I saw ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at the local theater this weekend.  Such a fun and quirky musical.  It runs two more weekends, and the cast really does do an incredible job.  If you’re a local, go see it.  It’s silly and wonderful… but I think there’s something more to the story as well.

If you’ve not seen the musical (or the movie) the plot centers on a florist on Skid Row who is about to close up shop forever when his shop boy (Seymour) puts a unique plant in the window.  The plant is so bizarre, it attracts notice as well as customers.  The shop makes an economic turn for the better, and all is well… the only problem being that Seymour’s plant requires blood sacrifice in order to thrive.  Audrey 2 (the plant) is able to articulate this need quite clearly as it commands Seymour to “FEED ME”.

There’s a lot of hunger in the show.  The shop girl, Audrey, has an abusive dentist boyfriend who also, apparently requires blood sacrifice in order to survive.  He collects this in the form of verbally and physically abusing Audrey.  Audrey hungers for a boyfriend and a dream of an alternate reality where she’s a Donna Reed type.  Mr. Mushnik, the shop owner hungers for financial stability… and Seymour hungers for a relationship with Audrey.

In each case, the hunger is consuming to the point of destruction of either self or others.  In each case, the hunger ends with Audrey 2 being fed.  And although we’re able to laugh through it all, we don’t heed the words of the (mostly digested) cast at the end as they implore us to ‘not feed the plant’.

And yet, we do, don’t we?  Feed the plant?  Slake our thirst and feed our hunger to the point where it consumes us (or others?).  We feed our need to be right as well as our egos.  We consume to the point where what we feast on deprives others of a decent meal.  As a nation, we put our needs at the center of the universe, and require blood sacrifice of those around us so that we can drive our cars and buy whatever we ‘need’.  FEED ME!

The musical doesn’t end happily.  It is a cautionary tale, or perhaps even a morality play as it begs us: don’t feed it.  Just don’t.

 

I spent a goodly amount of time reviewing the Rwandan genocide last week for one of my classes.  That focus continues this week as we dissect further what led up to the slaughter, and the complicity of leadership in Rwanda, the U.N. and the U.S.  (I’m looking at you, Mr. Clinton).  These people were victims of those in power who played them like a violin. 

And yet, even the oppressed in this situation were able to move towards liberation.  Thousands upon thousands of women, children and men were killed (800,000 Tutsis) and yet the people were able to overthrow the Hutu regime and end the genocide (no thanks to many who stood by and watched).

These are victims of a situation not acting like victims.  They acted like those who had nothing left to lose.  They acted like people who realized that although there was an attempt to remove all choice from their reach… that they had a choice.

Two years have passed since the Occupy Wall Street movement began.  I saw echoes there of liberation theology – people taking back their ability to make decisions and to use their voice against that which they felt imprisoned by.  In many ways, the Tea Party movement has a similar impetus.  In both cases you have individuals choosing to act.  Choosing to not be victims.

And then there are the victims who play at being victims.  They have choices.  They have options… and yet they choose not to act.  I realize in some cases it is due to feeling overwhelmed by what the world has thrown at them, but when I hold them up against those who have made the choice NOT to be ‘choice-less’, it’s hard to find sympathy.

And yet, in reality, so many of us have chosen to not act.  So many of us have chosen to not have a choice.  Instead of doing the hard work of making difficult choices, we turn on our favorite form of entertainment – be it Netflix, Pinterest or the magic of the interwebs. There are days I choose this drug as well (and I have no sympathy for myself when I do so).  We think that signing a petition is enough and then moan and complain about how the injustices of the world continue.

Please understand I realize it isn’t always possible for a victim to fight back… and I give thanks for the caregivers in our society who help those truly victimized to find wholeness… however, there are times when we (read: I) choose to be victims simply because acting requires more energy than we choose to give.

