Summertime in the Preacher's Corner

For my family and me, summertime means barefeet, swimming in the river, campfires and cooking on the grill. For one of my daughters, it isn't summer without the beach, and for another it wouldn't be the same unless she was at Lutheridge for at least one week. Summer means something different for everyone. As we live into the season and all the meanings it carries for people, as a preacher, one of the questions I'm trying to figure out in the midst or Mother's and Father's Day, Memorial Day and the 4th of July, is where, if at all, should my preaching connect the Gospel to these celebrations and traditions?

Here are my three most recent sermons. The first was preached on Trinity Sunday, which fell this year on the last weekend in May, which for most Americans anyway, is Memorial Day Weekend, the official unofficial start of summer when the public swimming pools open, grills are fired up and  the shoes come off.  The second sermon was on June 23, in the midst of the long green season both in the church and in a world where everything is growing and green, and the third was on June 30, the Sunday before America's Independence Day celebration.

I didn't try to make connections to the season's celebrations in this year's sermons and I haven't resolved my questions about the importance of those connections. Part of me wants to stubbornly stick to the text and not be concerned about them, but I also want my hearers to connect the Gospel to their own lives -  to know that they are loved by God and God cares about what happens in their lives - and going forward, I think that may mean making room for the celebrations. Please let me know what you think.

May 26, 2013
Trinity Sunday (Year C)
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15



 Listen Now


June 23, 2013
5th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C)
Isaiah 65:1–9
Psalm 22:19–28 (22)
Galatians 3:23–29
Luke 8:26–39


Listen Now


June 30, 2013
6th Sunday after Pentecost (Year C)
1 Kings 19:15–16, 19–21
Psalm 16 (8)
Galatians 5:1, 13–25
Luke 9:51–62


Listen Now

Kyrie Eleison... Lord Have Mercy

In a week already marked by anniversaries of past tragedies like the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the shootings at Virginia Tech (2007) and at Columbine High School (1999), as well as the 1993 shootout in Waco, Texas, we witnessed more death and destruction and, while my community is hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the tragedies that struck this week, I felt called to say the following to the people who gathered at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Asheville this morning for Good Shepherd Sunday. The Gospel text was John 10:22-30.

---

When I was growing up, my parents’ generation could remember where they were when they heard that President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.

For me, the first event that I remember in that way is the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

A litany of unthinkable events have happened in the years since then.

Like it or not, these incidents become waymarkers in each of our lives, like blazes on a footpath or buoys in a channel.

When new news of death and destruction hits us, like it has this past week with the bombing at the Boston marathon,
the explosion of the fertilizer plant in Texas,
the earthquake in China’s Sichuan province,
we freshly mourn the loss of lives
and try to find our true north, to regain our equilibrium,
wishing our cries of “Enough” and “Never Again” were sufficient.
But somehow, they aren’t,
and now, here we stand together again,
lost and disoriented,
deeply grieving for the hurting world around us.

We all react differently to these experiences.
Some of you may be able to neatly categorize these events as the stuff of history
while others have heard or seen so much in your lifetimes that you numbly accept yet another tragedy,
while for others, each new tragedy is a sharp jab to your gut
as the memory of “where you were when you heard” rushes back and knocks the wind out of you, all over again.

Poet Mary Oliver suggests yet another reaction, writing,
“Read one newspaper daily …
And let the disasters, the unbelievable yet approved decisions, soak in…
What keeps us from falling down to the ground…?”(1)



Indeed in today’s Gospel, I think we are called to fall down –
called to admit that in this broken and hurting place, we can do nothing apart from God,

called to kneel before God and confess Jesus as Messiah – the Risen and Living Christ who died to restore us in relationship with God – 

and called to stand and follow him,
as our Good Shepherd, confident in God’s love and care for each of us.



Speaking to a Jewish audience, Jesus takes the image of the Good Shepherd,
a familiar image known to them through the prophets Ezekiel (34; 22:27), 
Zephaniah (3:3) and Zechariah (10:2-3, 11:4-17),
an image that compared the unfaithful leaders of Israel to bad shepherds who consigned their flocks to the wolves,
and tells them, "Look again!"

Recalling the promise of a future shepherd,
a good shepherd, who will gather God’s people as one flock,
Jesus says,
“Look around you! I am the Good Shepherd. My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me.” God has fulfilled God’s promise to Moses, to David, to Israel!

God has given God’s people – us – a good shepherd who gathers us into one flock,
one community of followers who know Jesus.

We don’t just know his genealogy or where he was born; in John’s Gospel “knowing” is not just a “head” matter, but a “heart” matter. Knowing is not just an intellectual task; “knowing” is “believing” – God’s people believe Jesus is the Messiah and follow him.

And not only has God given us a good shepherd;God has given us to Jesus.
Just as a shepherd knows the flock in his care, Jesus knows each one of us –
the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Jesus knows us in our anger, our hurt, and our tears.
And Jesus knows us in our generosity, our mercy, and our joy.

We know his voice – his Word comes to us through Scripture. Psalm 23 tells us

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;”

His Word gives us assurance of his presence and reminds us of his promise:

that we will have eternal life – that death will not have the last word;
that we are held in God’s loving hands – no one and nothing can snatch us from God;
that God is greater than the evil we see perpetrated;
that God is greater than the powers and principalities that try to separate us from one another and from God.

