fame?, us?, here?

I think I like the idea that you can google "liturgy locatedness" and the skinnytree appears as an option. So you don't have to go back to the old skinnytree, which is formatted all crazy now, I'm re-posting this here, where it is exponentially easier to view.
But that isn't the only reason for re-posting and re-reading. There is also this: Laurita Mia is so far away and I'm really trying hard not to worry about her. I keep asking myself, "Why does she have to go all the way to Uganda? Why there? and so it has been comforting to re read my own answer to the location question... you know, it keeps my hypocritical tendencies under control.

so, without further ado...

A Strategy for Local Theology

But why here?
I’m going to plant a tree here. I live here, I work here and though I know the soil in California better than I know the soil here, though I respect the California native Banana slugs, though I have delighted in Californian riparian woodlands encroaching or shading over Bouganveillias in my home town, though I was willing to fight back the blackberries and Vinca Minor there in ways I have been unwilling to do so here, I am beginning to trust the way the rain will come when Seattle grass begins to brown and cedars go to seed. This is where I am right now, and I know trees will grow here.
So I’m going to plant a tree. Here.
The theology that is just a branch, just the beginning of an idea, I clipped from another time and another place is ready to put down roots. My ideas about God and God’s people are ready to be grounded in this location. My theology is daily changing and being changed by the people and problems of this time and place. It seems to me that my little branch of theology needs the nourishment offered by questions posed here and now.
I will have to dig a hole for my little tree, the way they dig for a building’s foundation: find a spot and dig deeper than anyone expected. Maybe even put up a temporary barrier to protect the hole, and those who come around to look down in it. On the friendlier days we have talked to each other. They usually ask, “why are you doing this in Seattle? What was wrong with California—you know people there.”
And I respond as transparently as I can, “I just fit in better here. I am more readily accepted here. They understand my love of children and are more community oriented. They are like a city but also like a small town. I think it is a good place to try new things. It is good for me to be rained on and greyed in and I am learning to appreciate sun, the water and the trees in new ways. I think I could be here a good long time. Besides, it wasn’t until I got here that I decided to stop wandering around and put down roots and there is no way of knowing exactly when and where to start digging—sometimes you just have to start.”
“How long do you think you will be in Seattle? Would you ever go back to California?”
“Sure, I would. But I want to put down roots so badly and this is where I am right now. I want to invest here, to reach down and grab up and give back in this place and the only way to do that is to be here now, fearlessly and graciously. I want to contribute, to say something meaningful and that won’t happen unless I discover the local currency. I don’t worry about getting out or back to Cali, this is good soil.”
So I resume digging. I dig a deep hole and sort out the rocks of hardened hearts from the fertile soil, dark with nourishing elements like curiosity and mystery. I never had to do that in California; I wasn’t ready to do the work of local theology there. Now I look down, bow down, to the differences, respect them enough to sort them, carefully and with love. I will have to or my theology will never put roots down deep enough. I decide which of the hard parts and hardened hearts to deal with now or leave in place knowing that the roots of my local theology will navigate around them.
I get down on my hands and knees, not with a shovel, but with my fingers and tenderly grapple with the hard parts of the people close to me. I know some of the fears and habits of the local people: the way they are afraid to tell their children “no”, wonder what will happen if they don’t recycle every can and bottle. I see the way their hearts and money are spent on their dogs and boats and second homes in Island County. These, the stony bits mixed in with the fertile soil, are not a loss, but neither are they to be ignored. They must be turned over and looked under. I will have to make judgments about those hard hearts and stony faces I am sorting through, I will have to take them into consideration as I plan to set a theology into this place. I will mourn, surely, if I can’t find their beauty. Sometimes it seems there are more rocks than soil but those times are so far few and far between.

