The Transformative Power of Praying for Kittens

When I was little I wanted a pet all of my own.  I prayed for a kitten, but my parents never got me one.  I prayed for kitten, but my parents would not be swayed.

We already had a cat, but she was a grown up cat and I wanted a kitten.  A nice, small, cuddly kitten with a pink nose.  I asked my parents for a cat, but they said no.  I prayed and prayed, asked and asked, but I still only got noes. 

I asked over and over, and one day the answer changed and I knew that I had an in to getting my cat.  Instead of no, they said I needed to show that I could take care of the cat that we had already.  So it became my responsibility to feed her dinner every night.  Even if I was tired.  Even if I didn't want to,  I still had to feed the cat.

Well one day the stray cat outside my grandparents house gave birth to kittens.  There was one kitten that was the color of cream.  He was a rascal and would pounce on his siblings.  Immediately I fell in love with him and said: "Please God, let me take this kitten home!"  I dragged my dad outside - he was the one who was holding out, in large part I think because he was the one who needed to clean the litterbox - but when I put my kitten into his hands the kitten instantly began to purr and nuzzled against him.  His heart grew three sizes that day and I took him home. 

I thanked God because I finally had my cat!

But then something funny happened.  That older cat, the one I showed that I was responsible enough for a new kitten? When we brought the kitten home, she started to follow me everywhere.  She began to sleep with me every night curled up on my feet.  She even would stick her cold nose against my leg, make me jump and get under the warm covers.  The kitten and I became friends, but the cat that loved me the most was the one that I had already. 

I got my cat! And my prayer changed, from please god to thank you God!

You see, my was  not the cat that I was expecting. And God answered my prayer for a cat all of my own, with the cat that I formed a bond with proving that I was ready for my own cat. 

But you know what, here's one of the amazing ways prayer works. Because I was praying for a kitten, I learned how to take care of the cat. Because I showed I could take care of a cat, I got to have one.  Sometimes we change and learn so we can have those things we ask God for all the time, because the things we ask for are important and big responsibilities.  So all those times we ask God to give us peace in the world all the time, we get more peaceful hearts to show we're ready for that peace.  Or if we ask for more love, our hearts become more loving.  And if we ask for a cat all of our own, our hearts open up better to the new cats around us, but also the cats that we already own.

Let's pray. 

God, help us ask for big things, like love and hope and kindness.  Help us ask for those big things, so we can have bigger hearts ourselves. Help us remember to ask all the time for these big things, so we know what is important, and can live our lives with those important things. 

Amen.

--- This was the children's sermon for our March 9th worship service.

Praying for Wednesday

Our church set aside our sanctuary and some time to pray on election night.  It took place concurrently with a meeting and so the clergy at my church took twenty minute shifts over the course of the hour and instead of being bothered by the interruption, I found that I was grateful for the quiet on a frenzied night of meetings and election coverage.   The candles and white calla lilies from All Saints day still covered our sanctuary.  It was simple, pious atmosphere.  I felt called into a quiet sense of responsibility.  

While consecrating communion, I described the last supper this way.  

And on the night Jesus gathered his followers around him he brought different people with different ideas to his one table.  And we know that as the grain is scattered through many fields, it is gathered together in this one loaf, united by love. 

At that moment, I needed to hold on to hope for our country and our community.  Too often we think that a "house united" means everyone thinks the same thing, not that our differences are a gift that leads us into a better, stronger community.  Seriously people, we can't all be thumbs. 

Instead of praying for one outcome, I prayed for Wednesday.  I prayed specifically for the people that I know have different political opinions than my own, not because I was “praying for the enemy,” but because I felt called to bring light into the moments of a breach of community and hope for our future together.  My prayers weren’t that their mind be changed, but simply to hold them in love. 

I know in the bottom of my heart that the people on the other side of my thought-out and morally weighed political conclusions also do a great deal of soul-searching and heart-work for their stances.  I cannot assume that it’s out of ignorance or stupidity they have made their decisions.  I respect their judgment and I knew that I would accepted the new President if the election had gone the other way. 

Wednesday comes after a yearlong argument.  Our problems are still there --- a need for governmental income, more sustainable job creation, the ravages of a decade of war, and a climate that is changing with violent outbursts.  I also believe that it is a patriotic duty to hold on to our convictions when your officials disagree with us.  I hope that my conservative friends continue to hold us to standards of fiscal responsibility and respect for our institutions; I hope that my progressive friends continue to work for equal access to the benefits of living in our country. 

