Ghost in the Graveyard

Google "haunted places in Alabama" and Pinson UMC will come up.

Many folks say that there is a woman who sweeps the graves. The view from our back deck is of the graveyard...here's a picture.

I choose to believe what the Rev Hub says....it's just full of saints....

Saturday Psalm

As the deer longs for flowing streams
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
my tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me continually, "Where is your god?"

These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is wiht me.
a prayer to the god of my life.

I say to God, my rock, "why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?"
As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually, "Where is your God?"

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquited within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

Psalm 42

still marching....

My father-in-law participated in the March from Selma to Montgomery. We figured out tonight that my husband was actually in-utero at the time.....His dad had known AD King (MLK, Jr.) when he (Bob) was in seminary at Emery. The story always told is that MLK, Jr. held Ron's older sister when she was an infant....

In reading about all the events today, I wished I could have been there. I wrote my thesis about the involvement of Methodist students at Duke and UNC in the civil rights movement. I was motivated to study that when I heard a story from the Senior Pastor with whom I was working. Here's the story....

During the 1960s, he was a Campus Minister at Harvard. He brought groups of students to NC to do voter registration. When he returned to NC to finish out his ministry, over 25 years later, there were pastors who remembered what he had done and would not speak to him....

This got me to thinking: Why did he have to bring students from out of state to North Carolina? What were the students who lived there doing?

So, that's what I researched and wrote my thesis on when I did my ThM....the most interesting thing I found out from that is that often the newspaper articles that I found had the story wrong. They didn't accurately report was was happening. Often the articles conflicted with the stories that I heard from people who had participated in events! I'm not sure though if some of the misreporting wasn't done on purpose...

If you're interested in learning more about Civil Rights here in Birmingham, I would recommend the book Carry Me Home. Written by a woman who grew up in Birmingham, she has interspersed her own remembrances with research.

"We fought for the soul of our country, on the streets of this city."

I heard Robert Eggers (founder and Director of DC Central Kitchen) say that last week and I thought it was meaningful. He then went on to say that we have spent 40 years in the wilderness.....That in 2008, it will be 40 years since MLK, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. He said, "and we didn't deal with it. We just moved on." His hope seems to be that in 2008, we'll come out of the wilderness. Could it be???

But, I do have to stay...now that I live in this city, it's as if there's a large group of white people who simply chose to "move on" here as well and have never dealt with any of the seismic changes that happened in the 60s...the racism just went underground...

My last thought....
Why weren't there any Republicans there?

family

What does it mean to be family?
How do we become (and stay) family?
Is blood thicker than water?
Are families more made than birthed?

The older I get, the more I ponder such questions....As I marvel at my family and how we move through life.....the ties that bind us together...

Inclusiveness

Not sure if I've written on this before now..If I have, forgive me for the rerun....

I had a conversation with a friend last night and I was trying to explain my desire to hear/read inclusion language concerning God.... I really feel uncomfortable hearing/seeing "He" or "His" in reference to God.... I said that God is neither male nor female. And he asked "what about the whole thing about "Father" and Jesus as "son." OK...so here's my personal story first and then I'll come back to the theological reasoning in a moment.

My mother was the most important person in my life--as many mothers are for their children. She was probably the most "real" Christian I have ever known (of her generation). She was deeply passionate about caring for those in need; usually serving as the chair of the Missions Committee and/or as an officer in United Methodist Women (women's missions organization). The only time I can remember her leaving home for any events was to go once a year to the UMW's School of Christian Mission. All this is to say, my passion for missions was instilled by my mother. My faith was nutured by her--every night ended with a reading from "Little Visits with God." The only items I can ever remember seeing her sit and read were Mission magazines, Disciple Bible Study, or her Sunday school lessons and circle materials...ok, so I think she had a subscription to Ladies' Home Journal, Better Homes & Gardens, and Redbook, but I think she only bought those for the recipes!

Anyway, she died of cancer at age 60 when I was 30 years old. For a long time, I was very depressed and unhappy, and found it very difficult to pray. I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but I was probably very angry at God for allowing it to happen. She suffered terribly in the last months of her life. When she died, none of her children had yet produced a grandchild. That was her one regret. She loved children so deeply (she had been a teacher) and she wanted to spoil those grandbabies that were yet to be..... ok, so I was probably rip, roarin' mad at God, but I couldn't express that.

How could I be mad at God? I was the Associate Pastor of a large church...I had to lead prayers every Sunday and teach and preach and worship....besides all that, I knew that "She was in a better place." She wasn't afraid to die and I knew that she was with God...

So...how does this relate to any of this God language stuff?

In finally beginning to work through my grief, it took me a while to realize that the things that I missed about my mother were the qualities about her that were "God-like." What I missed more than anything was her unconditional love for me. What I wanted more than anything was to be a child again and crawl up in her lap.

Once I started to connect these dots, I began to "recover the feminine in God." The qualities that I missed in my mother were available to me through God. It was only when I began to envision God as Mother that I was able to begin to let go of my grief and begin to pray again.

So, back to the theological reasoning... God is NEITHER male nor female exclusively--but rather both. If I as a woman am created in the image of God, doesn't that mean that part of God's image has to be female?

As far as the "son" part: Yes, Jesus was male, but that was the "earthly" Jesus--he had to be one gender or the other...However, I'm not sure that the eternal "Christ" has to be thought of as exclusively male.

As for the Holy Spirit: neither male nor female.....

Our language, especially English, is quite limiting.... It places the God of the Universe into small, finite bits. I chose to do my best to not limit the qualities of God to all those that we humans associate with males.

The One who created the universe is much bigger than any of the words that we use.....