Friday was the last day I couldn't drive nor walk around the block more than once. Friday marked the difference between laying flat and being able to stand (somewhat) straight for more than three minutes. Friday my pain level went from a 9 to a 6 1/2--the qualitative distance between those levels for my body mirroring the quantitative distance between states like California and New York on a map. When you've got nothing, you get tremendously grateful for something even if that something would have felt pathetic before you lost everything. Back to Friday.
Makes sense that my spiritual director would usher in the period of transition, the transition from immobility to inches-given. We were supposed to have dinner in Oakland but there was no way I could drive up from Palo Alto, so we decided to talk on the phone. She's a magical human being, my spiritual director. Even so, it took me 30 minutes to get honest about the struggle, 30 minutes to admit my despair and absolute bewilderment. At first I hesitated. I didn't want to use the word "unemployment" because she used to be my boss. I didn't want to use the words "lack of faith" because she's also now my pastor. I didn't want to tell her how bad my back pain had been the last 4 days, how only 2 days ago I'd begged my physician for Morphine and when he refused to order the shot and told me to go to the ER (how can a person with level 9 pain drive themselves to the ER?), I'd asked G-d to give me death. I thought she'd be disappointed. She's the kind of person everyone works hard--i mean hard--to avoid disappointing because she's grace-filled, beautiful and dependable. Because she is these things, she asked the questions that coaxed me into honesty. She asked if I'd been writing. I said no. I couldn't write because I was too ashamed.
Then we began talking about the lives of pastors: what they do, not just how they work within the walls of a congregation. She talked about vocation being larger than employment, particularly in the ministry. Pastors are people who bring theological and ecclesiological reflection to all aspects of life, not just the life of a congregation where they are employed. We look at all struggle and victory, all brush-ups with grace and evil with several things in mind: 1) our people 2) our G-d & 3) the intersections between the two. I began talking about how this struggle with getting a job, with getting adequate health care, and dealing with chronic pain have given me a wider circle of compassion. I told her about my new found empathy for people who have to be on disability, people who spend too much time staring up at the ceiling because that's the only option they've got. I told her I would never, ever, in the future forsake the blessing of having a job. I told her I would never forsake another pain free day. She then asked if I would be willing to write during this time as a way of providing testimony, as a way of pastoring from the wilderness.
G-d knows I am not the only one in the wilderness right now. In fact, my wilderness looks like a nicely trimmed vineyard in comparison to some people's struggle these days. I may be moving back home, but at least I've got a financially stable family to welcome me back. I may be without steady employment, but I qualify for federal help that's enabling me to pay my bills. My skin color, education level, class privilege and body ability guarantee me a future within my denomination that, unfairly, many cannot claim. I may be leaving the Bay Area where countless friends and memories hold my heart, but at least I've made those connections and dwelled in that precious space at all. Amidst the struggle I am both grateful for what I have and committed to fighting against those things holding people in greater bondage than I can even comprehend. I will not allow this time of suffering to isolate or silence me. Thanks to Marjorie's suggestion, I will use this time to connect, to express, to fight, to hold on, and yes, to love G-d. Therefore, this blog space will serve as a key portal for these attempts to break open and to reach you.
There’s more…
On Saturday I actually survived the drive to the East Bay. I had the opportunity to write and direct the communion liturgy of Michelle Haris-Gloyer's Ordination service. I love Michelle. Working with her on any liturgical project feels like breathing sacred air: it just flows. We blended the traditional institution of the Lord's Supper with the language of 2 Cor 4. We relished in the patterns and poetic flow of those two texts in conversation. Michelle desired "multiple voices at the table" so we invited 8 servers to participate in the spoken word. The actual delivery wasn't perfect (well, im*h*o) because we only had a few practice runs, but the process of relationally engaging, envisioning, writing and rehearsing reminded me of why I want to do ministry. There's no greater joy(e) than experiencing the burst of novelty at the intersection of tradition and innovation. No greater love than worship. I may not be “in the church” but my heart is in this work, no doubt.
