Rant

I don't want to have any more conversations about individuals or specific acts when it comes to the following: violence, mental health, addiction, sex, race, ability, religion, over-privilege, under-privilege, employment or education. If there's no systems analysis, I don't want to hear it or talk about it. Period. End of story.  

To The Women/s: A Poetic Letter/Plea at the Horizons of Feminist & Continental Philosophy

Some of you have more to say now. 

Others look away with greater judgement and speed than before.

Still others drop off gifts, quietly, sometimes anonymously--

gifts color-coded, gifts cloaked in generational grind. 

Yet another group of you can't look at me without crying

because images of your abortions, miscarriages, 

your torturous waiting that turned into a never,
that he left you for some vagina-that-could,

come flooding every time my engorged belly passes by.

Little girl creatures stare and stare and stare:

as if I'm some new constellation in the sky, 

begging for a name and mythology all my own.

The oldest, those closest to death

say things so unfiltered, it's almost refreshing. Almost.

New tongues and traditions between us 
and though I am delighted, I have something to say:

I see you. 

I see it all. 

But I saw you before, too. 

Do you know that? 

Before you began applying the universal woman/mother hermeneutic upon my flesh,

before you tiptoed through the entrance of a 'tolerable' discourse 

in this culture that tries to annihilate anything authentic and creative between-women
outside of its Cosmopolitan, Better-Homes-and-Gardens, Madonna/Whore jurisdictions-- 

I yearned for you.
Yearned for your speech, 
your glances and judgements, 
your quiet and anonymous gifts, 
your tears. 

I've wanted to see/hear/touch/love all of you all along. Not just about this. 

Not just about the labor of our love externalized, as Irigaray would say. 

But about the labor of y/our interiority too.

Your questions, desires, and mad-ass plans to do it different,

the burning shame you hold because of too many nevers,

the way you touch yourself when the loneliness has become too stifling,

the way you make sense, the way you become incensed.

The books that burst you into belly laughter.

Why you cry in church like that.

Your stories and songs outside the obligatory and caved-in.

I've wanted all of you, all along. 

I do not confess my longing,
as the framers of autocratic/phallic/fuckery would propose,
from a location of hyper-feminine, dyked-out insatiability.
This is not a petition of one who wears black leather, fish nets and red lipstick.
Does anyone else yawn in the face of such simplicity? 
These are the yearnings of one who occasionally
glimpses the "one" we are not because of the dynamic, difference we are.
And it sets me free. Not to be you. But to be me, and in being totally me,
the possibility to love you, to love the ineffable us, which is 
after all the greatest gift I can give this unborn daughter
coming into our fold, a line of flight her very own.

 

Aurora the Aporia: Learning Apophasis (again) from the Inside for Once

Another thing you should know about your mother:
I spend a lot of time watching movement. Movement of the earth in seasons.
Movement of the Multitude in pursuit of justice. Movement of liturgy.
Movement from trauma to healing.  But there's nothing, absolutely nothing,
that captivates my attention like the movement of the human body.
I spend hours, days in fact, watching flesh do its thing.
And I make countless guesses about what motivates human movement.

My seminary professor Dr. Marion Grau says this is hermeneutical,
that we are interpretive bodies interpreting bodies. She's right. About many things.
But back to the matter at hand, at foot, at head and heart and bone and all things body.
These guesses I make, that we all make, about how/when&why movement erupts
in ourselves, or in others--these guesses and interpretations reveal much about
the guesser, the interpreter herself. And in that regard, dearest Aurora,
morning's dawn, light of day, you are already reminding me of what I don't know.

Sometimes you are still for long long periods of time.
And then there are times, like last night, when you move rapidly, with fierce intensity
and repetition for hours. Undeniable, attention-grabbing force in what you are doing.
I wonder, in motionless moments and silence, if you are tired.
In moments when you are physically erupting inside of me I wonder
if you are hungry, excited, uncomfortable, seeking release, happy. What? I don't know.

