It is the evening of Ash Wednesday.  Outside my window, the rain falls, a gentle patter that momentarily swells now and then, forming puddles on the oversaturated ground.  It rained all day and the prediction is for snow tonight – no more than a half an inch, they say.  Winter persists.  It’s been a long one, and in these parts, the sun doesn’t shine very much between October and March.

I have been trying to up my appreciation for winter.  Frankly, winter rather insults me.  This is a bad attitude, I know.  I will never be one of those people who just loves a brisk winter day and can’t wait to get out in it.  I won’t be one who plays winter sports and plans winter outings.  But it is not simply the cold, and the inconvenience of trying to get around.  SAD, seasonal affective disorder, is a fact of winter for me.  Mostly I can handle it, but at times it is quite fearsome.  It takes work to combat it.  Sometimes I need others to recognize what is happening and step in, pull me out of the abyss.

I am learning to endure winter, with what I hope is some small measure of grace.  I try not to complain – too much.  I make myself walk in the weather – sometimes.  I use my light lamp.  I get out of bed in the morning, even if I don’t have to go anywhere until later.  I pray.  I keep my eyes open for beauty.  I ask for help  - this may be the hardest thing of all.

There is something I do genuinely appreciate about winter. In this part of the U.S.,  the very definite demarcation between seasons is evident; here, the seasons change ‘for real for real’.  The shift from winter into spring is always the most profound for me, surely because I am so anxious for winter to end.  It does come, spring.  Life persists.  What seems dead is not; only sleeping.  Even today, with snow yet in the forecast, I can see it.  The trees have those buds on them, the ones that up close are brown and tender and lovely, and from afar, say when you are driving along the county roads, the upraised limbs of all the trees seem to give off a hazy pink glow.  Still on the county roads I drive past a copse of maples with sap buckets affixed.  The birds, my lord, the birds are losing their minds with their flocking and swooping, gathering in their great crowds.  The slant of the light, when the sun does shine, is different.  The earth has tilted, the equinox approaches, spring looms.

Winter is a fact of my life and I am stumbling about, trying to live with it, really live and not simply endure.

Spring will come.  It always does.  I don’t always believe it and yet – there it comes.  Hallelujah.

Two very interesting, thoughtful, influential Christian pastors passed away in the last few days: one Roman Catholic, one American Baptist; one cloistered, and one who participated in presidential inaugurations.

Father Matthew Kelty — longtime monk, priest, and homilist at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, confessor to Thomas Merton, and author of numerous books of collected sermons and essays — died last week at age 96. In a lovely obituary at Religion Dispatches, Louis Ruprecht notes that Fr. Kelty wrote an essay at age 90 called “Celibacy and the Gift of Gay” in which he argued that:

A celibate priesthood, community, is a grace for the Church, a song of the Kingdom (where there will be no marriage but all will be whole),and a joy for all in it. There are none more called to it, more capable of it, more created for it, than the people we call gay. They begin from day one a process of integration others do not even have a hint of before they are 40. Bless them! (My Song is of Mercy, 258-259)

At least some of Fr. Kelty’s homilies are online, and are beautiful reads. Here is one I particularly enjoyed. The large-crowd communication system he imagines I’ve in fact seen practiced at big demonstrations with no sound amplification.

Rev. Peter Gomes passed away Monday at the too-young age of 68. A chaired professor at Harvard, and the minister at Harvard’s Memorial Church, Rev. Gomes was the leading spiritual adviser at the university; he was also a prolific author and a beloved teacher and preacher.

Below is an interview with Rev. Gomes. (Transcript follows.)

Interviewer: How do you, um, exegete “I am the way, the truth, and the life?”

Gomes: I exegete that always in the context of another verse, which Jesus says: ‘Other sheep have I not of this fold.’ And it seems to me that in exegeting any text of scripture, you take the verse, and you take the context, and you take the larger picture. I simply cannot accept the notion that that verse is the one absolute justification for a “my church or no church” point of view. I think Jesus is talking to a group of people and he says “Look, if you want to get in on this then you’ve gotta come with me. I’m the one who’ll get you there. I’ll show you how to do it.” He’s talking to a particular group of people. He’s not making a universal pronounciation [sic] there.

