the fifty-ninth formica friday

[caption id="attachment_3796" align="aligncenter" width="582"] There was a lot of medieval sex this week. By that, I mean I was essay writing.[/caption] A quote

To free all those who trust in Him from Satan's power and might. O, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. O, tidings of comfort and joy.

- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

A list, in which I am grateful:

• late night essay writing, wine, laughter, old and true things
• the slow, ember time of the finishing of class
• white tequila
• the creases along Bible covers
• blog readers who are more generous, more good, more loving than I could ever say
• red, rosy dawns here at the end of the world
• a none-too-simple faith, a none-too-complicated trust

The best I read this week from you:

• From my stunning, beautiful friend Antonia. A brief, simple psalm: to the girl in the bar.

• "She stopped rocking on her feet. 'Wait.' Her voice is always gentle and slow, but her brow was knit. 'Would you say… you’re a Christian?'" Act Like A Christian from Ashleigh

• "I’d said something incredibly stupid that amounted to white-splaining. It was bad and he was absolutely right in calling me out on it. But the only reason that I was able to handle that without an explosion of drama and fighting was that I realized a basic principle: my pain at having my privilege called out in no way trumps the pain of the oppressed. In fighting back against that simple scale, in the debate loses. Everyone." Checking Privilege: A Lesson in Pain from Dianna

• "And I think that we’re using the wrong language. It’s not church shopping orchurch hunting. You’re not looking for the right church, as if could be is one. As if there’s a magical place where everyone will love you immediately…where they will know exactly how to take you in. Where you’ll feel complete." Church Home from Addie

• "I don’t remember who did the teaching; I just remember the singing. But this is when I met the Spirit. I felt the holy presence active around me even beyond the reach of the altar. One night I woke up speaking in tongues – it both frightened and delighted my mother. For me it became the next sacrament in my spiritual formation." my mother church from Kelley

• This summary of Ed's wonderful women in ministry series features some of my absolute favourite writers: The Women in Ministry Series: 2012 Highlights

And, as always, an old post from me:

• for i trust the hands of the Potter

Share with me: I was sparse this week with everything going on here, what was your best post this week, or whom did you read that I didn't?

when i have something to say about the sanctity of marriage

It has been brought to my attention by a few scholars I very much respect that this is a bit too reductive and romanticised. Though I disagree, to a point, I'm grateful for their engagement and will be reading more on the topic in the coming months. If you have a book recommendation, leave that in the comments! (And please note, these bolded sections were added later and some comments below may reflect response to this post before these additions.)

Imagine.

You wake up this morning and turn on the news. You've pulled a slice of bread from the toaster, edges a bit burnt. You're spreading orange marmalade, waiting for the coffee to brew, when you hear the broadcaster announce that Congress will be debating a law that will make the Lord's Supper, Communion, the Eucharist, the property of the State.

That is, the State will now control what defines the Eucharist, the true Body and Blood. You can still bake bread in your home, can still pour a glass of wine or grape juice, can still pull out some crackers, place hands over the table and call it the Table, and say that what you partake in is bread and wine, Body and Blood, but legally it will be unrecognised, it will be nothing more than child's play.

You would say this ridiculous, of course. The State cannot control something that is clearly the property of the Church. It cannot dictate what is and is not of God: the State's sanctioned version of the Eucharist is no more the revelation of Christ than a bag of Doritos and a Dr. Pepper, for it takes the efficacious work of God's people to see Body and Blood fully realised.

It doesn't matter what the State does, you would say, what matters is what is happening in the places where believers are gathered together. What matters is what Christians do in proclaiming Christ, whether the State agrees or recognises or condones.

Now imagine it wasn't Communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist; imagine it was baptism.

Imagine that the State is threatening to take control of baptism, that it will define the parameters of what baptism means: perhaps sprinkled, perhaps immersed, perhaps as an infant, perhaps as an adult. The State will control every detail, will have the ability to legally decide what counts as an efficacious baptism or not.

And you can fill a swimming pool. You can go to a lake. You can go to a fount. You can baptise thrice in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or once or sprinkle or dunk or whatever you believe to be the Scriptural truth, but in the eyes of the State, it will not matter. What you do is not baptism, but playing in a bit of water.

You would say this was silly. It doesn't matter what the State believes about baptism at all. What matters is the confession of Christians who baptise according to the Scripture, who live out their Faith and do so in fear and trembling. Simple as that. Whatever the State decides, it has no control over the truth.

Now, imagine that you consider the Eucharist and Baptism to be sacraments of some kind.

Rudimentarily, let's suppose you believe that they are the property of the Church, that what the Church can do with Eucharist and Baptism the State could never do, for the efficacy, the good, the truth of them is through confession of Faith and orthodox adherence to the Scripture at work in and through Christ's Church.

So let's talk about marriage.

