Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

jill crainshaw

power in the blood

by Jill Crainshaw in Current Events, Poetry

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I have been searching for what to say or even think about the Orlando massacre. All words fail. The story of the hundreds of donors who gave blood for those who were wounded inspired this poetic response:

power in the blood

aunt gertrude played the antique upright in church every sunday
sometimes by ear
sometimes the old-timey way
reading notes shaped like diamonds or triangles
but the hymn she cherished most
her fingers knew by heart

power in the blood
wonder-working power

as much as i loved to hear gospel favorites
spilling from Aunt Gertrude’s fingers
blood hymns troubled my soul
too violent
too brutal
i knew even as a kid
how much life and hope
the old old story had bled out over the years

early that vicious sunday morning
shots rang out
precious blood
wonder-working blood
spilled out
on the dance floor
in the streets
spattering shoes
dancers
doctors
nurses
police officers
lovers
friends

as we gathered for church that day
several states away
in orlando they did it the old-timey way
by heart
for those too often discarded
discounted
disremembered now dismembered
a mile-long vein opened up
friends and strangers enfleshing care
until a flood of plasma pulsated through the city
into wounded souls
and as my little group of worshipers
lined up at the communion table
to eat the bread
drink the cup
share the holy body
i remembered that old hymn flowing out from
aunt gertrude’s hands and… [Read more…] about power in the blood

Breaking: A Poem

by Jill Crainshaw in Poetry

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

This poem emerged as I thought about news stories and headlines I encountered last week (April 3-9, 2016). Many other headlines also appeared during the week, but those referenced in the poem capture my ambivalence and worry about how we imagine and talk about life today. The poem also celebrates the ways people “walk on” in spite and in the face of life-denying headlines. Note: Doris Day’s dog is named “Squirrely.”

 

Breaking

They gave up the ghost this week.
No more walking dead

for now

except the comatose American economy or is it “finally waking up”?
My neighbor with the zombie car battery
who can’t get her to her minimum wage, 25 hours a week job
four miles away
doesn’t think so.

And Apple? showing its age “maturing”

while Doris Day
“turns 92, shows adorable pic with her puppy”
Squirrely

Meanwhile
Alabama governor’s future “looks bleaker”
Cruz and Sanders celebrate in Wisconsin
Mississippi protects “sincerely held religious beliefs”
PayPal decides not to login to North Carolina
Tennessee designates the “Holy Bible
as the official state book.”

Newsfeeds are push-back-from-the table full
while “Conflict in Eastern Ukraine leaves 1.5 million people hungry.”
Perhaps Tennessee will feed them now?
“If you offer your food to the hungry …”

Breaking news
Breaking into homes
Breaking onto shores
Breaking out
Just breaking
hearts
spirits
dreams
lives

But mere clicks away from Flipboard and… [Read more…] about Breaking: A Poem

In Our Bones: Holy Week Reflections

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

Holy Week begins this Sunday, on Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday, many Christians process into worship, colorful banners and streamers and emerald palm branches dancing in the air as they go.

I do not dance with ease on any day. I stumble even more on Palm Sunday. My uncooperative sense of rhythm is only part of the problem. I process with awkward reluctance because my heart and mind are reluctant to grapple yet again with the seven days Christians have marked as Holy Week.

What makes this particular version of Sunday through Saturday holier than other weeks of Sundays through Saturdays? Judging by recent news headlines, I think it is fair to say that human endeavors will not do much to create an ecology of particular or peculiar holiness during this week (though I suppose we can be on the lookout every week for those moments when human courage and faith ease or even transform some element of communal brokenness). How do our ritual actions during this week we call “holy” speak of God in and to communities crucified every day to appease the gods of discrimination or commerce or politics? What do our 21st century embodiments of Jesus’s story mean in a world where violence or racism or war destroy life and where too many of the wrong things and not enough of the right things are resurrected? These questions trouble my feet as I make my way in fits and starts along well-traveled Holy Week pathways.

But I am a liturgical theologian.… [Read more…] about In Our Bones: Holy Week Reflections

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

Ashes.
I scatter them. They slip away from cold-numbed fingers.
It is winter. Nothing grows in winter—
does it?

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

But a dancing fire warms my hands
and its ashes cultivate growth.

We are ashes;
our lives slip through our fingers
sometimes. Or so it seems.

We are also formed from the earth.
We are dust.
Scattered in God’s garden
“to till it and to keep it.”

