Heisenberg Uncertainty- Ministry in this age

For a ministry class the Rev. Rebecca Parker posed this question "How might a post-modern, relational understanding human interchange inform an evolving ecclesiology in an age of social networking and internet technologies?" A class associated with a conference (Center) for ministers. Not only would I need to answer this question I would need to post my answer so that other ministers could read it. It is different posting for you - nonexistent followers who look and may sometimes like what they see but rarely comment. Here I would post for people who I would interact with in 72 hours. What did I want from this? Simply to make some kind of sense? Actually to make this question make some kind of sense to my life and call. What does it mean Karen to be a minister in the age of social networking and digital interchange? What does it mean to be a minister? What does it mean to have a social network? What does it mean that that network is digital and far flung around the world - yet still seen and experienced.

I ran for my handy on-line dictionary to look up several terms... ... ...

I am a priest in the order of Melchizedek. Aren't you? The mystical priest holding only to the highest Gd. Holding onto the earth while pointing at the moon. Serving those in need while capturing beauty. Awakening love while remembering the holy. Ministry is the impossible task of living fully in this world with all its mess and chaos, beauty and horror, all the while gently making room for the ineffable. Ministry is being in two states at one time, holding on while letting go. Ministry is knowing that while it seems impossible to be both at once, it is the only way to live.

But she asks a different question my middle of the night mind reminded me - not what do you know ministry to be - but how might we be now?

YouTUBE  (you may have heard of it) is one of those ideas that started a revolution. Let's make everyday videos available on the web. Facebook, Twitter, WoW, EVE, Second Life ... where do people "live" now? What does community look like now that I can Skype my step daughter in Germany and have a virtual job with people on the other side of the country? It is a mystery to me and to most everyone I talk to -  and still it is the world I live within today.

Because I believe that reminders of our transcendent nature are important, I have played around in the realm of YouTUBE, Blogspot and Facebook, attempting to create a space for beauty and wonder. I explore and experiment here because I want a ministerial, pastoral, voice in this space of virtual community. It is a strange and wonder filled land. where joy and humor reign. I am not sure how good I am in this task but I have gathered about 500 followers for a series of questions asking  where we find Gd n the world and another 400 viewers of various videos that I've posted. In comparison, a friend has over 6 million views for a VERY funny spoof on getting older - you might even have seen it. 6 million views (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSaoN2LdfU). Nothing in comparison to Gangnam Style with 1.2 BILLION views (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0).

What does it look like to be a voice of opening, of possibility, of reverence? People are willing to be distracted - are they willing to be transformed? Does Matt Dancing change people? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY) Does transformation come from Playing for Change? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM)

Who are the priests which Melchizedek would now bless?

What if we are the macro enactment, the embodiment, of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: we either know where we are going or where we are but never both at the same time.

I do know that ministry is no longer about 40 years, or 40 days, but rather 40 minutes or perhaps even 40 seconds. We have a moment to catch someone's attention, to invite them into a wider, richer, or potentially life changing perspective. What can we do with that moment?

Awakened to a start

91.5 was on the tuner for NPR in Chicago. In Chattanooga it is a Family Christian station. Waking up to music and proclamations of Gds love was not startling but it was oddly off putting. The level of self-congratulation and self-righteousness was stunning. Was I like that? Am I like that? Covering myself in a truth felt comforting even if it fit snugly, even if it was only part of the truth. OK really I should say the active from - when I cover myself. I am still in this camp of holding onto truth though the "truth" is now more ambiguous, more symbol than words - still I cover myself in truth too frightening not too really - for me. I play with the image of the river and letting go to float free - some days I even make it there but less often than I would like.

So as my eyes adjusted to the dark I wondered – why does this make me so uncomfortable? 
I blame it on the subtext of rightness and wrongness, with which a message of love is delivered. 
Is that what makes me uncomfortable? 
Right and wrong 
wrapped in the package 
of suffering for being right 
in the midst of wrong 
equaling LOVE.
Suffering in the midst of wrong = love.
 
