Category: Video

by Steve Watson, Senior Pastor

A couple of years ago, a young man who grew up in Cambridge walked into our church services on a Sunday and then kept coming back. Turns out, he had first visited on a whim while curious about finding more of a spiritual or religious center for his life. When I asked him why he kept coming back, the first thing he said was, “When I walked in, I saw my whole city there.” He didn’t mean that literally, of course. Cambridge is home to more than 100,000 residents and beautiful and accommodating as our sanctuary is, they would never all fit.

What he meant is that he assumed that when you visit a church, you knew people would mainly be older and they would almost all be of the same race. At Reservoir, though, he saw people of all ages. He met people of many races and cultures. And while he guessed that most people were probably straight (true), he thought that were quite a few LGBTQ folks as well (also true!).

We love this about Reservoir. We are and always have been a multi-racial church. (In America, that means that no more than 80% of people are of one race. Very few churches in America are multiracial, even by this limited definition.) We are also a church that fully includes LGBTQ guests and members and leaders. Again, for churches like ours, this is sadly rare. We are increasingly reflecting the class diversity of city as well, for which we are grateful.

We take none of this for granted, and it’s not coincidental for us. One of our core values at Reservoir is “Action.” Love for Jesus after all compels us to act – to seek justice, show compassion for reconciliation, and hope for transformation in joyful engagement in the world. If this value hadn’t made us a diverse community, we’d be lying or pretending. Another one of our core values is “Everyone.” That’s funny syntax for a value, but we wanted it to stand out a little. We seek to honor people in all their diversity, without condition or exception, as they consider embracing a life connected to Jesus and others. Special things have happened in our community on this front.

As a next step in this journey, we’ve commissioned a Diversity and Inclusion team to help us grow into the greatest possible health and equity in our community and to help position us to be a force for healing and justice in our city as well. This team will meet every couple of months for at least two years, and will have a representative from both our Board and our pastoral staff involved. I’ll also start on the team as well, as this is an area of high interest and passion for me.

Two things that this initiative is not, and then a tiny bit more about what it might become:

One is this is not a window dressing or token initiative. I was in a meeting recently with one of the members of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, discussing the follow-up to their major series on race in Boston, particularly many of the ongoing inequities facing Black Bostonians. When asked what kind of follow-up he’s seen institutions take, the best he could point to were organizations that hired an additional person of color, or started to consider talking about diversity in their human resources departments. That’s frankly relatively token, trivial work, and it’s not good enough. Our church isn’t just interested in micro-improvements to our culture or how we appear to the world. We’re interested in being a community where all people and groups experience an equitable degree of centering and decentering. This team will be taking a hard look at voices and cultures that have been centered too much, and those that have been marginalized, and suggesting ways to repair this. We’re interested in being a church where each person’s story and culture is given appropriate dignity and representation. And we’re interested in having something deeper and better to offer our city than merely the diversity that our young visitor saw in the room.

The other thing this is not is what some people might dismiss as political correctness or virtue signalling. Our core values and longings are matters of the heart, not issues of external conformity to our times. And our desire to write a better story than the stories of racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and patriarchy have written in our history is a matter of passion and calling, not a yearning to be on trend in some way. Frankly, there’s no one we’re trying to impress, and churches as diverse as ours are rare enough that we also have nothing to prove. We’re shooting for more than that—to be a light and force of healing and justice in our times.

So this team, once it is assembled, will examine some questions and some data that our pastoral team provides. They will share with one another and study and talk and pray and see if they have other questions they’d like to ask themselves. And when they are ready, they will make recommendations to our Board, and talk with our congregation, about what they are learning and what that means.

If you’re reading this and are a member at Reservoir, we’re looking for spiritually engaged, relationally healthy people who have passion and/or experience in diversity, inclusion, and equity work and would be interested in serving on this team over the next couple of years. If you’d like to be considered by our Board, send a short interest statement to our Board member Brian Kang by March 1st. We hope to announce the team and have them start their work in Spring of 2019.

by Steve Watson, Senior Pastor

Over the past three years, one of the most powerful forces of inspiration in my life has been the work of an Indian NGO called Asha. Over thirty years ago my friend Dr. Kiran Martin, recently graduated from medical school in Delhi, heard of a cholera epidemic in her city’s slum communities. It was devastating, but not unusual news, emanating from the poorest, least privileged corners of her city. But rather than saying a prayer, sending a check, or doing nothing, Dr. Martin set up a small cholera clinic in one slum neighborhood. As she stayed, she continued to take step after step to serve and empower her new friends. The work expanded beyond health clinics to public health, women’s and children’s empowerment, economic development, and higher education access. Asha is now transforming the lives of over 700,000 residents of nearly one hundred slum communities in around Delhi.

Through my family’s and my church’s partnership with Asha’s US-based advocacy organization, I have seen firsthand the amazing results of Asha’s work and the deep interpersonal and spiritual values by which it is conducted. More than anyone else right now, Asha is pushing me (I hope!) to be a better human being—less focused on consumption and material wealth, and more on relational and spiritual wealth.

In 2019, I am letting Asha’s values guide my daily meditation and prayers. Each month, I meditate daily on one of Asha’s ten values. Today I share a few thoughts from my January reflection on dignity, the first of Asha’s values.

