Dancing with the Raggedy God

Today is Sunday. 

There was a time when Sunday was a sanctuary. You went to church, and maybe you even enjoyed it. Sunday morning was a time for worship and dancing with God. He let you lead at first, but once you had found your footing and knew the steps, he gradually and gracefully took the lead and you began to follow.

It was an intricate dance and a heady time on the floor with him. Whether it was a classic waltz, or something brisk from your high school days or early adulthood that moved you as smoothly as butter on a hot griddle, you loved it. As the two of you danced across the floor, you picked up and considered new ideas, gained new perspectives, and wondered at new information. 

Those Sundays at church were a personal golden age. Sunday was a time you could give from your own passions, and others would welcome it. You could lower the bucket into your own well of knowledge and people would drink. You poured out your heart for the sake of others, and Sunday at church was a place where that gift was prized. 

Maybe it even was a time for friendship. Together with others at church you celebrated sacraments like going out for lunch after the service, or talking with one another in the hall while the preacher blathered on endlessly during the sermon. 

Whatever happened during the week, Sunday morning was always fresh start. Church was where you belonged. The people there were your people. The tribe was yours. You enjoyed going there.

But that was before. 

Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. It was bad. You stopped enjoying church but kept going out of obligation. Just getting there became a struggle, but you pressed on because of what it used to be, until one day you finally just couldn't anymore. 

You stopped. It was over.

Now when Sunday rolls around, the only sanctuary you want is another hour in bed, and the most transcendent thing you touch is your pillow. 

What did it? Were there predators loose in the sanctuary? Did people promise to stay with you all night, and then leave once it started getting dark? Did you look behind the curtain and realize that there was nothing there but an old man playing with knobs and levers? Did you give the church your treasure and then find it sitting on the curb on Monday morning, awaiting collection?

Maybe you were honest about who you were, or your friends were, and then the people you thought were your tribe proceeded to reject you because they didn’t want honesty after all. Or maybe after years of hearing people stress the value of integrity, you saw them turn on a dime and say we could wink at corruption and even cruelty if we gained control, and to your horror you realized that control was all that had mattered all along. 

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? The point is, a place you needed to be safe, wasn’t. People who claimed to love and value you, didn’t. The place of belonging, wasn’t. 

And now you're here. Alone, jaded, disappointed, more than a little bitter about the whole affair and even entertaining some brutal doubts about this whole God thing. 

Who can blame you? I certainly don't. The way you feel right now is natural and normal after the betrayal you've experienced. And you're not alone, either. Look around and you'll see that the number of people with you in this dismal place are legion.

Like you they have been kicked and stepped on; abused, disbelieved and gaslit; used and exploited; ignored when they wanted to serve, told that in true complementarian fashion God made men to lead and women to follow; or just told to have faith in the leaders and not challenge them with questions. Like you they've come upon pretenders who claim to act with God's authority and have the gall to tell you that you're hurting God's kingdom when you speak out about what they've done.

Like you they've been driven out and pushed away, and told they weren't good enough, if they were told anything at all.

Like them, you're hurt. You need to rest. You don't know if you will ever go back. I hear you. 

God is not disappointed in you. He doesn't hold it against you that you feel this way. 

If all you can do this morning or today is to lie under your covers, then God will lie there next to you. If the only worship you can give is to stream Batman on Netflix, then God will sit and watch with you. 

The failure isn't yours. Take all the time you need to, and when it comes time to move on, don't go back. Move forward.

The God you once believed in is not the god of the mighty and the pious, but the god of the outcast and the ragged. He drives along forgotten country roads in a rusty old Buick, past weather-beaten mailboxes, looking for those who have been chased away; and he hikes through undeveloped and even liminal places to find those who have given up. 

Your church sucked, but you don’t. 

The raggedy God welcomes you as you are, and he’ll dance with you again. 

 Copyright © 2022 by David Learn. Used with permission.

David and Bathsheba, and Nathan

It's David and Bathsheba season right now on Twitter.

The church goes through this so regularly it's almost a part of the liturgical calendar. On one side are voices that cast Bathsheba as a vile seductress, bathing at night in the mikveh where David could see her. From another box come the voices of those who cast the blame on David and Bathsheba equally, as two adults who consented to an adulterous liaison. A third group considers the relative power of an Iron Age king and a woman whose husband is away from home and concludes that since Bathsheba lacked the power to safely and confidently say no, that David was a rapist.

It's a powerfully affecting story, as evidenced by the strong passions it elicits. To understand it properly we need to consider the dynamics each of the players bring to the drama, and then ask ourselves which character we should emulate, if any of them.

For starters, there's David. As a former war hero and as king, David enjoyed a high profile, and the things he did drew notice because of who did them. Sent an army to war? People knew. He stayed home? They would have seen that too.

It was ordinary and proper for kings to lead their troops to war. It could spell trouble if a general led the effort and came home victorious and popular with the troops. Thrones had been lost over things like that. In fact it was precisely his high profile in the campaign against the Philistines that had endeared the people to David over King Saul, his predecessor.

David may have had good reasons for staying in Jerusalem. Maybe he had injured his leg, or he was receiving an important embassy. It could be had a serious illness, or it could even have been as pedestrian a thing as getting older. Who knows?

The point is, he stayed. People noticed.

Then one night when he was unable to sleep, he looked out across the city and saw Bathsheba bathing in her mikveh and he sent for her. He didn’t go himself. He sent someone for her.

Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, was away at the front. Someone arrived at her house and told her that her presence was requested at the palace. She had no choice in the matter. The king had sent for for her, so she went. She ended up staying overnight.

A king like David has secrets, but this was never one of them. Whoever went to summon Bathsheba and escorted her back to the palace knew. The guards on duty knew. By morning there would have been whispers all about the palace. Kitchen staff knew. Servants who scrubbed the flagstones knew. Lunch wouldn't even be on the table the next day before everyone in the palace knew. Nothing flies faster than gossip, and a story like this would have had wings

They might not know the particulars, though some surely did; but they knew enough. Rumors spread like fire, even when it’s risky to repeat them.

Bathsheba’s visit was an open secret.

A few weeks later Uriah showed up at the palace, drawn home from the battlefield by personal request of the king to deliver a report any number of other people would have been better suited to give. Maybe someone felt sorry for the soldier and told him the rumors about what had happened weeks earlier, and maybe they didn’t. But however far the embers had died down, Uriah's unexpected appearance blew fresh air on them and added tinder too. Before long what  David did had become the most open secret of his entire reign.

