Hush: Winter's Arrival Nov 23 2012

Hush. Hush. The snow fall is beginning and (of course) echoing. Look. Listen. Wonder. Remember. Lean into loving the living. Soak with grief your longing for the dead. Hush. Hush. Winter, in all her horrendous simplicity and silent elegance, descends. Arrives. Invites. Compels. These contradictory element/ary juxtapositions in their stark bare here-ness. Don't shop. Don't stuff. I'm talking to you America. Just hush and plunge. Into this tender comatose, this solemn last breath. Hibernation time will come soon enough. For now, just hush.

Nov 25th 2012

you choosing mystery. because you've got it like that, you relentless erotic pull. you red carpet and temple and throne. unlit candle. devouring flame. you yearning for delight. desiring the chase. knowing i will. come after you. bow before you. even though you mock me again and again and again. confronted, disturbed, intrigued by ignorance, i feel your touch, whispering "you'll never know. but come closer."

Comings & Goings November 12 2012

Comings: bursts of surprise. Gifts unexpected. Wide open eyes.
About your business like every other day,
then some kind of wandering wanderer wanders your head-buried way.
Not too much later you wonder how you ever lived before
without that wandering wanderer you've learned to unashamedly adore.

Goings: a rip your guts out, a robbery, life's necessary yet greatest sin.
Wretched apartness, I curse you from underneath my skin.
All this missing and missing again.

These humans, these creatures who make up my self.
Gone beyond gone, only half absence felt.
Where to reach? Where to reach?
There's nothing in this everything where love becomes breech.

No distance because they live inside, but out there they reside too.
No reaching equals touching but no gap releases you.
Yoked. Held. Just here all alone
haunted by (the gone) others who made/make this life a home.

Hearing Red

The year after my dad died

when self-destructive behaviors 

of an adolescent a little too smart to be saved

and a little too saved to be smart 

began waving red flags in my mother's mind

a therapist was appointed to the task.

Mission impossible. 

That same year my period came. 

Like many 13 year olds 

I consulted the frequent signifiers of my culture 

to figure out how to appropriately respond. 

All development is mimetic, after all. 

Took courses and rigorous notes 

by watching my creaturely sisters

who seemed more often than not

as if they were doing all of this for the 

entertainment and confirmation of male/truth/s.

 

"Complain. Joke. Trivialize. 

Consider it a nuisance, and act suprised

by how inconvenient it is every month. 

Never pay attention to the pain; just play annoyed

and grip your belly as if to say "be quiet"  for all of us."

So I did. And one day

as I was mimicking this cultural performance 

in my therapist's office, she interrupted me.

"What if you didn't do that? 

What if you learned to listen to it?

What if you considered it a creative, purifying force within you?"

 

She didn't say "feminism" or "cultural conditioning" or "patriarchy."

She invited me to witness and recognize my body differently.

Thousands and thousands of dollars were worth that moment alone. 

17 years later a rhythm began in my abdomen that I quickly recognized

as a creative, purifying force, one to be heard and obeyed not dismissed and avoided. 

Because I'd learned long ago the art of recognizing my body differently, 

my daughter was born into a welcomed space instead of a war zone. 

Therapy saves. 

 

Confessing Cultural Conditioning in the last days of Pregnancy

All of us are formed by institutions. All of us inherit ways of perceiving, being and doing from family, culture, religion, etc. What we do with that formation and inheritance determines the content of our ethics. Because our early formative years and the inheritance we receive are purely chance, we are not responsible for how we are formed or what we inherit. We are only responsible for what we do with that formation and inheritance once we become cognitively competent enough to ethically reflect on and reform them. In my opinion it is the ethical duty of all humans to sift through, wrestle with and transform (for the individual & common good) the legacies they've inherited.
I am still working on healing parts of my being that are deeply rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy and rampant ableism. These personality and behavioral struggles show up most viciously and seductively in the "Protestant Work Ethic" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic) which i've inherited from several key spheres of influence in my life, most notably the church and my/the nuclear family. In a nutshell: I over do it, to my detriment. I try to escape my limits and vulnerability by exerting extreme effort, thereby proving that I am strong (not weak). This is also shadow behavior typical of Enneagram 8 types (http://theenneagram.blogspot.com/2007/09/type-8.html).

I need to write about this detrimental tendency for several reasons. A) It's humbling to notice it, B) faithful to confess it and C) transformational to open the doors for others to witness this struggle in hopes that they too can relate, confess, transform and heal alongside me. I know there are other humans out there of all kinds, particularly Enneagram 8s, who struggle with internalized & externalized white supremacy, patriarchy and ableism. This is for all of us, in the hopes of healing.

