The Tennessee Waltz

Here are some pictures to illustrate what's been going on in my life for the last month or so. I love hearing back from those who read my blog, so please remember to leave a comment every now and again with any reflections, questions or comments you might have for me. Also, remember that my blog posts can be e-mailed directly to you as I publish them, so please let me know if you are interested in that.

Click on the pictures and they should enlarge.

The Indiana State women's basketball team played in the Holiday Tournament at Vanderbilt right before Christmas. Michael and Douglas Shaw along with my brother Brian came down for the games. It was nice to see them and about 40 other Sycamore fans who made the trip.

The final score of the tournament's championship game: #13 Vanderbilt 89, Indiana State 75. It was a very respectable showing for playing the 13th best team in the NCAA on its home floor.

With all the attention that had to be given to my grandpa's illness during December, the tree at home didn't get decorated until the 23rd. The Moles family tree was shaped like a Hershey's Kiss this year.

Back in Nashville: January 6

Since we are in the Nashville Epiphany Project, we celebrated Epiphany by cooking dinner together. Tara, Patrick and I made some chicken fajitas and a pear-chocolate-ice cream desert out of Tara's new Rachael Ray cookbook.

It was a nice surprise to come home this past Monday night to a birthday party! Since my actual birthday was New Year's Eve, my roommates threw me a little party on Martin Luther King Day. "Jefe" is my nickname around the Toolshed. Jefe (pronounced "heffay" for us non-Spanish speakers) means "boss." I think I got that nickname because I am the oldest and, of course, who would question my authority?

I was warmly welcomed.

Patrick cooked dinner, which was potato soup. He did a good job!

After dinner, we played one of my favorite games: Trivial Pursuit 90's Edition. Tara and Chasie won.

We had the unique opportunity to attend Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen's Inaugural Balls last night. He especially wanted me there because I have become such an important part of this state. Okay, so maybe we went because we saw that free tickets were available to the public, and we were lucky enough to get them. In this picture is country singer (can you imagine that in Nashville?) Josh Gracin, who apparently was on American Idol.

Governor Bredesen (a Democrat!) and First Lady Andrea Conte danced the official first dance of his second term to "The Tennessee Waltz." The Pioneer Ball was held at The Wildhorse Saloon, which is the place where they used to film that line dancing tv show.

The night was a lot of fun, and it was definitely an interesting people-watching event.

There was another ball at BB King's Blues Club, and our tickets were actually for it, but it was too crowded.

Of course the Governor wanted my opinions on policy matters, so he was sure to come over and talk with me. Well, at least he shook my hand and thanked me for being there. Unfortunately, my camera takes so long to actually take a picture, I have a picture from about 3 seconds later.

Jo Dee Messina was the headliner of the Pioneer Ball.

All of Tennessee's finest were there.

All three of us saw people we knew at the Ball. Tara saw a high school guy she met through Conexion Americas. Chasie saw a friend from Rhodes College (who is an actual Rhodes Scholar). I saw some homeless friends when we were outside afterward. Not being able to walk around downtown anonymously is a side effect of working at the Campus.

The Drum Major Instinct

This year’s celebration of Martin Luther King Day was different for me. It wasn’t just a day off this time around. (And yes, I was the only one of my housemates who had to get up and go to work on Monday.) It was the first time I’d actually spent Martin Luther King Day with a group of people who were mostly African Americans. I was with people who marched with King and one who was in Memphis the day he was killed. Racism is a reality of life in all communities—rich or poor. Many times it manifests itself in more subtle ways among the rich. The first thing I noticed as I drove my car into the Campus parking lot on Monday was that all of the Hispanic guys were standing together, separate from the rest of the group. Within the bigger group of homeless people gathering waiting for us to open there were small pockets of white guys standing together among the black majority. This is no different than the way the housed divide up into different neighborhoods based on race. It’s not uncommon for me to hear something like “well I know you guys only help black people here,” or “of course you don’t do anything for black people,” or “how come you let those Spanish-speaking people in here? This is America.”

During the day, we had many activities to celebrate MLK Day. I was in charge of making table tents for the tables that included quotes from Dr. King. We had classes for people to attend, including literature, a motivational session, and art projects. I led a Martin Luther King trivia class, where we played Jeopardy-style. It was interesting to see how most of the people knew everything possible about Martin Luther King, Jr., while one young man who I persuaded to come knew absolutely nothing (he also didn’t know what Easter celebrated). But, we played on teams so nobody felt left out, and we had a really good time.

The best part of the day for me, was when we showed a DVD of some speeches by Dr. King. Listening to the “I Have a Dream” speech in the crowded day room was a moving experience as people shouted their “amens” and focused more closely on King’s words than I’ve seen them focus on anything else since I’ve been there. I looked around the room and noticed all the faces that were there—the oppressed people of today who people want to keep in ghettos. These are the people who we’re trying to keep out of our restrooms and restaurants and out of sight.

When I got in my car at the end of the day, I noticed that the Hispanic guys were still standing by themselves by the shed, and the white guys were still together, and the black people were still a little suspicious that we weren’t celebrating Martin Luther King Day to the extent that we should have. In the outside world, people were still trying to make English-only legislation and build border fences. The wealthiest 20% of people still owned over half of our nation’s wealth, while the poorest 20% only had about 4% while the gap continues to widen.

The dream is still a dream.

Open our ears and loosen our tongues.