Then Uriah tragically died at the front, and David took a personal interest in comforting his widow, whose pregnancy by this time was becoming more evident.

People can do the math. They knew Uriah wasn't the father, but David was the king. No one dared to say a thing.

No one but Nathan,

In one of the most amazing stories in 2 Samuel, Nathan strolls into David's presence with a tale of a wealthy farmer who stole the only, beloved lamb of his poor neighbor and butchered it to feed a guest rather than butcher one of his own sheep. David, incensed, orders the wealthy man thrown into the dungeon for the rest of his life for his act of cruelty.

And then Nathan springs the trap: "You are the man."

This is what makes Nathan one of the most memorable prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. He performs no miracles, appears in no other books, and makes no prophecies. But he sees sexual exploitation and abuse, and unlike everyone else, he calls the king out.

Nathan speaks truth to the powerful. He risks his life to call David to account for raping Bathsheba and murdering Uriah. We all love Elijah with his theatrics, but Nathan is the prophet for our times.

The Catholic Church covered up sexual predation for decades, and moved wolves around so they could find new flocks to prey on.

The Southern Baptist Church ignored Bathsheba when she spoke up, and told Nathan he was harming David as he did God’s work. Leaders like Denny Burk even complained that the money being spent to address the history of sexual abuse and bring justice would be diverted from the more important missions work of the church.

And 3,000 years later we’re still pooh-poohing what David did, as though it were equally Bathsheba’s fault, and not something so vile that Scripture singles it out as the one thing God held against David.

Stop making excuses. Be like Nathan, and have the courage to blow the whistle on sexual abuse when you see it. Especially when the guy doing it is hiding behind the mantle of how much he loves God.

He’s doing more damage to God’s kingdom than calling him out ever could.

Copyright © 2022 by David Learn. Used with permission.

One final mountain to climb

When Moses was old and full of years, and his legs were no longer as fast as they once had been, God called him up the mountain.

The prophet climbed for most of the day, until the sweat on his face had turned dry and his skin was pulled taut like the papyrus scrolls he had held and read as a boy in pharaoh's court. His hair was matted to his head, and his eye had begun to twitch in time with the strange pulsing noise that came from the sun. His head was light but his arms were heavy, and God spoke to him as he had many years ago.

"Moses," the voice said. "Look down on the land below."

The prophet looked, and it was a beautiful thing to see. A river flowed through the land, and watered trees and fields alike. The prophet could almost taste the figs and the dates growing on the trees, he could almost smell the honey the bees kept in their hives, and his tired throat could feel clean water coursing through it.

It was a good land, he thought. "Flowing with milk and honey," as they used to say.

"Moses," God told him. "Lie down."

So Moses lay down, and the grass atop the mountain was soft and soothing on all the places where he ached. It was a nicer bed than he had lain in for forty years as he had led his people through the desert. It carried him back to his younger days in Midian with his wife; or further still, to the luxury he'd known in the royal court. It was odd to think that all this time such comfort had awaited him up here in a mountaintop meadow.

"Moses," God said. "You can no longer feel your legs."

And it was true. He couldn't. They had been bothering Moses for days beyond reckoning, and the climb up the mountain had brought aches to places he'd never felt before. But now they were relaxed and it seemed as though his legs had drifted away.

"Moses." He'd heard the voice of God thunder between the mountains when he'd climbed Sinai, but now the voice of the Almighty was little more than a whisper and he had to strain to hear it. "You can no longer feel your arms."

It was such a relief. He had carried such heavy loads with those arms, but they were fading away.

"Moses. Close your eyes."

The sky disappeared. The evening sun and the clouds vanished from view. There was no sky, there were no birds. All the prophet could hear was a steady drumbeat that filled his chest, his ears, his whole head.

And then -- "Moses. You're dead."

And there was silence on Mount Nebo. 

 

Copyright ©2022 by David Learn

Going, going, going, gone

 After 16 years, my church and I appear to have reached a parting of the ways. As the old saying goes, "It's not me, it's you."

It's a bittersweet thing, this parting of the ways. Because a church is a community built around a shared religious identity, it can be the foundation for deeply meaningful relationships; work of great psycho-emotional, spiritual and social labor; and a source of stability that anchors us amid difficult days. But it can also be deeply alienating, a source of heartache and frustration, and the cause of contention both internally and with others.

The split has its catalyst in the recent departure of our lead teaching and founding pastor. Tim and his wife came here about 17 years ago with a team of church planters. About two months ago, they announced they were leaving in order to be closer to their aging parents.

It caught us off-guard, as a church. There was no succession plan, and while a church can survive on its own momentum, that will only carry it so far. So the elders decided to form a transition team to keep the church going while it looks for a new pastor.

Good plan. Who's on the team?

Well, the elders appointed themselves, the worship leader, the children's ministry leader, the two hospitality leaders, and the two outreach leaders to the transition team. That's it, and that's the problem.
It's not the individuals chosen for the team, per se. I genuinely like and respect most of them.  It's how it was done, and what wasn't done at all.

The elders, who are not elected by the congregation but appointed by sitting elders to what apparently is a lifetime position, simply picked the transition team, and that was it. No congregational say in who handles the search, and not even an invitation to anyone who might be interested in being a part of the search to join the time.

That's it. A team that is essentially accountable to no one, consisting of three married couples and three other people.
To their credit, they're letting us know what they've decided to do and where things stand. And they "welcome input," which practically speaking means if you have an idea they'll politely listen to it, but if they don't see it themselves, they won't advocate for it, and it quickly will be forgotten.

But I'm patient and don't want to be unduly cynical, so I send in a list of questions I have about the process.

And wait for a response.

And wait.

While I'm waiting, I approach one of the elders and explain that I'm interested in being a a part of this effort. I point out that while I was on the school board I three times was part of the team that looked for a new director, and the third time I led the search myself. This is a school with an $8 million budget and over 50 employees. Hiring someone to do a search like this could cost a few thousand dollars, but I'd give my professional skills to the church for free.

And I delicately point out that it's a good idea for the search to solicit involvement from all the active stakeholders in the congregation: ministry team, elders, parents, youth.

I get told, no, they're not bringing anyone else in.

