Dear Self,

There are things you love and you drop them in the day-to-day of living/working/routine-ing. Right now you are on vacation with the space to connect (back) with those things. They are not things; that's a misappropriated term. They are life-lines, bring-you-back-to-the-truth-of-it-all type stuff. Stuff feels wrong too. Anyway, language aside, I want to remind you of them because this space away/apart can serve as on-going memory kicker. So, my dear, remember these...

The New Yorker (the writing, dear God, makes you better by proxy)
Joni Mitchell (lyrics of love unmatched and timeless)
Ecclesiastes (dust in the wind: now that's good theology)
Reading all day long (makes you more human)
Memorizing texts/poems because you/they deserve it (discipline is dope)
Walking to places you've never been (it's like trepidation and discovery all in one)
Going to the movies (it's just story, silly, and there's some kind of retreat involved)
Being alone (don't be an ass; you're totally an introvert no matter how much demand there might be for an alternative reality)
Writing love letters (because you discover love in the writing, duh)
Being outside (like literally changes the composition of your face. trip out)

There might be more to come as there are still 4 days left. What a hallelujah. Oh yeah: another thing. The book you're reading right now "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss is amazing and you should tell everyone about it. Oh yeah: p.p.s. The article you just read in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande about coaching is something you should share with everyone you work with, particularly folk in social service. Don't forget.

Between an Aged River and a Newly Flowing Stream

Dear Turtle Bean,

Yesterday was your grandmother's birthday. She is 62 years old.

There are things about her that I know you will discover in time
like how she can create harmony out of thin air
like how grace is at the center of her heart
                even though she fails to grasp it for herself
like how when you're struggling she's the most compassionate ear and tongue on the block
                because she doesn't fail to grasp it for others
like how to love her is to hold her pain which is hard but worth it
like how being loved by her is supreme (yes, similar to the John Coltrane jam).

I want you to know, child of my womb, that her life has been big life,
in every sense of the word. And that you come from her.
This is important. You must understand this.
I know it won't happen immediately, as even I, at the age of 30
am still discovering what it means to come from her.

But this I know--
to descend from her blood line
is to be enthroned with a legacy,
one filled with promise and struggle (as it with every maternal lineage, I suppose),
where spiritual giftedness is supplemented by
histories of persecution, migration, survival-based fundamentalism and liberation
where leadership brilliance and precision come with
the seductions of ego-enhancement and possibilities to unethically dissolve
where passions of the senses bring portals for ecstasy and
cliff side walks with addiction.

These are bloodline legacies
that you will inherit (and this is only 1/4 of the bloodline!).
Though you are not restricted by them,
you are ultimately responsible to the spirit of them.
They will show up in your life differently
than they have shown up in grandma's life
or in your mother's life
but they will show up
because you, you you you
though singular and all-your-incarnated-own
are not separate from the flesh that has formed you.

Like any mother
standing between  an aged river and a newly flowing stream
I am struck with the power and mystery of it all,
struck with the privilege that I inherited being had by her,
struck with the privilege that I inherit by having you,
privilege of knowing I will get to witness and tend to
the next phase of it all through your precious life unfolding.

When mystery and power of this magnitude strike me
I am full of fear and trembling. Wanting to be perfect
to and for you. Wanting to absolve you of the stuff that inevitably
comes and racks the human heart with suffering. But such is not the case with big life.

If there's anything I've learned
from the 30 years inside the 62 years,
it's that perfection and absolution
are nowhere to be found.
But harmony, grace and love supreme abound.
This is your legacy, child of my womb--
big life. And we cannot wait to receive you.

Side by Side: Prophetic & Maternal

I am a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Religion is a vocation deeply embedded in the history of my ancestors and I come from clergy blood on both sides of my family. Years ago I, like many of my forefathers, took an oath to conserve and uphold the traditions of the Church in all of my affairs. Part of the ministerial office requires truth telling about issues of morality and justice, what many of us refer to as the prophetic aspect of ministry. Like the prophets of old (Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus), ministers of today are called to speak the truth in love, particularly if society is falling into corruption. We are called to be verbal red flags in the communities where we find ourselves, voicing alarm where the streets have been bruised and breeched, and voicing invitation for all those who are lost in sin to return to the loving presence of a grace that can always forgive and set free. This is only one aspect of our work but it is an important one. In all honesty, I believe many pastors go into this work because we have an extra sensitive ingrained sense of right and wrong and the Church is one of few public institutions that conserves and places a rite upon truth telling even at the cost of one’s life. This is certainly true in my case and the prophetic aspect of ministry has always felt most natural to me.

