Preaching and Mental Health

If you missed it live, here’s a recording of what turned out to be a rich and wonderful conversation about preaching and mental health, hosted by the Bridge for Early Career Preachers at Union Presbyterian Seminary here in Richmond. Take a look/listen!

Event: "Journey to Wholeness" at Christmount, Black Mountain, NC

Want to dive deeper into conversations about faith, mental health, and human wholeness? Join me and others for this year’s Chautauqua at Christmount assembly, with the theme of “Journey to Wholeness,” from October 23-27, 2023. I’ll be leading a study on Thursday afternoon, and you’ll also hear wonderful preaching by Rev. Sarah Griffith Lund and educational sessions from Rev. Angela Whitenhill Shields.

Hope you can join us! More information and registration available here.

Event: Men's Mental Health Symposium hosted by the HHS Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership

Honored to be invited to share with the HHS Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership’s Men's Mental Health Symposium this week. If you're interested in the topic, there is a virtual option for joining:

To be honest, this is a bit of a different frame than the one I usually bring to this conversation, but it's an important conversation to have.

In Christ on the Psych Ward, I recount an experience of sitting with my dad in the hospital and seeing him cry:

"I was witnessing something taboo: an alternative image of what it meant to be a man....Tears are both a way to mourn and a way to reach out, to show the sort of vulnerability that invites empathy, connection, and, ultimately, relationship. My dad was crying on the psych ward, mourning his son's hurt and also, perhaps, instinctively trying to establish his empathetic connection....As my dad was crying, perhaps God was crying, too."

I’ll be expanding a bit on that experience, and the way it informs how I think about God-images, faith, and ministry, in my talk on Thursday.

Feeding the Common Parakeet

My daughter wants to feed the birds at the zoo

Or, at least, she thinks she does

Until we are in the little aviary

With the budgies flying all around

Then, her feelings are mixed

She holds out the popsicle stick covered in seeds,

wanting them to land but,

cringing away from them at the same time;

eyes closed tight;

flinching when their diminutive wings

beat by her head;

crying, sometimes -

she is diminutive, too,

and still testing her wings in the winds of this world

Never have I identified with her more

Hands outstretched but shying away

At once reaching for life and

unsure what to do if it arrives as,

theoretically,

desired.

Tempting joy while overwhelmed

By the cumulative noise -

so quiet if left alone -

of a thousand beating wings


Painfully Aware

I feel a strange sort of pressure to write something related to Mental Health Awareness Month, which is observed in the U.S. every May. At my church, I did focus my first sermon of the month on mental health awareness, and we also held a Mental Health 101 workshop presented by our local NAMI affiliate.

Those are important efforts, I think.

And also:

I have had a hard time knowing quite what to share here or on social media about mental health awareness. Part of that might be that I’ve been focusing on the ministry of my congregation. And part of it might just be that I’ve been trying to stay away from social media more these days — it’s not, frankly, great for my mental health. But there’s something else, too, I think:

I’m getting a little bit tired, at least on a personal level, of awareness.

I don’t want to over-make this point: awareness is good, and in a context such as a local congregation, awareness is the right place to begin. It’s the first step in any kind of cycle or process of change.

But there are downsides to an awareness focus. Or, at least, downsides if we stay in “awareness” mode and never take another step. I remember years ago attending a communications training while working for an advocacy non-profit in D.C., and the presenter asked each of us to name the goal of our organization. Almost everyone used the framework of awareness. The presenter challenged us on that. “What does awareness mean?,” they asked. “When will you know that people are aware of your issue? Is it when you’ve put it in front of a certain number of eyes? Then say that. Is it when people’s behavior changes? Say that.”

And, too, I’m not sure that the real struggles we have with mental health in our communities are due to a lack of awareness. People are aware that mental health challenges exist. I’d say we’ve reach a high level of just-plain-old-awareness. But people just lack depth of understanding, or they lack empathy, or they lack tools to respond, or they lack the resources to care for themselves or for others.

In fact, many of us are painfully aware of the realities of mental health conditions - if we believe the information provided by groups like NAMI, 1 in 5 of us struggle rather directly with them, the most acute sort of awareness imaginable.

So for those of us in the painfully aware category, and those who want to support us: what’s next? How do we go beyond awareness to equipping communities, building movements, and creating change?

That’s part of what I was grappling with when I wrote my (as it turns out, catastrophically ill-timed) second book. I don’t know that I really answered the question, but I at least wanted to start asking it: once we’re aware, what happens next?

In the narrative of the church year, we are in between Ascension and Pentecost. The followers and friends of Jesus have been instructed to stay in Jerusalem until the arrival of the Holy Spirit, which will then call them out into the world with new inspiration and dynamism. The apostles spend this time in prayer, opening themselves up to the question they, too, are impatient to answer: “What’s next?”

And so I’m sitting, today, with my painful awareness, my unease with its incompleteness, and, I hope and pray, with an openness to the Spirit’s leading - in my life, in the life of my congregation, and in our world.

