Why I Got Ordained Online

I was ordained two days ago. This may come as a big surprise if you happen to have followed my life in the last year (an egotistical assumption, I know. I’m barely following my own life). In fact, it was about one year ago that I decided to NOT get ordained.

I wrote this piece to help articulate why after spending four years, accruing $15,000+ in student loan debt, and receiving a Master of Divinity degree I finally decided not to pursue ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I had invested a lot of my life in the idea of ordained ministry, and so you can imagine how difficult that decision was for me.

So why get ordained after all? And why online?

Two days ago two of my very, very dear friends ask me to officiate their upcoming wedding. Now I have been asked to officiate a number of weddings over the past five years, a request for which I am always deeply grateful. And yet there was something markedly different about this most recent request.

Perhaps it was because of how well I know and love my friends. Perhaps it was because of how well they know and love me. Perhaps a semester of doctoral work in practical theology has softened some of my edges. Whatever it was, I felt my entire view of ordination, the ritual of marriage, and the human endeavor to narrate life meaningfully begin to shift.

To understand what shifted, one must understand what was before. I have always had a deep appreciation for the office of pastor. I see that vocation as a beautiful invitation into the most intimate, sacred spaces of peoples’ lives. A significant part of my being feels created for that work, and yet I never felt like I found a way to be “me” in that role. Most of that role felt like an inauthentic performance to appease an institution. In other words, what existed in me before was a deeply felt appreciation for pastoral work and a simultaneous resistance to an institutional mold.

So what shifted? I heard in my friends’ request a profound need to have their rite of passage marked and narrated in a meaningful way. I heard a request to bear witness to the celebration of their union not simply on their behalf but also on behalf of the community that loves and supports them. I heard an invitation to help author this part of their story, not as a representative of an institution but as Kari. I heard a direct call to the authentic me.

And so I got ordained online - not as a way to spite any institution or disrespect my friends who continue their lives in love and service to the church. I got ordained online in order to respond to a call to help two dear friends meaningfully mark a new phase of life together. I got ordained online because I believe that life is full of immeasurable opportunity and freedom to love my fellow children of the universe.

I got ordained online because in some way I still hear that I am called to the office of pastor, though my office is not currently in a building.

The Nourishing Mother: Why College Reunions Can Be Awesome

Almost five years later, it seemed not a day had passed when yesterday some of my dear college friends and I reunited. I called it a mini college family reunion in jest, and when I woke up this morning I was still thinking quite a bit about my alma mater.

Intrigued by that term and after some brief investigating I learned that while alma mater refers to one’s former university, when translated from Latin it literally means “nourishing mother.” Having studied enough object relations and attachment theory to get myself into trouble, the symbolism of this term in light of my recent reunion with some dear college friends was too good to be true.

As a brief background, one of the most influential thinkers on Object Relations Theory was Donald Winnicott. Coining the term “good enough mothering,” Winnicott argued that the task of a mother is to find the almost impossible balance between responding to the needs and demands of her child and suspending them at times to meet her own. Meeting the child’s needs helps create a child’s sense of agency in the universe, and yet not meeting the child’s needs at times begins to teach the child the limits of that agency and the reality of others in the world.

“Good enough mothering” at its heart expresses the foundation of ideal human relationships: to be seen, heard, received, and nurtured by others, and to see, hear, receive, and nurture others. Though this may sound easy, finding the balance between those two is not.

I think what makes this balance of “good enough mothering” so difficult is that it requires a lot of us. First, it requires that we are aware of who we are and what we need (which alone can feel like an impossible step). Next, it requires that we set boundaries on that awareness, which allows us to recognize who we are and who others are and to differentiate between the two. Finally, it requires us at times to bracket our needs and ourselves so that we may truly see and respond to another without our own stuff getting in the way.

“Good enough mothering” is hard work, and yet when we experience it in relationships we can recognize it immediately. Can you, dear reader, remember a time when you felt safe and trusting? I can imagine your sense of play and imagination sprung to life. You were able to once again believe that your precious and sometimes deviant little soul was seen, heard, received, and nurtured.

That’s the power of “good enough mothering.” It helps us feel alive because we connect not only to the essential parts of who we are but also the essential parts of the other. I recently came across a quote that read, “There is a child inside each one of us, who comes out in front of the person we are most comfortable with.” I can think of nothing more fitting than these words.

Much has happened these past five years in my life since college, and a lot of it has left me feeling unseen, unheard, not received, and not nurtured. There is a lot of bad mothering out there, and yet in the limited space of one afternoon with dear friends my inner child felt safe enough to play.

Yesterday I had the wonderful pleasure of reuniting with parts of my alma mater, my Nourishing Mother, and was able to feel comfortable long enough to remember what it is like to be fully alive, which inspired me to reconnect with my written voice and its power in articulating human experience. Though my college relationships were far from perfect, they continue to be a beautiful example of “good enough mothering” in my life. For that, I am forever grateful.

Heteronomy and the Inner Lyra: On Not Becoming Ordained

On Thursday, February 23, 2012, I made the most difficult decision of my life: I formally withdrew from the candidacy process for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). At least for the time being, I will not be the Reverend Aanestad VII.

I am thrilled that this decision frees me to more intentionally pursue work dedicated to utilizing the tools of interfaith dialogue as a way of building community around the celebration of diversity. Community development informed by the sharing and receiving of stories is a budding entrepreneurial dream of mine, and I cannot wait to continue to find ways of pursuing it.

Though I am incredibly excited about my future, the decision to pull out of ordination (at least for the time being) was an incredibly difficult one. The heart of the difficulty is rooted in a general struggle that we all face: how to resolve and live in the tension between the self and the community. We all must differentiate between the calling of our own path and the expectations of the systems and communities around us.

I must be careful to clarify here that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and in fact some theologies of vocation would suggest that a community can and does serve to affirm the internal call of a person. That is to say that we can learn more about who we are and where our gifts best serve the world by listening to the feedback and affirmation of others.

There are instances, however, when this is simply not the case: communities advise without knowledge, recruit out of self-interest, speak out of their own anxieties and insecurities, and even manipulate out of fear of change or loss.

Paul Tillich drew on terms from classic Greek philosophy, naming this differentiation as occurring between autonomy (self as law) and heteronomy (other as law). He, in the company of other great thinkers, uses these terms as an invitation to look self-critically at the weight we place on the expectations and opinions of others and the inner hunches and passions we hold.

In more literary terms, this struggle is embodied in the fictional story of Lyra Belacqua. For those of you who are not yet familiar with the spunky heroine of the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, Lyra is a spirited, independent adolescent who finds herself in the midst of unethical institutions, deceptive adults, and disempowered youth who suffer atrocities at the hands of those in power. As her journey to uncover the truth about what is going on around her unfolds, she is challenged to understand and trust herself in almost unimaginable depth. Almost every person in authority lies to her, and she soon learns that the only person she can trust is herself.

To aid her on her task, Lyra comes into possession of an alethiometer, a small golden compass whose sole task is to tell the truth. The compass has dials that point to pictures in a seemingly chaotic fashion, and it is up to Lyra to decipher the alethiometer’s message of truth. Following a process similar to Jungian dream analysis, Lyra slowly begins to learn how to integrate the metaphorical meaning of the compass’s symbols with her intuitive hunches on how they relate to particular instances around her. In other words, Lyra develops her own internal language based on intuition and myth that helps her navigate a confusing world of deceit and misinformation.

