Pack Sunscreen

Today's reflection is from The Rev. Emily Schwartz Crouch, Associate Rector at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY.

When I was first approached about participating in #Lentunedited, I wasn’t sure what to think.  Like many clergy, it was the week before Ash Wednesday and I was fully aware of how underprepared I was for Lent.  The thought of adding one more thing to my plate, or giving up something, sounded like a terrible idea.  Because when in my life has giving up chocolate brought me closer to God?

Since giving up meat, desserts and wine sounded like a terrible idea during Lent, I decided to take the challenge and post about my what my life really looks like;  imperfections and all.  Like many of us, I edit the parts I want people to see.  I say it’s because I’m a private person (which is partly true), but beneath this is a fear of being exposed.  As a recovering perfectionist, letting people see the messy, ugly, lazy, crazy and passionate parts of my life help me to take myself less seriously. My belief (or what I want to believe) is that God meets us in the messiness of life.

So far I’ve posted something everyday.  Some days it’s a picture of what our house looks like (think lots of dog hair, cracker crumbs and a ridiculous number of  dirty coffee mugs),  other days I post about my fears and anxieties.  I posted about my brother’s death and the sadness that emerges when I read my daughter his books.  And I can’t forget joy—I have lots of this too.

As I preached this morning I found myself led to the image in John 3 where Jesus calls us to become children of light. Do we stay in the dark because we feel we have something to hide? I think we stay hidden because we are afraid and feel nobody else can possibly understand what we are going through.  When we stay in the dark with our secrets, our fears and our perfection we miss out on connection.  We miss out on the chance to be fully alive.  Jesus became vulnerable by becoming human.  For us to become vulnerable, we must also be willing to risk being exposed.

During this Lent, I have felt exposed.  This has been a good thing.  I have been amazed by the grace and courage of those who have responded to my posts.   How becoming vulnerable has connected me more deeply to those I care about and to those I didn’t know before.  I am grateful.  But I am also more emotional and more tender.  Sometimes I need to squint in the light, even though the sun feels good.

May you have a blessed and Holy Lent; a Lent that calls you into the wilderness of vulnerability.  Pack sunscreen, for it’s hard to know exactly when the sun will shine.

Facebook Remembers

The day my brother, Ted, died about four months ago, I created a Facebook group to remember him. I asked friends and family to join the group and share their remembrances . The response was huge and turned out to be one of the my biggest sources of comfort in those tender early days.

The group is still active, and now I find myself posting on it when I find a video, a photo, or an article that Ted would have loved. I share it with the group. He can't enjoy it now, but the group can love it for him. The group, over 1000 strong, stands in for my big brother. They remember him for me. They re-member him. The put him back together. The group has become my brother in his absence and while he can never be brought back, this community stands in and makes him feel alive. All because of Facebook.

As Christians, we're supposed to do the same thing with Christ. We are to remember Christ and re-member him. We are to show the face of Christ to one another and to act as his body in the world. When we worship, when we pray, when we serve, when we reach out in compassion, we are becoming Christ's body--we are making him come alive again and again.

Acts of grace and compassion abound on Facebook. Between the photos of meals and snarky articles and top 10 celebrity fashion disasters, there are people showing the face of Christ on Facebook. It looks like comments of support and hugs sent from around the world. It is the offering of prayers for friends and strangers. It is support groups. It is people being real and making themselves vulnerable. It is event invites for volunteer opportunities. It is long lost friends reconnecting.

I never thought I would find myself making the argument that the face of Christ can be seen on Facebook. But under the layers of time consuming Buzzfeed articles and arguments about dress color, there is something real and beautiful going on here. I hope you see it too, and that you too will become the Facebook face of Christ for others to see.

Please Pray

Three years ago this week, while I was serving as Head Chaplain at Episcopal School of Jacksonville,  a teacher who had been fired came on campus with an AK-47 style gun while classes were in session. He murdered our Head of School and then turned the gun on himself. It was unspeakably terrible.

Within an hour, multiple news vans were parked at the entrance of the school and everyone was demanding to know what had happened. A board member, the Rev. Kate Moorehead, soon became the spokesperson for our tragedy. "We are shocked and saddened. Please pray for us." She must have said this refrain into microphones over 100 times in the first 24 hours.

"We are very sad. Please pray for us."

The journalists weren't satisfied with her remarks. They wanted to get the full scoop. They wanted all the details. One journalist sent a blanket email to all faculty and staff, asking how well we knew the shooter and if there were any signs. Others walked into the middle of teacher gatherings and teary assemblies. It was upsetting and angering, but they were doing their jobs. They wanted to report the big story.

