Father's Day, Expanded

Chris and I have stuck our Father's Day cards in the mail, and I've explored father-to-be options for Chris for this Father's Day, but I wanted to write a few words about how I think we're called to celebrate this day as Christians...and why...

This came to mind this week as I learned that we had only had enough gifts made to hand out this Sunday in church for, well, biological fathers. I hadn't asked before (I hadn't asked for Mother's Day, which is, it turns out, why we'd run out of gifts by the second service) because I had considered it a theological imperative, I guess, to recognize all men on Father's Day. After all, Christianity has long held singleness to be a totally valid path to discipleship, and long gone are the days when (most) Christians would call a childless marriage any less successful than a child-bearing one. After all, a lot of child-bearing marriages end in divorce, so I mean, how would you define "success"?

My own thoughts on this were formed early, and actually due, I think, to my own father's approach to the holiday as I say it played out at the church be served in Baltimore. There was an older could at that church, Chinni and Sununda, who had immigrated to the US from India, having grown up as Christians, and somehow (I cannot remember how) they ended up connected with this church in Baltimore.

Chinni and Sununda were awesome, kind, loving people who loved all the children of the church. They gave generously of their time, love and resources. Chinni has spent much of his life as a teach at a prestigious boys school in the city. But they never had children of their own. They not only care for the children of the church, but in Sununda's later years (she died several years ago) they took care of a niece and her family until that family could get set up here in the US.

It would have seemed radically awkward, really, not to recognize these loving people when we recognized parents. And so it was that we always did. We always recognized all men, or all women, on Mothers and Fathers Day. How else could it be? Certainly Christians value families and family values, but aren't we supposed to reach further, and understand our place in God's family. It just never occurred to me that church would so any less.

I mean, when you think about the important mother or father figures in your life, I bet you'll list people you're not biologically related to, and probably even a few with no kids of their own. All of these people are gifts got has given to use, and all ought to be celebrated!

Trust Clause Follow Up

So those who read my blog regularly--and thank you if you do (and I'm sorry for the rambling that most of my posts are)--I wanted to follow up regarding the issue of the trust clause, specifically as it was in the news recently because of the situation at Sunnyside.

Based on what I gathered from the Bishop speaking at last week's annual conference session, the parties involved have come to an agreement (along with some sort of confidentiality clause which I'm not sure what that hides, but I guess that's the point) in which Sunnyside gets to leave, and will buy their building. Now that I think of it, the confidential part may be the amount they're paying, since this is one of the problems the conference trustees have run into in the past--a congregation leaves, then the district committee sells or rents the building for a fraction of the price--there are even rumors of past such sales of churches for $1, which hardly seems to validate the spirit of the trust clause. At any rate, I have no idea what the amount was, though I can only hope it was a fair market price. At any rate, I must commend our conference leadership, the DS and the Bishop, who were far more gracious in this situation than was required.

The question of the trust clause remains, though, and was given bolstering recently with a judgment in a case involving Episcopal churches in VA--a big deal for United Methodists since our trust clause is much more legally strong than theirs.

Check out this story from the Washington Post

Nine conservative congregations sought to break away from the denomination over conflicts involving the ordination of LGBT persons to the Episcopacy--this is a different issue for their denomination because their call system allows for the ordination of LGBT priests without all churches being require to accept them. Therefore, the issue is not as present for all churches when it only allows for LGBT priests as it does for LGBT bishops. It is different for the United Methodist church because of the appointment process--a church could not simply NOT hire an LGBT minister, therefore, the issue for the UMC, I suspect, will be resolved long before the election of a bishop is the issue. But, hey, stranger things have happened.

That said, the unanimous appeals decision doesn't straight forwardly reinforce the trust clause, but says that the lower court mis-applied it in this case. The article says things are not over, just getting a lot more messy as these congregations seek to leave and take their property with them.

A Man Fell Into a Hole...

This Sunday's sermon is the final in our "Rethink Church" series. The question is "What if church could lighten your load?" and Pastor Ken will be preaching on the text of the parable of the Good Samaritan. We've decided to use the story from West Wing (the same story is told in different ways in different stories) of a man who fell into a hole. I just thought I'd share it to get you thinking in prep for Sunday as an opportunity to reflect on how we as church light be able to lighten each other's and others' loads...