And so, we follow him. United as one flock, our waymarkers are not the tragedies that we experience in our lives, whether they make the news cycle or not.

Our waymarkers are God’s commands to love God and our neighbor. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, leads us in God’s ways and keeps us on right paths.



Reassured by God’s steadfast promises in a world violently shaken by the brokenness of human sin and by death, we walk “on the rough ground of uncertainties”(2) ; we claim God’s love, grace and forgiveness and confess Jesus as Messiah.

In a message shared Friday night, Bishop Mark Hanson told us, “There are no God-forsaken places and there are no God-forgotten people….”(3)  We may be “washed in life’s river”(4), but we are baptized as God’s children; our Shepherding God knows each one of us by name and loves us and cares for us.



Let us pray. (4)

O Lord, our Shepherding God, come close to us now
Come near us in our time of need.

Guide us with your voice,
Help us to listen and follow no matter where you lead.
Help us to trust you.

Shepherding God,
thank you for your son who laid down his life for those who follow him and for those who are not yet in the fold …

We pray for those who don’t know the shepherd. We pray that by our actions and our reaching out into the community, they may come to know you.

Shepherding God,
Guide us with your love and renew us with your peace. Amen.

---

Notes:
(1) excerpt from Mary Oliver, “The Morning Paper” in A Thousand Mornings
(2) excerpt from Mary Oliver, “A Thousand Mornings” in A Thousand Mornings
(3) ELCA, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2q4IuPQcow&list=PLC4E2E3CA2B79AA24&index=1
(4) excerpt from William Blake, “Night”
(5) excerpt from Abigail Carlisle-Wilke, "Sunday Prayer for Easter 4C", RevGalBlogPals, http://revgalblogpals.blogspot.com/2013/04/sunday-prayer-for-easter-4c.html

Week 3 of Lent

As we move into the second half of Lent, have you discovered practices, prayers or disciplines that have opened your eyes to seeing God in the world around you? Have you changed how you approach God yourself? What have you been learning?

I have discovered that while I use a rich vocabulary of words in much of what I do, sometimes I live in a visual desert, or at least, its distinctiveness is blurred in its familiarity. I wonder how my reflections would change if I lived in  more urban setting, or if I was in more varied spaces every day instead of following my routine of home, desk, sanctuary, highway and home again. And then I find myself convicted: Living in the midst of the familiar (and the comfortable), how much more important is it then that I stop and pay attention to the world around me, to notice where I see God active and vibrant?

Hear

The organ resonates, the trumpets call, the choral voices are raised singing, "Hosanna!"

Earthly
"If God so clothes..." all kinds of "earthly" things, will God not also clothe us? (Mt. 6:30)

Prophet
Who are our "prophets" today? Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly has been named. Mother Theresa probably, too. Theologian Walter Brueggemann writes about prophetic imagination and how we preachers can speak prophetically when we bring the Word to our congregations. I wrestled with an image for this word because I resisted using the image of someone renowned, and kept wondering, "Who are the prophets in my life?" and "What does it mean to be a prophet today?" What are the hard truths we need to hear?

Leave
The story of Jesus delivering a boy from a demon in Luke 9:35-43 is the Scripture the folks at Rethink Church chose for this word. The disciples and Jesus had just left a mountaintop experience, and confronted by the world waiting for them, Jesus drove out the evil. What do we leave when we go out of our sanctuaries? Are we able, on the strength of our witness, to drive out, or expel, evil from our communities? Is that the power of communion, community bound together by Christ?

Thirst
Is our "thirst" for God felt more keenly than our craving for the next cup of dark roast?

Bless
"Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to Thy loving service." That was my childhood table grace, and it's one of one hundred graces in this volume, which a seminary friend shared with me several years ago.

Night
Remembering that even in the darkness, God is here with me, with us.

Week 2 of Lent

Week 2 of the "Photo-a-Day" challenge created by Rethink Church challenged us to look at these words:

Evil
Defined for many by the events of September 11, 2001, evil was made visible in the events of that day, as well as others before it and since, whenever we have cried "never again". This photo is from TIME Pictures:

Love
While, undoubtedly, the context for speaking of love during Lent is the inexhaustible love of God for us, the picture was what still comes to mind first for me: one from our wedding day in 1993.

Spirit
The Spirit of God is ever in the wind or the whisper. Many images I saw on the day of this word were of cemeteries, recalling the spirits of all the saints who have gone before us. This glass sculpture was in my grandparents' dining room during their lifetimes, and if you squint, you can almost see the branches sway.

Live
Daily, we're reminded to live life fully because it is a gift. With my family, I try to live with laughter and joy.

Cover
Last Sunday's Gospel text (Luke 13:31-35) spoke of the mother hen covering her brood, protecting them from the assault of the world around them. This image is from a chapel above Jerusalem that tradition says is where Jesus proclaimed his lament over the city. (Mt. 23:37)

For the rest of the week's reflections on "Vision" and "Lift", I have to rely on the Pinterest images collected by the folks at Rethink Church. The daily text and blog post give a short introduction to where they've drawn the word from, and sometimes, I read that before I find an image, while other times, I don't read it until later, and it's fun to see where our thoughts diverged.

