Several months ago, in the midst of a conversation with a man that I respect beyond measure, after expressing my frustration that I couldn’t seem to find a way to repay The Seattle School for all of the goodness it has given me, he spoke words to me that I am sure I will never forget.  His words were prophetic.  Not prophetic in the predicting the future kind of way, but in a way that called me to more.  I heard them as a prophetic invitation to live in a way that is very different from what I have known:

Be the one who burns.

What if my calling, my vocation, could be to simply feel those things?  What if, for now, my position in life is to receive goodness and to feel gratitude and love in return?  What if I am being called to burn with those feelings, to be nearly overcome with how much I love this place and to not do a single thing about it?

As reading week rapidly approaches, more or less the midpoint of the semester, I am beginning to see that my calling as a student at The Seattle School is to be a student at The Seattle School.  To take my learning here seriously, to engage my readings, papers, and class discussions, to allow myself to be challenged and to challenge others, to bring myself fully to my work.  What I want to do this year, the “gift” I want to give The Seattle School, is to simply receive fully, with open hands and an open heart, the gifts it wants to give me, and then to burn with my deep gratitude and love.

Those words — be the one who burns– are still speaking to me now, several months later, giving me a new desire for my life.  Those words are drowning out the voices that tell me to either smother or detonate the feelings that come up in me.  My new, growing desire for myself is this: that when I see that woman crying on the bus, I would cry, too.  That when I fall in “like” with a boy, I would allow myself to fall hard, to just like him even in the midst of the uncertainty of not knowing how he feels about me.  That when I’m angry at my former therapist for leaving me, I would allow that anger to fill me up and bestow upon me its gift of justice.  And when I recognize that some of that anger is covering up sadness, that I would push the anger aside for a time and allow Grief to bestow upon me its gift of healing.  That when I am unwittingly swept off my feet by a beautiful song, I would allow myself to cry tears of joy at the absurdity of its goodness.  That when I feel excitement, I would let myself giggle and do a happy dance.

Too often, we are people who either burn out or refuse to be lit on fire to begin with.  But what if we could be people who smolder?  What if we could let our emotions, from the simplest to the most profound, make their home in us and work their magic?  What if we could be like the burning bush, allowing ourselves to be engulfed in the flames, trusting that we won’t burn up?

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. “

– Mary Oliver

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For an assignment in my Theology I class, I wrote and performed my first spoken word poem.  The assignment was to create something that depicted your view of God and your view of yourself.  I performed the poem in class, and have recorded it and posted it here at the request of some of my friends and classmates.  I hope you enjoy, and I would love to hear your thoughts, reactions, wonderings, etc.

Sometimes

To try and piece together the story of God and Self,
I begin with the wisdom of a child,
quoting him like one of the forefathers of great thinking,
A little 4-year-old boy named Billy once said:
“When somebody loves you, the way they say your names is different.  You just know your name is safe in their mouth.”
Well, my dad, my dad had a way of saying my name like a 4-letter word.
And sometimes, just sometimes,
I can’t hear it any other way.
The person who gave me the name that means “worthy to be loved”
sssspits it out of his mouth like old, sour milk.

And if we’re all made in the image of God,
If he is made in the image of God,
is his mouth God’s mouth?
And if it is, does God spit me out of his mouth, too, like Jonah and the whale?
When I spill the milk, will God swallow me whole and spit me out cold
like Jonah and that goddamn fish?

I need to hear God say my name, my name, my name
so I know that I’m safe.

I saw God on a mountain once.
He was just sittin’ there, starin’, looking up at the sky.
And then, he looked right at me
with these eyes, these eyes, these eyes,
like he was looking right through me.
No, not through me.  Into me.
Right into that place inside of me where all of my tears arise.
And he knew… I knew.
I knew that he knew.
That he knew all of the things
that my friends didn’t know,
that my church didn’t know,
that my pastor didn’t know
…or didn’t want to know.

I knew that he had seen all of my tears,
and that he was crying, too.

Jesus. wept.

Sometimes…
well, okay, most of the time,
I have no idea who this God is.
But I do know this: I need a God who weeps.