The juxtaposition of suffering and love. 

This odd message that suffering is a form of love is troubling to me. It seems a crippling view that love can be seen in acts of violence. It feel overwhelming to me this equation, years of people waiting to leave abuse, longing to be seen as righteous and long suffering, willing to put up with in order to be moving toward love. I believe that while love can be seen anywhere - that does not make suffering love. Suffering is suffering.

Suffering is suffering.

So someone waking me up with images that make make suffering OK is jaring.
Did I do that?
Was I that for someone?
Did I profess that?

As if suffering was a commodity to be bought and sold for goodness. This language of love catapults me into a realm of anxiety. If I can act, give or be something for someone else – do I ever stop to ask myself if what I am doing is generative? Or is the dance simply to believe so strongly that I act, give and be right in order to be within my faith. 

But this does not take you into account - or wore it demands that you are wrong so that I can be even more righteous in my rightness. NOOOOOO I scream - love is love. Be love for yourself Karen. Be love not right or wrong - be love. Because while I may suffer (welcome to life) if I love through that suffering I will be redeemed - not in spite of others but because of them. I will be redeemed by the relationships I have within love. It is so odd this pull between doing to affirm belonging and doing to set myself a part.

My partner Pam says that these concepts of doing in spite of my suffering promotes individualism rather than relationship. I point out they are relational but relational to ideas rather than to people. Ah there is the rub. If I ascribe what I know to be: good of bad / right or wrong / righteous or obscenity / just or evil - to something solely outside of myself and then I put myself at odds with ever building a relationship with that same world?

I am reminded of hermits. While there might be something there to find in the solace and stillness of being alone with Gd and your own life. You do not find rightness as oppossed to others - if the mystics words hold truth you find rightness with you own faith in Gd.

And I am not a hermit, I am not alone in this particular place of belief. I am individualized and still I belong. I belong as long as I am willing to live in love. Which engenders trust. Which supports discovery. Which demands my best.

Ah it is all so very complicated.

I wish to find my way letting go of this odd language of suffering and instead embracing the direction in which these symbols point. Love. Love at every moment and hope that when people see your life what they hold onto is love as well. Not that drama - not the look what you got over - not even the achievements - let them hold onto the love. 

Collect for the day:
Gd let me use these as guides you have given us a compass rather than a map.

Hold onto life lightly.

Hold onto life lightly.

Hold onto life with light and love.

Out Beyond - Not just an idea

Dwell in Possibility: Out Beyond Ideas of Wrong and Right             by Pam Rumancik

I grew up Roman Catholic and that still informs some part of who I am in the world. While having let go of the theology, I know that my passion for justice, my love of ritual, and my appreciation for the sacred otherness of life have their roots in this heritage.

The teachings of a wandering Jewish Rabbi named Jesus deeply resonate with my understanding and experience of ultimate reality.

Love your neighbor as yourself, turn the other cheek, welcome the stranger – these lessons live deep in my bones.   I do not claim the label of “recovering Catholic” because I own and cherish much of what I experienced and absorbed growing up.

And yet…there is also a shadow side to this legacy I carry with me.

I grew up believing that there was a “right” way to do things; a “right” way to be and sometimes find that "rightness" hard to relinquish.  While having goals and ideals are necessary and good – getting stuck in rightness, or righteousness, can be unproductive and definitely at odds with the Unitarian Universalist faith which I espouse and love.

Within the UU tradition our highest commitment is to being in covenantal relationship with one another.  We do not hold onto a dogma or doctrine that everyone has to believe. We affirm community as a place of spiritual and personal growth; a place where relationship is valued above rightness because we trust that honest, respectful dialogue will bring forth deeper truths than can be found by a single person alone.

We are committed to respecting the individual and unique gifts of every person and staying in relationship despite the myriad viewpoints that are brought into the conversation.

