Belonging Together

In An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor writes of making a practice of standing naked in front of a full-length mirror with a sense of reverence for the physical body one lives in.  She goes on to observe, "One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours."  When the narrative for a reverence of my own embodied self is based on the belief that God loves and cares for people – people in their skin-and-bones physical entirety and not only their heart and soul and mind – it is impossible for me to view others with less reverence and autonomy than I allow myself.  

When this reverence is my narrative, I cannot think of others only for who they are in my life or what interaction I have with them. 

While embracing this narrative has broadened the way I view everyone I encounter, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on how it has changed the way I think of my family and my role in it. I never fully bought in to the teaching that a wife belongs to her husband and children belong to their parents, but it was part of my framework and influenced my thinking and my actions.  The way I now see myself as a person and a woman has helped me better understand the way I view marriage and motherhood. 

I know I've explained before that I do not belong to Ryan, my husband, but then it follows that neither does he belong to me.  I've always known this, but wasn't sure of how to explain it when “belonging to” was my default understanding.  I don't want to trivialize our relationship by arguing "we don't belong to each other," but I feel it is important to make the distinction between belonging to another person and choosing to belong together. 

Ryan’s role in life is not “Trischa’s husband.”  Yes, we said vows that we would build a life together and incorporate the role of husband or wife into who we are, but we did not take on the role of husband or wife as our entire identity.  It would be wrong to reduce Ryan from a person with his own passions and thoughts – many of which have nothing to do with me – to a role he fills in my life.  We choose that we belong together in our marriage, but we do not belong to each other.

Our sons, Luke and Owen, do not belong to me either.  Yes, I grew them inside my own body for a time and gave birth to them and nurture them and love them with a connected, reverent-awe kind of love.  I am their mother, but their role in life is not to be my children.  They belong to their own, autonomous selves and to the stardust from which their atoms were formed, and to God, who breathed life into their lungs.

They do not exist to exhibit behavior that would give me bragging rights or make me proud or conform to the way I think.  Treating my sons in that way would be to objectify them, to act as though they serve a function the way possessions do, which is not showing reverence for them as individual, embodied people.  I am responsible to actively teach them essential values and skills and celebrate with them when they excel or when they act with compassion and responsibility.  But I believe they learn much more about equality and consent and autonomy for themselves and others when they are encouraged to experience life within a framework of reverence, rather than training them to meet my expectations. 

My sons and I are in a life-long process of learning to love each other and figure out how we belong together as flesh and blood, but they do not belong to me.

Thinking that I belong to someone or that someone else belongs to me discounts that we all are unique individuals created in God’s image. I am better able to love with a deep, encompassing love when I embrace the incredible people around me as those I have the privilege of belonging with and when I allow them to determine how they belong in life with me.   

Note: I started writing this post last week, but just recently read a similarly-themed piece by Ben Irwin on why he does not intend to “give away” his daughter at her wedding.  It is beautiful and I highly recommend you read it here.

The Word Made Flesh

"Let us try to grasp the significance of the Word made flesh" - Thomas Keating

There are many topics being debated these days – self-image, modesty, purity, sexuality, relationships, rights, responsibilities, the circumstances of others, the autonomy of others, and so on. Even if we try not to get drawn into the debates, we are often forced to consider our own views on these matters and, if we are parents, will eventually have to discuss them with our children.  Our views on these topics are usually a result of the framework we use to evaluate and process life.  Increasingly I feel that if this framework is too narrow, too focused on one aspect of morality, it is easily distorted and leaves us ill-equipped to make determinations of how to respond when life doesn't fall neatly into our pre-defined criteria.
 
Over the past few years I’ve been in the process of dismantling much of what I was taught while growing up in Evangelical Homeschooling culture.  I’ve had to discard a lot of baggage associated with the popular “Godly” methods that were promoted by various groups over that time.  The framework for most “Godly child training” I encountered involved a focus on obedience – obedience for the sake of raising children who are obedient to their parents (and thus, to God) – in the ways defined by the specific methods of each group.

