Murphy's Law

I left the house for 24 hours and decided to leave the rain jacket home. Since leaving home, the chance for rain in all areas of Hungary has gone from 10% to 70% today.  This once again reaffirms that when I take a little extra space in by backpack for the jacket the weather will stay dry as a bone and sunny. And when the jacket sits at home...

BUT, today the rain will be a small thing--a drop in the bucket--when I go to the Budapest airport to meet up with my parents!

Meet Tamás

 

Meet Tamás!  A few weeks ago when I gave a presentation in Nyïregyhaza about the U.S. and the "American Dream" I met Tamás.  In August he'll leave Hungary and spend one year in the U.S. as an AFS exchange student.  Where in the U.S.? He doesn't know yet, but finds out soon. 

This last Tuesday we met again and I helped him prepare his scholarship paperwork.  His English is pretty good--definitely better than by Hungarian.  It's amazing how quickly you pick up on new words and grammar once you have a good foundation.  For me, this foundation didn't feel solid until February or March. Tamás is in for a great year, and I think he's especially brave to leave home for 12 months at age 16.

Talking and meeting with such a motivated student was a highlight of my week and I'm happy to share it on here!

The 4th from afar

YAGM Hungary meeting with the Phiren Amenca coordination team

 
The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I’ve always been particularly glad that the founding fathers declared independence in mid-summer, and I’m equally happy that it’s usually a big family holiday for me.  
Of course, this year was different. On the morning of the 4th I took a 4:30am bus that would connect me to a 5:15am train to get into Budapest for a 10am meeting.  I’ve written before about Phiren Amenca—a dialogue, education, and voluntary service network that connects Roma and non-Roma.  Phiren Amenca and its people have been an important part of this year for me in terms of understanding my community seeing it within the broader context of Roma in Hungary, Roma in Europe, and ongoing human rights activism.  What I’ve learned through Phiren Amenca undoubtedly has applications with marginalized peoples at home, but that’s a discussion for another time.
So we were happy to have this final meeting with Phiren Amenca to share stories and approach the question of “what do we do with this?”  As I said to the group that gathered, often times the moments that test our ability to truly dialogue with others are when people disagree and don't equally acknowledge the reality or complexity of pluralism. I would argue those types of dialogues are more important, albeit difficult. But there is also something energizing and hopeful about talking with others who, although we don’t agree on everything, are willing to approach pluralism and and social justice with openness and eagerness.

                      YAGM Hungary meeting with the Phiren Amenca coordination team

As chance would have it, we were able to join a group of young volunteers and activists who were attending a student session at Budapest's European Youth Center on the role of religious communities in Roma and anti-discrimination work.  Around the table were representatives from the UK, US, Canada, Ireland, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Romania, Hungary, France, Germany.  
The conversation was especially rich because we could share stories, and then others could respond with questions and reactions from their perspective. Some of what came out of the meeting will appear in my newsletter (coming soon!), but I want to share one particular point here.  The convener, Richard Otterness, said that he hopes addressing hate, poverty, discrimination, and violence aren’t specialties of any one person, or one organization.  In other words, we need to be alert and intentional about safeguarding and advocating for others in all realms of life. To do this, as we discussed, relationships have to come before “projects” that fight injustices.  And we need to work with others, and not merely do things for them.  It sounds simple—maybe too simple—but it demands time and emotional energy that, I think inevitably, we lead to all of us learning from and serving each other.
A participant from Ireland had a great call to action as it relates to the role of churches in social justice: too often, people, churches, organizations, governments provide tangible and sometimes immediate aid to people in need.  While we’re called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, it seems that there is also a call to address underlying reasons why people are hungry or naked in the first place.
In the evening, Ole and I joined Meredith, her American family, and her Hungarian host families for a typical 4th of July BBQ.  It was great to share this holiday with so many new people.  So many things about the celebration were so typically American—fireworks, s’mores, potato salad, obnoxious red white and blue decorations—while other things were so typically Hungarian—palinka, soccer match on TV, folk music and dancing.
Here’s to a great 4th of July in Hungary, and a word of thanks for people in uniform who are also away from home, perhaps in dangerous places, who keep us safe and allow us to wander this world as free people free to love and serve each other.