What are you seeing differently this Lent?

Opening My Eyes During Lent

For Lent, part of my practice is participating in a "Photo-a-Day" challenge created by Rethink Church, sponsored by the United Methodist Church.  Rethink Church posts a blog every day with a longer narrative and Scripture to fully explain the theme, and, with lots of other folks, I take a photo that, for me, reflects the theme for the day. Using the lens of the day's word, I am asking every day, "Where do I see God in my life today? 

Here are the ones I posted during the first week:

Who Am I
A child of God, a wife, mother, student.

Return
Does returning to God mean returning to God through the red doors? What are alternatives?

See         Injustice
No image for these two days because the days' work got in the way, but  the reflection of where I "see injustice" is found in the bus stops on the south end of town, where the jobs are, but the buses don't run on Sundays. Can we open our eyes to see the ways people with less privilege than we have experience life?

Settle
To where have I followed God (Va., Pa., W.Va., NC, MN) and to where is God calling me next?

World
We cannot experience the world through packages; we have to meet living, breathing people.

Wonder
I expressed wonder that "What you see depends largely on where you sit." The axiom is true in life, as well as in art. This photo of a window in Duke Chapel was posted on their Facebook page.

Want to try it? Visit Rethink Church. You can get daily reminders via email, share on Twitter with #rethinkchurch and #40days, post photos on their Facebook wall or on their Pinterest. There are lots of ways to connect, and more importantly, to be in conversation with others who are listening for God in their lives every day, too.

No Syllabus for God-sightings

July 10. Registration day for fall classes. Oh, wait, that’s right. I won’t be taking classes this fall. One of the new experiences gifted to me because I am going on internship is a semester without coursework.  Most of the time, I recognize it as a gift; sometimes, like this morning, I want to throw a two-year old’s tantrum and scream, “But I need that class now...” I think that, besides interrupting the reassuring, steady march of completing degree requirements, what I fear is missing the structure of having a schedule and a syllabus and some predictability. Instead I’m living in a pretty unstructured environment, for a few weeks anyway; trying to listen and watch what God may be trying to teach me in this time and space; and, watching internship draw closer on the horizon.

The learning doesn’t stop, fortunately. I discovered the local library system has a free online language tutor that lets me refresh my Spanish and bridge its Castilian foundation to the Latin American Spanish we hear more often in the Americas. I visited the stacks of the local used book store where it looks like somebody traded in a library of emergence theology and other interesting books. (so, I obligingly brought a few home)

I was finishing up a library copy of Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian and hoped to find a used copy to buy but I didn’t have any luck. I’m not surprised; it is a sticky book − one I expect I’ll reread even though I don’t usually read things more than once. In Almost Christian Dean writes about the 2003-2005 National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) and talks about teenagers, contrasting popular, cultural faith which reflects a moral therapeutic deism and “consequential faith”, which develops in teenagers in congregations who “portray God as living, present and active, place a high value on Scripture; reflect the life and mission of Jesus Christ in its practices and relationships; and emphasize spiritual growth, discipleship and mission.”

As someone who is more comfortable talking with people born in the ‘20s than people living in their 20s (or teens), a while back, I adopted a mantra for ministry: “break stereotypes, learn flexibility, build relationships and communicate well.” Dean challenges stereotypes of teenagers who aren’t interested in talking with adults and who aren’t capable of conversations that take more than 140 characters.  She includes an important reminder in Almost Christian that can get lost in the tussling about that is parenting a teenager:

[Every teenager is] an amazing child of God. Their humanity is embedded in their souls as well as their DNA. Their family is the church, their vocation is a grateful response for the chance to participate in the divine plan of salvation, their hope lies in the fact that Christ has claimed them and secured their future for them.

In Almost Christian, there’s a challenge to be intentional about living this truth out in our relationships with teenagers. There's also a challenge to Christian adults and to parents, particularly in mainline Protestant traditions, to recognize how we influence the faith of children, whether we know it or not, and to not be as afraid of speaking about God and Jesus, of pointing to the ways that God is moving in our lives. We tell our lives in stories and unless we are talking about our God-sightings and God-stories, how can anyone else recognize themselves in the Christian story?

So one hope I have for this unstructured time I have is to participate in more conversations about God’s active presence in our world, and more readily answer where I saw, heard or experienced God in everyday life. I hope you’ll listen in.

What would you like to be called?

Lauren Hunter at Church Tech Today published a new post this week about 5 Pinterest marketing strategies for churches.  

There’s been a lot of buzz around Pinterest (leave your email in a comment below if you want an invite) because its use, especially by women, is soaring. Recently, when Pinterest policies came under scrutiny for potential copyright issues I began thinking about how we share and promote our interests without infringing on others’ rights, and exploring what kinds of pins people are sharing. (For more on the copyright concerns, here is the February blog post from lawyer and photographer Kirsten Kowalski and a blog post from today’s Wall Street Journal. I follow a lot of people and boards on Pinterest because they pin images that reflect beauty and inspiration in ways that I understand. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Sacred paths by @ChSocm
Places by Yoichi S
Sacred Spaces By Stratton McCrady

As much fun as it is to drink in all the breathtaking images on Pinterest, I wonder how many folks dismiss it as the latest fad and at its worst, vanity and indulgence.