And that's the gift of it all. I am brought back to the truth of not-knowing.
Best guesses and interpretations aside: I don't know what moved you to come alive,
to come into first, second and third trimesters.
I don't know what causes your dormancy or excitability.
I will never, completely, fully know you or understand your movement.
Not when you're born.
Not when you try to explain it to me with the
language this world extends to you. Never.
Unless I slip into sinful amnesia, you will always remain a mystery to me. 

Which makes this life with you all the more inviting, which makes seeking
the who/what/why of you all the more enlivening.
The body: mystery. Motivation: mystery. Movement: aporia par excellance.
What a treasure to be taught this timeless truth from the inside for once.

Advent Congregationalist Article

For the longest time I had visceral, negative reactions to the phrase “wait on the Lord.” I know it’s biblical. I know it’s been in our tradition for a long time. I know it brings (some) people comfort. But it often comes across to me like a sound-byte, cliche that people utter when they have nothing else to say. Further, far too many people “wait on the Lord” when they could be taking concrete steps in their lives to make their situations more hopeful. It always rubs me the wrong way when God’s name gets invoked in order to absolve humans of their responsibility. And on top of all this, waiting often seems like the exact opposite of what God calls us to be about in the world. I’ve understood faith to be about acting from a place of assured risk, acting from the place of hope secured in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I mean, you didn’t see Jesus waiting on Rome or legalistic, corrupt religion to change their behavior. He actively turned his face/life/ministry toward Jerusalem and actively changed the world forever with his active challenge of love and justice. So what’s with this passive, waiting business evoked in his name at this time of year?  

In the Advent season we are told, again, yet again, “wait on the Lord.” And again, yet again, the promise of God’s incarnation is what we are instructed to wait for. God is going to show up, they say. A star will rise in the East, they say. Unto us a savior will be born, they say. So we get out our calendars and count the days. We invoke and plea with the spirit of God through song: “oh come oh come Emmanuel.” We watch a different family light a new candle in worship each week. It’s delightful, isn’t it? The purple and blue. The fire light. The familiar hymns. The way children get excited and remind us, literally, that miracles come in small packages. It’s new every time, this Advent thing, even though we do it again, yet again. It's new every time because we are different every year. That's the glory of religion: it connects us to timeless truths as we change week after week, month after month, year after year.

This year, it’s particularly new to me and it’s carving out a new appreciation and respect for a phrase I used to hold in high contempt. Something big is going to show up in my life this year. Something I can’t control. Something inside me, yet independent of me too. Something that will change my life forever. Every day I wait. Wait for the moment when she’ll show up. Wait for the moment when I’ll see her face. Wait for the moment of birth. I can’t control how it happens or when it happens. But I can get prepared, emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Pregnancy is teaching me about what I do have control over, what I don’t, and that the greatest spiritual gift I can give myself and this little one is to wait with awe-filled anticipation. There’s also some fearful dread, some uncomfortable moments of not-knowing. That’s also a part of Advent (which we’ll be hearing about as we journey with the Prophet Isaiah in church over the next weeks). But mostly, this waiting is filled with joy-filled curiosity and splendor. There’s nothing passive about it. It’s a choice, a choice born of love and surrender to the miraculous processes that transcend and live inside me simultaneously. Advent waiting is the same: it’s not passive; it’s a choice born of our love and surrender to God who transcends and lives inside us all simultaneously. We wait on the promise that God will be born, will show up, again, yet again. And that we will be made new, because of that birth & showing up again, yet again.  

Pregnancy is teaching me the unmatched spiritual power of waiting this winter, the Advent, this sacred season. What wondrous love is this...

Amen.

From Wilderness to Promised Land: Remember, Don’t Forget

By: Rev. Emily Joye Mcgaughy

FCCBC, Koinonia

November 20, 2011

Deuteronomy 8:1-20

I’m not going home this year for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but lots of my loved ones around here (and those I keep in contact with via phone) are preparing to head out, head home, go back, to return to the land of their ancestors. I’ve been listening to them about it all week. Many of them are experiencing a combination of excitement and anxiety, joy and dread, hope for peace & reconnection and ceaseless projections of potential drama. How many of you are or will go somewhere other than where you currently live during this holiday season at some point?

