Where are the young people?

I recently returned from an Eco-Justice Immersion in Seattle that was sponsored by the Office of Young Adult Leadership and Vocations and the former Office of Environmental and Economic Affairs. This immersion, my first event outside of DC with the Episcopal Church, was amazing. That's the short version. :) It was so wonderful to be around 20 other young folks who love God and love environmental justice and social action. I learned a lot about Seattle (first time on the West Coast!) and even more about the variety of Episcopalians across the country. I mean, we're pretty fun.

But there are two things I really want to talk about.

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The first happened at the end, as most memorable things seem to do. After spending five days with one another, we trekked over to the home of the diocesan youth missioner (I think that's the right term?) where we played bocce ball and ate a delicious dinner on her porch.

After dinner, we lit candles and sat around the porch. One of the organizers of the immersion led us in a reflection- we were encouraged to say a few words about what we intend to take back with us. In the candlelight and cool Seattle weather, it was wonderful to sit and listen to each other's experience and what it meant to us. We placed natural objects that we had brought from our homes on the table, which was now functioning as an altar of sorts.

Then, we cracked open our Books of Common Prayer and began a closing service. We sat around, straining to see the words in the low light, and followed along as Griff, our ordained trip organizer, brought out the bread and wine for the Eucharist. I was struck by the simplicity of it all.

But here we were, on someone's porch, blessing the elements and preparing to unite ourselves in the body of Christ. It reminded me of when I learned about how the early Christians worshipped in homes, usually with whoever had a big enough one to accommodate the believers. Here we all were, in the home of a woman we had just recently met but who was hospitable enough to allow 20 of us to stay with her.

There was no music other than the songs we sang, there was no procession or elaborate chalices. There was only the common bond we had built over the five days together- the new relationships were the most beautiful thing we could place on that altar/porch table.

And so on that porch, in the house of a believer that was big enough to hold us, we passed the bread and wine and served one another. When we passed the peace, everyone made sure to hug each person there. We knew each other's names. We celebrated communing together because of how different we all were. The Holy Spirit moved through our gathering in so many ways- it was beautiful. I knew that I was exactly where I needed to be in that moment.

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The second thing I took away from this immersion is a question (ok, several questions actually). But first, let me explain how I came to it.

The topic of youth engagement in faith-based organizations seems like it has been one of great concern lately. After all, anyone who isn't concerned with building up the next generation of leaders is probably in the process of dying out.

Thus, as I entered this immersion, I was interested to hear more about how other young people were doing in their congregations. And let me tell you- there was a wide range. I heard one person remark "I never knew there were this many other young people in the church" just after another spoke about their thriving youth presence in a large church.

As with most things, there's a wide range of experiences among young adults.

But what I was struck by as I watched my fellow participants was the huge amount of potential present in the group. These people could really make change happen.

They are here. They are in the church now.

(Now I'll switch to an ambiguous "we"). "We" are somewhere between the ages of 18-30, but just as with people in the age range of 31-45 or whatever, we have a large variety of lived experience. "We" have different needs and different gifts to bring.

"We" are a group that the church seems concerned with getting more of, of appealing to. I hear about how churches need to employ strategy ___ to get more of "us" or how they need a Facebook page so that "we" will know when to show up. "We" love social media and socials and service projects.

But do "we" really have a place at the table? And is the church ready to make room for "us" on all levels of the church? In other words, are "you" ready for "us?"

I do like socials. Don't get me wrong- I spend way too much time on Facebook.

But what I saw this weekend was potential that demands more than that- I saw emerging leadership. So, my question to my church is this: is there room for "us" at the table? Not the kid's table, but the big table where the important decisions are made and the faith of the church is lived out in the world.

I don't ask this out of a sense of feeling slighted or hurt- rather, I feel that it is the required follow-up question to what I hear all the time in seminary, from folks of many different denominations... "Where are the young people?"

Because maybe "we" are already here, just waiting to be invited in to the inner sanctuary, if you will. This is scary- each organization that I have encountered, religious or not, keeps its inner workings private. I get that. (With the exception of grassroots led groups such as Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, but I have found that these are an exception in a largely hierarchical world).

But isn't true Gospel hospitality that frightening process of allowing the "Other" to cross the threshold? Of allowing that which we don't understand to enter our sacred space in order to create a new shared space? Because the church is built on the foundation of the Gospel. The church is, by its very founding, meant to be a countercultural organization based on the radical principles of love and non-attachment to the trappings of the material world. Isn't it?

So when we talk about young adults in the church, we're not just talking about getting more young people involved in our corporation- we're talking about how to get more young people interested in the above ideas. Right? Isn't this what evangelism is based on? (I ask this honestly and not rhetorically- I don't claim to be an expert in any of this, after all.)

In sum, to me the question of young adults in the church is much more a question of who the church is, rather than a question of who/where young adults are.

I don't know how to answer the latter without first addressing the former.

Of course, I don't know who "we" young people are any better than you do. It's an ambiguous category with only an age limit to define its boundaries, which bothers me because it seems so arbitrary.

Thus, after the immersion, I am left more with a sense of our great interconnectedness as humans than I am with clarity on what young adults want or need. I know that I am deeply grateful for the time spent with new friends, and humbled and excited to be back home with old ones. I cried during church on Sunday because I was so happy to be home...ah, this really is the good life. So thank you thank you thank you to the Episcopal Church and all those I have met so far for providing the space for asking questions and sitting in the tension between new and old. To conclude, I leave you with a quote...

Healing is impossible in loneliness: it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.[Wendell Berry]

The responsibility of community

I have had the following quote on my mind lately:

"Some are guilty, but all are responsible." -Abraham Joseph Heschel

I read it while trying to put together my final essays for my Jewish Theology class during the opening notes of the organ recital for the 4th of July at the National Cathedral. I read it, and then listened to the patriotic music that celebrated the US and what it means to be American.

It struck me as a different way of framing discourse around the so-called "hot" issues of our day.

Two stories jumped to mind:

1. My mom once told me about how a former University of South Carolina football coach would make the whole team run laps if a player was late. This coach would make the offending player sit on the bench and watch while his teammates ran laps in the heat. Why? To build a sense of responsibility and community accountability. To make sure the other players were just as invested in that player making it on time as they were in themselves making it on time.

