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.  

Dear Self,

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

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

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

Between an Aged River and a Newly Flowing Stream

Dear Turtle Bean,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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