My due date is tomorrow, March 19th. I am currently at the very end stages of pregnancy. I could have a baby at any time. Ever since I started thinking about maternity leave, I made the commitment to "working right up until I have the baby." Where the hell did that commitment come from?

Well, for one I wanted/want to have as much time at home with my baby as possible and there's only an 8 week window. So if I left before the kid was born, that'd be one less day to spend time with her at the end. Totally legit. Secondly, women's reproductive lives are often sites of incredible prejudice and hostility in the work place and I live in fear of that, perhaps live with internalizd sexism as a result of that. God forbid I took a few days off before labor and someone thought I was lazy. To deepen that fear/internalized-sexism, I am working in a place where my predecessor received considerable pushback (from the congregation) for taking too much maternity leave. She apparently had pretty intense post-partum depression which members of the church, particularly the boomer women, had/have TONS of judgment about. But instead of being in solidarity with her (which I have been dialogically with congregants, to my partial credit) as a feminist and person who seeks to challenge the oppression of people struggling with mental/physical "health," I became hyper-vigilant about not confirming stereotypes about pregnant women in the work-place and not repeating dynamics of the institutional past. Like how much power do I really think I have? Good Lord. All of these things combined, I found myself more and more trying/struggling to 'hang on' to 'muscle through' as these last weeks unfolded.

But I've been tired and heavy and slower and in need of more rest in the last couple of weeks, which has problematized that ole protestant work ethic. In the last 3 days I've had spotting and more pelvis pressure than usual. My hormones are going crazy and I'm sleepy/weepy/hungry all the time. When I called my colleagues to tell them I wouldn't officiate worship this morning because I just couldn't do it, everything at my core shook with guilt and shame. Hi, my name is Emily Joye and I'm a work-a-holic.   

Dude: my baby is trying to make her way into the world. The least I can do is take it easy and give her the energy/down-time/support she needs in that process. Here is the ultimate irony in all this: I am about to do the strongest thing a woman can do, but instead of resting in order to optimize my birthing strength, I have been opting to appear strong by working working working and thereby weakening my physical self. Insane.

Everything I know about nature tells me that there must be dormancy before blossoming, must be long periods of quiet and stillness before the bounty of Spring's beauty can flourish. The least I can do is hibernate now, take long naps now, walk slowly now, eat intentionally now, pay attention to the rhythms of my/our body. My daughter deserves this. I deserve this. We deserve to begin this way together. And yet, it is not my first instinct. This is what I'm saying. Look at how insidious these inheritances can be! The protestant work ethic, the never-ending soul-devouring beast inside is equally strong as the natural, divine maternal ethic within me.

Thank God my own mother is here, nurturing me to nurture myself and her granddaughter. Thank God I read women authors who have gone through this mess and have something prophetic to say to my spirit. Thank God I have feminist male colleagues who are supportive and affirming when I lay down self-preserving boundaries. Harmful cultural conditioning may be strong, but we can move through/beyond it if we 1) learn how to self reflect and spot our shadow tendencies when they arise 2) surround ourselves with people and resources that call us back/into the way of life.

 

Statement

Why I am skeptical of heterosexual marriage...

Men and women have had fundamentally unequal power relations throughout most of history in most places. Men have acquired undue privilege and women have acquired undue oppression. Marriage is a partnership contract, one that fundamentally relies on the equality of the individuals within the contract to speak/act for themselves and to make decisions based in/on the welfare of the relationship. Without having undergone serious work around dismantling male privilege, men cannot be equal partners with women. And even then, men are not immune from bringing male domination into heterosexual marriage in all the unavoidable ways our society sets up. Without serious work of healing and empowerment, women cannot be equal partners with men. And even then, women are not immune from bringing internalized/externalized sexism into marriage in all the unavoidable ways our society sets up.

I am not saying healthy heterosexual marriage is an impossibility. I am saying its unlikely.

Healing takes time,

outstretched, long-standing time.

It takes a willingness to put aside this culture

that would have us do everything at lightning speed

in favor of a more sustainable future.

Healing takes time,

it moves in phases, fits and starts, cycles and

rhythms unknowable until you’re dancing them,

led by them, tripped up by them,

and brought back in again by some music

you simply cannot contain or predict.

And because healing takes time,

it requires endurance--

abiding, remaining, endurance.

It requires those who are willing to endure the excavation process,

those willing to invite, host & stay present with ghosts,

ghosts that scream and cry and hope with a yearning so deep

its almost unbearable because of its impossible indictment of the present.

When the healing work turns out different than you expected:

stay, don’t give up, don’t go away, stay.