2. When I worked as a part of a facilitator team for a study abroad program, I quickly found myself chafing against the sense of responsibility I was given for my co-workers. After all, I did my job and I did it well! Why should I get yelled at for a mistake that wasn't mine? ...Because I was missing the whole point- sure, the ideal was to have a perfect session. But the real lesson was that community is about supporting and owning the actions of those around us, even when it wasn't our fault. Because the fact that we didn't do enough to support each other was my fault. And it became our problem.

At the time, I thought these might be isolated cases- after all, our society encourages individualism and the idea of a self-made person.

But after pondering the above quote from Heschel during the 4th of July service, I am reminded- we are all responsible. Just as I feel elation when my country, church, or community behaves admirably, I am equally responsible for its actions when I don't agree with them.

To build community requires that we acknowledge our own guilt in creating systems and dialogues that are unkind and demeaning to others. But it also- just as importantly- requires us to recognize that even when things aren't our fault, they're still something we need to love and work on.

I struggle with this- it is so hard to accept how deeply we are tied as human beings when I find myself repulsed by another's actions. It is so much easier to feel the commonality of us all when I agree with the other!!

But what if, instead of looking for where to place the blame, we instead asked ourselves what we could have done to support or challenge the situation lovingly? What if we asked ourselves questions before we asked them of others?

It reminds me of a question I used to ask when folks were trying to rush out of a meeting or were feeling impatient with group process- "Where are you going?"

While this started as a literal "But seriously, where are you rushing off to? Your room? The bar? Where?" it became a more metaphysical question.

Where are we going? When we say we don't have time to understand each other and listen, where are we rushing off to?

I'm starting to understand that we will probably never reach the perfected and ideal world of our dreams, our beloved community. Instead, all we have under our control is the process- the holy process of how we work together and retrain our selfish souls into becoming loving, community building pieces of a greater machine. After all, "some are guilty, but all are responsible."

I'd like to end with this quote, which addresses a practice in many Protestant church services where we "pass the peace." In my experience, this is typically a time when the clergy says "The peace of Christ be with you." The congregation answers "And also with you" and then proceeds to shake hands and greet those around us. In some places, it can be a real time of extending loving gestures to one another. In others, it can be slightly awkward shaking of hands and not moving from your seat.

"We may not even particularly like the person with whom we exchange the peace, but in this case the gesture reminds us that 'liking' is not what binds community together. To pass the peace is to allow ourselves to be bound to others by more than our fickle likes and dislikes. In passing the peace of Christ, we train our bodies to rely on that peace to transform our dislikes, our hatred, and our propensity toward violence." [Elizabeth Newman]

Why Christianity?

Over the past few days, it struck me that I have never quite explained the noticeable shift in blog entries from travel updates in Thailand to primarily faith-based posts.  Because I am never not me, it didn’t occur to me that I should explain why I was suddenly talking/thinking about Christianity all the time.

However, I think there is value for me in charting out my journey as concisely as I can manage. The timing is also useful, with summer being the time to reflect on year 1 of seminary and the move forward into year 2.

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One important caveat: this is my experience and is not meant to be a blanket statement for/against anyone or any denomination.  The great beauty of the American Christian landscape is its diversity of thought and practice—in other words, the very things that didn’t work for me have worked quite well for others I love and respect. And I love and respect that experience.

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The title of this blog is “Why Christianity?” because when I started this process, I started with that very question. I was living in a predominantly Buddhist country (Thailand) and hadn’t been involved in a church since high school. I had been raised in a South Carolina Presbyterian church. Although there are many wonderful things about the Presbyterian Church (PCA), it wasn’t for me. I had never found a home there and thus left it as soon as I wasn’t compelled to be in church anymore.

As I underwent a huge shift in mindset during college, I was rapidly reading any social justice type text I could get my hands on. I found the idea of community thrilling and wanted to be a part of making our world a better place for everyone, including myself. I was over-involved in campus activities and had too many majors because I was so excited about learning everything I could about everything.

During this time, I wouldn’t say that I ever identified as atheist or even deist, but I would say that I didn’t identify.  I never stopped passively believing in a God, but I didn’t actively believe in one either.

My path back to God began when I saw the church as useful for the first time.  Honestly, there was nothing theological about my insight—as a struggling student/community organizer, I was jealous of their membership.  I was struck by the effort I would exert to get 10 people in a room when the church had 5 times that number once a week.  People went there, presumably, because they believed in something greater than themselves. I saw potential for organizing, potential for engagement.

But I had no idea what to say to Christians. They were the other to me and I had no idea how to talk about what I cared about in that community.

I distinctly remember sitting down with a religion professor at Wofford my freshman year and telling him that he was the first Christian leader I had ever heard openly say that he had doubts. I was floored—Christians could have doubts??

I knew that I didn’t know anything about Christianity, but I had my experiences.  These were largely negative at this point—I had seen the church be hurtful to people I loved, I had never seen a woman in the pulpit, and I never felt like there was a space to ask questions or voice concerns.

Thus, as I made the frightening decision to move to Thailand and work for the CIEE-Thailand program, religion was the last thing on my mind.  All I thought about was changing the world through the force of numbers and the might of people power.

It took being broken open through the process of living, working, and striving in community to show me that I hadn’t really known anything about the “why” of social justice work.  I learned what it was to love and feel the deep pain of that love.  But I also learned the power of that love to change the world.

As my fervor for a love ethic of social justice grew, I found myself coming back to the memory of the church as a group of people seeking something greater than themselves. Because there weren’t many other people I could explore this with in-country, I started my own process of discernment.  I started with the biggest questions: “How do I want to feel when I wake up everyday?” and “What gives me the most life/energy?” As I worked back from there, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do social justice work in the South, my home.  And I saw that the church could be the most organized base from which to act.

I actually felt much more compelled by Buddhism than Christianity. After reading a book on engaged Buddhism, I thought it sounded right up my alley.  However, I then read a quote by Gandhi (I think) that said, (paraphrased) “Why would you convert to my religion or another one? Look within your own tradition and you’ll find what you need there.” I started to rethink the faith tradition I was raised within.

When I started my search for seminaries, this was all I had. I didn’t feel like I was seeking God—instead, I was seeking the ability to communicate with Christians. It seemed funny almost, that I was looking for seminaries. I, who had raced away from the church the moment I moved out, was looking at seminaries.

Somehow, this crazy idea took root in the shelter of Thailand and I applied to three schools.  When I decided to go to Wesley, it was only after several frantic emails to the admissions office and my old boss to make sure that Wesley was really as open and progressive as they claimed.

I was making a huge bet, and I knew it. I had never seen a group of socially progressive Christians and I didn’t know much about the Bible—but I was betting that they might exist. I was hoping that they existed.

