Sermon for Pentecost 2, Year B: It’s Not You, It’s Me

June 4, 2015 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

[Editor’s Note: The reason I’m publishing my sermon early is that I want me to be me and Matt to be Matt. For those just joining us, Matt is my pastor at Christ Congregational Church, and I never want him to think that I’m just stealing his ideas. However, I don’t mind in the slightest if he steals mine. :P~]

There are some times when I’m reading the Lectionary and I just bust out laughing. Like, snot and tears everywhere and choking to keep it together. This week it was the conversation between Samuel and God, where Samuel is talking to God about the people rejecting him as king. God tells Samuel clearly that it’s not him they’re rejecting. It’s God. Then my sermon title came to me in a flash and I nearly fell out of my desk chair, just shaking with the hilarity of the moment.

Last week, I preached on Isaiah being called to serve God, and his emphatic “HERE AM I, SEND ME.” This week, the focus is on what to do if you stand up and the people say, “not so fast…” Or worse, the people have been happy with you for a long time and now, they just aren’t. But instead of being willing to stand in the rain and get wet, they just want the relationship to end altogether.

Does this in any way resonate with you? It should. It happens all the time. I am still reeling from it happening to me, so as you can imagine, I cannot help but take these scriptures personally and try to learn from them. The scriptures put together by the Lectionary are all designed around this theme, because it repeats over and over. Congregations get unhappy with their leaders just like they do with politicians. People also run away from their leaders because they know they’re right and hide in shame, anyway. Both of these things are equal in their power to disrupt leadership, but at either end of the spectrum. Let me give you a few examples taken straight from our scriptures today:

In the Samuel reading, the people get so mad that they just stomp off and follow someone else.
In the Genesis reading, Adam hides from the God who created him because he is so ashamed that he and Eve have done something that God expressly asked them not to do. He is not unhappy with the leadership so much as he is unhappy with himself. It reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail… “is there someone else up there we could talk to?”
In the Mark reading, Jesus has come home to a large crowd that thinks he has lost his ever-loving MIND…. that he has Satan in him because only Satan can cast out demons. Jesus tells them in no uncertain terms that they have lost their minds, instead. No wonder Jesus said of his hometown, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” because his own people were the first to become unhappy with him. [Editor’s Note: NOTE TO SELF]
In the Corinthians reading, Paul is heading into such strong opposition that he fears he is failing spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically…. perhaps even physically. The context of this passage is that he can feel he is near death (some believe this is due to epilepsy), and his words have urgency. Please, people. Believe. Carry my message forward. PLEASE!
In one of my favorite Psalms of all time, David pleads with Israel to wait upon God… to believe that God’s leadership is right and true. He knows this to be the case as he as often walked in darkness himself, and even though his time is long before the Christ, has seen redemption through Jehovah, the God he loves.

As you can see, it’s a pattern that will repeat until the end of time. The question for pastors in these scriptures is, “NOW WHAT?” How do we deal with both the people’s feelings of unworthiness in reaching out to God for help, and at the same time, seeing the flaws in our own leadership? Because come on. Leaders aren’t always right, and are sometimes too proud to see that reality. They are reticent to see the times when God isn’t speaking through them so much as they are taking too much license with what they have been given.

If you are not religious, think of all the politicians that claim God is speaking through them, and yet their policies clearly scream ego… that if they were really listening to God and not themselves, it would clearly be a different calling to ministry- using that term because politicians all over the world are called exactly that- ministers.

Again, where is the balance? We’re all in this together, in a sense. Both the religious and the spiritual, the born again and the atheists, because it’s all the same problem. Issues in the church are just a microcosm of what happens in the electorate, and that is true for the United States as well as all other countries who have democracy, and those that have monarchy.

You might think, “no. You are totally wrong. It’s not my problem. It’s my leaders. They’re the ones with the problems. Not me.”

Are you sure about that?

If you are religious, how are you running away from your leadership? If you are not, I ask you the same question in a different context. Are you expressing your unhappiness? Are you sitting in your own unworthiness? Are you hiding from the fact that you do have power to promote change… it’s just that you’re not using it? Are you just tuning out because it’s easier? Someone has to stand up and say, “HERE AM I; SEND ME!” Will it be you?

