Writing Isaiah Entry #13

Writing Isaiah

Entry #13

July 29th 2013

Tom Ott

So here is something I can never know but find myself curious about: What is it like to give life to a being that is completely you and completely your partner and completely other?

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to answer this question, given the fact that it's called to me over and over in the last months, ever since you let it float in my direction. Maybe I'm writing today because you're about to go on Sabbatical and I'm swimming in the anticipatory grief of not being in ministry with you for 3 months and this is my desperate attempt to stay connected in whatever way I can. Or maybe it's just time, in the way that writing beckons, egh demands, its own moments regardless of an author's intentions or plans. 

Well, preacher, here's one thing I can say to you and know it'll be heard and understood: it's a lot like writing a sermon. Giving "life to a being that is completely you and completely your partner and completely other" is a lot like the homiletical process. 1) The author/channel 2) the Holy Spirit/inspiration & 3) the living Word as its received by those gathered, the witnesses, those willing to behold. As we often assure each other: it's a process totally mysterious, profound, complex, frustrating, alluring...powerful. I think you probably understand the conception and birthing processes better than most, just by virtue of what you do for a living. So many parts of pastoring are like mothering and so much of mothering is like pastoring. If we wanted to take it all out of parental and gendered terms, I'd say it's artistry, play, collage--cooking, puzzling, building a porch house even. :-D A mixing and mingling of the elements: the contemplative, the creative, the erotic, physical, mental and emotional discipline, divine-ing forth in hope, bearing down in pain and exasperation, weeping in joy, learning new tricks, finding new tools, applying new skills, reflecting on the rules, breaking some, breaking open, discovering love you never knew possible, lighting up--literally--and dying--literally-- like the incarnation calls us to do. I'm getting carried away.

Completely me. Completely JR. Completely other: Isaiah. 

Just his name makes me take a deep breath. Was it arrogant to give him a name so early? Presumptuous--to do something as serious/permanent as place a title on something that hasn't even seen the light of day yet? Are names given or are they earned or are they discovered? "What's in a name?" Everything. Nothing. Definitely something. The entirety: Isaiah Joseph Reynolds. His first name is from my theological conviction, my favorite book of the Bible, it means: "YHWH is salvation." Don't I know it? The middle is his father's, his grandfather's and great grandfather's name: Joseph. Patrilineal heritage. Reynolds: a descendancy, a blood line, a family marking. All three of these names have meaning and significance, and yet there is significance to be had apart from anything we bestow upon him in the choosing of the name; there is the meaning he will add to that name as he lives into a life all his own. Isn't this just an miniature illustration of life in general? There's what we get put upon us and then there's who we become. Can we ever even discern where those parts collide and where they remain separate? I'm not sure.

Will I ever be able to look at my son and not see myself or not see JR or not see some blend of us? And in that looking, what am I seeing? A projection? A reality? Something in between or a little bit of both? Or does Isaiah transcend, in a completely imminent way, all that we are? I'm not sure. 

You know as I think about this, as I write about this, I'm reflecting on what I "see" and what I "experience" of myself in Aurora. And what of her sperm donor I see and experience in her. (I'm sticking with the biologically 'determined' stuff here, for the sake of simplicity) I gotta tell you: it's not much. She seems/appears more of an independent creature than anything. It'll be interesting to watch, as she grows, if she shares personality traits or talents with either of us. But in all honesty, right now I witness Aurora in a form of mortal uniqueness. A specificity. I can't look away for very long or I miss yet another revelation. It's quite the magnificent experience, this 'seeing' her in/of her own self. Kinda like writing a sermon that keeps writing itself after you've put the pen/keys down. You can't believe you ever had that idea/piece/passion inside/to yourself now that it's out there breathing and maintaining on its own. Was the union just a dream? Did it ever belong to you? If so, in what way did it belong? How, now, shall it return to you or are you forever destined to be its creator now-somehow-apart? I think of G-d often this way. It's kinda tragic. 

When I was in my final year of seminary I started thinking about the trinity as pregnancy. I even drew a diagram of the pregnant body in class and tried to explain how mother/baby/life-between-within fit perfectly with theologian Philip Clayton & Catherine Keller's ideas about panentheism: not God as all things, but God in and through and beyond all things. I realize today that what I got intellectually back then only makes spiritual sense in light of what I'm experiencing now. Just like my intellectual understandings of Jesus only make spiritual sense in light of pastoring now. What's making sense? Well, how we are each other and we're not each other at the same time. That goes for human co-journers (family, friends, mentors, colleagues, etc) and for the human/divine life. It's you in me and me in you and yet something totally Other--just like the prompt for this blog.  

