How to be Useful

01/23/2008, 1:00 pm -- by | No Comments

Sister Janice Brown said to me last Sunday, “Erin, you’ll know my car by the gold emblems on the back where it says Nissan — you know us black people, we always got to have our gold and nice stuff.” She said to me yesterday, “You’ll hear a lot of open talk from me about race, about racism. You can’t hide from it, not here.” She then launched into a story about one of her previous interns who was white-as-white-can-get, and how she did her best to train him in the city, but wasn’t entirely successful. The whole time she spoke, I thought to myself, oh, God, that’s me, isn’t it?

Every time I enter Sister Brown’s house (only a few times thus far), she tells me to be at peace, to be blessed of God, to have the Spirit rest on me and nourish me. She is on the pastoral staff at the Pentecostal Miracle Deliverance Center Church (PMDCC), on the corner of St. Paul and Upper Falls Boulevard in Rochester, but she wears about as many hats as there are townhouses in the 19th Ward. When she speaks, her words are almost always teasing, instructing, or praying; sometimes all three.

This weekend when I worked for my internship at her house/office, I felt useful, which is a lot more than I can say for much of my college experience. That ‘experience’ has usually consisted of cramming, reading, writing, and generally getting on the nerves of those unfortunate enough to live with me and not be in the Kierkegaard seminar (consider this my apology, housemates). The oddest thing about this feeling, however, was the fact that what I did seemed so minor. So what if I showed Sister Brown how to look up articles on segregation vs. integration on the internet? So what if I put together a program for a Youth Association rally? So what if I semi-translated and reformatted a registration form? So what if I played soccer with Yaser, Roby, Mateo, Carmilo, etc.?

Why, if all of these seem so minor to me (and, no doubt, to you), did I feel like I actually did something — or that I am doing something?

I grew up being taught that if I didn’t take initiative when I saw something wrong or something out of place, then it was my fault if the conditions turned worse. Usually, this was just my mom’s way of telling me to do laundry when the laundry room got so full that we couldn’t step inside it, but I really value the point that she made and it has stuck with me. There is something to be done. There are new ways to be learned.

And if I am in a position where I can learn those new ways, where my stupid I-just-met-you-so-I’m-kind-of-shy tendency can be stretched to teach me what it truly means to have interracial friendships, to work with teens who have never known the luxuries I have known (and now feel almost desperate to leave behind) — then by all means, I want to do this! I want to feel like in some small way, I am useful. That I am serving and learning at the same time. That my future isn’t as bleak as it sometimes seems.

This may be nothing more than a rant for hope from a hopelessly idealistic student. But I think the answer to the question ‘How can I be useful?‘ is strikingly simple: find a need. Fill it. And if you can’t find a need where you are, go somewhere else.

Arthritis

01/15/2008, 3:00 pm -- by | 3 Comments

I remember from hours upon hours of studying for those Scripps-Howard Spelling Bees in middle school (yes, I was a hardcore speller) that the word arthritis was technically a compound word. “Artho-“, I learned, was Greek and had something to do with the joints of a vertebrate animal. “-itis”, as a suffix, meant some kind of problem, sickness or malady. Put them together and you have the reason your aunts, uncles, grandparents, and other lovable elders complain that they can “feel the weather changing in their bones.” We get old — so do all the nuts and bolts that hold us together.

But the reason arthritis has been in my head lately is not because of the (utterly amazing!) elderly people at my church either here or at home, nor is it because of too much time spent with my grandparents, hearing their complaints. I’ve been thinking about it today because my knuckles are quite sore, and I know that I don’t have arthritis.

Why should you care about this? Well, perhaps you can identify with my situation. In the last few hours, I have typed probably close to fifty emails, reminders, and schedule changes. I have taken down agendas, written to-do lists for myself and for others, taken notes, and begun to (electronically) organize events. And so, in a very melodramatic (and typical, my friends will tell you) fashion, I resort to hyperbole (“I feel like I’ve got arthritis!“) to voice my complaint at the hectic pace into which I seem to be descending.

