No Easy Choice: Narrative Ethics

I’m starting at the end, with Ellen’s chapter, “The Only Way is Hard.” In this chapter Ellen explains that all decisions that come with life in an advanced technological age will be hard ones for Christians. It’s hard not to have a baby. It’s hard to have biological children when there are so many who need to be adopted. It’s hard to forgo medical procedures we perceive will eliminate pain from the lives of our loved ones. Ellen writes that each choice is accompanied by high physical, emotional, and financial stakes. Her broad suggestion of a way forward is to listen to the stories of others. Her whole book is an experiment in this kind of investment in the personal – a narrative ethics approach to issues of reproductive technology.

I started Ellen’s book just after finishing Danielle Allen’s Talking to Strangers. I interacted with this book a lot over the course of writing a paper on abortion for my contemporary ethics class this semester and it was in the back of my mind as I read No Easy Choice. Allen’s book looks at the historical moment of the integration of the Little Rock public school system, in particular when a miscommunication occurred and Elizabeth Eckford was sent to school by herself and faced a rabid crowd outside the school. It’s a fascinating chapter in American history because this moment forced a recalibration of public/private space. What was an intensely personal moment (walking to school) took on public significance. From then on no longer could Americans envision citizenship merely as a matter of public acts like voting and paying taxes. Private moments were now meshed with the public in a way that demanded something of the citizen.

Stories matter. That’s one of the reasons Ellen wrote this book, to break open to conversation about reproductive technologies from the confines of disembodied medical ethics and public policy. And there’s a lot to be said about this approach, especially the way Ellen does it. Another intriguing aspect of Allen’s thesis is that those of us operating in liberal democracies refuse to recognize that the price for this form of governance is loss, and at times self-sacrifice. In order to protect the goods we all value as common commodities we have to accept that someone will lose out on the decision making. I reason that reproductive technologies are the most deaf to this reality. These are advancements that work off the notion, as Ellen deftly points out, that you should have the kind of baby you want when you want it. What happens to your fellow employes insurance premiums when we undergo expensive fertility treatments? What about the cost of medical care? What do we lose in terms of valuing vulnerable life when we destroy embryos that are unhealthy?

But on the other side of loss is trauma, and liberal democracies are equally poor at naming the trauma that comes with loss and finding ways to adequately deal with that trauma. This is where I think Ellen’s work is so incredible and essential. She provides vivid descriptions of what it is like to live with OI herself, and to experience the excruciating pain of seeing her child felled by broken bones again and again. If we are going to truly talk about the losses that come with reproductive technologies we also have to name and negotiate the very real and profound traumas associated with those who will lose out on those decisions. We have to be able to take seriously what they are telling us is the actual lived experience of living with a child with a profound disability, what it is like to grieve a stillborn child, to walk alongside someone who must face the reality of never being able to bear biological children.

At the end of the day, however, I don’t think this means that we end up weighing difficult story versus difficult ethical decision to see which one feels worse. This is because for Christians this kind of “love” is not the final answer. Jesus, God enfleshed, is to whom we owe our allegiance. And we remember that following this Jesus means finding ourselves nailed to the cross. This means that we can and must ask others to undergo the trauma of certain losses, but our hearts should break with them. Not only that we as the church, the body of Christ, must also find ways to carry those losses and to name those traumas. This is not where the church has been at its best. We tend to take political positions (pro-life/choice being the most obvious) without naming that there is profound loss on both sides of this issue. We don’t do an adequate job of naming what the common goods are that we try to cultivate through particular limits on reproductive technologies.

Ellen also names one of the very real challenges that comes with trying to tell stories – even as these decisions are both private choices with very real public consequences it is very difficult to have these conversations. Childbearing decisions, despite their reverberation into public policy, health care, health insurance, eugenics, and political office, are incredibly emotional decisions. Most of us know someone who’s struggles with fertility cause her to avoid or end friendships with pregnant friends, or to cry in the bathroom every time there is a pregnancy announcement at work. My experience is that the desperation around infertility leads people to make decisions without consulting their communities of faith or asking deep questions about the ethics surrounding their choices. Practically speaking, I feel a great sense of despair about being able to truly talk about these decisions in a meaningful way. And I’m not sure of the way forward. Ellen offers some interesting suggestions from her own experience of being on the side of trauma that I find very helpful. But I also think she is a rare bird in her willingness to be open in the way she is. I wonder if anyone else has successfully navigated these waters.

No Easy Choice by Ellen Painter Dollar

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to be writing a series of posts reflecting on Ellen Painter Dollar’s first book, No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Parenthood, and Faith in an Age of Advanced REproduction (John Knox Press: 2012).

This is a book ten years in the making. It follows Ellen’s story of having osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), or what most of us know as brittle-bone disease, and the reproductive decisions made by her family in light of this genetic abnormality. It’s a fascinating story that also provides up-to-date information about reproductive technologies and that possibilities and pitfalls of these new options. Ellen reflects thoughtfully on what these technologies mean for Christians.

I especially appreciate Ellen’s tone throughout the book. She isn’t preachy yet she is far from all-embracing. She manages to maintain certain convictions while allowing others to be uprooted and overturned. And she does so not in a medical ethics vacuum, but while living with the complications of excruciating physical pain, and knowing that this pain could very well be passed on to her children. It is a brave book.

I’ll be looking at several topics over the next few weeks including the possibilities and limitations of narrative ethics, why we have biological children, and the poverty of our current debate over the personhood of embryos. Rather than reviewing this book as an impersonal bystander, I will attempt to stay true to Ellen’s vision for the book by engaging from my own experience and offering my own feedback and critiques.

I encourage you to read along and join the discussion. You can keep track of Ellen’s work and happenings at her Patheos blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ellenpainterdollar/.

There was a full moon: Wick’s birth story

This post contains graphic material. Because it’s a birth story. And birth is graphic. So meditate on that before reading. 

