Friday five: what's in a name?

This week, Revhrod of the RevGalBlogPals writes:

If you are a regular reader of Songbird's blog, you know that "The Princess" has requested a new name. Her older brother changed his "secret identity" a while back and now this lovely young lady is searching for a new name on her mother's blog. This got me to thinking. How do we come up with all of these names? There must be at least a few good stories out there.

1. So how did you come up with your blogging name? And/or the name of your blog?

I guess "Choralgirl" leapt to mind because I'm a choral geek to my very core. :-) I'm also a punster; my mind was sort of toying with the word "choral" and naturally, "reef'" was there almost immediately. I loved the imagery of all those colors and hidden places beneath the surface of the water, and so, dum-ta-DAAAA, a blog was born. Curious choice for a midwesterner, though.

2. Are there any code names or secret identities in your blog? Any stories there?

Mostly just to preserve the privacy of the other actors in my little play...and, to some extent, my own: Beloved, Wonderful Colleague, and lots of representational "first letters" (though I sort of outed M and B here), but that was a special circumstance and I got their approval first. It's weird; many of my readers know one another, so I try to be respectful of those boundaries, and sensitive to the parallel reality that this creates.

3. What are some blog titles that you just love? For their cleverness, drama, or sheer, crazy fun?

Well, I'm a big fan of Reflectionary, 'cause it's such a graceful piece of word play; wish I'd thought of it! :-) On an entirely different note, Cap'n Dyke, Lesbian Pirate Queen and Rogue Blogger is hilarious. Found her through Fran I Am, also a clever one.

4. What three blogs are you devoted to? Other than the RevGalBlogPals of course!

Nope. Uh-uh. Not answering this one! Too many that I love! Take a look at my blogroll instead, 'K?

5. Who introduced you to the world of blogging and why?

Complex question. I think it started with conversation with Wonderful Colleague; this tree has two branches. First, someone we both know shared her blog with us, and I enjoyed reading it and talking with her and WC about it. Second, WC had been reading Real Live Preacher (which is wonderful), and I started, too. I got curious and started clicking around on his blogroll and found Don't Eat Alone, which became a regular staple in my spiritual diet and inspired me to start one of my own.

Bonus question: Have you ever met any of your blogging friends? Where are some of the places you've met these fun folks?

Well, Peg Kerr (see last question) was already a friend when I got into this, as were Mad Preacher, Karen and Sara. I was lucky to have dinner with Cecilia at the Festival of Homiletics, this past spring, and that's been a delight ever since. I'm hoping that I'll meet Diane and the proprietor of the Swandive soon, as we all live in the same metro.

Existentialist poultry bard

The grace and impatience to wait

Give us the grace and impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottoms of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power and
come in your weakness in any case
and make all things new.

--Walter Brueggemann, from Advent in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth

I've talked before about M and B, members of my mishpacha, my chosen family. We first met one another (about 6-7 years ago) because B and I were working at the same church. She and I (and later, her M and my Beloved) quickly became the kind of friends that live in the deep chambers of one another's hearts. The four of us share the experience of being lesbians in ministry (and their spouses), and we've tried to help one another to keep right on becoming, to live out our callings faithfully.

It is my honor to walk with her as she does so. She's profiled in one of our local newsmagazines today. Take a look at her story.

B is one of those people who lives with deep integrity but manages not to be insufferable about it. :-) She lives the vision of church that I described here, though sometimes it comes at quite a cost to her personally. Funny thing is, part of the reason that she does so is that the Institution has made it clear that she doesn't really belong "on the road," for no reason that has to do with her call or her competence.

It's just about That Issue, again. Homosexuality. Yawn.

Don't get me wrong; her pastoral heart would have called her to the barren places anyway. She's an unconventional thinker who looks out for those who have been tossed aside. I'd like to think that this is a Pauline moment, that all things DO work together for the good of those who love God. But that feels like too simplistic an answer, because justice is not present. Though she is, in a sense, doing exactly the ministry to which she's so clearly called, she's also tethered to an unjust, Catch-22 regulation that requires her to choose one of these avenues:

1. Deny her vocation as a minister in order to live out her vocation as a married person.
2. Deny her vocation as a married person in order to live out her vocation as a minister.

There are lots of possible versions of those two choices, but that's the distillation. It is a specious choice.

Instead, B has found a third way. She lives in (mostly) calm, clear-eyed and grace-filled protest against the injustice done to her, but puts her ministry first, and keeps her eyes on Christ. As a result, with B (as with so many of our friends in similar situations who have the grace and impatience to wait for the church to catch up with God), new life keeps on springing up around her. You can almost smell the fresh breeze that is the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps because of her vantage point as an outsider in her church, she understands something that's much harder to appreciate from a comfortable berth on the inside of anything. As B says,

In the end, love is stronger than walls.