I wonder why so many of us (perhaps not just at Houghton, as a great part of Bweinh’s readership has never visited the bloody — er, blessed — place) feel the need to keep up this pace. Now, God has indeed given us gifts of time management, organization, passion, opportunity, and guidance to keep us sane through the insane times. God continually shows me that when I seem to be at my lowest, my busiest, my most dead-from-exhaustion, that is when GOD, not I, is glorified.

All that taken as it is, and it is truth, can it really be good for us, in the service of our Master, to fill our plates to overflowing? From the one to whom much is given, much is required…so also God can (and does) give us the ability to know how much we can handle — it’s part of His reaffirming love and support.

So although I must conclude this post by apologizing for the misleading title (those of you who expected a thrilling psychosocial, or even biological, discourse on arthritis, your disappointment is my fault alone), I hope that if, in the next few days, your knuckles are sore from the drudgery of work, you will inhabit some time asking God for wisdom and discernment with your busy schedule. And then put that wisdom and discernment to use.

Why We Believe: Vol. 7

12/15/2007, 10:00 am -- by | No Comments

This and following weekends, we will share the brief salvation testimony of each Bweinh!tributor. Read the previous six right here.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about crisis theology, and what I believe or do not believe about it. My testimony isn’t really one of dates and bright lights shining down from a cloud, but I tried to write it as a series of events, periods of time that sort of explain my coming to faith, and struggles within it.

One — It is a sticky June evening in 1996 and I am reading one of those ‘Keys for Kids’ devotionals that come in the mail for free from Northern Christian Radio. I can’t stand my mother’s Twila Paris music (and I never will), but there’s something in this little devotional story, long forgotten, that makes me look in the back at the ABCs of Salvation, and pray it, piece by piece.

Two — It is a chilly February evening, a Wednesday, during my middle school years. My Bible Bowl team is laughing over a commercial, somehow tying it into what we are studying. We debate personal standards about alcohol, and how God will treat us in heaven. We don’t even close in prayer, but I know God is pleased that we’ve been working out with quite a bit of fear and trembling.

Three — It is rally time in 2001 and I am at Whispering Pines camp in Manton, Michigan. Jeremy Kingsley is speaking in his funny Southern dialect, a down-to-earth retelling of how Jesus drove out Legion. I think, God, this is how your Word is supposed to come alive! That camp is where my first emotional experiences with God were: before I learned to trust or distrust emotion.

Four — I think to myself, some time near New Year’s in my sophomore year of high school, that I should probably be reading the Bible daily. I fall asleep in the middle of a chapter of 1 Corinthians that night, and wake up in the middle of the night to turn my bedside lamp off and take my contacts out.

Five — We have been at Dayton Center Wesleyan for four years, and I am graduating. My application for Houghton has been sent in with my personal testimony on it, but it is appropriately, honestly unfocused.

Six — I am talking to Chloe on the phone on a summer evening after our first year of college together. We get off the phone and I am kneeling by my bed, face buried in the too-soft comforter, asking, Why don’t I know what to do with my life? I hear a word, and perhaps it really was audible. Wait.

Seven — I don’t know whether or not I want to stay at this tiny church in Belfast. The people are wonderful and well-meaning, their faiths sincere, but is it the kind of Christianity that I profess? Am I just tying into a place for security? All of this goes through my head as I play the piano for worship that October morning — but in the middle of the second song, I think the Spirit witnesses to mine and I know I am where I should be.

Eight — I am sitting at my computer on a cold, rainy December day, thinking of how to turn a lifestyle into words. The songwriter’s version of Abraham’s story is pinned up on my bulletin board, and I think his summary is where I will leave my testimony. It may not be a doubtless faith, or a 700 Club-worthy one, but it is who I am.

So take me to the mountain
I will follow where You lead
There I’ll lay the body of the boy You gave to me
And even though You take him
Still I ever will obey
But Maker of this mountain, please —
Make another way.

Holy is the Lord, Holy is the Lord
And the Lord I will obey.
Lord, help me,
I don’t know the way.

