Writing Isaiah: Entry #3

Writing Isaiah

Entry #3

May 13th, 2013

Wade Meyer

In the interest of spontanaity, here are the first two questions I thought about.

I will consider it some more and send other questions if I come up with something.

1. Take a few minutes and just listen. What is Scrappy-Do saying to you right now?

2. What organ are you most aware of right now? What does it feel like?

I ask these questions because I'm curious about how this little life form is forming its own voice - even though filtered through you right now. Also because I believe there is communication from and within our bodies themselves all the time. My feet have a story to tell you, for example. And I have always been curious what it feels like - what it really feels like - what physically it is like to have this little bunch of tissues, this little alien that's you and not-you, and it's growing fast!

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds 

My Dear Dear Wade,

What I wouldn't do to spend time with you in Oakland or Rockridge right now, sipping on Blue Bottle Coffee, grubbing on dark chocolate, coasting on the streets, checking window-front titles, talking queer life, talking religion, death, love, sex and human fucking beings. All the stuff we always touch on, munch on and sift through. God, I miss you. 

I want to answer your first two(ish) questions, but I've got to say that I feel most intrigued by your follow-up paragraph, particularly this "little life form forming its own voice - even though filtered." So, in the interest of spontaneity...

1. At this very second Isaiah seems to be completely still. What might he be saying in his stillness? I don't know, to be honest. Perhaps that he is busy growing and needs rest. But I choose to interpret this stillness as an invitation to rest myself. Like if he needs it, maybe I need it too. 

It was beautiful to get centered in my belly for a moment of pure listening. Thank you for that invitation. 

2. Today I am most aware of my breasts. Because they keep being experiencing shooting pains, like their internal composition is shifting. It's actually quite excruciating; but short, so thank G-d for that. I don't remember this with my first pregnancy. I wonder if these sensations are due to weening Rory or if it's my breasts getting ready for Isaiah. They are totally in transition. Who knows. 

Now. 

In terms of the formation of voice in utero, throughout pregnancy, into the world--perhaps we detour for a moment to a topic you and I have wrestled with in seminary and over the years. Prayer. It's a temporary detour, or maybe not one at all, but a segway. 

When I first learned of my pregnancy with Aurora, I began lathering my belly with lotion every day, paying close attention to the words or phrases that came as I tried to physically and spiritually connect with her (developing self). This felt like a prayer practice: listening, expressing, connecting both to the truths I bear but also the truths that come from somewhere/someone else. Over time I accumulated 6 words and I repeated them every time I got out of the shower and caressed myself/her: strength and resilience, integrity and humility, harmony and beauty. Again, this felt like a prayer practice, or maybe chanting of a kind. 

I have begun the same practice in my pregnancy with Isaiah. Very different words and phrases have come. This time I've got compassion, mercy, positive power, passion in purpose, safe arrival, healthy thriving. Where do these words come from? Why are they so different, one child from the other? Are they about my hopes or are they related to my innate knowledge of this growing life that is not (at this time) separate from me? 

One of the central wrestlings of parenting, in my experience thus far, is the thin line between exercising respectful agency/influence as a parent and exerting control by imposing too much of one's (in this case, the parent's) will. Like who am I to thrust these particular words/phrases, these intentions, these prayers/chants onto a child I've never met? It's rather presumptuous right? Are Aurora & Isaiah in any way speaking these words to me that I then speak back on them? That is my hope. 

What is the human voice? Is it our capacity to speak? I cannot believe it is only this, for certainly there are voices within me that never get spoken. I think of someone like Micheal Campos for instance. He has a quiet spirit. He does not talk a lot or for long--at least not in my experience. And yet his voice constantly echoes in my heart. Things he said to me 5, 6 years ago still ring out when I'm contemplating certain questions about ethics, gender, pedagogy. Is that Micheal's voice in my head/heart? I guess what I'm wondering about here are the limits and freedoms, the specific incarnations and transcending tendencies of expression itself. I can't know whether Aurora and Isaiah have given me these words because in all honesty I don't know where they begin and where I end or where I begin and they end. This is especially true when the babes are in utero. 