Asha defines dignity as “the consciousness that we deserve honors,” whether or not we possess them. Dignity is “understanding who you are and taking your rightful place in the world.” To deepen my understanding of and commitment to human dignity, I read Jean Vanier’s beautiful book We Need Each Other. Vanier is the founder of L’Arche communities, where non-disabled assistants live together with people with significant disabilities. They find community and shared life and the love of God together.

Vanier wants us to know that God trusts us and that we are important to God. He says the cry of the poor, and in some ways of us all is: Do you see me as important? Am I of value? He asks if we can know we are loved and so be freed from our fears.

I thought that my meditations on human dignity would cause me to focus on how I treat others in my life. I am aware that I don’t treat my wife and children—those closest to and most beloved by me—with the dignity they deserve, let alone acquaintances and strangers and people of low status in my world. And I have returned again and again of the question about how to honor the dignity in the family, friends, and strangers in my life.

But as I read Vanier, I found myself first returning again and again to my own life. I found myself noticing again and again the subtle ways in which fear, loneliness, or despair cloud my consciousness. I asked what it would mean to approach my work for the day with love and without fear. I asked again and again: how will I live today if I’m already important, already of value, if I don’t need to earn importance or value today?

Interestingly, during this month, I had the opportunity to prepare two different teachings on living an unselfish love of oneself. I spoke on The Liberated, Loved, Gift-Giving Self, and on Finding Our True Selves Again. The first one features the story of a man who has been so traumatized by the violence of Roman occupation that he is now named and defined by his trauma. After his encounter with Jesus, he recovers peace and also discovers he has a great gift to give to his world. This is part of what I think it means to love ourselves and to live our dignity—to know we are free, we are loved, and we possess great gifts to give today. This, no less, is our rightful place in the world.

In the first of those two talks, I told a story of an African American scholar, Reggie Williams, who as of last fall, was watching excerpts of Black Panther daily to remind himself of his free, gift-giving self. I find myself wondering what each of us—myself included—can do each day to remember: I am free, I am loved, I have great gifts to give the world today. I will except no less!

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. Dignity is an essential part of every human being and it can never be separated from other essential aspects of the human person. It comes not from control, but from understanding who you are and taking your rightful place in the world. – Asha Values

by Steve Watson

During my teenage years and into my very early twenties, I spent thousands of hours singing. I performed in art song recitals and musical theater, sang fake medieval music for an athletic ware television commercial, and wrote and sang original avant garde opera for a school mate’s dance recital. Interesting times, those were. I also sang in dozens of choirs, which were usually busy with sacred music this time of year. And one benefit of all that singing is that I can definitively tell you what is the worst Christmas carol ever.

It’s a popular one. You’ll likely hear it this week. But it’s horrible, and I’m on a mission to take it down. That carol is “Away in a Manger.” Musical tastes are personal, but it’s hard for me to understand this one. It’s a sappy lullaby, written in late 19th century America, which produced an oversized share of songs that sound like sappy lullabies.

Even if you like the music, though, the lyrics have got to go. The first verse is ordinary enough and fine on the whole. It sentimentalizes the Nativity scene; there are far more interesting things about the manger birth than Jesus’ “sweet head.” But there are worse things than a little sentimentality. At least the verse reminds us Jesus wasn’t born into the comfort or luxury of contemporary consumer baby-care products, but into a hay-strewn barn.

The final verse is worse, but in a vein that’s common to Christian theology. In a prayer that Jesus will be close to us and watch over children, it ends, “And fit us for heaven, to live with thee there.” This prayer implies that life is mainly a dress rehearsal for the afterlife, diminishing the significance of this life while also ending the song with the creepy vision of Jesus taking care of “the little children in (God’s) tender care” only to sweep them off into heaven. Like I said, though, this minimizing the sacred significance of our present life is common in disembodied Christian theology. Even the ancient creeds that serve as touchstones for the historic faith state that Jesus was born then crucified, as if his life and teaching in between were mere footnotes to his afterlife mission.

So far my complaints likely sound petty and small. You might want to play your Pentatonix or John Denver or cute animated video and keep this Christmas lullaby! The problem is that the middle verse of “Away in a Manger” undermines the heart of the good news of Jesus and insults our shared human condition. The carol states that while the baby wakes up under a starry sky, and the surrounding cattle make a bunch of noise, “the little lord Jesus no crying he makes.”

No crying – seriously? Did the man who wrote this song never care for an infant? (Actually, perhaps not.) What is the purpose of this lyric? To comfort weary parents who are tired of their children’s noise? To shame any dear children who might consider crying themselves? Or just to indicate that Jesus, the holy child who graced our world with divine presence, just floated above the difficulties of life, immune to our shared pains and problems?

The very heart of the Christmas story is to tell us that God is so interested in the human condition that God entered it along with us. Born temporarily homeless, into a working class family, in a marginalized region of a small nation, oppressed by a brutal empire, Jesus experiences the challenges of our lives, from his first cries of infancy to his last breath during his state-sponsored execution. To remove Jesus’ crying is to tell us that we are hopelessly flawed and forever out of God’s reach. Jesus did cry as an infant – loud, gas-suffering, milk-longing, breast-craving baby cries.

