Since i am back in the process of becoming a ACPE clinical supervisor I haven't blogged much. Mostly snippets of me can be found at facebook.  I am planning to begin blogging again soon though.  Through a special agreement, the us army is training me as I supervise some of the great Army Chaplains in their clinical training. This week was a joy since a couple of the men have begun their rotation with me at the VA.

Things are good in my dept here at the VA and we have a great new Chief of Service. I am mostly busy writing my theory papers but I have a couple of friends that give me support and put up with my otherwise distracted mindset.  It has been a year of blessings and opportunity and tremendous hardwork but I am very thankful that God has opened the way for me this year.

My son Chad will deploy once more with the Navy for "a very long tour" and my daughter Amber is doing very well. And of course, there are the grandkids and it is hard to believe ALana is 14. 
Anyhow, blessings to all this Holiday season..

In my job I regularly talk to people who have lost all hope.  Sometimes they have really set themselves up for the very situation they are in.  Sometimes just enough random events happen that the straw breaks and the person gives up. I wish I knew what was the key to emotional strength. 

In many ways I myself should have given up at times yet I always wonder if things will improve just around the corner.  They generally do and since I have a history in which things were beyond my control and they worked out, I can imagine light at the end of the tunnel when I can't see it. I thought about this article I wrote many years ago for my redbudtree website.   I thought I had lost my copy of it but I am glad I didn't.  I thought of it today when I read this article  about a young gay woman who attempted suicide and the person who pulled her from the water said:

Witherspoon brought May to shore and into the arms of a stranger who May has never seen since but is eager to thank.

"This woman, she's an older lady and I didn't get a real good look at her face, but she just hugged me. I kept trying to push her away ... and she just held onto me, like she knew that I was just breaking," said May.

"She was moving my hair out of the way, kind of stroking it, and saying, ‘You're beautiful. You're a beautiful person. Why do you think you have to do this?' And I said ‘because I'm gay' and she said ‘God is not going to turn you away because you are gay.'

"It was just an inspiration to me that day to see a stranger just take me in like that. I didn't feel like I deserved to be alive. This woman made me feel like I deserved to be here, and that was amazing. From that day, I felt like I should be alive."

So I share this article that I wrote on the very same subject. I believe that is why people are drawn to me who are depressed.  I have walked that road, yet here I am, still walking up that mountain.

 (Note I wrote this years ago so God was still male to me back then)

New Beginnings

Before the cold front moved in, Alana and I rushed to plant our trees. A dozen tiny twigs that we hope will grow into colorful maple trees someday.  We knelt by each tree; Alana delighting in squishing the clay between her fingers as we mixed the native clay soil with the store bought peat.  Then we packed the soil gently but firmly around the trunk and put a pipe around the tiny tree to protect it from the deer and bunnies that would find it a tender delicacy.  

Planting trees is not an unusual task by itself.  I could not help but hum the hymn "just like a tree, planted by the water.... I shall not be moved....."  Nevertheless, people do not plant trees unless they plan to enjoy the fruit of that tree - either its beauty or its fruit. That process is lengthy for most trees. That represents permanence.  Planting an orchard is generally the first thing a homesteader did when he claimed his land. Often even before he erected his home.

My husband raised an eyebrow as plants started appearing in the mail. I am botanically challenged.  He was almost jubilant in his predictions of their demise. I bought one particular plant that was reputedly indestructible.  I looked to be the exception to their rule. Suddenly, new growth appeared from the roots to replace the parent plant. Lately I have shifted gears and reconsidered my life's work. This has meant a reappraisal of my educational goals.  I am nearing completion of my current program Master's degree program.  Many friends have asked some hard questions and I have openly considered them all. Am I avoiding something? Do I really want to commit to four more years?  Why am I doing this? Am I too old?

Prayerfully I have considered these things too and I have decided that they may be missing something too. Something they may not understand about me. In the normal scheme of life, the human is like a stone, such a marble, or quartz and life is like water that wears it away slowly.  We wear away with age, trauma, and the things of life until old age and then we die. Of course, there are exceptions and sudden tragic exceptions take place and people die.

