Let me tell you about "Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer"

* I received the book for free for review purposes from Wipf & Stock.

This is not quite a book review. Nor is it a book report. But I really want to tell you about my experience reading A Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer by L. Callid Keefe-Perry.

I don’t find it to be a coincidence that I ran across a quote from Toni Morrison this week. In Beloved, she wrote, “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” This quote, as well as a litany of verses from scripture and hymnody flowed through my head as I read Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer by L. Callid Keefe-Perry. Morrison’s quote from Beloved came to mind (and while formulating this review) as I was curious about how Callid would define theopoetics. Through Callid’s extensive writing and exploration, I found that theopoetics cannot be limited to a confined prosaic definition. Theopoetics is not something to be hoarded by the academic; it is instead a field that calls for creation and (re)creation within an active community of faith.

And that’s when I head the voice of Jedi master Yoda in my head: “You must unlearn what you have learned” (If you read Way to Water, I hope you hear Yoda’s voice, too. And God’s.). I went to graduate school to study rhetoric and professional communication. I then converted to Christianity from Hinduism. I then went to a non-denominational seminary and a Lutheran seminary to study theology. I then became a parish pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I would like to think of myself as a learned person, which is why unlearning is a terrifying concept for me. Because of my life experiences, I’m very interested in how people talk about God and contextual theology. But I’ve also used my studies in rhetoric as a binky of sorts; it’s one of the many shields I’ve hid behind in explaining theology to others and relying on the confines of definitions. Heaven forbid we place God in a box, yet I’ve inadvertently done that on many an occasion. But an exciting aspect of unlearning is relearning.

In Way to Water, I was reminded that I’ve been living a half-life of sorts within boxes and confines, and that experiencing God in our lives is something much more than needing an explanation. A reliance on concrete definitions. A reliance on needed tidy answers and conclusions. A delusion of grandeur that as a “theologian in residence” of sorts in a parish, I know more (well, I don’t). That the ways we talk about God can become our own idols and golden calves that we hold near and dear. Through Way to Water, I’m (re)learning that it’s more about exploring the work of a living and resurrected God in the world with others. I had a St. Paul the Apostle moment when scales fell from my eyes (see Acts 9:18-19, “And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength”) and I could imagine seeing the God-created world differently. Reading this primer has opened my eyes not just to how people talk about God, but taking conversations further in how people share with on another how they experience an experiential God.

As an ordained Lutheran pastor, I deeply resonated with theopoetics being more that just flourishing language to talk about God. In reading Way to Water, I felt in my bones the need to realize that God’s Word is the Living Word, the Word made Flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. It’s lovely and amazing to re-encounter the Living Word in a new area. Christianity is meant to be lived and experienced; otherwise, why would God come to us in the person of Christ if God didn’t want to truly know and live our experiences? Words can communicate, but learning through experience and lived-ness... interwoven with words can be profound.  Way to Water also made me realize that theologians have a particular vocabulary (click here to see what I'm talking about), and that how we communicate our experiences with God and with one another can be exclusive. If we are to share our experiences of God with one another (laity, ordained, seeker, conversation partner...), we must not be afraid to stumble where words might not be able to contain such an experience, because we just might find the words, the expressions, the experience of God alive, and perhaps God anew. Way to Water also brought me back in touch with my experiences with the Living and Loving God and made me excited about hearing and sharing with people on their experiences of God in their lives.

Reading Way to Water led to new discoveries in how I think about experiencing God, inviting conversation about how others experience God, and forming the words of those shared experiences into a holy and communal place. As Callid’s work is a primer, it whets my appetite for more conversation and more dialogue. As an ordained minister who is a woman of color in a predominately white denomination, I would love to see dialogue between theopoetics and the embodiment of race in theology. I appreciate Callid’s emphasis on safe spaces and hospitality in the area of theopoetics, but as a woman of color who’s pretty good at identifying as “other,” I wonder about how invitations are extended? Who extends such invitations? How are spaces deemed as “safe”? Who works to make such spaces “safe”? How can we work with concepts of hospitality, especially in a time when people feel they may be encountering inhospitable environments? As for a fleshy incarnational embodied experience, I also wonder how theopoetics will be in conversation with social media?

After reading Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer, it feels fitting to have questions on conversation.

Review of Way To Water: A Theopoetics Primer, by Callid Keefe-Perry, is published by Cascade Books. More reviews of this book will be published here, this coming week: http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2015/02/25/theopoetics-book-blog-tour/ 

 

Wilderness

Ash Wednesday was hard.

