Churches should update their websites for summer time changes unless...

... you're a doofus like me who seems to delight in committing many a social faux-pas. I would normally recommend that a church change their website to reflect a change in worship time. It's usually how visitors find out when worship starts. Only once did a church not updating their website for summer hours work in my favor.

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One of my preferred modes of transportation is using my own two feet. I usually have no qualms about walking unless I'm in certain areas of San Francisco or parts of the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles (situations that usually require a form of jet-pack transport). I was visiting my childhood friend in Denver for a week in August and decided to visit a nearby church for Sunday worship. I did what any visitor with the Internets would do; I Googled the nearest ELCA church and found that it was within a walking distance of my friend's house. I then went to that church's website to check on worship times. The website listed two services: I cannot recall the exact times, but it was something like 8:30AM and 10AM. I decided on the latter service so I could sleep in a bit. The church was only a little over a half mile away, so I didn't feel compelled to ask to borrow my friend's car. It would be an easy stroll on a flat and level surface.

Because I was in Colorado in August, the weather was dry and warm. I decided to wear a cute skirt and matching top. I looked at the Google Maps app on my phone and saw that the church was only a short walk, five blocks north on Emerson Street. I left my friend's house early, just in case I got lost in my wanderings. As I was walking north on Emerson, a couple of cars honked as I walked by on a quiet Sunday morning. I thought the honking was odd, but I didn't really stop to think about why they were honking. Maybe they were cut off by another car behind me? Maybe something fell in the road? It really didn't matter to me because I was enjoying the stroll and the start to a gorgeous summer's day.

The church on Emerson Street.

I arrived at the church to discover that worship was already taking place... which left me, the complete Type-A perfectionist planner, completely confused. I stood in the narthex checking my watch and checking my iPhone, desperately wanting to affirm that I had everything right. I must have looked incredibly distressed, because someone came to the back of the church and handed me a bulletin. With an urgent and hushed whisper, I asked, "When did service start? I thought it started at 10?" They responded, "Because it's summer, we're only doing one worship service. It actually started at 9."

My poor Type-A brain went into overdrive with its internal monologue: WHAT.DO.YOU.MEAN.WORSHIP.STARTED.AT.NINE.AM?!!??
WHY.DIDNT.ANYONE.UPDATE.THE.FREAKING.WEBSITE!?!?!?!?

Because this was all an internal monologue, I politely smiled as I took my bulletin from the nice person and then entered the sanctuary. Maybe I heard the nice person gasp; maybe I didn't. Because the rhythms of worship were similar to my home church, I realized that the service was nearing the meal. The Offertory was taking place as I saw the offering plates moving down the pews.

I eased myself into the back pew up against the wall. I put down my purse and bulletin. As I smoothed my skirt when I was getting ready to sit down, I noticed something odd. Very odd. Very, very odd.

As I attempted to smooth my skirt as I prepared to sit down, I realized that my skirt wasn't actually there. This made me very, very, very confused. I looked down to see that yes, my skirt was actually there in the front, I did put it on in the morning before heading out the door. My mind went into a panic... I see the skirt, but WHAT IS GOING ON? Did the back part of my skirt disappear? Was it raptured? Because it if was raptured, I was going to be seriously upset. I felt pretty sure that all of the folks sitting in the sanctuary that morning would be pretty upset as well if the rapture did indeed take place. But they weren't freaking out; no one seemed to have suddenly disappeared from their midst; no one was in a panic madly searching for their loved one (or any item of clothing, for that matter). As the panic within me grew, my heart raced incessantly as I tried to figure out in my confused brain, ''WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE BACK OF MY SKIRT???"

If I had taken the time to calmly investigate, I would have found the solution much sooner. After what seemed to be an eternity of panic half-standing, half-squatting in the back pew trying desperately to figure out this complete mystery of what happened to the back part of my skirt, I discovered that I had caused my own wardrobe malfunction. This wardrobe malfunction traveled with me as I strolled north on Emerson Street, entered the church, walked through the narthex and into the sanctuary.