I am also in the second trimester of pregnancy, expecting my first child in the Spring of 2012. For the first time in my life I am looking at issues of right and wrong, morality and justice as one who will bring a child into the world. All of sudden the prophetic is sitting alongside the maternal. Whereas before the prophetic alarm would sound in the direction of particular issues or events in society, I now think much more about how these issues and events shape the thinking of children. For instance, as all of my friends and colleagues were scurrying to write letters on behalf of Troy Davis this week (a very important act in itself, make no mistake), I kept pondering how to explain to my child that the government feels justified in taking life. And when I heard the news about racist vandalism being smeared all over Orchard Park in Battle Creek this week, I thought about the children witnessing hateful language about their own skin-color in their own neighborhood. Such things certainly qualify as domestic, psychological terrorism. What does this do to the worldview of a seven year old? Further, a report from the U.S. census came out this week reporting that 23.5% of children under the age of 18 in the state of Michigan are in poverty. When my child is in school and hears in history class the recurring rhetoric of this nation being a place where anyone can make it, how do I explain almost one of four kids crying of hunger pains at night?

Capital punishment has always mattered to me. As have racism and poverty. But what matters to me more than ever is that the single thread woven throughout all of these issues & events become more and more clear to all of us: life. The dignity of human life. When we think about the politicians we vote for, the churches we attend, the news stations we watch, the people we hang out with, the professional fields we go into, the words we use, the actions we take—perhaps the greatest litmus test of all is whether or not these things will shape the worldview of children to regard the dignity of human life.

A Psalm of Maternal Gratitude

Making your way.

So miracle. 

I am joined, because of you,

to countless generations of women

who have surrendered

their bodies to the great unknown:

new sensations everyday,

hopes and fears and prayers everyday,

unraveling mysteries everyday

connective

disruptive

magical.

We women, oh my God: 

what we do to continue.

You, joining me to that continuation

because you chose to be alive

and I don’t understand how that happens

but I cry envisioning the resolve in you,

you once a little swimming thing 

in a group of other swimming things.

You of all them that made it,

made it into me like hallelujah, yes, here I go.

You precious, strong growing everyday. 

And you are inside, but the external is different now.

So much softer now, less willing to sharpen or harden now,

or fasten tight to futile protectiveness. 

Now.
Yes, you are teaching me these things:

let it change you, reform you, stretch you, remake you even if

it means being ripped apart in the process—

the world, this you-world-inside-me,

teaching me what it means to give absolutely everything,

which is loss and blossom at the same time.

How can I thank you?

Still inside, and

already 

changing the whole wide world...

A Love Story

A Love Story

By: Emily Joye McGaughy

August 30th 2011

"I cannot live with a single body cut off from the rest. I want ways of holding on to what surpasses me, of adding to myself a mother or other. (...) I am the finite that wants its infinite. Love infinites me. Without you I am a pebble, and my skin closes narrowly over me. Without you, stub, stump. All I need is you in order to pass over into infinity."

"...I pass through an incomprehension of you towards you, one that doesn't abandon you. (...) O you of whom I'm thinking...contemplated belly to your earth like contemplated from the ground up, you pure manifestation of you, you moon, you other, my togetherness with you I will never know, but it exists. (...) I tell you yes. I begin us with a Yes. Yes begins us."

--Excerpts from Helene Cixous’ Stigmata “What is it o’clock? or The door (we never enter)”

                Every birth is a story. They are stories of flesh, flesh that gives of itself in love and risks rupturing the very foundation of the human body for the continuation of life itself. They are stories of seeds and beans. Stories of struggle, miracle and uncertainty. Stories of God. Stories that implicate history and herstory and every little crevice of incarnation that came before both of their stories. Stories of the body. Stories of the earth and her incessant need to return to herself, her constant craving to continue. Stories of love.

