Jeremaiah 13:15-17 (The Message, trans)
Then I said, Listen. Listen carefully: Don't stay stuck in your ways! Its God's Message we're dealing with here. Let your lives glow bright before God before God turns out the lights. Before you trip and fall on the dark mountain paths. The light you always took for granted will go out and the world will turn black. If you people wont listen, I'll go off by myself and weep over you, Weep because of your stubborn arrogance, bitter, bitter tears, Rivers of tears from my eyes, because God's sheep will end up in exile.
I love the Prophets, and the Prophetic tradition of the Old Testament for which Jeremaiah was a part. I am reading Brian McLaren's Finding Our Way Again, this sums it up for me, "Comfort and Power can become great enemies of true spirituality and true humanity, which explains why we often say that the prophets come to not only bring comfort to the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable." (McLaren, 2008. p23.)
My oldest daughter turns 12 today! I can't give you the exact time, because she was born in Alaska and by emergency C-section, so between the time difference and my alternative state of mind, I really can't sure. I guess tomorrow we can call her 12 without worry. I am in awe of her and of God because of her. She is taller than me now...officially by 1/2 inch after Monday's checkup. Her feet are 2 sizes bigger than mine. Being in 7th grade in our school system, means she will be getting a macbook soon that will follow her public school education. (THANK YOU FORMER GOVERNOR ANGUS KING)
I have had a macbook for 2 1/2 years. I love it and use it for my seminary education and classwork, organizing and doing disaster response ministry, creating and maintaining sermons, funerals, papers, this blog, powerpoint presentations, in fact I even made a movie title the Isaiah Project on this macbook. It's pretty good, I edited it, added text pages and music and everything. Okay it's not THAT good, but pretty good for someone who is not very tech savvy and relatively intimidated by technology. With all of the things I do on my macbook, I realize I am not using it to it's fullest potential. I know there are applications and uses that would enhance my life, my family's life, even my ability to organize my time and work.
Pianist has been getting lessons on hers for two weeks and doesn't even have it to take home yet. Last week after her first 20 minute lesson on the applications of her computer, she came home and completely reorganized my document files with color coding.....which I didn't even know was possible. I have been saying to people ever since that she will go farther in the next month on her laptop than I have gone in 2 1/2 years. Last night she told me about an interesting application and we sat down together and found it, downloaded it and enjoyed it. Its called omnidazzle and allows for you to shake pixie dust all over your screen and presumably in your electronic publications. I am so glad she shared it and we sat down and did it together, although I must admit that I felt a little intimidated that she could totally "drive" the computer and I was left in the virtual pixie dust.....I felt uncomfortable.
I can't stay stuck in my ways! I am a mom. My children won't leave me there without inflicting temper tantrums, pouts, demands for love and attention or a batch of cookies ......that is not to say I am a Donna Reed kinda mom, because God knows I am estranged from my vacuum, and am not in dialogue with my iron other than for melting beads animals. As Jeremiah states pretty clearly we must live fully into our lives.....OUR LIVES...before the lights go out. My life is not to be in relationship with my vacuum but my daughters.
So I'm not entirely stuck....although I am a little stuck with my computer. It's useful, but I didn't even appreciate how useful, until the creative gift that my daughter is...the miracle of creation that is now 12 years old, turned her bright fresh new mind toward computing and then loved me enough to share with me her new knowledge. Her collective 3 hours worth of learning has out-trumped my 42 years of schooling and higher education, experience, tradition, reading, blogging, facebooking, yadda, yadda, yadda. That makes me feel a little uncomfortable and happy and yet happy that someone, someday may fully realize the potential of mac and use it for greater things than I can.