It all seemed to compute at that very moment.
The couple of cars that honked their horns as I walked north on Emerson Street.
That gasp that I may (or may not) have heard as I entered the sanctuary.

The discovery? The hem of my skirt was caught in the waistband of my underwear. It seems that I flashed a good bit to drivers heading north on Emerson Street. Not to mention the nice person who greeted me in the church's narthex. I tried not to flash even more people as I tried stealthily to find where exactly the hem was caught in the waistband of my underwear. Thank God I decided to sit in the pew at the back of the church. Thank God there were no other people in the very back pew that morning.

Thank God I discovered this before walking up the center aisle to the altar for communion.

So yes, normally, I am a proponent of keeping your church website up-do-date, especially if there is a change in worship times during the summer months. But in this one time, thank goodness it worked out in my favor. Sort of.

The hour is a mystery

As I was bounding down the stairs in my in-laws' house thinking that I was late to meet with their pastor, their grandfather clock chimed five times. Those five chimes indicated that it was the hour of five; I checked my watch, which told me that local time in St. Louis was actually 8:45AM. I still had 15 minutes to make it to the church to meet with the pastor. The grandfather clock could tell me the quarter hour, but not the actual time itself.

The concept of time hadn't really registered over the past few days. Much of the days have been more task-oriented as opposed to time-oriented. The concept of time has focused on arrivals and completions. Time has been doled out in increments to orient ourselves to and for particular actions.

Making sure my father-in-law is comfortable.

Making sure that medications are given in a timely manner.

Making sure that the appropriate number of hours have passed with the arrival of the home health care aids, who have been absolute gifts from God.

Making sure that my mother-in-law makes it to her health appointments.

But in the day-to-day, many in my in-laws' house found themselves restless. My sister-in-law and her husband would find themselves awake at ridiculously early hours. I would find that I couldn't go to sleep even though my body was trying to tell my brain that it was exhausted, but yet there was time and energy enough to write. My mother-in-law would awake with the arrival of the home health care aid who would arrive in the extremely early morning hours.

The five chimes of the grandfather clock that morning told me that time was a relative concept. It was able to chime on every quarter hour; anyone in the house could tell time in fifteen minute increments if they heard the clock. Only the hour remained a mystery.

Time has made less and less sense. I feel like I have been catapulted into the previous year, being told that my father's cancer has invaded that tender space of the abdomen, the space where the body takes in and processes nourishment. But I thought, my father already died from this, why are you telling me again? I had to look at my watch and realize that it is indeed 2016 and not 2015. I had to realize that the diagnosis was not just tied to my father, but now also my father-in-law. I have to look in the hospital bed and realize that it's not my father, but my spouse's father.

Time doesn't really make sense; not only the hour, but even the year seem a mystery to me. It's as if someone hit a "rewind" button on the tape player of my life, and somehow, it has rewound itself to the previous year but in an alternate universe. Getting ready for a synod assembly not immediately close to home. Anxious with anticipation about the news contained in the next phone call. Not knowing if there is enough time to make arrangements for a last-minute flight to a destination that is not just a couple of thousand miles away, but that seems to be of another space, another point in history.

The concept of time contained and ordered... Not like real life.

There was usually one amazing marker of time, an achievement to be unlocked: the arrival of the next day. No one in my in-laws' house may have been aware of the actual date or the day of the week, but everyone was aware when a new day arrived. Everyone was somehow aware of that new day when we would wake up, tentatively look down and delicately tip-toe down the stairs into the living room, and to see my father-in-law looking back at us, breathing, comfortable, and alive.

The hour continues to remain a mystery.

Tweeting Dichotomy and Risk

Last night, I participated in the Twitter conversation (#ELCAWebcast) tied to the third ELCA webcast concerning racism within the denomination. I noticed something interesting concerning a couple of tweets.

I sent out a thought in two tweets.