Honoring Tradition

11/20/2007, 9:30 am -- by | No Comments

The rain and sleet drove down practically sideways in icy, almost unbearable torrents. The sky — if one could catch a glimpse of it — was a deep, discontented grey, with layers and layers of storm clouds mushrooming out for hundreds of miles. But no one looked at the sky — why would you look at a sky if it meant getting a face full of sleet? Instead, people pulled their scarves and their hoods closer, mittens a little higher, layers of sweaters a little tighter, and prayed that their wool coats wouldn’t be soaked through.

But the rain did soak through. It soaked through the wool coats, through the flimsy roofs of flimsy wooden houses, through lean-tos and tents and makeshift shelters. It dampened fires as they were lit in chimneys, chilled people huddled together for warmth, stole life from those whose lungs were already consumptive.

Then the rain turned — mostly — to snow. The ocean kept the temperature in the twenties or thirties, so the snow was heavy, wet, and deep. The little houses built near the bay were uninsulated, their medical supplies close to nil and medical knowledge even closer. Their thinner clothing — nightgowns, extra sheets and potential trousseaus — became graveclothes, and each time a death rattle began to sound, a collection went round for those with extra to provide, and the shovel was passed to those with some strength to dig the graves.

By springtime, over half of them were dead.

________

The next winter wasn’t nearly so harsh. New friends had helped them fill in the chinking in their walls, mend their roofs, and marvel at the stupidity of wool clothing, which holds water and cold for so long. The year had been mild and plentiful and had brought old and new visitors to the community. People ate and stored and looked long at the skies — which stayed blue and cloudless through October. They celebrated and felt full for the first time in months, their happiness almost immeasurable. It snowed near Christmas and for a while after that, but if the sleet and rain did come, they couldn’t soak into the food that had been stored away. Joy, it seemed, had come.

________

People expected life to continue that way – mild days, plenty to eat, fewer and fewer graves as the year went by. But the uneven cruelty of the winters was yet another thing that they couldn’t have known — not then, after just two years. The next spring and summer was hot and crowded — too many old friends had decided to move in as well. The food stores ran low by mid-January, just when the nor’easters began to unleash their fury. It was bitterly cold, and people often didn’t know which pangs were greater — those of their frostbitten fingers or their growling, shrunked stomachs.

The collections for graveclothes began again. They had more to spare this time, perhaps, but the hopefulness that had pushed them through the first winter was gone, now, and with each death it seemed a nail was driven into their own hearts. What had they done wrong? They had been willing to learn, to be thankful, to share. What had they done wrong?

________

It was just before the fourth winter — most of the leaves fallen already, but a few still clinging to the trees, rustling stubbornly as if to say, watch me come down before I feel like it, I dare you. The wind blew often in those days, and the people were certain another winter would wreak more havoc. They had grown significantly in number, but scarcely in hope. This year had been bad — a drought had teased the farmers with corn barely knee-high by the end of the season, much less early July. The people had worked hard and put away as much as they could, but by late November, the pangs of realization and hunger were beginning to set in. There had been a fire in the first week of November which tore through the village, burning the houses and food stores of many to a crisp.

One of the men, William, went in to his wife Alice, as she was crushing the tiniest bit of an indeterminate herb over their supper stew one day.

“Don’t we have a servant for that?,” he said, jokingly as he could, putting an arm around her from behind.

She smiled. “God knows I’ve asked him enough for one — though a servant might ruin your favorite soup.”

“My favorite?”

“Yes, of course. At least, it had better be your favorite. It’s got to last us a while.” Her eyes grew serious. “I’m beginning to give up, William,” she whispered. “Will one of our children be the ones to go this winter?”

There was a moment of silence as William pondered what he had always hoped to be unthinkable. “God will provide, Alice.”

“I pray and I pray, William. Not for much — for just enough.”

“I know. Believe me, I do.”

Alice began to reply, but in that moment William had an idea. He put a hand on Alice’s shoulder to still her voice and rushed out of the house to his neighbors’.

By the end of the day he had visited almost every house in the small community, begging them to see the light, to gather, and to pray.

________

They gathered. A man stood and read from Job about suffering and God’s mighty response, about His provision and His love and His ultimate authority.

