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coming clean about the women in ministry issue: today, at deeper story

January 27, 2012 in deeper story with 2 Comments

Today, I’m sharing over at Deeper Story

Depending on whom you ask, it’s the hot topic in the Church these days.

What are we to do with the women?

Whether it’s long and ridiculous lists outlining what constitutes an important enough position in a church to determine if a woman should be allowed to fill it or a much more thoughtful series of reflection, such as that being hosted by Ed Cyzewski, the blogosphere has done nothing but exacerbate our collective access to every opinion under the sun as to how we are to actually read Corinthians or Timothy or what culturally historical position should be taken to reinterpret into today’s context or … and it goes on.

And I must confess to you, I’m not sure which camp I completely fall into.

I have written in the past some particularly pointed posts in which I advocate a strongly feminist position, if we are going to define feminist as someone who recognizes a woman to be in fact human, moreover made in the image of God. Indeed, many of my friends around the blogs are women who have no qualm asserting themselves as egalitarian.

And I love them, I love what they do, I love how God works through them.

But today I want to come clean.

I want to confess to you that I haven’t fully made up my mind. I still need time to think and pray. For I am at heart, I think, a complimentarian. At least in so far as I think men and women do have complimentary roles to one another in marriage. Now if that means that I have to say only women should stay home or that a man is the only one allowed to work, then cast that label aside and find something else to call me. But if egalitarian means that anything a man can do a woman can do with no qualification whatsoever …

Part of me cries YES! and part of me cries NO!

I am not the person who has read an NIV version of Corinthians and Timothy and made a case for gender roles in church based on translation. I have read the Greek, I have read under people who read the Greek from both sides of the camp, and I am still pondering and praying it out.

But I can tell you what I do know. At least, what I know right now. I can share some of the threads that weave my soul.

Keep reading and join me, today, over at Deeper Story?

with all due reverence for the speed bumps of the Portofino parking lot: today, at deeper story

December 29, 2011 in deeper story with 3 Comments

We cut slowly across the parking lot, moving three stores down from the one we were just in. Were we anyone else, we would likely have abandoned the car at the first store and then walked to the second. But we are not like everyone else, so we took the car. We pulled out slowly, we gingerly made the approach.

And we came to the speed bumps.

“Honey, it’s alright. Just go over them slow,” she tells me, but I can see out of the corner of my eye the flicker of trauma remembered shadow her face and wordlessly I take the wheel and turn it left, driving down to the end of the row where I turn right and then right again for the simple sake of avoiding the speed bumps.

The drivers behind us are slightly confused, as two cars that were waiting have already gone over by the time we are back on the other side. If we were like everyone else, we would have driven over the speed Bumps in the parking lot of Portofino like there was nothing to even pause and consider.

But we are not like everyone else.

Keep reading and join me over at Deeper Story today?

accepting His silence — today at deeper story

November 28, 2011 in deeper story with 8 Comments

Today, I share at Deeper Story …

I pool myself on the table in front of him to try and make him understand, which is silly, because he does. But I have come to think that metered words and breathed prose somehow makes sense of my tangled mess of being, that I have to explain myself aloud, neglecting the power of the sacrament of the unspoken word—things betrayed and conveyed in eyes, in half-nods, in unspoken prayers.

“He’s silent,” it’s more choked than I would have liked, but this is part of the unspoken revelation, too. It’s been this way since September, a feeling that God is abundantly present, a sense of peace in the very core of my soul, and yet no kindling tickle of wings against my heart, against my being, so that I am caught betwixt an absolute certainty and trust that He exists, that He saturates the cosmos, but these truths, this Truth, does not feel present, does not feel true.

And I’m desperate. Eyes betray, convey.

I fear the future. I fear that He has led me into a time of such profound certain uncertainty, that this ground beneath my feet feels so absolutely solid and yet each step forward into darkness feels as if it could be a step off into the abyss.

And I pool. I pool all this in mangled words in front of him and he understands, but I keep talking, because what I’m not saying is that I’m scared and talking about it helps me be less afraid. At least, I think it does. I’m not certain of much apart from Him in this strange land of exile.

Join me on this journey today, over at Deeper Story?

what’s happened to satan? — today at deeper story

October 28, 2011 in deeper story with 0 Comments

Today, I’m sharing at Deeper Story.

We near that time in the year when Church and secular conflate with regard to the holidays and it becomes, at times, hard to distinguish them. As we near the close of October, I find myself thinking on evil, evil and what evil means. Or doesn’t. Is. Or isn’t.

One year at a local church’s Fall Festival—one of the valiant, though often unfortunate, attempts to reclaim All Saints Day and All Souls Day from Halloween—I was greeted by a boy dressed up as the devil. At least, his conception of him. Pitchfork in hand, horns on his head, red cape on his back, and a defiant look of satisfaction on his face.

“And what are you supposed to be?” I asked him, while at the same time encouraging yet another child to throw their fishing line—string with a clothespin affixed to a stick—over into the sea—a blue sheet with cutout fish taped to it—to see what they could catch—candy attached to a fish cutout that a very kind, very bored volunteer would time and again place into the expectant clothespin, then give a little tug and put up a playful fight before letting go to the victory shout of the child.

“I’m Satan!” declared the boy, sounding horrifically triumphant.

I was amused. “You are most obviously not.”

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give peace in our time – my first post at a deeper story

September 29, 2011 in bits of theological ramblings, deeper story with 2 Comments

A dream is coming true today. What started as a quiet hope, turned into an email, a possible guest post, and then, in the end, me becoming a contributor over at A Deeper Story. I’ve been in love with the amazing work there, the writers that have been brought together, the hope they draw out … I am stunned to be placed in the midst of them. Excited. Overwhelmed.

For my first post, I am reflecting on our need for Christ to be crucified, even now …

—

“Give peace in our time, O Lord. Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God”

We gather in the small chapel with the stained glass windows to pray the evening liturgy. There are no kneelers, so our flesh kisses the stone floor and goes numb. At that level, eyes are placed just below the columns of glass that overlook the altar. At that level, eyes are placed just below the central image woven into the glass: our Lord Christ, crucified.

Today, I think about Somalia and famine. Today, when we read the appointed psalm, I think about my friends in closed Asian countries, who flee from village to village, who hide Bibles in the lining of their coats, who have been imprisoned. Today, I think about the children who live across the street from me, just over the highway, who will go hungry tonight, and I wish I could know their faces.

When we come to the line about peace in our time, I cannot speak. I weep. A few tears stain the prayerbook, I rock back on my knees and feel them recoil at the hardness of the stone floor, and I lift up my eyes to that central image, to our crucified God, and I am overwhelmed by Beauty and Truth and Love.

I think it was Pascal who once said, “Christ will be in agony until the end of the world.”

Join me, for the first time, over at A Deeper Story?