Then two weeks after I sent in my questions. I get told "I'm sorry you feel frustrated by the lack of response," but still no answers to half my questions.

So yeah, part of me is feeling the pain of rejection, because I wanted to have an active part in this search. I've been a part of this church for sixteen years, and have always lent a hand when asked. But when I've asked to help out in some bigger capacity -- lead a Bible study, be a part of church leadership, engage in mercy ministry or social justice projects, run a drama ministry, preach a Sunday service once in a while -- I never get a response, even though these are all things I've done in the past.

Not "no," just .... nothing. No reason, no explanation. Nothing.

Sixteen years I've been here, and nothing of myself that I value is worth anything to this church. Not even the part that generally believes a no is almost as easy to accept as yes, especially when someone takes the time to share a coherent reason, even if the reason is stupid.

I stuck around as long as I did because the previous pastor guy was a close, personal friend of mine, and as we were friends I knew he listened to me. I had his ear.

Now I've got nothing but "I'm sorry you're bothered by bothersome behavior" and "Sorry, we have no use for you. Go sit down and be happy while we make decisions for you."

That's too authoritarian for me.

I told my friend once while he was pastor, "The elders can appoint to run ministries or lead a Bible study whom they want. It's their choice, and I respect that, even if the answer makes no sense. And if I really don't like it, I know where the door is."

That I do.

And I'm walking through it.

On Believing in the Bible

 I got asked Wednesday if I believe in the Bible. As God is my witness, I have no idea how to answer.

Believe in the Bible? How could I not? The 66 books that comprise it -- 73 if you're Catholic, and 81 if you're Orthodox -- express the foundations of the Christian faith. It's all there, from the Fall of Humanity, right through the Crucifixion, and all the way to the end. Heaven descends to earth and God's fondest wish comes true as he walks among us. The Bible says that, and I believe it.

But it sounds so cheap to put it that way. I'm amazed when people actually read their Bibles. But believe in it? What does that even mean?

The Bible talks about a dome that's placed over the earth to keep the land dry. When it's time for it to rain, God has to open floodgates in the dome to let the water through. The Bible also talks about warehouses filled with snow, and it mentions talking donkeys and snakes with legs. It names people who lived for 900 years, women who gave birth when they were 90, and men who had children when they were even older than that. With its left hand the Bible tells you to roast the sacrificial meat and not to boil it, and with its right hand it says of that same sacrifice that you should boil the meat and not roast it.

The Bible tells us that Jesus celebrated the first night of Passover with his disciples, and then it tells us that he was crucified on the first night of Passover at the time they were sacrificing the lambs.

Believe in the Bible? Is this a statement of faith, or a declaration of identity? "Stand back, for we are the people who believe in the Bible."

I remember when I believed in the Bible like that. It gave me such a headache. There are a handful of places in Scripture that appear to say women have no business being in ministry. They're mostly in letters Paul wrote, and they read like someone spilled fresh pizza on a nice new rug and couldn't get the stains out no matter how hard they tried. There are a half-dozen other passages that read like someone butchered a pig on fresh linen. They're called clobber passages, and people use them to justify throwing children out of the house for being gay.

"You have to read Scripture the way it is," I often was told. After all, we believe in the Bible.

But the Bible's an old book, and not even one book. It's a library, a collection of mythology, legends, folk tales, law, history, poetry, philosophy and folk wisdom, genealogy, census records and polemic. It includes personal correspondence and letters to whole communities, and a couple books written in a style so rare today that it's hard to tell if the author wrote it in code or just after he found some colorful mushrooms to snack on. The Bible was written between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago on the other side of the planet in Hebrew. Aramaic and Greek, by a group of people who didn't even wear pants. Anyone can read it, but to understand it properly is going to take work.

The Bible is the record of a conversation, a long one, among a people who were trying to get to know God while he was trying to get to know them. Because it's a conversation, there are a lot of voices and they don't always agree. Some are harsh and xenophobic, like Ezra. He saw his people marrying Gentile women and said "You're polluting the holy race! Get rid of them." Others are as  warm and welcoming as a plate of fresh cookies and a glass of milk, like the book of Ruth, which welcomes and praises the very women whose presence drove Ezra crazy.

They were all included for a reason, but they're not equal in value. Jesus' favorite book was probably Isaiah, and like a good Jew, he knew the Torah well. You know what he didn't quote? The book of Judges.

Who believes in the Bible? The one who reads a clobber passage and decides, "Yup, gays are sick and in rebellion against God," or the one who tries to reconcile what he's been told the passage means with the sister who was there for him when he desperately needed someone? The one who listens when he's told what the Bible says, and accepts it; or the one who listens, thinks about it, and studies for years to understand the people and society that produced the Bible, so she can understand it in its original context?

Do I believe in the Bible? It takes a lot of hard work, but I'm doing my best.


Copyright © 2022 by David Learn. Used with permission.

A heavenly choir of voices

 In the book of Revelation, St. John the Divine describes a moment when he was swept up into a heavenly worship of service.

There before the throne of the Lamb, John reported seeing a choir of the saints, gathered from every tribe, nation and language singing the song of the Lamb. If you’ve ever attended a multilingual service, you’ll have to agree. It is an experience as tremendous as it is unforgettable.

One Sunday morning a million years ago when I was a middle school teacher living in the Lehigh Valley, I got up early one morning. got in a car with two co-workers and someone I’d never met before, and made the trip to 51st Street. There we visited Dave Wilkerson’s Times Square Church, a church that without question reflected the demographics of its city. If there is any church with representatives from every tribe, nation and language, this was it.

How do you lead a church like that? One could say “You’re in America, learn English,” but this church didn’t do that. The sermon was in English, with running translation provided into a babel of language. When it came to worship, though, they did the only sensible thing. They took turns.

This particular week, worship was led by Filipino members of the congregation. In Tagalog.

The Tagalog choir took their spots on stage, and they began to sing. Don’t know Tagalog? No problem! The songs were in play at a lot of churches, songs like “He is Exalted” and “Lord I Lift Your Name on High,” so they were easy enough for congregants to sing along with in their own language.

And they did. While my companions and I sang in English, people around us sang in French, Spanish, Bangladeshi, Kreyol or whatever other language they preferred, or they tried to read the words on the screen and sing along in Tagalog. It was an amazing experience. It wasn’t Babel; it was Pentecost.

