Note: this blog comes in response to a LOT of things. But mostly it comes out of my frustration in not being talked to directly about...ugh...most things. I am a private person, there is no doubt about that. I'm an introvert. I don't do hype. Traditional shit makes me squirm. I don't like making announcements about my life, and yet, if I don't, it's interpreted as silence rooted in shame. It's true that people need "to give an account" of themselves, as Judith Butler so definitively argues in her book. In general I think the choices we make go far in giving an account of who we are. But this is complicated when it comes to leadership. As a public figure, I find it almost impossible to give an account of myself. Why? Because people would rather talk with each other about me than talk to me. That means people are making meaning about my choices without my consent. This blog is my way of responding to conversations that I hear are happening about my writing, about my pastoring, about my sexual orientation, and about my decision to get married. Please know I would always rather respond to people's concerns and questions face to face. But lacking that opportunity, respond I must, with what little I have. This is the only way I know how. Here's to writing itself: the place where what needs to be said, can in fact, be said. Regardless of the reception, I thank God for this place/space/occasion of delivery. If nothing else, this takes the torture out of my head and places it into the world where healing seems like a potential, if not real, possibility. 

***This is a shortened version of a much longer rant written about 2 months ago*** 

1) Public outrage about...well...anything...made known ONLY through facebook, sucks. It's devoid of relationship. It's one-sided. It lacks accountability. It's bad communication. Period. Maybe people need to rant in order to feel better or to get stuff off their chest, but that comes at a huge cost to the very institutions folks claim to have "loved and lost." Does that cost matter to them? I'm sure there are people who think "when you go into leadership, people will misinterpret your words and intentions all the time. That's what you signed up for. Get thicker skin." But you know what? Hurt is hurt. Period. Why do I have to get thicker skin? Why shouldn't other people do some work around how much damage their actions and words do?  

2) Because I am getting married, to a man, this month, I feel this incessant need to explain myself because I've gotten a reputation in the church of being anti-marriage and anti-heterosexual marriage (because of a narrow interpretation of a blog I wrote almost two years ago). If you read the actual blog post, you'll see that I said "I am skeptical," not "I am hostile." I also wrote that I think healthy heterosexual marriage is unlikely, not impossible. And just in case anyone needs me to be explicit about what I think makes for a healthy heterosexual marriage, here it is. Ready? The man and the womyn must both be aware and reflective of, and faithfully responsive to issues of gender privilege and oppression both within the relationship and within themselves. If I thought J.R. was incapable of this level of introspection and responsible behavior when it comes to gender, I wouldn't be getting married. The same goes for race within our interracial marriage. If he thought I was incapable of monitoring and laying down my white privilege, I really doubt he'd be marrying me. The point is: power and difference are real. Where there's been historical and institutional privilege and oppression, relationships between people carrying implicated identities must work with vigilance to love each other respectfully and responsibly in light of those power differences. 

3) ...which is a continuation of #2... I live in the mess of suspicion and participation in a LOT of areas of my life. I hold suspicions about Christianity and the institutional church and yet I've devoted my life to serving as a pastor. I hold suspicions about the culture of the Mid-West and yet I've plopped down and started a family and career in Battle Creek, MI. I am suspicious about the nature of white people to do collective work of spiritual and social justice and yet I serve a predominantly white church.  I hold suspicion about the authenticity of certain biblical texts and yet I preach from the scriptures every single week. I hold suspicion about the capacity of elected officials to actually carry through on their promises stated during election season and yet, every four years, I vote. I held suspicion about my ability to be a single mother to Aurora (before I had a co-parent) and yet I chose to inseminate and get pregnant as a single mother. So you see, this idea of suspicion being something other than suspicion (like, I don't know, attacking or dismissing or disrespecting) is assumed and certainly not implied. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can love something and be suspicious of it at the same time. In fact, that suspicion might, in and of itself, point to love's capacity to be honest with itself about the true nature of the object/subject of love. Can love exist without honesty? I doubt it. 

