Take one.
I am afraid that I will not remember what it's like to hear her breathing in the morning with lungs so small, with a body fragile and growing, completely reliant upon the food source that rests proudly above my rib cage. I am afraid that I won't remember what it's like to grow another being into being as a first radical act of embodiment every day and that my forgetfulness will be rooted in the lack of mouth nipple connection--an amnesia of clinging to one incarnation over another. I am afraid I will forget. How she set me free with this taking. And in forgetting I will know that I am missing something I cannot remember. Something that gave me my life by enabling me to give my life away.

Take two.
Why didn't anybody tell me I would be this tired? They tried. But there is no way to encapsulate the logic of this exhaustion in words.

Take three.
My brain is changing. I can feel neurotransmitters blazing new pathways with each unfolding hour as my levels of focus and distraction both increase and decrease depending on the environment. I used to be able to read and write and think for hours on end. Those days are over. Now my philosophical journeys take place in 30 second intervals, my sermons written at 4 a.m. in one full swoop. And then there is a bowl to fill, a coo to whisper over the crib, my own face in the mirror wondering where I have gone.

Take four.
She does something new. Like, in the last week, when she's waiting for breakfast, she has begun bowing in front of me, and i reciprocate so we touch the top of our skulls, as a salutation of sorts. This gesture between us, this love tap, alone, catapults me to the place where no prior heartbreak, failure or despairing matter in the slightest.

Take five.
The world is bleeding out of every effing orifice. Isn't there a better word than "violence" to describe what's going on here? What the hell was I thinking bringing a child into this world? Sometimes I wish I would have been knocked up on accident. Then I wouldn't feel so responsible for anything that happens to her. But does anyone ever really get knocked up on accident? And frankly I probably wouldn't feel any less responsible. What does it mean that if somebody hurt her I could see myself committing the very same atrocities i keep weeping about when they come on the news?

Take six.
She isn't yet 10 months old. And her two favorite phrases are thank you and bye-bye. Something tells me she already knows quite a bit about this life.

Take seven.
Too many redemptive things to count, things that reignite an innocence long lost to the confines of consciousness. Things like softness in blankets, simple harmonies in storybook rhymes. Like what happens to your own flesh when you take baths with baby skin and rubber duckies. The warranted forgiveness you find for the people who failed you early (despite their best efforts). The undeserved forgiveness you find for the people who failed you early (even though they never tried). Pink finds its way back to your soul without the cacophony of feminism slicing you every minute, because she looks like sheer possibility under and around whatever she wears and why on earth should that recognition be stuffed by gender logic of any kind? Your heart becomes the place where she rests her ear and that is a placement you and she both need to remember. The importance of tears in communicating what's needed. The importance of laughter in communicating what's holy. The importance of miscommunication in establishing good communication. How you have to fall down like 3000 times before you can stand. How other mothers are so full of pride and so full of shame that you'll never look at them the same. So much redemption; too much to count.

Take eight.
Things become too small or no longer necessary quicker than you can blink. Towels, spoons, a $175 swing, knitted hats no more. The storage material itself boggles the mind. Staring at a newborn onesie that fit for a week, I sob into my laundry basket, shedding my hope for a life where joy and loss are less entangled.

Take nine.
A single cry alerts me over the baby monitor that she is through napping. Is there another reverberation, another simple sound in all the earth that can bring me back to the present moment like this one? I am off to her, drawn into her. Showing up with complete ignorance and commitment in an attempt to attend to this creature, this creature who placed a love covenant around me (tighter than all the others), this creature who freed herself on the Spring Equinox by splitting me wide open.

Take ten.
In Latin, her name means "morning's first light." In Roman literature she is the Goddess of mythology. Aurora. 

Six months old, father dancing with me in the kitchen. A man racked with secrets, lies and hypocrisy, steps in rhythm, swirls my tiny body, lifts me in the air and catches me on his breastplate. I was his third born, born of a love affair outside of his "real life." I remember the white tiles of the kitchen floor that matched the white whiskers of his goatee. He was an old man already, but I could still feel the vitality of his masculinity as he moved about with me in total privacy. I remember the sheer joy and terror of being in the hands of something powerful enough to make my flesh feel entirely vulnerable and entirely protected at the same time. Some say that's the essence of fathering. I wouldn't know.

