Tag: preaching

Being a Preacher’s Kid is Not for the Faint of Heart

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Zac,

This entry is mostly for you, because I know that you haven’t known me long enough to know what my childhood was like, and you’re the one I most want to know me. You’re the one I most want to know. I’ll go first. Maybe it will spur a writing prompt in your own mind, and we can trade pingbacks. 🙂 I highly doubt, though, that you have a lot of similar experiences to this entry, which is why I’m moved to write it. Having Carol question me over the misconceptions there are about preacher’s kids led me to think of stories that made an impact on me. Some are hilarious. Some are not.

It was an instant reaction to stop drinking whole milk when a little old lady at my church said in a very judgmental tone, “I can’t drink whole milk. It puts the pounds on me.” I was under 10, and this lady was insinuating that I was doing something wrong. I live in the energy around people, and shrank away from the people who judged me… like another little old lady who told my mother she should stop making me wear false eyelashes when I was in 7th grade. I wish I could have shrugged it off, but it was a body issue. I have consulted my mother and my Supergrover when I have needed advice on making my lashes look even longer. It’s not vanity for me. It’s revenge.

You get used to being a big shot around your church because let’s face it. You are.

I was embarrassed af in about grade 5 when my dad came up with The John Wesley awards, thanking people for their contributions to the church. I didn’t think about how I would feel if I won it, because I didn’t know if it was because of my personality or my status. I didn’t know I should have recused myself in advance. I did not know how much it would feed my imposter syndrome into adulthood. Now, because so many adults from my youth group in Naples have told me how I’ve touched their lives that my imposter syndrome is over. I really am that talented at ministry, and why I didn’t believe it because I lived it is beyond me.

No, it’s not. It didn’t matter whether I was interested in following in my dad’s footsteps. Queer people couldn’t be ordained back then. There were other denominations that I could, but I didn’t know that then. Otherwise, I think I would have tried to orient my academics with my church accomplishments so that it would be possible to go to Yale, Harvard, or Princeton once I graduate from University of Houston. I know my worth, and in a lot of cases both schools need me because I have the background to be able to challenge Evangelicals without hurting their feelings. Again, this is my web site. This is where I rage. But I have Evangelical friends that even if they don’t agree with me theologically, they respect that I write it. I will also not rage if I get into Divinity School just because I am queer. Ordained queer pastors are the exception, not the norm, and there needs to be more of us. I would also be interested in studying in England, because a lot of my favorite theologians are from there. Neil Gaiman and Karen Armstrong being the ones I read the most.

I would like to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury, and it seems like dreams aren’t possible. I ran into David Sedaris at a coffee shop. Magic is everywhere.

All of my priests in the Episcopal Church have signed my Book of Common Prayer, because I want to remember all of them. Even the dean of National Cathedral. I don’t go every week, but I sure get mail like I’m in collections.

However, I understand it. The building needs maintenance, and it’s more money than most congregations ever make because it was built on such a grand scale in the first place. Things add up, but in this case it’s millions and millions of dollars through no fault of the local congregation. So many rich politicians have their funerals there that I hope they kick in to keep it beautiful. I’m betting they wouldn’t think of that, though…. to feed the church that fed you when you needed it the most.

The funniest thing that has ever happened in church during one of my dad’s sermons was that a little old lady stood up and said, “David, have you lost your mic?” Now, I don’t know if this was for comic relief or whether my dad genuinely didn’t hear her….. I have my suspicious…. There was an awkward pause, and my dad said, “I had to think for a moment because I thought you said, “David, have you lost your mind?” Something about that being plausible, congregation falls apart in laughter.

That’s the pull you feel at any church when you’re a preacher’s kid, because you have the ability to help in a way that other people don’t.

The funniest thing to my mind, and the only reason I’m telling you this is that she passed long ago, was a little old lady who had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. She treated all four of us to a trip to the Bahamas. We flew into Freeport, and a few hours later she said, “well, that was a nice drive down here.” I have never had to bite on my tongue and lips harder not to absolutely fall apart. I was bleeding I was trying not to laugh so hard.

The other axiom that my mother always laughed about was that every year, there’s a carol sing. Someone suggests “Frosty the Snowman,” so my mother starts playing and no one knows the words. It happened repeatedly enough that we could laugh about it.

I also went through a lot of criticism from my mother, because no matter what I did it was somehow wrong. I was picked to open the door at the Passover seder. My mother told me that I looked wooden when I walked. I was just trying not to fall because I was in heels. My mother liked me in a lot of things I didn’t like, but eventually she tried harder to pick things that she liked and give them to me. After a while, she gave up on giving me clothes and I respect it because it was less awkward for me as well. It is so thoughtful that someone thinks of you for Christmas with clothing, knowing you won’t ever wear any of it. When I was in a relationship, sometimes my girlfriends would wear them. Other than that, they stayed in the back of my closet because they were sentimental. She gave them to me, and it is the thought that counts. A thought can go a very long way. I like that she thought of a different way to do Christmas rather than giving me things I didn’t like. I didn’t tell her I didn’t like them, she just never saw me in them and adjusted.

Progress.

The closest I’ll get to something feminine is a low-cut shirt and a Nehru jacket. I can put on a choker and draw the eye up. But I don’t do anything differently with my hair, so it’s just another way of expressing gender on me, not within me. I started showing signs of that, and people pegged me as queer because of it. I’m not bitter about that for me. In my case, they were correct. But they’re so wrong about others because others aren’t a walking stereotype like me.

It caused problems in every church I’ve ever attended as a preacher’s kid. People aren’t stupid, and it’s hot gossip. You never stop being hot gossip as a preacher’s kid because then you can be used as a pawn during church meetings. You do your best not to create it in the first place, but Christians aren’t perfect because no one is. Being tempted by gossip is a real human emotion. I was just upset it was directed at a confused, lonely 7th grader. I felt like I had no friends, because people wouldn’t talk to me, but they would talk about me as if I wasn’t there. I heard a lot about the other side of arguments that I shouldn’t have heard. It affected the way I treated parishioners. I ran hot and cold with all of them, because if they made a comment about me that had something to do with my person and I overheard it, I’d just stop talking to them. Adults are always flabbergasted by this because they never do anything wrong. There is no reason I’d be protective. I let you in. You burned me. Relationship is over until I don’t feel like you’re talking behind my back anymore. I shouldn’t have worried. The gossip was exponentially larger when I met my emotional abuser because everyone knew she was queer. In that time and culture, this was bad. It turned out to be bad for me, but how could I tell? I loved her like a child loves an adult. You try to pull us apart, we’ll take it underground. It was my undoing, but I smiled until I couldn’t.

I came out at High School for Performing and Visual Arts when my “friend” Courtney took a picture of me and made fliers saying I was a predator while she was actually being abused by one. I had two bullies at HSPVA. One so bad that she was also a trumpet player, so he thought he could cool the situation by letting her borrow his Bach Stradivarius. He didn’t. Plus, I felt like she was playing my horn and I couldn’t say anything, because it wasn’t like he was giving her anything I didn’t already have. I had a Strad, too. It was just the principle. She had the case with the gold plate that said “Doc” Lanagan. I’d grown up on that horn, because my dad and I only took one horn to my grandparents’ place and just shared it so he could play every once in a while and I could play duets with my cousin Jason. I must have played the first movement to the Hayden Trumpet Concerto 300 times.

There’s a solid reason my favorite now is the Hummel Trumpet Concerto. When I hear the Haydn, I just feel like “it’s been done.” I started to feel that way about church, too. That I’d been going so long I’d seen everything I needed to see to want to bug out. The Methodists did not want my theology, and thus, I did not want them. I just didn’t know how to go anywhere else.

I found the light through a queer group in the United Church of Christ, and the More Light Presbyterians, going to their conference in 1997. I was relieved, not necessarily interested in becoming ordained. My calling didn’t come from above. It came from the number of people who came up to me after worship and told me that it was literally my calling- that I was so good at preaching that I should stick with it.

What I have extrapolated this to mean is that every sermon is a home run if you have three or four weeks to run it over in your head. If I was a pastor, not every sermon would be a home run. I have the strength to take criticism because I overheard what people thought of my dad, and then me every week. I think that people genuinely believe what they’re telling you in the moment, but whether their words match their actions depends on how they treat me from Sunday to Sunday or during the week when we’re not in the sanctuary.