A person who deals with depression is like the sandstone on a beach.  We fight that horrible erosion on much larger and faster scale. Some folks do not win at all.   Christians have a ROCK to cling to, sometimes that keeps them on this side of the veil, and sometimes it does not.

A person who struggles with depression may not want to die but the struggles of life sap the joy from life.  They erode away a bit at a time. They die away inside.  They may hang on because they desperately love their family and don't want to hurt them. They may hang on for many reasons but they seldom hang to life for themselves.  Life is for the moment because there seems to be no hope in the future.  A Christian who deals with depression struggles even more because they then feel guilty for their lack of faith. They sometimes secretly want to run away from everything, but not seriously.  A wise woman once told me "Christians do not commit suicide; they get careless and have accidents".

It is hard for someone dealing with depression to recognize that each new day is a gift instead of a burden.  It is God's opportunity for us - A new beginning.

What my husband didn't see when I planted the new tree was that I was really saying that I plan on being here in 5 years to see those trees as saplings. I plan to be here in 10 years to see the glorious red and orange shows that those trees will give us. I plan to be here in 20 years when Alana shows her children the trees and tells them she helped me plant them!  I could not say that a month ago.

Houseplants allow me to nurture, which are a reflection of what is happening inside my soul. What my friends did not say see about my schooling ....Is that four years is nothing in the scheme of life. The new program requires that I covenant with the class to complete and serve with the class. Not just sign the dotted line, but commit spiritually as well to a group of people. 

While I am not sure where the Lord will have me serve in the end, I am sure He has me on this journey of discovery. I need the structure and healing of plugging into an ancient tradition of worship and service. The external order creates and calms the chaos inside me. This commitment means that I will be here in four years.... I couldn't promise that a month ago. A month ago, I could not see a week ahead.  I, master of disguise had gotten so poor at covering my despair that some friends no longer knew what to say and just hugged me.  Others just pulled away and distanced themselves from me.  Few realized how close they came to loosing me altogether. Now I am hoping for at least another good thirty years to work for the Lord.  I have reached out and am allowing the Lord to used people to help me work through the pain and issued I need to resolve in my life.  There is hope again, where there was none. I love the words from a Michael Card song in which he blends many Biblical themes in a blessing-"Hope you in the Lord and renew your strength, soar you up on eagle's wings, tirelessly run in the race that's set before you, your life's the song the Father sings

As I have posted previously, the job market is slim for women in religious professions, at least in leadership.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/03/do-women-have-a.html

Do women have a prayer?

Men have been the driving force behind the world’s religions since the days of Adam and Eve. Yet an analysis of religious trends in America today finds that women are more active in their faith than men. So it follows that women would be given a lead role in these institutions, right? Not quite.

By Mary Zeiss Stange

When it comes to being religious, do women have a prayer? The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life certainly thinks they do. In anticipation of Women's History Month, the Pew Forum in late February released a report that suggested women "outperform" men in several key measures of religious belief and practice. Working from data collected for the Forum's massive 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the Pew Forum came up with several significant gender differences.

(Illustration by Web Bryant/ USA TODAY)

Most striking among the findings are that women are far more apt to believe with absolute certainty in a God or universal spirit, as well as to believe that this supreme being is a personal one. More American women than men are affiliated with a religion. Two-thirds of women say religion is a very important factor in their lives, as opposed to roughly half of men — percentages that are about the same for those who say they pray on a daily basis. Forty-four percent of women attend weekly religious services, as opposed to just a third of men.

One would think that these facts would translate into women's rise to positions of spiritual leadership — surely the mark of genuine equality — in the various denominations. Alas, as a glance at some of the largest organized religious groups in the country shows, the picture is at best mixed when it comes to women's ability to break that stained-glass ceiling.

The hurdles

The United States is a predominantly Christian nation. The Roman Catholic Church, whose more than 66 million members make it the largest U.S. Christian church, remains adamantly opposed to the ordination of women to the priesthood — so adamantly, indeed, that in May of last year, the Vatican decreed the automatic excommunication of any person involved in the ordination of a woman to the priesthood, in addition to the woman herself.