Consider instead these lines from the song “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” by Robert MacGimsey, a White composer writing in the early to mid-1900s. While MacGimsey was guilty of cultural appropriation, he was at least genuinely interested in African-American culture, and in many ways an ally and advocate for African-American musicians and music. That carol also has us sing of the infant Jesus.

“Long time ago/you were born/born in a manger Lord/Sweet little Jesus boy.” Then we hear words that speak to Jesus’ share in our sufferings, from the very start of his life. “The world treats you mean Lord/Treats me mean too/But that’s how things are down here/We don’t know who you are.”

That’s how things are down here indeed. But at least God knows and understands. Cry with us, sweet Jesus, cry on, cry loudly. We’ve got plenty to cry about still, and we could use your help.

 

Reservoir exists to help people connect with Jesus and flourish. We think the right church can be a good part of that happening, so we enjoy being a church that can help you discover more of the love of Jesus, the gift of community, and the joy of living. But we’re also aware that there’s a lot more to a flourishing life than church and that at any given time, church isn’t for everyone.

So each month, we’re sharing a few resources we’ve been enjoying and finding contribute to a flourishing life for us. I hope you enjoy some of these resources for your own flourishing life. If you have ideas for things we should include in future lists, send them to me at [email protected] with the subject “Top 5” in your message.

1. I’ve plugged this podcast before, but I am really thankful for Jared Byas and Pete Enns’ show, The Bible for Normal People. I’m sure it’s the only podcast of which I’ve listened to every single episode. That says something about me – I love the Bible and honest, insightful voices that help me think about the Bible differently. But it says something about the podcast as well. The most recent episode had a great New Testament scholar, Daniel Kirk, walking us through some great insights on the gospel of Mark. I’ve also been introduced there to womanist scholars (the reading of in this case, The Bible, through the lens of the experience of Black women), Jewish and Christian Old Testament scholars and archaeologists, and figures from popular Christian culture who have reevaluated their perspective on the Bible, or found new ways to engage with it over time. 
2. This past month, I watched two very different films that moved me and drove me to prayer. One is The Hate U Give, the adaptation of Angie Thomas’ young adult novel. It’s a movie that is about police shootings of unarmed Black men but also about love and fatherhood and racism and coming of age and much more. My teenage and preteen sons gave it rave reviews, as do I. 
3. The other film is a bit older, but it’s streaming on Amazon and elsewhere. It’s The Long Green Line, a documentary about one season in the life of one of the greatest coaches of our time, high school cross country coach Joe Newton, who passed away last year. Newton won 26 state championships over his long career, but this film isn’t just about the admittedly niche subject of high school cross country (interesting to me right now, as my daughter has been emerging as a pretty darn good cross country runner!). It’s about coming of age and about what mentoring and encouragement and inclusion look like, and how powerful it is when grownups offer these things to teens. 
4. My local library had a display this month of fiction by Native American authors. The title I checked out, and really enjoyed, was Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories, Ten Little Indians. The nine stories all feature Native American protagonists who are, amongst other things, coming to terms with their identity. Two that particularly resonated for me were the story of a young woman wondering if every life might be epic, and the tale of a middle-aged man looking for a second act past the the death of his parents and his life’s disappointments. 
5. Speaking of identity, current events in our country, and some media, and this upcoming Christmas season all have me thinking about how we wrestle with our own identities and the stories we tell about ourselves. As we’ve continued to witness shootings of unarmed Americans, including by police, and the tear-gassing of asylum seekers at the Mexican border, many Americans have been asking if this is the kind of country we are. The simple, if somewhat cynical answer, is yes – these events have long and deep roots in our bitter history. And yet for most of us, they aren’t part of the country we want to become. Can we embrace a better identity, a new story for ourselves?

   Hidden Brain’s Shankar Vedantam recently interviewed historian Annette Gordon-Reed discussing the contradictions at the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s complex identity and place in history. Jefferson penned the famous words “All men were created equal,” which have inspired Lincoln and King and others to advance freedom and universal human rights, and yet he owned slaves, including his long-standing concubine, Sally Hemmings. It seems Jefferson understood himself to be a progressive man, but in his optimism in inevitable human progress, he backed out of his own responsibilities to see that progress through. Part of Jefferson’s identity was “progressive man”, but part was also “man who’s entitled to dominance over his lover and the workers in his household.” These complicated contradictions of idealism and belief in progress right alongside entitlement and lack of self-awareness run through the fabric of American democracy and of most of us who live in this country as well.

   Some of my favorite stories involve this theme of the power of our construction of our own identity, and the power of the stories we come to tell about ourselves.

   As Christmas comes, I find myself asking questions about identity. Are we mainly vulnerable and alone in the world or is God profoundly with us now? Are we free agents, shaping our own futures, or are members of God’s family, citizens of God’s kingdom, seeking to find the way of Jesus in our private and public lives? Does our disappointment or our hope speak louder to us?

   May Jesus shape a better and better story for you this Christmas season, my friends.