It is very difficult for me to justify doing anything besides sleeping and nursing right now but I want to make sure I write this down before I forget or reinterpret the details any further. So here it is….

First of all, I curse you Downton Abbey. I had been waiting for season two for weeks and then was horrified to learn that the two hour premiere ended at 11 pm. 11 pm! Way past my five-days-over-EDD bedtime. I knew better but I went for it. I took a chance and went to bed at midnight after days of saying “this is the night” with not a single contraction to show for it. I felt my first contractions an hour later, at 1 am.

But with one birth under my belt I was wise enough to know that this might not be “it.” I went back to sleep and finally woke up with some steadier contractions with a slight edge. I got up to time them from 4-5:30 am but then went back to sleep until 8:30. We called my parents and sister and told them to come up from Virginia, and Jacob got Tennyson off to school. (We told T we were having the baby “soon” but I’m pretty sure she’s stopped believing us after literally weeks of hearing this.)

We started frantically preparing our house for family coming, packing our bags, eating a good breakfast and making sure everything was set for baby’s arrival. Our friend-neighbors agreed to pick T up from school and give her lunch so that we could labor without any interruptions. The morning was fairly slow, contractions moved from 20-25 mins apart to 20-10 mins apart, but still not in especially regular intervals. My family got into town and we did some walking around CRW. This helped the contractions but they slowed down whenever I stopped moving. This carried on into the afternoon. My parents took T out for a Chuck E Cheese date and we waited to see if we were in for another marathon labor.

I was starting to get nervous about this prospect. We were up to about 10 hours of labor and my own internal exams showed no more than 3 or 4 cm of dilation. I kept walking in a circle around our apartment. But pretty soon things started to pick up. I needed to use coping mechanisms to get through each contraction and I put on the TENS Unit. But no significant back labor; almost all the pain concentrated in my lower uterus. By 4 pm our doula came over.

Amanda Rachel suggested that I stop walking and that the contractions would stay steady on their own. I did and she was right! I labored on the birth ball for another hour when contractions started coming every 5-10 minutes. We called the midwife at 6 pm when it seemed like things were starting to move. I was starting to feel a lot of pain. We made the decision to go to the hospital.

Let me just say, doulas are REALLY important for what happened next. Just as the door shut for Jacob to go downstairs and load the car I had a series of five very powerful contractions in a row, strong enough to make me vomit and almost knock me on the ground. I can’t imagine being alone in the house at this moment. Amanda Rachel tried to calm me down. The pain was about at my ceiling at this point. I really, really hoped this was transition.

On the way over the hospital I had several contractions that were difficult to manage. Lots of screaming, folks. That’s when I added a new goal to my birth plan: not to be traumatized by my labor. If this was transition then I was quite certain I could finish the delivery without pain medication. If not, then I would need to make the call based on how dilated I was.

We got to the hospital and I went screaming off to labor and delivery. I was given an internal exam around 7 pm by our midwife, Ursula. I was only 6 cm dilated. Ursula tried to convince me that I would be ready to push within the hour but the last time I heard those words uttered I was in labor for another 14 hours, going from 7.5 to 10 cm. Everything about this labor was so far eerily similar to T’s. Five days past EDD. Long early labor. In the hospital right around transition. Emotionally the idea of a repeat was overwhelming. I was at my pain limit and I knew that if I waited any longer I wouldn’t be able to get an epidural. So I went for it.

It took another half hour to get the epidural in place (blood work, IV fluids, etc). In the beginning I was pretty amazed by how much freedom it gave me. It was almost like a wearing a belt of pain medication. I could feel my legs all the way up to the thigh. I labored on hands and knees, squatted, turned from side to side, pushed a little when I felt the pressure of the contraction. I was shaking all over, releasing a day’s worth of stress hormones. But still, it was great!

It was great, that is, until it came time to push. I started feeling this pressure in my rectum that got increasingly stronger. Wait, I thought. Aren’t I not supposed to be feeling this? Apparently the epidural is contained to the point that it didn’t really affect the vaginal or rectal areas. This was not good. The main reason for the not goodness was that I had already checked out of the “hard labor zone” required to get on through the intensity of active labor. Basically, I thought I was done. Pushing T out wasn’t easy, but I didn’t feel a thing.

Not so this time. I felt everything. The pressure was so strong that it became almost unbearable. And when I say “pressure” I’m not talking about someone pressing down on your back. I’m talking about a freight liner sitting on your rectum. It was unbelievable. The “urge to push,” it seems, is actually the urge to get this g*damn mother-fer off your internal organs. I was completely hysterical by now and Ursula and Amanda Rachel did their best to calm me down. My sister and mother were also their by this point and I really hope neither was scarred for life.

The most graphic part of the experience came as the baby descended and seemed like it was ready to emerge. Yet, even as the head stuck, it wasn’t coming out. Instead, my vagina and rectum grew to a head-sized balloon. I eventually had to stop looking in the mirror it was so disturbing to see. I went into my internal Kung Fu Fighter space and remained there for the final pushes. Ursula eventually said, “open your eyes! Grab your baby!” and the head popped out, after 25 minutes of pushing.

You guessed it – face up. Holy mackerel.

I grabbed the baby and pulled him on to my chest. On the way up I caught a glimpse of what was unmistakably scrotum and penis. It was a boy. He stayed connected to the chord and wailed away as everyone in the room (probably not the nurses) cried. I felt tired but not in the same sort of bone-crushing way I had with T. Labor started at 4 am and ended at 10:15 pm. It was a long day, but only one day and that made a big difference.