The church's logic is biblically rooted. As Pope John Paul II pronounced in 1994, and Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed in 2006, women cannot become priests because the original apostles were male. In other words, had Christ intended to admit women to the apostolic succession, he'd have done so. Mary Magdalene fans, eat your hearts out. Nonetheless, Catholic women have made substantial gains at the parish level, and the Women's Ordination Conference continues to work toward change in church policy on ordination.

The Southern Baptist Convention, with 16 million members, is America's largest Protestant denomination. It similarly appeals to the Bible to justify women's exclusion from ministry. While the SBC admits that women and men are equally "created in God's image," women's equality is of a subordinate sort. The 2000 revision of the Convention's statement of Baptist Faith and Message reaffirmed the wife's duty to "submit herself graciously" to her husband's leadership. She is his "equal" and his "helper."

So inhospitable is the SBC to the notion of women's religious leadership that last September, the Convention's LifeWay bookstores pulled from their shelves the October issue of Gospel Today, the most widely distributed urban evangelical publication in the USA. Why? Because the cover pictured five female pastors with the banner, "Breaking the Glass Ceiling." The magazine's publisher, Teresa Hairston, complained, "They basically treated it like pornography and put it behind the counter." LifeWay's motto is "Biblical Solutions for Life." The elevation of the status of women is obviously not among those solutions.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the nation's fourth-largest denomination with more than 5 million members, is similarly hostile to the idea of female equality, let alone leadership. In 1979, fifth-generation Mormon Sonia Johnson was excommunicated for advocating passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Joseph Fielding Smith (a descendant of church founder Joseph Smith, and the 10th LDS president) offered women the cool comfort that they might become "priestesses and queens" in the afterlife, reaping the "benefits" of their husbands' this-worldly priesthood. Why is this still relevant? The church's position remains the same today.

The better news is that among the so-called mainline Protestant denominations, women have made considerable progress in attaining positions of religious authority. The United Methodist Church, the nation's second-largest Protestant Church with 8 million members, has ordained women since the 1950s.

But — in a pattern familiar among churches that do ordain women — few of these women hold senior positions in large congregations. In January, the church announced an initiative, the Lead Women Pastor Project, to study barriers to female advancement in the church.

In addition to the other mainline Protestant churches, the Salvation Army, Assemblies of God and Unitarian-Universalists ordain women. Yet Seventh-Day Adventism excludes women from ministry, even though its co-founder, Ellen White, was a woman.

The religious picture for women is equally mixed outside of Christianity. Most branches of American Judaism ordain female rabbis, but Orthodox Judaism is about as welcoming of the concept as are the Catholic Church and SBC. Even so, there is a growing feminist movement within Orthodoxy.

The same can be said for Islam. Male religious authority is so strictly asserted that Amina Wadud made international news when, in March 2005, she led women and men in a prayer service in New York City (under Islamic law, women are only allowed to lead female-only prayer). Her act of defiance led to condemnation and death threats on the one hand, and on the other to increased enthusiasm for what has come to be called the Progressive Muslim movement in this country.

'Second-class citizens'

It is a truth so familiar as to have become cliché: Women are the driving force behind organized religion. They fill the pews, they bring their children into the fold. The Pew data help make sense of these facts. But the same data highlight the cruel irony that in far too many religious contexts in this country, women remain second-class citizens.

Another of the findings of Pew's 2008 Religious Landscape Survey was that, among people who pray "more than seldom," a significant proportion across most religious groups say their prayers are regularly answered, at least once a week or once a month. This religious demographic was not broken down by gender.

But it is fair to assume that, given women's greater likelihood to pray at all, a sizable number of these supplicants are women. It is equally fair to assume that, if religious equality is what they are praying for, many of them are going to have to wait a while longer.

Heroes are hard to come by, he said, especially when the lot you have to choose from is the human race.