Though Pullman would probably argue that Lyra's world teeming with evil and lies parallels the current church, I suspect that might be too harsh of an assessment. My decision to pursue work outside of ordination is not a negative response to the institutional church. Very rarely have I encountered individuals with religious authority who consciously manipulate and lie for personal gain - at least no more than people in other types of institutions. My point is not to condemn the church but instead is to call attention to a peculiarity of those who are drawn to work in it.

Many of us who are drawn to working in the church often place more emphasis on heteronomy - what others expect of us. We want to succeed, we want to help others, we want to do what others want us to do. This may not be true of everyone, but it has been true of enough people I have met in seminary to know that this piece warrants writing. At least anecdotally I can offer that a large reason why I stayed in the Master of Divinity degree for so long was because others expected and wanted me to, and, frankly, I really wanted to make them happy.

I do not think there is anything inherently wrong in heteronomy or wanting to make others happy, but there can be real danger when that drive comes at a cost to autonomy, or one’s ability to discern and pursue one’s calling in life.

In addition to wanting to please others by doing what they expect of you, I have discovered that the church has a deep-rooted mistrust of autonomy, which further complicates the balance between self and community that we must all learn how to strike.

Just as Lyra’s alethiometer poses a threat to the authorities of her world, so does our own intuition often pose a threat to the institutional church. Whether this is expressed in a theology of vocation that overly emphasizes the importance of community in call or a theology of sin that seeks to convict and kill the person and all her individuality, the mistrust of autonomy is prevalent.

Again, I do not seek to condemn the church or dissuade people from working in it. I only hope to highlight the additional difficulty that befalls those who feel called to work in the church and to encourage those who are perhaps a bit like me to feel more freedom in trusting their intuitions.

We would all be better served by more deeply connecting with our inner Lyra, and I truly believe the church will be a better institution for it.

Originally published on State of Formation on March 1, 2012.

The Grim Future of Interreligious Dialogue

South Park co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone humorously anticipate that in the year 2546, worldwide atheism will have successfully eradicated all religion in an episode entitled “Go God Go XII”.

Though religion is absent, the universe is far from being philosophically united as atheists now fall into one of three camps: the UAL (Unified Atheist League), AAA (Allied Atheist Alliance), and the UAA (United Atheist Alliance). This episode, like many others by Parker and Stone, offers a biting satire that suggests it is not religion or the absence thereof that leads us to tribalism, but instead it is humanity’s own perpetual tendency to define the boundaries of otherness.

This episode also highlights an important demographic shift that has been taking place for decades: people are leaving the church. Census data shows that a majority of mainline Christian denominations are shrinking especially against the overall population increase. Much more, the category “no religion” has increased by over 130% in under 20 years. That is not to say that the people who are leaving the church are joining another religious/nonreligious tradition (or that the universe will be comprised of three separate atheist camps in 2546), but it certainly does suggest a change is taking place.

We talk about this change all of the time in the Lutheran church. In fact, any student seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America this year was asked to write an essay describing a time when she was a part of a ministry setting affected by said demographic changes. Much more, the change is not simply that people are leaving the church. The change is also occurring within the church itself. One of my senior seminary capstone courses emphasized the fact that there is a general loss of familiarity with biblical stories and imagination, even among those who attend worship services regularly. In other words, even those who are nominally affiliated with a religion may not be as familiar or informed about the creeds and traditions of that faith as past generations were. Luther Seminary recently hosted a mid-winter convocation that focused on these very topics, recognizing that “the church seems to exercise less and less influence in the way we see the world.”

These changes also directly pertain to the interreligious work we do at State of Formation. In the fall of 1990, Dr. Diana Eck began her work that eventually became the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Eck’s work pioneered the use of interreligious dialogue as a helpful tool for navigating the difficulties posed by an increasingly interdependent and theologically diverse world, a model that we readily adapt and use. Two of the basic determiners of the effectiveness of interreligious dialogue, however, are that participants first affiliate with a religious tradition, and second, those participants have a certain level of familiarity with their own religious traditions.

If it’s true that more and more of us are no longer affiliating with a religion, and even those of us who do have limited knowledge of that tradition, how long will interreligious dialogue remain a helpful, relevant tool? Interreligious dialogue is only as strong as the pillars that it stands on, and it appears as if those pillars may be crumbling. So while interreligious dialogue may serve key purposes now by helping to reduce bias, bridge communities, and mobilize disparate groups, what purpose will it serve in the future?

Perhaps the answer lies in what Parker and Stone point out in their episode of South Park: it is not religion or the absence thereof that leads us to tribalism, but instead it is humanity’s own perpetual tendency to define the boundaries of otherness.

There will most likely always be the need for work around understanding difference by sharing narrative. Whether or not that difference is defined by religious affiliation will undoubtedly affect the content of the conversation, but the need for the conversation to take place will always remain.

Originally published on State of Formation on February 5, 2012.


Author's note: As I reread this piece I am realizing that I may have possibly alienated my brothers and sisters in the areligious traditions by not making a clearer distinction between those who affiliate with an areligious tradition (such as atheism or secular humanism) and those who choose not to identify with any tradition (or select “no religion” on the census).

I believe that the areligious voice has much to contribute to interreligious dialogue as it grounds itself in a philosophical tradition with rich offerings and insights into the human experience. I am trying to argue that what poses a threat to the effectiveness of interreligious dialogue as a relevant tool for understanding difference is religious/philosophical apathy – the unfolding trend for people to not identify with any tradition whatsoever.

I hope this point of clarification serves as both an apology for my earlier lack of clarity and as an invitation to those in the areligious philosophical traditions to engage in this conversation.

Church of Depression: Negative Cognitions and a Fundamentalist Theology of Sin

While modern mental health care has recognized the incredibly dangerous and often paralyzing effects of depression characterized by low self-esteem, feeling worthless, and feeling as if one is being rightfully punished, certain brands of Christian fundamentalism seem to continue to preach a destructive theology of sin that I argue enhances those feelings and increases the risk for suicide.

In my own preparation for ordination in the Lutheran church I have witnessed firsthand the crippling effects of that theology and am choosing to no longer remain silent. Those who preach a theology of worthlessness need to be held accountable to their destructive words.

As a brief background into the diagnosis and treatment of depression, in 1961 Dr. Aaron T. Beck published a 21-question self-reporting questionnaire to measure the severity of depression. This questionnaire, named the Beck Depression Inventory (DPI), was based on a revolutionary concept that is now the basic premise for one of the most effective treatments of depression, cognitive behavior therapy. At the time of the DPI’s release, most mental health care professionals assumed depression was a result of psychological forces that influenced a person’s behavior. The DPI, however, named that the real root of depression was in a patient’s own negative cognitions or thoughts. Thoughts inspire feelings, and feelings can cause prolonged periods of depression. Therefore, an effective treatment of depression is to work with a person’s thoughts and to create new neural pathways of positive self-affirmation.

The DPI’s 21 questions identified a few telltale symptoms of depression ranging from thoughts and feelings (such as a loss of interest in doing things once found enjoyable) to physical symptoms (such as weight loss and trouble sleeping). Among the identifiable symptoms are feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, guilt, shame, and being discouraged alongside having low self-esteem and excessively criticizing and blaming one’s self. Depending on the severity, if left untreated those feelings can lead to suicidal impulses, which pose a significant threat to a person’s life.

