The Analytical vs. The Creative

These past three years have been tough ones.  I have no idea of the what and why of the goings on, but I’ve endured them… not quite sure yet whether I’m worse for wear or whether I will end up strengthened.

One thing I do know, now that I’m able to more favorably move forward, I’ve got to get to a place where life isn’t simply dressing or mechanically moving from one thing to another.  I’m in a position right now that all is analytical, and while I have done and continue to do analytical stuff, I am much more of a creative type person than anything else.  Heck, even coding for me is a creative endeavor.

I’ve got to get back to the creative.  If I don’t, I’m going to go nuts.  I’ve got to find balance in my life, and right now I’m not sure how to do that.

2013 moves into 2014 – what will change?  Up to me, I suppose.

A New Year Cometh…

The eve of a new year is upon us.  I wonder, sometimes, how open we are to whatever-may-come.  Are we more apt to rigidly attempt to force life into a mold of our own imagining, perhaps because of fear or intimidation or weariness or confusion or insecurity or, perhaps, due to being lost to our own humanity, an honest sense-of-self, lost to our own possibilities?

We limit ourselves, terribly, I suppose. We limit our ability to love – and I think more significantly our ability to receive love.  What does it mean to be fearfully and wonderfully made?  Where along the line have we bought the lie that our consumerist culture peddles, and that we as a people soak up lock, stock, and barrel?

If we imagine ourselves to be free, particularly of the fear of what we cannot know or control, free from even the fear of death, then where do limits exist in understanding the potential and possibilities existing all around us?

If only we take one step, if only we run the race set before us, if only we decide to move beyond the boundaries of our own creation, then why limit ourselves and capitulate to whatever binds up our hope, our lives?  What can we discover in this new year if our imaginations are set loose to run free and run wild?  God’s peace and blessing we with us all, I pray. Happy 2014!

TheImagoDeiInitiativeBlog.

Affordable Care Act, Individual Liberty, and Socialized Medicine

So, my 2-cents on the ACA (Obamacare), the Federal Gov’t, and individual liberty.  A couple disclaimers: 1. Occupationally, I work for a company that provides health insurance – a VEBA; 2. Politically, I tend to be drawn to Libertarianism (which is not Neo-Conservatism or plain old Conservatism); 3. Socially, I’m a person who has set my life within the Way of Christ, no matter how imperfectly I succeed.

Now onward… Since the early debates of whether our form of government should be central or local – Federal-centric or State-centric – the battle has raged.  More State-centric seems to have won out in our Constitutional form.  So, I think the Federal government should not take up stuff not specifically provided for it in the Constitution – like medicine.  No socialized medicine!  Therefore, like the ACA (which really is of a different kind, but anyway…) Congress should immediately end the Federal government’s socialized medicine programs – Medicare and Medicaid – which are government controlled and dictated systems.

Secondly, people have the right to not have insurance if they don’t want it! Since we know that lots of uninsured people show up at Emergency Rooms seeking care for everything from what would otherwise be a primary-care check-up to a hang-nail, these uninsured visits drive up the cost of healthcare and drive hospitals into financial insolvency since these people can’t pay their bills, then this needs to stop!  Why should regular-people’s insurance premiums, co-pays, and co-insurance charges continually rise because we have to make up for other people’s decisions? It is our individual American right to not have health insurance, but if you don’t have insurance or don’t have the cash – no care!  Why should I have to subsidize other people’s Constitutionally granted decisions or their inefficiency, irresponsibility, or bad luck?

So, if you don’t plan well during your life and you’re old and have no healthcare coverage, tough luck.  If you are young and invincible and get into a drunken care crash without insurance, tough luck.  If your baby is in trouble and you chose to exercise your Constitutional right to not have health insurance, tough luck. Individual liberty, individual responsibility! After all, that’s the American Way of allowing us all to make our own, private, individualized decisions, right?  Now, if a privately funded charity wants to pay for those people’s healthycare bills, great, they can be enablers if they want to, just don’t make me pay for it.  (The “American Way” is looking more and more like “Social Darwinism.”)

But, the American Way is not the Christ-like Way.  And, for all those people who claim to be Christians – whether conservative or liberal, Evangelical, Mainline, or Catholic (Roman, Orthodox, Anglican, or some Lutherans) – hyper-individualism is counter to God’s call to us to be about caring for the lest-of-these, to considering others needs before our own, and to love not just our neighbors but our enemies as well.