From this article

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/the-great-gay-hope/?th&emc=th

“He looked around,” said one of his guests, retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do something about these plates. I’m not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29whitehouse.html?th&emc=th

However, I can say what love is not.  This weekend I watched a documentary called  Sex: The Annabel Chong Story  about a 22 year old college girl that became a porn star and was most known for having sex with 251 men in 10 hours (that incident was made into a porno movie).  This is a documentary, not rated but definitely not for children or prudish.  This girl (real name Grace Quek) tries to justify what she is doing as sort of an anti-feminism or proto feminism because she said that woman can control their own bodies and use it (and others) if they want. 

  As the movie continues it becomes clear how sad Quek really is.  She keeps stating how empowering it is to her that so many men want her.  It becomes very clear that these men don’t want her at all. They don’t even know her….  In the end, she is a has-been by age 23 when someone else breaks her “record”.  She states that good sex is worth dying for….. I think that she misses the point altogether.  Good sex is great but not worth dying for. Love is what is worth dying for and I believe that is the central message of the Gospel. 

I believe that ultimately, the goal for many (me anyhow) is to combine good sex and love for spectacular sex (or at least fulfilling sex).  This movie was disturbing on many levels and I consider myself a raving liberal.  I found it a very sad movie really.  Made me think of the old book… “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”  Quek said she enjoyed the 251 men. However, I watched this movie with friends and we concluded that the mechanics belay that statement.  Quek seems to be looking for something, not just to set world records in the sexual olympics.

The next day at lunch my friends and I were discussing the movie again.  I proposed a diagnosis BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER.  I looked online and found out that Quek had been gang raped at one time. Trauma such as that can cause BPD. Also, she cuts, that can be a symptom of BPD or either of these can be symptoms of PTSD as well.

One of my friends was busy on his phone trying to talk to someone at home in Oklahoma to arrange for a transfer of money from his account to his daughter’s bank account. What a hassle. … but it dawned on me, that is love in action.  Caring for someone and wanting what is best for them, even when you aren’t present with them. 

I happen to agree with her on this…to a certain extent. However, one does not have to become an object with no emotion, no feelings or soul to get off the damn pedestal or to be taken seriously.  No one can tell me that any of these men (in her gang bang) cared for her the least bit. In fact, I think that most of them would have shown up at ANY casting call that allowed them sex with a so-called porn star. 

What I want to suggest is this, with LOVE, that taco can become a gourmet meal instead of just a gymnastics exercise that happens to feel good (sometimes anyhow).  After all, if we were just animals and sex was just for procreation, why would be bother with birth control or long after it is possible to reproduce?  Why? because we seek intimacy and closeness beyond just reproduction.  That is another thing that makes us human…our emotional capacity.    I have thought a lot about this recently because I have been apart from the person I love.  I realize that although my longing has an element of physicalness, there is an intimacy and depth of feeling (love?) that I miss as well.  That sort of yearning spawns love songs and poetry.  It is love, sex and so much more.   Well, I still conclude that I know love when I see it but I have to say that I know what love is NOT when I see it too.

I don't know why talking about LOVE is so sensitive. I mean, I have had plenty of feedback but people are shy to comment publically. 

So far, here is the conclusion of the feedback I have gotten.

Love is intangible, we can see and feel the results but it cannot be emperically proven

Love is a mystery, sometimes we know it when we see it, sometimes we only know it when its gone.

Love is a life changing force.

Makes me think of that comic that ran in the paper when I was growing up. I found someone with a collection of those comics...

LOVE IS...

Of course, the cynic in me has to include the REJECTED LOVE IS....  (warning, has adult themes)

One thing I do know is this..... That sappy Movie. LOVE STORY that was such a big deal when I was a kid has the most ridiculous famous line ever  "LOVE IS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOUR SORRY."  Single handedly the worst advice I have ever heard!  Probably one of the reasons for the spike of divorces during that time.  Love is valuing the relationship enough to eat crow and apologize when one is wrong. 

Millions of dollars are made based on the theme of love. Usually two opposites attract, marry and live happily ever after OR finally find each other and DON'T live happily ever after.  Then the story becomes a tragedy, no longer a simple love story.  Yes, they are formula stories but they work. 

