Davison's Doodle

Holiday Pondering

My companion and I are fortunate to be able to be on holiday each year.   This is time away from our day to day vocations (our jobs).  Europeans take “holiday” rather than vacation.  It is a different mindset.  The film, “What About Bob” sets the difference between vacation and holiday time with this simple turn of phrase, “Take a vacation from your problems.”  I once thought of our time away through that lens, but one week of escape, like booze, two hours of a film, (insert your escape of choice), life returns; life’s messiness and complication is always there.  Instead, holiday allows the space to process, to explore new ideas, new activities, or revisit old ones, to pick up conversations that circumstance required us to set aside, and be present with each other.  Our lives are not left behind, as it were, but part of holiday as we become our whole selves.  The last few years we have enjoyed a cruise.  While on holiday I ponder.  Here are a few of the things I pondered from our cabin balcony in no particular order.

I’ve pondered: How is it that these United States are becoming as religiously divided as the near East?  It seems to me that we’ve been on this trajectory at least since the founding of the “Moral Majority.”  It and, others like it, are semi political-religious hybrids that our non-profit, freedom of religion, and tax code indulges.  If Sen Cruz, the American Family Association, Franklin Graham, the 700 Club, and the Trinity Broadcasting System are to be believed, religious liberty is under assault like never before.  Really?  The rhetoric reveals the bias.  What is labeled religious liberty, when one listens carefully, is the white male Christian patriarchy associated with a brand of Christian witness that is loosing its dominance in our culture.  I understand the fear of change and loss, but it is too broad to claim that religious liberty is under attack or suggesting that Christians are being persecuted in these United States.  If liberty is under attack, and it is for minorities, immigrants, the working poor, and the middle class, the source of the attack is Sen Cruz and others like him seeking to embed their ideological vision of a “Christian” America and capitalism on the citizens of our Nation.

I’ve pondered my vocational trajectory.  I turn fifty years old this year.  I’m an ordained minister serving as a middle judicatory representative with congregational experience, with event planning experience, with fundraising experience, and with some writing experience.  I also embody a love/hate relationship with the universal Church.  I’ve served primarily in youth ministry, loosely defined as grades 4-12 in my denomination, but I have diverse experience in congregational life and leadership.  I’ve come to realize that youth ministry is as much a style, a way, of doing ministry as it is a specific programatic ministry of a congregation or denomination.  For me, effective youth ministry incubates a balance of personal belief and communal ethics.  It journeys with adolescents navigating family, culture, expectations, and current technology while they make sense of the foundational beliefs, religious or not, that will guide their lives in good times and bad times.  Effective congregational life does as well.  I’ve pondered, “what next?”  I exist in a mainline Christian tradition that has embraced corporate America’s “downsize to the younger worker” to cut expenses and seek out eager energy.  It is a trajectory of my denomination since the late 1980’s.  I initially benefited from it.  I didn’t know it then, but my denomination had just begun contracting after expansive growth.  Several times the contraction has been slowed, but the religious and political landscape is different from our great expansion.  There is an opportunity for my denomination to remain identifiably relevant, but I’m not sure we have the willful diversity to remain at table together and be an example of communal Gospel in the 21st century.

I’ve pondered how overt racism has returned to our political system.  How it is that States and Governors have been able to redraw voting districts that resemble the wall between Israel and the West Bank?  Governors and State legislatures have passed voter ID laws designed to make voting harder because their ideas about society, culture, and economics do not translate to the changing demographics of our country.  If you cannot persuade people to your political point of view and vision, then keeping people away from the polls is the next best political strategy to maintain power.  Throw in “money is speech” and SCOTUS has made it easier for multi-national corporations and plutocrats to buy the politicians and government that benefits their bottom line.  I’m not sure why politicians or reporters with clout have not named the political nullification that the Republicans in Congress have been about since President Obama was inaugurated.  One possible answer is that there is no longer one news source, trusted to be objective, by a majority of our citizens.  The news outlets and newspapers that a majority of our citizens can receive are all owned by corporations for whom hard news reporting is not healthy for the bottom line.  It doesn’t profit the corporations to report on the systemic racism that is alive and well or to invest the time and money to do investigative reporting that keeps our governmental officials and representatives accountable.  That is not how one maximizes profit and increases stock price. 

