National Day of something or other

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:54:57 -0700

A friend sent out a mass email this morning about tomorrow being the National Day of Prayer and how important it is to pray. And my initial reaction was strong and negative. It was “What good is prayer when hearts and minds of the people are already made up and God has been stuffed in a tiny little church shaped box, sealed with a kiss and put on the upper shelf in the closet?”

Uh…

yeah!

Surprised me too!

And this is exactly what pastor preached about Sunday. He talked about how we quit praying when we get disillusioned about how ineffective our prayers sometimes feel. And I watched a beautiful couple come forward and pray again for children. And since I’ve been there I about lost it. I was playing piano and could clearly see the pain in their prayer. It was horrible in a really risky vulnerable beautiful sort of way. Lots of tears and in that little clump of praying faithful ones.

So… I’m trying to wriggle my way out of my unbelief and fatalism and try on something a little more like hope and faith… Yeah, let’s pray for our nation tomorrow. Not because it’s the National Day of Prayer (which means little to me.) But because God is big enough to change hearts and minds, and prayer is still the avenue he chooses to use to bring about that change. We need Him. I need Him. I have friends who need Him. My children need Him. Yeah, but most of all I need Him.

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Can I just say... AMEN!

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:27:49 -0800

I stumbled across this on a friend's blog and loved it. The guy is Tony Campolo who is one of my heros. I gave a couple books by him as gifts this Christmas. And I came across this in the midst of my own questioning about how the church can miss something so basic and central to the message of the scripture. But whether or not the church "gets it" has little impact on whether or not I do as an individual. So I guess I should just say that I'm paying attention and wondering what all this means for me. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The Kingdom of God

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Confessions of an ex-church leader

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:32:08 -0800

I used to love being in church and being involved in all kinds of stuff happening there. But right now I can barely make myself attend church. We go to a good church – much better than that last nightmare we attended for five years. (What was that about anyway?!) NO, it's not a perfect church - mainly cause I'm there. But still, I’m not invested there, I fail to see the point of going through those motions and generally I miss the point of getting up early to go observe the same stuff over again. I have the sneaking suspicion that if I told my Pastor that, I’d be considered in need of prayer or something. Go ahead, pray for me, I need it. (Don’t treat me like a mission project though – that doesn’t work real well with me.) Cause if church bores me, something must be wrong with me. Well, I don’t actually believe that. I actually believe something is wrong with church - but I digress.

Going to church and finding that everyone else seems happy with how things are – it just makes me feel like the closeted bitch for my secret fears, frustrations and unmet expectations. I used to have an aquaintance with God, He used to like me a good bit. I don't know what happened to that. And I know there is more out there than seems available to me at the moment. I don’t get it. I think people at church must think I’m a real grumpy bitch, but I’m just not seeing the point of pretending that I like it when I don’t. And my husband won’t let me be someone who doesn’t attend church. So I’m a little caught in a crappy place with this whole thing. I don’t like it much, no siree.

Church leaders talked to the hubby and I about the possibility of leading a thing that would look maybe a tiny bit different. Good God, I didn’t want it to be only a TINY bit different – I want the WHOLE FREAKIN REVOLUTION! I guess I shouldn’t say that too loudly. (ooopps, tooo late!) I know that our leadership isn’t much into the girls doing stuff in church and the only reason I was included in the conversation (bein female and all) is because I used to lead worship. Years ago. A lifetime ago really. And I said I’d never go back. But they didn’t stop to ask about that part. Some assumptions have been made. I wanted to be included in the conversation so I haven't popped their little assumption balloon yet. The conversation has never gotten really deep enough to include that bit anyway. So I’m included in the conversation because it seems like we’d be good – the really sweet guy with the pastoring gifts servant's heart and his wife who used to lead worship and seems generally talented for whatever else we might need done. We seem pretty normal, willing to serve and generally nice folks. (Well, I haven't been so nice lately.) Seems like those two could get the job done. Oh wait… what is the matter with this picture?

I want to be involved in something new, something that is real and actually works for me. But… I don’t know that this is it. And I don’t see any movement forward with it anyway. It’s all been just talk this year so far. All talk and no action. So here I am. I still fail to see the point. And maybe I’m a bit frustrated with God for the lack of Him in this current situation. What seems to be missing in my church experience? Well, uh… for starters – the blaring absense of the divine "Himself." Oh well, I have a hard time forcing myself to show up, why should anyone else - much less HIM?!

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What do you want? The Church Chapter

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:07:26 -0700

A friend’s blog contained the question “What do you want?” with a related question having to do with whether or not you're praying for what you want. It’s an interesting thought, especially since it’s really easy to get wrapped up in life and lose track of those things that are really near and dear to us. Suddenly we find the important things slipping away as the mundane atrocities of life choke out the dreaming, desiring and hoping aspects of our being. We get wrapped up in the temporal desires and needs and completely lose focus on those things that we desire that are of a more eternal nature.