A multiethnic church in my own city does this as well, on a smaller scale. When I visited a few years ago, worship was conducted in three languages, as lyrics in Korean, Spanish and English wove in and out in a groundswell of praise.

I don’t know exactly why Times Square Church took the approach to worship that it did. Maybe it was the path of least resistance, maybe they saw in it a fast track to growth that English-only services wouldn’t provide. Maybe Wilkerson just loved the sound of Romanian in the morning and knew he could get it in rotation this way.

What I do know is that little decisions like that go a long way to deciding what an organization will look like when it grows up. Give the hungry a plate of food and give the thirsty a cup of cold water, and people will sit and talk with you. Celebrate their language, their culture and their heritage — give them a place at the table as grand as your own — and you’re setting them up to be partners and friends for the long haul, ready to give all they have for the mission.

That kind of relationship isn’t something you just find in a church. That’s a piece of heaven.

Copyright 2022 by David A. Learn. Used with permission.

Prayer as a scavenger hunt

 One of the toughest jobs in a church is the youth group leader.

Pastors only have to deliver the sermon once a week, visit a couple shut-ins, and survive the live-action Call of Duty: Modern Warfare roleplay with the board of elders (often with real ammo). The secretary just has to answer the phone, let visitors into the church so she can discourage them properly by staring at them from behind her desk, and eat lunch every day. The elders just need to sit around being right.

But youth group leaders? They actually have to work.

Youth group leaders have the unenviable task of taking a religion founded 2,000 years ago on the other side of the planet, among a people who didn’t even wear pants, and making it sound at once reasonable and exciting. They have to this for an audience — teenagers — at an age when they will be the most disaffected, ask the most mind-bogglingly basic and therefore challenging questions, tell you when they think you are wrong (most of the time) or just stupid (the rest of the time), without ever once appreciating how much work went into planning your sophisticated and deeply spiritual activity of making them burrow face-first into trays of gelatin to retrieve the keys that will unlock their handcuffs.

And somehow, amid all that, youth group leaders are supposed to engage them with questions many adults don’t have time for, like “What is my purpose in life?” and “What does it look like to be a person of integrity?” when the teens are actually thinking things like “Holy buttered Moses on a pogostick, Gwen looks hot! I wonder if I can get her to sit next to me in the church van on the way to Six Flags tonight?” and “The new collectible diecast model of the Millennium Falcon goes on sale at midnight tomorrow. How am I going to get the other $283.17 I need to buy it?”

The youth group leader at my church a few years ago knew better than to teach the kids church history; or to try to engage them with gross activities like burrowing through gelatin, especially since Patrick knew he would never successfully engage them in gross-out activities like cleaning up. Instead, he decided to engage them with mysticism.

Christian mysticism comes with a few advantages that work well for those who teach it. One is that it sounds edgy because it’s free-floating and based on popular conceits about God rather than anything actually taught in the dusty old pages of Scripture. The other is that while this gives it countercultural appeal, it doesn’t actually involve Tarot cards, Ouija boards or incantations to Chthulhu performed over a pentagram, so it usually comes with some degree of job security as the Bible never actually forbids it.

So one week, Patrick decided to teach the kids about visualization.

“I want you to imagine a person,” he told the half-dozen or so teens in his charge that evening, “and take a sheet of paper and draw them.”

The teens, or most of them at least, dutifully averted their eyes from Gwen and stopped imagining riding in the back seat of the van with her, and started visualizing these new people in the way only teenagers can. They were people fit for a freak show. Orange skin. Three eyes. No noses. Missing limbs. Extra limbs. As it was mid-October, one unfortunate wore a jack-o’-lantern on his shoulders and carried his head in his hand like a latter-day Brom Brones.

“Now we’re going to take a few minutes and quietly pray for these people.” Patrick said.

“O Lord, please reattach this man’s head before his pumpkin rots” went one prayer.

Another that ascended to heaven: “If you let me ride in the back seat with Gwen, I’ll give all my allowance to feed starving orphans for the next year.”

The prayers finished. Youth group ended. The pictures ended up in the recycling.

“What was the point of that?” asked Luke. He was one of the youngest members of the youth group.

“Didn’t you hear? Patrick said next week we’re going to Walmart to look for these people and share the gospel with them,” said Emma.

The idea went over badly at once. Even allowing for the unfortunate medical conditions the teens had visualized in their pictures, no one in the youth group had any interest in socially awkward activities like getting thrown out of Walmart on a Sunday evening for approaching complete strangers and telling them they were going to hell unless they changed their religion.

The next Sunday rolled around, and all the teens had come down with an illness, been called away at once to a dying relative’s bedside in the Dominican Republic, or otherwise were unable to attend.

All of them except Luke.

Luke’s parents were devout believers, and while they didn’t hold with all Patrick’s ideas, they believed that it would be a healthy trauma for Luke to practice sharing his faith, no matter how much he cried about not wanting to go and meet the person he had drawn.

But Luke hadn’t just drawn someone with blue hair. He’d been reading H.P. Lovecraft late at night with a flashlight under his bedcovers, and he’d drawn what he’d been reading: a great green monster with wings like a bat’s, yellow eyes like a snake’s, and a mouth with a hundred tendrils and teeth like needles.

Patrick drove Luke to Walmart, and there they met Chthulhu.

 If I had to pick one song to define Rich Mullins' legacy for me personally, it would be "Hard to Get."

Released posthumously on "The Jesus Album," "Hard to Get" is a song about the struggle of an honest faith to reconcile the assurances of Christ's presence in our weakness with that weakness itself. It asks with steadily increasing anguish whether Christ hears us, if a God who is beyond our understanding can understand our griefs and sorrows. The song sweats blood over these questions so hard that it finally finds its answer in that struggle.

It's an amazing song on an impressive album. And if the writer of an article I just read on Medium is correct, the song may owe its depth to Mullins' struggle to accept himself for who he was.

Mullins, the writer contends, was gay.    

The music of Rich Mullins was fairly inescapable in the late 1980s and early 1990s if you attended an evangelical church.

