Interview by Tanya Riches

Editor’s Note:

EverydayImPastorin is a Tumblr site that has been making the rounds at seminaries across the country. Very much like TheologyRyanGosling, it serves the function of creating space for seminarians to laugh – at themselves, as much as the idiosyncrasies of local churches. These sites, who see their highest views and shares during finals, have caught on because they present a shared experience and normalize our thoughts and behaviors. Tanya Riches, a fan of the site, recently chatted with the host who has asked to remain anonymous. We at The SEMI prefer not to include anonymous articles, though we also recognize that there are times when the nature of art and religion can sometimes be too revealing, that discussing the sacred and the profane simultaneously can have terminal professional consequences – historically, excommunication; traditionally, cries of heresy; currently, needling questions of devotion to God. It is in this light that we publish the interview, knowing that you will understand and relate.

What prompted you to start EverydayImPastorin?

Basically, sitting with two Ph.D. student friends, enjoying the Tumblr TheTimeIStudiedAbroad and thinking that there could be, should be a comparable blog for ministry. The gif format offered some really hilarious things to do, and I found myself describing a ministry situation for nearly every one of them. That, with some goofy riffs on the song “Every Day I’m Shufflin’” and the whole thing was born.

When I look at the clips, sometimes up to 100 people have reblogged your posts. Do you know how many people read it?

I don’t, actually. There’s no real way to trace what gets shared on Facebook and Twitter, but I do know that the blog has around 2,200 followers on Tumblr. That’s totally crazy to me.

My husband and I are both pastors – he is currently in youth ministry, and I was a worship pastor in Australia before coming to Fuller. We adore your site. After watching 100 or more of these clips, we want to know who is posting? We’ve been speculating if you’re female/male, gay/straight, old/young, perceived as conservative/liberal … can you give us any clues as to your identity so I can judge which of the two of us is more perceptive? 

Well, I receive a lot of submissions, so that can affect what gets published. I also take suggestions from friends. I can’t offer much about my identity for publication, because I’m pretty sure that if my congregation got wind that this was my blog, they might flay me alive, or something not-so-fun like that. Alternatively, the defenestration of the pastor, if you will.

I will say that I’m young, and a progressive pastor in a very conservative place. Many of my friends from seminary know that the blog is mine, and I’ve shared it on a person-by-person basis.

Do any of your church members know you post anonymously?

Absolutely not! I don’t even post entries from the blog on my Facebook where they can see, lest they get an inkling that it’s me.

Some of the clips epitomize secret thoughts I and many people I know have had as pastors. Do you get much feedback about the site? And what do people say? 

I’ve gotten feedback from places as near as my home state and from as far as England and Iceland. There have been… some negative comments, such as “Please don’t rip on rural congregations,” or, my personal favorite – “Orthodoxy fail” when commenting on my support for LGBT pastors. I sometimes want to reply to things like that, drawing clear lines between social and theological positions. Mostly, I take the positive comments – there are a lot – and leave the negative ones.

As for the similar experiences, that’s what strikes me about this whole thing and the way that it’s reached so many people – turns out we have a lot of common experiences, regardless of culture or denomination, or church structure. As hard as a pastor’s life can be, it’s great to realize that we’re not alone. Our congregations have some crazy people, and turns out that pastors are pretty crazy, too – otherwise it’s doubtful that we’d put ourselves through so much that we do.

It’s kind of a pastiche of contemporary culture. Who are you thinking of when you’re uploading your posts? Who do you ‘create’ for? 

It’s usually my goal to figure out which posts are common experiences. I get submissions and sometimes want to post things that are specific to my own life, but I avoid posting them if I think they won’t appeal to a lot of people. It’s shocking, however, how many experiences that you would think are specific to you are actually pretty widespread – like fixing toilets in your clergy collar, having someone burst into tears in a discussion over curtain color, or having a parishioner suddenly faint during your sermon. I want a variety of people to be able to enjoy the site – from seminarians, to pastors of all mainline denominations. I want Presbyterians, Episcopalians, United Methodists, Lutherans, and similar denominations to all have a place to come and play.

I often start with a theme or a recent experience and then search Tumblr for a gif that captures it. I’ll isolate an emotion associated with it, search Tumblr for that emotion (say, “nervous”) and do some looking around, or some more searches, until I can find one that most closely communicates what that experience was like. Alternatively, sometimes funny gifs on my Tumblr feed will remind me of experiences – so it sort of works both ways.

Do you think the visual element of the Tumblr is important to your audience? Why?

Absolutely. I like writing, but I figured that there are a lot of written blogs related to ministry, and I thought that the church universal needed something different – something short that they could quickly enjoy. Basically, I like to make people happy. I also have a very short attention span.

The incidence of burnout is so high in pastoral ministry. Do you think there is a need for pastors to have outlets to say some of the things you’ve visualised through your work? 

Yes, yes, yes. Being able to vent my experiences this way has allowed me to laugh at them. I think it’s important to remember that the worst experiences in ministry – those that make us freak out, angry, or nervous – can be the best stories. Some people share theirs at the bar. I share mine on the Internet via gif … and also at the bar.

Do you think that the expectations of congregation members are fair? (Many of your posts are about managing the expectations that pastors submerge their personal views to listen to their congregants’ many problems including about their sex life despite being single; as well as manage to stay neutral while various political views are voiced) .. how do YOU manage the internal dissonance that you describe so well in your posts?

This may be wrong, but sometimes, knowing that it’ll make a great story later helps. There are some punches to the gut that I have to internalize – things that strike at issues close to my heart. For example, when a congregant calls all Democrats evil, I have to slowly steer them away from that as opposed to yelling at them for it. In some ways, I really wish that we could be more honest about who we are, but, living in such a conservative place, I know they wouldn’t trust me if they knew what I really thought about some things. I get a chance to gently share those things sometimes, however, showing them an alternative view. That makes things more worth it.

It’s about walking the fine line of keeping their trust and knowing when to share; it’s about staying true to ourselves while also valuing the opinions and experiences of our parishioners. As much as I want to, I can’t hold a parishioner who didn’t graduate high school and has never left this relatively rural place to the same standards that I’d hold an educated, well-traveled person. I also think it’s important to realize that the opinions and experience of each of those, and everyone in between, is valuable and important. All are children of God and deserve respect.

Can you speak to how you feel about denominational and sectarian labels that are brandied about for Christians, particularly pastors? How do you think young clergy/ministers feel about this in general? And do you think the labels ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are breaking down at all?

I think that it’s important for church leaders to realize that “conservative” and “orthodox” do not mean the same thing, nor do “liberal” and “unorthodox.” Often, especially in my tradition, people get so hung up on the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” and using “conservative” and “orthodox” interchangeably. This is crazy to me. I’ve met people who were very unorthodox – denying original sin and the bodily resurrection – who were very socially conservative. Personally, I’m pretty liberal, but I subscribe fully and without reservation to the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds. While, to some, “orthodox” means more than the creeds, I think that we need to think more about these terms before tossing them around and substituting them for each other without thought or hesitation.

I’ve gotten some pushback because the blog clearly has a progressive or liberal slant, but that’s okay. There are a lot of things on the Internet for conservative Christians – I have no shame about providing a different view. I also hope that it serves as a witness for anyone who is feeling that they might have to leave the church because of their conscience-driven views on science and evolution, LGBT inclusion, or any number of issues. You don’t have to leave – not every Christian subscribes to Fox News, Pat Robertson, or even Joel Osteen. Trust me. There are alternatives – a huge part of my faith is these issues – flinging wide the church doors to everyone, embracing science and its discoveries instead of being insecure about them, etc.

One of the other issues you address quite frequently is the distance between youth and church leadership. Could you maybe explain this theme a little? What are the generational divides you’re picking up? 

I would love it if older church leadership would stop talking about “young people” in clergy meetings without consulting us. I have been known to whisper loudly, “Psssst… they’re talking about us like we’re not here… Awkward…” I am usually then swiftly kicked under the table.

While no young clergyperson alone has all the answers, we know more about what our generation is hungering for, because many of us are hungering for the same things. I’ve often been frustrated by the feeling I get from older clergy that one has to be in the ministry so long before one can take a leadership role – and weirdly enough, that includes drafting plans about how to attract more young people. Young adult quotas and delegations are great, but I often feel as if we’re still at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. Can young adults get real leadership roles, please, and have everyone stop patting themselves on the back for creating “young adult clergy groups” that they’ll consult before making the decisions themselves? I feel like older clergy are saying, “they’re so cute” to everything we suggest.

Besides, frankly, most of us are not really all that cute.

And, do you have any ideas on how the denominational leadership *could* get in touch with what younger clergy and congregation members are thinking, other than reading your Tumblr and taking notes? 