That summer was filled with great doubt for me, especially when I returned to America.

What the hell was I thinking? I don’t even know what I think about Christianity, so who am I to go to seminary?

It didn’t help that whenever I told people what I was doing, some assumed I was far more devout than I was.

Q: Are you going to be a pastor?

A: No way, definitely not.

Q: That’s so great, let me give you the name of a good Christian dentist that I know… 

A: Uhh, I don’t really care that they’re Christian—I’d just like a good dentist, thanks.

When I went through orientation at Wesley, my fears were only amplified. Suddenly, my six-year religious hiatus caught up to me.  I was in chapel, I was being prayed over, and I was freaking out. I WAS AT A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL WITH CHRISTIANS.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I had made a serious mistake. Normally, my bold decisions have yielded good results—this time, I thought, was my time to be humbled for my boldness.

The questions asked during this frightening new time only compounded my insecurity.

Q: What denomination are you?

A: Umm… I don’t know actually. I guess I’m non-denominational.

Q: So what non-denominational church are you at, then?

A: Wait, that’s a denomination too? Crap, guess I filled that part out wrong on my Wesley forms…

Q: What is your call?

A: I don’t know, who’s calling? Wait, what do you mean?

Q: So what made you decide to attend seminary?

A: I HAVE NO IDEA.

It reminded me of when I studied abroad in Germany during college. I had taken two years of German language and was ready to study abroad—after all, I met the minimum requirements! Suddenly, I was standing in front of the study abroad office in Freiburg, Germany and trying to read a sign that was on the door. I broke down in tears because I couldn’t understand the sign and was supposed to start medieval history, film, and art history classes in German a few weeks later. I sat in front of that office for 30 minutes before someone came and opened the door and spoke to me in English.

I was insecure because I knew I didn’t know what was going on around me and knew that I was in way over my head.

But, just as when I studied in Germany, things got easier.  The terms thrown around casually became more familiar as I was able to unpack their meanings in class. I made friends and found that there was a wide diversity of belief and opinion at Wesley.  Not everyone was Methodist and not everyone knew why they were there.

I found that we were all seekers, in some form or fashion. We were all seeking something bigger than ourselves that (if we’re being honest) probably scared all of us a little bit.

I came to see that my lack of theology was actually a gift—I didn’t have any structures to tear down, so the only place to go was up. I had an empty mental space and plenty of room to build.

As I studied the Bible and the history of Christianity more, I came to see that the current trends of Christianity are just that—current trends.  I came to see that Christians are just as diverse regionally as they are globally.  I came to see that I could have a place at the table.

I also found that I build trust through questions and probing—and that this was the place for that.  After class, we would sit on the porch and laugh and play and talk about God.  It wasn’t always serious, but it was always formative.

Slowly, I found that I did indeed believe in God. I was still a little unsure about how Jesus factored in until the spring, but there came a point when I realized that I was a Christian. That I could authentically claim that label, that community, and mean it.

I would sit on my porch and watch the sunset and marvel at its beauty.  Slowly, I started to marvel at it because it was God’s creation.  Then, I started to see it as a component of my spiritual practice—a time of my communion with the divine.

I started to see God in every part of my life and I started to lean a little more on that presence.  When I wasn’t sure where to go, I started to pray.  I started to lean into God and listen.  I started to be still.

During this time of listening, I made my way around DC churches.  I went to a wonderful Mennonite church in the fall where I found a hospitable community that helped me find value in the community that is created through weekly worship.

In the spring, I started attending the National Cathedral and a United Church of Christ (UCC) church downtown where I learned more about the Biblical principles of social justice.

During this time, I found myself talking about theology all the time.  All of a sudden, I wasn’t self-conscious at all!  I was writing blog entries about Rick Perry’s treatment of the supposed war on Christmas and I was using “we” instead of “they” when I spoke of Christians.

I realized I really cared about Christianity.  I realized I was wholly committed to this, that I was really Christian.

I would move around plans so as not to miss church—not because I felt like I needed to be there, but because I wanted to be there.  I watched sermons in my spare time because I wanted to hear more and wanted to learn more.

The social justice ideals that had brought me to seminary had new words piled onto them and I realized my love for God and humans compelled me. It consumed me.

The fire that community organizing had lit within me had combined with a love for the divine that brought me to tears of sheer joy.

But I was still searching for a denomination.  The problem with looking for a denomination in seminary is that you can’t just choose an individual church that works—you have to find a whole system that aligns with your theology.  I found myself critiquing liturgy and lamenting that I didn’t get to take communion enough. 

What had happened to me?

Through prayerful reflection, I felt that I needed to be at the National Cathedral. I had no idea why—I simply knew it.  I was moved to tears when deciding whether to take a concrete opportunity at a church I knew I would do well in versus joining the Cathedral, where I wasn’t at all sure I would find a home.

But I knew it was where I was supposed to be.  So I started exploring the Episcopal Church and attending the Cathedral full-time.

Sometimes I would get so excited the night before church that I could barely sleep. Seriously.

I don’t understand it to this day, but I knew I was where I was supposed to be.

As I grew more comfortable in the Cathedral Congregation, I read as many books on the Episcopal Church as I could get my hands on. Every time I read something new, I got more excited. (I even found out I had been baptized in the Episcopal Church in Columbia!)

I felt like I had found home.

Now, as a baby Episcopalian seeker, I am hoping to start the process of ordination at some point. I say “start the process” very deliberately—if you know me, you know that I find process to be sacred and vital.  I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I have faith in God and in the church’s wisdom.  Thus, I don’t want to go into this saying that I want to be ordained because, as history has shown, I rarely know what the next step holds. But I feel called (yes, called!) to this process of discernment in a church I want to get to know more deeply. 

Maybe it isn't in ordained ministry, and that's fine. But just as I felt inexplicably compelled to be where I am now, I feel compelled to move in that direction. I feel called to be at the intersection of God's love and humanity's great need.

What can I say--I’ve fallen in love…and I couldn’t be more pleased about it.

Circling

For me, there are few things more frustrating than sliding backwards. It happens so slowly that one doesn't even notice, until one day you realize you have become complacent once more, lazy once more, disengaged again. When you work so hard to live out your values, sometimes you succeed. The joy, the centeredness, and the actions that result from this place of utter inner balance are when I feel that I am at my best. I find I can encounter any situation with calmness and a clear mind because I am at one with myself.