One morning this week as I was working at the support desk, being stretched more thinly than normal because of some staffing shortages, I got to see something in person that I’ve never seen before (not that that’s unusual at the Campus). There was a woman speaking in tongues. She had come in looking for a homeless gentleman she needed to give something to, but she could not find him. I figured she had left, but as I was trying to do a million other things I all of a sudden heard some passionate voices, which usually means trouble. This time it was prayer. It was a vigorous and loud and rocking kind of prayer that Presbyterians don’t usually pray (at least aloud in public). This woman was pulling participants aside and offering to pray with them. Her Pentecostal style of praying, with tongues that I’ve only heard on religious TV channels, was completely foreign to my experience as a Christian. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, and I’m still not.

Thursday evening, we went to an ecumenical worship service at Christ the King Catholic Church to celebrate the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The service was sponsored by Second Presbyterian, Christ the King and the Nashville Community of Sant’Egidio. Jim Kitchens and John McClure participated in the service’s leadership. The theme of this year’s international celebration is “Open our Ears and Loosen Our Tongues,” based on Mark 7:37 (“He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”) The service at Christ the King opened with three minutes of silence that began with this invitation:

Let us keep silence before God…silent within ourselves…opening our hearts to the silence of our sisters and brothers living in suffering: “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor 12:26).
May our ears be opened by this silence in communion with those whose voice we do not hear, either because they keep silent or they are silenced. Let us hear the call of Christ to the suffering of others, placing us firmly as Christians of all confessions before our common responsibilities.

It was easy for me to conjure up the sounds of the silenced. Those are the sounds that I sometimes have a hard time shaking at the end of the day. My co-workers at the Campus and I have talked about how the dreams we have at night that are so often centered around the people we work with during the day. And though I usually don’t remember specifics about what I am dreaming about, what I usually do remember is being awakened by the noise of people yelling or calling my name.

There are big gaps between Christians. There are walls of silence such as the one between the conservative Pentecostals like the woman who was speaking tongues the other day and the liberal Presbyterians like me. Those walls exist between Christians who experience God in informal churches that meet in huge arenas and those who worship using ordered liturgies. There is silence between Christians for whom the primary task of faith is to convert others and those who see working toward social justice as the most important thing, and even those who land somewhere in the middle. What if in our silence, our ears could be opened, despite our many differences, to the cries of those who are our common responsibilities?

I still don’t understand why or how that woman at the Campus was speaking in tongues. But, I do know that she and I were there for the same reason: because God calls us all to hear the silenced, however feeble our efforts may be. May we all pray for a day when together, the body of Christ can join as the church with open ears and able to speak and live the good news together in a world that so deeply needs to hear it.

This was the final blessing given at the ecumenical service on Thursday night:

“As you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Mt 25:40

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Mt 11:28

Dear friends, these words of Christ apply to each and every one of us. Christ is close to us in the heart of our actions, including our ecumenical actions, as well as in the suffering of the sick, the solitude and discouragement of many of us. He supports us in our weakness. He is our consolation and blessing.

Blessed be the Lord our God for the love which you have shown us
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In him who loved us we are conquerors over hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and the sword.

In the silence of abandonment and solitude,
of sickness and death,
pour out the riches of your blessing,
that we may ever be more faithful to serve you
in our sisters and brothers,
and that our joy to do your will be ever greater.

We bless you and glorify you,
for you listen to the silence of our hearts.
You act within us with power, healing us and leading us
to speak in the name of Jesus, your Son.

Send us into the world to carry out your will
and to break down the walls of silence which separate us.
May we witness to you, our only Saviour,
being ever more united by “one faith and one baptism.”

And may we grow in grace
and in the peace of God which passes all understanding,
that your name may be glorified.
Amen.

Epiphanies

Since this is the twelfth and final day of Christmas--Epiphany, and I am spending my year in the Nashville Epiphany Project, I figured it would be a good day to post. Beginning on this day and in the weeks that follow during Ordinary Time, the church focuses on the stories of Christ's revealing as the messiah. Starting with the story of the visiting magi, and continuing with stories of Jesus' baptism (this is my son...), the wedding at Cana, stories of healing and preaching, and ending with the mysterious story of the transfiguration of Jesus, we see how the people of 2000 years ago had epiphanies in their own lives about the identity of Jesus.

This year is all about finding God in places that we don't expect to find anything divine. It is about going to the places in this particular community of Nashville that the world has forgotten or loves to hate, whether that's in a community of immigrants who aren't welcome in the place that they have come to make a new life for them and their families, or in low-income housing projects where single mothers do their best to keep their children from the ever present dangers of drugs and violence, or an alleyway on 8th Avenue South where lonely and angry people look to another can of beer as their source of comfort. The message of Christmas is that Jesus came into the world and has walked in the shoes of the unwelcome stranger, the struggling parent, and the homeless addict. The best place to look for God isn't in the coffee shop at your mega-church, or in a great piece of religious art, or even in the sermon at church on Sunday, though God certainly is in all of those places. The best place for the epiphanies of our own lives to happen--to recognize that God is with us--is in looking at the direct image of God in our neighbors. In the weaving of hearts and the passing of peace in worship, in helping the grieving, in loving the poor, in welcoming others: this is where Epiphany happens.

The Work of Christmas

by Howard Thurman

"When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart."

— The Mood of Christmas, 23