Loudly

This isn't the beginning, and this isn't the end. 

"So...he's gay. The whole school knows now." 

I was stirring a foaming pot of raviolis on the stove. My sister had been talking about a mutual acquaintance who had recently "come out of the closet" during his senior year of high school. 

Part of me wasn't surprised by this news. But another part of me felt something akin to doubt, sadness, and wariness. My memory skipped back to my own senior year, which also happened to be the year that one of my guy friends announced that he was gay. I can easily recall talking about it with him. His decision to date his boyfriend didn't damage our friendship, our conversations, or our good times that year. I thought of him as a quality person even though I questioned the quality of his choices. I sometimes wondered if his being gay was some kind of misguided gimmick.

When the Day of Silence (during which "students across the country vow to take a form of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools") rolled around and many of my friends participated, I pointedly did not. Quite frankly, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of bullying and harassment of self-professed young homosexuals in our high school. In fact, many of them were popular, well-liked by students and teachers alike, and highly active in school activities and student leadership. I would even go so far as to make the statement that "being gay" was trendy in the way toting around a backpack woven from 100% recycled materials or eating local vegan produce was trendy.

I'm not trying to trivialize homosexuality. My dad has a PhD in clinical psychology and works with a depth of experience, knowledge, and wisdom in dealing with this issue...I'm aware of its complexity and controversiality and how incompetent I am in tackling this subject. 

But I do have my thoughts, and these are a few of the ones I'm sharing with you. 

My introduction to the Day of Silence event in high school made me more keenly aware of how passionate young people can be about causes they see as socially significant and just. Unfortunately, the Day of Silence was lobbying for a certain brand of ideology with which I did not agree. I longed to be part of a united front under one banner, a banner that called out a different message. But the Christians at our high school had no such school-approved alternative, no room at the "tolerant" table of "dialogue." So we were the ones to sit in unsettling silence. 

Several days ago I read a follow up to Rachel Held Evans' controversial "How To Win a Culture War and Lose a Generation". In it she claimed that her previous post spoke to a "growing desire, among both young and old, for radical change in how we treat one another as Christians and as citizens. Ready or not, a movement is afoot—a movement toward reconciliation, healing, grace, and love."  

This time I do not want to stand by in silence. 

I am ready for this kind of movement...but not toward the end that Evans has in mind. Like Evans, it saddens me that young Americans associate Christianity almost immediately with the "negative image" of being "antihomosexual" and that the Church is perceived primarily as being "judgmental, bigoted...hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring." But unlike Evans, it saddens me that many Christians have been seeking to dispel this "image" with their outspoken support of homosexuality.

There are other ways for Christianity to make an impression. 

Maybe I'm wary of jumping on the socially-acceptable bandwagon. Man, that would sure be easier. It would have made high school easier too. 

But I don't want my faith to be about being politically correct. I don't desire for my faith to accept a convincing untruth that has seeped into many of our churches and the way we think. I don't want my faith to be about following the trendy crowd. And I don't think it should.

What does it really mean to truly care about someone? In this context, what do sincerity and conviction look like in a Christian? When and how can reconciliation take place? And what does it mean to recognize the "plank in your own eye" before you try to remove that "speck that is in your brother's eye"? 

My dad once asked me, "If you're allowing someone to continue in a behavior that is harmful to them, is that love? If someone is hurting themselves and all you do is make them feel okay about doing it, are you really helping them heal?" 

So it is here that I'm wondering what it means to love and love loudly. To care for and respect a person but not his choices. To remember and stay rooted in what the Bible tells us about sin. To speak up for truth even when it's unpopular. And to do all these things not in silence, but in loud love. 

I recently delved into, like many before me, C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. And as I thirsted for a better understanding of love, I drank deeply from the chalice of his words.

When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.... To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must...be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable....What we would here and now call our 'happiness' is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.

Paul once wrote to the Philippian church, "Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents...For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake..." 

This was just a reminder, to me as much as to anyone else, to love and love loudly, even if it means standing under a solitary banner.  

This isn't the beginning, and this isn't the end. 

A Cup of Çay

In honor of Throwback Thursday, here's something I wrote while on Istanbul semester...