It isn’t.

I am not a social media savant. I still only know a sliver of how people are communicating today. In his newest book Viral, Len Sweet would call me a Gutenberger because I am about three years older than the oldest digital natives who he names Googlers; I grew up with a different language and vocabulary and my default is still paper and pen.

However, I think Pinterest is giving us new ways to answer an ancient question:

“What do you like to be called?”

When someone asks you,“What is your name?” they are asking what you were called at your birth. But "What do you like to be called?" offers something else. A friend reminded me of how differently those two questions can be heard by people who cannot or will not claim their pasts. Others want to stake their futures with their answers; creatives - graphic designers, artists, photographers - are using Pinterest to visually represent themselves by pinning their resumes. Our answers can reveal how we see ourselves and what parts of ourselves we want to share with others. 

That’s where the opportunity exists for churches on Pinterest. People are asking, “What do you like to be called?” and instead of delivering an answer people may expect, let’s answer by showing people who we are and to whom we belong. Happy pinning!

No Rising Tide?

In No Rising Tide Joerg Rieger challenges the relevance of President John F. Kennedy’s well-known statement that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” (1)  As the Occupy movements have brought to the headlines in recent months, “the gaps between the very wealthy and the rest of the population keep increasing” and “life-and-death struggles are no longer just a matter for the poorest of the poor.” (3) Even New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who Rieger identifies as “a long-time supporter of globalization who [has] great faith in the free market” has said, “We are going to have to learn to live with a lot more uncertainty for a lot longer than our generation has ever experiences.” (2)

Rieger challenges us to evaluate our assumptions about the economy and free markets.  Observing that often we believe “the authority of economics is unquestionable and often even infallible, and in the assumption that the current system is the only one that is viable” he suggests that there are parallels between economics and religion.  He cites theologian and Union Theological Seminary professor Paul Knitter as one who has gone as far as to say that the market is a religion and therefore, should be in conversation with other religions. (6)

What would that discourse look like? What would the questions be? Rieger suggests several: “On which authorities, powers, and energies do we rely? [Are they the right ones?] What is it that gives us ultimate hope, shapes our desires, and provides reasonable levels of stability?” (4)

These questions matter because in this disparate world where we live “power and influence determine who gets to shape the world, who gets recognized, and whose ideas count.”(3)  One example of an explicit theology of economics is pronounced by Michael Novak, an American Enterprise Institute scholar to whom Rieger attributes the idea that “the status quo should not be challenged since this is the way God intends things to be.”(6)  Arguing that often the relationship between economics and theology is more implicit than explicit, Rieger suggests “the principles of mainline economics are mostly taken for granted by religious communities, presupposed as part of the way things are, and virtually never discussed in critical fashion.” (10) Because the principles are embedded, “Hope, even in the midst of the most severe economic crisis, is thus built on the faith that things will eventually get between and that the reign of free-market economics will be reaffirmed.” (7)

Why don’t we talk more about “the alternative approaches to the world of economics”? (11) How can we awaken critical self-reflection of our economic positions, and initiate a movement away from market fundamentalism which promotes adherence without “consideration of changes in context or the real needs and concerns of people?” (14-15) At this point, I am not advocating one position over another; instead what I want to do is to echo Rieger that we have a responsibility to understand more about the world in which we live and the assumptions that are built into the systems and institutions that we live within.

Postscript on Money Matters: Occupy Wall Street

I am still watching the Occupy Wall Street movement and wondering what impact it will have and what role public Christian leaders should be taking. 

Reuters offers its analysis (October 7) arguing that although the majority of Americans are looking at our society through rose-colored glasses and do not recognize the growing division between the haves and have nots.

Kate Sprutta Elliott, editor of Gather, blogged on the Women of the ELCA website and speculated about the timeliness of a Debt Jubilee, an idea taken from Leviticus 25.  Here are more thoughts about the faith factor and the Occupy Wall Street Movement from the writers at Sojourners. They offer a one page congregational discussion guide about the movement if you provide your contact information.

On Saturday, thousands rallied in Times Square in New York City while protests continued to spread to other cities. A local favorite here in western NC, Carolina Chocolate Drops' singer Rhiannon Giddens recorded the following song, "The Bottom 99:"

The movement is gaining support although many are still questioning whether it has leaders who will move it beyond noise-making toward solutions. What is the role of our faith communities?  What is our role as individual people of faith?

Money Matters

Stephen Barton suggests that economic matters are integral to Christian practice and living because Christianity transforms or turns upside down our understanding of “what really counts and …how to attain it.” (56) After a survey of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and Acts, Barton describes what he calls a “re-narration” of these values. (ibid)  He writes briefly about the continuity and discontinuity that Christianity brought to the world, noting that there are life-giving practices of sharing resources and households that are patterned after pagan practices but there are also ways of re-ordering things and people so that the patron system was dismantled.(57-59) And he leaves us with the challenge that we are neither to proclaim a theology of glory nor a “Manichean separation of the spiritual and material” but instead

(1) follow the lives of the saints in “[creating ]space …where the value of things and people can be seen and practices in new ways” and become “agents of a different [ordering] of things and people”

and

(2) preserve the juxtaposition of money matters in worship  where, through the bread and wine,  we remember the sacrifices made by Christ and offer our own “self-giving” for the sake of the world.

