Tuesday 24 April 2012

Mark Driscoll's School of Manliness*

Applicant Number: 4055649






A great start. Clearly, a manly man. A full bottle of Extra Hot Tabasco downed in 5 seconds.





Showing serious potential. This guy is an animal. What you don't see: seconds later this dude swallowed the toilet roll whole.


















Manly men take note. This is the stuff we're looking for. True masculinity displayed in this act of rock-chomping.



















Owch. This guy was doing so well. His manly performance here is compromised by an air of femininity. The wearing of pink, seen here in the applicant's slippers ruins what would otherwise have been a beefy display of strength. If this brother doesn't wise up and man up he won't make the cut. 




Oh dang. The dude's been chickified. This is a real let down. I didn't think a man of this calibre would ever exhibit such symptoms of feminization. This is the toe-jam of masculinity. 

Grade: FAIL

Additional Comments: This man is anatomically male but he is showing symptoms of an effeminate nature. Influence of sisification detected. Immediate intervention and disciplinary action advised. 





* This is a fictional rendering of a fictional School Test. Mark Driscoll's School of Manliness may not actually exist. The content of this blog may not actually express words spoken or views held by Mark Driscoll. But the author regrets that it could be a frighteningly accurate rendering of the same.










Monday 16 April 2012

Saturday 31 March 2012

Left-out Right-brain






"I think that the church is afraid of right brain people." 
"You ask every five year old ‘how many of you sing?’… and they all raise their hands… We're all born artists, but then something happens..."
The above quotes are from a video my scribbling apprentice discovered months ago on a great visual liturgy website, called the work of the people. Check out the video here:
I started to cry when I first watched this because it was as if this man had spoken the words my heart had been crying out for years. I had a "YES! YES! someone else gets it, I am not alone" moment. Unfortunately these moments feel few and far between in my Christian walk. Sometimes I feel that I am speaking and feeling a foreign language which others around me just don’t understand. Even more strange and troubling is my experiences of feeling more at home as a creative Christian in the company of pagans than in the family of my Creator. Lately, I have been able to explain these feelings through an understanding of some very basic neuroscience! 
The right hemisphere of the human brain is mainly responsible for intuition, creativity and metaphor. The left part of our brain deals generally with logic, words and reasoning. In general, artists rely more heavily on their right brain. I am aware that our brains are not split as simply as this and I am not trying to fight for one side of the brain to be used more than the other. For surely at our best we are employing all aspects of our brains for the glory of God. For instance, recent research has shown that abilities in subjects such as maths are strongest when both sides of the brain work together. That is exactly what I am longing for in church… both right brain and left brain functioning together to the glory of God. I am simplifying this for two reasons: 1. Because I don’t know all the science behind it. 2. I want to make a specific point about the relationship between Christianity and Creative expression.
Consider for a moment your experience of church, whether you are a believing member of the body of Christ or someone who on occasion darkens the door of church. Has your experience been made up of intuition, creativity and metaphor or has the church service been largely constructed through logic, words and reasoning? 
“Nobody should be closer to the Creator than us... We ought to know the creator better than anybody... That ought to be the church’s claim to fame: We know the creator! What does the creator do? CREATE.”
You see the thing is, and this is where it gets tricky, I don’t think creativity is optional. The christian church should not be like the average irish primary school where art, PE, music and drama are done at most once a week, if we have time and all the other ‘more important’ subjects like maths and english have been properly covered. God forbid we might know how to paint and dance better than, or even as well as, we know how to read and multiply. I believe there are some who are reading this and struggling to agree with my argument. Surely it is more important in the world for a child to have skills which they can ‘put to good use?’ 
We say the same in churches. Surely God wants us to be serious children and knuckle down studiously and reverently under his Word through Bible preaching and teaching? I have no problem whatsoever with preaching and teaching from the Bible in church but I query the perceived need for it to be, by and large, carried out through left brain activities which are controlled and predictable. Predominantly, we use logic, reasoning and words to preach and teach despite the fact that Jesus employed the use of metaphor, intuition and creativity in his teaching and preaching.
Of course, if we have time, after the ‘serious’ work is done, we could maybe put on a little drama, sing a new song or play a short film? These are seen as more ‘creative’ acts and are not weighted with the same importance or centrality but are given a place in the introduction or appendices of church life rather than being at the heart of our Christian identity where they could be encouraged to seep into all aspects of our congregational teaching and worship.
“The Bible does not only give us permission to be creative but a mandate to be creative. If we are not being creative we are in fact disobeying God.”
- Ellis Potter
I want to emphasise here that there is immense creativity in preaching a sermon. I am married to a preacher who is also a gifted writer, painter, poet and storyteller and I see the glory of the Creator at work in him as he crafts and delivers his sermons week by week. Whatever anyone might say, I believe there is performance in preaching and I see that as a God-glorifying rather than egotistical use of the concept performance.
The thing is, we as Christians can be far too timid at not recognising and reclaiming what already belongs to God. On Friday afternoon, I spent hours in a dingy classroom in Maynooth learning about the seven chakras in my body. BEEP BEEP BEEP yes I hear it - the alarm resounds in the Christian readers’ mind and heart - NEW AGE HERESY ALERT… Pass judgement on me quickly and return to the safety of your left brain.
… or venture further?
God made my body and yours too. He tells me that He knit me together in my mother’s womb and that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and that my soul knows it full well (Psalm 139) 
Let me try again without the phraseology which has new age connotations… 