I just read a fascinating piece on Rich Mullins, that he was largely closeted his whole life, and the ways he wrestled with the notion that God loved him while the church loved only what it wanted to see

And in that painful struggle he understood the gospel at a fundamentally deeper level than you or I ever will

I had never heard nor cared. The Jesus Album was the only record of his I liked. But I read it fascinating article on Medium today

Yeah, I saw/see the appeal. But except for a few songs and that one album, he never did much for me

But that album — esp Hard to Get, and Man of no Reputation— has some of the finest meditation on the gospel I’ve ever found

It’s the raw and pained faith that comes from weakness, the sort of faith that white cishet men often chastise for weakness because we so badly misunderstand what faith and strength really are

It’s why I like and approve the church’s newly adopted approach to Bible study ; ie, how do you feel about this passage? What bothers troubles you about it?

'Pray Away': initial reactions

I just watched "Pray Away," a documentary on Netflix about the faith-based ex-gay movement.

So-called "reparative therapy," which intends to make gay people straight, has been deemed abusive and unsound practice by every major mental health organization in the country. The documentary chronicles the growth and collapse of Exodus Ministries, one of the biggest purveyors of this lie. It chronicles the cost in human lives and personal integrity that this organization accrued. 

It's deeply disturbing.

Christianity is supposed to be a religion that sets people free. It gets twisted instead into a means of control: control through shame, control through peer pressure, control through fear of hell and disapproval, and control through deceit.

Someone's going to say it's about right and wrong, and they're absolutely right. Is God someone who safeguards human dignity, or is he someone who consigns people to being second-class human beings or lower? Where's the moral high ground in telling gays that they can't be with someone they love, that they can't have children, that the God who pursues, the God who won't snuff out a smoldering wick, demands that they change their fundamental identity before they're worth his effort? LGBTQ teens who go through conversion therapy are twice as likely to commit suicide as those who do not.

How appropriate it is in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats that it's we religious folk whom Jesus sends to everlasting fire.

A couple years ago I was working with a faith-based nonprofit organization in which upper management decided to take an official stand on The Gay and communicate it to everyone in a position of responsibility. The position? God loves gay people, but gay relationships are a sin, and we need to support them in a lifetime of celibacy.

Opportunities came for comment. I took them, 

"This can be a deeply hurtful message."

"There are other ways to understand those passages of Scripture, based on context and language."

I'm not sure what I expected would happen, I expressed my view, and there was no response. No discussion. To this day, I have no idea if anyone listened to me with anything deeper than polite deference. 

The Rutgers School of Social Work has a number of staff who work with its interns out in the field. There's your task supervisor, who works in the organization where you're assigned; and there's your field instructor who helps you to make the connections between what you're doing "in the field" and what you're learning in the classroom.

I talked with my field instructor about that meeting our next talk.

"We have a conflict in values," I said.

I was already 48 by this point, so I won't pretend this was a learning moment for me. I've had plenty of opportunities over the years to disagree with people. I was confident I'd expressed my viewpoint clearly and respectfully, and that I had no reason to budge from it.

You know what the good news is? It's not that God can change you, or that he will. It's really simple, even simpler than that.

It's that God loves you the way you are, no exceptions; and he wants a relationship with you.

And I do too.

Good Friday in the age of George Floyd

 He was a man who had done nothing to deserve death, yet here he was: dying in front of a crowd, another in a constant stream of victims of state violence, his death justified by the danger his executioners believed he posed.

I am, of course, talking about Jesus Christ, whose death some two billion Christians remember today with solemn Good Friday observances. But I could just as easily be talking about George Floyd, a black man whose life was slowly crushed from him by the weight of a police officer's knee on his neck. Floyd allegedly had passed a counterfeit $20 bill in a store minutes earlier. And for that he died. 

Pilate would have been proud of Derek Chauvin, the officer who found it necessary to kneel on Floyd's neck while Floyd grew still and the crowd begged for mercy. Like Chauvin, Pilate knew the value that a show of force had in maintaining control. 

It doesn't even matter if the accused has done anything wrong. Just make an example of him, and the people will stay in line. 

Black deaths at the hands of police have been a matter of routine horror for years, compounded by our rush to assure ourselves that, while unfortunate, there's really nothing we can do about it. It's just part of the cost of having a safe society.  Sometimes people get killed, but it's their fault anyway, because they didn't follow orders, because they acted aggressively, or because police felt threatened. 

And besides he had a rap sheet.

That reaction should chill the very marrow in our bones. There is no reaction further from the heart of Christ and the heart of the Good Friday story that we celebrated in our churches today.

Even those outside the Christian faith know the Good Friday story. Jesus Christ, an innocent man, was arrested under cover of night. Denied the due process of law, he was deprived of his basic human rights, brutally tortured and finally executed.

Preachers often play up the story of Jesus' trials and execution for the moral affront that they were. To convict, all the priests needed was for two witnesses to agree on a charge. The gospels note that they couldn't even manage that. For his part, Pilate, the Roman governor, couldn't find any basis for a charge at all. Neither could Herod.

So why was he executed? The chief priest was afraid that Jesus was disturbing the peace and getting people riled up. Pilate wanted to maintain order. Herod just didn't care.

Christianity used to be a religion of the powerless, but after 1,700 years of holding the reins of imperial power, we've become far too comfortable with the way those reins feel here in the West. We treat the execution of Jesus as though it's an aberration, a once-in-history occasion when the justice system failed in its duty and killed an innocent man. The effect is that we treat the Crucifixion as a one-time failure, an especially heinous act of evil. We always stress the innocence of Jesus to stress how shockingly unjust his death was.

I wonder, if we were to survey his contemporaries, how unusual they found it that Rome would kill an innocent man. I wonder how many peasants, carpenters and bricklayers there were who felt they couldn’t get a fair shake either. I wonder how many people could point to the mountaintop of Jerusalem, to Mount Gerzim in Samaria or to the rolling hills of Galilee and tell the story of family members, neighbors and friends who had been unjustly executed by the state.

I wonder how many people knew what it is like to struggle for breath beneath the crushing weight of a Roman soldier's knee.

They wouldn’t have been hard to find. After the riots that followed the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE, when rioters burned the city of Sephoris, the Roman legions restored order through the process of decimation. One man in every 10 was pulled from the crowd, taken outside the city, and crucified as a warning against unrest, without benefit of trial.

The message is the same that police like Chauvin like to send. See our power. Be afraid. Stay in line.

Good Friday wasn't a once-in-history event for the people whom Jesus lived with and walked among. It happened all the time.

It's the same in America now. Remember the names of those who have been denied justice by the authorities and killed without a trial. 

Can you remember them all? Can you remember just all the big names?

