Thursday, August 30, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
True Religion
Sermon Given at Oak Grove United Methodist Church (Carrollton, Va.)
and Riverview United Methodist Church (Rescue, Va.)
July 22, 2012 (Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time)
New Testament Lesson: Ephesians 2:11-22
I want to talk today about a disturbing fashion trend. It actually has nothing to do with clothes, though there are plenty of clothing trends which alarm the Church. It has to do with words, one word in particular: religion. It has become alarmingly fashionable to separate ourselves from this word. “I’m not religious,” we proudly tell our friends. “I’m spiritual.” “It’s not about religion, it’s about relationship with Jesus,” the catchy slogan goes. If any of you are fans or users of these buzz phrases, I don’t want you to feel under attack. But today, I want to show how silly such statements are if we really understand what religion is and what it means to us as Christ-followers. There are Christian sects who have eliminated the image of the Cross from their churches, saying it gives the wrong idea by overemphasizing Christ's suffering. Some even refrain from celebrating Christmas or Easter because the meaning of these holidays, they say, has been hijacked by our consumer culture (I don’t think they’re wrong about that, but I disagree with their response). Hearing about these groups, we usually feel that the problem isn’t the Cross or Christmas—it is these groups’ understanding of the true meaning of these things. We defend the Cross. We defend Christmas. Well today, succeed or fail, I’m going to try to defend religion.
Religion itself is not that old of a word. The oldest form of it is from the Latin language, and as languages go, Latin isn’t that old. It’s nowhere near as old, for instance, as the Greek or Hebrew the books of the Bible were first written in, and even those languages aren’t nearly as old as ancient Egyptian or the Sanskrit language of ancient India. Still, the word religion is old enough that very smart people disagree about its original meaning. Now, most of us know enough English words that start with the prefix ‘re-’ to know what that means: recreate, refinance, recount, redo. “Re-” just means that you’re doing something again, repeating something, usually something we didn't do very well the first time. It’s the second part of the word “religion” that we have to scratch our heads about.
Some think it comes from the word legere (“to read”); think of our word "legible." So then religion would mean "re-reading." By that, some think “religion” originally meant “stuff that’s so important, it should be read and re-read over and over. This fits many religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share some Scriptural topics and focus on the written word for their religious truth. Hinduism, Confucianism, and a whole bunch of other –isms rely heavily on reading and re-reading their respective scriptures.
The other possibility, and the one I favor, is that the second part of the word “religion” comes from the word ligare (“to connect” or "to bind"); think of our words "ligament," "obligate," and "league." Reading it that way, religion is a means of reconnecting, of recreating a relationship where one used to exist but, for whatever reason, doesn’t any longer. That's how St. Augustine thought the word had first originated, and I'm going to go with it, frankly, because it suits the point I want to make today.
When we define religion that way—as a process of reconnecting to something or someone we’ve lost—we don’t have too much trouble reading further into what that means for us as Christ-followers. We, as humans, from the moment our life begins, are cut off from God by sin. King David cried out to God, “Surely, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). Our relationship with God is broken from the time we are created. Before we can have a true relationship with him, a “reconnection” must take place. And what is the word for that reconnection? Religion.
This reconnection has taken a lot of different forms. The idea of sacrifice occurred to human beings very early. Giving things up to a god by setting them on fire is a very old practice. Up until a thousand years ago, it was still common for several religions around the world to practice human sacrifice, and a few still do. By offering up other human beings or animals or crops as burnt offerings, people have sought to reconnect with their god or gods, spirits in nature, or even their ancestors. That's how their reconnection, or religion, works.
Our faith, Christian faith, is supposed to be a reconciling faith, a faith of reconnection. Really, all religions go back to this simple goal: to reconnect human beings with the divine. And in its goal, Christianity is no different. We are people who recognize how far we have fallen as a species, how far we have fallen as a human race, and know we need to be reconnected with our Maker. But if all religions have the same goal, why should we be Christians? What makes Christianity so much better than other religions? If I had no good answer for that question, I wouldn’t be here today, and if we can’t produce a good answer for that question, we need to be earnestly searching for that answer or we need to go home.
I used to find it maddening at William & Mary when I would attend a lecture or a sermon and all I came away with were a bunch of scary questions and no hint of how to get to the answers. That’s not what I want to do today. I do have a reason in mind for why Christianity is better for me than any other religion. Just like most religions, Christianity is about reconnection. But instead of people reaching out for their god with blood and sacrifices, we see ourselves as the ones reached out to by God. Our God made the first move to reconnect with us, and he used his own Blood, not that of children or animals.
St. Paul was trying to tell the Ephesians what this reconnection looks like, and how awesome it is that God starts the process. We don’t have to make the first move in reaching out to God, we don’t have to clean ourselves up before he’ll be able to love us—he died for us when we were at our worst. He reached out to us. He wanted to reconnect with us. If you’re not sufficiently awed or amazed by that simple fact, then look with me at the state humans were in before Christ died for us.
We were “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel.” We were strangers to the promises of God, stuck on the outside looking in at the covenants. We were hopeless, we were without God in the world; a wall of hostility, a wall of our own making, separated us from our Creator and from the rest of his creation.
If that sounds sad, good. That means you’re either out of that separation and appreciate what a gift you’ve been given, or you’re still there and you know you want something better. In either case, God has already started working on you and with you. He has already reached out to you. Even if your current reality is that you are separated from God and have no desire to reconnect—even if that’s you—Paul’s words to the Ephesians are words for you.
The real miracle of our religion, and the reason I don’t want us to cringe or shy away from the word religion, is that God began our religion. What is religion, again? Reconnection. Who started the process of our reconnection? God. God began our religion. The process by which we reconnect with God doesn’t start with us at all. It starts with him. He reaches out to us. We take his Hand, but before we even seek that Hand, it is already extended in our direction.
Now that’s all lovely and maybe it’s convincing enough for us to start saying the word “religion” with a smile again, but stopping at the God-Us aspect of our religion reminds me of a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. My great-grandfather used to quote it often: “Some people are so heavenly-minded, they’re no earthly good.” I don’t wholly agree with that statement. Heaven is more important than earth, just as spiritual things are more important than fleshly things. But one day, heaven and earth will be the same place. We will have new, glorified bodies and even though they will be real, fleshly bodies, they will be radiant with God’s spirit. So everything must be kept in balance and we can’t stray too far toward focusing on heaven and forgetting there’s an earth or the other extreme. To the Thessalonians, who were convinced Jesus was coming back any second and so they quit their jobs and just started sitting around waiting, St. Paul said,
In fact, this section in Ephesians is mostly talking about their relationship with other people, especially other Christians. Something you should know about the Ephesians is that their city, Ephesus, was home to an enormous temple to the Greek goddess Artemis, goddess of animals and hunting. It was so big and splendid that it was known not only as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but the most wonderful of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. So not only did these people worship a false goddess, they did it in style. As such, all the good Jewish Christians looked down on the Ephesian Christians—it didn’t matter that they had been baptized and received the Holy Spirit, they were uncircumcised ex-idol-worshipers and, for some Jewish Christians back then, giving up your idols and receiving the Holy Spirit just wasn’t good enough to be a “real” Christian.
When St. Paul wrote this letter to the Christians at Ephesus, he wanted to remind them that, as they used to be, they really were pretty bad off. But through the blood of Jesus Christ, all that was over. “You who once were far off, have been brought near” (Ephesians 2:13). The wall of hostility that used to separate the Ephesians from their fellow Christians, especially Jewish Christians, was gone. Now, the wall Paul is talking about would definitely have reminded his audience about various walls in their lives. The Temple at Jerusalem had a five-foot stone wall separating the “Court of the Gentiles” (where anyone could walk) from the rest of the Temple area (where only Jews could go). If you can believe it, some early Christians continued to practice this separation, mistrust on both sides led to walls of hostility in the earliest congregations. As you can imagine, Paul, even being a former Pharisee, did not believe this was the way for worship to be carried out. Walls like that only serve to create and sustain hostility between different groups of people. God nailed that hostility to the Cross, and killed it. There was to be no more separation, “for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Ephesians 2:18).
If you have ever visited the Holy Land, this “wall” talk is especially moving for you. The state of Israel has, since the 1990s, been constructing a wall to separate Israeli territory from Palestinian territory. There are serious security concerns in that part of the world, obviously, with bombings and other atrocities against the innocents of both sides smattering our headlines every week. However, the “security barrier” cuts deeply into Palestinian territory and represents little more than an illegal land grab condemned by every country in the world, including the United States. But even more heartbreaking than the fact that land is being taken from Christians, Muslims, and others is the experience I had on either side of this wall.
On the Israeli side, we met a Jewish settler named Bob. He grew up in New Jersey and moved his family to Israel by the right of aliyah, which allows any Jew in the world to move to Israel, and the state of Israel helps pay for the relocation and helps find housing (as long as they can prove they are racially Jewish and have not converted to Christianity). Bob showed us his beautiful home and his wonderful family. His wife was cooking and his kids were fighting over the computer because it was Friday, and once the sun went down, they would be observing Sabbath rest (no cooking, no computer). Bob sat us down in his living room and talked to us about the Jewish-Arab problem. He said it broke his heart. He said he doesn't want them to split up into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. He wants them to live together in one state with equal rights for everyone, all races, all religions, and no walls. But, he said, "none of the Palestinians want that.”
The last few days of our time in the Holy Land, we worked on a Palestinian farm planting olive trees. The owner, Daoud, an Arab Christian, has been fighting in the Israeli Supreme Court to keep Israel from seizing his family’s farm because it is prime real estate, high ground between several housing settlements created for Jews moving into the country. But most heartbreaking of all, Daoud told us one day, that though he favors the two-state solution, he wishes it didn't have to be that way. He said he would prefer not to split the land into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. He said he would rather they live together in one state with equal rights for everyone, all races, all religions, and no walls. But, he said, "none of the Israelis want that.”
Can you imagine what could happen if these two men could actually meet each other? Can you imagine what could happen if everyone on both sides who thinks this way (and there are lots of them on both sides) was actually allowed to meet each other? What a difference that would make in the world? But they are intentionally kept separated, literally, by a wall of hostility. The wall Paul was telling the Ephesians about used to seem like such an abstract image before I met these two men, two men who agree but will never meet, because agreement would upset “the way things have always been.”
