When Love Shows Up: Weekly Reflections about God's Presence

11 years ago my family and I walked into a theater and watched what would become one of the most significant movies of the last several decades. Of course I’m talking about Frozen. It became the highest grossing film of that year, the highest grossing animated film up to that point, and singlehandedly re-established the cultural relevance of Disney’s animated movies.

But more important than all that, Frozen brought the song “Let it Go” into the world. Everything else about Frozen’s impact pales in comparison to this. “Let it Go” won an Oscar, a Grammy, and sold nearly 11million copies in one year. Even if you have never seen Frozen you have heard this song. And if you have had a child, grandchild, godchild, or are friends with anyone who has had any of these in the last decade, you know this song. It is impossible to overstate its ubiquity in our culture.

Let me step back for a moment and acknowledge the obvious. Yes, I am still a priest and this is still my religious podcast. And yes, I am an adult. And yes, in the midst of some of the most interesting and trying times in recent memory, I am here talking/writing about a Disney movie and one of its songs. Stick with me. Jesus will be here soon.

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Kindness is the conscious decision to humanize the person right in front of you, to at least seek to empathize with them, to insist that they matter even when you don’t want them to.

The temptation to hate is so strong. I am speaking about myself here as much as I am speaking about anyone. I do not believe kindness comes naturally when we feel threatened, when we are hurting. We are in a time of upheaval and great cultural division, fear, and animosity.

Some are grieving the results of this election, and some are celebrating – and if you look at the numbers, it’s a fairly equal portion of both. We cannot say that our country is united behind Donald Trump. That would be a lie. We could not have said the country was united behind Joe Biden after his election. That’s not how this works in real life. We know that politicians like to speak in sweeping terms about the electorate. I think those broad declarations about us are disingenuous – wishful thinking. “America has spoken!” they will often say. Have we? Our winner-take-all mentality insists on a narrative of unity that does not reflect our experience. And our binary thinking requires good guys and bad guys for us to be able to function. This is fertile ground for hatred to grow.

We are fractured, and the breach runs deep. I am not at all sure it is reparable. We all belong to each other, but we don’t act like it, and often we don’t even believe it.

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Well, this is the last blog I will publish before the election. I am aware that nothing I could say at this point would sway your vote one way or the other. I think most of you who know me and have read my writing have your own guesses about how I will vote. And I don’t pretend that anything I’ve put out there has had much of an influence on your vote. So I will not be using this platform to tell you for whom you should vote, or even to tell you to vote at all.

But I am thinking a lot about November 5^th. I believe it is the most consequential election of my lifetime so far. I care deeply about what happens. And also, beyond casting my vote, I have no control over the outcome.

What I also believe is that there will be a November 6^th. And a November 7^th. And hopefully many days after that. And I believe that, regardless of the outcome of the election, we will still all belong to each other. And we have some work to do in order to act like that’s true.

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When we wrote that line, about 7 years ago, I thought I knew what we meant by “every”. In my mind, I was thinking primarily about Republicans and Democrats, and a good mix of independents that included moderates, libertarian types, and some socialists for good measure. This was the scope of my thinking, and I thought that was pretty broad. That was everyone.

It feels naïve now. Sunny, even. It’s not that I didn’t realize other ideologies and perspectives existed – it’s that I assumed the rest to be so extreme as not to need to be acknowledged or discussed. But in the intervening years, Christian Nationalism has emerged as an apparently acceptable perspective. Many legislators openly and comfortably proclaim themselves as Christian Nationalists. Shockingly, frighteningly, it is not a disqualifying proclamation.

It should be.

Christian Nationalism is antithetical both to America and to Christianity.

Christian Nationalism insists on creating legislation based on one particular interpretation of religious belief. That is patently unamerican. Our country has in its founding documents a refusal to establish a state religion. You will sometimes hear adherents to Christian Nationalism try to sidestep this by talking about “Christian values” as the backbone of America’s creation. This is also patently false. For all its faults, our country’s desire to exist as a place free from religious coercion is imaginative, noble, and courageous.

America is not a Christian nation. We were not founded by Christians, but by a mixture of Christians, Deists, Atheists, Agnostics, and Unitarians. Our founding documents are not Christian. While some of the values they promote may be compatible with Christian thought, they are not themselves inherently Christian. Pretending otherwise is just that: Make-believe.

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“So are there other Republicans at the church?” he asked me. And I laughed.