Thirty years later, three weeks after my first daughter is born, i have a dream where a younger version of my father sweeps me off my feet. Comes up to me from behind and lifts me up in the air and doesn't miss a beat. In the dream I never see his face, but I know it's him because our bodies fit together perfectly, almost as if one originated from the other. And because now that he's dead, as I move, he moves, in the spaces where spirit and flesh are no longer separated by generations. Some call that space heaven and earth colliding. I wouldn't know. In the dream, I feel a freedom that I have never felt in my creaturely life. I wake up crying, knowing this is the longing etched in my bloodline. To be free enough to dance.

I have spent most of my life thinking that the absence of my father was something internal to me. Something I had to fix because it was irrevocably wrong. This message of internal blemish is deeply connected to a message that women receive all of their lives; a message about their worth being determined solely by their connections to men. But the world teaches men to hate women. To simultaneously lust after them and want to kill them. So it is a connection that is elusive at best, impossible at worst. Something about being the mother of a daughter has given me infinite clarity into this nonsense, but most importantly I have forgiven myself  for internalizing a 30 year old lie about my own worthlessness. 

This morning I dance with my daughter, girl body to woman body, on the kitchen floor. I step in rhythm, swing her in circles. I throw her in the air and catch her on my breastplate. She delights, smile so wide it takes up her entire face. Our genders and our bodies may change throughout our lives. But this is enough, right here. We are free enough, just the two of us in the kitchen, no secrets, no drama, free enough to just dance, in the spirit of love. Together, entirely vulnerable and entirely protected.

Last night I watched the widely-broadcast memorial service for the students, teachers and principal, and mother who lost their lives in Newtown Connecticut on Friday December 14th. It was an interfaith, ecumenical, political, media event that took place in what appeared to be a school auditorium.There were all kinds of traditional religious offerings: opening words, comforting prayers, scriptures, homilies, benediction, etc. The Quran was quoted right along side The Book of Romans. Women clergy officiated right next to Catholic priests. It was diverse. The best of each tradition got poured out of each representative leader. It’s not often that such displays of cooperation and pluralism shine from American religion. Perhaps it takes such a devastating tragedy for us to get over our petty squabbling. Who knows? What I do know is that given my values, my deep and abiding commitment to interfaith and ecumenical solidarity, I should have been proud of what was happening. But I wasn’t.

And it wasn’t an all together unfamiliar feeling. It’s something I feel almost every time I officiate a funeral. It’s a recognition of the unsolvability, the sheer un-utterablility of loss. Is there anything that can be said, about God, about heaven, about this life of sheer precarity, from scripture, from tradition, from even the most devout clergy person--that helps us make sense of the murder of children?

No there is not. And that's why even the most well-orchestrated interfaith, ecumenical display of solidarity fell short. How dare we even speak? Words become filler. It's rather pathetic. And yet, where are the spaces for genuine morning if we don't create them?

There was only one moment during that entire CNN-televised service when I felt connected to what’s sacred: it was the moment President Obama (not a person of the cloth) began reading the names of those who were lost. As he was saying their names, one by one, slowly, tears began to fall. Soon the weeping that’s necessary in order for us to remain human in the face of such inexplicable loss could be heard from those in the auditorium. Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison. Say them out loud and see if it doesn’t shift the energy in your spirit.

I often notice that when families have lots of unresolved issues, funerals become battlegrounds. The details of the service become a point of tension, of unworked rage finding its way to the surface. Or worse, family members, clergy people, or old associates use the ceremony for their own ends: to make lofty speeches, to get in their last digs, to host an altar call. These misuses of sacred space, space designated for the holy work of grieving, are beyond disturbing not only because the healing work of the heart’s repair cannot begin, but because the dead are not mourned on such occasions. Someone famous once said you could measure the character of a culture based on how they treat their children and how they mourn the dead. America, how do we measure?

