Good Samaritan

I don't remember the accident.

That is what is so strange about the whole event. What I do remember is what saddens me the most.

With the light green, I proceeded into the intersection. That is the last thing I remember until I was aware enough to know I was leaning on the steering wheel of my car. In almost ten minutes, not a single person checked to see if I was o.k. I was not. The first person to check on me was a firefighter. Not a single witness came forward to tell the officer what had happened.

I was taken to the local trauma center primarily because I had acute chest pain, very fuzzy memory (still do) and because of my Remicade and Chrohn's disease, I have a compromised immune system. While there are no broken bones, I am very sore. Very sore.

What is most saddening and disturbing is the lack of help provided to me. It is not the first time I have felt like the man by the side of the road. Where was my "good samaritan?" Rauschenbusch says that sin is being radically self-centered. Where is the sense of community? Could no one even spare a few minutes to report what they had seen and stay with me until help arrived? It really is symptomatic of our condition. This is the heart of sin as identified by Jesus I believe.

Though I have had a very rough time lately. I feel all the more closer to God and my family and to my call. I feel very connected to life right now. I feel myself walking toward God and community. I guess I would like community to move toward me, but the Kingdom of God is not something that just happens. I must move toward community. This life with God is a dialogue and a dance. I have lived life to much as if life happens to me rather than me living life. I feel as if I am living life now. I take authorship of my life. Yes, I wasn't helped, but I sin too and I learned the importance to walk toward those in need. May I do this for God's sake.

Faith Makes Me Well

This has been a particularly bad week for me physically. Because of this, I have had a particularly bad week emotionally. Despite the fact that I had a night of sheer delight and fun cruising New Orleans with my wife in an unexpected trip for CPE day at Notre Dame Seminary, I have not felt well. The fact that I have not felt well is really starting to get to me. I have now been on Remicade for going on four weeks and I have really seen no real results. I find myself lying alot recently about how I'm feeling. Including myself at times. I just want SO badly to feel better. Plus, it gets people off the topic for awhile. The reality though is that I'm still struggling though I am still going.

"Your faith has made you well."

I'm really searching this meaning for me. It certainly is not if I have faith in Jesus Christ, I will be cured of my Chrohn's Disease. I think it does mean that there is something about this relationship with God through Christ that offers us a space for healing. Christ offers me something that provides healing for the whole self. But, I have responsibility in this as well. There is alot I cannot change, like my disease, but there is a lot I can, like my choices in turning toward God in faith. The reality is that I haven't seen my dependence in Grace as something to be desired, but something from which to run. I have sought my own way, I have sought too often independence from God. It is the sin of pride as I understand that. The sin of not seeing myself in the proper perspective in relationship to God and others. Faith would make me well, regardless of my condition, if only I could trust. Trusting in God's grace is a process I am living in at the moment. I am beginning to understand ways in which I do trust and ways in which I do not. In other words, to accept in God's grace where I am while at the same time move toward a new way of relating beyond where I am today.

I often get caught in black/white thinking here. I understand that. I will try not to fall into that this go round. Just for the moment. The Kingdom of God may be at hand, but there are ways that I live in community with the faithful, and ways I do not. Probably always will. But my spiritual life at the moment is on the cusp of an awakening of sorts. This process, this intersection of my illness with my process is a powerful opportunity for me. My forty days so to speak in the wildnerness.

We will see where God leads me, and where I will follow.

Ready for Grace

Met my first committee last week here in Austin. My "Readiness" committee. I actually enjoyed the experience. I got a lot out of it. I guess I expected to get beat up and it didn't happen. So much for expectations.

I feel very aware of God's presence with me right now. I still believe in a self-emptying and vulnerable God, but one who does so in such a way that I do not have to. I don't have to be the sacrifice myself. I do not have to be the lamb for slaughter. I do not have to be the suffering servant. I can lead with the power I experience in God's gift and grace to me. That is perfectly acceptable. I have the gifts and strengths for this work, I don't need to lay myself upon the altar for either the expectation of abuse of the need for care. I am responsible for my own life and only my life and I am the author of my own story and I am understanding how that Grace of God is fully with me right now. I experience this reality in my daily life. I am deeply blessed by the love of God emptying for me. It gives me strength, it empowers me. It enlivens me to walk through the darkness of life. It helps me understand hope in the midst of great despair and hopelessness. I understand I have to get in the muck of life. Hell, I've lived it. But, perhaps, for really the first time in my life I really TRUST that grace is there. Sometimes it feels as if there is no light darkness cannot overcome. But I'm beginning to understand experiencially, at least for me in this moment, that perhaps, just perhaps, I may indeed see a light that no darkness can extinquish. Thanks be to God.

Good Bye U-Haul Truck, I'm Free At Last!