Spiritual practices can seem like a daunting addition to our busy schedules. They say it takes something like three weeks to form a habit, too, so even if you start a spiritual practice of—say—daily bible reading, or prayer walking, can you stick with it long enough to form it into a habit? Maybe some remarkable folks among us create habits out of these disciplines, but I think it’s safe to say that many of us struggle to create space for regular spiritual practices in our busy lives. And then once we have made the space, we quickly forget about them.

Spiritual practices don’t have to be interruptions to your routine. Here are just three suggestions for things you can try this week that won’t require you to find extra time or go anywhere special.

1. A Palm Prayer

The palm prayer is a simple gesture prayer that can capture the spiritual act of releasing burdens to God and receiving grace and blessing from God. One simply holds their hands out in front of them, faces their palms down for a period of time, and then faces their palms up.

You can pray with words while doing this if you like. For example, with palms facing down, I might pray, “God, I give you to you the anxiety I’m experiencing right now.” With palms facing up, I might pray something like, “God, I receive the peace of your Spirit.”

But you don’t have to use words. You might just welcome a brief moment of internal silence, and hold your hands palms down for a beat, and then turn them up for a beat. Try it. You can even hold your hands under your desk at work.

2. A Warm Cup Prayer

Use your existing routines, and turn them into brief spiritual practices. Do you enjoy a ritual hot beverage in the morning? If so, try this:

Hold your cup of coffee/tea/hot water/hot cocoa, and allow your hands to feel the warmth of the cup. Can you, for a moment, imagine this warmth to be the warmth of the Spirit of God, radiating into you through your hands? Before you sip your coffee, notice the warmth.

Raise your cup to take a sip. As you do, can you imagine that the content’s of your cup are the life-sustaining nourishment of God? As you drink, welcome the life-giving nourishment of Jesus, who compares himself to food and drink. You can say words with this prayer too, if you want. But you don’t have to. Just allow the drinking of your cup to evoke for you the act of being nourished by a warm, energizing, sustaining God.

3. A Touch Prayer

This spiritual practice requires a tiny amount of pre-planning, but is the briefest practice of the lot.

Choose a spot in your home that you pass by often. Perhaps it’s your fridge, or the area next your front door. Now choose some kind of symbol of faith you connect with God. Maybe it’s a traditional cross, or some kind of art work; maybe it’s a memento that represents a relationship you’re grateful for, or a photograph of a time you remember God’s presence. Let this symbol be of your choosing. Take your item—your faith anchor, we’ll call it—and hang it in the spot that you chose.

Try briefly and gently touching this anchor with your fingertips when you pass by it, whenever you remember it. If your anchor is next to your front door, briefly touch it as you leave each day. As with the other prayers, you can certainly pray with words as you do this. But you might also just remember whatever feeling of connection to God and other that this anchor evokes in you. Allow yourself that daily moment of feeling-memory.

There are, of course, so many spiritual practices we can add into our schedules, some more time consuming than others. But sometimes these brief moments we take to simply notice our need for God, or our connection to God, can be the richest spiritual practices of all.

Jillie Wowk-Kennedy, Reservoir Member, interviews Liza F. Carter, whose work is currently on display in the Reservoir Dome Gallery. Liza is a Massachusetts-based watercolor painter and photographer. See her art on Sundays before/during/after our Sunday services. 

It took a little bit to get this interview off the ground. Poor Liza had to call me back 3 times while I tried to figure out how to record a phone call and in the end I just gave up and stuck her on speaker while I typed. From our conversation I learned a lot of valuable lessons about Art and Stewardship and How to Conduct a Phone Interview. Thanks, Liza, for sticking it out with this internewbie!

So, what can we expect to see in the Dome?

A lot of the pieces are up on my website. What’s different is they’re printed on large canvases, 2½ to 3 feet in diameter. They’re being shown on a completely different scale, so that’s sort of fun.

I know it’s sacrilege, like picking a favorite child, but I’ll ask anyway: Do you have a favorite piece? One that you’re most proud of or was the most fun to create?

The Pussy Willow ones. “Pussy Willow 3,” that’s my current favorite.

I pull the Pussy Willows up on her website; they’re a three-part watercolor series featured right on the homepage. “Pussy Willow 3” is smaller than the other two and the background is shot through with pure cobalt blue. Its perspective is tighter than the others, inviting your eyes to linger in the crux of the willow branch.

The thing about watercolors is, you’re always dancing between being in control and completely out of control. And you have to enjoy that process or else you switch to oils or acrylics. You never know what you’re going to get until you got it. With “Pussy Willow 3” I was happy with the background and the definition of the pussy willows themselves. The way I paint tends to be realistic but not photorealistic. With paintings, I like to know what I’m looking at, but if I’m looking at a painting I’m looking at something that’s more than a realistic depiction of something.

The photos that are in the show are more fine art interpretive photographs. They’re not documentary, but they’re also not extreme angles and filters and tweaking and post processing work. It’s just like! I don’t want to be spending all my time on the computer; it doesn’t speak to me. So when I want to be creative, I do it in the watercolors.

How did you first develop your appreciation for watercolors?