Now we don’t have to make ending the Israel-Palestine conflict our life’s work. There are plenty of walls of hostility right here at home, not just on the national level and the state and county level, but on our personal level. Someone did us wrong, we don’t like the way they look, we don’t like the way they dress, we don’t like the way they talk, and we sure don’t like the way they worship. Uh-uh. Christ nailed all that to the Cross. The miracle that God stretched his Hand out to reach us, to die for us when we were yet sinners, is supposed to inspire us to reach our hands out to others, usually to the ones we’re least enthusiastic about reaching out to.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave the graduation address at William & Mary in 2006, just months before I arrived on campus as a freshman. I remember, once I had settled on going to William & Mary, I visited their web site and they had an audio recording of his speech. I listened to the whole thing and it was one of many confirmations that I was going to the right school. One thing he said I will never forget is that “God doesn’t feed the starving by raining hamburgers down from heaven. He feeds them through you.” Likewise, St. Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish nun from the 1500s, wrote,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
We are the ones God will use to reach out to the lost, the aliens, the ones cut off from the covenants of the promise. That’s supposed to be our religion, and we’re not supposed to apologize for it or say “I don’t fool with that religion stuff.”
That’s how we reconnect with God—by connecting and reconnecting to others. And we don’t wait until they’re good enough for us or they impress us or they reach out to us. God didn’t wait for that when he sent his Son to die for us. He didn’t wait for the human race to get better. He sent Christ at a time when, given the chance to know God in the flesh, all human beings wanted to say was “Torture him! Beat him! Crucify him!” And when Christ was nailed to the Cross, all the hostility that exists between human beings was nailed with him. If there’s still hostility, it’s because we’ve recreated it. Sometimes we reconnect to the prejudices and hostility that were supposed to be nailed to the Cross, we sometimes make that our reconnection, we sometimes make that our religion.
Paul was telling the Ephesians about something so much better! Because of what Christ has done, we are not only reconnected with God, but his saving acts have destroyed the dividing wall of hostility between us and other people. We are no longer foreigners to each other, but fellow citizens with the Saints in heaven. We are not a bunch of people separated from another bunch of people by a wall of hostility. Christ has broken that wall, and made the many one. We are a house, built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, and Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone.
Perhaps most exciting is that the building project is ongoing. In him, we are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. If there is hostility between you and others, don’t wait for them to knock that wall down. God didn’t wait for you. And I know you people are capable of this with God’s good grace. I’ve experienced it! I feel like many of you have known me for a long time, but some of you, I remember the first time I ever met you, and I remember that, without knowing anything about me, you smiled, shook my hand, hugged me, and called me “brother,” and since then, that’s how I’ve felt. I have seen the face of Christ in these encounters with his people. That’s true reconnection. That’s true religion. Thanks be to God!
NOTE: At the conclusion of the sermon at Riverview UMC, this video was shown to the congregation. It is the Virginia Tech Wesley Singers' rendition of Mark Miller's "Christ Has Broken Down The Wall."
-Aaron Gregory, 2012, s.d.g.
Some think it comes from the word legere (“to read”); think of our word "legible." So then religion would mean "re-reading." By that, some think “religion” originally meant “stuff that’s so important, it should be read and re-read over and over. This fits many religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all share some Scriptural topics and focus on the written word for their religious truth. Hinduism, Confucianism, and a whole bunch of other –isms rely heavily on reading and re-reading their respective scriptures.
The other possibility, and the one I favor, is that the second part of the word “religion” comes from the word ligare (“to connect” or "to bind"); think of our words "ligament," "obligate," and "league." Reading it that way, religion is a means of reconnecting, of recreating a relationship where one used to exist but, for whatever reason, doesn’t any longer. That's how St. Augustine thought the word had first originated, and I'm going to go with it, frankly, because it suits the point I want to make today.
When we define religion that way—as a process of reconnecting to something or someone we’ve lost—we don’t have too much trouble reading further into what that means for us as Christ-followers. We, as humans, from the moment our life begins, are cut off from God by sin. King David cried out to God, “Surely, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). Our relationship with God is broken from the time we are created. Before we can have a true relationship with him, a “reconnection” must take place. And what is the word for that reconnection? Religion.
This reconnection has taken a lot of different forms. The idea of sacrifice occurred to human beings very early. Giving things up to a god by setting them on fire is a very old practice. Up until a thousand years ago, it was still common for several religions around the world to practice human sacrifice, and a few still do. By offering up other human beings or animals or crops as burnt offerings, people have sought to reconnect with their god or gods, spirits in nature, or even their ancestors. That's how their reconnection, or religion, works.
Our faith, Christian faith, is supposed to be a reconciling faith, a faith of reconnection. Really, all religions go back to this simple goal: to reconnect human beings with the divine. And in its goal, Christianity is no different. We are people who recognize how far we have fallen as a species, how far we have fallen as a human race, and know we need to be reconnected with our Maker. But if all religions have the same goal, why should we be Christians? What makes Christianity so much better than other religions? If I had no good answer for that question, I wouldn’t be here today, and if we can’t produce a good answer for that question, we need to be earnestly searching for that answer or we need to go home.
I used to find it maddening at William & Mary when I would attend a lecture or a sermon and all I came away with were a bunch of scary questions and no hint of how to get to the answers. That’s not what I want to do today. I do have a reason in mind for why Christianity is better for me than any other religion. Just like most religions, Christianity is about reconnection. But instead of people reaching out for their god with blood and sacrifices, we see ourselves as the ones reached out to by God. Our God made the first move to reconnect with us, and he used his own Blood, not that of children or animals.
St. Paul was trying to tell the Ephesians what this reconnection looks like, and how awesome it is that God starts the process. We don’t have to make the first move in reaching out to God, we don’t have to clean ourselves up before he’ll be able to love us—he died for us when we were at our worst. He reached out to us. He wanted to reconnect with us. If you’re not sufficiently awed or amazed by that simple fact, then look with me at the state humans were in before Christ died for us.
We were “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel.” We were strangers to the promises of God, stuck on the outside looking in at the covenants. We were hopeless, we were without God in the world; a wall of hostility, a wall of our own making, separated us from our Creator and from the rest of his creation.
If that sounds sad, good. That means you’re either out of that separation and appreciate what a gift you’ve been given, or you’re still there and you know you want something better. In either case, God has already started working on you and with you. He has already reached out to you. Even if your current reality is that you are separated from God and have no desire to reconnect—even if that’s you—Paul’s words to the Ephesians are words for you.
The real miracle of our religion, and the reason I don’t want us to cringe or shy away from the word religion, is that God began our religion. What is religion, again? Reconnection. Who started the process of our reconnection? God. God began our religion. The process by which we reconnect with God doesn’t start with us at all. It starts with him. He reaches out to us. We take his Hand, but before we even seek that Hand, it is already extended in our direction.
Now that’s all lovely and maybe it’s convincing enough for us to start saying the word “religion” with a smile again, but stopping at the God-Us aspect of our religion reminds me of a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. My great-grandfather used to quote it often: “Some people are so heavenly-minded, they’re no earthly good.” I don’t wholly agree with that statement. Heaven is more important than earth, just as spiritual things are more important than fleshly things. But one day, heaven and earth will be the same place. We will have new, glorified bodies and even though they will be real, fleshly bodies, they will be radiant with God’s spirit. So everything must be kept in balance and we can’t stray too far toward focusing on heaven and forgetting there’s an earth or the other extreme. To the Thessalonians, who were convinced Jesus was coming back any second and so they quit their jobs and just started sitting around waiting, St. Paul said,
Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. (2 Thessalonians 3:6)Yet to the Colossians, who had a different set of problems, he wrote, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). These verses aren’t contradicting each other; they are showing a need for balance between two extreme forms of religion. True religion, true reconnection, is not just about our relationship with God—it is just as much about our relationship with other humans.
In fact, this section in Ephesians is mostly talking about their relationship with other people, especially other Christians. Something you should know about the Ephesians is that their city, Ephesus, was home to an enormous temple to the Greek goddess Artemis, goddess of animals and hunting. It was so big and splendid that it was known not only as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but the most wonderful of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. So not only did these people worship a false goddess, they did it in style. As such, all the good Jewish Christians looked down on the Ephesian Christians—it didn’t matter that they had been baptized and received the Holy Spirit, they were uncircumcised ex-idol-worshipers and, for some Jewish Christians back then, giving up your idols and receiving the Holy Spirit just wasn’t good enough to be a “real” Christian.
When St. Paul wrote this letter to the Christians at Ephesus, he wanted to remind them that, as they used to be, they really were pretty bad off. But through the blood of Jesus Christ, all that was over. “You who once were far off, have been brought near” (Ephesians 2:13). The wall of hostility that used to separate the Ephesians from their fellow Christians, especially Jewish Christians, was gone. Now, the wall Paul is talking about would definitely have reminded his audience about various walls in their lives. The Temple at Jerusalem had a five-foot stone wall separating the “Court of the Gentiles” (where anyone could walk) from the rest of the Temple area (where only Jews could go). If you can believe it, some early Christians continued to practice this separation, mistrust on both sides led to walls of hostility in the earliest congregations. As you can imagine, Paul, even being a former Pharisee, did not believe this was the way for worship to be carried out. Walls like that only serve to create and sustain hostility between different groups of people. God nailed that hostility to the Cross, and killed it. There was to be no more separation, “for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Ephesians 2:18).
If you have ever visited the Holy Land, this “wall” talk is especially moving for you. The state of Israel has, since the 1990s, been constructing a wall to separate Israeli territory from Palestinian territory. There are serious security concerns in that part of the world, obviously, with bombings and other atrocities against the innocents of both sides smattering our headlines every week. However, the “security barrier” cuts deeply into Palestinian territory and represents little more than an illegal land grab condemned by every country in the world, including the United States. But even more heartbreaking than the fact that land is being taken from Christians, Muslims, and others is the experience I had on either side of this wall.