Thanks be to God.

A note from Lucy

Arf! Arf! Awrooo arrrrr arf!

(translation: I'm feeling much better now. Thanks for your kind concern!)

In these footprints

O God,
you have called your servants
to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden,
through perils unknown.
Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go,
but only that your hand is leading us
and your love supporting us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

--Book of Common Prayer

During my campus visit at the first college I would attend, I remember loving the fact that the steps in all the venerable old buildings had grooves worn into them. Generations of students before me had stepped where I stepped, and it comforted me. "See, this isn't scary. Don't you wonder what they saw from this spot? What they thought about? Where they are now? This institution is bigger than you are, but it's a safe place." That last was the promise that those worn stone steps made to me. It made me love the place a bit, even before I matriculated there.

It's comforting to put our feet in others' footprints. The "perils unknown" are a bit less scary if you know that you're not the first person to face them. Footprints give us a pattern to follow, the familiarity of repetition, the security of the group...even the moral authority of the "tried and true." They keep us from wandering off the path.

And here's where it starts to get dicey.

Because so much of real life happens somewhere off the path, and because the seductions of the institution can distract us from the central purpose of the institution:

to shape and feed us
so that we may be sent out into the world
to follow Christ
and to share our bread.

To love the institution for its own sake is an easy slide into idolatry. I love my church, but it's not perfect. It's easy for church to become an end in itself, and the walls that hold it up sure keep a lot of people on the outside.

You know where Jesus would stand in that equation.

There's a fine line between a place of sanctuary and a place of constraint. Sometimes it's just a matter of perspective. As my friend Diane says, Jesus probably didn't come here to start an institution full of "bureaucracy, hierarchy and patriarchy (not to mention a few more 'archys')." He wanted to start a movement.

A movement takes a whole lot of courage. A movement is an experience of constant change. A movement asks us to make new footprints, to move into "ventures of which we cannot see the ending." We don't know what we'll face, and we don't have reliable, traceable, safe patterns to use. We are required, almost by definition, to move off the path.

We don't know what or who we'll find there.

We don't know what they'll believe; how they'll react to us.

They probably won't be just like us.

We might have to do things in new ways, and to stop nosily worrying about where our fellow travelers are walking and what's in their backpacks, because we'll have enough to handle, just climbing the hills with our OWN baggage. That is, if we're really willing to go somewhere new. We might be called to offer our fellow traveler a hand, though, because we might be on a road, but we might also end up on rocky ground or among the brambles.

Who knows what new life might arise from seeds that are planted there?

I'm pretty sure that the only footprints we'll find in a lot of those places are Jesus' footprints. He didn't have much use for the boundaries laid out by many of the institutions of his time, when they became barriers between him and those he came to save. And Jesus had the faith to go out with good courage, even when he COULD see the ending and all the perils he'd face along the way.

So...maybe we can go out with courage, too. As Will Willimon says,

Dicipleship is about risk.

Maybe we can dare to get outside all the walls we build around ourselves and walk as pilgrims in the footsteps of Jesus.

Got your sandals on?

Arte y Pico award

Two days ago Ruth of Ruth's Visions and Revisions bestowed the Arte y Pico award on five bloggers, including me. This award is given to blogs who "deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language." I'm honored that Ruth listed me among her honorees; her blog is one I read every day. Ruth is a gifted writer; she has the courage and insight necessary to see into places that many wouldn't dare to venture, and she uses those tools in ways that are both thought-provoking and lovely. Please go and see for yourself!

Here are the rules of the award:

1) Pick five (5) blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award which is here: "Arte y Pico".

May I have the envelope, please?

Actually, each of these five people has been an inspiration to me in some way...in my own blog, in my ministry, and in my spiritual life. I thank them and I'm pleased to honor them in this small way. My choices for the Arte y Pico award are:

1) Grace Unfolding: more than just a blog, it's a haven. It's a beautifully designed page whose evolution I've watched for almost a decade. Anita is a pastor and a partnered lesbian who has created a ministry for GLBTQ Christian folks. When she started this, online resources for this community were scarce, and she has created a lovely gathering space there. Whatever your orientation, there's beauty and grace to be found at Grace Unfolding.

2) Closeted Pastor: the visual design is very simple, and that's appropriate. Complexity would draw focus from Cecilia's courage, pastoral heart and searing honesty. When confronted with opposing and sometimes hostile viewpoints, she stays engaged in conversation in a way that builds trust and elevates discourse. I'm proud to call her my friend.