That doesn’t mean we have to give everything over to the Federal or State governments to control or administer (I am enamored with Libertarianism, after all), but it does mean we cannot dump our responsibility to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien!  We can democratically decide whether to take up that responsibility through our government, private associations, or individually.  We can collectively decide the means within our representative democracy, but we can never decide to ignore those least able to make it.

Reality and Life

I have some friends telling me, “Give yourself a break.” Why? Well, I tend to be fairly hard on myself. I tend to be a type “A” personality and feel as if I need to be an overachiever (or am one regardless of what I may feel). I tend to think that I should be able to easily “hold up” and do, do, do… overcome, overcome, overcome… without any downside or downtime.

If I step back for a moment (considering the advice of friends to give-myself-a-break) and consider my life over the past 6-years… well, maybe I should stop, consider, and reflect (kind of like when you catch fire you should “stop, drop, and roll”). I may be on fire. (Not like “the Girl-on-Fire”!)

A number of years ago, close friends of mine gave me a single sheet of paper with words all over it. There were lines and columns of adjectives. They lovingly and sarcastically said, “We’re going to tell you to point to your words – and then you have to.” It seems they thought that I never really talked about me – as in using adjectives – and how I was really doing, going through, or feeling. They were frustrated. I guess it really wasn’t (isn’t) very conducive for people getting to know me, really.

A very close friend of mine, who I rarely see any more, regrettably – distance and all that – has her PhD in community counseling. She is a great listener, but it always frustrated me that she never really talked about herself. So, I know my friends’ frustration!

Well, “giving myself a break” probably means being open with others about what has happened over the past 6-years and accepting that the results on my psyche (and everything else interrelated) just might be real. Well… Of course, what the hell do I need to complain about when considering what the majority of humanity has to endure on a daily basis! I’ve got “first-world” issues, as some would say. Maybe…

I took a job after seminary in NYC in 2006 that I never wanted and had to struggle through every day. It wash good job, with a very good company, and the people I worked with were great! So what’s the problem, right? It was just soul-killing work to do full-time, at least for me. I took the job to stay in NYC for my partner. A reasonable reason. We all have to have our share of sacrifices for the good sake of our beloved.

So, I’m working. Blah. Then, six years ago, I was dumped, unexpectedly and unwantingly. Things were not perfect, of course; they never are. But, I was not expecting it and I was emotionally shocked and hurt, hurt, hurt. Not only that, but I was dumped for another guy that is (still) destructive to my former partner. That makes is doubly hard because I don’t want that for someone I love(d). Co-dependence is an oh so wonderful thing, right? Maybe I’m better without the relationship (that’s what some tell me), but I don’t feel that way… I don’t believe it.

Then, nearly four years ago I was appointed to my dream job! I was amazed, shocked, and thrilled that I was going to be able to do this! Pinch me, really! Do it again because this can’t be true! I began the position in 2010. I took a $20,000 pay cut. That’s alright because I was still making decent money. From my just resigned job (hallelujah – even though I really like my co-workers and the company), I was able to accumulate a really good savings account!

I started me dream job and poured everything into it! It was so exciting, stimulating, and fulfilling. I had a very hard time turning off the job and taking some down time. I was creating something totally new drawn from a lifetime of experience, education, and lots of research and study-groups. I was good at it, and it was succeeding!

A year and a half later the rug was pulled out from under me. The project was being shut down – at least the sponsors’ sponsorship of it. Politics. Lots of opposition from others who thought it was a tremendous waste of dwindling resources that should be directed to their ministries and enterprises (often failing, which is just the reality).

Of course, what I was doing was for the long term, for revitalization, to provide ways and means for them to do their work in newer ways that actually resonate with younger people – their very future. That didn’t matter. They needed the money right NOW, and they couldn’t conceive that what I was doing was to benefit them… just not so much right this second. Of course, it also meant that they would have to change their presumptions and mindset and do things differently in a postmodern, post-Christian reality. It meant (still means) that they give up “old-ways-of-thinking”, which means the ways of thinking of the 1970’s and 80’s. Ouch.

They also didn’t like that I kept pointing out the elephants in the room. Stupid, I know. I’m like that, however – I actually want to deal with things. What else can one do when we have to honestly grapple with why things are not working and we are not succeeding when others are? We have to understand the problems forthrightly and in the glaring light of noonday before we can fix anything. What people generally want, alas, is everything else to change so that what they do and the way they do it magically succeeds.