I want God to be like the God Ra from the ancient Egyptian myth,
who cries and cries, and as his tears hit the
broken
cracked
earth, it dries,
and they’re suddenly transformed right before my eyes
into tiny, little bees,
buzzzzzing around, buzzzzying themselves with their honeycombs and hives.
The sole creatures who, from the expulsion from Eden survived,
they testify forever to the presence of God.

But sometimes, I’m afraid we’re stuck with more of a Greek myth kind of God,
Like the God of this guy Aristaeus, the first keeper of the bees,
This God
pressed all of those poor bees to
death because Aristaeus
stepped outside the bounds of “acceptable” behavior,
and demanded sacrifice to bring them back alive.

Sin, death, resurrection.
That story sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it?

But sometimes, just sometimes,
God isn’t so bad.
Sometimes, I’m convinced that God is hiding away in some of my friends, and I have to wonder if it’s really him when she stops me and says,
“I’ve heard all this before”
and lets me cry into her lap.

And I wonder if God was hiding in my therapist, too
Helping her to somehow create this space where I felt safe
for the first time,
where I could cry and rage,
put on sackcloth and pour ashes.
And she gave me the gift of pouring ashes of her own.

But there was this one time, that one sometime not too long ago,
when she left me to do something else,
to pursue her dreams, putting me on the back shelf,
And I’m afraid that I saw God there, too.
That somehow, watching her leave,
I had Moses up my sleeve,
and I was watching God’s backside pass before me and
keep. on. going.
not knowing if he’s ever coming back,
just leaving me here, stuck and alone
in the cleft of this big. fucking. rock
wondering, where the hell do I go now?

So, determined to leave, to get out of this God-forsaken place, I start packing my bags,
ready to join the throngs of people who have left their dashed, God-directed hopes behind,
casting out into uncharted territory.
But I stop, and I wonder, maybe that wasn’t God at all.
Just maybe that wasn’t God’s backside, but mine,
leaving behind all of my God-sized visions of grandeur,
burning bushes, pillars of cloud and smoke, and all that,
Maybe it was really me, leaving to follow the whisper,
because the wind, earthquake, and fire just don’t work for me anymore.

So now what’s the score?
I can’t seem to keep track
of the back and forth attack that I wage against faith.
And friends, I’m tired, so tired my very bones cry out,
“Forget about the score!”
And then I hear those nine.noon.three chimes,
and I just give in, bow my head, and stop counting God’s crimes
but just sometimes.

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Words

To my new therapist:
Or To Whom It May Concern:

I have a story to tell.
I have a story.
I have.
I…
I have a story to tell without telling.
Without words, with words,
words without, words within.

I have a story with words to tell without words.
I have a story without words to tell with words.

Can you hear me if I don’t tell you?
Can you hear me if I do?
Can I tell it? How can I not?
Can I not tell it? How can I?

I have a story to tell…

…to my new therapist

Or, to whom it may concern.

Ellen Davis, Critical Traditioning

We don’t like tension.  Well, maybe I should just speak for myself.  I don’t like tension.  I like things to be clear.  I like for someone else to give me the answer.  I like my world to be in perfect harmony, and when it’s not, for there to always be an easy way out.  And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

But there does seem to be one curious exception, one place where I prefer tension over harmony, where tension gives me a euphoric sense of satisfaction:

A little music lesson for those of you who aren’t familiar with the language, the tension that I so love in music is called “dissonance,” which is defined as “a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion.”  Looking at the sheet music for “Water Night” by Eric Whitacre, you can easily see where this dissonance is present.  Generally, the notes are able to be easily stacked directly on top of each other.  But in many instances of dissonance, the notes are too close together to fit in one line, so they stand slightly askew, two notes competing for the same space that’s just not big enough for the both of them.  Dissonance in music is generally supposed to give you the desire for resolution.  You hear the competing notes and you long to hear one fall or one rise to achieve some sense of harmony.  But dissonance does something completely different for me.  I want to hold on to it, I want the tension of it to continue into eternity.  In Whitacre’s masterpiece, when I hear the words “And if you open your eyes…” a chill is sent through my whole body, my eyes close and tears begin to form.  To me, it is the dissonance, not the resolution, that gives me a feeling of completion.  The tension is the goal.

