A little about me


I love talking about a good book, but many of my favorite friends are far away. So let's talk about books here on the "Reading Along..." blog. Please be sure to post your comments here of what you are learning from our book.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Reading Along - week 7


Yes, there are several weeks missing... let's chalk it up to a busy move and get on with the program...

The chapter "Sword Drills" hits me right where I live.  I am a woman minister.  I ignored my call for many years, assuming that I was misunderstanding how I was supposed to use my spiritual gifts.  When I was 27, I was intent on pursuing a master's degree in health sciences to go along with my bloodbanking credentials, but after two semesters realized that the only place I felt connected to God and myself was when I was doing my mission and speaking work through the church.  So I began to explore the call to full-time minsitry.  Fortunately, my denomination has been ordaining women since 1956, and several people confirmed my interior call will exterior affirmations.  And at the age of 28 I left behind my old life and became a divinity school student.

Not that EVERYONE was supportive.  Many people used scripture as a weapon against me, quoting chapter and verse on why what I was doing was wrong, misguided, and even evil.  And still I pushed forward.  And when people said to me, "I'll never consider you to be my pastor because of what the Bible says about that," I reply, "That's OK, let's just be friends."

As much as I want to use the bible as a weapon against them, I find that it's just not in my nature.  I love that scripture entices me to ask more questions, that I always find a community where I can be authentically me.  My husband's work often involves frequent moves - 11 times in 18 years - and still I find that ministry opens up to me, sometime paid, sometimes not.  But while my life looks nothing like I imagined when I graduated from seminary 22 years ago, I know that I am in the place where God calls me to be.

I can continue to engage scripture and the church and people for exactly the reasons that Rachel gives: "The Bible is by far the most fascinating, beautiful, challenging and frustrating piece of literature I've ever encountered" (188).  But I am compelled to engage it, and to help people see it not as a AAA TripTik, but as an encyclopedia of our experience with God.... not a turn-by-turn map, but a history of God's faithful relationship with humankind and how God hasn't given up on us yet.

This post is being written in the wake of the shootings in Aurora, CO, where are gunman killed a dozen people and wounded many more in a midnight movie showing of the newest Batman movie.  While many ask the question, "Why?" others have used this as an opportunity to proclaim God's judgment, to say who is in and who is out of the Kingdom of God... a kind of Judgment House for the rest of us to make sure we have our lives in order.  That kind of response drives me crazy, but some people have gotten it right, and it makes me happy to know that I'm not alone in thinking that God would want some other kind of response from us.

My favorite response has come from Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, religion editor at the Huffington Post. (Read the article here.) He states that our most faithful response to the tragedy is to hold a vigil... to stay silent, not jumping too quickly to respond or answer out of honor to those who have died, been injured, or continue to suffer from the effects of this event.  This is not a time to feed our own egos, agendas and bias, and as he says, they "only serve to distract away from the real work of compassion."

The biblical story in its entirety is filled with contradictions, questions and troubling choices.  But rather than explain them away, we can try to see how our own troubling times are a reflected within its pages, and acknowledge God's presence in every story, even the ones that are hard for us to fathom.  The same is true for the trials and joys of today.  Dealing with the hard stories of scripture together, disagreeing, but still willing to go out to love and support one another - that's what real community is made of.

Peace, Deb




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