The pushing was kind of traumatizing and the sunny-side-up baby did serious damage to my body. I definitely feel like someone ran a truck through my anus (sorry, that may be excessively graphic, but there it is). I am also glad I had the epidural. It gave me just enough time to relax and recover, but didn’t go in so early that I was worried labor would not progress (my #1 goal for both labors was to avoid an unnecessary emergency C-section. I have no moral quandaries about epidurals and not the slightest concern with being a birth super hero. But I do believe epidurals, especially early on, lead to a cascade of interventions and can lead to C-sections that would otherwise be unnecessary if the laboring mother could have switched positions and walked around to aid her labor progression). I think that the verdict on my childbearing experiences is that I carry pregnancies with ease but have very difficult labors. Or that I’m a wimp. I’m willing to concede either, or both.

Now we are back at home. Wick went home at 8 lbs 4 oz and is already back up to his birth weight (8 lbs 10 oz), only two days after being home. It’s hard to tell much about his personality this early on but I’m living in the hope that he will have a very different temperament from his big sister. If he doesn’t I may fail out of my last semester of seminary.

Speaking of big sister, she loves having a real live baby doll in our house and is being well supported by her grandparents. I think the realization of how big this life change is going to be (for all of us) will hit home around Jan 23, when J goes back to school full time and then even more so when my classes start on Feb 2.

And that’s the story of Wyclif Henry’s birth!!

Adoption Sermon

My apologies for the extended silence. We’ve had great excuses. I’m currently 35 weeks pregnant and moving into the last two weeks of the semester here at PTS. Oh, and our baby did receive a thumbs up at her level II ultrasound. Of course, one of the realities of pregnancy is that you don’t ever know what you are getting. We continue to wait and hope.

I did finally come up with something to post. This is the last sermon I preached for class. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like preaching in a hot room with 50% lung capacity, weighing about 30 lbs more than you usually do. Talk about embodiment.

I wrote this sermon as a response to a challenge from a blogger who mentioned he’d never heard a sermon on adoption preached in church. I thought it was an interesting challenge because in a congregational setting there are a lot of people who aren’t even eligible to adopt (children, teenagers, the elderly) and others who simply are not in a place where this is a possibility (single, in debt, caring for a sick family member). Here’s what I came up with!

Matthew 19:16-22

16 Then someone came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ ¹⁷And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ ¹⁸He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; ¹⁹Honour your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ²⁰The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these; what do I still lack?’ ²¹Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ ²²When the young man heard this word he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

 

Happy National Adoption Month! And happy National Pomegranate Month, Epilepsy Awareness Month, International Drum Month, National Novel Writing Month, and, of course, the month we celebrate Albanian Independence. As you can see, in November there are a lot of causes and times of remembrance that could take up our time. So why should the church care about National Adoption Month in particular?

For one, there are currently are 116,000 American children in foster care legally available for adoption. This means that a judge has severed parental rights or that the parent has signed over these rights to the court. These children now wait for a family to call their own.

Another reason is that this is an issue we as the church can actually do something about. To put it in to perspective, there are currently 16 million Southern Baptists in the U.S. Only one in 138 would need to adopt in order for every child to have a parent. Think about it: if each of our churches had only one or two families who welcomed these children there would be no more orphans!

Another reason adoption should matter to Christian is at its at the very core of our religious identity. The constant refrain throughout the Old Testament is the prophets’ call to take care of the alien, the orphan and the widow. And in the New Testament Paul uses the metaphor of adoption over and over again. In Romans we read that we the church have been welcomed with open arms into a preexisting family of Israel. In Galatians we learn that through adoption as daughters and sons we have been made righteous. Even our baptism is a reminder that it is not through birth or circumcision that we are brought into God’s family, but through faith. Baptism is the ceremony marking our adoption day!

So what’s the big deal? Why wouldn’t this cause all of us to head straight to our nearest foster care agency and start filling out the paper work? The reason is that adoption is a good choice, but also a challenging one. When we really sit down to think about it, adoption requires a lot of us. There are the logistics of time, money and energy that come with welcoming any new child into the family. There is also the reality that many children, especially older children in the foster care system carry on them the scars of abuse and neglect.

Then there are our own limitations. Maybe you’re single, young or older and the idea of parenting a child is not in the picture. Maybe you’re already taking care of a family member. Maybe all your kids are in school and things are finally starting to seem manageable. For me, getting ready to both have a second biological child, and to take on the significant burden of sending my husband to medical school, the possibility of adoption any time soon feels very remote.

Adoption isn’t easy and welcoming a child from foster care can seem like a significant risk. It may even be impossible based on your life situation. So we’re all in a bit of a bind. We have this demand from God to take care of orphans. We recognize that we have been adopted by God. But we’re also aware that life makes moving on this challenge extremely difficult. We’re stuck somewhere in that place between the real desire to follow God and the difficult realities on everyday life.

Our Scripture today is about a man in the exact same position. Like us, he wants to be a disciple, to really and truly follow God. A rich young man approaches Jesus from the crowd and asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus response sort of blows him off. Sure, he names some commands for the man to follow. But Jesus doesn’t even name the difficult commands, the one that have to do with us before God, the kind of stuff that requires a remaking of our hearts. Jesus sets the base line pretty low. Don’t kill anyone. Check. Don’t lie. For the most part. Honor your father and mother. Done that. It’s not surprising that the man can answer, “all these commands I have kept.”

Yet this young man knows there must be something more, so he digs deeper. He wants a genuine answer. Like us, he doesn’t want to be a casual rule-keeper. He wants to know what it means to live in the rich abundance of a godly life. He wants to know how to become a disciple.

But the answer smacks him in the face. “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money away to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven: then, come follow me.” We read that the man goes away grieving because he has a lot of stuff.

Just in case we try to get away with making this Scripture less difficult that it actually is, we have the disciples to remind us that Jesus just said something completely out of control. They wonder, “if it’s true that a rich person can get into the kingdom like a camel getting through the eye of needle, who can be saved?” It’s pretty clear that Jesus isn’t talking about giving up a couple things, or sacrificing even half of what you own. He really, actually wants 100%. God help us.