 

Visiting other YAGMs

In late May and early June I was able to spend time with the three other Hungary YAGMs. In total, we’ve probably spent less than a month of our lives together, but we’ve become good friends and I’m glad to have people here to share this experience with! Life is great with great people!
Throughout the year we’ve heard stories from each others' lives in our different towns.  Each of our sites is so unique to its area of Hungary, and of course each of our jobs and routines come with its own sets of people and places.  So it was especially good to meet some of the characters and see the setting for the narrative of this YAGM year in different sites.  

Roman mosaics along the Amber Road

In May I visited Chelsea in Szombathely - a city of 80,000 in western Hungary, just 10 kilometers from the Austrian border. We explored Roman ruins from the first century AD along what used to be the Amber Road trade route from northern to southern Europe. Fascinating. 

Soviet-era public art perched above the city of Szombathely 

We went on a long walk with an old women Chelsea has befriended this year. Actually, I think Chelsea would say they befriended each other.  The women fled Hungary in 1956 during what turned out to be a failed uprising against the Soviet occupiers.  She then spent the next 56 years living in the United States where she earned a PhD in piano performance.  She spent time living and teaching in Bemidji, MN.  “Minnesotans are just good wholesome folks; they come from good Scandinavian stock,” she told me.
I also spent time at Chelsea’s school meeting her students.

 Visiting Chelsea's students; here we're most likely working on the "th" sound 
 
En route back across Hungary I went to Budapest where all four of us had a final meeting with Bishop Fabiny of the Hungarian Lutheran Church. He and his team have been very attentive to us this year and we appreciate it.
The second weekend of June I journeyed to Szarvas to visit Ole, my favorite Canadian. He and I conquered the town by bicycles making stops at the county museum, canoeing on the Körös River, visiting an independent Roma congregation, having ice cream with his boss and pizza with his host brother, shopping at an outdoor market, taking a selfie (more on that), eating fruit right out of his co-teacher’s garden, and playing soccer with some of his students.  It was a great weekend at Camp Ole!

 

Selfie with Ole at the geographic center of the former Kingdom of Hungary

 

 
A plaque at the historic geographic center that says quite a bit about Hungarian nationalism:
Hungarian Creed:
I believe in God
I believe in a homeland
I believe in a divine eternal truth
I believe in the resurrection Hungary


About that selfie: Ole had recently learned about a historic site along the river marking the geographic center of the former Kingdom of Hungary.  Before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon in which Hungary lost 70% of its territory, the Kingdom existed as a behemoth of a state between east and west. Remember that Hungary was founded in 896, so the place we visited stood at the center for over a millennium.  

Where is the historic center now? Go 76 miles northwest of Szarvas and you’ll be in the small town of Puszavacs. Drop that factoid at parties and impress you friends!

Meredith making some new friends at the Görögszállás Children's House

Finally, in mid-June, Meredith from Piliscsaba outside of Budapest came to visit me!  We did the 50 minute walk between my house and the train station 3 times (one way three times) so we had plenty of time to talk and take in the village life. We also caught some great sunsets.  Saturday we went to Nyiregyhaza, the nearby city, in hope of catching some sun at an outdoor pool and thermal bath.  Friday evening we sat outside and had a long talk with both of my host parents.  Given out language skills, we definitely couldn’t have had that conversation in the first half of the year, and maybe not even in February or March. Progress!

In such a new place I find that I’m always trying to build context by connecting the people and ideas I find in different places. Hungary is a fascinating place to do this. And it’s great to do this with friends spread out throughout the country!

Balogas

 

That’s the Hungarian word for graduation.  Last week, one of the families in the village invited me to attend their son’s preschool graduation.  A dozen other Görögszállás families and I made our way to Belegrad, the village next door, on bicycles. The kids had a quick program that was probably as smooth as any preschool program.  
After 9 months here I’m still picking up on all of the ways that people in Gorogszallas are related. The Gorogszallas kids had whole cheering sections for them with cousins, aunts, uncles, godparents, grandparents, great grandparents.
After the ceremony we made our way back to Gorogszallas—a 10 minute ride—where the family who invited me had prepared a feast for lunch. The mom apologized to me saying that she knew it probably wasn’t as good as what I eat at my host family’s house, but she hoped I would like it. It was amazing to see the happiness and celebration in this family’s home. Life is hard for them; the lows are pretty low and the highs are few and far between.  It was incredibly humbling to be invited to break bread and celebrate with them on one of their highs! 