With such a love, even a longing, for tension in music, why do I seem to be so opposed to tension in relation to God?  Why do I need clean, clear-cut answers?  Why do I need everything to line up with my own sensibilities, allowing so little room for contradiction, questions, and uncertainty?  The idea of “right” interpretation of Scripture has come up in all of my classes in these first few weeks of school, particularly in Hermeneutics.  We seem to have so little tolerance for uncertainty.  The possibility that someone’s interpretation that contradicts with our own might not be “wrong,” the possibility that multiple interpretations of one passage might be able to somehow coexist, puts us on edge.  We hear the dissonance and we long for resolution.  We cannot tolerate the tension.

But I’ve found myself asking, what if I could approach God and Scripture the same way I approach music?  What if the many (many, many) difficult passages, instead of making me cringe, sent chills through my body and brought tears to my eyes closed in reverence?  What if the tension of those passages, rather than the “resolution” of them through attempts to justify or disregard, gave me a sense of completion?  What if tension was the goal?

This semester, I have come to even more deeply respect my Hermeneutics professor, Dwight Friesen.  He seems to live in the tension of Scripture with such grace and openness.  Certainly not disregarding his struggle, he is able to feel the tension that arises and still somehow follow the God of his faith.  He allows the tension to enter the relationship without dismissing God or himself.  Is the same possible for me?  For you?

I’m curious.  What happens to you when you come across a passage of Scripture that seems to contradict your view of God?  What happens in your body?  What thoughts come to mind?  How do you attempt to resolve the tension?  Do you think it’s possible, or even beneficial, to try to live in the tension?

Squirrels.

Yes, squirrels.  I’ve been seeing them around a lot lately.  I’m not sure if they are showing up in larger numbers these days, or if I’m just taking more notice of them.  Either way, they have taken hold of my attention enough to deserve a short and mostly unimpressive blog post.  After seeing another one of my furry friends walking down the sidewalk ahead of me this afternoon, I have come to (in my opinion) a remarkable conclusion:

I want to pet one.

I have grown up around squirrels my entire life and have never had that thought before, as well as I can recall.  But I do.  I want to pet one.

I mean, who wouldn’t?

– Bees by Candace Savage

The god Re wept and the tears
From his eyes fell on the ground
And turned into a honeybee.
The bee made [his honeycomb]
And busied himself
With the flowers and every plant;
And so wax was made
And also honey
Out of the tears of the God Re.

A Religious Text from Ancient Egypt

The story in my head goes something like this:

As God was walking in the Garden, he was suddenly overcome with a vision of the future suffering of his most beautiful creation, humankind. He saw their hatred for one another, the ways they would seek to kill and destroy each other. He saw their deep wounds, remnants from their shaky and chaotic beginnings, wounds given by other wounded souls. He saw the moments where they would be so overwhelmed with their suffering that they would curse the day they were born, that they would even curse God. Seeing all of this, seeing the tears of the crown of creation, God wept. God. wept. And as his tears hit the ground, they transformed into a million tiny buzzing creatures. God’s tears remain with humankind, buzzing in our ears reminding us of their presence, bringing life from one place to another, and creating the sweet, sticky, golden substance that reminds us of the goodness from which we were made, the goodness for which we were made. The bees testify to the presence of God.

Coming back from a recent backpacking trip, my heart was suddenly captured by a lake-side mountain. Most days, I keep my heart deeply hidden, attempting to protect it from the harm that seems so rampant as of late, protecting it especially from the God whose goodness has been called into question by the quantity of my own tears. But God called to me from that mountain, and I could not resist. He sang to me from that mountain these words:

“I saw God on a mountain
tearing at the sky.
I saw God on a mountain
with tears in his eyes.
He said, ‘Son, I used to know where I put things.
I used to know.
I could have shown you all the beauty in the world,
but now I need you to show me.’” — Panning for Gold, by Ben Sollee.

And I saw God there, standing on top of that mountain, holding his head in his hands, weeping. He looked at me, a knowing glance, a glance that penetrated my very soul. And I was suddenly struck with a thought, that God is a fellow sufferer. The things that bring tears to my eyes bring tears to his. For every tear I have shed, he has shed a thousand more. In that moment, I allowed God to embrace me, and I allowed the most desperate words I could ever speak leak from me, carried by the fresh tears tracing their familiar path down my cheeks: “I need you.”