If you need real-life examples of this, let’s look at the Catholics. I am flabbergasted by all the changes since Pope Francis came into power. He listened to the people’s distress with all of the problems inherent in the leadership trying to live in a 21st century world with a 19th century attitude and said, “enough is enough.”

I am waiting for the Anglicans to have that sort of revelation, because they are the ones that stomped off mad. They are the AntiFrancis. They are content to sit in their own stubborn beliefs that are eventually going to lead to their demise. They are secure in their own authority, the one that says the Bible doesn’t change as we do. They have ceased to look at the Bible as a living document, and their stagnation is evident… maybe not in terms of their numbers, but in the way that their views are slowly becoming antiquated and they are coming down on the wrong side of history. I mean, come on. They have a problem with women bishops. Please. If ever there was an example of leading through ego and not leading through God, it’s them.

Pope Francis is determined to stop that kind of death, and the people are heartened and strengthened by it. The church is showing new life as more and more parishioners see that faith does have relevance in their lives as long as it moves forward with the context surrounding them. When the people cry out for change, they’re leading from the back, and because of Pope Francis, it is working.

So again, what kind of leader are you?

Do you believe, in the one true edge… by fastening your safety belts and stepping towards the ledge? Or are you content with letting your leaders decide your direction without your input? Worse, are your leaders crying out to you because you are wrong- either in the church or in politics, and you are forcibly running away from conflict? It’s not unprecedented. People have left churches, left countries, left relationships because they didn’t have the fortitude to get down and dirty and figure it out. How do we know when we are speaking from a place of soft power, and when we are broadcasting God as ego? That is not limited to leaders. That is everyone, everywhere.

If you are not religious, how are you rejecting President Obama, or any other president that comes to power? By rejection, I do not mean that you have to like your leaders. Affecting them is not committing to liking them. Affecting them is a call to leadership whether you agree with them or not. Rejecting them is not hearing them at all. I am using President Obama as an example not because he is the politician I like, but because he is president right now. There will be others, but we are talking about right here. Right now. Are you affecting change, or rejecting it?

If you are religious, how are you rejecting God? How are you rejecting the life lessons we have to learn from Samuel, Adam, Mark, Paul, and David? How are you mistaking your own ego from the light of Christ shown through you? How are you not submitting to the higher power that runs through us all? Because in the end, in order to lead, you have to get your own ego out of the way.

Are you willing to listen when God says, “it’s not me. It’s you?”

To me, that is the very essence of the Pentecost season. Pentecost was revealed to us through fire. Our job is to learn not to throw water at it, but learn to walk in it without getting burned.

Andy Doyle, my bishop in Texas, wrote a gorgeous prayer with which I’ll close that talks about this very thing. I ask that you sit with it for a while, because it brought me the fortitude to keep walking my path; to be a leader inspired by Christ and not by myself:

Gracious Father,

We pray for thy holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior.

Amen.

Perspective. Get Some.

June 3, 2015June 3, 2015 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Whenever I get lost in my own problems, I read Jeffrey Thames’ Facebook page. It reminds me of the time that I was just lost in the minutiae of my job and a case came across my desk; I called a phone number without looking at the company first, and they answered, “Doctors Without Borders.” All of the sudden, my attitude changed and a peace came over me that I hadn’t had in weeks. For all of the problems I had, I wasn’t in a war-torn country that day. I returned to my loving, attentive, “I’m Leslie Lanagan and I’m here to help” patois immediately.

Today, it was a post on Jeffrey’s wall that talked about why homeless people often smell of urine. Have you ever wondered why? I thought it was just because their clothes were dirty. I mean, that’s a reasonable assumption, right? Ummm, no. Apparently, when homeless people pee, the cops take joy in arresting them, giving them tickets, etc. So they pee on themselves in order to avoid getting taken downtown or getting tickets for indecency, which they cannot pay, anyway. The cops aren’t finding ways to help the problem, only compounding it.