I had a hard time looking at my Facebook feed, seeing smiling selfies with the imposition of ashes upon many a forehead. Looking at those pictures, I found myself wanting to scream at the computer screen. I wanted to tell my friends and colleagues, "This is absurd! You have the markings of ashes on your forehead, yet you look so damned happy."

Then I had to stop and think, "Okay, Tuhina, what is going on?"

I didn't observe Ash Wednesday this year. Or maybe I did, but not in a traditional setting. I spent most of Ash Wednesday in bed. I wasn't going to church for a multitude of reasons. Some of those reasons were:

• I'm currently about 3,000 miles away from the parish where I serve;
• I was sick due to an overly generous visit from the snot fairy;
• I wasn't prepared to drive a car not familiar to me in the aftermath of an ice storm in the South; yet most of all...
• I wasn't ready to have ashes placed on my forehead and I wasn't ready to hear the words pronounced to me, "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

I'll admit, I find myself in a wilderness of sorts. Death lurks around the corner in this wilderness. I vacillate between the cool calmness of logic and the tempest whirlwind of emotion. Logically, I think I understand that my father is dying from cancer. This cancer defies logic, though. This cancer is vicious; the man who was a force to be reckoned with is still incredibly sharp in mind, but cruelly trapped in a body that is failing him. Emotionally... well, my emotions are encased in the shiny silver ball ricocheting all over the pinball machine of the classic five stages of loss and grief. My pastoral colleagues tell me this is normal; if I'm going to be entirely honest, I don't know what normal is anymore.

Ash Wednesday is particularly difficult this year because I'm not ready to hear the words, "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I'm not ready to hear those words this Lent because my father wishes to be cremated when he dies. He wishes to truly return to that form of ashes whence we came, from the adamah from which we have been formed. And this year, on Ash Wednesday, to have the imposition of the ashes on my forehead felt too real, too close to my father's mortality, too close to the tactile nature of adamah.

As a Lutheran, I am grateful for the sacraments, especially for their tactile nature. I am grateful for the bread and the wine that are Christ's body and blood, that feed me and sustain me and keep me connected to the body of Christ. I am grateful for the water that has led to my own death and rebirth. But it's the tactile nature of ashes pressed to living skin that I had a hard time with this year. The ashes of my personal Ash Wednesday were not the burned up palm leaves from last year's Palm Sunday. My ashes were instead were the particles of dust flying around as I sorted through the items that accumulated throughout the course of my parents' marriage. This Ash Wednesday, I think I get it.

"For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Longing for Home

Sermon delivered Sunday, December 21, 2014 (4 Advent, Year B), at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Oakland, CA (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 and Luke 1:26-38).

When I think of this week’s lessons, I can’t help but think of home. What does home mean to you?

Home is that place where you feel comfortable, right? Where you can kick off your shoes, maybe (or maybe not, depending on who’s in your house) put your feet up on the coffee table, and be your whole and full and entire self. But sometimes, the emotional place of home can be elusive. Home can be that mythical land, like in dreams and fairy tales. Thinking about this elusive definition of a full concept of physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological home makes me think of my parents. My parents were both born and raised in India. They grew up with this rich history, this rich culture, this rich sense of who they were as children of what was then a newly formed independent and democratic country of India. They were also formed by their families, their schools, and even their villages... 

And then they left India... and went to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1970. In November. 

Even though they’ve lived in the US for 44 years, my parents still don’t feel like they really fit in this country; they don’t really know if they’re home or not. When my parents were finally empty nesters, they announced to my brother and me that they were moving back to the mother country. 

That only lasted two months.

When they came back to the US, they were surprisingly sad. They were happy to be back in India, but just for a little while. The India they knew was in their memories, back in the 1950s and 60s. This present-day India... they discovered that it wasn’t their home. Things were different. People got older and changed. Friends and family members died when they were stateside, buildings were torn down, and somehow my parents got older, and were maybe even more displaced because they were longing for a sense of home so much. My parents will live the rest of their lives longing to find that home, that place of belonging, where they can merge their Indian upbringing with their American present, where they can wholly and fully and entirely be themselves.

