When Love Shows Up: Weekly Reflections about God’s Presence

It Snowed Today in Cincinnati - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

So I go back to the day he died. I was 26. He was 59. I had moved back to California recently. He was living in Maine now and was in California for a visit. Whenever he came back he would stay with my grandma – his ex-mother-in-law. She once said it took her so long to start loving him that she wasn’t going to stop just because of some divorce. My dad had been battling cancer. It was in remission, but his body was much worse for the wear, and he was actually sick when his plane touched down. Unusually for him, he needed a wheelchair to get off the plane. Shortly after getting to Grandma’s house, he got into bed, where he would mostly stay until he died three days later.  
I was sleeping in the room next door to his in order to keep an eye on things and take care of him to the degree he would let me. We argued because he wanted me to get him booze and I wouldn’t. He was an unrepentant alcoholic in denial going through withdrawals and I would not bring him vodka in bed because I was a tired, stubborn, idealistic adult child of an unrepentant alcoholic and I had no interest in enabling this ridiculous man I loved so much.  
The last night of his life he pretended to have an appetite and we sat next to each other in his bed and ate In-n-Out Burgers and watched boring British television – his favorite. 
 
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The Moving Middle - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

The middle moves. When we talk about conservativism, liberalism, and centrism – we often speak of these things as if they are fixed, when in fact they are fluid. They may live on a spectrum, but over time the spectrum itself shifts.  
It begs the question, What are conservatives trying to conserve? And is it the same thing that conservatives were trying to conserve 50 or 100 years ago? What are liberals trying to liberalize? Is it the same thing liberals were trying to liberalize 50 or 100 years ago?  
And of course, most of us do not fit neatly into either of these categories.  Some of us do, for sure. We have in the Church of the Redeemer community a fair share of self-described conservatives and liberals.  But most people I know are a mixture of conservative and liberal beliefs and values. Most of us are not as easily categorized.  
This complexity – and this shifting spectrum of belief and the moving middle – all matters to the context of a religious community. One of the reasons for that is that religious communities are often expected to maintain neutrality, to hold the middle ground, or to make sure we do not express any kind of ideological or political preference. We have been exploring that in recent blogs. Trying to understand our part in the politics of our culture is an ongoing process.
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Who's in the Center - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Centrist. Moderate. That middle? 
Let’s look for a moment at that center – one where people actually sit in terms of the events of the day. 66% of Americans believe that the government should ensure health care coverage for every citizen. 64% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 70% of Americans do not want immigration decreased. 60% of Americans do not approve of the way ICE is operating in our country. 60% of Americans believe that gun laws should be stricter. 63% of Americans believe that taxes on corporations should be raised. 79% of Americans believe in vaccine mandates for children for preventable diseases. 
Let’s just stop there for a moment, because these are all hot-button issues, and I’m wondering how you feel about me bringing them up at all in the first place. Am I deliberately trying to be controversial? No, I have been writing the last few weeks about the tricky sticky territory of trying to hold the middle ground, trying to be centrist, and I realized we haven’t even explored what the center looks like. So I took a look at the basic public opinion on some of the central issues of our current day. We are told these are controversial issues, but the numbers demonstrate that the middle looks really clear.  
There is so much talk in our country about a desire to move to the middle and this is what the middle looks like.  
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The Middle of Nowhere - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Multiple Christian denominations were fractured during the time leading up to the Civil War. The moral issue of slavery was at the center of these splits. Most notably, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists tore in two. As you might suspect, the denominational splits occurred along geographical lines, with northern churches opposing slavery, and southern churches supporting it.  
The Episcopal Church did not split.  
For many years I liked this about my religious tradition. How beautiful it is, I thought to myself, that the differing of opinions and beliefs – no matter how strong – could not split us up. We found the middle and held it. How great is that? 
It’s likely you already see the problem with this and are shaking your head at me. That’s ok. I shake my head at me a lot too. If you’re not there yet, that’s ok too. I’m going to explain.  
Here’s the problem: The Episcopal Church held together by refusing to take a stand on slavery. American slavery - the institutionalized, racist, systemic kidnapping, trafficking, rape, imprisonment, and forced labor of a whole segment of the population upon which much the American economy and infrastructure had been built – was not a dealbreaker for my denomination. Who are we to say where Jesus would stand on this issue?  
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Stuck in the Middle with You - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

The temptation to locate God within my own party and preference is universal – and it is ongoing. I will always struggle with the desire to align God with me rather than the other way around. I am reminded of Ann Lamott saying, "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."  
Seeking the middle ground has a lot going for it. There is something really healthy about saying let’s find a place to meet. Let’s find a place where our common values outweigh our differences, let’s find our connections wherever we can. Let’s share a meal and a prayer and look out for each other even though we disagree about things. Like the song goes, Clowns to the left of me jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you. That’s the idea anyway. 
The other day I was listening to an interview with American documentarian Ken Burns while driving across town, and I almost had to pull over. In the midst of what seemed like a very casual conversation, he said these words: “There’s only us. There’s no Them. And if anyone tells you there’s a Them, run away. There’s only Us.”  
There’s only Us.  
What else is there to say? 
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Moderation - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