On the Israeli side, we met a Jewish settler named Bob. He grew up in New Jersey and moved his family to Israel by the right of aliyah, which allows any Jew in the world to move to Israel, and the state of Israel helps pay for the relocation and helps find housing (as long as they can prove they are racially Jewish and have not converted to Christianity). Bob showed us his beautiful home and his wonderful family. His wife was cooking and his kids were fighting over the computer because it was Friday, and once the sun went down, they would be observing Sabbath rest (no cooking, no computer). Bob sat us down in his living room and talked to us about the Jewish-Arab problem. He said it broke his heart. He said he doesn't want them to split up into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. He wants them to live together in one state with equal rights for everyone, all races, all religions, and no walls. But, he said, "none of the Palestinians want that.”
The last few days of our time in the Holy Land, we worked on a Palestinian farm planting olive trees. The owner, Daoud, an Arab Christian, has been fighting in the Israeli Supreme Court to keep Israel from seizing his family’s farm because it is prime real estate, high ground between several housing settlements created for Jews moving into the country. But most heartbreaking of all, Daoud told us one day, that though he favors the two-state solution, he wishes it didn't have to be that way. He said he would prefer not to split the land into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. He said he would rather they live together in one state with equal rights for everyone, all races, all religions, and no walls. But, he said, "none of the Israelis want that.”
Can you imagine what could happen if these two men could actually meet each other? Can you imagine what could happen if everyone on both sides who thinks this way (and there are lots of them on both sides) was actually allowed to meet each other? What a difference that would make in the world? But they are intentionally kept separated, literally, by a wall of hostility. The wall Paul was telling the Ephesians about used to seem like such an abstract image before I met these two men, two men who agree but will never meet, because agreement would upset “the way things have always been.”
Now we don’t have to make ending the Israel-Palestine conflict our life’s work. There are plenty of walls of hostility right here at home, not just on the national level and the state and county level, but on our personal level. Someone did us wrong, we don’t like the way they look, we don’t like the way they dress, we don’t like the way they talk, and we sure don’t like the way they worship. Uh-uh. Christ nailed all that to the Cross. The miracle that God stretched his Hand out to reach us, to die for us when we were yet sinners, is supposed to inspire us to reach our hands out to others, usually to the ones we’re least enthusiastic about reaching out to.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave the graduation address at William & Mary in 2006, just months before I arrived on campus as a freshman. I remember, once I had settled on going to William & Mary, I visited their web site and they had an audio recording of his speech. I listened to the whole thing and it was one of many confirmations that I was going to the right school. One thing he said I will never forget is that “God doesn’t feed the starving by raining hamburgers down from heaven. He feeds them through you.” Likewise, St. Teresa of Ávila, a Spanish nun from the 1500s, wrote,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
We are the ones God will use to reach out to the lost, the aliens, the ones cut off from the covenants of the promise. That’s supposed to be our religion, and we’re not supposed to apologize for it or say “I don’t fool with that religion stuff.”
That’s how we reconnect with God—by connecting and reconnecting to others. And we don’t wait until they’re good enough for us or they impress us or they reach out to us. God didn’t wait for that when he sent his Son to die for us. He didn’t wait for the human race to get better. He sent Christ at a time when, given the chance to know God in the flesh, all human beings wanted to say was “Torture him! Beat him! Crucify him!” And when Christ was nailed to the Cross, all the hostility that exists between human beings was nailed with him. If there’s still hostility, it’s because we’ve recreated it. Sometimes we reconnect to the prejudices and hostility that were supposed to be nailed to the Cross, we sometimes make that our reconnection, we sometimes make that our religion.
Paul was telling the Ephesians about something so much better! Because of what Christ has done, we are not only reconnected with God, but his saving acts have destroyed the dividing wall of hostility between us and other people. We are no longer foreigners to each other, but fellow citizens with the Saints in heaven. We are not a bunch of people separated from another bunch of people by a wall of hostility. Christ has broken that wall, and made the many one. We are a house, built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, and Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone.
Perhaps most exciting is that the building project is ongoing. In him, we are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. If there is hostility between you and others, don’t wait for them to knock that wall down. God didn’t wait for you. And I know you people are capable of this with God’s good grace. I’ve experienced it! I feel like many of you have known me for a long time, but some of you, I remember the first time I ever met you, and I remember that, without knowing anything about me, you smiled, shook my hand, hugged me, and called me “brother,” and since then, that’s how I’ve felt. I have seen the face of Christ in these encounters with his people. That’s true reconnection. That’s true religion. Thanks be to God!
NOTE: At the conclusion of the sermon at Riverview UMC, this video was shown to the congregation. It is the Virginia Tech Wesley Singers' rendition of Mark Miller's "Christ Has Broken Down The Wall."
-Aaron Gregory, 2012, s.d.g.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Mom's Eulogy for Grandma Mary
So far, I haven't had a "guest blogger" on here. But I decided to post Mom's eulogy for Grandma Mary here for anyone who wasn't there Friday. It was a beautiful service and I don't think any daughter-in-law has ever spoken so lovingly about a mother-in-law :).
I love you Grandma Mary!
Eulogy for Mary S. Gregory
Given at Newport News, Virginia
By Sharon G. Gregory
Friday, August 12, 2011
A number of weeks ago, I received a call from Mary, very early one morning. She was very short of breath, and she said she didn’t have much time because she was about to have a rather dangerous procedure on her heart. She went on to say that this was something she had to do, no matter how risky, because she could not live so short of breath. She said, “I’ve called for you to promise to do a couple of things for me.” She said, “If I don’t survive this, I want Aaron to sing at my funeral and I want you to speak.” I said, “O Mary, let’s please don’t talk about this today. Let’s agree that God is greater than 86-year-old arteries.” She said, “I’m not asking you to stop praying for me. I just want to have everything in order, and this is what I want. You will know what to say.” I promised that, someday, I would do what she asked. But I went on to tell her, “You know, Mary, I’ve never believed it’s a good idea to go to these places. You could well have to speak at mine instead.” She followed with, “I would if you asked me to.” I guess we settled it in that moment.
Now I am not oblivious to the fact that many of you are wondering why she would ask me to speak. And that’s a good question. There are many of you who have spent more time with her than I, many of you would be considered to be closer to her than I, you would perhaps be able to speak with far more intimacy of her than I. All of this being said (and true), Mary did not ask me to come to speak of her today. I think it is really far more accurate to say Mary asked me to speak for her today.
There is no question, I could well fill this time with many wonderful things about her. She was a devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, and friend. She was always a gentle, soft-spoken, true Southern lady at all times. She could cook a meal for fifty people without turning her kitchen into the Abyss. In this family, she was the true and original Paula Deen, always cooking up something new and delicious with a ka-bazillion calories. I don’t think her house has ever been introduced to dust, and she actually played with her grandchildren when they visited.
In forty years, I only hear one curse word cross her lips. The word was “damn” and it was followed by “cigarettes.” I’m pretty sure that’s how God refers to them too.
She was wonderfully talented and creative and meticulous in all endeavors. I recall Andrew coming back after spending the day with her with his very own Virginia license, complete with picture. She had remastered her old one. I remember hoping she wouldn’t redo it when he turned 16. As I said, she was very talented, a stickler for detail.
She had the heart of a teacher, always happy to share her knowledge and ability with great patience with anyone who asked. She blessed many with her beautiful cakes and crafts and many babies and children born at Riverside with her stuffed animals. There was always a great deal of love and care in whatever she put her hand to. In her work, she strived for excellence and hit the mark every time.
I could go on and on. But if I did, it would not be what she asked me to do. Mary did not ask me to speak today to exalt her in any way. She asked me to speak today to lift and exalt her Savior, Jesus Christ.
Seven years ago, this June, I lost my mother. Her death was unexpected: a seemingly perfectly healthy person falling over dead right before your eyes. We went out for Chinese and to look at a car. Instead, I came home without her forever, with her car, her purse, and a paper bag with clothes that had been cut from her body. I remember so well driving back across the bridge that night and saying to her, “O God, Mother, what have you done? What the hell were you thinking? You have died and—O God—I can’t fix this.” That was an incredible understatement. That night began a journey for me that I would never have believed. As I told Wayne the night Mary passed, “This won’t kill you. But, for a time, you will wish it would.” In serious times of trouble, a person can only choose to go two ways. She can run to God, or run from him. I will always thank God that, for once in my hard-headed life, I chose correctly.
I had always believed in God, and I confessed Christ as my Savior from a young age. By this time, I was a regular church-goer, no longer a Chr-Easter (an “Easter and Christmas” Christian). I was rather active in the Church, and in looking back, I realize I was doing so because I knew it was the right thing to do, but not because of the right reason: love and devotion to a Savior who loved me so very much.
Over the course of the next two years, I began a journey that would allow my God to show me who he truly is and what kind of relationship he wants to have with all his children. It was as if he moved into my house, in an almost physical sense, for literally two years. In that time, he revealed to me things about him I could never have imagined. And he also revealed to me things about myself which were beyond heartbreaking, but always followed by love and comfort so undeserved. At times I felt like George Burns, in the role of God, had moved into my house. He was so real. He was loving and kind and comforting, but painfully truthful, honest, and uncompromising in his leadings. At the same time, my cousin Muncie, who is an absolutely awesome Bible teacher, came to work for me at my daycare. Not by chance, for sure, but certainly by design. Muncie was the first to tell me of John 1:1-5, and 10-14.
In the Word is the knowledge of all things Christ accomplished on the cross for us: salvation and eternal life, for certain, but O so much more for the here and now.
God tells us, in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Hebrews 11:6 tells us that, “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.” It is totally impossible to be in fear and in faith at the same time. They cannot coexist on any level.
Romans 10:17 tells us how we acquire faith. Paul says, “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Mary and I spent these last years speaking of all these truths. She was like a sponge when we would talk about it. When she was recovering from her knee surgery, I had what has become a most precious blessing of spending two evenings with her, when we talked until way past midnight about God and life and death and so many things. She said that night, “I just love when you come and talk to me about these things. They mean so much to me. They make me feel so close to the Lord.” She blessed me equally as much by her enthusiasm and her encouragement, never rejecting and skeptical, but always welcoming and validating.