The first tweet was: “What I wonder is what are we really willing to risk being a "welcoming" church?”

1/2 What I wonder is what are we really willing to risk being a "welcoming" church? #ELCAwebcast #decolonizeLutheranism

— Tuhina Verma Rasche (@tvrasche) May 26, 2016

The second tweet was: “because [sp] Christians all over the world are risking life & limb to praise Christ.”

2/2 becuase Christians all over the world are risking life & limb to praise Christ #ELCAwebcast #decolonizeLutheranism

— Tuhina Verma Rasche (@tvrasche) May 26, 2016

I noticed an interesting dichotomy taking place between these two tweets. The first shows that I can spell; the second shows that I cannot. But there were other things to notice... Maybe because with an electronic conversation in two parts, some are more apt to remember and see the first part of the conversation? Maybe I am making something out of nothing? Maybe I’m asking this particular series of questions because I myself cannot speak truth?

About the dichotomy between the tweets... The first tweet is a question. I’ve discovered that when tweeting a question to the Internet ether, it doesn’t necessitate a response. Maybe it’s a question that is merely “food for thought” on which to gnaw? Maybe it’s a question that no one wants to answer. It’s also a question, that at least in a general group discussion in the Internet, no one has to answer.

The second tweet is a statement. People around the world are not only risking their lives and limbs to raise their hands in worship to praise Christ, but they are dying.  They are risking the ultimate risk, putting their lives on the line, nailing their lives to the cross.

After a webcast, I find it frustrating that this is the level of risk offered. Some can tweet, "Great conversation!" I really have a hard time accepting that some felt that they had a difficult discussion on racism, good job, bravo! now back to our regularly scheduled programming is risk enough. When it comes to conversations about racism and identity, I don't get to change the channel. I don't get to turn off the television. If we are going to have honest conversations and take action about the racial makeup of our denomination (however awesome or flawed that may be), much more risk-taking needs to take place. 

I’ve been thinking about “welcoming,” intersectionality, and risk for awhile and in conversation with trusted friends and conversation partners. One of those beloved sisters is Alisha Gordon, who asked me, “What are you willing to give up for the liberty of all people?”

Damn. Damndamndamndamndamn. Nothing quite like a question that gets me to think... as a follower of the crucified and resurrected Christ, what would I myself be willing to risk?

Let me be entirely honest and transparent with you: I am struggling to answer that question. I am willing to risk things that personally, I deem to be big... but globally, people are risking far, far, far more.

But as a follower of Christ in the United States, do I really and truly understand the concept of risk? Do I really and truly understand what our forebearers of the faith in those early days risked to profess a crucified and risen God? In thinking about last night’s Twitter conversation and accompanying webcast, I think what I really want to ask is: what are members of the ELCA willing to risk to truly be a welcoming church? Maybe a greater yearning is to search for an answer...

What are you willing to risk as a follower of the crucified and risen Christ to truly be welcoming of Christ’s church? If the ELCA is to truly take heed, much risk-taking must take place. But what risks? What must we do, risk, and give up to #decolonizeLutheranism?

Feeling uncomfortable in an awkward conversation?

Having someone being mad at you and having a fractured relationship?

Your status? Your title? Your identity?

Your life?

Time seems to fold in upon itself

Time seems to fold in upon itself.

It felt like it took the work of a small army to get my father-in-law out of the hospital and back home under home hospice care. There was a very orderly and regimented schedule that occurred yesterday. Members of the family divided and conquered the list of tasks that needed to be completed.

Like getting my mother-in-law to her designated appointments.

Or receiving the hospital equipment at the house.

And coordinating with the doctors and nurses at the hospital to make sure that my father-in-law’s transport would take place in a timely manner.

Then being at the house to receive the initial delivery of prescriptions.

And timing the arrivals and departures of the nurses and home health aides.