Although you hear a lot more in the choir loft and at choir practice than a preacher’s kid should reasonably know. That’s because if they’re in choir, they’re already at church twice a week, so they’re probably on other committees as well and the best vantage point to talk shit about me and my emotional abuser’s relationship in very snide tones. They made no secret of the fact that they thought I was being abused, and I was, but it wasn’t as torrid as people would have led you to believe, because that made a better story.

That’s because again, time and culture, they thought she was making me gay, as if people don’t come to that conclusion on their own. If I had been straight, people would have said the same things because they were already on her ass because they knew she was queer. Of course she was grooming me, and she was. But not in the way that they thought. All her friendships work by isolating people. I was just the youngest. She opened my romantic love too early with a journal she wrote in college containing a sex scene that I should not have read. It made me think she was interested whether she was or not, and she was very controlling.

Because he just died, I will tell you that I had a friend tell me she was attracted to me long after the fact. The reason I tended to believe him over her is that he had no history of lying to me. She did. However, he was just as good as she is at jeweling the elephant. I asked her if it was true, and her voice went absolutely dead. It was the most sociopathic thing I’ve ever heard. So, I don’t know whether she was lying or protecting herself. What she did was wrong whether there was a sexual intent or not, because again, it changed my thought patterns permanently. The women in my life became my focus and not me.

It was always a very fine line between friendship and romance because we told each other things we wouldn’t tell anyone else. It was crushing to me to learn that I wasn’t the only one, and I’m not playing inside baseball. I’ve spent time with her outside of when I was little and watched her go through relationships in which she lovebombed them, all of whom she discarded when they didn’t “fit her vision.” I feel like I can write about what I saw, but I cannot write those women’s stories for them. Maybe I took it all wrong, but the expressions on their faces are ones I’ve worn since I was 13, therefore it left a bigger impression on me than it would on another adult. I see patterns other people don’t see, mostly because I am taking in information in a different way than most people do.

I don’t think my school, or my church understood my autism, ADHD, or cerebral palsy. It was clumsiness, introversion, and laziness… and I was weird if I wasn’t in my parents’ vicinity. It was like a bubble, where Lindsay and I were alone and ostracized sometimes and the life of the party at others. Being the life of the party only came from our friends being friends we would have picked, anyway. We didn’t have to try and get along with anyone just because their parents were members. Or, that’s the idea, anyway.

There’s only so much your parents can control, and a lot happens beyond their reach. As an INFJ writer, I’m built to observe and remember people’s behavior. It’s never for malice, it’s for social masking. I know people’s behavior. I cannot imitate it. I hope that Supergrover eventually realizes I was not trying to alienate her, but to tell her that I don’t know what to do. I can’t figure it out on only this much information. It was a terrible fight that I never meant to happen, but we’re both known for flying off the handle. It just wasn’t my day and she thought it was.

I was only throwing the ball back in her court. I want her to figure out what she wants with me beyond just the obvious. We like writing to each other. Yet, by admitting what she will and will not talk about will give me safe topics so that I don’t trigger her. Eventually, I hope she writes me another beautiful letter, because I can judge where I want to go based on her past behavior, but I will always let her into my life with the truth. I don’t want a one-way connection where only I spill my guts. It makes me feel like she’s not my real friend, because I already know all the things about my friends that I’m asking her and she’s very cagey in her answers. Probably because she thinks her life is on display and it’s not. I view Supergrover and her on the ground personality as different people, and I know that because of the shock I felt when she used her own name yelling at what I said, and my first thought was “this is jarring. That’s not your fuckin’ name.” We hadn’t really talked in a while, so I wasn’t used to seeing her real name…. and yet, I fell over in laughter because of it.

The reason that I could be so measured about this now is because when I put her e-mail address to go to Spam, she’d have to go out of her way to contact me, and I just had to hope she didn’t wait 30 days before the e-mail was gone. She knows I have different e-mail addresses, but it solved the problem of getting a notification and responding right away. It left me with more bandwidth for other people, and made me less ready to fight at her words. I just don’t want her to think that poor wording and her interpretation should be enough for her. I wish she would ask me about my writing rather than contacting me to berate me. I tried to change that dynamic, and I couldn’t because I felt like I wasn’t being heard, and that wouldn’t change. I needed her to be vulnerable consistently. When she is, I hope she’ll come back to me. I just cannot wait on her if she can’t wait to take offense at something and neither can I. I get frustrated and tell her to work on a problem, and she gets angry. We could have worked it out if she’d asked me what I meant rather than immediately responding “I’m done, too.” She also said, “what a shame,” so I hope that leads her back to me, too. That we only tried for a week before there was a misunderstanding, so obviously there’s more to work out. She said that I made a snap judgment after a week. Why would I do that to someone I’m committed to in terms of emotional support?

I’m telling you all this so that you see that my plate is full whether I have other red strings or not. You don’t have to worry at all. I’m being fed by different things. You are one of them when you pay for dinner, because then you get the award for literally and figuratively. 😉

Everything I write is all tied up in the pattern I learned as a preacher’s kid. It’s how to help people. It’s also not my job to make people take it. I am very good at what I do- life coach good. I am not built to be the Martin Luther King, Jr. unless it’s on paper. But I am built to be the Bayard Rustin, or the Olivia Pope. Dealer’s choice.

I don’t have any degrees except being raised to be a pastor. Just because I don’t doesn’t mean I can’t. But it gives me a very pastoral view of my friends. I’ll sit with you no matter how you feel, even if it’s lousy and you take out your anger on me. I don’t take anything personally. I see others’ battles as well as I see my own. It influences the way I feel more than anything else.

And the way I feel is that I just like sitting next to you.

Let’s go to Target if we have the bandwidth 🙂 ),

Leslie

Preacher’s Kids

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

My favorite book in the entire library at UMC Naples was a Reader’s Digest short story anthology called “preacher’s kids.” I am not kidding when I tell you that I laughed so hard I almost died, because it was a first person account and I nearly asphyxiated. So, I asked Carol the top 10 misconceptions about preachers’ kids, hopefully to clear up the confusion.

  1. Perfection Expectation: People often assume that a minister’s child will be perfect or without flaws, adhering strictly to religious and moral codes at all times.
    • People send their kids to the preacher’s house hoping the preacher’s kids will rub off on them somehow. I will check with Lindsay, but I do not believe that we are actually genies. They had to learn that on their own when they met us. 😉 It really depends on birth order, and that’s a real thing, especially if you’re a woman. Girls don’t do that, especially preacher’s kids. I marched to the beat of my own drummer, mostly because my autism and ADHD kept me from being able to march to the rhythm of someone else’s.
  2. Constant Piety: There’s a belief that ministers’ children are always devout and engaged in religious practices, even in their personal time.
    • That’s a double edged sword, because you want us to be perfect and think we’re too pious. Make up your minds. Preacher’s kids either love or hate religion, and it’s a wide spectrum. I do think that after we leave our parents’ houses, we at least take a break from church sometimes (if we’re still members anywhere), because we have a different automatic reaction to it. What that automatic reaction is changes from child to child.
  3. Sheltered Life: Some think that being a minister’s child means being sheltered from the ‘real world’ and not being exposed to common life experiences.
    • I cannot think of anything less true than this. Not anything in the world. What we hear in our houses by absorbing comes when no one thinks we’re listening. I don’t have a sheltered life. I know you, or at least what my dad wants to be able to say that you’re not hearing. It also really depends on where you’re serving. Are you in midtown Manhattan or Lone Star, Texas?
  4. Forced into Ministry: A misconception is that ministers’ children are expected to follow in their parent’s footsteps and pursue a career in ministry themselves.
    • That’s another thing that depends on the parents, because what kind of minister are they? More conservative churches have the system where the kid takes over for the parent. My dad has never discouraged me, but he’s never encouraged me, either. Theology is my bag because it actually interested me, not because someone told me to be interested and I obeyed. Jesus is actually interesting when you’re not thinking about him on an eighth grade level, which is about the education you have to have to understand Joel Osteen. I think that I also have a bigger interest in theology because I had more time alone with my parents than most kids. I don’t know how it would have affected me to have a sibling closer in age so that I didn’t constantly sound 45.
  5. Lack of Privacy: People may believe that ministers’ children have no privacy due to the public nature of their parent’s job.
    • I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without my childhood. I am living the same way I always have, with my life on display. Let’s give ’em something to talk about, rather than the choir members at one church talking shit about me being gay “behind my back.” They weren’t behind my back. They were just too tall and too dumb to check around. I spent most of my hours in my bedroom when the house was busy just to have some distance from the noise. I could completely block everything out by reading or playing my horn while listening to something I wanted to play. Since I was actually good, people tolerated it. Beginning trumpet will clear your sinuses.
  6. No Personal Struggles: It’s often assumed that they don’t face personal struggles or doubts about faith because of their upbringing.
    • That one is actually true. We do not have personal struggles in front of you.
  7. Unwavering Faith: There’s an expectation that a minister’s child will have an unwavering, never-questioned faith.
    • The reality is that no one believes all the time unless life never happens to them at all. Like with any relationship, talking comes and goes. Praying in community is more powerful to me than praying alone. Being in the choir reminds me that Bach is praying twice.
  8. Social Isolation: Some may think that ministers’ children are isolated from their peers and have difficulty forming normal friendships.
    • That is absolutely true. Other kids think preacher’s kids are weird. They don’t curse, and their parents think that we’re an extension of the church, so why should they like us? They don’t like church.
    • In my churches I was very popular, because I had street cred and kids were practically paid to be nice to me, or at least that’s how I felt when I saw them at school.
    • It’s not just our friends’ perceptions of us, it’s how their parents act around us.
  9. Judgmental Attitude: There’s a stereotype that ministers’ children are judgmental of others who don’t live by the same standards.
    • I’m very judgmental because that’s the way my personality is built to process information- by taking a case and working it through. I do not, contrary to popular belief, render verdicts. I tell you what I’ve concluded. It’s the part where you’re supposed to tell me what you’ve concluded. The people who get the most offended are people who haven’t thought about it at all.
  10. Financial Stability: A common misconception is that ministers’ children come from financially stable homes, which isn’t always the case.
    • Truly nice clothes are gifts, because it takes a very long time being a pastor to get good enough to make a decent salary. We’ve never lacked for anything because our housing was always covered, but it’s not like we lived a life of luxury. Our friends treated us to things all the time because that’s the thing you do for the preacher’s family. I have no doubt that I was given things other kids didn’t get because no one wants to look bad in front of their minister. I’m a preacher’s kid, and people apologize for saying the word “fuck.” Meanwhile, if you’ve read me for any length of time, you how much of a problem it is for me to cope with cursing. Please respect my privacy during this difficult time. That one f-bomb really took it out of me due to my delicate nature.

