As I reflect on this past weekend’s goings on, I am heartened that the academic year (a very bad one), ended with this meeting. I can’t help but recall when I first met some of these people, many whom I have known for years, and in only fleeting emails over the years have kept in touch.
As I plan the 2011 meeting of the Society of Pentecostal Studies program, slated for Memphis, I think about the nature of meetings like these, and how most academic meetings completely bore me, this was not one of those. I remember meeting one person at an academic conference, thinking that they did not look anything like I expected, and were quite bright and yet approachable, that person drew me into their story so completely, it was as if the conversation we started in 1987 in some cafe in San Francisco had just concluded with a big hug.
I remember meeting another person and wondering if what they were thinking about in their wildest dreams was ever possible? And if it was, could I ever get over my innate cynicism…I have spent the last 10 years or so out of this person’s life, only to have reconnected recently, and wondering how much I actually knew about this person back when I met them…I do know that if a fraction of their dreams come true, the world will be forever changed.
I have met most of these Louisville participants before, some in passing, some in informal gatherings, some in very difficult and awkward moments. What I can tell you is that whenever you feel free enough to talk outloud, share your secrets, admit your failures, and still walk out of those meetings with some sense of purpose and hope, you have transcended the mundane ego-driven goals of most academic meetings, and you have begun to form a community…welcome to our stories…
Universals
June 9, 2009
Sentient beings are innumerable, I vow to help them all.
Afflictions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them all.
Ways to practice is boundless, I vow to master them all.
Enlightenment is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it.
Pentecostal Holy Day of Obligation
May 29, 2009
This sunday is Pentecost. Thanks to the incessant iconoclastic behavior of most Protestants, this sacred day has become little more than a good reason to have a picnic.
So, let me make a suggestion, as someone who grew up Catholic, and still loves and respects the Catholic church, let’s re-institute the Holy Day of Obligation, just for the day of Pentecost. For those of you totally unfamiliar with our Catholic liturgical calendar, holy days of obligation meant that as a good practicing Catholic, you would go to confession, prepare yourself for Communion, and get to Mass on that day regardless of how busy you were.
The Holy Day of Obligation was also a way to fast, to repent, to stop ourselves for one day and focus on the sacred nature of the day, and it slowed us down.
That is what I am most interested in, how do we slow down? I have been, for lack of a better word, Pentecostal, for nearly 25 years, and I never thought of Pentecost as special, as a day to slow down, to fast, to repent… never occured to me, probably because no church that I have been affiliated with since I converted ever made a big deal over it..why not?
Holy Days of obligation allows us to focus on some serious stuff affecting our respective communities…repent…justice is not an abstract metanarrative that we strive for, it is a concrete personal story of overcoming apathy, indifference and neglect…that is harder to repent of–how are you treating your friends lately?
Holy Days of obligations allows us to focus on fasting…we don’t give anything up in this society, let’s give something up, “imagine no posessions, I wonder if you can.” A solidarity marked not by posturing, but by permanence…I know what you are going through, and I don’t get to leave it and go back to my life when I am through.
Finally, a holy day of obligation allows us to be still…to understand that ourl lives, my life, right now are busy, I am thrilled by Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, but scared because the crazy tree has been shaken and they are all falling out now…orando para ti hermana.
Be still and wonder if the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” has so afflicted my institution of higher learning, that the casualies of this war are more than superficial, this war may take alot of us out…orar por mi hermana/os.
My holy day of obligation will not be spent with my hands raised to do some denominational cheer-leading, my holy day might well be spent surrendered to the power that make me more human, more capable of weathering the storm, more grateful for the quiet solidarity of friends and the constant presence of family…
Señor envía su Espíritu Santo
Prop 8 and our own liminal space
May 27, 2009
It seems that many of my colleagues and friends in the academic universes that I travel are grieved by the decision today by the California Supreme Court to let Prop 8 stand, while at the same time allow the existing 18K marriages stand as well. Victor Turner, who posited on the idea that we all need a communal space of acceptance to flourish as full members of any coherent community, also coined the idea of “liminality” meaning that there is a point in everyone’s life where they are outside the circle, they are in-between-things, and that space is never supposed to be permanent, because it risks making permanent the outside status of any given group of people…what our brethren don’t get, not at all, is that we cannot continue to allow, what one my esteemed colleagues called, “spiritual violence” to occur to any community outside our circle…until we get that, and we move toward a communitas with the GLBT community, we don’t do justice…period.
