Rogue Reverend

Too Much or Too Little?

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

It’s been an eventful week in the news. Revolution in Iran. The Metro crash in DC. A North Korean ship with a warhead in the Pacific Ocean, headed toward Hawaii. South Carolina’s Governor Sanford having an affair and running off to Argentina. Ed McMahon dead. Farrah Faucett dead. Michael Jackson dead.

As I mentioned, I’m a social media freak. I like facebook, twitter, I blog, read blogs, it’s really hard to get me away from my computer. And the news this week has been dominated by big issues, but the news has been dominated even more about the way people are talking about the things going on. From Sanford’s email love letters being released and read on the evening news, to everyone on Twitter changing their profile pictures to a green tint to support revolution in Iran, to the video of Neda, the young woman killed in a protest (even though she wasn’t protesting) by a single gunshot, a gruesome video that won’t leave my memory. Then the pounding that television and news outlets got after Michael Jackson’s death that left all of them scrambling for verification of untrue rumors. Rumors of other celebrity deaths.

And then the death of the King of Pop. You know, for a couple of hours, they were saying that Michael Jackson’s death might have killed the internet. Servers all over the world were running slow because of people searching for information on his death, and on his life, too, I suppose. The news outlets made hours of programming about it, it dominated the airways.

A friend of mine tweeted (that, for those of you who don’t twitter, is a 140-character (or less) statement about what you’re thinking) with a poll, “Michael Jackson: freak or child molester?” I don’t know about all that, but I do know that Michael Jackson was a product of his environment. He was a product of consumerism. And that’s just it…he was a product. The expectations of our culture made him who he was. And even in his death, we are still both overjoyed and shocked at what we made.

Our culture is driven by this consumerism. Even people fighting for the basic right to live in safety is dulled by our consumeristic drive. Michael Jackson trumps Iran.

You know the Bible says a lot about consumption, don’t you? If we took out everything that the Bible says about economics and the treatment of the poor (especially the widows and the orphans) we’d have very little Bible left. And while we spend hours, days, months, and years arguing the rightness and wrongness of other Bible verses (should we dance? should we allow people who love one another to continue loving one another? should we drink alcohol?) there’s no doubt that we spend very little time on economics and the treatment of the poor.

And our passage today is really about consumption, more than anything else. Let me give you a little background from on our passage:

1. It’s a letter written to the church in Corinth, who Paul has a very close relationship to. In fact, he’s sort of the father of their faith.
2. The church in Corinth is a socially and ethnically diverse congregation, and is pretty unified.
3. Paul is taking a collection from the Church in Corinth for the “saints in Jerusalem,” or the “poor in Jerusalem.”
4. The final sentence in the passage, “As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little,” is a direct quote from Exodus, when the Hebrew people were complaining about not having enough food, and God began providing manna for them.
5. This passage is centered around the term “grace,” or charis, even though our translation doesn’t make that clear. Verse 7 and 9. Charis is understood to be given by God to people, in the midst of affliction and poverty. It’s given abundantly. God’s grace is powerful and moves the recipients to a reflection of God’s abundance so that they respond profusely by doing good works toward others.

Let’s look at the passage again.

For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has–not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

I spent a little time this week thinking about my own consumption. I watched as I spent more and more money. I thought about how to not buy branded stuff (do you realize that you can’t do that? Even buying local is branded these days, by Farm Bureau, with their big signs on the highways.

I thought about giving away my stuff. Keeping it moving. But, honestly, I couldn’t see why anyone would want the stuff I have to give away!

I’m going to make an assumption. American is still the richest country in the world.

So here’s a question: Are the richest people in the world be inclined to be giving?

And is Paul talking just about money?

Paul says, “the gift is acceptable according to what one has.”

What do we have? We have freedom. We have wealth. We have water. We have food. We have security. We have the rule of law. We have the right to self-rule.

But doesn’t it also mean that those who live in poverty, in fear, in insecurity, in hunger, in thirst, that they should share what they have? They have culture, and religion, and God, in some way, and persecution, and injustice, and sickness. Should not they also share so that we would not have too little?

You know, I look back on the life of Michael Jackson, and what I see is someone who had great expectations put upon him for his music. But also very low expectations for his behavior. He had a ton of money, but very little responsibility. He was treated like a child, and he remained a child for his fifty years.

We have been given grace from God. Remember, charis is understood to be given by God to people, in the midst of affliction and poverty. It’s given abundantly. God’s grace is powerful and moves the recipients to a reflection of God’s abundance so that they respond profusely by doing good works toward others.

So the task that I’ll leave you with this week is to think, think hard about your relationship to money. Does having more make you want more? Or does having more leave you open-handed, giving so that those who have little will not have too little? Think about your relationship to other things that you have in excess: your time, freedom, health, security. Can you spend time giving so that others can have a little more time?

Gandhi said, “As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it.  If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you.  Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired.”

A young man came to the ashram where Gandhi was and said, “I want to join the ashram, but I can’t give up my books.” Gandhi said, “Then don’t give up your books. When something comes along that’s better than books, then you’ll give them up.”

It is, in other words, find something that you love, more than money, more than freedom, more than time, more than security. Isn’t that they point?

The Word of the Day: Integrity

The word of the day was going to be “asshat,” but I’ve changed my mind.

The word of the day is “integrity.” One web definition is “an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting.” Wiki defines integrity as “Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code; The state of being wholesome; unimpaired; The quality or condition of being complete; pure.”

Unfortunately, integrity is one of those words that the Religious Right has ruined for me. But today, I’m taking it back. The Religious Right thinks you have no integrity if you don’t do what they think is right.

