Mud and evil

A tree outside the seminary.

There are all sorts of small bits of color around. Just small bits, though. Still lots of grey and black and brown and mud. Funny how new life comes out of mud and ugliness.

That's true of Holy Week. Easter only comes after immersing ourselves in the darkness and violence of our world through Jesus' crucifixion. But the crucifixion always seemed so grand to me! Dark, powerful, and overwhelming. Not like mud and sticks and grey - the awful dull deadness of early spring. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe the crucifixion is dull and muddy and forgettable. Like most evil in the world - it's dirty, everyday reality.

I've gotten really upset this week about the TV show, 24, for that reason. I've never seen it, I admit. But I read an article that described the scenes of torture that occur in most episodes, torture that always produces results, for the patriotic Jack Bauer - who knows that torturing suspects is the way to save our nation from certain destruction. This scares the hell out of me. My brother and his girlfriend think I'm overreacting, that it's just entertainment and it doesn't matter. I guess I feel like it means our country is continuing to lose a sense of that evil exists, and that it begins inside the hearts of each one of us. Abu Graib and Guantanamo don't just belong to the military - the soldiers inside those prisons could be any one of us. We can all be corrupted to the value and integrity of other human beings. (Plus, torture pretty consistently doesn't work, i.e. here.)

I'm sure it's exciting to watch someone be tortured and punished for trying to nuke Los Angeles. But I wonder how this changes and affects us as people, how it defines our patriotism. Compassion is a discipline, not a faucet we can turn on and off. Evil is ordinary, not grand or distant. And I guess I believe everything that we do, every day, plays a part in choosing one or the other.

Why can't these ants just go to the beach?

There are ants in my apartment. I can't decide if that's ok or not. I don't like killing them, and they're not gross or anything. They just walk around, checking things out. Still, seems like a couple more roommates than I'd bargained for.

It's been easy to take walks to the beach lately - on my own, or a couple times with my friend and neighbor, Kris. I wish I had some photos for you, but for some oddball reason I haven't taken any yet. All that big water is good for reminding me how small I am. This evening it was so still! How can so much water be so quiet? I could see all the little tiny pebbles, it was so clear. Probably because of zebra mussels. I feel very lucky to live near such beautiful things.

Forget everything I said

Saw "The Pianist" last night. Movies about war or the Holocaust always do this to me... everything in my life seems like a gift, even my problems. Problems my old friend Steve called "lucky problems." We human beings are so full of brokenness - we break the world into fragments, tear things apart. But before I get too deeply into evil and sin, I have to get my things together to go to a meeting - another 9-12 hour bishop search committee meeting. Holocaust, bishop applications, hours of meetings, war and violence that I can't see out in the world (Iraq, Sudan...). Much to pray about.

Bulletin from the job front

Well, I've received my first job refusal - which is actually a bit of a relief. I actually emailed them to withdraw from the process a few days ago, but the messages may have crossed paths.

I'm going to move into this shack at Christ in the Wilderness, instead, and sell organic yogurt to support myself.

Or just remain open to whatever the Spirit brings.

The eye is the lamp of the body

A geranium finally blooming in my window. This is something I get from my dad - having geraniums around all the time, even if they're straggly and awful-looking.

A begonia grown from a cutting my friend, d, found in a greenhouse
in Massachusetts, where she was working.

These are some housemates who live in my windows. My little apartment-sized intentional community? I love plants. I've collected them from friends, from the law office where I used to work (where they were just going to throw them away!), and from grocery stores. I tried to grow mint in a pot, taken from some thickets of it growing in the community garden where my dad and I had a plot last year. It didn't work.

I look out of my windows a lot, so I was thinking I would share some things that I see from them. Back in January, I took pictures of the view. It's not very pretty now, grey and muddy and overcast. I took this today:

Grey grey grey. The plants are prettier.

