I have a "My Bible"

In the group I described last post, the leader asked if we "brought our Bibles". None of us had. I realized that I didn't have one. While I own several Bibles for different purposes - my New Revised Standard with extensive footnotes and cross references from seminary (the first Bible I'd owned in decades), an old Red Letter Edition King James, whose language I love and old type I photocopy for collages, a light, paperback NRSV, and The Message for a jolt with familiar passages - none of them would qualify for "my Bible". That is, a companion, a Bible for comfort, regular study and devotion, something that is - well, personal.

I went online and ordered this one. It's an NRSV in gray, genu-wine imitation leather. I bought it from one of Amazon's used book dealers (it's new) and I waited a long, long time for it. I wondered if it was okay that I was checking the mail each day and saying where's my *$%ing Bible?

So today it arrived. I didn't expect it to be so pretty and to feel so soft and nice in my hands. It says "Holy Bible" and has a curlicue cross with little curlicue ornaments down the side. The verse on the front is "Be still and know that I am God." (I only need reminding of that several times a day.) There's a shiny blue ribbon marker. It has the handy titles above the stories like "The Transfiguration" so that people who haven't memorized chapter and verse can find things. And there are some silly things. It's clearly a gift Bible, probably for confirmands - that's about 9th grade, right? - and so there are all kinds of workbook pages in the front and back for the young person to fill in. "Favorite and Special Memories" of church events, holidays and vacations, etc. "People who have touched my life" with "Name" and "Why this person is special" to fill in. Then there's the "About Me" page with blanks for favorite movie, TV show, etc. "Milestones on the Spiritual Journey" that asks about when you were baptized and how you came to know Jesus. There are also lovely things like the prayer of St. Francis, St. Patrick, Thomas A Kempis, Merton, and more. There are Bible verses to read when you're afraid or lonely. There are instructions for Lectio Divina and centering prayer.

While I really didn't want all this extra stuff and I am totally making fun of the workbook pages, I secretly want to fill in the blanks about my family and my special friends and how I feel about God and my favorite TV show. Because that would make it My Bible, wouldn't it?

How about you? Do you have a My Bible? What's it like? Did you used to have one? Do you wish you did now?

Wade in the Water

I had a lovely meeting with some Christian UU ministers; we call ourselves the "Friends of Josh" - a sly way of describing a secret society, akin to AA, who call themselves the "Friends of Bill." We had an introduction to Ignatian spirituality, which involves praying and imagining oneself in a story in the gospels. We read Mark 1:9-17, which is jam-packed with not 1, not 2, not 3 but FOUR stories!

We were to choose one of the stories, then ask for our desire from God. Then we imagined the story as fully as we could, making use of our senses, and relating ourselves to Jesus, or to what he was experiencing. I chose the baptism. I have been to the River Jordan, as I believe I've posted before, or to the spot where they take tourists for group baptisms. There is a pristine park gathering spot, with a counter to purchase a big t-shirt in which to dunk oneself, and changing rooms. They videotape every baptism, and you can purchase a recording of your holy moment as you're leaving the "park". I started calling it and other places like it in Israel "Jesus Land".

It made me smile. I had to wipe all that out of my mind. I sat on the riverbank, and looked at the lush, green trees that grew alongside it. I was a child of five in my imagining, in shorts and a T-shirt. I watched as Jesus was getting baptized. I was drawn to the tender way John cradled the back of his head as he dipped back. I didn't know if I was supposed to do this, but I decided to get in the water, too. It was cold! Suddenly, (or "immediately", as Mark is fond of saying) I felt the strong tug of the current. It was hard to keep my footing. I also saw clouds gathering and darkening, and birds - not just one dove, but many birds, filling the air. There was a loud voice that I could not understand, and it seemed to come from everywhere, and filled the skies.

I was very frightened - cold, pulled about by swift waters, and the voice and birds that were everywhere. Suddenly, I was caught up in some very strong arms. I knew them to be Jesus. I was held fast. And even though the water was still cold, the voice was still roaring, the birds were still circling, and the current swirling, I knew I was safe.

Moments later I was seated on the bank of the river, the delicious sensation of cool water on my skin in the midst of a hot afternoon. It sparkled and danced in the light.

I have been wondering what Jesus is like - not just a character in a story, but what the living Jesus might be like for me. This is a clue, I think. A focusing of God's love that is too powerful and mysterious to take in without some human form that I can relate to. Someone/something that doesn't take me out of danger, but holds me in it, so I am not alone or afraid.