Time has now shifted. Instead of shuttling back and forth to the hospital, we’re all now gathered at the home of my in-laws. We’re trying to find new rhythms of medication schedules, nurse and health aide rotations, prescription deliveries, visits from friends and family, generous food deliveries so we don’t have to take time to prepare meals, and waiting. We’re gathered at the house finding things to do in the meantime, because we’re simply sitting and waiting for what will come to pass. We’ve set the table well before mealtime. We’re outside trimming the hedges. I spend my time writing obsessively. We’re finding ways to fill the time, because watching and waiting is twisting and wrenching our hearts. If we stop to watch and wait, I fear our hearts may be obliterated.

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Time seems to fold in upon itself.

I feel as if I’ve been here before. Holding vigil. Watching. Waiting. Knowing that the inevitable will arrive. I have been here before. It hasn’t even been a year since I saw my own father slip from this side of the eschaton to the next. And between those moments of moving from one side of the line to the other, I remember finding ways to fill the time. Reading books. Singing hymns. Praying fiercely.

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Time seems to fold in upon itself.

The sacraments show me that time folds in upon itself. I was struck by this thought the day before my spouse’s father returned home from the hospital. The pastor who came to visit communed the family around the hospital bed. He then anointed my father-in-law’s forehead and proclaimed, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” Those words took me back to the previous week, a week of tongues of fire and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, words I proclaimed in a sermon to the congregation I serve over two thousand miles away. Those words took me back to numerous times at a font, proclaimed at the baptism of babies and adults. Words proclaimed at death and resurrection. Words, water, and God’s promise proclaimed that tie us to Christ’s death and resurrection.

Sacraments are a way to recognize that time folds in upon itself, that they are a way of showing us God’s kairos time in the midst of the linear chaos of chronos time. The sacraments are a glimpse into God’s concept of time within our own concept of time. The sacraments give us a chance to see that God “is, was, and is to come.”  

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Time seems to fold in upon itself.

The sacraments connect us to what is, what was, and what is to come. Baptism and communion tie us to those who have died and to those communities who are to come. The most stark example of this is the half circle communion rail; as we commune on one side of the circle, the communion of the saints commune on the other side, literally and figuratively. At one point, we too will join in this holy communion of the saints. The sacraments show us that God’s grace abounds. The sacraments are always for us, ways for us to see that God’s kairos time breaks into our chronos time. The past, present, and future collide and intertwine in a trinitarian dance.

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Time seems to fold in upon itself.

Communion and the stirring of memory

What do your communion practices say about your community?

My father-in-law is dying of cancer, and we’ve been taking rotations in the hospital to keep vigil. As I type, I’m sitting across from my spouse as my father-in-law sleeps. This afternoon has been quiet.

But the question on what communion shows us and tells us has been resonating deeply with me today. I was struck by this question today as my spouse’s family gathered together in the hospital room. We entered into the afternoon hours when a family friend, who is also a phenomenal pastor, came to commune the family. We stood in a circle around my father-in-law’s bed and heard the words of death and resurrection, and that the risen Christ comes to meet us in this simple meal. We partook of the risen Christ’s body and blood on this Trinity Sunday, this Sunday that can go beyond the confines of doctrine and proclaim a God of deep and abiding relationship. We wept as we communed together, that we weren’t united just as a family, but as the body of a resurrected Christ and partaking in this meal with the communion of saints. We were met by the risen Christ who meets us in death and life.

Thoughts on life and death can stir one’s memory. The question of communion practices also made my mind wander... back to the practices of my internship parish and first call. The people of my internship and first call concluded the meal by pouring all of the wine back into the chalice and having the pastor and assisting minister finish the wine out of the chalice. When I first arrived to the congregation in 2011, I simply thought that this was a good practice of treating the elements with reverence and respect. It was later in my internship that the drinking of the wine at the end of the meal communicated something else along with the reverence of treating the elements.

