Several readers wrote to express their, um, gratitude for my story in our 11/20 issue on the topic of gratitude. I also received a few additional thoughts on the topic in the form of a press release from Jonathan Goldstein at Duke Divinity School. It seems like the perfect postcript to share on this day before Thanksgiving. May you and yours have a happy one.
In a timely Thanksgiving message (but too late for our print version), United Methodist Bishop Timothy Whitaker (Florida) asks in his blog whether Native Americans have a place at the table today.
He reflects on the recent decision by the Supreme Court to decline hearing a lawsuit filed by Native Americans over the NFL's Washington Redskins team name.
Bishop Whitaker says:
"Naming sports teams by terms associated with American Indians may seem to be much ado about nothing. [But] I do think that this practice of naming teams this way is an indicator that we Americans have a long way to go in treating our fellow native citizens with the respect they should receive."
This is one of the "hot-button" issues for us here at the Reporter. Every time we publish something about the brouhaha over sports team names, more than a few readers heatedly tell us they think it's absolutely ridiculous to think of these mascots as offensive.
For an eye-opening cultural lesson in how we are unwittingly hurtful (still) to Native Americans, I'd suggest a book that Dakotas Bishop Deborah Kiesey recommends: Kent Nerburn's Neither Dog Nor Wolf.
For United Methodists, in particular, it seems like it would be simple enough: Do no harm.
Even when we don't "get it."
... In fact, it's pretty much impossible.
One of my most vivid memories of a college course has to be when Dr. John Farthing, a professor of religion and ordained United Methodist elder, sat down in the center aisle of the Mills A lecture hall at Hendrix to illustrate the sheer impracticality of the phrase, "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." Imagine a 50-something man rocking around on the floor, grabbing the straps of his boots and pulling as hard as he could, just to prove he would go nowhere by doing so. It put the truth out there in vivid fashion: We can't do it all by ourselves.
I thought of that illustration yet again as I read this blog post by Matt Lipan. He addresses ministry with the poor on an individual level -- he's been building a relationship with someone who really wants to turn things around, and sees God at work in his life. But bootstrap culture makes it a little more difficult to break the cycle of poverty. Matt reminds us that if someone tells you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, they're assuming you already have boots.
Thanks, Matt, for calling your readers to step in and be the evidence of God's grace in the world.
Last weekend my wife, Christy, and I made time for a date at the movies. We stood at the ticket window for a moment trying to decide what to see. I'm sure it seemed longer for the people behind us in the ticket line. In the end - no pun intended - we chose 2012.
After the movie, we threw away the popcorn bag and soft drink cups and walked to the car. Instead of thinking about special effects and theories of end times, I left talking with Christy about The United Methodist Church. Weird...I know.
There are cataclysmic shifts taking place right under our feet, and most of us are oblivious to what is happening. We can't see it. We react to the effects. We don't understand it. We try to fix blame for it, but no one did anything to cause it. Shift happens.
When social and political shifts occur, human-made monuments and infrastructures crumble. Dust they were; to dust they will return. Some of the storyline is corny and unrealistic, for sure. But let's be honest -- so is much of the ecclesial drama that is enacted to preserve the sentimental.
A pivotal question concerns power and privilege and how it conducts itself in the face of change. Will it try carefully to control the gene pool in order to ensure the survival of what is deemed by some to be the best and the brightest, or will it open its doors to the diversity and differentness of that which God created?
Throughout the action and drama lie opportunities to redeem and redefine relationships within a new landscape. It's not easy - it requires humility and courage - but this is the essential work of loving neighbor. This is intensely personal work. No one can do it for us.
For the doomsayers who announce demise, I choose hope over fear. Natalie Sleeth writes in Hymn of Promise, "In our end is our beginning," and in the beginning, God creates. God's not done with us yet.
What do you think? The next General Conference is in 2012.
TV stars live and die by the ratings, but the stars of this show have to keep up their grades to stay on the air. A group of teens, all members of St. Paul UMC in Dallas, have created a YouTube show called "Teens with a View," based on the format of the TV talk show The View. Their goal: to create a positive presence on the Web.
Members at New Life UMC in Midlothian, Va., skipped worship on Sunday to pack thousands of meals (at left) for Stop Hunger Now. The project benefits schools and orphanages in developing countries—and keeps the congregation active in global mission, according to Pastor Mike Maxwell.
"If we could 'end world hunger in our lifetime,' that is a compelling mission to be a part of," he told the Midlothian Exchange. "We are not willing to live in a world to accept hunger and poverty as the status quo."
Amen. But lest we think the crisis is all overseas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its annual report on domestic food security yesterday. The news isn't surprising: Food insecure households—defined by the USDA as those with "limited or uncertain (access to) nutritionally adequate and safe foods"—rose to more than one in seven in 2008. Nearly 17 million children were affected.
"The recession has made the problem of hunger worse, and it has also made it more visible," the Rev. David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister and head of the faith-based nonprofit Bread for the World, said in a press release. A new section on the group's site includes more comments and a link to the USDA report.
My friend the Rev. Nathan Mattox sent me a link to his recent blog entry dealing with the end-times hype about the year 2012, prompted by the movie of the same title. Read his thoughts on the matter before he delivered his sermon. The money quote:
The idea of the apocalypse should instead prompt us to action for the sake of Christ. Jesus says "Be alert!" (Mark 13: 33) Being alert doesn't mean alert and alarmed about latest prognostications about an occasion that we can't possibly fathom, let alone predict. "Alert" means "awake" and "about the tasks that we were left with."
If you want to hear the sermon itself, it's available online, too.
Our recent guest blogger the Rev. Andy James saw 2012 over the weekend, and said he noticed parallels with the United Methodist Church in the plot. I haven't seen the film myself, so I don't know what he means, but hopefully we'll get him to say more in the next day or two (hopefully as a blog entry here).
I had a phone conversation yesterday with Jesse Rice, author of The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community.
We talked about several aspects of the rise of social media, and he shared that part of the inspiration behind his title is that Facebook behavior can follow a pattern similar to church life: "It’s a gathering of people from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences, their own ideas of faith and spirituality, and they’re all coming together in this one environment to sort of figure themselves out, to figure out what is meaningful and what is true, and to be entertained and all these things."
Having thumbed through the review copy of the book before I talked with Jesse, I've now taken it home for a closer read. He's a worship leader with a degree in counseling psychology, so he's attentive to both the psychological and spiritual needs that people may be seeking to have met through social media.
We touched on that a bit in the phone chat, including the thought that in our desire to stay connected online, we might be losing other opportunities for connection right in front of us. I'm one of those people who has looked up and realized that I've been guilty of ignoring an entire room of in-person humanity because of the little communication gadget in my hand. I've also noticed how that mode is now standard operating procedure for many of us, and soon we'll have a big chunk of the adult population who grew up with it that way by default. I wonder what ramifications that will have in a few years.
Check out Jesse's blog if you're interested in more of his thoughts right now, and look for my Q&A with him in an upcoming issue of the Reporter.
It's not like I'd never seen the Rev. Zan Holmes before. I'd watched him on the television screen for years while taking and teaching Disciple Bible Study, and interviewed him by phone a few times while covering Religion for the Dallas Morning News. But last night, at the Sojourners' Justice Revival in Dallas, I heard the pastor emeritus of St. Luke "Community" United Methodist in Dallas preach for the first time. Wow. It was like watching Yo Yo Ma, only with preaching instead of a cello. He's truly a master of the art and one of the great preachers of our generation. The Rev. Freddie Haynes introduced him as his "hero of homiletics" and he lived up to the billing. More on what Dr. Holmes had to say in my upcoming story from the event.