Color. I do a lot of knitting and my knitting is all about blending and doing dramatic things with the way colors work together and I was walking down a hallway in the local art center in Concord and there were some watercolor paintings on the walls and they had a lot of different pigments blended up to do their own particular magic and I thought WOAH! That’s what I’ve been trying to do with knitting. The artist was offering a class at the center, so I took her class and fell in love with the process. It was the play of the color and water.

How long have you been painting?

About 10 years.

What’s a lesson watercoloring has taught you?

You’re not in control. That’s sort of the first thing. And the other is you have to play with what you get.

How did you first develop your appreciation for photography?

I think it was being able to capture the “defining moment” where in the midst of everything moving, you capture a still that encapsulates everything. It’s something that, in the age of so-much-video, doesn’t really happen. It’s much easier to capture a scene with a video because you get the whole range. You see the movement and the relationship develop, whereas if you’re capturing that in a still… that’s a very different skillset.

Back when I started, video wasn’t really a thing, so I did enjoy trying to capture something that… like with the photos featured in the show, it’s more an emotion. It’s all nature images. When exploring a subject to share, like with my Mongolia pictures, I want to use photography. I didn’t want that to go through my interpretive lens.

How long have you been shooting film?

Since high school. That was really my first major art area.

What’s a lesson photography has taught you?

The importance of staying open to capturing that definitive moment that oftentimes you have a millisecond to react because the person or the light is going to change or the animal is going to move and you have to be open with those art-aware eyes. I never do studio or street photography; nature photography requires quick reflexes.

If you could direct your viewers’ eyes to one thing, what would it be?

I think that I would say take time to actually enter the picture. I think that one of the things that happens is that people look at things very cursorily and if you take time with any piece of artwork you will see a lot more than what you initially got. Stay with the picture; try to enter it.

What is one artist tool you can’t live without?

My eyeballs.

How would you describe your process?

It all starts with a visual — something that I’m excited by — and that pretty much drives everything else. In order to stick with something long enough you have to have a heart connection to it and you have to keep touching base with that initial thing that spoke to you. It’s easy to get waylaid in the technicalities; they’re important, but they’re not the only thing. I find that with painting.

I was originally trained as a scientist and I believe in the whole right brain/left brain thing, so I need to start the day in the right side of the brain. If I started the day in textbooks or going over notes, I would have a very hard time switching gears. I have to be very conscious of how I begin.

A drawing teacher once gave me this great tip: the left side is concerned with logistics. So, if you have a time limit, the left side of your brain will be like okay, what time is it? What time is it now? What time is it now? Set an alarm, so your left brain says okay, that’s set; I can butt out for a while. When I’m in the creative place where I want to be I do everything possible to support staying in there. Because it’s very easy to pop out!

Your academic background is in environmental science. What would you say the role of an environmental scientist is in our society?

Education. I think if people truly understood the implications of the decisions being made they would make very different decisions. There are… a lot of heads in the sand. It’s not going to affect me — it’s deeply scary. Things that were predicted when I was in grad school in the 80s are all coming to pass and now they’re so much more difficult to ease up or mediate than if they had just been fixed then. Toxic chemicals in our air and water and food,…it’s really scary!

I think it’s education and trying to build connection! People are not going to protect things they don’t love. However they experience it, through going out in nature themselves or through art… Nature deficit in this country is a very real issue and out of that spins lack of concern and decisions that end up trashing it.

What is the role of an artist?

Well, I can really only answer for myself. For me, I want to help build connections between people and the environment. And in my case, that’s by presenting the beauty of it and hoping that people will be pulled into that. That goes back to “people can’t protect what they don’t love.” It’s trying to make things more visible and it’s partially why I was experimenting with this scale.

What is a rule you love to break?

Most of them. I like to see between the cracks. The Mongolia book and the book on grass fed beef is falling in between categories of things. No one knew what to do with these books! Is it a textbook? Is it a guide book, a coffee table book, a photography book? And the answer could be yes or no to any of those things and, like many things that are new, people don’t know what to do with them. It’s filling those things in between the cracks…

She trails off. Liza had spent a full year living in Mongolia, documenting the daily lives of a community of nomadic herders. She ended up with a treasure trove of startling, vibrant images — at once sprawling and intimate — and nowhere to put them. Her publisher’s inability to commit finally drove Liza to self-publish a book which has gone on to receive seven awards. She’s facing the same short-sightedness with her current project, Hamburgers Don’t Grow on Trees, a children’s book about the American meat industry.

What’s your dream project? Like, no time constraints, unlimited funds, the world is your oyster! What would you do?

Ooh, um… A continuation of the photography book I’m trying to get published now, Hamburgers Don’t Grow on Trees. And my goal with that is, to cut to the real chase, to eliminate factory farms. I personally am an omnivore, I eat meat, but I only eat meat that is ethically grown and that’s a very small percentage of the meat in the world. I mean, everyone has a rough time at the end of life, but the quality of an animal’s entire life is the important piece to think about and as big corporations have taken over from family farms, it’s gotten exponentially worse. I mean, anyone who actually witnesses it no longer participates in it; it’s that horrible. There’s a lot of information on the scary things that happen and my book is showing kids a way that honors the animal and the farmer and takes care of the environment in the process. I’m sort of in the middle of it; I’m trying to get it out into the world because publishers are scared of it. It’s taking on a big topic, particularly for kids. And you know, it’s not a typical… what I have to do is figure out an end run around the gatekeepers. So that’s sort of my challenge right now.

