Monday, June 24, 2019

My story is the proof

Today was a travel day, which means I listened to a good number of podcasts. A new one on my list is Flash Forward, which my husband recommended particularly because of their latest mini-series on bodies.  I haven't listened to the whole series, yet, but the first episode I listened to, InkRX (5/21/2019) got me thinking about connections to scripture, to other podcasts, and to my own experiences with seeking medical care.  This podcast would connect powerfully to the story of the woman with the flow of blood (Matthew 9:20–22, Mark 5:25–34, Luke 8:43–48) as well as to the Easter narrative in Luke (connecting to women as "idle tale" tellers) the woman at the well and other stories of illness and healing where people have trouble believing and trusting the person who is in pain.

Flash Forward uses technology that's in development, now, to imagine what the future with that technology might be like. What I especially love about what I've heard of the show so far is the way the host, Rose Eveleth, explores the implications of the technology from different angles, covering ethics concerns in a way that feels more creative, meaningful and comprehensive than most science and technology reporting. This episode explored using sensor tattoos to get instant and continuous readings of heart rate, hydration, and other bio markers right on a person's skin. They delved into disability rights and privacy, and, near the end of the episode, got to the question of whether or not having this kind of data makes a difference. Does having more data really mean better outcomes for patients? Is what doctors need from patients more, and more precise, data?

This is quote from the transcript, but the whole episode is very much worth a listen:

"Rose: Plus, the idea that simply having more data will always solve the problem excludes the fact that sometimes the problem is people. It’s bias or inequality or discrimination or sexism.

So for example, there’s a menstrual cup product that connects to Bluetooth and measures exactly how much blood you’re collecting each time. And the pitch for this, the argument people made at the time, was that the cool thing about this was that now people who bleed a lot during their period could finally PROVE it to doctors. They’d have data. To which I kind of wonder, why spend all this money on a device when… doctors could just… believe their patients?

And this pitch shows up sometimes in stories about this tattoo technology too — if people just had more data about their biomarkers, then they could show that tattoo data to a doctor and everything would make sense. In reality…

Rose: You’re shaking your head.

Ace: It just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. You know I got my Ehlers Danhlos diagnosis at 26. I’m 32 now. I started you know trying to figure out what was going wrong at 18, when I look back at my entire lifetime I can literally find symptoms while I was in utero. It didn’t matter how much data I have. I know I have entire notebooks where I would go hour by hour and I would I would have an outline of the body and I would outline all of the places where I was having subluxations or dislocations and what it felt like and what I was doing that day and what I had eaten that day and when I had drank that day and what came on just pages and pages and pages of heart rate and blood pressure and information. And you walk in with it and it doesn’t matter. If you look like a femme, if you’re talking about a pain disease, they’re not going to believe you. It doesn’t matter what kind of data you have especially if you’re talking about a rare disease the doctor has absolutely no familiarity with ...it doesn’t matter. I mean that’s a beautiful thought. And it is clearly a thought from somebody who has never had to interact with our medical industrial complex."

I've had to have those interactions, myself, and I resonate with what Ace says, here. I recently started a science fiction short story with a character saying, "Healthcare is no place for sick people." It's a good line, and it's a direct quote from my mom. In some ways, we can look to the story of the woman with the flow of blood and see that medicine--in whatever form it takes--has always fallen short when it comes to listening to and treating pain. At the same time, it's interesting to look at how advances in technology--which should make diagnosis more accurate and reliable--have also contributed to doctors not being able to listen to patients. 

One of my favorite episodes of 99% Invisible is The Stethoscope (8/06/2017.) It traces the development of the stethoscope and the impact of the stethoscope on medicine and the relationship between doctors and patients. One of the pieces that fascinated me, most, is that the stethoscope marked the beginning of data-based medicine, where the doctor no longer needed to conduct in-depth interviews and listen closely to the stories of patients: the data was more trustworthy than what the patients would/could report. "This evolving device got doctors thinking about disease in new ways, changing their dynamic with patients and giving doctors a lot more power. Before the stethoscope, to be sick, the patient had to feel sick. After the stethoscope, it didn’t matter what patients thought was wrong with them, it mattered more what the doctor found." While the stethoscope started this trend, it's also a throwback to the older style of medicine: to use a stethoscope, a doctor has to touch the patient and listen to their body. Because of lack of training and practice, doctors are losing the ability to do this well, too.