I’d love to see more young clergy in leadership roles. Not in advisory roles, but in actual leadership, where they’re viewed as equal voices, not merely consultants.

There’s also a lot of commentary on the difference in values between liberal Seminaries and rural America. Do you feel like your seminary education adequately prepared you for parish ministry? 

Yes. I think the faculty of my seminary did a great job, and I think that a large part of that was having people on faculty and staff who had served rural conservative churches before.

Another theme I love in these clips is your commentary on liturgy. It’s funny because although I grew up in a contemporary worship setting, I’m fascinated with traditional liturgy, and I know many of my Pentecostal and Nondenominational friends feel the same. Do you think there is a movement towards a deeper understanding of liturgy, or do you think it’s still a small bastion of people trying to clutch onto something more profound than the latest Chris Tomlin song? 

I feel liturgical renewal catching fire and has been for awhile. I’ve noticed Baptist churches in the city where I went to seminary advertising Advent and Lenten services, which we might never have seen only a few years ago. While it may be slow, I think that we’re seeing a renewal of liturgy – realizing that our ancestors in the faith really did create something worth keeping. I’m sort of obsessed with the church year, too – and I think that the latest Chris Tomlin song can easily be incorporated into a season, if we only listen for themes. Hope, and waiting for the Lord? Advent song. Penitence, lamenting sin, thanking God for forgiveness? Lenten song. Celebration, resurrection, defeating death? Easter.

I received a really good liturgical education that focused on themes over style, and that taught me to help the church service reflect who the particular congregation of people are. So, at my church, we follow the church year, and we use country/bluegrass and old hymns that are appropriate for each season. We have several talented banjo pickers, guitar, mandolin, and upright bass players, so they play during worship a lot. Turns out a lot of country and bluegrass lyrics talk about the kingdom to come, so they mostly play for All Saints’ and Advent. I think it’s less about imposing liturgy on the people, and more about helping liturgy to speak to them and who they are, where they are. It just takes a bit of creativity more than totally rigid thoughts of what liturgy has to be.

Thank you for your work, on behalf of all the seminary-trained introverted, awkward, young, single, popular, traditional pastors struggling with theological issues. 

Thank you, from a seminary-trained, awkward, young, single, questionably popular, traditional pastor who’s always in a theological fight with myself.

User Experience Principles for the Web and for Ministry

By Matt Lumpkin

any systems are designed to make things easier for either:

a. the computers that run them

b. the people that made them

c. the people who bought them

My job is to make things easier for the people who use actually them.

For the past two years I worked on eReserves and eCommerce for Fuller while I completed my MDiv.  Last summer, I took on a new role as Online User Experience Strategist working with Jeff Harwell and the rest of the IT team.  In this new role, I focus on the many facets of the online experience that are a part of Fuller (fuller.edu, Moodle, Portico, and many many more) with a particular emphasis on:

- the actual experiences of the people who use them

- how they fit and work together or don’t

- how we can make small changes to the way systems or processes are deployed that can greatly improve the experience of the people who use them.

Last September I attended a conference focused on User Experience (sometimes known as UX) in San Francisco and I’ve been using a lot of the insights from it since. The most important shift is in looking at systems and processes on and off the web from the perspective of the people who use them rather than from the perspective of the people who create them. As an MDiv grad, it wasn’t long before I began to see how almost all of these insights work just as well when thinking about ministry, mission and communication.  Many of you will be doing ministry of some kind as you study, even moreso afterward. Many of you will also be editing, planning, or creating websites.  If you aren’t already, you will be, or will be asked to soon!

What follows are some bullet-points about UX for the web and for ministry, then a few words of explanation on each. I’m going to use the word “design” in the broadest sense possible to mean the application of human intention to a process, artifact, space or experience. I propose an exercise as you skim through them: try to imagine how each item might yield just as much useful insight in an opposite column since the boundaries we draw around what is and is not ministry are artificial.

User Experience Principles for the Web:

- People’s eyes are drawn to username and password fields like magnets. If you put them on a page, don’t expect them to read anything else.

- Logos conventionally go in the top left or bottom right.  If in the top left, clicking them should return the person to home. Login info and identity are usually in the top right.  Designers sometimes like to flout conventions like this but they had better have a good reason to reward the user as payback for the disorientation they introduce.

- Rules like those above seem arbitrary and many of them are. But so are many of the rules of language.  They shape the context of what you do and the expectations of your audience. You ignore either at your own peril.

- People who don’t read what you wished they had read on your website aren’t lazy, they’re selectively deploying their attention in an exponentially rising sea of noise. It’s your job to give them hints, cues and choices that help them deploy their attention efficiently.

- Form and design communicate what genre of communication you intend. They determine what kind of attention your users will deploy and how they will interpret what you show them: blog post, form, photo gallery, ad, etc. We read each of these differently.

- If you haven’t built a map in your mind of how what you’re saying, posting, designing, building fits together, then the people using your system will have to do it themselves and you can be sure it will be incomplete and confusing.  Instead take the time to plan out carefully not only what you intend to communicate but how it fits with the larger whole of your page, sub-section or site.

- Getting people to pay attention to text involves the entire composition of what’s visible.  Simply applying Bold and red isn’t enough.

- If everything is bold then nothing is.

- People using your site are unconsciously assessing whether you are trustworthy or not.  Everything from design, to content, to whether things work like they expect all contribute to a user’s sense of whether or not they are in good hands.

- Your use of the web is the new hand writing. You will be judged and understood by means of it. This means more than font choice.  This means the entirety of the composition of a given web site and the entirety of the experience they have while using it.

- Good design is iterative, that is, there is no good design only good redesign.  The more you build into your design process soliciting feedback and input from the people you say you are designing for, the faster your iterations will begin to communicate.

User Experience Principles for Ministry:

- Time and attention are increasingly scarce, precious and the most valuable thing people have to offer.  Asking for either should be done with recognition of their scarcity, respect, intention and care.

- If you haven’t taken time to think about and understand who you’re trying to communicate with, you will design your communication for yourself and it will work for people to the extent they are like you and fail to the extent that they are not.

- Checking what you think you are communicating with even a very small sample of your target audience can have exponential benefits at refining your communication.  A little user testing is a lot better than no user-testing.

- Communication is about creating an interface to ideas, models, concepts or experiences.  It is necessarily a translation, an abstraction or a process of encoding.  The best interfaces use metaphors that help connect the intended idea to what the user already knows.  But beware: metaphors as are not the thing in itself.  There is no actual recycling bin in your computer and even when you “empty” it the files can still be recovered in many cases. The bin is a metaphor and metaphors always break down.

- Design is an act of gracious service.  Good design does unto others what it would have done unto itself.  When you encounter it you know that someone you can trust has taken care to think of how their choices will affect your life.  Bad design is a tireless, structured, ignoring of who you are and what you care about that systematically tells you that your experience is not thought of and you are unwelcome.

- Design is asynchronous communication between humans through the medium of an interface. Design that takes the user’s experience into account is one of the ways institutions can and do communicate their regard for others.

- Interfaces should be redundant and multi-channel.  If something is important you should find multiple ways to communicate it rather than communicating it just once, loudly or in bold print.  People will hear and prioritize different channels differently.  Use more than one to increase the odds they will get it.

- Ambiguity in your communication will be filled in by the mind and assumptions of the people who hear it.

- Design is an opportunity for inclusion.  Design with the other in mind is enacted hospitality. People can tell if you have thought of them and if you haven’t. One communicates that they are welcome.  One communicates that they are alien.

User Experience at Church

While completing my MDiv, I interned at Altadena Baptist Church altadenabaptist.org. This was the first church I had attended that wasn’t made up exclusively of white Americans. About 1/3 are Anglo, 1/3 are African American and 1/3 are Hispanic, Asian and ex-pat. Altadena Baptist is a place I could literally bring anyone and know they would be welcomed and included. Yet as I began leading several adult Bible studies, it became apparent that our experiences as individuals and as groups meant that we read certain texts, comments and actions very differently. By making room for and hearing one another’s stories and how they shaped us, we were all enriched. All kinds of unconscious assumptions we had been carrying around were opened up for examination and discussion. As I learned more of the stories of my church family, I began to see the subtle but intentional ways that the pastoral staff had designed the worship services and their ministries with those different experiences in mind.

Without paying attention to what our systems, sermons, websites and communities communicate to those who we hope will use them, we will design experiences that are easiest to create and maintain for those of us doing the designing. In doing so we run the risk of carving our own blind spots and biases into stone and then becoming annoyed when those who don’t share them bump their heads on them.

