Tears

“Come on, give us a smile.”

I sat on the pink velvet loveseat in Jay Cee’s office, holding a paper rose and facing the magazine photographer…. I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry.  I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week….

“Show us how happy it makes you to write a poem.”

–from The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath

The Anglo-Catholic Vision

St. Paul’s, the church that I visited last Sunday (and LOVED), is part of what is called the Anglo-Catholic tradition.  They posted these words in their invitation to join an email group, and they literally took my breath away.  This truly makes me want to go to church again:

In the secret places of their hearts, modern men and women are seeking themselves. They sense, although they cannot believe it, that they have enduring value, that there is more to themselves than their employers, their accountants, their government, or even their families can possibly know. What the world craves is the assurance that there is “a splendor burning in the heart of things.” Naked dogma cannot supply this need, nor can empty ritual. Only the Catholic vision will suffice. But if the world is to find that vision it must be found in us, clothed in living thought and embodied in holy lives.

Ours is the vocation of enchantment, restoring to humanity the divine image which sin has hidden but cannot destroy. It is a ministry of holy responsibility as well as delight. We must teach the truth to an age that does not believe in truth, preach hope to men and women bereft of confidence in the past or the future, and labor for justice in a time of ideological bankruptcy and political cynicism. But what will ultimately win souls–drawing human beings out of despondency to embrace their true selves, their brothers and sisters, and their God–is wonder: the spontaneous love and joy which lures us to Mass Sunday after Sunday. The future of Anglo-Catholicism and of the whole Church depends less on our work than on our ability to enflame our neighbor’s hearts.

John Orens in “The Anglo Catholic Vision”

Single Story

May we refuse to accept the single stories of the people that we meet, read about, see in the news, etc…..

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A New Conciousness

“Despite the growing disenchantment women experience… the idea of existing beyond the patriarchal institution of faith, of withdrawing our external projection of God onto the church, is almost always unfathomable.  It’s that old the-world-is-flat conviction, where we believe that if we sail out on the spiritual ocean beyond a certain point we will fall off the edge of the known world into a void.  We think there’s nothing beyond the edge.  No real spirituality, no salvation, no community, no divine substance.  We cannot see that the voyage will lead us to whole new continents of depth and meaning.  That if we keep going, we might even come full circle, but with a whole new consciousness.”

– Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

This morning, I went to church for the first time in over two months.  In total, since I moved to Seattle, I’ve only been to church 5 times.  And I am profoundly glad that I went today.

I stood in one of the pews of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, listening to the church sing the words of the Apostle’s Creed, watching them bow and make the sign of the cross–head, chest, shoulders.  For today, I had decided to accept the church’s invitation in the bulletin, “If you are unfamiliar with the ritual customs of the Episcopal Church, simply relax with the liturgy and let the rest of the congregation carry you in worship.”  And they carried me to a place I had never been before, a new continent of depth and meaning, a place where the face of God was not the face of a man.  My heart rejoiced and long-hidden tears fell from my eyes as I watched the female rector perform the sacraments and lead the congregation in worship.  Surprising even myself, I spent the whole service silently pleading to be able to receive communion from her.  Something in me knew that today, for the first time in my life, I needed to receive the body of Christ (broken for me) from a female hand.  I knelt at the altar and opened my hands, overwhelmed with peace and gratitude as I took the bread that symbolizes the broken body of Christ while looking into the face of a woman.  The tears came again a few minutes later as I watched one of the men return the gold and red vestments to their place of honor–the shoulders of a woman.  As I was overcome with emotion, I think I realized, possibly for the first time, that God isn’t a man, afterall.

Today, during that fleeting moment of the Eucharist, the body of Christ was a woman.

Story

Story story story story.  I’d be the first to tell you how sick I am of hearing that word since I started at Mars Hill.  I’ve heard it come out of my own mouth, followed quickly by, “If I hear that word one more time, I’m going to throw up.”

But despite being sick of the word and how often we use it in the Mars Hill cult, I can’t get enough of story.  I am fascinated by people and their stories.  Mars Hill has taught me to listen with different ears, to see with different eyes, and I’ve begun to experience people in a way that I never have before.

Waiting for the bus with Kate on Monday night, we met a man with a kind face, carrying a backpack and a trash bag.  What started as a question about the bus schedule turned into a conversation about his struggle with alcoholism and how he’s trying to get himself together so that he can be there for his 2-month old baby.