4) ...which is also a continuation of #2... I am queer. Here's what that means to me: I don't have a gender criteria when it comes to love. Who I choose to partner with has everything to do with values, ethics, integrity, interests, and yes, attraction. None of that is rooted in genitalia. For me. My queerness is also NOT limited to issues of attraction. I am gender queer: as in, I do not feel like I am a womyn or a man, specifically, but beyond and between both of those signifiers. Queerness is not just about who you love, it's also about how you understand yourself. Having said that, let me get back to love. I am responsive to the spirit of love whenever and wherever it crops up in and around me. I don't have a type. I have a posture: of being open to partnership that feels right regardless of color, gender, age, religion, etc. In the last year and a half I have been in relationship with someone who fits next to and with me. We are creating and securing a family together. It's not a fate. It's a choice we are making. I am choosing this in light of who he is, who I am, who we are together as parents for our daughter, and who we want to be as a family in the future. This is not about an identity switch or the abandonment of the LGBTQ community. I am as queer today as I ever was. This is about choosing, consciously, the love and family that feels right to me. It may be choosing a traditional relationship formation that I've been and still am suspicious of in the present. But if that doesn't make sense to you, go back to the final sentences of #3. And having said ALL this, let me say one last thing. 

5) I've been luke warm about marriage equality as a political movement and some of that has been rooted in my long held belief that there are MUCH bigger issues for the LGBTQ community to tackle when it comes to sexual justice than marriage. Other spaces of resistance in me have come about because of the racist and transphobic undertones of the HRC's movement for marriage equality. But that's not about marriage. That's about a political organization; and even they have done great work in spite of their (big time) short comings. Soooo, now that I am exercising the privilege of marriage, in response to the contexts of love and family in my life (and in a lot of ways we are opting into legal and financial securities that feel non-negotiable for all of us), I've had a big shift in perspective. You don't know what you don't know, right? Well, now that I know, how important the freedom to get married is, for the well being of partners and families of all kinds, I am 100% committed to the marriage equality movement. And I will be stepping up my game as an activist and pastor when it comes to equal marriage rights. And and and. I still want to stand by the fact that marriage is just one way to formalize love. It's not the best way. It's one way. As long as life partners, sex partners, and life choices are concretized with integrity, consent and no harm: it's ALL good. Not one holier than the others. ALL good according to the CONTEXT they're/their/there in. 

Foot Washing: A Reflection

Foot washing isn't a routine Christian sacrament or ritual. In fact, I'm not even sure foot washing has sacramental status. I should find that out in order to keep my clergy card. I digress. Last night, in worship, we read chapter 14 of John's Gospel and did communal foot washing as part of Holy Week. 

Every time I participate in foot washing I undergo the same sequence: 

discomfort-->reluctant participation-->mind blowing revelation. Let me explain. 

Don't know when it'll ever sink in that when i'm out of my comfort zone I'm on the verge of spiritual break-through. Being out of my comfort zone, in the moment, just feels like...well...discomfort. It never feels like promise or purpose or gift. It feels like anxiety and awkward and "yeah, how bout we don't?" Such is the case with the removal of shoes and socks in church. For all the lip service we pay to being an incarnate people, and worshipping an incarnate God, Lord have Mercy, we are a body phobic religion. Is this a general sweeping statement? Yes, and it's true. 

So Pastor Ott invites us to come forward when we feel moved. Even before he's done inviting, people are reaching down to undo their laces. This is outside normal, liturgical structure. Other than the moment when we reach for the fellowship pads to sign in, how often are people's backs bent over and heads down as they sit in the pews? Ugh, never. Then there's the tussling. You can hear clanking and popping as people set their shoes down, post removal. That's not normal church sound. Next, the seats up front remain unoccupied for way too long. The basins just sit there. The towels, stacked nice and neat, go unused. The water still as the silent air. We all stare. Who will go first? Who will expose their bare feet before the reluctant rest of us? It's a sort of spiritual strange.  