And I pray to give this love to other people, frightened and selfish as I am. But first I must receive it.

sharing nicely

I agreed to the interview with some trepidation. My friend Sheela from my aerobics class wanted to interview me for a paper she is writing for seminary. She said that she needed to talk to someone who is not a Christian. (She's Assembly of God, and saw Unitarian Universalism as a religion that embraced all world religions. True enough.) She wanted to share her faith with me and find out what I thought.

I said, "S-sure." The only reason I agreed to this is that I do love Sheela. I have been at her house for an interfaith, international gathering - mostly other evangelicals from India like herself, but a few Hindus sprinkled in, so I couldn't quite wear my "Sore Thumb" t-shirt. People spoke about their lives as couples on an amazingly personal level. (Sheela & her husband Tom teach a couples' class at their church, so people were probably quite comfortable talking in front of them.) I was tense; not unlike someone wearing a dress and pantyhose sitting right next to a pool with people laughing and splashing around - convinced someone was going to try to push me in at any minute. But they didn't. Really. She heard what I thought - at least the tiny bit I shared in my nervousness, and still liked me.

This meeting today upped the ante, I must say. There we were, in my office, she sitting next to me on my love seat, asking me to read highlighted verses from her Bible, and asking me to say what I thought they meant. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me." Etc. My little forays into discussing the different meanings of the Greek words or the context of the verses didn't go anywhere. My descriptions of God that included the interdependent web, the divine spark in all people - zip. I was sad to have confirmed what I suspected going in: she really didn't want a dialogue. She was sorta hoping I'd see the light. Her light.

But God bless her. Every time I said what I know was heresy to her - Jesus was not the only person in whom God was manifest; the resurrection was probably not bodily, some of the words attributed to Jesus were probably put in his mouth by people writing them down 50-90 years after his ministry - she took it like a trouper. She did argue back when she disagreed, but it didn't get ugly. Mostly because, I think, we agreed to be nice.

Well, you know what? After reading all week about fundamentalists of various stripes turning to violence, hooray for nice. In thinking about the troubles in Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the shootings of Dr. Tiller and the guard at the Holocaust museum, all done because people care more about themselves and their beliefs than other people, let's give nice a standing ovation. In my study about fundamentalism, and in my experience today, I have a renewed respect for the challenges of true interfaith dialogue. We ain't there yet. But we can care enough not to hurt one another. I suppose that's niceness at its best.

Where is my father?

I was listening to my colleague preach in church today, and he told this wonderful story. In 1980, the American hockey team beat the Russians, an amazing feat, apparently - I know *this much* about hockey. They were doing a victory skate around the rink, and the camera zoomed in on one of the players, craning his neck to the far reaches of the crowd. They showed his face, clearly mouthing the words, "Where's my father?" He wanted to share the moment with his father, knew he was sitting up there, and wished he could see him. According to some therapists, this one searing moment sent droves of men into therapy for the next 20 years.

"Where's my father?" At some basic level, my colleague said, we all want to know.

I called my father today and I was sad to know where he was. Newly separated from my stepmother, to whom he has now been married for more years than my mother. She is in a nursing wing at Anoka Care Çenter. He is at home. Alone. I've been supremely frustrated with him these past few weeks, stubbornly refusing to either face the facts or spend the money for proper assistance. Falling. Unable to get her to eat enough, unable to bathe either himself or her. We sibs have been at our wits' end, trying to get him to recognize that his now frail self cannot care for someone with advanced Alzheimers. Finally, the social worker put it plain enough: do it or I will report this to the county.

Where's my father? Forced now to do the right thing - and to live alone at 86, for the first time in his life. I said, despite my incredible relief that she is being cared for, "It must be awfully lonely at your house." He said, "I watch TV, and when there's a joke, I look over to see if she's laughing, and she's not there."

That sound you hear is my heart breaking.

Where is my father? Jesus quite plainly referred to God as his father, or the Father - he called him 'abba', which has a tender connotation of papa or daddy. Prior to this, Jews had referred to God in more distant and sovereign terms. This is so much more intimate. The father in the prodigal son story, which was also read in church today, was the dad we all wish we had, the dad I imagine most dads wish they could be. 100% unconditional love. God must've come through to Jesus that way, loud and clear - all the love we could have ever wished for, no matter what. It's the God he brokers into the world for us. May you find this God now. May I. May we show up for each other.

Think I'll write my dad a letter.

Everybody Sexy!

There's a game show I've made up - it's called "Everybody Sexy!" It's like a combination of Survivor and American Idol. It's too radical for the United States, so I imagine it, say, in Eastern Europe.