In #32 Noël, Leo tells Josh the following story (Josh refers to it when talking to Leo in "Bartlet for America"):
    "This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.
    "A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, 'Hey you. Can you help me out?' The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.
    "Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?' The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on
    "Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?' And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, 'Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.' The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.'"
(Passage as quoted here: http://westwing.bewarne.com/queries/story.html)

Interfaith Marriages

There are a few websites that I check out regularly...if not daily, then at least a few times a week. These include The Pew Religion news page and Duke's Faith and Leadership page, which in additional to featured articles, also highlights news stories each day. Often, there aren't many stories that catch my attention, other times there are. Usually is I post about the stories at all, it's to share them on Facebook and share a few reflections (already this morning I've posted a story from the Washington Post about people protesting a possible (i.e. in development) show about Jesus living in NYC today--and why I think there are probably better things to worry about for Christians.

Then I checked out the Faith and Leadership page and came across this article about how the rate of interfaith marriages is increasing, but that these marriages are also failing at a higher rate than the average population.

Here is the article.

I think one line really start to get at the issue for me as a pastor..."But couples don't want to hear that, and no one really wants to tell them."

When I do premarital counseling with couples (and I haven't really done any true interfaith weddings, more like one person is way more interested in church participation than another) I do not tell couples what they should do or not related to their religious lives. I suppose some pastors would criticize me for this, but I find the setting to be too charged--these people just want to get through these sessions so you'll marry them. I'm afraid they'd be prone to say whatever they think I want to hear. So my speech on religious life goes something like this: "Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I will say this. Early in a relationship, religion can seem like a non-issue for many couples. Your schedules may not really allow you to go to church anyway, and at any rate, you may simply have expectations for the future. You need to talk about those now. Because religion WILL become an issue if not before then, then when you have children. Don't make your kids resolve this for you. Deal with it now. Discuss your views, especially how you see religious life being (or not being) a regular part of your lives, and if you want to find a church community and get more involved, it may be easier to do that now than when you have a young child and are adjusting to that."

We live in a pluralistic world, and many people are able to make such relationships work. But many people are not.

One of the big things people try to assert is that their religion does not exclude others. I have yet to find one for which that is true--precisely because each faith's beliefs are so unique so as to not be able to be interpreted in any way other than their "native" way. For a Buddhist to say they accept Christianity would be to reject the Christological claims of Christianity generally. Christianity does not accept that Jesus was simply a prophet, so Islam cannot be fully reconciled with Christian beliefs. Christianity does not believe in reincarnation, on and on. It doesn't mean we all have to fight, it just means you can't believe everything at once.

Check out this quote from the article:

But the effects on the marriages themselves can be tragic -- it is an open secret among academics that tsk-tsking grandmothers may be right. According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.

This same article even points out that differences not only amongst denominations, but also the degree of the couple's religious involvement (i.e. one spouse worships regularly, the other does not) also seems to increase the rate of divorce.

Or check out this quote about how well-intentioned couples can still face difficulties:

Even among those who have tough conversations, says Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonpartisan research organization, religion can become a serious point of contention later on. One parent may agree to raise the children in the other's faith, he says, but then that faith "becomes repellent" to him or her. Coleman doesn't think that people get married with the intention of deceiving their spouse; "they just have no idea how powerfully unconscious religion can be."

So at any rate, I thought the article was interesting, though not predictive for people (after all, there are still a lot of interfaith marriages that don't end in divorce). What do you think?

Reflecting

Whoa. So it's been a super long time since I've blogged. Yikes!

I remember in college, as a history major at Gettysburg College, we often used primary sources for our papers (the way real historians do, and as I later learned, not how everyone--sadly--does history). At any rate, for one project, we looked at civilian life in the town during the Battle of Gettysburg. One can only imagine how well researched this topic is by GC students alone!

We found one woman (I cannot now remember her name) who wrote quite a lot before and after the battle, but not during. And actually, even her writings afterward don't shed the glaring light on that time as we'd hoped. Of course this led first to a discussion in the class about how disconnected she was. Our professor countered with the view that I like to hold (at any rate I like it better): this was so real an experience. During it, who could blame her for not having time to write (we'd learned from other sources that this same young woman had helped with the medical care which filled the town and nearly all its buildings). And after that (and it was a long while before anything like normalcy returned) how exactly does one describe that experience, where would one start.

At any rate, then, I hope my lapse in writing here does not in any way signal any lack of interest in the happens of the world, community, church or my own life in between. In fact, a TON has happened since my last post, and I can only hope to be more regular in my postings from now on (at least until my next regrettable lapse).