Of course, Jim Seimers (the highest regarded elder among us) stands up on his wobbly legs and moves toward the altar of awkward. He sits down and because he is beloved by everyone, and I do mean everyone (especially the womyn because he's a tender man and there's a huge shortage of those in our world), all these bodies pop up at the same time to wash his feet. He's just been diagnosed with cancer. We've known something was wrong for a while, mostly because he's gotten skinnier and skinnier these past few months. Anyways, Tricha, one of our newer members, kneels before him and does the holy deal. This of course enables the flow to begin. Now a crowd has formed in the center of the sanctuary: water is pouring, towels are wiping, toes are wiggling, hands are stroking, bodies are embracing, voices are signing, tears of tenderness are emerging. Colors and shapes and disabilities and desire and loneliness and genders and witnesses and participants and believers and skeptics--all co-mingle at this intersection of humility and servanthood. The whole thing feels like one big exercise in corporeal catharsis. Like for once we are touching God in each other instead of staring at each other and passing back and forth abstract notions of religious doubt and certainty about things in the past, or things in the sky, or things in the next life. For once, we are touching. Touching. Touching. 

Jesus left us incredible directions, man. How do we stay human? Wash each other. Eat and drink with each other. Sing alongside each other. Weep together. You know: all the stuff he told us to do and showed us how to do. It's really not all that difficult.   

Half way through the sacrament (yeah, it's a sacrament) I decide to go get Aurora because when I think of "service from a place of love" (the theme of our silent meditation before the foot washing started), she immediately comes to mind. Is there a servant role more rooted in love than motherhood? So I go get this one year old that used to bathe in the waters of my womb. I take off her pink socks and walk toward the basin. Now, I wash this child's feet in the bath tub almost every night with the company of rubber duckies, floating tug boats and floating toy creatures of the sea. But tonight the washing is different. Tonight I acknowledge the religious tradition we, mother and child, are immersed in as baptized Christians. Tonight we return to the Tehom that elementally unites us in creation, in chaos and purification. Tonight the community acknowledges me as mother on my knees (not pastor set apart) bound and determined to serve this child of my flesh. Tonight I am not officiating. Tonight I am participating, one of the Many. It is freeing. It is liberating. And yet again, I get it: you don't enter into this kind of consciousness and grace unless you disrobe, unless you kneel down, unless you reach out and touch. It's all about the body. All. About. The. Body. (Actually it's all about the bodies, together, plural, distinct, in comm/union)

Itty bitty toes in my maternal hands. Eyes closed. Feeling her feet. Thanking God for her life. Thanking God for my own body that's been capable of sustaining and serving her, through birth and breast-milk and nurturing arms. Here we are, together, doing this ancient exercise, and just when I think it can't be infused with any greater meaning...here comes Jim. Since he was the one who started us off, he was the last one to kneel down and wash. And I, I just happened to be the last one who needed washing. So this old man, who can't kneel down without putting almost all of his weight on my knees, bears down and gets to work on me. I am his pastor. He is my pastor. In the washing, there is no distinction. He does a sweet job of it. But then he can't get up at the end. So Pastor Ott comes over, and together, seasoned senior pastor and whipper-snapper associate pastor, lift our faithful elder onto his feet. 

Let me tell you about the privilege of being a servant: last night I got to wash the feet of the youngest member of our community and I also had my feet washed by one of our oldest. I am a steward of one and inherit the legacy of the other. Her body incapable of walking yet. His body barely able to stand on its own. He has memories of a time in this community before I was born. I was there when she was born. Between us, we span three generations, hundreds of years. What do we have in common? Very little except the water in our flesh and the water that joins us in faith. And of course, tender, fragile, precarious bodies. Where else on Earth does one come into the naked presence of love like this?  

Lent Day One

There is so much false spirituality around us these days, calling itself goddess-worship or "the way." It is false because too cheaply bought and little understood, but most of all because it does not lend, but rather saps, that energy we need to do our work. So when an example of the real power of healing love comes along (...) it is difficult to use the same words to talk about it because so many of our best and most erotic words have been so cheapened. --Audre Lorde "The Cancer Journals" page 39

Today is Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent: a 40 day journey of contemplating and resisting (through fasting, for example) those temptations that seek to distract us from the holy and true. This is the third year I've participated in Ash Wednesday and Lent as clergy. Each year I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of what i'll call "Lent light." Let me explain.

I hear all these people admonishing Christians "not to take something away, but to add something to our lives for 40 days." Like a spiritual practice. Or a new book. More often than not the folks advocating this approach are former Catholics who want to remove the yolk of guilt-driven theology from their lives. Hear me clearly: do that. If adding something instead of taking something away enables you to experience a more generous and loving incarnation of yourself and God, together, all glory to that. Do it, don't think twice. 