The question of water and wind
This place and these people affect the growth of my theology. This place invites me to relinquish all that I know about God to the holy water and spirit wind here. I set it down and let weather, neighbors, dogs, babies and music come close to what I have hoarded so boldly. When it is time, I search out the right tree and get it in the soil. I know a lot about trees, and yet, it will never be enough because it is impossible for me to understand all the ways each branch interacts with the elements in this location. There is no formula to determine how the leaf buds shudder in the ruach of the local wind, or roots will soak in the waters from the local font.
I recently heard a story of a church that unearthed a giant baptismal font during renovation. The day of their first post-renovation worship service they baptized babies in that antique font but because it wouldn’t fit in the newly renovated sanctuary, they lugged it out onto the sidewalk and did the liturgy there. I want to ask the pastor of this Capitol Hill congregation how this reveals his theology of baptism that allows for naked babies to be dipped in a giant font on a busy sidewalk.
As for the congregation I serve, we have a small bowl-like font, a smallish metal trough and a giant, coffin-sized trough. They are all three employed with equal fervor and regularity. We exchange stories of our interactions with the font on a pretty regular basis. I like to tell a story of the night I tripped and nearly fell face first into the small, waist-high bowl. I heard one recently about two sixth graders washing their faces in it. The font is central to our theology, but also to our daily lives.
We all have stories about it interrupting our routines and tempting our children, calling them to dip a finger in and then lick it off, just to see if baptism tastes like they remember. The taller kids walk by and put a whole hand in, just to check if it might be good for swimming in, and then wipe the water all over their best dresses, their hair, or their baby brother. Parents hold their four year olds over it so they can stare down into it, hoping to glimpse fish or pennies or God. I have never seen any of these behaviors in other churches. I have never before seen theology worked out like this, around a font so tempting and present because of its location, its place, its central role among us.
Recently, I asked my pastor if I could use the giant font for a Vacation Bible School game. We both considered how this would affect the adults and children in our care. The children are ever increasingly familiar with the font. They have played in it before—during baptismal liturgies younger siblings often spend so much time enjoying the water that the whole family ends up soaked. But do they see an affirmation of baptism in the precious asperges as a soaked big sister runs to embrace a grandfather who flew in from Florida to attend? What would happen to their idea of baptismal sacrament were the font carried carefully onto the front lawn and filled with fully dressed children soaking, wiggling and cheering for their friends to run to the waters, and jump in? What kind of water is in this trough, in this place, that calls theology to be informed or adapted be a scene like this?

A sort of arborist
If we understand that theology comes to us locked in a seed, only to peek out after a blazing wildfire, we understand what growth will cost, how much energy it takes to respond to a harsh environment in constructive ways, what we must do to harden the outer bark just enough to protect xylem and phloem, veins and structures. I have landed in this place, these fonts, these winds, which will beat against my theology and I must let it happen.
Theologically grows stronger if I let the voices I know, both near and far ask questions about the varied fonts and Spirit they know personally. I become a sort of arborist, reading the details of the lives in my care, watching how the differing theologies grow near to each other or far apart and why. I look for signs of health, growth, disease or decay.
Theology grows, moves and gathers strength from the winds of change. It either shelters kindly or crashes down through the roof of the house if the roots are too shallow. Theology has branches and little bits at the tips that fall away at the end of the growing season. Theology bears sexy little blossoms, which wait patiently for the breeze and bees to disseminate its tiny totality.
If we learn to appreciate the variety of theologies like we appreciate the power of the seasons in a forest ecosystem, we will be better prepared to acknowledge substantial theological hardship as it comes and goes. We will see that certain trees suffocate in certain climates and dominate in others because of wind and water. Theology is the same way and happens according to the smallest components connecting, gathering fodder, and gaining strength by standing against indeterminate forces.
The problem with trees, is the same problem with theology: transplanting is difficult and not always in everyone’s best interest. Of course seeds transport well, with or without a human to carry them, seeds are fragile and hopeful but they are not the whole. The whole tree, the whole theology will not do well if it is dug up and moved too far and left alone. So it is best to prepare realistically and imaginatively, or come humbly with the seeds of a local theology and hold them loosely knowing that they are to be scattered and may not survive.
One part tree hugger and one part theologian, I am predisposed to the task of planting in the best of conditions, and nourishing the seedlings of theology, all the while knowing that I don’t have any say really in how well a thing will grow. Trinitarian theology grows best in conditions of heightened community. Rupture, and repair are to theology, as they are to the bark of a tree, evidence of growth. They are evidence that we are in the presence of salvific community, that we are gaining, changing, responding to outside forces like water and wind, that call us to be more ourselves, to put down deeper roots (reaching into the dark and unknown) and risk putting forth tender leaves and blossoms. There are choices to be made and freedoms to be exercised in order to grow a local theology. Doing local theology means extending roots and branches fully into the spaces we perceive between our location and God’s. It is in this reaching that we find how close God is.

