The Lifeboat of Laughter: A Reflection on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

Taken from my article in "Read the Spirit" http://shrvl.com/S435q

 

The day after 9/11, I was working for the Red Cross taking inbound calls for missing persons in the fallen towers. Somewhere mid-morning I received a call from a woman whose husband was missing. Her call was like all the others I had received: she offered a description of him, information about where he worked, what time he left. Then something totally unexpected happened. She began to laugh.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you! He left the house with the worst tie on. It was this horrible green color with flamingos. I told him it didn’t match,” she laughed, “but you know men.”

I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. For several moments we sat at opposite ends of the phone line in silence. Finally she said, “I’m sorry. Maybe laughter seems inappropriate right now. But it’s all my family and I have left.”


I learned something about grief—and about laughter—that day. While most of us think of laughing as something we do only in comedy clubs, in fact laughter may be the most powerful healing tool we have. For some it’s a way of lifting the crushing burden of crisis to allow for a brief moment of reprieve. For others, it is a tool to help get through the stages for grief. For the woman on the other end of my phone line, it was a lifeboat in a great sea of despair.


Since that day, I have lived and worked in New York City and have witnessed first-hand the pains of healing and transition, especially the violent reactions to our Muslim brothers and sisters. If I have one hope for our city, our nation and our world, it is that in the years to come we may find a way to dialogue, to listen and eventually, together, to laugh.


Some may bristle at that suggestion. For many, to laugh with someone means you forgive them—that all is okay. In fact, laughter is much more complex. In its purest form, laughter is a not about giving up, it is about opening up.


As a minister and also a professional comedian, I’ve found a great example of this power. A few years after 9/11, I started working with a standup rabbi and a Muslim comic in the “Laugh in Peace” tour. Created by Rabbi Bob Alper, “Laugh in Peace” is an interfaith comedy show targeted at building bridges between diverse communities. Our audiences span every imaginable face: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists. And for two short hours, the differences are forgotten and we all laugh together.


The bottom line? Humor highlights our commonalties. When we laugh with someone, whether it is a stranger, a friend, or an enemy, our worlds overlap for a tiny, but significant moment. It is then that our differences fade and our common connections gleam forth. As the poet W.H. Auden wrote, “Love your crooked neighbor with your own crooked heart.”


There is much healing left to do. And many hearts are still broken. But on this—the tenth anniversary of 9/11—we all face one simple question: Will we leave a legacy of retribution or one of restoration? It is my deepest hope that we will not give up, but open up; open up our minds to understanding, open up our hearts to the stranger and open up our spirits to wholeness and healing.

Give our children the legacy they deserve. Show them the tools to heal and move forward. Give them (and ourselves) permission to laugh. In the end it may be the lifeboat that keeps us all afloat.

FEMALE JET PILOT? SURE. PREACHER? NO.

Taken from my blog on Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-susan-sparks/southern-baptist-female-clergy_b_923021.html

One third of the U.S. Supreme Court justices are women; more than fifty female astronauts have traveled into space; and forty-one women have won the Nobel Peace Prize. But place a woman in a pulpit and blood pressure and eyebrows immediately begin to rise; rise, that is, within the religious tradition of my upbringing: the Southern Baptists.

The current position statement on women by the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC") states that "Scripture teaches that a woman's role is not identical to that of men in every respect, and that pastoral leadership is assigned to men." ( http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/pswomen.asp )

Today -- in 2011 -- the road to ordination in the Southern Baptist Church remains strewn with women who have been turned down or, worse, who have been ordained only to be ousted from the denomination. Consider the case of twenty-eight year old Rev. Bailey Nelson who was recently called as the Senior Pastor of Flat Rock Baptist Church in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Within two weeks, her church was summarily kicked out of the local Baptist Association for violating scriptural guidelines that they believe reserve the role of pastor to male. (http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/6626/ ) "We're getting letters from all over the world voicing concern and support," Nelson said. "The outpouring has been overwhelming."

Rev. Nelson is not alone. I remember at an early age telling a vacation bible school teacher that "I was trying to decide between being a minister or a jet pilot." She smiled and said, "well, girls can be jet pilots, but God only calls men to preach."

Eventually I decided against the jet pilot career and became a lawyer (same job as a minister - just different clients). Yet the call to ordination became too strong to ignore. In the end, I was forced to leave the Southern Baptists and join the American Baptists (http://www.abc-usa.org/ ), a more moderate denomination within the Baptist family - and one that ordains women. But I'll give the Southern Baptists one thing: they are nothing if not consistent. To this day, after ten years as a trial lawyer, two graduate degrees, an honors thesis in seminary and my own pulpit in New York City (and the first woman in my church's 164 history), I am still not welcome to preach in my home church in Charlotte, NC where I grew up.

As a lawyer, I can't help but scratch my head at the circular nature of this situation: the SBC interprets scripture to exclude women from ordination; yet all those who interpret scripture within the SBC are ... men?