Yet, reading this text at face value may let some of us off the hook. As a seminarian, there are days when I can honestly say with Peter that I have left everything to follow God’s call. Many of us struggle financially to make ends meet, as do many of our neighbors. As future pastors we may be content, even hopeful, to think that our financial sacrifices are all Jesus is talking about in this passage.

Now don’t get me wrong. Jesus wants your money. The consistent message of the New Testament is that wealth block access to full participation in God’s kingdom. And I don’t think it’s a mistake that first Jesus tells the rich young man to sell his things and then to follow Jesus. You can’t do the latter until you’ve done the former. But if we look closer at the text, Jesus is saying something so much more unsettling.

In the version of the Gospel we read today we hear the word “possessions” used twice, first when Jesus tells the man to sell them and second when we learn that he has many. In the second instance possessions is a pretty good summary of what the man has. He’s a rich guy. He’s got property, servants, and money. It’s a word that means wealth.

Now the first time the term “possessions” is used, when Jesus tells the man to give them up, it means something a bit different. This is a different word that comes from the root “belongs to or is devoted to.” While it includes one’s material possessions, it’s meaning extends to our circumstances and our advantages. It’s a word that has more to do with the stuff that makes up our very substance. Jesus is saying he wants the man to give up everything.

Here’s an idea of what I think Jesus meant. Some of you may remember the classic dorm room prank where you switch around two peoples’ rooms. In order for this prank to work you have to be meticulous. Posters have to be moved to the exact same spot in the other person’s room. Books have to be arranged on the shelves in the same order. Sheets and blankets are switched. Even dirty gym socks left on the floor are moved.

The urban legend of this room switch is that someone, somewhere was once able to turn the room upside down by nailing everything to the ceiling. I remember several late night conversations in my dorm room about how you could actually do this. It seemed fantastic, but can you imagine walking into your dorm room and seeing your exact room hanging there above you? That would be the magnum opus of dorm pranks.

And that’s what Jesus is talking about here. He doesn’t just want our stuff; he wants us to nail it to the ceiling. He wants to so radically shake up our sense of devotion about all the things that make up our lives are turned upside down. This substance includes our families, accomplishments, student debt, and relationships. It means our bills, responsibilities, the expectations placed on us by others, even the call we feel on our lives. All of that is totally reoriented in the call to follow Jesus. He wants to cause such colossal upheaval that, in order to keep living, we have let God teach us how to live on the ceiling. No wonder the disciples are so shocked!

It’s only then, Jesus tells the rich young man, that he can be perfect. This is another word in the text that may throw us off. But Jesus didn’t have in mind the kind of perfection that involves getting everything right. What he means is that in living an upside-down life we will find completion, wholeness. Were this story found in the Old Testament I think we could translate this word shalom. In opening our lives to this radical transformation we actually become the persons God created us to be.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that just before of the rich young man we hear about some little children who come to Jesus but are shooed away by the disciples. Jesus’ response is to rebuke his followers because the kingdom of God belongs to little ones. Jesus and the disciples knew that children are a risky, disruptive reorientation of the most basic aspects of life. The difference is that Jesus knew these were all characteristics of disciples.

Thinking about it this way, the failure of the rich young man may have had more to do with allowing the worry of wealth overwhelm him more than it did with refusing Jesus’ command. Reorienting the substance of your life is something that takes time, energy, and creativity. It always takes an act of God because, as most of us know, our substance can take on monstrous proportions. But the first thing we need is the desire to have our stuff reoriented. We need to be a people who seek after conversion rather than waiting for it to happen to us.

We know from this story that there are material ways to begin this conversion. This involves taking action steps towards putting our lives in order. When we think about this in terms of adoption this means that we each begin to make a life that is open to welcoming children. It may mean planning to buy a house with an extra bedroom or adding an adopted child into your plans for having biological children.

For others this will be less tangible. It may mean praying for openness to children, or addressing fears we have about parenting that come from our past. It may simply be asking God to give you a heart to love the children around you, for a patience you feel you don’t possess or for wisdom in making future choices.

Not every person in this room will one day adopt a child. But today’s Gospel reminds us that we need to work for conversion of our lives today. We have to ready so that when the call to have our lives radically altered comes we can answer “yes.” Otherwise, we might find ourselves like the rich young man, so deeply mired in the stuff of life that we have no choice but to walk away grieving.

The tough part of today’s Gospel is that we all have a lot of reorienting to do before we can begin to take seriously the cry of orphans. We have to figure out what may seem like the impossible logistics of nailing our very substance to the ceiling. But the amazing gift, the hope of the Christian life is that we never do this alone. It’s Jesus who will teach us, together, how to live on that ceiling. In doing so we will not only heed the call discipleship, we will become who God made us to be. Amen.

9/11 and the Vulnerability of Love

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about going to church this morning. Most of my worries were unfounded. In fact, the preacher was the most upfront I’ve ever heard, in any church context, about the specific responsibility Christians have to love their Muslim neighbors. And this guy was specific. Thinking your Muslim co-workers’ dress and customs are “weird”? Making snide comments to friends about Islam? Refusing to make eye contact with someone in a burqa at the supermarket? You need to repent.

While I applaud (loudly!) pastors who correct the church’s post-9/11 Islamophobia, what did concern me was the underlying reasoning for our ability to love our Muslim neighbors. We don’t need to fear this “enemy” any longer because Christ has won the victory. In fact, we know Islam to be “absolutely wrong.” The enemy isn’t really an enemy, just a helpless, needy soul searching like everyone outside Christ’s fold.

Over the last ten years of my journey as a Christian the great lesson, a lesson I fail daily, has been Jesus’ Gospel proclamation to make ourselves vulnerable to the otherness of the Other, just as he himself made himself vulnerable to a human life and a human death. In terms of inter-religious dialogue this does not mean we exclude specificity. Doing so would mean we are being dishonest about the nature of our otherness. What this does mean is that we are called, each day anew, to meet the vulnerability of loving our neighbors, even our enemies. Triumphalism, the spirit that “we’ve got it all figured out and you’re welcome to join us” is the death of this vulnerability.