But slowly, this state changes. For me, it isn't dramatic and it doesn't mean I am in a terrible place now. It's simply realizing that you're not where you hoped you'd be based on where you've been.

This might sound terribly vague, and in some ways it is. I'm not failing anything and I'm not depressed. I just don't feel awesome, I don't feel intoxicated by God and my relationship with the divine.

Ways of communing with God that worked for me during the school year unravel in the summer. Patterns of behavior that I now realize were hinged on a community of accountability become easier to perpetuate.

For me, the summer is a time of spiritual wilderness. I am separated from the easy regularity of a school year or a work schedule. Instead, I find myself immersed in finals with fast turn-arounds and loads of Greek grammar which bends my mind in painful ways. My soul yearns for the time when my old system was workable- however, I find I am constantly in a process of re-becoming. The high can't last forever, and the boredom of summer feels stifling compared to the more extreme highs and lows of the past year.

I have found that there aren't too many prayers for feeling average. It seems to be easier to reach out to God in times of great distress or great happiness, but what do you pray when things are just mediocre? How do you relight the fire when the old way doesn't work like it used to?

It reminds me that the spiritual journey I am on is much like the pedagogical path described in many of the books I read pre-seminary. Life is a constant process of learning and then unlearning, of acting and evaluating. Any time I slack off on any of this, I feel it. Perhaps not all at once, but slowly and then dramatically. I suddenly know I've gotten lazy and circled back to where I was before. It reminds me of how The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu described his prayer life as being like brushing your teeth- you can skip it, but it just feels off. After not brushing your teeth for a week, it gets downright gross.

It's frustrating and annoying, and it's life. Being a seeker and human being isn't always exciting... Sometimes it needs to be quiet too. Even as I struggle with the restlessness summer brings, I am trying to sit with it and pay attention to it. Where does the restlessness stem from? Was it always there, but was able to remain unnoticed in the busyness of the year? Or is it a wave of feeling just like any other, that needs to be named and felt and then left behind?

While having dinner with the fabulous Annie and Meghan Hottel-Cox, they let me borrow a book called the "Women's Uncommon Prayers." It is a take on the Episcopal "Book of Common Prayer" and is a collection of Episcopal women's prayers for nearly every imaginable event in life. The one that spoke to me today in my period of frustration and restlessness was as follows:

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and that shall be,  Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven: Awaken us with your Holy Spirit, and preserve us from the temptation to stay comfortably asleep; encourage us to proclaim our authenticity, and preserve us from a false accommodation to the world; breathe into us your breath of life, stir us up into activity, and preserve us from the inertia that leads to complicity in our own oppression;  Open our eyes to the promises in creation, Open our hearts to the love and example of Jesus, Open our ears to the persistent whisperings of the Holy Spirit, and preserve us from a sense-deadened existence; give us the confidence to engage technology and preserve us from regarding it with fear or with too much trust; remind us that we are made in your image, that we, too, are creators, lovers, decision makers; instill in us the pride of our heritage, and preserve us from excessive, crippling humility. Above all, gracious God, give us the grace to hear your word to us and the courage to claim and act on that inner authority; preserve us from the tyranny of the external authority that comes from the world. Amen.

--The Reverend Margaret Cunningham

Also, I wanted to share the sermon from church on Sunday. It was the best 4th of July service I have ever been to (keeping in mind that there will also be a July 4th service of a more typical variety on Wed)... because it wasn't all sugary and "America the Beautiful." It was honest and gritty, prophetic and bold. I commend Rev. Dr. Wade for his courage and look forward to growing in this community.

"The fact is, God doesn't need the church. God doesn't need cathedrals. Churches need God, and we forget that to our peril." -Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade
July 1, 2012 Sermon at National Cathedral

Sunset & Hafiz

Do you ever feel like God has been waiting for you to simply open your eyes to beauty? Tonight it was a sunset with birds singing... followed by the discovery of a new Hafiz poem. Soul food.

Falling on a Soft Mat by Hafiz

More attentive than any lover or parent

is really God to us, but our gauge of judgment

is impaired by the world's values, and our bodies'

often dominance over our spirit realm.

A young child first learning to walk and very

likely to fall may be allowed to do so by a wise

guardian or teacher

if there is a soft mat beneath its body that will

cushion it from harm.

There is a soft rug you can place around others

it is forgiveness, it is charity.

We are all still learning to walk--and fly--in

ways; kin help each other. And everything I am

related to.

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

This was the "Still Speaking Daily Devotional" for today (http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/). I found it particularly poignant and wanted to pass it along.
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Psalm 71:20

"Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up."

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

When death hits us, we are never prepared. Even when we know the end is near, when we can see the storm on the horizon, when it hits, it still feels like a tsunami. For one thing, most of us don’t have a lot of experience losing a deeply beloved one. We tend to have a short list of lives whose loss would be most ultimately devastating. How do you practice for the loss of a husband? Or a parent? Or a child? There is no way to be prepared. 

They say that grief echoes. Each new grief takes us back to a grief we have experienced in the past. So when you lose your second parent, you find yourself going right back to losing your first parent. Suddenly, you are thinking of every other loss you have ever been through. 

It seems so unfair, that in the midst of a new grief, you would find yourself pulled back in memory to past deaths, but there it is. As a pastor I have learned that this is how it often goes, whether we want it to or not. Grief echoes. Better to know that than to be caught off guard by it. 

Better to be on the lookout for that when you see someone else who is grieving in ways that don’t make sense to you. Perhaps that person is reeling with the echoes of past grief that you know nothing about. Deal gently with those who grieve. 

And when you grieve, deal gently with yourself. 

Grief echoes. 

Prayer

In the echoes of grief, may memories come to be blessings, and eternal life, my promise. Amen.


About the Author
Lillian Daniel is the senior minister of the First Congregational Church, UCC, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She is the author, with Martin Copenhaver, of This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers.

There's no cool way to hate yourself.

This Saturday night, I have been watching several wonderful and inspiring documentaries on women and their journeys. (Yes, I know...but HBO is addicting!)

The last documentary I watched was on Gloria Steinem, the well-known feminist leader.  I was struck by her late in life journey more so than her numerous accomplishments as a  movement leader—later in life, she wrote a book called “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem.” She spoke of her realization that she, in fact, had very little self-esteem. In her quest to find it, she went through a retrospective analysis of her life in an effort to find her own center and her own sense of self. http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/gloria-in-her-own-words/index.html

This in turn reminded me of the Ashley Judd article that went around a few months back in which she firmly (and rightly, in my opinion) chastised the media for waging a battle over women’s bodies and appearance. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/09/ashley-judd-slaps-media-in-the-face-for-speculation-over-her-puffy-appearance.html

A quote that I saw on the Internet around this time period was “There’s no cool way to hate yourself.”