When the healing work makes you look at everything you’ve been taught differently

and everyone you’ve been taught by differently:

stay, don’t give up, don’t go away, stay.

When the healing work threatens to shatter the very core

of who you’ve known yourself to be:

stay, don’t give up, don’t go away, stay.

It takes time. It requires endurance.

Please, stay. 

Doing the Right Thing vs Making the Right Thing Happen

Wayne Muller makes a distinction between “doing the right thing” and “making the right thing happen.” When I first heard Wayne make this distinction, it confused me. Those things are different? Yes. Yes, they are. And the distinction has everything to do with the issue of human power.

What do we really have control of? What do we really have the power to do?

Some people have a high internal locus of control, meaning, they believe they have a high capacity to personally impact the world around them. Some people have a high external locus of control, meaning, they believe they have a low capacity to impact the world around them. The former often feel like they can control everything; the latter often feel they are controlled by everything. And then there are those who fall in between these extremes, people who feel and know that they have some control over their lives but that they are also subject to the whims of the world around them for better and worse. It is my opinion that how we grow up–what kind of privileges and disadvantages we inherit, the systems of nurture and discipline that form us, and our exposure to various healthy and toxic environments/people–is ultimately responsible for where we fall on this spectrum of perceived control. Of course, we are capable of moving along this spectrum as we accumulate more wisdom through experience, but those early years make a huge difference in how we interpret our own agency throughout our lives.

For instance, for most of my upbringing I had a single mother who worked hard and always had relatively high paying jobs. She never depended on outside sources of income to support our family. As a result of that modeling, I’ve never even thought about depending on a spouse/lover/partner financially. I’ve been motivated to work hard and secure my own income. That’s what the women in my family do. I’ve been given a high internal locus of control when it comes to my finances because of what I inherited and saw modeled as a kid. I’ve met other women who are on the opposite side of the spectrum on this issue, women who expect to be taken care of financially by a spouse/lover/partner because that was the norm in their household. In their families, women took care of the house, cooked and raised babies; being in the work force was not an option or reality for them and so issues of finance belonged to someone else (usually, a husband). These women have a high external locus of control when it comes to finance because the decisions about and outcomes regarding money happen outside of them. I think I have all the power in the world when it comes to my financial situation. Others think they have no power when it comes to their financial situation. Both are probably skewed. Point being: what we inherit and have modeled for us as kids often has long standing impact upon our way of viewing the world and our understanding of how much power we do or don’t have.

For people who have a high internal locus of self control, it’s hard to keep the distinction between “doing the right thing” and “making the right thing happen” because we (yes, I identify with this crowd) think we have more power than we actually do. For people who have a high external locus of self control, it’s hard to keep the distinction between “doing the right thing” and “making the right thing happen” because they think they have less power than they actually do. And then there are those in the middle who appear to balance things out nicely, folks who walk adequately in their agency and surrender in necessary moments to their own limitations. I’ve always been jealous of them.

Truth is, we have the capacity to make our own choices and we have varying levels of influence over the lives of others. There are also things that will happen to us and around us that we cannot predict or control in any way. We humans are constantly negotiating both power and powerlessness.

And what of God, Pastor? Where does God fit into this?

Most conversations about God are strangely non-explicit about issues of power. And I will admit, I think this a dangerous thing, because people can go around saying things about God that have tremendous influence, things that may or may not be true or helpful. For instance, consider this relatively standard Thanksgiving prayer that could be and probably is uttered in countless homes and sanctuaries each November:

“Thank you God for the blessings you bestow upon us and our family. We know that not everyone in the world has food on the table or a roof over their heads and we thank you for what you have given us.”

There is an implicit claim of power in this prayer, specifically that God chooses to use God’s power to bless some people and to withhold and starve others. When you bring this implicit claim to people’s attention, they often get extremely mortified and deny any reference to God starving anyone, but that’s because their notions of God’s love don’t fit with what you’ve pointed out about their implicit notions of God’s power. The conflict has to do with our notions of who God is (character) and what God is capable of doing (agency). The conflict has to do with intersection of divine love and divine power.

Most of us have been taught classical theology through years of Sunday school, sermons and pop theology in a culture that loves to sound-byte about God. Most of us have been taught the three omni’s and agape, that God is omniscient (all knowing), omnipresent (always around/with us) omnipotent (all powerful), and all loving. Unfortunately the revelation of Jesus Christ is at odds with the classics of theology. The revelation of God made known in Jesus Christ is the incarnation, the gift of divine life made real in human flesh. In Genesis, in Jesus, in Pentecost we read of a God who again and again puts Itself into humanity for the sake of creating/interacting/sustaining the world according to the divine will. The interactivity between human and divine is the point, the meaning of life.