My absolute favorite times these days happen in the early morning. Aurora starts out by saying "hello" from her nursery, which we can hear over the baby monitor. I fill a bottle, make the coffee, tip toe into her room, pick her up, give her the bottle, change her diaper, then bring her into momma & daddy's bed. We spend the next 20-30 minutes just snuggling. Bare bodies. Sweet touches. Little laughter. It's a trinity all its own. This morning I felt especially grateful because J.R. was home with us after being gone for the weekend. (There is a womb like quality to the family bed: reunions after time away feel indescribably divine. Like, some skin that provides satiation to your own, which is your own and not your own at the same time, returns. I know you know this.) Anyways, I was basking in the glory of lover flesh combined with baby flesh, all rolling and romping around between the sheets and then Aurora started into this new routine where she kisses mommy "mwwaaaa" and then kisses daddy "mwwwaaaa" and then pushes our faces together so we kiss each other. She finds this quite amusing. I, on the other hand, store it away in that archive of my mind entitled "things I want to remember on my death bed" so that I go to heaven already knowing what heaven is. I said out-loud "how did we get so lucky?" J.R. responded by saying "she just gives back what we feed her." He's right. Absolutely. And, I know there will come a day when she gives even more than what she's been given. Isaiah too. I can only hope in those moments, they lift their precious faces to the shape-shifting sky, and blow the biggest mwaaaa's they've got to the One who is Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer, the "wor(l)d without end," amen.    

Writing Isaiah Entry #11

Writing Isaiah 

Entry #11

June 24th, 2013

Sarah Ann Douglas-Siegel

I love this writing idea so much I might have to replicate it myself when/if I get pregnant down the road (or adopt, in the waiting process). I do have a question for you, and it deals with my struggles around motherhood (from MY mother) as Mother's Day approaches, and my thoughts about what a gentle, patient, attentive and selfless mother you have been to Aurora, and will be to your new family member as well.

-- What do you wish to teach your new child about motherhood?

This question is of import because of my experiences with a narcissistic caretaker, my visions of selfless love and the Mother are skewed, and this does damage in ways that are not only related to how I view my own mother, but in how I understand myself as a future mother and deal with childhood wounding. The gifts and benefits of a gentle and selfless caretaker begin from the moment you are born, and well before! Every single one of us is shaped by our experiences with mother. It's ESSENTIAL in every sense of the word! I have asked myself this question when preparing to conceive (when we were trying) and will continue to work towards answers to it that make sense and contribute to my healing. This question is meant to be answered in reference to the entire course of the child's life, from birth to as long as you know them.

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

Sarah, I could attempt to answer this question/these questions every day for the rest of my life and never "finish." In some ways this feels like the most complex question I have tackled in this pregnancy writing project to date. In fact, as I approach the topic I feel a watershed dose of grief surfacing. Why grief? Because mothering--being mothered, being the mother--is full of it. And not just the traditional grief that's easy to talk about: like how motherhood contains loss at every step. I'm mindful of the less talked about stuff, the stuff I think you're alluding to with words like narcissism and struggle. How our mothers mess us up despite their best intentions and how we no doubt will do the same to our own children, and how much of that has to do with the oppression of womyn in our society at every level. And how to be honest about that is to appear narcissistic or ungrateful or anti-feminine, which just perpetuates all these myths about what we can and can't express as womyn who are trying to be in the world with a gender queer, feminist ethic. It's so much easier for me to slam my father in public. But not my mom. Acknowledging the pain of maternal relations almost feels like betrayal of the highest order as someone who is trying to fight patriarchy. And yet I know that failing to admit maternal pain just perpetuates the oppression and silencing of womyn, which is, in and of itself, a major component of patriarchy. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it feels relatively impossible to start on this except by acknowledging that this topic is treacherous and hard. And because it's treacherous and hard, I'm going to lean in with a certain level of hope that bravery will be its own reward in teaching us what's possible here. 

I take comfort in the fact that I'm writing to you, another queer identified womyn who is doing all she can to systemically, interpersonally, and personally see, hear, and love the truth of other womyn and gender non-conforming people. There's a generosity in that space: the space of being received by another womyn who shares feminist ethics and queer love. Like, there's some sort of common language that I can rely on as already-established here. I don't have to start out by telling you that it's possible to love womyn and critique womyn's behavior at the same time. You already know that. And you also know that the only way to reclaim one's life and one's family from the ravages of oppression is to incarnate love and family differently. But to do it differently requires rooting out all the oppressive shit you've inherited consciously and unconsciously which means entering into big stages and phases of detachment from the very people that gave you life. And you also know that our mother's are entirely complex creatures and so are we and the only way to honor that complexity is to be honest about it at the intersection of our stories, which requires a whole lot of truth-telling and while they're still alive that's really hard because being honest about who we are and who they are runs the risk of offense. Offending the parts of them that are unaware and unintegrated. Runs the risk of being labeled judgmental or arrogant. And yet if we don't do this, how can we grow? We must do this. We must grow, with fear and trembling. 

What do I want to teach my new child about motherhood? 

That it's an ocean. 

Light turquoise surface that invites you to swim all day and navy depth that will drown you without asking permission. Schools of fish. Snarling sharks. Coral reefs so colorful you cannot look away. Sand particles so small they cannot be seen. Flat and smooth somedays. Tidal waves and tsunamis others.  

