Poetry - really?

As a straight ally and the pastor of an Open and Affirming congregation I was invited to participate in the 13th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance in Riverside, California. Of course I said yes, and foolishly told the organizer, "I'll do whatever you want me to in the program." Today I got an email which said, "Attached are three poems for you to read in the program."

Poetry - Really? When I read that email to my husband he started chuckling. He knows the struggles I have had with Poetry.

I didn't always have trouble with poetry. Apparently I liked poems, even wrote some when I was very young. My mother was fond of showing family members a love poem I wrote about a classmate in 2nd grade. That was embarrassing, but it's not the reason I had trouble with poetry. That started in 4th grade.

The 4th grade teacher, Mrs. McClintock, was known for the wonderful poetry recitations her class presented every year at the annual spring program. Every month all through the school year she would assign long, boring poems by dead white guys to be memorized and recited in front of the class. I hated it. I could memorize alright but the standing up in front of the class to recite was horrible. I was always terrified. I developed a real dislike for poetry. As much as I loved reading, if I saw anything even shaped like a poem in whatever I was reading, I would skip over it. It might be song lyrics that gave the clue that would solve the mystery or help the hero save the day, but I wouldn't care. I wouldn't read poetry. I wouldn't even read the psalms because they are obviously poetry.

This state of affairs lasted about 35 years. When I finally got to college in my 40s I had an English professor who insisted that we read poetry. She didn't care how much I hated it, I was going to read it. Then she assigned poets like Maya Angelou and a Vietnam vet and some Native American writers. I had no idea there were people like these writing poetry. Not a dead white guy in the bunch! No poems about chestnut trees or owls and pussycats or the village smithy. No iambic pentameter. And I liked it. I started reading poetry voluntarily.

Mind you, I still don't read much poetry. But I do read it when I run across it in a book or magazine. I've even purchased a couple of books of poetry. I now enjoy the psalms and proverbs and Song of Solomon. Life opened up whole new vistas of understanding when I lost my hatred of poetry.

So on Sunday I will be reading three powerful, pain-filled poems written from the perspective of a transgendered woman. While reading I will be giving thanks for Dixie Durham at Chapman University and her insistence that I would find good things about poetry if I would just open my mind and give it a chance. And I will be praying for open-mindedness to come to all people, everywhere.

Radioactive blessings

At the beginning of my first appointment in the radiation oncology department I was surprised to be introduced to two physicists who would be working on my case. Somehow it had never occurred to me that there would be anyone besides medical personnel involved in my treatment but on reflection I thought, "Radiation. . . physicists ... duh. "

They explained to me that the bulk of the time I spent in the treatment room would be taken up by them checking and rechecking and sometimes triple-checking the math in order to make sure I got exactly the right dosage for exactly the right amount of time. I assured them that I greatly appreciated their attention to detail and they could check their math as many times as they liked.

I went home that day thinking how exciting it was that math people would choose to study and work with ways radiation in order to help heal specific individuals. I think of physicists as professors and rocket scientist, folks working in laboratories and universities. On my second visit I felt compelled to ask one of them what drew a physicist toward medical uses of radiation.

His story wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I thought I was going to hear why a physicist would leave the lab or university for the field of medical radiation. What I heard instead was a story of vocation discovered.

The physicist's story began shortly after graduating from college when he discovered that his degree in Spanish Literature was not going to help him earn a living. After trying a few other things he began working as an Xray Technician. During the course of his duties he was exposed to the physicists working in radiation oncology. [pun intended] What these men and women were doing really excited him! Here were people who were not doctors and yet who spent every day working to heal people from what is possibly the most frightening diagnosis anyone can be given. He wanted to be part of that. He went back to school (where he discovered he actually does like math) and became one of them, a physicist working in radiation oncology. He said, "It took me a while to get here but now I am doing exactly what I am meant to be doing."

He thanked me for asking and I thanked him back for telling me about his journey. When I showed up for my appointment I absolutely did not expect to hear a story of calling and vocation. What a blessing I received along with the radiation.

I've been Lurking

Yesterday one of the ladies at church said, "I've been worried about you. You haven't been on Facebook all week!" I replied, "I've been there, but I've been lurking." Then I had to explain what lurking is. I've signed on to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ every day. I've read other people's posts and even added some folks to my lists and circles of friends and followers. But I haven't said very much at all.

It could be that I'm suffering from social network overload. Even when I have had something I really wanted to share I have to decide how I wanted to share it. Did I want to limit myself to 140 characters, posting to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously? Or did I want to write something longer as a blog post or a note and then post a TinyURL on Twitter so it would appear on both Twitter and Facebook? Or should I just post it on Facebook?