My favorite band of all time is The Beatles. Nobody whose favorite band is the Beatles could claim in good conscience to be an extremist. The most popular pop band of all time? Forget it. I’m a moderate. I just am. Let’s be real about my temperament, about my preferences: I like moderation. I like institutions. I like the sense of stability and belonging. I wear a uniform to work! I remember when I took the confirmation class at an Episcopal Church when I was 23. They made an explicit point of telling us over and over that we didn’t have to join – we could just be there, we didn’t have to be Episcopalian. But I like brands and organizations and belonging and I wanted to be called an Episcopalian – a denomination historically known for staid, moderate behavior. The old joke goes how many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?  “What’s change?” 
What even is moderation? What is centrism? Is it the idea that there are two extremes and the truth lies somewhere in the middle – in some kind of muddled compromise where nobody is perfectly happy and nobody is perfectly furious? I mean, I love that. I really do. It fits my temperament so well, and frankly it’s convenient to my lifestyle. It is also very often a pragmatic approach to life. And so many of us across the political spectrum have noted the unfortunate move towards extremism in our government – often bolstered by gerrymandering and corporate interference for profit. We would love a representative body that finds some kind of imperfect middle ground. 
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Not Political - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

If I want to approach the world through a Christian lens then, before I asked what is conservative or liberal, what is Republican or Democrat, what is libertarian or socialist, what is Red or Blue, what is MAGA or Antifa, I would begin by saying what does it look like to try to create a community, a culture, a country that seeks and serves Christ in every person, that strives for justice and peace, that respects the dignity of every human being? That seems like a fairly good guideline for a Christian approach to morality and humanity. 
So, politics aside, do I believe in heavily armed masked men detaining people in the streets based on their looks, the color of their skin, their accents? Do I believe in families being separated and kept in cages in my country? Do I believe in imprisonment and deportation without due process? Do these things seem moral to me? Do they seem humane?  
 
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The Song I Believe - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Over the years my faith has ebbed and flowed, my desire to be close to God has sometimes been strong, and other times I have doubted the very existence of the God I worship and have dedicated my life to serve. And I am often frustrated or even horrified by Christianity as I see it being expressed around me – as a tool of judgment, ostracization, oppression, and violence.  
At the age of 13, raised and immersed in church culture, I had read Paul’s words many times before. When this time it found me I was spiritually adrift and obsessed with the idea that I needed to figure it all out – that I needed to prove God’s existence and then reach that proven God on my own power, to find Jesus, to know exactly what I believed and to live it just right. And then I heard Paul say that before I had ever even thought about reaching out to God, God had already reached out and taken hold of me. And all I can tell you is in that moment I believed it.  
And, God help me, I still believe it.   
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Accomplishing Christmas - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

What are the little things that make it Christmas for you? What has shaped your perceptions of Christmas – of what it’s supposed to be? Likely, it’s a combination of your personal experiences and the ways the holiday has been presented to you by your culture growing up – what was on tv or the radio, what commercials or movies you remember, what foods your grandmother made.  
For me it’s watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story. My dad on the roof putting up the lights, getting a real Christmas tree, singing carols, the little plastic Santa that sat on our front porch all lit up from within, getting dark early, the smell of cigarettes  and taste of lemon bars and fudge at my grandma’s house where we had our annual Christmas Eve party. A well decorated shopping mall with way too many people. These things make it feel like Christmas to me. 
I love the movie Christmas Vacation. I watch it every year. This year our middle child was finally old enough to watch it: A rite of passage in our family. Actually, to say I love Christmas Vacation is sort of irrelevant. Love is beside the point: It’s a part of how I experience Christmas. I saw it in the theater in December of 1989 with my family. I was 10 years old. I have seen it at least once nearly every year since then. It’s not Christmas until the lights on the Griswold’s house blind the neighbors. This movie has shaped my very perception of what Christmas is supposed to be. How could it not? 

Pursuit - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

About ten years ago I was working with this therapist and it was a very good fit. She and I had both grown up in similar religious, geographical, and cultural contexts, and we both had come to similar places in our relationships with those things. Which is to say I felt heard and understood, and she was able to speak a language to me that didn’t need a lot of translation. I learned a lot from her about life and about myself. But the thing she taught me that may stick with me the most – at least on a conscious level – was something about God. 
I was speaking with her about the pursuit of perfection: My desire to get everything right, to be the right kind of person, and specifically my belief that I needed to make all the right choices in order to be that right kind of person. I wanted to get it right, you know. And I wanted to get it right for God. It seemed like the least I could do. But I put a lot of pressure on myself to do that: To get it right for God, to make the right choices for God. To be the person God thought I could be. I was not able to see what a burden I was placing on myself in all this. But my therapist saw it.  
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