I interviewed with HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) in Washington, D.C. back in October for a position that wasn’t right for me. In late November, they asked me to interview for a different position. This one fit. And stuck.

January 4 was my first day as the Client Advocacy Program Manager at HIPS. HIPS’ mission is to assist female, male, and transgender individuals engaging in sex work in Washington, DC in leading healthy lives. Utilizing a harm reduction model, HIPS’ programs strive to address the impact that HIV/AIDS, STIs, discrimination, poverty, violence and drug use have on the lives of individuals engaging in sex work.

I’m so excited about the job. The people I’ve met have been warm and welcoming. I feel so grateful, first just to have a job, but especially to have a job I care about. Happy New Year!

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

I truly have the best friends in the world. I have brilliant, funny, loving friends. There’s the friend I call when I really need counseling (T), the friend I  talk to for hours, never running out of things to talk about (A), the friend I drink coffee with and eat vegan food (even if she’s no longer a vegan!) (R), the friend who challenges me to broaden my vision (also an R), the new friend who I like to hang with (E), and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s the friend who has known me longest (T), and who always knows the right thing to say and do in life. Don’t forget the friend who is my best girl, the mother of my godchildren (K). There’s (D) who gives me hell when I fall off the right path, and loves me enough to tell me I’m wrong. There’s my friend (A) who is very busy right now, with new challenges (school, moving, new business), who has always been a better friend to me, and inspires me.

There are so many more, but I can’t write about them all.

I am so grateful. I found this cheesy poem that really says what I’d like to, but much cheesier:

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to
new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints
on our hearts, and we are never ever the same.
~ Flavia Weedn

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. I love you.

Case in point, I went to print labels from the post office web site, which required me to create an account, which I didn’t really need because we already had one, but when I went to reset the password (which we couldn’t remember) on the old account, I accidentally reset the password on the new account, which meant I had to go to another email account to figure out how, and anyway, it took me an hour to figure out the labels, and I finally got them. Then guess what? I ran out of printer ink.

So a trip to Staples, and I put in the black ink. Reprint.

You thought it was going to be easy? Wrong! Color ink out, too, so it didn’t work. Luckily, I had gotten a color cartridge.

Yep, that kind of day.

When everything you do requires a little creativity.

And I’ve got it. And I’m grateful.

Now, if I can just actually get something done tomorrow…

Given that I love my job. And I love my home. And my friends and special people. What am I most unsatisfied with in my life?

You guessed it. Money.

So here’s my grateful list for this Sunday, and the topic is money.

I have never gone hungry, and always seem to have enough.

Waiting for luxury items makes me more appreciative when I get them.

I have a new pair of tennis shoes in my very near future!

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Preach Christ? What does that mean?

I have to tell you a little about Dr. Smith. He’s a large black man, a preacher who hoops (which means that he gets a certain cadence to his voice, a sing-song-like rhythm), who sings amazing songs at the end of sermons. His voice is deep, like James Earl Jones.

And he said, “Preach Christ.”

Preach Christ? What does that mean?

I heard his voice. “It means Christ crucified.” Christ crucified? What is that? Why does that matter? “Because it’s Christ resurrected.” Ah, the resurrection. Now what difference does that make? And then I hear Dr. Smith. “It means Christ is alive.”

So, today, I’m going to preach Christ.

I have a new podcast series I’m listening to, put on by the Long Now Foundation, which
was established in *01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. I listened to a talk by Daniel Everett, who is a former Christian missionary turned anthropologist. He has studied a language group of people called  the Piraha

Daniel says:

The Piraha have a very interesting concept, among all Amazonian tribes as far as I can tell, one important value that is shared, is called immediacy of experience, Amazonian tribes are very interested on what is going on now.  And they tend not to value so much, the deep past or the distant future, but to focus on now, and many anthropologist have commented on that, but I do not know of any other group that has a concept, which the Piraha called “xibipiio” and xibipiio is a fascinating concept, when you are out there, they do not speak Portuguese by the way, so when I first went there in December of 1977 and got off the plane airsick and looking for the first place to throw up… they started talking to me, and I didn’t understand anything they said.  So, I remember once a fellow walked in to the jungle, and they said, he xibipiio left, and then somebody else came out of the jungle and they said he xibipiio arrived.  Well maybe it means he just left, he just arrived, and then I saw someone go around the bend in a canoe, and they said he xibipiio left they came back, he xibipiio left, planes, they would say xibipiio.