When I think of today, this fourth Sunday of Advent, I can’t help but think of home, and longing for that place to fully and wholly and truly be who God created you and me to be. I think about God’s home. Because really, where does God live? King David, in our Old Testament lesson, is convinced that God... well, that God needs better digs, and maybe an actual zip code to settle down and get out of that tent. God confronts David and tells him, “Excuse me, all this time you’ve been carting me around in this tent, have I demanded that you make me a house of cedar? No!” It seems though, that God’s cool and all right with where God’s at being amongst God’s people. God delights to be among God’s people; God tells David, “I have been with you wherever you went.” Of course, God is the God of surprises. God tells David, “Hey, guess what? I will build YOU a home, for you and your people and I will establish a dynasty. How’s that for a home?” Okay, so maybe God didn’t exactly say it that way. But this home, this dynasty? This is a significant proclamation to come from God. Especially for a people who have lived with displacement, that have a history of wandering, especially wandering around for a good forty years, and having a sense of being and no longer longing, having this home is a big deal. Huge.

What is it about home and wanting a home? Advent reminds us that we’re all sojourners. We’re all looking for God’s kingdom to come, that complete fulfillment of whatever home “is,” where we can wholly and fully and entirely be ourselves. Advent reminds of this time of our sojourn, reminds us that we’re living in-between times, reminds us that the fulfillment of the place we can call home is coming not just with the Christ child, but with the second coming of Christ.

But even though there might be a longing for home, or a longing to be... God has a place for us always, a place that we can call home... with God. God makes this promise that is to be communicated to David, “I will appoint a place for my people Israel and plant them, so that they may live in their own place and be disturbed no more... GOD will make you a house.”

What I really, really, really want to talk about is how God makes a place for us. Sure, God could build us a house. But God has done much, much more than that. Remember, God is a God of unexpectedness, a God of surprises, a God...really of scandal, a God of showing up where we least expect. Like making a home with us in a really unexpected place. Actually, it’s a place that’s really ludicrous and scandalous, and where we least expect God to show up, in the womb of a young peasant woman. Who knew that God would make a place with us, a home with us, to dwell and tent and be with us, in the incarnate Christ. Born of a young woman from a small village.

God makes God’s house in strange places. With a wandering people in a tent. Within a young woman in Palestine over 2,000 years ago.  With you and with me here today. That’s the beauty and the strangeness of today’s Gospel lesson; God doesn’t just make a house for us, but God makes a place with us in the incarnate Christ. Think about that. God tented with the Israelites in the Ark of the Covenant. God didn’t need a big ol’ house. God just needed a tent to dwell with God’s people. In reading the beginning of the Gospel of John, a translation of the first chapter states that God pitched God’s tent with us in the person of Jesus Christ. The incarnation is Christ pitching his tent with us, making a home with us, making a home for us. Not in a palatial disconnected ethereal being, but in flesh and blood, with us. This is one of the most profound and beautiful ways to profess the strangeness and beauty of God, that the anticipated and expecting coming of the Messiah doesn’t show us military or political power. Instead, the coming of the Messiah is shown in such a different and radical way. In the vulnerability of a young woman, who in the Magnificat, professes the world anew... the world anew with who has taken home in her.  

German theologian Meister Eckhart said of God’s presence with and among us, “We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.” We too are the scandalous and beautiful and broken places with where God dwells. God dwells with us in other surprising and scandalous ways. In the waters of baptism. In the simple elements of bread and wine. With this fourth Sunday of Advent coming to a close and anticipating the coming of the one we have been waiting for, where have we prepared the way? Where have we made a dwelling place, a home, for the one who is to come? In thinking of ourselves as that dwelling place, that place that can truly be called home, Sufi mystic Rumi had something to say of the body, of home, and of dwelling places. Hear what Rumi says about they body and a home for God in this poem:

The Body is like Mary, and each of us has a Jesus inside.

Who is not in labor, holy labor? Every creature is.

See the value of true art, when the earth or a soul is in

the mood to create beauty;

for the witness might then for a moment know, beyond

any doubt, God is really there within,

so innocently, drawing life from us with Her umbilical

universe—infinite existence...

though also needing to be born. Yes, God also needs

to be born!

Birth from a hand’s loving touch. Birth from a song,

from a dance, breathing life into this world.

The body is like Mary, and each of us has

a Christ within.*

*Rumi, "The Body is Like Mary." The Purity of Desire: 100 Poems of Rumi. Eds. Daniel Ladinsky & Nancy Owen Barton. New York: The Penguin Group, 2012. p. 3. Print. 