After the service I ran into Christina Hutchins who is pastor, poet, theologian, philosopher and all-around goodness. She's the person who throws out Koan sayings that knock you spiritually senseless one minute and then 20 minutes later comes up with an absolutely irreverent joke that makes you laugh so hard you almost pee. I adore her. Anyway: we hadn't seen each other in a while and she asked me how I was doing. I gave her the 1 minute version of "jobless, in pain and moving home to my mother's house." She looked me deep in the eyes and said "you could practice loving your life the way it is right now." In some ways I think she was taking me to the same core principle that Marjorie ushered me into on Friday night. Her words stayed with me for 3 days, read: they actually meant something.
Ever since I've been wondering about the practice of "loving life the way it is right now." What does it mean to actually do the work of loving something that feels so damn bad? This question, this meditation of sorts, has thrown me "back to the basics." Yes, it's letting the "test become testimony" (as Marjorie would say) and so yes, the loving is about expression and writing. But mostly: it's about paying attention. And I can only pay attention to the present moment because the future is a downhill-rolling-fear-filled-snow-ball phenomenon if there ever was one. I am looking and listening more deeply today than I ever have. And guess what?: the practice is saving me moment to moment.
I'm here to testify: the present moment contains the most G-d you'll ever find. Thank you Marjorie, Michelle, and Christina.
In the coming weeks and months I am going to practice gratitude in this blog space. The practice of gratitude is about intention, about paying particular (intentionally appreciative) attention to the present moment. The practice of gratitude is the practice of “loving life the way it is right now.” And, hey, it’s seasonally appropriate. My hope is that you will continue checking in and that you will share your gratitude (or anything else you want) in this space as well. I am particularly reliant upon this space to hold connections as I transition from the Bay back to Southern Cal. I want to keep loving your lives—just the way they are right now—too. Be in touch, beloved,
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Advent
(Hey all: I've started an Advent writing project with Tai Amri and Corbin. This is my first post. My boys will respond on a webzine called Patheos. I will post the link later and if you find interest in this material, check us out.)
Advent, the season that includes both religious holiday and secular consumeristic spin-outs, is a time of preparation. For Christians in particular, this is a time to halt, a time of pause, a period of waiting. But we do not wait for waiting's sake. We await the event of incarnation, a birthing of divinity and humanity in the world. We move collectively during this time of preparation, as a people, toward the promise of Christmas. Like any other liturgical season, Advent takes form in our lives through practice. We practice Advent. And again, like any other liturgical season, the practices of Advent take on drastically different forms given the Christian sect/denomination/community wherein they are being ritualized. For instance, while some Christians will pray, light candles and open miniature calendar doors each evening during Advent, other Christians will spend the bulk of Advent shopping for gifts, preparing meals and attending bi-weekly church services. It's all about context.
The diversity of Advent practice is made more complicated by the undeniably far-reaching reign of commercial industries capitalizing on this time in order to make a profit. We hear Jingle Bells set to Best Buy's advertisements, see GAP models adorning cute little santa hats in order to sell ordinary blue jeans, and find Christmas Blend coffee stocked heavily on the shelves at any local Starbucks. With equal force, those finding the man of Nazareth missing from this holiday extravaganza, step in the streets with their "No Christmas without Christ" signs or "Jesus is the reason for the season" buttons. All of these things—pious prayer, corporate cash-ins and religious resistance to consumerism--are about the practice of Advent. There’s a spectrum here and quite honestly during my 28 years of Christianity I’ve probably gone to the extreme on both sides. Today, after seminary training and years of work in the field of ministry, I find myself somewhere between unconscious consumerism and self-righteous blasting of all-things-Capitalist. I find myself practicing the “middle way.”