A theology of sin that emphasizes and even enhances depression-based feelings of worthlessness is rampant throughout different practices of Christian fundamentalism. Though fundamentalism is a broad term that describes movements throughout a number of denominations, in the Lutheran church it takes the name of WordAlone. WordAlone is a self-described reform movement within the Lutheran church in North America. Its main reform objective is to call the Lutheran church back to its biblical and Lutheran confessional roots, which they argue have been betrayed by liberal Protestantism’s intellectualization of faith in a way that affirms culture. In other words, they argue that more progressive Protestant theologies have used the tools of academic scholarship to favorably reinterpret the supposedly straightforward Word of God that condemns culture and a fallen humanity.

In respect to WordAlone’s theology of sin, there are three basic principles. First, humans are inherently full of evil lust and inclination. In other words, there is nothing inherently good about humanity and humanity is not capable by its own motivation of doing good. Next, human beings must be killed daily (drowned in the waters of baptism) in order to receive a new life that exists only in Christ. In other words, by being entirely decrepit and worthless, the only redemption that humanity finds is one that is outside of itself. Finally, one cannot fully live into the new life of righteousness in Christ without repentance – a full recognition of all of one’s shortcomings and worthlessness.

Not only is this theology of sin dangerous because it externalizes the locus of control by placing one’s very notion of self worth and esteem in the hands of others, but it also dangerously emboldens some of depression’s darkest suspicions: a person really is without worth, hope, and esteem.

Returning to the principles of cognitive behavior therapy, depressed feelings are thought to be caused by negative cognitions or thoughts, which form neural pathways in one's brain. The neural pathways can be formed into a tight-knit pattern that transmits the negative thoughts and further entrenches a person in depression.

A fundamentalist theology of sin that emphasizes one's sense of being worthless, I argue, affirms these negative neural pathways and can further deepen a person's depressive state. It is as if a man is standing in a hole, and a theology of worthlessness comes along and deepens the hole, making it additionally difficult (if not impossible) to get out. Those shovel-wielding theologians would do better to offer outstretched hands instead.

Originally published on State of Formation on December 1, 2011.

Taking No Pleasure in Death

I knew there was something wrong when my right leg turned purple after standing for three minutes, but I never guessed it was life threatening. The triage nurse at the emergency room pressed her fingers against my shin and began counting. When she reached 12, she grabbed her phone, pressed a button, and said, “We have a level two here. Gotta get her to Ward E immediately.” She then looked at me and said, “You might lose that leg.”

What was supposed to be a healthy recovery from a routine arthroscopic knee surgery a few weeks earlier quickly devolved into doctors rushing past me, ultrasound technicians scanning my veins, and nurses plunging needles in and drawing blood out. When they found the blood clot deep in my right calf, everyone’s pace slowed. With proper elevation, subcutaneous shots in the belly twice a day, and a six-month regimen of a blood thinning pill, I will most likely be fine.

Though I didn’t lose a leg that night, I did lose something else: a naïve belief that my body was somehow exempt from death. My time as a student chaplain in the hospitals of Oxford taught me to cognitively recognize the universal mortality of the human condition, but it was not until two weeks ago when the needles were taped to my skin, the doctors were reading my charts, and the purple, atrophied leg was my own that it hit me. If not now, then some day, I will die.

Yesterday at 11:08 PM someone did die. A needle was plunged into his arm and taped to his skin, and after minutes of poison trickling through the intricate venous system that we all share, he breathed his last. Troy Davis, who was convicted of murdering Officer Mark MacPhail in 1989, was executed by the state of Georgia despite witness and jury member recantations, numerous appeals, and international pleas everywhere from the former United States president Jimmy Carter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The Davis case has quickly become a platform for advocates of judicial reform as it reveals the deep-seated race-based discrimination prevalent in our judicial system. For example, 98% of all prosecutors responsible for death penalty decisions are white, and black individuals comprise nearly 42% of the population presently on death row in the United States (deathpenaltyinfo.org). That is an incredibly high percentage considering black individuals only account for 12.6% of the total United States population according to the 2010 Census.

Others have used the case as an opportunity to call for social and religious justice. This morning my newsfeed on facebook has been lit up with quotes from Mahatmas Gandhi, Ezekiel, Bobby Kennedy, Sister Helen Prejean, Desmond Tutu, and others. The profound words of love and pain from these wise leaders humble me as I continue to type. I am moved to grieve.

In concluding I must be careful to make clear that while I am strongly against the death penalty and do believe our judicial system is functionally racist, it is not my ambition to sway a reader’s political opinions to my own, to argue that Davis was innocent, or to provide reform suggestions. I mean only to grieve. As I write now my leg is strapped into a mobility machine where it lays for 6-8 hours a day. My jeans sag off my shrunken flesh, and I cannot help but think of how unbelievably delicate life is. Poet Mary Oliver once asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Some wild and precious lives are cut short for reasons we may never understand and even intimately disagree with, and for that today I will grieve.

Originally posted on State of Formation on September 22, 2011.

Rev. Frankenstein: Seminary and Chasing the Monster

When I first read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I knew I would never be the same. I was a 21-year-old English major completely enthralled with Gothic literature, but nothing prepared me for the monster I was about to meet in between the pages of a now tattered book.

Much like the day I first picked up Frankenstein, when I began seminary I had no idea about the monster I was about to meet in between the experiences of a now tattered self. Though Shelley’s creative words helped me learn that we all create our own monsters, versions of ourselves that repulse us and of which we spend most of our lives in constant pursuit, I did not actually meet my own until I was in the Master of Divinity degree.

For those unfamiliar with the plot of Frankenstein, please read it. In the meantime, however, here is a brief synopsis: a young Victor Frankenstein, whose talents in chemistry and the natural sciences exceed beyond those of his peers and superiors, stumbles upon a secret technique that brings life to inanimate bodies. Pushed by a terrifying, uncontrollable internal motivation, Frankenstein works tirelessly to collect and assemble parts of an eight-foot tall not-quite-human being with withered, translucent skin. After bringing the creature to life, Frankenstein is immediately repulsed by his monster, flees the room, and tries to forget what he has done.

Abandoned and betrayed, the monster begins a slow process of first surviving, then educating himself, then finally becoming self-aware. He is able to put language to his feelings and thoughts, and finds himself torn between deeply desiring companionship and seeking revenge against the race that continually forsakes him.

After accidentally strangling a little boy, the monster flees into solitude. Frankenstein, hearing of the murder, suspects the monster is the culprit and chases after him in a rage. I will not spoil the story’s ending, but I will say that the monster and Frankenstein find themselves in almost constant pursuit of one another, and the unending chase forbids them any fulfillment in life or intimacy with another companion.

Like Frankenstein, I had always excelled in academic areas beyond my peers. Despite any success I had within institutionalized systems, I always felt driven by a terrifying, uncontrollable internal motivation to do more. I was driven right into the throes of ministry, a world where there is no clear definition or measure of success.

As a requirement for ordination, I completed a five-month unit of hospital chaplaincy. When my first patient died, something came alive in me - something eight feet tall with translucent skin. I fled the room in the sense that I completely suppressed my emotional response to her death. I had heard the importance of boundaries in ministry emphasized so often that I thought by suppressing I was being healthy, but really I was just scared. When I left the hospital every day, I tried to live as normal of life as I could forgetting what I had seen in the dimly lit spaces where life marries death. But I could not sustain that forever. Eventually my monster would pursue me.

Long after my unit of hospital chaplaincy ended I continued to feel connected to the dark grief and doubt from which I had tried to escape. Like Frankenstein who imagined his monster lurking in every shadow, I saw a galvanized version of myself interrupting my life and destroying my relationships. I eventually learned that the process of professional spiritual formation was a grueling one that slowly collected and assembled some of life’s most pressing unanswered questions and some of my deepest pains in order to create a monster of emotional dishonesty. Unlike Frankenstein, however, I finally decide I could no longer flee.