3) Don't Eat Alone: the blog that got me started. Milton is a former pastor, current chef, and beautiful soul. His art is in the blend of his spirituality, cooking, music-making and poetry. It's never clear what you'll find there on a given day, but I promise you, it will be tasty and gorgeous.

4) Velveteen Rabbi: Rachel is a poet and rabbinical student who offers Torah portions and stunning poetry, along with a glimpse into a world I don't often see. Well worth a trip.

5) Real Live Preacher: Gordon is that rarest of birds, a progressive Texan Baptist. His pithy, easy-on-the-ears preaching is...well, the man is gifted. Words fail me. He's often a source of discussion within my church staff. Go see why.

Thank you to each of you, and to you, Ruth. Blessings!

The big read: second edition meme

So, ever since this post about fiction that the NEA would like us to have read, I've been mulling its incompleteness. These lists are lists precisely because they're not all-encompassing, but I can't help but think that there were some truly glaring omissions (unfortunately, many of them by non-white authors):

• My Antonia (Willa Cather)
• East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
• Beloved (Toni Morrison)
  
• The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
• Native Son (Richard Wright)
• A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle)
  
• The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
• The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende)
• Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
  
• Roots (Alex Haley)
• The Chosen (Chaim Potok)
  

As well as some I just really loved, that made me want to grab passersby by the lapels and ask if they'd read them:

• The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell--searing)
• The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (Louise Erdrich)
• Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)
• Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (Christopher Moore--will make you laugh 'til you have hiccups; also remarkably well-researched)
• Staggerford (Jon Hassler)
• A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)
• I Know This Much Is True (Wally Lamb)
• Saturday (Ian MacEwan)
• A Lesson Before Dying (Ernest Gaines)
• One True Thing (Anna Quindlen)
• The Short History of a Prince (Jane Hamilton)
• A Map of the World (Jane Hamilton)
• The Lords of Discipline (Pat Conroy)
• Giants in the Earth (Per Rolvaag)
• Montana, 1948 (Larry Watson)
• Blue Shoe (Anne Lamott)
• Peace Like a River (Leif Enger)
• The Time of Our Singing (Richard Powers)
• Straight Man (Richard Russo)
  
• Plainsong (Kent Haruf)
• Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons (Lorna Landvik--I have a special attachment to this one; it's not just a fun summer read, but she's a daughter of the congregation I serve; the action takes place in a neighborhood I know...and, rumor has it, several of the prototype "housewives" are members of my church)
• Bastard Out of Carolina (Dorothy Allison)
• Rubyfruit Jungle (Rita Mae Brown)
• The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

So, that's 12 "I'm horrified that they weren't on the list" books, and 25 "given my druthers, I'd add these, too..." books.

What would yours be? Consider yourself tagged; I'd really like to know!

Pupdate

Well.

It's been quite a week: I was in a 3-day class about navigating the U's new financial system (it's my job to process contracts for our writers, designers, proofers, etc., and to handle all of my office's purchasing); my choir had a summer gig; the choral line I'm editing for the local Lutheran publishing house has reached the proofing phase, which always creates a flurry of e-mails and some packages to mail out; I had a church meeting on Tuesday; I'm preaching tomorrow, and then my parents are coming for lunch; finally, we have friends coming for dinner.

And the pups are sick. Hookworms. Eeeeeyew.

Linus seems pretty OK, with the meds they're on; Lucy has had a tough few days. I'll leave it mostly to your imagination, but she got dehydrated enough that the vet gave her subcutaneous fluids on Thursday. She's on a special diet for a few days in addition to the meds, and the vet hasn't ruled out parvo as the cause. We've been in "watch her closely" mode since Thursday, and I'm starting to be less worried today; but for being a tiny bit subdued, she seems almost back to normal. Whew.

Because parvo would suck.

They were good little campers last week! Better than Beloved and I were, I suspect; we were too exhausted. But M and B are patient sorts, and they (along with one of the women in the next campsite over, who seems to be some kind of "dog whisperer") helped to make it work. Thanks be to them. :-) They took pictures of the pups in the lake for the first time (wearing expressions that said "I'm wet. WTF?") and provided "auntie" laps for campfire enjoyment, among many kindnesses.

***Breaking news*** The pups are galloping through the house in tandem, both having grabbed an end of their latest loofa toy. They look like a yoke of tiny oxen. This is Outer Limits Cute.

So. Very little time to blog or to read others' blogs this week, and I've missed it--and have missed my bloggy friends! The pups and Beloved and I are finding our rhythm together, though. As long as I get the sermon written today, and Lucy's OK, all will be well.

So I'm gonna go do that. :-) Peace, friends!

When you read, you begin with...