The last time Mary and I spoke, I said, “You’re down in the dumps, aren’t you?” She said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “It’s because you aren’t going home, isn’t it?” She replied, “It is.” She went on to say, “If I cannot fully recover, I want you to let me go.” I told her I would. It took right up until her death for my heart to truly come into agreement. In spite of all I have lived and learned, letting go is another frontier yet to be conquered. Many hours before Mary passed away, she began to make the motion of writing across her chest, as if writing a letter. She seemed to write several pages, followed by putting her hands in a praying position under her chin. We asked if she was writing, and she confirmed that she was. We were fairly certain she was writing to God. She just stayed at that task for hours and hours. Her nurse, Shannon, said Mary had spent the entire night writing as well.
As I began to prepare for today, God revealed to me, through his word, that Mary was not writing her thoughts, but rather taking dictation from the Great Comforter. She was covering her heart with the promises of God. No wonder it was so very long. 2 Corinthians 1:18-22 says,
I love you Grandma Mary!
Eulogy for Mary S. Gregory
Given at Newport News, Virginia
By Sharon G. Gregory
Friday, August 12, 2011
A number of weeks ago, I received a call from Mary, very early one morning. She was very short of breath, and she said she didn’t have much time because she was about to have a rather dangerous procedure on her heart. She went on to say that this was something she had to do, no matter how risky, because she could not live so short of breath. She said, “I’ve called for you to promise to do a couple of things for me.” She said, “If I don’t survive this, I want Aaron to sing at my funeral and I want you to speak.” I said, “O Mary, let’s please don’t talk about this today. Let’s agree that God is greater than 86-year-old arteries.” She said, “I’m not asking you to stop praying for me. I just want to have everything in order, and this is what I want. You will know what to say.” I promised that, someday, I would do what she asked. But I went on to tell her, “You know, Mary, I’ve never believed it’s a good idea to go to these places. You could well have to speak at mine instead.” She followed with, “I would if you asked me to.” I guess we settled it in that moment.
Now I am not oblivious to the fact that many of you are wondering why she would ask me to speak. And that’s a good question. There are many of you who have spent more time with her than I, many of you would be considered to be closer to her than I, you would perhaps be able to speak with far more intimacy of her than I. All of this being said (and true), Mary did not ask me to come to speak of her today. I think it is really far more accurate to say Mary asked me to speak for her today.
There is no question, I could well fill this time with many wonderful things about her. She was a devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, and friend. She was always a gentle, soft-spoken, true Southern lady at all times. She could cook a meal for fifty people without turning her kitchen into the Abyss. In this family, she was the true and original Paula Deen, always cooking up something new and delicious with a ka-bazillion calories. I don’t think her house has ever been introduced to dust, and she actually played with her grandchildren when they visited.
In forty years, I only hear one curse word cross her lips. The word was “damn” and it was followed by “cigarettes.” I’m pretty sure that’s how God refers to them too.
She was wonderfully talented and creative and meticulous in all endeavors. I recall Andrew coming back after spending the day with her with his very own Virginia license, complete with picture. She had remastered her old one. I remember hoping she wouldn’t redo it when he turned 16. As I said, she was very talented, a stickler for detail.
She had the heart of a teacher, always happy to share her knowledge and ability with great patience with anyone who asked. She blessed many with her beautiful cakes and crafts and many babies and children born at Riverside with her stuffed animals. There was always a great deal of love and care in whatever she put her hand to. In her work, she strived for excellence and hit the mark every time.
I could go on and on. But if I did, it would not be what she asked me to do. Mary did not ask me to speak today to exalt her in any way. She asked me to speak today to lift and exalt her Savior, Jesus Christ.
Seven years ago, this June, I lost my mother. Her death was unexpected: a seemingly perfectly healthy person falling over dead right before your eyes. We went out for Chinese and to look at a car. Instead, I came home without her forever, with her car, her purse, and a paper bag with clothes that had been cut from her body. I remember so well driving back across the bridge that night and saying to her, “O God, Mother, what have you done? What the hell were you thinking? You have died and—O God—I can’t fix this.” That was an incredible understatement. That night began a journey for me that I would never have believed. As I told Wayne the night Mary passed, “This won’t kill you. But, for a time, you will wish it would.” In serious times of trouble, a person can only choose to go two ways. She can run to God, or run from him. I will always thank God that, for once in my hard-headed life, I chose correctly.
I had always believed in God, and I confessed Christ as my Savior from a young age. By this time, I was a regular church-goer, no longer a Chr-Easter (an “Easter and Christmas” Christian). I was rather active in the Church, and in looking back, I realize I was doing so because I knew it was the right thing to do, but not because of the right reason: love and devotion to a Savior who loved me so very much.
Over the course of the next two years, I began a journey that would allow my God to show me who he truly is and what kind of relationship he wants to have with all his children. It was as if he moved into my house, in an almost physical sense, for literally two years. In that time, he revealed to me things about him I could never have imagined. And he also revealed to me things about myself which were beyond heartbreaking, but always followed by love and comfort so undeserved. At times I felt like George Burns, in the role of God, had moved into my house. He was so real. He was loving and kind and comforting, but painfully truthful, honest, and uncompromising in his leadings. At the same time, my cousin Muncie, who is an absolutely awesome Bible teacher, came to work for me at my daycare. Not by chance, for sure, but certainly by design. Muncie was the first to tell me of John 1:1-5, and 10-14.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…Jesus Christ is the Word, so when we pick up our Bibles, we pick up Christ. As described in this Scripture, if we are not in our Bibles, it is like living in your house without turning on the lights, trying to muddle through living by what you think you can see. The Bible is our guide for good living, given to us by God, not as a taskmaster, but as a loving Father who wants his children to know how to negotiate the potholes on this road known as life in a fallen world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
In the Word is the knowledge of all things Christ accomplished on the cross for us: salvation and eternal life, for certain, but O so much more for the here and now.
God tells us, in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Hebrews 11:6 tells us that, “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.” It is totally impossible to be in fear and in faith at the same time. They cannot coexist on any level.
Romans 10:17 tells us how we acquire faith. Paul says, “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Mary and I spent these last years speaking of all these truths. She was like a sponge when we would talk about it. When she was recovering from her knee surgery, I had what has become a most precious blessing of spending two evenings with her, when we talked until way past midnight about God and life and death and so many things. She said that night, “I just love when you come and talk to me about these things. They mean so much to me. They make me feel so close to the Lord.” She blessed me equally as much by her enthusiasm and her encouragement, never rejecting and skeptical, but always welcoming and validating.
The last time Mary and I spoke, I said, “You’re down in the dumps, aren’t you?” She said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “It’s because you aren’t going home, isn’t it?” She replied, “It is.” She went on to say, “If I cannot fully recover, I want you to let me go.” I told her I would. It took right up until her death for my heart to truly come into agreement. In spite of all I have lived and learned, letting go is another frontier yet to be conquered. Many hours before Mary passed away, she began to make the motion of writing across her chest, as if writing a letter. She seemed to write several pages, followed by putting her hands in a praying position under her chin. We asked if she was writing, and she confirmed that she was. We were fairly certain she was writing to God. She just stayed at that task for hours and hours. Her nurse, Shannon, said Mary had spent the entire night writing as well.
As I began to prepare for today, God revealed to me, through his word, that Mary was not writing her thoughts, but rather taking dictation from the Great Comforter. She was covering her heart with the promises of God. No wonder it was so very long. 2 Corinthians 1:18-22 says,
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him, the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us and put his Spirit into our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come.
2 Corinthians 3:1-6 says,
Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Isaiah 41:10 tells us, “So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.” 1 Corinthians 2:9: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” Mary went to meet God without any apparent fear whatsoever, with boldness and confidence, totally outside the normal realm of being human.
Psalm 23 does say, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and staff, they comfort me.” Mary allowed God to cover her with his promises, and then walked boldly into her new life and future. It was a peace that did pass all understanding. I feel honored to have been there.
Mary’s last words, or more properly her last songs, were “A man and woman will never part as long as they have a happy heart. The Lord loves my heart. H-E-A-R-T! Amen and amen!”
It is with your mother’s great love for all of you that I bring to you her final hope (and yes, prayer) for you, her children. It was her heart’s desire for each of you to begin to serve the Lord. She knew you were all believers. That was not a concern. But she wants more, much more, for each of you. A mother dreads to approach her children with these desires for fear of rejection. However, she knew I would have no such fear. This is the real reason she chose me to speak today. Your mother wants her death to create in you the burning desire to run into the arms of God, to fall passionately in love with him, and all he has provided on your behalf. This is what she has fervently prayed for these past few years. There is no greater loving request any mother could leave her children than this: she wants you to have God’s best, fully covered in the same precious promises he covered her with in her final hours, one of which, I’m certain, was Isaiah 54:13: “All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace.” And perhaps Isaiah 59:21:
In speaking on Mary’s behalf, I have told you everything God gave me to say, and everything she shared with me as well. I give you this with my love, and I hope you will receive it in that way. I would just add, in closing, your mother found each of you perfect in every way. Her prayer was not to change you, but to leave you the greatest inheritance you will ever know. The last time we spoke, she said, “I’ve always loved you, Sharon.” I replied, “I wish I had been more loveable.” I would like to say the same to you, my brothers and sisters. May God greatly bless and comfort you.
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by everybody; you show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves, but our confidence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.and verse 12 of the same chapter again, “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.” And verses 17 and 18,
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.Proverbs 7 says, “Guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.” This describes beautifully what Mary was doing.
Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Isaiah 41:10 tells us, “So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.” 1 Corinthians 2:9: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” Mary went to meet God without any apparent fear whatsoever, with boldness and confidence, totally outside the normal realm of being human.
Psalm 23 does say, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and staff, they comfort me.” Mary allowed God to cover her with his promises, and then walked boldly into her new life and future. It was a peace that did pass all understanding. I feel honored to have been there.
Mary’s last words, or more properly her last songs, were “A man and woman will never part as long as they have a happy heart. The Lord loves my heart. H-E-A-R-T! Amen and amen!”