I laughed because it was a great question, asked directly, and without a hint of irony or cynicism. My breakfast companion was sitting across from me at a local diner when he asked this question. He is getting to know Church of the Redeemer, but he’s been an Episcopalian for his whole life – maybe longer. And as a Republican, he knows the drill. There are, for the record, plenty of Republicans at Redeemer, and in the Episcopal Church. 39% of Episcopalians, to be precise, identify as Republican. Not a small number. But compared to, say evangelical Christians, 56% of which identify as Republican, Episcopal culture simply feels a little more politically liberal. Plus, Cincinnati is a Democratic leaning city in a Republican leaning state. So that skews our congregation’s numbers a bit as well.

I laughed because, it was a lovely, vulnerable question. We live in such a heated and politically divided time. And I won’t even bemoan that. I think it makes sense that things are heated and divided. I don’t like it. But I think I get it. To many people – myself included – it feels as if the soul of our country is currently on the line, and how we navigate these next few years will be profoundly decisive. At the same time, we are getting more and more accustomed to living in self-selected bubbles based on common interest or affinity. So if he’s getting to know Redeemer, he wants to know if it’s a bubble. And that is a vulnerable question, because he’s sitting there over his eggs benedict asking, “Is there a place for me?” It takes courage to wonder that aloud, and it filled my heart with love.

I laughed, because, and I told him this immediately, not two minutes earlier, another Republican parishioner had just texted me to congratulate me on my 8^th anniversary of ministry at Redeemer. “See?” I joked, “Republicans!”

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Last week I insisted that, as a Christian who is American, I must understand myself as Christian first – that my Christian identity supersedes my Americanness. There are, of course, problems with this assertion.

I remember putting that flag up and thinking, “I’m home.”

America was something about which I was religious. I wouldn’t have said that at the time. I would not have acknowledged that. But I could not only not fathom being anything other than American – I could not imagine that any other country could be as good as mine. To love my country was not just about affection or allegiance. To love America was to consciously believe that it was the greatest country on earth, that there had never been a country and never would be a country as powerful as smart, as resourceful, as successful, as free – as Good as the USA. To love my country meant to know what was wrong with other countries. To love my country was to feel sorry for people who weren’t American, who didn’t know what it was like to be so free, to be so successful, to save the world so many times.

The line between patriotism and nationalism is sometimes razor thin, isn’t it?

What does it look like to value our children?

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Did you know that our bones are constantly breaking themselves down and building themselves back up again? You probably did know that. Most of you are better at knowing scientific things than me – it’s not my strong suit. But I learned this about bones as an adult and it really blew me away. In the simplest terms, you have these things called osteoclasts that are constantly dissolving your old bone tissue. Meanwhile you also have osteoblasts that spend their time building new bone tissue. This is happening inside you constantly. It’s a very natural and normal thing – the breaking down and building up.

We all understand bones in terms of the stability and structure they bring to our bodies. So, at first for me it was counterintuitive to hear that part of their healthy process was that they were breaking down all the time. For most of my life, I have associated stability and structure with something like immobility. You want your house built on a strong foundation. And we often find great comfort in the idea of changelessness, of things remaining the same. When life deviates from our expectations, we seek to get back to normal, to something that resembles stasis because that feels safe. As the old hymn proclaims, “Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”

But it turns out I’m moving all the time. These little invisible things within my very body are moving, tearing my foundation down and building it back up again all day every day. These strong bones are anything but static and immovable, and my desire to understand that has helped me learn to accept that change is inevitable.

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I’ve just returned from my sabbatical – a nearly four-month break from work that was facilitated by the amazing people, clergy, and staff of Church of the Redeemer, and graciously funded by the Lilly Foundation – who awarded Church of the Redeemer with a Clergy Renewal Grant which enabled me to travel both by myself and with my family. The primary purpose of this sabbatical was simply to rest, which I’m glad to say happened. When I wasn’t just resting, I was going places that connected me to conversion experiences and food – and the places where conversion and food meet.

So, what better place for me to take my family than Italy? It’s famous for its food, it’s rife with religious sites, and it was the location of my accidental conversion all those years ago. We spent a little less than a month in Italy, traveling all throughout the northern half of the country, and finishing our time there in Cinque Terre – the little patch of land on the hillside I keep talking about. I wanted to walk the trails of Cinque Terre again like I did all those years ago, and I wanted to take my family with me. I knew doing this would inevitably draw comparisons to the first time. How could it not?

And while I was quick to tell anyone listening that I had no expectations of another conversion experience, I could not help but wonder if just maybe I’d be knocked down and picked back up as thoroughly as I once had been.