                I’ve got a love story to tell. I have loved the baby that is now growing in my belly before I ever conceived incarnationally. Loved the promise of planting a seed and nurturing it into growth. Loved the promise of giving my body over to the threshold of life that is also the threshold of death and therefore meeting God in the process of birthing. Loved the idea of something coming out of me that is not me, something that will become outside of me and in the process enable me to be even more me than I’d ever be without it. Loved the idea of seeing this child become something entirely mysterious unto itself, someone that will change the very nature of nature just because she/he is here. Loved the idea of my mom becoming grandma. Loved the idea of continuing the bloodline. And now, now that the baby is growing within, I love the small changes happening in rhythms I do not understand. I love the heartbeat I heard at 7 weeks. I love the people who have promised to surround this baby with their love and support. I love that this baby is surviving and making its way daily. I love the welcoming “yes” that awakens me every morning.  And then there is the love story I cannot tell because I am an apophatic theologian at heart and know the limits of human discourse when it comes to love, divine love, divine life, etc. I cannot, in the fullness of truth, describe the body yearning/knowing/truth of motherhood that has been with me all along, truth that only I can discern because it lives inside with incredible force and precision but does not employ language. I cannot explain that love to you because it is of/from God who is always beyond words, ever glimpsing and reaching into our capacity for knowledge beyond the alphabet, knowledge in the depth of our skin, bones, breath, heart, brain and willing wombs. 

There is the love story of my love for this coming child. There is the love story of God’s movement within me, making way for this coming child. They are the ground of this birth story.

                And while this story is one of mothering and divine love, there will be some who question its truth because the family structure and conditions of life for this child do not match our culture’s sanction on what’s normal. I have heard the critiques already, read them in bold print. I could spend hours writing responses to the fears people have for/about me/us. But instead, I just want to say this. At the heart of all things violent, arrogant, judgmental, erasing and distancing is the belief that we know the truth of someone else’s body/life better than they do. At the heart of all things loving, compassionate and supportive is the belief that God’s revelation is in the body of everything that lives, moves and has its being. Our work on this planet is to together discern and live out that revelation. That is what I am doing in the process of procreation: discerning and living out a revelation that has been in my flesh for a long time.

This pregnancy comes out of a two year discernment process that was originally kicked off by a  diagnosis of potential long-term fertility impairments due to polycystic ovarian syndrome. That doctor told me that if I ever wanted to have kids, I needed to get busy. I took her words seriously. She also told me it might not be easy and that I shouldn’t have high expectations. The fact that I got pregnant after two attempts at insemination is, in the words of my Ob-Gyn nurse practioner, a miracle.  The two year process of discernment has included accountability and support from the people closest and most important to me including my own family, ministry colleagues, mentors and friends. I gathered medical and spiritual information. I prayed hard. A donor came into my life in ways that still leave me breathless with gratitude. I have family-by-choice in place that will be present in the raising of this baby. I have a community of friends and extended family-by-choice that will support me. Every step of the way has been accompanied by mercies and miracles. I am the happiest I have ever been. I’ve never felt more gifted from the outside, careful, tender and attentive with the inside, never felt so humbled and empowered simultaneously.

I am due in late March. I delight in the promise of a spring baby that will enter the world right alongside the Iris’ and Marigolds of Michigan. Between now and then I pray you will join me in prayers for this little one: safe passage, welcome and sustaining support, love without beginning and without end. A life of infinite love. A life of yes. Amen.           

Violence & Memory: Thank you Choir Camp 2011

Today concludes Choir Camp. One of our music directors, Lucy Lower, gets kids from all over Battle Creek to come play, practice and perform various biblical stories each summer. Choir Camp lasts a week. I've done morning devotions for the kids the last two years. Last year the kids performed the story of Jonah. This year they are doing "Are We There Yet?" which is a production of the Exodus story. 

Anyone who knows me well knows that doing "children's moments" in worship is about my least favorite thing on Earth. But Choir Camp devotionals are nearly my favorite thing on Earth. The difference being the presence of adults. In worship there are 100 adults surrounding the 5 or 6 kids drawn to the center of the sanctuary to be seen (rarely heard, though) for a total of 4 minutes. In choir camp, it's just me and the kids. No pressure from the on-looking grown ups. No real time constraints. Space and time for interactivity where the kids are seen and heard, and the text for each morning is consistent with the text that consumes their lives for the entire week. It's relevant to their day-to-day lives, it's meaning-making in a consistent way and I actually think the kids experience some critical faith formation as a result. 

This year I've run into some core commitments of my own in the devotional preparation process. If you ever want to know how you *really* feel about something, consider whether or not you'd be willing to teach it to children. Great litmus test. 