The Anthropocene Reviewed picks up this idea of listening to patients and people in pain in Hawaiian Pizza and Viral Meningitis. Hawaiian Pizza is a good review, but Viral Meningitis is where John Green gets into the question of how the problem of how pain is resistant to language. Indeed, as Elaine Scarry writes in The Body in Pain, pain destroys language. "To have pain is to have certainty. To hear about pain is to have doubt."

The Body in Pain is one of the formative texts I carry with me from a class in undergrad on literature and pain. Another text from that class that formed me deeply is The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur Frank.  Frank lays out different kinds of pain narratives, and writes about which narratives we prefer (the restitution narrative, the quest narrative) and which we have trouble listening to (the chaos narrative.) I've spent a lot time thinking about what it would take for us to be able to listen to and accept chaos narratives as the truth of people's experience. To listen to the story when it is inarticulate and unresolved, when the Spirit is interceding with sighs to deep for words ... and to have that be enough. 

Green quotes Susan Sontag: "Nothing is more punitive than to give disease a meaning." Or, to use Frank's terminology, it is cruel to force a restitution narrative onto someone in the midst of chaos. To use the language of Jeremiah, "They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace" (Jer 6: 14.)  Green says that when we force a tidy story onto the untidy reality of someone else's pain, particularly chronic pain, "We end up expressing our doubt in the face of their certainty, which only compounds the extent to which pain separates the person experiencing it from the wider social order.  The challenge and responsibility of personhood, it seems to me, is to recognize personhood in others. To listen to others' pain, and take it seriously, even when you yourself cannot feel it." 

While connections to healing narratives here are clear, these questions have resonance with the wider biblical narrative and with any situation where a person has a story and that story is met with disbelief. The title I chose for this entry comes from a 2017 article by Carol Howard Merritt in The Christian Century.  She writes, "Many men have read my story and then asked for “proof.” And that’s the difficult thing. My story is the proof. Yet, when you don’t believe a woman can discern truth, then you question the credibility of the sole witness. This sets up a climate where abuse can be perpetuated. This is the precisely what I’m speaking out against," ("More Thoughts on Tim Keller" .)

Issues of trust bubble close to the surface under all of these texts: who do we trust to tell their own stories? Who can we trust with the story of our own bodies? Can we trust and listen to the stories our bodies tell? 

When I think about the story of the woman with the flow of blood, the interpretation that's helped me the most comes from Professor Candida Moss, who was a teaching assistant at Yale Divinity School when I was a student there. She taught us that that "leaky" things, and people, were considered unclean and suspect. A woman who had been bleeding for 12 years would very much fall into the "leaky" category. But, she pointed out, in this text Jesus is also leaky. Jesus' power leaks from his body--all people have to do is touch him, even just touch his clothing, and they can be healed. Jesus' leakiness not only heals the woman, it places him in a category with her--there is something dangerously leaky about Jesus.  Jesus' body continues to be leaky in significant ways, both on the cross and after the resurrection. The body of Christ--and the Body of Christ--is scarred and leaky. Can we listen to, and believe, the stories of the body, and the Body?



Saturday, June 22, 2019

How should pastors and basketball players wear their hair?