What a powerful sentence—in this culture of skinny models and trendy diets, there is no cool way to hate yourself.

As a woman trying to find myself in this world, I found it more convenient to talk about all the ways in which I didn’t measure up. In college, we dieted and compared notes on which alcoholic drinks contained less calories. Even when we binged (or just went out for that late night Taco Bell run), it was always with the undercurrent of me knowing we were doing something wrong. Deviant, even. (In my opinion—not that everyone felt this way).

Weight and looks were always part and parcel with self-worth and more often than not were seen as directly reflective of one’s own sense of self. In other words, if you were gaining weight it was because something was wrong—you were going through a break up, the freshman 20 was in full swing, there were a lot of stresses at school. Comments about women’s weight flowed freely between groups of friends, not to mention between family and others.

Conversely, losing weight seemed indicative of something going right—you were finally eating better, you cared about how you looked, you wanted to start dating again. Does this seem obvious? It's sad to me if it is.

As seen from the two parallels I have drawn, my own relationship with myself and my weight has been a deeply troubled one that has caused me great pain for much of my teenage and adult life. It is hard to say which came first—the societal assumptions placed upon me or my own projections of self worth onto society.  Either way (and likely both), I entered my twenties with a strong sense of my own ugliness.

Yes, I knew I was ugly. Just as I knew I was smart and a feminist social justice organizer blah blah and that my voice mattered, I simultaneously knew my body was hateful. I stood in front of the mirror and saw all the places where I didn’t measure up to other’s expectations of me. I desperately, desperately, wanted to be skinny/perfect even as I sat in my feminist philosophy course and reveled in the voices of strong women. I hated my curves and the way people would look at me. I hated that people treated me like an object and so I ignored it. I didn’t date much in high school or college, which from what I understand was more often assumed to originate from a sense of superiority. Oh, if only I had been eloquent enough back then to talk about my insecurity and the cycle of self-hate that went through me every single day from the moment I woke up.

Even as I started gaining more confidence in my looks, I still struggled with my body. This fleshy, messy human body that I inhabited. It still seemed alien to me and far too squishy and imperfect no matter what I did or how many calories I restricted.

I wrote this poem (embarrassing moment, I debated putting this in the post…) about my experience at the height of my struggle with food and self-hate. While I am no poet, this has been a wonderfully therapeutic process for me as I continue to dig deep into my own darkness. I share it because, like this post, I want to add another voice to the women who fight for our dignity as beloved creatures of the divine.

She used to wake up everyday and smile with the emptiness inside of herself.  She would place her hands on her stomach and feel her heartbeat, steady and sharp and then she would stretch her back and place her hands on her hipbones as they jutted out. 

Moving out of the bed and onto the scales she would weigh herself and feel the creeping glee of a lower number than the day before.

Slinking around the house like a wraith she curled into the couch and read a book, watched the news, and plotted out the day. The coffee would provide enough energy to get to lunch time and the next coffee would boost her on to the dinner time and the banana and pieces of meat would take her until bed time where if she could just fall asleep again before the emptiness began to cave in on itself then she could wake up the next day even happier and even more proud than the day before.

The dinner time was the hardest time because the coffee stopped working and the cigarettes stopped curbing the pangs in her stomach that were nothing compared to the waves of terror that swept through her soul like a fire.

The wait outside the cafeteria brought the tears, hot and rolling with shame and anger and the question buried deep within of how a sandwich had become so scary.

Back and forth, back and forth she walked and turned and ran and stopped and whimpered and screamed inside of herself.  The decision to get the sandwich with the chicken salad was delicious, but every bite that went down was a reminder of her failure.

She left the cafeteria and curled into her bed and wondered what she would do the next time she had to confront the sandwich and the hot shame of not being able to make such a simple choice.

She had wanted the sandwich and yet she never wanted another sandwich again and yet why was it so wrong to want a sandwich and when will she ever ever ever be able to eat like a normal person again?

She put her hand on her side and reveled in the bones of ribs and hips and the skin that lay over them and the fat that wasn’t in the coffee but was in the sandwich and she plotted out her next day with the coffee and the coffee and the sandwich.

This struggle continues for me today, but has been greatly helped by several strong and confidant women in my life. Because it isn’t enough to tell someone to love themselves—I have learned the act of loving oneself speaks so much louder than words. When I see women loving their bodies, I feel elated. Isn’t that the ultimate act of rebellion, to say to the world that you will not bow down to their expectations of you? That you are the only one who can determine your self-worth?

As someone who has talked about community building and social justice for years now, I am struck by how long it took my words to catch up with me. I said many lovely things that were intended for other people rather than allowing myself to be broken open to the radical new idea of my own wondrous being.

I believe I am beautiful because I am a wonderful Creation of the divine. Even when I don’t feel beautiful, it is essential that I reframe my definition of beauty rather than my self-worth.

The love of God is vast enough to encompass even my brokenness and I should allow myself the same grace. I am now coming to see that our beauty is actually more in the broken, dark places than it is in the painted faces we show to the world. Our experience is all the more poignant because of the journey we undertake each day just to love the self we have been given.

It is particularly appropriate that the scripture today is Amos 5:8, which reads

Seek [God] who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth: The Lord is [God’s] name.

Tonight I pray that I continue to seek the God who turns our deep darkness into the brightness of a new day. Systematic reform must start in my soul, and I pray for the strength to each day confront the voices that say I am somehow less than. I pray that I remember to treat my body as a Temple to decorate and love, not a place of hate and restriction. After all, tomorrow is Pentecost- what a joyous day! Hallelujah!

RIP Walter Wink

I'm a bit late posting this, but in memory of the great and prolific theologian Walter Wink, here is a tribute to his life and work along with an excerpt of his that I love.

http://forusa.org/blogs/richard-deats/walter-wink-presente/10545

"The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no biblical sex ethic. Instead it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand-year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible only knows a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, culture, or period.

The very notion of a "sex ethic" reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is "ethical" in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person's life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witness the shift from the ideal of preserving one's virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.
...
Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus' love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn't mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus' love commandment. We might address younger teens, not with laws and commandments whose violation is a sin, but rather with the sad experiences of so many of our own children who find too much early sexual intimacy overwhelming, and who react by voluntary celibacy and even the refusal to date. We can offer reasons, not empty and unenforceable orders. We can challenge both gays and straights to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole."