I have a desire that’s pretty unusual, judging from the practice of life I’ve observed. I want to go to a church that I’m excited about. An emerging church that looks like some of the books I have on my reading list. Seriously, I want to be involved with an emerging church with people I respect who are so outside the box that we make a new box and invite people in. (Not because we are spiritually superior, but because we are interesting.) I want to work with the church to help poor and needy people in our community and do community service projects instead of services some weeks.

I don’t want it to meet in a normal church building or be a “normal” church at all and definitely not on Sunday morning. (another barf.) We could meet at the park for all I care. I want a full tilt dangerous honest to goodness church where people finally “get it” that it’s not about a service – yet it’s about service. It’s not a building centric thing but could happily meet in a variety of places. And since it’s about community, it would be cool if we all lived close enough together that we could really become intentional community, and share our stuff and help each other out by bartering services among the members and really connecting with people on a deeper level. No religion, no pretense, and for heavens sake - if you don’t want to be at the gathering then don’t come! Oh, and there should be food involved! Good food! And tables seem to go good with the eating thing. Uh, and chairs.

Oh, and if I’m going to have to show up to some sort of service, then I want it to be a full tilt artsy thing with lots of interesting stuff going on. Incense is good, and artwork that changes each week would be cool. My brother is carving a cross and it progresses a little each week at his church. Now how cool would that be?! I want lots of dancers doing their thing, I love it when the dancers “dance upon injustice.” I love it when they use big fabrics, banners, flags and Chinese ribbons. These things delight me. No preach praying allowed, poetry hoped for and plenty of reading from the Song of Solomon – which also delights me, and the Psalms which are better yet. And I like the big projection screens with lots of excellent color and artwork! Go ahead, distract me! I like it! I want to try all kinds of traditions and not do the same thing twice for any reason – especially not because that’s how we did it before. Couldn’t someone read the introduction to “The Hobbit” one time? I could gladly preach on that. Let’s use donut holes for communion for crying out loud, and maybe the health freaks can refrain from making an unholy uproar over it for just once. And music! There must be lots of music of a variety of styles. I want to play and sing in the worship team that is full of really killer good musicians who are also actually interesting people. I want some “harp and bowl” worship along with whatever other kind of music makes God’s people happy.

And there should be prayer. Prayer for people individuals, about things that matter. Not just about so and so who is in the hospital – those kinds of prayer requests we talk about just to fill up uncomfortable space. But the real prayer requests we are scared to share cause they make us look… uh… human. Real. Transparent. Authentic. Human.

I guess my prayer about church is pretty much swallowed up in complacency most of the time. I go and stomach the ordinariness of it most of the time. Sometimes for brief flashes I’m engaged and intent on what is happening around me. If something is happening around me. And I want to be a part of the story, writing the story, living the story.

I told my mom when I was a little kid, I wanted to be in the next books they add to the Bible. Hmmm… yeah, didn’t quite strike the chord with her that it could have, but it’s still pretty much true. I just want to be involved in the next chapters, that’s all.

I know many of my ideas are pretty strange on this one, plenty of religious folk would be rightfully concerned about such disrespect for tradition and predictability. And any lessor God would have squished me by now, especially since I find a lot of His people especially annoying. But I have somehow escaped so far. Thank God. For real. Thank God.

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Rosh Hashanah

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 06:51:40 -0700

It’s Rosh Hashanah today, the Jewish New Year, time for new beginnings, apples and honey, and the blowing of the shofar, feasting and fasting. One Jewish tradition is to empty the pockets into the river to symbolize unloading of last year’s sins. I’ve never paid much attention to this holiday in the past, I can’t remember ever hearing much about it until this year. But this year it resonates with me in a new way.

I’ll be spending the next few days (around my work schedule) taking an inward look at some goals and resolutions for the New Year. I’ve been increasingly frustrated with my life this calendar year, it’s been a very difficult year with much transition and I’ve had some bouts of depression this year that were not pretty. We bought a house, renovated it and moved, leaving my surroundings in turmoil for a while and leading me to a sense of exhaustion unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, thankfully that part has settled down. We lost Lee to suicide at Mother’s Day, the nearby school shootings in April really grieved me. Professionally my life has felt like it got flushed down the toilet, but at the same time I’ve really learned some interesting principles from looking back over the way I ran my last company. I’ll do the next one differently and I’m grateful that I got the chance to take this time to get some distance and make some observations of that experience. And then there is the pizza waitressing job, that’s had its own set of dramas and I’m really hoping that I’m learning whatever I’m supposed to be learning there and that it isn’t just the rabbit trail that it feels like.