It is with your mother’s great love for all of you that I bring to you her final hope (and yes, prayer) for you, her children. It was her heart’s desire for each of you to begin to serve the Lord. She knew you were all believers. That was not a concern. But she wants more, much more, for each of you. A mother dreads to approach her children with these desires for fear of rejection. However, she knew I would have no such fear. This is the real reason she chose me to speak today. Your mother wants her death to create in you the burning desire to run into the arms of God, to fall passionately in love with him, and all he has provided on your behalf. This is what she has fervently prayed for these past few years. There is no greater loving request any mother could leave her children than this: she wants you to have God’s best, fully covered in the same precious promises he covered her with in her final hours, one of which, I’m certain, was Isaiah 54:13: “All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace.” And perhaps Isaiah 59:21:
‘As for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the Lord. ‘My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth or from the mouths of your children or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever,’ says the Lord.Or perhaps Isaiah 44:3 and 4: “I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.”
In speaking on Mary’s behalf, I have told you everything God gave me to say, and everything she shared with me as well. I give you this with my love, and I hope you will receive it in that way. I would just add, in closing, your mother found each of you perfect in every way. Her prayer was not to change you, but to leave you the greatest inheritance you will ever know. The last time we spoke, she said, “I’ve always loved you, Sharon.” I replied, “I wish I had been more loveable.” I would like to say the same to you, my brothers and sisters. May God greatly bless and comfort you.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
God shows up in an ordinary chore...
I don't know whether green is my favorite color because it is the color of Ordinary Time or Ordinary Time is my favorite season because its color is green. In fact, I'm not even sure when green became my favorite color. I feel like it was before I came to William & Mary, but I can't be sure exactly when. Regardless, since we're in Ordinary Time now and my years as a W&M student and a Wesley House resident have come to a close, it seems especially appropriate to reflect on a few things.
I will continue to serve on the Wesley Board of Directors, and I look forward to that continued relationship with the organization. But I moved out of the Wesley House for the last time on June 30, 2011. I lived there for four school years: sophomore, junior, senior, and my M.A. year. I had a single room for the first three years and a double for the fourth. Living there was one of the most special experiences of my life. Residents met as a group with the campus minister for theological discussion once a week, acted as a welcome party to Wesleyites and anyone else who came in the door, and did weekly chores. The chores, particularly my last chore before moving out, led me to write this reflection.
Every resident has his favorite (or most tolerable) chore. Lock-up is probably the universal first choice. This chore entails locking the doors every night, putting the recycling out on Tuesday night, and putting the trash out on Thursday night. On Monday night, when everyone else is scrambling and scrubbing, the lock-up person just locks the doors and has the rest of the night free to do work (or not, as the case may be). The living room chore involves vacuuming the living room, the hallways, the stairs, and the campus minister's office. You also have to dust some furniture and give the fireplace floor a light scrubbing. The kitchen chore is just that: cleaning the kitchen (floor, counters, sinks, etc.) and also sweeping the back deck. The basement chore was just as straightforward: vacuum and dust in the basement. The bathroom chore only involved the public bathrooms (in the Fellowship Hall and in the hallway by the campus minister's office), cleaning the floors, sinks, and toilets. Finally there was the fellowship hall chore. This involved vacuuming or sweeping the floor, mopping the floor with a bit of water, and wiping the tables down.
I saved the fellowship hall for last on my list because it was my least favorite. The basement was as big an area as the fellowship hall, but at least you were done after you vacuumed. With the fellowship hall, finishing vacuuming meant you weren't even half-done! Bathrooms and kitchen involved a lot of individual tasks, but at least they were compressed spatially. The fellowship hall chore was a lot of tasks spread over a lot of space.
Now, Wesley House residents recognize that these chores are a small bother compared to what many people go through. There are plenty of people in this world who wish water were such a mediocre commodity that they could slosh some all over their floor with a mop, and that such work was the most difficult of their week. At our best, this thought makes us a little sheepish at the griping we share about our chores or the little effort we sometimes put into them. But still, in my microcosmic universe as a Wesley House resident, I dreaded cleaning the fellowship hall. I would actually trade chores to avoid it.
When I prepared to do my last-ever chore before moving out of Wesley for the last time, I wondered what it would be. Murphy's Law, I thought, would surely have me mopping that fellowship hall. It wouldn't have been unbearable. Finishing my resident years with the fellowship hall chore actually would have had some symmetry to it. That was the room in which I had experienced so many amazing worship services, programs, meals, and of course the Holy Eucharist celebrated every week. My most poignant "God moments" had happened in that room (sometimes even when a mop was involved). Spending my last moments as a Wesley House resident cleaning this space would have seemed an appropriate conclusion. But God had other plans. I had to clean the living room, office, hallways, and stairs. Not my favorite chore, but far from my least favorite. How anti-climactic, I thought.
My chief memories of these spaces were not memories of spiritual ecstasy, nor were they memories of humbling defeats. They were general, everyday moments, like resting on a couch, poking my head into the office to say "Hey!" to David or Max, or walking up the stairs every day for four years just to go to my room. Rather mundane memories came to me. I wanted something a little more momentous to mark my exit from the Wesley House. I almost wanted to clean the fellowship hall. But our God is bigger than my conception of "momentous."
As memories of the mundane flooded my soul, I realized how precious these memories were. The living room was where we played Wii Golf, ate Domino's pizza, watched Real Genius, and even studied on occasion. It was where we met in the mornings before going to the Rec to play basketball, in the evenings before going to the Sunken Garden to play frisbee, and on Sundays before going to church. In short, it was a gateway to most of the amazing experiences which made up my years at Wesley.
The office was a warm place to study in the cold months (we never knew why that room got so much warmer than the rest of the house). In that room, surrounded by theological and pastoral classics, I passed several evenings with my laptop, paper notes, and a diet coke (and, sometimes, a box of wheat thins). On days when David was there or Max was there, I could never "just poke my head in," a conversation would ensue without fail, sometimes without end :). But I always left that office blessed by my time in it.
The hallways and stairways were everyday passages to my room. My mom always called the stairs "Methodist stairs" because they were really small and really steep like the ones you find in old churches. But after a few years, I could run up and down them with a full laundry basket on my hands and my eyes closed. The back stairway, leading up to the double I shared with Ben this past year, was a little safer, but still had its quirks. While the other stairs were carpeted, the back stairs were finished wood, so they had mats bolted to them to make them less slippery. The fourth stair had a terrible creak and the second-to-last one's mat was loose and, if you weren't careful, you might pull it up and trip as you ran up the steps. I couldn't tell you how many times I ran up and down each of those staircases, but it was at least hundreds. Hardly memorable stuff-- in fact, I walked those hallways and stairs on autopilot so many times, it's hard to call up an actual memory of walking up the stairs or through the hallways. These spaces of everyday blessing were where I spent my final moments as a Wesley House resident.
It didn't take too long for the significance to hit this calendar-conscious Christian, but I insisted on waiting until my thesis was finished to write this reflection. It's Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Church calendar. The term "Ordinary" in "Ordinary Time" refers not to the fact that it's an unexciting time, but to the fact that the weeks are "ordered" or numbered (think "ordinal numbers"). But our usual association of the word with the everyday or the mundane has a truth about it as well. It's not a time of deep reflection or fasting like Advent or Lent. It's not a season of unbridled joy like Christmas or Easter. The paraments in our churches aren't black or deep purple, but they're not bright white and gold either. They're green. This is a picture of our lives. The majority of our times are not mournful, not joyful, but ordinary.
Ordinary Time falls in two chunks. The shorter chunk falls between Epiphany and the beginning of Lent. This shows us that, even within the bounds of Christ's earthly life, there was a significant chunk of Ordinary Time. From the time of his revelation to the Magi to the 40-day fast and his journey to the Cross, the in-between years were not exclusively ones of joy or sorrow, though they certainly included some of both. They were, by and large, ordinary times. Times of growth and learning, times of work, times of the everyday.
The larger chunk falls between Pentecost and Christ the King, the day we celebrate our anticipation of the Second Coming. This shows us that our entire lives (so far) are encompassed in this season. The Holy Spirit has come, and we have work to do, but we also wait anxiously for Christ to come again. We commemorate Christ's suffering and his Resurrection every week, but the majority of our days are ordinary days. The majority of our times are ordinary times.
An ordinary living room, an ordinary office, ordinary stairs and hallways, ordinary chores reminded me that we live in a cosmic Ordinary Time. But if it's one thing the Church teaches, it is that there is a holiness in the ordinary. Ordinary bread and ordinary wine become the very presence and body and blood of Christ. Ordinary water, composed partially of hydrogen, the commonest and most ordinary element in the universe, becomes a vehicle of saving grace in Baptism. We have moments of inexpressible ecstasy. We have times of unspeakable sorrow. But together these form a small portion of our time here. The better part of our time here (both in quantity and, I would argue, in quality) is Ordinary Time, the seasons when God shows us what he can do with people, spaces, things, and actions we have written off as "ordinary." That is the message of the season of Ordinary Time.
As I took my leave of Wesley, I didn't have the coveted lock-up chore, which would have been a source of some joy. I didn't have my least favorite chore, the fellowship hall, which would have been less than enjoyable. At least in the fellowship hall, God had been so easy to find. But I spent my last hour as a house resident cleaning the living room, office, hallways, and stairs: ordinary spaces where I spent ordinary times. And as I vacuumed, I saw how present God had been even in those times and spaces.
If you're looking for a constant stream of limitless joy, Ordinary Time is not the time nor Earth the place to find it. If you're a sadist and are looking for endless sorrow and suffering, the same holds true. Most of our lives are spent in ordinary places and ordinary times, somewhere between the two extremes. And in those seasons, perhaps especially in those seasons, God is with us. I tend to think of God most in times of joy or sorrow, more often the latter, you know, when I actually feel like I need him. But cleaning such ordinary spaces in my last moments as a resident at this extraordinary place reminded me how extraordinary the ordinary can be. We need only to stop and recognize that God himself lived through years and years of ordinary time. He knows that the mundane and the commonplace dominate our lives. He knows that those are the times when we will be least inclined to think of him. He knows that those are the times in which he must reach deep to remind us of his loving presence. And he does just that. He had me clean a living room and reminded me of the fellowship, the laughter, the holy conferencing that happened on those couches. And I knew without a doubt that he was always there, even in the times when I was hardly thinking of him at all. Thanks be to God!