Snapshot of a day

Today is a normal day for me in Görögszállás.  Some things have been routine, some things have been unexpected i.e. a 20 minute wait at a railroad crossing where I was waiting with my bicycle.  Still, in a way, this type of unexpected waiting is also something I’ve come to expect this year.  

Today I also did something that felt familiar, but did in it an unfamiliar place. We have lots of zucchini in the house right now, so I emailed my parents for their zucchini bread recipe. As I’m mentioned before, Hungary’s gastronomy tends to be fairly flavorful but also fairly repetitive week in and week out.  So the idea of using shredded zucchini to make sweet bread got some funny looks when I first mentioned it here at the house.  

There were the expected things—like the taste of the batter with all of its cinnamon and vanilla that made me think “do I actually need to bake this?” And there was the shredder (is that what you call it) that still reminds of when I was small and kept grinding a carrot until I realized I ran out of carrot and started in on my finger.  These were the expected, or familiar, things.

And then there was the unexpected.  Converting Fahrenheit to Celsius only to discover that there’s no temperature gauge on the oven.  I told my host mom I wanted 175 Celsius and she seemed to know just where to turn to the knob.  There was also the grocery shopping trip to buy walnuts, raisins, and vanilla extract in which I wandered the aisles looking for the items and carried my iPhone with its Hungarian/English dictionary app so I could ask people for these items.

The bread tastes great, but only lasts a short time. The smell in the house is great too, and lasts longer!

I just opened an email from a family friend who lives in Iowa and happened upon my blog last week.  She read all of it, which was both great for sharing this experience, and also provoking in terms of what role the blog plays at this point in the year.

Lately, as time winds down here, I’m feeling more self-induced pressure to come up with conclusions on the experience so far, or at least articulate on-going questions. 

But the blog isn’t the place for those.  For now, I’m sharing this slice of a typical day filled with both the expected and the unexpected, the familiar and unfamiliar.

Brotherly cook-off

As I was typing in "blogger.com" I was thinking it had been a while since I posted.  Yes, actually it's been a month to the day.  Life has been happening here, and I should probably be sharing more of life's moments.  Take yesterday, for example:

Cooking/baking is not a strong skill of mine.  I can help in the kitchen, I can do the basics, but my experience is lacking. When I'm at home in the US I have two parents who are great and adventurous cooks, uncles who are great grill masters, aunts who are also fantastic cooks, and a grandma who, in her earlier years, could whip out 4 dozen cookies, a hot dish and 4 side dishes, and some caramel rolls in her sleep. When I was in college, I was usually too stingy to buy good ingredients and too "busy" to spend time cooking. The point is, cooking/baking is not something I usually do.

Here in Göröszállás, my host mom is the kitchen engineer and darn good one.  Cooking and baking here are simpler. In some ways its healthier because many of the ingredients are basic and don't include processed, high fructose corn syrup additives. While household incomes in Hungary are significantly lower than the US, food prices are comparable. Add the fact that the village doesn't have a store, and the spectrum of ingredients and food in the pantry because more limited. 

While I've helped my host-mom in the kitchen at various times throughout the year, I didn't really get the itch to cook anything on my own until a colleague came to visit in early May.  We cooked hamburger patties made with beef, which is not overly common in Hungary.  They were a success! My host dad and brother especially enjoyed them.

Hungarians make darn good pancakes--called palacsintas (pawl-aw-chintas). We've made them in the village a few times and I'm tried them at other markets and festivals.  They're like a crepe and similarly filled with jam, nutella, or other sweet filling.  

