Tongues o' Fire

1994ish Ashley Jordan
Originally uploaded by paynehollow

In the last few months, we've been sharing testimonies we've called "Tongues O' Fire" in which we recall someone in our lives who has brought God to us in a very real way. This past Sunday, we heard from Adam, who is an intern this semester at Jeff St. He gave a powerful and delightful honoring of his big sister...

My big sister Carlye taught me that if I act up too much she WILL physically sit on top of me until I calm down and apologize…

My big sister Carlye taught me that if I bite her, or hang a freshly caught fish in a ziplock bag on our maroon refrigerator with magnets, she WILL physically sit on top of me until I understand why that’s gross…

My big sister Carlye taught me that even when no one who drives by the top of our driveway wants to stop at my lemonade stand, or my used toy stand, or my Charlie Chaplin impersonation stand, that I still always have a niche market in big sisters who can never get enough lemonade, rusty matchbox cars, and Charlie Chaplin…

My big sister Carlye taught me that your strength comes from how you love yourself, how your family loves you, and how God loves you; it does NOT matter what the kids at school say or whether or not you have many friends…

My big sister Carlye taught me that you can still listen to bad music; you just sing a different word, like “ice-cream” when mom and dad would tell you to turn it off…

My big sister Carlye taught me that Christians can be real, cool, fun, smart, and engage in all the things everybody else is concerned with around them…Christians DON’T live in enclosed habitats like the animals at the Zoo…

My sister Carlye taught me that women CAN be ministers and that even when a quarter of our home-church leaves when she gets hired, God uses even that kind of occasion to weave good, humbling, and beautiful things…

My sister Carlye taught me that even after seven years of ministry, even when your own friends make you pay in blood for challenging their customs, you still press on and don’t let it stop you…

My sister Carlye is teaching me how to be a parent, how to love little people, and to realize that parenthood is one of those things that gets its own category, FAR beyond that of “full-time job”…

My sister Carlye is teaching me that it is actually OK to change, or grow, and that this doesn’t mean you are betraying the family values but you are honoring them with your own contributions…

My sister Carlye and I are learning together that even when a spouse runs off, when grandparents die, when friends and family move far away, when circumstances arise that you cannot control or see coming ahead of time, and even when postpartum depression makes you question whether your life will ever be what you always imagined it would, that you can rise up like a phoenix from the ashes in resurrection…

My sister Carlye and I are learning together that God never runs out of life to give out or good ideas for new changes of plans…that God is a Tinker who likes to stitch together broken bits of junk and make us into works of art that breath…
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Thanks, Adam!

Kiddin' Around

Outsider Art

Spiderweb 2
Originally uploaded by paynehollow

Pastor Cindy had a sermon a few weeks ago where she was talking about artwork, specifically a type of art called, "Outsider Art." This is an excerpt...

As I said, the label for what “Outsider Art” actually is is fluid, but this is the definition I’ve heard that I like the best:

“I have come to use the phrase Outsider Art to refer to the creative work of artists who are self-taught and/or those who, for a variety of reasons, are what I consider fortunately impervious to being taught how to make art. It now includes all of the following: The naive, the innocent, the self-taught, the visionary, the intuitive, the eccentric; the schizophrenic, the developmentally disabled, the psychotic, the obsessive, the compulsive.”

That’s a pretty cool definition, isn’t it? It really struck a chord with me, and of course, the reason that it struck a chord with me is that it describes, not just Mr. Finn and Mark Anthony Mulligan and Larry Smothers and some other artists I know, it describes our church: the naïve, the innocent, the self-taught, the visionary, the intuitive, the eccentric, the schizophrenic, the developmentally disabled, the psychotic, the obsessive, the compulsive.

A Mutt. The Wretched Refuse. A Funny Looking People.

That’s not all of us, of course, not all the time. But it’s who we are at our best, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a diverse bundle of humanity. It’s who we are at our best. So I’ve got a new label for us.

We are an Outsider Church.

When we were kicked out of our building by the Long Run Baptist Association 19 years ago for calling a woman pastor, that would be me, the most crucial decision that we made was to stay in our rough and tumble neighborhood. Looking around now, it’s not so rough and tumble. But it was then, and I am convinced that it was that decision that has pushed us more than anything else into any radical thing that we’ve ever done...

...You and I, because we are an Outsider Church, because we have been in relationship with the cast-out, the funny looking, the dispossessed, the mentally ill, the poor, we have a different slant on things, and it’s crucial that we don’t lose it. It’s crucial that we don’t lose it.

Which means, as our neighborhood changes around us, that we are going have to do something different, something new in order to continue to live in relationship with the marginalized. We’ve always had the luxury of never having to go look for human need. These other churches come down here on Sunday mornings to do the Welcome Table, to feed meals to homeless men and women because they know that it’s not just important for the homeless, but that it’s important for them.

We’ve never had to go that far. It’s been a precious gift, our proximity to the poor. But we’re not across the street from a housing project anymore, and we are going to need to do something different. To maybe come down to the Hospitality Program one morning a month to sit with Diane and to learn the names of some our homeless guests. To figure out who is actually living in our new neighborhood, and if they might need us, if we might need them.

To come down to the Goatwalker Coffeehouse, not just to enjoy the music, but to intentionally build a relationship with one of the homeless guests. To maybe take on one of the Welcome Table meals ourselves once a quarter. To trip over each other on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights as we rush to welcome the stranger, the odder the better.

Or... what? What other ideas do we have? It’s not just the poor who are marginalized, of course. Immigrants, transgendered persons, gays and lesbians, mentally ill persons, addicts.

There’s a whole slew of people who we need to learn from, who we need to foster relationships with. It’s always been a gift, a luxury that people like "Louise" would just walk through the door and delight us and frustrate us for months with her request every week during joys and concerns for a new bra. But she didn’t just give us fodder for funny stories, she unmasked us. "Louise" constantly reminded us that our system isn’t working. Her life, her crappy, sad, heartbreak of a life howled like a cry through every smug pretense our life afforded.

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd,” said Flannery O’Connor.

"Louise" wasn’t just odd herself, she made us odd, thank God, and what a wonderful gift that is, to be odd, and to be unmasked, and to be an Outsider Church...

...As we enter into this new year, may we be looking for ways to retain our saltiness, our flavor, our identity as an Outsider Church. May we irritate the crap out of the Powers that Be, may we heal the brokenhearted, may we season this city with mercy and justice and grace, may we ever preserve our oddness, following the One who calls us to be salt for the earth.

Amen.