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

The seasons of Lent and Easter in Christian traditions call us to reflect on rhythms of feasting and fasting and feasting in our world, our churches, and our spiritual lives. But the traditional Lenten fast is complicated this year because fasting in our world today is a complicated concept. Too many people’s bodies and souls ache because of fasts imposed on them by unjust life realities. Too many people’s tables are too empty because they lack adequate access to food.

So we wonder. To what fasts can we commit ourselves during this season that will teach us how to fashion redemptive and life-giving relationships with each other and this earth that is our home? What can we plant in the ashes and dust of Lent’s great fast that will bring forth a resurrecting great feast for our world’s hurting people?

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, our foreheads smudged with charcoaled Palm branches from last year’s now-cold feast, we are reminded:

By the sweat of your face you shall eat… [Read more…] about Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Twelfth Night: Reflections on Epiphany 2016

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

Twelfth Night is upon us,[1] the eve of Epiphany when we remember how magi from Persia followed to Jesus’ birthing place an unusual God-flung orb of light that appeared in the heavens. The word “epiphany” means “manifestation” or “a striking appearance.”

In the U.S., Epiphany provides a time after the scramble of holiday shopping and parties to focus on the refreshing surprise of God-with-us in the birth of Jesus. What does manifestation of God in Jesus mean in a world where so many fear for their lives, where too many innocents are slaughtered? How are we who live in the face of such hard realities to incarnate Incarnation?

What if we decide on this Twelfth Night that God-with-us means God-in-us—in what we do each day to insist on justice and peace in our homes and neighborhoods and beyond?

Post-Christmas daylight reveals yet again the knots and snarls of our everyday lives. We have work to do to make real in all seasons and throughout each day the cascading possibilities promised during the Christmas season of illuminated nights. God is with us. Thanks be to God. Now—on to the work to which God calls us.

Star-watchers.
Eyes wide opened
by what they see
in backyard night skies,
a dream and a LED-bright star their GPS,
“Bearing gifts they traverse afar”
to investigate
explore
consider.

Then—eyes wide opened
by what they see–
re-routed,
home by another way.

Ah, the peculiarity of Christmastide epiphanies:
shepherds
cows… [Read more…] about Twelfth Night: Reflections on Epiphany 2016

Advent Four:  Do You Hear What I Hear?

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post by Jill Crainshaw is based on the Gospel lectionary reading for Advent 4, Luke 1:39-56.

Snow falls. Gently. Lights twinkle in houses festive with welcoming wreathes. Santa and eight tiny reindeer alight on a snow-softened roof. Enchanted. Perfect.

“Bah Humbug!”

Those were Robin’s words as she opened that year’s Christmas gift to discover–the snow globe. A holiday scene trapped in a watery sphere. “What does a 50-year-old woman do with a snow globe? You look at it, and then what?”

Robin had no room for one more thing to look at. Her house was too full of stuff. Her life too complicated. Her time too cluttered with grown-up realities. She packed the snow globe back into its box and shoved it onto a top shelf in a closet.

But don’t we sometimes long for a snow globe Christmas? Smiling people strolling down cheerful sidewalks. Just the right amount of snow to hide imperfections without shutting down streets. A lovely Christmas contained in a predictable scene. Oh, the extremes some of us have gone to at times to create that perfect Christmas, and what disappointments have befallen us.

I think we are tempted to see the Nativity story as a series of picturesque snow globe scenes too. Joseph in a well-organized carpentry shop working with gently used Harbor Freight tools. Shepherds on a verdant hillside, startled by the angels that Christmas night, but not too much. A baby born in a barn kissed by the glow of heaven’s brightest… [Read more…] about Advent Four:  Do You Hear What I Hear?

Advent Three: Rejoice?

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality, Poetry

“Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4).  “Sing for joy!” (Isaiah 12).

With these words, ancient biblical voices call us to joy on the third Sunday in Advent.

The Latin term for this week in the season of Advent is “Gaudete” or “Rejoice,” and on this Sunday many churches follow the historic practice of lighting a rose-hued candle of joy instead of the penitential purple or anticipatory blue candles of the other three Sundays.

I have been thinking in recent days that perhaps this Advent we should forego Rejoice Sunday. The world is too weary with violence and pain. Indeed, what manner of rejoicing even rings true as we strike a match and touch its flame to the joy candle on this year’s wreath?

My friend’s 75th birthday celebration made me stop and reconsider my decision to snuff out the joy candle. Party-goers were asked to write my friend a poem or blessing. As I thought about this request, I realized that my friend’s life itself is both blessing and poem, for she has done what she could over her years of living to be kind, not just during the idyllic weeks of quixotic Christmas snow globes, but for the season that is her lifetime, even during times when life was anything but kind to her.