Last night I decided to make "American" pancakes which are unique to Hungarians because they're much thicker and more substantive.  I checked with my host mom to make sure they had the ingredients in the house.  No oil! No butter! I assumed we had these things, and usually they do. But for the time being, we had a vat of pig fat. Maybe some of you foodies would shrug and say this is the same thing as oil or butter. To me, the idea of it seems like it would have a different taste and be more...fatty. But, because it's not everyday I get to cook with pig fat I decided to forge on.  And the pancakes turned out to be a smash hit! I didn't make very many because I didn't know how they would go over.  Also, cooking with gas was a new experience.

I think my host brother still had room in his stomach afterwards. He said, "now (9:30pm) we make Hungarian pancakes."  

This turned out to be one of the best nights of brotherly bonding we've had all year.  We made a huge stack of palacsintas taking turns at the griddle and spreading jam and nutella on the steaming cakes.  We spoke in our usual Hunglish and had a fascinating conversation about life in the village and his plans for the future. 

In the end, it was a great night, and I'm glad I said yes to cooking with pig fat.  

Posta ember

Every morning around 11 the Görögszállás post man comes into the village and taps his horn a few times to announce his arrival.  In Hungary, and probably other places, people can go to the post office and pay their bills for their cell phone, utilities, house payment, TV, internet.  People end up having a lot of interaction with the post man, especially since many of them are home during the day.

The post man, though, isn't all business.  Earlier in the year I had a lot of mail requiring my signature while I was trying to get a visa.  When the post man came inside for a signature, he usually got a cup of coffee, and sometimes a typical Hungarian three-course lunch. When he stops by the Children's House he kicks the soccer ball with the kids and has such a friendly, approachable nature that they all flock to him.  
 

This is how some folks spend their day...

 

I found this infographic a few weeks ago which provided some interesting food for thought on my question "how does one spend the day?" - see previous post.  There's a lot of things I like about this.  For starters, there's no color code for watching Netflix or surfing facebook.  There is, however, a good chunk of most days dedicated to socializing in person and communicating with people either in person or by letter.  I especially like Ben Franklin's morning ritual of setting the day's resolution and asking "what good shall I do today."  Sleep patterns are also interesting.  It's interesting that the color gray--"making ends meet"--appears infrequently.  We know that plenty of prominent historical figures weren't always good with money.  But they did spend their days doing interesting things, things that shaped their world and the future.  

What will be your day's resolution?

Infographic from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/29/brilliant-people-schedules_n_5055953.html 

 

How does one spend the day?

This question of “how does one spend the day" is, probably, one of the most important questions that keeps coming up for me as I spend this year in a place that is so different from home.  I focused on this to some extent in my most recent newsletter.  Framing this question, which began as a collection of thoughts and observations, into words comes from two very different realms of experience.
In one realm I hear stories and see—both firsthand, and elsewhere through media--people in this world without a job and basic resources.  They spend most of their time trying to survive in their environment. Here in Gorogszallas, I see people laboring each day for things I generally take for granted: heat, water, food, shelter, clothing. Both how they spend their day, and how they think about the day is different from what I know. It becomes easy for us to fragment each day with meetings, errands, house work, projects, leisure, exercise, entertainment, study.  Let’s remember that the 40 hour workweek, perhaps with benefits and even paid time off, is a relatively recent phenomena.  
So then the other realm of experience helping me to frame this question is precisely the highly-developed, busy, connected realm that I and all of you reading this are familiar with. I recently shared a quote with a friend that helped me to frame this question about how one spends the day.  E. B. White writes, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”  The very notion that we have the opportunity to both enjoy and improve, and that it can be a choice each day, speaks to the level of privilege we come from.  Luther would add that each day we are reborn—made new—in God’s love and grace.
There is not a “right” way to spend your day. And we certainly can’t improve everything all at once. Or perhaps a less extreme way of saying this is that we can’t always do big things. This shouldn’t curb our ambition or stymy our talents, but it should let us pause and consider the time we have each day, what we’ll do with today, and remember brothers and sisters around the world who will spend their day in vastly different ways. 
Sometimes we romanticize images from developing parts of the world such as vendors selling food in a street market, or children playing soccer with a tattered ball, or families bathing in a river.  For reasons of history, religion, economics, politics, and sometimes shear fate, the way they spend their day is so different from what many of us can relate to. We like to think of not just our days, but our lives as a clear trajectory: education, then a career, raise a family, and eventually retire. This isn’t a good or normal trajectory for everyone.  I’m discovering here just how vulnerable to disruption and scarcity people’s lives can be.  
Democritus writes, “life without celebrations is like a long road without an inn.”  I like celebrations too, but now I think more about those people who can’t stop at the inn on the long road for any number of reasons. We pass people like this on the road all the time.  Why not share a story, or an idea, or a sign of kindness.
All 7 billion of us get the same 24 hour trip around the sun.  What will be your quest today?  What will you do to care for yourself and your neighbors? How will you spend the day?