It’s amazing how before we even get on the plane, train or automobile to the place of our return, to the “home” that may or may not still feel like “home,” that place starts living in our psyche and talking to us about what’s to come. Before we even leave, that place has arrived within us. Perhaps American Novelist William Faulkner was right: the past is not the past. And our biblical text of this morning would have us believe that’s a good thing. But I’ve got to be honest…sometimes I don’t buy it.

Am I the only one who returns to the land of my ancestors and experiences instant psychological and spiritual regression? As soon as I cross the threshold of here/there, I turn into a teen-age ball of angsty yuck. When I “go back” somehow I am no longer a self-sufficient adult woman with a house, career and love life of my own. Instead all these insecurities rise up in me that I remember having when I was still dependent on my parents. And every time I forget that these feelings happen every time, and so: I eat too much; I’m offended too easily; I cry at the slightest provocation. It’s crazy. Further: it seems that every fight or awkward silence or total avoidance or dysfunctional dance my family has ever engaged in seems to get re-ignited at the very times of year when Hallmark tells us we should be delighting and devoting and merry merry dancing with one another. I just have to talk about the neo-colonial ideology of Thanksgiving and the Holocaust of First Nations people in America which spoils everyone’s appetite. And my mom’s husband just has to talk about how essential gender roles are for the proper functioning of society which makes the lone queer in the room go suddenly silent and sulky. And my mom just has to make peace between all of us which makes her feel hopelessly anxious and all of us hopelessly annoyed by her anxiety. It’s like clock-work.  

And yet…

And yet…

I also return, or go back to these slices of life, these ghosts of times gone by that connect me to the very things that have formed my body, formed my psyche, formed my world-view and passions and politics and positions for the good. Things that knock me over with thanksgiving, like my mother’s ability to turn a dining room table into an altar with her eye for harmonious color and candle light and the way she opens her arms when people arrive at the door, exhibiting the kind of hospitality joy that only God could inspire. Things that propel me into Thanksgiving wonder, like returning to the place where we spread my father’s ashes 17 years ago and being reminded of the ways he burned a love of political dissent, progressive theology and critical thinking into me as a young child. Things that soothe my heart into the Spirit of Thanksgiving, like hearing familiar music coming from the family speakers or seeing familiar works of art on the walls and realizing how shaped my aesthetics have been by these artifacts of beauty from the past. When I encounter these good things, sometimes I lose my breath because of how much I miss it all, how much I love it all. And then when it’s time to leave, I get lodged with overwhelming nostalgia, wondering if I can live away from these people, these memories, this landscape, these loves of my life.

Returning. Going back. No small endeavor. Ever. Brings out the good, the bad, the ugly and the unrelenting beauty of who we are as people, families, and community.

To return is to unravel the string of memory. And so our biblical text from Deuteronomy has something to share with all of us this holiday season, whether we are the ones returning or whether we are the ones hosting the returned. Deuteronomy 8 is a sermon in itself. It’s a sermon about the sin of forgetfulness and the salvation of memory. The timing of this passage is significant. The Hebrews have escaped slavery under pharaoh, have been led out of the wilderness and driven out all those who previously inhabited the promised land. They have settled in Canaan and are living in a time of security, wealth and peace. The authors of this passage, a crew of priests that have the nation of Israel’s future welfare in mind, warn the peaceful Hebrews: you may have it good now, but don’t forget where you came from. Verse 2: “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you…” Verse 11: “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God…”

Remember. Don’t forget.   

Biblical mandate.

Remember. Don’t forget.

This particular warning about forgetfulness is targeted at a prosperous people. These priests seemed to understand, like many wise spiritual writers from all the world religions throughout the ages, that humans are capable, most particularly when they are flourishing, of forgetting who and what they are. But most importantly, people in prosperity are most likely to forget God, to operate under the illusion that they are self-made, self-sustained and in no need of divine life or love. It’s not a sin that’s hard to understand. If you are capable of securing work, food, shelter, security and lots of material toys, when you’ve got it made, got it good and plenty—what is there to remind you of your utter dependency on things outside of yourself? The greatest danger of material wealth is the idolatrous notion of self-sufficiency that often accompanies it.