I don't generally go looking for love stories to watch. Frankly, I am more drawn to dark humor to feed my cynical soul.  However, I have been struck by a few movies that stuck with me (hey I have watched 1000s of movies, rated over a 1000 on Netflix alone) through the passages of time:

SHADOWLANDS  with Anthony Hopkins as CS Lewis.  This movie outraged the Christian community that had put CS Lewis on a pedestal.  The typical May/December romance of Hollywood fodder. Lewis did take up (at least emotionally) with Joy BEFORE she was divorced.  Lewis had all this theory about love in his brain, without having given over to it in his heart. Of course, it ends tragically and what makes it even sadder is that it is a true story.

SARAH PLAIN AND TALL  Mail order bride meets bitter widower and wins him over. THE BOOK IS Better but the movie is decent. Glenn Close plays the role very well.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY   In this case, these people lived their life in 4 days and out of duty, or even love, denied this same love. Another tragic movie. Clint Eastwood was brilliant here. If you click on the link to the movie, the comments are worth reading.  I can't remember if it is the book or the movie, but a part of this rang so true.  Mom gives up all, a life, the love of her life, so the kids will have the continuity and never know the pain of her leaving and the DAMN SON is angry about the affair instead of being grateful for her sacrifice.

THE HORSE WHISPERER   Robert Redford saved this movie. I really liked the movie despite the leading actress.  I say he saved this movie because I loved the book until the last chapter, which was totally contrived. I read this book in a hotel room in San Diego and I can remember litterally throwing it against the wall because the last chapter was so wrong.  Redford fixed the ending in a way that worked (for me anyhow.)

I am sure that there are more, I just can't think of them right now. I am open to suggestions though.

Todd Rhodes publised an article today with these statistics about today's church attendance in the context of history.

Is the American Church Really in Decline? Orginally published on Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 10:10 PM
by Todd Rhoades

"The percentage of Americans that belong to a local congregation is actually INCREASING in the country. In fact, church membership is much, much higher in 2008 than it was, even in revolutionary times.

Stark shares research done for the book “The Churching of America, 1776-1990,” which went through an elaborate study to actually see what church membership has looked like throughout American history. Here’s what they found:

% of Americans Who Belong to a Local Congregation
1776—17%
1850—34%
1906—51%
1926—56%
1980—62%
2005—69%

Stark says that the Puritans were actually a very small minority of the people who settled in the new world.  European church attendance was dismal, and many settlers brought their religious habits with them.  Thus, only 17% were connected with the church in the early years of our country."

You might want to click through and read the entire article.  My question is this:  What kind of congregation do  people belong to and what constitutes belonging?  Is belonging to a meditation group at the Dharma center the same as belonging to a church?  Is belonging here something that is based on committment and community so a matter of getting on the mailing list of a church to keep up when one is out of town?

More people live in cities now.  More people have access to a church to attend. Still, I do think these statistics are very rosy compared to the reality I experience. Still, there may be some truth there. Where I live it seems there is a church on every block. Dying or not, someone has to be paying the bills to keep the doors open. I wonder if church membership statistics will look the same after the builder and boomer generation fade away?

Can Love Conquer Caste?

Indian Government Supports Mixed Unions, But Couples Who Defy System Face Violence

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 22, 2008; A01

NEW DELHI -- She was a gutsy student leader known for hunger strikes and provocative street theater at universities across the country, exposing the plight of India's beleaguered lower castes. He was a worldly gadfly with a passion for ending nuclear proliferation and exposing environmental crimes.

They fell in love in Iraq nearly 18 years ago while campaigning for peace before the Persian Gulf War. Their romance bloomed, and within three months they were engaged.

But their marriage a year later ushered in another war: In tying the knot, they openly defied India's deeply entrenched taboos against inter-caste marriage. Anita Pharti, now 42, came from the Dalit caste, still known as untouchables, the lowest in India's social order. Her husband, Rajeev Singh, 45, is a Rajput, traditionally a landholding caste that had for centuries ruled over Pharti's peasant community.