But "We are very sad. Please pray for us," was the story. Of course there were many more details, but those belonged with us, not the world.

Lent United is an experiment in discerning what belongs to us and what belongs to the world. Some stories are ours alone. Some details are meant to be private. And some are meant to be shared and hopefully much good comes of it. But to be clear: we do not owe the public our stories. They are ours to share, not theirs to be demanded. We can choose when and how to share our traumas, our joys, our frustrations.

The most important part of the story that Kate told the press was this, "please pray." It was an invitation for the whole world to become a part of our healing. No, every last detail did not belong to the public. But our healing did.

This is where Lent Unedited can be powerful for those of us willing to share some or all of our stories. We can choose what to say and how to say it, but I offer for you to end your story with, "please pray for me." Knowing that you are being held up in prayer is extremely powerful, and, I believe, does actually heal.

Soliciting prayers is an act of bravery and vulnerability. It's the real thing. It's admitting that we can't endure the ups and downs of life without the support of others and without the grace of God. It's telling the story of the way we belong to each other. What a terrifying, beautiful story to tell.

We Are Simply A Mess

A guest post today from The Rev. Jason Emerson, Rector of Church of the Resurrection, Omaha, NE

I am enjoying the #lentunedited hash tag because it is simply true that we are all a mess.  No matter how much we might give the impression of having our “stuff” together, no matter how anal-retentive, organized, or fastidious we might be, we simply are a mess.  In some way, shape, or form we are cluttered materially, emotionally, or spiritually.  The #lentunedited hash tag is giving us a chance to practice telling the truth.  

Speaking the truth about ourselves to ourselves is a key practice of lent.  The Ash Wednesday liturgy is so thoroughly clear about just how broken we are the truth becomes unavoidable.  It is a beautiful thing because the truth sets us free as it invites us to mindfulness. 

It is so easy to go through the day on auto-pilot.  It is excessively simple to make the motions of contemporary life with never a thought.  Indeed the "powers that be" prefer us to be mindless.  It makes it easier for the fallen spiritual forces of this world to control us and maintain the status quo if we simply get out of bed, go to work, come home, "veg out" in front of the TV, go sleep, and repeat.  

On the other hand, when we are mindful; when we are aware of what we are doing; when we pay attention to our actions, we can then ask why we are acting and we can wonder if there are better ways to act, individually and communally.  

So how do you become mindful?  How do you wake up to the present moment?  The first step is to tell your self the truth.  You are a mess, and pretending to be otherwise is a lie.  However, you do not have to stay messed up.  Internal tidiness is possible.  Start by paying attention to your breathing.  If you think about it, breathing is the most mindless act you ever do.  It is reflexive, but it doesn't have to be.  When you pay attention to your breath, you become aware of your most mindless act.  Your awareness allows you to become more aware of your other less mindless acts.  It opens the door to being fully present in the moment. 

To become aware of your breath, simply breathe in through your nose for a slow count of four, then exhale through your mouth for a slow count of four.  Do this for three to five minutes.  At first your mind will run in 90 directions each one begging for your full attention.  That's okay, let it happen and keep returning to counting your breath.  Soon your thoughts will settle like those fake flakes in a snow globe and you'll be able to just breathe.  Mindfulness follows, then creativity, and then transformation. 

Fr. Jason Emerson+
Omaha, NE

022715

Safe

Safe. What a buzzword. We are a culture consumed with safety. Actually, we are a culture consumed by fear, so we become obsessed with safety. The feeling of safety "fixes" our feelings of fear.  

So naturally, the question has been raised to Lent Unedited--is this really safe? Is it safe to put your real life out there? To be vulnerable on something as public as Facebook? And to be clear, Facebook is very very public. Anything you put up, any comment you make, is public--it can be shared with anyone anywhere, even when you have the strictest privacy settings. 

It's an important question and the ramifications of posting our vulnerabilities need to be thought through. Maybe someone will see our posts and somehow use them against us. Maybe we will lose trust in someone. Maybe we will feel that we went too far and said too much and it just didn't sit right. Maybe someone will stalk us or try to take advantage of us. Those are legitimate concerns. 

So is Lent Unedited a safe thing to be promoting? No. But I would argue that nothing we do on social media is safe. Nothing. 

