Writing Isaiah: Entry #5

Writing Isaiah 

Entry #5

May 20th 2013

Corbin Tobey-Davis

Music incorporates so much meaning into my own life journey.  From break-up mix tapes back in the day, to creating playlists for every year of my daughters life the power of music as narrative is palpable. I would love to hear your thoughts on the role of music and your postion as one of the primary "sharer" of music with your children. How does music move you while growing the child inside?  How do you share music with child in Utero, during birth, post birth, and what about their journey throughout their life? 

Boom!

And here is a new song I am really feeling.  I love the image of the Divine feminine in the video. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iTRRkOXIoI

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds 

Gah, Corbin!--this is so you. This prompt. That video. The topic you've invoked. Your way of writing, introducing, giving it. Part of what I love about this pregnancy writing project is connecting to the spirits of my peeps in the process. You have brought your spirit here, to me, in this exchange. I revel in it, Corbin, I really do. You have a joy in your step, a power of ambitious engagement that I have grown to crave over the years. It was in the stuff we passed back and forth on Holy Hill when we threw parties or deconstructed classes or watched ball games. I miss it--that thirst of life in you, that zesty awake and aliveness. Perhaps I'm just getting older or maybe the miles between me and my friends are accruing with ever increasing rapidity, I don't know. But I do know that I yearn to be with my far away people more and more and that this writing is providing an entry, albeit an incomplete one. Some day our daughters will bounce together on the grass to Blue Scholars and Tribe Called Quest. But until then, the Logos carries us, huh? Thanks for giving me the chance to meet you in that carrying. 

To your questions. 

"The power of music is palpable." Yes. Yes it is. And how that power manifests, I've discovered over the years, throughout the threads of experience in my life, changes wildly given context, given relationships, given struggle, given what is here and now. I made a playlist for Aurora's birth. I never pressed play in the birthing room because I was too busy working my ass off to get that baby born. :-) But I listened to that mix for the weeks leading up to her birth and it prepared me spiritually for the work ahead, particularly a song that my friend Dominique shared with me called "Run til I Finish" by Smokie Norful. That song saved me in the last weeks of pregnancy when I was wondering if I could make it with a body so full, limbs too tired, mind overly excited and anxious. These lines "I'm going to run this race. I'm going to take my proper place in the winning circle" became the chorus of my life and it enable me to preserve. And then, for some reason, as soon as she was born, I began to crave the song "Trouble" by Ray LaMontagne. The title might seem strange, but there are some lines in the song that I needed to hear: "But I've been saved by a woman. I've been saved by a woman. I've been saved by a woman. She won't let me go. She won't let me go. She won't let me go." In some ways I think those lines had double meaning: I'd been saved by the arrival of this girl child, but I'd also been saved by the womyn I had to become in order to be her mother. The meaning just reverberated all over the place in that hospital room as the speakers echoed in our earliest moments of getting acquainted. Once I finally returned home and began nesting full time I went back to some oldies but goodies: Elton John's "You'll be blessed," and Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely." I danced with Aurora, especially to Stevie, again and again, sometimes full of joy and levity, other times sobbing because the hormones and happiness were too much to contain. These days I try to have all kinds of music playing. I want to share the diversity of brilliance of musicians near and far with Aurora. In fact, I think it's as important as sharing good books with her. I also try to show her videos--every morning if possible--of people playing instruments because there's a spirit-life connection in 'making music' that I want her to witness/vibe. And when church music is good, which it often is because I work with one of the most talented music ministers in the world (Tom Ryberg), I bring Aurora into my arms and sing as loud as I can, hoping that she can feel the momentousness of singing in community. 

One thing that I've been lamenting lately, in a big way, is how little I am dancing. I live in a body phobic culture. There isn't a single radio station that plays decent music where I live. Not one. I'm serious. The gay clubs here are so racist that they won't play hip hop music because of the "kind of people" it attracts. Wtf. And I don't do straight clubs for reasons I hope you understand without me having to explain. The parties I go to never include dancing. It's my living room floor or nothing. As you know, I am most alive on the dance floor. It is where I connect with the parts of me that will not be contained. It's always been a place/space where I can explore/express my physical, sexual and spiritual power in safe and wild ways. I crave that kind of movement. I need it to feel whole and connected to the pulse of the Earth. And yet, it's not here. I don't think I've had a serious dance fest yet with my new pregnancy. As I'm writing this, I'm feeling a sense of desperation. How can I not connect Isaiah (in utero) to this sacred part of me/life? There are huge things that I gave up when I left the Bay Area. People here don't understand because they've never experienced a plethora of options when it comes to queer embodiment, movement in culture/community, celebratory bodies joined in rhythm, etc. Those plethora of options were on the streets, in the parks, in dorm rooms, between us and all around us. Corbin, I miss it so much. I'm in tears as the memories echo...