In the safe space of solitude far from the office of pastor, I embraced a shadowed Kari, a version of myself whose fears, insecurities, self-doubts, grief, and despair had repulsed me and from which I had fled. Unlike Frankenstein, I was able to give my monster what it had wanted all along: honesty, openness, compassion, and companionship.

Shelley’s Frankenstein will forever serve as an invaluable resource to my personal and professional formation. The mark of good literature is not only its timelessness but also its ability to communicate truth to many people. The truth of Shelley’s monster is that many of us, especially those in ministry, struggle with those eight-foot tall creatures more often than we wish to recognize. My own monster has gifted me with the insight and empathy to help others bring light to dark places and love to where there is fear. Frankenstein continues to deeply inform my understanding of self and practice of ministry, and I am forever grateful for the power and opportunity that a good book presents to us.

Originally published on State of Formation on August 5, 2011.

My Third Sermon: Why I Believe in the Rapture

I preached this sermon at Oxford University’s Keble College during an Evensong service. The service was one of the last of the academic year and took place during final exams. I preached it less than a week from my final departure from Oxford.

Grace and peace to you all. My name is Kari Aanestad, and I am honored to be among you all tonight. As a brief note of introduction, I am a seminary student from Minnesota and am in my last year of study for ordination in the Lutheran church. My husband Brian is a proud member of Keble College in Oxford, and we are sad to say that after two years our time in Oxford is quickly coming to a close. What comes next for us is a bit of a mystery. I only have a few courses left of my degree, and Brian is finishing his now. In other words our current life plans are finding some resolution, and we are quickly being forced once again to deal with the dreaded f-word, the future.

I am sure you can all relate on some level to the sense of impending doom and dread that I know I feel when I hear the word “future.” The time we share among friends punting the River Thames, traipsing through Port Meadow, and cycling through the city seems to whiz by us faster than Oxford’s taxi drivers. Before we know it, here we are at one of the last Evensong services of the term. Our future is hurtling toward us, there is a lot of uncertainty about what may happen next, and how we make sense of it all is seriously up to us.

Some of us respond to uncertainty by latching on to firm answers, and I have a wonderful example of this. I’m not sure if you heard about this, but a few weeks ago a group of Christians in the United States became quite public about their belief in the impending Rapture. Many of them cashed their life’s savings, sold their homes, and quit their jobs all so that they could be ready for Christ’s glorious return to earth on Saturday, the 21st of May, 2011. They were quite public with their conviction that the end was coming; they conducted television interviews, advertised in magazines and newspapers, and quickly became the object of the US media’s fascination.

As you can all probably guess, Saturday, the 21st of May came and went. No heavenly trumpets were heard, no whore of Babylon or beast from the sea were seen, and no salvific lamb finally conquered the forces of evil.

With that group of Christians in mind, when I read the assigned scripture readings for today from the Gospel of Matthew, I couldn’t help but laugh. In 24:42-46 Jesus gives us a humbling reminder of just how uncertain the future really is for everyone. He is quoted as saying, “You do not know on what day your lord will come…the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Maybe those Christian Rapture enthusiasts in the United States were spending a bit too much time in the book of Revelation and not enough time in the Gospel of Matthew.

But my point isn’t to have a good laugh at gullible people. My point is that we are all a bit more like those Rapture enthusiasts than we would like to think or admit. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can acknowledge that we too respond to uncertainty with firm answers, plans, and decisions. Whether we are a Rapture enthusiast or an Oxford student, we all make decisions about our lives now according to our best guess of what the future may be.

Though we probably haven’t cashed our life’s savings because we believe we will be bodily subsumed into heaven tomorrow, we may have spent our life’s savings on a degree from Oxford or on adventurous travel designed to help us find ourselves. Though we may not have sold our homes in anticipation of our heavenly home, we have sold ourselves on the transient life of a student – one where we have many homes and yet none are permanent. Though we haven’t quit our jobs because we believe the world tomorrow will not exist as it does today, we may have chosen our studies here based on certain careers prospects.

Now I am not suggesting that the decisions we have made in order to be here make us the object of ridicule comparable to the Rapture enthusiasts. I am suggesting, however, that we all make decisions about our lives according a certain idea of the future. We operate in a system of meaning that holds in tension the fantastic possibilities of tomorrow and the somewhat mundane decisions of today. We all need something that we are not only working toward but also that provides the daily-ness of our lives with structure and meaning.

And there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that. But I do think there is danger when we forget that we are always operating according to our best guess of what may happen and start to believe that we can and do have certain answers or that we have some semblance of control over what happens to us. Frameworks of meaning built on that type of certainty crumble quicker and faster than any other, and the results are often personally devastating. Last year I spent five months in the John Radcliffe Hospital on a chaplaincy placement. Nearly every day I saw how one diagnosis, one car accident, one blood vessel completely changed an entire family’s trust in the world and hope for the future. “You do not know the day or the hour…”

I do not mean to depress you all, but I am trying to invite you to reflect on what sort of answers, plans, and frameworks for meaning you have that help you respond to an uncertain future. What is your equivalent of the Rapture? I ask all of this because I think that when we are able to be truly honest with ourselves about how much really is out of our control, we find ourselves gently cupping little mustard seeds of faith. A faith that grows not into a trite belief that all things happen for a greater purpose, but rather blossoms as a deep trust born from authentic struggle. There is opportunity in uncertainty.

I do not pretend to have all of the answers about this stuff nor do I expect any of you to have them either. These are lifelong issues with which we will all continue to struggle. It is fundamental to who we are as creatures of meaning. My parting prayer as I leave this great city is simply that we find the courage to be more honest with ourselves and more vulnerable with each other, that we find a balance between the plans that drive our productivity and the opportunities that exist in uncertainty, that we find new depths of being in this world after the loss of old ways, and that we ultimately find a future so unimaginably dazzling that all our present hopes, dreams, and plans seem a dull gray at best. God be with you on all of your journeys. Amen.

Originally published on State of Formation on June 10, 2011.

My First Sermon: When Miracles Happen to Good People

What is a “miracle” really?

Colloquially speaking we tend to associate the word “miracle” with a specific event that is not explainable in natural terms, and the outcome of that event seems to be inspired or caused by divine agency. A miracle is a happy ending – a sudden and divine solution to a seemingly unsolvable situation. It is a supernatural event that is inherently good and works to make everything better. According to this definition in light of Christian theology, God is the divine actor – God is the supernatural problem-solver – God is the miracle-worker.

While this definition of a miracle is fairly common, I’m going to suggest that it is problematic. But before I go there, I would like to introduce you to Ruth Jolly. In her book Something Absolute: Surviving a Miracle, Ruth describes her own encounter with something miraculous. One morning while sitting in her living room she received a phone call from a nurse at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, who informed Ruth that her son Charlie had been in a serious plane crash during a flight lesson. Charlie’s flight instructor had died upon impact, but Charlie had somehow managed to survive. The nurse told Ruth that Charlie would be in surgery for the rest of the afternoon and that she should call her family because they were not sure how much longer he would live.

Charlie did manage to survive, but his recovery was a long and painful process. As a young, independent, and athletic man in his early 20s, Charlie suddenly found himself nearly crippled in a wheelchair, living in his childhood bedroom, and completely dependent upon his parents.