But. 

Differences do not equate with the face of evil.  An election going differently than your hopes is not a time to call for revolution or to threaten the lives of those who just became elected.  It is not the time to say that you disown your family because they voted for a different direction for the country.  This is the time to demonstrate to the world that we can move forward despite our strong, opinionated differences.  Democracy is not merely about having an election, but forging a future out of the results of the ballot box.  

I am holding all of us in the light, so that we can show that we are one, united in love.  I am a Christian who believes that we are called into unity, not to be the same, but to hold each other in respect and hope.

Can a Christian Woman Get a Hotel Room While Showing Cleavage?

Thunderstorms in Boston and Newark delayed my first leg of air travel home. I, like many other stranded travelers trying to get to Seattle, needed to find a place to sleep other than concourse benches. My journey at that point included 14 hours of travel time and knew I had at least another 16 hours before I would get home. I was frustrated. Exhausted.

As I approached the front desk, my dusty backpack and roller bag in toe, the clerk's eyes roamed over my body. From my face to my shoes, he slowly looked up and down, pausing in leering enjoyment at my chest each perusal over my body.

At that point I smiled. It was not a friendly smile, but a patented Pacific Northwest variety of smile that can easily be translated into "#$@* you very much." Only after I smiled did he acknowledge that I was at the desk.

His reaction was par for the course that day. I had made a classic travelling error. I wore a shirt that showed a hint of cleavage. The over shirt was sleeveless, see through material, with polka-dots. It also breathes well and is cool in the hot summer months, so I can add a layer of formality without sacrificing comfort. So when I was stuck on the tarmac for an hour in Boston in this travel outfit, I wasn’t sweltering. It’s a fun flirty shirt that is not enormously provocative, but makes me smile at the hint of curves that it shows when I wear it.

You see, I love my body. As a 25 year old woman who spends most of her year in Southern California stating how comfortable I am in my own skin is a startling revelation. I love the color of my hair and I am thrilled that I am inheriting my mother’s sparkling grey. I love the fact that only the right side of my face can curl into a sarcastic half smile. I love the gentle curve out of my stomach, because it means that I am healthy and have enough to eat. I love my mismatched feet. I even after years of awkward self-conciousness love that hint of cleavage.

This is not me speaking from narcissism, but an appreciative gasp of thanks for the miracle of my body. Thank you, God. Thank you for this body and the life that comes along with it.

This prayer is defiant. My body is not something that I am supposed to like. My native and corporate culture can’t sell me creams, make-up, and get thin quick cookbooks if I actually like my body as is.

As for Christianity? Historically, the body has been an embarrassing footnote to the theologies of spiritual salvation, an accident that needed to be conquered by true faith. And being in a woman’s body? Well that was an indication of spiritual unwholesomeness that is to be blamed for the whole sinfulness of humanity. So while you have Paul and Augustine praising women for their spiritual leadership and capabilities, you also have them suggesting that women need to cover themselves to not inspire lustful thoughts of angels or cause spontaneous erections in men. I shouldn’t be so proud of my womanly curves, I should hide them so I do not invoke any hint of sexuality.

Wearing a shirt that even remotely suggests my body is feminine means that I am now allowed to be viewed as a sexual object. This is probably why the clerk at the desk felt that it was acceptable to ogle me. After I handed over my identification and credit card, the clerk walked over to his manager. “Should we let her have a room?” he audibly whispered to his supervisor. The clerk kept a raised eyebrow pointedly directed at my chest.

The supervisor looked over at me and smiled broadly. “I think so. She has an innocent face,” he said to the clerk. “But if we have a loud party we will know where it started.” He chuckled inviting me to share in the joke.

Half way through my journey, exhausted and frustrated, I had just been called a whore. I flushed in anger, embarrassment, and gratefulness that I had a place to sleep that night. I swore that I would never wear that shirt again.

That is the sneaky part of sexism. It makes you blame yourself for the horrible treatment of others. I went to bed that night thinking that the behavior of the clerk was my fault for showing cleavage and standing out while I traveled. I looked at my breasts in the mirror and sighed at the unwanted attention the garnered yet again. I forgot that my body was a miracle. I went to bed without thanking God for this blessing.