When it comes to the formation of voice, the developmental phases that either encourage or shut-down the capacity of babes/children to express themselves, I must admit that I think parental listening is huge. In fact, maybe this is true in general. Like can anyone find voice, ever, without having space to be heard? In some ways, you, Wade, have been one of those spaces for me. I learned some of my own languages because of your listening presence, particularly languages about self-love and the need to be gentle with myself when shit gets rough. You remember that line from Nelle Morton, right? About the need for feminist womyn to "hear each other into speech?" Yeah. Mary Tolbert loved to quote that in our NT class. Anyways, I think parents need to hear their children into speech, witness their children into expression, lovingly host their children's developing voice. Paul Tillich said something similar along these lines: "the first duty of love is to listen."  

Let me be real: that shit is hard sometimes. Sometimes Aurora says "hi" 300 times in a day. Am I listening intently on the 289th time? Not so much. There are also times when what she's expressing doesn't fit my framework for listening, like I literally don't understand her right now. She is babbling a ton, and based on her inflection it's obvious that sometimes she is asking (for?) something, sometimes she is demanding and sometimes she's just oogle-googling for the sake of it. Because she doesn't use letters and sounds the way I do, I don't always know what she's asking for or demanding. Which can almost immediately foster a sense of powerlessness in me. It reminds me of my interactions with congregants who want to know the "why" of their suffering. Because I don't use theology the way they do, nor do I always fit their notion of what a pastor should be (i.e. one who gives definitive answers), we are often at an impasse in terms of care. Again, in light of their particular communication, I feel powerlessness. So the first duty of love is to listen. But fuck it's hard sometimes when you listen but don't/won't/can't understand.  

What gives me great hope for my children is that I won't be the only one trying to hear them. Their voices will emerge because of the plethora of people who provide them with space/place/time. I mean, think about it. How many people have 'heard you into speech' in your life time? It's unquantifiable, right? Again, I think different parts of who we are come out based on what gets heard, what gets seen, what gets hosted. So part of my parenting work is to surround Aurora and Isaiah with people and to encourage them to surround themselves with people who are capable of hearing, seeing and hosting the stuff I/we cannot. 

In closing, I hope you know how important it is to me, Wade, that you--gentle, powerful, strong and sassy you--are one of those people that surround my children and draw them out. 

All my love,

Emily Joye 

Writing Isaiah: Entry #2

Writing Isaiah

Entry #2

May 6th, 2013

Kim Brown-Montenegro

Now as a mom already, what are you most excited about becoming a mom of two?  what is your biggest fear of having two?

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

Hey Kim,

Thanks for this awesome question. I want to hear how having 3 kids informs this question you've asked. I cannot even imagine what you go through day to day being a mom with three beloved babes. Hopefully next time we sit on a couch together you can tell me all about it. 

The thing I'm most excited about becoming a mom of two is, ironically, two-fold! :-) The first is: witnessing the sibling relationship between Aurora and Isaiah. The second is: witnessing the similarities and differences between them and allowing those similarities and differences to deepen my understandings of what it means to be a human among humans on this Earth. Let me expand on both of these.

1. As an only child, I often watched sibling relationships with a certain jealousy. In many ways I think growing up without siblings can actually set kids up to be overly-adult focused and too independent. These are of course severe generalizations that I put forth with some trepidation. But in my experience, kids brought up alone often struggle with developing and maintaining relationships with people their own age/s and often don't know how to share time/space/resources in (the good) ways that kids who grew up with siblings often do. I am excited that my kids will have each other, for these reasons, and for all the reasons that I cannot comprehend as a person who grew up as an only child. 

I can only imagine that there are bonds between siblings that make life more meaningful. Of course there are siblings who absolutely detest each other, and that's always a possibility, but I'm hoping that the sibling relationship in our family will serve as a place of recognition, accompaniment, play and long-term intimacy. 