So here are the Hebrews, in a land of flowing streams, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, a land were they may eat bread without scarcity, where they lack nothing. But instead of glorifying the Hebrews for this prosperity, the priests warn them: remember slavery in Egypt, remember starvation and drought in the desert, remember wandering in the wilderness. And when you remember those things and compare them to the glory you’re currently living in, do not say “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

You know what happens when we return? When we go back? When we allow the string of memory to unravel us? We rid ourselves of the dangers of forgetfulness.  

Entering the spaces of the past, whether through cognitive memory or geographic travel, affords us the opportunity to remember just how much power outside of us and how many hands not our own have shaped us. Such experiences annihilate this idea that we have created anything by our own power or by the might of our own hand. And that’s exactly what the biblical authors want.

Going back: we remember what gave us life, that we did not give birth to or raise ourselves. Returning: we remember what influenced us in the early part of our lives, that we did not shape our own world-views, spiritualities, behaviors and habits. Going back: we remember the landscape of our triumphs and terrible mess ups, the external contexts and social feed-back loops that either fostered self-esteem or stripped us of confidence. Returning: we recognize that much of who & what we are today comes from what we learned about ourselves back then. For better and worse. All that stuff we loathe, that drama, those regressive, coping behaviors we learned in the wilderness: that’s in us. All that stuff we love, that beauty and spirit of connection to our relatives that sustains us: that’s in us. Both are right here and memory unravels it all. And that’s exactly what the biblical authors want.

But here’s the kicker: it’s not memory for the sake of getting stuck in what was. It’s memory for the sake of being present—spiritually—to what is. What is now. What is present today. What occupies this moment. And the spiritual lesson in all of this is that God is. God is here. God is now. God is present today and occupies this moment with us. When we go back and return, it’s easy to see how God was with us and brought us through in the past. The gift of those memories is that they can, if we allow them to, illuminate the Divine life in the present. And this illumination can, if we allow it to, change the way we see and handle our current circumstances.

God brought the Israelites through exploitation, made water burst forth from a rock and made bread rain down from heaven, provided sustenance and mercy even in the worst of times; so surely it is that same benevolent spirit that provided in Canaan. Problem is, the Israelites considered the prosperity their own, like it belonged to them just because they were special/good/deserving/hard-working/chosen, whatever. No, no, the priestly authors warn: anything giving you life, anything sustaining your spirit, anything feeding/satiating your needs is from God and God alone. So treat it as gift. Let the memory of God’s goodness in the past inspire you to recognize God’s goodness in the present.   

So beloved faithful: as you return, as you go back in these next weeks, in this holiday season: seize the opportunity to unravel, seize the opportunity to remember and to recognize. Seize the opportunity to treat everything that gives you life, everything that has sustained your spirit, everything that has fed/satiated your needs, seize the opportunity to enact your thanksgiving by treating these things like the gifts from God that they are. Listen to them deeply. Love them fiercely. Touch them tenderly. Gifts from God: remember, don’t forget. Amen.  

Hinged

The door across the street
keeps opening and closing
as the wind commands an effect
to her causal call.
On a hinge, helpless,
blown about, back and forth,
again and again.
Slightly open, suddenly a slam shut,
then flung so wide open that, in a five second flash,
the whole internal house--furniture, floors, hallways, all that--.
can be seen from the outside.

Entrance, exit. Which? Just wait a second.
Everything changes with a new arousal of the air.

Dare you stand in the way?
Dare you approach and try to touch the handle?
Dare you desire to come inside?

Just a quick glimpse. A simple foreshadowing season.
No grip.

Aurora in the Song

In the way of knowing things before you know them,
music predicts, prophesies, pulls apart and imparts what's to come.

First time you opened your mouth and let it fly
I sat in the pews and convulsed with a crying fit
so mysterious and unexpected, it haunted me for over a month.