The worst part of this story is that I forgot that my body is a gift. Sexism, and the theologies that stem from it, are in direct conflict of my understanding of God’s universally applicable love for us as God created us. Scripturally, there are many verses that uphold that a body as being lovingly created by God or in the image of God. Women are either explicitly mentioned, or can be read into verses that celebrate God’s creation. Many feminist theologies address this consideration of the body, and emphasize the importance of the feminine body in the face of prejudice or violence. It’s hard to remember this when you’re scared or frustrated, but the underlying and deliciously subversive message of these Christian's woman's depicitions of the beauty of the body is this: I am a child of God, made in the image of God and I will not feel ashamed because choose to travel in a shirt that makes me smile.

150 Posts

Last weekend was Annual Conference for Pacific Northwest United Methodists. It felt like a homecoming to sit in a large room with “my people.” Although I have loved and appreciated being at Claremont School of Theology, in large part because it refuses to let me rest on shortcuts, it was refreshing to not be constantly translating my understanding of Christianity or Methodism. Yes, there are places that we have to grow to be the best United Methodists we can be, but this weekend left me hopeful and excited to how we can move forward.

One of the highlights of the conference was the high involvement of Young Adults. We were everywhere! We were heading committees, leading worship giving addresses, running cameras, building labyrinths, and serving in dozens of other instrumental ways. It was so exciting to see how much we have made annual conference our own.

In her excellent Young Person’s address, Emma Donohew’s emphasized the need for our conference utilizing social media. “I know it’s cliché for a young adult to say this, but I will preach the gospel of social networking!” she declared. And she’s right. The future of “first contact” will be online. If someone wants to know what it means to be a Pacific Northwest United Methodist, the internet is the first place that a young adult will look. If we are to be relevant we must be online.

As I sat there I realized that I knew to use social media, but I have only updated my blog once in the past year. My challenge from Emma’s talk is not necessarily to preach the gospel of social networking, but to do it.

So. I am giving myself an accomplishable social networking challenge. 150 blog posts between now and the next convening of annual conference. 3 blog posts a week. And while I can visualize whole months in the future that will be difficult, perhaps this kind of journaling shall be my Wesleyan method for the next year. If I agree wholeheartedly that we should use social media as a form of outreach for the United Methodist Church, it’s time that I take the first step and model that affirmation.

Let's see what happens.

If you want to hear other excellent things that Emma said, here is the entirety of Emma's Address:
(It starts at minute 41)

Watch live streaming video from pnwumc at livestream.com

Blog #1 in Ruth’s Social Networking Gospel Challenge.

A Different Reaction

Once explaining how our actions affect God, a professor offered this story. On September 11^th process theologian, Marjorie Suchocki planted bulbs in her garden. On a day that despair, death, and hatred reigned, she made a prayer of hope and took part in creating life, with sewing plants into the earth.

On this day that is intimately connected to September 11th, I ponder about justice, safety, and grief. I do not find joy in the death of an evil man.

And so, as so many celebrate this death, I will celebrate the things in which I find life:

I rejoice in the young hummingbird flitting from twig to twig in the tree overhead.
I rejoice in the domesticity of taking down and folding fresh laundry.
I rejoice in the feeling of accomplishment of finishing papers.
I rejoice in the bright color of my scarf.
I rejoice in the support of text messages from best friends.
I rejoice in clear mountains, sunlight on my face, wind dancing in my hair, smiling at a stranger, daisies growing out of cracks in cement, the taste of my coffee, and the scent of roses drifting over campus.

Here God, these are my offerings of uncomplicated joy today. Take these delights into your heart. And God, if I may, I hope the joy we find in these simple things will overwhelm us into deep, lasting peace and celebration of life.