User Experience at Seminary

Fuller is famous for having originated the idea that you could grow churches quickly among people who are like one another — homogenous units of people. We have since come to question how much transformation can actually happen when all the people who influence you are already like you. Indeed the strongest argument for the transformative power of encountering people who are different from you may be Fuller Seminary itself. As former provost Sherwood Lingenfelter once said, “Fuller is an opportunity to practice being with people who are not like you –hearing their stories and having your way of seeing the world expanded.  Seminary itself can be a practicum in cross-cultural encounter if you let it.”

User Experience at Work

My work involves building and refining web sites, services and experiences. I think about these issues every day.  As more and more aspects of our lives are moved onto the online space, the question of who we include and exclude with our systems becomes more and more immediate.  In Fall of 2013, Fuller will begin to offer two new degrees which are almost exclusively online. But as most Fuller students already know, there is a whole other dimension to the Fuller community spread across Moodle forums, blogs, Facebook threads and Twitter conversations.  As our institution begins to explore the possibility of transformative encounter and spiritual formation online, my role is to continue asking the questions: Who is this for? Who have we ignored? 

My colleagues and I are working to design spaces, structures and systems that create the opportunity for the kinds of encounters I had at Altadena Baptist, and during my MDiv at Fuller to unfold in the online space. I’ve already begun interviewing students, faculty and alumni on how they use Fuller’s current online tools, and soliciting feedback on the direction we are headed. If you would like to help shape the future of theological education and human discourse, I’d love to spend some time hearing your story and making sure that we are designing with you in mind.

Good places to start to dig deeper on user experience:

Nielson Norman Group NN/g Useability 101

A great introduction and orientation to basic user experience / usability principles for the web specifically.

TED: Shyam Sankar: The Rise of Human-Computer Cooperation

Minimizing the friction in the interface between the human and the computer is the decisive variable in maximizing.  Start by designing the human into the process.

t is a great pleasure to welcome Jean Bethke Elshtain as the 2013 Payton Lecturer at Fuller Seminary. Her lecture series, entitled “Ethics in Troubled Times,” will be held on January 30th and 31st from 10.00 a.m. to noon at Travis Auditorium. All members of the Fuller community, as well as members of the general public, are invited to attend.

Professor Elshtain, who is widely regarded as one of America’s foremost intellectuals, was born in Windsor, Colorado, and is a graduate of Colorado State University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Colorado, and Brandeis University, where she received a Ph.D. in politics; her dissertation was entitled “Women and Politics: A Theoretical Analysis.” She is a political philosopher whose principal task has been to illustrate the connections between political and ethical convictions. She has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Vanderbilt University (where she was the first woman to be appointed to an endowed chair) and the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where she currently serves as Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics. She has also been a visiting professor at Oberlin, Smith, Georgetown, Yale and Harvard, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

She has held prominent leadership positions at number of scholarly centers throughout the country, including the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke, and the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. She has also held the Maguire Chair of American History and Ethics and the Klug Chair in Modern Culture, both at the Library of Congress, where she also serves as a founding member of the Scholars Council.

Equally impressive has been Professor Elshtain’s emerging role as one of the world’s leading public intellectuals. In 2005-6, she delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Scotland (previously given by such luminaries as William James, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr) on the theme, “Sovereign God, Sovereign State, Sovereign Self.” She served as a fellow at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation at Como, Italy. In 2006, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Elshtain has also served as co-chair of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Chair of the Council on Families in America, Chair of the Council on Civil Society, and as a member of the National Commission for Civic Renewal and the Penn Commission on American Culture and Society. She has been a Phi Beta Kappa Lecturer, and has served as vice-president of the American Political Science Association. In 2008 she was appointed to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Among her many honors and accolades, Professor Elshtain has received nine honorary degrees, she has been elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the recipient of the Goodnow award for distinguished service by the American Political Science Association and the Ingalls award for excellence in classroom teaching at Vanderbilt. In recognition of her entire corpus of work, she is currently being honored by a series of conferences at the University of Chicago Divinity School, under the title, “Jean Bethke Elshtain: the Engaged Mind.” In 2011, she was honored with the Democracy Service Award by the National Endowment for Democracy, previously awarded to the Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel, among others.

Professor Elshtain is married, the mother of four children and grandmother of four.

Dr. Elshtain is also one of the most prodigious scholars in American higher education. She has published over six-hundred essays in scholarly journals and journals of civic opinion and has authored (or edited) over twenty books. Here are some of Professor Elshtain’s most interesting books, identifying themes to give a context for her lectures, and to stimulate discussion:

Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities: Politics and Ethical Discourse (Eerdmans, 2004). Named “Best Book of 2000″ by the American Society of Theological Booksellers. $19.50. If we are to understand American identity, we have to name our sins accurately: our fetish for buying new things renders us unable to pay attention to what lasts, and the ideology of the money-powers hypnotizes us into believing that our identity is individual freedom from others. So we cannot acknowledge that life is a gift from others. In our individualistic pride we become lonely, and lose awareness of the relationships that shape who we really are. And in our sloth, we fail to recognize our own limits. But there is also something good in American culture. As Bonhoeffer said, we need realistic truthfulness based in humble attention to the created nature in which we have our life.

Sovereignty: God, State, and Self: The Gifford Lectures (Basic Books, 2008). $22.00 First, Dr. Elshtain shows historically how the sovereignty of the state emerged, with a dangerous ability to dominate and become tyrannical. But the Constitution’s realistic checks and balances against concentrated power, separation of powers, and God-based human rights, were developed where Puritan realism about human sin was combined with free-church support for religious liberty and independence of churches from the state. Second, she shows how the sovereignty of the individualistic self emerged, with dangerous subordination of everything to selfish interests and the resulting inability to overcome polarization and beliefs that “my way is the absolute right.” But Luke Bretherton’s review says that she lacks diagnosis of the sovereignty of the market, which is so dominating us, to our harm. And that the remedy has to be emphasizing the common good, and focusing on shared responsibility for the human rights of those being dominated, and checks and balances against greed.

Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 1981; second edition, 1992). Selected by Choice as one of the top academic books of 1981-82. $39.95. Here is the fullest articulation of a basic theme that runs through Dr. Elshtain’s writings: the too-widely accepted assumption that women’s role is in private life, and public ethics belongs mostly to men, marginalizes women, damages our politics, and fails to represent the needs and realities of our society.

Women and War (second paperback edition, U. of Chicago Press, 1995). $30.00. Elshtain begins with her autobiography, in which Joan of Arc, with great military prowess, was her childhood idol. She argues against relegating women to the role of  “The Beautiful Soul,” in an idealistic realm where they concern themselves only with private dimensions of life and have no voice on public issues. Women should fight just like men, and be drafted just like men, if the U.S. ever reinstates the draft. Just War theory should quit being abstract rational principles and instead should pay attention to war’s actual impact on real people. “Pope Paul VI got closer to the mark when he spoke of a ‘butchery of untold magnitude’ and drew upon prophetic language.”

Just War against Terror (Basic Books, 2003). $16.95. Here she argues that the way to combat terrorism is to make war against it, including in Iraq. She and Glen Stassen debated this question to an audience of 350 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, with Glen arguing that Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm has a much more promising way to deal with terrorism.

ne Sunday a few weeks ago I was asked to jump in—at the very last minute—as a Sunday school teacher for a kids’ after-church program that met in an empty corner of our church basement. Curriculum-less and without the aid of a felt board, I had a brief moment of panic as I looked out on the faces of this motley group of children—all of varying ages and familiarity with church.  Eager to come up with something fast, I blurted out, “Does anyone know what the acronym ACTS means?”

This seems now like a strange choice as I don’t usually think in acronyms or use them in my prayer life, but somewhere in the recesses of my brain must be a neural pathway that connects acronyms with Sunday school or perhaps with damp church basements. I taught these children that the acronym ACTS is a memory aid for prayer that encourages the one praying to begin with Adoration, then Confession, Thanksgiving and finally Supplication. All of which can be truly vital aspects of prayer, but I’m afraid I might have terribly confused them in the end because as soon as I began, I questioned my spontaneous lesson plan and made all sorts of qualifications—that there’s really no one specific way of praying, that there are no formulas needed to talk with God, that actually acronyms can be pretty confusing and can neglect more than they include, etc., etc.

I prayed that they would bravely enter into the fantastic, strange adventure of communing with the wholly other.

Indeed, if they were able to take something away from that class—beyond my own ambivalent struggles with prayer—then I’m grateful for the Lord’s work. And I did pray that God would protect them from thin or rigid or magical notions of prayer where our words are used—as we can often use them— as a means of control. But I prayed that they would bravely enter into the fantastic, strange adventure of communing with the wholly other, mysterious creator of the universe whose clearest communication and self-revelation was one of radical, uncompromising, passionate love.