Ruth writes that while she was completely thankful for the odd miracle of Charlie’s unlikely survival, she found herself struggling to cope with this incredibly significant change in her life. In the first few chapters of her book she describes some of the reactions she received from friends while going through the difficult and painful healing process with Charlie. She writes that her friends seemed to only be able to focus on the fact that Charlie had lived – as if that fact alone somehow alleviated the incredible stress caused by the discontinuous change of the accident. Ruth began to feel guilty that she felt tired, frustrated, and even depressed. After all, is not a miracle an event that transforms everything for the better? Why then was life after Charlie’s accident so incredibly hard?

Holding on to the story of Ruth and Charlie, let’s look at another story. The blind man from John 9: 1-42, like Ruth and Charlie, also survives a miracle. His story begins in the middle of things as Jesus and his disciples are walking along a road. They come upon a man who is well known among his neighbors as being blind since birth. “Teacher,” the disciples say. “Is it because of this man’s sin or the sins of his parents that he was born blind?”

Jesus answers, “Neither this man nor his parents have sinned. Instead, this man was born blind so that God’s work may be revealed in him.”

After Jesus said this he bent down, scooped up some dirt, spit on it, mashed it up into mud, and then smeared it across the blind man’s eyes. Then Jesus said, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam.”

The blind man did as told and returned to his village seeing everything along the way. When his neighbors discovered that he could see, they were very confused and troubled. They interrogated him then brought him to the church leaders for further investigation. The church leaders questioned both the formerly blind man and his parents. After concluding that the formerly blind man was a sinner, they kicked him out of the church.

It seems to me that the formerly blind man’s life after the miracle is not a happy ending. The more he continues to tell those around him the truth about what has happened to him, the more alienated he becomes. His neighbors no longer trust him, the church leaders hurl insults at him and throw him out of the church, and even his own parents betray him knowing that if they confirm what he says they will also be thrown out of church. Though his sight is restored, his problems are not solved.

We see in the stories of both Ruth and the blind man what it means for miracles to happen to good people, and it’s sort of a disconcerting image. Sure it seems that after a miracle new life is found but that life seems to come at a pretty high cost. Charlie’s battered body took years to recover and placed an incredible stress on his family. The blind man was essentially not trusted by his community, betrayed by his parents, and kicked out of the church.

What these stories begin to reveal I think is that, contrary to popular belief, miracles are not necessarily happy endings. Ruth writes about it in this way:

“When something truly extraordinary happens to you, the minutiae of life by which your days are shaped and your energy is expended, cease to matter…For a long time – a very long time – after a miracle, you flounder, and in a way, there are no more certainties ever again. Something has happened for which there is no clear, solid explanation. And try as you might to re-order events in a logical, factual way, at the heart of it all there remains a mystery. One simply has to cobble together some words that sound vaguely plausible and leave it at that. No, a miracle, wondrous though it is, is not a ‘happy ending’. Rather, it is a shattering new beginning, and when the world starts to turn again, what you make of it is seriously down to you.”

I don’t know about you all, but I think I’d rather not witness a miracle in my life. I like the way things are now – I have learned how to manage things, I’m comfortable, I have a routine. I’d rather that things just stay the same, but unfortunately things do change. While it may be too bold to suggest that we have all experienced miracles in our lives, I do think that the stories of Ruth and the blind man are ones to which we can all relate. Like Ruth and the blind man, I suspect that we have all experienced some sort of radical, unexpected, discontinuous change that has intimately shaped the course of our lives thereafter.

I can relate to this in a very personal way - In the fall of 2008 my husband got a Rhodes Scholarship, which brought us to Oxford. That sudden event pulled me away from my familiar, beloved community at home and plucked me into a new, loving community. My whole life changed when I moved to Oxford, and it was somewhere between a plane crash and sight restoration. These past two years our lives have been filled with discontinuous change, and I can definitely understand what Ruth means when she describes life as full of “shattering new beginnings.”

So I have suggested that a miracle is not a happy ending. I think the stories of Ruth and the blind man definitely attest to that. We have begun to see that the colloquial definition of “miracle” is problematic – but what about the rest of it? Earlier we said that a miracle is caused by a supernatural, divine agent whom Christians name as God. What about that part? Is that as problematic as the happy ending assumption?

Understanding God as the cause or primary actor in an event of sudden, discontinuous change is indeed problematic, and I will suggest it is so for two reasons. First, it opens a Pandora’s box of questions about God’s involvement in human suffering and death. If God saved Charlie from death, why didn’t God also save 21-year-old Katie when she missed a turn on the highway and rolled her car? If God chooses to heal the blind man, why does God let Bernard continue to suffer with advanced pancreatic cancer? God as the initiator of a miraculous event compromises some of the basic theological claims we make about God as all-loving, compassionate.

This definition of a miracle is also problematic because it goes against what the story of the blind man suggests. Let’s quickly revisit the story once more. “Why was this man born blind?” the disciples ask Jesus. “Was it because of his sin or the sins of his parents?”

“This man was born blind,” Jesus responds, “so that God’s work may be revealed in him.”

Jesus is being both cheeky and clever here – the first part of his response is intentionally phrased in the passive voice so that no clear actor is given responsibility for the man’s blindness – the man was simply born blind – neither God, nor anyone else, caused his blindness. There is no actor or cause. Instead, Jesus’ answer suggests that God works through that which has already happened to reveal God’s love and presence in the world.

What the text suggests here is that the point of a miracle isn’t who or what caused it to happen (although I do think it’s fair to ask those questions). The point is to examine what our lives look like after a sudden, life-changing event. Against the colloquial definition, I want to suggest that a miracle is not so much of an event as it is a relationship – a relationship among the events of our lives, God, and us. This relationship inspires us to ask, “What does God’s participation in our life after a miracle look like?

As Ruth suggests, what we make of it all is seriously down to us. It may be far too simplistic to say “God has a plan for you. God works through your suffering to reveal his purposes and love for you.” And yet, it seems that is what the story of the blind man suggests. It’s an incredibly provocative, inspiring, and even troublesome thought – one that I’m not even sure I’m ready to subscribe to. But what if we did? What if we believed the Creator of this entire universe was active in our lives – not as the cause or cure of our suffering, but as our companion in it? It seems to me that that might be the true miracle.

Originally published on State of Formation on April 15, 2011.

Confessions of a Bully

She never saw it coming, and then there was peanut butter everywhere. Her new khaki pants were ruined, the whole classroom burst out laughing, and she didn’t come back to school for the rest of the day. She was my best friend, we were 13, and it was all my fault.

Earlier that day I decided it would be funny to smear the tan paste all over the seat of her wooden desk chair. The mess was hidden so well that I barely held back giggles as I tiptoed away from her chair and waited from across the room. The moment she sat down I felt a twinge of regret, but the cheers from my classmates almost immediately filled my ears. I had managed to make everyone laugh and only one person cry.

None of us is our finest self at 13, but that particular memory is not one of which I am very fond. Much worse, the peanut butter incident is not the only instance of its kind. My junior high years saw other practical jokes and public humiliations, which unfortunately won me a sort of feared popularity. I eventually snapped out of it (probably around the time puberty concluded), but even at 25 I still find myself holding sadness around what I did at 13. At least for a time in my life, I was a bully.

Though I did not bully on the explicit basis of sexual orientation, race, religious affiliation, or gender, my bullying did stem from a similar place: a need to distance myself from the other. I recognized that if I could find a way to draw public attention to the ways in which a classmate was different from me, I could confirm my own normalcy and acceptability. By humiliating the other, I tried to find affirmation in community. What I actually found was disunity, brokenness, and ultimate self-rejection.