Unarmed. Killed by police, their murders justified just as the execution of Christ was. They were disturbing the peace. They were resisting arrest. They were failing to comply. They had a history. There were extenuating circumstances.

We were afraid.

To allow or to approve their deaths is take the reins of Caesar in our hands, give them a familiar grip, and say to ourselves, “This isn't so bad.” When we give approval to their deaths, let us remember the words of Jesus:

“Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

Copyright 2021 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Maundy Thursday; time for dinner

 Thursday may be my favorite day in Holy Week. Thursday was the day we remember for a meal Jesus ate with his friends.

Formally known as Maundy Thursday, today is the day Jesus and his disciples shared the Last Supper. On Sunday they threw Jesus a parade. On Holy Tuesday and Holy Wednesday, he mixed it up all over town, sparring in the Temple and winning accolades for his quick wit and sharp words. Good Friday will be set aside for horror and grief, Saturday is for despair, and Sunday is for celebrating the impossible, but tonight is about good food, good drink and good conversation with the people you love.

Dinner with friends. What could be more mundane, more ordinary and more profoundly human than that? We always wonder what we would do if we knew we only had 24 hours to live. The gospels show us what Jesus did. He ate dinner and spent a quiet evening with the people who mattered most to him.

We often think of the Last Supper as a fairly staid affair. The disciples had their little dustup, of course, they always did; but Jesus reclined at the table, serene and above the fray, absolutely stoic and unaffected as he drew the errant children back into good behavior.

I can't see it that way, try as I might. Amid the jokes about Simon and his flatulence and the comments about how Thomas would lose his head if it weren't attached; and for all the comments about families they missed, and the endless hand-wringing over this and that, Jesus knew what was coming tomorrow, after all. 

How could he not? For the past three years he'd been defying social conventions and crossing lines to heal, honor and befriend outcasts in ways that scandalized decent society: welfare cheats, sex workers, immigrants, gays and lesbians, the transgender, adulterers, trained killers and religious people. Even before he looked at Jerusalem from the vantage of the Mount of Olives that past Sunday Jesus already had been predicting his death.

When, I wonder, did he know that hammerfall was imminent? Maybe it came to him amid the heightened scrutiny. Verbal traps that masqueraded as friendly questions or as mere arguments had been ratcheting up the tension all week, the nets and spears of his opponents drawing closer all the time. Something was going to give, and soon.

Jesus had been on the road with his disciples for three years, and he knew them intimately. When did he first sense that Judas had started to pull back, moving first from all-in support to mixed feelings, and then onward to skepticism and finally to outright rejection? It must have happened quickly; none of the other disciples noticed it. When Judas left partway through dinner to betray their teacher, everyone else assumed that he was running out to get something they had forgotten for the meal.

When did Jesus realize that Peter was about to fail? For three years, Peter had been part of the inner circle of Jesus' intimates. Along with the brothers John and James, Peter had been there with Jesus when he raised the daughter of Jairus up from the dead. He'd also been one of the three to witness the Transfiguration.

Peter was someone Jesus clearly had been impressed with. Originally he'd been named Simon, but Jesus had likened him to a rock and renamed him Peter. Over the past week, Jesus had watched as a crack had formed in that rock, one that now threatened to split it down the middle. He'd started praying that the rock would be strong enough to hold together.

Moments of terrible clarity come to all of us at one time or another. We realize that things are about to take a turn for the south and there's nothing we can do about it. The marriage has died, and divorce is now inevitable. Child Protective Services wants simply to close the case, and the girl you love like your own is headed back to the people who abused her. The boss has made his decision, and you're about to be fired. The mob has you at its mercy, and you're going to die.

People who survive such moments often report after it's all over that during the moment of crisis, there was a supernatural calm that fell over them and held them upright and aloft long after they would have given out on their own steam. Their situation hadn't changed any. It just didn't matter right then. These moments of serenity stretch across the surface of simmering trouble. From time to time that calm shakes from the tension of what is happening beneath, but it holds.

Did Jesus' voice tremble when he told Judas to go take care of what he had to do? Did the words catch in his throat when he predicted Peter would deny knowing him, and he described the prayers he had made for his friend's sake? Were there tears in his eyes as he held the Passover cup aloft after dinner and promised to drink it with them again in the Kingdom of Heaven?

All possible. Jesus was human, after all, and he stands squarely with us in our weakness, in our fears and in those secret places where we tremble for what we see coming for ourselves, our loved ones, for our nation and for our world.

The next moment may bring ruin, or it may bring death. Right now that doesn't matter. At this moment, there is only this moment. 

Right now, friends are gathered around, and it's time for dinner.

Lent: Word

The world is empty and void, and looking out over it are Steve Burns and his dog.

There is nothing there but the two of them, and Blue's "Big Bag of Words." As Blue brings out the words, one by one, the empty world begins to change. Tracks appear with a car big enough to carry Steve and Blue. They begin to ride, and as Blue pulls out a new word, a rock blocks their way. Another word, and the rock becomes too small to impede them, and the journey continues.

Such power in a word. It can fire passions and inspire loyalty, heal injury, tickle the soul, inflict pain beyond measure or create an unbreakable bond. 

Many words create space to equivocate and evade, but a single word provides such clarity that it demands a response. Dance. Eat. See. Love. 

An abandoned baby lay kicking by the road, unwanted and left in a ditch to die. Then someone came by and heard her crying. He picked her up and cradled her in his arms, and said one word.

"Live."

All it takes is the power of words, and everything can change. 

(I wrote about this before.)

Lent: Celebrate

Celebrate the routine wonders and they will dazzle you. 

It's cold outside, but there is a warm bed with blankets waiting in here.

There are friends who hear, friends who listen, and friends who care. Some of them you even know their names.

The evening is filled with rain, but the food is hot and it goes down easily, with family gathered round. 

There are children whose feet itch to take them new places, and like birds preparing to spread their wings, they are lacing their shoes and getting ready to grow.

Feel the magic of touch. There are fingers that brush your arm, a hand that holds your own.

Listen to the music. It can sing with a choir, strum a banjo, or call like an archangel with a trumpet. The familiar tune becomes surprising and strange with a new arrangement.

 Tell stories. They entertain and entice, they inform and they intervene. Cinderella comes to the ball a hundred years late, after an unfortunate accident with her carriage. Azaka shows up at the party and is horrified when he sees what's become of his beautiful garden.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

Lent: Rise

There's a story they used to tell about a bird with an unfortunate habit of bursting into flame. They called it the phoenix.