The biblical narrative of Exodus exhibits the best and worst theology connected to the historical and imaginative G*d YHWH. This is the G*d that so believes in freedom that He is willing to rise up as liberator a former criminal and power-hoarder: a man who is lied to about who he really is; a man who commits murder and then flees the scene. This is the G*d that so despises enslavement of any kind that He is willing to part the ocean into high-flying walls and create a dry path of deliverance for the aching feet of formerly enslaved captives now walking/running/dancing into the possibilities for new life. But/And.

This is the god who takes issue with Pharaoh for killing Israelite first-born sons and then does the exact thing in the final plague upon Egypt. Let me be specific: this is a god who kills children, lots of them. Let me be more personally specific: if I were to teach this story to the kids at Choir Camp in its fullness, I would be saying that God participated in a sort of ethnic cleansing and that the target of his wrath was the most vulnerable in society. Would you be willing to pass this theology onto 4 & 5 year-olds? I simply could not. So I skipped the plagues. And when we got to the ocean crashing down upon all the Egyptian soldiers, I cringed and wished there was a way to tell the story without including that part. But there wasn't. So even in the most deliberate attempt to keep violent theology out of the room, I faltered. 

Not that I am afraid of deconstructing biblical violence. I preach against the Bible regularly. But I'm not sure there's cognitive capacity for this kind of sophisticated theological thinking among preschoolers, first graders or even seventh graders for that matter. I am reminded of Rev. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown (Emeritus Professor of Theology and Ethics at my alma mater Pacific School of Religion) who once said: "Any philosophy or theology I do must put the welfare of children above the niceties of metaphysics." We may not be able to guard against all theologies of violence making their way into the imaginations of children, but it's one of the deepest prayers of my life to do all I can in that vein. 

The other theme of the Exodus story that’s causing sustained reflection for me this week has to do with memory. I’ve been using clips from “The Prince of Egypt” with the kids because the movie makes alive what comes across so bland and boring in the book. In the film, Moses’ sister Miriam plays a significant role of reminding the former-prince-turned-prophet-and-liberator who he really is. He is a Hebrew, not an Egyptian. He was born to a particular people and it is those people who need him to be reminded of his place among them. Moses has three sibling figures in this story, but as my colleague Rev. Thomas Ryberg reminded me this morning, there’s a direct parallelism between Miriam & Pharaoh. Pharaoh wants Moses to claim who he is in terms of power and empire building, an identity claim that could possibly bring Moses “personal comfort” and social esteem. Were Moses to acquiesce to this seductive invitation, he would have to continue denying his ethnicity, his blood-relation to those he is oppressing. Miriam, on the other hand, invites him to reject imperial power and to choose a life of truth, one where his ethnic and kin connections take precedence over personal comfort and social esteem.

How often are we confronted with these kinds of invitations?

The stripping of one’s ethnic and domestic identity is nothing short of psychological terrorism. Often this kind of stripping happens under the guise of ‘building something better’ for future generations. But which generations, exactly? Who stands to benefit, in the long run, from being lied to about their identity? No one. Not victims. Not oppressors. No one. When we lose who we are and where we come from, whether that happens to us or through our own decisions, there is tremendous loss. That’s why memory can play such an incredibly spiritual role in the redemption of individuals and communities. When we remember where we come from, remember who we come from, remember who we are—literally (not according to some new age “we are all children of light worthy of healthy snacks and hybrid cars” bullshit)—we cannot help but feel an obligation to the whole, which is healing and restorative and inspiring.

There’s a line in one of my favorite passages in Trito Isaiah, where the prophet is talking to  once-exiled-now-returned Israel about what actually pleases God. It goes like this:

          Is this not the fast that I choose (…) Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?      

As a fourth generation European American whose lost most of my ethnic heritage because of the ideologies of assimilation (yes, some “white” people get screwed by this too) and as a person living in Michigan who is the daughter of a mother once exiled from the Mid West—not hiding myself from my own kin has become salvation for me. It’s remembering that I was born to a particular people and it is those people who need me to be reminded of my place among them.

So yes, the bible contains horrific theologies. But/And. It also invites me into the lasting truths of my life and the truths of lives around me. How could I ever let it go? I can't. At least not today. 


I want to thank Choir Camp 2011 for giving me the opportunity to teach. So I could learn. Amen.   