Tripp's Words of Wisdom: Six Rules on How to Use Social Media Things and Still Have a Life

1) You’re on twitter, facebook, whatever, you use, pick one of them, where people actually connect to you. Pick a network, make yourself available, connect to people in it.
a) Listening, finding something with an engaging passion. Don’t reply to everything of facebook, every tweet, every blog comment. One place where you are going to look at what they do and get a response from you.
b) Okay, I do that already. Facebook will always get a reply.
c) Or you can solicit e-mails, to avoid fights.
d) You make a way to have a conversation, you pick one. Facebook, comments, it unravels. If they are in your congregation, do it everywhere.
2) Pick one conversation and permeate it.
a. Phil, technically he could blog and dialogue on any of those issues. Something you know everything about. When you know questions, culture. You want them to come to you. (Be an expert). Pick one idea and permeate that conversation. If someone cares at all about that idea, they will come find you.
3) Subscribing to lots of blogs is a good idea – here’s how to do it with efficiency. I subscribe to 300 blogs on my RSS feeder. 5-10, I look at every time that they have something come up? They’re status – awesome, I want to know what they think. Find the 5-10 that are in the conversation you’re in, care about what you say, and regularly engage in those 5-10. Dialogue with them, connect with the people you always read. Know that the other ones are going along and find a connection. Create a place they become investment, they matter because they are attracted to you. Why, and who really thinks you’re interesting. Have that group you’ll always be in conversation with.
4) Consistancy and regularity. Like regularity in the number of posts, the quality and the topics.
a. Regular debate on what that means. My life is interesting, so I’ll just tell you what I feel like. Cool if people who go to your church and your grandma read it. Don’t blog on your new sweater, unless you’re just interested in writing it, and you can make sweater purchasing interesting. I totally disagree with this. Theme, quality and consistency.
5) Get an RSS feed and scan it, read the titles. Good bloggers know that they need to have good titles. Scan, look at the titles, and decide whether you want to click on it. Another trick. Google reads blogs to you. While you’re scanning blogs, it’s reading you a previous one. Tweets of conent, schedule once.
Comment on a blog post, it wins fidelity more than anything else. Retweet think you like the title, posting a comment means that you’ve read it. It’s converting yourself to someone’s post and they will like you.

What my Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-Shirt Tells me about Jesus.

Tribes, are our visible narratives of self-identity by association with a group. It’s who we want the world to see who we are. According Seth Godin a Tribe is an organic event. Not just something being in community is something that we as humans are evolutionarily geared to be, but that a gathering of has an individual choose to associate with and through that association they give me identity.

As I was reading through Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us, I couldn’t help but think about my own examples of tribe membership. I often describe myself as a nerd, which other nerds get and causes non-nerds to worry for my self-esteem.
Nerd-dom has long been an important subculture, which yes is highly influenced by science fiction and comic books, but really is about:
· imagination,
· utopian community, and a
· hopeful future.

Although the stereotype of the nerd may be the person who hides behind her computer nerds have long been about forming community IRL. While there is no secret handshake, there are certainly ways to measure “nerd cred.” For example, when meeting a new nerd, I might mention that I follow Neil Gaiman on twitter, I can tell you the name of the commanding officers for each Star Trek series, and have been reading megatokyo since comic 83. Yet nothing, absolutely nothing, can beat the establishment of nerd cred through the almighty t-shirt.

T-shirts are a visible way to align myself with a particular tribe. In the nerd world it’s not so much a Sharks vs. Jets situation, a person in a Superman t-shirt would not automatically hate a person wearing a Spider-Man shirt, as much as it is a method of sorting. For example, when I wear my Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt, I expect to get into conversations about why Fox has no understanding of tribe loyalty and why producing video content for the internet is the way of entertainment’s future; I would not expect to have conversations about why Asimov is better than Heinlein or Girls in Refrigerators. In the age of the internet, a t-shirt has also become a way of supporting an artist whose work you particularly enjoy. There are webcomic artists who are able to completely support themselves and their family on t-shirt sales alone. T-Shirts are about preference, declaring knowledge, and ultimately about willingness to support creative thinkers, the glue to our community.

The Lessons from the Obama Tribe

T-shirt declarations are not just from one branch of nerdyness. One of my friends bought a great deal of “Obama chic” during the 2008 campaign and he was even more thrilled when his conservative step-mother bought him an Obama shirt with the declaration “Hope” across it for his birthday. For him, wearing the t-shirt, putting the campaign card in his window, and playing Obama’s key campaign speeches for any roommate walking down the hall. Obama was the leader of a tribe of people, because he was able to inspire people into thinking about how they related to a politician and politics differently.