It is clear to me now that whether or not I am living my faith well or raising my children successfully is not determined by how we measure up to a trendy method established by some other person’s interpretation of “God’s Way.”  I understand that I need to replace that old, discarded thinking with something new, for my own faith and in raising my kids.  But rather than embracing a new “method,” what I’m attempting to define are the basic beliefs that provide a general framework for thoughts and behavior.

I’m increasingly drawn to the study of Incarnation and the way it so beautifully incorporates how I want to live and what I want to teach my children about everything from making wise choices for ourselves to how we treat others.  I don’t want to be ashamed of my body and I don’t want my kids to be ashamed of theirs, but I also want us to understand that the body is sacred.  I don’t want us to behave as though other people’s bodies exist for our judgment or pleasure.  I want us to care about the physical needs of others and make choices that are good for our bodies and our spirits.

I completely identify with Barbara Brown Taylor when she writes, "I do not recall ever being told that my flesh is good in church, or that God takes pleasure in it. Yet this is the central claim of the incarnation—that God trusted flesh and blood to bring divine love to earth." 

Incarnation is not something that was specifically discussed in my home or in my church growing up.  Of course I was taught that Jesus was God in human form, but I can think of no deep discussion of what that truly meant for humanity, other than Jesus coming to die for our sins.  I was never instilled with a sense of awe for what it means for “the Word,” present with God and one with God from the beginning of time, to be “made flesh.”  (I’m not even sure if anyone would have been okay with using the word “flesh,” because it has such scandalous connotations in those circles.) 

Yet as I've studied the writing of Barbara Brown Taylor, along with Richard Beck, Thomas Keating, Brian Zahnd, and others who write of Incarnation, I'm struck by how their understanding of it is woven through their work, even when they are addressing other topics.  The way they view humanity and their belief that God cares for our physical bodies has transformed the way I understand my faith.  I have no delusions that I have new insight to offer the world on Incarnation and I realize I do not fully comprehend it, but I can feel it continuing to transform my thinking and the way I view humanity.  I’m still trying to grasp the full significance of passages like this:

The lost beauty of God’s good creation is what is recovered in the Incarnation. The beauty of the image of God marred in man through the Fall is what the Incarnation redeems. By a deep appreciation of the human vocation to bear the image of God, we realize that the value of a human being is in no way determined by what he can do—this is the sin of objectification (treating humans as objects). Human value is derived from the image all humans bear—the Imago Dei.  It is the image of God deformed in humanity that Christ recovers through his Incarnation. - Brian Zahnd

Or this:

In Christian teaching, followers of Jesus are called to honor the bodies of our neighbors as we honor our own. In his expanded teaching by example, this includes leper bodies, possessed bodies, widow and orphan bodies, as well as foreign bodies and hostile bodies—none of which he shied away from. Read from the perspective of the body, his ministry was about encountering those whose flesh was discounted by the world in which they lived. - Barbara Brown Taylor

When I read and meditate on these words, I cannot help but be convinced that I was getting it wrong by attempting to adhere to a faith framework based strictly on morality or obedience.  Not that morality and obedience are wrong in themselves, but by using those things as the lens to view myself and others, I was focusing on how well we measured up to those standards, rather than beginning with an understanding that we are all human beings created in the image of God.

When I think of my own self-worth and teach my children about theirs, the belief that Jesus loves and redeemed our humanness must influence that.  When I consider my interactions with other people and how I teach my children to treat others, my belief that God loves and values not only the inner life, but also the physical existence of both ourselves and others will necessarily be part of that.  Drawing again from Taylor, "One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours."

Internalizing a sense of reverence for the human body allows me to see the human form of everyone else as a gift God gave to that person.  I can never view their body as an object, as something that exists to please me or meet my personal expectations or preferences.  They may be any shape or size.  They may be considered attractive or not.  They may use their bodies to practice the rituals of a religion different from mine.  They may have different anatomy than I have or experience their sexuality differently than I experience mine.  They may love their own body or they may feel they were born in the wrong body.  But each person I encounter has a body and I cannot love that person in some abstract way as though his or her body were an afterthought or is somehow subject to my approval. 