That it's an ocean.

That I am an ocean, as a mother. 

That my mother was/is an ocean, and I am her swimming strong/sometimes drowning daughter.

That Isaiah will swim and sometimes drown too, because of this ocean he's been born into. 

That mothering is an ocean, bigger than me, bigger than her, bigger than him. 

Some kind of a Goddess, Medusa/Ursula: the one everyone is afraid of because her shape-shifting body is big and her pussy is wet and they know they'll get tossed, get lost, get in touch with their own precarity in the big wet what is of mother/ing. 

Control gone. The (notion of) self thrown into disarray because the (m)Other's effect/affect penetrates by being penetrated, is birthed by giving birth. Concrete collapsing because the slow, steady, back and forth back and forth power/resistance of the water wore it away. What is this water power resistance? this slippage? this womyn who dares to bear/bare life? 

It's an ocean.

Unconfined. Uncontained. Always in motion. Huge. Majestic. Abyss. 

Nourishment. Salty. Easily pierced. Nothing stronger. An ocean.

Motherhood is an ocean. 

What I am about to write is somewhat scary to me. Scary enough that it deserves its own line. 

I have no hopes of saving my child from the ocean. 

No exception to the rule here. Swim he must. Drown a little, he probably will. But if there's anything I can do, I hope it's to teach him the art and pragmatism of putting on a life-preserver sometimes. Which means, I'll probably have to teach him how to unhook from me better than my mom taught me to unhook from her better than my grandma taught her to unhook...ad infinitum. I wish I had learned earlier how to recognize my mom's stuff playing out in my life. For the longest time, I couldn't see me outside of her or how she was in me. There is stuff about my mom that I never want to lose, stuff I want to keep inside. But a life preserver would have been nice in the times when I was picking up her addictions, or fights, or denial. If she'd had more awareness about her own issues, maybe she could have named those things for me and I could have avoided becoming so enmeshed in them. But isn't there some kind of wishful thinking in that? Like, who can be aware of stuff that they're just not aware of? To the best of my ability, I hope to name and own my stuff for Isaiah. But in all honesty, I will fail. I know I will fail.

And part of that is because I think my mom is nearly as good as it gets and she failed. Won't we all fail? I may be getting into trouble here. Even the person whose children are severely neglected, or the person who gives up their children for adoption so they can keep getting high, or the person who beats their kids regularly--aren't they just a severe case of not having what they need in order to do what needs to be done? I can't imagine that i'll always have what I need to do what needs to be done in Isaiah's life. There's huge sadness in that for me. But there's also a lot of forgiveness for my own mother and a sense of compassion for the failing mother I know I will be. 

What do I want to teach my new child about motherhood? 

That it's an ocean. And that I'm still swimming/drowning in the ocean of my own mother's pain/loss/grief/brilliance/resilience/beauty. I think Isaiah will learn a lot about motherhood in watching the way I treat/process my own mother and the way J.R. treats/processes his own mother. And he'll learn a lot by responding to what I will and won't take from him in the relationship of son to mother and to watching the relationship his sister has with me as daughter to mother. The ocean is manifold, many many creaturely connections exist there. And there/in lies the learning/teaching/becoming. 

That it's an ocean. Capable of loving itself. What if I lived in such a way--with my sperm donor and spouse, with my son and my daughter, and independent of all of them--that each one left this planet knowing that Motherhood is the highest occupation/calling there is? Or at least that it was for me? Could I live in such a way that each one of them recognizes the gift and burden was unparalleled? That the love I felt and the fight I dared were matchless? That is certainly the lesson my mother's legacy has left for me. I want my life to be that exact same lesson for them. 

Diversity and Hiring Practices

Thanks for/to those who read the coverage of me in yesterday's Enquirer. Thanks to/for those of you who shared it and said words of affirmation about me in the subject line and comments. I am humbled and grateful by your public support of me and the church I'm privileged to serve. I also want to give love to my colleague Tom Ryberg and my dear sister/friend Martha Thawngmung for their kind words in that piece. It was an honor to spend time with Olivia Lewis and to have our faith community's ministry/work lifted up in print.

I emailed Olivia yesterday to thank her. But in all honesty I was at a loss for words. This morning I woke up with more to give, but it feels bigger than just Olivia, so I thought I'd blog about it.

The Enquirer has done local pastor profiles the entire time I have lived here and it wasn't until Olivia, a womyn of color, was brought on their staff that the FCC pastoral team got a glance for the progressive ministry we do. This is not a coincidence. Who Olivia is and who we are as a faith community--meeting up together in the press--is about what happens when progressive consciousness is given (note: there's power/privilege inherent in giving anything to anyone) the freedom and institutional support it needs to do its thing. 