My earliest memory of my childhood involved my brother Stephen. We moved from Georgetown to Pasadena, Texas around the time I was three or so. I remember my brother luring me into the back of the U-Haul we were using for the move and closing the door behind me, leaving me in the dark. I was terrified. It was hot and it was dark. No one seemed to notice I was missing for quite some time. My dad discovered me when he opened the door to load up more things.

The memory always stirs up in me feelings of loneliness, abandonment and fear. I also feel very powerless against those that seem to have more power than me. I could not save myself, I had to wait in the dark for someone to notice I needed to be saved from the dark. Somehow find the way out to save myself. I also remember worrying that my family would never discover I was missing and that I would get lost in the dark.

I see a lot of these same themes play out in my life today and in my process. The powerlessness I feel with others, the sheer vulnerability I feel at times, particularly with those in authority is still very present with me. The other morning, one of my supervisors confronted me with material he felt was missing in my paper. Instead of standing up and really engaging him as a peer, I allowed him to bully me a bit. That morning felt a bit like the back of the U-Haul. I kept waiting for someone to save me, I felt powerless to save myself to stand up to this power. I shut down and resigned myself to that spot that morning. The door was opened when the session was over.

I think I let others lock me away in the U-Haul a lot. I go back there a lot. This feeling when it arises prevents me from being fully present and who I am with my colleagues and peers. I often resign myself to being simply a victim. Alone and abandoned by those closest to me. My fear of intimacy is related to this I think. I fear being abandoned about as much as I fear anything. I feel insecure in my relationships, always looking at ways that people might hurt me, leave me alone in the dark. Forget about me.

One interesting theological twist I hadn't contemplated before now. I often think of salvation as something each of us must seek on our own. No one, not even Jesus, can save us. We must save ourselves by following Jesus. By following The Way. However, this sense that God will save us through no power of our own has always bothered me. I seem to think of it as a "I'll show you the way, you do the rest" kind of a thing. Not a lot of grace in my theology.

As I reflect on this, it kind of strikes me that this is how I think of it when I waited so desperately for someone to save me in the back of the U-Haul truck. I knew I couldn't do it for myself. Perhaps my theology is more in line with my resistance to this sense of pervasive powerlessness I feel. Perhaps God's power is the one thing, in my mind at least, I have the ability to control. It is everyone else I let bully me. God, on the other hand, I have created to be vulnerable, just like me. This theology may not be serving me very well. It is authentic to who I am, but it may not be helping me claim my own authority and power. Just as I'm writing, I'm wondering would it would look like if I let God open the U-Haul for me and let the light of Grace really touch me for the first time. Would I be able to find my own power even as I let the power of God wash over me?

I am beginning to wonder if I have been living too long with a myth of rejection and not long enough with the reality of God as love in my life. Perhaps by letting God save me, by letting the light of Grace come upon me, I can find true freedom to be who I am really called to be: an authority in my own right. An author of my own story. Then perhaps I can shout the words of the old spiritual: "Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"

The Myth of Perfection

If it were possible to become a CPE supervisor in three months or less, I would be working really hard to do it. In fact, my biggest weakness at the moment is one of my greatest allies much of the time: I work hard at processing, learning, growing and just generally trying to "figure it out." The problem right now is that I am working way too hard to have it all figured out. Not only that, but to have it all figured out NOW. I'm having trouble just embracing where I am and loving myself in it at the moment. Kind of goes back to the basic shame issue I wrote in a previous blog about my encounter with Brene Brown's work.

So, I continue to work through "Recalling Our Own Stories" and am impacted by this "Myth of Perfection" Wimberly talks about. I definitely get caught in this myth and this myth is preventing me from really blessing and embracing my gifts and embracing my weakness as a resource. I work so hard to hide my weaknesses from others and myself. I mean I work really hard. I do this because I want to show myself as "good," which to me means perfect. All I'm being asked to do at the moment is to demonstrate I am "ready" for this journey, and yet I am trying to prove I have met all the competencies and all of the theories and all of the self-awareness... and so on... The truth is, I am quasimodo and just where I need to be. I am not fully formed and not expected to be, especially at this stage in my journey. I'm just beginning.

In recalling my story, I need to remember how I have been gifted and how I have recieved grace in those areas of my life I am in a liminal state. I am in a liminal state and I need to be o.k. there or the stress of this process will hurt me, emotionally, spiritually and physically. Especially with my Chrohn's Disease. My family deserve to have me care for myself in this journey and I need to learn how to do that and still move forward. I can't stop "working" that is my nature and who I choose to be. But I also can choose not to work so hard emotionally in this process it hurts me in all other areas of my life. Instead, this is an opportunity for me to really embrace this as a spiritual journey. One that is in itself an immense gift, if I allow it to serve me and not hurt me. So, I hope to move from striving for perfection in this process and instead move toward living into realism in this process: grace. Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of vulnerability as Christ exhibited it. Living into the tension between being called to be disciples of Christ and recognizing and accepting that our way of living into that is flawed and imperfect. The fact is that I am wounded, and called. I am gifted and graced. I am living into my discipleship and yet flawed in my execution of my call. I am empathic and yet unable to be fully attentive to the needs of another. Accepting myself and loving myself in this process does not mean that I simply accept that I am powerless to moving toward growth or healing. But it does mean that while I am as I am, that I love myself in that process.