I've been reading Stanley Hauerwas' autobiography Hannah's Child lately, thanks to the ease of the Kindle app on my iPhone (I'd rather read a few pages than play a silly game--most of the time at least). I have really enjoyed reading my former professor's reflections, and have certainly learned a lot--and remembered how much I missed the theological discussions of my seminary days. But also powerful to me has been how Hauerwas tells his story--as others have noted of the book, he has filled it with references to people...people he worked with, knew, read, etc. He certainly sees himself as the product not only of his experiences, but also his acquaintances (though even such a note sells his theological views on the matter short). At any rate, it has made me reflect upon the people in my life and how they have shaped me. In fact, Hauerwas' story is also a part of mine--so that when he tells of particular views he developed in interaction with a particular person, I recall how my views on that were shaped by Hauerwas, and I thus learn both of us were shaped by this other person, on and on. I will never forget the first day of our intro to Christian ethics class when Dr. Hauerwas explained that he was not going to endeavor to help us to think for ourselves--it was his class and his goal was to have us think like him. I suspect i have fallen somewhere in between.

Hauerwas' explanation of his own family (his former wife's mental illness was nothing of a secret around the Div School though I knew none of the details till reading Hannah's Child) not only resonated with some similar experiences (similar in very vague and different ways albeit) in my own life, but his relationship with his son Adam also made we really wonder for the first time about my own child (hopefully children) as Chris and I anticipate our first child's birth in the latter half of November. I once had a counselor tell me (God bless colleges that provide free counseling to their students) that sometimes all parents can do is do their best and start saving money early for their children's future psychiatric care. That sounded less flippant, yet still humorous in context, but as a soon-to-be parent, I suppose it bear (probably constant) attention...how do our choices and lives affect our children?

For me, one of the things I think about is the way my and my husband's vocations will impact our children. It is perhaps unfair to say that a pastor or camp director's children are more impacted by their parents jobs (I can imagine any person's job having a significant impact on their children depending on how they handle it) but there is something to be said for the sheer physical presence a child of such a parent (let alone one of each) has in their parent's "work" world. I don't think such a situation is necessarily traumatizing (if I did I wouldn't even venture submitting a child to such) but I do know it can be done terribly wrong, which gives me the hope it can also be done quite right (or at least as well as possible).

I suspect one of the key factors is the extent to which a child feels there are expectations placed upon them solely because of a parent's job. And further, the extent to which they feel their lives are in some way a possession of the community. Now, as a Christian, I cannot help but hold that we are not our own people, and we are only most truly living as disciples when living in a community to whom we are accountable. But for many PKs (pastor's kids, and I suspect often true for camp director's kids) the healthy aspect of this gets swallowed up when parents simply do not have good boundaries for their own lives. Of course, discerning good boundaries is precisely the difficulty, but for many, simply asserting that there should be some boundaries is probably a good place to start.

Further, in an attempt, I suspect, to mitigate the negative aspects of poor boundaries and having people too involved in a child's life, some pastors and camp directors seem to deem their work setting as the appropriate place for their child to learn basic manners. As if it is routinely the altar committee's job to keep one's child from running amuck, or the Bible study group's job to simply ignore the child you dragged along. We all need grace, and parents need support, but church or camp cannot and should not replace a parent's responsibility to properly raise one's children. There's something to the Apostle Paul's guidance to Timothy (1 Timothy 3:12) about church leaders managing their children well. Pastors don't have perfect kids (what does perfect mean anyway?), and shouldn't be expected to, but they ought to be able to "manage them" well. At least well enough so that they are not a burden to others. No one likes a bratty kid, and when it's the pastor's kid, it becomes more difficult for people to deal with. I know a lot of kids who are well behaved (all kids are, well kids, but there's a difference)...and some of these are even PKs, so I believe there is hope.

All this said, I'm aware that it's one thing to say it, and other to do it. It's also easy as a parent who is a pastor or camp director (and I suspect this is the root of most problems in such families) to lay aside family time and priorities in favor of the many and limitless good things to be done. A pastor who wants to find a way to fill his time will have no trouble doing so. And many a clergy family has died a slow and painful death as their relationships have fallen prey to others' needs. I'm not advocating for self-indulgence (that is, after all, sin) and I do think it's quite important for children to learn that there are a lot of people out there and the world doesn't revolve around themselves. But there's a point where this good lesson becomes a punishment. And that is the point where these vocations of ours can become dangerous.

So, as we prepare for a child, Chris and I continue to discern how we are called to find a healthy balance in our family. We are helped along because we have done this all along--talked and prayed about how to balance our relationship and our callings, and how to keep all our relationships healthy. I was blessed by parents, who for whatever other challenges we faced as a family, I found them to be very interested in letting each of us be ourselves, and not simply an extension of my father's ministerial office. I was not raised to feel I was simply the possession of the church, and thus it was meaningful for me to give my life over to the church's service--it was indeed a choice and not an inevitability. That is the same choice I want our children to have.

So we'll see...just as I shall continue to see the many ways the people in my life shape me, and no doubt, the ways those same people and others shape my children's lives...