When I hear talk about hiring practices and diversity it's often about hitting some number or filling some quota. This is total misalignment of justice, an institutional manifestation of privileged guilt and gets us nowhere. Bringing folks who have been historically marginalized (womyn, POC, disabled people, lgbtqiia people, immigrants, young people, etc) into the work place is not about marking off some professional, obligatory check list. It's about the quality of work that marginalized people bring because their consciousness, their interests, their commitments, their line of sight, and values are (not always but often) outside of the normative structures of knowledge. There are incredible skills and gifts outside of the status quo. That's what this is about. 

Indira Gandhi once said "mankind will endure when the world understands the logic of diversity." Yeah, and the work place, every work place, but especially those that work with/for humans, will flourish when the "logic" of diversity is made the number one priority. Again, not for statistics, but for the sake of quality. Different perspectives, embodiments, life-experiences make the quality of work/service/ministry better. It's not just about a "black female" perspective being included at the Enquirer, either. That's tokenizing. The story Olivia did on me was about church politics, feminism, sexism in the work place, and marriage issues in America. It was intersectional. Again, is it a coincidence that an intersectional life brought about intersectional coverage? I think not. A way of being/seeing in the world often translates to a way of working in the world. And we need that kind of work in our community. In fact, we need it everywhere if this country is to live into its creed. Certainly womyn and the black community can be more invested in and more proud of the Enquirer now that Olivia is here, but it's not just WOC that stand to benefit. We all do. The overall quality of our newspaper is better now that Olivia is here. Period. 

I don't know all that much about Olivia (she definitely holds a certain journalistic distance in her interactions; not cold but professionally poised) but I do know she was educated at an HBCU and she's been hired to cover stories on social justice. And since she's been here I have much more gumption to read my local paper. In her first three weeks of reporting she hasn't been channeling her energy in the good ole boy (corporate) network. She's gone to Voces, Sprout Urban Farms, the Urban League and I saw her last night at Women's Coop covering the "We Don't Want Them" community conversation about housing segregation in Detroit and Battle Creek. Again, this way of 'entering' community is not a coincidence. I'm sure Olivia could work the good ole boys with ease, but that's not her priority and thank God.

Having said all that, I've seen one too many young progressive humans come into BC excited about their work and leave sooner than necessary because the communal support they needed to sustain themselves just wasn't in place. I want Olivia to stay. So. I'm hoping that all of you who read her coverage of my work will keep reading her. And I hope that all citizens of BC (and beyond) who want journalistic integrity will read and support her. And I hope you will leave comments (of affirmation and criticism where due) on her articles to let her know she's impacting our community. She is open to hearing about social justice events and movements locally; so let's keep her in the know. You can find her on twitter and her email is listed on the Enquirer site. And, what about getting a subscription to the Enquirer if you don't already have one? They didn't have to make room on their staff assignments for explicit social justice stories. But they did. They should receive the affirmation and financial backing they deserve for that. I'm putting my money where my pen/mouth is today. I hope you'll do the same. 

Writing Isaiah Entry #10

Writing Isaiah

Entry #10

June 13th, 2013

Tom Ryberg   

We inhabit an overpopulated world that, alongside its glad joys and peace-filled moments, is filled with sorrow, rage, greed, violence. To bear a child today means to inevitably expose her or him to suffering - of others, of her or his own self. How do you feel about bringing this child into this world, at a time such as this? What gives you hope? What gives you pause? What gives you courage?

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

What gives me hope? Men like you, Tom. Humans like you. People who are able to stay present with suffering, build connectivity to/through suffering, and offer love in suffering. Hope also comes to me when I reflect on the role of suffering in carving out empathy. Of course, not all suffering produces empathy or compassion, insight and/or solidarity, but it can. When it does, that's hopeful. I of course want to shield my children from from all unnecessary, cruel and abject suffering, but I know without some suffering, they will not grow into the fullness of humanity. Suffering is an inevitable part of life. How we move with it partially defines the content of our character. 

In some ways I have hope about how I will influence my children as an adult when it comes to suffering. Not to sound like a victim or anything, but I've seen my fair share of suffering in 32 years. Not to sound like a hero or anything, but I find myself in a relatively confident place these days when I contemplate my capacity to endure what life throws at me, simply because none of the stuff its thrown at me so far has ended me. Of course I give G-d's grace entire credit for that. But in the reception of G-d's grace, I've learned that G-d's grace is most accessible in times of suffering. Even that, then, has become a source of confidence. Truth is every time I've been brought to my knees, I have found incredible meaning, resources, mentors and community right on the other side of crisis. "Tears may endure through the night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5) So, when it comes to parenting, my hope is that I model a certain level of faith in suffering and an openness to what suffering can do/be/give. 

Part of this, is of course, embodying the art of grief with honesty and integrity. I'm not saying that I will face my own suffering or the suffering of my children with a smiling face. I will scream and cry and fight and fuck up. And, I think that's so much healthier than shutting down, pretending everything's fine, trying to buck up and move on as if nothing happened. 