And when I teach this sense of reverence to my kids, when I tell them the stories of Jesus in close fellowship with the marginalized of society, when I tell them of the woman washing his feet with her hair, I can remind them that Jesus was just as human as they are and that he was the example of how we should value and respect the humanness of others.  Jesus didn't see our flesh as dirty or wrong, but as something beautiful and in the process of being redeemed.  As Brian Zahnd has written, "In the Incarnation Jesus makes beautiful all that it means to be human."

What I am now attempting to discern is how to continue to apply the insight and wisdom others have shared about Incarnation.  One of my favorite passages from Thomas Keating reads, "Once God takes upon himself the human condition, everyone is potentially divine. Through the Incarnation of his Son, God floods the whole human family -- past, present, and to come -- with his majesty, dignity, and grace.”  Our bodies are the basic component of the human condition, and therefore we must learn to respect and honor our own bodies as well as the bodies of other people.  Truly grasping this undermines the temptation to dismiss others, to objectify others, or to turn a blind eye to their physical needs.

I have only scratched the surface of all there is to learn about Incarnation, but I keep coming back to how it reminds me that I’m connected to God as well as to others and how that connectedness should influence every aspect of my life.  As Zahnd points out, Incarnation shows us “what God is like and how to be human,” and Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “wearing skin… is what we have most in common with one another.”  My hope is that rather than focusing too narrowly on current trends or hot topics, I can live my faith in a way that exhibits a deepening understanding of the way my human flesh connects me to God and to other people.  And I hope living this out will help my kids understand and see the beauty there as well.





Note: Thomas Keating quotes are from The Mystery of Christ, Barbara Brown Taylor quotes are from An Altar in the World, and Brian Zahnd quotes are from Beauty Will Save the World

All That I Still Have to Learn

While on vacation this summer, I read the book “Leaving Church” by Barbara Brown Taylor.  Near the end of the book, there is a passage where she describes the things she is keeping as she moves on to where life takes her, and the things she is going to pack away.  She writes first of a cross, made out of nails and gifted to her when she first arrived at the parish she is preparing to leave, that it had been lost for years and just then recovered and returned to her.  She continues:

I’m glad to have it back, although I have many more, which I liked to wear back when a cross meant only love to me.  Now I know too many people who regard it as a weapon.  Some have been cut too deeply by it, not once, but over and over again, while those who wield it like a rapier seem to believe that their swordplay pleases God.  Either way, I find myself reaching for symbols with less violence in them.

The one I wear most often now is a silver circle with three waves curling toward each other in the center.  Jesus is one of those waves, but he is not the only one.  When his wave breaks, the Holy Spirit’s wave picks up where his left off, and when the Holy Spirit’s wave breaks, the water spills back toward the Wave Maker.  The clerk who sold me this circle told me that it did not stand for anything, but I knew better.  I knew I needed a symbol for the fullness of God, which cannot be reduced to any one name alone.  While I wear the circle, I will keep the cross, even though I am not sure that the symbol can survive its abuse.

When I read this, I immediately knew that I wanted a tattoo of the three-wave circle.  It’s not a religious symbol, at least not the way a crucifix or a rosary is, but it has deeply significant meaning to how I have come to understand and embrace my faith. The more I turned it over in my mind, the more meaning it took on.

It is difficult to fully explain all that this symbol has become to me and why I wanted it as a tattoo.  I attempted to explain it to Chris, the artist who does my tattoos, and never found the right words.  Of course, I was trying to explain it out loud, which I struggle with.  I’ll make an attempt to do it justice here, in written words, but I some things mean more than words can express. 

This tattoo does symbolize the fullness of God, but that is only the beginning.  It also symbolizes learning to embrace my faith and finally understanding that my faith is made real in the wrestling, the questioning, the re-evaluating, the storms and the peace.  It stands for the vastness of all I still don't know, but the grace to keep growing and changing and letting new revelations wash over me. 