“...The will to give ourselves to others and to ‘welcome’ them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity.”  - Miroslav Volf 

Walking in to the Aya Sofya for the first time can only be described as breathtaking. It was huge, spectacular, a magnificent feat of architecture. It was a contrast of old, new; dilapidated, restored; traditional, modern; promising, hopeless; Christian, Muslim -- a host of contradictions, just like Turkey itself. The church-now-mosque was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. But before walking in to enjoy the splendor, I read a little plaque beside the doors to the main domed sanctuary. It explained that this was the farthest point that common people could go during Byzantine times. Only emperors and priests could enter through the doors. Did the people of Constantinople burn with resentment that only a select few could even step into, much less enjoy, this awe-inspiring building that should have been open to thousands of worshippers seeking Christ? Christine D. Pohl writes in Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition that “...Even those of us who do not depend on hospitality for basic needs know something of the joy of being welcomed warmly. We also know the pain of being excluded.”

There are a plethora of pomegranates here. Pomegranates to be juiced right before your eyes, their tart juice savored immediately. Then there are pomegranates to haggle over with street vendors; pomegranates to slowly pick apart for breakfast or a late night snack. The nature of the fruit is such that you are forced to eat the pomegranate slowly, seed by seed, pinched between your fingers and lifted into your mouth so you can taste even a little bit of its flavorful and distinct juice.

I’d been admiring the skillfully crocheted jewelry displayed in a shop window near our flat in Istanbul every time I passed by...so one day after Turkish lessons, I dove out of the cold and into the little shop with a singsonging “Merhaba!” that surely identified me as American.  I was greeted in return by a quiet, gravelly voice from behind a counter too tall for the aging woman who ducked out from under it. I slowly looked around the shop, admiring, murmuring “Çok güzel!” as I fingered leather shoes and softly patterned dresses around her boutique. She watched me patiently. I asked her about the jewelry I so admired, the necklaces shaped into stunningly lifelike grapevines and the earrings that looked like hanging berries and the rings decorated by exquisite little flowers. She told me that she designed them all herself and pointed to each piece in turn, explaining in broken English how long each one had taken to make. I lurched into rudimentary and fumbling Turkish, at which she grinned toothily. We exchanged names...and then almost immediately, she said, “Sit! Çay!” We sat together in her shop, drinking the steaming tea (from the small Turkish glasses just the right size to keep the çay hot while one drinks it) and munching on tiny biscuits. She asked me about what I was doing in Istanbul, and I found out from her in bits and pieces (aided by a trusty Turkish-English pocket dictionary) how she was half Greek, half Turkish, and practiced Christianity, not Islam. Her husband and her children were all Muslim, I learned. “Problem var,” she said, nodding with a sad smile. She explained that it was very hard for Christians and Greeks to survive here in Turkey, even in a city as tolerant as Istanbul. She took my dictionary and pointed to the word for “cruel.” We sat there talking about marriage, survival, money, and Islam (at least to the best of our abilities in our respective snippets of Turkish and English). She made more çay. When I had to leave she kissed me on both cheeks and said, “See? Now you are Turkish!” 

Later that same day I came back to introduce a friend and fellow traveller and immediately she sat us all down again with tea and we talked and laughed together. We told her about our recent escapade in trying to find a laundromat, after which she immediately offered to wash our clothes any time. She showed us more of her jewelry designs and pictures of her grandchildren on Facebook (yes, elderly Turkish women use Facebook). I couldn’t help thinking how kindly she had opened up to us, and was touched by her generosity in sharing time and tea with us as young foreigners and strangers. We had heard that Turkey is known for its culture of hospitality, but the experience with my new-found friend showed me a snippet of what this really meant. 

This was by no means the only experience of our encounters with the hospitality of the Turkish people...with them, coffee, company, and conversation are never lacking. Some of the boys have made friends with the seventy-year-old janitor of a nearby mosque, and he has a couple of times treated them to tea, introduced them to all his friends, and treated them like brothers despite their age and nationality. Our group has also developed friendships with a tiny little kebab restaurant which we frequent regularly and loyally for chicken or lamb pitas; one of my favorite moments of the morning is the cheerful hello that the man who sells fresh orange juice outside our apartment and I exchange every time I walk by; and the owner of the small grocery nearby is always willing to practice Turkish when we try to buy bread or toilet paper. 