It seems to me that the argument could be made that the Republicans in Congress determined that a successful non-white President would provide too much hope to our citizens and those looking to the United States for inspiration that America is an exceptional place of opportunity for every person.  I think they believe no one would view their actions through the lens of racism as long as they used the word “principled” in their efforts to stall, block, obstruct, and nullify legislation, cabinet appointees, judgeships, and international affairs between Heads of State.  Books, websites, Youtube, talk radio, cable news channels, billionaires, religion, and multinational corporate money are the weapons of choice between the Confederacy and the Union here in the 21st century.  If countries could be represented on a human development scale then we are in that awkward adolescent phase: good hearted, testing the limits of our freedom, and beginning to ask questions about little “t” truth and big “T” Truth.  How will we continue the experiment, “Out of many, one.”, and live the ideal of a self governing people?

I pondered my religious beliefs.  I watched the sunrise over the Atlantic on Easter Sunday and read aloud the entire Easter story from all four gospels through the appearances of Jesus.  I began with Mark, then read Matthew, Luke, and John.  The crew on the ship were doing their jobs, some paused a moment to listen, others steered clear from the place where I was.  I remembered being in a room several stories below the street level of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Below the Chapel of St. Helena is the Chapel of St. Vartan which is not open to the public.  It contains a drawing of a boat with a Latin inscription loosely translated, “Lord, we have gone.”  It is believed to have been drawn by an early pilgrim to the site.  Our Jewish, PhD  archeologist noted it might also be translate, “Lord, we were here.” 

I’ve arrived at a place in my journey in faith that I’m comfortable thinking and believing that Jesus had no idea what would become of his followers, his teachings, and his way of living.  Christianity was birthed by self proclaimed Apostles and absorbed into pop-culture becoming the religion of the State sometimes, before becoming its own recognized Nation State called Vatican City.  Christianity assimilated local customs and religious rituals to make it more palatable to those being conquered in the name of Christ; it still is syncretistic.  An honest read of world history will note that in all the places that Christianity has gone it has been a source of good and a source of evil.  As a system of belief Christianity has evolved, reformed, devolved, and matured depending on the political system adopted by the people.  I’m comfortable saying that I no longer believe that redemptive violence was necessary, nor planned, to bring humanity into “right” relationship with God.  Death is not a punishment for sinners in the hands of an angry God.  For me, Jesus’ way of living leads to Truth about God; and that Truth is life giving.  The rest is commentary seeking consistency.  In the course of one day my choices of who to help, to whom I will listen, to what I will give my time, for what cause I will support, are weighed against the way of Jesus.  Jesus’ way, the parables, are critical of the union of Christianity with our consumer culture, of which I participate, and the union of Christianity and a political system of domination.  That’s not what the kingdom of God looks like.  Most days it is easier to believe in Christ rather than practice Christianity.

I pondered the days ahead with my parents.  They are healthy, as far as I know, and enjoying retirement post 70th birthdays.  I don’t see them nearly as much as I should, and want.  It has always been that way.  I’ve been the “away” child.  Like old friends, we just pick up where we left off.  Mom and Pop adjusted to how my sister and I stay connected to them.  I trust that my mother has made peace with our decision to be child-free.  It was hard for a season.  I’ve always known that my parents are proud of me and my sister, and while watching the waves on the horizon I think I found a way to accept it.  Odd it took this long.

The waves floated on, my companion and I told old stories, laughed, and talked about the future.  We’ve shared life for 27 years and are working on 26 years of marriage.  Back home now, we do not want to revert to routine, but there is comfort in it no matter how our holiday effected our perspective and our lives.  “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around for a while, you could miss it.”  Ferris Bueller, you’re my hero.