I guess the reason the Jewish New Year appeals to me is because my calendar year has been such hell. I’m hoping that a fresh start here in September will be enough to give me the lift I need to get back on track and see what happens between now and January first. Can my calendar year be redeemed? I know in my head that there is no such thing as wasted time, I believe that to be true. Yet my calendar year feels like the wasted one, the year I took off for depression, floundering and frustration. May God have mercy on my soul.

So my new goal is to treat Rosh Hashanah as my New Year and spend some time looking for the new vision and dream for my life, hoping God will do something interesting to redeem what has become of me. I’ve been really grieving lately over the sense of God’s absence in my life. I need Him desperately and I’m out of options of places to go where He allows himself to be found. So I’ll keep looking and try not to die of thirst in this vast desert that my life has become. I’d like to believe that I’m on the verge of something. Lord have mercy.

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Gideon is one of my favorite guys!

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:14:19 -0700

Yesterday’s sermon was about Gideon. This really unassuming humble guy got up and spoke about Gideon in a way that really captured me Sunday. Sad to say that is really unusual because if there isn’t something to go with the intellectual content I have a hard time staying tuned in. I love Gideon; he and I go way back. I’m always thinking I’m nobody but there is something in the back of my spirit that dreams of bigger things, bigger adventures, and even a desire for greatness. This preacher guy with the sweet spirit talked about how God sees us the way He created us, we view ourselves very differently. God says to Gideon “Mighty Warrior” and Gideon goes looking all over the place to see who God is talking to, because certainly it couldn’t be him. I get that. Moses got that. There are others who get that. And Gideon struggled to believe the truth about himself. He saw the fire burn up the food he had prepared, he saw the angel vanish from the place where he had just been standing. He saw the fleece dry with the ground wet, and again the fleece wet with the ground dry. Over and over God confirmed Himself to Gideon while he struggled and wrestled with how these things could possibly be true. And then God started messing with his army. So Gideon sent the scared ones home. Then he watched them drink from the creek and sent some more home. I can picture his journal reading something like this: “God, do you even like me at all? You’re going to send me up against the biggest army I’ve ever seen and you want me to go with 300 wirey little guys? Well, I might as well die an honorable death, that way I’ll be spoken of with respect when I’m gone. I can be somebody in death at least.” But God continued to patiently work to confirm His word to Gideon. This time he got to overhear the enemy as they pronounced their own defeat. And Gideon defeated them.

I often wonder how it was for Gideon on the evening of that battle. He must have sat at a fire with a weary body thinking back over his day. He had seen a lot of death that day, and he probably had some cuts and bruises. But three hundred men had captured an amazing victory. Did he turn to God in absolute humility and confess his shock and amazement that the God of the universe would use him to do this? Did he turn to the mirror and smile at himself and puff out his chest and say “I know you could do it ol' chap!” I don’t know. I’d love to sit down with Gideon and ask him questions about what it was like. I wonder if he ever ceased struggling and wrestling with the truth of who God created him to be in contrast with what he believed of himself.

Abram was a tired old man with plenty of wealth and no one to leave it to. He was a childless man. God gave him a son and then asked for him back. And Abram started to obey before the angel said ‘just kidding.” God called him Abraham. God made his children like the stars.

Elijah was a lunatic who poured water on the wood and provoked and picked at his enemies like a mosquito asking to be swatted. But God poured out fire from heaven and toasted everything. Then God visited him when Elijah started hanging out on the mental ward section of the desert. How amazing that encounter must have been.

Joseph, that annoying dreamer child, the convict with abandonment issues, became the best friend of Pharaoh and the brightest star in his family, a provider and administrator and gifted in interpreting dreams.

Moses was a judge and liberator, but he went about it his own way until that blew up in his face and he had to scurry off to the desert for fear of his life. Then the burning bush thing rocked his world. There is a little verse about God considering squashing him like a bug but Moses’ wife did something that saved his neck. I wonder what that was all about. Was Moses trying to weasel out of this gig that God had planned for him? We humans are slow to comprehend and slow to believe. But Moses grew into God’s design, and we know his name all these generations later.

Rahab was a women used and abused by many men. But God made her a haven and protector. And the spies that she protected liberated her and her family.

Ruth was an abandoned and bereft woman, but God made her steadfast and her fidelity to Naomi brought her into God’s redemption plan.

Joshua had to be reminded to be strong and courageous repeatedly. Was he really a weak and cowardly man that God transformed? How many nights lingering in the Presence of God after Moses and turned in did it take till the old weak and cowardly man began to give way to the strong and courageous man?

John was the voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” He really lost his head.

Peter was all over the charts, one day up and the next day. One day he was recognized for listening to the Holy Spirit and another time it’s “Get thee behind me satan.” But God called him Peter - rock.