I don’t have a problem with the police in terms of the ones I’ve dealt with personally. I’ve never been arrested, so the only times I’ve come in contact with them are when I’ve been speeding. Not one has ever been mean to me. Not. One. However, I am a little white girl. My experience of the police is going to be different, and there are a thousand wrong-headed reasons why (see above).

Those wrong-headed reasons are the reasons I’m most likely to be arrested in the first place, and if/when I do, I hope that the kindness I’ve experienced from the police so far carries over. I am not saying that I am planning on being arrested. It’s just a possibility, because there is no way on God’s green earth that I’m not going to be a part of peaceful protests, wearing a clerical collar or not. I don’t have to be ordained to be counted among people protesting for peace, and it’s “ironical” how quickly even the peaceful are taken away in handcuffs. In one of my friend’s cases, she was taken away in her clerical collar with a zip tie, and it caused permanent damage to the nerves in her hand.

Am I looking forward to it? No. Who is? But at the same time, I have to go into my profession with the outlook that it is a possibility. I’m not going to wait for ordination to be a protester, but at the same time, it would be the funniest thing in the world to me if my first mugshot was in my clerical shirt with collar, complete with silver ichthus from James Avery, because that’s where you get those sorts of things. Hilarious because of the absolute irony of the situation, because in order to walk in light, sometimes you have to be the one that walks into darkness holding it.

Who am I to say that I am worthy of such a mission? I certainly am not. However, neither is anyone else. We are called to Christ because we are perfect in our flaws. Moses beat a soldier to death when he was young, and God called him, anyway. I think he was surprised; he struggled with the unworthiness of that act and told God to call his brother, Aaron, instead. He said that Aaron was more well-spoken. I can see behind that mask in a minute, can’t you?

I identify with Moses a lot, because in that moment, he let his temper overtake his common sense. He probably thought the killing was justified until it was over, and I can see his serious “oh, my FUCK” reaction just as clearly as I see my own when my temper gets the better of me.

And yet, God calls me anyway, and it is a calling I’ve ignored for years. My closest friends on the ground, both past and present, have seen this holy fire within me and have encouraged me to get the MDiv in various ways since I was 16 years old. Before that, even, but it really started when I began looking at colleges and going to senior high church camps. They could see what I could not, because I was so scared that the reason they thought I was worthy of this ministry was just because my dad was already ordained; that I was somehow riding on his coattails instead of going my own direction.

It really took my dad leaving the ministry and getting some separation from his enormous reputation that I thought I could do this on my own. By enormous reputation, by the time he left the ministry he was preaching to almost 1,700 people a week. Because I was not really there or too little to understand when he started playing small ball, I thought I could never live up to the expectations I had for myself. It was not anything that he said or did, it was my impression from watching him that he was successful in a way that I couldn’t accomplish.

So, I ran from this enormous calling, especially when I felt so rejected by the denomination that ordained him. The Methodists wouldn’t take me because I knew I was going to be gay whether they liked it or not. As soon as puberty hit, I knew, and even before that, I had an inkling. I was ten the first time I got “caught” liking girls.

Ironically, it was Jay Bakker that convinced me I had a future. You can look at his last name and tell where he comes from, who he belongs to on the ground. He has tattoo sleeves on both arms. He has nerd glasses, just like me. He’s a recovering addict, which isn’t like me and yet, the troubles I’ve faced render me into that category of person- the one that says you have to give up everything to find it all.

I didn’t find the divine until I got dirty enough to see that I was on the wrong path, that I was hiding so many things about myself that I was making up a personality and a way to be in the world that wouldn’t show anyone my cards.

In another ironic turn, given the direction our relationship has taken, that provided me another piece of the puzzle. Argo said, “you’re not broken. You’re just Leslie.” I carry that feeling to this day. I cannot be anything but me, and that comes with a lot of emotional baggage that includes an enormous ego to cover up the fact that my “small-l leslie” has so many flaws. Leslie Lanagan, Trademark has been an act. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is kill her. It’s taken years, and I’m not completely finished.

The purpose of this blog is to show myself when the parts of her get out of hand. In reading backwards, the question that comes up for me the most often is whether I am being my true authentic self, or whether I’m writing in a way that hides my sins…. and there are a lot of them.