Always the song to my soul, your voice,
your cadence, especially the high notes
pitched in the androgynous zones (a familiar space to us
but foreign to the rest).
That morning, that worship time,
a monumental thing: breaking forth from the rest of what's routine
in the realest sense of religion. Incarnation to come.
My body must have known; yours too:
even then before contracts or swaps in the hallway,
she was making her way.

"You breathed your fragrance on me. Late have I loved you."

Now, every morning I play it so she enters to the soundtrack
of a love that knows no distinction between human/divine, as I've never
known such distinction with us. Certainly that's what we've created and
certainly that's the melody she deserves.

To My Father

For years the only comparison named
was the pinky finger.
Until blood tests could confirm,
it was the pinky finger,
mine exactly like yours even as a newborn,
that stood as paternity marker.
When the more scientific proof came,
no one was shocked, though everywhere scandal traced
what the two of you had done, and not done.
My skin and bones just the beginning.


Seven weeks ago I met your (other) children,
my siblings, for the first time. And I met nieces and nephews,
two face to face, others through pictures or memories shared.
We all have the same nose and wide smile. And there's something
reminiscent of fire in all of us, even your only son
who is patient, quiet and gentle but neverthless a power in his own rite.


Sometimes I want the dead to be alive,
but only in the way we, the living, can envision you, the departed, among us.
Present and watchful, subject to feeling but unable to fuck anything else up.


I wanted you to be dead but watching in the moment
he, your only son, my long lost brother
said my name outloud, looked me in the eyes, took me into his arms
and held me which you...you...
were unable to do before taking leave of me,
taking leave of us who now gather around your choices
like pilgrims and conscientious objectors
with only chards of glass and petals of devotion
to make sense of at our feet.


I want you to be dead but watching
in the moment my child is born. Grandchild number five,
bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, will come this Spring
in addition to Heidi, Bret, Luke and Elise.
And then, father-of-mine, when I arrive where you are
a long time from now, I want you to tell me what it was like to watch me,
the daughter you never knew, the daughter you deserted,
have faith enough in this life, despite everything that could have stripped me of it,
breathe and breathe and breathe and push and push and push
y/our blood line through another generation.


If, even there and then, you cannot love me
with embodied things like language, gesture, embrace
please know that this baby is already forgiving you
from the inside in ways I could not have foreseen.
So if even there and then you cannot love me,
I will throw my arms around you and thank you anyways
because there's no baby without me and no me without you.

Diagnostics: A Chaplain Reflects 2 Years Later

I've been concerned about diagnostics for a long time. You know: the observation of symptoms, the evaluation of those symptoms vis-a-vis some long standing collection of knowledges, and then the naming of whatever those symptoms appear to be in their totality. My problem is that 'totality' is rarely taken into account, not in a social way that is. The criteria and framework for diagnostics and the practices of diagnosing feel dangerously isolated and individualistic to me.

This morning, while walking with my mom around the marshes on the island of Sandwich in Cape Cod, the veterans of Palo Alto flooded my memory, infusing my thoughts with their faces, stories, and languages. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), Kidney Failure, TBI (traumatic brain injury), Bi-Polar, Drug-Addicted--whatever. These are hardly the things I remember. I remember the stories about war time, about why they signed up in the first place, what they saw and did on the battlefield, who they saved, who they let down, the poignant events & moments that carved a never-ending narrative into their minds be it about shoulda-coulda-woulda or I'd-do-it-all-over-again. I remember the stories about becoming a civilian again, about the struggles, pain, and relief of reentry: the stories about cheating wives, jealous siblings, weeping mothers and proud fathers, stories about how hard it was to look your kid in the eye knowing you'd shot someone else's kid somewhere else, stories about feeling like a foreigner in your own bed and like a zombie at work, stories about feeling your spouses' skin for the first time and feeling like everything was gonna be alright. And I remember the stories of their today's, stories not so racked with soldier-drama: stories of men grown old, now just trying to be good husbands and fathers and grandfathers, stories of mortages and financial woes, stories of disgust with government and a lazy society, stories of how they felt so emasculated by the health-care-system, stories of how they couldn't wait to go home and see their dog and drink a beer and watch football. I remember all that, but if you asked me their diagnosis I'd probably struggle to recall. Why? Because that's not the totality of a person.