And.

This add-something-approach to Lent appears to be grounded in the assumption that we can re/center our lives on God by engaging something new and different. I won't deny that there's wisdom in this approach, but it doesn't do the nitty gritty, often painful work, of illuminating the ways our current incarnational practices harm and distract us. You can add yoga during Lent, but if you don't take away that group of friends at the YMCA who keep judging your parenting practices, the sleeping child pose will only provide you so much. In order to illuminate what's currently harming and distracting us, we have to follow a hunch about the stuff that 'may' be a problem and remove it. I call this spiritual detox.

You don't detox by adding; you detox by stopping something. Stopping does some stuff that mere addition cannot do. Stopping illuminates false dependency. Stopping illuminates the often subtle yet totally overwhelming lie of craving. Stopping illuminates how we've cast power into the very things that threaten to extinguish our spirits. Sometimes you've got to feel the extremes of withdrawal to understand the illusionary power of of drugs. Anyone who has been to rehab will get me on this one. And when it comes to Lent, we are called to dive into spiritual detox.

But before I go into more about detox, let me say, in a rather anecdoctal way: there's also something politically subversive about stopping, as opposed to adding, in a culture of non-stop accumulation and hyper-compulsive doing. Read: Lent is for secular minimalists too!

Lent is about spiritual detoxing for the sake of revelation. It's not detox for the sake of sacrifice itself. Hence my discomfort with the other side of "Lent light:" these folks who make Lent about self-punishment practices vis-a-vis the impossible standards of body 'perfection' in our culture. One year in college this girl I knew, who was a cheerleader J-Lo look alike, stopped drinking soda for Lent. When I asked her why, she told me that her sugar intake was too high and it made her feel like crap. When i pressed about "feeling like crap," I discovered that she wasn't talking about the chemical/energetic ups and downs that result from sugar spikes in the bloodstream, but the crappy feelings of knowing that you're drinking something that might, if you're not more disciplined, make you fat one day.

Someone tell me what the fuck that has to do with spiritual revelation?

How has Christianity become so co-opted by mainstream commercialism that Lenten practices lend themselves to disciplines that a) exercise fat-phobia and b) secure projections of hatred onto one's future self? And not to keep grinding the ax but more often than not, these kinds of Lenten disciplines are the ones I hear about: diet and exercise. Nothing wrong with these disciplines in and of themselves, but if there's no spiritual search attending to these removals of apathy or excess food in-take, then the discipline seems rooted in the two headed monsters of capitalism: vanity and self-hate. If we are not blessing our bodies with exercise or eating well, there's something going on with us spiritually. The revelation comes when we stop our current harmful and distracting practices, and ask ourselves--once we've had enough time to detox from them--how/why they've been 'serving' us. What's motivating them? What do they help us avoid? How are we in touch with certain parts of ourselves through them? How do they connect us to others? If you're a person who starts exercising for Lent after years of being sedentary and you discover that exercise makes you feel a kind of physical power you don't know what to do with--that's a spiritual revelation! Or if you start eating differently during Lent and discover that without eating fatty foods that you're angry or exhausted or restless all the time--that's a spiritual revelation! These revelations are just the tip of the ice-berg when it comes to discovery. Lenten disciplines are just that: things that get us to the very beginning, or crack us open just a little bit. Because what follows is the 40 day journey of integrating those revelations into our notions of who we are as individuals, in relationship, in community, and with our God.

So: please don't exercise or eat differently so that you can brag about how many pounds you lost come Easter time. That mocks Jesus because Jesus loves your body just the way it is. Do you? If, on the other hand, you exercise and eat differently during Lent as a way of exploring the Divine Life within your systems of hunger and movement and as a way of exploring how spiritual liberation is connected to body practices of care (especially if you are a womyn or have a marginalized body in our society), then please please please share your testimony come Easter time.

I for one am stopping facebook because I have a suspicion it distracts me from deep reading/writing and I'm adding a 2 hour time for self-chosen reading/writing each day. I'll be charting my journey here. So it begins. 

From dust you have come and to dust you shall return. Word. Made. Flesh.   

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.