But what exactly does this mean in terms of Islam? How about really grappling with the fact that we’re part of a triad of monotheistic religions that share a common history? Or thinking seriously about what it means that we share roughly 75% of our Scriptures in common? Or wrestling with the fact that Christians are willing to form strong bonds with Judaism (even in it’s most horrifically violent, nationalistic forms) yet are often afraid and confused when it comes to the Islamic community? I don’t have answers to any of these questions but they give me pause, and I know that their answers could have real, lasting implications for my faith and for the church.

We can think seriously and deeply about these questions because Jesus opened his life to what was radically other and in turn reconciled us to a righteousness from which we had become estranged. Jesus introduced this same contingency into the religious world of the Jews and early Jewish-Christians, contingency we are still called to work out with patience and humility. Ecclesia semper reformanda est (“the church is always reforming”) is the Reformers expression of this vulnerability (even though they did this very, very poorly) and the legacy of those of us who believe the church must loop back for “a rediscovery of something from the past whose pertinence was not seen before, because only a new question or challenge enables us to see it speaking to us” (Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom).

So, yes, an excellent first step is to address the underlying behavior of your congregation towards Muslim neighbors and co-workers. If you haven’t preached this sermon, do it. But we also have to go deeper than this to how we got to these behaviors in the first place. Is it because we thought we had nothing to learn, nothing to change, no convictions embedded in our own religious experience that need to be challenged and corrected? It may be that our Muslim neighbors are the ones to help us expose and uproot the sin that so easily entangles.

Third Birthday Poem

For all of us who feel that time is passing by too quickly. Happy birthday, my sweet girl. I could not love you more.

A Little Tooth
by Thomas Lux
Your baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone. It's all over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet talker on his way to jail. And you, your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue nothing. You did, you loved, your feet are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

Choroid Plexus Cysts

At our standard 19 week ultrasound we were informed that our fetus registered a brain abnormality. The sonographer noted the presence of choroid plexus cysts (CPCs) on the bilateral regions of the brain. CPCs are not a huge problem in and of themselves. They are located in the fluid around the brain, not in the areas that control personality or function. Though they are rare (found in 1-2% of pregnancies) many people have them their whole lives. It’s even more likely that these CPCs will disappear by 24 weeks, as is the case in 99% of instances where they are seen. Our midwife was visibly disgusted that these were even noted on our chart since they generally amount to nothing more than unease and worry for the parents, all unnecessary.

The major issue with CPCs is that they can be a soft marker of a chromosomal difference in the fetus. I say “can” because these abnormalities usually coincide with other factors, like higher maternal age, heart problems or physical features associated with a particular chromosomal abnormality. The more worrisome chromosomal copy is Trisomy 18, or Edwards syndrome, a fatal genetic disorder that ends in the the stillbirth of 50% of babies. The 50% who make it to term usually die within days of delivery, of apnea or heart failure. We did not see any of the characteristic of Edwards syndrome (crossed legs, clenched fists, bowels external to the body) in our fetus. Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, is less associated with CPCs but is still a possibility. Trisomy 21 is not as big a concern for us since our fetus exhibits none of the physical ailments associated that cause physical suffering to our child (heart problems, kidney function, or being severely underweight).

We will have a Level II ultrasound in four weeks to identify any physical issues not seen at the standard ultrasound and to see if the CPCs have grown or disappeared. We would like to be prepared for the kind of care a high-needs baby would require, both for ourselves and for the infant. This ultrasound may also eliminate entirely the possibility of a chromosomal condition. Even if the CPCs remain there is a 99% chance our fetus is chromosomally average. Regardless of the results we will not request an amniocentisis because of the small but present concern of miscarriage. We do not participate in prenatal genetic screening so that information is unavailable to us.

This news is sobering but certainly, at this point, not a source of panic or even worry. If anything the very slightly heightened possibility of bearing a child with a chromosomal abnormality (perhaps) has brought the bioethical news of the previous few weeks into even clearer focus. A few “of note” developments have occurred. A blood test was introduced that can accurately predict the sex of a baby at seven weeks. The Danes introduced an initiative to completely eliminate Down syndrome babies through selective abortion, calling this outcome a “fantastic achievement.” The NYTimes reported on the rise in reductions of a healthy twin in order to produce a singelton pregnancy. The world feels less safe for children who are seen as undesirable by nature of their chromosomes, sex or their being part of a multiple pregnancy. We’re praying for the grace, community and patience to love, for as long as we are granted, whatever gift we receive. Of one thing we are certain – the gratuitous love of our God. And for that we rejoice.

Call or Conversion

I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’ve felt some angst about Ellen Dollar Painter’s post “Why Don’t You Just Adopt?” over on Thin Places. Painter writes about the difficulty of offering this pat answer to couples experiencing infertility or facing other decisions that may restrict biological children (both parents being cystic fibrosis carriers comes to mind). As I read through her list of reasons adoption isn’t always the answer I agreed with everything she said. Adoption is difficult and complicated. For one, it takes a lot more effort to enter into adoption than when you just happen to get pregnant. Adoptions also involve children who have experienced tremendous loss and the repercussions of this loss can be traumatic for everyone involved.

So what’s my deal? While I think it is very important to be aware of the full gamut of issues involved in adoption, and that there is ridiculous naivety about adoption, I worry when I get the sense that adoption is so difficult it has to be a “call” on a particular couples’ life.

I recognize that my sensitivity to call-language is grounded in a life in evangelicalism where “call” was misused to get in or out of whatever you felt like. I never had a clear sense that those who used this language knew where God-inspired discernment began and unmitigated desire ended.

It is also strange to me that there are things to which we are called that have very little to do with an actual decision. Take motherhood. I’ve noticed this John Piper post has been circulating the internet about the calling to motherhood. But this is a calling I’ve received not because of a process of discernment and response but because, to be quite honest, I accidentally got knocked up. While I take parenting seriously I’m not ready to label that a call.