What I learned (because of the privileged positionality of being chaplain) is that whatever diagnostic accompanied their hospital stay, it usually had  a lot to do with their social experience, be it in the family, on the battle field, with religion, whatever. The mind-body connection is never isolated from the social ties that bind. And so I grew increasingly frustrated with what I saw as a devaluing (or perhaps denial/minimization) of the role social relations play both in creating phenomena and in healing that phenomena.

For instance, war is social. Wars usually happen in response to some kind of social conflict in the first place: there's social violence/threat that predates war-based conflict 9 times out of 10. Wars happen because people in relationships make decisions. Leaders decide together. Military personnel suit up and begin working with another in a coordinated effort to carry out incredibly complex operations. Society (to varying degrees, of course) participates in the feed-back loops of the ethics of war by voting for/against the candidates that promise to do something about them. What happens to an individual soldier on the battle field hardly belongs to that soldier alone. So why on earth, when soldiers get back, are they observed, evaluated and diagnosed as if the symptoms of their injury belong to them and them alone? PTSD doesn't arise in someone just because. It arises because one's experience of a relational environment has been traumatic. Yet diagnostics rarely take environment and relations into account when labeling the "problem." The problem gets attached to the (already fucking traumatized!) individual, as if he/she is the only one exhibiting symptoms. Do I need to emphasize how unbelievably unethical this is? Someone is hurt and then we add insult to injury by labeling them in such a way that they become the sole geography of that hurt? Please...

My guess is that if we started observing, evaluating and diagnosing environments and relationships as much as we do this unto individuals, the symptoms under analysis would be much more difficult to treat. A recommended exercise routine alongside some medicinal suggestion would barely cut it because said practice does nothing to cut off the injury-causing system itself and it certainly requires nothing of those who could potentially heal this soldiers's mistrust of his/her current social environment. If social environments are the location of injury, then the only hope for healing comes with repeated exposure to non-injurious and healing social environments. How many of us, leaders, civilians, family members, fellow church goers, feel compelled to create a non-injurious social environment for returning military personnel? Not many of us. Not many at all. Because we are never considered part of the problem and therefore never required to be part of the solution. For shame.

Now that I no longer work in the VA hospital I have zero contact with returning soldiers. Part of that is because they're being redeployed at such a high rate that few of them are actually in country. Part of this is because they are stuck up in hospital rooms by themselves, much like our senior citizens and mentally ill, being asked to shoulder the weight of war and diagnosis by themselves. If you don't circulate in and through the hospitals, or more militarized environments--which i don't--it's hard to see/hear/interact with them. Given the gratitude I have for the memories of faces, stories and languages that came flooding into my mind this morning, I can't help but grieve this disconnect between soldiers/vets and civilians. I might think tomorrow or next week about solutions/bridges, but today I'm just grieving.

        

Marjorie

...a time to tear and a time to mend...(Ecc 3:7a)

Before I knew her well
I used to watch from the back pew
mesmerized by the long hair packed tightly into a bun
on the top of her crowned head (i wouldn't know about that crown till later).
She would sway and sing and cry. Cry a lot.
Always with a tissue tightly wiped around her index finger,
a practice she learned from her mommy Mae Rose
who, though shorter and less religious, wipes her tears exactly the same way.

From the back pew I wondered how anyone
so astoundingly beautiful (like all eyes in the room captured kind of beautiful)
but even more beautiful than what can be described in observing social response,
how anyone so poised, wise, esteemed and successful
could cry like that. I knew those tears were real,
I just couldn't imagine where they came from
or how she got lucky enough to learn the art of expressive grief.
I'd just stare in my curiosity, in church, in my own perplexed and frustrated pain,
probably watching with a hope of learning something from her
though my heart was still too hard to admit such need.

I'm no longer in the pews with her, much to my regret
and though we live a country's distance apart, I know now
about those tears. Don't totally know, but know enough.
She is everything I've ever wanted to embody
and learning her stories after years of witnessing her tears
has given me full confidence that only the broken and healed
can wear a spirit-something that beautiful.