And then one night, I could not find my candles and I just had a match and my flashlight batteries were dead and I have this match lit and it was flickering, and they said the match is xibipiioing they used it as a verb, and I could not figure out, what on earth would this mean.  Well it means to go in and out of the boundaries of experience.  If you want to use a technical terms, you can say, that refers to experiential liminality, but it simply means to go in and out of experience. This is so important to them, not… we do this when we are children, peek-a-boo that sort of the equivalent to xibipiio in our vocabulary.  It is the excitement of seeing something go in and out of experience, the Piraha have codified it and made it a very important part of their language and an important part of their culture.  And one thing I noticed was that, their verb structure… so English has how many verb forms, well it has about 5, sing, sang, sung, singing, sings… Spanish or Portuguese might have 40 different verb forms, well Piraha like many American Indian languages has a very complex verbal system.  So Piraha has 16 different suffix that can go with the end of a verb, that gives 2 to the 16th power possible verb forms and that is a lot. That is more than 40. And of those things, 3 suffixes are very important and those tell you how you got your evidence.  So every verb has to have on it the source of the evidence, did you hear about it, did you see it with your own eyes, or did you deduce it from the local evidence.  So if I say did John go fishing? They can say John went fishing “heai” which means I heard that he did, or they can say John went fishing “sibiga” and that means I deduced that he did, or they can say John went fishing “ha” and that means I saw he went.

As I mentioned, Daniel Everett was a Christian missionary when he got to central Brazil to learn this language. He continues:

In some respects the Piraha are the ultimate empiricist, or like people from Missouri, the “show me state”.  Part of this cultural value of the Piraha, the immediacy of experience reflected in this word xibipiio produces a value to keep information slow and to keep it verifiable, and it must be witnessed, so a Christian missionary, which I no longer am, if you read the book, you will find out what they did to me.  They actually demanded evidence for what I believe and I realized, I could not give it as well as they wanted me to give it.  So, this changed my profoundly, but I remember telling them about Jesus one time and they said “So Dan, is Jesus is he brown like us or is he white like you?  “I do not know I haven’t seen him.”  “What did your dad say?  Because your dad must have seen him.”  “No, he never saw him.”  “Oh what did your friends say who saw him?”  “No I do not know anybody who saw him.”  “Why are you telling us about him then?  Why would you talk about something you do not have evidence for?”

Hmmm. And you want me to preach Christ?

There have been two Scripture texts rolling around in my head all week, the first of which has mostly been used as a weapon against me or as an argument as to why I’m wrong:

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

And here’s the thought that keeps coming to me. What if we listen to this verse a little differently? What if it says, which some scholars say,“I am the way, which is to say, the truth and the life. No one ever comes to the Father but through me.” We’ve looked at Jesus saying that he is the Way, AND the Truth, AND the Life. As if they are three things concurrently, But what if Jesus is saying, I am the Way, that is to say, the truth and the life. You get it? And really, what if Jesus is talking about his WAY being the way? And his way is that of truth and life. And that our way gets so deep inside of us that it becomes who we are?

The second passage that keeps coming to me is this:

John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

You know, that verse has been taken over and over again to prove that God wants us to be rich, but what exactly is abundance? It’s not wealth, says the man who had no pillow for his head. It’s not food, says the child with the distended stomach. It’s not a new car, says the woman on the public bus.

Christ came to give us life more abundant, but really. Abundant what? Abundance is what Anthony De Mello calls waking up. It’s awareness. Presence. Being in the moment. That’s the abundance Jesus is calling us to. And it’s abundance in compassion. Feeling. Understanding. Ourselves and others better.

Are you getting it? The church’s job, our way, Jesus way: Noticing, and Passion with compassion.

Preach Christ, huh?

Mother Teresa said, “Let us preach you without preaching, not by words but by our example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.”

When I was in seminary, I went to see my preaching professor, Dr. Robert L. Smith one day, and he wasn’t in his office. He wasn’t in the classroom next to his office. I found him, instead, in the preaching lab, where we gave our sermons. He was pacing the room, praying over every chair in the lab, praying for his students. And every day when I left his presence, he would say, “I love you, Lia.” Never sure what to say, I would turn away and say, “Thank you.” One day, he stopped me and said, “Lia, why do you look away when I say I love you?” I couldn’t answer, but I know now that I couldn’t look upon that much love right then. I couldn’t face down my own demons to be loved like that.

He preached Christ. Through his preaching and his words. He preached Christ crucified through his life that he poured into the lives of his students. He preached Christ resurrected when he noticed me and loved abundantly.