As we reflect on how we adapt to discontinuous change in our post-modern world, perhaps we can retrieve the examples through our history as the church and use those examples to discover new ways of leading and serving.

Reflecting on Barton and the emphasis on reversals in the gospels provoked my curiosity about the recent development of movements throughout the U.S. that have followed the lead of Occupy Wall Street in New York City.  Here in my own city of Asheville, protesters have begun occupying our own Wall Street and organizing in the nearby Pritchard Park downtown. 

The local newspaper covered the story in today’s edition and I noticed the number of businesses and leaders who are now involved and also the absence of churches or faith communities, at least in the newspaper coverage.  In this recent video of the protests here in Asheville, a chaplain speaks at 13:30 invoking the Spirit and remembering civil rights activists who have gone before this group. 

What do you think about this new movement? Is there a role for churches and faith communities?

Barton, “Money Matters” (p. 37-59) in Longenecker, Bruce and Kelly Liebengood, eds. Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

The Empire Strikes Back

In Christ and Empire, Joerg Rieger, the Wendland-Cook Endowed Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology (SMU), argues for a more comprehensive understanding of how empire shaped first-century life in the Roman Empire.

“Emperors were revered as divine and gave orders to build temples and altars for themselves.” (26) The emperor was credited with healing power and the ability to bring peace and security to the world. (ibid)  The language that Christians associate now with Christ is the same language attributed to Augustus and later emperors then: dikaiosynē (“justice”), eirēnē (“peace”) and kyrios (“lord”). (31)

Explaining that the context of empire was pervasive, he describes the emperor cult as not only political but also economic, cultural and religious and reminds us that the tendency to delineate these different spheres of our lives is a modern phenomenon. (26-27)

Rieger suggests that today we need to be more aware of how empire theology and the top-down “logic of empire” inform our present-day theological understanding and our society.  He commends Paul’s words in Philippians 2:5-11, quoting Antoinette Clark Wire who sees here “the voluntary downward plunge of the divine”: (43)

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,
8  he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.

Rieger argues that Jesus deliberately and decisively reverses the logic of empire. 

Answering charges that empire is not wholly negative and acknowledging that some people will be unaware of “the pressures produced by empire” and imperceptive of its influence, Rieger asserts that “empire can be problematic even when it is morally correct and benevolent.” (44) By definition, empire builds or increases its own power and benefits its own interests; consequently, there are large groups of people who do not benefit from the work of the empire. This is why it is vital that we understand how broadly empire informs our context and why our Christian witness cannot be apolitical.  (ibid)

Rieger identifies the crucifixion of Jesus as political action, writing “the cross was a well-known political tool for breaking the will of the people.” It was the empire striking back, against the proclamation that urged listeners to not promote themselves on the backs of those less fortunate, but instead “[identify] oneself with those who huddle together on the broken, bottom rungs of the human ladder.” (43) Proclaiming Christ as Lord involves “real transformation of the world in ways that go against the grain of the empire and that the empire cannot envision.” (49)

Want to hear more? In Spring 2011 Rieger addresses Earlham School of Religion in a three-part series on Christ and Empire. You can view it Part 1 here: Joerg Rieger -- Lecture One: "Empire and Economics: The Difference Christianity Makes" on Vimeo. Progressive Christian Center of the South has additional video Q & A featuring John Dominic Crossan and Rieger in dialog about God and Empire.

Child Brides

Often news stories blur together but this weekend, I read an article about child brides from National Geographic. It was shared on Facebook by The Girl Effect an organization working to break the cycle of poverty in developing countries by focusing on providing education and opportunities to girls and getting them to adolescence whole and healthy. Read the article and watch the video and read why it haunts me.

This video by Stephanie Sinclair and the article by Cynthia Gorney are all connected through a documentary project at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting: Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides.

Why this story haunts me I cannot imagine either of my two daughters marrying, even though they are years older than the girls in this story.  However, that isn't what makes this story so startling. What keeps rattling around in my thoughts and haunts me about this story is what I have in common with at least some of the parents of these children. Pay attention to the conversation that takes place between an activist and a father in the article and to the words of the girl in the video who "escaped" child marriage and instead was introduced into child prostitution.  These child marriages, which are conducted illegally and covertly, are, at least some of the time, preemptive. At least some of the families believe that giving their daughters to marriages at the age of five, seven, or even eleven is a way to protect their daughters against rape and other violence. Is there anything I would not do to protect my daughters from violence?

While it doesn't make child marriages any less disturbing, Sinclair and Gorney's work makes me ask harder questions before firing off an indignant email or letter.  How do families survive, how do children find safety and security, and what are the obstacles that people face?  If legislating no child marriage has failed, what are the possible solutions?  I don't have easy answers but I think looking at each other as daughters, sisters and parents is a start.

The Girl Effect documents the extraordinary odds that face girls and explain how difficult it is for girls to stay in school and reach adolescence.  The National Geographic article introduced readers to a half-dozen organizations who are working on this issue.