Tom, you and I often talk about the consequences of white supremacy both in our own lives and in our community. I think one thing white supremacy has done to me/us is strip us of the capacity to truly, spiritually, authentically feel. There's a certain insulation from particular suffering that happens when we are privileged. The inverse of that is, of course, that being under-privileged and/or targeted is to experience and  endure particular suffering. I've seen way too many people in the white community think that suffering is something that happens to "other" people, unfortunate people, people who aren't as "blessed" as them. This feels like insulated privilege speaking, not any kind of truth about the distribution of suffering itself. For instance, someone who has lived on the "right" side of town and done all the "right" things all their life, including "go to church every Sunday" comes down with cancer. Inevitably there's this question: "how could this have happened to me?" Inherent in that curiosity is a sense that suffering is distributed intentionally and that if you do all the right stuff, you can avoid it. That's utter horse shit. Only a person who is entirely privileged and insulated from life can have that world-view. And no matter how privileged and insulated you are, that world view will inevitably crumble because the body is inherently vulnerable, relationships are inherently unstable, the Earth is constantly in chaotic flux and death is waiting for us all. There's no "safe" life for anyone. It's only a matter of space/time before that lesson gets learned. Back to white supremacy. To show feeling is to magnify the fact that one is suffering, that one is enduring something hard. When our social virtue, as white people, is built upon notions of being "safe" and "fine," to feel out loud, in public, is to betray the very fabric of white supremacy. Whenever I grieve the "precarity of life" (to use Judith Butler's language) in white spaces, I can just feel people freak out in the face of my tears, outrage, pain. Whenever people let loose in church, either sobbing or setting themselves free with joy, you can feel the people around them grow in discomfort. Like, oh my God, feelings are happening next to me! What should I do? It's like they know that whatever has us feeling just might be contagious and they might have to feel too! Whatever has us suffering might get them too. And you know what, there's cause for that fear. What's ironic is that they fear the feelings and suffering, when they should be afraid of what's been lying to them all their lives about the good life being the 'protected' 'insulated' 'privileged' non-feeling life.  We joked, hard, almost to the point of stomach ache last night about this dynamic among our people. But we laugh so hard to avoid collapsing from the monstrous insanity of it all. Not being able to feel means not being alive. I think in parenting we can model what it means to be alive, to be a feeling being through it all, in suffering, in grief, in celebration and joy. Through it all. Alive. I have hope that if I model this well, my children will be even more alive than I have been. 

What gives me pause? You know: the regulars. Poverty. Global warming. Mass incarceration and police brutality. Escalated "costs" of living that make it impossible to move in the world debt-free. Hyper-masculinity. Perpetual war in the name of national security. I cannot help but think that the seeds of destruction sown in the war/s on terror are going to come back on Aurora and Isaiah's generation. That shit keeps me up at night, as a parent. It's been keeping me up at night to think of other people's children being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. Sleeplessness is a kind of pause. Now I have it in regards to my own children. Tom, I hate war. I always have. I've never been more sickened by it though as I am now as I look upon the innocence and tenderness of my daughter. We do not come into the world violent. That gets manufactured some how some way. It's got to stop. 

The thing that gives me most pause, right here and now, is the slow and steady erosion of public education. I am incensed by the lack of concern for the tearing away of the most important institution in the life of society. Knowing that I'll have children entering public education only 4-5 years from now terrifies me. Our schools are underfunded, under-resourced, undervalued, and frankly, in my opinion, often misaligned. It's a two fold concern I have: on the one hand I'm worried about the fact that often what happens in school is not learning; it's conceptual banking and memorization, a kind of factory model that Louis Althusser refers to as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). I think schools, particularly in light of high state regulations and ridiculous standards of measurement, are conditioning adolescents for the work force instead of teaching them how to think, how to question, how to resource their own quests for understanding. This is alarming to me. Second: any and all kinds of reform that are necessary to make our schools learning communities instead of ISA's are short circuited because we'd rather put our biggest and brightest minds into the military and we'd rather use national dollars for weapon making than compensation for awesome teachers/administrators/visionaries engaged in educational reform. More dollars to kill citizens of other lands than dollars for our children? It's just fucking sick to me.  

What gives me courage? That my children will be great and that their greatness will carve out beauty instead of violence, wisdom instead of ignorance, hope in the face of despair. The potential for their greatness and how that greatness will touch those around them--that gives me courage. Incredible young people in my life like Abbey Labrecque, Rachel Strand, Taylor and Hannah Soares, and others near/far--they give me courage. The adults I know Aurora and Isaiah will have on their team--radical queers, fierce activists, bold lovers, spiritual seekers--they give me courage. And, at the end of the day, G-d gives me courage. When I reflect on the goodness of G-d and the goodness of life, not in spite of hard shit, but in the midst of it all, I am encouraged. In fact, I am enlivened. I am inspired to believe in them without reservation and to love them more fearlessly. 

Thanks for this question my beloved colleague, . Thank you for being an unfailing rock in my life. For your music that saves me. Your ministry that compliments and cares for me. Your humor that loosens the stress. Your tender listening ear that enables truth to appear. Your love that never quits. 