And even if he were — this is where I venture onto cracking ice I know — but even if he were, one has to ask: Surely God must have given some thought to all these other people, and what might that thought be? And just because I don’t know what that thought is, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t know. So I remember J.B. Phillips book many years ago, Your God is Too Small.

Interviewer: Your God is Too Small.

Gomes: I said: I have got to have a God who is not an American Baptist.

Interviewer: Well I can assure you…

Gomes: He is not. [laughter]

Well, I have to have a God who is not even a Christian. And somehow the God that I worship and who has made everything — and not just the post-Reformation church — has somehow a plan, a way, a thinking, and I have to take that seriously. I have to discover it.

So my relations with other faiths and other religions means that I have to be reverent of them, because somehow God is… has a responsibility towards them, as I must have. And therefore I can’t say “Well the only way I can deal with you is that you must become as I am.” And that… because that makes my little view God’s view, and I’m not sure that’s really quite right.

I suspect it might be cheesy to close an “In Memoriam” with the words of a hymn, but, you know, there’s a place for cheese — and I think there’s also a reason why people reach to song to express aspects of loss (even of famous people we’ve never met) that can’t be expressed in didactic prose. So in the words of one of my favorite Southern Harmony hymns:

My Christian friends, in bonds of love,
Whose hearts in sweetest union join,
Your friendship’s like a drawing band,
Yet we must take the parting hand.
Your company’s sweet, your union dear,
Your words delightful to my ear,
Yet when I see that we must part,
You draw like cords around my heart.

For the life of Fr. Kelty and Rev. Gomes, gratitude.

I hope it comes in my lifetime: the day when a bunch of people “Berlin” the walls erected by Homeland Security between the US and Mexico. I don’t happen to agree with the goals of the wall in the first place: I could write volumes of disagreement about “security,” “border,” “barrier,” “immigrant,” and “illegal,” among other notions. But even if I did think that somehow US security was a valuable goal, and stopping people from entering the US from Mexico to find work was a key to that goal, building a wall would be not be at the top of my list for how to accomplish said goal.

(Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / January 19, 2011)

One of the many problems with this sieve of a securitization attempt is that — wait for it — it’s not on the border. In many places, it runs a mile or more north of the actual border. Wherever that is.

Here at the eastern end of the borderline, the Mexico/US boundary is “marked” by the Rio Grande River. The Rio Grande has been a capricious marker for the duration of its service, so variable in its shifting flow that ranchers on either side of the river could and did find themselves losing or gaining land or cattle through any given season of flooding. Now that the flow of the river has been reduced to a trickle by upstream draw-downs for agricultural irrigation, it is an even more ludicrous excuse for a border, especially where it widens into a sandy, silty delta through and outside the town of Brownsville at the mouth of the river.

So, where ya gonna build the wall? Well, not in the river … and not in its flood plain … and not in Mexico … so, yeah, just a little north of all those problem areas. Which has created the situation described in the latimes.com article, “Texas landowners stuck on wrong side of border fence” which describes the plight of folks whose lands, properties, livestock, orchards and families are on the “wrong” side of the fence (h/t to resistracism for noting the article):

When the Homeland Security Department began its Southwest border buildup four years ago, erecting barriers seemed a straightforward enough proposition. The international boundary is ruler-straight for hundreds of miles from California to New Mexico, and planners laid the fencing down right on the border, traversing deserts, mountains and valleys.

But here, where the border’s eastern edge meets the Gulf of Mexico, the urgency of national security met headlong with geographical reality. The Rio Grande twists through Brownsville and surrounding areas, and planners had to avoid building on the flood plain. So the barriers in some places went up more than a mile from the river.

Welcome to the South Texas borderlands, where the border has been crossing people for centuries now. Thousands of Spanish ranching families woke up one day to find themselves citizens of a new country, Mexico, resident in the state of Tejas y Coahuila. Those same families later woke up to find themselves citizens of the United States, resident in the state of Texas, after the Treaty of Guadalupe ended the US war of aggression on Mexico.