It was so hard to believe.

They stood and prayed for safety and health and warmth and the Spirit, one after one, words after words. Until William.

He stood a little clumsily for a man in his authoritative position, but those around him didn’t see it as weakness. His family was hungry, too.

“I called you to this because it is all we can do,” he said, and then began to pray.

“Our Father, give us a spirit of humility, thankfulness, and joy when Your provisions for us are many and we cannot but express our gratitude for Your everlasting love. When we are unsure of the future, give us the ability to trust You, give us perseverance, and banish our doubt.”

“And Father, when we are as we are now,” the words came out slowly, his voice dangerously near to giving out, “when we believe no light can be seen, when we fear for our lives and for our souls, bear us up in Your grace, help us not to curse You but to thank You for it all. Amen.”

Then William opened his eyes to the people he governed. “Let us keep on doing this. It is a tradition worth beginning,” he said. He motioned to Alice and his children — the ones born on the voyage and born here, the ones born of his first wife, whom the first winter of sleet and rain had killed, and the ones born to Alice: his family, the light of his eyes.

Then the Bradford family walked, together, out of the meeting hall and looked up at the sky, where a storm had been brewing. The snow was just beginning to fall.

Imagine

10/30/2007, 8:00 pm -- by | 3 Comments

Looking through Houghton’s course catalog the other day on a quest to decide my future, I noticed a class called ‘Psychology of Religion,’ which included Sören Kierkegaard in its great theological and psychological thinkers. This was especially interesting to me because I had been hoping to write on the subject of the imagination, and I had thought of that as more of a psychological than theological topic. Kierkegaard tackles the issue of imagination from various perspectives and pseudonyms throughout his writings, but unites theology and psychology in his analysis of the imagination and what it means to humanity. In his work, especially Philosophical Fragments and Fear and Trembling, a possibly preposterous idea arises: that the human being would be incapable of imagination without the existence of God.

Much of Fear and Trembling centers on the story of Abraham and his belief — a prime example of how imagination is feasible only through faith. Commanded to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham dutifully obeyed, believing “on the strength of the absurd” that “through faith [he would not] renounce anything, on the contrary in faith [he would] receive everything.” What makes this belief possible?

Johannes de silentio (Kierkegaard’s pseudonym) details for us the “faith paradox” in which “the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal [: and] stands in absolute relation to the absolute.” In plainer language, a person who chooses for himself to make continual choices for faith in God comes into an appropriate relationship with God (the only real absolute), characterized by a “paradoxical and humble courage.” For this continual choice to be possible, humans must in the first place be able to comprehend something larger than themselves.

In the process of creation God gave to humanity not just a spirit of immediate understanding, but also a perception of God Himself, in whose image humanity was created. This ability to perceive God (but not fully understand Him) is why Abraham could “imagine” that although he fully intended to go through with the sacrifice, God would keep His promise to give him Isaac as well. It’s a logical contradiction, but Abraham’s imagination allowed him to make what Johannes Climacus (a later pseudonym) will call the “leap of faith.”

Making this leap of faith, therefore, is nothing more than humans imagining against logical thought that God will provide or move or manifest His will, then choosing to immerse themselves in the belief that their imagination is the only the beginning of God’s working. It is the choice to believe the imaginative perception God gave to humans.

I am not talking about dreaming crazy situations where God swoops in and, in nothing short of a miracle, saves the day; neither do I mean our usual, modern definition of imagination — that gift required to write a novel or create a beautiful work of art or escape boredom. Though those are manifestations of the ability to imagine, given to humanity by God, the root of all imagination is God’s need for a relationship with man. God gave man the imagination to create scenes or ideas or pictures beyond the immediate, but His love for man requires that this imagination be fulfilled by an absolute belief.