These misconceptions can lead to unrealistic expectations and pressures on ministers’ children, and they often don’t reflect the diverse and personal experiences of individuals in such families. It’s important to recognize that, like anyone else, ministers’ children have their own unique challenges and life stories.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
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My first thought was “Jesus *Christ*…” but not in a good way. I have no idea who I’d like to be, because I see pros and cons to everything.

I’m not even sure I’m that good at being myself….. but I’m laughing about it. The thing is, though, I could totally be Jesus. It’s like, the only thing I know how to do. I tell stories, people listen to me, and I can flat *assure* you that “nothing good comes out of Nazareth.” No stranger has ever come after me over my writing, because it’s *mine*. Why would they have an interest if they didn’t know me personally?

Here’s why it’s not any easier to be me than it was to be Jesus. The only difference is that I had a blog and he literally sat around and told stories and people wrote them down years later…. taking away all the facts, but none of the truth. Some of the things I write about are long in the past. Some of it is what’s painful “write this moment.”

Here’s why I talk about my blog the same way- facts are missing, but the types of truth I’m laying down *are only from my perspective.* In order for my blog to be factual, I would have to know what someone else was thinking. I am only telling you what I took away from my interactions with my friends and/or family. What you took away from my writing is none of my business.

I feel like that’s Christ on a cracker right there. He was absolutelyfuckingnot trying to impress anyone. In fact, he actually made quite a few people angry, wouldn’t you agree?

And yet, some ideas are worth dying for, because I don’t think that the story would have been remembered if he’d lived out all his days…. although he would have had the chance to fact check the Gospels a little more closely…. or at least, I would like to believe that Jesus would have been a different person at 60 or 70 than he was at 33.

I know his personality like the back of my hand because I’m an INFJ and he and Martin Luther King, Jr. are INFJ as well.

INFJs are guided by a deeply considered set of personal values. They are intensely idealistic, and can clearly imagine a happier and more perfect future. They can become discouraged by the harsh realities of the present, but they are typically motivated and persistent in taking positive action nonetheless. The INFJ feels an intrinsic drive to do what they can to make the world a better place.

INFJs want a meaningful life and deep connections with other people. They do not tend to share themselves freely but appreciate emotional intimacy with a select, committed few. Although their rich inner life can sometimes make them seem mysterious or private to others, they profoundly value authentic connections with people they trust.

As quintessential idealists, INFJs have many ideas about how to improve society and make the world a better place. INFJs believe a better world can only be attained if we concentrate on doing what is right, regardless of short-term consequences. However, harmonious relationships are also extremely important to the INFJ. They are skilled mediators who look for the root sources of conflict to find common ground with others. Because of this, they tend to prefer a diplomatic communication style and are careful to not unnecessarily ruffle feathers.

INFJs have a profound respect for human potential and a deep interest in understanding the mind. Because of this, they are motivated to pursue authentic self-development and strive to live up to their true potential, while encouraging and guiding others to do the same. According to idealistic INFJs, if we believe in our ability to accomplish the extraordinary, the extraordinary will instantly become a possibility — “dream it and you can achieve it,” as the saying goes. However, because of their integrity and empathy for others, it is uncommon for INFJs to cut corners or hurt others to achieve their desired future state.

Because of my processing disorders and mental illness, I have hurt people. But I’m also human. The old saying goes that “hurt people hurt people,” and I’m trying to clean myself up. But the way I do it is to lay out everything I’m thinking so that my ups and downs might be a survival manual for someone else. I am relentlessly driven to leading from the back, that people have shown me they won’t be vulnerable with me if I’m not vulnerable with them, first.

And, of course there were 14 disciples (I include Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany). But were all 14 of them best friends all the time? Have you met any group of 14 people that gets along all the time? I can just picture it now…. Jesus, could you stop being intense for like four minutes? Just four minutes, bro. We all need a beer after that one (and that one could be anything, like Jack Palance’s finger).

I don’t do shallow.

So, if people are, I back away slowly. Because to me, shallow means that you are not looking for a deeper, more meaningful connection with me. Our connection depends on communication and honesty, and if either of us doesn’t get it, how long are we going to stay in the time loop? I can count one that lasted 23 years, one that lasted 10. I didn’t have an exit strategy for either, just one day I was exhausted and I couldn’t take up any less room than I was already taking, because what tends to happen is that people think I’m a wonderful writer until we’re close enough that they say they don’t care what I say here….. I’m entitled to my stories.

In somewhere between six months to two years, they learn that somehow I can write beautifully about everyone except them. They’ve been caught up in the bubble of my personality, and then I do something stupid and I fall from a pedestal every single time, whether it’s singing or writing. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it recently, but I’m a classically trained solo-quality voice, and I have learned never to believe my own press. In both cases, I’m in a bubble of my own, and people are not so awed when they see the man behind the curtain.

I’m going to guess Jesus was like that. Most ministers are. In show mode in front of a crowd, solitary the rest of the week except for meetings. The people he led didn’t really know him, they knew his message….. and somehow, it’s been twisted to make him look like some kind of professional Christian superhero, when to me the historical Jesus is so much more interesting.

The link is to a book by Marcus Borg, one of the preeminent scholars on the historical Jesus, joined by Dominic Crossan.

It’s called “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith,” and it’s a book that’s been on my Kindle since I first met Marcus and Dom, and I’m allowed to call them that because Marcus’s wife was one of the rectors at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon…. so even though he’s not Episcopalian (he’s Lutheran), I’ve heard him preach a lot. Bill, the dean of the Cathedral (blanking on a last name, sorry), used to joke that whenever you had a theological problem, you should always go drink beer with a Lutheran.

I would have gone for a beer with Marcus, but I really want to go for a beer with Nadia Bolz-Weber.

I’d like to be her, but in so many ways, I already am.

Plotting By Notting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?

When I am not writing, I am obsessed with television and video games as much as I am with reading, because it’s a different style and structure in each medium and I want to learn them all.

My favorite writer on TV right now is Issa Rae, because “Insecure” hit Netflix and all of the sudden, I realized how brilliantly her pilot was constructed when it came together…. but not enough to keep you from clicking “Watch Next Episode.” Maybe the pilot could work as a standalone. Maybe.