One last thing about music and parenting. Or maybe it's just about music and being human.

I think we each have an instrument that mirrors us. An instrument that belongs to the "family of things" (to use Mary Oliver's language) in the same way we do. I think there's an instrument that is us, that we share its properties, capacities, and outcomes. Like for me, that instrument is the cello, though the oboe comes in a close second. For some people it's the drum, still others the saxophone. These instruments are composed differently, are played differently, make different sounds and evoke different emotions/response/power. Just like humans. And I think humans each have their correspondent instrument that most resonates because in its music they discover truth/recognition of who they are. Anyways, one of my great hopes for Aurora and Isaiah is that they find their instrument earlier than later in life. And that they either play it throughout their lives or find ways to incorporate the music of that instrument in their day to day. Is there any salvation, any divine power like the power of a musician set to her/his craft? I think of watching Yo Yo Ma playing the cello. Some days it makes me weep. Other days it arouses and pleases me in the waxing and waning of Eros. One time, one of my friends was dying, and in listening to the cello, I found a poem, gave birth to a poem, that needed to be written for her. This witnessing, this connecting, this morphic resonance (to use Rupert Sheldrake's language--do you know him, Corbin--he's amazing) of the musician with her instrument--it strikes me the highest kind of incarnation. Liberation. It is the kind of subjectivity one can cultivate in the generous space of music that I am alluding to here. How it can tip-toe you to the zenith of what you already know, cradle you there, and leave you breathless. How it can hype you out of your own skin. Or coax that skin with a magic potion capable of making you love yourself (if only for a second). I don't know. Words always fall short of the grace of anything real. God. Life. 

And music, music, for sure. 

Much love to you, from the stormy Mitten to the Rocky Mountains.

Emily Joye 

Writing Isaiah Entry #4

Writing Isaiah 

Entry #4

May 18th 2013

Logan Casey 

I mentioned to you my difficulty in settling on a question for this project, and you asked me to use that as my response, that you could work with aporia. That was a new word for me, and I found this on Wikipedia: "denotes in philosophy a philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement and in rhetoric a rhetorically useful expression of doubt."

Maybe my puzzlement is about my own relationship to biological parenting... that I won't ever be able to do that, and so I am in wonder (amazement, awe) about how even to imagine the bodily experience(s), let alone ask a question about them. (This part seems particularly puzzling to me since my body used to be such that I could have had children the way you are.)

But I think there's an even more personal element for me than just the bodily process... Barring some kind of miraculous scientific advancement, I simply can't ever have biological children. This makes me even more invested in chosen family than I already was as a queer person. So maybe here's a question, then, separate from the aporia: as a fellow queer person ---and as one of the most vivid embodiments I've ever met of creating and sustaining chosen family --- how do you find yourself relating to and experiencing this process of creating biological family?

:)

Love you. 

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

How can I even begin, Logan? Part of the experience of aporia is anti-beginning. A stalling. A coming to space only to encounter non-space. And yes, this can be puzzlement and wonder. It can also be frustration and lack. I experience none of those at this moment. Rather, a kind of built-in respect that necessitates a form of pause. These reflections, the two paragraphs you have gifted my way--how does one begin to respond? A hesitation feels like the only form of holiness worthy t/here.