If we have a God who is capable of interacting with the world–which we must in order to have a relationship with God at all, which we must in order to believe and hope that God has any impact on us personally, socially, ecologically, etc–we’ve got a problem with the classical teachings of theology, particularly the third omni, the notion that God is all powerful. God cannot interact with the world freely, nor the world interact with God freely unless both God and the world share power. If the interactivity between divine and human is the meaning of life, then in order to live meaningful lives, the divine and humans must share power.

Classical theology reflects God having a high internal locus of control. The highest, in fact. Perhaps this theology reflects more about the people who have been writing/teaching/spreading it than it reflects about who God is and what kind of power God has. In this sense, I think our ideas of God have suffered from the same mistaken notion that people with a high internal locus of control suffer from. We’ve assumed too much power in one place. And I think we’ve therefore heightened our ideas about God’s ability to “make the right thing happen” at the expense of focusing on and acknowledging when God does “the right thing.”

Even though I have a high internal locus of control, there are certain things I’ve never been able to make happen. Seventeen years ago I wasn’t able to make my father’s cancer go away; he died. Eleven years ago, I wasn’t able to kick a drinking habit by myself; I needed other recovering people to show me how. I’ve never been able stop people from treating each other badly in church no matter how much I preach about integrity and love; scandals still happen and shatter relationships within the Body of Christ. Again and again, other people’s lives and choices, their struggles and strengths have impacted me. Sometimes I’ve chosen the right thing and the right thing has happened because the actions of others assisted the process. Other times I’ve chosen the right thing and the right thing hasn’t happened because the action of others blocked the process. And then there have been times when interactions of shared power have completely deconstructed and reconstructed my idea/experience of what the right thing is in the first place.

What sets God apart from the variability I’ve just described above is God’s love. God’s power, though perfect, is not infinite. I bet God wanted to take my dad’s cancer away too. I bet God wants addicts to get clean too. I bet God wants people to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly, always. Of course God wants these things; this is the One who says “I have no desire for the death of them that die; turn therefore and live.” But again, power is shared and God is, in the freedom ethic God employs with us, subject to influence and the outcomes beyond God’s control. Given this, I bet God grieves as we grieve when our hopes and desires for the right thing to happen don’t work out.

Whatever power God can exert, we can be sure it is rooted in eternal love. Humans do not always choose the right thing. But we can always count on God to do the right thing because it is in the divine nature to do so. There still may be times when God can’t make the right thing happen, because God’s power is not unilateral, but we can have faith that when God acts with us, God is enacting the right thing right beside us. Whereas I cannot live with the idea of a God who has all power and chooses to do nothing for those who suffer, I can live with and partner with and give thanks for a God who does all She can with persuasive, passionate and resurrecting love. In fact, I am emboldened by such love to try and become more like it in character and action–that’s the power of its influence. Perhaps influence is, ultimately, eternally, more powerful than control.

Doing the right thing is the only way to ensure we will influence the right thing to happen. The right thing still may not come about, but it certainly won’t if we don’t take the right action. Our capacity to do the right thing is rooted in our ability to faithfully perceive and act at the intersection of our power/limitations and to trust that we are always sharing power and interacting with a God who is beside us acting right all along.

Exercise During Pregnancy

I have worked out five days a week for most of my pregnancy. 3 days a week I do cardio, weight-lifting and core strengthening. 2 days a week I walk for 45 minutes and stretch. There has never been a physical impediment to exercise during my pregnancy other than exhaustion, which frankly, can be managed. I am in great shape right now and I'm supposed to have a baby in five weeks.

I share this because I am tired of hearing/seeing pregnant women treated like and treat themselves like they are entirely fragile and weak. There has never been a time when I've felt stronger, more physically capable and overall empowered than the last 8 months of my life. I attribute much of this to my daughter's spirit within me, but I also have learned in my 30 years of life that the world loves to 'weaken' women and it's almost always to my peril when I believe the bullshit.

I know some women have horrifically hard pregnancies and obviously this shout out is not to them. I'm also aware that working out is not everyone's cup of tea and that stuff like yoga is preferable for some. Sure. Great. Whatever it is that keeps you in motion and makes tangible the strength you have as a woman bringing a child into the world--do it. And when you do it, talk about it. Because there's a narrative about the fragility of pregnant women that needs to be problematized and it'll only happen if we speak out.

Having said all this...