"He who writes the songs of deliverance..." that's still you, all day everyday. I am grateful. Amen.  

Writing Isaiah Entry #9

Writing Isaiah 

Entry #9

June 2nd 2013

Karen Weideman Parker

What are your expectations of Isaiah as a new being and evolving into the world; how has that changed since you've had Aurora?

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

You know how we walked together at least once a week throughout last Spring, Summer and Fall? It was still Aurora's first year of life. One thing I remember about that time was your way of questioning. You'd come over with Panera coffee in hand (while I was still scrambling to get out of bed and get ready :) and be with us for a few minutes before we made our way out the door. Almost inevitably the first question you'd ask is: "so what new thing is Aurora doing?" And each time, I'd have a different answer. Things like: she's holding her head up on her own; she's rolling over; she's laughing at concrete things; she's eating solid food; she's clapping; she said 'momma'; she's almost crawling; her hair is growing thicker; she can sit in the bath on her own now; she's standing; she's walking!!! Each week there was a new thing. Your questions, a constant companion, much like you've been for me in the last three and a half years, made me more attentive, more observant, more of a recorder of my own daughter's progress. I would have noticed these developments as they happened, but I'm not sure I would have been as reflective and mindful of them without your prompting. Is this not one of the greatest powers of friendship: that it provides space for mutual reflection and witnessing? That in this space, we become more present to our rapidly moving lives and more present to each other? You are this gift to me, Karen. 

What does this have to do with a new being and evolvement? Everything. 

As Aurora grew up, both in utero, and once she was born, I noticed myself 'checking' her progress vis-a-vis the little charts "they" give you in books, at the doctor's office, in the early childhood center care basket (that was home delivered by my friend Israel Flores). There are these advancements, milestones, that are supposed to correspond to particular phases of development. For instance: at "one month" babies are supposed to "briefly watch and follow objects with eyes;" at "six months" they are supposed to "sit with a little help and roll from back to stomach;" at "fifteen months" they are supposed to be able to find a hidden toy under a cover." How do I know this? Because the "educator developed, parent approved" Guide to your Child's Development chart tells me so! I have found these books and charts and check-lists from the doctor helpful in some ways. But in other ways, I wonder if they aren't conditioning me to have unnecessary expectations of Aurora and Isaiah.  

In the last 4 months I've been participating in the most radical learning community I've ever been a part of entitled BASIC (building alliances sustaining inclusive communities). The community was comprised of about 24ish humans and the content focused directly on the intersectionality of racism, classism, and ableism. I've always had issues with our society's standards of normalcy and what's "natural" (mostly because those standards have harmed me physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually as a gender queer/variant person) but the time I spent with my folks and teachers at BASIC took that long-standing beef to a whole new level. Hearing--both from people in the room and from articles, books, presentations--about the historic and contemporary, concrete ways the medical establishment has rendered and branded disabled bodies insufficient and unworthy (of life, basically) gave me pause as a parent. What does 'healthy' really mean if one does not "meet" standards of health? What does 'proper development' signify to/for those who fall outside that category (and thereby, of course, render that category relatively unstable)? Underlying all of these categories is a HUGE assumption that there is a life course that is natural, predictable, stable and reliable. Of course some of us fall into this so-called normative life course in some ways. But none of us fall into "it" (whatever the fuck it is) in every way. 

When kids are little, or even still in utero, I think we are less mindful of how damaging these kinds of assumptions and categories can be. As adults it becomes all too obvious how the so-called normative life course oppresses us--unless we are insulated by privilege at every turn, but again, I don't think any of us are privileged in every way, so even folks with a whole lot of insulation can experience the oppressiveness of normalcy. Though I hesitate to admit it (because it's in me), I think a part of why we are less mindful of 'normalcy' bullshit when it comes to little ones is because most of us still (partially) believe in the sanctity of normalcy and want whatever we conceive of that normalcy to be, in conscious and unconscious ways, for our children. Even if we are aware of the internalized and externalized shit that comes with holding on to ableism, we all know there's suffering to be had if you're disabled because ableism is a system and the system is real and wicked. Part of parenting is wanting to eliminate the unnecessary suffering of your children and so i think part of ableism itself is the "yeah I get it but I still want to protect against it for me and my own" phenomenon that gets enacted by well intentioned albeit negatively impactful parents. My friend Martha Thawngmung reminds me often that Americans are more obsessed with warding off suffering than others. I guess what I'm saying is that ableist privilege is a bitch, particularly if you live in all kinds of other privileges that block you from seeing that suffering isn't actually the worst thing. Oppression is.

I'm writing about all of this because you've asked about Isaiah evolving into the world. I know one thing: my expectations of normalcy and natural will hinder his evolution if I don't do the work of dismantling them. I want Isaiah to unfold authentically, within the integrity of his own unique bodily system that is unlike any other bodily system on this earth. I want his racial identity and gender identity and bodily identity and his spiritual, psychological, intellectual and emotional capacities to proliferate in the light and levity of freedom. As a parent the best way to do that, I believe, is to see, honor, and support what and who he is no matter how often it changes or how much it surprises or disturbs me. Not what I want him to be. Not what others say he should be. Who and what he is in the concrete becoming he determines for himself in the power and struggle of relations/community.