So I sat/lingered with your reflections/question all night. Too much came up. It was overwhelming. Resonance. Rejoicing in the recognition. Feeling unbelievably seen and honored by your naming my embodiment/s of chosen family. I have worked so hard to incarnate family differently--that is outside of normative nuclear notions of family which in all honesty don't even exist for the most part, because as you know and I know, there is no norm when we boil it all down--and so to have that work called out/forth as good is humbling, beautifying, a congratulations from the universe (that speaks in the form of you today). I also must admit that I felt some fear and dread because you articulated impossibilities (albeit with qualifiers :) and instead of facing those self-named places of "not here" "not in this body" with openness and loving kindness, I felt myself balking and grieving. Which, of course, tells me that I have work to do. (Hence, the fear and dread) There's this incredible quote I stumbled on years ago that feels vibrational here: "If only I could throw away the urge, to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you." It seems as though I stand at the precipice of your articulated truth about not being able to biologically parent with a kind of traced pattern. And while there may be balking and grief for you in all of this, I wonder if it isn't my own grief, or a kind of collective grief I feel. 

You see, for years I sat in shadows of shame about my queer body, particularly its inability to be feminine enough to do all kinds of stuff. I was actually told by a physician that I had too much testosterone in my system to have an easy time getting pregnant and I might not conceive at all. Before that I had years of shame around the fact that I got left for girly girls and cheerleader types, that lovers would scoff at my body when I took off my clothes, that I was teased as a kid for "looking like a drag queen." My mother's husband even said that my kickboxing injury (which left me practically paralyzed for almost six months) happened because I try to act (in sports and life in general) "like a man." As a result of this harassment, taunting and projection I have often walked around in the world with an internalized sense of being too masculine to achieve certain results--pregnancy being one of them. Our world, and yes, even our sciences, are incredibly limited by what we think is possible/impossible through a gendered hermeneutic. Part of getting pregnant and forming family, for me, has been about prophetically pushing through those narrow definitions of the possible. I want every gender queer person on this planet to know "the limits of discourse" don't always match the limits of their bodies. They do sometimes but not all the time. I'm also aware that part of my reaction to your reflection is that many queer bodies feel branded, both externally and internally, by some kind of "not enough or too much" narrative around gender/hormones/etc. Essentially, that I am not the only one: many of us feel this way. And it gets in the way. In the way of creating the lives we desire, the babies we yearn to meet, the families we hope to form, etc. And while I don't want to make the aporia you've offered some kind of totalizing segwey into my own story, or some social systems analysis about body shame & dysphoria, I am aware that we all--you and me and anyone else brave enough to admit these realities--exist at some intersection of bewilderment and bravery as we behold our queer flesh. 

The more I write about this the more aware I am of a need I possess to personally and communally, private and publicly grieve these places of pain. This is clearly clearly clearly not about you. AND here's where I need to practice a certain ethic. I want You. I don't want to trace my patterns. I want to admit my patterns and in the admission process make space (cleared by the recognition of my stuff) for your stuff. Hence, I'd like to ask you, if it feels like something you want to engage, for a response to this writing, specifically focused on this question: how do you experience the reality of not being able to biologically parent? You have named puzzlement. In taking that term literally and artistically I envision pieces, many pieces, coexisting together-yet-apart on a common surface. Is there an accuracy to this vision? Tell me more. 

Now...to your question...

My process around processing :) this move to biologically parent started about two years ago when I found myself falling deeply, quite unexpectedly (with varying levels of disturbance), in love with J.R. I was on a plane to Biloxi MI where I'd be doing a week long Katrina Recovery home renovation. We were both in other primary romantic relationships at the time and nothing physical had happened between us but there was an acknowledgment of something totally powerful going on that couldn't be stopped. It's an utterly terrifying feeling. Anyways, six months pregnant, dyke-identified with a sperm-donor baby and I was madly in love with a self-identified biological male. It made no sense. Still doesn't some days. But on that plane, high in the sky, (never underestimate the power of fucking with gravity/routine/placement when it comes to receiving revelation) I had this distinct premonition that we were going to have children with each other. It scared me. And enticed me. Like only something totally outside the box can. At that point I didn't even think J.R. and I had a future as a couple; I certainly couldn't see biological children. But however perplexing that's the message I got. Looking back, I'm more sure than ever that the 'power that couldn't be stopped' was (multiplicitous for sure and) partly Isaiah's need to be in the world. He was part of that pulsing, gripping, completely compelling mystery we call love. Sometimes things need to make their way into the world through already existing things in the world. I think the desire we feel is often this currency, a kind of invitational communication, of the unborn. And I mean unborn in a large sense: books to be written, sculptures to be formed, music to be composed and sung, places to be traveled, you feel me, right? What I'm trying to say is that future incarnations can often preview themselves in the form of yearning that makes no sense in the present. Hence, after a long detour to set context, let me say that my first response to biological parenting (and of course, I (am) biologically parented/parenting Aurora too but conception came about differently; more of this later) was outright disbelief. Like, how on Earth is that going to work? Yeah, fucking, right. 