In the 1980s, the people of the congregation created an HIV/ AIDS Task Force. So many in the Bay area were dying in this epidemic. The church held services of healing that were picketed. They flung open their doors as a place of welcome for people who were being turned away by their families and institutions, who were stigmatized, and who were dying. The Task Force also visited patients at the AIDS ward at one of the Easy Bay hospitals (and that ministry continues to this day). Members of the community that had nursing and medical experience became caretakers for their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

This ministry was also brought into the sanctuary into weekly worship. The senior pastor I served with was a solo pastor at that time. He wanted to communicate that this welcome was a serious welcome that did not come with any conditions, and this was communicated at the Eucharist. 

The consecrated wine imbibed by congregants on every end of a multitude of binaries was poured into a chalice at the conclusion of communion. The pastor then drank the wine, communicating to the congregation that HIV/ AIDS could not be transmitted in the sharing of the meal. The gathering of the body of Christ also communicated that death does not have the final say over our lives.

Communion is a powerful sacrament that can communicate so many things. What we do at communion can also communicate something powerful to the body of Christ.

The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen you and keep you in his grace.

Amen. 

Adventures in "exotic" pastoring and #decolonizeLutheranism

Said to me when I was in my first call in Oakland: “The people of your congregation must love having an exotic pastor at the pulpit.”

The external reply? “Why yes. The congregation loves having Pastor Ross at the pulpit.” (FYI: Ross was the senior pastor at my previous congregation, a delightfully wise, snarky, older, white, gay man)

At that moment, the external reply was nowhere near the internal reply. I’m not going to lie; there are times that I wish my internal response could be an external one. Kind of like this:

My internal reply involved a lot of yelling, wild and flailing arm movements, obscenities, and in general, freaking out in front of this individual at a delightful Easter dinner celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. What pains me even more was that the individual who made the comment was an ELCA seminarian. He was studying to be a leader in a church. 

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Exotic (adj.): very different, strange, or unusual; of a plant or animal: not living or growing naturally in a particular area: from another part of the world  
(definition from Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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Exotic, in this context, was nowhere near a compliment. This was a microaggression bordering on a macroaggression. Calling a person “exotic” is othering; this is a result of having whiteness be the norm in the United States (and within mainline Protestant churches). Anything that is not white is therefore “other” and can be deemed an object and not quite human.

I never really thought of myself as exotic; I mean, I’m from Denver, Colorado. A beautiful place to live, but not what I would deem as “exotic”. I am, however, a second-generation Indian-American who was born and raised in the United States. What leads to a person calling me “exotic” is when a person sees is my skin color, which is obviously not white. That automatically deems me as other, as not American.

But an exotic pastor? This is a realm that I never thought I would write about. I am quite aware of the leadership statistics within the ELCA (I previously wrote about it here). I well know that I am far outside of the “norms” of church leadership. But those “norms” should not be what defines church leadership. Our church leadership should look like the Pentecost event: we should be from the ends of the earth proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We should do this in the fullness of who God created us to be, comfortable in our skins, our orientations, our personalities, our languages, our cultures. Our churches should be the Pentecost event, welcoming the diversity of languages, cultures, personalities, and orientations. It is a place where in the fullness of what Home with God can be, no one is objectified. No one is othered.

This is why I am passionate about #decolonizeLutheranism; it is a community that wrestles together, that loves the church, that loves the depth and breadth of Lutheran theology, and that believes that the Pentecost event is leading God’s church be that place where the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit is with us all.

Also, Christ was never about the norms.

What my Hindu father taught me about the resurrected Christ

Sola Gratia.