Well, I didn’t quite put it in those terms at the time, lest I scare them off the whole thing.  In the end—after all my assertions and qualifications—I mostly encouraged them to just do it (which can be one of the hardest things about prayer)—and not to just do it, but to do it as our Lord taught us to pray:  boldly.

Recently in my devotional life, I encountered Jesus’ teaching about boldness in prayer that made me a bit uncomfortable. The story of the persistent widow reminded me of a long-held prayer request about a difficulty in a relationship that I had lazily let fall by the wayside. I had justified my lack of resolve by consoling myself with some half-truth about my having been busy with some more rarified form of prayer, supposedly elevated above the fray of mundane needs and wants. But needs and wants are often reflective of our deepest desires. Some of mine are for healing, reconciliation, and closeness; the unsettledness of my heart betrayed the truth that I hadn’t fully leaned in on the God of uncompromising, passionate love, who may or may not yet answer my prayer. Instead, I had been exercising my own form of control by neglecting my desire, and in that way, I didn’t have to take risk of renewed vulnerability. I thought I had achieved a kind of peace—but it was the cheap peace of tepid complacency—and I recognized myself in Annie Dillard’s wonderfully vibrant picture comparing the sometimes blandness of our prayers to the mysterious dynamism of the One to whom we pray.

We’re very vulnerable in prayer—or, at least that’s the idea.

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. “[1]

We don’t normally think of prayer as risky, but with Dillard, I have found that both in my own life and in that of those I have prayed with, prayer can come with risks. These felt risks can be as diverse as those who pray, but they are there because in naming our confession or supplication (or whatever the subject is), we invite exposure, and then we don’t get to control the answer. That is, we’re very vulnerable in prayer—or, at least that’s the idea. Otherwise, we may come off more like publicans and pagans, who apparently use prayer to impress others or God or their own selves, instead of like widows and tax collectors and children, whom Jesus elevates as models in prayer for us. And this is why Jesus reminds us that we’re not to fear in prayer, even though we’re vulnerable. Our Father is good—very good—and he won’t answer our prayers with a stone, or a snake or a scorpion, but he may answer our prayers in ways we don’t expect.

When I was working as a chaplain in the hospital, I often encountered fear and risk when I was praying with people. Much of this fear was about all that they were suffering, but sometimes it was about prayer itself.  For some, my prayer with them was one of the first times they had ever prayed with another person—their vulnerable situation having opened up for them a new spiritual dimension to their lives—and simply talking to God felt unknown and risky. And then every time I prayed for healing with a patient or with a family, we entered together into that very vulnerable place of gathering our longings, our hopes, and our love and presenting them to the unseen God—who told us of his goodness, who desires our happiness, and yet whose ways remain mysterious.  To pray boldly means to relinquish our control of the outcomes and then to trust. This takes tremendous courage.

Of all the prayers that I prayed with people in the hospital, some of the most courageous were those that were uttered when outcomes—whether of medical procedures or of the vicissitudes of daily life—were excruciatingly, heart-wrenchingly, disappointing.  Expressing anger at God or grief or a sense of betrayal can risk some of the most cherished notions we have of both ourselves and of God. Does our placid spirituality demand peace at any price? Or is our hard-won strength predicated on a kind of aloof stoicism? Can our relationship with God withstand our negative feelings, and can we bring these to God in prayer?  For those of us familiar with the Bible, we know we have at least 150 different things we can pray to God in the Psalms, much of which is not stoic or placid. And yet, even given that familiarity, I suspect many of us still have a lot to learn from the psalmist in terms of raw honesty.

Can our relationship with God withstand our negative feelings?

One of the greatest perceived risks that I have struggled with in my prayer life is simply the risk of time and the discipline that this time demands.  Even when reminding myself that I’m too busy not to pray, I can still manage not to risk it. What’s at stake may be terribly important obligations of ministry or friendship or family, but sometimes it’s really just my ego. Whether I’ve allowed my sense of self to be overly determined by obligations or performance, or I’m lazily (and vainly) trying to shield it from the Searcher of my soul, I can easily neglect prayer when I’m busy. I was greatly helped in this area a year ago when I started using Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius, that paragon of organization, soldier for Christ, founder of the Jesuits, developed a structured and time-consuming program of prayer that got this very discipline-resistant, time-challenged, sometimes-spiritual-dilettante, to experience a more dynamic prayer life than she ever had before. The disciplined structure of these exercises belied the deep wells of grace I found once I was willing to take risks with both the form of prayer as well as the time required for it.

Over thirty years ago, in his spiritual classic, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster wrote prophetic words for his time that have become even more needed today,

“Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”[2] I would add to his words, that there is also a need for people who take risks—that is, the risks required to go to the depths with God, with ourselves and with each other.

Brené Brown is, is a social science researcher who has written and talked about what creates a sense of deep connection and love between people; she has identified taking risks, embracing vulnerability and facing shame head-on as necessary components to creating connectedness, or intimacy.[3] These same components are also what I’ve relied on to connect to God, which is ultimately the greatest gift that I’ve ever had through prayer.

Ignatius of Loyola, Richard Foster, and even Brené Brown are just a few among the different spiritual mentors that have helped guide me in prayer. Each, in their own way, has helped me take risks, embrace vulnerability and face shame. Ultimately the source of this encouragement comes from Jesus’ own teaching. But, these things are not only what our Lord taught us to do in prayer; these are the very same things that our Lord—in his journey to the cross—embraced for us for the sake of love. In taking risks, embracing vulnerability and facing shame, we not come to connect with our Lord, but we also become more like him.

[1] Annie Dillard, “Expedition to the Pole,” in Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harper & Row, 1982) 40-41.

[2] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, (New York: Haper & Row, 1978) 1.

[3] Brené Brown, TedxHouston, June 2010, http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html.

everal times a day my husband John and I say set prayers out loud together from the Book of Common Prayer. Specifically, from the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families section, which has bits repeating the same scripture or words everyday- that’s the “set” part. There are also suggestions like “a canticle may be used” or “prayers may be offered for ourselves and others.”

We’ve had various reactions to this habit. We get asked: “Isn’t it boring?” And told “For me, making up prayers for each situation is more meaningful,” or, “I often pray, but don’t feel a need to be legalistic about it.” Sometimes we hear, “What a cool thing for a couple to do, I wish we had the time.”

Yes, sometimes it is boring, and we don’t have time. Or the words don’t fit the situation. It’s especially hard when we have a spat and it therefore doesn’t seem cool to have to come together to pray.  But we do it anyway and prayer has thus become a precious fixture of our marriage. Why? Because even though I find it both emotionally grounding and a great bonding routine, even though it can set the tone for the day and help me sleep at night, the most important reasons we have for praying are much more profound.

First: We just don’t get it

From the very beginning we haven’t gotten it. When God walked with the first humans in the early evening breeze, it was the sweetest time of day in the most luscious garden imaginable, but that wasn’t enough for us.

In spite of the perfect setting and knowing God was there with them, people forgot what God imparted to them on those walks. They forgot both God’s love and God’s instructions. The result of this forgetting is powerlessness and severe jeopardy. I know this from my own experience and because the same story, different characters, is repeated over and over in Scripture. Just understanding the story doesn’t help me remember it. Scripture uses repetition to help us remember.  God begs us over and over in various ways to listen. God formed an entire people to serve as an example. Remembering the overarching story of their life with God was perhaps the most important part of being an example. They remembered this out loud together by repeating the story at festivals.Set prayers help me remember this same story.

God sent us prophets who used familiar bits of scripture, poems and prayers as lectures and warnings not to forget the big picture.  The prophets also begged us to cry out to God for help. An entire book of Scripture, the Psalms, instructs us in remembering and crying out.  I doubt the psalms were given to us only to be read once and then put away as irrelevant.

But we rarely call out to God in this way unless we are really suffering like Job or Hannah.  The set prayers use the Psalms. The first words I pray each day are from Psalm 51. “Open my lips, Oh Lord….” Reminding me I need God even to speak and that there is a larger story that my life fits into. The story of what God did for us and will do for us, most profoundly in Christ.

When God came to walk with us again, to tell us directly the good news of God’s love for us, did Jesus have instant mind-meld with the Father? No, Scripture tells us Jesus regularly turned to prayer. Jesus thought that prayer was important enough that he gave us specific instructions about it and a specific set prayer.  Jesus thought that prayer was powerful enough that it was the very last thing he did on the cross. And Jesus thought crying out through scripture was worthy enough that his last prayer was also a recognizable set prayer, a psalm.

