OneWord 2014: Silence

"We work out our salvation in silence and in hope. Silence is the strength of our interior life....Without this silence, our virtues are sound only, only an outward noise, a manifestation of nothing..." - Thomas Merton


What words do I use to explain why "silence" is my word for 2014? I've been trying for weeks to write this post, but I realize I must rely heavily on the wisdom of others to communicate why I chose Silence this year.

Merton and other contemplatives like Thomas Keating and Richard Rohr write of silence as the place within each of us where we discard our false-selves and the external props we often depend on to "prove" ourselves or our faith. By embracing and fully experiencing our inner silence, we learn to be who we truly are. I've been re-reading portions of Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island, and keep returning to this excerpt:

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. 

We cannot experience this making "peace with ourselves" or "quiet expression of our inner life," without becoming well-acquainted with our interior silence.

I often feel a compulsion to react to what is going on around me and to fill silence with outward noise. Yet I've realized in the past weeks that I need to withdraw from the impulse to react, so I can explore the true motivations for my reactions. When I am filling space with my own noise, I am not making room for what God may be trying to speak to me in silence, nor what I may need to hear from others speaking out of the silence of their interior life.

Practicing silence doesn't mean always being silent, but it does mean honoring my own silence and the silence of others by not giving in to the discomfort that seeks to fill it without purpose. Practicing silence is one way in which I can learn to detach myself from a desire for others to hear and understand me, in order that I will hear myself and others more clearly and with understanding.

I'm not going to preemptively limit this experience by trying to create a detailed plan. I intend to explore more deeply the practice of contemplative prayer and I may attend some religious services where silence is practiced in community. I hope to go on a spiritual retreat that cultivates silence if I can, but I'm not making that a requirement. I am open to the possibility (read: probability) that my year with silence will be nothing like I'm envisioning right now.

Here is a final excerpt from Merton that I've been meditating on and which influenced me to choose Silence for 2014:

If we fill our lives with silence, then we live in hope, and Christ lives in us and gives our virtues much substance. Then, when the time comes, we confess Him openly before men, and our confession has much meaning because it is rooted in deep silence. It awakens the silence of Christ in the hearts of those who hear us, so that they themselves fall silent and begin to wonder and to listen. For they have begun to discover their true selves. If our life is poured out in useless words we will never hear anything in the depths of our hearts, where Christ lives and speaks in silence. 

I want to fill my life with silence, so that when I speak I am not pouring out useless words, but rather speaking hope to the silence in the hearts of those who hear.

Book Club: Telling God's Story

I'm part of a group reading through the book Telling God's Story (by Peter Enns), in effort to gain some insight around how to teach our kids about our faith in a way that (we hope) avoids some of the misconceptions we grew up with.  If you are interested in following along, you can find the group Facebook page here, and you can find links to some of the other members' thoughts here.  I didn't write anything about chapter one, but I finished chapter two this weekend, and below are my thoughts. 

Recently Luke was filling out an activity-book survey.  He asked each of us if we believe in ghosts, then tallied our answers: I don't. Ryan and Luke aren't sure. Owen does. He looked at the page for a few minutes, before saying that the dog probably believes in ghosts, so his mark would be with Owen. Owen responded, "And if he does, then mom loses! Two, against two, against one."

I know it was an innocent comment, but I still questioned his statement that just because more people think something, that makes it right. We discussed it and agreed that the only way I would really "lose" in that scenario is if we had a way to prove that ghosts exist. And if we could prove that, then yes, I would lose because I would be wrong. Conversely, if we could prove ghosts do not exist, but then he and the dog would "lose," and I would "win," even though a larger group thought the wrong thing.

And don't many of us often make that type of mistake, thinking we must be right when more people agree with us? We look around at the people we interact with and when we discover areas where we agree, we feel like we win, and we feel like those who disagree with us lose.

Even though, realistically, we know that being in the majority doesn't automatically make a person right.

When I was growing up in the midst of Conservative, Evangelical, Homeschooling families, I saw this "majority is right" thinking often. Whatever was the new darling book or speaker or conference or curriculum, seemed to work its way through most of the families -- the families who were "right."  And while some of those things may have been right for some of those people, I now think that some of those things were wrong, or at least wrong for some of us.

This probably contributes to why I am so very skeptical of bandwagons.

So when I found myself rather enthusiastically agreeing to join a book study on teaching the Bible to one's children, I started questioning myself. Even when the book arrived and I started reading the introduction, I couldn't quite shake the anxious feeling that I was treading a little too close to that line of joining in with other like-minded people and jumping on a bandwagon.  And despite that I appreciated the first chapter, I still had my doubts -- not specifically because of the content, but because I was concerned about following a majority of people I respect and setting aside any reservations I had about doing so.