I've burnt myself before, with a match. I was trying to light a candle, but it took too long and the flame reached the part of the match where my fingers were, and you know the drill.

A different time I pulled a metal sheet from the oven carelessly and was left with a blister on my finger that ached and made it a challenge to hold things.

Other times I've burned in slow motion as my brother and I horsed around on  a rug, and the friction of being dragged across the floor left a brush burn across my back.

The worst came when I burnt myself all over under the sun during a family vacation at the beach. Arms, legs, feet, back all. It was agony to touch or be touched, and that night I woke in a feverish delirium with no idea where I was. (I was lucky. The next day I began to peel, which I did, vigorously.)

It didn't matter how I burned, or where. It was awful.

For the phoenix, the experience was far worse and far more all-encompassing. Its temperature would spike and it would begin to cook in its heat. Imagine the pain as the process got under way. Its  ears would fill with a sizzling noise as its body fat began to melt, its flesh would come loose from its bones. Pain and terror would overthrow executive function, then flames would appear, searing the flesh as feathers burned away amid an acrid smell as the dying creature would emit one final, terrified squawk.

Then, wonder of wonders, from its own ashes, the phoenix would rise, renewed and filled with vigor.

And to think I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning after a full night's sleep.

A wise man once said "Life is pain. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something," and it's true. There are a thousand injustices that most of us are too fortunate to need to worry about, and yet they happen. The day may be filled with a thousand casual cruelties, and the lacerating indifference of friends and strangers alike.

Know them for what they are. Face them on behalf of others so they don't have to. And when they beat you and say "Stay down," there's only thing to do.

Rise.

In so doing, you will upend the world.

Lent: Bless

Let me share with you three of my oldest and most golden memories.

The first is framed with the excited glow of anticipation. I was sitting in the back seat of the car and probably had been for years, but my long wait was about to end. My father had just turned the car down a country road with trees on each sides and a distant gray house on the right. That was where my Grandmother Learn was, and my two brothers and I were going to visit.

The second memory is suffused with joy. I was climbing a set of stairs made from a metal grill that you could see through to the people below. I'd never seen stairs like that before. They were wondrous, strange and new. But this was the engineering plant where my father worked, and I'd never been there before. It was a rare public tour, and my mother had taken the three of us.

The third memory comes a few months after the other two. I mostly remember a sense of wonder. It was a summer day, and I was in the upstairs of our house. My older brothers' room was off to the right, and my room was directly in front of me.

Someone had placed a crib just inside the open door, and my mother was standing up after just laying my new roommate down for a nap. Steve's been in my space ever since. (Jerk.)

We gather a lot of debris in our lives, and some of it is even fun or useful to have around for a while. But when God really wants us to bless us for this journey we're on, he sends people.

Lent: Call

All his life Rourke wanted to hear the call of God the way others did.

He heard about them in church or in Sunday school; and Rourke understood from the hushed reverential tones their names were whispered in that these were men and women who heard the call of God on their lives. They answered it unreservedly, and blazed a path in service to heaven, that glowed years after they had trod it. For that reason their names were remembered and held up for inspiration. George Fox. Clara Barton. Jim Elliot. Cate Blanchett. Hudson Taylor. Melvin Fenwick. Keith Green. 

It must be something to hear the call of God. Rourke imagined himself on a gray and dreary day, laboring away at the tedium when the world would split with a trumpet blast and it would happen. He would hear God's calling.

The call of God! Rourke shook at the very thought of it. When he heard it, Rourke would leave the ordinary world behind and embrace a life of faith and daring, like a spiritual Indiana Jones bringing the good news to the Jabberwalkies and the Hottentoads, standing alone against the hordes of darkness.

But the call didn't come, and as he got older, Rourke entered art school. He began a career as an artist. drawing pictures for children's books, teaching art to elementary students, and making watercolors of the animals people often missed, like the red foxes that lived in the city's parks, or the coyotes that migrated along .the railroad tracks.

Then one day the phone rang. An old friend needed help. The friend talked, and Rourke listened. They passed the hours in conversation, and as days turned into weeks, Rourke called his friend regularly to check in and see how he was doing.

Rourke got older. He published a few books of his photography through a niche publisher; and donated the money to a local watershed conservation group, to protect the fields and waterways in the area where he lived. Someone noticed that, and he was invited to address a few civic organizations about the importance of the local environment and ensuring that everyone had access to nature.

God never called. 

One day Rourke woke to find himself alone. His wife was gone, their sons were gone, and he realized he was entirely on his own, standing at the brink in a place of unbearable darkness. In desperation he called a friend he knew.

He spoke. She listened, and before they hung up, she made him promise to call her in the morning so she would know he was all right.

Years passed and Rourke mended.

When he died at the age of 72, Rourke had never heard that trumpet he had hoped one day to hear. He never preached good news to the Hottentoads, and he never carried a lit torch over his head to show crowds of Jabberwalkies the way. 

The call of God is strange and wondrous, and easy not to see.

Perhaps it was in the care he showed for the earth and its inhabitants as he drew attention to the gifts of nature all around and asked to preserve them for everyone to enjoy. Perhaps it was the night someone called and he picked up the phone and was present in a way they needed; or perhaps it was even when he called someone else.

But Rourke's legacy was no greater nor less than any other man's, yet none doubted he had answered his calling.

Lent: Everlasting

Many years ago an artist went to see Leonardo da Vinci for help with his paintings.

Although he made a decent living with the support of his patrons, the artist was frustrated with the quality of the paintings he made. They were detailed, they were accurate, they were marvels of composition. So when he came to the master artist for guidance, da Vinci was surprised.

"What is wrong with them?" da Vinci asked.

"They are completely forgettable," the artist said. "They are pleasant to look at, but they are forgettable. I made one for my patron that took me six months to create, and he lavished me with praise for it, then he had it hung in his privy and even I can't remember what it looked like."

"Ah," said da Vinci at last. "I understand. They are not for everlasting."

The younger artist looked confused, so da Vinci held up his hand for the other man to see. The hair on its back was gray, and the skin itself was so thin that the younger artist could see the veins within. The hand was frail and weary with years, and the younger man understood  that the master artist had only a few winters left. 