Being right conflicts with a commitment to being in right relationship. Sometimes, as “come-inners” to this beautiful faith of relationality, we bring with us our old habits of righteousness; our old conviction that there is the right way – and we’ve got it. I call this my “catholic” monster because it rears its ugly head and roars at me that there is a right way and other people should be following it.

This is a profound spiritual practice for me – recognizing the snarl of that monster and then relegating it to the past where it belongs. It no longer serves me or how I want to be in the world.

My commitment – my highest value – is to healthy and respectful covenantal relationship; it is to the belief that we are far more together – wiser, kinder, stronger -  than we can ever be alone;  it is that a group of thoughtful seekers of truth and justice will always be the world’s best hope for creating a just and sustainable future.

So while I may have very strong opinions – about reproductive health, too big to fail banks, fracking or gun control – my highest commitment is to remaining in open and respectful dialogue with my community and the world around me. Deciding I am right shuts down any way forward into new, creative, or synergistic solutions for the future.

Three centuries ago Universalist Hosea Ballou wrote: “If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.”

Let us agree in love to stay in conversation – to find a third way forward when right and wrong no longer serve.

Out beyond ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. 

 When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. 

 Ideas, language, and even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense. 

 ~Rumi

Imago Dei

Imago Dei - the face of Gd.
I recently picked up a book for our religious kitsch bathroom called "Look it's Jesus." It is an edgy book filled with the stories of people finding the image of Gd, Jesus, Mary, Mother Theresa, ... (you get the drift) in a wide variety of place. I noted on Facebook that my personal favorite is couch stain Jesus, I am ashamed to say this selection makes me belly laugh. Still I am fascinated  I may have laughed hard and heartily when we initially found the book and flipped through the variety of images but I am fascinated that there is a book dedicated to our human longing to find images of Gd all around us. (I am also fascinated by the fact that people can see draped bearded faces in just about everything.)

I to want to see Gd peeking out at me from things as familiar as my food and my living space though that has not ever happened in the way the book describes. I think it would make me feel special and surrounded, perhaps even protected by the essence of Gd. Now I am not sure that I need protection, still my world can seem like a scary scary place. I am not always sure that I belong. I am certain that I am often not enough. I have been convinced that my work alone will not transform those I love or dislike. I believe in a transcendent force (lets call it Gd for the ease of conversation) that is ever evolving and ever calling me to my best self. Believing in a Gd so present to me that Gd shows up early in the morning as I prepare for the mundane life. I often live is a point of potential. Suddenly my life holds within it the possibility of transcendence. In seeing Gd for a moment I am pulled away and reminded of that presence that I lean into during good worship or meditation is there, is here, is now.

This silly and profound book that in an oddly respectful way shows a number of different "sightings" of Gd in our world speaks to me of my need to be in relationship. Relationship with both the world in which I live and with Gd. Not separately, but in a way that is surprisingly integrated and whole. All of this got me to thinking about Imago Dei in a very different way...

Imago Dei - the face of Gd, we are created in his image. Yes my friends when you start talking Imago language Gd is usually a he... you know Adam and all. Usually a man and usually the depicted in the dominant culture - white. Apparently there is power in believing that Gd looks like us. There is power in that subtle affirmation. We may have fallen from the grace of the garden but - and this is an important but - we still look like our creator. We are kin. We are children. We are beloved. And we look for affirmations of that connection in our everyday life as well as in our religious practices.

We might ponder what it means when this image - this including and reflective image - is only depicted in the dominant culture. Who is included in the work/ in the world of Gd? In justice work, there is often an appeal to shift the face of Gd from only affirming the dominant culture. Liberation theology, the notion that Jesus' good news is actually more significantly directed at the impoverished and maligned, the outsider and the foreign within our midst, also holds examples of reclaiming the image of the face of Gd as the outsider. Liberation theology grabs hold of Gd's face and says - look - Gd is ours as well. Jesus would have looked more like Mohammed than someone attending Woodstock in the late 1960's. Images of a dark skinned Gd invite those long left as children of a lesser Gd. A Gd with a broad powerful nose, curly hair, stout figure and brown eyes abound act as a radical reminder of whom Gd is in relationship with.