Their position hangs on a literal interpretation of passages like 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 in which the Apostle Paul writes "Let the women keep silent in church." Of course, a literal interpretation of this passage would mean women may not sing or verbally praise God in worship. For anyone who has attended a Baptist service, you know that is a manifest impossibility.

In another similar scripture (1 Timothy 2:11-12) Paul writes: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." Not even addressing the historical context of this scripture which demonstrates these words were directed at marital issues and not ministry, there is a larger problem of selective enforcement. For example, that same passage also forbids women to wear gold jewelry or pearls. We don't hear much about that section. I guess the SBC decided that would be too much to enforce on us bling-lovin' southern sisters.

We also don't hear much about Romans 16:7 where Paul speaks of Andronicus and Junia (a woman), describing them as "outstanding among the apostles." (Not surprisingly, some later translations changed the female name "Junia" to the male "Junias.")

If you want to take a literal interpretation of the Bible, then how about use Acts 2:17-18: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." As I used to say in my prior career, "I rest my case."

Numerous theologians and prominent members of the Baptist family have publicly disagreed with the SBC, most notably former President Jimmy Carter who broke with the Southern Baptists due to their position on women in the ministry. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-5177423-503544.html He explained, "The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women ... They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter."

The reality is this: we live in a world in great need of healing. And there are people across the globe offering to dedicate their lives towards this healing; yet they are denied simply because they are women.

In one of his most famous parables, Jesus said that the Kingdom of heaven is like the landowner who entrusted his three workers with certain talents (money). Two invested the talents, doubled their value and were rewarded. The third worker, however, was punished, because he buried the money and barely returned what was given.

The SBC is burying the divine gifts borne by over fifty percent of God's children. It is wasting these talents. We can no longer afford this unjust denial of vocation. We can no longer afford to stifle God's call. Given the broken nature of our world today, I say we need all the help we can get -- Supreme Court Justices, jet pilots, preachers, and all.

A Heart of Pyrex Glass

Taken from my blog on Day 1:  http://day1.org/3186-a_heart_of_pyrex

I am the world's most dangerous person in the kitchen. If something can be dropped, cracked, or knocked down, I will do it. No exceptions. That is why I am a big believer in Pyrex -- the almost indestructible glassware made by Corning. Used in everything from cookware to the Hale Telescope, the glass is created through a melting process which requires exceptionally high temperatures over long periods of time. The end product is extremely durable, able to take extreme temperature swings and is virtually unbreakable.

While it's a familiar concept in manufacturing, the idea of making something stronger by exposing it to extreme heat is also familiar in life. It's like the old saying "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

We all have to face challenges - fires in life. The question is how to face those fires and come out stronger? Said another way, how do you forge a heart of Pyrex?

One quick and easy solution is found in the Genesis story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. There Jacob is attacked by a "man" (or more probably an angel or the divine in human form). Rather than giving up, Jacob holds on and does something audacious. He looks the figure in the face and says "I won't let go until you give me a blessing!" The nerve! Yet what happens? God gives him that blessing: a new name "Israel" (translated: "God prevails"). Instead of letting this struggle defeat him, Jacob turns it into a blessing; something that made him stronger for the days ahead.

What do you wrestle with in your life? What fires or "high temperatures" do you face? What could you learn from that moment? What does it have to teach? What would happen if you took hold of that issue, looked it in the eye and said, "I won't let go until you give me a blessing?"

Do you face a job loss? Perhaps you would receive a blessing of faith.

Are you facing a medical crisis? Maybe you would receive a blessing of courage.

Relationship problems? Perhaps you would receive a blessing of humility.

Even something as minor as waiting on a cross-town bus that is late -- asking for a blessing might bring you a lesson in patience.

In the end, we're all just trying to be better people; to strive to be more like our creator. And perhaps God is offering us a little help. It's like C. S. Lewis wrote, "God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain."

There's an old myth in metalworking that says a silversmith knows when the metal is fully refined when he can see his reflection in it. Perhaps, God is doing the same; refining us through fire not only to make us stronger, but so that we reflect our creator's image.

Consider the possibility that each hardship in life comes bearing a divine blessing. Ask for that blessing. Look for the lesson. Face the fires of life and come out stronger. Use them to forge yourself a heart like Pyrex glass.

Prayer to Live with Grace  By:  Rabbi Rami Shapiro

May we discover through pain and torment,

the strength to live with grace and humor.

May we discover through doubt and anguish,

the strength to live with dignity and holiness.

May we discover through suffering and fear,
the strength to move toward healing.

May it come to pass that we be restored to health and to vigor.

May Life grant us wellness of body, spirit, and mind.

And if this cannot be so, may we find in this transformation and passage
moments of meaning, opportunities for love
and the deep and gracious calm that comes
when we allow ourselves to move on.