Alone but not lonely

Syracuse is cold, friendly, and friendless. Maybe it's an invitation to discover myself. Out among the trees and stretches of dotted highways, this is my do-over. Each day is a signal flare tossed up high, illumining some thing I didn't have eyes to see or ears to hear. Well, you've got my attention, self. Here's to the memories! I look forward to getting to know ya.

Signed,
Finnegans

truth over cliche

Are God’s consolations not enough for you? Job 15:11

This would have made a great punch line for a sermon. "Isn't God enough for you? Aren't his promises enough? If his grace has brought you to it, won't his grace bring you through it?" Applause

Except it wasn't God that asked. It was Eliphaz. The guy who, like Job's other friends, just wouldn't stop preaching. Eliphaz' speech consisted of various wise aphorisms and sayings. Each verse of his speech could stand on its own as a musing on sin and morality. Individually, some of them were noble, true, even poignant. But Eliphaz took these sayings, fletched arrows out of them, and fired them at Job. And all Job heard was, Our God is Great, Our God is Awesome, and You are Bad, Bad, Bad.

The question at issue can be a great reminder of God's many consolations I experience throughout the week. But when uttered in this context, it was an accusation.

Which reminds me of Job's speeches. Job's own words about God were ... less than flattering. He calls him a bear lying in wait, a hunter who laid mines all around Job. A seasoned master at arms, "he bursts upon me; he rushes at me like a warrior." Job minces no words: God has set a target on his back. And regarding his friends pious declarations, Job retorts,

Will you speak wickedly on God’s behalf?

    Will you speak deceitfully for him?

Will you show him partiality?

    Will you argue the case for God?

 

Yet in the end, Job's friends lose the speech-talent competition. In the end, God validates Job. So what do I learn here? One thing is what relationship with God looks like when the world beats you down. It's not clichés and platitudes. It's wrestling with God and demanding justice. Job's anger at God stemmed from a God-given sense of justice. Job's urge to his friends about showing partiality channel's God's own heart - for God "shows no partiality to princes and does not favor the rich over the poor". Job is anguished at God because he was made in his image, and therefore of course he should anguish at apparent inexplicable suffering. 

 

We don't need to argue God's case to our friends when they suffer, nor when we suffer. When we suffer, we should vent our God-given sense of justice, craving for shalom and love. When we feel forsaken, it's okay to admit it. God will understand. He did it as well.

Not the Critic Who Counts

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

 

                                                                       Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship In a Republic (1910) 

 

 

 

 

Loki

His ears always perked
His expression thoughtful
Loki was his name
He was a handful

A master builder
of tunnels and castles
His greatest making was
The bridge to my heart

Never in a rush
Did not ask for much
Except for food, water
And a gentle touch

Solitary, unafraid
Adventurous, modest
Curious, Cautious,
                                                                                            Leaving him, the hardest.


Loki (?/?/2013 - 10/1/2015)

America, the dream, the place

Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

quotes.

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
— Judge Leon M. Bazile, January 6, 1959

"Nothing is more sacred than racial integrity. Purity of race is a gift of God. but it is a gift which man can destroy. And God, in his infinite wisdom, has so ordained it that when man destroys his racial purity, it can never be redeemed. This should be sufficient to show that any statement which says our Christian religion forces us to accept the social equality of the races and to sanction intermarriage as the private affair of the two individuals concerned is utterly and absolutely fallacious. If God gave the Negro the inalienable right to social equality and intermarriage with whites, then we must go further and say that He gave to the black man the right to destroy the white race."

- Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, 1946

Remembering My Church

I grew up in an Indian Pentecostal Church. We started church in a private school's biology lab. We shared the lab with a friendly boa constrictor. Later, we upgraded to the old sanctuary in the school. Over the years we shuffled around. We met in a store front in Brooklyn. We met in the basement of our Queens home. We met in a Knights of Columbus hall next to a bar. Then we finally settled, after two decades of renting, in a building of our very own.

Since then, the face of the church started to change. A good third of our congregation became non-Indian. Our picnic tables featured carbonated drinks from Haiti and Jamaica. For Thanksgiving once, we had turkey, as well as samosas, as well as empanadas. In my last year at the church, we sang this little Nigerian ditty at camp all Saturday night while dancing around a camp fire. Literally.

One thing I notice about our diversity is that the one thing we mostly had in common was our status as immigrants. Nearly all the families, Indian, Latino, or otherwise, were first or second generation immigrants. We were a church of sojourners.

But underneath the skin of our church, there were conflicts and rumors of conflicts. It started as some families left for more mainstream Indian churches and others left for more mainstream American churches. Insensitive things were said. People were hurt, and quietly left. Months passed. Eventually, rumors erupted. Fingers were pointed. My family and I left. With us, the non-Indian third of the church also left. (Don't know if empanadas are still served at the summer picnics. Shame if it's not.)

Reflecting back on my former church, I learned a few things about racial integration.

One, it's really hard. Integration does not guarantee unity. It can often do the opposite: our church was diverse as it was divided. Some of the difficulty was the fault of prejudice, but some of it was also natural: everything from our sense of humor to our priorities and values are colored by our ethnic culture, creating a real divide between ourselves and others.

Two, it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is a church that is authentically loving its neighbors and loving God. A full Indian church is just as much a part of God's body as any other church. Church shouldn't ever be about getting millenials or any other group of people. Church needs to love its immediate neighbors, and love God. Neighbors include those folks inside the walls of the church - the ammachis and the cousins and uncles, and it also includes those folks chilling at the 7-11 across the street and the people who do the dry cleaning the next block over. It's everybody.

Three, it's worth it. So many opportunities exist in a multi-ethnic church to love people you don't know, to grow in your love's "depth of insight". Christians of different cultures can teach you to examine aspects of Christ and Christlike living that you wouldn't have taken seriously, given your own culturally conditioned perspectives; diversity humbles us. It's such a great thing that expands your ability to love God's people and love the immeasurably wise God who created all of us varied colored people.

So, yeah. I still haven't found what I'm looking for.