Morning Rounds and Evening Musings

Vocational discernment has been a constant struggle for me in my short-lived life. I resigned myself to a communication major for the first two years of school, feeling frustratingly dispassionate. I was an aimless until I found theology. I love theology; I love school. Seminary was the logical next step, right? If I keep studying what I love to study, eventually it will lead me to job I love. This has always been my mantra. But it is backfiring. I am realizing that I cannot be a passive onlooker in this whole quest for discernment. I actually have to make strategic decisions; I need to choose from many interests and possibilities, a job that will be fulfilling and meaningful.

Those Bible folks had it so easy. Moses gets God in a burning bush, Isaiah gets a seraph searing his mouth to enable prophecy, Ezekiel gets a crazy vision of God sitting above the dome calling him to go pronounce destruction, Jeremiah gets a word from the Lord, audible and clear, Paul gets knocked of his horse, the disciples get miracles of fish...the stories go on and on.

The astounding thing is, all these prophets had something to say about their call from God. Moses doesn't speak well, Jeremiah is too young, Paul was an enemy of God, Amos was a herdsmen and a dresser of sycamore trees--hardly a prophet's resume. Despite their objections, the call was loud and clear and God was never one to let them off the hook.

The past week has brought on something of a vocational crisis. Here are the things brewing on my horizon and in my tiny mind:

* Non-profit. This has always been something I could see myself getting into. But after applying to about a gizillion non-profit jobs upon returning from Russia and getting rejected from all of them, I feel demoralized about my prospects. This week, however, an opportunity to intern for CARE International was unexpectedly dropped in my lap. This could mean an even crazier year with more work than I can handle, but it could also mean a really great opportunity to break into a field that is hard to crack.

* Education. I love to teach. I especially like to teach theology. This year, I will get to try my luck at Christian Education at St. Luke's, where I am interning. My supervisory priest is an incredible teacher herself, so this is a fantastic opportunity. Of course, the question becomes 'in what capacity?' Christian Ed in a church? In a private school? On a purely volunteer basis in my spare time while I get paid to do something else?

* Old Testament Scholar. Even acknowledging this as a possibility cracks me up. I LOVE the Old Testament. I love school, and I like college kids more than the younger varieties. But, PhD programs are practically impossible to get into. Once I'm in, teaching jobs are hard to come by. I would probably end up teaching in some school in Iowa or Kansas or something when all I really want to do is teach at SPU. Alas! Plus, any Bs in any of my O.T. classes throughout seminary mean that I can basically kiss this dream goodbye--seriously! To add to the confusion, I got the highest grade in the class on my last Hebrew exam, but I am almost surely to get a B on a very demanding midterm in Exile and Restoration--taught by one of the world's leading O.T. scholars whose recommendation I would surely need for PhD applications, but am unlikely to get without a stellar performance in her class.

* Ordination. Save the most confusing for last! I do not want to be a parish priest. But, in talking with my site supervisors at St. Luke's recently, I have been reexamining the reasons for my aversion. Mostly, they involve fear--the same kind of fear experienced by Jeremiah (I'm too young!) Moses (I'm unskilled!) and the disciples (I'm not sure want this lifestyle...). I'm not sure I'm comfortable shutting this door out of fear. So, the first step toward figuring this out in the Episcopal Church is a process called...drum roll...discernment. I have been toying with the idea of entering discernment as a way to explore these issues further with a board of priests and lay people who are all excited to help me figure out these questions. While I thought I might possibly enter discernment next fall, I was invited today to enter into this year's cycle, which starts Saturday!!

You might get the picture that I am highly confused and you would be right about that. There are so many open doors right now and there is no clear word from God. Where is my burning bush? I could use a lightening bolt, a vision, a voice from heaven, whatever. I'm not picky, really. Just something besides the same objections, doubts and options circling round and round in my head. I am not good at this. I want so desperately to do God's will to be right where God wants me that I find myself nowhere. At some point, a leap of faith will be required, I have no doubt, I'm just having this sense that this leap might be coming sooner than I was expecting.

I may not have burning bushes, but I do believe that God still speaks. And the primary way God has spoken to me in the past has been through the people around me. So people, speak up!

The chapel at the University of Central America in El Salvador looks like any other Latin American worship space...at first. We visited the university because it is the home of the Oscar Romero museum and the site where 9 Jesuit priests were assassinated by the government in 1989 for their outspoken resistance to the Salvadoran military in its human rights abuses during the civil war. The picture to the left is of Wes standing in front of the monument dedicated to the remembrance of the Jesuit martyrs.

The effects of the civil war on the Salvadoran psyche cannot be underestimated. 75,000 people were killed by death squads or assassinations for their resistance to the right-wing (US funded) oppressive government policies. Everyone in San Martin-- the housing project that hosts Santisima Trinidad (the parish where I worked) in the outskirts of San Salvador--was displaced by the war and had lost family members and friends. The husband of our host mother, Irma, was killed by a stray bullet only a few blocks from their house during one of the final conflicts between the FLMN and government military. The stories go on and on.