How do you handle that frustration?

On a day-to-day level, it’s mainly hanging out with my personal menagerie and spending time out in nature. That’s hugely important for me. And there are people who are working on all these topics… I go back and forth between being optimistic that something can happen, but then I can also go down the rabbit hole, seeing all the stupid stuff that’s happening with our current administration, and get really bummed out.

My first job was working for the NRC in New York City and Reagan had just come in and he had hired a Secretary of Interior who was totally anti-environmental. This was early days of there even being an environmental case law and this guy was trying to undermine everything and just take us back to, like, to square zero. I remember I was talking to one of the lawyers and I asked him how he felt about going back to fight over square one and he said, ‘I love to win, but what I really love is the process and I’m okay with going back and fighting more’. And I thought…I am not okay with that. I love the end result, not the fight. So that’s when I started exploring other— that’s why I’m working as an artist, trying to shift how people view things. And I think many people have experienced seeing an image— most recently that young child who was separated from her parents at the border? That picture changed things. And again, that boy washed up on the shore? That also changed things. It’s those things that keeps me going, saying yeah, art and photography can make a difference.

Is there a question I haven’t asked that you wish I did?

Ha! Uh…It’s more of a rant. When you work as an artist, you very rarely get outside validation for anything that you do. When you’re working for an organization, you have a title, a bonus, you get raises and reviews, things you can look to as landmarks that you’re improving and that is not the life of the artist. It has to be much more internally satisfying. And it is! And it still can be sometimes challenging.

By now Liza has begun a two-week safari in Africa, radio-collaring giraffes and doubtlessly marinating in the thrill of walking the dirt of a different continent. Then she’ll make a quick pit stop in Geneva, where her daughter is finishing up a Masters degree. Liza also has a son, a dog, a parrot, eight chickens, and four rescue kittens. Her son is a musician. His band, Windborne, has recently taken off after one of their videos went viral (look up “Song of the Lower Classes at Trump Tower” on YouTube). Now, thanks to the internet, they work as full-time traveling musicians.

I’m using my art as a kind of activism, my son is doing the same thing through singing, and my daughter is getting a Masters in human rights law, so we’re all activists in certain ways.

 

by Lydia Shiu

Reservoir exists to help people connect with Jesus and flourish. We’re aware that there’s a lot more to a flourishing life than church and that at any given time, church isn’t for everyone.

Here’s my list of things outside of church that are helping me flourish this month… I hope you find something helpful!

1. I get distracted easily. Attempting to grasp at holy moments like prayer can be helped by things that anchor me. Pray As You Go is a prayer app that’s helped me do that. Even though it seems counterintuitive to grab my phone for creating sacred space, well, it’s what I have in my hand already and it actually takes me in. It’s a guided audio with music, Scripture, and reflection. It begins with music from diverse backgrounds of Christian traditions to set the tone. Then, reading of Scripture by a soothing British accented voice usually. It prompts for some questions for reflection and reads the text again. It’s paced well with silences, music, readings, and commentary. I love that it centers on a Bible text, a kind of Lectio Divina practice. I close my eyes and listen. It invites me in and I appreciate being simply guided. It’s easy and I can do it anywhere. Good prayer apps are hard to find, and I think this is one of my favorites.
   
2. Another great app for reading devotionals, rather than an audio prayer, is Our Bible App. It was created by a group of people who wanted to offer something different than what the large popular Christian media companies have. It’s inclusive, celebrates diversity, promotes decolonizing faith by highlighting the voices of LGBT, women, and people of color. It’s a platform for a diversity of devotionals that meet the needs of more inclusive views of theology and spirituality. They have a variety of series of topics you can choose from. One I recently enjoyed is a series called, We Belong: A Devotional Series For Those In the Borderlands, “a tool for liberation and healing for People of Color and Indigenous persons in the Church”. It spoke particularly to me in my sense of otherness and experiences of being marginalized — validating and encouraging me with Scripture and prayer. It’s a really unique voice in the devotionals world that’s much needed now.

3. Speaking of LGBT, women, and people of color. Here’s my book recommendation. Written by a Chinese-American journalist, Deborah Jian Lee, Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism is a well organized overview of some of the histories behind American evangelicalism and where it is now. I found it not only encouraging to see new facets of Christianity in America, but it helped me understand how we ended up with some of the unique strands of American Christianity we’ve come to know today. And that it hasn’t always been that way. I think understanding our faith, church, and theology has much to do with the historical and social context we’re in. This book helped me see that a bit more clearly. And to see that new voices are rising to shape Christianity in a whole new way. I am encouraged to see Holy Spirit at work in fresh ways through people who love Jesus and are leading the church in a new generation. Lee also has a lovely podcast called, Kaleidoscope. It’s worth a listen.