Imagine that you wake up, turn on the news, pull out your toast, spread your marmalade, and hear that the State is saying it has the authority to define what marriage is. It is going to take marriage out of the hands of the Church and define it as it saw fit, in accordance to its teaching and beliefs. You would laugh, of course, for marriage is the property of the Church. But you hear that the Church is helping the State determine the definition. It's not really the State that is defining the terms, but the Church. For if the Church is helping it along, there's no chance for something sacred, unique, and divinely given to be lost.

Right?

Would you say that made sense?

Would you say that the State was protecting the sanctity of marriage?

Would you say that it was good for the State to be able to define marriage, because the State has respected so well all of the other Christian institutions that it brought legality into?

Or is there something wrong with this picture?

Is there something wrong with believing that a secular State should be responsible for defining marriage to begin with, let alone, allegedly, redefining it?

Is there something theologically amiss when the State takes control of what only the Church can confer?

I think so.

As a conservative-evangelical-liturgical-uneasy-pacifist-environmentalist-believer-in-marriage-between-one-man-and-one-woman Christian, I still think the State has no business defining marriage, because I also don't believe the State should be able to define the Eucharist or baptism or anything else theological for that matter.

For marriage in the Scriptural sense is the property of the Church.

For sanctity is not the property of the State.

For God is not the property of the State.

(And if you want to know what I feel about homosexuality, read this, from one far, far greater than I.)

What I thought was clear in this post, but I have come to realise is not, is that I am not writing to suggest that marriage as civil unions and contracts are not part of the State and its property, but that marriage as sacrament, as something to be protected, as more than contract but as covenant, is a unique part of the life of the Church. Yes, marriage exists in other parts of society as well, but not as a sacramental practice, which is why I don't think the State can be told not to allow same-sex marriage any more than portions of the Church could be told they must approve it.

when you don't have a book contract anymore

Shut the door, have a seat, we need to talk this one out.

Really, we need to bake this one out.

So imagine that you are here in my flat at the end of the world, in my kitchen where Thanksgiving happened and where the writing, on the nicer days, happens. Imagine that you're at my table and I've opened the wine, that I have pulled out the bowls and the chocolate I keep stashed behind the Arabian spices, the chocolate I only ever use for the best things. I've set out butter and eggs, I've preheated the oven, I've glanced around the kitchen, around you, out the windows, and have stood in front of the open refrigerator for a few minutes before pulling goat cheese out, because I am convinced that chocolate and goat cheese cupcakes can and should happen.

Perhaps I've just finished weighing out the cocoa, perhaps I've just taken a sip of my wine, but I'm over the mixing bowl when I take a deep breath and say, "I spoke to my agent a few weeks ago."

Then I turn to look you in the eye. Then I tell you the whole thing.

I tell you about how there was some potential problems with my publisher that slowly became more and more apparent the closer we were to turning in the manuscript. I tell you about the rumours, about a friend or two who were coming away from working with them a little suspect, about my agent calling me and saying that there was some shady business in all of this, that it might be time to pull away, that it might be time to save the book I've invested heart and will and time and chocolate and coffee into for months now---over a year, in fact.

And then I tell you about prayer, about wondering, about pulling the trigger and thinking if it was as easy as to not even be believed, it was the will of God.

And I tell you that my agent moved to withdraw me from the contract, that they didn't put up a fight, that in that motion alone, they confirmed how in trouble they may or may not be in, that it was good that I got out, that it is going to be hard couple of months now.

Now.

Perhaps the cupcakes are in the oven now and we're halfway through the wine, or onto the second bottle, and I'm telling you about writing a book proposal for the book I never thought I would have to propose, about sending it off to a publisher, about how hard it is to wait now, about how I have slowly, quietly, expunged my about pages and book page and CV of a specific publisher name, that I have waited to tell you until there was something to tell, that what I am telling you now is that all there is to be done is wait, wait, wait.

And write.

I tell you that I still believe Tables in the Wilderness: Scripture and the Enchanted Creation needs to be written, that I want to speak of God's glory in the everyday, in the midst of us, in how His word is the fabric of our being and the rhythm of our lives. I tell you about how I'm still writing it, still working on it, still pushing forward.

But for now, I'm waiting to hear. I'm waiting to hear if Tables has a new publisher.

And I tell you, too, that A Common Faith: A Memoir of God Found, Lost, and Found Again is not so far behind, that I plan to write it after Tables, that I don't know what it all means yet, what it will mean, but that there are words that need writing and things that need saying and I'm going to ink out all of it, every last bit, because it's all I know to do and how I know to love.

When the cupcakes are between us, still too warm to frost, I place the bowl of frosting along with a knife beside, raise a cupcake, mound frosting though it runs, and share with you the messy uncertainty of it all. I tell you that I need you to stick around, if you would, because these days are hard and lonely and scary and beautiful and awe all at once. I tell you that you, as a reader, mean more to me than I know how to say well, perhaps say ever. I tell you that I did this, in part, because I want to give you my best. I tell you I hope that you understand. I tell you I wish I could bake like this for you all the time.

And that's where things are now. That's where thing are going to be for a little while.

Hope. That's where we'll be. In this kitchen, with these messy, impossible cupcakes, hoping.