This Sunday I have the opportunity to preach at the UCC congregation in Decorah, where the summer sermon series is based on the theme "Body-Loving Worship: God's Body & Our Own." I'm grateful for the chance to do more reflection on a text I've contended with before, 1 Corinthians 11:1-16. My key learning from the text is that, from the very beginning of the church, there were women and gender non-conforming people preaching, prophesying and leading worship. And from the very beginning, people were worried about their hair.
So, this worry is definitely not new, and it's definitely not gone, and it's definitely not confined to the church. Sometimes it takes the form of rules against wearing hijabs or other head coverings--rules aimed at Muslim women in the US and Europe. Sometimes it takes the form of rules against dreadlocks or natural black hair at schools or in workplaces. High school dress codes are notorious, and rightfully being challenged along with their underlying assumptions about clothes that make women and girls "distracting."
This week I was listening to live radio and got to hear an episode of The Takeaway that connected to this topic: "Not All Female Athletes Play to the Male Gaze." The podcast segment and interview is based on an opinion piece for The New York Times by Britni de la Cretaz, "Androgyny Is Now Fashionable in the W.N.B.A.: Women’s basketball is expanding ideas of what female athletes are allowed to look like." Listening to the podcast, I found some profound parallels between the experience of being a woman pastor and being a woman basketball player (parallels I might not have thought about, otherwise.) One point that stood out in both the podcast and the article: "As recently as 2016, the W.N.B.A. had fashion, hair and makeup classes for its rookie players. In 2008, nearly a third of the league’s two-day rookie orientation was dedicated to makeup and fashion tips."
I graduated from Yale Divinity School in 2008. While there, I got some make up and fashion tips, too, and I hadn't been expecting them. The way that advice was given--by one of the professors I most admire--has been something I've carried with me, contended and wrestled with.
What makes the 1 Corinthians text so interesting to me is the way it reflects this very real problem we have with seeing the image of God in each other. The text says, "For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man." This just isn't true, but we act like it's true. We act like there are some people who reflect God more clearly, more directly, than others. We act like there's a best way to look like a woman when you're leading worship, a way that might minimize the distraction and be tasteful and professional and fit some idealized archetype of what a woman church leader should look like. We act like there's a best way to look if you're a woman basketball player, too. That archetype reflects the pressure we put on ourselves and others to conform to norms and expectations and guidelines (which are not-so-subtle ways of enforcing racism, heteronormativity, and other forms of oppression, too.)
Listening to this podcast gives opportunity for reflection on incarnation theology and embodiment, bearing the image of God, being the Body of Christ, and the ways bias and other limits on human imagination can be overcome by Spirit-filled curiosity, holy imagination, and the courage of leaders who model a different way of being themselves--beloved children of God--and embodying their roles as leaders, as well. 

I am, you are

I was in text study earlier this week with my clergy colleagues. I love them, and I love spending time with them and talking scripture with them so much that try I go to text study even if I'm not preaching, or not preaching on the assigned texts, that week. This week our discussion reminded me of a favorite podcast segment from last year, which prompted me to finally start this blog that I've been thinking about for so long, and struck me as a segment that could be a source of helpful preaching connections far beyond the texts for this week. The themes I'd say we'll hit on with this podcast are reality/being real/authenticity, being seen, naming, identity and healing, with extra potential for connection with texts in ordinary time and Epiphany.

At text study we spent time with the Gospel text assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary this week, which is Luke 8:26-39, the story I grew up calling "The Gerasene Demoniac." The text is dramatic and frightening, and it doesn't have a sense of happy resolution--the situation is incredibly grim for the possessed man, the conversation with the demon(s) feels high stakes and scary, the healing itself is incredibly destructive and violent, the crowd is afraid and asks Jesus to leave, and when Jesus tells the healed man he can't follow him and must return to his home/kin/people, a person feels more than a little nervous for the guy. In our discussion of the text, we kept returning to wondering about what it means to be able to be yourself. For the man who calls himself--or at least, the demons inside--"Legion," is there any point in this story where he able to be himself? Is the church a place (or rather, a people) where we can bring and express our real selves and be met with love and grace?

The conversation reminded me of a segment of a longer episode of This American Life. The episode, To Be Real is from July 14, 2017. In the second act, at about minute 37, we meet magician Derek Delgaudio, and learn about his show, "In & Of Itself." Here's some of the transcript, but it's really worth following the link and listening to it:  

"Ira Glass

Here's what happens. Before the show, when you walk into the theater, there's a wall of cards printed with the words "I am." And then, under "I am," just different things that you might be. A baker, a gardener, troublemaker, truth-teller, the one that got away, extrovert, con artist, idealist, over 1,000 different cards. And you pick the one you feel describes yourself best and you walk to your seat. And 90 minutes later, at the end of the show about whether people see you for who you really are, Derek says to anybody who took the exercise of picking a card seriously--

Derek Delgaudio

Maybe you chose something that you feel reflects who you really are, how you'd like to be seen in this world. If you're one of those few people, please stand up.

