The Boy Scholastic's Bike De-Chained

He knew that he had left in one too many links, and now he's paying the price. Well, he's also paying the price becaues his bike is a fixed gear with no brakes, which means that, at present, he can neither speed up or slow down. All he can do is not fall of, and things were going fast before he lost control. As he wizzes through stop sign after stop sign, going towards the lake, he is suprisingly calm. And as he and his bike (miraculously?) make it to the water's edge, he says as loudly as he can, "I am everything and nothing!" And at that moment his bike stopped. He would like to believe that it was the sand dune he had just crashed into which brought about his sudden stop, but as he flies effortlessly over the handlebars and into the water, he accepts that fact that there are things in this world far too mysterious and beautiful to understand, the least of which is horizontal motion on a bike or his own existence, let alone the relationship of the one to the other.

"I am everything and nothing." I did say that once, on a roller-coaster, which may seem silly, but those things are like existential joy-rides for me. I'm deathly afraid of them, but yet I ride them at every possible oppertunity, because they cause in me such an interesting dread. I really, trully feel like I'm going to die, but not in a real way, but only semi-real. I can tell myself all I want that it's safe, and deep down I know it is, and yet I get filled up with such an anxiety that, well, the experience is something wholly other. I never know how I'm going to react. Once, at a very unexpected turn in the roller coaster, I yelled, "Why? Why would you do that?" I don't even know why -- it just seemed like the right thing, I guess. I'm not about to question what silly things the mind decides to do under stress, let alone weird, roller-coaster stress. All I will say is that, if you enjoy being entertained, ride a roller-coaster with me sometime. It's mildly rediculous and definitely hilarious.

A few days ago, I had the great fortune to have lunch with Mark Hanson, the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America for those of you who aren't as interested in churches and stuff as I am). It was an amazing oppertunity to hear from him about his job as Presiding Bishop as well as president of the Lutheran World Federation. It was a small group of us present, and we were asked for questions. I immediately asked him about his stance on the ELCA Sexuality Task-Force's statement: Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust[PDF]. I asked in no uncertain terms whether he felt that this issue was a primary or secondary concern for the church at present, and what he saw his role and the role of my generation (represented heavily at this meeting) in this debate. What followed was the most brilliant and profound response that I have ever received regarding the statement on sexuality. I've transcribed the heart of it here -- my quotations are not direct quotes, but the paraphrasing of ideas in direct discouse. Forgive me any errors I may have had in writing them down:

His main point was that this discussion is not about gay or straight, hetero-normative or varied gender-identities or sexual orientations, because looking at the issue in that way divided up the church into those categories: this is a gay pastor, that is a straight paster, this is a transgendered cantor, that is a stay-at-home wife VBS leader. If we treat the debate in those terms, we risk dividing the church. "And as a sixty-year straight, white male, it's tempting to talk about sexuality in terms of GLBT," he said, "because it takes the focus off of me." We are only going to come to a right and just solution if we talk about human sexuality and human intimacy as universal experiences, as a gift and a trust. We as the church have had a long history of making people feel ashamed of their need for intimacy and their desire for sexual relations. We've forced people to bottle them up, to make them unspoken, and that's unhealthy. That's what gives us scandals in the priest hood like in the Catholic church -- they refuse their priests any intimacy, and that hurts people.

At this point, the Bishop told us that he had a therapist with whom he met regularly. "And I look at my therapist exactly as I look at my dentist and my general physician -- they are all people who help keep me healthy. We need to stop being ashamed of needing to talk about these things, because that causes so much hurt to people, and the church is guilty most of all of propegating that. We as the church used to be the instruments of social change and right-thinking, but we've wrongly given that up in American to secular society and the talking-heads on TV, and that's caused a whole different set of problems. It's time we take that banner back."

He said much more than this, most of which added to those points, but the central issue which was what was so beautiful. For the first time, I could truly say that I was proud--damn proud--of being a member of the ELCA. Never before had I met someone with so much earthly power and authority who was so humble. It was remarkable.

What added to this was that, yesterday, I was the assisting minister at chapel services at the ELCA church-wide office, and I was the one who communed the presiding bishop, who was in attendence that day (rare since he travels so much). The humility I felt as the steward of such a cup, especially giving it to someone for whom I have so much respect, nearly brought me to tears. I have meant more the words which I said that day: "Take and drink: cup of life, cup of salvation." And my sending had never been so powerfully spoken: "Go in peace, Christ is with you!"