That’s another thing. People here are usually very enthusiastic to help us practice our Türkçe. When a few of us trekked into the Egyptian spice bazaar behind the Yeni Camii one night, we made friends with a vendor named Mehmet (“Like the conqueror! It’s a very common name in Turkey”), who gave us samples of dried mango and dabbed amber perfume on to our wrists. He took us through his stall and pointed to different objects in turn, teaching us their names and repeating the unfamiliar words till he was satisfied with our pronunciation. At a little thrift shop one night, we talked to a man who said that a group of us should come by twice a week and he would teach us Turkish slang because, he said, “You’ll never really know the language unless you know this slang.” He told us about what the best Turkish radio stations to listen to were, and told us about life and business in Istanbul. We had been trying on a few things in his shop and as we were getting ready to leave he gave them to us, saying, “Gifts for you. Come back and visit soon!” 

I was struck by how all of these experiences would rarely, if ever, occur in the United States. Obviously, our country is not devoid of generous people; but there is something innately and passionately hospitable about Turks. If a young Turkish student walked into a Starbucks in America, never would they be offered free tea and language lessons, or even welcoming conversation. Even as an American, I have never really been offered friendship in a shop -- not even, particularly, in the places that I might frequent. And heaven forbid an American shop owner giving away something without a price, or reaching out to someone who glaringly looks the foreigner. 

Where is our hospitality? Where is our radically Christian neighborliness, our generosity in entertaining the stranger or acquaintance? I think we like the idea of hospitality, but rarely have I experienced it in the United States. I am not referring to entertaining guests or friends; this is indeed an important and beautiful aspect of kindness and warm reception, but a culture of hospitality goes beyond this; it actively reaches out to the stranger. Henri Nouwen writes that hospitality is “the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines...” (Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, 71). This perspective of hospitality is all the more meaningful as we are here in Turkey, dialoguing with Muslims of very different shades of faith. 

 

I know that this observation of hospitality is by no means a new or unique one; I will not say what has been said by much more competent writers and theologians than I on the recovery of the tradition of hospitality; I will not give you scriptures to chew on about this topic, because I think that you should find them yourself. Work for them like picking out the seeds of a pomegranate. Seeking and finding the conviction to make changes in one’s life is a labor-intensive process. But this is me handing you the pomegranate. This is me trying to digest some of the cultural richness that we have been experiencing here in Turkey. 

This is me asking you to open the doors of your Aya Sofya.

Green

It is unfortunate that we often do not value what we have until we no longer have it. Those earrings weren’t nearly so treasured until I misplaced them. That relationship gained a different significance when it fizzled out and I was left with a realization of how much it reshaped me. Those gummy bears didn’t taste particularly good until there were none left and I wished there were more. That room of opportunity didn’t seem so appealing until after the door was firmly shut to those possibilities. 

Thankfully, while we’re sleeping life leaves little gifts of graciousness on the pillows damp with our tears. These gifts are the chances to value what we do have, when we have it -- not out of fear of loss, but out of unadulterated joy and appreciation. 

My grandpa and I were trudging through my grandparents’ woods on a short hike reminiscent of bygone summers spent exploring the verdant foliage. We brushed past elegant ferns, stepped gingerly over fragile snail shells, clamored over fallen trees padded with carpet-like moss, shied away from grimacing nettles, pointed out almost every slug we saw (you’d think you’d stop commenting after sighting the twelfth slug in five minutes, but you don’t), inhaled that redolent aroma of cedar and evergreen and decomposing leaves, and admired the gray-green beards of lichen festooning the bark of the tree trunks’ faces. I’d walked through these woods many times...sometimes with an avid imagination, collecting smoothed stones from the creek bed to build a faerie house in a gnarled old stump...sometimes with practicality or Grandma’s orders in mind, picking huckleberries and thimbleberries...sometimes with disgust and impatience, shuddering off spider webs and barely listening to my grandparents’ enthusiastic explanations of flora and fauna. 

But this time, I soaked in the thousand shades of green. I was sad I’d missed the fiddleheads in their tightly-curled glory. I commended my grandfather on his feat of engineering and handiwork in the form of a new bridge arching over the stream bed. 

And I genuinely appreciated it all. The chance to spend time with a beloved someone growing tired with old age. The untamed, delicate, vigorous, folk-tale-like beauty of the woods. 

When we were studying abroad and spent a stretch in Israel and Palestine, we visited the Sea of Galilee. Everyone exclaimed how breathtaking the view was, how peaceful the atmosphere was. The Sea of Galilee is indeed a stunning place. 

But my thought at the time was, “This looks just like home.” 

Maybe it’s unfortunate that we sometimes need to roam to the other side of the world and back before we realize that we live amidst breathtaking beauty ourselves. Sometimes you don’t realize how lovely a familiar face is until you’ve encountered lots of unfamiliar ones. 