And what about Google+? I'd have to write something separate for Google+ because Twitter and Facebook don't talk to Google+. Then I'd have to decide which of my circles to share it with. Do I want everyone in my circles to see it, or just other church folk, or just recovery folk, or just women, or do I want to share with the whole entire world of Google+?

Maybe I should just write a blog post. That would work. Then I could post it everywhere and not worry about how many characters it has or who gets to read it. Of course, that means I have to decide whether to post it to Jubilee or Everyday Thinking, or Tuesday's Child on the Disciples of Christ site, the Intersection: Where Faith Meets Life. I don't really like to cross-post so I kind of have to pick just one. Then I get to decide where to post the link so people can read it. . .

You see the problem I've been having? When I was only involved with one social networking site and only wrote one blog it was simple. ;-)

However . . . today I've ended my lurking break. I imagine I will take other breaks in the future when it starts seeming like way too much again. I've returned to all those places with comments and posts and likes and RTs and +s. See you there.

At the foot of the cross

For an hour today I watched from the foot of the cross, from the bottom of the hill, with the other women.

Every year from forever ago our congregation has held a prayer vigil on Good Friday. Once upon a time they would all come to the church at the time they had committed to pray and sit in the sanctuary for 30 or 60 minutes, depending. We would set out candles and meditation books on the communion table for those who liked to use those things in their prayer practice. Over time, as some members of the congregation got older and other members got busier, more and more people signed up to pray at home instead of in the sanctuary. This year only one person besides me signed up to spend her prayer time in the sanctuary. *sigh*

My hour was from noon to 1 pm. I read the lectionary readings for the day while sitting in the first pew. In front of me was the wooden communion table with the words "In Remembrance of Me" carved on the front. Above me in the center of the wall is the stained glass cross. As I sat there, awash in the silence, the phrase "at the foot of the cross" from John's gospel reading kept coming back to me. The cross stretched so high above me, as it must have stretched high above the women at the foot of the hill, at the foot of the cross. I wondered what it must have been like to be in that place, to watch your nephew, your teacher, your son, die such an agonizing death. I've sat with my own family and with members of my congregation watching loved ones die, wondering which would be the last breath, holding our own breath as we waited for that last agonizing wheeze to be expelled, for that last moment when you can see the life seep out of the body. But our experiences are in hospital and hospice and home. We could touch the hand of the one we loved. We could lay our cheek on theirs, and whisper our last loving words. From the foot of the cross, from the bottom of that hill, the women watched a man die tortured and tormented, bleeding, unreachable and alone. And today I was there with them.

I wondered why that had never really come to my mind on all those other Good Fridays. I have walked and prayed the Stations of the Cross I don't know how many times. I've prayed in front of life sized Stations outdoors and 5x7 reproductions on the wall of a Catholic school cafeteria and everything in between. I've walked the Stations because my parents required it when I was a child and because I desired to as an adult. But somehow it never occurred to me before that my place on Good Friday was with the women at the foot of the cross. But today . . .

. . . today for an hour I stood with the other women. With the other women I watched from the bottom of hill, at the foot of the cross.

Preparing for Lent

It's Shrove Tuesday! It's Mardi Gras. It's the last day of Carnivale. Where ever you may be and however you may practice it, today is the last day before Lent begins. We'll have a pancake supper in the church hall this evening including pancake races for the kids and perhaps other pancake games. Luckily, someone else is in charge. Fascination with pancakes wasn't part of the Shrove Tuesday practices I grew up with.

Since this is the 2nd Tuesday of March we would have been having a meal together tonight anyway. We usually gather on the 2nd Tuesday of each month for a modest meal and conversation. Someone chooses a topic in advance which Linda Gardner and I present, often with handouts and flip charts to write lists on. We particularly enjoy using paper tablecloths and making crayons available so people can doodle or write their ideas while someone else is talking. Tonight, however, we're just going to have fun together. I'm even going to wear jeans!

We don't do that very often - get together as a congregation just to have fun. Oh there is the annual church picnic, but even that is a form of outreach. We invite a local women's recovery home to come sing at worship and join us for the picnic and we hold the event on our front lawn so the whole neighborhood can see and maybe want to come join in the fun. And we have our fellowship time after worship but those conversations usually revolve around church business and outreach and the planning of upcoming events. We are, in fact, usually so busy being church folks that we maybe forget to be just plain folks.