On some level we all know that bullying is wrong. We don’t need the Golden Rule or complex systematic theological arguments to convince us of this fact, but we do need them to help us hold each other accountable. That, I believe, is the wonderful task of a good theologian: to remind us of that which we already know, give us the courage to pursue the higher path, and encourage us to ask for forgiveness when we are not our finest selves.

One of my favorite theologians on the subject of otherness is Eastern Orthodox metropolitan John Zizioulas. In his book Communion and Otherness, Zizioulas argues that while it is in our nature to define ourselves against the other (or in my case, to seek affirmation by humiliating difference), the nature of the triune God calls us into a different model of self-understanding. As God exists and finds unity within a mutual acceptance of three distinct persons, so are we to find unity among one another. In other words, the Trinity models for us what we are to strive for in our communities: true and free love that comes only from allowing otherness.

What might this mean in a little less abstract terms? Zizioulas in a way affirms my own experience at 13: community, love, and true acceptance never comes from suppressing or bullying difference. Though I was popular for a time, the social cohesion brought on by bullying was an illusion loosely knit together by fear, anxiety, and misery.

Furthermore, I had not only rejected my friend as other, but I had also rejected the otherness in myself. In bullying my friend I presented to the class a version of myself that I thought was acceptable – a version of self that denied whole parts of me. While looking for group acceptance, I found self-rejection. In sum, bullying sucks.

If suppression of difference does not build community or foster unity, what does? How can we work to love and accept otherness? Zizioulas’ argument is incredibly challenging in that he recognizes that only God has accomplished what God calls us to do. I suspect we are simply not capable of achieving the sort of perfect unity that is professed in Trinitarian theology, but that is not to say we should stop striving for it. This is hardly a zero sum equation – we either achieve perfect unity or fail.

Instead, I suspect that we live in countless moments where the opportunity for unity and freedom in love can exist. When we, as Zizioulas says, “love the other not only in spite of his or her being different from us but because he or she is different from us” then we both live and love in freedom and joy. Though it may only last for a moment, when we love the other and the otherness in ourselves, we are privileged with a glimpse at the remarkable creativity of our Creator and our own baffling, precious part of creation. And so may we all strive to love as we have been loved by the Author of diversity.

Originally published on State of Formation on February 11, 2011.

"Tangled" Narratives of the Disney Princess: Is the Church Keeping Up?

I wanted nothing more than her thick, red hair, tiny waist, and natural gift for song. Her codependent fish friend Flounder, stern babysitter crab Sebastian, and scatterbrained seagull Scuttle were unlike any friends I could ever hope for. Much more, I wanted Prince Eric. I used to recreate with my Barbies the wedding scene on the giant boat where Ursula is finally unmasked as the evil octopus witch she is and King Triton, Ariel’s father, immediately hands Ariel over to her prince having never spoken a word to him. Their prompt boat wedding was the perfect Disney princess ending; at least my generation seemed to think so.

For years after I struggled to learn that the Disney princess narrative is not one that is readily recreated or one for which I should strive. Typical high school heartbreaks taught me that not all men are princes and some princes should end up with other princesses. When I met my prince at 18, it took us almost six years of dating, some long distance, negotiation, and world traveling before we finally had our big royal wedding. Though I didn’t grow up to be Ariel, I am indeed living a fairytale of my own.

Having spent years with the Disney princess narrative, however, you can imagine my surprise when I sat down in the overstuffed movie theater seats to watch “Tangled,” a newly released Disney adaptation of the story of Rapunzel. Though the traditional story of Rapunzel is one of ultimate passivity (the strapping prince discovers a helpless girl trapped in a tower by a witch and immediately asks her to marry him), “Tangled” depicts an active, brave, and charming 18-year-old Rapunzel who bargains with the criminal Flynn Rider to escort her from the tower, through the woods, and ultimately on an adventure of mutual self-discovery. In other words, their relationship is not love at first sight as that of Ariel and Eric, but rather begins with trust, reciprocity, and a negotiation.

As Flynn and Rapunzel battle their way through thick forests, initially off-putting thugs, and an incredibly law-abiding horse, their relationship stays mostly neutral. With every passing trial, however, they share more of their stories and begin to learn from each other.

At one turning point Rapunzel and Flynn sit in a rowboat (very similar to the one Ariel and Eric sat in) on waters just outside the castle waiting for a moment for which Rapunzel has been dreaming of for years. She shares with Flynn that she is scared for the moment to happen because it could either disappoint her or leave her without her dream. Flynn then suggests that when this particular dream is realized it is time for her to get a new dream, implying that self-discovery in life is a continual, unfolding process (quite a different narrative than that of “The Little Mermaid”).

Eventually both Rapunzel and Flynn discover a new sense of identity (that Rapunzel is the lost princess stolen away at infancy, and Flynn is not a selfish criminal but a discarded orphan trying to survive), and only after they have found themselves do they independently decide to strive for a new dream: to share life with each other.

Finally, just before the credits, the retrospective voices of Flynn and Rapunzel tell the audience that only after years and years of dating does Rapunzel finally agree to marry Flynn.

While it’s quite obvious (at least from my perspective) that Disney has “tangled” the old and new narratives of the princess in the story of Rapunzel and Flynn, I am left wondering, “Why add the new elements?”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m thrilled Disney has revised the princess narrative to incorporate a higher level of mutuality and self-discovery between the hero and heroine, but I am still curious as to what provoked the change and how this next generation of kids will receive it. I suspect the change has quite a bit to do with what my generation wants for our kids. We want our kids to take their time in adolescence, get to know themselves, then get to know each other, wait until they are 18 before they date for a really long time, and then finally get married.

Unfortunately, just as I had to struggle against the Disney princess narrative throughout my adolescence and discover my own story, I suspect this next generation of children will also struggle. While Rapunzel and Flynn’s narrative reflects what my generation has been somewhat able to accomplish, the story is ultimately more normative than it is descriptive. Though we may wish it so, our children probably will not wait until they are 18 to rebel, find themselves, and date. Much more, their love stories may not end in marriage.

A recent article published by the New York Times reveals that in France civil unions have gained favor over marriages amongst heterosexual couples, defying the assumptions of many that heterosexual couples prefer marriage. When interviewing couples who chose a civil union over a marriage, many shared they needed the legal recognition of their relationship status but did not want the full commitment of a marriage. Some treated the civil union as a precursor to marriage, but that was not necessarily a belief held by all.

With the rise in divorce rates, ambiguous gender roles in families, and arguable decline of traditional religious authority, it isn’t any wonder that the Disney princess narrative is adapting, but is it a generation too late? Much more, is it providing this generation of children with a helpful narrative about what it means to find self and love in life?

Ultimately, narratives (like that of the Disney princess) have deep impacts on the ways in which the people I serve find meaning in life. As a future pastor, any time a metanarrative shifts in my culture, I need to at least be aware of it and at most be engaged with it. But what does that really mean? While I am far more concerned with hearing the pain and needs of the people I serve rather than protecting an institution or clinging to normative descriptions of how the world should be, I can’t help but wonder what the church has to offer when it comes to relationships, self-discovery, and marriage. Has the church been able to adapt its narratives as successfully as Disney?

Originally published on State of Formation on January 17, 2011.

Israelis, Palestinians…and Lutherans? The Myth of the Apolitical Pastor

His eyes burned green and his hands shook as he gave me my first history lesson on the Six-Day War. Somehow at 22-years-old I had managed to find myself sitting at a moonlit beach restaurant in Aqaba, Jordan having hardly ever learned a thing about Israel. I felt ashamed, and my dinner companions offered me more hummus in consolation. That night I learned, among many things, that Jordan had absorbed 40 percent of the nearly 5 million Palestinian refugees who were forced to leave their homes after Israel was established as a state in 1948.