I reached out to a friend of mine with three adopted children to see if any of my angst was founded (and knowing she would set me straight if need be). I loved her response. She told me how she avoids the language of call by thinking in terms of conversion. You don’t sit around and pray for a call to parenthood. You start opening up your life to the possibility of this radical vulnerability of your time, finances, love, and emotions. You pray for conversion to welcome any kind of life because we have absolutely no idea what we are getting ourselves into. You work to make a life of welcome.

I don’t know that this will lead every Christian to adoption, or even parenthood for that matter. As much as I see adoption in our future I look down the long path of my husband’s impending journey to medical school and wonder how on earth that’s going to happen. As the parent of one, soon two biological children I have no judgment for those who desire parenthood in this way. But I do want us all to hesitate when we use the language of “call” when it comes to adoption. Maybe we should be praying more for a conversion of our hearts when it comes to the task of parenting adopted children. I know I’ll be praying for conversion in my heart and life as fear around finances and the future creep into my life. I hope you will, too.

“Why We Sing,” A Sermon on Psalm 96

This is the second and last sermon I preached at Oxford Circle Mennonite Church. And yes, yes I did decide to read a speech from one of the nation’s most famous orators. That part went okay. Also, I only clicked my tongue once (my nervous preaching habit), which felt like a major victory.

Why We Sing
Psalm 96

Because singing is so specific to religious groups, it might be hard for most of us to believe that the songs we sing in church aren’t just for Christians. It seems like that should be the one part of church that is just for “us.” After all, most of the other things that happen at church involve people outside the church. When we pray we pray for our world, our government and our neighborhood. The sermons we hear are usually about injecting faith into life outside Sunday morning. We spend time talking about ministries and hearing from our missionaries. But it seems like singing to our God, worship of Jesus, that’s the thing that’s really about the people gathered on Sunday morning.

The first part of the psalm read today seems to confirm this idea. “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day!” Psalm 96 begins with rightful worship of our God as we remember the good things God has done for us. It’s us offering praise to God. But after this short introduction the psalmist’s tone changes. We find out that God’s glory is to be declared among the nations. All the people of the world are to give God honor and praise. In fact, the whole earth will tremble before God. Amazingly not only people will sing praises to God. The physical creation, the rocks, trees, fields, sea and sky will also break forth in songs of joy.

What’s really wonderful about this psalm is the way it expands our ideas about the direction of our worship. For most of us worship looks a lot like something I give to God. Worship comes from the old English word “worth-ship.” We ascribe worth to God because of who we know God to be. We praise God for what we’ve seen God do in our lives. Good worship is a response to the beauty and glory of God we see in newborn babies, the delicious smell of barbeque chicken, and that beautiful, arcing homerun. These things call forth our praise to God, their Creator.

This response of worship is what led Charles Wesley to write the hymn “Jesus, Lover of my Soul” in 1740. Some of you, especially if you grew up in a hymn-singing church like me, know these words:

Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide, till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide; O receive my soul at last.

What’s I love about this hymn is that it wasn’t inspired by an internal storm of doubt and fear. It’s about a real storm! It was written when Wesley was crossing the Atlantic Ocean, returning from America to England. This was a time when travel by sea was extremely dangerous. While on the voyage Wesley’s ship encountered a horrible storm. He kept a journal about the experience:

“I prayed for power to pray, for faith in Jesus Christ, continually repeating his name, till I felt the virtue of it at last, and I knew that I abode under the shadow of the Almighty. The storm was at its height. At four o’clock, the ship had made so much water, that the captain, finding it impossible otherwise to save her from sinking, cut down the mizen mast. In this dreadful moment, I blessed God. I found comfort and hope and such joy in finding I could hope as the world can neither give nor take away. I had that conviction of the power of God present with me, overruling fear and raising my above what I am by nature, as surpassed all rational evidence. After the storm subsided my first business today – may it be the first business of all my days – was to offer up the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.”

Praise was Wesley’s response to God’s saving power. Others have written songs about spiritual salvation, a dramatic change in life from who they were before. These are often wonderful songs of praise that encourage each of us as we walk through difficult times. These songs also give us the words to say when we have no words of our own. They give us words to thank God when we have experienced the incredible goodness of the Lord.

But worship that stops with “God and me” doesn’t take into account how big our God really is. Our psalm today starts out with songs to the Lord but then it reminds us that we sing to the God of Creation, the God of the Universe. “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.” Over and over again we read that the whole earth is supposed to hear, in song, about God’s good work. And we know from the newer testament that this is actually happening. When God sent Jesus, God’s own Son, that declaration of glory to the nations we read about in psalm went into overdrive. In Acts we learn how this happened, how those who followed Jesus took up his command to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the very ends of the world. It was time for the whole world to get in on the relationship with God that before was reserved for the Jews.

So, as strange as it sounds, when we sing we’re not just singing for God. The theologian Marva Dawn says that we also sing for our neighbors as good singing forms us for daily mission. Let’s think about it this way: how many of us talk about “going to church” on Sunday? Dawn reminds us of what a strange thing this is to say, as if the church was just a building, a sanctuary, or a pulpit. This is a place where we the church, the body of Christ, meet. The things we do here prepare us to be the church every day of year. The more we engage in worship together as the church, the deeper we get into the stories of salvation and thanksgiving of those around us. The longer we live into the ways God is working among us the more we are going to want to share about that God with the world around us. Our neighbors will see that we have something to sing about.

This means that our worship and our evangelism are always intertwined. Will Willimon, a United Methodist bishop, shares a story about how important it is that our praise be witness to the fullness of life in Christ.  It was the end of the day when Willimon decided to visit a member of his congregation who was a lawyer.  He dropped by his office and everyone had gone home but this lawyer who was working late.  Starting off the conversation Willimon asked, “What sort of day have you had?”  The lawyer replied: “A typical day…full of misery.  In the morning I assisted a couple to evict their aging father from his house so they could take everything while he was in a nursing home.  All legal, not particularly moral, but legal.  By lunchtime I was helping a client evade his worker’s comp insurance payment.  It’s legal.  This afternoon I have been enabling a woman to ruin her husband’s life forever with the sweetest divorce you ever saw.  That’s my day.”