Here's how it goes:
The host comes on, loud and hammy, and says, "Everybody Sexy!" The requisite gorgeous women in bikinis jump around.

Then you have contestants come on. Contestants on "Everybody Sexy" must be over 18. Other than that, they may come in all ages, shapes and sizes. There's a variety of things they could do, but it must be something that makes them feel sexy. They could sing a sultry number, a la Marilyn Monroe. They could model underwear from Victoria's Secret or International Male. They could do a strip tease. Anything. And if they do anything, anything at all, they win a prize. Always.

There are rules for the audience for "Everybody Sexy", and they are much stricter. To be in the audience you must have been a contestant first, so you know how it feels to be up there. Audience members may: clap, wolf whistle, give a hearty "Woo-Hoo! or "Work it, Honey!" But they must do it with complete and utmost sincerity. There will be judges circulating through the audience, like proctors for an exam. If an audience member is not completely sincere and enthusiastic for each contestant, he or she will be voted off the show. If someone laughs, and the contestant clearly did not intend his or her performance to be comic, something really bad happens. We don't talk about this, as it would spoil everyone else's good time. But it weeds out the immature and uncommitted.

Don't you want to see this? A show like this would cancel out half the suffering of junior high, all the angst of gaining a few pounds, and give hope with each birthday.

Everybody sexy!

Dawn-Watching

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
- Psalm 130:5-6

I visited a couple in the hospital this week. He was in surgery, she was waiting. The surgery was supposed to last three hours - tough enough to busy oneself in old People and Highlights magazines - but then it stretched to seven. Complications. Bleeding. Tissue fused impenetrably. I waited one of those hours with her, as she showed me notes she had written for the insurance company, of the many procedures he had had over the past 12 years.

I marveled at how many times they have had to hope - that this surgery, that treatment, this therapy, that medication would do the trick. It's been a lot of dawn-watching. She mentioned that a chaplain once referred her to Psalm 130. It was a throwaway comment, she wasn't much of a Bible-believer. I wish I had had my Bible with me, and that I knew the Psalms better. I looked up Psalm 130 today, and it is certainly the Psalm of waiting and hoping.

I'm struck by the repetition of the line - "more than those who watch for the morning". Think about those times you've watched for the morning - sleepless, afraid, lost all perspective, most likely. Or think of people who must stand guard over something, the "night watchman" and his loneliness. Vigils. There is such a fierceness in this waiting and hoping. Robert Alter's The Book of Psalms interchanges the words "wait" and "hope", as if the two actions were the same. There is a fierceness in this kind of vigil.

"Waiting for/hoping in his word" is still somewhat mysterious. My fundy upbringing would say it means reading the Bible, and reading it like a form of anesthesia - knocks you right out until God makes things better. But of course the Psalmist didn't own a Bible, didn't have access to Torah, most likely. Alter thinks the writer is waiting for word of God's forgiveness, since there is so much about that elsewhere in the poem. For me, "his word", God's "answer", is looser than that. It may not be an Answer, but an answering presence. Always there, too - it is we who fidget, figure out, move away, panic.

I've always thought that turning something over to God was a peaceful thing, and sometimes it is. I become calmer, I turn away from hand-wringing and heat up dinner. And sometimes it doesn't mean turning away, just waiting with God, trusting that new life will come, is always coming, and there will be something good in it.

God is not the pizza man

Last post, I looked at the question, "Lord will only a few be saved?" and thought the questioner was talking about all the suffering people in the world.

Now I wonder. Isn't it just as likely he's asking about himself? "Lord, I have this FRIEND who has a problem..." I feel far away from Jesus sometimes, far from God. I look with envy at people who have a strong felt sense of God. This is another way of looking at the Greek word sozo, translated as "saved." I certainly feel gathered into God's bosom more at some times than others.

Usually when I'm in trouble. I'm obsessed about some problem I can't fix. I'm sure things are going to hell in a handbasket. I recognize that I'm powerless over the situation and I finally - finally ask for God's help. And it comes. Subtle directions: call someone I deeply disagree with, instead of firing off an e-mail. Let go a teensy bit - and don't try to change him. Or get him to agree with you.

I feel a sense of release, and ah, there You are. I am saved from "the bondage of self" as we addicts say.

Jesus says "Strive to enter through the narrow door". "Strive" isn't a very fashionable spiritual word these days. But we do have to figure out what is our part, and to have faith that our part matters. Often, we must work to remain conscious - the temptation is to simply go blank. And then we are lost - and in need of saving. And we need to show up - God probably won't just come to our door with the answers like the pizza man.