Second: Prayer is servant behavior

Isaiah (45:23 NRSV) brings us God’s word: “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” This command is very clear and doesn’t appear to be optional. Scripture leaves us with little doubt that Jesus is Lord. Paul reinforces this message in Philippians (2:10-11) and Romans (14:11). The confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord” is part of our set prayers; this recognition establishes our human status as servant. We are not to be our own Lord. We are subject to our Lord God. But what does this mean exactly?

Philippians gives us some instructions.  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (2:5) and “(He) emptied himself taking on the form of a slave.” (2:7) and “Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others” (2:3). I find daily set prayer a way to fulfill these instructions. When I use set prayers from scripture, saying out loud the word of God, I am “taking on the mind of Jesus.”  As I repeat the words I remember. I remember who I am in relation to Jesus and my neighbor; and I remember God’s instructions about those relationships. I am reminded again who God is and how Jesus served with uncompromising humility.

When I use set prayers I am being formed into a humble servant. I find that I don’t always “feel like” doing the prayers. But when I do them anyway I am demonstrating to God that I recognize Christ as Lord. This means that I don’t get to do what I want when I want to. I demonstrate that I am willing to serve God and others even when I don’t feel like it. It is a light yoke and one that gets easier to bear with practice.

When the words of the set prayers do not seem to match up with our current interests, it is an opportunity to look towards the interests of others. We then say the words as if we are in the other person’s shoes. In this we are tithing our freedom, our voice, and our time as servant to our neighbors.

John and I use our dinner prayers to pray a psalm for the people of Darfur, for example. In essence we are lending them our voice and crying out to God on their behalf. We are asking God to consider their plight and take action. This is a powerful way to fight for others who are in a seemingly hopeless situation that we personally can’t “do” anything about.

Third: God hears us

The scriptures overflow with examples of people crying out. The slaves in Egypt cried out. Noah cried out. Hannah cried out. Job cried out.  Apostles cried out. And God heard them and God answered them. My husband points out that when we read set prayers, we are adding our voice to the voice of many others who are offering the same prayers all over the world, crying out together. This puts our lives into the context of the wider church and reminds us that we are part of the overarching bigger story; we are a part of God’s life. God hears us and remembers us as God’s beloved people.

The people who cried out in the Bible were not always answered in the way they expected or asked for.  But they were heard. This fact is reinforced for me when I know I am praying the same words they said; this doesn’t happen when I am making up my own prayers. But will we hear God?

We are sometimes prone to identify culturally dictated impulses or personal rationalizations as something “God said to me.” Through the set prayers, especially those taken directly from Scripture, I come to know what God has promised and what God’s “voice” sounds like.  I am less prone to put my own words into God’s mouth. And many times the answer I need is right there in the prayers.

In Conclusion: Set prayers provide a frame you can depend on

It may seem that praying set words is shallow or doesn’t take enough creative effort or is too simple. However, when I am focused on the tasks of the day, or trying to sort out my relationships, I can easily forget what is important.

Here is a sampling of important reminders that are included in the four Episcopal Daily Devotions:

The morning prayers remind us that we have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection.

At noon we are reminded that our blessed Savior stretched out his loving arms on the cross for us.

In the early evening we reflect that it is not ourselves we proclaim but Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake.

At the close of the day we are reminded that the Lord is merciful and almighty and can drive away all the snares of the enemy.

These things are a frame we can live in and depend on. They are true. They convey God’s love for us. They are God’s answers to our prayers.

 was at a church recently where a guest preacher began his sermon with prayer.  There is nothing strange about the act of praying before one’s sermon. However, the end of his prayer was, well, in a word…strange. He concluded by saying, “I love you.  Talk to you soon.” And from there immediately launched into his sermon. His words stunned me. They felt awkward and contrived. I assume, good naturedly, that his attempt was to communicate that his prayer life is an ongoing conversation with God—a lifestyle of continual prayer. But this casual, Buddy the Elf-like prayer just made me wonder if that’s what 1 Thessalonians 5:17 is talking about when it says, “Pray without ceasing.” I have no idea what the sermon was about that day because I spent the rest of the service wrestling, once again, with what it means to have a consistent prayerful life. What does it mean to pray continuously, ceaselessly, all the time? How do we do that without coming across as awkward and insincere to the people around us? How do we live out an authentic lifestyle of ceaseless prayer?

I have always been intrigued by the verse in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. In the NRSV, it says, “Pray without ceasing.”  Other translations say, “pray continually” or “never stop praying.” This was one of the first verses I memorized in Sunday school. To be honest, I think it was among the first verses I memorized because of its brevity more than its theological content; nonetheless, it is a verse that I have pondered, attempted to put into practice, and wrestled with many times throughout my life.   How can we actually pray all the time?

He concluded by saying, “I love you.  Talk to you soon. his words stunned me.”

I think about our bodies.  There is so much that happens constantly, rhythmically, and involuntarily. Our bodies are comprised of intricate systems—many of which work ALL the time. Constantly. Without stopping. Our hearts beat without us consciously telling them to do so. We digest food without reminding our stomach and intestines to get to work. It’s amazing! Our body systems work together naturally and incessantly. Then there are those things that we don’t start out knowing how to do well, or at all. Things like, riding a bike or learning how to swim. The balance and coordination it takes to ride a bicycle is learned over time. Often that learning process comes with some bumps and bruises. It’s not unusual to crash a few times before we get the hang of it, but with practice, we get better at it. The same can be said for aspects of a lifestyle of prayer. As we practice prayer in our lives, we learn that there is a balance, a rhythm, and a posture to maintaining consistency in it.

When I graduated from seminary, I accepted a position as the Director of Student Ministries at a Presbyterian church. It felt like an incredibly chaotic time for me. All in one month, I graduated from seminary, left my friends, moved across the country back into my parents’ house, and began summer programming for a large student ministries program. I hit the ground running and did not stop. My supervisor at the time was the church’s executive pastor, who had 25 years of ministry experience. What stood out to me about him is he maintained an exuberant love for ministry after so many years. He and I met for an hour each week. We talked about the youth ministry, the youth staff, all of the things you’d expect to talk about in a meeting with your supervisor…but he’d always end the meeting with the question, “Jenn, how is your soul?”

He’d always end the meeting with the question “jenn, how is your soul?” it made me cry almost ever time.

This question made me cry almost every time he asked it. That summer, it was the only time each week that question came up. Nobody else was asking me that question. More importantly, I was not asking myself that question. I was busy doing the work of ministry without paying attention to my own spiritual life. Looking back, I realize that this man, who quickly became a mentor in ministry for me, was teaching me an important practice in ministry — a lifestyle of staying plugged into the spiritual work happening inside of us every day. He was modeling for me the importance of tending to our souls. He had learned how to better live out a life of constant prayer, but didn’t tell me that he was teaching this to me. He practiced it. It shined through him. I had no doubt that this man practiced what he preached. It was evident in his ability to be present with me in my chaotic ramblings and yet lead me to the question that would calm some of the chaos. Much like a music teacher teaching their student to keep tempo, he walked along side me helping me to find the rhythm of my spiritual life that would sustain me through ministry. He was leading me to better understand the practice of continuous prayer.

A picture that has been painted of what it looks like to be “a great prayer.” That person calmly folds their hands, whispers, and has the perfect words at just the right time. Honestly, I struggle with that picture. I am far too dramatic. I say “yes” to too many things. I have to work really hard in order to be centered. And I often find myself longing for communication with God.

Maybe our prayers are more than just words. What if our actions are prayers? As Mother Teresa of Calcutta famously said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” She lived this out daily. She taught in a convent school in Calcutta for about 17 years, but the suffering and poverty she saw outside the convent walls moved her deeply. She was compelled to leave the convent school and devoted herself to working among “the poorest of the poor” in the slums of Calcutta. She saw those in need around her and moved toward them with no funding, but instead teaching skills, a heart to love the children in the slums, and trust that God would provide for her. She started an open-air school for slum children and, step-by-step, volunteers and financial support started coming in. Soon, she was able to extend the scope of her work. Small things. Great love. Small prayers. Continuously.

So, how do we really do this life of prayer? If we are to pray constantly, doesn’t it make sense that prayer, like life, is multifaceted? That it’s the collection of small things equaling something great? There is time for all prayers—for silence, intercession, fasting, praying in community, praying in solitude, speaking our prayers, screaming our prayers, or not even having words for our prayers but trying to live them out each day. What if prayer is more than folding our hands and bowing our heads at the dinner table and at bedtime?

A life of continual prayer is the recognition that every breath, every step, every word, every action is an ongoing conversation with the living God who is actively at work in us. Constantly.  Repeatedly.  Unceasingly.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

aving silenced the critics who accused her of relying too heavily on her songwriting partners with the entirely self-written Speak Now, Taylor Swift has now collaborated with other artists to her advantage; Red is more mature, more diverse, and shines in a way that the dramatically orchestrated Speak Now did not.