Thank you, Father, for the years you allowed me to spend in this incredible place. Thank you for the blessing of your presence and your smile, in times of joy, times of sorrow, and in the vast Ordinary Time. Thank you for the blessing of years with housemates who love to laugh, watch movies, eat pizza, and more importantly, love each other. Bless all those who call this wonderful, ordinary, extraordinary place "home." Let them see you in their seasons of joy (when they have lock-up), in their seasons of sorrow (when they have the fellowship hall chore), and in the ordinary times (when they have the living room chore). Let them know that you are with them always, and that a great cloud of saints, witnesses, and past house residents is surrounding them with love and prayer.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I will continue to serve on the Wesley Board of Directors, and I look forward to that continued relationship with the organization. But I moved out of the Wesley House for the last time on June 30, 2011. I lived there for four school years: sophomore, junior, senior, and my M.A. year. I had a single room for the first three years and a double for the fourth. Living there was one of the most special experiences of my life. Residents met as a group with the campus minister for theological discussion once a week, acted as a welcome party to Wesleyites and anyone else who came in the door, and did weekly chores. The chores, particularly my last chore before moving out, led me to write this reflection.
Every resident has his favorite (or most tolerable) chore. Lock-up is probably the universal first choice. This chore entails locking the doors every night, putting the recycling out on Tuesday night, and putting the trash out on Thursday night. On Monday night, when everyone else is scrambling and scrubbing, the lock-up person just locks the doors and has the rest of the night free to do work (or not, as the case may be). The living room chore involves vacuuming the living room, the hallways, the stairs, and the campus minister's office. You also have to dust some furniture and give the fireplace floor a light scrubbing. The kitchen chore is just that: cleaning the kitchen (floor, counters, sinks, etc.) and also sweeping the back deck. The basement chore was just as straightforward: vacuum and dust in the basement. The bathroom chore only involved the public bathrooms (in the Fellowship Hall and in the hallway by the campus minister's office), cleaning the floors, sinks, and toilets. Finally there was the fellowship hall chore. This involved vacuuming or sweeping the floor, mopping the floor with a bit of water, and wiping the tables down.
I saved the fellowship hall for last on my list because it was my least favorite. The basement was as big an area as the fellowship hall, but at least you were done after you vacuumed. With the fellowship hall, finishing vacuuming meant you weren't even half-done! Bathrooms and kitchen involved a lot of individual tasks, but at least they were compressed spatially. The fellowship hall chore was a lot of tasks spread over a lot of space.
Now, Wesley House residents recognize that these chores are a small bother compared to what many people go through. There are plenty of people in this world who wish water were such a mediocre commodity that they could slosh some all over their floor with a mop, and that such work was the most difficult of their week. At our best, this thought makes us a little sheepish at the griping we share about our chores or the little effort we sometimes put into them. But still, in my microcosmic universe as a Wesley House resident, I dreaded cleaning the fellowship hall. I would actually trade chores to avoid it.
When I prepared to do my last-ever chore before moving out of Wesley for the last time, I wondered what it would be. Murphy's Law, I thought, would surely have me mopping that fellowship hall. It wouldn't have been unbearable. Finishing my resident years with the fellowship hall chore actually would have had some symmetry to it. That was the room in which I had experienced so many amazing worship services, programs, meals, and of course the Holy Eucharist celebrated every week. My most poignant "God moments" had happened in that room (sometimes even when a mop was involved). Spending my last moments as a Wesley House resident cleaning this space would have seemed an appropriate conclusion. But God had other plans. I had to clean the living room, office, hallways, and stairs. Not my favorite chore, but far from my least favorite. How anti-climactic, I thought.
My chief memories of these spaces were not memories of spiritual ecstasy, nor were they memories of humbling defeats. They were general, everyday moments, like resting on a couch, poking my head into the office to say "Hey!" to David or Max, or walking up the stairs every day for four years just to go to my room. Rather mundane memories came to me. I wanted something a little more momentous to mark my exit from the Wesley House. I almost wanted to clean the fellowship hall. But our God is bigger than my conception of "momentous."
As memories of the mundane flooded my soul, I realized how precious these memories were. The living room was where we played Wii Golf, ate Domino's pizza, watched Real Genius, and even studied on occasion. It was where we met in the mornings before going to the Rec to play basketball, in the evenings before going to the Sunken Garden to play frisbee, and on Sundays before going to church. In short, it was a gateway to most of the amazing experiences which made up my years at Wesley.
The office was a warm place to study in the cold months (we never knew why that room got so much warmer than the rest of the house). In that room, surrounded by theological and pastoral classics, I passed several evenings with my laptop, paper notes, and a diet coke (and, sometimes, a box of wheat thins). On days when David was there or Max was there, I could never "just poke my head in," a conversation would ensue without fail, sometimes without end :). But I always left that office blessed by my time in it.
The hallways and stairways were everyday passages to my room. My mom always called the stairs "Methodist stairs" because they were really small and really steep like the ones you find in old churches. But after a few years, I could run up and down them with a full laundry basket on my hands and my eyes closed. The back stairway, leading up to the double I shared with Ben this past year, was a little safer, but still had its quirks. While the other stairs were carpeted, the back stairs were finished wood, so they had mats bolted to them to make them less slippery. The fourth stair had a terrible creak and the second-to-last one's mat was loose and, if you weren't careful, you might pull it up and trip as you ran up the steps. I couldn't tell you how many times I ran up and down each of those staircases, but it was at least hundreds. Hardly memorable stuff-- in fact, I walked those hallways and stairs on autopilot so many times, it's hard to call up an actual memory of walking up the stairs or through the hallways. These spaces of everyday blessing were where I spent my final moments as a Wesley House resident.
It didn't take too long for the significance to hit this calendar-conscious Christian, but I insisted on waiting until my thesis was finished to write this reflection. It's Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Church calendar. The term "Ordinary" in "Ordinary Time" refers not to the fact that it's an unexciting time, but to the fact that the weeks are "ordered" or numbered (think "ordinal numbers"). But our usual association of the word with the everyday or the mundane has a truth about it as well. It's not a time of deep reflection or fasting like Advent or Lent. It's not a season of unbridled joy like Christmas or Easter. The paraments in our churches aren't black or deep purple, but they're not bright white and gold either. They're green. This is a picture of our lives. The majority of our times are not mournful, not joyful, but ordinary.
Ordinary Time falls in two chunks. The shorter chunk falls between Epiphany and the beginning of Lent. This shows us that, even within the bounds of Christ's earthly life, there was a significant chunk of Ordinary Time. From the time of his revelation to the Magi to the 40-day fast and his journey to the Cross, the in-between years were not exclusively ones of joy or sorrow, though they certainly included some of both. They were, by and large, ordinary times. Times of growth and learning, times of work, times of the everyday.
The larger chunk falls between Pentecost and Christ the King, the day we celebrate our anticipation of the Second Coming. This shows us that our entire lives (so far) are encompassed in this season. The Holy Spirit has come, and we have work to do, but we also wait anxiously for Christ to come again. We commemorate Christ's suffering and his Resurrection every week, but the majority of our days are ordinary days. The majority of our times are ordinary times.
An ordinary living room, an ordinary office, ordinary stairs and hallways, ordinary chores reminded me that we live in a cosmic Ordinary Time. But if it's one thing the Church teaches, it is that there is a holiness in the ordinary. Ordinary bread and ordinary wine become the very presence and body and blood of Christ. Ordinary water, composed partially of hydrogen, the commonest and most ordinary element in the universe, becomes a vehicle of saving grace in Baptism. We have moments of inexpressible ecstasy. We have times of unspeakable sorrow. But together these form a small portion of our time here. The better part of our time here (both in quantity and, I would argue, in quality) is Ordinary Time, the seasons when God shows us what he can do with people, spaces, things, and actions we have written off as "ordinary." That is the message of the season of Ordinary Time.
As I took my leave of Wesley, I didn't have the coveted lock-up chore, which would have been a source of some joy. I didn't have my least favorite chore, the fellowship hall, which would have been less than enjoyable. At least in the fellowship hall, God had been so easy to find. But I spent my last hour as a house resident cleaning the living room, office, hallways, and stairs: ordinary spaces where I spent ordinary times. And as I vacuumed, I saw how present God had been even in those times and spaces.
If you're looking for a constant stream of limitless joy, Ordinary Time is not the time nor Earth the place to find it. If you're a sadist and are looking for endless sorrow and suffering, the same holds true. Most of our lives are spent in ordinary places and ordinary times, somewhere between the two extremes. And in those seasons, perhaps especially in those seasons, God is with us. I tend to think of God most in times of joy or sorrow, more often the latter, you know, when I actually feel like I need him. But cleaning such ordinary spaces in my last moments as a resident at this extraordinary place reminded me how extraordinary the ordinary can be. We need only to stop and recognize that God himself lived through years and years of ordinary time. He knows that the mundane and the commonplace dominate our lives. He knows that those are the times when we will be least inclined to think of him. He knows that those are the times in which he must reach deep to remind us of his loving presence. And he does just that. He had me clean a living room and reminded me of the fellowship, the laughter, the holy conferencing that happened on those couches. And I knew without a doubt that he was always there, even in the times when I was hardly thinking of him at all. Thanks be to God!
Thank you, Father, for the years you allowed me to spend in this incredible place. Thank you for the blessing of your presence and your smile, in times of joy, times of sorrow, and in the vast Ordinary Time. Thank you for the blessing of years with housemates who love to laugh, watch movies, eat pizza, and more importantly, love each other. Bless all those who call this wonderful, ordinary, extraordinary place "home." Let them see you in their seasons of joy (when they have lock-up), in their seasons of sorrow (when they have the fellowship hall chore), and in the ordinary times (when they have the living room chore). Let them know that you are with them always, and that a great cloud of saints, witnesses, and past house residents is surrounding them with love and prayer.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Groups and Identities
Good evening!
So I haven't really blogged since getting back from Pamplona, and I don't plan to do so regularly until the thesis is done and I'm just focusing on my teaching job. My thesis is moving ever closer to being off my back, and I've decided to take a little break this evening before possibly doing some more work. Right now, the thesis seems to be coming into focus as a study of the mutual exclusivity of certain identities in early modern Spain (especially Navarre, where most of my primary source material is from), and how this characterization is much more nuanced and complicated than the pat explanation of certain groups and identities being considered inherently vile by everyone (including people who belong to those groups) or the more recent suggestion of Ruth McKay that occupation-based exclusion was just a figment of 18th-century illustrados' imagination.