God’s grace is a gift, and that grace is ridiculous. We don’t get to choose who receives that grace because it is God’s to give. I experience that grace weekly in the sacraments. I really get to experience that grace daily in the face of my neighbor, created in God’s image. Even when that neighbor may not be a follower of Jesus. As the first year anniversary of my father’s death approaches, I have often thought of resurrection as the earth has journeyed around the sun in these days. I needed resurrection in those days when I saw my father, who I knew as a force of nature, wither down to skin and bones as cancer ate him alive. I needed resurrection because a part of myself died when my father departed this earth. I needed (and continue to need) resurrection to get to the next, new day. Little did I know I would actually experience resurrection in the face of death. I saw the resurrected Christ in my Hindu father and I found God’s grace in his death. My dad died in the middle of a vicious rainstorm. The power went out, and my mom, brother, my spouse and I had to yell at each other because it was raining just that hard. We were in a panic because the breath of life was no longer in my father’s body. We were in a panic because in one minute, my father went from alive to dead. We were in a panic because we had to now live in a new reality where my father’s incredible and overwhelming presence was no longer. I remember screaming and crying into the phone, trying to get the on-call hospice nurse to return to the house to do the impossible; restore the breath of life into my father’s body. Logically, I knew my father died. But emotionally, I had this insane hope that resurrection could happen at that very moment, that my father would rise from his deathbed, be cured from his cancer, and continue to overwhelm our lives in the best way possible.

Resurrection happened on that day, but not the way I expected. My father was not Lazarus, who was unbound by the cloths and stench of death. My father was bound by a dhoti; he told me that he entered this world as a Hindu, and he would die as a Hindu. He wanted to be clothed in a simple dhoti upon his death. The on-call hospice nurses arrived. They bathed my father and bound him in his version of his shroud. As my family was entering into the complex and confusing emotions of a new reality, the pounding rain slowed. It cleared to a drizzle to reveal a magnificent double rainbow.

If the double rainbow wasn’t striking enough, a bright red-orange fox was running through the clearing in front of my parents’ house, headed straight for the rainbows. All I could think at that moment that the Spirit was ready for a new adventure.

My dad’s final wish was also an act of God’s grace. It also involved a bunch of Lutherans. It was quite the cast of characters. It was the assistant to Bishop in the Sierra Pacific Synod, Pastor Katy Grinberg, who contacted the assistant to the Bishop in South Carolina who contacted a member of the Christian Action Council in Columbia, South Carolina who contacted my campus pastor, Pastor Chris Heavner, from my college days at Clemson University to help my family in a profound way. That chain of brothers and sisters in Christ working together found the Hindu priest my dad desperately wanted before he left the house for the last time. That Hindu priest lives in Columbia, South Carolina. But because the Spirit does what She does, somehow this priest, who rarely traveled away from his home, was at the Vedic Center (the Hindu house of worship) near Greenville, South Carolina the day of my father’s death. Another miracle that occurred that night was that my mother, who kept vigil at my father’s bedside in his last months and rarely left his side, somehow had ALL of the materials needed to perform the puja. The flowers to offer to the Deities and my father came from an African violet, a Mother’s Day present of years past. Dried flowers from a tulsi plant that somehow survived months of neglect. Long forgotten whole betel nuts, miraculously found at the back of my parents’ puja space. Atta flour to create mounds of offering. All of these people, all of these things needed for ritual, came together at that time and that place.  I am led to believe that it was because of the Holy Spirit at work through all these people that, by the grace of God, my dad received the biggest gift, his greatest desire on his last day on this earth; to have his body blessed, to have the Hindu ceremony that released his soul from his body before leaving his house and his family for the final time.

I was re-formed by my dad’s death. It was a visceral re-forming, but God was there. It took his death to solidify my belief in the Holy Spirit at work in the world today and to solidify my belief in Christ’s resurrection. The last article of the Apostles’ Creed screamed out to me on that day and every day after:
    I believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the holy catholic Church,
    the communion of saints,
    the forgiveness of sins,
    the resurrection of the body,
    and the life everlasting.
Amen.

The Reformation is more than Martin Luther nailing something to a church door. It’s definitely a part of it, but really, the reformation is still happening. We’re living that, experiencing that, in so many ways. The Holy Spirit is still at work in the church, in all of us. We’re the body of Christ to proclaim Christ into the world. Psalm 139 says, “We have been fearfully and wonderfully made...” formed by a God who is still at work in the world. How then does God continue to re-form us...?

And Papa, I miss you. Every damn day.