March 30th, 2012

Reorienting maybe means re-Orienting myself.  I’ve lost so much of me, there’s so much to recover.  Too much to uncover, “what’s under the covers?”  Disorientation to seeing the world through new eyes, ‘ears to hear.’

Much to say, but what can I?  When there’s too much unsaid.  Can’t say everything, but nothing is too costly.  All is confusion, a jumbled mess.  Clarity is prosperity, yet tension is not stressful.  Nudged or pulled, even confronted with blunt emotion is welcomed and embraced.

I keep living but eyes haven’t seen like this.  Vision yet unlived is following one foot in front of the other.  Correctional lenses or opticals can’t fix these pupils, because they are fixated on seeing through this view.  As the kingdom in-breaks, idols shatter.

     2012 was marked with many emotions, but most of them leading to what this song iterates… a remarkable sense of peace and gratitude.  Always looking, ceaseless searching, restlessness, and discontentment were major movements in my life but they started to subside this year.  Maybe it’s because I’m turning 30 in a few months, or because I’ve never really felt settled anywhere since before middle school, but I feel reassured knowing that I’m right here.  Running away from parents, from responsibility, or running into professionalized ministry, I’ve never really had the chance to just be.  I think if I hadn’t shown up at CAN two and a half years ago, I might have never uncovered who I am, and what my life means in its disparate parts.  But I think I have a chance now, with the help of this congregation and especially the youth and young adults, to the making of my whole self.  “I’ve been found out, so I’ll never explore.”

     Several revelations were shown me this past year and they have helped start the process of integrating pieces of me into wholeness.  Through my understanding of God, ordination, and family I have come to a fresh idea of faith and ministry.

     First, much of my reality surrounds the notion that God is either perfect or dead, Western Dualism at its finest.  As much as I would like God to be perfect, God is human in all our failings as well, because Jesus is human.  I have seen just how much this community loves and cares for me in everyday living, not holding onto my bad-boy past or my heroic future.  I have come to see that God is love in times of brokenness and frailty as much as in times of hope and confidence.  God just is, and I am thankful for that in this moment.  I offend others and others offend me, but God is still God. To be faithful, is to have the courage of knowing that God is the foundational relationship of my life, which grounds every other relationship on this earth.

     Another moment of God’s self-revealing came in the way I was expecting an old ordination (orderedness) but was surprised by living into a new ordination.  At the intern retreat I saw that my aspirations for being an ordained minister included exclusion of those not formally trained, competition with those who were denominationally affiliated, and a complete dismissal of those who weren’t a part of the system to begin with.  This meant I disavowed non-seminary trained lay members, congregants who didn’t grow up PCUSA or part of the mainline/Reformed tradition, people of color, women, and other Korean-Americans in the process of formal ordination.  The very people I’ve been called to love and care for, I have been treating as less-than because of the way I saw my own calling in the old order.  The old order, our denomination and its structures both physical and figurative, will crumble.  But I realized that day, that I am eager to be a part of the transition as the new order in-breaks even now. It is going to be very difficult, but to be a part of the new orderedness, means recognizing my privilege as I prepare to enter into the old order, a formal PCUSA ordination as a male.  It also means I admit that the seminary system is privileging its students to think and act like men, which I benefit from.  I see more clearly than ever before that I cannot be “neutral,” but that I must be actively against sexism, racism, and prejudices and injustices of all kinds.

     God showing Godself to me, I have begun letting go of my old narrative and living into a new one.  Mainly, I have started to believe in God.  I have begun to follow after Jesus rather than idolize my parents or a cultural project.  I am thankful that this church helped me destroy these golden calves of my life, and continue to do so in a loving and gracious manner.  All of these revealings have direct effects on how I embody faith and ministry at our church.

     Most pertinent is seeing ministry as friendship, and being a pastor as being a friend.  I truly believe that Jesus meant it when he said that he calls his disciples his friends, because I have had the privilege of leading my closest friends at CAN in a deeper sense of discipleship both youth and young adults.  With our young adults I reframe the narrative of purity from the messy sinful world and the church being an oasis, to being resilient followers of Jesus Christ in a crazy world.  I ‘walk with’ our youth in our regular rhythms of life seeing our church as the heaven here and now, and the world as a place to practice the inbreaking kingdom.  Both are asking the question, “Who am I, and what is the purpose of my life?”  They are asking the question of vocation and the answer is always discipleship.  How can I minister to show our younger members the intersection between God’s people (follower of Jesus Christ) and God-given talent (charism)?  This has been such a joy to see played out in our life together.

     “What is the source of your discontent/restlessness?” has been the question I have been asking regularly to our young adults, as anxiety is most present with those who are out of college and exiting the field of influence of parents.  Yet, when we, as spiritually empty and emotional adolescents, are left with our own devices and worries we are absent or violent with those around us.  Much of my ministry then is listening and letting anxieties be present and being invited into the world in which they came.  It is a continual emptying of the junk our families and cultures of origin have dumped on us, by loving and caring in the midst of hurt and betrayal.  We continue to work, relate, hang out, and enjoy life together in the midst of this playing out, and those who choose to stay have a new narrative in which to live into just as I have.