If Swift has strayed from her country roots, she still has her feet firmly planted in the realm of pop-country. Red finds a balance between the two worlds of country and pop. Some songs are saccharine-sweet pop confections (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”), while other songs have strong Nashville overtones (“I Almost Do,” “Begin Again”) but the most noticeable departure from her previous work are the initial tracks with their soaring arena-rock tendencies. Rolling Stone magazine got it right in describing the opening track, “State of Grace,” as a “U2-tinged liftoff.”[1] The song is sweeping and epic, with a guitar track which could have been lifted from The Edge.

One thing Swift does with undeniable verve and panache is write excoriating songs about boys who have hurt her. “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Getting Back Together,” with their pop sensibilities and catchy, simple hooks. “We Are Never…” is already a top-40 radio staple, and, with its Skrillex-esque dubstep-lite “I Knew You Were Trouble” has potential to top the charts as well. Perhaps the most heart-wrenching song on the album is “Treacherous,” in which Swift sings about the risks she is willing to take for love, singing “nothing safe is worth the fight.” Other emotional tracks include “I Almost Do,” a country ballad about resisting the temptation to call an ex-boyfriend, and “The Last Time,” an emotionally-charged duet with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol.

The album ends on a hopeful note – the final three tracks, “Everything Has Changed,” “Starlight,” and “Begin Again” speak of a blossoming relationship. “Everything Has Changed,” a duet with English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and showcases Swift’s airy upper register in a manner similar to her duet with The Civil Wars for The Hunger Games soundtrack. The three songs together leave the listener with the hope that Swift will finally be able to be successful in love.

As she continues to mature sonically, Swift matures lyrically as well. The vast majority of songs on this album contain complex, extended metaphors, or poetic remembrances of past relationships. While skewed toward a tween demographic, her work contains themes that adults can relate to as well. At this point, Swift has the most room to improve in the area of thematic diversity – listening to sixteen songs in a row about love and love lost is emotionally draining. Perhaps this emotional tiredness is part of what Swift is trying to communicate – that on top of her touring and recording schedule, relationships and breakups are exhausting. And this is something we all know to be true – so perhaps we ought to be grateful to Taylor Swift for the reminder.

[1] Dolan, Jon. Taylor Swift: Red. Rolling Stone, October 18, 2012. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/red-20121018

Disclaimer: Charlotte Sandy is a student in training with the School of Psychology. She is not an expert. For more information, please utilize the resources provided online via our website, thesemi.org or speak with a professional counselor.

I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak.  It is ever so easy to go.  Harder to find your way back.”

-Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

nd so I never met Allison Miller[1] but she went to a residential eating disorder treatment center in 2010 with several of my friends.  She struggled with an eating disorder and went into treatment multiple times between 2010 and 2012. In September, Allison was discharged from treatment, still fighting the inner struggle with all she had. This week she died suddenly as a result of her eating disorder.  She was in her mid-twenties.

At first, I was in shock. I knew that the mortality rate of eating disorders was (and still is) high – higher than that of any other mental illness – but the statistics still never felt real because I had never known anyone who had died.

The mortality rate of eating disorders varies significantly, but a 2009 study by the American Journal of Psychiatry reported that the mortality rate was 4% for anorexia nervosa, 3.9% for bulimia nervosa, and 5.2% for eating disorder not otherwise specified.[2]  Her death reminded me that it could have been any of my friends who have had an eating disorder. Eating disorders are insidious illnesses. They have physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional ramifications.[3] The “voice” of the eating disorder takes over, promising salvation if one would just submit to its every command. If you lose five pounds it will be enough… if you get thin you will be enough. But you can never meet all of the eating disorder’s demands. Nothing is ever “enough.”

It is hard for those who haven’t suffered from the illness to understand the utter devastation that an eating disorder reaps onto the body, mind, and soul.

It is hard for those who haven’t suffered from the illness to understand the utter devastation that an eating disorder reaps onto the body, mind, and soul. Many people in recovery from an eating disorder personify the inner monster. Author Jenni Schaefer in her book Life Without Ed, personified the disorder as an abusive “husband” named Ed (E.D., standing for, Eating Disorder). Others personify their disorder as a female named “Ana” (short for anorexia) or “Mia” (short for bulimia). The disembodied ‘voice’ of the eating disorder can be relentless. You’re fat, You’re disgusting, You’re worthless, You deserve to die are messages that repeat all of the time. Author Marya Hornbacher, who chronicled her journey of bulimia and anorexia in the memoir, Wasted, described her eating disorder as “my double image, the evil skinny chick who hisses, Don’t eat. I’m not going to let you eat. I’ll let you go as soon as you’re thin. I swear I will. Everything will be okay when you’re thin. Liar. She never let me go. And I’ve never quite been able to wriggle my way free.”

Worse, an eating disorder convinces the sufferer to think that it is benevolent.  People with eating disorders can be resistant to treatment. One woman entered treatment, horrified at the prospect of giving up an eating disorder which she described as her “best friend.” A treatment provider replied, “You think that your eating disorder is friend, but I see it like a monster ready to strangle you.” I heard a therapist liken an eating disorder to a “terrorist,” and, “You can’t negotiate with a terrorist.”

“You think that your eating disorder is friend, but I see it like a monster ready to strangle you.”

People can have an eating disorder at any weight. One common misconception is that people with eating disorders don’t think they’re sick enough. Sometimes, weight is not an estimator of eating disorder severity. Obviously, if someone loses a lot of weight suddenly, that is a warning sign. But it is not the only warning sign. People can be a completely normal weight, or overweight, and struggle with eating disorder behaviors, including bingeing, purging, overexercising, or restricting. Another misconception is that people with eating disorders are Caucasian, middle-upper class teenagers and college students. Eating disorders do not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual orientation. 10% of those who suffer from eating disorders are men, and a growing number of younger children and older women are developing eating disorders.[4]

Eating disorder recovery can also take several years, if not longer, and relapse is common.[5] Treatment is expensive (inpatient treatment for a few months can cost up to a few hundred thousand dollars out of pocket, as insurance companies are often not willing to pay the full amount for treatment). Residential treatment programs cost an average of $30,000 a day, and treatment is often needed for 3-6 months. Even outpatient treatment for an eating disorder costs an average of $100,000 or more.[6]  There is also considerable crossover between eating disorders.  It is not atypical for someone who starts with anorexia, for example, to develop binge eating disorder or begin bingeing and purging.  Therefore, treatment for multiple eating disorders might be warranted.

If you or anyone you know has an eating disorder, I want to know the following things:

1

First and foremost: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  You are in the company of many people… approximately 8 million people in America, 7 million women and 1 million men.[7]  And there are probably millions of other men and women who struggle with “disordered eating.”  The National Institute for Mental Health states that 1 out of 5 women struggle with an eating disorder or disordered eating.[8] People who have disordered eating may not have an official eating disorder, but they may have irregular eating habits, issues with exercise, be chronically dieting, or consider certain foods “good” or “bad.”

2

Next, I want you to know that treatment is available.  People can recover from eating disorders. I have seen it happen for my friends. If you need treatment, http://edreferral.com/ is a good web site to help you get started. Inpatient, residential, intensive outpatient, and outpatient treatment is available. Treatment is also available for free or for a reduced cost at Fuller Psychological and Family Services.

3

Full recovery is possible.  You do not need to be enslaved by an eating disorder. Jenni Schaefer, author of Life Without Ed, describes what recovery from an eating disorder can look like: “It is actually eating on Thanksgiving Day. It is enjoying myself at a cookout. It is being alone in my apartment without being afraid. It is having the energy to walk around the block. It is letting go. It is letting people get close to me and my boundaries. It is honesty. It is being able to say no. It is the ability to focus. It is the passion to pursue my dreams. It is having so much more time for living. It is me. And it can be you, too.”  Life in recovery is not perfect, but it is worth it.

4

Recovery comes one a day at a time, one meal at a time, one moment at a time.  Jenni Schaefer talks about doing the “next right thing.”  For example, if you just binged, the next right thing is eating the next meal and stopping the binge-restrict cycle.