There's a beautiful shot in the video when the narrator says: "Childhood is not for cooking and cleaning and having babies. It is for education and having friends and having fun."  I'm not sure what the next steps are, but I hope more of us can live into a future where children the world over can  spend their childhoods being children.

Where am I now

    Just as we begin each educational leadership class by looking at our knowledge competencies, we conclude each class by reassessing our skills, knowledge and attitudes, measuring what we have learned and how our classroom experience has informed our understanding of education.  Early on in Media and Technology in Parish Education I identified two goals that were still growing edges for me.  The first one is supporting intergenerational learning, and the second one is supporting theological and biblical reflection in a variety of contexts, and with a variety of people involved.
    Often when we talk about intergenerational learning, we talk about forging relationships between older adults and youth, but I am in the middle and personally, I am much more comfortable reaching out to older adults than children, teenagers and even college-age young adults.  However, technology and media create openings for conversations in ways that might not happen otherwise across multiple generations.   Three of us in my family shared this video with each other – my retired Navy officer father, my eleven year old flute-playing daughter and me.

    Similarly, my almost sixteen year old daughter commented recently on the way that we watch people grow up through the photographs they share on Facebook.  I have classmates who have posted scanned photographs from our high school years and for my daughter, cameras have always been digital so pictures from kindergarten through high school are easily shared online.  Comfortable with using social media and technology to tell our families' stories, now we are beginning to discover how we can use them to tell our faith stories as well. 
    Blogging our theological and biblical reflections for this class has let me invest time in Blogger, adding elements to my blog like a cloud of the tags, labels or subjects in my posts and a blog roll or listing of the blogs I subscribe to in Google Reader.  The reader itself has a search engine to find blogs based on keywords so I can search for a title or a topic and add it quickly.  And for a twist, in Blogger, when I list my favorite musicians, I can click on a name and find other bloggers who share an interest in that musician. (So look out for more bluegrass theologians.)
    These tools and resources have connected me with other people who are blogging particularly about faith, leadership, education and social media.  But just making the connections isn’t the same as having conversations.  For conversations, I will always hope to find and make opportunities to sit down across a table with other people in a concrete, physical space, but as a distributed learner, I am also very comfortable with asynchronous conversations. 
    Using Hootsuite I can read feeds from Facebook and Linked In, and even RSS feeds from blogs, but I primarily use it to follow conversations on Twitter where I tweet @christinaauch.  In Hootsuite, I set up streams or feeds – lists of Tweets by other people - in Twitter using hashtags.  Hashtags are words preceded with a pound or number sign (#).  Right now I have my main Twitter feed where I can read anything posted by someone I am following, but I also have a half-dozen or more streams that I read that are based on the hashtags or subjects:

#chsocm (people interested in how churches are using/can use social media; tweetchat begins July 11)
#isedchat (independent school education chat)
#edsocialmedia (education and social media)
#finalsite (a web communications conference in June near Hartford, CT)
#gather2011 (Bread for the World’s conference in June in Washington, D.C.)
#WGF11 (the Greenbelt-esque Wild Goose Festival held in June in NC)
#NN11 (Netroots Nation 2011 conference in June in the Twin Cities)

Here I see tweets from many more voices, anyone who uses the hashtag in fact. For tweetchats we are actually engaging in synchronous chats, at a given time and date, but you can also stumble onto them and go back to them if you can’t be online at the proposed time. 
    It is in these conversations that I hear a number of voices, including Lutheran, Episcopal, United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist, and other Protestant voices, and now the Pope as well.  Different nonprofits and denominational offices and ministries (Bread for the World, Vibrant Faith Ministries and David Creech at ELCA World Hunger, for example) are on Twitter, too.  Tweets are conversation starters, and the conversation grows as comments are retweeted or people reply to earlier tweets. 
    For people who don’t think real conversations happen in 140 characters or less, in the past few days, I have had a conversation about how to talk to our children about Jesus, our gathered community and worshiping together without answering “Why do we go to have to go church?” with “Because that’s what we do on Sunday.” and connected with someone who has written his thesis on themes similar to Clay Shirky’s. Earlier this year, I spoke to David Creech about a course he had taught on Christian responses to poverty and hunger.
    These are real conversations happening without the benefit of a landline phone, knowing someone’s full name or having a peer introduction. They are respectful, engaged and thoughtful conversations about God, wealth and poverty, justice, faith, fear and pain as well as places where joys and sorrows are shared. The participants often are more diverse in racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds than I would find at a roadside diner or coffee shop in my corner of the world, and probably in my congregation, although I’m less convinced that we are any more successful at bridging class divides.  Nor do I think our digital spaces should replace our physical spaces and face-to-face conversations, but they afford unique opportunities that complement and even enrich those conversations.

Everybody Can Be An Activist

In Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky examines the ways in which social media have influenced political activism.  He tells the stories of people who have gone far beyond clicking the “Like” button on a political candidates’ Facebook page or even submitting a petition by email to their local representatives.  

Shirky tells the story of one of the first flash mobs with political purpose which happened in September 2003 on behalf of presidential hopeful Howard Dean. (See the September 8, 2003 invitation in the online archive of “Doonesbury” by Garry Trudeau.)