On a very practical level, I'm also excited about there now being more humans for Aurora to engage with in a day to day way. When she was first conceived, I was planning on being a single mother with only one child. Life sure does change and change fast sometimes! Now I have a spouse and another baby on the way. We went from a family of two to a family of four, which means Aurora has J.R. and Isaiah to focus on, to play with, to push up against, etc. It lessens the real and perceived possibilities for enmeshment in the mother-daughter bond when there are more people around--which, frankly, eases my anxious mind! 

2. My friend Tom Ryberg and I were talking the other day about how different our daughters are. Ellie, Tom's daughter, is about 10 months older than Aurora. I watched Ellie develop in utero. I was there the day she was born. I've been around as she, Andria (her momma) and Tom have navigated year one and two. Watching Andria's pregnancy and watching Ellie grow up--all before Aurora came into the world--gave me a preview of what I was in for. But you know what? My pregnancy was nothing like Andria's. And Aurora is night and day different from Ellie. In some ways, I almost feel like I set myself up with wrong expectations. Moral of the story: everybody is different. And yet, when Tom and I talk about the new-parenting experience, there are incredible similarities in the impacts our daughters have had on us. So while difference obviously exists, there are points of connections, ways of using similarity to deepen our experiences too. I assume this will be the case with Scrappy Doo. 

Aurora was born of a sperm donor through artificial insemination. Isaiah was conceived with a known, intimate partner through sexual intercourse. Totally different conception stories and totally different paternal identity/lineage/biology/etc. That alone will make them different in concrete ways: body type, personality, race, gifts, struggles, etc. And yet they have the same mommy. Even so: they don't have the same egg from mom's body and the way my biology influences one may be very different than the way my biology influences the other. 

It's all so very very mysterious. And of course fascinating! I cannot wait to witness who they become. How they are similar. How they are different. How they use those similarities and differences to relate to themselves, each other, to their parents and the wider world. As a theologian and overall seeker of knowledge, this process totally appeals to me. I think all the time about personal/communal/cultural/gender/racial/religious/family/national similarities and differences. About the ways these things lead to connection, persecution, education, marginalization, beauty, violence, etc. I'm always genuinely curious about who we are and why we do what we do. Having children who are related yet individual feels like peeling away another layer of the onion in my thinking/understanding on this. 

The answer to your second question about fear is kind of complex. All of my fear is rather anticipatory and ungrounded right now. I have no idea what my life will be like with two kids. Right now, all I have is one kid, so that's all I know and understand. In a way I don't know what to be afraid of. Which, in all honesty, scares me in and of itself! And having said that, I do have some projections into the future that freak me out a bit. The biggest freak out for me is around time. Will I have enough time, as a full time pastor, mom, spouse, etc to give my kids, my work, my love, the world what it needs from me? The second fear is something I mentioned earlier: what if they don't get along? Like what if they have sibling rivalry throughout their lives? Maybe I should read some books about how to foster loving relationships between siblings from a very early age. Or, maybe you have some insight with this? How do Isabella and Jaime get along? And now, how are they with Joaquin? 

In all honesty, two other fears creep up in me that I'm having to spend a lot of time looking at relating to identity issues, justice and community: 1) Aurora's biological father is gay and I fear she'll experience turbulence with homophobia/hetero-normativity around her blended/mixed/queer family & 2) My second child is mixed racially and I fear s/he'll experience turbulence with racism/white-supremacy. I keep thinking that the Mid-West is the Worst place to raise kids in a family like ours when it comes to identity formation. And yet, here we are for the time being. I shouldn't be so harsh. In some ways the Mid-West is the best place to raise kids, in terms of forming values around community, sharing, and public service. This place is awesome at that stuff. And yet, it has a long way to go around diversity and hospitality around difference. I hope that by the time they begin to have understandings about issues of identity regarding sexuality, race, family, culture, etc that my family lives in a more socially progressive and diverse place. They won't feel alone that way and they'll also have more resources for processing who they are, who they aren't and what that means for them both personally and socially. I have to admit though: I wonder if they'll ever be loved anywhere the way they've been loved here. My church and community in Battle Creek never cease to surprise me. They celebrate, and I do mean tangibly celebrate, family and love in ways I've never known before coming here. 