Paul was the guy who held truth above all. But he went about it his own way and had really quite the list of martyrs to his credit. Then he “saw the light” on the road and it wasn’t a UFO. His grip on truth transformed him into a door keeper for those people out there beyond the Jews – the Gentiles. That’s how I (a gentile) came to be writing about him.

David was a man whose whole life was a search for the beauty and presence of God, from shepherd to king – that was his primary vision. He faced his Goliaths and engaged his own epic battle to break through the garbage and grief of life to get to God. And God saw a man after this heart.

I don’t get it. I look today back over a checkered history. I see failures and triumphs. Times that I won big, and times that I lost even bigger. I remember people who are not a part of my life any more because our relationship was broken. I remember those who misused me and, sadly, those I’ve misused. I remember times when I’ve been a good friend and times when I’ve gotten into the face of a good friend and said some really horrible things – even with good intentions. I’m nobody. I fight the truth of that because it isn’t what I want to be, but that doesn't change the truth. I haven’t done anything exceptional that hasn’t already been done by others. I have not become something amazing or assended to some great height. But there is something within that God sees when He looks at me. I shake my head at the silly grin on His face, wondering if He’s really thinking of someone else. There is greatness within. Or at least God sees it. And I have vision for a future that can be most different and unusual. And I have vision for what I can grow into. My new employment, the transitions in my life this year, the paradigm shifts I find in my own mind, all this is preparation for what He’s got around the bend on my journey. I can’t see it from here but I don’t have to. And maybe I don’t have to even fully believe it as long as I try to listen and do as I’m told.

If He can look at

Gideon and see a warrior,

Moses and see a judge and ruler,

Peter and see a rock,

Abraham and see a father,

Rahab and see a haven,

John the Baptist and see a voice in the desert

John, the disciple that Jesus loved, and see a mystic seer,

Paul and see a doorway for the Gentiles,

David and see a man after his own heart,

Mary and see a mother,

Well, then

There is hope

Sweet hope

For me.

I think the shout still echos through history... "For the Lord and for Gideon." Yeah, for the Lord and for nobodies everywhere who dare to hope that God still creates something from nothing, still takes on the impossible, still sees the possibilities in someone like me. For that kind of God. Yeah, I'm all for that!

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A search for better words to describe Salvation

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 16:17:53 -0700

I’m growing unfond of the word “saved.” Well, not in the sense that I have received a gift of salvation from Jesus that has significantly altered my life for the better. But more in this “us and them” kind of semantic way we talk about saved and unsaved people. I wonder how many times words like “unsaved” have been used with cruelty, to determine community membership, or rather – community exclusion. I believe God is at work in everyone’s life, whether or not they recognize it or even approve. God may work to rescue a witch from the full consequences of a delivering a curse, or He may divert a plane away from its intended destination like on 9/11. He may allow a person to break an ankle rather than loosing the leg entirely. Yesterday I was rear ended by a teenager who wasn’t paying attention. Who’s to say that wouldn’t have been much worse had God not protected us both? Maybe that kid needed a shake up, and God went easy on him. I think there are so many ways the hands of God save us that we may never fully understand this side of heaven. One of the most devastating and bizarre betrayals of my life may have actually saved me in the end. I would be a different person now if I had stayed too closely aligned with an ultra religious friend who was (at one time) my mentor mother. I’m more compassionate than ever now, seeing up close and personal the harm that hyper-spiritualism can do. I’d like to find new ways to speak of people who don’t know Jesus in the specific and intentional way that I like to think I do. There are many out there who are more generous, more compassionate, more tactful, and more thoughtful about many aspects of life and truth than I am, yet maybe they haven’t thought of Jesus much in the last year. It is unrealistic to think that I can determine from my earth bound perspective the saved or unsavedness of such a person. God alone knows the attitude of the heart. Clearly good works is not enough to purchase a ticket to heaven, but since when has heaven been the major point of Christianity? Yes, it’s been used as a motivator, or perhaps a scare tactic. But isn’t Christianity more about death and resurrection engaging the common moments of our lives in the right here and now? There are many religious people who are more cruel than many unreligious would ever dream of being, but they think the ends justify the means. They think that because they have truth on their side, that being right is enough. Dead right, is still wrong. I guess I’m on the search for new words to express more than just whether or not someone has prayed a prayer – as if salvation was a one moment thing rather than an every-breath-I-breathe kind of thing. There is so much more to this, and the words fail so miserably.

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A poem I wrote for my brother

nobody@vox.com(Artzy Carmen) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:56:22 -0700

My brother

Kite Builder

Man who flies rainbows

With God

Your talent dazzles me

Your potential wounds me

His fingerprints

All through the design of you

Hi fingerprints

All through your designs

Signs and wonders

In the heavens

As you release His beauty

His breath lists your work

My brother

Kite Builder

Man who flied rainbows

With God

I marvel at you

Man who flies rainbows with God

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