I've never felt the kind of fragility and tenderness and love before that I am feeling these days because of Aurora's arrival in my life. It's just not a material/physical thing all the time (at least not a majority of the time, though moments of physical struggle do come). I find that the fragile, tender love of pregnancy is spiritual, emotional and relational. There's a softening happening inside me; that's for sure. It just doesn't get in the way of planking or lunging or going hard on the elliptical.

Thank you. The end.

Enough: A Feminist Reflection

How many of us, as we quit our bed and place our feet on the earth to go about our good and necessary work, drink deep from some authentic feeling, beneath language, some cellular knowing, that we are, this moment, more than sufficient-that we are the light of the world? What if, as an experiment, if only for a day, we lived as if we believed that there lived in us some reliable strength, wisdom, and wholeness?  What if we were to pretend that, regardless our health or mood, our fortunes or circumstance, we would remain quietly wise, accurate, and trustworthy in our judgments and actions? How would we respond differently to the world during such a day? –Wayne Muller “A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough”

This business of sufficiency is in my (not so humble) opinion hardest for women. Therefore I’d like to offer this reflection as a woman to women. My hope is that men can gain insight and support for their own spiritual journey here, but my primary target audience is any/every woman who has ever rendered herself insufficient. I offer these words with fierce love for who you’ve been, who you are and who you are becoming– always enough.

My friend Kim and I were sitting at lunch one day during graduate school and she referenced an author she’d heard speak publicly the week before who said: “the entire economy would collapse if women loved themselves.” When Kim recalled this statement out loud at lunch, something reverberated in my bones. Something deep inside of me registered the truth of this claim in a physical and spiritual way. As a female bodied person myself, I knew well the pressures (and failures) of trying to swim in a market that relies on women feeling like they’re not enough. If we were enough why would we need all these products and processes to enhance our beauty, bodies, mothering, wifery, home-making, sex lives, etc? If we were enough why would we be bombarded every time we open our computers or drive down the street or watch television with internet, billboard and commercial images that tell us to lose weight with Jenny or Weight Watchers or the local gym, to get our vaginas tightened or our breasts maximized at the local plastic surgery clinic, to get our teeth whitened with the latest bleach-saturated dental gel, to get our hair straight or curly or extended or blonde or brown or red or pink? As a female bodied person myself, I knew my friend’s utterance to be true because the systems around me and my individual responses to conform to and break free from those systems confirmed every word.

When I feel insufficient as a woman because I am listening to the fairy-tale scripts about what it means to be a “good girl” or feeling insufficient as a woman because I can’t get ‘pretty’ enough to satisfy the internalized patriarchal gaze that would have me be a perpetual sex object or feeling insufficient as a woman because I have too many opinions and ideas in a world that renders me less intelligent and less worthy of having my voice–when I’m in these places of personal insufficiency I seem to need stuff to make me feel better. I reach for quick fixes sometimes, reach for the things that will dress me up or hide me better. I reach for things like clothes and make up and pedicures. Sometimes I eat less or eat more, because withholding or over-indulging have everything to do with sufficiency. When I cannot render myself enough, I tend to need stuff. Material stuff. Quick. Easy. Sometimes cheap and sometimes expensive. And when I reach for those things, which 100% of the time fail to satisfy if I’m using them from a place of low self-esteem, I reinforce the market conditions for production that fundamentally rely on and profit from woman-hatred.

When i feel comfortable in my own skin, when I am able to see myself as a unique incarnation of God’s body that is whole and wholesome, one beautiful woman among all the other beautiful humans, when I am able to see myself in a balanced way, as a woman capable of great love and great harm, when I am able to surface my own vulnerability and strength and see both as necessary components for a life well lived, when I get in touch with all the sweet and serious and sad moments of this “one wild and precious life”–when I’m in these places of personal sufficiency I don’t need a thing. Don’t need to buy anything or reach very far. In fact, when I can feel my own sufficiency, I’m much more likely to feel the sufficiency of those around me, particularly the sufficiency of my earthly sisters who are so often stripped of their dignity. That completely changes the breadth and depth of what I rely on. Feeling our own sufficiency doesn’t mean we wont’ rely on things outside of us; it just means that our reliance will come from a place of strength and wisdom instead of low self-esteem attempting to quick-fix. Feeling my own sufficiency enables me to reach out for people, particularly other women. And that doesn’t cost a thing. It also disrupts the market forces that fundamentally rely on and profit from woman hatred.

You know why the life of enough is so scary? Particularly for us women? Because if we were living it practically everything around us would collapse. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing. Particularly if what emerged from the rubble resembled what God intended for all of us all along: a people who recognized their own divine likeness and treated themselves and one another accordingly.