Learning is one thing, but seeing is another. The next day while trying to find the Roman ruins of the city of Jerash, we got lost in one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps. I stared out the dusty window of our car and looked directly into the dark-coffee eyes of the ragged faces that we passed. The piles of splintered wood stacked into makeshift houses screamed of biblical exile, and the irony stung a bit too deeply.

A mere few days after we left Jordan, my husband Brian and I ventured into Israel. As our tour guide, fittingly named Moses, led us through streams of emotional tourists I felt my palms begin to sweat and heart race. I thought my heart had belonged to Jordan, but now I found myself deeply identifying with my fellow Jewish traveling companions. I could not fathom the horrors of World War II, and I hoped that if my new Jewish friends had been with me in the refugee camps of Jordan that they would feel profound empathy for their displaced Palestinian brothers and sisters.

But we were no longer in Jordan; instead we were meandering through clean swept Israeli streets toward giant bricks burning in the sun. Suddenly I found myself standing before the Wailing Wall thinking only about my parents’ divorce and how much four-year-old Kari had hated that they just couldn’t get along. “Same to you, Israel and Palestine,” the 22-year-old Kari thought.

“I love you both, but I hate the way you treat each other,” I wrote on a small piece of white paper and shoved it into the cracks of the wall. As I walked away I held my breath hoping that my words could crumble at least a metaphorical wall.

Almost three years later I find myself still haunted by that summer. As I finish my last year of my Master of Divinity I find myself wrestling deeply with my role as an ordained Lutheran pastor and my participation in world events. I hail from a long tradition that claims that pastors should be as apolitical as possible since politics at best distract from the Gospel and at worst manipulate people into destructive narratives that pit “us” against “them.” In other words, my tradition (a specific brand of Lutheranism) argues that a pastor’s only job is to preach the Word alone.

I am quickly realizing, however, that the apolitical pastor is not only a misnomer but an impossibility. The Christian church is political. I say this not necessarily as a normative argument (that the Christian church should be political, which is a whole other essay) but simply as a mere description. In the case of Israel, one need look no further than the work of the World Council of Churches (WCC), an organization representing some 580 million Protestants worldwide. The WCC has been active in the Israel-Palestine conflict since its inception in 1948, and most recently in 2009 published the Kairos Palestine Document, a work authored by Christian Palestinians calling for a boycott of all Israeli goods in hopes of dissuading the Israeli government’s ethically questionable treatment of Palestinian refugees (especially those living on the West Bank).

The WCC’s decision to publish the Kairos Palestine Document on its website has been met with great criticism, especially from some leaders of the Jewish church. In their article Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper essentially call the WCC “anti-Israel” and go so far as to say that the actions similar to those taken by the WCC will “embolden terrorists and anti-Semites, and cast carefully nurtured interfaith relations into darkness and disarray.”

Though I do not necessarily agree with the claims made by Hier and Cooper, their comments remind me that the church is in fact political, I am a part of the church, and if I do not speak for myself, organizations like the WCC will speak for me – for better or for worse. Much more, if I do not choose to participate in world events especially by way of interfaith dialogue, I do a great disservice to my calling, my brothers and sisters, and my God.

In short, I reject the myth of the apolitical pastor. As a person called into a ministry of profound honesty and authenticity, I believe that there are no limits on what parts of me are used for God’s work in the greater world. My experiences in Jordan and Israel absolutely prohibit me from ever being apolitical because my story is deeply impacted by the people I have met and the stories I have heard. And so with great humility, love, and faith, I brace myself for the difficult task of moving forward into conversation with my interfaith brothers and sisters. I only pray that what I have seen and heard in this world will help bring hope, light, healing, and ultimately greater understanding.

Originally published on State of Formation on January 8, 2011.

S.A.D. Lights and Advent Candles: What is the purpose of religion?

I occasionally suffer from situational depression, and it is called life. In its simplest clinical terms, situational depression is a form of deep sadness that often follows a traumatic life event such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, a divorce, a move, etc. The symptoms can be similar in severity to clinical depression and last for months depending on how the suffering person perceives the trigger event. This form of depression can be very serious, and what is especially unnerving is that it is so common.

Defined by these terms, it is fair to say that we probably all have suffered or will suffer from situational depression at some point. Why? Well, let’s be frank: sometimes life sucks. Despite our different religious traditions we can all affirm that death is inevitable, loss is frequent, and life can be unspeakably painful. No one’s rituals or faith can save her from that darkness, and if a theology claims to do so, it does so disingenuously. In other words, the purpose of religion is to not spare us from despair.

Instead, I suspect the purpose of religion is a bit more ineffable, intimate, and honest. Earlier I mentioned that I occasionally suffer from situational depression. One example is that every winter that same “situation” seems to manifest itself: seemingly impenetrable darkness. Since I have moved to England where the sun sets at 3 PM in December, my Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) has been at its all time worst. (I must be careful to clarify here that S.A.D. is not necessarily a form of situational depression but rather is a specifier of general depression; this distinction is incredibly important for diagnosis and treatment, but the distinction between the two is not as important for the theological metaphor I am about to entertain).

One of the most popularized treatments for S.A.D. is light therapy, a treatment option in which the sufferer exposes herself to a special light for a period of time daily. The light, when exposed to the retina, helps manipulate the brain’s production of melatonin, which has been linked to sleep patterns and to some extent mood disorders. While I need not go into the science of S.A.D. and its treatments, I’m curious to discover that light is a popular treatment for sadness that is triggered by darkness.

One might say that religion has been prescribing this treatment plan for centuries. The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah (the Festival of Lights), the Hindu celebration of Diwali (the Festival of Lights), the Scandinavian, Australian, and New Zealand celebration of Yuletide, the Christian celebration of Advent and Christmas, and many more are examples of ways in which religion has sought to not only name the power of evil and darkness in life but also celebrate that light still shines. In other words, there seems to be a fascinating diversity of tradition around the celebration of light in the midst of seemingly impenetrable darkness.

As a Christian, I am currently celebrating the season of Advent. Advent is the period of approximately four weeks prior to Christmas in which we focus on themes of waiting and preparation. Each Sunday of Advent we light a candle to remind us that there is hope in darkness, promise in despair, and new life after loss. Advent recognizes that we are not spared from darkness, but have a light in it; though we inevitably suffer from situational depression, we have hope that there is purpose, meaning, and final reconciliation in and after life.

So what then is the purpose of religion? British writer Ruth Jolly defines what the purpose of religion has been in her life in her autobiographical work Something Absolute: “Religion isn't really about giving intellectual assent to things that other people proclaim to be true; it's about awareness of a spiritual dimension to existence. It's about the way this awareness affects the life you lead, with others and for others. And it's about shaping this life through our fleeting experiences of the divine."

Jolly’s words for me touch on the heart of not only the Advent season and all celebrations of light, but also my calling into ordained ministry. I understand my goal as a pastor is not to force people to find meaning and purpose in a certain ritual or tradition, but if the resources of my faith can provide someone with hope and new life in their personal winter darkness, it is my task to help foster that hope. Ultimately no religion has the power to spare us from despair, but it does provide us with tools to help us more deeply express our grief and give us language with which to name hope. With this view I see religion not as a bully but as an important life aid, one that seeks to comfort, not convert. I only hope that I can continue to live into my calling into a ministry of intense honesty and be a light for others.

Originally written on December 10, 2010.