Thanks again for prompting me into this particular writing. It's given me great insight into what I'm carrying around in terms of hope and fear. It's also nice to connect with you in the Spirit of friendship over the miles between us. Would love to hear back if you've got responsive thoughts. 

Much love my dear friend.

Emily Joye

Writing Isaiah: Entry #1

Writing Isaiah

Entry #1

May 3rd, 2013

Martha Lynn Tamburrano: 

How is your relationship with your mother changing because you are pregnant again? (Selfish question, I know) 

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds: 

Selfish is good in this case, though I think that's a rather harsh term, momma. I keep hoping these writings will flow forth and from the interpersonal, intrapersonal, in between and through the relational and familial. You, of course, are perhaps the one, with J.R. a close second, who can make these river currents of writing possible because of the blood we share. I was in your body once. You nursed and nurtured and influenced and sustained my life. Still are sustaining my life. My relationship with you is always changing, but these pregnancies, these pregnancies, my G-d, they are changing it in such powerful ways. Ways worthy of reflection. So while it may be a selfish question, I am glad you have asked it because this is a terrain of thinking-writing (as Helene Cixous would say) that I must embark too. Thank you for the generous provocation. 

When I found out that I was pregnant with Aurora, you were (second to Brennen who just happened to be in the house) the first person I called. You were in Macy's, remember? I recall knowing that you'd be surprised by the timing, because I was supposed to have difficulty conceiving according to the medical establishment, but that you'd be thrilled by the fact. After all, you'd been coaching me about it all for almost two years. With the second pregnancy, the orientation of the call was entirely different. I knew about the pregnancy for a full 24 hours before calling you. Which, of course, felt like an eternity, because I rarely, if ever, hold such huge life unfoldings to myself, away from you, for that long. You see, I didn't know, because of the timing of it all, how to tell you the story. 

Now that I am in the second trimester and the news is settling, the reality of Isaiah's life becoming evident of its own accord--I am mindful that this is an experience you've never had. You've mentioned it a few times too. A second pregnancy, a second kid, a son, a sibling in the house--you didn't go through this. We didn't go through this. In all honesty: it scares me and makes me feel proud. Like, I'm charting my own life, not just repeating yours, blazing a new path and creating new novelties for the bloodline. But I'm also scared because of how much I rely on the wisdom of your experience to guide me through stuff. It's not that I won't listen to you and you won't have wisdom to offer. Babies are babies. People are people. Families are families. You have expertise on it all. But it'll be different. I don't know how--just different. 

The other way my relationship to you is changing is this: I am getting more and more aware of how much I need you. Like, practically (I could really use a family member, an older/wiser/more patient one around to help me) and spiritually. One of the affects of your love upon me is calm: when you're around, though it may sound cliche, I feel more secure, more safe, more capable, less alone, less intimidated by life. Especially when I'm doing stuff for the first time, you help me navigate new water with a particular kind of strength. I'm doing marriage and kids for the first time in my life, at the age of 31. I feel like I've never needed the canon of your knowledge like I do now: both the knowledge of your successes and failures. Yes, we can talk on the phone. But I want to talk on the couch, when the babies are napping. Or at the park, holding them on our laps, as we swing on the swing set. I want them to grow up in the "shadow of the Most High"--the place of Mother-Daughter love that goes before them and paves the way. I want my babes to witness the truest true love between us because it can't have anything other than a life-family deepening influence of them. Perhaps its because my family has expanded so rapidly that my feelings about family have changed so rapidly. I'm no longer content with the distance. During my 20's when I was detaching and exploring and cultivating my own vocation, it was necessary and good. But now? Now what's the benefit? You are one of my favorite people in the whole world. I want my kids to know you. Know you well. And so of course this desire to be closer--physically, geographically, bodily--with you puts me at odds with my current life. It's a grief I carry every single day. Every single day. 