There's meaning to be found in buying just the right gift for just the right someone, even if you find that gift at Best Buy. There's value to be found in lining up and resisting the forces of classism, homeless and hunger in our city streets--and doing that resisting in the name of Christ precisely because Jesus came into this world through a homeless, unwed, pregnant, teen-age girl. Reverence for life and reverence for the liberation made known in Jesus can increase with every candle lighting, every sung version of "Oh Holy Night." However, there’s the danger of “going through the (Advent) motions” just to get through the holidays. This is the danger of meaningless habituation that accompanies any ritualistic activity. We can pick gifts off the shelf without thinking much about the person receiving them or where those gifts were made and under what conditions. We can prepare a Christmas meal for our extended friends and family because we’re supposed to, not because we actually want to. We can go about the obligatory, business as usual practices "we've done every year," or we can go about the work of checking our intentions. Perhaps the most faithful discipline we can engage as we approach the season of Advent in 2009 is the practice of Advent intentionality.
As a progressive Protestant I’ve seen the shortfalls of “thinking” about religion—my people are notorious for thinking themselves right out of holy living--and so I am not advocating a more heady way of approaching Advent. Instead I’d like us to consider that we’ve always practiced Advent and there’s something to be discovered in revisiting those practices with the lessons of faith we’ve learned in the last year. Certainly this will lead us to change some practices and to hold onto others with greater appreciation.
Advent, the season that includes both religious holiday and secular consumeristic spin-outs, is a time of preparation. For Christians in particular, this is a time to halt, a time of pause, a period of waiting. But we do not wait for waiting's sake. We await the event of incarnation, a birthing of divinity and humanity in the world. We move collectively during this time of preparation, as a people, toward the promise of Christmas. Like any other liturgical season, Advent takes form in our lives through practice. We practice Advent. And again, like any other liturgical season, the practices of Advent take on drastically different forms given the Christian sect/denomination/community wherein they are being ritualized. For instance, while some Christians will pray, light candles and open miniature calendar doors each evening during Advent, other Christians will spend the bulk of Advent shopping for gifts, preparing meals and attending bi-weekly church services. It's all about context.
The diversity of Advent practice is made more complicated by the undeniably far-reaching reign of commercial industries capitalizing on this time in order to make a profit. We hear Jingle Bells set to Best Buy's advertisements, see GAP models adorning cute little santa hats in order to sell ordinary blue jeans, and find Christmas Blend coffee stocked heavily on the shelves at any local Starbucks. With equal force, those finding the man of Nazareth missing from this holiday extravaganza, step in the streets with their "No Christmas without Christ" signs or "Jesus is the reason for the season" buttons. All of these things—pious prayer, corporate cash-ins and religious resistance to consumerism--are about the practice of Advent. There’s a spectrum here and quite honestly during my 28 years of Christianity I’ve probably gone to the extreme on both sides. Today, after seminary training and years of work in the field of ministry, I find myself somewhere between unconscious consumerism and self-righteous blasting of all-things-Capitalist. I find myself practicing the “middle way.”
There's meaning to be found in buying just the right gift for just the right someone, even if you find that gift at Best Buy. There's value to be found in lining up and resisting the forces of classism, homeless and hunger in our city streets--and doing that resisting in the name of Christ precisely because Jesus came into this world through a homeless, unwed, pregnant, teen-age girl. Reverence for life and reverence for the liberation made known in Jesus can increase with every candle lighting, every sung version of "Oh Holy Night." However, there’s the danger of “going through the (Advent) motions” just to get through the holidays. This is the danger of meaningless habituation that accompanies any ritualistic activity. We can pick gifts off the shelf without thinking much about the person receiving them or where those gifts were made and under what conditions. We can prepare a Christmas meal for our extended friends and family because we’re supposed to, not because we actually want to. We can go about the obligatory, business as usual practices "we've done every year," or we can go about the work of checking our intentions. Perhaps the most faithful discipline we can engage as we approach the season of Advent in 2009 is the practice of Advent intentionality.