This Sunday’s Gospel is Luke 16 – the parable of the shrewd manager.  Like most preachers, I find this one of the most difficult passages to preach.  This time around, however, I’ve seen something new.  I’ve begun to think it’s not the actions of the manager that Jesus asks us to emulate (um… he was a bit of a cheat) but instead the attitude of ‘shrewdness’.  Shrewdness is the ability to use your wits to better a situation.  Shrewdness is the ability to take what you’ve been given, and to not be limited by what you have.

I see that shrewdness in the work of Paul Kagame in the rebellion against the Hutus.  I see that shrewdness in the Occupy movement… and in the Tea Party.  I see that shrewdness in one of my DayCare parents who has managed to piece together a living in spite of layoffs and governmental failure.  I see that shrewdness in the church as it tries to balance a budget.

And like Jesus, I find myself applauding.

It goes something like this: “you can do anything you put your mind to”.  There are various corollaries, but that’s the one I’ve heard come out of my own mouth.

Lies.  All lies.

The fact is, there are limits to everything – to the mind, to the body, to the endurance even of the soul.  If these words were uttered in a complete vacuum, without any possible interference (poverty, physical disability, etc.) they would still be untrue.

Calvin might link this to our general state of depravity.  I don’t think he’s far off, at all. Part of what is wrong is our danged human-ness, and that fact that we are not gods.  We have limitations.

I’ve met some of mine this past week, enduring week one of my Comprehensive Exams.  It wasn’t even a matter of willing my self to work more… I had reached a mental breaking point that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before.  I hit the wall.  There was one point where I pulled into Starbucks and sat in the parking lot and wept.  

Now, you may nod sagely and remind me that I got through it.  *They* didn’t lie, you might say.  I had proven their truth.  But the fact of the matter is that *I* didn’t get through last week.  At least, *I* didn’t get through it alone.  I had a whole lot of help.

See, part of the lie embedded in the whole “you can do anything….” thing is that it has an underlying current (see what I did there?) that states that you accomplish anything *alone*.  In my experience?  That’s a boldfaced lie.

This past week I had help from friends, cohort-mates, colleagues, members of my church, faceless friends of facebook fame, family, my rabbit (hush!), but especially my spouse and the One who spun the stars of the universe and knows the hairs on my head.

Today we remember a march on Washington that emphasized that same fact.  We do NOT do this alone… nor can we, nor (as my faith informs me) should we.  The song, my friends, is not I shall overcome.  No one individual will be able to solve the problem that is Syria, the situation between Israel and Palestine, Climate change, the hunger in our streets or the injustice in our courtrooms.  This is on all of us.  Who we vote for, what products we buy, what we do within our own space to bring peace and justice… this is about US.  

This week is a different week.  The Comp exam questions loom before me, as does Sunday morning when I am back to work as usual.  The weeks ahead seem overwhelming, and I may falter or fail.  However, I know there are so many who are there to pick me up, put me back on my feet and push me back into the right direction.

It’s a helluva lot of work, but I’m grateful.

 

I need a vacation.

The problem is, the week that leads up to any vacation is filled with such busyness and angst.  It’s not just packing.  For me it involves making sure that everything work-oriented is where it needs to be, or at the very least, under the watchful eye of someone else.  I put in more hours at work the week before vacation than I think I actually spend *on* vacation.

Throw in that vacation this year is wedged between the end of the summer semester (everything due on Friday… the day we leave!) and my Comprehensive Exams and you get the picture.

I’m not complaining.  Whining, a bit, perhaps, but not complaining. 

I love the life I live and the people I live it with.  I love being busy – not for the sake of busyness, but for that wonderful feeling at night as I sink into the pillow and realize that at least for a few hours, I’ve spent my life well.

Those who know me, know my hands are rarely idle.  If I’m not knitting, I’m… well, I’m knitting.  My brain operates in a similar way.  I’m always thinking, scheming planning….

Which is why I need vacating.