Will I influence him? Most certainly. But I don't want to control him. I am terrified by the men I know who experienced controlling environments as children and are now controlling entities themselves. I want to avoid creating a controlling masculinity in my son. The world has seen enough of and been devastated too much by that. Back to influence. If I can influence his evolvement in any way, I want it to be along these lines: that he recognize the radical diversity of who he is and the radical diversity of all human beings on this Earth as divine gift and live into that diversity, both personally and communally with respect, hard-work, and liberating love. How can I influence him in these ways? By recognizing as divine gift the diversity of who I am, loving the diversity of my family members as individuals and my family as a unit, by loving the diversity of people in my local, national and global sphere, by living concretely this world-view in how I treat myself and others minute by minute, day by day. At bottom I think we most influence by example. I want to exemplify loving difference/diversity as a parent. This feels like a way to foster good self-esteem in my children, but also a way of fighting hard against tropes of normalcy and naturalism that shatter people's worlds, dreams and relationships with each other and the societies they live in.

This time, when we do our morning walks, and you ask me "what new thing is Isaiah doing?" I cannot wait to answer through a different lens. I will think of his new babblings, behaviors and becomings less in the framework of developmental milestones vis-a-vis the handy-dandy charts/books, and more in the concreteness of who and what he is in his particular uniqueness. It's a different way of looking, a different way of seeing, a different way of being as a parent. I'm not sure I'd be where I am in all of this if it weren't for my people at the BASIC training. I owe them credit for any shifting from oppressive expectations to liberating witnessing that I've done as a parent. This I know: Isaiah will  be a beautiful child of God, like the rest of us, unlike any of us, beautiful child of God.            

Writing Isaiah Entry #8

Writing Isaiah 

Entry #8

May 27th 2013

Jonah Douglas-Siegel

Do you experience any tension between needing to protect your child and fostering freedom/independence? How do you expect to experience and reconcile this over time? 

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds 

Sliding into dialogue with you feels like sliding under my favorite blanket on a cold winter day. Thank you for this question and for the challenge it poses (me/us). For some reason, knowing that I'm answering you, in specific, unlocks a certain level of creativity and demands a high level of intellectual integrity. Like, I'm bringing you color and vibration. But no bullshit. Does that make sense? I want to give you the best I have in the way of beauty and truth. I think that says a lot about who you are, Jonah, and about what you make possible for others. 

There's an article/essay by Audre Lorde entitled "Man Child: Lesbian Feminist's Response" that I read right when I found out I was pregnant with Isaiah that helped me think/feel deeply into these issues you've raised, the issues of parental protection and fostering freedom. Because it opened so much for me, I want to share two lengthy quotes from that essay as a way into this conversation with you. 

"Raising Black children--female and male--in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. THis is what mothers teach--love, survival--that is, self-definition and letting go. For each of these, the ability to feel strongly and to recognize those feelings is central: how to feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be overwhelmed by it, how to enjoy feeling deeply."  

(pg 74 of Sister Outsider)

"It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn't feel, or if he wins." 

(pg 76 Sister Outsider) 

What's most compelling, and therefore informative, for me in these passages is the way Lorde deals with fear. In both quotes she acknowledges how important it is to be aware of but not ruled by fear. This is what it comes down to in the work of protection in parenting. One can get utterly fucking stuck, immobilized, terrified when thinking about all the things that are painfully possible in this power-imbalanced, injustice-soaked, naturally-chaotic (in a threatening as opposed to generative way) cosmos we inhabit. When one brings a child into this realm, the dangers become all the more discernible, partly because you've never loved this much which fosters a kind of protectiveness, but also because there is no way to avoid encountering day to day dangers due to one's physical responsibilities as a parent. For instance: there are corners of tables and long sharp knives and potentially suffocating blankets that baby-bodies make apparent by their very wobbly, vulnerable existence. I never thought about those things before Aurora came. Now I think about them every 10 seconds when she's moving about the house with a tongue that wants to taste everything, legs that barely support the rest of her body, and hands that haven't learned the degrees of things like heat, sharp, etc. And here's the kicker: this is just stuff that freaks me out based on proximity. This isn't even touching stuff that acts of its own volition, like bullies on the school yard, people who blow up public buildings, rapists, bad teachers or coaches. You feel me? There's the stuff you can protect against by being vigilant and pre-emptive, but then there's stuff you can't do anything about. I find the most zealous fear to be of the latter kind.