And then something crazy happened. I listened to my mother. Lol! 

Two weeks after that initial vision/premonition I was with my mom in Cape Cod (again, outside of my normal geography) and I was lamenting this love that didn't make any sense, refusing to give into "normativity" and "heterosexuality" and wishing it would all go away. Do you know what she said to me? I'll never forget it. "Em, you've been fighting for everyone else's right to love each other however they want, whoever they are, ever since you were a kid. Why not give yourself that same right and freedom?" My mother standing at the altar of my life, calling me, pushing me, propelling me forward. In some ways I know that her own failed love affair with my father is what enabled her to utter that prophetic question. Again, sometimes things need to make their way into the world through already existing things in the world. In my bloodline that means one thing for sure: the capacity for love and desire to be honest about themselves, to not quit, to persist when everything in the world (except the heart) says turn around/away. My parents couldn't do it. No, let me be real: my father couldn't do it. She suffered as a result. I could feel her hoping that my life wouldn't be thrust into a similar love-not-chosen kind of spiral. 

Let's face it. We are undone by each other. And if we are not, we're missing something. --Judith Butler. 

You sent this to me and Anna the other day, Logan. Do you remember? One wonders why a certain passage/text/pericope echoes with such force throughout the years with such force throughout certain communities. Here's a guess on this one. We queers fight for freedom in the world that we too easily deny ourselves. Because we've so often been rejected (because our bodies, love, sex, relations are taboo, non-normative, too big, not enough, etc) we are a self protective people. Yet the balm we most need is the very love we understandably, yet tragically protect ourselves against. We need Judith to remind us: the only way to wholeness is through the process of being undone. 

I had ideas about the kind of love and the kind of family I could have. It was a kind of militant framework looking back. I had so thoroughly rejected notions of nuclear/biological family and so whole-heartedly embraced queer/family by choice lifestyle that when the love I most wanted/needed came my way, I had to struggle to undo what was protecting/blocking me. The point here, is of course NOT that I have now seen the light and embraced the "true" paradigm by settling into marriage and having a kid through vaginal intercourse. Not at all. In fact I feel more queer than before. Because I've realized sky is the limit. When it comes to love, relationships, family, sex, parenting, etc, the options are endless. It's all possible. I can choose any of it. There is incredible freedom in this. The freedom to accept what comes my way in the form of gift, no matter how it comes. (ha!) I think my way of conceiving and parenting Aurora is equal (in the sight of God and my community of accountability) to how I've conceived of and will parent Isaiah. I absolutely love the combination of stuff my family is. Gay straight queer. Black brown white. Young middle and old(er-ish). It's (the diversity) a huge source of pride for me. No one I know has this story. How awesome is that? 

The choice was before me: was I willing to be undone by J.R., by this love, by this potential family--or not? I chose love. I chose J.R. I chose the potential for Aurora and Isaiah to have a father/co-parent. I am not sorry. I am happier than I've ever been. More free in the commitment. More secure in the ties that bind and inevitably cause grief/loss. So, to answer your direct question: "how do you find yourself relating to and experiencing this process of creating biological family?"--Logan, I feel grateful. Grateful that I know it isn't the only way and that knowledge isn't conceptual but experiential. Grateful that I could have repeated the pattern of my parents by walking away because it didn't make sense but I didn't. Grateful that I chose to love and be free and be Isaiah's mom. On my knees, in a sacred hush, most days, because the gratitude is so deep that I cannot help but kneel in adoration. 

Thank you for your reflections and question. Thank you for being a presence that evokes the best. The fucking best. You are a friend, a brother, a companion of delight and depth. 

In my experience an aporia is often an opening. Never seems that way at first. At first it's often disorientation, a kind of disturbance for those of us who like to Know. You began with/at an aporetic door. I hope I walked through this one with the respect, honor and bad-assness that this relationship, and all aporias, deserve. 

All my love, 

Emily Joye

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