Mexico attempted to protect the rights of its citizens through that conflict and its “resolution,” but by most accounts, it was already too late. During Tejas’ revolt from Mexican control, Anglo colonists — many of them illegal immigrants into the Mexican state of Tejas y Coahuila — had expelled and driven out Mexican families living near their colonies. Mexican families, apprehensive and under pressure, sold over 1,500,000 acres of land, with over 1,300,000 acres shifting to Anglo hands.

(Which may be part of the reason why the latimes.com article is illustrated by an Anglo woman named Pamela Taylor … or maybe it was necessary to picture a white woman rather than a Latina so we’d give the story a look.)

It’s an old story, and the most apt handle on it is still Gloria Anzaldúa, who spoke of this region as an open wound …

… una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture.

– Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, 25

I grew up in that border culture. It runs through me still. And when I think with my body, I know this: wounds this deep and intractable cannot be stitched together or bandaged over or walled away. They can only heal from the inside out, and in the meantime you live with the wound in your body, keep it clean and protected, and love the parts of yourself that are struggling to come together.

The people mixing and laughing and loving and crying and dying and working and living in, on, and around the border are the Body, the wounded Body doing its best to heal. This wall won’t help; the mindset it represents and springs from won’t help. And someday we’ll have our Berlin moment, and it will come down.

In the meantime, let’s spray-paint this everywhere we can:

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. — Leviticus 19:33-34

And maybe this one, too:

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. — Leviticus 25:23

I came across this op-ed piece in the NY Times today outlining the spending cuts being proposed by GOP lawmakers to programs that aid children living in poverty. They include:

• $50 million in cuts to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant that “supports state-based prenatal care programs and services for children with special needs.”

• $1 billion in cuts to programs at the National Institutes of Health that support “lifesaving biomedical research aimed at finding the causes and developing strategies for preventing preterm birth.”

• Nearly $1 billion in cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its preventive health programs, including to its preterm birth studies.

This is the same budget in which House Republicans voted to strip all federal financing for Planned Parenthood.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks after a friend of mine posted on Facebook a story about legislative attacks on abortion rights, including the proposed cuts to Planned Parenthood, and she included as her status, “oh how much better our U.S. dominated world would be if our religio-political culture revolved around the Quaker value *there is that which is of God in everyone,* instead of the hyper-Calvinistic value *predestined (s)elect few over a totally depraved humanity.*”

And I starteed thinking … what exactly is the theological rationale for the protection of the unborn/preborn/fetuses but not of the post-born? Where do they fit into theological anthropology? Into soteriology? Into ecclesiology? I know, I know, I’m a doctoral student and I should just go and look this shit up, right?

Oh wait, I’m a doctoral student and I don’t have time to look this shit up right now because I’m waaaaaaay behind in reading Hannah Arendt. Who, I’m sure, fits into theology somewhere, and I’ll know exactly where by the end of the semester.

But seriously — can anyone point me in that direction? Give some names of writers/theologians etc. who’ve done some work on this of figuring out how one can theologically justify (or not … I’m kinda leaning toward not) protection and care for kiddos in the womb but none once they start screaming and pooping in the outside world.

Is this the way I left it?
A pulpit trapped behind four walls…
A man who’s mastered prose and pause…
You yell and scream, but miss my call…

Is this the way I left it?
People lying in the street…
Children wondering what they’ll eat…
Disciples singing “Tis So Sweet”…

Is this the way I left it?
This side clinging to the verse…
That side calls my Word “a curse”…
Neither sees both sides have worth…

Is this the way I left it?
Preachers sell my gift for gain…
Teachers seek applause and fame…
Neither feel a hint of shame…

It’s not what I expected.
I ate here with my enemy…
And touched the man with leprosy…
And stood for change defiantly…

And, as I recollect it–
I made the law servant to grace…
And helped the outcast show her face…
And died… so you could take my place…

But, look how you reject it.
Instead of setting captives free…
You oppress them and indict me…
And who will speak prophetically?!

Is this the way I left it?
Has my message come to naught,
Or did I leave your passion hot?
Discern the truth and what is not.
Disciples: Do as you were taught…
Yes, child. The way I left it.

by Cassandra of  Troy // February 27, 2011

I currently live somewhere in the U.S.* where I teach bible and some other stuff* at a small Christian liberal arts college (interdisciplinary is my middle name).  I am African American and grew up in a mostly black context, but for the past several years have lived in a pretty white context  - this may figure largely in the things I choose to write here.