But what I learned is that I wanted to keep learning from her, because I wanted to see another episode in which she built up a plot in one way, and then unravels the sweater so that you don’t see it coming. The way she does it is by using emotional intelligence gathering on herself and others, which is every bit as interesting to me as watching espionage, because in both stories, there are things that go horribly wrong by not having the right information and consequences cost a lot more than they can pay….. one literally, the other emotionally.

Issa Rae’s comedy and drama comes from gathering intelligence and it turns out that either her perceptions are completely wrong, or her friends’ are. She digs into the complexities of really trying to own yourself, because you become stronger when you can admit that mistakes have been made.

In every book, TV show, or video game, it’s the writers that draw me in. The second thing is the composers. Once I’m done with a video game because I’m tired of it, I still listen to the score a lot. For instance, the full orchestral version of the Fallout 3 score is as beautiful as “Galaxy News Radio” is entertaining.

Now that I’ve played the intro to Fallout 4, I’m glad that Galaxy News Radio has been replaced by a DJ that plays the same music, but he sounds like he doesn’t know anything about being a DJ. There are lines that are so funny that I’ve fallen over, and I’m impressed at how Bethesda has continued the details that made Fallout 3 great. The reason I’ve only played the intro is that I could tell quickly that it was a console interface that had been adapted for PC. I hated it because I had to learn it, when Skyrim and Fallout 3 had the same game game mechanics ( and I rearranged the keyboard so that it was the same as Skyrim and Fallout 3).

I also would hate to start a game that didn’t have console commands, because it’s so handy in Skyrim. The game is stable on its own with a few unofficial patches, but the more mods you add, the more problems the game has with starting quests correctly, etc.

I am also very, very picky and I will not stick around for bad writing. I either like no writing at all (like match three phone games), or huge, epic sagas. I will look up the intro to Oblivion on YouTube and put it at the end. It grabbed me even more than the opening to Skyrim, because here’s what happened.

Video games are programmers. Most programmers are neurodivergent. Most programmers are also used to extensive documentation. So, Patrick Stewart was hired to do only the introduction, and he showed up to a bigger dossier than he’d ever been given for any character in his life. He said it was delightful…. actually, he’s said it several times, and I appreciate it because it has promoted the game many times. It’s one of the best opening cinematics in any video game because of THAT VOICE. I’ll put it at the end.

I played Oblivion when it first came out and got bored with it pretty fast because I was older, and when you’re older and you’ve played video games since you were a kid in the 80s, the more complicated keystrokes/controllers seem like too many buttons. Believe me, they are. I haven’t even figured out how to favorite weapons in Skyrim for easy access, and it’s been 10 years.

However, I didn’t come across Skyrim on my own. My brother-in-law had an XBOX (I don’t remember whether he’s upgraded or not, but you don’t need to update hardware for that game. Anyway, I was watching him play it and I loved the story, but hated the controller. So, I got it for PC and found the game mechanics much easier. It’s fun to fight the battles, but at the same time, the main storyline has to be compelling for me to even finish the game, much less play it twice.

I will say that since I have played both Oblivion and Skyrim now, I liked the ending of Skyrim’s main storyline, but the ending of Oblivion’s A plot made me fall out of my desk chair…………. just like I did in the 90s with StarCraft (iykyk).

Speaking of which, when it came out (I don’t remember what year, but not recently), StarCraft Remastered was $10 on Blizzard.net, and it was the best $10 I’d spent for the last several years. It’s a great storyline, and it’s so damn quotable. I remembered the interplay between Jim and Sarah like it was yesterday. Sometimes I’ll still start up a campaign just for old time’s sake, like keeping an old NES.

In terms of being able to study structure in writing from books, I find that I get the most and the least out of Stephen King. That’s because we write in exactly the same style. We don’t start with a plot, we find it. His “On Writing” is one of the best books in the world, but I still can’t figure out how to let go and get the story out without thinking too much about it. That’s because I’m not the kind of writer that can think all the way to the end of a story, because I don’t know which direction I’m supposed to go after a while and it all becomes character study.

I want help, and I don’t. That’s because if someone helps me with the plot, then it’s not my story anymore. I want to be able to tell it the way I want to tell it. I’m talking about things like craft and research to have enough information about a subject to know which way it would go in a real situation.

For instance, I’ve been trying to figure out a sermon that makes sense comparing Jesus’s escape to Egypt as a toddler to a modern ex-fil op since “Argo” came out. It came to me during the scene when Tony explains to the higher ups at State that “the only way out of Tehran is through the airport. We send in a Moses…………….” If I hadn’t already been sitting in the theater I would have needed a chair, it hit me so hard. That being said, I’ve put it off and put it off because when I write spy jargon, it doesn’t sound real. I need to read enough declassified operations that would fit my theme, and the most interesting part is that I need recent ones the most because they’ve taken place in the Middle East. It can’t happen, though, so I’m combing through a lot from WWII to The Cold War, both through newspaper articles from the time and non-fiction books.

Here’s why I want to learn what really happens during an ex-fil and how it would go down in The Middle East. My father told me about 35 years ago (and he got it from Harry Emerson Fosdick, then pastor of Riverside Church in Manhattan) that “every good sermon begins in Jerusalem and ends in New York, or begins in New York and ends in Jerusalem.” It’s a code for being relevant. Start with the past and connect it to the present, or start with the present and tie it to the past. I have found that the latter works better, because when I start with the news or history, it is interesting, but the people are sitting there thinking, “how in the hell is she going to tie this all together?”

Then, when the light bulbs go off in their heads as to what dog you’re walking, you’re going to get one of three reactions. The first are smiles and excitement like they’ve gotten to the part in a novel where they can see the plot twist at the end. People have known these stories for years, just not necessarily new ideas on them unless their pastors are really digging into different interpretations/criticisms.

The second is tears, because sometimes the message really drives home something powerful going on in their own lives What I know for SureTM is that if you touch a nerve, people will say “it’s like you were only speaking to me.” “How did you know that’s exactly the message I needed to hear today?” In today’s lingo, I have no doubt that as I was shaking hands at the back, at least one person would say, “you didn’t have to attack me like that.”

It’s the point of church to begin with- to have community when those things come up for you…… which is why we had several atheist members at bridgeport and as far as I know, we still do. They don’t have to believe in God to believe in social justice.

The third reaction is raucous laughter, because I have to make sure everyone is still awake. If nothing else, I do two things to make sure even those people get something out of it……. the ones who are weaving in and out, lost in their own thoughts and then paying more attention because they didn’t know why everyone else was laughing….. I also make sure there’s a soundbite. I don’t leave it there, though. I don’t sum up scripture in, what is it for Sorkin? 11 words?

No, I find a way to have several illustrations that all tie back to that one line, so even if people can’t remember the entire sermon, they’ll definitely remember the tl;dr.

However, I haven’t been asked to preach in a very long time, so now my foray into an intelligence operation of Biblical proportions, it would just be a theological essay- as I am wont to do even while telling you about a million other things. I’m just not there enough to really tie a point together like I really want to, because the best way to knit a sweater in a story is detail, the immersive experience of playing a video game, reading a novel, or watching TV. The difference is that it’s all self-help based in reality, not “grandfather in the sky.” Divinity is too close for that.

I hope that, as in past entries, I’m making it clear that theology is one of my special interests, not that it has to be yours. I’ve said it before, but I accept everyone. I don’t care if you’re an atheist or not. I’m trying to impart lessons to an international audience, and Biblical references are something that connects a lot of the world. However, I don’t use Biblical illustrations for everything because it’s not the only way to use a world language as the world gets closer through the same cultural media. The internet and VPNs have changed the way we watch media, both here and abroad. I love setting my VPN to Canada or Australia when my browser will allow me to do that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It depends. It always works on my desktop, it sometimes works in the app.

And sometimes, those illustrations work better than Biblical ones because the Bible is ancient and pop culture is happening right now. There are so many sci-fi TV shows/movies that I think represent the same self-improvement I use in Christianity by quoting nearly anything. I wasn’t kidding when I said I quoted Snoop Dogg in a sermon. My friend Kina was going to be there, and she was in a band called “Twisted Whistle” that did an acoustic version of “Gin and Juice,” like The Gourds except in four part harmony.

So, I knew I could make her smile if I worked it into my sermon, and it just so happened that the lectionary couldn’t have been more perfect. The Psalm that day was particularly beautiful, so, I started with telling everyone that the Psalms were written like poetry, and, like all Biblical stories, have had music set to them for centuries because setting a tune to the words is what helped people remember them before they could write. Then, I said that I knew it worked, because I knew all the words to “Gin and Juice” because Kina had finally slowed it down enough I could understand the lyrics. I got a little closer to the mic, and I sang Kina’s bluegrass version of the very first line, which is the only one I *could* sing in church……..