The discourse in our nation since the elementary school tragedy reminds me of a family with way too many unresolved issues. We’ve been attacking each other about guns and mental illness. We’ve been hoping people with power--religious and cultural and political--will say something or do something to ease the pain. But they can’t. What’s done is done and more horrifyingly, what’s gone is gone. Kids. Educators. Lives. Gone. And fighting each other isn’t going to solve anything. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s time to reconsider our gun laws and I believe mental health care is essential for a thriving society. But now, now is the time for saying the names. Now is the time for silence and weeping, together. Because if we don’t grieve, and I mean truly grieve, each and every one of us, anything we say or do to ease the pain will be short-lived and insufficient. It is only the wrecked heart, the heart that has nothing left to lose, that can be transformed in the ways we need to be transformed.

Back to Sabbath (again)

There seem to be 5 or 6 lessons that I must learn again and again in life. Lessons like, "when you're angry, you're probably just avoiding grief." Lessons like "the disavowal of feminine power is toxic." Lessons like, "don't ever ever ever stop working out or spending time in vast expanses of green/nature." And the one I learned again this week: "there is a rhythm to life and it's all about the steady flows and steady steps of giving and receiving; both/and--not one or the other." 

Real talk: I know all this stuff in my bones. But I forget. Lose touch. 

Usually these lessons are reborn (again and again) because I find myself out of whack. That's a nice way of putting it. Crazy as hell is more like it. For instance, this week, I forgot about the rhythms of giving and receiving. Seems that the steady flow of institutional religious production--preaching every week (sometimes more than once a week), pastoral care, planning events, managing crisis--had gone into overdrive and I hadn't even noticed. I should have noticed. It'd been months since I'd read a novel or poetry, or lifted weights. I haven't been walking outside (I do live in Michigan; and it's winter, to my credit) and don't have enough money to pay for therapy. These are the things that make me sane, the stuff that fills my cup. So on Tuesday when someone said something irritating to me, first thing in the morning at my place of employment, I snapped. Thank God I have a loving, wise boss who knows an empty cup when he sees one. He sent me home and told me to do the things I need to do to be restored. 

I actually listened to him. I know, right? This is progress...

For three days I've been listening to the cello and oboe non-stop. Dancing with my daughter on the kitchen floor. Writing letters to people in my family (living and dead). Reading Junot Diaz and Allison Bechdel like my life depend on it. Consuming, devouring--the music, literature and writing processes that place me right into the stream of life where cup and water become one. And suddenly the God I yearn to serve is apparent to me again. 

Here's what gets me: I was running on fumes, seriously. Empty. Depleted. Without resource or energy. Out of touch. Forgetful. Here's what scares me: I didn't know. That rage I felt about the stupid comment in the office Tuesday morning--it felt totally rational to me. It never occurred to me that I was lacking inspiration. The idea of being on the receiving end of deep thinking, wise, hilarious, truth-filled writers, artists and creative projects never crossed my mind. I just wanted to slap that snarky woman in the face and get on with it. And yet, when I stepped away, when I took time out and apart and allowed myself to be the recipient of beauty: it became crystal clear where the problem was. 

If you want to be seduced into thinking that working/serving all the time is the "right" life, become a pastor. Was there EVER a more out-of-rhythm institution than the white mainline protestant church? Help me, Jesus. For real. It's insiduous yall. Seriously. It's not biblical or faithful. But its insidious and every one will thank you every step of the way. Until you do something crazy, like slap an auditor or cheat on your spouse or kill yourself one day because it just got to be too much. And then everyone will say, "I don't know what happened; s/he was such a wonderful person." 

And so I'm back to this Sabbath law. This literal commandment to rest. To STOP PRODUCING. To STOP WORKING. To stop DOING ALL THE TIME. It's not an archaic law. It's wisdom, the truest spiritual precept for those of us needing meaning and value and love. For those of us honest enough with ourselves, our community, and our God to admit that though serving others is a necessary and faithful part of spiritual life, it's not all there is. There "is a time to break down and a time to build up." Yes, in(non)deed. 

Lesson learned. Again. 

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.