Communion of Saints

So I've been thinking for a while about the Communion of Saints.  At a very basic level, it's the idea that there are spiritual foremothers and forefathers that have played a part in the creation of our community and our person -- that the people who came before us, by living their faithful example, directly shaped who and what we are.  And they remain with us still, in our shape and in our actions.

But even longer than I've been thinking about the Communion of Saints I've been thinking about the women in my life who have been spiritual examples.  So here's a short, by no means complete, list:

My grandma Glo, someone who you didn't have to know very long to know she was special.  I remember that when we'd stay the night with her and she'd tuck us in and pray out loud for us.  In the mornings, she'd get up early and sit by the big windows at the back of the house and read her Bible.  And on days when she could convince us to get up early enough (which got harder as we reached teenage years) we'd sit with her and she'd read aloud to us.  When we were there on Sundays we'd have to go to church with her and Grandpa.  I hated it because the minister was always crying and screaming about something, but I got to sit next to Grandma and we'd sing harmony out of the shaped note hymnal.  Grandma was never afraid to do what seemed right to her.  I remember that once she said something like 'if women were supposed to be quiet in church that men had better be doing what they were supposed to, and if they didn't then it was up to the women to do it right and the men would just have to accept it'.  Coming from a time and place where the literal interpretation of the Bible was strong and motivational, this seemed so shocking to me.  But she was right.

My grandma Huckelberry, a woman I didn't get to know very well.  I remember sitting at her kitchen table with her, and sticking my head under her skirt at the grocery store, and being in the house with her during her time in hospice care, and that's about it.  But I know her through my mother and aunts.  I know she was precise and giving.  I know she was creative and good with words.  I know she loved music.  Most importantly I know she taught my mother about Jesus and I'm so grateful for that.

My aunt Becky, my doppelganger.  Aunt Becky manages to be strong and analytical while being totally tenderhearted and in love with God.  She and God talk like they're friends.  She is wise and smart and thoroughly goofy.  She gives her talents to God, playing and singing and encouraging.  Getting to sing with her during Grandpa's memorial is something that will always be sweet to me.  I've felt God's presence many times singing with her.  She gives of herself even when it isn't easy, and her generosity astounds me. 

My aunt Nancy, my mother hen, always providing a place to nap and escape the world/school.  Aunt Nancy probably doesn't know how influential she has been to me, but she and her Bible study/devotional bag have been.  When I was starting to think about seminary I remember driving with her across town and talking with her about what I thought God was telling me.  I remember she said to me, "It sounds like God's telling you to do something and you'd better do it."

My sister, the only one who understand why and how I'm so weird and why I have trouble knowing whether or not a knife is dirty.  Emily is patient and serene and logical (especially with difficult people) when I want to kick and scream at something(/someone).  She is strong and funny, and a good mother and wife.  She doesn't talk negatively about her husband, and I know that isn't because he's perfect but rather because she's chosen to present a united front to the world.  She's concerned about raising their son to know God.  She's concerned about her wider family's well-being.  When we talk about God I always learn something and am always surprised (in a good way) by the way she looks at things.

And lastly, but in no way leastly, my mother.  She has done, and continues to do, a lot of great things for me.  However, one of the best things was dragging us to church, even when we didn't want to go.  Even when she didn't want to go.  Starting and making us be in the youth choir.  Making us go to youth group.  Making us go to VBS.  Making us know God.  She continually prayed with me when I didn't understand how God could love me.  So many times.  She bravely handled my teenage existential/spiritual crises and never once did she make me feel as though it was unimportant (because though it seems silly now it was so important then).  She is strong, stronger than she knows I think.  She has big girl panties and knows how to put them on.  She is fiercely protective.  She wrestles with God, but never lets go.  And I know its hard sometimes.  She is resilient.  She is determined when she has to be and a zany perfectionist the rest of the time.  She's loving and caring and steadfast.  And she's the main reason I know Jesus.

These are members of my Communion of Saints, my lineage, and quite frankly I find it hard to measure up.  And the thing is I meet new members all the time.  I am totally in awe of some of the friends I've made here at BUSTH.  Their depth and wisdom and courage are so inspiring and intimidating to me.  Through my interactions with them I can say without question that God is real, alive, and good.  And I suppose that's what the communion is for--to draw us all closer to the One who wants every bit of us, the inspiring, uninspiring, and the ordinary.  The One who wants to transform us into saints ourselves.

Brain overload.

One of the things I'm learning about me throughout the process of grad school is that I need order in my life.  I don't need every minute planned, but I like to have a general idea of what the day (or activity) will bring.  I can fly by the seat of my pants, but too much of that makes me nuts pretty quickly.  I don't even particularly care if I/we deviate from the plan, as long as there was once a plan to deviate from.  I think this is where my procrastinating gets me into trouble.  "I'm supposed to be doing this right now...oh look...a shiny puppy..."  But this semester has been a particularly rough start.  With the weather and holidays classes are slow to start and I'm slow to get organized.  I'm already behind, and I have a book that's absolutely kicking my butt.

So from that book is this thought.  Mom and I were talking about the Communion of Saints (looking to the lives of those Christians who've gone before us, or "saints", for wisdom/guidance) over break.  Then this morning we had a conversation about our lived lives (both individually and communally) as evangelism.  This is two paragraphs from the book that's kicking my butt.

"Like the poor and the stranger, the dead have little place in modern societies because they have no “utility.” Only that which bears an exchange value is allowed to make a claim on us, and so the dead, who can do nothing for us, are either forgotten or fetishized (and thereby turned into a commodity). Our medical, bereavement, and funerary practices keep the bodies of the dead at a distance and diminish any contact with them that is not entirely antiseptic and pumped full of formaldehyde. In the Christian household, however, both the living and the dead belong.  The dead in Christ commune with and make a claim on the living. This “communication” with the dead is not morbid, and though it is unsupported in modern cultures, it is quite common in cultures around the globe that have not yet been given over wholly to an instrumental rationality in which value is defined by usefulness (indeed, these cultures frequently include the dead in a ritual meal). For Christians, death does not have the last word, and the table of the Lord, in its reconstitution of time and in its remembering of the body of Christ, is literally a gathering of saints from across the ages within a local assembly. To evangelize the world, therefore, is to invite persons into a concrete local fellowship that is at the same time made truly catholic (“ according to the whole”) around that table.

Memory, according to J. B. Metz, is a form of solidarity with the dead, the suffering, and the conquered that is “dangerous” because it “breaks the grip of history as a history of triumph and conquest interpreted dialectically or as evolution”. The dead are part of our story, and through a eucharistic solidarity with the dead, we are saved both from resignation and from narcissism and thus freed to be life for the world. The “great cloud of witnesses” (for they are, indeed, evangelists) will not let us forget; and neither will they let us reduce hope to that which our own rationalities and technologies might produce in the world. Evangelism carried out eucharistically is both faithful and hopeful, because it is a telling and a sharing that is essentially a “remembering forward.”"

Stone, Bryan P. (2007-03-01). Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness

SO MUCH crammed into two paragraphs.  When we "do this in remembrance" what are we remembering?  Are we remembering Jesus the political instigator or are we remembering Christ the bringer of new life?  Or are we remembering both?  Are we remembering the suffering, trials, lives, and ultimate victory of those who have gone before us?  Are we participating in the story of Christianity?  Are we a living memory of the Good News?

But I think I'm going to focus on eucharistic food practices for my paper in my sacraments class, so look forward to that...

Gotta run...I'm late...again...