I know Christ. You know Christ. You have seen him, if only in the lives of those around you. Christ is crucified in your life every time you face down the demons that persecute those around us. When you follow your passion, you are Christ crucified. When you paint a painting. Love a child. Hug your spouse. Whenever you give love, ou are preaching Christ crucified. And you know Christ resurrected. You may not be able to prove it, you can’t say, “I heard it. I saw it.” But you can infer it in the lives around you, in the love around  you.

Preach Christ? What does it mean?

It means Christ crucified. It means Christ resurrected. It means Christ is alive today.

May it ever be.

Why is it this way?

First, because the poor have very little time. Picketing a grocery store for being more expensive is a great idea, but who of the poor can afford to take the time off of work to do it? Driving to the other side of town? Hard to do when you are counting pennies for gasoline.

Second, because poor folks don’t know that they can ask questions and that they have rights. I know it’s not always true now, but it used to be true that you could get your bank to waive overdraft fees. If you made a mistake on your checking account, and weren’t habitual, you could ask, and they’d waive them. Because that’s pure profit for the bank, and their managers had that option. Do poor people know that? Nope. Young people don’t either. So who pays overdraft fees? The poor and the young. In other words, those who don’t have the money.

Third, because they live in smaller spaces. It’s one thing to go to a big box store and stock up on tons of stuff, but most poor people live in smaller spaces and don’t have the room to put huge boxes of cereal. Then stuff goes to waste.

Fourth, saving money takes an investment. Back to the box stores: a stick of deodorant is about $2 in a drug store. It’s about $6.5 for 6 sticks at a big box store. Spending the money NOW becomes an issue of having more money NOW to save money in the long run. Most poor people don’t have the extra money now.

Fifth, life becomes about robbing Peter to pay Paul. Poor people figure, “I won’t pay my phone bill until next week so that I can pay for some food today.” Bam! Down the credit rating goes. Bam! Up the credit card rate goes. Bam! Up the insurance rate goes.

It’s a vicious cycle.

And until some people besides poor people start caring about the injustice in the system, it probably won’t change. Because, really, it’s possible that the rich think, “Well, I work hard, I should pay less money for things.” Like health care. Is it possible that people think, “They don’t deserve health care?”

The Bible makes it clear that God cares about the poor. Shall we keep oppressing them?

The sermon was rather different (surprise, surprise!), and I quoted from one Ted talk by Sir Ken Robinson, starting at minute 15.09. Robinson tells the story of Gillian Lynne, a choreographer whose grade school teachers (in the 1930’s) thought that she had a learning disorder. Gillian’s mother took her to a doctor, who listened to the symptoms, and asked Mrs. Lynne to talk with him privately. Instead of talking, they turned to watch Gillian, who got up to dance to a radio that was on in the room.

“Gillian isn’t sick,” the doctor said, “she’s a dancer.” Gillian’s mother took her to dance class, where Gillian proclaims, “We walked into this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.”

I believe the church should be like the doctor: noticing. And like the mother: fostering passion.

Then we listened to 5 minutes of another Ted talk. Eve Ensler spoke on happiness. Go to minute 15:41. Really. Go listen. I’ll wait.

Eve says that the Vagina Monologues “has taught me this really simple thing, which is that happiness exists in action, it exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is, and it exists in giving away what you want the most.”

We have to work to identify our passion, the thing we want the most, that we have to give away.

We then talked about our saints. sharing our mementos, and thinking about them, “What was the thing they gave away?”

I talked about my saint, Barbara Watts, during this time. The memento I shared was a hymnal from Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and hymn number 398, “In the Garden.” Barbara sang this favorite hymn at my ordination.

The refrain is, “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own; and the joy we share, as we tary there, none other have ever known.” Sure, it’s bad theology, but it’s one of my favorites.

Barbara’s gift, her passion, was attention. She paid attention to all the people she loved in such a complete way: cards, letters, calls. Remembrances, birthday wishes, gifts, Barbara paid attention. I’m so grateful for her model in my love, and for being the object of some of that love.

After sharing our saints, without a dry eye in sight, we shared communion. We communed with our saints who are gone, but also with those who will someday consider us saints. What would be the passion they would see?

Jesus took the wine and the bread, very common elements, and made them holy. The saints in our lives, who were very human, shed the light of sacredness in our lives. How would we do the same in others’ lives?