SO, still keeping the general direction of my thesis in focus as I take this break, I've decided to create a list. If I don't do this soon, this information may be completely lost forever! You see, when I first joined Facebook WAYYYYY back in the spring of 2006 (yes, over half a decade ago), there were these things called "groups." Now, groups still abound on Facebook, but they're in a totally new format. Something about "pages" or whatever. Anyway, Facebook is in the process of archiving/deleting all the groups of the old format. Once they do this, I don't know if I'll be able to see what group memberships I've accumulated, especially in those early years.
I'm not sure if I would still identify with all of these groups, but they seemed like good ideas at the time. For now, I'm not going to include any explanation for any of them. The attraction to some of them, after all, was the sheer wittiness of their group names.
Here are the identities, groups, and causes I've accumulated on Facebook since the spring of 2006, in alphabetical order:
8th Graders need to back off 9th grade guys especially other peoples BF's
757
Abortion is a Complicated Issue
a little math for you: House > Grey's Anatomy...
American Legion Boys Nation 2005 Alumni
American Legion Boys State Alumni (Global)
Angelina Can Wreck My Home
Anti-Popped Collar Club
Anyone That Says They Hate Virginia Obviously Never lived in Hampton Roads!
Audition for the W&M Choir!
Audition for the WM Choir!!
Automatic Doors Make Me Feel Like a Jedi
Beauty, Intelligence, & Personality.. yes, I am a Boys/Girls Nation Alumni!
Because I'm over the age of 6, I know the difference between your & you're
Bill Clinton Is Still My President
Botetourt Is Hot!
Bring back Habeas Corpus
Brunettes are Sexier
Burst Into Songsters
Cancel Class Tomorrow
Choir
Christian Apologetics
Christian Democrats
Christian Groups on Campus United
Churches for Middle East Peace
Club For the appreciation of Dostoyevsky
Colbert Nation
Concerned Students for the Advancement of Relevant Class Discussion (WM Chapter)
Defenders of Grammar and Spelling
Dog People
Don't Tickle Me Or I'll Kill You
F.A.T. - Friends Against Thomas
Facebook Members In Support of the Kyoto Protocol in the United States
FoMNiE - Fans of Music Not in English
For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur.
Free Rice to end world hunger
Friends of Teach For America at William and Mary
Good Grammar Is Hot
Good News
Google Enthusiasts
Grammar Nazis
Great Minds were born in 1988!!!!
Harry Potter and the Bad Pickup Lines
History Honors Society
HOKAY, so here's the Earth!
House, Md
I'm Saving Myself For Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex
I'M taking the hobbits to Isengard and I'm bringing facebook with me.
I assume you suck when your facebook status is grammatically incorrect.
I bet I can get 100,000 Virginians against the VA healthcare law suit
I bet we can find 1,000,000+ people who DO approve of the Health Care Bill.
I Hyperventilate When Katie Midland Is around
I live at a Wesley Foundation
I Need My Daily (Brian K.) Bailey.
I shouldn't have to walk through a haze of smoke to get into Swem!
Isle of Wight Academy Chargers
IWA cast and crew of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
IWA Posse... missed more than they will ever know!
IWA Scholastic Bowl - A Dynasty
I was there when Maite Cubilette destroyed a little piece of us all
I Went To a Small Little Private School
I Went To Private School....and therefore I am Better Than You.
JACKSON - Boys State of Virginia Best City 2005
Join this group if you've sung Renaissance polyphony with somebody in it...
Kaplan Krazies: Official Supporters of Tribe Men's Basketball
Leslie IS a Big Deal
Let us have had dared to translate a Pluperfect Semi-Deponent Subjunctive
Live from New York...it's Saturday Night
Man Law
Men
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS!
My Church Preaches Social Justice
New United Methodist Hymnal
Non-Humanities Majors Lack an Informed and Nuanced Outlook on Life [WM Chapter]
oh my gosh, I totally just realized I'm the best!
oh thank heaven for the 757
Old School Nickelodeon (W&M Chapter)
One Accord Members and Fans
Overheard at William and Mary
Palpatine Vader 2008
Paper Can Not Beat Anything!!!!
People Who Use Handicapped Door Switches Daily
Peta (People Eating Tasty Animals)
Pick up a copy of The Virginia Informer today! THEN BURN IT.
Pierce for State Representative-District 20
Pro-Choice, Anti-Abortion
Professor Beach Rocks My Socks
Proud to be called Liberal
Red State Refugees
Renew Gene Nichol's Presidency
Sleep... it's the new sex
Smithfieldians Fo Life.. YO
Snakes on a Facebook
Spike was SO clutch in the Land Before Time (the original)
Spotswood 06-07
Spotswood 3rd Lower 2006-2007
Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma
Support Stem Cell Research
SUPPORT THE PETITION
The Class of 2010
THE LORD ON HIS WAY BACK TO GET ME
The West Wing
The William & Mary Tribe's Woolly Mammoth
Treats vs. Nutes: A Clash as Old as Time
Tribe Basketball is good this year
Two Feathers
Vote NO on VA's "marriage amendment" Nov. 7th
Vote Rojas-Ruzic for SA President and Vice-President
Vote Stephanie McGuire for Class of 2012 VPSA
W&M Commencement 2010
W. Taylor Reveley, III
Want More? Get More!.Scott Morris for SA Senate
We are ridiculously Methodist!
Wesley Basketball
Wesley Foundation
Wesley New Triathlon
Wesley Sports
When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.
When I was your age, the first African American President was elected.
When I was your age we double spaced after periods.
William & Mary IS Hogwarts, and MY dorm is Gryffindor Tower
William & Mary Supports Haiti
William and Mary says "No" to Ken Cucinelli's Discriminatory Letter
Without William and Mary, UVA wouldn't exist
WM Remembers Virginia Tech
Wonderful World of Disney
woooah, free laundry?
Worship & Song
You're killing me Smalls!!
You Are Not Married
I would like to point out that I am more than the sum of my various identities, and not all those identities are represented in my group memberships haha. Maybe during my next break, I'll go back through those groups and get their front-page pictures. Some of them are awesome =D.
Till then, good night!
-A
So I haven't really blogged since getting back from Pamplona, and I don't plan to do so regularly until the thesis is done and I'm just focusing on my teaching job. My thesis is moving ever closer to being off my back, and I've decided to take a little break this evening before possibly doing some more work. Right now, the thesis seems to be coming into focus as a study of the mutual exclusivity of certain identities in early modern Spain (especially Navarre, where most of my primary source material is from), and how this characterization is much more nuanced and complicated than the pat explanation of certain groups and identities being considered inherently vile by everyone (including people who belong to those groups) or the more recent suggestion of Ruth McKay that occupation-based exclusion was just a figment of 18th-century illustrados' imagination.
SO, still keeping the general direction of my thesis in focus as I take this break, I've decided to create a list. If I don't do this soon, this information may be completely lost forever! You see, when I first joined Facebook WAYYYYY back in the spring of 2006 (yes, over half a decade ago), there were these things called "groups." Now, groups still abound on Facebook, but they're in a totally new format. Something about "pages" or whatever. Anyway, Facebook is in the process of archiving/deleting all the groups of the old format. Once they do this, I don't know if I'll be able to see what group memberships I've accumulated, especially in those early years.
I'm not sure if I would still identify with all of these groups, but they seemed like good ideas at the time. For now, I'm not going to include any explanation for any of them. The attraction to some of them, after all, was the sheer wittiness of their group names.
Here are the identities, groups, and causes I've accumulated on Facebook since the spring of 2006, in alphabetical order:
8th Graders need to back off 9th grade guys especially other peoples BF's
757
Abortion is a Complicated Issue
a little math for you: House > Grey's Anatomy...
American Legion Boys Nation 2005 Alumni
American Legion Boys State Alumni (Global)
Angelina Can Wreck My Home
Anti-Popped Collar Club
Anyone That Says They Hate Virginia Obviously Never lived in Hampton Roads!
Audition for the W&M Choir!
Audition for the WM Choir!!
Automatic Doors Make Me Feel Like a Jedi
Beauty, Intelligence, & Personality.. yes, I am a Boys/Girls Nation Alumni!
Because I'm over the age of 6, I know the difference between your & you're
Bill Clinton Is Still My President
Botetourt Is Hot!
Bring back Habeas Corpus
Brunettes are Sexier
Burst Into Songsters
Cancel Class Tomorrow
Choir
Christian Apologetics
Christian Democrats
Christian Groups on Campus United
Churches for Middle East Peace
Club For the appreciation of Dostoyevsky
Colbert Nation
Concerned Students for the Advancement of Relevant Class Discussion (WM Chapter)
Defenders of Grammar and Spelling
Dog People
Don't Tickle Me Or I'll Kill You
F.A.T. - Friends Against Thomas
Facebook Members In Support of the Kyoto Protocol in the United States
FoMNiE - Fans of Music Not in English
For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur.
Free Rice to end world hunger
Friends of Teach For America at William and Mary
Good Grammar Is Hot
Good News
Google Enthusiasts
Grammar Nazis
Great Minds were born in 1988!!!!
Harry Potter and the Bad Pickup Lines
History Honors Society
HOKAY, so here's the Earth!
House, Md
I'm Saving Myself For Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex
I'M taking the hobbits to Isengard and I'm bringing facebook with me.
I assume you suck when your facebook status is grammatically incorrect.
I bet I can get 100,000 Virginians against the VA healthcare law suit
I bet we can find 1,000,000+ people who DO approve of the Health Care Bill.
I Hyperventilate When Katie Midland Is around
I live at a Wesley Foundation
I Need My Daily (Brian K.) Bailey.
I shouldn't have to walk through a haze of smoke to get into Swem!
Isle of Wight Academy Chargers
IWA cast and crew of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
IWA Posse... missed more than they will ever know!
IWA Scholastic Bowl - A Dynasty
I was there when Maite Cubilette destroyed a little piece of us all
I Went To a Small Little Private School
I Went To Private School....and therefore I am Better Than You.