It is these stories of bees and mountains, these moments of presence and mystical connection, that keep me tethered to my uncertain faith. It seems that right as I’m about to give up, to untie the old knot, God shows up, embraces me, and says, “Hold on, dear one.”

It’s been a while since I’ve written on here, and I’m hoping to change that. I want to begin writing again, chronicling my meandering faith journey, my thoughts on God, the Church, the seasons, the strange and wonderful world of therapy, and all of the (un)usual places where God seems to show up. I hope you will join me as I wander through this maze, trying to find my way out again, or possibly as I discover that finding the way out is not the goal, because this isn’t so much a maze as a labyrinth. Would you join me on this pilgrimage, as friends and fellow travelers?

Oh, how I hope you will.

For today, I will leave you with one of the (un)usual places that I have found God recently.  This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard.  I find myself both crying and laughing in response to the beauty of the God with whom I wrestle.  I hope you can find God here as powerfully as I have.

(Note: Though I am generally opposed to the expectation that God be referenced using the male pronoun, God has been revealing himself to me lately as a male figure. So for this post, at least, I made the intentional decision of referring to him as a male. I also chose not to capitalize “he,” “him,” and “his,” in order to bring God down to earth a little bit. Offending is not my intention, so I apologize if anyone takes offense to either of those decisions. I’d love to talk to you about it, if it bothers you. Just let me know.)

I can’t say that the last day of 2010 has been the best day of the year.  But it certainly hasn’t been the worst.  It’s been a day of high anxiety and an extra dose of insecurity and loneliness.  All the familiar adventures.  But what I can say is that I’m content with where I am right this moment, in the most literal sense.  I’m sitting at a nearly-empty Miro Tea waiting for my cup to cool down, with an as yet to be opened Anne Lamott book by my side and a pen in my hands, writing down these words.  The last words of 2010 (a good blog post title…)

Endings always awaken in me an unquenchable nostalgia.  I become so intensely introspective and contemplative that I’m sure I move to a whole different state of consciousness, nearly beyond the point of recognition.  I love commemorating.  I love reflecting.  I love looking forward in hope, when I can muster the strength to risk it.  And so I am content as I sit here, prepared to pen my hopes for the next year, still unsure of what may leak out of me onto the page.

When this new year tradition began, I always picked a scripture verse that seemed to be following me around.  But seeing as I don’t read scripture much these days, that doesn’t really feel like an honest reflection of who I am and where I am.  But music… yes, music.  Music has been the word of the Lord to me over the past couple of years.  And so it seems appropriate that my new year’s tradition should shift a little.  Thus, my practice this year will be this: to pick a song for 2011.  No resolution.  No guiding principle.  A work of art will define my year.  And I think that’s beautiful.

I bought a bike two days ago, and I have thoroughly enjoyed riding it many, many miles in the beautiful – albeit cold – sunshine.  As I was riding along the water yesterday, a new song was playing on my phone, and it captured my attention.  It is the kind of song that, when it’s finished, compels me to close my eyes and whisper to myself, barely audible, “Thus sayeth the Lord,” and let the “Amen” fill me up.  Let it be.  So it is this song that will lead me into 2011 with hope and wonder.  I don’t know why this song.  But I don’t need to know just yet.  Here’s to spending 2011 making sense of it, or letting it make sense of me.

“Mended” by The Autumn Film
( Thanks to Courtney Warren for the introduction)

Safety pin me to your chest so I can stay put.
Please don’t leave me in this mess cause I am
this close to unraveling, unraveling.

Don’t give up on me now, this can all me mended.
We can iron this out, it can all be mended.
When you’re tearing at the seems, it can all be mended.
It can all be mended now.

Little walls are tumbling down, I feel them crumble.
There’s nothing left to tear down, there’s only gravel.
I’m breaking out, I’m breaking down.

Don’t give up on me now, this can all be mended.
We can iron this out, it can all be mended.
When you’re tearing at the seems, it can all be mended.
It can all be mended now.

Don’t give up.

Don’t give up.