Finally, it signifies that I have made peace with knowing that the way I experience God and understand my faith is not the same way many of the people I love and respect experience God and their faith.  Just as the vastness of the ocean can affect us all differently and evoke different responses from different people, the same is true for how each of us experience God; that is part of the beauty and mystery of both God and the sea. 

When I first started getting tattoos, I thought that they should all have a deep and personal meaning, but I’ve since realized that it’s fine to get a tattoo just because you like it.  My next tattoo may simply be something beautiful that will compliment my magnolia.  But this one is deeply significant to me and will likely take on more meaning as my faith evolves.  The fullness of God, embracing my faith with all that I still have to learn, and being at peace with how I experience God – that's the meaning I explain for now.



Sink or Swim

In her sermon titled “The Shepherd’s Flute,” Barbara Brown Taylor begins by telling the story of when her husband and a friend were going duck hunting in the friend‘s boat. When they arrived at the boat dock, they discovered that the boat had come untied and was floating away. As much as they tried to reach if from the riverbank, the current carried it away and the friend eventually had to shed his hunting gear, jump in the frigid water, and swim out to get the boat. They both agreed it should be the friend to take the plunge because it was the friend’s boat.

The second story is about two friends who parked in a parking garage and the driver accidentally bumped the car next to him as he was exiting his car. The driver of the other car jumped out and began yelling, despite that there was no damage. The first driver’s friend got out of the car to diffuse the situation, but the irate car owner told him to stay out of it as the dispute didn't involve him.  To which the friend replied, “When you’re talking to my friend, you’re talking to me.”

Later she goes on to explain the following, which I have been thinking about all weekend:

All in all, we are warned away from getting involved in other people’s problems. Parents teach us to mind our own business and let other people mind theirs. Therapists call it “trespassing boundaries,” or “ co-dependence,” and they have a point. Sometimes our ownership of others’ problems ends up crippling both them and us, by eroding our responsibility for our own lives.  When we make a habit of rescuing other people, we prevent them from learning about the consequences of their actions. We help them keep illusions about themselves, and we get to be heroes in the bargain, but it is not good for them or for us. Everybody deserves a chance to fail.  It is how we learn to be human.

But we also deserve to have someone in our lives who will say, “When you’re talking to him, you’re talking to me,” someone who will tear her clothes off and dive into the water when what is disappearing down the river happens to be us. That is not “ co-dependence.”  That is agape, self-giving love, the kind of love the good shepherd practices and the kind he teaches.

In reading this, I began to think of how much I appreciate the people in my life who have been there for me, to swim after me and keep me from disappearing down the river. But I also realized how ill-equipped many of us are, myself included, to be that person who is diving in, reaching out, standing in, or pulling someone back to shore. We don’t know what to do, aren't sure of our ability to swim, aren't sure exactly of how to help. We stand by either hoping (or praying) for them to save themselves or we end up offering assistance that doesn't really meet their need.

I know it’s not really fair and I know it feels like other people should know what we need, but if we’re being berated by life or struggling to stay afloat, we need to say something to the panicked onlookers. Tell them that we need them to yell back, to pull us in, or to just tread water with us while we get our bearings. If they are trying to put together a rowing team to come out and get us, but what we need is for them to remind us that we are an excellent swimmer and to simply cheer us on, we should try to tell them that. If someone wants to take revenge and shout back at the bully but we just need them to stand quietly by our side, say that. It is easy to think that the people who care about us should instinctively know how to support us. But people process and approach situations differently. What they are offering may seem like the best idea to them, but may be hurting us.

Again, it isn't fair and I know sometimes we may not have the strength to fully explain what we need, but, if at all possible, I really think we need to try. I’m speaking just as much to myself here as I am to anyone else.  It may make all the difference between sinking or making it back to shore.

Stirring

I owe a great debt to Barbara Brown Taylor. I've never met her, but I have been irrevocably changed by her words.  I'm working my way through her books, experiencing a sort of rebirth as they pierce my heart.  When I read her thoughts, I feel something I haven't felt in a long time.... a stirring in my spirit.  It's something that, if I'm honest, I had thought I may never feel again.