On Friday afternoon I experienced how God has created my body to hold and express emotions in different ways. As I focused on different parts of my body I realised how my body feels different things in different places and different parts of my body can represent different things to me as a human being made in the image of God. Through movement exercises I was able to understand and celebrate better my connection to the God who made me and saved me through the body of his son Jesus Christ and has now filled me with the Holy Spirit to live and work to His praise and glory.
Now, do you feel like I am just putting Christian language on a New Age phenomenon or do you see that it should be the other way around? Our bodies belong to God, whether we acknowledge Him as Lord over them or not. The Universe belongs to God, whether we acknowledge His Creation and Sustentation of it or not. What humans call something should not be the final word. Christians need to be reminding the world and its people that God was here first, that God owns truth whatever shape and form and phraseology humanity tries to skew it into to glorify their own egos or even just sell books or courses. That should not mean as Christians we need to throw out all things that smack of another religion or philosophy or just is not explicitly from the brand of Christian culture which we have been a part of all our lives. 
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” 
How does this relate to creativity and the right brain?
The thing is, sometimes I feel more free to express myself creatively in my secular dramatherapy training course than I do in my Christ-loving church. And that makes me sad. Then it makes me frustrated cos I think, “How come those who don’t even acknowledge God as their Creator are more buzzed about creative expression than those who say they know and serve their Creator?” If you serve a Creative God you have to be creative. It is not an extra-curricular activity, it is an an exam subject. It is central to your identity as a child of the living creator God. 
I believe there is a biblical mandate to be creative. And I believe that mandate is not just for artists, musicians, Sunday school teachers or women. It is for preachers and pastors, engineers and brick-layers, farmers and mothers, accountants and consultants, film-makers and solicitors, pharmacists and therapists... it is for everyone and anyone who says they are made in the image of God, in the image of the Creator. It is not about our career choice but rather our commitment to our Creator. To be living as one made in the image of the one who creates you must know your own creativity is valid and needed in this Universe. 
I take full responsibility for the sadness and frustration I feel. It is not anyone’s fault but it is something I want to change. It doesn’t feel right that I feel more freedom to express myself creatively in my dramatherapy course than I do in my church. The problem is I am afraid. I know that if I stepped out in church I risk the judgement of others. Sometimes it feels easier to just go with the norm. Don’t rock the boat Claire. Keep your creativity under wraps. 
But then I hook up with the dramatherapists and my right brain screams HALLELUJAH! I experience an environment where people support and encourage me to express myself and my relationship to God and to others through every way possible. I dance and I move, I sing and I improvise, I feel and I speak
Except there is a missing link. I love my fellow trainee dramatherapists and I love their freedom and zest for creative expression and their belief in its innate presence in all people. But most of them don’t attribute their creativity to God the Creator. I love my brothers and sisters in Christ and I love sharing in their joy in knowing Jesus and experiencing their sacrificial love for me and others. But most of them don’t see or express themselves as creative beings.
So I come away wondering “Why can’t the two go together?”
Then I realise God is bringing the two together in me. And so I get scared again cos I don’t want to be the one they all look at, the one who says in dramatherapy : “Jesus is Lord of all Creativity!” Or the one who says in church “God is creator so let us be more creative in our expression!”
2nd Samuel Chapter 6 verse 16 says this: "As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart."
When David comes home Michal calls him a “vulgar fellow” but David says “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.” 
I admit that I fear humiliation if I was to act the same way in church as I do in the experiential workshops on my dramatherapy course. This creates a tension and a disconnection in my life at the moment which I am seeking to resolve. Unfortunately churches can unwittingly have the same attitude to creative expression as Michal had towards David’s ‘undignified’ dancing. The likes of leaping and dancing should be left to the charismatics (too often have I heard that word used in a derogatory way) while we get on with the business of being 'serious' about God. Was David not being serious about God when he physically embodied and expressed his praise for God? Where is the place in church for physical embodiment and expression? For original creative expression in service to God and others?
The problem, as identified in the video, is that right brain activity involves unpredictability… “anything can happen!” That is how the world began, God the Creator spoke and things happened; light, sound, action, breath...
God created man and woman in his image. God invited man and woman to get creative with Him. Come into the garden, name the animals, work the land, eat the fruit…
Then things got messy.
Creating can be a messy business. Ask the Mum who decided to spend the morning finger painting with her child or the Dad who makes pizza from scratch with his kids. But God didn’t stop us. God asked us to create from the get go. Creativity doesn’t mean replication or imitation. Creativity is bringing something new into being. God asked Adam to name the animals, inviting a subjective point of view within an objective Creation that God has made.
The fact of the matter is that Church ought to be the most creative place in culture. We should be birthing artists of all sorts like there is no tomorrow. I feel whole-heartedly that there is eternal significance in painting and pottery as well as pastoring and preaching. I feel this not because of who I feel I am but because of who God tells me He is. We love because God first loved us and likewise we express ourselves creatively because God first expressed himself creatively. 
“Christ entered our world, the Creator translating heavenly existence to earthly... all art forms attempt to translate what is unseen into what is seen.” 
- Makoto Fujimura
For those of us who are treading carefully and collecting courage on this journey to be pioneers of creative freedom in Christianity, I put my voice out there in the hope that the tears of encouragement I shed upon hearing and seeing the video above, will be yours too as you realise you are not alone. 
In closing I share the words of another voice who encouraged me to believe in God the Creator, Calvin Seerveld says: “Your redemptive task as artist is not to convert people or to be apologetic about following Jesus Christ. A Christian artist simply needs to give away your imaginative insights to whoever crosses your path, and the Holy Spirit will take it from there.”
Holy Spirit, please take it from here.