Godin understands leaders in a different light than how we usually understand leaders to work. First of all Godin understands WORK differently. The Tribe understanding of occupation is the simple idea that if you love what you do for a living, you’ll be a much more interesting individual. Oh sure you’ll be happier doing work that you love, but you’ll also be a credit to your society because your energy and creativity will be more productive and world-changing. Leaders are people who are able to nurture curiosity in a way that it becomes productive to society. They are able to inspire people to take a leap from doing work to ensure a paycheck and risking to fall in love with work that might not pay as much, but is ultimately more rewarding for everyone around them. Most importantly leaders are able to guide individual creativity and channel it into fulfilling a need or goal for the whole tribe or the rest of society.

Obama was this type of leader for my friend. He took off a semester from school to do what I teasingly called “Work for Obama.” Even though he was set by the Obama administration to God-knows-where, and worked more than 100 hours a week, and even though he had to sacrifice what was familiar and time with those he loved, he was happy. He leads campaigns now. He has been inspired, by one leader to become a leader.

Buffy T-Shirt + Jesus = Rebranding Christianity

The third key component to being a tribe is marketing. Now being my generally anti-consumerist self, I have to admit that this was the idea that was the hardest for me to swallow. Godin declares:

Marketing changed the idea of stability. It’s human nature – we still assume the world is stable… and we’re wrong. We’re wrong because the dynamics of marketing and storytelling and the incessant drumbeat of advertising have taught us to be restless in the face of stability. And the Internet just amplifies this lesson.

I worry about this part of our culture. If it’s not new, it’s disposable. And if it’s disposable, we’ll throw it out. Forever 21 is a perfect example of this – in as little as six weeks runway fashion can now be worn by everyone with a spare twenty dollars. And in about three months, it can be thrown away. I fret about my car’s gasoline that seems to disappear, but really creates trash (carbon dioxide, smog) that we don’t or won’t see. Our desire for the new, the pleasure that derives from these goods, doesn’t entirely give us a chance to fully come to terms with how to deconstruct or recycle the old.

Then I began to think, what is marketing of the new is just another way to explain openness to creativity? What if being in a tribe not just about association with like-minded people, but an excitement about what these people will bring to the table next?

To go back to my Buffy t-shirt, I wear that with pride, because I like to be a part of a group that is familiar with Joss Whedon’s work. Eventually, I will watch whatever Joss Whedon writes. Yes, even the really gross, scary horror stuff (and not just because @gravelittleloli will make me), but because I’m always interested in the stories that Joss tells. There is something about his archetypes of strong, yet vulnerable, yet loving women intrigue me and his witty dialogue always makes me laugh. Even though I get annoyed at the fact that he enjoys creating romantic tension just for the sheer joy of murdering them, I still get pulled in each time. I’m curious about what Joss has to say next, and so I keep coming back. I belong to this tribe, I advertise that I belong to this tribe, because I am curious about what will come next and I want to be a part of that discussion.

Which brings me of all places to Christianity. You see, I think Jesus was a Leader in a tribal sense. There seemed to be a level of inspiration and guidance of creativity that was embodied in Jesus that is astonishing. There is also a level of inspiration and hope that drew people in. I bet that people following Jesus were a hundred thousand times more eager to hear his next sermon than I am to see a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-long Blog.

Today though, I’m not sure that the church has that ability to be encapsulated by a t-shirt. I don’t think I could wear a Methodist T-shirt that declares “I write John Wesley Fanfiction” and expect to have random conversations about grace and social justice at a Christian convention. My Christianity has lost its ability to be conveyed in t-shirt form. We’ve lost our ability to market – to be able to be creative and exciting in a publically expressible form of loyalty. Yet what I find significant in nerdyness, is in fact, what I also find available in Christianity. Imagination, Utopian community, and creativity are all there in Christianity, why can't I express that easily?

I think for Methodists, mainline protestants, or progressive Christians, our significant landfill has finally caught up to us. We can’t just dispose of our old ideas, because our old ideas are so prominent in everyone else’s minds, that they stuck when we try to explain the new. We need to be able to explain our tribe better, we need to make it

So, Godin’s challenge is not just to identify tribes or to understand how they work, but is a call to action about the ways in which we can lead them. He thinks that each and every single one of us has the potential to be a leader. I think my call as a future Christian leader of a progressive, mainline church is not to be to see new tribes and create them, but instead to understand what makes Christianity as awesome as being a nerd, and go from there.

[Grammar edit and sentence tightening occurred. And I added tags. RM]