Do you remember the other day I sent you that article called "The You in Me" from Psychology Today? It's about the way cells carry over & through bodies/generations. There's a quote I cannot get over: "The placenta allows fetal cells to steal into a woman, and maternal cells to slip into her child. Mom also has cells from her mother stowed inside her. Pregnant women host at least three generations of cells." You, me, Isaiah--all together, right this second, here inside my body. "Such knowledge is too high for me; I cannot attain it." (Psalm 139) 

Love,

Emily Joye

Shame & the role of fear in love

Shame is fucked. I cannot think of a more unproductive place to be. Shaming never ever does the work that I often think it tricks itself into believing its doing. Shaming never makes me feel energized or empowered. It sinks me into an abyss of self-loathing which makes it almost impossible to move. The irony of shame is that I believe its often used as an attempt to move people from a-->b. Like, you  are dumb. You should be smart. (This is a callous and simplistic example, but useful and popular, hence I'll use it to illustrate the point) The point of naming "dumb" is often to shame a person into learning in a way that will produce/move-toward "smart." The problem is that name calling makes a person feel like crap. Who wants to do the work of learning when you are just trying to pick yourself up off the floor?

I just had a really complex conversation with someone about a lot of stuff, but part of the conversation had to do with the role of fear in my life. This person is close to me, a person I trust deeply and is, therefore, able to name the amount of anxiety I carry in day to day way. And I'll be real: I carry a lot of anxiety. But it has proliferated, exorbitantly, in the last 3 years because of 2 major things: 1) becoming a pastor and 2) becoming a mother. Both of those changes in the last 3 years have resulted in me caring  for people in a much more direct way. As in, I am responsible for people in ways I never was before. I have access to people's bodies/hearts/grief/stories in ways I never did before. My daughter is almost entirely dependent on me for her survival. I am more responsible and more in love than ever before.

And so I wonder: is it possible to love, like love responsibly, without carrying anxiety around? Can you truly value people in this life without having dimensions of fear accompany that valuing?

In the back of my head I hear something echoing: "perfect love casts out fear." The most perfect loves I have known have been in pastoring and mothering. And yet I carry all kinds of fear in the reality of those loves. I carry anxiety about all that my congregants face: their economic vulnerability in unemployment-stricken Michigan, their body frailty in the presence of cancer, their spiritual tenderness when there are conflicts in the congregation over theology, money, values, etc.  I carry anxiety in the love I have for my colleagues: anxiety that they are experiencing too much pressure in the impossibilities of pastoring, anxiety about whether or not they are getting enough family time, anxiety about whether or not I am showing up for them in ways that are equitable in the face of all the work we share. I carry anxiety about my daughter's future. She has a vagina. Enough said. This planet is facing ecological crisis like never before; will there be a planet healthy enough to sustain her life and the life of her children? Is she receiving the amounts of intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual stimulation she needs to develop into the person G-d has crafted her to be? These are just a few of the anxieties I carry with me every single day. Just a few. There are thousands.

So I contemplate this thing about perfect love casting out fear and I feel shame. But why? Because I'm not living into the mandates of my religion with perfection? Is the call to a life of no-fear even achievable? Like I cannot envision loving these people or communities in any way that wouldn't include taking harm/injury/sustainability into account. So is fear/anxiety the presence of something bad? Or has our world been so conditioned to shame affect, female/maternal ways of being, that we cannot recognize that anxiety is often an outgrowth of deep connection/relationality?