For instance, Argo thought I was lying to her when I said I wasn’t the one that punched Dana first. It wasn’t that I thought I was lying. It’s that Dana is so much bigger than me that when she pushed me with such force, I took it as “throwing the first punch,” because there was no way that a shove from me would have hurt her the way it hurt me. So, just for the record, now I’ve said it. When Dana and I got into a fistfight, I was the one that hit her. You can leave it to your own opinion whether I was right or not. I thought I was. Just when you decide, know how much smaller my fist is and whether or not Dana hit me first, who broke the barrier between us that would have kept it to a shouting match.

In that fight, I don’t remember anything in the correct order… not to preserve Leslie Lanagan, Trademark, just that it comes to me in bits and pieces of nauseating waves that do not line up chronologically, but hurt just the same. My cheek hurt for weeks in literal pain at first and phantom pain for long afterward. I am not discounting Dana’s pain, only that I cannot speak to it. I can only tell my own story.

I also waffle on whether I wanted to go back to her because the rainbow comes after the flood, or whether my abused personality needed to believe we needed to be together because that’s what I think I’m worth. It is neither, and it is both. Dana answered that question for me by saying that she didn’t want a relationship with me, because she sees me as the abuser in all of this. That my emotional abuse was so much worse than hers.

I disagree, but at this point, the internal fight is on its way to resolving itself, because I have done so much healing work. I don’t have to think about it like I once did, and by “have to,” I mean that I was stuck in the loop of rumination because I couldn’t not.

I haven’t ruminated about Dana as much as I’ve ruminated about losing Argo because I actually thought that Argo was the healthier relationship of the two, and trying to create solid ground with Dana was beyond me because of our roller coaster of family dysfunction that I did not have with Argo because she wasn’t physically there to experience it. The idea that she wasn’t stuck in our family dysfunction evaporated when she reached out to Dana and tried to arbitrate who was right and who was wrong when we were fighting. I lost it.

This is because Dana was so crazy in her rumination that eventually Argo and I would be a thing that I thought it was going directly to the person that disliked her the most and expecting a reasonable answer. Maybe she got one, maybe she didn’t, but it wasn’t the answer that bothered me. It was the question.

Argo and I were a thing in terms of close friendship, and I carried that betrayal for a long time. I gave it up when Dana decided to pick up her toys and go home, but I am the kind of person that forgives people and doesn’t forget.

More people than Argo have taken it as holding things over their heads, but it is not my intention. It is my endless repetition of the facts I believe in order to create a different reality later on. I don’t want either of our past behavior to affect creating a new reality, and if I can see a behavior pattern that smacks of the old either one of us, I will say something about it… and we are not talking about Argo anymore. Take any one of my deep relationships and you’ll get the picture.

Again, I forgive, but I don’t forget. The question in my mind is whether I’m supposed to or not. What does a healthy relationship mean? Does it mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to bring up past behavior? I have an elephant memory when it comes to behavior, and that’s just a part of my personality… but what am I supposed to do with it? I am not holding on to anger. To me, facts are facts. Emotions are emotions. I can talk about facts without attaching emotions to them.

For instance, I never would have been able to forgive Dana for everything that’s happened to me if I hadn’t looked at my own behavior and owned it. At the same time, though, I will never forget how past actions affect our present or our future, should there be one even in friendship. I have said, and I mean it, that when she shows up, I will receive her in love and not anger. The problem I have right now is that she won’t. Show up, I mean. She doesn’t want to talk about things. She wants to sweep them under the rug and just have a “ladies who lunch” relationship. I am not that kind of person, and I never will be. If we have this level of conflict, it takes that level of resolution for me to interact in a merely friendly way. You have to accept the flood to get the rainbow. Dana says that being in relationship with me is too hard. That I’m too much to handle because I require a level of emotion that she’s just not willing to give.

It was realizing that I’m not a hard person to love that has gotten me through this time in my life; it’s her unwillingness to unpack and face the music and go through the hard parts instead of ignoring them that gets me. The fact is that when I tried to unpack with her, she called my dad and told him I was having a psychotic episode. The fact is that when I tried to unpack with Argo, she freaked out like I was some sort of psychopath on a mission to destroy her.