Faith and Doubt

That's the title of a new column in the Sioux Falls (SD) Argus Leader written by the Rev. Dr. Anna Madsen. 

Her words:

I’ve always been drawn to the last few paragraphs of the gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.

The disciples — those who had been with Jesus for miracles, for teachings, for reprimands, for healings, for feedings, for deaths and for resurrections (minus Judas, but that’s another matter) — gathered at the Galilee mountain to meet with the risen Jesus.

Matthew makes a point of calling these men “disciples,” as opposed to, say, men, or followers, or friends.

And then, depending on how you read the Greek, Matthew either said that some disciples worshipped and some doubted, or he said that the disciples, all of them, worshipped and doubted.

That’s interesting.

The disciples, these men who had known Jesus for years, still weren’t quite sure what had just gone down, didn’t quite know whether they could entirely believe their eyes and ears and experiences.

Some, if not all of them, doubted.

And then Jesus said, “Go, make more disciples.”

Go make more worshippers and more doubters.

I’ve been invited to write this column, and it’s a column we’ve decided to name “Faith and Doubt.”

I like that title a lot.
My vocation is to be a theologian, and a systematic theologian at that. We systematic theologians wake up every morning and are awfully happy that we get to spend our days thinking and wondering about God.

But we not only spend our time thinking and wondering about our own notion of God; we also ponder how other people think and wonder about God. We know that there isn’t just one way, one system, of belief for God. Instead, there are closer to, well, gazillions of systems for thinking and wondering and believing in God.

And we know that how one thinks about God makes a difference: It makes a difference in terms of how people are parents and partners and citizens and voters and friends and sufferers and consolers. In short, how we believe, and in whom we believe, shapes everything about who we are.

This observation doesn’t necessarily imply a better or a worse way of being in the world. But it does imply — in fact, it straight-out means — that different beliefs make for different people.

It also means that no single person can believe that she or he has got God all sewn up.
There’s a pretty decent margin for error when we speak of God.

In my study, I have hundreds upon hundreds of books. One day, a gentleman made an appointment and brought along his Bible.

He pointed to a certain text and said, not with anger, irritation or defensiveness, but rather with conviction: “But look! This is what the Bible says and what it says is what it means!”
So I took a deep breath, and I blew it out, and I said, “Sir, I have an awful lot of books on my walls. Nope, I haven’t read them all. But I’ve read more than a few of them. There are books here from all across time and across the globe, and most of them have something to do with the Bible. If it were so simple to know what, exactly, the Bible says and means, then I wouldn’t need all these books, and I wouldn’t need all these shelves. I would need a small table, big enough to hold two books. One book would be the Bible, and the other would be a volume titled, ‘This is What the Bible Says and What It Means.’ ”
I’m afraid that Christians, anyway, believe that the Bible means only one thing, that faith only means one thing, and we sure hope (if not outright believe) that we’ve got it right. All too often, I fear, this mindset makes us afraid of wondering, afraid of learning and afraid of asking questions, because each of these habits might either hint of or lead to doubt.
As if that’s a bad thing.

Seems to me, if doubt is good enough for the disciples, it is good enough for the rest of us.
Even the word “faith” means trust in something not seen, not immediately present.

I have faith that tomorrow will come, but I’m not certain of it.

I can’t prove it.

But still and even so, my actions today are based a whole lot on the premise that tomorrow will, in fact, come.
 