Monday 13 February 2012

Burning Heart opens Can of Worms




Last week a man who loves Jesus said ‘God gave Christianity a masculine feel’. A woman who loves Jesus read the man’s words and felt fire burn in the middle of her chest, right between her breasts. And as this fire had been sparking up quite a bit lately, she thought it was time to let it out. 

And this is what she said...
I am a woman. I have a vagina and breasts, a womb and long hair. When I was little I wanted to be a nurse, then a gymnast, then a make-up artist or an actress, then a spy or a secret agent. I played with barbies and sylvanians. I made a bow and arrow out of stick and string. I got a gun that made shooting noises until the batteries ran out. I smoked matches like cigarettes and pretended to be on the run from the law with plastic bags of flour as my illicit substances. 
I played in fields and climbed trees and built camps with old car tires as toilet seats. I wore tracksuits in dark colours and was jealous of my friends who had pink and white socks and were allowed to grow long hair. I minded dolls like they were real babies and put clothing up my top pretending to be pregnant. 
I planned to get married at twenty three and have babies at twenty five. I wanted to be a mother and be appreciated and accepted for being a mother and not asked ‘will you be going back to work?’ I wanted to be appreciated for already being at work
My dad cooks curries, makes jam and goes on paper-making courses. He collects interesting polyester materials to make cards out of distressed fabrics. My husband (whom I married at twenty three) writes poetry and paints driftwood and cooks better lasagne than me. My dad bought me hiking boots that I still wear today and took me camping and orienteering and leads mountain hikes to this day. My husband preaches sermons, writes stories and debates most intelligently and lovingly about all things theological. My husband cries, brews beer, loves chopping wood with a big axe and being out in the wild. My dad hugs me and asks me how I’m feeling and listens to my answer. 
My mother sang hymns to me and my big sisters told me stories at bedtime. My mother is educated and opinionated. My mother made biscuits and hosted birthday parties. My mother is a teacher and a La Leche League leader. My mother hosts and helps lead bible studies in her home and church. My father was chairman of the Irish Farmer’s Association and mid-wife to thousands of cows. My father taught me to drive tractors, deliver calves and change the tire on my car. My father taught english, history and geography before going into farming and forestry. He teaches english to non-nationals, helps adults learn to read and write, runs discussion groups with wheelchair users and volunteers to move big stones around in the rain to make paths on irish mountains.
My father stayed at home with my eldest sister for the first year of her life while my mother went back teaching (until she couldn’t stand leaving her baby every day). My father carried his baby daughters around in an african sling and put a car seat in the back of his tractor so we could be at work with him. My mother breastfed me until I was four, prayed with me, spent hours helping me with homework and disciplined me with careful instruction and love. 