Ira Glass

It's not a big theater, about 150 seats. And on this particular night, over 100 people stand. And then Derek walks into the audience, walks up to each of those people one at a time, looks right in their eyes, and tells them what they chose.

Derek Delgaudio

Boy Scout.

Ira Glass

Boy Scout.

Derek Delgaudio

The black sheep of the family.

Ira Glass

Black sheep of the family.

Derek Delgaudio

A good Christian.

Ira Glass

A good Christian. Watching him do this, when he tells the people sitting on your row, and the row in front of you, and the row behind you how they see themselves, it makes you look at them differently. Like, no kidding. These people who showed up on a weeknight with their backpacks and their work clothes, and suddenly you get this glimpse of something so private. It stops feeling like a room of anonymous strangers. They look different.

Derek Delgaudio

You're a ninja.

Ira Glass

A ninja.

Derek Delgaudio

You're a very good parent, aren't you?

Ira Glass

A good parent.

Derek Delgaudio

You're a ray of sunshine.

Ira Glass

A ray of sunshine.

Derek Delgaudio

A wallflower.

Ira Glass

A wallflower. Derek told me these moments, when he walks up to people and stares in their eyes and tells them something about themselves, it's everything he was hoping the show would do. Something about those moments is not about magic. It isn't about the trick. The magic is all in service to this very human thing that's happening.

Derek Delgaudio

Yeah. I mean, I get emotional, too, just based on people's reactions to it and I see it in their eyes. And there are some that are truly painful. One stopped me in my tracks, which was someone saw themselves as a failure.

Ira Glass

This was a young woman, maybe in her 20s. Derek hesitated. Then he said it. A failure.

Derek Delgaudio

I mean, I choked up. There was a pause because you don't ever want to have to call someone a failure. And that's how they felt like they were in this world and kind of how they felt others saw them and I called them a failure in front of a bunch of strangers. But you hear-- you heard the rest of the audience go, aw.

Ira Glass

The woman teared up and sat down. It's the sort of moment, watching it, all you can think about is her and her life and what that must be about. What you do not think is, how'd he do it?"

What makes Delgaudio's "trick" so remarkable is the part that isn't a trick at all--he is seeing people and naming things out loud about them that, on some level, they feel a need to name, and a need to be seen and heard. I think it's uncommon, though not completely unheard of, in most church settings to have an experience of someone reflecting back something you've claimed about yourself, of someone naming something you've chosen as a name. It happened to me once when I got to take part in a Quaker-style clearness committee. There's also an activity I've done with a few groups, now, where you tell a story about a time when you felt a sense of accomplishment, and the people listening write adjectives to describe you on a sticky note and then give them to you at the end of the story telling.  These experiences were powerful, formative. Being seen, known and named in this way is not an everyday thing. 

The healing power of this naming is something we see Jesus do, often, and it throws a different light on his conversation with Legion. Questions about identity, naming, who knows Jesus, names for God, how Jesus and God know and name the people they interact with, and the role of healing in naming, are all possible connection points with this podcast segment. 

Friday, June 21, 2019

Podcasts for Preaching: the premise

I listen to podcasts pretty often, mostly when doing the dishes or laundry or in the shower or right before bed. I strongly prefer podcasts that aren't directly related to what I do for work, and I love podcasts that expand on what I already know and push me out into that zone of proximal development where I can learn new things and start to see and think about the world differently. While I'm listening to podcasts like this, I often do make connections to what I do for work, which is serve as a pastor at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest.  The podcasts I listen to form me and inform my pastoring in many ways, including my preaching ... but when I'm listening while I'm doing laundry or the dishes, I usually think "Oh! I should remember that!" and then it enters into that blurry hazy memory zone where all podcasts, and all sermon ideas, inevitably run together.

My hope is that, once this blog is up and running, it'll be a really convenient spot for me to record, keep and share ideas for connections between what I'm listening to and the texts my clergy colleagues and I live and wrestle with. It'll be haphazard at first and not tied to the Revised Common Lectionary, but hopefully with tagging and the blog search function it might end up being a useful sermon prep tool at some point, too.