Lady Gaga and the Autonomous Self

Though I would not necessarily laud all of her decisions as a performer and artist, Lady Gaga has surprisingly and quickly become one of my key reference points in my academic work as a theologian and my practice of pastoral care in ministry. I think what Lady Gaga has come to represent for our culture and my generation specifically is the personification of the autonomous self (among many things), which ultimately reflects our struggle to determine and define personal identity.

Sociologist David Riesman in his book The Lonely Crowd (1950) first named the “autonomous self” as being a phenomenon hung over from social disillusionment post-WWII. Before the industrial revolution Riesman argues that Americans derived meaning from tradition, the roles our ancestors fulfilled in the communities that we settled. Tradition as the source of meaning and identity for the self, however, was quickly replaced by ideals from the industrial revolution, namely that of progress and institutions’ ability to achieve it. After WWII and with the advent of the atomic bomb, however, our trust in progress and the institution was deeply shaken. In other words, if the atomic bomb reveals the realized promises of technological “progress,” maybe there is no meaning or identity in that after all – or at least a meaning and identity that we do not want.

Riesman argues that we have then since shifted into a postmodern existentialist drought in which the self is defined by autonomy, or rather one’s ability to invent one’s own self. We no longer rest on the traditions of those who went before us or in the institutions that give us social order. Instead we are left with the burden of proof – who we are is defined solely by our own making.

As I mentioned before, I believe Lady Gaga is the personification of this self entirely defined by personal invention. Stefani Germanotti (Lady Gaga) spends countless hours on costume design, music and lyric composition, and cinematic direction sculpting the character of Lady Gaga into a living, breathing work of art that ultimately reflects the very nature of American culture caught in the midst of postmodern existentialist crises. Her elaborate and seemingly random costumes and nonsensical pop lyrics all regurgitate what is popular in mainstream music and television, but the persona of Lady Gaga perverts it. She takes what we celebrate as sexual, popular, and good and makes it repulsive as if to say, “You have no idea where you find meaning or identity, America. You define yourselves by the sex you have, and ultimately that is no identity at all.”

Especially in her most recent music video, “Alejandro,” Lady Gaga embodies the autonomous self in a way that satirizes American culture that treats sex as a source of identity. Her pale, corpse-like body in “Alejandro” reveals the true vulnerability and frailty of the human form in opposition to the super-human scantily clad models featured in other popular music videos. Her inability to define herself as anything other than “not your babe” – an identity expressed only in opposition to the other – reflects our own inability to positively affirm who we are independent of a sexual partner. Her final submission to the mob of sex-crazed men fills her audience with such sickness and revolt that we cannot help but turn inward on ourselves and evaluate not only our own literal promiscuity but also all of the ways that we have failed to understand ourselves as something other than our own creation. In other words, Lady Gaga reveals to us that we have no idea who we are.

So, how are we know who we are if we are in fact self-defined autonomous selves? If tradition, progress, and institutions can no longer be trusted to provide us with meaning and purpose in this world, and a culture of popularized sex only distracts us from thinking about it, what are we to do? I suspect that the issue of meaning, purpose, and identity in this world is a struggle that every generation has fought. Though we may have at one point trusted the narrative of tradition – I am now what my mother once was – the narrative did not itself give us meaning, but our belief in it did. We agreed that narrative had meaning and moved forward together as a society trusting those traditions.

I agree with Riesman that we no longer trust the narratives of the past; we only cling to what we can define as individuals. I also agree with Lady Gaga that instead of wrestling with issues of our identity we have become obsessed with a culture of sex. While this is fascinating commentary, it still does not answer the question “Who am I?” Though my Lutheran tradition suggests that I am an imprint of the creative force that created me, a unique expression of the divine, what weight does that narrative hold in not only postmodern existentialism but also interfaith work? If we do not all agree on a narrative regarding the source of our identity, do we know who each other is? I conclude this piece not with many answers, but an invitation to conversation about identity. Who are you and how do you know that?

Originally written November 16, 2010.

Lutheranism Without the Potluck

“What was Daddy’s sermon about?” my dad asked as my younger brother Erik and I piled into his black blazer covered in dust from the rural Minnesota farm roads. It was Sunday, Garrison Keillor was giving us the latest news from Lake Wobegon, and we were on our way to McDonald’s post-church.

I watched as the white country church disappeared amongst the rows of corn and soybeans, and after a while I answered, “Jesus and stuff.” Even at age thirteen I was well on my way to becoming a keen biblical scholar (I’m being sarcastic, of course).

Over ten years later and halfway through my Master of Divinity at Luther Seminary I hope that my answer to my dad’s question might be a little more sophisticated than “Jesus and stuff,” especially as I write from Oxford, England – or as I like to call it, Academic Disneyland. There are no easy answers here, especially when theology is involved. An aggressive atheism and intellectual elitism drips from every rain-drenched pub canopy, and I cannot help but get wet as I splash along the European cobblestone roads.

Needless to say, it has been hard to leave Minnesota. So much of who I am was fed by the warm potlucks of the quaint Minnesota Lutheran church culture where I spent the first 24 years of my life. Without that culture this past year in England I have suffered a spiritual identity crisis, and I have not been alone.

Back home the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is suffering right there with me. We are losing members by the hundreds. The white country churches like the one my dad served are quickly becoming a part of the graveyards that surround them. The type of Garrison Keillor Lutheranism that existed for so many years is dying, and many of us are not sure what the future church will look like.

We’re suffering an identity crisis, which means for some that the quest to define church is done in opposition to the other – I am what you are not. To define church in this way not only creates a system of insiders and outsiders, but also limits the practices of church to local culture. In other words, when a church defines itself as “us and not them,” it excludes on the basis of what fits neighborhood narratives, not on the basis of doctrine.

I lived this type of cultural exclusion last Sunday. I attended an Evangelical Free church in Oxford, and ten minutes into the service it became evident that I was an outsider. I had not brought by hard copy Bible with me, I pronounced everything with a heavy northern Minnesota accent, and I asked for coffee when they only served tea. Much more I missed half the sermon because I did not know where Shotover Den, Filchampstead, or South Hinksey are or what lockets, zebra crossings, or Lucozade is. Though on paper I knew our theological confessions considerably overlap, I did not belong at their church because I was an outsider to their culture, which had come to define their practice of church.

Now please do not get me wrong; I realize that local culture is what often brings many of us to church. I suspect on some level all of us wants to belong to a community where we share a language, history, and customs that make us unique. In my church life, that language is that of the Norwegian farmer and the custom of the warm Minnesota potluck. I never feel more at home than when I dig my spoon into a pile of wriggling green Jello and can ask how the crops are doing this year. As I named earlier, however, that brand of culture-based Lutheranism is dying and with its slow exit we are beginning to see that maybe it was more inherently exclusive than we originally thought.

As an emerging religious leader I hope that I can work with others to help define the future church as a place where local culture is celebrated but not solely definitive. I suspect the success of this future church will rest in its flexibility and openness to those who have been historical outsiders.

Interfaith work then is absolutely crucial, and as a Lutheran I could not be more committed to this dialogue. One of the primary tenets of my faith is that I am free to love and serve my neighbors, which challenges me to go beyond my local culture and hear the stories of those outside, to meet new people (yes, even non-Lutherans!) and learn from them. I believe life is an exquisite gift as are the people who are a part of my story. So while I have ultimately learned that my spiritual identity is not synonymous with Minnesota culture, perhaps the potlucks can continue as long as everyone’s dish is welcome.

Originally published on State of Formation on November 14, 2010.