I used to think
in all my liberal, well-learned haughtiness
that internal stillness came from the clearing of distraction
which inevitably meant detachment from stuff.
In fact, I often scoffed at bells and fancy rugs
as the supplements to achieving peace.
Even texts I though superfluous. 
But tonight I baked Amish friendship bread
which smells like cinnamon
while listening to Norah Jones
whose voice sounds like satin
and those two things
brought me closer to bliss than I’ve been in a long long time.
Takes a lot
or perhaps just the right little
to unlearn the absurdity of being well-learned.

The Threshold & Generations

...approaching 30. my mom's arrival...

you (both) are here. flesh of my flesh.
i am here.
we are here.
together.

bears, believes, hopes, endures.

love.

this miracle, here--
testimony in your bearing
in my believing and hoping
in our enduring almost always the things that were too much
and yet surviving again and again
and there's more
to come; it's here already.

i'm stunned in love. here. today. now.

Father's Day Round Two

This is dedicated to Rev. Gene Boutilier, Rev. Dr. Barry Sang, Rev. Dr. Bill McKinney, Pete Bellis and Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Kuan--fathers of my Spirit, fathers for the Earth. This is dedicated to Rev. William McGaughy & Rev. J.B. Schwartz--fathers of my body, may they both rest in peace. This is dedicated to Jaime Montenegro, Tom Ryberg & Corbin Tobey Davis--three friends and new fathers who give me hope for the generations to come. God is merciful.   

Father’s Day Litany

We thank God for fathers, in body and spirit

inside this building and all over the earth

fathers who love and nurture their own biological children

and love and nurture children not of their blood line.

We thank God for fathers, in body and spirit

Who take time to see, hear, touch, nurture and provide.

Who take time to teach, discipline, support and strengthen.

Who take time to play, sing, dance, and walk alongside.

Who take time to be quiet, attentive, inquisitive and invested over the long haul.

We thank God for fathers who in body and spirit

show up faithfully,

put up with what’s hard, patiently,

who are willing to be changed themselves and

willing to make the world over through concrete acts of love.

We ask God’s forgiveness

for the conditions of evil and sin upon this Earth

that make fathering difficult and impossible for some:

conditions like poverty, unemployment, mass incarceration and war. 

We ask God’s mercy and justice

confront and transform those fathers who

have hurt their families and children

because of dishonesty or selfishness or greed or fear.

We ask God’s peace and healing

be upon all those this day who are broken and pained

because they grew up fatherless without a choice.

God’s peace and healing

be upon men who wanted to but could not father children

with their bodies or spirits.

God’s Peace and healing be upon  

fathers who lost children too soon to tragic death, miscarriage or abortion,

fathers who have living children lost to long-standing resentment or

addiction or untreated mental health disorders or

anything else that separates them.

We pray for all people living today and those unborn

for fathers everywhere to recognize the image of God

incarnated in their lives and we pray for their faithful response

in body, mind and spirit,

faithful responses of integrity and love whenever they are called

to be good stewards of the lives entrusted to their care.

Amen 

Father's Day

It's the day before Father's Day
and facebook has become the latest display case of the nuclear family
where everyone posts their father as their profile picture.
I have two fathers. How to choose? I refuse.
Besides neither one really counts.
It's this half life, half lie, half truth that's always haunting me, daddy.

On accident, I just saw a picture
of my biological father holding his (other) daughter.
It's the only picture I've ever seen of him where he doesn't have grey hair,
where he's a young man with black curls and bulging biceps and a smile
so devilishly gorgeous that someone as smart as my mom would fall for it. 
It's the only picture I've ever seen of my father, fathering.

And I feel like screaming at the picture and screaming at him.
FUCK YOU. HOW COULD YOU? 
I feel like making him the scapegoat for absolutely everything,
every struggle,
every love lost,
every staining abandonment episode,
every stinging inability to participate in healthy intimacy.

But I am in love too.
In love with this idea of him. This idea of my father, fathering.
Isn't it love that spikes the initial yearning for him? It is, yes.
And so I imagine it's me that he's holding.
Imagine it's me that gets to feel his hands on my 2-year old belly,
Imagine it's me smiling from ear to ear in between his sturdy black boots.
I imagine he is elated to be with little me
and that little me can't imagine a life without
this towering, tenderly holding him.

...and when I'm done imagining and done sobbing
because the contents of my imagination are always more generous than this life...

i pray for a world where dads can be dads to all their children,
where women don't fall for the bullshit,
where men don't believe their own hype,
where love can flourish in multiplicity without shame, guilt, fear or minimization of its power.