One cannot help but wonder what how a recent history of tremendous violence has influenced the liturgical life of the church. It was in the little chapel of the UCA where we found our answer. There we found a memorial to the priests assassinated in the parish they served, and a disturbing picture depicting Oscar Romero and the other outspoken bishops of the Catholic Church in heaven as the military leaders and soldiers are essentially burning in hell. But the most striking, disturbing, amazing and thought provoking evidence of the pervasive effects of such violence were the stations of the cross hanging on the back wall of the chapel.

The stations of the cross are designed to facilitate a pilgrimage of sorts for Roman Catholics (and now Anglicans, Lutherans and others) during Lent. Typically, stations of the cross consist of 14 images or sculptures from the final hours of Christ's life. The depictions help the believer to focus their prayers and to experience in a deeper way, the sufferings of Christ. Usually, the stations begin with Jesus' condemnation by Pontius Pilate, the receiving of the cross, his first fall and on up to Jesus being stripped, nailed to the cross, dying and finally, being laid in the tomb. Obviously, it's a solemn Good Friday (as opposed to Easter Sunday) kind of discipline that's been around for centuries.

But, in this particular chapel that has seen so much violence, all the stations of the cross are a depiction of Christ crucified. And they are not idealized, pastel, clean, or pretty pictures either. Instead, they are drawings of real people--kidnapped, tortured, murdered and left in a killing field outside of San Salvador. The charcoal drawings were done by a friend of the chapel during the civil war. He would travel to the known killing fields every day, looking for his sister who had gone missing several months before. He didn't find her, but in order to deal with the trauma of witnessing such violence on a day to day basis, he started drawing the victims there.
It is these horrific drawings that now hang in the chapel of all places--not an art gallery or a museum, but a house of worship. We heard that there were many requests for the pictures to be taken down, especially for events like weddings and other happy occasions. After all, who wants to remember the realities of living under an oppressive, killing regime when they're at church?! Isn't church the place we preach a different gospel, one that declares Christ victor, where death has no sting and where the kingdom of peace and reconciliation is coming soon? Of course. But in El Salvador, none of those truths allow us to escape this world and cease to embrace our responsibilities to be Jesus in this world and take part in ushering in the Kingdom of God. Oscar Romero, El Salvador's contemporary martyr whose marks are everywhere clearly understood that.

These drawings bring new meaning to religious art, iconography and the liturgical function of art in church. I remember Wes telling me about a church he visited in South Africa where Desmond Tutu served as a priest during apartheid. The church harbored apartheid protesters and stood up against the police regularly. Inside, however, hung several banners left over from the English colonizers--a mark of their not-so-honorable past. Every tradition can no doubt boast merits and embarrassments alike, but more often than not we like to play up the good stuff and forget the bad. Crusades...shhh. Civil Rights....woohoo, Church! But for St. George's it is not alright to forget the past and the events that, for better or worse, have shaped them.

The same is true, I think, for the UCA's chapel. Jesus' life, death and resurrection take on a different meaning in a society struggling to recover from indiscriminate violence and corruption. Jesus' death is not simply a theological doctrine, but a point of contact between the death they have seen from all sides since 1979. What does it mean to turn the mangled bodies from a killing field from meaningless slaughter to opportunities for religious and devotional contemplation? What does it mean for someone who saw their brother or husband murdered before their eyes to look upon the bloody bodies of similar victims and see Jesus there? What does it mean to be reminded of the atrocities of the past as you return to your pew after receiving communion and upon walking out the door into the world that continues to breed corruption and violence on every corner? It is these questions that have rattled around in my mind since that Saturday. I cannot imagine a church in the States being willing to display such violence on its walls. Then again, we've never lived in a place where such scenes occupied a space in everyone's mind.

The UCA stands, for me, as a stark reminder of the church's mission in a world that is so resistant to the gospel and despite our hopes, will never participate in bringing about the kingdom of heaven. Those drawings are disturbing and horrific. And so sometimes, is this life. And yet, there is Jesus; our savior who was crucified, died and raised again to new life.

I saw Jesus at church Sunday. He always shows up in the most unlikely places. On Sunday, Jesus was two old women, one black, one white. They sat next to each other two pews in front of me. I watched people scurry to the altar for communion, and I watched as Jesus slowly stood. Ever so slowly, leaning on each other for support, they hobbled up the stairs to the altar.

Together.

Jesus was the white woman, holding the hand of someone her upbringing and culture forbid her to know. Jesus was the black woman, holding out a supportive hand to an image of her oppression. Jesus was there, his body the food for the white and black woman alike. His blood the cup of salvation for two weary souls. His sacrifice, the possibility for reconciliation, unity and life.

On Sunday, heaven happened at St. Luke's. Heaven looked like two old women, determined to meet Jesus at the altar rail. They fed on him even as their bodies withered away. Heaven--the place where there truly is no Jew or Gentile, no black or white and where wrinkled, dysfunctional bodies become new--that place took form at the altar rail as two old women lowered themselves to their knees and stretched out their tired hands.

Together.

I saw heaven there. Just a glimpse. Jesus sat at the table, welcoming us all to join in the great feast.