Discerning- denomination

Hello internet, it's been awhile since my last post. With the flurry of activity at the end of the semester, I haven't had the processing time that usually precedes a post.

It's hard to believe I have finished my first year of seminary- I am now a 2nd year MDiv student! That, and the quiet lull that follows the semester, have given me a lot to think about. This year has been one of great growth, but also great rest. I spend a fair amount of time with my friends, both in DC and at school.... and then I go home. I go to my apartment that houses only me and my stuff, that I can always guarantee is quiet and totally within my control.

I have never lived alone prior to this year- in the last few years, I have even survived hyper social living situations, culminating (I hope) in my 4 roommates/coworkers/friends/siblings/p'facs in Thailand. While that was fun, I must confess that I adore the time to restore my mind and think. With no one but myself to get mad at when the dishes remain undone or the half and half ran out (like today, despite going to 2 grocery stores yesterday grrr), I can better listen to God's movement in my life and better understand my own needs as well.

At this time, the thing most heavily on my mind is denomination. I was baptized Episcopal (as I learned the other week, ha thanks Mom), raised Presbyterian (PCA), and have somehow always chosen Methodist institutions (Wofford College and Wesley). Parts of my family are Southern Baptist and others are Methodists. Thus, for me denominations have always seemed fairly flexible. This year, I have attended a Mennonite church in the fall, a UCC church in the spring, Methodist chapel at Wesley (well, usually it's Methodist), and the Episcopal National Cathedral at various points in between.

I believe that God's Word finds its way through our human institutions regardless of our work, so in some ways I find even the choice of denomination baffling. Why are there so many choices? For example, I was looking for wine the other night at the grocery store and was once again shocked by the sheer number of choices... which made me ask "Are they really all that different?" It's hard for me to find differences between the $30 bottle and the $8 one (I know my stepdad would fervently disagree haha).

So why do Protestant Americans have so many choices? It seems more confusing to me than helpful. It also reminds me of a TED talk my friend Allison showed me, which concludes that humans seem to be happier when they have less choices. Watch it here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose.html

No wonder I am having trouble settling down in one particular denomination- I am paralyzed with too many options! It doesn't help that DC has just about anything I could imagine.

Because of this, I have tried to reframe my parameters. Instead of starting with the question "Which denomination should I join?" I changed it to "Where do I feel God most strongly?" Other theologians I have read call this a "thin place," one where the distance between humans and God is especially small.

In my search for thin places, I keep coming back to the National Cathedral. This might seem obvious- I mean, who could deny its beauty and majestic presence? But there's something more to it.

The Episcopal liturgy speaks to my soul, even as its hierarchical structure does not. The reverence I feel during the service feels God inspired, fills me with the Holy Spirit. I think church there is my "thin place" in DC.

There's something neat and tidy about it as well- I was baptized at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia, SC. Am I simply coming back around to my spiritual roots? After much time exploring the world and its offerings, have I ended up where I started?

I love the congregational structure of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the strong lay leadership of the church I have been attending in DC.

However, I can't get the high church liturgy out of my mind. I don't understand it, but I feel compelled by it.

All I can be sure of- every time I think I've nested somewhere, I end up moving somewhere else. I also wonder if perhaps I am not meant to be comfortable in any denomination. Perhaps my path goes along the edge of the churches, where there is greater freedom yes, but also greater loneliness. I want to be in community with a church, but as always... "Not my will but thy will be done."

This passage from Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Leaving Church, really spoke to me about my path of discernment:

"All these years later, the way many of us are doing church is broken and we know it, even if we do not know what to do about it. We proclaim the priesthood of all believers while we continue living with hierarchical clergy, liturgy, and architecture. We follow a Lord who challenged the religious and political institutions of his time while we fund and defend our own. We speak and sing of divine transformation while we do everything in our power to maintain our equilibrium. If redeeming things continue to happen to us in spite of these deep contradictions in our life together, then I think that is because God is faithful even when we are not. When we are able to trust the gospel that our human love of God and one another is the sum total of what we were put on earth to do, and that we have everything we need to be human, then redeeming things will continue to happen, both because and in spite of us. They will happen because God loves life so much that even at the grave we make our song Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

What about Holy Saturday?

I have been continually struck by the absence of a proper title for the Saturday of Holy Week. As the day before Easter Sunday, arguably the most important day of the Christian calendar, you'd think it would have a more venerable role in the week long services that are called Holy Week. There's Palm Sunday to start off the week, but the momentum of the week really gets going on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. [In fact, I have noticed that many churches, assuming that congregants won't make it back to church before the next Sunday (Easter Sunday), race through the story of Christ's entrance to Jerusalem to the trial to the death on the cross to the anticipation of the Resurrection on Palm Sunday. Thus, a weeklong process is condensed into two days.]

On Good Friday, Jesus was nailed to the cross and uttered the words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" before he died and was buried.

Even now as I type, my urge is to burst in with the "he rose again from the dead" part of the Apostle's Creed and voila! We're at the joy of the Resurrection!

But- what about Saturday?

The story of Jesus is reminiscent of a movie we're watched about 2000 times- once you've seen how it ends, it is pretty hard to appreciate the tension felt when we didn't know what was going to happen. To use a completely trivial example- I was a wreck when reading the Harry Potter series. I mean, that last book! Wow, I didn't sleep all night because I was completely absorbed in the story and riddled with anxiety about whether my hero, my beloved hero who I had basically grown up with, was going to make it out ok.

Thus, in my humble opinion, it seems that if Easter Sunday is the high point of the Christian year, Holy Saturday might be one of the darkest days. Holy Saturday was the time of silence, the time of waiting... where the folks watching weren't at all sure what was going to happen next.

This wasn't just me being a nervous wreck because of some character in a book- this was a group of believers who thought enough of one man's work to drop everything and follow him. They had left their families, their loved ones, and their jobs... all to follow a man through small towns in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. And now... He was dead?? Really? What was the point of it all, if he was really gone? How can the Savior cry out that he has been forsaken and then die?

No one was sure of anything during that time. Had I been one of those followers of Jesus, I think I would have felt the doubt and uncertainty creep in. After all, how can a God be killed? Especially for the people of the time, this was in many ways a total impossibility (isn't the point of being divine that you don't have to deal with that sort of thing?) However you look at it, these folks had taken a major risk. And on Holy Saturday, the results of their gamble were still very much in the air. No side could claim victory, only anxiety.