Watching an online news story about Palin’s book release, I was suddenly struck by her humanity.  The news anchor and her guest interviewee were meticulously tearing Palin’s life apart, criticizing her actions, questioning her motives, and making definitive and degrading comments about her character.  As I watched, I thought of the recent Newsweek Magazine cover that featured Palin in her office wearing running shorts, a photo which Newsweek had chosen that had been taken earlier for a magazine geared toward runners, with a tagline that reads, “HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE SARAH?  She’s bad news for the GOP–and for everybody else, too.”  Firstly, I was shocked by the overt bias of Newsweek.  But I was more shocked and saddened by their unflinching mockery.  They found the most inappropriate photo of her that they could, and then led the world to point and laugh.  Listening to the news anchors pick her apart, I realized that all of the conversation was about Palin, but Palin herself was absent.  And I don’t mean just physically absent.  They were examining her with a microscope, dragging into the light the most subtle of impurities, and somehow completely missing her in the process.  I don’t deny that much of what they were saying was probably true.  I’m not trying to argue that she has done no wrong, and to be honest, I’m not particularly fond of her politics.  But she deserves to be seen.  She deserves to be seen as she is–full of both glory and depravity, no different than the rest of us.  Maybe she wouldn’t have made a good vice president, maybe she doesn’t know much about foreign policy, maybe her book is full of fabrications and distortions of the truth.  But who are we to belittle the depravity in her that is also present in us? Everyday, I lie, I cheat, I kill, I covet, I manipulate, I dismiss, and I deceive.  ”Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  If the majority of her book is, in fact, fiction, then I can’t imagine what kind of heartache and distorted reality would drive her to write something that would give others such a perfect opportunity to drag her through the mud… again.

Even as I’m writing this, I watched two bike cops excitedly ride across the road and jump the curb to question an apparently homeless man, and I can see in their body language that they are enjoying every moment of making this man squirm.  They’re smiling.

I rushed out of the house this morning to catch the closest bus that would take me downtown, but suddenly felt the urge to take a walk.  So I walked through my favorite part of the neighborhood to Market St, where I could pick up another bus that would get me to school.  As I got closer to the stop, I saw the bus pulling away.  With a sigh of annoyance, I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to kill time until the next bus came.  After browsing through boxes of $1 CDs outside of a record store and spending a few minutes perusing an overpriced boutique, I sat down on the bench to wait for the bus.  A young woman wearing sunglasses sat down next to me, yelling at a man who was walking away from her, something about how what happened to the Jews was terrible and that she wasn’t a Nazi.  I let out a little nervous laugh, and she asked me why I was laughing.  That started a conversation that, honestly, didn’t make very much sense.  And it would have been really easy for me to dismiss her as nothing more than a druggie or a drunkard, either of which may have been true.  And that is exactly what I wanted to do.  But something told me not to dismiss her so easily.  So I tried to keep the conversation going.  She had a copy of The Stranger, and she showed me parts of it that confused her, that she didn’t understand.  Her thoughts were scattered, but I tried to follow as best as I could.  She decided to get on the bus with me to go downtown.  She asked me if she would get hurt if she went downtown.  I think the bus driver must have known her, because she just looked at him and said loudly, “I have a bus pass!” and he responded calmly, “I know.”  I asked her about her family, how old she was, what she does with her time.  She’s 27.  She lives with her mother.  She told me that her father told her that she needed to let go of her social worker and find a place for rehab.  She has a problem with drinking.  She asked another passenger if she could borrow his paper.  She read a story aloud to me about a 50-foot tree that had fallen on someone’s house, and I shared stories of fallen trees from North Carolina hurricanes.  She read to me a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, which we tried to interpret together.  It was about being open to surprise, to travel to new places with your mind and with your heart.  Just before she got off the bus, she confessed to me that she wished that she had some girl friends, saying that she didn’t have any female friends, quickly followed by the statement that she didn’t have any guy friends either.  She laughed nervously and looked down.  After a few more questions, she said goodbye and got off the bus.  Walking by my window, she gave me the gift of her smile and a wave.  Her name was Loraine.  And I think I may have seen God in her beautiful blue eyes.

 

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”  – Martin Buber

Kind of hilarious

George Ellery Hale was the twentieth century’s most important builder of telescopes. In 1897, Hale built a 40-inch-wide telescope, the largest ever built at that time. His second telescope, with a 60-inch lens, was set up in 1917 and took 14 years to build. During that time, Hale became convinced that he suffered from “Americanitis” a disorder in which the ambitions of Americans drive them insane. During the building of his lens, Hale spent time in a sanatorium, and would only discuss his plans for the telescope with a “sympathetic green elf.”