I like to sit on my couch in the morning, look out the window, and just be for a while. I think I'm praying, but I'm not always sure. Sometimes it's still dark, and I have to move my little icon of Joan of Arc around to keep some of the streetlights from blinding me. From the third floor, I can't see the parking lot - just the sky, the steeple, and the third floor of the library (where there's old books, a bunch of Egyptian pottery and a small mummy, but more on her later). I can also see a few Northwestern buildings. A woman comes and turns her office light on at about 6am, in the engineering building. There are tons of cars that zip by, too, all barrelling past on their way towards the city.

It's hard to be in an apartment that never gets direct sunlight, but I'm glad there are other things to look at. But sometimes I wonder if I need harsher things to look at. I feel pretty sheltered here.

Lilith, who also likes to sit near windows. Not unlike the begonia, I found her in a shelter in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Back then, her name was "Paige."

Hyde Park

This is a photo I took from The Point, on the lakefront in Hyde Park looking south, the weekend before I went away to the hermitage retreat.

Being back in Hyde Park is always interesting. It's where I grew up, and where I did my ministry degree - very formative things. At church on Sunday, I was sharing a little of my concerns about parish ministry and next year, and a person (not affiliated with U of C) said, "Well, of course - it would be hard to go from the University of Chicago into parish life." And I kind of stopped for a second. I didn't know what to say. I felt invisible for a second.

Allow me a little defensiveness: I didn't go to U of C because I wanted to get a Ph.D. or because I thought parish ministry was unimportant. In my class of 14, everyone thought the parish was VERY important. It came with us into all our classes, even more so because our professors were not bringing it into classroom discussion themselves (although Margaret Mitchell, for instance, did). Not everyone went into a parish, but that was for good reasons - 1 still in process, 1 searching for a denomination, 2 Catholic women, and 1 had to do her Anglican year! Two of us have gone on for a Ph.D. - Kirstin in human development (psychology + sociology) and Myung-Sahm in anthropology of religion, specializing in Korean fundamentalism.

I went to U of C, in part, because I wanted to study dead white men - weird, huh? I wanted to try to read Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Niebuhr... and I tried, although I didn't always understand everything. Also, I grew up around the University, and so, like Jacob and the Angel, it was there and I wanted something from it - I wanted to wrestle with it, until it blessed me. It did, although I had disappointments along the way. I'm sure my father's struggle to get his Ph.D. from the University, over thirty years ago, had something to do with my going there, too.

I don't talk about the divinity school much at Seabury, in part because I always get teased about it! But that's alright. It's a diverse and complex experience - 3 years of many different things - that has formed my theology and ministry. I don't believe that it's better or worse than anyone else's formation. It's just there.

In a defensive moment... taken by my friend, Heather.

Hermitage

I had a fabulous retreat at this little house in western Illinois, on some woods and prairie in the middle of farmland. I took long walks, read, said the daily office, journaled, and just sat in contemplation - outside, inside, on the sunporch. It was super. The rolling hills were gorgeous, and I loved just being alone for three and a half days. I read a book by a man who lives as a hermit in the Ozarks. I ate on the little patio when it was nice. I saw lots of white-tailed deer, rabbits, birds, hawks, a badger, and field mice. Oh, and beef cattle. I also saw the remains of a few creatures who had been eaten by coyotes (a rabbit? a badger?). Life and death. I actually heard a coyote barking frenzy the first night I was there, makes me shiver. But I was pretty docile: I made bread and falafel, slept a lot, took pictures, and prayed about next year. More on that later.

The remains of one of those little creatures. Fur was spread over about a fifteen foot square area, and not a scrap of bone or any blood. It seemed so mysterious and awful. There was another patch of fur like this just down the hill from my house - white fur, so I could actually see it from the porch. A reminder that the world is not a peaceful place.

I love prairie.

The view from the house - that's the little chapel, across a creek, a former chicken coop.

Away on retreat

I'll be away all week, in Hyde Park with my parents for the weekend, and off to a hermitage in the woods for three days and four nights. I hope to have some good photos for you when I get back.

I miss the city

Last Friday, John A. and I took the train downtown to see an opera that another friend, Edmund, had recommended - "Dialogues of the Carmelites," about a group of Carmelite nuns who were guillotined in France during the Reign of Terror. The opera was beautiful - very minimalist.