Organizations:

National Eating Disorder Association

NIMH

Academy for Eating Disorders

Books:

Life without Ed and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me by Jenni Schaefer

Regaining Your Self and Dying to be Thin by Ira Sacker

8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin

Gaining: The Truth about Life After Eating Disorders by Aimee Liu

Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnston

Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp

Hope, Help, and Healing for Eating Disorders: A New Approach to Treating Anorexia, Bulimia, and Overeating by Gregory Jantz

Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth

Beating Ana: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder and Take Your Life Back by Shannon Cutts

Movies:

Thin

America the Beautiful II: Thin Commandments

Killing Us Softly

Dying to be Thin

Other:

SomethingFishy

ED Bites Blog

Sources:

[1] Name has been changed for confidentiality purposes.
[2] Other studies have reported higher mortality rates for anorexia, between 10-20%.  Mortality rates for untreated cases of anorexia might also be higher. http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/, http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm
[3] Take, for example, the host of physical/ medical issues: http://www.aedweb.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Medical_Care_Standards&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=2413, http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/medicalpubs/diseasemanagement/psychiatry-psychology/eating-disorders/
[4] http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-eating-disorders-know.html
[6] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/the-cost-of-an-eating-disorder/, http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/nedaDir/files/documents/handouts/FactsAct.pdf
[7] http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm
[8] http://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/counseling/Eating_Disorder_Statistics.pdf

hristmas Eve is different from other nights. In the film, Of Gods and Men, it is the decisive night. The Trappist monks of the Monastère de l’Atlas, nestled atop a mountainside Algerian village named Tibhirine, find themselves confronted on that night both by “terrorists” and by the newborn Jesus. Amidst increasing hostilities in the region, the revolutionary fighters have come into the monastery, brandishing assault rifles, to forcibly take Brother Luc to tend to their wounded an hour away. An ailing man himself, Luc is the only doctor in the area. Christian de Chergé, the elected head of the monastery, who has already refused the existing government’s military protection and now refuses the presence of revolutionary weapons inside the monastery, further refuses to send Brother Luc or any of the monastery’s scarce medical supplies with the armed men. They may bring their wounded to the town clinic, where they will be served without prejudice like the rest of the sick.

Ali Fayattia, the head of the armed group, is obviously moved by the nonviolent firmness of Christian, who, having led him outside the monastery walls, appeals to the monks’ well-known modesty and quotes a passage from the Qu’ran about the respect due Christian people, particularly monks and priests, “who wax not proud.” Their humble conditions are their defense. Finishing the quotation himself from memory, Fayattia relents, and the confrontation appears to end when he summons his troops to leave. But then Christian calls out awkwardly, “Tonight is different from other nights.”

“Why?” asks Fayattia.

“It’s Christmas,” Christian replies, “We celebrate the birth of the Prince of peace, Sidna Aissa.”

“Jesus,” translates Fayattia, and with that name, the confrontation ends, Fayattia extending his hand and Christian, haltingly, shaking it. A short while later, according to custom, the monks celebrate the Christmas Vigil and Mass. Looking back on that decisive night, Christian would say to his fellow friars,

Here it becomes clear not only that Christmas night is different from other nights but that all other days and nights are different because of Christmas night. Being confronted by violent men within the walls of their monastery had brought the monks face-to-face with the limit of their lives, all but paralyzing them with the presence of death, and so all they had left to do was live. And to begin to live in the face of death was simply to observe the calendar determined by the coming of Christ, to sing the words that had long been ingrained in their lives so that now they were sung by sheer inertia.

But what they found in that liturgical moment was not the escapist crutch of mere repetition or familiarity but testimony to the Prince of Peace in the very same violent world in which the monks found themselves. The way that the Lord Jesus was born and the threat hanging heavily over his life at its most vulnerable were the power and the promise of life in days of similar danger at the Monastère de l’Atlas.

Once frightened almost to the point of abandoning their service to Tibhirine, the monks began to see things differently in the bright shadow of Christmas. They found their salvation in the rhythm of the mundane tasks of sustenance, worship, and economic solidarity with their Muslim sisters and brothers in the impoverished village. Fear remained, but it was not the master of their lives. Several of them had indeed been rattled by the confrontation of Christmas Eve, but the way that daily and seasonal rhythms had been punctuated by Christian liturgy, which continually called their lives into the gospel story, prepared them to endure it in faith. And now their steadfastness grew with those rhythms, showing that the power of Christmas peace spreads not in a single night but through a pattern of worship and work, flowing from that night into the present, day after day and year after year, in the kitchen, the garden, the prayers, the bells. That’s how they had to resist the violence.

The burial crosses that line the various corridors of the monastery’s cultivated landscape tell us that this is not a pattern that pretends to escape death but one that unfolds in the very midst of it, training its participants to find the fullness of life as they work precisely there in its shadow. We easily forget that Micah’s and Isaiah’s vision of swords being beaten into plowshares is not about a mythological escape from violence. By the lights of these prophets, the Christian alternative to war is worshipful work.

In the coming days, our society will, once again, invoke Christmas to pretend that we are Christian. We will sound a hollow claim that Christmas night is different from other nights. For the Messiah child, absolutely helpless and already so threatened, we will substitute the slicked-out, Disneyified Jesus of commerce, the gnostic icon of a culture addicted to sanctimonious self-gratification that is as superficial as it is savage. There will appear to be nothing helpless or threatened about this Jesus, who is charged instead with solemnly reassuring us that our ostensibly abundant life is sacred and secure. And then we will watch as the self-righteous brokers of this culture skirmish over the extent to which this sort of Christmas should yield to more “inclusive” displays of Happy Holidays. We will listen as market speculators celebrate the contribution of Christmas greed to “the economy.” And our eyes and ears will be flooded with scenes of Christmas charity that aim to justify our violence and exploitation as the work of generous people. We can scarcely imagine the price that so many must pay for our capitalist religion, whose sparkle is the Christmas Holi-Day. Nor can we imagine what this religion does to us who are its purveyors, who know so little of worshipful work. The prophet cries out against us:

We, too, have to resist the violence. But can we? By what rhythms do we live if their culmination is the American Christmas? How can we possibly manage the manifold refusal that Christian managed when, day after day and year after year, we say yes to “the economy” which preys systemically upon so much of the earth’s people, animals, plants, water, and soil, all in the name of “growth”? The way that Christmas toys are made in China is but a single tooth in an omnivorous machine that never turns off. Being consumed by this machine, how can we live up to the night that is different from other nights? How can we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace?

We might despair, but one of the reasons Of Gods and Men is such a true movie is that it shows the agonizing strain of Christian nonviolence. Christian de Chergé can be seen time and again pacing and wringing his hands, his face twisted with conflicting impulses in the face of new tragedies, his fellow monks torn between insufferable alternatives. There is no easy road to peace, and there are no shortcuts for us from a culture of violent consumption to Christian holiness. We are a long way from the life of the Monastère de l’Atlas, but even we can welcome the child who was born for us, absolutely helpless and already so threatened. It’s what we have to do. Even for us there is the slow discovery of worshipful work, daily tasks in whose undertaking we can find our salvation, learning as we refuse the destruction of others and ourselves that all we have left to do is live.

Some of that will have to happen in the kitchen, in the garden, through scheduled prayers, and by a pace of life marked by bells different from those that keep time for the buying and selling of “the economy.” It will involve weaning ourselves from goods that are bought with blood (e.g., gasoline). And, if we are to live in faithful solidarity with our neighbors as Christian and his monastic community did, it will certainly be a life fraught with pacing, hand-wringing, and conflicting impulses, a life of struggling toward sound judgment in the face of apparently insufferable alternatives. But that is precisely the life of hope that is possible because Christmas night is different from other nights.

As the monks of the Monastère de l’Atlas sang on Christmas Eve,

This is the night, the immense night of origins. And nothing exists except love, except love which now begins. By separating land from water, God has prepared the earth like a cradle, for his coming from above.

This is the night, the happy night of Palestine. And nothing exists except the Child, except the Child of life divine. By taking flesh of our flesh, God our desert did refresh, and made a land of boundless spring.

This is the night, the long night in which we grope. And nothing exists except this place, except this place of ruined hope. By stopping in our abode, God, as with the bush, did forbode, the world on which fire would fall.

I must confess that many of my extended family’s Christmas traditions, part as they are of a wider culture of violent greed dressed up as Christian devotion, leave me stumbling through our gatherings perplexed and estranged. I am sure that some of my perturbation is just falsely noble wallowing, and it is easy in such gatherings to be a perfect ass. To hope for peace is not to be nauseatingly indignant. And while I am sure that our celebrations are among those that the soul of the Lord hates, I am also sure that there is no hope in romanticizing drab poverty. As the woman who anointed Jesus for burial teaches us, certain occasions call for a measure of extravagance. The question is, what kind of extravagance is worthy of the child who was born absolutely helpless and already so threatened, the child who later died by Roman crucifixion? Such extravagance must somehow say that that helpless child and that dead man is the one omnipotent God.