Then, I told my mother’s favorite memory of her mother. In the end, she had very bad dementia. She could hardly remember a thing, but tears rolled down my mother’s face when a music therapist got her to sing “Jesus Loves Me.” My mother had never heard her mother sing before, but showing again that theology is imparted through music.

Then, I sang the first line of the Psalm from the Episcopal setting I’d learned years ago……. from memory.

So, after establishing how it was finally written down, I explained the context around why it was written the way it was written. No one will remember that part of it because it was just color commentary However, I’m going to bet that if you know any of the songs I’ve mentioned, you started singing them, too. I sang the first line of the Episcopal setting to close as well, because you can get people to remember things if you set them to music….. or so I’ve been told. 😉

The quadratic equation is “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

What “Plotting by Notting” means is that I am taking in a fire hose amount of information when I look at other stories, no matter what form they’re in. Even when it looks like I’m not wiring and I’m just sitting there or gaming, I am still lost in my own head, trying to figure out how this or that plot device will work for me in the future. I have so much energy for writing, though, that the “notting” part takes me a while to det to because it’s so far down on the list of priorities.

The last author that really got me hooked in a way that I couldn’t let go until I’d finished the last in the series (at the time) was Diana Gabaldon. It took me three or four tries to get into Outlander, but by Dragonfly in Amber I was reading a thousand pages in two days. It was insane how fast I inhaled it.”Go Tell the Bees” is my least favorite because Gabaldon told us we’d get answers to questions we’d had since book one, and we didn’t……. and this is supposedly the last book. In a lot of ways, it was a “choose your own adventure” ending…. or, “Monty Python and Quest for the Holy Grail,” I think there’s more story to be told, but no one asked me. I’m sure that there’s fan fiction that addresses a lot of my questions, but I don’t want to wade through the D papers to find an A. I don’t have that kind of time.

What I’ve found with my “Words are Hard” fiction prompts is that I’m pretty good at short story ideas, but there comes a point quickly where I say, “this is as good as it gets.” I think this comes from my father’s preaching advice……. “when you run out of things to say, stop talking.”

I don’t spend time fleshing anything out more than that, because these are training exercises…. or at least, that’s how I see them. I am walking before I run….. this is “couch to 5K.”

Oh, and I almost forgot. Here’s the intro to Oblivion, with Patrick Stewart. As soon as he stops speaking, one of my favorite brass intros in any orchestral starts, called “Reign of the Septims.” This is the kind of music that makes me glad game soundtracks are available so I don’t have to play to enjoy the symphony and/or choir. Even if you don’t play video games, you’ll enjoy this:

Making Connections

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I was just thinking about how I said that the Bible was an ancient blog at best, because there is no argument for God. There is an argument over people’s reactions to God. My ruminations are just as important as theirs because reaction to the divine is individual. You talk about how it influences your life, and it either attracts or repels people upon execution. I hope I act like I’m in touch with my divinity, and lead them to believe that it guides me in a way that atheists would never find offensive. That’s because most atheists don’t actually hate God. They hate what Christianity has become and they’re mad af about it because we keep forcing something down their throats that they’ve thought about for years and decided enough is enough. White supremacy Jesus can only be justified so much.

It would be so much more if Christians hadn’t been overtaken by the Republican party that their set of beliefs is the first thing that comes up in an atheist’s mind. There’s sometimes no room for me in that crowd, because they don’t believe I exist. It’s my job to just keep being me and not judging anyone for anything. Anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t really listening. Zac is. He gets to stay. 😉 All atheists who aren’t offended I’m not are welcome. I love debates between Christopher Hitchens and Rowan Williams. I think he would have loved Michael Curry as well.

Michael Curry added a depth to the Anglican church that they didn’t even know they needed, even after electing Katherine Jefferts Shori as bishop. That was important, but being black is unique in a singular way. White people do not support the black perspective as much as they should, but when they did, Michael Curry brought James Cone with him. Liberation theology hits different, and it is one thing to always preach to a black audience. He got a chance to direct that message exactly where it needed to go. He preached one of the most famous sermons in the entire world- Harry and Megan’s wedding. He said that we could set the world on fire with love if we only tapped into it.

I’m trying to explore what’s stopping me. I have a talent for self destructing. It’s brilliant, really. It’s also not all my fault as I am set up to fail six ways from Sunday. I am learning how to deal with my limitations realistically instead of having the pipe dream of getting better as a cook. There are things I just cannot do that able-bodied people can. It didn’t work out. Doesn’t mean I can’t 100% miss the thing that makes me the happiest in life.

Just like Anthony Bourdain (I know people call him Tony, but he said once that he only likes it when his friends call him that), writing is the thing I love most in the world that can give me the highs and lows of cooking. Just like him, intelligence and cooking are woven together, his in fiction. Mine is real in the sense that I write about my life and I’ve taken the time to listen to Zac and really take in what he’s saying because I’ve been interested in it since childhood, everything I didn’t get to ask my great uncle because he was taken from us when I was too young to understand. And he might not have been taken from us the way it went down, but no one will ever know. It just adds to the mystery, the legend in my family. I could get the public version through a FOIA request, but I don’t think I want to know what really happened. I’ll find it on my own eventually if I keep researching the era of C/DIA I’m studying for dialogue and accounts of real events.

It’s not that the people of the Bible hold authority over our lives. It’s to show that a group of people trying to write a story can succeed. Christians continue to write that story, but more of us write it like we’re in it for ourselves rather than our betterment in order to be in community. You cannot take on more than you can handle, and you cannot expect everyone to catch you all the time. Recognize the hell out of the people who do, because they’re the ones to which you owe the biggest honors and favors.

If you don’t act like a connection matters, it won’t- depending on your tolerance for not being able to fix a problem. Sometimes your rope is very short and you have to apologize for being quick to jump to conclusions. Sometimes it’s enormous because it takes time for a problem to simmer to the surface. The honeymoon phase of any relationship is addicting. Bromance is almost as instantaneous as it was in Stepbrothers. Because of this, it’s really hard to break into a group of guy friends and feel like a regular. That’s because they have five friends from fifth grade so you’ll be FNG until you die. 😉

I’m the same way. I value time and effort. That’s why I value input so much. When I talk about my response to God, you can talk back because I speak in a universal language to express something ineffable (thanks, Neil). Everything comes down to secular humanism, because no one has a lock on what God is or isn’t, but everyone knows how they feel in the Blue Ridge mountains or on a plane with the possibility of going down. I am betting that Zac can describe this fear more than most because I cannot imagine the feeling of being trapped on a ship or a sub during conflict. Even if you love it normally, you’re going to react like a goalie. Most of the time, the play is on the other end of the pitch, but when it comes down to you, it really, really counts. Being a goalie can actually come down to 89:53 of nothing followed by a stunning amount of terror.

It was getting quiet in here, so I put on my latest mindworm. It’s jazz, “RFK in the Land of Apartheid” by Jason Moran and the Bandwagon. It’s inspiring because it’s mathematically complicated, but I’ve been listening to it on repeat for years to get it out of the way. Now the bass is a life blood.

It is another thing that puts me in the correct frame to write because I also hear people dealing with white people Jesus. Apartheid Jesus wrecked South Africa. Every time we talk about it, we reinforce why that stuff should never happen again. Americans need to face the reality that all minorities fear being put under that kind of system. Hopefully it will never be a dictator who think white lives matter just a little bit more. A lot of Americans have proved that’s what they’re looking for in a leader, and it’s our right and responsibility to write it down, but not to add to the fire. To be there as a witness. People are doing it with their cameras, I choose to do it in words.

You cannot always feel a divine presence, but it’s up to you to nurture it in the way you know best. It’s not that atheists don’t experience those feelings of wonder. They just don’t attribute it to God because they don’t see that thread of divinity that comes with acknowledging someone’s humanity. They see it mostly as a grandfather in the sky, because that’s what the church has represented for thousands of years. I, like they do, see morals and relativity through the lens of other people’s behavior. I, like Arundati Roy’s brilliant title, believe in the God of Small Things.