4. A podcast I’d like to especially recommend is The Allender Center Podcast. Dr. Dan Allender is the brilliant Christian counselor that has pioneered some of the best work in healing from sexual abuse and trauma. With #metoo and the bombardment of a newly awakened realization about sexuality in our generation and culture, I think this is one of the best resources that I can recommend for everything from masculinity, loneliness, shame, hope, to spiritual abuse. Allender has written really important books like, The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse, if you’re in need of deeper work. But the podcast is more approachable (without needing to call your therapist!) with a variety of topics that are wise, authentic, and life giving. I believe he’s a truly a needed voice, especially in the church world that often lacks resources about sexuality.

5. Lastly, not specific to Christian tradition but just good stuff! Music opens me up. One of my go to places for music is Youtube NPR Music. To discover new music, I especially enjoy the Tiny Desk Concerts. They’re short live concerts that are intimate and fresh. It makes me feel like I’m right there, without going out to a venue or paying a ticket price! Because it’s a small room, the sound is usually so raw, like unplugged style. And the genre is quite diverse and I get exposed to types of music I would never find on my own. New music refreshes and excites me. It’s a way I get out of my own comfort zone and experience something totally different. Tiny Desk Concerts is a great portal to a new world, in a tiny bite size way.

I hope you enjoy some of these resources for your own flourishing life. If you have ideas for things we should include in future lists, send them to Steve at [email protected] with the subject “Top 5” in your message.

by Laurie Bittmann 

The intersection of faith and disability is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.  I was born with a condition called Spina Bifida. This is a birth defect that occurs during fetal development, shortly after conception where the spinal cord does not form correctly. The impact of Spina Bifida varies from person to person, and ranges from almost no symptoms in the mildest of cases, to profound disability in the most severe form. I fall in the middle of this range. Some of the common symptoms that people with Spina Bifida face may include numbness and weakness, paralysis, challenges with toileting, kidney damage, skin breakdown, and orthopedic problems.  It is a lifelong condition with no cure, though there are treatments for many of the symptoms that lead to an increase in quality and quantity of life.

Most of the time, Spina Bifida is diagnosed before birth or shortly thereafter.  I was misdiagnosed for years, despite the fact that I had overt signs of this condition that were apparent from birth. At first, my body was able to compensate, but by the time I was 9 years old, the damage became increasingly evident. My legs started to become paralyzed. I could no longer run, walk, play, or even write with ease. My parents did not rest until they found a doctor who believed them in their concerns and a diagnosis was made. Shortly thereafter, I was scheduled for surgery.

Though I came to faith later in life, I can look back and see that God was speaking to me in terms of my diagnosis. Before I went into the hospital, my teacher had me tell my class about my upcoming surgery. One of my classmates asked me how long I was going to be in the hospital for, and how long I would be out of school. Unbeknownst to me, my doctors and parents were not expecting that I would return to school that year. However, “something” spoke to me, and I informed my class that I would be in the hospital for 2 weeks and home for an additional 2 weeks before returning to school. I could practically see my teacher thinking, “This kid has no idea what she is in for.” But lo and behold, I spent two weeks in the hospital and two weeks recovering at home before rejoining my class and finishing out the school year. To this day, I truly believe that it was God speaking to me in those moments, and that He was telling me that I was going to be okay.

One might think that being misdiagnosed for 9 years would lead to feelings of anger or regret. In some ways, yes, this might be justifiable. But instead I see God’s protection over me. Had I been diagnosed at birth, I likely would have had surgery shortly thereafter. Maybe that surgery would have prevented further deterioration of my condition – or perhaps, surgery could have led to severe nerve damage and complete paralysis. During the 9 years between my birth and diagnosis, medical technology advanced quite a bit. As a result, I was the first patient at the hospital where my surgery was performed to use a new technology that measured nerve impulses during surgery. On more than one occasion, the alarms sounded to alert my surgeon that he was dangerously close to causing permanent damage and he was able to back off, therefore preserving nerve function.

Living with a permanent disability has also shaped my view of healing.  The Bible is full of examples of Jesus healing the sick, the lame, the blind, and we are called to pray for one another in faith. But I ask you, what does it mean to be healed? Over the years, I have had many well intentioned people pray for my physical healing.  Yet, I still have Spina Bifida and I still have to deal daily with the negative effects of this condition. For years, I struggled with the fact that God had not healed my physical symptoms, and this took a toll on my faith. Was I not praying hard enough or long enough?  Was I doing it wrong? Over time, I have learned that healing is so much more than just a release from physical symptoms. Yes, sometimes healing does happen in the physical form (which is awesome and amazing when it does happen), but that is not the only way in which healing can occur. Healing can be richer, deeper, and more encompassing, than just the physical.

For me, healing is not a cure, but instead, it takes the form of being okay in my own body and knowing that despite the challenges that I face, I live a full and meaning filled life. For me, healing is being in connection with God, and being able to go to him not only on the harder days, but also in my celebrations of life. Living with Spina Bifida has given me passion, empathy, and drive in life to work in the medical field, with others who have disabilities or serious medical conditions. For me, healing is recognizing that life is a gift, and it is my intention to use the life that God has blessed me with to the best of my ability. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalms 73:26)

A college professor once asked me, “Laurie, if you could go back and choose to be born without Spina Bifida, would you do it?” I didn’t even have to think about it. “No.” She seemed surprised by my answer and asked me to explain. For all of the challenges that arise from living with a permanent disability, the positives far outweigh the negatives. Living with Spina Bifida has shaped the way in which I view the world and allows me to see God’s beauty, in all of His creation – even if it not as one envisions it would be.