Confession and Absolution in Advent, Year B, 2014

In this season of Advent...

We stand before you during this time of longing.

We stand before you during this time of waiting.

We stand before you during this time of anticipation.

We stand before you as a broken people.

We stand before you as sinners.

Sin makes us uneasy and uncomfortable and unsure, but sin cannot be downplayed or ignored.

We live in a world where sin is very real.

It distorts our vision, our relationships with one another, and our relationship with you, God of mercy.

Sin robs us of having an authentic life.

Sin robs our neighbor of having an authentic life.

We have seen this loss of authentic life in so many ways.

We name sin... personal and communal... silently or out loud, with words and images.

(A time for reflection)

This sin, this loss of authentic life with you, makes the waiting of the Advent season much more real.

We cry out to you, God of mercy, when we live and see the brokenness and sinful nature of the world around us.

We cry out, “How long, O Lord?”

How long?

God of mercy, you hear our cry.

You come with words of power and words of prophecy.

You proclaim to us a New Heaven and a New Earth.

In this New Heaven and New Earth, you bring the ultimate healing, the ultimate restoration, and the ultimate renewal for us and for our neighbor.

While we wait, break your future of a New Heaven and a New Earth into our present.

You forgive us our sins today.

You give us newness of life today.

Show us the coming reality of that New Heaven and New Earth.

With that coming reality, we confess words and images, silently or out loud, professing our hope for the world through Christ today.

(A time for reflection)  

In that forgiveness and hope in the promise of a full restoration of your creation, may we be the hands and feet of your son, Jesus Christ, that we work together to bring the Spirit of Shalom, and the Spirit of your justice, to show the collision of the future of your New Heaven and a New Earth with today.

Bread and Wine, Flesh and Blood

I'm trying something new. Here is a video of the last sermon I preached at my internship site, St. Paul Lutheran Church in Oakland, California on August 26, 2012. The Gospel lesson for the day was John 6:56-69.

I was learning to say goodbye on a multitude of different levels. I was learning to say goodbye to a congregation that I came to love. I was also learning how to say goodbye to my friend and mentor, Marcus Hess. I learned my last week of internship that Marcus was diagnosed with cancer. Marcus passed away on September 13. I got to tell Marcus about the last sermon I preached, and I now share that sermon with you.

Who the hell are you?

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, July 8, 2012
Delivered at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Oakland, California (my internship site)

“Remember who you are, but remember whose you are.”

 I heard those words just last week. I had the privilege and blessing to see one of my close friends, Joshua Serrano, who as a joke I call my “brother from another mother,” be ordained as a minster of Word and Sacrament into the ELCA. It was a pretty incredible ordination service getting to see his friends, family, colleagues, and mentors support him in this call. His internship pastor gave the sermon at the ordination service, and I want to share parts of that sermon with you. She asked Josh, “Why? Why do you want to be a pastor?” That is a good question. It’s also a rhetorical question, but I would have been great to hear Josh’s answer. She also talked about call. One of the common threads of call is that it’s God’s work and tug on our lives and on our hearts. Then she reminded Josh that as a newly ordained minister of Word and Sacrament, “Remember who you are.” Which is pretty much code for “Don’t let this go to your head.” She also reminded him, “Remember whose you are.” Which is not code. Which means Josh is a mortal who belongs to God. Thinking back on this ordination service, I can’t help but tie all three readings to responding to God’s call on our lives and in our hearts. Because you know we’re all called. No one in here is exempt. Yes, you can hide under a pew, but I ask that you don’t do it now during the sermon or during service. You can run away, but please not now, and not any other time during the service. God has a way of seeking people out, even if you’re hiding and running away. Have you thought about how you are called? How that call can be a combination of both terror and comfort? How that call can be both incredibly fulfilling and incredibly draining?

