Writing Isaiah Entry #16

Writing Isaiah 

Entry #16 

August 26th, 2013

Tricha Grajek 

How has your body/life/mind been healed in new ways since and during your pregnancy?  I can only imagine at this point...

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds 

I remember the first time someone referred to me as a 'healer.' It was my mentor/spiritual-mother/pastor Rev. Marjorie Denise Matthews Wilkes. She was introducing me to someone on the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) campus, someone who had just preached at our Black History Month chapel service, someone who brought me to my knees and brought me to tears all at the same time--a man named Rev. Dr. James Noel. Professor of American religious/church history, incredibly talented visual artist and ordained minister in the Presbyterian church. It was one of those introductions that made my knees shake because I didn't feel worthy to be in the presence of such greatness. And when it came time to introduce me to him, Marjorie put her arm around my shoulder and said "Dr. Noel, this is Emily Joye, current student at PSR. She is anointed, this one. A prophet and healer." When she said it I felt this squishy, uncomfortable sensation in my belly. My eyes immediately hit the concrete pavement and an incredible force of shame washed over me. How could she say such a thing? And especially in front of *this* man? For one, I'd always considered myself mostly broken and in need of healing, not any kind of source of healing in and of myself. Secondly, when I thought of 'healers' back then I thought of folks like Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa...and well, Marjorie...and I was *nowhere* near that level of personhood. Third: I was too tattooed, too activist and angry, too queer, too confrontational, too formerly addicted and confounded to be a "healer." I imagined Dr. Noel could see all of that just looking at me and so I was embarrassed about the gap between what was being said and what I felt was true. Now I know my projections of what Dr. Noel saw merely reflected back what I thought about myself. Problem was: I knew Mama Marjorie was incapable of lying. Her words always have been and always will be "solid rocks" on which "I stand." There's the Word (which is Christ) and there are the words (Christ's treasured earthen vessels who in their unique, personal way incarnate the Truth/Gospel) in our world today. Marjorie is one in the great Other, without a doubt. So in that moment, forced to grapple with the discrepancies between what she said and how I felt, there came a reckoning. Was "healing" a part of my vocation and I just didn't see/feel/know it? 

Ever since then, I've been discerning what 'healing' actually is. Perhaps i'm not alone in this kind of discernment. In some ways I feel like biblical stories/images get in the way for contemporary Christians. We are taught to think of healing in non-consensual, ableist, ex-nihilo models. Like out of nowhere, we encounter suffering on the street, and without relationship, without being asked, we reach over and extend our hand to some poor soul in need and because the power in us is so great, that person is "fixed." What a patriarchal, Western imperialist wet dream that is! Of course there's context for this kind of imaginative conception. While it comes dangerously close to the same ideological power dynamics that exist in colonization and rape, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't biblical, theological and Christological precedent right underneath it. We've got to grapple with this stuff as contemporary believers and theologians. We just do. I've been grappling for a long time. All this to say, when I read/see the word 'healing' there are parts of my conditioned white supremacist, ableist, patriarchal, imperialist thinking/mind that I must work hard, consciously, to identify and deconstruct. 

Tricha, you may think I have forgotten your question totally by this point. But I haven't. You asked me to reflect on healing in the experience of pregnancy. In order to do that, it felt necessary to be honest about the identity and contextual struggles that present themselves whenever I try to engage this topic. So now that I've done that, I'd like to move into more beautiful things. 

Last week my mentor Jo Ann Morris was in town. She sat on my office couch for 3 hours, which felt like the longest drink of water my thirsty soul has had in a long long time. We talked about all kinds of stuff: personal life, family, work, politics, love, justice, etc. But one thing Jo Ann shared with me has been ringing in my ears (and heart) ever since. She has an incredible sense of urgency in the work she does as a professional author, coach and facilitator in the area of diversity. She doesn't let *anything* get in the way of risk, courage and truth-telling (3 things that cannot exist without each other which she reminds me often and is evidenced by her life). When I asked her about what sustains that level of urgency and relentless pursuit of risk/courage/truth in her work/life--she said, "I'm going to die." This is apparently a refrain she is using a lot right now because she referenced it three different times throughout the course of our conversation, once rather casually, once folded into huge husky laughter, once dead-ass serious. "I'm going to die," she reminds herself, she reminds others, she reminds me. 

Is not the fact of death the most healing balm there is? For some it's fear. For others an abstract. But for those who have faced it or brushed up against it, whether willingly or not, there can be an endless supply of life-giving permission in embracing the reality of our mortality.

Isaiah is now 32 weeks developed in the womb. He is flapping, kicking, flipping, hiccuping, sleeping, etc. I feel him (even in stillness) now every single day in a way that I will not feel him soon. This morning, one of the first things J.R. said to me upon waking up is: "little Isaiah was kicking up a storm last night while you were asleep." You know what that means? That means right now, in this phase of pregnancy, my husband is able to spoon me and feel his son's force materialize in the spaces between us. In a matter of 8 or so weeks, that will no longer be the case. When Isaiah emerges (God willing, safely) I will feel his newborn body on my chest, feel him breathing, even feel him move towards my breasts for the first time, which will be the source of his nourishment in the months ahead. And, there will come a time, not shortly thereafter when he will no longer breathe on the stillness of nor fit so perfectly on my chest. Later he will require solid foods and will no longer breast-feed. I know all of this because I've gone through these phases with Aurora. They do not last. They come so beautifully and then before you can even fucking blink, they are gone. 