I need to be made empty.  To surrender the possession I have of my thoughts and plans.  I need to feel the freedom that comes from doing absolutely nothing.  And I realize that this Sabbath time is so essential to my well-being and my soul (for it is when I remember that I am Creature) that it is worth the work that leads up to it.

(And the work that follows… but I can’t think about that just yet).

This emptying of self takes place several days after actually leaving home.  It involves a day-trip to our camp, and then the construction of our new home (made of canvas and metal poles).  It involves shopping for provisions, and getting things settled.  And then, at some point during the week it happens.  I go from being all these things that I am to simply being me.  Every year I fear it won’t happen… but it always does.  I am re-created and renewed and restored… rebooted as it were. 

But for now?  Now there are a couple of papers that still need work, and a desk that needs clearing… several yarnish details that need my attention and that book thing we’re working on.  For now there’s the house that needs to be made clean for the week when we’re gone, and the rabbit that needs fresh greens and the cat that needs attention.  Now?  Now there’s laundry that must be done, and bulletins that need to be prepared and books that need to be assembled for the days that follow vacation.

But all of this “now” is to be followed by the then/zen of vacating…. and it is worth it.

I was a Brownie several hundred years ago, and one of the hallmarks of being a Brownie was learning Girl Scout lore.  As I matured in the Scouts I discovered that one of the aspects of Scout culture that resonated with me was music.  As an adult I had the opportunity to attend the Triennial gathering when it was held in Dallas.

Poor Dallas had no idea what hit them.

There was music *everywhere*.  Public transportation, hotel hot tubs, street corners and meeting rooms were filled with women’s voices singing in harmony.  It was transformative.

One of the classic GSUSA songs is “Make new friends…”.  For the uninitiated, the lyrics are as follows:  Make new friends, but keep the old:  one is silver and the other’s gold.

I had a deep discussion with someone recently about friendship.  We discovered that each of us had different expectations of what friendship looked like, and how it was enacted.  I’ve learned the following about myself.  For me, then…

1)  Friendship can be contextual.  I learned this difficult lesson years ago towards the end of my chaplaincy training (CPE).  At the end of an intense summer together, our Supervisor walked us through the steps of moving on.  One of the things he said was to not try and sustain the friendships beyond the context of the program.  He was spot-on.  Those friendships existed in a particular time and place for a specific purpose.  Facebook challenges all of that – but even in a social media world many of us understand context.  It’s fun to catch up with folks that we (insert experience here) with years ago… but unless there’s something more than that context, the friendship is merely another tally on the FB friends line.  This isn’t to diminish the relationship, but rather to understand it better.  I’m grateful for those friends who know me within a particular context as well as for those that cross the line over into something else.

2)  There are layers of friendship, and these are fluid.  Some individuals remain constant in my life, but they may not always be a significant part of my daily life.  I give thanks for those friends in particular.  These are the folks that I can sit down with and in minutes it is as if no time has passed.

3)  Sometimes the word “friend” isn’t sufficient.  We’ve tried as a society to adapt new ways of tagging one another, from the “best friend” of grade school to BFFS to Besties and beyond.  I think we’re simply stabbing at the surface of something deeper here.  There’s a point where friendship becomes family – that circle of individuals who are beyond blood ties and yet who are so connected to us that they *are* family.  Our fortune is doubled when our family are also our friends (and yes, I have been so blessed in this way!)

Old, new, acquaintances, soul-sisters, contextual-friendship and those that challenge the boundaries…. one may be silver and the other gold, but each are treasures.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”  With these words, the poet Emma Lazarus summarizes the meaning of the green lady that sits in a harbor not too far from my desk.

I remember learning about the great statue in grade school.  The idea that we were a melting pot of people intrigued me, and the subsequent journeys into our heritage that this brought about was always interesting.  I figured out the percentages.  I was a German/English/Scots-Irish mutt of sorts, with some confusion over my religious heritage (not all of my history is WASPish).  My friends had more interesting backgrounds, causing me to grab the globe in search of their ancestry.