Still this claim to Gd's image being non-traditional remains a divider, a place of separateness, a weapon of authority. If Gd is us than he is not YOU.

Gd created man in his image.

I wonder if we too narrowly define what image means. If Gd created us in Gd's image - was the image of a face at all. Was the image of an emerging star a cosmic light, a single celled organism, the angler fish in the depth of our seas.

I wonder if Gd made us of the very stuff of Gd. Image as replica. Image as kin and as part of and as creation. I wonder if Gd created us as Gd. That which exists in all things, that which connects all things, that which holds all things together - this is my personal definition of Gd. Not a definition that can easily be found as a reminder in food or ashtrays but a definition that takes me beyond the tribalism that I hear in so many religious traditions. Not generally within the mystical arms but that is a story for another day.

Am I, are you the image of Gd?

Earlier last year a small particle was finally "seen" by physicists underneath the French mountains. This particle initially dubbed the "god particle" known now more formally as the Higgs-Boson particle, is the stuff of life. It is the hope that we are not made up primarily of space - no more spectacularly we are made up of potential.

Am I are you the image of Gd?

What if we gave up the notion that the creator said yes you look like me, as if this was a photo recognition exercise.
What if we claimed we look like the creator because we are made of creator.
What if all of this amazing universe is connected in by this potential - peeking out at us from everywhere in everything.

Go ahead look for the face of Jesus, but look for the Andromeda galaxy.

None of this is new, I know, nothing really is - what is new is perhaps our understanding that we have the potential to be the stars -or- we are the stars waiting for the potential to be human.

What a precious gift life, to be able to look and see in the simplest places the transcendent nature of Gd. What a gift to be reminded that finding Gd can be filled with peels of laughter and tears of joy. What a gift for me to remember Gd calls to me - not from far away - but from the very air that I breath. Be - be all that you can be - I am waiting for your potential to unfold.

Efficiency & Spaciousness 

Morning woke me early

Grey. An intermittent snowflake

crazily navigating sharp air.

Heard the voices saying “you should walk”

…

A shiver of reactionary retorts;

“it’s cold…the bed is warm” no movement.

 “The birds call…it’s been too long.

There’s more…out there”

Yes, just where fear ignites…

more.

Stepping out of comfortable reality;

cranky, challenging, stressful… familiar.

Needed;

essential, important, validated.

A place to earn my keep in this confounding rodeo.

The Big Assumption:

Life must be earned.  Ouch.

No free rides; ruthless efficiency guarantees a longer stay.

What? Really.

Hesitating, curious

my walk begins on aging asphalt

laced with ribbons of variegated stones

noticing;

long dead trees nourishing moss, foliage, green.

Ancient boulders hosting lichen,

rich, profuse, abundant.

Fallen trees at drunken angles

bedecked with vines & crackly nests.

Being.

Not breathing, running sap, or even rolling

down hill.

Silently in place without agency.

Holding their place; holding their space.

A generosity of spaciousness flowed to and fro;

every single atom needed

wanted, irreplaceable,

a blessing.

What happened to the frantic trying?

The worrying, the struggling,

pushing, wrestling, straining?

Wisdom, experience?

Carefully placed levers?

Reeling, I breathe.

Spaciousness.  (without plans

or blueprints, or schedules, or clocks)

Looking to the clear edges of forever

refusing to blink.

What would it look, or feel, or taste like?

To step out of efficiency

be swallowed up in spaciousness?

Would not implosion surely ensue?

Perhaps… and yet

let’s go.

 Pam Rumancik  3-1-13