General Motors, alone 25% of the American economy at the end of the 1970’s, went bankrupt because they lost track of how to make cars that people actually wanted to drive. The Church is not alone. GM is getting better after everything came crashing down, after the tipping point of insolvency. Hopefully, we will, too. It would be nice if insolvency wasn’t necessary, but for us perhaps it is. Sad and shameful, isn’t it? Such a waste of the financial and spiritual patrimony of generations past and their sacrifice.

So, the rug was pulled out from under me. No more money. No more health insurance. No more support, even as I continued to do what I was doing as much as I could without their help, support, or sponsorship (even thought they still will reap a benefits, tangentially). (After asking, they did continue paying for my health insurance after a time and for a year.)

After losing my job, I entered the rolls of the unemployed in the heat of the economic downturn. Wonderful. The next blow was that I wasn’t eligible for unemployment. (IRS rules stipulate that when an ordained person is employed in ministry work, the ministry/employer is not required to pay into unemployment.) Yup, no money. My savings account didn’t last for long. Thankfully, after several months, I was able to secure a very part-time position back with the company I worked for, before. From taking a huge pay cut to do my dream job, complete unemployment that completely drained me of all my liquid assets, to a very part-time job that didn’t quite cover even my rent. Fun.

Unemployed for two years with no unemployment benefits, health insurance for only one of those years, applying for all kinds of positions to no avail. I just heard an NPR piece on the psychological and emotional effects of being unemployed for 6-months. Phhww, what’s 6-months? Wimps!

Can I say how thankful I am for the generosity of my parents and that they are in a position to help me! Even though I bleed through all my assets, lived as simply as I could in NYC, I would never have made it without my parents. Of course, a 50-year old man doesn’t want to think that he is in a position that makes him go back to Mom & Dad for a hand-out (a nearly two year huge hand-out). That was tough… really tough!

Well, thankfully, this past June I secured a full-time job back with the company I worked before and with which I worked part-time this past year. (For the first time, I now honesty understand the peculiar world of clergy compensation and church payroll!) And I am thankful. It is a great company and I like the people I work with. It’s just that what I am good at doing is going completely unused, unutilized, and unappreciated. My skills are not being honed. I’m just a hard worker and good at organizational stuff. I can now support myself, however, and I am very happy about that! It is a tremendous emotional relief.

My former boss at Kent State, where I created the Technology Support office for our new hybrid academic/student services unit, the Vice-Provost and Dean, wrote a recommendation letter to my seminary. He wrote that he thought this endeavor of mine would end up being a “tremendous waste of talent and skill.” He is one of few men that I truly look up to and respect, but I thought he was completely wrong. After all, this reluctant priest-to-be was told repeatedly by those in authority that there is always “a place in the Church for good priests.” Hum.

The bishop under whom I became a postulant seemed to have a high impression of me. He told the new, incoming bishop (co-adjutor), “You don’t want to lose this one.” I was in Ohio for my final candidacy interviews, and I was dumbfounded when he said this. See, my Dean wasn’t right! I tend to not recognize in myself what others seem to – at least according to them. I also don’t use “my words” enough when talking about myself… when interviewing. I also tend to thank that people actually want to improve and fix things. I also tend to be wrong – a lot, it seems.

I’ve come to realize that the Vice-Provost and Dean was probably right. It wasn’t that he was anti-religion, but I realize now that he didn’t believe they would recognize what they actually had in me. I still don’t see it, even though I know I’m good at what ever I do, I’m a quick study, and I’m conscientious. Go figure.

Lots of people fret and complain, “Where was God when I needed him?” Many people say this because they want or expect their concept of God to magically work and make them a rose garden. What God actually promises is that He will be with us through it all. He gives us the charge to go and do and He will give us the strength to do. Never easy, in the midst not emotionally uplifting, but we can endure. When we come out the other end, the other side, exit the tunnel, we are wiser and more honest with ourselves, more patient, more understanding, more kind, more generous, more fully human – as God intends. We are, that is, if we don’t expect God to be a magician that we can manipulate to get our current will.

Within 6-years I was unexpectantly dumped and lost my relationship – the reason I stayed in NYC and for which I worked a job I didn’t’ like. I was given my dream job. I had that dream job unexpectantly yanked away and told to fend for myself. I was unemployed and unable to support myself for two years. At 50, I had to depend on the generosity of my parents. I am in a position in life right now that if I knew this would be where I would end up 11-years later, I never would have entered seminary to begin with – even though I would not want to forgo the experience of my seminary education and formation and the people I’ve met and friends I’ve made along the way.