Instead, I’m going with the nerd definition, “an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting.” See? There’s a consistency in integrity. What you think with your head will match what you feel with your heart and what you do with your actions. Integrity doesn’t imply, for me, a morality of good or bad, but instead, a steadfastness of those three things, thought, emotion and will.

There’s a parable that Jesus tells in Matthew:

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’” ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered.

I’ve always been the first child, saying, “No,” then doing it anyway. I know too many people who say, “Yes, of course,” then don’t follow through.

I’d rather know a person who was consistently evil than one who pretends to be good, then does evil. Of course, that second person is an asshat to me. So, maybe the word for the day is really asshat.

Oddities

Okay, I haven’t mentioned the name Pam Houston in ages. Haven’t seen her books. Haven’t read any articles about her or by her, probably in 5 years! Then I wrote that blog post. The very next day, listening to a public radio hybrid in Richmond, I heard a series of short stories read aloud, and hers was the very first one.

It’s a strange amount of serendipity.

Does that ever happen to you?

Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining Into the World

If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.

Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.

Treat it as you yourself
would be treated,
brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.

And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant—

Stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’d come to believe were yours,
and plunge.

Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling.
That you came to love it, that was the gift.

Let the envious gods take back what they can.

Jane Hirshfield
first published in Five Points, vol. II, no. 1, Fall 1997
also from The Lives of the Heart

I Love a Man in Uniform

I love books. I have two favorite female writers from this century. Pam Houston and Lily Burana. My favorite Pam Houston quote, from the short story collection, Cowboys Are My Weakness, is “I was addicted to him like cough syrup, and I didn’t respect his mind.” I read that book in the early 1990’s, and I still think of that quote at least once a week.

Lily Burana wrote my all-time favorite book, Strip City. Obviously, if you know me, you understand why. Burana combines all the things I love: strippers, memoir, psychological understanding, and just a little bit of religion. I’ve recommended Strip City to every Star Light volunteer, to all the women I’ve talked to about starting their own stripper ministry, and to every dancer I’ve ever met. I loved that book so much, at one point, I had 30 copies about my house, to give out to folks I loved. Now I have only my original two copies around, both of which are marked up with underlining, folded pages, and exclamation points. I’ve given all the others away.

So it was with great joy and anticipation that I started Burana’s new book, I Love a Man in Uniform. There was some trepidation, too. Strip City is a pair of big stilettos to fill. (That really didn’t work, did it? But you know what I mean).

And before I get too much into I Love a Man in Uniform, you should know a bit of my own bias: I am a pacifist, I have protested our current wars, and yet, some of my dear friends are service people. My father served in Vietnam, I served a church in Metro DC with several service people (and got in trouble for a sermon about Abu Ghraib), and I’ve worked with sex workers and former sex workers for 8 years.

On with the review:

I loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Burana has a way of saying things that makes me lean back, smile, and say, “Yep. That’s it.” I literally cried when I read this passage:

The stripping. The arrest. None of it fazed Mike. In fact, he had reservations about whether he was good for me. He worried that I’d see him as helplessly boring and square, illustrating his point by making an “L7″ with his hands. But if I needed something, he was there, and by the end of September, I found myself wanting to see him more and more. It became impossible to get him off my mind.

When Mike came up to visit me in New York in October, he walked around my little cottage in the woods, checking out the furniture and the books. “Wow, you’re pretty squared away.” At the time, I didn’t fully realize what a compliment that was. “Squared away” is high praise from a soldier. From there, it’s a short trip to “I love you.” Squared away means You have your shit together; I think I can rely on you—and to a soldier, that is everything. At first, I had my doubts that we’d make it past the superficial stunt-dating stage, but by now, I was feeling quite different.

I left Mike at my house during a quick trip to Chicago for a writing assignment, and when I came home, I found him outside in the sunshine, carefully cleaning out brushes and rollers. While I was gone, he’d painted my chipped and peeling front porch. My heart soared. I love the traditional niceties of romance—dinners, cards, a pretty bouquet—but nothing compares to the gift of sweat equity, which I view as the he-man’s true statement of intent. Far better than spending money on me, he’d spent some of his precious free time. Bring me flowers and I’m charmed; swing a hammer and I’m yours.

I’ve never experienced exactly what Burana is talking about, but DAMN! I want to!

The story of their romance gets real later in the book. Burana deals honestly and, sometimes brutally, with her own depression, her own demonette, who seeks perfection from her at every turn, and both her and Mike’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She writes:

It occurred to me that stripping, for me, and the whole adventure of those years may have been the ultimate game of Survivor: Trauma Edition. Already dissociated and cynical about humanity, I undertook stripping as the female equivalent of a kind of Special Forces training—the physical discipline, the focus on en pointe performance, the thrill-seeking, the playing with fire and going into dark or taboo places most “civilians” don’t go. The exaggerated gender typing, the special outfits or uniforms that mark, again, a defined break from civilian life, the pervasive sense of danger or limit crossing.

The book was surprising to me, because, having been a fan girl of Burana’s, I really expected a “happily-ever-after” memoir. I wanted that for Burana. She is an amazingly fierce woman and a wonderful writer and I’d like for her to be happy. I wanted a happy book. I Love a Man in Uniform is not a happy book. Near the end of the book, Burana expresses her gratitude for Mike, “Thank you for your commitment to serving our country. Thank you for picking me to be your wife. Thank you for being man enough to get help when you needed it. Thank you for fighting for our marriage as valiantly as you fought any war. Thank you for being both my husband and my hero.”

But the book reminded me. Life isn’t always happy. But it can be good.