But the city itself is what really took my breath away, finally. It reminded me of my days working at the law firm - when I used to walk around under those buildings every day, have lunch alongside the river with my brother (who still works there), and just soak in all the people people people who had all come downtown to work or sightsee that day. All those buildings, streetscapes - and especially at night, all those lights under all that Midwestern sky. I miss it.

I wish there was a way to go back next year, somehow. The Holy Spirit and I are talking about it.

Seven deadly sins quiz

"You have committed many sins, but Sloth is the mortal sin that has done you in. Just below, discover your full sinful breakdown and learn what it is about you that codemns you to hell."

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Medium

So, usually I don't go in for all this quiz stuff, but I finally came across one that I just couldn't resist. It is Lent, after all. A "full sinful breakdown" seems appropriate.

Discover Your Sins - Click Here

The scary cupboard

This cupboard is at the end of a hallway in the seminary basement. It gives me the heebie-jeebies. Last fall, I was wandering around alone, exploring. I walked right up to this little door and just opened it, curious. It was dark in there, this cool strange air blew all around me, and suddenly every muscle in my body just seized up. Yikes! I think I pretty much ran all the way back to the laundry room. It's like a labyrinth down there, I've gotten lost a couple times, looking for the change machine, and have turned a corner and seen that little door spring up in front of me - and I stop in my tracks, my heart beating. Minotaur, anyone? I should start bringing a ball of string with me to the change machine.

Is this totally crazy? I had to swallow hard to even take a picture of it. But I'm hoping that taking the photo, posting it, and writing about it, will exorcize some of my crazy terror. Any other Seabury people have stories about this thing? Maybe sometime before June I'll get someone else to go down there with me and have another look. I'll let you know.

Saunas are holy

This is the pool at my gym, taken without flash so it looks all cool. It's a nice place to swim and look out the windows, although the walls have all these California cool graphics of disgustingly healthy people looking uber athletic and satisfied with themselves.

I've branched out from swimming to some of the machines, which I always thought looked so dull. The elipticals make my toes go numb, but the stationary bikes are pretty good. You can select different "terrain" for your ride, and although I would never do this in real life, I like the hilly ride. It's nice to have something so concrete to push against.

But I really love the sauna... it's very plain. A little room off the shower room with this aromatic wood paneling and a little turbo heater. It smells good, is QUIET, and I'm amazed how wonderful extreme heat makes you feel. It really does feel purifying and energizing. It feels like a little chapel to me.

My heart is a tin shed

It's raining raining raining. I found this poem on the Writer's Almanac this morning, after a friend pointed me there for another one (which I guess I didn't like so much - sorry, John!). I am often distracted by the meaning I find in little hidden things, like I can't stop thinking about the lettuce plants at the beginning of this novel I've been reading. Hello? I like taking pictures of things funny ordinary things for this blog, too. I think it's how I think about preaching, too, and churches - that every thing and person and place has a hidden heart and a way it is loved by God and called to be in the world, and a hundred different ways to interpret that call.

This poem turns the human heart into a hidden, dark, messy little thing, a way I've never thought of my heart before. I love it. But I can't get blogger to show the tabs - so, I'm sorry Suzanne Cleary! To see her poem in the right formatting, click here.

Echocardiogram

How does, how does, how does it work
so, little valve stretching messily open, as wide as possible,
all directions at once, sucking air, sucking blood, sucking
air-in-blood
how? On the screen I see the part of me that always
loves my life, never tires
of what it takes, this in-and-out, this open-and-shut
in the dark chest of me,
tireless, without muscle or bone, all flex and flux and blind
will, little mouth widening, opening and opening and,
then snapping
shut, shuddering anemone entirely of darkness, sea creature
of the spangled and sparkling sea, down, down where light
cannot reach.
When the technician stoops, flips a switch, the most
unpopular kid in the class
stands offstage with a metal sheet, shaking it while Lear raves. So
this is the house where love lives, a tin shed in a windstorm, tin
shed at the sea's edge, the land's edge,
waters wild and steady, wild and steady, wild.

by Suzanne Cleary, from Trick Pear. © Carnegie Mellon University Press