We who are privileged with higher education and resources to obtain technology should never become comfortable with the gifts that these things bring us. Angus King was genious to realize that the if you could find a way to put technology in the hands of every 7th grader, they would outpace their elders, and train us how to use the technology. Still it is not a mandate for schools to purchase the laptops and many public schools dont have the financial resources to not only buy them at a bargain prices, but hire the tech staff to support an entire program around the laptops that includes, repair, maintenance, internet security and protection, education of use, policing and the list goes on. And so, the communities of educated, wealthy folks (like mine) who understand King's message and intent, who provide enough tax dollars as a result of their big homes and higher property taxes, can subscribe to the program. Others dont. I feel sad for the other kids in Maine and around the Country who wont get a macbook and learn a whole new language and technology that could transform their life. Those of us with education and privilege are obligated morally to share these opportunities beyond our wealthy boundaries.
Teach your children well, a mother's hell, will slowly go by.
Feed them on your dreams, the one they pick, is the one you'll know by
Dont you ever ask them why, if they told you you would cry, just look at them and sigh, and know they love you....................Crosby, Stills and Nash
Sometimes our obligation is not to force our dreams or education or leadership on others, but to let their light shine. I ponder this as the United Church of Christ speaks of Alternative Paths to Ministry. I hear colleagues offer concern about letting less educated clergy into the club of ordination. One concern that I share is that this may encourage the proof-texting, zealous, hierarchical approach to religious leadership, that my tradition is trying to offer an alternative to.
Juxtaposed with this however, is the notion that there are many other people do not have the privilege of access to even an adequate public education system that could prepare them to study our white, male, privileged tradition of Christianity. I have worshipped in New Orleans in black congregations where lay ministers preached so powerfully and scripturally sound that the spirit of God moved deeply inside me and tears flowed down my cheeks and goose pimples covered my arms.
There is effectively no public school system in NOLA. When working on rebuilding homes, we were cautioned about walking down the street alone as young gang members roam the streets and prey on homes (still vacant or repaired or somewhere in between) looking for copper pipes to sell on the black market, or looking for a place to do a drug deal, or worse. One of the homes we worked next to had a picture of a 16 year old boy on it. When I looked at the picture it was a memorial for a young boy, the resident's grandson that had been shot to death across the same street we were working on a few weeks before we came. She had been raising her grandson, as her son had been shot after he testified against a gang person, when his son was a few months old. During Katrina, she lost her brother who lived 2 blocks away from where were working. He had been trapped for days in his attic, and then trapped for hours on his rooftop rescued and dropped into the stagnant water. He developed an awful rash after it all and died.
Perhaps that was an aside for some of you reading this. But if you were a person growing up in that America, and you had a story to tell..you had God's story in your life to tell......and you didn't get the privilege of public education, or perhaps even the right of safety to walk your streets, protection from law enforcement when you stood up to the evils in your midst or the due diligence of response from our Government to warn you, rescue you or even take responsibility for their failure to do any and/or all of that, how am I even going hear your story? How will I know your tragedy, and my role in it as someone who wont read about it in the paper in my community. I wont hear it from your people because they are shut out of the education system, shut out of technology, hell we don't even keep you warm and safe and dry . I was privileged to be invited..hell, allowed to participate in your remarkably beautiful and powerful and authentic praise and worship.. Many of your congregation still living in trailers, out of work, burying your teenagers weekly, still thankful to God for life for God's presence......I am glad that my church recognizes we should find another way to invite you to be equal partners in ordained ministry. I hope we of privilege have the strength and Grace to follow through.
Our children have so much to teach us! My hardest challenge continually is slowing down to listen. The Bible has so much to teach us! My hardest challenge is to find more dialogue partners with experiences other than mine to help me interpret the fullness of its meaning in my life. Life has so much to teach us! We have eyes to see and ears to listen...God grant us Grace that we may truly see and hear Your will and understand it in our lives!
Happy Birthday my darling Pianist! Let your light shine and burn like the newest SuperNova, like a campfire, life fireworks, like sunset, like a fully lit Christmas tree, like an erupting volcano. Let it flow out of you, through you, in you and out to light all of our worlds.