To have faith means to trust, and to trust means to live and breathe out of a belief that something or someone is worthy of rearranging your life on its or their account.
I figure that such a commitment calls for an occasional look-see to check out whether what I claim to be right and true checks out against itself, and against my experience of the world.
Not only that, but although it might surprise some people, thinking about God — the act of being a theologian — is fun.

No, really, it is.

It’s fun.

There are so many quirks of history, word plays, insights and little-known facts about and in religious history that cause a person to wonder in amazement, to be utterly surprised and to totally impress family and friends at the dinner table. Some of them are worth checking out because they are simply interesting; some can change your life.

To be sure, there are some statements we can know, factually, to be true in religion.
For example, Moses came before Mozart.
We know that. We can prove that.

But there are all sorts of matters in theology that open up mystery, and questions, and probably a healthy dose of humility.

Czeslaw Milosz, who won the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature, tells of an “Old Jew of Galacia” who said:

When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Why, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug and the worse kind of rascal.

I’m hopeful that this column will err less on the rascally 75 percent to 100 percent thug side of things, and settle in more between 55 percent to 75 percent right. I’m hopeful that this column will give some room for thinking about theology, religion, worship and communities of belief in new ways, offering a little something both to the faithful and to the doubters.

Freelance theologian Anna Madsen is director of OMG: Center for Theological Conversation in Sioux Falls. Follow her writing and speaking events at Facebook, Twitter and www.omgcenter.com.

Patience

I recently wrote about the joy of sharing some of my YAGM experiences with other YAGMs around the world.  As a reminder, the Young Adults in Global Mission program has volunteers in Argentine/Uruguay, Mexico, South Africa, Madagascar, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Jerusalem/West Bank, and Hungary.  
Living in totally foreign places, speaking in a new language, navigating new communities, and implicitly representing the power and privilege of the United States present some interesting challenges, and of course a few laughs, that are nice to share with people experiencing the same things. This perspective also gives me a greater appreciation for people outside this program who are similarly working in an international context doing hands-on work.  A family friend, Mary Redlin, just finished her third entrepreneur business training for women in Uganda.  She wrote a great blog post about patience, and recognizing that sometimes it takes longer than we expect—and want—for our efforts to bear fruit.  
We want things to work now.  We want to connect with people now.  We want to bypass failure and get right to success, because, among other reasons, failure takes time.
Living in an international context means things take longer that we would like or expect to fall into place.  It takes longer to develop relationships, not to mention trust and respect. It takes longer to communicate ideas. It takes longer to get places.  It takes longer to figure out the nuances of people, communities, and social norms.  All of this extra time means many moments to practice patience, although that’s not always easy or fun when I just to mail a postcard, or get to town, or express what I’m thinking.
Ever since winter left northeast Hungary (okay, so it was a pretty easy winter) I feel like I’m finally starting to figure out the pulse of my village and the nearby city of Nyiregyhaza.  For the first time last week I had reason to navigate the bus system within the city and transfer to a new bus after the one that brought me in from Gorogszallas.  In the beginning of March I found the public library which has a great English section, and also people who are eager to practice their English with a native speaker.  I’ve gotten to know some of the teenagers better who come to the village’s after-school club.  Perhaps all of these things could have happened earlier through some stubbornness, persistence, and the simple passing of time.  But maybe patience itself can actually help expedite and even lead to a better outcome.  Maybe more mindfulness for patience and things out of our control can help us enjoy the journey and the destination.

"There's room for doubt in faith"

Living in such a foreign context and working through the Hungarian Lutheran Church lets me see and understand how culture shapes faith.  Here, in a new column in South Dakota’s Argus Leader, Rev. Dr. Anna Madsen talks about our different ideas of God.  Her words are especially worth thinking about in light of the familiar Gospel stories we’ll hear during the next week and half.  (Anna also writes a fascinating blog of her own - check it out here.)
 