What do you do on Holy Saturday, when it seems that all hope has been lost? How can we fully appreciate the joy of Easter Sunday without the utter hopelessness of Saturday?

If I might continue with my thought train, it also seems indicative of something within the church that we have never really known what to do with Holy Saturday. While I am far from being a church historian or liturgist, in my own experience I can't recall a service for the day.

Just because there is blank space in the narrative does not mean there is no substance. The silence of Holy Saturday might be one of the most profound lessons for our community. What does the church do, when all the lights go out? "The night may be darkest before the dawn," but that only comforts us because it presumes the dawn will come. What does it mean to live in the darkness with no certainty of the coming dawn?

The haunting quiet of Holy Saturday is too easy to lose in our race to the glory of Christ as a risen and victorious Lord. I wonder what we can do to slow that down, not just during Holy Week, but during the rest of the weeks in the year.
---------------------------------------------------
Another thought: I also imagine the reactions of the broader community when faced with the grief of the followers of Jesus. What about the people who had condemned Jesus to the cross? Jesus might have left, but all the humans were still stuck in the same little corner of the Roman Empire. I hope this isn't too flippant to say... but I also imagine Holy Saturday must have been really awkward and uncomfortable. The broader community still had to interact with one another during this time of deep grief for a segment of it. The people who said they wanted Jesus crucified didn't evaporate- they continued to exist alongside the devout friends of Jesus.

That thought transitions me into a broader concept I am struggling with now. Thanks to a free month of Netflix, I have been racing through a large number of pretty depressing and poignant documentaries. The two I watched today, "Forgiving Dr. Mengele" and "Deliver Us From Evil," both dealt with the deepest darkness of the human soul, the former in regards to the Holocaust and the latter in regards to pedophilia within the Catholic priesthood.

From my experience in Nashville (as described in my last post), I have had the subject of forgiveness heavily on my mind. In the first documentary, a woman who was subjected to horrible experiments by Nazi doctors in Auschwitz speaks out of her conviction to forgive all the Nazis for their crimes. She is lauded by some, but interestingly not supported and even criticized by many of her fellow survivors. Lastly, she is convinced by a person she meets to put her ideal of forgiveness to the test again by meeting with a group of Palestinians in the West Bank (she lived in Israel for 10 years). While I don't want to ruin it, I will say that I was left with a sense of unease and a lack of resolution in the end. [Very important: I am making no comment on what victims/perpetrators in either case should do as I am merely a passing observer of these two films].

The moral ambiguity present in these cases, the deep and long lasting pain and lament described by the people in each case.... seems somehow fitting for Holy Saturday. There was not resolution or easy answers in either case and viewers of the two films are largely left to figure things out for themselves. After watching "Deliver Us From Evil," I wept at seeing the pain of the victims and their families. After speaking with a Catholic priest in Nashville convicted of molesting young boys, I was disturbed and compelled by his humanity. For me, this means that I can't watch that documentary with the same easy lines drawn in the sand. I am left unsettled, in the most visceral sense of the word.

Thus, while I long for Easter Sunday... I wonder if I didn't move too quickly through my own Holy Saturday.

Forgiveness

I have been meaning to write this blog for 2 weeks now... but better late than never, I suppose.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to Nashville, TN with several of my Wesley Urban Fellows classmates to participate in a lecture series on mass incarceration and also to visit the Riverbend High Security Penitentiary with pastor and educator Rev. Janet Wolf.

We heard a beautiful and compelling speech by Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" (see here for the book: http://www.newjimcrow.com/). This event, sponsored by this amazingly radical little college called American Baptist College (http://www.abcnash.edu/), was thought-provoking and disturbing at the same time. For more info, I encourage you to check out Alexander's novel.

However, the part of our trip that had the most impact on me was our visit to Riverbend (http://www.tn.gov/correction/institutions/rmsi.html).

Rev. Wolf, along with other educators from the Nashville area, have been working at this prison for nearly 15 years alongside "insiders" (as the inmates are called) in order to build a group within the prison. This group, consisting of approximately 15 insiders, has been meeting regularly for years and is self-directed and self-determining. In these meetings, they discuss books, theology, education, and their lives. They are a community.

I was so excited to meet with these men- after hearing my friend Doug talk about it, they sounded like the closest thing to our community/student exchanges in Thailand, which I missed deeply. Thus, after being searched and allowed into the prison (I even had to shake my bra out ha), we were led through a maze of buildings, barbed wire, high fences, men with huge guns, and open green spaces to a room with a group of men sitting around outside. Due to my faster than normal walking pace, I was one of the first to arrive in the room.

In some ways, this was my greatest fear. I have always felt uncomfortable around large groups of men, especially those I know has been convicted of violent crimes. But, due to my training both abroad and in SC, I knew that I needed to take a deep breath and jump in without thinking through all that.

Any fear I had was soon alleviated- I was greeted with big smiles and handshakes. We walked around introducing ourselves and reveling in the welcome of the place. Each person I met greeted me with such openness and care- it was like truly meeting someone, without all the pretensions and masks we often wear in public. In this room, I felt as if I had entered one of the most "real" spaces of my life.

We sat down, each of the Wesley students between two of the insiders to mix up the groups. I laughed with the men at my sides, and felt such joy at being welcomed into that room with them. What a privilege to really feel like we were sitting at God's table, communing with one another and loving one another.

Any curiosities about their crimes, or why they were at Riverbend, evaporated as we sat in the room. As we went around and shared (insiders first, then Wesley folks), I shared that I knew the criminal system was racist because I thought/think that way. I criminalized black males for much of my life, and had a fear of them as the "other." As I shared this, a light went on in one of the inmates eyes. He eagerly wished to speak with me more, but the exchange was ending. Quickly, he said "I really want to address your comment." We sat down as everyone hurried around us and he asked "Have you ever seen the movie A Time to Kill??" I said I hadn't, and he briefly explained the plot in which a black man is accused of a crime and hires a white lawyer to defend him. This insider, JBaby, ended by saying "He said that he chose this lawyer because he knows how they think. This person was chosen because they used to think like that, and now they can help because they know how they think." I was struck by this, and it stuck with me as I left the prison. (Here is the trailer to the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O90-DO9P6q0)

In fact, this small interaction has stuck with me in the weeks after the trip. As I struggle to discern God's plan for my life, I keep coming back to the words of JBaby in Riverbend, paraphrased as they are: "I called you because you know how they think."