Let’s talk first about Ezekiel and his call. Can you imagine how freaky it would be if God came to you and said, “O mortal, stand up on your feet and I will speak with you?” Because if someone uses that line on me, I usually want to run screaming the other way because 1. I’m either in trouble or 2. I’m being asked to do something HUGE. But this isn’t just any ol’ someone. This is GOD. And God saying, stand up, I want to talk to you? Let’s place ourselves in Ezekiel’s place. How would you feel? Intimidated? Freaked out? Maybe not able to stand? Guess what? Ezekiel’s not able to stand on his own when God comes to him. But Ezekiel doesn’t have to get up on his own. The Spirit places Ezekiel on his feet. But Ezekiel’s call? Not so easy. He’s going to proclaim God’s word with a rebellious people. They may hear… or they may not. Ezekiel has to go forward in a community where people will essentially say, “Who the hell are you?” But God equips Ezekiel in these difficult circumstances. Ezekiel is equipped with God’s Word. He literally eats God’s challenging Word of lament and woe in the form of a scroll. He eats these words of lament and woe… but these words taste as sweet as honey, they feed Ezekiel in the midst of a challenging call. These sweet words are countercultural, but they’re life giving. But they are words people don’t want to hear because they goes against what we want. The Word (and God’s call on our lives) can be considered to be awkward and not widely accepted.

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians also plays on call. It seems problems with authority don’t go away over time. The church in Corinth was dealing with authority issues with a people coming in saying they’re a true deliverer of God’s Word and authority. People were asking, “Who is a real apostle?” and in asking such a question, Paul was dealing with people who challenged his call and doubted the Spirit’s work in Paul. In their doubting, people are asking Paul, “Who the hell are you?” How does Paul establish his authority as someone called out by God? Well, he talks about a really spiritual friend. But Paul also admits to being a wreck; he talks about being someone with a thorn in his side. But even if Paul is a total wreck of a person, even if Paul’s plagued by this thorn, he’s still called. God’s strength is at work in the midst of human weakness and brokenness. We see that in the person of Jesus. We can also see that in God’s work in our life and how God calls us out. Paul talks about his weakness, and in this weakness, God still uses Paul. God outright tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Then there’s the Gospel. Jesus is having a rough time on his home turf of Nazareth. Sure, his hometown folks are amazed, but they’re quick to turn on Jesus by essentially asking him, “Who the hell are you?” They can’t recognize him as the Son of God. But I want to focus on the second half of the story. Jesus sends the disciples out. He tells them to pack light. But he doesn’t send them out on their own. Jesus equips them in their call to heal and cast our demons. They’re being sent out into uncomfortable and awkward circumstances, but they’re not stuck on their own because he sends them our two by two. The disciples were called and continually sent out in not so great and less than ideal circumstances. There was never a good time for them to wait and to exercise their call. They just had to go.

What about our call? The times where we just don’t want to go? We may feel halted by naysayers in acting out God’s call for us. We may think the thorn in our side impedes us. We ourselves may want to wait. Wait and see when it would be a good time. Wait and see when we can ease into God’s call on us. But there’s not a “good time.” Today’s lessons show us that even in the midst of rebellion, in the midst of adversity, in the midst of people asking us, “Who the hell are you?” and in the midst of brokenness that there is no “good time” to wait and act on our call. Circumstances may not be easy, but we’re equipped in our calls whether we know it or not. Our calls are unique to us, they’re all different, as educators, as administrators, as nursing home volunteers, as those working for social justice... there’s so many ways in which we can be called to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. When we’re baptized, we’re all called out. We’re all set aside to be ministers in the church. We cannot hide from that (even if we try to stuff ourselves under a pew). When we’re held over or standing at the font, we’re not alone. Baptism is a community event where God’s Living Word meets us in the water. We die in our baptisms where our sinful selves are drowned. We’re also bathed and refreshed in God’s love and grace. We’re surrounded by a community of brothers and sisters that have made a commitment to one another to support each other in our unique calls, our unique ministries. There are days we may not feel the Spirit at work, but the Spirit’s there. There are days when stuff just doesn’t seem to go right. We’re not guaranteed a smooth ride after baptism, after being set aside to be a minister. But we’re guaranteed that we don’t go about our call, and our lives alone. As we go forth thinking about how we’re called, some may as us, “Who the hell are you?” In responding to that question, remember whose you are.

Wow, I haven't updated this sucker since January. Which leads my adoring public (all of two readers, thanks y'all) to wonder... where have I been?

I've been on internship.

Internship has been an amazing experience. It's also been quick. I will leave the church and nursing homes where I'm serving in two months. That means the previous ten months have flown rather quickly. I'm left here thinking, wow, where to go from here?

Back to seminary.

For those of you who know me IRL, seminary hasn't been the easiest of experiences. I feel like I started as a lump of clay that was being molded and shaped. A couple of cracks showed up during the journey, but I'm continued to be shaped and molded. And part of that shaping and molding is to be a leader in the church, God willing.