Something changed, however.  I honestly don’t think our nation would put the same poem in the same place at this point in our history.  Or, if we did, it would be with the addendum: “as long as they look like us”.  I realize the melting-pot metaphor no longer works, we’re not nearly as heterogeneous as we were when Liberty was raised, but our greatness as a nation is dependent upon all being melted together, is it?

The debate over Immigration reform has some resonance with the debate on race.  If we were to draw a Venn-diagram, the overlapping portion could well be labeled fear.  So much of our suppositions about immigrants (documented and otherwise) are not found in fact, but rather, come from either the unknown… or the known.  The latter is the most concerning.  It is the narcissistic tendency to make our own experience the only truth that exists.

“I knew a girl from Pakistan once and she was lazy”.  Therefore, we generalize our own experience.  “All girls from Pakistan are lazy” is the conclusion we come to.

The problem is, my experience of girls from Pakistan is different than yours.  Where is the truth?

When it comes to understanding a large number of experiences (and not just our own) it helps to turn to the statistics.  (And yes, I’m familiar with Mark Twain, statistics, and damn lies).  Even though numbers can be tweaked and interpreted, they do offer something to hold on to in the realm of pure experience and opinion.  Consensus amongst Economists is leaning heavily towards the understanding that immigration HELPS the American economy (more people buy more things…. meaning we need to make more things… meaning more jobs, etc.).  Does this negate your experience?  No.  It simply means your experience is not universal.

As the church, our responsibility is to remember that God’s children come in different colors and speak different languages.  All are welcome at the Table.  Jesus’ family knew what it was like to flee persecution to another land…. and one of the great acts that we can do is to welcome the stranger in our midst.

The above quote by Emma Lazarus is at the end of her poem.  We rarely hear the beginning which sets the context.  Not only do we open our arms wide to those who come broken and with nothing, we do so as an act of defiance.  We say, as we open our arms, we ARE different.  If I were ever to move towards nationalism, it would be on this point.  Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!  These huddled masses, and who we are with them in our midst defines our very spirit as a nation.  We are greater than the sum of all of these.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch,

Whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome;

Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she with silent lips.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I’m not planning on seeing the Lone Ranger any time soon.  It’s not that I don’t love me some Johnny Depp – but the genre of Western escapes me in the same way I just can’t quite get Country music.  Both have boots.  Maybe that’s my issue?

I have, however, been following some of the storyline behind the storyline:  Depp’s stating that he based his face-paint and headpiece on extant documentation; the use of mechanical horses in certain scenes due to the danger posed to the actual critters; and of course, the violence.  The rallying cry is that the original series (radio and tv) didn’t feature any of the blood, guts and heart-eating moments that this newest spin incorporates. 

Now, before we as a society nod our communal heads at that notion and tsk-tsk at the shame of the loss of ‘good family entertainment’, consider for a minute the other ‘story behind the story’.  The original series may have been a heart-warming (as opposed to heart-eating) good tale, but it sanitized the Wild West.  It didn’t display the anarchy of the times.  It didn’t show the massacre of indigenous peoples.  In a sadly ironic way, the original series “Disneyfied” the time period in a way that recent Disney film did not.

I’m not claiming the new film is authentic in any way, shape or form.  I am suggesting that if you’re looking for a family film, perhaps it might be wise to avoid anything that glamorizes or sanitizes a time period that is marked with violence.  Any treatment of such a story that attempts to portray it as other than it was is a dis-service to those who died during that time.

Yesterday, three people were shot in my community.  The details are unknown.  The violence is heart-wrenching.  I pray that as time passes and the present becomes the past, no one will think to write a fun family film or series about the violence in our streets.  Whether it glorifies or sanitizes the violence, it would be unjust to those who continue to bury their dead.

 

This week I had the chance to bring my closest friend to see Ella at school.  It was amusing – Ella kept introducing us as “my two moms”.  It was so wonderful to catch up with both of them, and to see Ella and one of her “other mothers” together.  She has no idea how large the village is that has raised her.