Due to a boring WordPress issue that would take far longer to explain than it’s likely to hold anyone’s interest, we here at The Seedbed wound up with a backlog of introduction posts that languished away pending review. Do you know why? Evidently the blog was waiting for me to approve them. The blog has a much higher opinion of my authority than is appropriate, higher than any human would be likely to form, and for this reason I didn’t know I needed to take that step. Ah well. Now I have done so, and changed the settings so that this won’t happen again. But because I’m worried about great posts getting buried, may I please direct your attention to:

This post in which Priscilla the Explainer introduces herself in what she SAYS will be her most serious post ever. (I’ll take her at her word about POSTS, SPECIFICALLY, but I also think that she might be one of the heavy-hitters in the comments, is all I’m saying.) Incidentally, don’t you think it’s charming and incredibly generous of Priscilla to be thanking the rest of us whackaloon lefties for abiding the presence of a relative conservative in our midst? Well I do. As though it’s not we who should be thanking her for being willing to be outnumbered.

But please also do not neglect this post in which rock star Yuki (I’m going to have to start thinking of synonyms for “rock star” because we are nine rock stars deep) eulogizes Dwayne McDuffie and manages – because she’s just that cool – to connect this to what Theologian and Official Famous Person David Tracy says about imaginative stories. I happen to know Yuki in real life — a datum which I never tire of dropping into conversation as it never fails to impress — and I will say that this is a tiny little sample of some work she’s done that has Gotten Noticed In The Field. So, you want to read this.

Once you’re finished with that, I SUPPOSE you may have a break, but then do make sure to read Cassandra of Troy’s introduction because… well, Cassandra of Troy is kind of internet-famous under another name AND YES I POACHED HER. (Okay, I didn’t “poach” her so much as I politely begged her to throw some posts our way as she’s able to fit us into her life, and not only did she agree but she’s gotten us out of most of the WordPress-related jams mentioned above and then some. One of my favorite lines comes early in the post, when she talks about what “drives me to think until my head hurts, to soul search until I cry, and to read until the wee hours of the morning. I believe faith and reason can intersect without requiring me to lie to you or me or anyone else.” Cassandra? Brava. World at large? Read, please. Thank you.

Oh, but don’t think you’re done just because you’ve pondered the nature of truth! Oh no no no no. Because you’ve yet to plumb Badasstheologychickwivattitude’s intro post in which she comes up with THE MOST DELIGHTFUL IMAGE OF WHAT THEOLOGY IS ALL ABOUT that I’ve ever read. You think you know what theology’s about because you read a little Helmut Thielicke? Pah. Once you’ve read BATCWA’s bit about the magazine – and that’s the only hint you’re going to get, internet! – you’ll wonder how you ever made it this far without that image in your head.

I can’t say there will be a quiz, but I can say I will give a teacherly stinkeye to any of you Internet People who gloss over these posts. None of us wants that, I think. So I shan’t distract you any longer. Have fun.

<tap, tap, tap . . . is this thing . . . tap, tap, tap . . .>  Oh, you can hear me?  Good.

This will, in all likelihood, be my only halfway-serious post.  Usually this space will be reserved entirely for spectacles of absurdity, but I think not tonight.  The performance might not work if you don’t know the actor first.  And so here I am, stepping to the front of the stage a bit shyly, looking to see if there is anyone looking back at me.  Me: thirtysomething white Southerner, able-bodied, straight, single, not a parent.  I have changed my career and my political party but have never changed denominations.

What do I believe in, you might ask…

I believe in the Trinity.  The virgin birth.  The bodily resurrection.  The real presence.  Incense.  Country ham.  Draft beer.  That the works of Alasdair MacIntyre are vastly overrated.  I believe that no means no.  I believe that Radical Orthodoxy is neither.  I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing PowerPoint in churches.  I believe in labor unions, Murphy’s Oil Soap, mechanical pencils, the second use of the Law, unsalted butter, and not putting up Christmas decorations in Advent.  And, I don’t believe in porn, because I do believe that the inexplicable, sticky, mundane, honest, and occasionally hot sex that can happen between two real people is infinitely more interesting than anything on a screen.

Goodnight.