I’m stressed. I need to give myself a break. I need to understand what the last 6-years have done to me – particularly the last 2-years. It is hard to admit. It is hard to let go. It is hard to let some things end. It is hard to humble myself and not feel compelled to “prove them wrong” about me and the things I’ve discovered and created. I need to “use my word” more forthrightly, and this entry is my attempt.

The Church

“The Church, in common with the whole redemptive process, does not exist as the fruit of human endeavour, which has shown time and again by the bloody collapse of ‘civilized’ rationality to be incapable of attaining anything that is lastingly healing. Thus the Church cannot be reformed by human effort and ingenuity, any more than sin can be reformed by good will. We must hear the gospel of the incarnation as a summons to self-abandonment before all else, not as a reassuring endorsement of the best we can humanity do.”

– Rowan Williams in his book, “Anglican Identities”, p. 89-90, writing on on Michael Ramsey’s theology of the Church.

This is the problem we have today – those who still rely on Modernist notions for their base foundation of what can be known for sure are still trying to reform the Church by human endeavor and some kind of human ingenuity – and it isn’t working. There is too often a reliance on late 20th-Century American socio-political ideology (of the Left or Right) rather than what the enduring Tradition reveals to be the ways-and-means of the Kingdom of God. For example, demanding “rights” is not at all the same as living into “loving your neighbor as yourself.”

With respect to the “reform” of our Church (in this case, the Episcopal Church), what is needed is self-abandonment to the gospel-of-the-incarnation (understood in a Postmodern way), which is completely tied to the deep and flowing stream of the enduring Tradition (for us in its Anglican form) taken up  by us from generations past, experienced anew in our own day, and if we are faithful we will strive to understand how to pass it on to the next generations.

What will we do in this Anglican form of the Tradition of ours when we think about issues of a numerically and financially declining Church – a Church that has nearly lost what once was significant influence for the good within society – within a culture that no longer thinks and acts within a Christian worldview?

Labour

“The Bible does not supersede labour, but by its very form proclaims labour to be fruitful… There is, no doubt, a restless desire in man for some help which may save him from the painful necessity of reflection, comparison, judgement. But the Bible offers no such help. It offers no wisdom to the careless, and no security to the indolent. It awakens, nerves, invigorates, but it makes no promise of ease.” – B.F. Westcott, “Lessons from Work” (London, 1901) p. 148 as found in “Anglican Identities” by Rowan Williams (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2003) p.76.

We’re rethinking…

So, I’m in the midst of rethinking the “Imago Dei Initiative.”  Part of our DNA is an understanding that rethinking has to occur regularly and constantly.  As folks engaging with emerging generations and culture, what else can we do?

Up-front-and-center is the need to refocus ministry development in the midst of parish life. After nearly 20-years of observing “Emergent” or “Fresh Expressions” models of being “the church” – at least that part that eschews larger gatherings of people for the “intimate-alternative” – I find that those models tend to be transient and temporary.  As valuable as they may be for the people in them, such small groups over time are not particularly sustainable and certainly do not do things like pay diocesan assessments. I fully support those trying alternative things – that’s what we are doing, frankly. It just depends on how “alternative” is conceptualized and experienced. 😉

There are reasons why aspects of the Christian Faith and Tradition have endured for nearly 2,000 years, even as our understanding and experience of society, humanity, and technology have changed.  The institutional Church must realize that those experimental forms of “church”, as valuable as they may be, are not the future. The fringe never is.  The fringe, however, will inevitably change us!  Yet, that which has endured will continue to endure no matter how radically-whatever we try to be, and the rest will fall away.

The current Church bureaucracy of technocrats still function under a perceptional framework based in Modernism and Christendom – no matter how much they try, otherwise.  It is obvious to anyone who was not formed to perceive in such ways. So, the real re-invigoration of the institutional Church will rest with those younger – so shall it be as it always has been. The holders of elder-wisdom who get-it will be there to guild and support.  Those who don’t – well, they will hinder until they can hinder no more. Thankfully, the emerging generations at present have a keener understanding of and value for that which endures.

So then, how do we perpetually put aside our own “stuff” for the sake of the Church-becoming… for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in present contexts… for the sake of those who do not yet have a knowledge of God?