I know I've written before about my conservative upbringing and how, over the past few years, I've diverged from that upbringing quite a bit.  I would imagine that at least part of my experience is similar to anyone who has been raised in a certain tradition, become disillusioned with that tradition, and then found themselves feeling lost and unsure of how the frame their life from there. The process has been extremely awkward, like some kind of spiritual adolescence.

At the beginning of this experience, I was focused on shedding the old beliefs, walking away from where I was before.  It was painful and difficult, as I was not sure how much of the old had to be stripped away. I doubted everything.  I was worried that clinging to too much would feel like being weighed down with baggage.  I think once I'd made up my mind that I no longer believed so much of what I'd grown up thinking, the old way seemed bad.  I was so frustrated with my "before" that I began to see most of it as wrong.

Some of those "before" things had to do with how easy it is to have the appearance of certain aspects of faith, without really "meaning" any of it.  It is ridiculously simple to go through the motions of many faith traditions because you know people are watching you and expecting you to behave a specific way, yet without any of it changing your life.

Once I realized that I did not "mean" some of these things, I didn't know how my faith experience should look.  At the risk of being associated with some of my old ways of thinking, I restricted any faith experience to philosophical discussions with people I deemed safe and I kept everything else to myself.  When I did try to open up to people outside my safe little circle about what I was going through, I can see now that it had to seem like I was lashing out -- not from my own struggles (as was the reality), but at those people for not being in the same place as me.

I've only recently begun to feel that I'm moving away from that into a new realization of my faith.  This involves the awareness that I must have grace for the faith process of others which may or may not lead them down the same path I've traveled.  It also includes having grace for my own process.  This has been a long time coming, but I feel like I'm right there, on the cusp of freedom.  I can think and believe what my own journey has taught me while accepting others right where they are.  I can understand and appreciate that the minds of others work differently, based on their personalities and life experiences and environment.

Thanks to my introduction to Barbara Brown Taylor (as well as to several other authors and bloggers), I'm realizing that I am not alone and that growing to a new place doesn't have to mean abandoning my faith out of distaste for some of the ways I had framed it in the past.  Neither does it mean rejecting others who may still be where I was before and may never be where I am now. I can be cognizant  that the right place for me is not necessarily the right place for everyone else, and vice-versa. 

In her book, "Leaving Church" Ms. Taylor discusses that when your journey takes you to a place away from your roots, it can be difficult, but freeing.  It also allows you to connect with people you otherwise would have been completely isolated from. Life on the fringe of your tradition can be scary and lonely, or it can be rich and affirming.  We don't have to rely on clichés and dogma; we can be at peace with uncertainty.  She explains:

I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.  We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities.... This wilderness experience sets up a real dilemma for some of us, since we know how much we owe to the traditions that shaped us.  We would not be who we are without them, and we continue to draw real sustenance from them...

I will keep faith - in God and in God's faith in me, and in all the companions whom God has given me to help me see the world as God sees it.... We may be in for a long wait before the Holy Spirit shows us a new way to be the church together, but in the meantime there is nothing to prevent us from enjoying the breeze of those bright wings.

 All this is to say that I feel like my spirit is emerging from the dark place where it has languished for so long.  This isn't any sort of Now-I've-Arrived statement, but more an attempt to convey the hope I feel that I'm catching glimpses of a way forward. Connecting with the stories of others has contributed to this hope and given me a sense of belonging.  I find myself reaching for my Bible and feeling my spirit stir as I find new meaning in passages that had seemed flat and confusing before.  I know I have a long, long way to go.  I know this journey will likely take me to places I would never expect, and that a year from now (or even tomorrow) I could look back on these words and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

I'm still questioning and learning and growing and emerging and changing.  I don't know where I will end up or if I will at some point feel like I'm back where I started.  But, for now, I feel like the pieces of my tradition are coming back together in a way that awakens my spirit.

And for that, I am grateful.