Laurie Bittmann is a member of the Reservoir community. She’ll join Steve Watson for part of his sermon on 10/21 to talk more about her thoughts on faith and disability. 

by Helen Lee

SPOILER ALERT: some spoilers from the film A Star is Born may follow. So if you were hoping to see it, wait to read this until later! 

A new re-make of an old-ish story, Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born tells the story of human fragility: of our fragile hearts, our fragile egos, and our fragile bodies. And importantly, it tells a story of the redeeming power of a loving gaze, and the crushing danger of gazes that lack love.

Saving Gaze

Ally is a talented singer who has resigned herself and her talents to singing in a drag club, where she’s beloved, and the only female they’d ever let sing there. She’s given up on “making it” anywhere else as a singer before starting, after internalizing the message that she is not the whole package. Thus far in her life, she’s been told enough times that she’s ugly that she believes it.

Ally even utilizes the make up techniques of drag queens to make herself performance ready. The artistry of drag makeup notwithstanding, these techniques are designed to create the illusion of a radically different appearance (as opposed to an augmented or touched up appearance). We learn early in the movie that in order for Ally to be presentable on a stage, she can’t appear to have the eyebrows, hair, or nose she was born with — or so she believes.

But in Jackson Maine, Ally is confronted with a sudden and loving gaze that startles her. He weeps when he watches her sing. When he visits her in her dressing room afterward, he is starstruck — even though everyone else in the room is starstruck by him, the famous singer.

With wonder and curiosity, but without judgment or revulsion, he watches her remove her false eyebrows, interested in the purpose they serve, and hungry to see what’s underneath. When she emerges looking like her true self, his gaze doesn’t change. He sees her in disguise and out, and delights in what he sees regardless.

 

It is Jackson’s loving gaze that draws Ally out onto the stage for an impromptu performance of a song she’s only created a rough draft of. And once on the stage, it’s Jackson’s gaze that seems to give her the permission she needs to share the voice that she’s been hiding for so long because she’s been told her body is not worth looking at. In beholding her as worthy, beautiful, important, Jackson begins to undo the damage of years of body diminishing messages. As a result, Ally flourishes.

A Death Giving Stare

Tragically and in stark contrast, Jackson seems to have the opposite trajectory of Ally. Plagued with unprocessed grief over the loss of both his parents as a preteen, Jackson has self-medicated for years with pills and alcohol. The introduction of Ally into his life prompts little attempts to get sober, but Jackson’s untreated mental illness is profound. His diminishment of his own body through abuse of drugs and alcohol has been enabled by his brother, everyone close to him, and his entire audience.

Jackson bears in his own body the lie from the world that he does not deserve to flourish in mind or spirit. Never resting, Jackson is accustomed to passing out more than falling asleep, after giving himself to the hungry eyes of everyone who feels entitled to his person. The loving gaze of Ally is a light in his dark, but she cannot single-handedly save him. In fact, the system of enabling around Jackson is so robust, that although Ally knows he needs help, she probably never appreciates how deep his need is until it is too late.

Jackson’s rock bottom comes as the kind of public humiliation none of us can imagine enduring. I had to watch this scene with my hands over my face, peeking through the cracks of my fingers. As Ally accepts the Grammy Award for best new artist, a drunk Jackson joins her on stage in front of the massive Grammy audience in addition to the millions of people watching on TV. He steals her moment, rambling incoherently, and then loses control of his bladder, wetting himself on the stage and collapsing. He goes to rehab soon after this.

Jackson’s return from rehab is loaded with hope. He’s clean and sober. He’s eager to get home. He loves his wife. He loves his dog. But in rehab, Jackson has been protected from the unforgiving stares of the world, and, sober, Jackson is still profoundly grieved and mentally ill. In rehab, Jackson has the support of group therapy and rest to hold him in his  now unhidden depression; out of rehab, he faces the same unfiltered and unforgiving, entitled gaze of the world.

One stare in particular seems to confirm Jackson’s crushing sense of worthlessness, and it comes from Ally’s agent, Rez. Rez takes advantage of a rare moment alone with Jackson to tell him that in spite of his work in rehab, in spite of his love for his wife, he will always be a black mark on her career. He will always be an embarrassment to her. The world will always see the humiliated man from the Grammy Awards when he stands next to her. In Jackson’s last moments with Ally he learns that she has decided to cancel her tour. Taking this as confirmation that he is, as Rez says, an insurmountable burden to his wife, Jackson resigns himself then and there to end his bodily life.

Jackson’s brother Bobby asserts later that his brother’s suicide is entirely his own fault. Perhaps it’s true that Jackson died at his hand alone, but can we expect a person to survive in a world that glares at him and calls him worthless? We are so fragile, after all.

You are not the sum of some series of unfortunate events, whether they were seen by only a few, or by the entire world. You are not an embarrassment or a black mark. You are precious and beloved. Your mind and spirit are worthy of flourishing; your body deserves care and is beautiful to behold. You are worthy.