What a powerful statement, what a beautiful insight for my life... from a man that society teaches us is a criminal who deserves to rot away in prison. The Bible calls us to prison ministry, but not because we need to tell folks in prison anything. The Bible calls us to this for our own souls, so that we may love deeply and build community with all of God's creation. I was moved and changed through my experience, especially after leaving the prison and discovering more about the crimes committed.

This is why I titled this post "forgiveness." After meeting and learning alongside a former Catholic priest convicted of molesting young boys, I am compelled to reimagine God's love. I am convicted by the humanity of this person and the other folks we met during the above meeting and also on death row. Our exchange with the death row inmates was filled with the Spirit and tears came to my eyes as I heard the men speak of God's redeeming love in their lives, of the importance of this group time for them (many are in solitary confinement the rest of the time), and the joy with which they interacted with the prison chaplain there.

When we look into another person's eyes, when we shake their hand, we are compelled to recognize our vast similarities rather than differences. I am suddenly aware that you are not only "murderer," but a human just like me. In Genesis, God created humans and declared it good. What a powerful statement for our lives- that we have all been declared good, regardless of our actions!

To leave this at mere theological reflection would be selfish on my part, however. Our love for one another must then become an action, done hand in hand with those who society (but not God) teaches us can be thrown away.

Which part of God's creation can be forgotten, or locked away in the darkness? Who is unworthy of love?

Despite my deep discomfort with the vastness of God's love, I am moved by it and can find no loopholes in it. Thankfully God's love is greater than my own very conditional and sensitive human feelings.

In closing, I owe such a debt of gratitude to the brave men of Riverbend High Security Penitentiary and Rev. Janet Wolf, Jeannie Alexander, and all the others who make this kind of experience possible. To all my new and old friends at Vanderbilt Divinity School, I strongly encourage you to get into the class! (Taught at the prison with VDS students and insiders in the class).

I am so humbled by the power of love in my life and so grateful to be at Wesley, where I can take life-changing trips with my classmates.

Some photos of our time in Nash-vegas. :)

Beautiful flight, we are so small comparatively

First time at Hobson UMC and I had to speak, ha!

Eleanor, Anissa, Kayeen, Doug, me, and Sylvia at Hobson UMC

Making sandwiches for Hobson's homeless ministry

Southern food FEAST at Monell's- had to nap after this meal

Investigating the scenery during Eleanor's photo shoot :)

Getting ready to hear Michelle Alexander speak!

Making trouble with DJ, our lovely friend from VDS

With the President of ABC- thanks for your time!

The Bible and sexuality

Here is a good video that an old CIEE student (JBo!) sent my way. The Biblical analysis is pretty solid, and he's obviously done a lot of research. Have questions? Check it out! And keep doing your own research, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQjNJUSraY

What is KONY 2012?

Starting a day or two ago, I started seeing tons of posts about KONY 2012. At a glance, I thought it was something for the presidential campaigns and didn't bother to look into it. However, after seeing it again this morning (and seeing numerous dissenting opinions posted alongside) I decided to check it out.

The video was interesting and well done, with lots of Youtube clips that make my generation laugh and relate. The hook is very good, and the birth of a white baby in America helps us relate to our human experience.

However, I won't rehash some of the better written criticisms of the video as outlined in several articles like the one below.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things
http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/solving-war-crimes-with-wristbands-the-arrogance-of-kony-2012/254193

The quote I want to focus on is one from Mr. Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children. This organization is the one that produced the video and was quoted in this NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/world/africa/online-joseph-kony-and-a-ugandan-conflict-soar-to-topic-no-1.html?_r=1&hp:

“No one wants a boring documentary on Africa,” he said. “Maybe we have to make it pop, and we have to make it cool.”“We view ourself as the Pixar of human rights stories,” he added.

I found this quote the most troubling out of all the back and forth about the video. Aside from the disturbing assumption that people don't care about human rights stories unless they're well-produced (please, please tell me this isn't true), his first statement begs the question: who asked for a documentary on Africa? Was it the African (because let's not forget that Africa is a huge and diverse continent) people? Who are the African people? 

Quite simply, why does a white man with a Western education want to make a documentary on "poor Africans?"

I don't know this man, nor do I pretend to understand his motives. However, as presented in the video, it seems fair to suggest that his disgust with the situation in Uganda regarding child soldiers has led to a deep sense of righting injustice in a foreign land.

Now, I'm not saying that what is going on in Uganda isn't troubling. Uganda, just like the US, has many problems of socio-economic inequality and corruption. And Uganda seems to still be grappling with the aftermath of war and what to do with former child soldiers.

But, I see that there are several assumptions underlying this video [not a complete list]:
1. Africa is a savage place, and the United States needs to save it from itself.
2. Africa cannot save itself.
3. Raising awareness in Western, developed countries affects everyday Africans.
4. American cultural norms are correct and African cultural norms are wrong.
5. Talking to one person is equivalent to speaking with an entire group of people.
6. Solutions to human rights issues are obvious.
7. Money is needed to solve human rights issues.
8. The United States Navy Seals are the best solution to the problem of child soldiers in Africa.
9. An internet campaign is change.
10. Wearing a bracelet directly aids catching an international war criminal.

[I have intentionally used Africa here, rather than the region of Uganda, because I think this is another assumption that Africa as a whole exists.]

To me, this is why SELF-AWARENESS is vital in social justice work.

Many articles seem to say "Well, maybe there are problems with the video... but isn't that missing the point? How can saving child soldiers be bad?"

I would argue that this is the crux of a huge issue within the social justice community--the idea that self-awareness is not necessary for work. Why is this man adopting a white guilt savior complex for some child in Africa? Why are millions of US dollars being funneled towards this? And why is criticism of his irresponsible appropriation of Ugandan children deemed insensitive? 

To be honest, this kind of stuff pisses me off more than blind ignorance. I care deeply about human rights and justice work, so to see someone with money throwing around white guilt that masquerades as real change makes me angry. Are those cool bracelets really going to help a child in a foreign country that most of us know very little about? And most importantly-- what right do white folks have to "fix" Uganda when many of the root problems were established during white colonial expansion and mining of African countries? 

We must not forget that European colonialism set up many of the structures that continue to oppress people across Africa today. Where's that Pixar video?

Until we get real as a nation with this conversation, I leave it with this: I am tired of seeing white people carelessly toss around huge amounts of resources with a Wikipedia level of information while expecting the world to praise them for how wonderful they are. We can do better than that.