Thank you, Useless Knowledge.

Now back to writing about a central and guiding tragedy in my life.  Oh, Mars Hill.

Photos

Posted some new photos on my art blog:  Seattle in the Fall

What I think I want

I’ve been thinking a lot about my last post, and trying to answer the question, what do I want?  And I’ve had several moments of clarity that have helped me to figure that out.  All of these answers may not be right, but they seem to make sense for now.  And these certainly aren’t necessarily the things that I should want, but I think awareness of them is important.

 

1.  When I ask my therapist to let me tell the whole story without interruption, what do I want from her?

I want her to interrupt.

2.  When my actions say to my therapist, “Fuck you.  What are you going to do about it?” what do I want from her?

The question isn’t rhetorical.  I want her to do something about it.  I want her to fight for me.

3.  When, in my dream, my mom comes to the door, but says nothing, what do I want from her?

I want her to speak.  I want her to get rightfully angry.  And I want her to see me.

4.  When I decide I’m not comfortable seeing my old therapist and she calls me unexpectedly (though possibly by accident?), and I’m angry about that, what do I want from her?

If I’m honest, I wanted her to call.  I wanted to feel like she cared, and like I mattered, even if calling wouldn’t be the best thing for me.  At the same time, I want her to care enough to protect my boundaries by not calling.  I want to see her, but for some reason, I just don’t think it would be a good idea.  Something about it makes me very uncomfortable, and I think the best thing for me will be to let her time in Seattle come and go without crossing paths.  I also recognize that the call could have been an accident entirely, but it’s an important question for me to consider, anyway.

5.  When I send a deeply valued friend an email about the ways that they have hurt me, but don’t ask for an apology, what do I want from them?

This one is much more complicated.  She was right.  I wanted to make her feel guilty.  I wanted her to hurt, so she would be able to see that a friendship with me is bound to end in heartache.  I wanted her to see how toxic I am, so she would just leave me alone… for her sake.  At the same time, I think my deeper desire was for her to fight for me, to prove me wrong, to show me that I’m worth the struggle.  And that was a burden that I don’t think she could bear, and I’m not so sure she should have.

6.  When, after having a complicated week with my anti-depressant medication, I take one of the pills in front of that same friend (now somewhat estranged), what do I want from them?

Your guess is as good as mine.

7.  When I’m annoyed with new friends for the way that they chose to take care of me, but I’m glad that they did it, what do I want from them?

I wanted them to hide my pills.  They saw me, they heard me, and they took care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself.

8.  When I’m angry at my mom for not listening to me, but lie to her when she asks me how I’m doing, what do I want from her?

I want her to search for me.  I want her to refuse to accept “I’m good.”  I want (and wanted) her to see that I’m not always okay.  I want her to push back, even if it makes her uncomfortable.

 

What… the hell… do I want?

I want to be loved.  I want to be pursued.  I want to be fought for.  But I also recognize that I make that really difficult for people to do, maybe even impossible.  So I want to learn how to let myself be loved, pursued, and fought for.

What do I want?

When I ask my therapist to let me tell the whole story without interruption, what do I want from her?

When my actions say to my therapist, “Fuck you.  What are you going to do about it?” what do I want from her?

When, in my dream, my mom comes to the door, but says nothing, what do I want from her?

When I decide I’m not comfortable seeing my old therapist and she calls me unexpectedly (though possibly by accident?), and I’m angry about that, what do I want from her?

When I send a deeply valued friend an email about the ways that they have hurt me, but don’t ask for an apology, what do I want from them?

When, after having a complicated week with my anti-depressant medication, I take one of the pills in front of that same friend (now somewhat estranged), what do I want from them?

When I’m annoyed with new friends for the way that they chose to take care of me, but I’m glad that they did it, what do I want from them?

When I’m angry at my mom for not listening to me, but lie to her when she asks me how I’m doing, what do I want from her?

 

What… the hell… do I want?

 

 

Songs for Me

I swear this man writes music just for me.  These two excerpts from his songs “Breathe” and “Crinan Wood” describe perfectly what this week has been for me:

“And all the suffering that you’ve witnessed
And the hand prints on the wall
They remind you how it’s endless
How endlessly you fall
And the answer that you’re seeking
For the question that you found
Drives you further to confusion
As you lose your sense of ground
You know you are here
But you find you want to leave
So don’t forget to breathe
Just breathe”

– Breathe

“See these knots around my hands around my feet
They would take me down my end for me to meet
And I grow weary of this struggle and this fight
Morning so far off from out here in the night”

– Crinan Wood