It was so easy to look at me that way, and probably still is for both of them. But their unwillingness to see me for who I really am instead of who they want me to be is the crux of my problem with both of them. There is no rainbow, because when the flood arrived, neither of them wanted to get wet. Because getting caught in the rain with me is an acknowledgement of the part they played in making it rain to begin with.

Their unwillingness is not my problem. Their versions of me aren’t my problem, either. Their parts in the play of my life have caused unrest, and they are unwilling to sit in them. I just want to shake them and say……..

Perspective. Get some.

Where Do We Go Now?

June 2, 2015 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I can’t imagine Argo hasn’t gotten all of my requests to unsubscribe to my blog, because she is generally umbilically connected to the Internet. So, if she’s going to keep the connection to me, I’m going to keep the connection to her and try to let it stop bothering me. In the past, my reaction would have been to rant and scream about it. That’s just not me anymore. I am walking in light, and to get mad about this is just antithetical to who I’ve become.

So I’ll just remind myself of all the good things about her that I love and not the fact that it irritates the shit out of me that my simple request has been ignored. I never asked her to stop reading, just to break the connection that says, “I am here. I am listening.” Her past is to take the things I’ve written and and use one sentence as a gutter snipe instead of taking the entire letter as one narrative. They are her best IEDs ever.

Yeah, sometimes I get angry, but in the same letter I will also say good things, because I see her as a whole narrative and not just a one-dimensional character.

But.

There have been times where the IED has gone off and I couldn’t help but react instead of respond. The whole goal now is to stop, in all things, really. I want to stop being a hotheaded jackass when she doesn’t see the point I’m trying to make because it will serve me well in other areas of my life. Because I’ve been that hotheaded jackass in front of her, she may not ever believe I am truly capable of changing that aspect of my personality…. but she doesn’t have to believe it. I do.

That doesn’t erase the angry things I’ve said, and it never will if she doesn’t let me grow and change in her mind. Because she only knows the virtual side of me and not the Leslie that lives on the ground, her version is skewed into a crazy that my friends on the ground would fall on the floor. Anyone who’s ever met me will say that I am an emotional roller coaster AT TIMES, but at heart I am full of hope, faith, and love. I have bad days, but so do everyone else.

I have mentally obsessed over this relationship because that’s what my personality dictates. That I am more interested in emotions, responses, and the way things could be instead of the way that they are. I am an Idealist, and idealists don’t want to live in the bounds of conventional reality. They want to create utopia and will try anything to get it. I don’t obsess over everything that’s gone wrong, but how to make it right.

The thing that’s new in my life is stopping the obsession with how to make things right with Argo and starting to obsess over what my perfect reality looks like. I am heartened by my dad’s “you go, girl.” I am heartened by all of the people that send them, really. That’s the change in focus. Why obsess over everything that’s gone wrong when I am creating new things that go right? Why live in the past when I can put so much energy into the here and now?

I am going to work with homeless people. I am going to be the Writer in Residence at a church I’ve come to love. God willing, I am going to get an MDiv and start the church that has lived in my dreams for many months. If Argo needs to believe that I’m too batshit crazy to accomplish all of this, then let her. She can sit in that reality for as long as she wants, because while she’s doing it, I’ll have changed in a million different ways without her- she just won’t be there to see it and celebrate with me.

It feels good that it’s not my problem. It’s hers.

So, as long as I take what I’ve written to heart, I am going to be just fine. Sometimes, stopping caring what other people think is the best thing I can do for myself. Letting go of the version of myself that says I am incapable of incredible things is the best thing I could have ever done for my sanity. I wouldn’t have met BBQ, Stefon, and Rez. I wouldn’t have met Cookie. I wouldn’t have met Jeffrey virtually and get to meet him on Friday. I wouldn’t have gone to Prianka’s wedding.

And most of all, I would have been stuck with a wife who continually beat it into my head that I would never amount to anything. It’s not a goal to prove her wrong. It’s a goal to prove me right. I am not competing with Dana’s vision of me. I am competing with mine. What can I accomplish in this life that will become legacy? Will there ever be a congregation that names me pastor emeritus as it grows beyond what I’ve created? Will there be congregations all over the world that use the liturgies I’ve written?