Another story he tells is from May 2006 when protesters in Minsk in Belarus organized themselves to appear in Oktyabrskaya Square and showed up eating ice cream.  (Read more about “turning information into action”.)  By the way here’s a disappointing update from the Christian Science Monitor on the political situation in Belarus now, five years later.

But political protest persists, and just yesterday student protesters in Chile demonstrated against their government over their failed education system. 

Social media is not only changing how we communicate but how we organize and use information to inspire action.

SPOILER ALERT - How the film fest wrapped up

Tonight I finished the sixth of the movies I chose for a weekend (and a day) film festival that looked at how faith, culture and media mix and what messages about humanity, God and faith may be implicit in these films and what messages may be explicit. (Here's the original blog with the movie list.)

My interest stems from an acknowledgment that pop culture is a place where these conversations are happening, just as in social media today, and I haven’t been present, let alone participating. 

Where was I? Well, for one thing, 4 of the 6 films were rated R. I pretty much stopped watching anything stronger than PG-13 in 1995 when my oldest daughter was born.  4 of the 6 films were set in a post-apocalyptic world where artificial intelligence had overrun human beings.  I am more likely to read Agatha Christie than George Orwell and was perhaps even more telling, I was convinced upon finishing college I could find a job that didn’t require a computer.  (Clearly, I don’t have a future in telling the future)  Finally, 2 of the 6 films were set on death row, and 1 of the 6 was released when I was 12 (1982) so I definitely missed those. 

What were the common themes?

• All of the films looked at the criteria we use to value life and create identity. Do humans have greater intrinsic value than other created beings? Why or why not?  Does it matter who one’s parents are, where someone came from, how they experienced childhood?  Are we malleable? Can we change our identity?

• There were questions about sin, judgment, and grace. What is sin? Or some sins worse than others? What does judgment look like? What does hatred and division spawn? What does fear do? What is redemption? What is integrity? How do we preserve hope?  Can hope be restored?  What does grace look like?

• There were questions about love.  What is unconditional love? Can love exist among difference? Can relationship exist apart from physical intimacy?  How do children love differently than adults? Are love and faith related?

• There were questions about human finitude, grief, compassion and death.  Why does our world have disease? What happens to us at death? What happens to the people who are still alive? What distinguishes life from death? How are freedom and life related; what about slavery and death?

Eventually, I want to write up the extensive notes I have on each film, and dig more deeply, particularly into intersections with Scripture, but for now this experiment in mixing theological reflection and popular culture has taught me to listen more carefully to the world around me and to look at how we ask questions about ourselves, others and about God in our everyday lives and experiences, whether that’s in a Friday night movie, a Saturday morning cartoon, church on Sunday morning or a lazy afternoon in a hammock reading a best-selling novel.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (part 3 of 3)

**Spoiler Alert: This post explores various theological questions and topics that are present throughout the film's storyline**

When David, Teddy and Joe arrive in Manhattan and find the place “where the lions weep”, they find a young boy who looks identical to David.  David asks, “Is this the place where they make your real?” Then David asks the second boy his name and discovers he is also named David and he erupts in an uncontrollable rage bashing in the head of the second mecha boy, screaming, “I am David! I am special! I am unique!” Dr. Hobby comes in and tries to calm him, reassuring him that he is special, that he is “the first of a kind” and that he is real because, in his quest for the Blue Fairy, he has succumbed to “the great human flaw – [wishing] for things that don’t exist.” 

Questions: Where do find our identity? How do we experience the difference between who the world says we are and our identity as God’s children?  What makes us or our lives real? What icons or idols do we chase?

When Dr. Hobby leaves David to assemble the other team members, David wanders around the offices and discovers a production line of Davids and Darlenes, child mechas in various stages of assembly and packaging.  The scene changes and David is sitting on the edge of a windowsill overlooking the sea and he jumps, tumbling into the depths.  Joe watches from the helicopter they were using and then fishes David out of the sea, depositing him inside the cockpit.  Inside, David tells Joe he saw the Blue Fairy at the bottom of the sea.  In a final confrontation between orga and mecha, the police arrive and drag Joe off; as he gets pulled into the sky, Joe yells, “I am. I was.” and pushes the button to submerge David and Teddy into the water so that they can go to David’s Blue Fairy. 

Questions:  Are there times in our lives when we have tumbled down in despair and been rescued? How do we respond? Where do we find hope?

David maneuvers the capsule toward the Blue Fairy, the remnant of a Coney Island Pinocchio attraction, and parks himself there, praying “until the sea anemones died… the ice encased [him].”  With open eyes, David stared “through the darkness of the night and the next day and the next day….” 

Questions:  How is our faith childlike? How do we pray? Do we pray expectantly?

The scene shifts and we see a snowscape and the Blue Fairy, no longer under water but part of the frozen landscape.   A subtitle indicates two thousand years have passed.  David is awakened by a new being and climbs out of the capsule but when he reaches out to touch the Blue Fairy, she shatters and disintegrates.