One tree or one branch
I know that in the process of doing local theology there will be erosion of the soil, bending of the trunk, pruning of branches and grief when an old growth theology falls hard. It is hard to determine if local theology is just one tree in a forest of theologies: biblical, covenantal, feminist, reformed, Muslim, etc. Perhaps these are just branches of one system. Either way, they work together, live together, move in the same wind and grow in the same sun, from the same soil.
There are certain things I do, as a budding theologian, that are part of formulating and living a theology that is self-aware, taking into consideration my locatedness, vocation, gifts and struggles. My coworkers help me to see how my style of relating informs the relationships that affect my theology most. Recently, a coworker’s wife shared with me her husband reports back to her when our pastor/boss and I occasionally experience mismeeting. He tells her these stories because it is in my struggle to be understood by other theologians that he recognizes his own.
For example, I have both loved and hated our weekly staff meetings because I am often invited to share my perspective. My perspective on ministry is colored by my expectations that I will work against oppression; that others will work against oppression; to hear and to use inclusive language; to be hopeful rather than condemning of the mistakes coworkers make; to think creatively about the future of what happens in the church building, and in this particular neighborhood, with an eye for those who are not already a part of our community; to deepen relationships, in order to deepen faith; and to take risks in order to create a safe place for other risk-takers to land should they be in danger—that is what I think it is to lead. Though these are not so different from my coworkers’ expectations, they have been formed by my very personal experiences of particular oppressors, my own mistakes, certain neighborhoods and specific relationships that my coworkers will never fully understand.
The Parish Administrator, our minister of outreach and lead Pastor are all highly sensitive to concerns like mine and I am learning from the way they voice their own concerns. They seem to have a relational style very different from my own, if not a theology that differs significantly. And yet, week after week, I am able to exegete, both the text and the congregation, in light of our locatedness, and explain myself in a way that builds bridges. The strategy here is to tell the truth as I see it, to listen humbly and be honest when I am too angry to do so.
When I offer the children’s word I try to tell the truth as I see it. I offer a thorough exegesis in a non-threatening tone. In age-appropriate language I offer them a taste of prayer-infused preaching so that rather than sum up the week’s lesson, which I am very much afraid to do, I simply choose to lead them in bowing heads and offering a question to a loving God. When I write Sunday school curriculum, I think first of the questions the students have already asked, problems they already face. Then, when we are together for the lesson, we begin the work of integrating their experience of God, what they have been taught about God, and what they hope to find out about God from me. As we work out our theologies, we ask a lot of questions and are intentional about leaving space for more.

The mini(s)tree
It is my hope that we will do the work of local theology together for the duration of my ministry. I plan to be ordained so that as the lives of my parishioners intersect with sacrament and struggles, I will be allowed by the larger church to preside and participate. But I am also aware that the ordination journey is as important to the local theology as is the ordination itself.
The ordination process is a process that affects the theology of all participants. Committee, candidate, sponsoring church, the candidate’s family and friends are all called to be honest and even angry at times but to always tell the truth in love, and ask difficult questions that will change the way we live theologically together. My call to be a ordained as a female minister of word and sacrament (whose particular interest is in the faith formation of children and families) is a call to action for those in my sphere of influence. Sometimes it elicits anger and highlights doctrinal differences. At other times it unites and validates those who have been othered over against hegemony.
I have chosen to move far from the Presbyterian congregation that is sponsoring my ordination. This geographical distance has called my home congregation to wonder how I will repay them for their support and how the distance between us will be bridged. How many and which trees will have to die in order that we may build a bridge of solid timbers? They have been curious about my motives and discernment processes. One woman in particular feels a heavy burden to be especially available by phone for me in ways she has never offered other candidates and admits that this very particular kind of connection to me has changed the way she is in relationship with me, with our church, and with God. The members of my sponsoring congregation are those who stand over the hole I am digging, the tree I am planting wondering what will come of all this digging, planting, questioning and hoping. They watch my theology change as a result of my surroundings and warn against certain influences and celebrate others.
Not only has my home congregation been called to the struggle but also those who write me a pay check every month. My position in the Lutheran Church has called into question the ecumenical motives of the church as it employs someone who maintains a theology very different from theirs. They love me deeply and each one of them has adopted a different way of working out the meaning of our theological differences.
Both churches have ecumenically informed theologies with deep roots. Though these roots may mean that transplanting is impossible, it also means that these old trees will bear new leaves, if not heirloom fruit, faithfully and in turn. These theologies, though locally informed and reformed by my very participation, are reaching deeply down into the fertile soil of tradition. Those roots reach down deeper than their most recent political agendas and even deeper through the habits that have yet to stand the test of time. As a result, we are learning to form a theology that works for us and against us in different seasons, like wind and water against a tree, according to what we need. And we see that even a local theology will speak of God: the God we experience, the God that is One in the here and now and forever.