I choose to correlate that to the message in the book of Acts, that resurrection happens in the middle of the mess, or in this case, when you least expect it. It takes work to get down to the smallest part of yourself, not just to be able to acknowledge your feelings but to tell another person as well. Just like the historical Jesus, the message is here if you want it. I’m just never going to say that your way of viewing the divine is invalid and that it’ll land you in hell. I don’t even know whether I’m going or not and I am nowhere near 94% correct as to how God works. Neither were the people in the Bible.

Old Testament is all of us on a bad day. New Testament is all of us on a good day apologizing for it. Feeling saved by God/Jesus is the same feeling as being saved by friends or family when you’re in the shit. God is not the grandfather in the sky. It’s the audience I talk to when I’m alone, because especially when I’m writing here, I can’t be sure that God is listening, but I can be sure that you are.

It also helps my friends understand me better because they see me talking about both them and others when I can’t be sure they’re listening or care. They, in effect, see the way I talk about them behind their backs, but not for malice. Because both good and bad reactions are valid. It takes work to resolve a conflict without either party feeling slighted. Depending on who’s in office, we’re better at it or worse. Some administrations, frankly, just like the dollar signs that come with being pro-war and don’t want to be smart about intelligence keeping conflict down because it’s “good for the economy.” Whose, exactly?

Because when we stop thinking as a worldwide people instead of Americans first, we open the door to being oppressors instead of support police. We end up staying longer than we need because we’re making good money. Who cares what it does to them? And then when their countries have been ransacked, we pull a lot of racist bullshit when we have plenty of room. There are even states that are basically empty.

The huge problem we have in Texas is that when Greg Abbot sends a busload of people to Washington, his supporters cheer. He keeps doing it whether it’s legal or not because it’s popular. You can’t stop that problem from this end without federal intervention.

The problem is twofold. The first is that people don’t actually come together to fix the problem. They sort of kick the can down the road rather than hiring enough people to handle that kind of influx. Meanwhile, if you don’t know anyone here, you could get a higher priority if you’re willing to settle where we put you. That way, we have more infrastructure and tax base in places that need it to survive.

No requirement to stay, of course. Just that it might give you a better chance if you were willing to live in a smaller city.

We fail ourselves by telling us that we are so much better apart than together. Being apart creates separation from God, because we make God in our own image. If people are displeased by us, so is the divine. It’s the only thing that can inspire true change in behavior, because you have to want change to come and you cannot process it properly without looking at it from a third person perspective. It doesn’t matter to me whether people have access to that concept through running or prayer. It’s not the semantics, it’s the protein.

Speaking of which, I need some.

It’s a connection I made.

In More Ways Than One

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever been camping?

My church had a campout on Mt. St. Helen’s so yes. I have camped. I hope it’s the last time until I find a place that’s warmer. It was great during the day. I froze my ass off every night. To her credit, Kari tried. She gave me a sleeping bag that was rated -20. It says more about me than it does about the sleeping bag, because my body temperature didn’t get high enough to provide the insulation and that’s on me.

Therefore, I have nothing against camping, per se. I don’t mind being dirty at all. It’s just that I’ve never been able to sleep outside without massive amounts of bedding. Which I have at home. In my bed. In a house.

Even my coldest outing wasn’t as bad as camping out in my mind tends to be every day. That’s because in order to maintain the good, I have to look at the bad. I have to go back and read what I’ve written so that I understand the context in which it was written and what I’ve actually written down…. and I can only go back long enough before the context fails, and then I can see if an idea is local or global. Am I ranting, or is it a problem that lots of other people deal with? Is it my bipolar spinning out? I have to make sure it’s not that, because it’s the kind of mood and behavior that isolates people. In a lot of ways, I camp out in my mind to make sure my story is consistent, and letting my emotions evolve day by day. The facts are consistent. It’s how I “treat myself,” and I’m delighted by that little double entendre.

When I see what my behavior is doing to people, I can look at others and see if my problem reads universal or personal. I can separate reactions from responses. I can separate their childhood shit from their adult behavior because I do it to mine all the time, comparing against the heuristics of all the human behavior I’ve seen my whole life. I had a platform to be able to see down, but I was looking up. My congregation has been teaching me to be a better human since I was born, both in learning to lead and singing in the choir.

The most disturbing thing I’ve ever thought is that if the woman who emotionally abused me had stayed, I might have been the pastor of the church. That she would have made me into her partner, and I mean the one she has now. If you look at who I am and who she is, it’s a fucking jump scare. She didn’t pick a person, she picked a pattern.

I could have turned into an arrogant asshole, but I didn’t. It probably wasn’t how she came across to her congregation, because when you’re already in love with yourself, you have the ability to lead and it’s whether you like it or not how the ones around you are treated. If you need to feel powerful because you feel powerless, you’ll take it from people who you deem inferior to you…. according to your own personal ranking system. Nature does not deal in absolutes.

I would like to think that I would have remained myself, and realistic about the fact that it was just the hand I was dealt. I don’t know what I would have done had I actually taken on pastoring a church… but here’s what I wouldn’t have done. I wouldn’t have made everything dependent on my mood and behavior so that pleasing me was a guessing game…. because microaggressions don’t lie. If someone picks it up, they won’t believe your words for a second because the energy is off. Your words and behavior don’t match. That way, other fixer/pleasers don’t feel like they’re not getting recognition, because it’s the easiest and kindest way to let them know they matter…. because they do. To treat them as anything else is crazy and won’t win you any points. If you have turf wars because you can’t delegate, it’s the beginning of the end because no one is empowered except you. Let your board feel like they’re failures long enough and berate them when they complain, and then either they’ll replace you or you’ll throw a fit and go tell them to fuck off and fire yourself. Picking up your toys and going home is never a good look, and you’ll burn down your legacy in any church at all. It was a difficult thing to stand in the flames because I had bought tickets to the show for 20 years.

No one will ever win an argument by thinking they’re always right. But let’s be real. In a congregational church, you have a boss… and the boss is the equivalent of an Episcopal vestry. In a large denomination, you have a bishop, and the conference is responsible for conflict resolution because they’ve SENT you to a church instead of you applying for the job. If you’re not humble enough to work by committee, it’s a losing argument in the congregational church. The board’s general problem is thinking they’re smarter than the pastor, and it makes the pastor feel like “if you wanted to lead the church yourselves, why did you ask for someone with a Master’s and treat them like crap?” Doesn’t expertise count for anything? It’s a give and take, a spectrum just like whether there’s a Bible or not, a God or not. It takes a tremendous amount of vulnerability on both sides, and torture when either can’t do it. The pastor isn’t always right, and neither is the committee. They will repel and attract for the entire length of their stay, and it very much depends on whether you were on a committee or not as to how you feel the church is being run. Only the people in the room know what happened.

So if you are in a church, and someone tells you the pastor did something or another, have empathy for all this. Listen objectively, and don’t let them get away with anything, either. It keeps both parties honest to hear the ways they can help each other so their future keeps getting brighter. The same things that work with leaders and groups work in marriages. People in homosexual relationships know this better than anyone else, because marriage between a man and a woman comes with a very strict power dynamic. Letting your penis inside something is good, being vulnerable enough to give that power to your partner is bad….. and leads straight men to treat gay men like they’re sinning. Not because they’re gay…. because they’re vulnerable and men don’t do that.

Straight women don’t get their glory because straight men won’t switch hit. They know it will change the power dynamic and they just don’t want to do it. That’s because most of the time, it’s the only power they’ve got. They’ll do everything from raping women and children to pretending it’s not sex with men if they’re on top. That way, one person thinks they’re in a relationship and one doesn’t. It is……. problematic. I remember getting dicked around by a straight girl that way. I knew I was an experiment…. the next morning. Speaking about not looking at microaggressions… she was a walking time bomb.

It was just a coincidence that I started hanging out with her ex later, because she’d already left my life for good. That didn’t stop her from calling my answering machine and saying that Kat had been abused and listed all the ways in which it happened. That time, Kat was in the room where it happened. It filled me with love for her that I was able to hold her while she cried about it, to say to her honestly and completely that I loved her and that nothing her friend had said made any different. Her friend had outed her about something that I would never have wanted to hear about her unless she told me, but it did give me the opportunity to be even more loving than I could have been because we started the relationship both knowing everything about everything and nothing was holding us back from honesty. That’s why I called the police when the ex showed up at our house unannounced and Kat said she didn’t want to talk to her and stood her ground. The ex wouldn’t leave and broke our screen door. Whether that was on purpose or by accident is a non-issue. It happened, and facts are facts.