Willimon thought, “What could I say?”  The lawyer continued, “Which helps explain why I’m in your church on a Sunday morning.”  Willimon replied, “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed thinking what on earth I have to say in a sermon which might help you for a Sunday.”

Then the lawyer said, “It’s not the sermon I come for, preacher.  It’s the music.  I go a whole week with nothing beautiful, little good, until Sunday.  Sometimes when the choir sings, it is for me the difference between death and life.”

Marva Dawn explains that, “It is a major flaw in present-day churches that we don’t realize that our primary evangelistic tool is the corporate life of the believing community. Our neighbors need to see the Christian way of life that gives warrant for belief.” The strength and conviction of our singing vertically is going to reverberate horizontally, into the world.

In the same way, if we sing to God like God is another one of the idols of this world, if we sing like singing is something our own little insular group does when it’s not busy doing real work, then no one is going to want to be a part of what we do here. People are busy! People have things to do. We’ve all got our idols to worship, whether that’s money, prestige, relationships, sex or politics. Psalm 96 reminds us that our singing isn’t one of these idols but says something about these gods: “For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.”

Singing like this, singing that’s to the God of Who Rules Everything, will actually blow the doors right off the church. My friend RG is a pastor in Birmingham, Alabama. His church is called Church Without Walls. I love that name. It’s a reminder to me that worship done well is going to explode our idea of what God is doing in the world. When we start to see worship that puts our idols in place we might be surprised by the results. Who here expects to walk outside and see the heavens putting on a light show to the tune of Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee? Who here thinks that on their trip to the Shore that the waters will churn and swell to A Mighty Fortress is Our God? Who would have ever thought or imagined that trees would grow mouths to open and would sing praises to the Lord? Get ready, because that’s the God we worship, a God beyond our expectation.

If even the trees of the fields will clap their hands, clearly our songs will sometimes find themselves breaking out into the world in unexpected ways. The Rev. Dr. Charles Tindley discovered this when his song “We Shall Overcome” started to be sung at rallies and churches during the Civil Right movement. This gospel song can be heard as a longing for the time when pain and trials will cease. It can be heard as a song about strength for our earthly journey as we face the perils of daily life. But as Bull Connor’s fire hoses beat back protestors and as churches exploded in the night more and more people began to sense in this song a longing for justice on this earth that reflected eternal peace. Eventually the song was taken to a folk workshop and reworked into a protest song, one that became the most popular anthem of the Civil Rights.

When some people hear this story they think that “We Shall Overcome” was stripped of it’s spiritual meaning and secularized for a political cause. But I don’t think that’s what happened. Instead, in this gospel song we see how our singing taps into something so much bigger than what we could ever imagine. Remember we’re singing to the God of the Universe who created all things. When we sing well our songs will speak to the yearning for justice, righteousness and wholeness God has put in all our hearts. Songs like “We Shall Overcome” are a strong reminder that God’s love is embedded in good worship. Sometimes we just have to be willing to let it run wild in the world.

But letting our worship loose in the world isn’t without risk. We all know that this world is filled with forces that want to thwart the work of the kingdom, forces that want to silence the voice of the faithful. Yet, we also know that we worship a God who has already defeated the greatest adversary, Satan, and who is coming again to judge those powers of destruction and violence. Psalm 96 says, “Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.” This part of the psalm sounds apocalyptic. It reminds us that Jesus is coming back and things are going to be made right in the whole world — not just only in our spiritual lives and our personal relationships but in the whole of creation. When our songs break forth into the world this is a foretaste of what’s to come when God redeems everything. Our songs participate in this reality now.

But in this life, before we experience the glorious return of Jesus who will judge all the hatred, violence and destruction we will find that we sing in dangerous places. Dr King knew what it was like to sing “We Shall Overcome” in front of an angry crowd of rock-throwing protestors. He knew what it was like to sing to the principalities and powers of this world. Listen to his words:

Deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome.

Now I join hands often with students and others behind jail bars singing it: We shall overcome.

Sometimes we’ve had tears in our eyes when we joined together to sing it, but we still decided to sing it! We shall overcome.

Lord before this victory is won some will have to get thrown in jail some more, but we shall over come. Don’t worry about us, before the victory is won some of us will lose jobs, but we shall overcome.

Before the victory is won, even some will have to face physical death. But if physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children from a permanent psychological death, then nothing shall be more redemptive. We shall over come.

Before the victory is won, some will be misunderstood and called bad names and dismissed as rebel-rousers and agitators. But we shall overcome.

That’s the place true worship that is pleasing to God will take us. It will take us to jails, to lost jobs and even to death. It will be called rebel-rouser and agitator. It will sing the words of wholeness where the spirit and the body are at peace. Remember, when Dr King said “We Shall Overcome” he meant that one day we would live in a nation that recognized the personhood of blacks and whites, men and women, the abled and the disabled. But Dr King also meant that we will overcome even death. Those words I read were his last speech before his assassination following a trash-workers union strike in Memphis. He reminds us that we live our lives doing the work of God and then return to our God who will one day judge our broken world in righteousness. Right worship to God prepares us to do the risky work of singing out against the powers of this world that seek to destroy God’s kingdom.

My favorite worship band, U2, knows about the risk of singing out against the powers. In the mid-1980s the band was on tour during the time the nation was debating making Dr King’s birthday a national holiday. Some, especially in the south, were vehemently opposed to the idea. As the debate heated up, U2 introduced the song “Pride” into its lineup. I’m sure many of you have heard this song: “One man come in the name of love, one man come and go, one man come here to justify, one man to overthrow. In the name of love, what more in the name of love.”