The example of Nicodemus in John 3 is not explicitly given in Philosophical Fragments, but the reference to Nicodemus’ struggle with this very concept was unmistakable, especially considering Kierkegaard’s audience. His chief problem was that he imagined in too literal a sense what Jesus meant by “born again.” His imagination lacked faith’s leap into the absurd and could not process Jesus’ metaphor. Although as a member of the human race he had been given the ability to imagine — the ability to have faith — he was “essentially deceived” into thinking faith was entirely his work. As a teacher of Israel, Nicodemus saw God as one who would “draw the learned up toward himself” because of a careful Pharisaical lifestyle. Instead, as Jesus instructs and Climacus’ writings echo, he must concede the essence of faith is that God “will appear, therefore, as the equal of the lowliest of persons.”

But this is unthinkable! Disrespectful! Unimaginable!

That is exactly is what Johannes Climacus shows: the human mind and its capacity for imagination are totally reliant on a consciousness of something far beyond it, far greater than it, and yet also of something (Someone) who condescended to become equal to it. This condescension overleaps the limits of mere human imagination.

Only once God “poetized himself in the likeness of a human being” could man begin to truly and imaginatively marvel at God’s love, “for love does not have the satisfaction of need outside itself but within [:]” God’s love, completely justified in His being, still needs man’s imaginative, passionate, absurd faith to be complete.

What could be more preposterous — yet absolutely true — than this?

The Fall-Ness of Corn

10/17/2007, 1:00 pm -- by | 3 Comments

Everyone knows that non-Brach’s candy corn gives you AIDS. Everyone, that is, who reads The Onion. Everyone also knows that Aztecs sing drinking songs about “maize, maize, potato.” Everyone, that is, who knows Seàn Cullen’s stand-up routine called “House.”

These facts notwithstanding, each fall I, my friends, and my family consume a healthy amount of corn — both candy and regular — but usually refrain from singing Aztec drinking songs. At this very moment, on my little table, my housemates and I have three ears of Indian Corn — that beautiful dry multicolored stuff — tied together as a centerpiece. As the days get colder and the weather decides, well, maybe I won’t spoil them after all with another month of 80-degree temperatures, we start to see how and perhaps why corn (“maize,” or scientifically, zea mays) is such a staple in our culture.

First, corn is a starchy vegetable, which makes it wonderful to add to soups, stews, and any light meal. One can often find “meat-lover” (often read as ‘vegetable-hater’) recipes trying to overcompensate for their lack of starch by being sludgy or including too much rice. Or they can be served over none other than — ta da! Cornbread!

Second, corn has been a staple in the Americas for much longer than the European colonization. Maize was one of the original “three sisters” — along with squash and beans — of the Native Americans of the Atlantic Northeast. Can anyone remember back to kindergarten, when a kindly older lady sat you and your classmates down, showing you how those silly Pilgrims were just starving away in the New World, until the kind and benevolent Native Americans came and shared their bounty, and taught the Pilgrims to grow corn, resulting in a rare thing: a cooperation and fellowship of two very different cultures?

In fact, corn only spread to the rest of the world after European contact with the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. The rest of the story of the cultural exchange was not nearly so pleasant, if you recall.

We can also reflect on the delightful experience of toting oneself and a gaggle of confused friends around a maize maze — and the myriad of bad puns that can come from such an unfortunate homonym. Honestly, what could be better than understanding how a lab rat feels, except that instead of cheese, maize maze participants are usually promised cinnamon apple cider?

Corn is also on the forefront of science. It is being used to create biomass fuels such as ethanol since 2005, in efforts to reduce the cost of food, heat, and just about any other transported good affected by rising fuel costs; most of which increase in demand during the fall and winter months.

So although this little blurb is turning out a bit more argumentative than I had hoped, please know that I’m not trying to convince anyone to become a vegetarian, renounce other wonderful fall foods like chili or pumpkin pie, or even to support the University of Michigan (their colors may be blue and maize, but they are still your mortal enemy when it comes to football — believe me, root for Michigan State).

However, I am hoping that you’ll stop this fall and take some time to savor the colorful, healthy, knee-high-by-the-fourth-of-July, American-grown, Veggie-tales-forsaken, delightful fall staple that is corn.

And I’m not sure that candy corn counts.