As a progressive Protestant I’ve seen the shortfalls of “thinking” about religion—my people are notorious for thinking themselves right out of holy living--and so I am not advocating a more heady way of approaching Advent. Instead I’d like us to consider that we’ve always practiced Advent and there’s something to be discovered in revisiting those practices with the lessons of faith we’ve learned in the last year. Certainly this will lead us to change some practices and to hold onto others with greater appreciation.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Seeing the Doc. Seeing the MRI. Seeing the future
To put words
when he sheepishly avoided my mother's question about long term prognosis
To put words
to the color chaos--where white should have totalized, no, greyish black moss
To put words
where potrusions illustrate this screaming, aching, knifing, killing, pain that's been and been and been
I cannot.
when he sheepishly avoided my mother's question about long term prognosis
To put words
to the color chaos--where white should have totalized, no, greyish black moss
To put words
where potrusions illustrate this screaming, aching, knifing, killing, pain that's been and been and been
I cannot.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The River
"It's grief. They want you to have some normal response to grief, you know, so they don't have to watch. But it's mine."
--Henry Carter portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the movie Shrink.
Three days ago…
While walking next to my girl Maritza through the streets of the Mission District in San Francisco on Dia de los Muertos, I realized something profound was happening. Painted skeleton faces. Candle luminaries all around. Packed crowds full of mourning, carnivalesque pilgrims communing with their dead. Skull and bones etched upon elaborate altars made from scratch. They call the march a "processional." Here the boundaries of life/death, religion/secular, sadness/celebration, here they go blurry. Here the isolation of grief meets its eclipse. I turned to her and said "Pretty prophetic for a culture that doesn't want anything to do with grief."
We don't grieve because we refuse to face the unnecessary damage we accumulate through unnecessary war, unnecessary violence (read: racism, sexism, neo/colonialism, heterosexism), unnecessary consumption/production practices, unnecessary distancing, unnecessary silencing. Our refusal multiplies the contents of grief. So we accumulate and accumulate and accumulate and the buried dead, the relational deaths, the sorrows of significant and untended loss—they whisper, call out, scream and haunt. They haunt, hoping we will wade in the water, hoping we take seriously the things we have loved, hoping we will not turn away.
Maritza nodded. She knows a lot about death and dying and grief--and about the murderous silence often accompanying them. She works for/in the Latino/a community, in the field of AIDS prevention and outreach. She lost her brother. She knows. She uses the language of "crossing-over" and while that language is foreign to me, it communicates so honestly the trespass, the back-flipping liminal space that momentarily exists when what's lost comes alive again in memory. This is the real stuff of resurrection. Christians should make this street their classroom and put down their pathetic theories of heaven. She bends down and gazes into the altar constructed for Cesar Chavez. She takes pictures and lingers. His work is her work. And I witness her witness, his resurrection inside her wide-open heart. And this: my gaze upon her adoration, this is the work of mourning together, the hard, sometimes almost impossible work of staring at and seeing loss without trying to strangle it, or put a wall up in front of it, or shooting someone because you refuse to feel it. This is the radical and creative motion necessary for the ash to penetrate the earth while giving permission to its surrounding soil: yes, let something new bud here.
If we create space for each other, if we allow our companions the dignity of grief, without attempts to control or fix or minimize, we might possibly end the ceaseless marches to war. We might instead, begin floating in a river that changes its pace, follows no predetermined direction and therefore promises no security, and sometimes gets colder than we can tolerate. But the river, the river will deliver us.
--Henry Carter portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the movie Shrink.
Three days ago…
While walking next to my girl Maritza through the streets of the Mission District in San Francisco on Dia de los Muertos, I realized something profound was happening. Painted skeleton faces. Candle luminaries all around. Packed crowds full of mourning, carnivalesque pilgrims communing with their dead. Skull and bones etched upon elaborate altars made from scratch. They call the march a "processional." Here the boundaries of life/death, religion/secular, sadness/celebration, here they go blurry. Here the isolation of grief meets its eclipse. I turned to her and said "Pretty prophetic for a culture that doesn't want anything to do with grief."
We don't grieve because we refuse to face the unnecessary damage we accumulate through unnecessary war, unnecessary violence (read: racism, sexism, neo/colonialism, heterosexism), unnecessary consumption/production practices, unnecessary distancing, unnecessary silencing. Our refusal multiplies the contents of grief. So we accumulate and accumulate and accumulate and the buried dead, the relational deaths, the sorrows of significant and untended loss—they whisper, call out, scream and haunt. They haunt, hoping we will wade in the water, hoping we take seriously the things we have loved, hoping we will not turn away.