Travel is, with good reason, alluring. It’s a new patchwork quilt of sights, tastes, experiences, and conversations to wrap around yourself for days and nights to come. It inherently fosters in you a deep appreciation for exploration and discovery and a fascination with what is for you the uncharted. 

But then there is the well-mapped territory of your ‘normal’ life, of your neighborhood, of your childhood memories, of a wrinkled face. And after months without this in the forefront of your mind, newfound immediacy can take on its own charm. 

Sometimes, some of the most beautiful places on earth you will ever discover are minutes away from your home. Some of the most incredible people you will ever meet you’ve already known for years. But sometimes, you just need a reminder to value them. 

Watering Can

Perhaps it's a little bit ridiculous that I waited until now to create a blog. Maybe I feel some guilt that I did not begin one during the four months of travel and study abroad that I just concluded. Now I'm home, feeling like a filled-up watering can without a garden... so full that it slops water over its edges before it finds the right plant to bring new life to. 

This blog was birthed out of frustration. But as Mrs. Incredible once said, "We need to find a more...constructive outlet." 

I was in church. We'd arrived late, as per normal, but managed to catch the last worship song before the sermon. The sanctuary was full, the congregation garbed in their brightly-hued summery wardrobes. We were singing "I am a friend of God." 

We sang that phrase about 37 times. Or rather, some people sang that phrase 37 times. I was staring up at the ceiling, thinking that it was perhaps convenient that we usually missed most of this part of the service.

God forgive me, it was not the first (nor most likely the last) Sunday morning that I was wrestling with my irritation at American Protestant church music. There are several reasons for this, not all of which I will divulge here...but this morning in particular, I was struck first by this worship song's complete lack of theological depth and second by the fact that its lyrics have more to do with "me" than with actually praising God. 

My mind flickered back to our time in Turkey. Back to standing beneath the dome of the Hagia Sophia, surrounded by frescoed angels and the remaining glory of the breathtaking Byzantine basilica. Back to running my fingers along the stoney ruins of temples and synagogues and churches of the ancient world of Asia Minor. Back to the glittering mosaics of Chora Church in Istanbul and the way that the tiny tiles depicted the wrinkles of Christ's forehead as he frowned gently or Mary's tragic expression as she cradled her baby and Savior. Back to our conversation with an Armenian priest struggling for the survival of his beloved church. Back to the aroma of incense and prayers in a Syrian Orthodox service. Back to the cave churches of Cappadocia and the paintings there depicting the severe persecution of Christians under the Holy Roman Empire. 

I thought back to all we had read and heard about 'dying' Eastern Christianity. I thought about our long lectures on the Ecumenical Councils, the intrigue and intervention and sacrifice and debate that has gotten us to this point in our theology and Christian doctrine. I thought about the services we had attended, the familiar and foreign liturgies dripping with credence, how worship whether chanted or sung concentrated on exalting God and never focused on the self-important language of "me." I thought about how difficult life is for Christians in the Middle East. And I remembered amassing the gradual but penetrating sense while abroad of being overwhelmed by how much I didn't know. 

This awareness took several different forms. One was a renewed thirst for learning, for questioning, for seeking, for reading. One was a deeper appreciation for biblical study and the necessity of being able to articulate exactly what we believe, why we believe it, and why that's life-shattering. And one was frustration with church back home.

Sunday school theology helped me grow and led me along a steady path up to a point...and then there was an aching abyss. I hadn't even fully realized it until I needed something more, and it wasn't there. And I was frustrated about it. Frustrated that nineteen years of church had not theologically equipped me with more than Sunday school answers. Frustrated that I hadn't earlier started drinking from mature spiritual milk. I realize that commitment to seeking out God carries with it a substantial personal responsibility. My point is that the modern American Protestant Church as I knew it could not help me in any way, shape, or form in working through my new doubts, questions, fears, and confusion. It had not even taught me a creed. It had shied away from even teaching me beautiful traditional hymns for fear of not "reaching the younger generation." It was too busy singing "I am a friend of God." 

As someone who is part of "the younger generation," I'm saying: we need more than mediocre understanding of what the resurrection means, of what history means, of what Christian unity and community means. And we need good music on a Sunday morning. 

Maybe that was a slop of water out the side of the watering can. My only hope is that maybe it splashed by happenstance on a plant that needed some reinvigoration.  

But that's what a blog is for, right?