I have already been read on this blog by at least a few people in every country in the world.

Sit there. Take that in. EVERY COUNTRY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Here’s what I have to say about that.

What’s next?

A Little Lean-to

June 2, 2015June 2, 2015 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When Jamie and Claire reunite after Black Jack Randall’s excoriation of Jamie’s spirit, he tells Claire that the small space in his soul isn’t restored, but he’s at least managed to build a little lean-to. I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember the exact line, but the concept is the same. Putting together my application for Howard and committing to my church that I wanted to work with them as I grow gave me a renewed sense of purpose and, well, light.

To that end, I sent Argo a message that said, “please unsubscribe from my blog. Cut the ties.” Nothing has come of it yet, but I don’t want to see her name in my followers list anymore because when I do, I get sick to my stomach and I canna breathe. I don’t care if she reads my blog. First of all, there’s nothing I can do about that. But get a damn RSS reader or something, amiright? That way, she can read and I don’t have to see her name every time I log in. It’s just too much. I recoil at the sight, and I don’t want to feel that pain, but I canna remove her myself. If that were the case, I would have removed her long ago, not because I hate her, but because I would hope that she wouldn’t want to create reactions in me anymore. She’s made it perfectly clear that’s not the case on the ground. Why in the cloud?

I have told her all the things I dinna ken, all the ways she could have been my Jenny instead of my Jamie and I blew it all to hell. She doesn’t want any part of any of that now, so I have to move on. You’d think that something as simple as an e-mail address wouldn’t jar me, and yet, it does.

Because when I see it, I only see pain. I only see darkness. I only see the past instead of the possibility of a clean, white future because she has said she doesn’t want it. There is no hope for resurrection, so it is like walking in Good Friday. I think I have done enough in that respect. If she wants no further contact, then don’t make it so easy to e-mail her every single day…. if that makes any sense at all.

There are ways of reading me where I canna figure out who ye are. I’d rather have it that way, because it just keeps me in the space of “there must be something I can say that will fix this.” I will ruminate on it until I’m blue in the face and the only one that it hurts is me.

The Upside of Fear

June 1, 2015 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When fear that life would pass me by became greater than my fear of social interaction, I started to move. Yesterday was a “go big or go home” sort of day. I talked to my pastor about all sorts of things, such as working to earn ordination through the UCC, actually going to seminary, and people I should meet in Silver Spring.

As of this morning, my application to Howard is complete. I am just going to worry about how to pay for it later. I am sure that with the combination of donors, federal aid, grants, etc. I can wade my way through the last year and a half of undergrad and start grad school to get the MDiv I’ve wanted forever, but have never put my money where my mouth was. I chose Howard because it’s cheaper than American. The last thing I want to do is start out my homeless ministry with crippling debt. Being a pastor to homeless people generally doesn’t pay that well, and if it does, you’re doing it wrong.

The application fee was less than $50, and as I submitted my debit card number, I had this huge feeling that this was money I was using to prove that other people didn’t have to believe in me. I believed in myself. To that end, I took Matt’s suggestions and reached out to the names he gave me in Silver Spring already doing what I want to do.

I have a meeting with Jeffrey Thames on Friday morning. Jeffrey runs a homeless ministry in Silver Spring called “Hope Restored,” so my objective is just to show up and absorb all the knowledge I can, and see if he’ll give me a job. I can’t imagine he won’t. It doesn’t matter if it pays anything. That’s not the point. The point is to get experience in what I really want to do, because walking back and forth from my house to the 7-Eleven is only going to yield so much. As of right this moment, I know four homeless people by name. It’s a damn good start if I am choosing to focus on how far I’ve come in the month that I’ve been here. The trick is not to give in to social anxiety anymore.

When I isolate, I keep bad things from happening, but I don’t let in any good, either. I have to be bigger than my fears. I have to keep them at bay. I have to own them, and not let them own me. The upside of fear is that it motivated me to look at my life differently. And in that way, there is no downside at all.