So it's really appropriate on this night before the beginning of Lent that we should give ourselves up to fun and laughter and pancake races. It is in the spirit of Mardi Gras and Carnivale even though a bit more restrained. Because tomorrow begins the season of fasting and preparation. Not fasting in the sense of giving up chocolate and other luxuries, but fasting in the sense of personal transformation. Fasting in the sense that we heard it from the prophet Isaiah

58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.


crossposted as Tuesday's Child on The Intersection: Where Faith Meets Life

Collared

At our Regional Assembly recently one of the ministers was wearing a clergy collar. Most Disciples clergy don't wear collars. In fact, one is generally hard put to determine which of the folks at any church event are ministers. I get the impression that California clergy men seem to think that a Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans is their uniform but in the case of clergy women it's really hard to tell. We don't usually even have any titles on our name tags. Titles just aren't a Disciples sort of thing.

Maybe this is because the Disciples founders' intention was to start a movement where the lay leaders were really more important to each congregation than the ordained folk. In the beginning our worship services were designed with the sermon coming after communion, at the very end of the service. That way if the traveling preacher didn't make it there wasn't an embarrassing pause in mid-service where the sermon should go. Everything else in our worship services up to and including presiding at the Table every Sunday is or can be done by lay folks. For some decades ministers in the Disciples tradition weren't set apart by collars or robes or even titles. The history books say that the first DOC minister who put "Reverend" on his door started quite the controversy. Even today many of us don't insist on a title although I must admit I enjoy being called Pastor. :-)

So when a Disciples minister makes a statement by wearing a collar to a regional event it is going to draw some attention. We had a little conversation about it. I admitted that when I first moved here I would often wear a collar when visiting a hospital, but that confused some of my church members so I stopped doing it. As a result I have occasionally been challenged by hospital security officers who ask me to prove I'm a pastor. When I mentioned that to my collared colleague he said the challenges were probably because I am a woman. Oh. Duh. Still, no big deal.

Yesterday I went to a luncheon in LA hosted by some copier companies and the National Church Purchasing Group. The man sitting next to me at lunch had a name tag that said Pastor James. Mine said Maria. I didn't really think much of it until the third introduction that went something like "Hello Maria. I'm Joe, sales rep for ABC company. Are you Delhaven's office administrator?" "Why no, Joe. I'm the pastor." "Oh. Really? A woman pastor? How nice."

OK. That's it. Tomorrow I'm pulling my clergy shirts out of the back of the closet, just in case I have any more church related sales events to attend. I can always keep a spare collar in my purse for emergency identification purposes. :-)

Ribbons for Life

On October 10th I stood in the pulpit and said "For those of you who are liturgically minded and are curious about the color of my stole today, I just want to let you know that as far as I am concerned, Pink is the appropriate liturgical color this month." I then went on to lift up all the football players who added pink to their uniforms that week, saying that I considered every one of them the Most Valuable Player.

It has become a matter of personal pride to add a splash of pink to my outfit every day during October. Oddly enough I haven't had any trouble finding a pink blouse or scarf or camisole to wear. I say oddly because for years, decades really, I didn't wear pink at all. Slowly pink has been making its way into my wardrobe. It started a few years ago when I walked in the Susan B Komen Race for the Cure and was given a "Warriors in Pink" scarf. (For some reason the LA event was held on a Saturday that year so I was able to participate.) And it was important to me to make that walk because that was the year both my niece and my associate minister were dealing with breast cancer. I thank God that both of them are survivors.

Like almost everyone these days I know a lot of women who have had to deal with the reality of breast cancer. Virtually every week I hear of a new woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer or is waiting to hear what the pathologist says. I thank God that there are more and more survivors, that the medical community is getting better at saving lives through early detection and treatment.

The same goes for cervical cancer. People aren't nearly as aware of cervical cancer as they are of breast cancer. In fact, I am a cervical cancer survivor and only discovered it has its own ribbon when I started writing this blog post! Cervical cancer has, of course, received some publicity in the last few years because of the rather controversial HPV vaccine - controversial because it is designed to be given only to young women who have not yet become sexually active. But speaking as a survivor of cervical cancer, I can't tell you how happy I was to see that a vaccine had finally been developed. Prescribed and administered properly it will help reduce the numbers of women like me who develop cervical cancer because of HPV. As with breast cancer, more and more of us are living longer because of early detection through regular pap tests.

To all who have helped in any way to support women's health issues and cancer research, please know you are being lifted up daily in my prayers of gratitude.