Things die. They go away. What we have now we will not always have. Acknowledging these realities gives me permission to be fully present in every moment of my life, but particularly those moments that feel perfect. And honestly Tricha, those moments are pretty frequent these days. There's healing in that. Frequent moments of encountering perfection after many many years of not even believing perfection was possible--there's healing in that. 

This morning Aurora began to stir around 8:00 a.m. I was in the living room, storming the key-board in the midst of another writing project. I really really didn't want to stop writing because I was on a roll, and yet J.R. was in the shower and her little voice kept calling over the baby monitor: "babba. hello. babba. mommy. daddy. babba. hiiiiii." Begrudgingly I went to the kitchen, filled a bottle, and then way-less-begrudgingly picked up my baby girl's body and carried her with me back into the living room. She placed herself square in my lap. It was just about that time that Isaiah began stirring within. I had a baby on the outside and a baby on the inside, both freshly awake, both gently moving in their own way. I was between them and yet it felt like the closest we'd ever been. There was a moment when Aurora's soft breathing and Isaiah's tender kicking and my body prehending it all overwhelmed me: how did love find its way to me like this? How is it that I get to be the thin layer of existence that right now separates these two by skin, but once Isaiah emerges will connect them biologically forever? I had no idea my life could or would ever be/feel this useful. 

So healing. 

I've written ad nauseum about the way womyn's bodies are mythologized, disregarded, and trashed in this society. So I won't go into all that here. But I will say that I think 'healing' is about re/discovering power where larger forces have rendered us powerless and therefore mothering (whether biologically or by choice) is an unparalleled time for womyn to discover their power. I've never felt powerless in my body. My body has always been a source of strength for me. I've told you that before. But I have felt absolutely powerless when it came to my capacity to be/do/have family, to bare/bear connective, biological relations and to abide in the love of my bloodline. These perfect moments are healing me from that mythological/narrative about powerlessness by putting me in touch with the power I do have. I cannot tell you what a difference that has made and is making in my vocation. 

Pastoral ministry is full of all kinds of stuff. But one thing we swim in, constantly, are the myths that others bring to our work. Like, folks think we are inherently more spiritual than them, and therefore more capable of insight, prophecy, healing, and leadership. If you are a pastor who likes your ego stroked more than you care about the will of God being done, you will confirm these myths for people while losing your soul. If however you know that you are going to die and everyone else is going to die and that time for folks to discover the Gospel in themselves (as opposed to perpetually discovering the Gospel-according-to-their-pastor) is limited, then you earnestly and hopefully humbly get about the business of putting people in touch with the power they do have--which is always, as St. Paul the Apostle reminds us, the power of God at work in them. Often that will entail deconstructing the myths of power they carry about themselves, others and God. Some people will not hang out for that part because it gets wickedly fucking uncomfortable. "Never under estimate the inclination to bolt." Right? Many of those myths give people their sense of identity, sense of world, sense of place. Destabilizing that is risky. But/and. My friend Kayla Bonewell used to have a quote on her Facebook that seems relevant here: "World-views create worlds." They hammered this into us in seminary. I think partly because if we dared going into a 'healing' profession, we better know that what often stands in the way of people's healing are the worlds and views they hold to be true. If people's views/myths/narratives of power are rendering them powerless, there's no way to heal from that except through deconstructing those views/myths/narratives about power and creating new ones. Which is of course about facilitating space for people to tap into and experience their own power, like women's writing group and our fitness group with Taryn. Not an easy (pastoral) task if people think that a pastor's job is comprised of listening compassionately and giving answers. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Creating new ones--views and worlds--doesn't happen all at once, though it does happen simultaneously. It happens in this really interesting matrix-y kind of way where you do new stuff that makes you think new stuff. Or you think new stuff which enables you to do new stuff. And then all of a sudden your thinking and doing are dancing to a different beat, shifting forms along the way, passing information back and forth, enticed, like best friends on an old sofa telling each other radically risqué and totally tender love stories. 

Pastors don't heal people. People who heal (which pastors can be part of, of course) do so because they courageously move into discomfort, dance bravely into new territory and willingly embrace and share widely the gifts that come as a result. Because of my own healing experience, I have come to think of my pastoral duties differently. I don't heal people. I make space for people to move, dance, embrace and share. Healing happens in those spaces if God and humans collide. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Whether it happens isn't my responsibility. Making the space is my responsibility.  

 

In that regard I think many of us on this Earth are 'healers.' Mama Marjorie was right about me, and, I'm just one of many. I suspect Tricha that you are one of many too. In fact, I know you are. And I cannot wait to see how your current pregnancy and those to follow will engage this question/prompt of healing in your own life and in the life of others. Be sure to write back. Some day. 

Love,

eeJ