I have to admit that I am asking a lot of these questions out of self-defense. Perhaps I am just trying to justify all the fear I carry so as to not do the hard work of liberating myself from that fear. I also have to admit that part of these conversations (the one I had earlier, the one Christianity has about fear/love, and the larger conversation in our culture about the nature of a 'good life') feel totally gendered, particularly around the capacity to 'control' ones feelings/inner world. I've never ever ever had another womyn/mother criticize me for carrying too much fear; in fact, the anxiety we share as womyn is often a connecting point. So how do gender dynamics/embodiments and social conditionings of other kinds (race, class, nationality, religion, body type, culture) have to do with attitudes toward the presence of anxiety?

Because shame is present and I'm not entirely sure of my motives right now, I want to open this struggle into a wider arena, into the gracious space of communal contemplation.  So will you enter in with me?

What is the role of fear in the life of one who is willing to risk love?

An Open Letter To My Mother: Mother's Day 2013

Dear Mom,

I've been thinking all week, in light of what this year has been and meant for me, in terms of mothering and daughtering, both as mother (now) and daughter (always), been thinking all week about how to honor you, in light of it all.

I considered flowers and cards and material gifts but none of them came close to conveying what I simply must convey to you at this unique, unparalleled moment in my life. This unique moment is, as you know, one of having mothered a live daughter for a year now, having accumulated a years worth of mothering and now having some new insights into the vocation itself. And it's a moment when I come to a new horizon as pregnant mother of a boy child: uncharted territory in our last two generations of maternal experience.  Part of that inability of 'things' to convey my gratitude, my honoring, my abundance of love, is the very thing I must convey to you at this moment. Because I have learned through the accumulation of a year and now standing at this horizon that there is nothing that can 'tell it' like I can. About your mothering. About the potency of your individual capacity, as a mother, to show me mothering, in such a way that I am now--absolutely incapable of allowing mothering to exist outside the concreteness of particular bodies, stories, bonds, breaks and strands that have become 'us.' All this to say: our relationship is ours to tell and celebrate. And on this day, I must tell it from where I am and where I stand. And this feels like the only gift worthy of giving to you "at such a time as this." On Mother's Day. 2013. 

Part of the cruelty of life is that you don't know what you don't know. In some ways I wonder how I ever celebrated Mother's Day before. Like, what the hell did I know about mothering in order to celebrate it? Perhaps this sounds too harsh. But what I am trying to get at is that it's (somewhat) true that you can only truly appreciate a thing once you've entered into it and given your full self to it. Last year Aurora was only two months old on Mother's Day and though I'd gone through pregnancy, birth and a few months of day to day mothering, this year is different. I have accumulated minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and more of waking, feeding, washing, dressing, caring, caressing, holding, laying down of this little body that has been and continues to be utterly dependent on the vocation of which I speak. Of mothering, which you showed me. Of mothering, which I now do in the legacy of your lessons within. And because of these acts of mothering which I have accumulated a life has grown. No two lives have grown. Hers and mine. Or perhaps three: yours growing inside of both of us as these lessons and lived experiences unfold? 

I didn't know until now about the way mothering saves you. Or the way it stretches you, sometimes to the point of near-death. I didn't know how it could melt and heal the hardest shit you carry. And make you all the strong you need to be for the sake of your child's survival. I didn't know about the heart-breaks that live in those moments where no matter how hard you try, you cannot control outcomes of safety for your child. I didn't know about the joy of first words or steps or the first time your baby truly sees and recognizes you for the Mother you are. I didn't know about how mothering redeems and sacrifices your body at the same time, how you come into this complicated awareness of your own interconnectedness and autonomy in ways that forever shatter your illusions about total freedom or impossible enmeshment. I didn't know about how you become more yourself and less yourself than ever before when experiencing the demands and delights of mothering. And I surely didn't know that I didn't know how much you've given, how much you've succeeded, how much you've gone and done and forged and made possible to me, for me, through me in your own mothering practices. 