Being me is knowing that I’ve also felt like her, but never done anything to that degree in my life. Thinking is free. Saying something is optional. I try to wish things into being, and work toward it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not human. It doesn’t mean my words come out right all the time so that people never misunderstand anything because I’m so great. It depends on how much they desire to understand that makes listening to me get easier. That’s because the less I need to process something, the less you’ll hear about it unless something pops up suddenly that connects to something in the past………

Probably because I’m camped out in my mind.

Sermon for Easter Year A

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Listen to Stories That Stick by Leslie D. Lanagan on #SoundCloud

Talking it Out by Writing

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

What do you wish you could do more every day?

This might sound silly, but I’d like to be able to talk more. Except I hate the phone. And video calls. Just text me when you’re outside.

I feel this way because I’m often left to my own devices as if I live alone, but I don’t. I have five housemates, but I rarely talk to them because “I’m busy.” It’s not that they’re bad people. I’m just that introverted. I’m close enough to them that I could go to them if I needed something and they can come to me, but it’s not girl talk and pillow fights around here. We’re old. Please leave by nine.

But the pendulum has moved too far to the introverted extreme and I’m trying to break out of it. Talking to this audience has helped, because I get to relate to everyone in a different way. I have a lot in common with people like Oprah, because she’s as introverted as they come unless the stage lights are on. That’s me to a T, it’s just that my platform is both bigger and smaller now. As Oprah has told me over and over in my head, “you have a platform. Use it.” What she said was better, but you’ll have to look it up. It’s in the last “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” where it’s just her, the audience, and a camera.

My stage presence is easy because I can talk to one person or a thousand, and have trouble with two or three at the same time. I promise that if you look up “stage presence,” preacher’s kid is in there somewhere. No one saw the real me for years after PK was no longer applicable. It’s not because anyone didn’t want to see me. I didn’t want to be seen. I have gone to great lengths to protect my writing time and my solitude, but “everything in moderation, including moderation.”

I don’t think my introversion is due to lack of confidence in myself, although that’s part of it. I cover up large insecurities with a lot of laughter and outlandish language to throw people off the real story. People are drawn toward me because they *only* know me in show mode, which I call Leslie Lanagan, trademark. I highly doubt that many people like leslie, because so few people have ever met her.

If people take the time to get to know me, then I’ll drop the funny. If you manage to make it past that, I’ll tell you some of my stories that really aren’t hilarious. Not all of them, still have to keep a bit of mystery. I have decided that I do not need to be a fortress, however. That it’s okay to open my heart a little bigger, and okay to walk away when the relationship reaches its natural conclusion. Sometimes, it’s because one or both of us isn’t getting what we need. Sometimes it’s death. Sometimes it’s because people in the inner circle disappear and reappear years later, like The War Daniel. Relationships begin and end with no rhyme or reason if we’re looking at all relationships, not just the one you have with your partner. People come and go, let them.

That being said, it’s also okay to walk away when your needs aren’t being met and your concerns fall on deaf ears. No one is trying to hear there’s a problem, even when it’s necessary to work them through. It’s not comfortable to say “we have a problem.” If it was, relationships wouldn’t end. All I’m saying is that I need my armor to come down so that I can be uncomfortable. Sit in it. Memorize why. Because if the problem is serious enough, you need to work out whether you can survive the storm…. And not wanting to wade in the water is a valid answer. What’s that thing Jesus does? Wipe the dirt of his shoulder?

Oh, wait. I think that’s Jay-Z.

With Jesus, it was the sandals. If someone doesn’t agree with you, don’t spend time arguing. Just let them be them and walk away. It’s not an excuse to be a dick to everyone. It’s that your life has a direction, and only you know it. You ask people to come with you, and keep the ones who do. My direction is always self-reflection, but it’s not because I’m all that and a bag of chips. I just understand more about people in general when I look at what I’m doing, especially since I have experience speaking to and connecting with large groups of people at once. Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten has come from people reflecting on my own writing/preaching, because constructive criticism is always welcome. I did not love it when someone told me my skirt was too short for a woman preacher.

Get bent. Seriously? I spent this monstrous amount of work time on just this one thing alone and all you noticed was my skirt?

But that’s what you say in your head. Outwardly, it’s “thank you for coming.”

And it’s not because I’m less Christ-like. It’s that if you want me to treat you with respect, don’t start the conversation with something irrelevant and mean-spirited. It’s really hard to earn my disrespect, but that’ll do it. Jesus would have shit a brick if people focused on his clothes instead of his message. Why should I be cool with it?

Especially since no one would have noticed Jesus’s clothes because he’s male, so there’s that.

I am a normal human with all the flaws and failures therein. Therefore, I am allowed the same range of emotions as the people who come to hear me. Of course it doesn’t sound Christlike to say “get bent,” but it’s not any better if the preacher is female and you act like a mean girl.

For the record, I was wearing a red suit. My skirt was maybe an inch and a half above my knee. I was also wearing heels, so you know that went well for me, too. Eyeroll.

In Portland, I preached in jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater or a fleece. When I could move better, I could think faster. Making connections off the cuff became easier because I could think faster than I could talk. So while the words are streaming past, you’re only seeing about a tenth of my flow.

Or is that Jay-Z?

Flow for rappers and flow for preachers is very much the same, especially in a rap battle where you’re trying to come up with spontaneous verse. It’s tying scripture to current events, all kinds of media, etc.

Here’s the two best pieces of speaking advice I’ve ever gotten, one for preaching, one for speaking in general.

  • Every good sermon starts in New York and ends in Jerusalem, or starts in Jerusalem and ends in New York.
  • When you run out of things to say, stop talking.

To clarify, start with current events and end in scripture, or start with scripture and end in current events. Make the text come alive. The Bible is a living document, changing as new forms of criticism emerge. Feminist theology. Liberation theology. Queer theology.

Queer. Theology. I never thought I’d see those two words together in my lifetime. I was just making it up as I went along.

“Stop talking” means “take all the filler out,” or as my grandfather says, “write it tight.” If it cuts your sermon down, fine. People will remember a five minute sermon with two or three great lines far easier than they’ll remember a complete mess of a half hour. Bet. Don’t just preach for a half hour because you think that’s what’s expected of you. If you’re a really bad speaker, it then becomes a hostage situation.

If you’re actually interested in theology, I have a sermons page where you can look at some of the ones for which I have a manuscript. There are several times that I’ve wished that I’d written a manuscript because people asked me for a copy, and it was completely off the cuff. There is one sermon in particular that went over extraordinarily well and now there’s no evidence it ever happened. And, of course, I would rather kick myself that I didn’t think about whether I’d want to save anything for later instead of the joy of someone asking for a copy because it actually meant something to them.

Maybe I should have talked to someone.

Sacred Ground

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday contained a mountaintop experience for me. I experienced a high that I hadn’t felt in years, and I am so grateful. It is carrying me through the rest of my week, as mountaintop experiences are wont to do.

Last week, my old church in Portland announced that they were going to be livestreaming from Facebook and Zoom. Because Zoom has a native Linux client, I downloaded it and got it running. At the appointed time, I logged in. Instantaneously, I was connected to faces I’ve looked to for love for almost two decades. I was reminded of the days when I was preaching, the days when I showed up for church so low that everyone couldn’t help but notice, and the days when a hug from them meant more than anything in the world. And, as a Virgo (an earth sign), I am deeply tied to setting.

Looking at the sanctuary made me flood out, and I looked at the ceiling so I could stop crying. Right in front of me was the banner Sash and Lisa made for our performance of John Rutter’s Requiem, s-l640intense colors and “Out of the Deep” written in their own “font.” It was a blessing remembering the day I truly became a singer, instead of a trumpet player who faked it. I was the soprano soloist for the Pie Jesu movement, and I don’t think I would have gotten the chance to spread my wings anywhere else… as was the chance to pinch hit for the pastor.

I was lucky in that my very first sermon ever was well-received, so I got to preach more. I wasn’t always the best at it, but when I was on, I was unstoppable.

The service started and the people connected to Zoom weren’t shy about singing, and I heard voices I hadn’t heard since I moved away in 2013. It was exactly what I’d hoped would happen… that I would find myself wanting to go to church for the first time since my mother died, focusing on what was mine there instead of what had been my mother’s domain. I was not so wrapped up in grief that I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t feel comforted, couldn’t breathe…….. Waiting for the service to begin was one of the great Shatner ellipses of my life, and I was changed by it…………………………

God and I have always had a tight relationship, but church and I have been at odds. When I was little, my mother was everything in the church, from choir member to accompanist to children’s choir director. There was nowhere I could look that didn’t feel like a ghost rising, and I couldn’t smile. I couldn’t feel my own joy at everything I’d accomplished on my own that didn’t have anything to do with her. I think it was because I wasn’t in my element. I hadn’t lived in Silver Spring very long, so I didn’t have a connection that reached two decades down and had the ability to grab my hand.