Praying Again for the Rain

The rain is pouring off our house in waterfalls,
tap-tap-tapping on the strange skylight
on the second floor of our rented rowhouse,
And I am remembering that night, in college,
Seventeen years ago now,
Seventy lifetimes ago, now,
When the rain came down so hard
that we could slide across the green on our stomachs,
and I ran, muddy, into the library,
and we shouted up at the sky.

The next day, finally dry, I scribbled in a journal,
with the pen my grandfather had given me
that was running out of ink:
“Last night I summoned a storm to heal my father,” I wrote.
I never had that kind of power,
but there was a truth there, somewhere,
I felt it in my bones.

The rain is coming sideways, now,
The woodwind and percussion sections, all at once,
and the dog is scared,
and I am praying again for the rain,
Somehow,
to heal my father,
And wondering if I should miss the frantic, manic, passion
of shouting at the storm,
or if,
that energy looks better in hindsight,
when at the time, I just desperately wanted

To feel home, somewhere, in the world.

What I (Don't) Know

I was recently invited to give the Sawitski Lecture at Desert Garden UCC (video available here) — thanks to them for the invite and to Rev. Michelle Hargrave for sharing her poetry throughout the webinar. During this talk, and particularly during the Q&A, I was reflecting on how difficult it is to respond to some of the most frequently asked questions I receive. I decided to write about the topic for the UCC Mental Health Network’s blog, in a piece called “What I (Don’t) Know,” which I’ll share here as well:

There is so much I don’t know.

When I have the opportunity to share some of my story and experiences with churches and faith communities, the most common questions I receive are also the hardest to answer. The questions about how to help a loved one who doesn’t seem to want help or know how to receive help. The most honest answer to these questions seems the least helpful: I don’t know.

Not knowing the context, not knowing the people involved, often, in the era of Zoom, speaking from a great distance, I don’t always have helpful advice. There are resources I can offer – Mental Health First Aid trainings; the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, now reachable by dialing 988; my own story of getting help. But those resources, vital as they are, are not magic wands, not simple solutions to complex, layered challenges. Even when I know more details of a situation, when I am responding as a chaplain or a pastor rather than a guest speaker, I can’t always fix, can’t always help. Sometimes I – sometimes we – can only listen, and pray, and hope.

There is so much I don’t know.

But there are some things I’ve learned. There are some things that I know, or at least that I am stumbling into knowing, into believing.

I know that if we do the hard, consistent work of challenging silence and stigma, more people will be able to ask for help.

I know that if we are sensitive to the ways that we are socialized not to ask for help, whether because of gender, or an American culture of individualism, or any of the many other factors that make “I can do this on my own” the supposed ideal, more people will be able to ask for help.

I know that if we push back on trauma-creating systems, if we pay attention to the ways that race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity and presentation, and systemic injustice impact our shared human need for mental, emotional, and spiritual health, more people will be able to ask for help.

I know that if we work to make quality mental healthcare affordable and accessible for all, more people will be able to ask for help.

I know that congregations and faith communities can play important roles in this work.

And I know – I have faith – that we can do this because we are called to it by the One who is our Advocate, our Companion, our Comforter, and our Friend, the one who calls us to healing and to wholeness in the midst of the forces of fragmentation and death.

There is much I do not know. But I have faith in the God who calls us into spaces of not-knowing.

Coming Up: October 8th Webinar, "Sorrows Like Sea Billows Roll: Mental Health Challenges and Our Journeys of Faith"

On October 8, I'll be a guest speaker for the Sawitski Memorial Lecture webinar at Desert Garden United Church of Christ. I'll be offering reflections on the theme "Sorrows Like Sea Billows Roll: Mental Health Challenges and Our Journeys of Faith." It's all remote, so you are welcome to join! You can register at this link.

Just a small bit of backstory: the title for my talk is a quotation from they hymn “It Is Well With My Soul,” a hymn by Horatio Spafford. I reference they hymn, in a somewhat negative light, in Christ on the Psych Ward. In describing a time of acute mental and emotional crisis, I wrote: “With all respect to Horatio Spafford, it was not ‘well with my soul.’”

When Desert Garden UCC invited me to give this lecture, they informed me that “It Is Well With My Soul” is something of a theme song for the lecture series, and kindly inquired whether that would be a problem for me, given this passage in my book. I told them no — to the contrary, what a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the tensions we hold in our faith life, between celebration and grief, presence and absence, assurance and lament.

So the choice of title for the lecture is an intentional reference to these tensions, and will provide something of a focal point and theme for the webinar.

If you’re able, I hope you’ll join!

The First Time I Understood the Nativity

The first time I ever really understood the Nativity, I was in a village called Yanoun, in the northern West Bank. I had been serving as a Global Mission Intern, living and working in Jerusalem. I traveled to Yanoun with friends working with the World Council of Churches. We met village elders and learned about the dire situation facing the Palestinian families that had lived and worked this land for generations. We walked through the village and the surrounding fields, led by two cousins, both shepherds, who showed us the ins and outs of their daily routine. At one point, they showed us one of the spots where they corralled their sheep – it was a low cave in a hillside, with rusty feeding troughs for the animals located just outside. I ducked to look in the cave. It smelled like…well, sheep shit. Not a bad place to shelter your flocks, really. Just not exactly the kind of place I would want to have a kid.