And so, in some ways, because of all I didn't know, I didn't know how to honor you in the ways that I can now envision. Which of course, now, includes a certain acknowledgement of all I am able to see, be, do and know as a mother because of the kind of mother you were to me. This is a new gratitude, born of experience, and again, it is mine to tell, yours to receive, at this particular moment. I want it to get up inside you, like a recognition that feels like God's eyes opening themselves within your flesh, for you and you alone. I want you to feel seen and understood in your own particularity like no card, flower, or gift could possibly facilitate because no card, flower, or gift has come from that very flesh nor stood in the light and shadows of your history like I have, nor can they name the legacies or losses of your life like I can. 

A friend of mine was working with a family a few weeks ago whose mother was/is struggling with alcoholism. My friend was explaining to me that the mother's daughter felt no ability to distance herself from the mother's problem. In her frustration for the pain in this family, my friend said in all honesty: "I swear that mothers could light their children on fire and the children would still cling to those mothers in love." It felt like a hot truth, one I didn't want to hear, but had to hold because I knew the truth in it. What is there that you could have done or did do that would stop me from clinging to you? Nothing. There is nothing. Is there anything more awesome and potentially destructive than a child's fidelity to its mothering/source? It is biological, of course. And so one wonders about its practicality for our species in environments where mothering is less than good. I wonder about your own mother for instance. My grandmother. Not that she failed you (what does that even mean?) but the spaces of mothering she couldn't occupy that set you up for a life-time of seeking mothering/fulfillment in other places that have been harmful and healing. And then I juxtapose that with the mother you became. How did you do it? How did you know, despite what you didn't learn from her, how to do it all? How to encourage me to be strong bodied and strong willed? How to encourage me to question and to trust? How to bend over backward for others and to never collapse from the weight of it all? How to play it safe (most of the time) and to branch out in risk? 

You didn't always protect me enough. They always tried to protect you too much. I can barely fault you for finding your way just a little too far on the opposite side of the pendulum given your experience. Perhaps Aurora and Isaiah will find the sweet spot between those extremes. One can only hope. 

When I was in seminary there was no foresight into being a mother. But we talked, a lot, about G-d as womyn, about G-d as womb, about G-d as mother. It was a theory I needed at the time because it helped me part ways with the patriarchy of Christianity, patriarchy that stifled my body, spirit and capacity to create the life God willed for me. In some ways that theory laid the ground work for my becoming queer, which in all honesty, made it possible for me to have children. More on that in some other subsequent letter. But suffice it to say that trusting one's own desire enough to create life from that desire is the essence of queer reclamation of one's body/spirit from a world (and in our case, religion) that tries to stifle bodies, desire, etc. The theory back then set the ground work for a set of life practices that would later enable me to see, through experience, not just cognition, the truth of Mothering as Divine and Divine as Mothering. 

And so, Catherine Keller, who has written extensively about Tehom (the female primordial Chaos from Genesis that pre-existed 'creation' with G-d in all her watery, uncontrollable, genius self) is right. In mothering and being mothered one recognizes God and in God one recognizes both being mothered and the capacity to mother. But I think she's only right when it comes to a particular kind of mothering: the kind that nurtures the capacity for a divine line of sight within itself. You have been that kind of mother to me which is why today I know what I know about love, sacrifice, and what you've drilled and instilled in/to me all along, grace upon grace. 

My one and only prayer on this day is that I carry this nurturing capacity into the relationship with Aurora and Isaiah, that they too recognize God in mothering and mothering in God. If they do, it will be because of what you taught me, with every day of your beautiful, bold, messy and miraculous life. 

Goddess bless you, Momma. Now and forever. 

In your faith and doubt.

In your struggles and victories. 

In your strength and weakness. 

In your body that is old and young, big and small, tired and energized, hard and soft, birthing and dying still, every day. 

On the days of bounty and the days of barely making it through.

Through the years of so much, too much separation from the daughter who emerged from your body.

Into a time when Crone, Maiden, and grandchildren reunite in the flesh. For good. 

Amen. 

Love,

Emily Joye

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.