Maritza nodded. She knows a lot about death and dying and grief--and about the murderous silence often accompanying them. She works for/in the Latino/a community, in the field of AIDS prevention and outreach. She lost her brother. She knows. She uses the language of "crossing-over" and while that language is foreign to me, it communicates so honestly the trespass, the back-flipping liminal space that momentarily exists when what's lost comes alive again in memory. This is the real stuff of resurrection. Christians should make this street their classroom and put down their pathetic theories of heaven. She bends down and gazes into the altar constructed for Cesar Chavez. She takes pictures and lingers. His work is her work. And I witness her witness, his resurrection inside her wide-open heart. And this: my gaze upon her adoration, this is the work of mourning together, the hard, sometimes almost impossible work of staring at and seeing loss without trying to strangle it, or put a wall up in front of it, or shooting someone because you refuse to feel it. This is the radical and creative motion necessary for the ash to penetrate the earth while giving permission to its surrounding soil: yes, let something new bud here.
If we create space for each other, if we allow our companions the dignity of grief, without attempts to control or fix or minimize, we might possibly end the ceaseless marches to war. We might instead, begin floating in a river that changes its pace, follows no predetermined direction and therefore promises no security, and sometimes gets colder than we can tolerate. But the river, the river will deliver us.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Welcome to the World Little Ones
For Isabella, Gabriel & Alex, Clementine, Elanora (and some still on the way...)
My friends are having babies. Many many babies.
And what is there to do but become enamored with
the possibilities born of our world
when wonder and grace filled people
make the radical decision to multiply?
It's radical. It is because our world quickly crashes
any naive eschatology promising safety,
painlessness or gauranteed success
for any child. Any child.
Here they are anyway, their mere existence a testament of hope
reaching from the guts of sperm donors, mommy bears
and delivery dancing dads.
My soul stands up, claps, and refuses to sit down
even when the ovation has grown long and others have begun to subtly
gesture their tired and time-bound allegiance.
Keep standing, I say! This is the stuff of true celebration, of worship.
And if we are not indoctrinated into new types of responsibility
by the mere announcement of pregnancy,
then shame upon shame,
for these are the holy whispers of futures untouched,
members of a new order,
a new order that altars our world and
asks of us new symbols, gestures and language, asking:
what do you, dear pilgrim, bring to this table?
They have come from bellies over-swollen and
ribcages close to collapse, from mothering giants overwhelmed with discomfort.
They have come impossibly, through pain and tearing and sleepless nights
to awaken the dead and sluggish from their slumber,
to announce the myriad of miracles in flight,
still searching for open hearts to occupy.
Welcome. Welcome.
My friends are having babies. Many many babies.
And what is there to do but become enamored with
the possibilities born of our world
when wonder and grace filled people
make the radical decision to multiply?
It's radical. It is because our world quickly crashes
any naive eschatology promising safety,
painlessness or gauranteed success
for any child. Any child.
Here they are anyway, their mere existence a testament of hope
reaching from the guts of sperm donors, mommy bears
and delivery dancing dads.
My soul stands up, claps, and refuses to sit down
even when the ovation has grown long and others have begun to subtly
gesture their tired and time-bound allegiance.
Keep standing, I say! This is the stuff of true celebration, of worship.
And if we are not indoctrinated into new types of responsibility
by the mere announcement of pregnancy,
then shame upon shame,
for these are the holy whispers of futures untouched,
members of a new order,
a new order that altars our world and
asks of us new symbols, gestures and language, asking:
what do you, dear pilgrim, bring to this table?
They have come from bellies over-swollen and
ribcages close to collapse, from mothering giants overwhelmed with discomfort.
They have come impossibly, through pain and tearing and sleepless nights
to awaken the dead and sluggish from their slumber,
to announce the myriad of miracles in flight,
still searching for open hearts to occupy.
Welcome. Welcome.
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