I have learned how I want to mother my own children from both my father and my mother. Though the children at twenty five plan has since been rearranged.
This is not an exhaustive collection of experiences and attributes of influential men and women in my life. And yours will surely be different to mine. Feminine and masculine are not exhaustive in their traits and trends.
I am a woman. I am feminine. I teach, I direct, I lead, I serve, I counsel and I create. I learn from men, women and children. I love baking and cooking and doing laundry. I change wheels on cars and help my husband learn to drive. I have worked with men years older than I in the area of personal development through drama. I’ve been told that I should not lead a bible study or a church service. I’ve been thanked for teaching male and female children in Sunday school. I’ve publicly proclaimed and taught God’s truth to children, teenagers, women and men in church buildings and market places, at kitchen tables and in cars, in youth clubs and living rooms, on beaches and in night clubs. I’ve been asked by churches and universities to direct, lead and teach male and female adults in performing a drama of Mark’s Gospel. I’ve been told that I should step back to encourage men to take leadership roles in church. 

I have performed a monologue in a church but would not be allowed to stand up and deliver a sermon in the same setting. Because I am a woman. Because I have a vagina and breasts, a womb and long hair. 
For some time now I have been facing up to painful inconsistencies in attitudes towards and understandings of what it is to be male and female followers of Jesus Christ and what the definition of teaching and preaching actually is.

I have a lot of questions. And I am so sad to notice that when I ask them of people there is often not a real desire to answer, let alone discuss deeply the feelings and experiences at the heart of these questions. 
But I have decided to continue to ask and to continue to seek a clearer understanding. 
“What exactly is feminine and masculine?”
I am a woman but my life has both a feminine and a masculine feel. The world has a feminine and a masculine feel.
I think that it is very obvious from the Bible, from Jesus, from the Church and from the Created Universe, in which God has formed men and women to live in his image, that God has given Christianity both a feminine and a masculine feel. 
Churches need to seriously consider the effects of placing their own, often self-invented rather than biblically deduced, limitations on what women and men can or cannot do. 
In Luke Chapter 10 verse 37-42, Jesus tells Martha that Mary is doing just the right thing sitting at his feet and learning, even though at that time and in that culture her being in that position with Jesus would have meant she was stepping outside the sphere of the home in which women were expected to stay. No wonder Martha was so confused and infuriated by Jesus’ approving response towards and lack of retribution of Mary.  

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

“Why let women learn if we do not expect them to teach?”
God did not limit the spheres to which women are expected to live, work and minister. Men and women chose those limits and those spheres. 

To say that women can lead in one sphere but not another is to fall into the dreaded chasm of separating the sacred from the secular. God is as much Lord over a church pulpit as he is a kitchen sink. The words spoken at a kitchen table are as powerful and effective as those delivered by a preacher in a church building. There is something seriously inconsistent and confusing when one says that you need a penis to pastor and preach in a church but it is ok to do those same actions as a woman if you call yourself a missionary and go to a foreign country or if it is in the realm of women’s only conferences and ministries. 

What I would like to know is WHO is making these distinctions? I fear that we are getting further and further away from the truth of God’s word and more and more comfortable in our own doctrines of gender which are culturally and experientially defined. I will readily admit that my views of men and women are influenced by my experiences in life and culture. So let us at least be honest about this. When this man talks about Christianity having a masculine feel, he means masculine in terms of what he understands masculine to be. And the term masculine looks very different in India than it does in North America, in Ireland than it does in Brazil. 

I heard recently of a young man who was at a Christian conference and went into the kitchen to help wash up after dinner. A male pastor came in and told him to get out of the kitchen because this was the women’s job to do. 

This anecdote hits the nail on the head for me. This is what is happening in churches all across Ireland under the guise of ‘reclaiming true biblical manhood and womanhood’. It is seen in small ways, not just in who does or does not lead our services and teach our children. Announcements call for women to provide ‘tray bakes’ and a cookery demonstration is offered out to women only. My feelings around this are made even more complex by the fact that these restrictions and comments are mostly well meaning and often entirely unconscious.

I love being a woman. I love being married to a man whom I respect and enjoy in all his array of wonderful differences. I love making traybakes and going to cookery demonstrations but so do many men and I don't think that makes them less masculine in God's eyes. Just check out the sunsets, tropical fish and jungle flowers in this world and try tell me God is not into arts and crafts. I know that God made men and women to be different. But I believe that men and women can occupy the same roles and positions in work, in church, in home and in society and can occupy these in very different ways. 
I am not convinced that the Bible teaches me as a Christian woman that my gender defines what I should or should not do in church or in any other setting. I believe that God created me to be a woman, and I don’t want to try to be a man. I have purpose and passion in being a woman. But as a follower of Christ I want my life to be defined by Jesus and not gender. And frankly, I want some discussion generated and explanations provided for the inequality and inconsistency I am currently witnessing and experiencing. 

Let the worms squirm and not be silent.