While we were together, we went to see Monsters University.  The film is a fun re-hash of one of the oldest themes in literature:  belonging.  Watching it as a mother brought back memories of the times when Ella wasn’t sure she fit in.  Watching it as a fifty-year-old woman brought back memories of the times when I KNOW I didn’t fit in.

There’s a reason why this is a theme that is developed again and again… it’s a common experience.  As I speak with the youth in my church, I hear their own tales of exclusion.  The youth telling these tales range from those considered to be the most popular in school, to your industry-standard geek.  We all seek to belong.  We all feel at some point that we do not.

Of course, there are huge variances in that experience, and bullying is very real and very painful.  However, the reason movies like Monsters U do well at the box office is because on some level, we all resonate with it.  Many of us eventually find a place to call home.  Some of us continue to search…. but I’ve become convinced that there is a place for just about everyone.

When I was Called to First Presbyterian almost thirteen years ago, I decided that our motto should be “A Light to the Nations”.  This played on so many levels.  We were the first church in the world to have electricity, AND we were a diverse congregation in a community of ‘many nations’.  The motto went on the newsletter, website and Sunday bulletin.  It’s true… but it doesn’t really reflect who we are.

Several years ago, a member of the church properly identified us as the “Church of Misfit Toys”.  Ask anyone who attends – and they will tell you it’s true.  That nomenclature is an apt description for what we are and who we are…. a church where, somehow, everyone belongs.  We each have our warts and our oddities, but in the end, we’ve found home.

Now I just need to change the stationery….

Several years ago I attended CREDO. CREDO was an opportunity to engage in incredibly deep introspection about my life from a physical, financial, spiritual and vocational stance. It’s one of the reasons I joined a gym, got my financial house in order and enrolled in a PhD program.

Part of what I took away from the experience was a BHAG (that’s “big hairy audacious goal” for those that haven’t read any Jim Collins… although you should!) The BHAG I had involved building community here in Roselle.

I love this town. I love its diversity, its spark… I don’t love its politics. The in-fighting is rarely about issues, and is almost always about who-sat-with-whom at the lunch table. As a result, even when good things are accomplished, the political backlash is hurtful.

Roselle needs something good to grow here – and thanks to a grant that we’ve received from the Presbytery, something good WILL grow here! The summer of 2014, we’re going to have a community garden! I’m still hoping a few other grants will come through to make our work a bit easier, but with the Presbytery grant we can at least get started. I’m thrilled.

This is the first step in that BHAG (see above!). There’s much more to come. So much more. Watch this space!

Growing up, we played cards.  Oh, Grandma Cronenberger didn’t – something about Grandpa and religion, but the other side of the family played cards constantly.  I grew up sitting around the kitchen table with three (sometimes four!) generations playing ‘The Penny Game’, ‘Oh, Heck’ and Gin Rummy.  There were family rituals that surrounded these games.  Mom would curse the deck, and Grandma Wyman would often get up and walk around her chair after a string of bad luck.

My spouse comes from a card-playing family as well.  ‘Oh, Heck’ was replaced by Setback – and Gin Rummy was supplanted by cribbage.  Bill and I continue to play cribbage often – the board is on the dining room table and provides a sweet diversion after dinner when there’s time.

For all the card-playing in my own family, it was my husband’s family that helped me understand some of the truths that are taught by a deck of cards.  The most essential is that you can only play the hand you’re dealt.

Let’s face it.  More often that not we wish we were richer, thinner, smarter… did I say richer?… and we are presented with a choice.  We can either dwell on it, OR we can play the hand we’re dealt.  No amount of wishing is going to give you a different genetic code, or erase that terrible nickname you had as a kid, or make you more popular in your High School years.  (Word to the wise: none of us escaped those years unscathed.  Even the most popular kids have emotional scars to prove that deep down, we’re really all vulnerable).

We can’t change our past.  We can only choose what we will do in the future.