In the first instance, I was at a retreat for pastors about Missional church. I was the only woman in a group of pastors, most of whom were Southern Baptist. One was pastor of a UCC church, so I thought there was hope, until he explained that his church left the UCC when they voted, as a denomination, in favor of gay marriage. I knew, by the time the introductions were over, that I was in the wrong place.

But I stayed, thinking that perhaps I was jumping to conclusions. I was not wrong. I had signed up for a three day retreat, but left that evening, after enduring masculine visual aids (all the people in the slides were men), having the leader call the group, “Men,” constantly, and being ignored, and even worse, argued with during the discussion time. I found myself getting really upset.

And the thing is, all these pastors were expressing their concern over their churches dying. Duh! Of course they’re dying! You don’t even offer to women the freedom they enjoy in the rest of our culture.

The second time was upon looking at a conference about missional community called Verge being held in 2010 in Austin, Texas. A person I follow on twitter was excitedly tweeting about it. So I looked at the website. Not one single woman on the roster for this conference. The conference leaders seem to mostly be SBC, and we know that they won’t respond to my request to add at least one woman to their roster.

Those of you who knew me in seminary know how painful the experience was. Hardly a day passed when a male student didn’t say to me, “You can’t be a minister! You’re a girl!”

Even worse than all that, one of my friends tweeted me, “we’ve gotta love those who interpret scripture differently though.” Really? Really? Love them, sure, but accept where they are wrong in interpreting Scripture? If this was any other scripture verse (like perhaps the ones on slavery?) would we think we should respect their points of view?

No.

I have been insulated from the issues of exclusion of women in ministry. Living in the progressive/liberal world shelters me from the sexism so rampant in the evangelical church.

I am so sorry that the little girls sitting in those churches don’t have the opportunity to see women in leadership. I’m sad that they’ll grow up like me, doubting God’s call on their life, because there are no clear role models. It’s tragic that these little girls will grow up thinking they are not as valuable as boys, simply because their churches interpreted Scripture so wrong.

I’m torn about putting myself in more places where women are unwelcome in leadership. I’ve enjoyed my protected place. But I don’t think I can leave my sisters to suffer.

When was the last time a woman filled the pulpit at your church? Time to ask the pulpit supply team for some new faces.

Dear Friends,

Several weeks ago I sat in a room full of pastors from downtown churches in a forum called by the Raleigh Police Department. Ostensibly, it was to talk about how faith communities can properly secure their premises, especially in light of Martha’s murder a few months ago. The gist of the presentation was about church security - having your facilities well lit, etc. And then, they started talking about the homeless.

We saw pictures of dangerous criminals (their words), all but one of whom were black, as examples of the sort of people we should be watching out for. (Of course, most of the folks in the audience were white, so this played with their stereotypes perfectly.) Then they presented us all with trespass letters, which, if signed and placed on file with the police, would give them permission to arrest folks found on their property after hours. The entire presentation built to this, and you got the feeling this was the whole reason for the meeting.

There aren’t near enough shelter beds. If you are unhoused and needed a safe place, you might think about going to sit out of the rain under the awning at the corner church. Especially since the church is closed so you won’t scare any of the rich white people who attend there. If you thought this way you wouldn’t be alone. There are several churches downtown where friends of mine sleep - behind their dumpsters, in the shrubs, under the awning. Because it is well lit, clean and generally safe.

The police work for the city, which makes revenue from developers, who sell houses to rich people who do not like seeing homeless people. So the police are under a lot of pressure to “clean up” the homeless problem. The police are frustrated by the churches that have allowed people to sleep on their grounds. So, the police scare the daylights out of the church leaders, throw Martha’s death in the mix, show some scary pictures of black men and convince a goodly number of the downtown churches to put up no tresspassing signs, enabeling the police to act on those tresspass letters they wanted us to sign.

The presenters assured us they did not want to interfere with our mission - they just wanted us to help them keep us ’safe’.

I was the only one who stood up and said that our mission does not call for us to be safe - it calls for us to show extreme love and radical hospitality. I asked the people, preachers and police alike, the following question: If you are tired and hungry and alone and have no home and no hope - if you cannot go to the church, where should you go?

No one had any answers to that. The police officer told me he understood, but that was not his job.

But it is my job. It is our job. To extend grace and love to the other. Not to put up signs to keep people who don’t look like us away.

So I have spent the last few weeks telling my friends who sleep outside that churches are not safe places anymore. That the No Tresspassing signs mean they will be arrested. And when they ask me where they are supposed to go if they can’t go to church, I tell them I don’t know. And when they leave, I cry.

Love Wins. Always.