Mediation

10/9/2007, 6:30 pm -- by | 7 Comments

I read a play once entitled “Art,” by Yasmina Reza. I don’t know how many of you will have read it, but frankly, I did not get it the first time through. Like most art, in fact.

Call me uncultured, shallow, unperceptive, base, but there happens to be quite a lot in the world that I can’t help but admire mostly for its aesthetic quality upon first glance.

I’m not the type of person to identify a natural nimbus right off the bat, or to make some sort of correlation between Henry VIII’s codpiece and the monarchy’s propaganda. It just doesn’t occur to me.

The play “Art,” now that I have spent considerable time discussing and enjoying it, actually has quite a bit to say about a person’s opinions on art. The plot revolves around 3 friends and their arguments about a painting, about 3 feet by 5 feet, completely white, with white lines running across the center. The man who bought the painting (Serge) is totally enamored with it, because it was expensive and painted by someone presumably famous. His good friend Marc thinks it was a ridiculous waste of money and isn’t impressed. The third man, Yvan, continually tries to make peace between the two, revealing how trying to please everyone rarely works — but may be the only chance for living that we have.

What opinions, judgments, or appreciations of art that I have at first glance seem to me to be kind of a mediating factor between the “greatness” of the piece of art itself (I’ve looked at quite a few “great” pieces of art and completely missed their artistic or historical significance) and the popular reception of that art. Oh sure, Van Gogh may have been a wonderful, talented man, but I can’t get into his work.

Perhaps the opinions that we all hold on things as enigmatic as art and music are really the only chance we have for thoughtful discussion, spirited argument, and living in a way that doesn’t just melt all our ideas together until nothing original is recognizable.

After all, to quote Reza, “If I’m who I am because I’m who I am and you’re who you are because you are who you are, then I’m who I am and you’re who you are. If, on the other hand, I’m who I am because you’re who you are, and if you’re who you are because I’m who I am, then I’m not who I am and you’re not who you are.”

Grime

10/2/2007, 8:30 am -- by | No Comments

Clifford Avenue points west and downtown towards the gorge in Rochester — you can follow it with your eyes and end up staring uncertainly at the skyscraper-ish buildings rising nobly out of the city. They attempt to shake off the grease of the neighborhoods and stretch their tinted windows up to the sky, where the tint is enough that free air is all that matters. Miles upon miles of sky do a great deal for the skyscrapers, and for those who dwell inside.

But outside those windows is a whole other world that I have just come to know. A world within the city where uncertainty is life, where — despite Latino ascendancy — the Latino neighborhoods still rotate aimlessly around a center of poverty, crime, and fear. It is part of any city, the suburbanite might say, so what can we do?

I am as guilty as any suburbanite, even though I’ve never lived in any sort of housing development or suburb, of having this thought run rampant around my mind, twisting any compassion or motivation I might have for those who live their lives in the urban rut. Even in 2002, when I was blessed enough to have the city of the third world brought to my immediate attention — in an Iquitos marketplace, the immediate is all there is: sights, smells, tastes — even then, I do not think I really understood what the grime of the city is.

To me, then, it was sheer culture. Iquitos, Peru was distant even when I dug my toes into the black selva dirt. Certainly, the culture was amazing and I have since realized how much it really was my first love, but that does not take away from the fact that the cities have always been places that I feared. Too loud, too many people, too many problems that could never be solved.

Last weekend, nothing really spectacular happened, at least not by most standards. I hung out at a Salvation Army (a ‘Salvo,’ as I have called them for a long while) with 40 or 50 kids, played fútbol for upwards of three hours, proved that Houghton has not improved my ability to swing my hips to Latin music at all, and chatted in unmistakably poor Spanish as much as I could. I understood about 60 percent of a sermon and took communion with people from more countries than I ever have at the same time.

How disorganized my love for Latino culture has been.

I feel that I can only clarify this statement by saying that the grime of the city has officially taken up residence on my knees — and it is only by embracing this culture and all its needs that I can truly love it, truly pray for it, and truly be in it and of it (someday!).

Grime is unpleasant and ugly and socially unacceptable, but it is there. And those who live with it are just as qualified as any suburbanite to receive God’s love and ours.

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