“Oh,” I remember thinking to myself. “I get it. If God could be born here, God can be born anywhere.”

At Christmas, we read stories of unassuming people who meet God in an unexpected way, in an unexpected place, in a moment that, from the standpoint of emperors and kings, would never make it onto the radar of world history. What unassuming people are seeing God today – and in what unassuming people might we see God? In what unexpected ways and places will God be born today?

Christ is born. Christ can be born – anywhere. Born in a cave, huddled with the animals for warmth, laid in a feeding trough for a cradle. Born in the midst of the turmoil and tribulation of a world that might not stop to take notice, if not for the song of the angelic chorus. And born, even here. Even in my heart. Even in your heart. 

Merry Christmas. Today, there is good news of great joy for all.

(Sheep in the village of Yanoun;
photo by EAPPI/G.Kerr-Sheppard, 2015)

Snidow Lecture, WTH is a Pastor, and more

It was a honor to be invited to deliver the annual Clifton L. Snidow Lecture on Christian Life and Work, hosted by the University of Lynchburg’s Spiritual Life Center. My talk was titled “You Are Not Alone: Faith, Crisis, and Mental Health.” It was recorded if you want to take a look:

I was also recently a guest on the “What the Hell is a Pastor?” podcast, which is hosted by several alum of my alma mater, Wesley Theological Seminary. We had a good conversation about pastoral ministry, chaplaincy, denominational shenanigans, and theology, and also recorded a '“mini-sode” that was more theological geekery if that’s your jam.

Coming up in October, I’ll be doing an interview with the Writing for Your Life website and then speaking to a Duke Divinity School class, and in November I’ll be doing an online workshop with the Faith Connections on Mental Illness group based in Chapel Hill.

I can’t really put into words how grateful I am for these ongoing opportunities to create conversations about mental health, faith, and story-sharing. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. As I wrote about earlier this month: “I almost missed this,” and I’m so glad I didn’t.

"The Farthest You've Ever Seen" (for World Suicide Prevention Day)

Today, September 10th, is World Suicide Prevention Day. If you need help, you can now call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988, and I keep a longer list of helplines available on my resource page.

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This past Sunday Leigh and I took a trip to Western North Carolina for our sixth wedding anniversary, and since Laila is still a fun-sized human, she came with us. We took a hike on the Art Loeb trail and paused on the peak of Tennent Mountain, more than 6,000 feet above sea level. I glanced back over my shoulder at Laila, who was riding in style in a snazzy hiking backpack, as she gazed out over the landscape, wide blue eyes taking in the vastness of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Laila!,” I said, “This is the farthest you’ve ever seen!”

I keep thinking about a comic I first saw on The Trevor Project’s Instagram feed, created by Introvert Doodles. “There are four secret words I’ve never said out loud,” the comic creator writes: “I almost missed this.” I thought about these words on the top of Tennent Mountain, seeing through my child’s eyes the beauty all around us, hearing the buzzing of the bees and tasting the fresh blueberries, all anew. And I thought about a note Leigh wrote me, after I’d done a brief stint back in the hospital two years ago, about how she’d miss me and how she thinks that even if she’d never met me, she might miss me anyway. I almost missed this.

It’s a quiet little mantra for those of us who have survived suicide and/or suicidal thoughts and feelings. I could have missed this, and I didn’t, and I’m so grateful to be here, to be alive, to feel the weight of my 10-month old in my hiking backpack and hear her running burble commentary. And that gratitude has been hard-learned and hard-won, and I’m grateful to be able to say that, too.

Arm Tattoo.jpeg

It’s why I have a semi-colon tattooed on my forearm after a quote from one of Paul’s letters to the messy communities in Corinth — it reads “My grace is sufficient for you;” — because of Amy Bleul’s idea that it could symbolize a sentence that could have ended, but instead continued. What feels like an end can be a continuation, even a new beginning.

In my experience, living with suicidal ideation sometimes feel like there’s a fog in front of your eyes, like you just can’t see far enough in front of you to be able to see any way forward; and then other times, it’s as if you can only see things from too far away, only see big and horrible and seemingly immovable things and can’t see the ground right under your feet.

And so I stood on Tennent Mountain and looked out over the farthest my kiddo had ever seen in the ten months of her life.

And I also looked down at the rocks and the dirt and blueberry patches and the buzzing bees content to be about their vital work.

And I was grateful.

Please, if you are reading this:

There is such beauty to be seen, I promise.

You will see both farther and closer than you feel like you can right now, I promise.

We need you.

Please stay with us.

Please don’t miss this.

Remember: If you or someone you know needs help, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, and I keep a longer list of helplines available on my resource page.