     “Why did Jesus come and die for us?” asks one of our youth with the deepest sincerity.  No matter how I answer I know it would not be adequate unless I could embody it.  I realize can facilitate the safe space and the allotment of time for our youth to be fully themselves, but I cannot do anything unless the youth invite me to do so.  I still have my super-pastor complex, and I want to save our youth. I still feel the need to be their hero and to impress them with my giftedness, or lack thereof.  But what gifts can transform a life?  None.  Without the Holy Spirit moving in our youth’s heart, and without their earnest questions of life, I am nothing.  The teachers and I can help put language to our youth’s experience, but nothing we do or say is as important and as powerful as listening to what they say and living our lives faithfully as fellow sisters and brothers, following Jesus Christ.

I am yours now

So now I don’t ever have to leave

But trust me, I still deliver like a midwife

And no, I’m not sayin’ I’m the nicest, I just live life like it

Uh, it take a certain type of man to teach

To be far from hood, but to understand the streets

I never threw away that paper with my Grammy speech

Because I haven’t hit the pinnacles I plan to reach

Yeah, you gotta own it if you want it

Kisses all on her body, she tells me live in the moment

And, baby, I’ll never forget none of that

Girl, I told you I was coming back

Drake - Aston Martin Music

In order to make the world over anew, people themselves must turn onto a different path psychically.  Until one has indeed indeed become the brother of all, there will be no brotherhood.  No science or self-interest will ever enable people to share their property and their rights among themselves without offense.  Each will always  think his share too small, and they will keep murmuring, they will envy and destroy one another.  You ask when it will come true.  It will come true, but first the period of human isolation must conclude…

For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.  For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself.

He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence.  For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish.

Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity

From Bk 6/Ch 2 (From the Life of Elder Zosima) in Brothers Karamazov

We spend money we don’t have, to buy things we don’t need, to impress people who we don’t like.

We’re just ordinary people

We don’t know which way to go

Cuz we’re ordinary people

Maybe we should take it slow (Take it slow oh oh ohh)

This time we’ll take it slow (Take it slow oh oh ohh)

This time we’ll take it slow

- “Ordinary People” by John Legend

The sun rises and the sun sets, and there is stuff in between.  Important things, fun things, sad things, and things that make me angry or frustrated.  The day is full, and yet, I leave this world as I close my eyes when I lay my head down on my pillow each night.  There are still mornings where I feel like the previous days trickles over, and sometimes floods over, but most days are full in and of themself.  My day is ordinary, and so are my weeks, and months.  This summer has been the perfect time to realize the beauty in the ordinary.  From retreats at people’s cabins, grill outs, and the State Fair, I have wanted to take things slower.  Maybe it’s because this is the best time of the year in Minnesota with trips, vacations, and BBQs, or maybe because the sun is not in such a hurry to set, there’s a bit more time to catch up with friends and family.

Ordinary doesn’t mean boring.  Having been at this church for exactly two years now, I would argue that our everyday life is just the opposite.  Yet, we don’t seek to be extraordinary.  Because of this church I have been able to see my interactions with everyone around me, whether members or strangers, to be of the greatest joy.  I most recently took a trip to Upper Peninsula Michigan to spend a couple days with a few of our Singles Ministry members.  The delights of a cabin/lake weekend jet-skiing, swimming, and canoeing were all present, but I was most surprised of how boring those things were in comparison with the hours I spent catching up with members who I haven’t seen in what seemed like months.  Not only this but it was also lots of fun getting to know family members and friends of our Singles members, who I have very little interaction with on a daily basis.  The ordinary lives of our members, turned out to be the most interesting and exciting happenings of our trip up North.

Not being extra-ordinary isn’t the end of the world like I once thought.  Growing up with the off-white American Christian understanding of God, I felt as if I needed to be especially gifted, extraordinarily well-behaved, and the most-loving in order to be saved from eternal damnation.  I know now that there isn’t a moral exemplar requirement or a save-the-world missionary outlook to life.  Feelings of helplessness and isolation that I previously held onto because I never lived up to uniqueness in God’s sight I no longer have. 

Discipleship is for ordinary people, like a fisherman and a tax collector, or a 20-something youth director of a local congregation, and sometimes we don’t know where to go.  Thankfully we can take each day slow.  Heroism is boring.  Living faithfully, that is exciting.

Do not be afraid of anything, never be afraid, and do not grieve.  Just let repentance not slacken in you, and God will forgive everything.  There is not and cannot be in the whole world such a sin that the Lord will not forgive one who truly repents of it.  A man even cannot commit so great a sin as would exhaust God’s boundless love.  How could there be a sin that exceeds God’s love?  Only take care that you repent without ceasing, and chase away fear altogether.  Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you.  And there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten thousand men - that was said long ago.  Go, then, and do not be afraid.  Do not be upset with people, do not take offense at their wrongs.  Forgive the dead man in your heart for all the harm he did you; be reconciled with him truly.  If you are repentant, it means that you love.  And if you love, you already belong to God…With love everything is bought, everything is saved.  If even I, a sinful man, just like you, was moved to tenderness and felt pity for you, how much more will God be.  Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people’s sins.  Go, and do not be afraid.

From Bk 2/Ch 3 (Women of Faith) in Brothers Karamazov

There is among the people a silent, long suffering grief; it withdraws into itself and is silent.  But there is also a grief that is strained; a moment comes when it breaks through with tears, and for the moment it pours itself out in lamentations.  Especially with women. But it is no easier to bear than the silent grief.  Lamentations ease the heart only by straining and exacerbating it more and more.  Such grief does not even want consolation; it is nourished by the sense of its unquenchableness.  Lamentations are simply the need to constantly irritate the wound.

From Bk 2/Ch 3 (Women of Faith) in Brothers Karamazov