Which takes me to your question about fostering independence. I think that fostering is directly proportionate to the level of dependence my children have on me. For instance, Isaiah is entirely dependent on my biological system right now. Therefore I am not invested, at all, in fostering his independence, other than through keeping myself healthy which enables his independence to proliferate in utero. With Aurora it's different. She is acting independently all over the dang place! Speaking when she wants. Touching what she wants. Running where she wants. To the degree that she is not in harm's way, physically or emotionally, I try to cut her loose. But it doesn't come naturally to me, as J.R. can most certainly attest. In fact, I think my natural tendency is to worry, to be over protective, to hold on too tight. It's not good, so I'm practicing something else. 

About two weeks ago I went to a local play group at the Burma Center. I was the only non-Burmese parent there. And I went there on purpose. Here's why. For years our church used to host a Baptist Burmese worshipping community on Sunday mornings. I noticed that in general Burmese parents were much less hovering than European-American parents. They let their kids run, play, and rough-house in huge packs, often unsupervised by adults. At first it troubled me because I thought it was unsafe. But the more I witnessed their cultural style of parenting, the more respect I began to develop for them. You see, their kids were always engaged, with other children, with diverse kinds of play, and with adults (other than their own parents) who would come in and out of activities with them. It seems really healthy to me now. The parents appear less flustered and anxious and the kids are caught up in present-moment joy. I want to be in play groups where that ethic is embodied. It's not a lack of presence or concern. It's a more trust-filled way of being and it really speaks to me. When we were at the Burma Center play group two fridays ago, I couldn't speak to anyone nor could they speak to me, but Aurora had the time of her life. Point is: I'm trying to learn from the Burmese. How to be more trusting of my child, of my parenting peers, of the world. 

Yesterday there was a picnic for my church community at the Ryberg's house. There were all kinds of families, many with young children. Aurora was the youngest (born) child there. I noticed that most of the other parents stayed pretty close to their kids. I, on the other hand, let my girl go wild with different adults. She was often out of sight. Sometimes she was too close to flying balls that the other kids were throwing around. She had grass in her diaper when I brought her home. And her feet were totally caked with dirt because I let her roam around barefoot. Some might accuse me of being careless. I just want her to know the diverse dimensions of this life. And and and. I never want to be so laze-faire that my child unnecessarily comes to harm nor do I want other people feeling like I am passing my supervisory role over to them without consent. So it's a dance. Which takes me to Lorde. 

In that second quote she talks about the importance of children discovering that their parents aren't omnipotent. And how hard it is for children and parents alike to coming into this knowing. I wonder if this process isn't similar to theological deconstruction. For many years I've watched people confuse God's love with God's power. As if God's greatest attribute is God's capacity to keep us entirely safe. To protect us from all harm. I gotta say it seems to me like this kind of belief system is most rampant in two groups: 1) those who are economically privileged enough to privatize their lives to such a degree that they never meet 'threat' & 2) those who are so threatened every single day because they are most vulnerable/targeted that nothing other than safety could possibly feel 'divine' or 'sacred' or like 'salvation.' But that's another essay for another day. Point being: is the highest degree of care, the pinnacle of love, merely about safety, about being entirely protected? This particular theology or parenting world-view neglects love's capacity to endure risk in the promise of one's (unique) becoming. There's no development, no novelty, no complexity without risk. I'm willing, as a parent, to lay down the illusion of omnipotence, in order to create space for my children's development. And, I think without enough security and safety (materially, emotionally, etc) they cannot develop. So there's a balance to be had, no? 

How does one achieve that balance? "How do I expect to experience and reconcile this over time?"

Trial and error. Every day. Talking it all through with one's partner, mother, mentors, friends, etc. Emulating the style of other parents who seem to 'get it' (at least some of the time). Reading articles and books about it. Eventually watching and listening to the feedback loops that play out through Aurora and Isaiah's lives. Like if they're too hesitant, back up. If they're too daring, squeeze a little harder. I don't know, shit. Just being open to life? Maybe that's the answer to everything...

(((Jonah)))

Love,

EJ

Naked Spirituality: Here

For the next 12 weeks my church is doing a worship series that's focused on Brian McClaren's book "Naked Spirituality." Each week has a different central theme encapsulated in a single word. This week the word is "here." We've been encouraging our community to find pictures, images, quotes, videos, etc to go with the theme and to  share those things on Facebook. I wrote a poem on "here" this morning that I shared with Koinonia. I want to share it on this blog too. In fact, whatever I come up with on these themes, I plan to share in this space. 


Here--

baby kicks announce an arrival to come

we make love in the morning dark

coffee percolates with a soft click click click

she wakes up, more beautiful than the day before

i sneak out to Horrocks as the light christens the day

Gaia sniffs the new marks in her backyard/territory, bodacious spring green

the griddle produces smoke prior to pancakes splashing down

mango, banana and blackberry make the perfect side dish

buddha bar pandora echoes from the speaker, ambient and dub working it 

dishes accumulate in the sink for the unlucky sucker later 

stacks of bills, cards, gift certificates and books half-read mark a table too full

a mom, dad, daughter, son-to-come, dog and their stuff--

i am 

we are

this is--

love 

perfect

sabbath

home.  

Here.