Thinking about my friend’s 75 years of weeks and days of learning by doing how to be a kind and caring human being has made me reconsider the meaning of that rose-hued candle on the Advent wreath. A world weighed down by fear and grief needs gifts of kindness. We may even be… [Read more…] about Advent Three: Rejoice?

Advent Two: Longing for Sunlight and Song

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality, Poetry

The songs and images of the Advent and Christmas season stir in many people a longing for peace and good will. But peace is hard to come by these days. Instead, violent world realities incite fear.

How can a fear-wearied world rejoice with songs of hope? How do we keep fear from taking over and destroying our capacity to love and care for each other and our neighbors with open hearts and minds?

The admonition to “fear not” appears often in Advent lectionary readings. Angels materialize at unexpected times to urge Mary, Joseph, and shepherds on a hillside not to be afraid as unfamiliar and fearful things happen in their lives. The “fear nots” of these familiar nativity scenes sing out to us in beloved Christmas carols, and children enact them in annual church Christmas plays. The Advent and Christmas season is a time to consider what we fear and to be aroused by God’s fear not.

The Canticle of Zechariah, a lectionary reading from Luke 1 for the second Sunday of Advent, also sings about the power of fear and the mysteries of God’s call to “be not afraid.” In this ancient story, Zechariah is startled when an angel announces to him that his wife, Elizabeth, is to birth a son in her aging years. His skepticism becomes speechlessness.  Zechariah is silent for many weeks, until his and Elizabeth’s child—John the Baptizer—is born and his silence gives way to a fear-not song of freedom and fearless worship. This poem-prayer for the Second Sunday in Advent is based on Zechariah’s… [Read more…] about Advent Two: Longing for Sunlight and Song

Advent One: Longing

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

In my church this Sunday, we will begin the Advent season by hearing biblical texts crafted by writers who longed for God’s presence. The Gospel text for the first Sunday in Advent this year, Luke 21:25-36, speaks of “distress among the nations.” Jeremiah imagines justice, righteousness, and safety in hurting lands (33:14-16). These texts speak to us across the years with great urgency. Almost daily in my newsfeed, I read of distress among nations and peoples, and along with Jeremiah I imagine—hope for—justice and safety for people whose fearful eyes search the skies not for stars but for bombs. So the season of Advent begins–with too many people across the globe seeking refuge from the symbolic and literal “roaring of sea and waves” (Lk. 21:25). Advent begins.

Bright flames dance in the distance
somewhere on down the path.
We are eager for the light,
for toes warmed up by a friendly fire
after walking
too many wintry miles.

But for now, one candle only,
an illuminating snippet
to see us through
until the spark catches and the fire grows.

God of First Light,
Stir in us a yearning
to hear with gentle ears
the stories of others
who stumble with us
upon this just-lit Advent fire.

Send to us for these dim days
flashes of insight.
Light a new torch to animate humanity’s treacherous search
for this thing we call truth.
Keep us from harboring
evidence of things not seen
in the limited glow of a single flame.
Arouse longing for wisdom and beauty
that await recognition
beyond the… [Read more…] about Advent One: Longing

Upon a Midnight

by Jill Crainshaw in Poetry

This guest post was written by Jill Crainshaw and was first shared by Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

Many storekeepers decked their halls weeks ago to prepare the way for Christmas shopping. Congregational leaders have been working for weeks to craft worship scripts for the Advent season of expectation that begins this year the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Over the next month in our worship, we will wait, anticipate, expect. We will recall ancient Israel’s mournful longing as we sing “O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.” We will imagine Mary expecting the birth of her unexpected child.

During Advent, we wait. We wait in hope, perhaps, but we wait. That is what Advent is and has been for centuries—a season of anticipating Jesus’ arrival.

But right now? All of creation groans in these pre-Advent days, wounded by violence and death in Paris, Beirut, and other places across the globe, and I am restless for good tidings in the midst of despair. I am restless for justice. I am restless for weary refugees to find a place to rest. I am restless for God to rip open the heavens and come down sooner rather than later. I am restless for Jesus to come early this year, because I fear that some people and places in our world cannot wait much longer for help and healing to arrive.

How ironic that in a society where we pipe in Christmas shopping songs almost before the sun has set on Halloween, we struggle to offer concrete gifts of life again in… [Read more…] about Upon a Midnight