JACKSON - Boys State of Virginia Best City 2005
Join this group if you've sung Renaissance polyphony with somebody in it...
Kaplan Krazies: Official Supporters of Tribe Men's Basketball
Leslie IS a Big Deal
Let us have had dared to translate a Pluperfect Semi-Deponent Subjunctive
Live from New York...it's Saturday Night
Man Law
Men
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS!
My Church Preaches Social Justice
New United Methodist Hymnal
Non-Humanities Majors Lack an Informed and Nuanced Outlook on Life [WM Chapter]
oh my gosh, I totally just realized I'm the best!
oh thank heaven for the 757
Old School Nickelodeon (W&M Chapter)
One Accord Members and Fans
Overheard at William and Mary
Palpatine Vader 2008
Paper Can Not Beat Anything!!!!
People Who Use Handicapped Door Switches Daily
Peta (People Eating Tasty Animals)
Pick up a copy of The Virginia Informer today! THEN BURN IT.
Pierce for State Representative-District 20
Pro-Choice, Anti-Abortion
Professor Beach Rocks My Socks
Proud to be called Liberal
Red State Refugees
Renew Gene Nichol's Presidency
Sleep... it's the new sex
Smithfieldians Fo Life.. YO
Snakes on a Facebook
Spike was SO clutch in the Land Before Time (the original)
Spotswood 06-07
Spotswood 3rd Lower 2006-2007
Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma
Support Stem Cell Research
SUPPORT THE PETITION
The Class of 2010
THE LORD ON HIS WAY BACK TO GET ME
The West Wing
The William & Mary Tribe's Woolly Mammoth
Treats vs. Nutes: A Clash as Old as Time
Tribe Basketball is good this year
Two Feathers
Vote NO on VA's "marriage amendment" Nov. 7th
Vote Rojas-Ruzic for SA President and Vice-President
Vote Stephanie McGuire for Class of 2012 VPSA
W&M Commencement 2010
W. Taylor Reveley, III
Want More? Get More!.Scott Morris for SA Senate
We are ridiculously Methodist!
Wesley Basketball
Wesley Foundation
Wesley New Triathlon
Wesley Sports
When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.
When I was your age, the first African American President was elected.
When I was your age we double spaced after periods.
William & Mary IS Hogwarts, and MY dorm is Gryffindor Tower
William & Mary Supports Haiti
William and Mary says "No" to Ken Cucinelli's Discriminatory Letter
Without William and Mary, UVA wouldn't exist
WM Remembers Virginia Tech
Wonderful World of Disney
woooah, free laundry?
Worship & Song
You're killing me Smalls!!
You Are Not Married
I would like to point out that I am more than the sum of my various identities, and not all those identities are represented in my group memberships haha. Maybe during my next break, I'll go back through those groups and get their front-page pictures. Some of them are awesome =D.
Till then, good night!
-A
Saturday, March 12, 2011
At EWR
I've made it back to the U.S.! As usual, Newark was an awesome customs experience-- all of 20 minutes or so to get through and the only reason it took another 20 to get here was I had to change terminals. I'm at my gate with about 45 minutes to spare before my flight to Richmond starts boarding.
I was going to take a rental car from Richmond to Williamsburg. I've known the Williamsburg Enterprise Rent-A-Car branch to return cars to the Richmond airport, so I assumed a one-way rental would work. Upon calling them late last night, I found out that one-way rentals have to be done with a major credit card. No debit cards and no cash.
Okay I've actually loved Enterprise to death for a while, but this is the second time some ridiculous payment issue has kept me from using them. Last time was when I wanted to use those Visa/AmEx (can't remember which it was) debit cards, accepted "everywhere Visa/AmEx are accepted," EXCEPT everywhere I would like to use them, apparently. I couldn't use them at Enterprise, and I couldn't use them to buy a money order (which I could have used at Enterprise). Anyway, I understand that they want to cover all their bases when someone's doing a one-way rental, but seriously. When the online chat person can call up my last reservation just from having my first and last name, I feel like I'm a regular enough customer that I'm allowed to be P.O.'d about this kind of crap.
Anyway, the train will provide me with good one-way transportation, and Amtrak DOES consider a debit card (or cash, if I wanted to use cash) an acceptable form of payment. In their defense, most other rental car companies have similar policies, and one of them would have cost three times as much as Enterprise would have, so I guess Enterprise is still the best. But still, kinda annoyed at them at the moment.
The important thing is that I have been re-patriated, and I've made it to my gate in plenty of time for my connection. I doubt I'll make another blog post at Richmond-- I'll need to get in a cab and head for the train station pretty soon after I get my bags. My next post, I hope, will be from the comfort of my room at the Wesley House.
Thanks again for reading; it's been an absolute blast!
-A
I was going to take a rental car from Richmond to Williamsburg. I've known the Williamsburg Enterprise Rent-A-Car branch to return cars to the Richmond airport, so I assumed a one-way rental would work. Upon calling them late last night, I found out that one-way rentals have to be done with a major credit card. No debit cards and no cash.
Okay I've actually loved Enterprise to death for a while, but this is the second time some ridiculous payment issue has kept me from using them. Last time was when I wanted to use those Visa/AmEx (can't remember which it was) debit cards, accepted "everywhere Visa/AmEx are accepted," EXCEPT everywhere I would like to use them, apparently. I couldn't use them at Enterprise, and I couldn't use them to buy a money order (which I could have used at Enterprise). Anyway, I understand that they want to cover all their bases when someone's doing a one-way rental, but seriously. When the online chat person can call up my last reservation just from having my first and last name, I feel like I'm a regular enough customer that I'm allowed to be P.O.'d about this kind of crap.
Anyway, the train will provide me with good one-way transportation, and Amtrak DOES consider a debit card (or cash, if I wanted to use cash) an acceptable form of payment. In their defense, most other rental car companies have similar policies, and one of them would have cost three times as much as Enterprise would have, so I guess Enterprise is still the best. But still, kinda annoyed at them at the moment.
The important thing is that I have been re-patriated, and I've made it to my gate in plenty of time for my connection. I doubt I'll make another blog post at Richmond-- I'll need to get in a cab and head for the train station pretty soon after I get my bags. My next post, I hope, will be from the comfort of my room at the Wesley House.
Thanks again for reading; it's been an absolute blast!
-A
Friday, March 11, 2011
The Last Night
I don't feel like I've been here very long, and I guess in the grand scheme of things a week isn't that long. But I do feel like I've gotten a good amount of work done, I got to see dear friends I hadn't seen in a year, and as is the standard of success of a trip for me, I'm coming home with more books than I left with.
I bought two volumes of Don José Luis's catalogue today before I left the ADP. We got one of the other people working in the archive, Maria Rosario, to take some pictures of us:
I bought two volumes of Don José Luis's catalogue today before I left the ADP. We got one of the other people working in the archive, Maria Rosario, to take some pictures of us:
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| Me with Don José Luis sitting in his office. |
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| Me with Don José Luis in the Archive. |
After leaving the ADP, I met Peio and Maripat for café and a croissant at "El Coloniale," a nice little place on the Calle Estafeta near the Plaza del Castillo. Mari had heard from Peio about my adventure to San Sebastian on Wednesday, and I told her more about it. I was sorry to report that I hadn't had time to go down to sea the ocean while I was there (the return bus to Pamplona was leaving in 15 minutes!), but I can see the Atlantic anytime =D.
After café, I realized I hadn't gotten pictures of the AGN like I wanted to, so I went back to snap some real quick before heading for the train station.
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| With books in the auxiliary library in the Research Room at the AGN-- faculty directory picture maybe??? |
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| Second try for a picture with Peio-- he was adjusting his glasses in the first. |
So my investigaciones complete (or rather, the time I had for investigaciones having more or less expired), I set out for the hotel. I stopped on the way to pick up a few souvenirs, got back to the hotel, called a cab, and headed for the Renfe station. In the little restaurant there, an episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was on (in Spanish, of course). It's always interesting to see how they do voices in the dubs. For instance, in episodes of The Simpsons, I feel like everyone has almost the exact same type of voice as they do in English-- it's almost like the English voice actors are doing the dubbing in Spanish. Not so with Fresh Prince; that voice sounded NOTHING like Will Smith =D. iCarly (kind of embarrassed to say I saw a couple of episodes the other night) was similar. Spencer (or Espencer, as he's called in Spanish) sounded like a fifty-year-old man.
Anyway, my critique of Spanish dubbing of American TV shows being finished, I got on the train, and after we made a stop in Tudela, the movie came on: Salt in Spanish. I think I got most of it. I understood more than I did watching The Rebound (La Segunda Vez in Spanish) on the way to Pamplona from Madrid.
Arrived at Atocha, got a cab, and headed to the Lisboa, where I rested for a while before meeting Lu Ann downstairs. We stepped across the street for a light dinner and I told her about my adventures. She doesn't have Internet at her hotel in Madrid, so she hasn't seen the blog in a few days. The last she had heard, I was planning a trip to Barásoain. Well I told her about my visit to San Sebastian, and she also painted it positively, reminding me that it was a really pretty ride. I told her about a lot of the stuff I found-- I think I talked a lot, not unlike what I do in this blog-- and she thinks I'll be in good shape for my colloquium/defense in two weeks.
It's been awesome, and even if I don't have a reading public of thousands of readers, it's been great to spew my thoughts at the end of each day. I hope you readers have enjoyed reading about this trip as much as I've enjoyed being on it. Chunks of this blog will probably be revised and included in my thesis, so if you've found this interesting, maybe I'm getting closer to having a good answer to the "So what?" question of my thesis =D.
I'll post again tomorrow when I get to Newark-- I paid for a month of Internet at the airport, so I should still be good to use it. Only a cab, two planes, another cab, and a train stand between me and Williamsburg. And I was reminded tonight that I'll need to get right back to work as soon as I get back-- my group is producing discussion questions for our "Africans in the Atlantic World" class, and it will be extremely helpful for me to do the reading before producing a discussion question =D.
Thanks again for reading!
¡Vuelvo a los Estados Unidos mañana! ¡Hasta luego, España!
-A
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