I’ve always been drawn to the last few paragraphs of the gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.
  The disciples — those who had been with Jesus for miracles, for teachings, for reprimands, for healings, for feedings, for deaths and for resurrections (minus Judas, but that’s another matter) — gathered at the Galilee mountain to meet with the risen Jesus.
  Matthew makes a point of calling these men “disciples,” as opposed to, say, men, or followers, or friends.
  And then, depending on how you read the Greek, Matthew either said that some disciples worshipped and some doubted, or he said that the disciples, all of them, worshipped and doubted.
  That’s interesting.
  The disciples, these men who had known Jesus for years, still weren’t quite sure what had just gone down, didn’t quite know whether they could entirely believe their eyes and ears and experiences. Some, if not all of them, doubted. And then Jesus said, “Go, make more disciples.” Go make more worshippers and more doubters.
  I’ve been invited to write this column, and it’s a column we’ve decided to name “Faith and Doubt.”
  I like that title a lot.
  My vocation is to be a theologian, and a systematic theologian at that. We systematic theologians wake up every morning and are awfully happy that we get to spend our days thinking and wondering about God.
  But we not only spend our time thinking and wondering about our own notion of God; we also ponder how other people think and wonder about God. We know that there isn’t just one way, one system, of belief for God. Instead, there are closer to, well, gazillions of systems for thinking and wondering and believing in God.
  And we know that how one thinks about God makes a difference: It makes a difference in terms of how people are parents and partners and citizens and voters and friends and sufferers and consolers. In short, how we believe, and in whom we believe, shapes everything about who we are.  
This observation doesn’t necessarily imply a better or a worse way of being in the world. But it does imply — in fact, it straight-out means — that different beliefs make for different people.
It also means that no single person can believe that she or he has got God all sewn up. There’s a pretty decent margin for error when we speak of God.
  In my study, I have hundreds upon hundreds of books. One day, a gentleman made an appointment and brought along his Bible.
  He pointed to a certain text and said, not with anger, irritation or defensiveness, but rather with conviction: “But look! This is what the Bible says and what it says is what it means!” So I took a deep breath, and I blew it out, and I said, “Sir, I have an awful lot of books on my walls. Nope, I haven’t read them all. But I’ve read more than a few of them. There are books here from all across time and across the globe, and most of them have something to do with the Bible. If it were so simple to know what, exactly, the Bible says and means, then I wouldn’t need all these books, and I wouldn’t need all these shelves. I would need a small table, big enough to hold two books. One book would be the Bible, and the other would be a volume titled, ‘This is What the Bible Says and What It Means.’ ”
  I’m afraid that Christians, anyway, believe that the Bible means only one thing, that faith only means one thing, and we sure hope (if not outright believe) that we’ve got it right. All too often, I fear, this mindset makes us afraid of wondering, afraid of learning and afraid of asking questions, because each of these habits might either hint of or lead to doubt.
  As if that’s a bad thing.
  Seems to me, if doubt is good enough for the disciples, it is good enough for the rest of us. Even the word “faith” means trust in something not seen, not immediately present. I have faith that tomorrow will come, but I’m not certain of it. I can’t prove it. But still and even so, my actions today are based a whole lot on the premise that tomorrow will, in fact, come. To have faith means to trust, and to trust means to live and breathe out of a belief that something or someone is worthy of rearranging your life on its or their account.
I figure that such a commitment calls for an occasional look-see to check out whether what I claim to be right and true checks out against itself, and against my experience of the world. Not only that, but although it might surprise some people, thinking about God — the act of being a theologian — is fun. No, really, it is.
  It’s fun.
  There are so many quirks of history, word plays, insights and little-known facts about and in religious history that cause a person to wonder in amazement, to be utterly surprised and to totally impress family and friends at the dinner table. Some of them are worth checking out because they are simply interesting; some can change your life. To be sure, there are some statements we can know, factually, to be true in religion. For example, Moses came before Mozart. We know that. We can prove that.
  But there are all sorts of matters in theology that open up mystery, and questions, and probably a healthy dose of humility.
  Czeslaw Milosz, who won the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature, tells of an “Old Jew of Galacia” who said: When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Why, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug and the worse kind of rascal.
  I’m hopeful that this column will err less on the rascally 75 percent to 100 percent thug side of things, and settle in more between 55 percent to 75 percent right. I’m hopeful that this column will give some room for thinking about theology, religion, worship and communities of belief in new ways, offering a little something both to the faithful and to the doubters.