I will choose to live into my story in a new way, I hope. Not perfectly, but with grace and acknowledging my own woundedness just as I thank God for my being gifted with grace and healing movment.

My Call

One of the things I think will be helpful to me in this journey is to reflect on my story theologically. I picked up a book by Edward Wimberly on Spiritual Renewal for Religious Caregivers called: Recalling Our Own Stories. In his tradition, retelling the story of our "call" to ministry is an important place to start. He calls it the story of our "project of existence." It is the meta-story of our life. It is a re-membering of the fact not only "that we are" but of "who we are called to be."

The first time I walked into King of Glory Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas I knew that I was in a special place. I knew because Pastor Ramona Bouzard was looking at us as we walked up the sidewalk through the small square window in the door with a huge smile on her face. Upon opening the door for us as we walked up, she knealt down, met me face to face and extended her hand to me. She embraced me and walked me around to meet other young people in the church. I never felt so loved and welcomed in my life as I did in that moment.

I continued in that Church despite the fact that my father was none too pleased with a female pastor. I learned about baptism and decided to pursue that for myself the following Easter. As my baptism approached, I understood that the sacrament was a sign of God's work toward me, my atonement and salvation. But, I also understood, even as a young man, that the sacrament was a sign of my commitment and love toward God and this Christian community I was choosing to join. I understood I was choosing a life of discipleship.

That Christmas, as we prepared for our choral extravaganza for the year, I was sitting in the pews watching as Pastor Ramona walked to and fro in the church, talking with folks as she did, seeming doing all that she did with such joy. At that moment, a warm sensation came over me and my hair stood up on my neck. I felt a movement inside of me and I heard a message distinctly within me. "Be for others as she is for you." I began to cry with such joy at this message felt so deep within me. I told everyone who would listen that I was wanting to be a pastor. I wanted to study religion and the scriptures. I wanted to be for others as Pastor Ramona was for me.

Twenty-five years later, that call has not died. Occasionally, I even get that feeling that I am doing as God has called me. Whatever my ministry is, that message is at the heart. I love, because Christ first loved me. I discovered that love, that grace, fully in community and continue to. Relationship and community is the Body of Christ and where we both experience our at-onement with God and we come to understand our justification. It is the community of Christ that holds us accountable and responsible for our on-going process toward sanctification and holds us accountable when we miss the mark of God's call for us in and through Christ. Rauschenbausch stated that sin is the "private kingdom of self-service." Love is living life as a servant in and through Christ in the Kingdom of God. Not perfectly, but with intention. If my story has taught me anything, it is the power of that saving community to move me toward grace and understanding my at-onement with God, experienced in the Body of Christ.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Well, I thought it would take me a little longer than my first presentation at SES Day to cry. But cry I did. I was invited to confront my own vulnerability with the committee I was presenting to and I wasn't going into that easily. However, I was extremely proud of my ability to move toward that during the hour. I was also amazed at the fact that this is what they wanted from me. In what other profession is the invitation to vulnerability and the willingness to accept it a mark of professionalism. It is a very strange concept indeed.

As I reflect on my own struggles with vulnerability, I realize that my struggle seems related to intimacy. I fear intimacy with God and others as this dependence seems like weakness. Bonhoeffer states that all relationship in Christian community occurs "in and through Jesus Christ." If this is so, the only way to fully become a part of community, to be intimate with others, is through the embrace of vulnerability just as Christ embraced his vulnerability in order to fully be in relationship with us. Interestingly, this can't be if Christ "had to" be vulnerable. This only works if God "chooses to." Rahner calls God the "context of being." God is wholly other. This is different than Process Theology that says that God is interdependent upon creation. Rahner seems to think that God's Love is only understood fully if one realizes that God doesn't "need" to be in relationship with us, but chooses to be with us and does so in the most vulnerable way possible. This requires a level of intimacy that is salvific and one God chooses for us. And if this is true, it is the basis of Chrisitian community, not in an ideal way, but in a way that is always open to Christ.

For me, this helps understand the need for vulnerability. It is not just for the sake of vulnerability, but for the sake of Christ. It is the power of Christian community and Christian community, as Bonhoeffer states, is the Body of Christ and keeps the incarnation a very real presence in the world. It remains the "context" in which all things remain.

So, I cried. I grew. I moved. I am closer to understanding the power and grace of intimacy in Christian community. And, in so doing, a bit closer to really embracing this vulnerability I see as so valuable theologically.