"My family was completely aghast," Singh recalled, sitting with Pharti in their cozy living room, where they have helped clandestine inter-caste couples elope. "My father said he wouldn't let it happen. But I felt so sure about Anita. We were able to fight back. But we were the lucky ones. Many still get murdered for this."

Even though India legalized inter-caste marriage more than 50 years ago, newlyweds are still threatened by violence, most often from their families. As more young urban and small-town Indians start to rebel and choose mates outside of arranged marriages and caste commandments, killings of inter-caste couples have increased, according to a recent study by the All India Democratic Women's Association. Full article here

Have you ever felt bludgeoned to death with a sermon?  I experienced that the other day.  Someone took a sermon, utilizing the passages that talk about love in the New Testament and proceeded to order us to love. For twenty very long minutes-Love or else….It was horrible.  I don’t want that kind of love. You know….I gotta love you because Jesus said I have to…..(because, if it was up to my own selfish ass, I wouldn’t bother).  Kinda like this past election. Everyone wanted to vilify the other side in the name of Jesus.

I have thought a lot about love lately.  Matter of fact, it has been the topic of conversation quite a bit of late.. hey, it’s not even Valentine’s day either.

Pastor Rob Bell says that we use the word love today, in so many casual ways that the word is often meaningless…  I agree…. I mean, I just luv that T-shirt… 

So which comes first, the love or the attraction?  Is love something we determine to do?  I believe that is how it works in countries that have arranged marriages. Alas, it seems that there is a huge amount of domestic violence in those countries too.  Some of those marriages work, for sure.  Sometimes genuine love blooms although it often doesn’t. I can’t say we do well in our cafeteria west. Seems that we idolize youth and sexuality and yet love remains elusive.

Of course, there are many kinds of love.  Love of country (which can include pride, loyalty, etc), love of parents (duty, shared experience), love of children (connection, duty, shared experience, knowledge of a genetic connection, that is, children as mirrors of ourselves), love of neighbor and love of stranger.  But for today, my thoughts are about relationship chosen between two people.

I believe love is a gift, somewhat I like the Holy Spirit.  It can fall into our lap when we least expect it.  I have had love at first sight, love after making a commitment and love that pops up unexpectedly in the least likely place at the least likely time. I have experienced seasonal love, that is, love that was there, in the moment and it was perfect but transitory.  I like to believe God arranges those things when I need them the most.  However, I have had many dark, dark periods of my life in which the only love I did experience was the abstract knowledge that God loves me. Otherwise, I felt quite alone.

One friend of mine offered that love is comfort.  I had to think about that.  Then this friend defined comfort as a place of acceptance and being.  Ok, I can go with that. I believe we all long for acceptance.  Another friend defined love as commitment. They said that the feelings were secondary to commitment. This same person speculated that love is something you chose to do.  I tend to think that love is something that chooses you…. Or maybe a response to being loved.  Maybe the scientists are all right, that love is just a product of hormones that trick us into reproducing and perpetuating the species.   I doubt that because it wouldn’t explain why we love long after we can physically reproduce.

I see love sometimes and it takes my breath away.  The other day I went to visit a patient.  He is in his mid 80s and he has dementia. He is a distinguished older man- strong and lean from his years as a military officer.  His dementia causes disorientation and this man vacillates from anger to crying very easily.   He has been hospitalized for months.  He is dying.  His wife of 50+ years sits patiently with him. She leans over, cups his face in her hands and looks him straight in the eye and whispers her love and he calms down.  I thought to myself, there is more than duty here. I see people who are dutiful in their love everyday here.  Only love could provide that kind of strength.  Furthermore, it had to have been more than a one sided love. They must have had a shared experience that gives this woman the strength and courage to be strong for her husband.

To me, love has to have a mutual component. If it was just about devotion, they we could just go to the pound and pick out a puppy. I think that it may be much easier to experience love than to define it. Again, love is like God.  Sometimes you know God is present when you see the evidence, though mostly we experience God’s hand in our lives when we look back at the experience and see, in retrospect, where God was working.

Ok, Click the little comment button at the bottom of this and YOU tell me what you think love is?