Working on a sermon and an article. Got me some heavy-duty writer's block at the moment...back to the basics:




And, just because this is purely the spirit of play that he embodies when he sings:




Saw him do that in concert once. Pure joy.

OK, maybe now I can write what I SHOULD be writing. :-)

Spiritual generosity

It was my birthday last week. Among the many lovelinesses offered by dear ones, one of them really got me thinking. My friend G is a writer, a poet, a tender and generous soul. She also happens not to believe in God, at least in a "traditional" sense. No big, bearded guy in the sky for G. (Or, actually, for me...but that's another post.)

What she does believe in is generosity. In sharing whatever she's eating. In taking care of each other and giving voice to the voiceless. Or, as that Jesus guy said, in "loving your neighbor as yourself."

She tells me that I'm the only "churchy" person she's ever known well. She regards the Church with suspicion, not having grown up in one, and having heard mostly exclusionary, judgmental messages from our loudest voices.

But G is a writer, and thus has a gift for observation. She "gets" me on a surprisingly deep level for someone I've known only a year. So, among several presents that made me grin, I found this book.

"I saw it on the shelf and knew right away that you'd love it. I had to get it even though I'd already bought your present," mused G.

Understand, please, that the content doesn't set her heart on fire or anything. But she knew that it would do so for mine.

It got me thinking about a couple of things:

1. It's a gift to be truly seen and to be loved as the person you are. I think that's what our relationship with our Creator is, most fundamentally. It's warts-and-all acceptance, coupled with the desire for the loved one to keep right on becoming.
2. In order to truly give something, you have to empty yourself. This gift was not about G. Many people I know (and certainly I'm one of them sometimes) would be more likely to offer something that's meaningful to them, in the hope that it will be meaningful to the recipient. And I think there's often a lovely impulse behind that, as well. But the conscious choice to offer a gift with no agenda other than the joy and growth of the recipient...that's powerful stuff.
   

Which leads me to the question: what if our evangelism looked like that? (as opposed to "edifying instruction")

• What if we just met people where they are, with all the love we can muster?
• What if we stopped treating our Christian story as something that needs defense and protection from the unbeliever (or the "wrongbeliever") and started acting in the confidence the love of God is so strong, it can't be constrained?
  
• What if we found a way to truly see the stranger, and respond in love to her/his full humanity--the pain, the growth, the joy, the brokenness?
  
• What if we could act from a position of equality, instead of one of "I have something you need," or (worse) "I know how you should be living?" Just as fellow human beings on the same level--as friends.
• What if my churchless friend G has a clearer understanding of what it is to be Church than we on the "inside" do?
  
• What if we listened to her and learned from her example?

What a powerful witness to the One who came in full humanity to bleed and sweat and laugh and cry with us: Emmanuel, God With Us.

So, G--thanks for the gift. And for the Gift. :-)

Please, please...

don't piss them off. Sing from the diaphragm, with a pear-shaped tone, and for God's sake, ENUNCIATE!


I can't be responsible for what'll happen if you keep that tension in your throat and shoulders.

Really.

The Big Read

I got this over at Cecilia's place. This is from something called 'The Big Read', and it is designed to encourage community reading initiatives. The NEA came up with a list of their top 100 books and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I will highlight the ones I've read. Cut and paste into your blog and let us know which you've read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

In case I was wondering what to do with my free time...

:-)

And in the seventh month, they rested

Beloved, the pups and I are going camping for a few days with M and B, who comprise one third of our mishpacha. We try to get out in the woods together at least once a summer, and always have a great time together. We'll walk in the woods and make s'mores and sit around the fire and play games and read and wander into town when it rains. We'll be quiet. We'll enjoy each other's company. We'll rest. And this time, we'll have the fun of taking the pups along.

(They made it through the whole night without getting up again last night, BTW. That's two in a row!)

Thanks be to God for times of rest, for beautiful creation, for the sounds of wind in the trees and waves on the shore, the smell of a campfire, and loved ones to shared it with.


See y'all next week!

Take THAT, Barbie!

One of my dear ones gave me a book today entitled "Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West." A fount of loveliness. My lunch companions and I were paging through it, and M found the following, which is attributed to St. Catherine.

I know that there's a lot of dieting going on throughout the RevGals, and I'm part of it. Healthy choices are wonderful and life-giving; sometimes they're truly transformative. BUT, I submit the following to you, Sisters, for those days when you hit a plateau and are feeling badly about it. A helpful counterweight to those feelings of "heaviness." It's called "Your Hair, Your Face."

What is it
you want to change?
Your hair, your face, your body?
Why?

For God is
in love with all those things
and he might weep
when they are
gone.

They slept through the night.

Thanks be to God
and
thanks be to dogs, too!