It doesn’t matter though because here in this world, the new beings tell him that because he knew living people, he is “unique in all the world.” They create for him, from his memories, the house where he lived with his mother and Martin, but when he asks , “Will Mommy be coming home?” they explain she cannot because she is no longer living.  When they tell him that they are able to regenerate people from pieces of DNA, we discover that Teddy is still carrying a lock of hair from David’s mother.   They agree to bring her back but they explain to David that the experiment is not perfect; after the first day, the recreated humans die again when they fall asleep at the end of the day.  David insists and he has his “perfect day” with his mother, finally closing his eyes when she does, after she says, “I love you, I have always loved you.”

Questions: What are the stories we have in Scripture about being raised to new life? What does a new life in Christ look like? Read Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33. How can we talk about grief and compassion in light of God’s mercy?

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (part 2 of 3)

**Spoiler Alert: This post explores various theological questions and topics that are present throughout the film's storyline**

Hidden in the woods, David first encounters other mechas.  Near his hiding place, a dump truck deposits its refuse, a collection of mangled mecha body parts and scavengers swarm the site to find new eyes and limbs. He wanders into a mecha shantytown where damaged and discarded mechas roam. 

Questions:  What is disposable in our society? How do we define wholeness? What about community? Many of the mechas are created for one job - nannies, lovers - which they do extraordinarily well; are people disposable when they are no longer useful or productive?

Caught in an orga police raid of the camp, David and other mechas are hauled away in a trawling net and taken to a “Flesh Fair.”  The fair combines the most exploitative elements of a circus and a demolition derby, taking aim at imprisoned mechas and destroying them in public and humiliating displays.  It bears an ugly resemblance to the slave trade markets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with mechas corralled in cages. 

Questions:  Whom do we call neighbor? How do we treat our neighbor? When do we avert our eyes to oppression or bigotry? When do we even participate in oppression? What effect do hatred, division and fear (sin and brokenness) have on our world?

Led into the center ring, David surprises everyone when he pleads for his life.  People are confused and shout, “Mechas don’t plead for their lives.”  Dismissing their arguments, the despicable master of ceremonies taunts, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, recalling the verse from John 8:7 when Jesus challenges the crowd who would stone the woman,“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  The crowd turns on him and pelts him, creating a riotous melee during which David, Teddy and another mecha named Joe escape. 

Questions: What do we learn about sin, judgment and grace here?

When David explains to Joe that he is looking for a woman called “the Blue Fairy” Joe thinks he knows how to help and the trio travel to Rouge City in a journey and meeting reminiscent of Dorothy seeking out the Wizard of Oz.    After they arrive in Rouge City, David sees a status of an angel at a curbside chapel, “Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart”, prompting Joe’s observation that “the ones who made us are always looking for the ones who made them.”  Then they go to visit “Dr. Know”, asking how to find the Blue Fairy. 

Questions:  To whom do we turn for knowledge and revelation? What language do we use to describe our Creator God? What assumptions do we have about God?  How do we respond when we cannot find answers? What do we do with our unanswered questions?

With an improvised verse from W.B. Yeats for an answer, David urges Joe to help him get to the “end of the world” which Joe knows as “the lost city in the sea at the end of the world” or Manhattan.  

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (part 1 of 3)

The story of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) is the story of David, a child mecha created as a prototype by Professor Hobby, a human scientist and inventor who steers Cybertronics, a giant in the artificial intelligence industry.  Living in a society that has survived extreme climate change and the loss of seaboard cities like New York and Amsterdam, humans have thrived by limiting human population growth, licensing human pregnancies, and relying on mechanized beings (mechas or robots) because they use a finite number of resources.    Now Dr. Hobby has proposed creating child mechas for whom “love will be the key by which they acquire a subconscious.” 

**Spoiler Alert: The remainder of this post explores various theological questions and topics that are present throughout the film's storyline**

One of the earliest theological questions in the film is creation.  Someone asks if a robot can love, what is the responsibility of the human to that robot? And Dr. Hobby parries, “Didn’t God create Adam to love Him?” 

A second question exists around end-of-life questions.  The family into which David is “adopted” had a young son who was in a coma-like state for five years; the parents continue to visit him in a sterile, clinical setting waiting for his condition to change, and then, resigning themselves to his condition, agree to adopt David.

Shortly after his arrival, the mother gives David “Teddy” a supertoy teddy bear who accompanies David everywhere he goes.  Teddy had been their son’s constant companion.  Perhaps, he appears here as a paraclete? 

Miraculously, the biological son Martin recovers and returns home, and tragically but not surprisingly, a sibling rivalry begins.  In this context, a fourth set of questions about difference, biological vs. adopted, and race, organic (human) or mecha (robot) are raised.  The mother reads Pinocchio to the boys and David becomes convinced that if he were “a real boy” his mother would love him more.

His dilemma raises several more questions, including “What does authentic relationship look like?”, “What does unconditional love look like?” 

After an accident involving the boys endangers Martin, the parents decide to return David to Cybertronics, where they know he will be destroyed.  Destruction is inevitable because when the parents adopted David, they implemented a protocol that “triggered” his love; it was irreversible, unconditional and unalterable.  In this iteration, he could only love the person who implemented that protocol; that person was the mother. 

So now we encounter questions about covenant and the cost of breaking covenant.  The covenant is first broken when the parents decide to give up David.  However, the mother fails to return David to Cybertronics; instead she leaves him in the woods theoretically to protect him from destruction.  With her actions, she breaks the covenant she had with the company also.