I cried quietly, tears running down my face when Karen read poetry, Wendy sang, and Stacey’s mic was hot in the chatroom. I also laughed with delight, the kind of laugh that lights up your whole face and you can feel it with your whole body.

I realized afterward that it was also important that I was in my own room, with no one else to witness what was happening to me as I fell apart- and my congregation put me back together. I didn’t have to feel shy about anything, didn’t have to feel embarrassed. I could take it all in, letting the power of the Holy Sprit run unimpeded.

I do not think I am finished with this particular journey, but it was a step down on sacred ground.

Sermon for Proper 14, Year A: Choppy Waters

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Matthew 14:22-7

It’s hard to imagine looking at the news this week and not feel the choppiness of the water surrounding our boats. We pray for all those affected by the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, particularly the family of the woman who died and those injured. We pray for all those at University of Virginia and the neighboring schools who are watching in horror.

We pray for Guam, who has been directly threatened by Kim Jong Un. We pray for a president who has no experience in this type situation, and may encourage violence rather than squash it.

Prayer is about hope, faith, and love. We may not be able to directly calm the waters around us, but we can abate the hurricanes inside us, emotions rising that we may not have felt before because for the young, they are walking in new territory… while older Americans remember the white supremacy violence and nuclear threats of the 1960’s, and have to relive that trauma.

Today’s Gospel reading is about Jesus needing rest and relaxation after preaching to the crowds and having them flock toward him, overwhelming the calm inside him and needing to retreat to recover. While he is gone, a storm brews on the Sea of Galilee (now known as Lake Kinneret), and Jesus cuts his time away short to run to the shore and help them.

It is essential to remember that Jesus is not doing anything out of the ordinary, and is in fact, a part of his personality. Jesus is doing what he always does, which is to help people in need. When the Disciples see him walk out onto the water, they are terrified. Some people translate this literally, that he could walk on water. However, from the Greek, it is unclear whether this is what happened. In verse 25, it is epi ten thalassan, which can equally mean over the sea and towards the sea. In verse 26, it is epi tës thalassës, which can mean on the sea or at the seashore. Therefore, it is hard to tell whether the Disciples thought they’d seen a ghost because he was walking on water toward them, or whether he just sneaked up behind them and they jumped out of their skin. Remember, he was away and unexpected.

The surprise regardless of what you believe happened is that Jesus shows up in their hour of fear and need of reassurance. Whether the storm blew over on its own, or whether Jesus personally calmed the waves is of no consequence. As  Rev. Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister in addition to his PBS presence, put it, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.

When we look around at the choppy waters surrounding our own boats, let us not focus on the water. Let us focus on the people who are willing to drop whatever they’re doing to rush in and help us in our own hours of need.

There is no better metaphor for our current situation than Operation Dynamo, the Dunkirk rescue mission during WWII in which private sailors volunteered to drop everything they were doing, including fishermen who would lose wages, to go and rescue soldiers in France and bring them back to British shores, because the destroyers could not reach shallow water. Without even thinking about it, they refused to focus on the choppy water, but on the people in need. People who never signed up for military service endured gunfire and bombs, but ignored the threat in favor of “keeping calm and carrying on.”

It has become a trite saying, but when you really ask yourself, “what would Jesus do?,” this is it. This is the spirit of Christ working through enormous chaos, calming the water for the soldiers who saw the rescue boats coming. Just like the Disciples surprised by Jesus, they had no idea that the small crafts were coming. Some were scattered among different ships, and others were swimming for their lives.

Even if the weather was still bad, the storms that raged within the soldiers as they knew they were facing almost certain death from German fire or hypothermia were calmed. The spirit of Christ walked on the water, to the water, in the water.

When the storm rages within you, know that someone is coming. It might be the spirit of Christ that lives in you, or it might be the spirit of Christ that lives within someone else, ready to drop anything to come and help you in your own hour of need.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

Sermon for Proper 10, Year A: Seeds and Stems

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

Sperm is often called “seed,” especially in the Bible. Therefore, every single one of us starts out as a seed, and when, joined with an egg, takes root in the womb and stems outward. A lot of our personality is created when seeds become stems  and stems become branches and branches become the mature tree… a new person, ready to take on the world.

But have you ever stopped to wonder how the DNA handed down to you affects the type of roots you create? What kind of seed you might be? Do you consistently seek out people who you deem “in the same garden?”

The types of seeds that Jesus is talking about directly relate to personalities in people, and he says so directly when he’s explaining what he just said. This is because often, when Jesus uses an analogy while preaching, and even in just talking to his disciples, what he receives is a series of dumb looks.

This is not unusual even today, because without repetitive explanation, people get lost in their own minds and now have no idea what you’re saying. The best preaching advice I’ve ever gotten is, “first, you tell them. Next, you tell them again. Then you tell them again.” Of course, you use different illustrations, but they’re all the same point.

When people are firmly planted in their pews, completely tracking with you, they may not get the idea of repetition. People who are not often need it. As a preacher, I am competing with the personal stories that come up for the people listening, what to have for lunch, and, especially in Portland, a sunny day.

It’s the difference between how the seeds are planted, and what kind of personalities they create.

We can even expand past the personal to the local church. Are you invested with deep roots, or did your mother make you come? It’s at this point that we have to ask ourselves “are we the 30, the 60, or the 100-fold kind of church?”

What kind of church ARE we?

Are we so shallow in our commitment that a bird could swallow us up? That it would take so little to make us disband? We have nourished the bird, but have failed ourselves in a “give a man a fish” kind of way. We’ve sustained, for a moment, one being… and walked away. The gospel competes with the world, and loses… badly.

Have we planted ourselves on rocky soil, reaching for the sun? The best analogy I can think for this kind of church are those that initially are so gung ho that they over-commit, and six or 12 months later, leave, never to return… because it’s just so much work. Few can let go and listen because the running tab of things to do is so long, particularly for “the Marthas…” who place very little importance on the phrase don’t just do something, sit there.

Initial excitement in its exuberance is a wonderful thing, but it has to be watered carefully, as not to burn or drown. There is generally little room to add new crops, because people are already so mired between committees and choirs and teaching Sunday School and laying out vestments and ALL THE THINGS that new shoots spring up, and there’s no one with enough sunlight left to tend to them. The gospel just gets in the way of the running to-do list with no respite.

Churches with deep roots are not only self-sustaining, but have the ability to minister to others… and it’s a difference you can both see and feel. Deep roots mean there’s a group of people for each single thing, so that no one group has to do everything. The same 30 or 60 people are not the entire church, but just the choir or just a couple of committees. If you’ve ever been to a really small church, you know that there are at least ten people who are on every committee and in the choir, and have to say “no more.” Not out of malice, out of exhaustion. There are churches with deep roots who have the ability to create a committee just to shake new people’s hands as they come in the door, and that is their only function. There is enough room between rows, enough nutrients for everyone, that the seeds become stems and the stems become branches and the branches become the mature tree. The gospel is not working at us, but through us. We are able to welcome the stranger, give to the poor, fight racial inequality and GLBTQI rights… we have the ability to widen the net, teaching others to fish as we go.

Which invariably leads to the question of what kind of world we want to be.

For a lot of people, it’s starting to feel like being a 100-fold seed in a 30-fold world. But here’s the catch… it’s not a 30-fold seed world. Perception is not reality. There are enough people to do everything, enough people to be able to pick which causes to support, which battles to fight… and which governments need resistance. Resistance is not futile, it’s its own kind of protest.

Hundred-fold people create hundred-fold churches which give the individual a chance to grow into a community. So many people can and will get involved, but are overwhelmed when it comes to how to “jump in.” They are the hope and the future as to how a 30-fold seed can find its way from feeding one being to all of them.

This is where you are issued an invitation, in turn to give one. In my own life, I have never once had success with inviting someone to come with me to church. I have had success with showing them who I am and to whom I belong. For instance, I’ve invited friends to march with me in the Pride parade along with my church group…. or go to a political rally. Wide-eyed, they look at me as if to say, your church does THAT?

Of course. In a church with deep roots, the plants grow toward the sky, because the deeper the support system, the easier it is to say…

Jesus Has Left the Building.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces