Blog : Give Me Grace

Give Me Grace : One Week, One Family : A Little New York Story

Posted on March 19, 2016March 19, 2016 by lisha epperson

This was one of those weeks – when every thing happens all at once and all you can do is nod a numb yes to the stream of questions running through your mind. Can you? Will you? This week was a week of yes.

To be clear I didn’t say yes to anything extra but a string of activities and occurrences converged to make this week precisely as I’ve described – “one of those weeks”.

Here are the highlights …

In chapel I watched a young seminarian dance his joy. Long locks flowing, he blessed the space in gold lame pants. The title of the sermon was “Now That We’ve Found Love”. Using the Third World song as reference and another student sitting in a chair sharing her live Twitter feed of the events as they happened – they crafted a sermon about love and freedom.

Love is what we’ve been searching for

And sweet love is what we’re looking for

Now that I’ve got it right here in my hand

We gonna share it all over the land.
Now that we’ve found love

Tell me what we gonna do with it?

Weekly attendance at James Chapel has opened my heart to a variety of expressions of faith. I’m inspired by the crafting of meaningful ritual, practical teaching and creative worship that speaks to the heart of an inter-generational community. It is a hopeful re-imagining of ways to love and serve Christ. It is the heart work of the church.

Chailah had a birthday! Little miss Firebird turned 8. This picture of Ade loving on her is a perfect image of how we all feel about her. She joined me on my run that morning. When we stopped to pick flowers she said it was “the best birthday ever”. Chailah is and will always be my beautiful flower child. I wrote this about her at SheLoves Magazine last year.

After months of waiting we know where Ila will attend high school. The scholarship offered isn’t what we hoped it would be but we’re stepping out in faith that it is indeed the school for her. We’ve put this life of faith in practice and we’re sticking with it. We’re excited about the potential that exists for her to soar in a supportive and loving environment. York Prep, here she comes.

The rest of weekend looks like this.
We’ll all attend Figure Skating In Harlem’s annual Ice Show.

It’s a fun performance and a chance for the girls to display their hard-earned skills. Ila is excited to land her 1st axle in a performance. We’ve got family and friends coming out for support. Some of Ila’s birth family will be there. I wrote a little about our relationship for Five Minute Friday.

Ila did her own bun this year and I kissed her as she left to meet her friends at the train station. This is the first year myself or another parent won’t drive them.
LiChai left early this morning for a science research program and will meet us at the rink after a small birthday gathering with friends. He sent and allowed me to share this picture.

Big Daddy has to work and will attend on Sunday. We’re masters at this parenting thing now. Although the teen years are proving we have much to learn we’ve definitely got the juggling act down. Although it changes from week to week I see grace in our ability to go with the flow. In the trenches of an almost 20 year marriage I’m learning to be grateful for the things that work. Shout outs to my partner in parenting crime!

And…
We found a suitable a replacement for Ade’s Curious George soft toy. It was a happy reunion.

I didn’t tell you about a project on the New Testament that I’m working on for school or an opportunity to do field study at an Episcopal Church or the workshop I’ll lead at Winsome Retreat in April. There just isn’t enough time – it’s one of those weeks.
Know that I’m being stretched and growing stronger.

And now to get to the rink on time. I think we’ll take a cab.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

♥

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Mary Reclaimed (for #GiveMeGrace)

Posted on March 12, 2016March 15, 2016 by lisha epperson

Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” – Luke 1:38

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
– C.S. Lewis

If you asked me 20 years ago if I could see myself anywhere near an Episcopal church my answer would have been a rushed and emphatic no. Today I remember my fascination with a statue of Mary in front of a Roman Catholic Church in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. Growing up, I nursed an intense desire to peek inside, keeping it a secret even from my best friend Rhonda. We walked past it at least twice a week, sporting whatever was left of Sundays press and curl. But our world was Black and divided, speckled with images of holy beings that looked nothing like us. Mary of the Madonna pure and holy perfection, was a Mary I could not know.

Was this quiet invitation a seed planted in a heart that would one day fully understand an inclusive love of God, one which flows as easily in a storefront as a gothic cathedral. These days silent meditation and Celtic eucharist services at another church I can walk to are a revelation to that tween age secret. I wonder now about the seeds planted then. It was a quiet feeling I can only describe as longing. Mary intrigued me.

When I gave my life to God I put Jesus in a box marked private and disassociated myself with the biblical portrayals I’d seen growing up. Rejecting those images Jesus freely morphed into an “everyman” of sorts. He looked like whatever I wanted/needed him to look like. Mary, Paul, John, the whole lot of them, I just couldn’t see. For Jesus, I made the exception. Because a part of me was embarrassed about it, I explained my faith in him to myself by allowing his very real love to settle in my heart.

I remember the tears I shed with an ivory statue of Mary in the garden of a church in Long Island City in my early 30’s. I’d pull my then long locks into a pony tail and speed walk over the Pulaski Bridge on my way to the city. I stopped every day to spend a few moments with her likeness during the early years of my infertility. Mary didn’t look like me but she knew what an impossible situation felt like. We bonded over that. Mary and I were becoming friends.

Was our relationship then, the bud blossoming from those first questions, an inner excitement over the potential of a divine calling, my natural leaning toward ritual and advent calendars, candles and saints released – not withstanding the ivory statue.

My faith, my Christianity, and how I express it has always been something I see in multiple places, in so many forms. Like C.S. Lewis, I believe it because I see it but I also see it in everything else. Without realizing it, I’ve reclaimed Mary.

I’m spending an entire semester in the New Testament and for the first time in my Christian life the characters are becoming real. Beyond Jesus and the women who struggled with infertility, Sarah, Rachel, Hannah and Elizabeth etc., I couldn’t relate to their lives as reflected outside of the story. So it was always only a story. Fabricated, unreal because the images were unreal too. Images of virginal, good and pure, power and wealth being housed only in people who looked nothing like me – didn’t work.

It still doesn’t. But I’m reclaiming an interpretation of the Bible that allows a shift in perspective.

Now, I hear and see myself in the “be it unto me according to your word”. I hear it above any created image. Mary, even the Mary in you and me, allows herself to trust God enough to believe that He would in fact choose her. Her trust in God is greater, but now I’m seeing a trust and faith in herself, a spectacular acceptance of self as Gods creation. Mary’s faith is compelling. I hear her powerful declaration “Here am I ( you fill in the blank), the servant of the Lord.”

I’m beginning to see Mary in me and I’m choosing again, with all my enlightenment, book and scientific knowledge – to embrace her all-inclusive perfectly imperfect luminescent beauty. I’m choosing a Mary empowered through grace – a Mary who exhibits agency in whatever way she managed to say yes to God – be it confident or quavering. This is the most important – the yes to seeing ourselves in our faith, reclaiming our power to see God in ourselves and others.

In addition to Barbara Brown Taylor and Nadia Bolz Weber I’ve fallen love with the faith of Desmond Tutu. But I’m also looking for more. I’m researching women of faith who look like my daughters and me. It’s not separatist, it’s inclusive and empowering. In my cart this week at Amazon is Song in a Weary Throat : An American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray.

In 1977 Pauli Murray was the first African-American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. I’m also reading the works of Mercy Oduyoye and the largely unpublished work of Afua Kuma, a Ghanian farmer and midwife who belongs to the Church of the Pentacost. I’m learning about women who’ve come before me, who’ve made the choice for and important contributions to the cause of Christ. This matters to me. I’m delighted to share them with you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. – Acts 2:25

I had the pleasure of attending a performance of the Crossroads Theater Company’s production of “Fly” which tells the story of the African-American Army Air Corp fighters known as the Tuskegee Airmen. I was moved to tears watching the story unfold. It’s hard to explain the pride I feel in the connection to these stories. I don’t know my families personal stories of triumph beyond the last century. Like most African-Americans, so much of my history has been lost. I graft myself on the branches of trees like this because of the strength and beautiful history of all African-American people. Not the brutal story of trauma and hate but the story of hope, the story of survival. It was His Story, whispering the breadth of deeper connections to the past – a past both known and unknown. The show runs through March in New York City but will make an appearance in New Jersey in April. Check it out if you can and if you can’t …. Enjoy this clip.

God is revealed, born and reborn as a story, with characters I encounter as part of my lived experience as a woman of faith. It isn’t always with words and the characters don’t always look like me and that I believe, is how it should be. We are witnesses to how God moves in the world – in the seed, the bud, the tree. Our spirituality, a reflection of all He’s spoken, all we’ve heard – all we see.

Tell me about a woman of faith who’s inspired you. How has her faith inspired you to cultivate your own? Tell me about a woman who embodies all this and looks and comes from a culture that is nothing like your own.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

Continue reading “Mary Reclaimed (for #GiveMeGrace)” →

Give Me Grace : Reckoning {figuring out a faith that moves}

Posted on March 5, 2016March 15, 2016 by lisha epperson

Reckoning { figuring out a faith that moves }

Reckoning – a settling of accounts as in a day of reckoning – a summing up

“In the end what matters is not how good we are but how good God is. Not how much we love Him but how much He loves us. And God loves us whoever we are, whatever we’ve done or failed to do, whatever we believe or can’t.”
– Desmond Tutu

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of a god, and having received from the father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both SEE and HEAR. – Acts 2:33

I started a 31 days series two years ago. I called it “Grounding” because at the time I was beginning to experience the stirring of my soul, a shaking of the foundations that pushed me toward a deeper reckoning. I had to go back to the beginning – to reaffirm my identity as a woman of faith, a believer.

I didn’t finish that series but God continues the work in me. Since then I’ve lived in the thin space between risk and certainty. I don’t want to live anywhere else. This year has been a year of reckoning – of reconciling my accounts with where I’ve been – where I hope to go.

I’m going deeper with who I am and why – excavating the truth behind “all things working together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose”. He uses every experience to sharpen our ability to pay attention, to listen – to the other. That I was born a brown female, the product of an interfaith marriage 50 years ago in New York City, that I was surrounded by a melting pot of faiths and voices is part of my story. It plays a significant role in the why and how of my open heart, my inability to see anything beyond an inclusive Jesus. My upbringing informs how I learned to see. Getting to the crux of our individual journeys helps us imagine the breadth of our faith experience. If we look close enough I believe we’ll come to know the mark of faith that can’t be erased.

I see my spiritual life as a sure thing – with Jesus on and around each side of a faith continuum. Our lives and world and sacred and God is a gracious and loving guide who walks with us. I call it grace. There would be no place my faith couldn’t stretch – that Jesus wouldn’t go with me. There is no place or person that sits beyond his reach. And so it is one – a universal movement of pentecostal love where God comes down as the gift of enlivened understanding. He pours out his spirit on all flesh that we might understand.

Before it was all said and done I’d dabbled in the Iching and the writings of Carlos Castaneda – all while falling in love with Jesus. I learned to eat the meat but not the bones of a holy yoga practice and to respect an ancient wisdom – the elders who’ve gone before me – even and especially when their practice of faith didn’t look like mine.

Some might say I used God to be what I wanted him to be. I say, God loved me and cared for me. He pursued me and became, as Paul said, all things, that he might win my affection. When I needed him to be a seeker and mystic, he was. When I needed him to fall afresh on me with tongues of fire in a prosperity preaching community – he did. In mid-life he’s become a church door. An entry way and portal – an open door, one that is as easily sealed when I need to feel safe as swung wide when I need more or different. Mine has been a faith that moves.

It is a re-imagining for sure – the church has a brutal history of keeping people out (women, the oppressed, brown people etc. ) but this dream takes me back to His first. The dream of a world unified in love through the practical application of a meaningful gospel. It’s what keeps me in love with and working hard for the church I’ll leave to my children. On a day of reckoning I pray my life points to Jesus. May it be so in my life – may it be so in yours.

I‘m interested in the architecture of the human experience of faith. I want to hear your stories. How did you come to believe and how has that changed or expanded?

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight…#GiveMeGrace

♥ Continue reading “Give Me Grace : Reckoning {figuring out a faith that moves}” →

Give Me Grace : Blackish {on choosing hope}

Posted on February 27, 2016March 5, 2016 by lisha epperson

You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. – Nina Simone

I waited two days to watch the Blackish episode about police brutality and the complex feelings black families face when the people we look to for protection seem to pose a threat. I wanted to watch it and discuss it with my teens without exposing my Littles to a topic I’d rather they not worry about, at least for now. It isn’t clear when black boys make the leap from child to predator, but my youngest is 5 and still cute in a hoodie. Perhaps we have time.

Last night after homework and dishes I asked my husband to put the youngest to bed so I could make a historical television memory with my teens. Nina Simone makes it plain – artists, in every medium, have a responsibility to use their platforms to speak to the times. It doesn’t call for radical or revolutionary. It about the risk of going there – having a say. Blackish took a leap and I’m grateful for the way the show employs historical and current events to entertain and teach.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t a fan of the showwhen it aired in 2015. I’ve never considered my self anything other than black and would personally resent such a wimpish reference. I’m Black. (Insert black girl side-eye). But Traci Ellis Ross has been a friend in my head since her days on Girlfriends. I couldn’t not give a show about a family of color with 4 kids a chance. Too many things drew me in.

I pushed past references to The Cosby Show because … nothing compares to the Cosby show. Scandal and drama aside, the body of work speaks for itself. It was a powerful model for what a Black family could be, an entertaining epistle for the world at large. Black families exist. They live and love in and outside of the ghetto.

I watched the first episode of Blackish trying desperately to think of another name for the show. I watched it and hated it. I’d had my fill when they mocked elements of a traditionally African ceremony and instead chose to wear Run D.M.C. styled track suits in an attempt to funk up a Bro-mitzvah themed rite of passage for their teen-aged son. No thank you.

But I gave it another chance and it grew on me.

I watched it the following week. Blackish was a show I could watch with my teens and I loved the conversation sparked after the pilot episode. Since then, I’ve fallen hard for the smart as a whip, take no prisoners, youngest daughter Diane, played by Marsai Martin. Traci Ellis Ross as Rainbow, the still fly working mama in corn rows and scrubs – is refreshing. Anthony Anderson as Dre’ rounds out a likeable cast of new faces. Like I said, refreshing.

With still images flashing across the screen the highly anticipated episode opened with Marvin Gaye singing “what’s going on?”

Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today – Marvin Gaye

The show did a great job of mirroring the experience of black families as they attempt to process a world of televised police brutality, questionable Supreme Court rulings and the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Black people, black families are for cops. We’re invested in our neighborhoods and support the efforts of the police force to serve and protect our communities. This message was fairly balanced with a measure of skepticism. We are not strangers to the term police brutality. There is a level of suspicion, a legacy of distrust that exists because of our painful history. Forgiveness is real and I believe we’ve opened our arms to embrace a spirit of reconciliation, but nobody wants to be played. It’s about testing the fruit.

Policies and laws must be changed to raise the standard of what should be justice for all. But it goes deeper than that. Donald Trump is running on steam produced from racist and anti-other (than white) rhetoric. It’s hearts and minds that need the overhaul. How do we change hearts?

How do we shield young children from the news in the age of information? How do we keep them safe? Do we soft pedal the truth to protect the innocence of our children? How do we engage our teens who travel alone, how do we protect them while setting them free? How do we keep our children from losing hope? What does this all look like to the elder generation, the generation that remembers the riots, the marches, the unrest of the not so long ago sixties? This generations lives the truth of how much things have changed, how much they’ve stayed the same. How do parents square off over both sides of a tough issue? How do we present a united front? How do we inspire each new generation to lean into a message of hope? Should we e encourage our children to participate in protests? What about the continual criminalization of black people? And the talk? The yes so, no sir, and thank you sir “just get home safe” talk?

These questions and more were covered with transparency and humor. I saw my family in every scene. With a nuanced complexity Blackish dealt with this grey area in American history. Using compelling statistics and every family members voice, every side was presented.

What’s going on? You tell me. I’d love to hear how your families and communities handle the real issue of racism in America. I’d like to see the tablecloth Peter talks about in Acts 10, where God hints at the fully inclusive dream he has for us. But…

We live in a flawed world.

Conversations over court verdicts and the particular way we have to navigate being black in the world are a major part of how we do family life. And that isn’t new. That’s the more things change, the more they stay the same part. I remember conversations like this with my family. Mother wit and the wisdom of the sages whispered, yelled and shouted at my siblings and I. They told us how they got over, how and why they kept pushing forward. They did it to keep us alive. God, we got over with God. Grounded in a faith we make and remake until, it becomes our own we keep moving forward. With God on our side, we win.

The show ended on a hopeful note, nailing the head on the other side of the story. On the flip side of pain, on the other side of the struggle is our resilience. How our quest for liberation moves and inspires us. Making us better. All of us.

God has placed us in community with each other to do the work of justice, to engage each other over the things we don’t understand, to help each other see.

You can watch the Blackish episode “hope” on Hulu. Let me know what you think.

And if you can’t watch that here’s a powerful clip

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

Continue reading “Give Me Grace : Blackish {on choosing hope}” →