The Artist Residency is beginning at Mars Hill today, and this year I am gratefully going to be a participating artist.  As this week of creative play and labor begins, I want to embrace the freedom to draw what is inside of me.  ”The world isn’t pretty.  I won’t draw it pretty.”  I want to use a passage from the book as a guide as I begin the journey, and I’d like to share it with you now.

To give a little background, Asher Lev’s mother is in the middle of a deep depression after her brother, Yaakov, has died.  At this point in the book, Asher is six years old, and the drawing that he speaks about is of his father talking on the phone with someone about the hardships of the Jews in Russia.

Toward the end of the meal, I said abruptly, “I made a drawing today, Mama.”  My thin voice sounded loud in the smoky silence of the kitchen.

My father had been sitting tiredly over his food.  Now he looked at me, startled.

“Yes?” my mother said in a dead voice.  ”Yes?  Was it a pretty drawing?”

“It was a drawing of my papa on the telephone.”

“On the telephone,” my mother echoed.  She looked dully at my father.

“Asher,” my father said quietly.

“It was a good drawing, Mama.”

“Was it a pretty drawing, Asher?”

“No, Mama.  But it was a good drawing.”

Her eyes narrowed.  They seemed tiny slits in the blue-gray darkness of her sockets.

“I don’t want to make pretty drawings, Mama.”

She lit another cigarette.  Her hands trembled faintly.  An odor rose from her, fetid, cloying.  I put down my fork and stopped eating.  My father took a deep breath.  Mrs. Rackover stood very still near the sink.

“Yes?” my mother said.  Her voice was sharp.  ”I want the pennies now, Yaakov.”

“Rivkeh,” my father said.  ”Please.”

“You should make the world pretty, Asher,” my mother whispered, leaning toward me.  I could smell her breath.

“I don’t like the world, Mama.  It’s not pretty.  I won’t draw it pretty.”

I felt my father’s fingers on my arm.  He was hurting me.

“Yes?” my mother said.  ”Yes?”  She stubbed out the cigarette she had just lit and began to light another.  Her hands trembled visibly.  ”No, no, Asher.  No, no.  You must not dislike God’s world.  Even if it is unfinished.”

“I hate the world,” I said.

“Stop it,” my father said.

“You must not hate, you must not hate,” my mother whispered.  ”You must try to finish.”

“Mama, when will you get well?”

“Asher!” someone said.

“Mama, I want you to get well.”

“Asher!”

To this day, I have no idea what happened then.  There was a sensation of something tearing wide apart inside me and a steep quivering climb out of myself.  I felt myself suddenly another person.  I heard that other person screaming, shrieking, beating his fists against the top of the table.  ”I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it!” that other person kept screaming.  I remember nothing after that.  Sometime later, I woke in my room.  My father stood over my bed, looking exhausted.

“Mama,” I said.

“Your mama is asleep.”

“Mama, please.”

“Go back to sleep, Asher.  It’s the middle of the night.”

I was in my pajamas.  The night light was on near my desk.  The slit of window not covered by the shade was black.

“No one likes my drawings,” I said through the fog of half sleep.  ”My drawings don’t help.”

My father said nothing.

“I don’t like to feel this way, Papa.”

Gently, my father put his hand on my cheek.

“It’s not a pretty world, Papa.”

“I’ve noticed,” my father said softly.

My pledge for this week: To draw the world as I see it, not as others want me to see it.  May it be good, even if it’s not pretty.

I used to be a dreamer. I used to believe that amazing things could happen.  Now, I feel like I settle a thousand times a day.  I’ve given up on what I think about love.  I’ve given it up for logic and “psychological health.”  What about connection?  What about sparks?  What about love at first sight?

I’m beginning to think that psychology has become my personal brand of atheism.  It has become the science that explains away  all the beauty that I used to imagine and hope for.  When did it become healthy for me to go on a second date with a guy just because it would be “good” for me, when the only thing I can say about the date is that I feel “neutral” about it?  When did giving up on my dream of love become necessary for my growth as a self-actualized human being?

I think logic in love works for some people.  Maybe for some, it is truly the healthiest way to approach relationships.  But what if it’s not for me?

What if I want to hold out for something else?