The song draws a parallel between the life and work of Jesus and that of Dr. King. You can imagine that those opposed to commemorating Dr King were not happy about the public singing of this song. Some people were so unhappy that they sent the band death threats. One night at a show in Arizona a very specific death threat was issued. Bono received a letter that said, “If you sing Pride tonight it will be the last song you ever sing.” The band faced a real dilemma. Would they stand by their convictions and sing this song or would they back off just for the night? After much deliberation they decided to sing Pride. As Bono began to sing, standing helpless before a crowd of thousands, he closed his eyes. He didn’t open them again until the song was through. When he did, he saw something amazing. Adam Clayton, the band’s bassist, had been standing in front of Bono for the entire song, acting as a human shield.

We’re not always going to find ourselves singing before a loaded gunman, but we do need to remember that our worship can take us to places that are not safe. Really good singing not only prepares us but propels us into the fullness of God’s work. Singing is risky business.

So far we’ve talked about worship that goes in the direction of God, then spills out to our neighbors. Sometimes we have to be ready for it to burst into the world in unexpected ways, ways that may be risky as we make the proclamation about Jesus. Our singing moves in one final direction – through eternity. I’m always encouraged to remember that the songs we sing were all written by real people who lived real lives out of which these songs came. They were written by the former slave trader, John Newton; by a woman blinded by illness named Fanny Crosby; by Mennonite martyrs; by African churches; by contemporary worship leaders; by great church reformers, by pastors and poets.

When our worship gets risky or puts us in difficult places we can remember that we stand in the company of those who wrote the songs we sing. And because we believe in the resurrection we aren’t just singing in memory of those who have gone before, we are singing with them. We know from the book of Revelation that one of our primary activities in the new heaven and the new earth will be worship. Even now we sing with those who sing in every nation and tribe around the world. But we also sing with those who have died and gone before, our loved ones and those unknown faithful who sing with us. We never sing alone.

Singing takes our faith in every direction imaginable. Our praises go up to our God, they go out to our neighbors, they run wild in the world and they spring into eternity as we sing with the faithful both past and present. So let us all sing to the Lord a new song. Let all the nations of the world ascribe God glory. Let the trees of the forest sing for joy. And let our praise resound as an announcement of the risky work of those who have built up the kingdom of God and those faithful workers who are still to come. Amen.

Why “Gender Neutral” Misses the Point

Yesterday T and I were picking out her clothes for the day when she informed me that she would no longer be wearing the bright green shorts I held out to her. “Those are boy shorts,” she said, rummaging around for the one pair of pink shorts in the drawer.

And so it begins. Just around her third birthday T is figuring out that she’s a little girl. The only other clue as to this developmental step was when we looked at pictures of herself as a baby. Not wanting to speed the inevitable association of pink-to-female I mostly dressed T in what we would call gender-neutral clothing as a small child. Whenever she sees these baby pictures she tells me that these were taken when she was a boy. She wonders if she will be a boy again when she gets older.

I used to be nervous about the time my child would turn into the gender police. I thought there might even be a way to stop the princess tyranny that may yet invade my home. I’m not alone. Every day I read a new story about a parent in the midst of a grand gender experiment. Most of these parents are choosing to withhold the sex of their baby from the outside world in order to allow for “natural gender discovery” in their child. The idea is that, instead of having gender forced upon you from an outside source, you will make your own choices about clothing, likes, dislikes, friends, interests and other gender-regulated aspects of life.

I can empathize with this desire to allow for freedom in self-identity. Yet, I can’t help but shake my head at the total failure to acknowledge how normal a developmental step it is to begin dividing up your world. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s NurturShock talks about one example of this phenomenon, only this time in terms of race. After experiments done with children on the establishment of identity, scientists concluded that in-group favoritism is developmentally normal. It’s even true of babies who will be drawn to white faces if they are white, Asian faces if they are Asian, etc. This is how children learn about their world – they divide it into pieces they can understand, and this in turn helps them develop their own identity. This is why we don’t need to freak out when our three year olds tell us they don’t like white/black/Latino kids. Eighty-six percent of children at this age say they would prefer to be friends with children of their own race. Their categories are limited. For now there is only us and them; good and bad.

Gender is less a dividing factor at this age but get to four and game over. Unless the gender-neutral movement is right. The problem, according to the research, is that kids will find a way to divide themselves up no matter what. One experiment in NurtureShock divided children up by T-shirt color. No antipathy developed but, sure enough, the Shirts created divisions to confirm each group’s sense of identity. The Reds explained that all Reds were good; only some Blues were good. If it’s not gender it will be something else, like skin color. Black kids play with trains; white kids play with dolls.

The other problem I see is the short-sightedness of this approach. As Bronson and Merryman point out, the problem isn’t that kids divide themselves up, it’s that we never talk about race with our children. Because it’s an uncomfortable subject we don’t bring it up. As a result, normal developmental patterns turn into racism and race preference. I think the same could be true for gender. Really think about it: do you want your kids to choose their gender with the options now before us now? Because the divide lines up like this: femininity is associated with consumption, timidity, low-impact play and observation; masculinity is associated with toughness, under-achievement, lack of empathy (seen as weakness), and sexual prowess. Both are packaged by Mattell and available at your local Toys R Us. I choose neither, thanks.

Despite knowing that I will have to restrain rolling my eyes for the next few years, I fully expect my child to divide up the world along gender lines, but I also hope that exposure to the Mia Hamms and Ruth Bader Ginsbergs and Esthers of this world will help expand her understanding of femininity and it’s opportunities. I also hope that our religious tradition will become a place where T can rest her identity (I haven’t read any research as to how religious communities do or do not impact gender norms). I don’t think there’s a silver bullet for getting out of the gender norms problem, but I’m pretty sure that pretending like gender doesn’t exist isn’t the way to go.