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To explain this pouch, I should probably first say that some of my father’s family were practicing Santeros. You may not be familiar with Santeria, or if you are you may see it as some kind of voodoo, but Santeria quite plainly is an African diasporic religion that arose in Cuba in the 19th century as a mix of traditional West African polytheistic Yoruba religion mixed with our very monotheistic Catholic form of Christianity. It is a form of spiritism, very animistic and to many Christians it’s probably heretical, but here we are.

Growing up, my mom and dad enrolled me in catechism in our local Roman Catholic church. I became a very devout practitioner and took pride in my religious conviction. I was not modeling anyone at home since neither my parents nor grandparents attended church regularly.

All the while this “other” religion loomed in the background. My paternal grandfather hosted Santeria gatherings and my father would go, but we were not allowed to attend. To my mother, who could be paradoxically judgmental, all of this was nonsense. It didn’t help that it was stigmatically seen by many as a religion of the poor and uneducated. Mom, who had her own rocky relationship with her faith and even more with my father, had no interest in introducing us to any of this. But, like many others, she was respectful of it, just in case...

When they divorced in my 8th year, shell-shock mixed with intrinsic curiosity would set me on a life-long search that would eventually include an education in theology and, of course, what was in that little pouch.

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Have you ever been transformed by love only after believing in it for a while?

I have.

Here’s what I mean: Have you ever had an experience of transformation that is connected to a person, a belief, a moral idea that you have proclaimed for a time – months or years- and then suddenly in a clarifying moment you are, for lack of a better word, converted to the thing you already believe, or know, or have?

Maybe I should give an example. When my husband Andrew and I were trying to become parents we were chosen by a pregnant woman to adopt her child, as yet unborn. For prospective parents in an infant adoption process in the USA this is an incredibly exciting and fraught moment. Exciting because the months of waiting and wondering if we would ever actually be chosen to parent someone seem to be coming to a close. Fraught because no woman can actually choose to give up a child until that child is born. This is both practically and legally the case – a woman cannot relinquish a child until she has given birth. In most states there is a waiting period after signing papers where the mother can revoke her relinquishment.

This is a good thing. Giving up a baby should only happen if it must, and if the woman chooses. It’s never a happy thing for a parent to lose their child.

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It was one of those mornings. In the labyrinthine hallways of the ministorage, where I was converted through the incredulous look and gentle words of Jamie, one of my dearest pals. I crutched around a corner with a pillow in my teeth to meet Jamie, who was returning to the unit for another load. He looked at me for a second with that look of surprise, and, then, with a measure of concern, said, “Jimmy, what are you doing.” Through clenched teeth, I said, “I’m helping. I can still help.” To which he responded something like, “if we need that kind of help from you right now, we are in real trouble.”

I was good at helping. I was good at giving. I was good at being there for folks in need. I was and still am almost always game for showing. I was no good at receiving. I wasn’t any good at letting others give me a bit of help or care along the way, and my unwillingness to ever be set to receive, rather than send, impeded my real ability to experience the kind of community that I had envisioned to build in this new venture. It was a block for me, and my dear friends stupefied gaze and matter of fact words caused me to turn around and see how The capital K Kingdom wouldn’t work without a real measure of interdependence. How we can’t just give, give, give. How something loving like giving can become absurd under certain circumstances. A grown man, on crutches, with a pillow in his teeth at 7:30 in the morning with a hive of people working around me.

My cousin had somehow convinced me that we could get away with smoking in my Granny’s bathroom. I have no idea why I believed him. There wasn't a chance that we weren't going to get snared.

Later, when my mum questioned me, I knew that we were busted and there was no point trying to hide it. So I told her the truth. And — as our conversation went on — I told her the whole truth. It wasn't just the smoking. My friends and I had been stealing booze, getting drunk and putting ourselves in seriously dangerous situations. I knew I had screwed things up. I knew I had broken the rules. I knew I was in serious, serious trouble.

My mum, as you can imagine, was devastated. It was heartbreaking to come clean and see what I was putting her through. What scared me, however, was what would happen my dad found out. I begged her not to tell him but she wouldn't keep it from him. He was away for a couple of weeks so I lived in fear of what was to come.

When he came home, mum told him everything and he came straight to me. He told me to get in the car. Too afraid to ask any questions, I obeyed. I got in with no idea where we were going.

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Can we rest yet? Is it time? The dizzying, never-ending buzz, the exhausting, contentious election season, It feels like the answer is no, right? Because now we shift to our prayers and preoccupations over a peaceful transition of power, as well as our preparations for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and Winter.