"The body is weak and decays," da Vinci said, "but the soul endures. The eyes dim, but the heart is made for eternity and longs to walk there. It yearns not for a different world, nor even a better one; but for this one to be realized properly, so that love ages gracefully and does not grow cold, so the mind remains as keen in old age as it was in youth, and so tears bring deliverance and healing. and conflict begets understanding and reconciliation rather than fighting. The spirit understand that redemption is coming, but the flesh cannot conceive it, and so life becomes fleeting and ephemeral."

He looked at his young acquaintance.

"Let your art reveal the longing of the soul and its faith that the world's redemption will one day be complete," he said, "and your work will be for everlasting."

Lent: Name

Eighteen years and change ago, I called my younger brother to let him know that he had a new niece.

"What did you name her?" he asked. (We'd made a point of not telling anyone the names we were considering after discovering with Oldest Daughter that some people felt they had a license to be rude about prospective names.)

"Spock," I said. Somehow I kept my voice even but earnest, the tone you might expect from a second-time father.

"Spock?" He was incredulous. He was outraged. He was exemplifying precisely we had kept lipper number two's name quiet for nine months. "You named your daughter Spock?"

"I think it's a lovely name," I said simply. "Don't you?"

Names are funny things. Often they're ordinary words from another language, that someone one day decided to slap onto some unsuspecting kid and suddenly the word gained a whole new significance no one had expected. "Alondra" is Spanish and "Zipporah" is Hebrew. They both mean bird, but those girls are nothing like one another.

We pick the names we do for our children because of the sort of people we want them to become: logical and reasoned, loyal and strong, devoted and caring, or whatever other quality we associate with their names.

Our names gain value and meaning as we get older and build a reputation. People who have never met you but who have heard your name usually have some sort of idea what to expect when they hear your name, and it may not be the meaning your parents had when they picked that name out for you.

In the end we're choosing our own names, in secret even from ourselves. It's a lifelong act of discovery that reveals itself in how we treat others when we have more than we need, and how we treat them when we don't have enough.

Friend.
Helper.
Good Counsel.|
Wanderer.
Indifferent.
Cruel.
Murderer.

They say on the final day, all will be revealed. The books will be opened, and the Judge of all the earth will call us all forth, one at a time, by name.

I wonder if any of us really knows the name we will have chosen to answer to. Be wise, and be sure that it is one you will not be ashamed to hear.

Lent: Walk

It was my father who taught me the value of going for a walk.

It started. I think, my senior year of high school. Knowing my father it was something he was content to let grow rather than a campaign he had planned from the get-go, but there came a night he asked me to walk the dog with him and I agreed.

Our dog was a cockapoo, a polite way of saying he was a mutt who weighed 30 pounds when he needed a haircut but only 15 pounds afterward. Some nights we just walked Fonzi down to Colbaugh Avenue, sometimes we walked him all the way around the block, and sometimes we'd go for a walk that seemed reach the upper limits of infinity.

Those walks became one of the most sacred rituals we ever performed. I'd only recently returned from living for a year in New Zealand as an exchange student, and now I was getting ready to go away to college for the next four years. I was the third of four sons, and I think my father realized time was not on his side, so he wanted to spend time with me while he could.

So we walked together in weather so cold that our breath burned on its way out of our mouths, then turned to ice and shattered on the ground. We walked on spring evenings as choirs of katydids sang in the trees above, We walked on summer evenings when the murderous heat of the day had broken and the moon whispered peace.

And while we walked, we talked with one another.

I told dad about what I hoped to study at college, and somehow he agreed that it sounded reasonable, even though I changed my mind after less than one semester and studied something else instead. We talked about books we'd read and the authors we loved, and together we fanned on the latest episodes of Star Trek.

Sometimes we talked about other things in the news that probably seemed important at the time, but mostly not. It was a time I was getting ready to set sail; and as he stood on the wharf getting ready to watch me leave, he tried to decide if he was proud of the man I was becoming, or if he should go file a formal complaint with management and disavow the whole thing.

That was more than 30 years ago.

In the years since, I've walked many miles with my children. With my foster son, I filled those miles with the affection his birth parents had never given him and taught him not only how to use his legs, but his ears and his mouth as well. We walked our dog Sandy together almost every day he was here, while I filled his ears with nonstop words in a bid to lift him out of the neglect he'd been left to languish in.

I've walked all over this city with my girls. Together we've trekked our way to school, to softball and to soccer; we've stomped to friends' houses, to the library, to the parks and to summer camp. On foot we've hunted Pokemon wherever they hide, we've marched in parades, and we've even crossed the river to lose ourselves in the woods.

And as we've walked the upper limits of infinity, I've filled their ears with stories I knew, stories I made up, and stories that will never be told again. I've poured myself into them with every step I took as they poured themselves into me; and always I've prayed that it will be enough.

The girls, I think, have found the value of a good walk. The second is getting ready in a few short weeks to begin the journey her sister started a few years ago and that I once took over half a lifetime past. Her feet itch and her eyes are set on college in California.

It's a long walk, but as I watch her lacing up her shoes, I can't help but think how proud I am of the young woman she has become and is becoming.

And I can't wait for when her path leads her back home, so I can hear her stories from the road and all the wonderful things she's seen. 

Lent: Celebrate

It's been a rough year for celebration.

Senior proms. Fourth of July cookouts. Bat mitzvahs. Graduation parties. Thanksgiving dinner. Weddings. They've been all delayed, scaled back  to virtual events or outright canceled in the shadow of the pandemic. 

When some have insisted from a misguided sense of entitlement on gathering together and celebrating anyway, too often the pandemic also has attended, and left its mark as guests start to fall sick and die a few weeks later.

Today remains a day of celebration.

Lent is a season for introspection and repentance. For Catholics and Protestants who observe a formal liturgy, it's often a season for penitence and doing without. But Sundays in the church calendar have always celebrated the Resurrection, and Lent is no exception to that. 

The challenge this year is that celebrations always require other people, and gathering with people remains a way to spread the virus and add to the death toll.. (The Resurrection is a matter of faith for the Christian, but it's no call to be reckless before our time is through. Be wise.) It's a hard thing when even our celebrations must be Lenten.

So the party is muted, and we wait another week, two, or more before we can see our friends properly. But a vaccine is here, and a promised end to disease is coming. 

Once the all-clear sounds, prepare to celebrate.