On the night they were subsequently kidnapped and herded off to their deaths by Fayattia’s men, Fayattia himself already killed in previous fighting, the monks of the Monastère de Notre Dame de l’Atlas briefly suspended their usual austerity at the initiative of Brother Luc. To their Eucharistic meal he added fine wine and the tinny sounds of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake through a portable stereo. The joy of the table spills over in laughter and tears.

I am not sure what holy extravagance is at Christmas in America, but the biblical scenes of Jesus’ birth and the life of the monks of Tibhirine tell us that hope lies not in easy aloofness but abiding, if disconcerting, solidarity. We certainly cannot pretend that we’re not part of the problem crystallized in the American Christmas. Our complicity is deep and manifold. Somehow the way to peace must be at once the confession of our complicity in an economy of violence and our refusal to settle for it. It must be our straining, our praying, for God’s kingdom, which is “justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

That both the civil war wracking Algeria and the presence of the Monastère de l’Atlas owed a debt to the colonialism of France and other Christian powers is not glossed over by Of Gods and Men. And at the end of the film, Christian de Chergé’s words against the backdrop of his own murder, which is a revolutionary attempt to bargain with colonialist powers, tell us that he knew well the solidarity that is the meaning of being Christian.

Should it ever befall me, and it could happen today, to be a victim of the terrorism swallowing up all foreigners here, I would like my community, my church, my family, to remember: that my life was given to God and to this country, that the Unique Master of all life was no stranger to this brutal departure, and that my death is the same as so many other violent ones, consigned to the apathy of oblivion. I’ve lived enough to know I am complicit in the evil that, alas, prevails over the world, and the evil that will smite me blindly. I could never desire such a death. I could never feel gladdened that these people I love be accused randomly of my murder. I know the contempt felt for the people here, indiscriminately. And I know how Islam is distorted by a certain Islamism. This country, and Islam, for me are something different. They’re a body and a soul. My death, of course, will quickly vindicate those who called me naive or idealistic, but they must know that I will be freed from a burning curiosity and, God willing, will immerse my gaze in the Father’s and contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them. This thank-you which encompasses my entire life includes you, of course, friends of yesterday and today, and you too, friend of the last minute [i.e., his killers], who knew not what you were doing. Yes, to you as well I address this thank-you and this farewell which you envisaged. May we meet again, happy thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen. Inchallah.

he Sessions is the delicate, intimate, and very naked story of Mark O’Brien’s [John Hawkes] relationship with a sex surrogate named Cheryl [Helen Hunt]. The film is based on the true story of Mark’s life as a severely disabled 38 year-old-man who hires a sex surrogate after being commissioned to write an article on sexuality and disability. Trained in the psychology and physiology of sex, sex surrogates help people resolve serious sexual difficulties in both mind and body. They can only be hired through a client’s clinical therapist and, in order to protect all parties involved, are limited to six sessions…hence the title of the film.

Having suffered from polio as a child, Mark is paralyzed from the neck down and goes through life laying flat on a five-and-a-half foot long stretcher attached to an iron lung. Tragic, yes. But Mark is a charming, intelligent, and witty poet and journalist. He’s also a devout Catholic who enjoys a poignant friendship with his parish priest. And so The Sessions invites you to explore sexuality through a somewhat unlikely lense. Disability, therapy, friendship, romance, and religion all play a role in answering the question: What does it mean to experience wholeness and intimacy?

Matthew:

This film is about baring all of yourself – body, mind, strength, and soul. It is a potent and convincing portrayal of the “naked and felt no shame” of Genesis 2, demonstrating how to drop the fig leaves and stand before another person, no longer judging or evaluating, but wholly accepting. It is also about the infinitesimally more difficult task of learning to be wholly accepted in return. Impressive, especially for a film about sex as a business transaction. Are sex surrogates prostitutes? With simple and honest storytelling, The Sessions says no, its philosophy hinging on the scriptural idea of sex as a redemptive act. Prostitution uses sex to numb pain or deliver a temporary hit of satisfaction. Sex surrogacy, on the other hand, uses sex to heal. Just as the scriptures depict sexual relations as one of the primary ways of righting a derailing human story (Rahab, Tamar, Bathsheba, Ruth, Lot’s daughters, etc), this film also attests to sexuality as a way to heal heart and soul. Throughout the film, Mark consults with his priest, Father Brendan, who decides that healthy sexuality is theologically endowed by a force beyond the church’s rigid appropriation of “purity.” To Brendan, repairing years of broken relationships and bitter disappointments is far more important than adhering to the letter of official Christian dogma.

Personally, I felt the beauty, intimacy, and power of sex when watching this film. It felt sacred. It was the precise and exacting opposite of porn, or the majority of dramatized love scenes. This film was about two people who fight to be fully with each other, and all the awkward and imperfect glory that comes with that. I saw the characters bare their bodies and their souls, which made me feel like I was intruding on something meant for them alone.

Samantha:

I think everyone, especially every Fuller student, needs to see The Sessions. This film captures wholeness, sexuality, and religion with beautiful, interwoven harmony. While media tends to expose the glamor, ease, and familiarity of sex, and Christianity can be faulted as preferring to overlook the fact that we exist inside physical bodies with physical desires (for food, shelter, and yes, sex), this film puts these opposing threads in conversation with each other; all inside the body and soul of one charming and disabled man. Mark asks questions about what it means to be a whole person despite his disability, to love and be loved, and to experience physical intimacy with another human body. He asks these questions of himself, his friends, his priest, his God, and ultimately, he asked them of me.

I left the theater feeling naked, and yet more secure than when I had entered. The Sessions invites you into the most intimate parts of a person’s life as they bare their deepest shame, fear, and insecurities. The story is so captivating, the characters so honestly portrayed, I forgot I was sitting in a theater full of (mostly elderly) people watching actors in a movie. If this film doesn’t make you think differently about the boxes we, as Christians or Americans or post-modern twenty-somethings, put around sex, you missed it. Director Ben Lewin and his cast translate real life redemption to film in a powerfully (and theologically) significant experience.

Matthew:

I understand exactly what you mean about feeling more secure when leaving the theater. It was reminiscent of Lars and the Real Girl, reminding me of just how compassionate humans can be when faced with someone who needs their help. I was also struck by how sex in the film was a choice, rather than a “mood” or “force” that swept you into the moment. It was almost as though choosing to be physically intimate (despite massive physical obstacles, and despite lack of emotional connection or history) allowed true intimacy to emerge.

Do you think that we sometimes go about it backward? We often want emotional or psychological security before being physically intimate, when perhaps it can work the other way around? I’m sort of thinking about arranged marriages and such, where people choose to love physically.

Samantha:

Well I’m certainly no therapist, but I think more than going about it backwards, we approach intimacy in disjointed segments of relationship. We put sex or marriage (or whatever intimate fulfillment looks like in your book) on one end of the board and spend a lifetime of tangled, fragmented relationships trying to “win” the game. In reality, I think intimacy is spiraled, layered, and constantly evolving.

For example, each of Mark’s relationships is marked by incredible and beautiful intimacy – with his priest, with his attendants, with Cheryl. Such intimacy emerges outside the bounds, and even hopes, of marriage or sex. And I think what Mark discovers through the process of intercourse is that sex itself is not the “win.” So I wouldn’t say that true intimacy occurs for Mark because of sex. Rather the sexual act frees him from imagining that sex is the answer, the means to, or the result of such intimacy. Maybe that’s why the idea of an arranged marriage is almost comforting to me. It takes “winning” out of the picture and frees you to accept, receive, and create intimacy with what you already have. I think that’s the role Cheryl plays in Mark’s life.

I agree with you that the film is about the task of learning to be accepted as much as it is about learning to be accepting. Why do you think one is more difficult than the other? Where did you see this in the film and is it something you’ve experienced in your own life?

Matthew:

I think acceptance of self is one of the greatest difficulties of all life.

Samantha:

Go on…

Matthew:

Well, because I think fear of rejection is the greatest of all human fears. Fully accepting another is hard, but it can be attained with relative certainty. I know in my heart when I fully accept you. However, when another person fully accepts me, I can never be sure that it’s actually real. I second guess, conjuring evidence to the contrary, because I don’t have unfiltered access to the other person’s heart. I have to choose to believe them, rather than know that they love me wholly, and that is a dicey endeavor, because it could turn out that they are deceiving me. Learning to be accepted fully is the riskiest thing anyone could ever do, which makes it the most frightening, but also the most rewarding.

Samantha:

So what’s next? Twilight?

Matthew:

I actually saw that.

Samantha:

You’re a prepubescent girl.

Matthew:

The film could have easily been re-titled My Head’s Come Off! There were at least 90 dozen decapitations. How about The Perks of Being a Wallflower?

Samantha:

Perfect.