But I doubt I'm shocking any of you by saying this. We evaluate risks and take them all the time. We know that driving a car can be deadly, but we take appropriate safety precautions and use our best judgment because we know that going places is worth the risk of getting inside a car. 

And safe is not always the same thing as good. When I get to thinking of the very abstract concept of safety, I recall the scene from C.S. Lewis's, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Susan is speaking to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about Aslan, the lion and Christ figure in the story:

"Ooh," said Susan."...Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good..."

I think that although participating in social media is not always safe, it can be very good, especially when we act as a real community. As mentioned in earlier posts, I've been blown away by the support people have shown one another in this Lent Unedited experiment. It's been awesome. When I've made #lentunedited posts on my own page, my community has shown up in really meaningful ways with every single post. My community has always been there. But it's grown wonderfully deep over the last ten days. What a gift. 

So take appropriate safety precautions with your posts--know your settings and use good judgment. But don't let fear get in the way of being real. Being real is where Facebook can be at its best. 

Joy Unedited

"So is LentUnedited going to become a contest of who has it the worst?"

This question made me imagine a dismal picture of us all joining in on some huge Facebook-based downward spiral where all we hear about is misery and all we feel is pity.

But I don't think that's the direction we're headed. I've known from the beginning that Lent Unedited would be a big experiment and that it would largely depend on how we all participate together. What I've seen so far is people being incredibly brave, honest, funny and real. And I've seen people be wonderfully encouraging and supportive. It's been an awesome start.

So where is the place for joy in LentUnedited? Is it going to be 40 days of pure doom and gloom? Maybe. But maybe not.

I think that sharing true joy is also a place of vulnerability. Sharing our happiness is taking a risk. When we ask someone to really celebrate with us, that's stepping out and sharing good news, and we often worry that sharing joy is the same as bragging. And we wonder if our good news will really be heard and received.

But the difference between joy and bragging, in my opinion, is that our true joys are often born out of our difficulties or imperfections. Or they exist alongside them. When we ask someone to rejoice with us that we landed a new job, or are in remission, or finished a dissertation, we are admitting that at some point along the road to this accomplishment, there was struggle and difficulty. That's a place of vulnerability. That's admitting imperfection.

Celebrating a good day, a peaceful dinnertime, a good grade, a birthday, an anniversary, a finally potty trained child--these are things that are joyful in part because we know the hard work, the lows, and the strain it took to get there.

I'm pretty sure that sharing joy requires as much encouragement as sharing difficulty. I have a feeling we are up to the task. If something wonderful is happening in your life right now, consider sharing it with #lentunedited. I bet all of us will celebrate with you and I bet it will be awesome.

What Does Compassion Look Like?

My husband and I have it down to a science. Whenever I bring up something I'm struggling with--whether it's kids, work, family, whatever--he listens for a good long time, nods his head, then pauses. Then he says, "Do you want me to just be a listener right now? Or would you like some ideas and solutions?" Then I say "the first one."

It is always the first one. Or maybe, it's the first one and he listens and responds sensitively, and then we move on to ideas and solutions.

#LentUnedited confession: it wasn't always this way between us. It took MANY frustrating conversations over years until we finally came to the understanding that what we most often need from one another is to sit with each other in the struggle, just a partner to be together with in the mess.

I think that's what we all really need. Sure, we need ideas, solutions, quick fixes, and encouragement. But what I believe most of us are longing for most of the time when we share our vulnerable selves with each other is for someone to say, "I hear you struggling. I'm walking beside you through it."

That's compassion. That's Jesus on the cross. In the Christian faith, we proclaim a God who suffers alongside us. And if the Holy suffers, then our suffering is holy too. How comforting it is to know that we have a God so intimate, so involved with human suffering.

But how do we, as a community, do this for each other? Especially on social media? What does compassion look like on Facebook and Twitter?

I've seen some friends be incredibly brave on Facebook over the last three days of #lentunedited. Everything from sharing a picture of a messy bedroom to admitting the loss of a job. The admissions themselves are incredible.

But how we respond is where we can really change the game. We can respond to one another by saying, "please, my bedroom is way messier than THAT," and "don't worry! Things are going to be ok!"

OR we can respond by saying:

I'm here for you
I've been there

I hear you struggling
I imagine that must be so difficult
I will walk with you through this
You're in my thoughts
You're in my prayers

When someone shares a vulnerability, that is our best opportunity for connection. And the best kind of connection we can make is one that's based in compassion. Thank you, Lent Unedited participants, for building a community of compassion in this unlikely place.