Life and Writing Updates

A photo of Leigh and me at our ordination service in August 2020

A photo of Leigh and me at our ordination service in August 2020

It’s been too long! I haven’t written here in awhile, mainly because it’s been a season of big transitions for the Finnegan-Hoseys. We recently relocated to Richmond, VA, where I am now serving as co-minister of Bon Air Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Leigh has joined the chaplaincy team at VCU Medical Center. Laila has learned to crawl and is experimenting with walking, and Penny is still a good dog. This is a good move for us and we’re excited for this new adventure.

Here are a few recent writing and speaking updates:

I’m grateful for all of these opportunities to challenge stigma around mental health in faith communities and to create story-sharing spaces. It’s been a decade since I was first hospitalized for mental health crisis, and it’s sometimes hard for me to believe just how many surprising gifts have been a part of this healing journey. What a beautiful and blessed life.

"Six Days Later" (a sermon for Transfiguration Sunday)

Here is a sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, based on Mark 9:2-9, recorded in Howard Chapel at Barton College. Text is below if you’d prefer reading:

Mark 9:2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"

Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

“Six Days Later”
Transfiguration Sunday 2021

 ---

“Six days later.”

         That’s quite a way to begin a story.

Imagine with me for a moment that we were together watching a cinematic rendering of today’s gospel reading. Just talking about this is making me miss a time when we could sit together in a darkened movie theater, elbow to elbow. We’ve made it through all of the previews and the popcorn ads and the reminders to turn off our phones. And then, on a darkened screen, these words appear: “Six days later.” It’s like “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” for biblical stories. The words fade, and we leap into the scene, a beleaguered Jesus hiking up a mountain path with three of his closest followers – quite literally, in this case, following him up the slope. And then, the spectacular special effects – the miraculous transfiguration, the mystical appearance of ethereal figures from the distant past, the mysterious cloud obscuring our view, the magnificent Voice of God from somewhere off screen.

         And the whole time, as our senses are overwhelmed by the strange occurrences on this Galilean hill, in the back of our mind sit those three words with which the story began: “Six days later.” Words which, of course, make us wonder: what, exactly, happened six days ago that set the stage for the burst of sights and sounds we are currently viewing? Will the answer to this question perhaps be revealed in a series of flashbacks? Will we have to wait for a prequel to be released? What are we missing about the current scene that we might catch in a re-watch once we understand the events of six days ago?
         “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.”

Of course, we aren’t watching a new release in a movie theater. We’re reading a translation of an ancient manuscript; and we can direct our own flashback just by turning back the page.

That Mark’s Gospel begins the story of the Transfiguration in this way is particularly notable. Mark’s Jesus rarely waits around for six days before doing anything. One of Mark’s favorite words is the Greek euthys, often translated as “immediately.” The word appears more than 40 times in Mark’s relatively short gospel. Jesus seems to do just about everything “immediately.” Mark’s gospel doesn’t have time to wait around – it’s got stuff to do.

So, when we as readers or listeners get to this line, “Six days later,” we are cast back from the beginning of the 9th chapter, pushed to remind ourselves what has come before, six days ago.

         And if we do indeed turn back the page, we are reminded that, just six days ago, in the village of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked the disciples what names people were calling him. Among the answers they came up with were Elijah and one of the prophets – names both referred to and repudiated when Moses and Elijah appear on a mountaintop six days later, talking to Jesus. And then Jesus said, “Ok, but what about y’all – who do you say I am?” And Peter, who’s always quick to act and quick to talk if sometimes a bit slow to think, said, “You are the Messiah” – or, to say the same thing with a different translation, “You are the Christ.”

         Now, those of us who have spent some time in church, who maybe, say, grew up going to Sunday School, are accustomed to thinking of this as the right answer. We nod our heads in the affirmative. Of course Jesus is the Christ. Of course Peter has given the correct answer, has passed the test, will get an A+ in his course on Discipleship from Professor Jesus. But Jesus always surprises. Rather than, “Yes, Peter, you’ve got that right!,” Jesus said, “Don’t tell anybody you said this.” Perhaps Jesus knew that once word gets out that someone’s a Messiah, their teachings get trampled as half of the crowd rushes to put them up on a pedestal, while the other half rushes to put them up on a cross. “You are the Messiah, the Christ,” Peter said. “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Jesus responded.

         And then Jesus and Peter really got into it, with Jesus starting to explain that being a Messiah might actually involve quite a bit of unpleasant suffering, and Peter saying, “That can’t possibly be true!,” and Jesus, who apparently did not attend the most recent seminar on respectful workplace communication, calling Peter Satan and telling him to back up. In the words of New Testament scholar and theologian William Placher, “Peter expects a Messiah and thinks he knows what that means, but he has it all wrong, just as anyone with the usual expectations about wandering miracle workers would have it all wrong.”[i] So much for that A+ in Discipleship class.

         This tendency to “have it all wrong” extends beyond the identity of Jesus and discussions among his closest followers. In fact, Jesus goes to great lengths first to call a larger crowd to him and then to let that crowd know that just as Peter has misunderstood the nature of messiahship, so too have the followers of Jesus tended to misunderstand discipleship. To follow Jesus, to look for the Christ, is not about gaining power, prestige, or popularity, but is, in the words of the great theologian (and campus chaplain) Howard Thurman, to “choose rather to do the thing that is to them the maximum exposure to the love and therefore to the approval of God, rather than the things that will save their own skin.”[ii] If we balk at Jesus’s harsh words to Peter, perhaps it is because we understand their deeper meaning – not only that Peter gets wrong what it means to be the Christ, but that we can so often get wrong what it means to be a Christian.

         It’s six days after this pretty public rebuke of Peter that Jesus takes Peter, and his frenemies and rivals for Jesus’s approval, James and John, up a mysterious mountain. And there, something happens that calls into question all of the disciples’ theories about who this Jesus is. Elijah and Moses are there – there goes those theories about Elijah or the prophets being Jesus’ identity. Jesus is shining, but there is a cloud, and thus Jesus’ identity is both revealed and concealed in a new way – and then God speaks, and calls Jesus by a name that Peter and the disciples left off their list. “This is my Son,” says God. “This is my beloved Child. For this reason” – not because he is Messiah or Prophet or Savior, but because the Belovedness in him reflects the Love that is the Divine nature – “listen to him.”

         Six days ago, the people and the disciples had a lot of ideas about who Jesus was. Six days later, God just calls him “Beloved Child.”

         In similar fashion, people have a lot of ideas about what to call God. Our scriptures, in fact, are filled with multiple images, with many names, for God – God is a Rock and a Father, a Redeemer and a Voice from a Cloud, “The One Who Sees Me” according to poor exiled Hagar, a Mother Bear according to the prophet Hosea, a mother bird according to many of the Psalms, a midwife according to the 22nd Psalm, Lord and Shepherd according to the 23rd. And yet all of these images, these names, these labels, are summed up for Christians in a single line from the First Epistle of John: “God is love.” All of the different names by which God’s children call out to God, all over this beautiful, weary world – God will respond to all sorts of different names. Because God recognizes these are attempts to call God by God’s true name: Love. Human language just won’t do for that – but then, of course, human language, and human action, with all its limitations, is all we’ve got.

         If you’ve been paying close attention to Mark’s gospel, you might recognize from earlier in the story this voice of Love speaking from the cloud on the mountaintop. The divine voice which speaks of Jesus’s Belovedness urges us to turn back the page, again, not just six days back, but back to the beginning of this good-news-story, to Jesus’ baptism, where we first heard that voice speaking – with one little difference. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus’s Belovedness reminds us that we need to listen to Jesus’s teaching, even when that teaching is, surprisingly, to not make such a big deal out of a glowingly divine Jesus speaking directly to Moses and Elijah while God makes proclamations from a cloud. Jesus, in fact, tells the disciples not to tell anyone about that; for rather than impressing people with the spectacular special effects, the disciples will be called to love people in surprising ways in the midst of the ordinary. When it was time to deliver an unpopular sermon on the likelihood of suffering and the need to give up power and prestige, Jesus made sure to call a crowd around him; but this miraculous event he wants kept a secret. Not exactly the right way to gain a big cult following!

But at Jesus’s baptism, according to Mark, “a voice came from heaven, saying ‘You are my Beloved Child, with you I am well pleased.” Sounds familiar, right? But again, note the one little difference. That God cares for and is pleased by God’s Beloved Child – that comes first in this story. The love comes first. The need to listen to hard words about discipleship comes second.

         This reminder – that the story begins with God proclaiming how pleased God is with that which God loves – urges us to turn the page back, yet again, this time all the way back to the beginning. Because in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earths. And six days later, or so the story goes, God created humankind in God’s very own image, in the image of loving relationship, and sent them out to love and care for all that God had created, and called it all good, good, and very good. And then God, who had done a lot of hard work over the past six days, took a nice, long nap. Which is the kind of thing that you can do when you are able to rest on the assurance that creation is, in fact, good; and that you are, in fact, made of Love.

         Six days later, what started out in chaos and vacuum had become a good and beloved creation. Six days later, what started out in conflict and confusion had been clarified with simple words: “This is my Beloved Child. Listen to him.”

         Are we prepared, today, to listen to this voice – God’s voice, the voice of the Creator – when it tells us who Jesus is and, in turn, reminds us who we are?

         I wonder what would happen if, right now, you were to turn the page back six days. Where have you been this week? What conflicts and confusions have you encountered? What sorrows and celebrations, challenges and serenities, have you experienced? When has your heart broken, and when has it been healed?

         Take a moment and turn back the page. Reflect on the week that is behind us. Take a deep, cleansing breath.

         And as we go about the next six days, may we open our ears, open our minds, open our hearts, to receive the good news from God:
         God, who made us in God’s image and called us good.

         God, who sees us as we truly are,

         Who calls us by our true names:

Beloved. Beloved. Beloved.
Amen.

[i] William Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture (Westminister John Knox, 1994), 13.

[ii] Cited in Emerson Powery, “Mark,” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, ed. Brian K. Blount (Fortress Press: 2007), 138.

This Week: Real Talk about Relationships, marriage, and mental illness

I’ll be joining my friend the Rev. Sarah Griffith Lund and a group of really insightful folks for a conversation about marriage, relationships, and mental illness. The even is Tuesday, February 9, at 8pm Eastern; you can get a free ‘ticket’ to the event, along with the sign-in link, by clicking here. The event is also a launch party for Sarah’s new book, Blessed Union: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness and Marriage, now available from Chalice Press.

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"God Sightings" -- A message for the first Sunday after Christmas Day

My parents with our daughter Laila at the NC Botanical Gardens

My parents with our daughter Laila at the NC Botanical Gardens

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too." There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. (Luke 2:22-40)

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Five years ago, I was serving as a campus minister at American University in Washington, DC. During our weekly worship services, we always took time for something we called “God Sightings.” God Sightings was a chance for our students to name where they had seen God in their lives over the past week. Every year, one or two students would be particularly diligent in having a God Sighting to share every single week. They would keep an intentional eye out for little moments that reminded them of their faith, moments of wonder or compassion or restoration. The way sunlight reflected in a puddle on the campus quad; a fun conversation with roommates; something learned in class that unexpectedly resonated with their faith; they would report these sightings, faithfully, every week. Another group of students would participate if something particularly meaningful had occurred that past week – exciting news from family back home, perhaps, or a grad school acceptance letter.

And then there was a third group of students, perhaps a bit shyer, who rarely had something to share out loud. When members of that latter group did work up the courage to share, it was usually because other students in the community had come through for them in some simple yet beautiful way, delivering soup during a sick day, calming anxieties about final exam, providing a ride home for the holidays. These stories were often born out of an experience of difficulty, of pain, or of human need, need which was met by the care and compassion of a loving community of faith. Shared over the course of a year, the practice of God Sightings gifted us with a robust sense of the many and diverse ways that God can make God’s self known in the world, even and perhaps especially in difficult or scary times. Keep an eye out for God often enough, and you can’t help but catch a glimpse.

We are, of course, in the Christmas season. While I’ve never actually seen any lords a leapin’ the old song is correct in reminding us that there really are twelve days of the celebration of Christmas, beginning on the 25th of December and continuing until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. (By the way, did you notice two turtledoves meeting their not-so-glorious end Luke’s gospel?) So anyway, Merry Third Day of Christmas! In this season we pay particular attention to God with Us, Immanuel. We remind ourselves that God comes to us in the most unsuspecting places and ways – in the rugged open hills of Palestine, in celestial concurrences, in mysterious visitors from foreign lands, and of course, most centrally, in the fragile and dependent body of a baby.

We are newly familiar with the practice of noticing God in the sounds and movements of a newborn. Our daughter Laila is six weeks old, and we are delighting (mainly) in her newly discovered and surprisingly strong grip, the way her eyes are beginning to track motion and faces, her experiments with vocalization. Each day with Laila is a reminder of wonder and of the purpose found in caring for each other. If we were to offer God Sightings in worship, I would have many to share! But of course, there’s an ease to noticing God’s grace present in an infant when we are safe, warm, at home in our relatively privileged household. It is a more difficult task, or at least one requiring a bit more discipline, to keep an eye out for God when things are not so safe or comfortable. Sharing God Sightings each week in worship is just one way to hone that discipline so that it is well-practiced for the harder times.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’s parents bring him to the Temple for his dedication, fulfilling the sacred traditions of their faith, and are surprised by not one but two strangers who offer prophecies and praise of their newborn child. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Simeon and Anna are both deeply attuned to the presence of God in unsuspecting places. Their encounters with the baby Jesus are a form of sharing God Sightings. Their words remind us to pay attention, to be on the lookout, for the Christ who is God with Us, hiding often in plain sight.

Simeon and Anna have something to teach us, I think, about our calling as Christians. We also, guided by the Holy Spirit, are meant to keep our eyes out for the Christ Child. And while our collective images of Christmas often gravitate toward the cozy and the comfortable, these two prophets remind us Jesus is born right into all the contingency and challenges of life – life which, in first-century Palestine under imperial Roman rule, had its share of suffering, of inequity, and of violence. These two prophet’s words do not shy away from this fact. Simeon speaks of falling and rising, of the upending of power which Mary had already predicted in song prior to Jesus’s birth, in her glorious Magnificat. He speaks, too, of the opposition and pain that this child and his mother will experience. And Anna’s words about the redemption – that is, the freedom or the liberation – of Jerusalem are dangerous words to cry aloud in the midst of Roman military rule. There is beauty here, in this story, in God’s very self revealed to us in this humble, helpless child, in God With Us. But there is risk, and danger, and pain, as well.

I won’t belabor the point too much, just to name out loud the palpable reality we are all aware of this Christmastide. If we are called to keep an eye out for God in this season, then we too are looking for Christ in the midst of all the pain and promise of a world in need. More than 330,000 Americans have now died as a result of COVID-19, my great-uncle Wendell White among them, with more than 1.75 million deaths worldwide, while millions more of our neighbors are out of work, fearing eviction, or lacking in adequate medical care. Political leaders seem unwilling or unable to take the necessary risks in order to care for the common good. Early Christmas morning, news of an explosion in Nashville, Tennessee ushered in even more uncertainty and, while little is yet known about the incident, it appears to be an intentional act of violence. With Simeon and Anna, we too look for redemption and healing in the midst of much rising and falling, of many hearts pierced by swords. Where could God possibly be in the midst of all of…this? Here, exactly here, we look for God With Us, in surprising places and unexpected ways. Here, exactly here, we look for Christ.

There is good news to be found here, even in the midst of a painful season for the church, our communities, and the world. Simeon and Anna live out their callings. They fulfill their vocations. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant West, vocation and calling have often become associated with career and job. But Anna and Simeon show us a different understanding of vocation, one not simply tied to productivity or consumption. And they do this not with some great and heroic act, but rather with the simple act of paying attention, of noticing God when God shows up in the form of a tiny child. Simeon, we are told, asks God to “dismiss your servant in peace” – by sharing his God Sighting, he has fulfilled a deep sense of purpose and can now, in a sense, retire – not because of some imagined productivity or accomplishment, but simply because of the fulfillment that comes from noticing God With Us. Anna, the story tells us, is “of great age” – that is, she was pretty old. Her age does not in any way diminish her sense of purpose, of vocation, for she is called, just as we all are, in whatever situation we are in, at whatever stage of life we are in, to pay attention, to keep an eye out for the revelation of God even in the smallest of things.

Anna reminds me of the words of theologian Joyce Ann Mercer, who writes of calling in older adults as “the vocational experience of slowing down.” She says that she often worries about how she will “spend” her time, how she can “save” time. “But with older adults,” she writes, “time becomes re-storied, transformed from a commodity to be spent or saved, to a space of grace where relationships unfold….I have come to think of the vocation of older adults as offering time-gifts to people who need to slow down.”[i] This isn’t to romanticize anything – old age, no less than childhood or any other age, has its share of frustrations, of contingency, of challenge. But perhaps it takes the wisdom of a ready-for-retirement Simeon or an elderly Anna to remind us to slow down, to be mindful, to see God here with us. To re-story time so that we understand our calling not in terms of commodity and productivity but in terms of the quality of attention.

Let this be good news for us during Christmas: that our calling as Christians is first and foremost not to produce or to achieve but rather to pay attention, to look and to listen, to notice and to share our God Sightings with one another. Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of work to be done, plenty of what that great theologian and mystic Howard Thurman calls “the work of Christmas” in his poem of the same name:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.[ii]

Indeed, there is plenty of work to be done. Plenty of finding, of healing, of releasing, of rebuilding. But Simeon and Anna teach us that this work does not find its source in hectic striving or competition or busy-ness-for-busy-ness-sake. Rather, it begins with keeping an eye out for God. With noticing Christ. And with sharing what we have seen. This is our calling, a calling made possible by the Holy Spirit which rests on us. It is a weary world which rejoices this year, my friends. May we rejoice with it – for our eyes have seen our salvation, prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the world and for glory to God’s people.

Look at God!

Amen.

[i] Joyce Ann Mercer, “Older Adulthood,” in Calling All Years Good: Christian Vocation throughout Life’s Seasons, edited by Kathleen A. Cahalan and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 188.

[ii] Howard Thurman, “The Work of Christmas,” from The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Friends United Press).

Little Things Before Big Things, Life Before Death

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Maybe it’s an obvious thing to say, but traversing the Advent season to Christmas feels a bit different with a newborn in our arms. Leigh was commenting yesterday that she has so many more questions for Mary this year, like, “What’s it like to labor on a donkey?” and “Who cut the umbilical chord?” and “Did Jesus fight his swaddle?” Because it turns out keeping an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes is no easy task.

Holding Laila as we participated remotely in an online Christmas pageant, I was reminded of just how very small and fragile a thing hope is, at least at first glance — and how strong she can be when she gets a hold of your hair, or of the future, and starts pulling.

At Christmas, we are reminded that little things come before big things. That life comes before death. The strangeness of the Incarnation is the affirmation that life matters— this life, this particular life, in this particular place and time — in all its smallness and and contingency. We celebrate the birth of Jesus, and this year I have at a tiny bit of a better sense of how sacred and awesome and primal and powerful a thing birth is to celebrate.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,” Jesus is reported to have said. The little things matter. So much of what we see going on around us this year seems to originate with people who can talk a big game about dying for their beliefs but can’t seem to value the little matters of life. Early on in the pandemic, the story of Naaman was floating around a lot, with a lot of folks, myself included, pointing out that what finally healed Naaman was him giving up on the need for the big show and settling for just washing himself in a little river. Just washing our hands, and having the courage to wear a cotton mask for a little while — these are such small things, really. But some folks would rather get sick, and risk others getting sick, and pretend like their actions stem from some high-minded take about liberty or family or something. And I get it. Frankly, it’s easier to pound our chests about making the ultimate sacrifice for our country than it is to get involved in the drudge work of democracy. It’s easier to talk a big game about making sacrifices for my family than it is to just do the damn dishes. But faithfulness in little things, first. Life before death.

Christians have often been no help in this matter. There was an early Church council that felt obligated to put out a statement saying Christians shouldn’t going around trying to get martyred just to get into heaven — that it’s the living out of one’s beliefs, rather than the heroic-seeming act of dying, that’s central. Faith might give you the courage to face the lions, but getting eaten by lions isn’t the point of faith. The way we have often talked about Jesus, as if this child whose birth we celebrate just showed up in order to die, as if the cross is the only part of the story that matters rather than the life that wound its way to it or the tomb-busting love that repudiates it, likely hasn’t helped, either.

But these are weighty matters, best left to another day. For now, as I write this, my 6-month old is resisting a nap in her bassinet by our bed, testing the bounds of her swaddling clothes (and we don’t even have to try to get her to sleep in a feeding trough!) Time to put down the theories about incarnation and atonement and rock her and sing to her, marveling all the time at how small and tough and beautiful life can be.

This year, may we be reminded to be faithful in little things before big things. In the daily matters of living before the epic matters of dying. For unto us a child is born. Let us stay here for awhile, by this improvised cradle, and with the shepherds marvel at this gift of life.

I Hope You Will Know: To my daughter, from her bipolar father

Dearest Laila,

Just over a month ago, you joined us here on land, and we couldn’t have been more excited and grateful to meet you. You are too young to read this right now — your curious eyes are just learning to search out the contrasts between light and dark, fascinated by the black rim of the nursery mirror where it meets the white wall.

I have been thinking over these past few weeks about the things I hope you will know as you grow older. There are too many to write down all in one place, but I thought I would try, incomplete as the attempt might be. It’s what I do, you see. You’ll learn that about your father, for better or for worse. I hope it will mainly be for the better.

I hope you will know that you are so, so loved. That I love you and your mom loves you and your grandparents love you and so many other people love you, and that God loves you and knows you by your name. You will always be loved. Nothing and nobody can take that away.

I hope you will know that it is ok to have big, big feelings. People in our family often do. Feelings aren’t bad. They’re how our hearts talk to us about the world. Sometimes, they try to tell us too much all at once, and we have to sit down with them and tell them to raise their hands and speak one at a time, but that’s not because they are bad. It’s because they have so much to tell us.

I hope you will know that when your dad has big, big feelings, it’s not bad. And it’s certainly not because you are bad or have done anything bad. You, my love, are so, so good. Sometimes, when your dad seems sad, or mad, or hurt, it’s because his heart and his brain are trying to tell him too many things all at once. He is still learning how to sit down with them and talk to them. Your dad is still learning to see, not just the contrasts between the extremes, which your eyes are right now practicing on, but all the shades of in-betweens. And that can be hard. And it’s ok to tell your dad that it’s hard. It’s all ok, because we are all learning, all the time.

I hope you will know that brains are complex and sometimes hard but they are beautiful as well. I hope you will know that our minds and our hearts and our souls and our bodies are good, and that they are made to love and be loved.

I hope you will know that you are safe and that you are cared for. I hope you will know that your mom and I try to do everything we can to make the world a better place, not just for you, but for all of the friends and neighbors you will make as you grow up. I hope you will know you can be a part of that work, too.

I hope you will know who you are. I also hope you will know that figuring out who we are is the journey of a lifetime. I hope you will know that the things you love and are fascinated by are part of that journey. I hope you will know that there is something in this world that only you can do and be, and that when the time comes, you will have everything you need to do and be it.

I hope you will know joy, and know how much more joyful it becomes when shared.

I hope you know that since your first breath you have always made me laugh, and smile, and cry the best kind of tears.

I hope you will know how strong and amazing your mom is. I hope you will know how strong and amazing you are.

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And most of all, I hope you will know whatever you need to know, whatever you want to know, whatever knowledge and wonder your already-so-curious mind seeks out. Right now it’s the contrasts between light and dark, the source of the glimmering lights on our Christmas tree, the way your startlingly strong little hands work, the identity of the strange furry canine who is so curious about you as well. Who knows what it will be next?

Who knows?

I hope you will know.

I love you. You are so, so, loved.

Gratefully,
Your Dad

Recent Media: Accidental Tomatoes and Ministry Collaborative Podcasts

I had the honor to be featured in two recently published podcasts:

My friend Joe Webb, who invited me to Marietta, OH back in 2018 when I was on my Christ on the Psych Ward mini-tour, interviewed me on his Accidental Tomatoes podcast.

Joe’s podcast focuses on the ways faith takes shape outside of the boundaries of traditional church.

We talk mental health, partisanship, and relieving medical debt.

And I was honored to be part of a conversation with one of my favorite theologians and authors, Dr. Monica Coleman, facilitated by the awesome Jennifer Watley Maxell of the Ministry Collaborative.

Check out this 20 minute conversation, entitled “Big Feelings,” about stigma, systems, and being ok with not being ok.

Just a few meaningful conversations for you to listen in on as you commute, walk the dog, or — in my case — try to figure out how to convince a 2-week old baby to sleep!