Then I got to the second chapter and read this:

The Bible is not a book on how to invest your money, which political party to join, whether to homeschool, where to go to college, whom to marry, where to live, whether you should buy that car, America as God's chosen people, or a blueprint for present-day world events. It is not, in other words, a "Christian owner's manual." Too many Christians assume that the Bible is the guidebook to address all of life's questions. But that is not what the Bible is designed to do.... 

In this light, I want to introduce what I think is the single most important biblical concept for living a Christian life, not only today, but during any era: wisdom.

When we get down to it, much of our lives as Christians requires us... to "wing it." I don't mean that the Christian life is haphazard with no guidance. I mean that many of the decisions we are called to upon to make every day we make, not because of a verse here or there, but because of the wisdom we have accumulated over the years. That wisdom is acquired through the study of Scripture, prayer, life in a Christian community (not just "going to church"), and plain old life experiences...

And there it is. Wisdom. That is what I want my kids to see in the Bible, to see in Jesus, to see in my faith, and learn for their own lives. Peter Enns is not advocating in this book a blanket set of moral codes or a checklist of behaviors. He even acknowledges that what wisdom might allow for one child or family, it may not for another.

This is so refreshing.

Enns is not asking me to jump on a bandwagon, but rather to use the means available to me to do the reading, research, living, asking, observing, and praying necessary to understand my faith, and then to apply all of those in my interactions with my children as I strive to share God's story with them.  This doesn't mean that I will simply go along with whatever I hear from a popular speaker or automatically go wherever the majority is headed.

I must use wisdom to determine what to do for my own life, majority or not, and I must use wisdom to teach my kids wisdom and discernment for their own lives.

I'm still overwhelmed at the thought of being primarily responsible for teaching my children about God and the Bible.  I still have so many questions and I still ask myself all the time if I'm getting things wrong.  Most of this stuff cannot be proven, only lived and experienced for ourselves, so there are no clear winners or losers when it comes to all the ways Christians can disagree over the Bible.

In light of this, I'm thankful for this book and this group and I'm looking forward to what other insights I can glean from it in the coming chapters and from the others who are reading them.  We may not entirely agree, but we are seeking to gain and share wisdom.

That's really the best any of us can do.

What if I'm Wrong?

“From keeping nativity scenes in public buildings to keeping “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, defending America from the perceived takeover of secular humanism became the purpose of the modern church… Evangelicals read Christian books and listened to Christian music. They sent their kids to Christian colleges, where they received Christian educations.  Apologists and theologians talked about the biblical approach to homosexuality, the biblical response to global warming, and the biblical view of parenting… 

It was within this social context that I and an entire generation of young evangelicals constructed our Christian worldviews. You might say that we were born ready with answers. We grew up with a fervent devotion to the inerrancy of the Bible and learned that whatever the question might be, an answer could be found within its pages... To experience the knowledge of Jesus Christ, we didn’t need to be born again; we simply needed to be born. Our parents, our teachers, and our favorite theologians took it from there, providing us with all the answers before we ever had time to really wrestle with the questions.”

– Rachel Held Evans in Evolving in Monkeytown

If there were a sentence in the above quote about the Evangelical homeschooling movement, it would perfectly describe my upbringing.  I grew up hearing the story of how I would tell people, when I was only four years old, that Jesus climbed down a ladder from heaven into my heart.  God was a character in my life who was always there.  I did not, in any serious way, allow myself to entertain the notion that God might not exist or that God might not be who I was told he was until after I had graduated from (Christian) college and gotten married. 

The absurd thing to me now, is that I honestly, with all my heart, believed that I knew God existed because I believed I had considered all the evidence and come to that conclusion myself.  I would hear other people talk about their experiences with God and I would incorporate that language into my own talk about God, not really understanding that I was equating believing the right answers about God with believing in God.

I think I’ve come a long way since then.  I wrestled with my questions and discovered a faith that is entirely different from what I was taught, but one that I embrace with all my heart. 

One of my biggest struggles now is how I teach my kids about God.  All that stuff that Rachel Held Evans explained happened because parents wanted their kids to know God in the way they had come to experience God.  They thought they were doing what was best for their kids.  With the homeschooling and the Christian everything, my parents thought they were doing what was best for me.  But I do not want to indoctrinate my kids into my faith; I want to help my kids understand God in a way he is real to them.

Yet, what if, by attempting to discard most of what my parents did and take a different approach, I'm just screwing my kids up in a different way than the way I was screwed up?

What if embracing their questions and not forcing them to accept my answers leaves them wishy-washy and completely unsure of anything?

What if not insisting they attend church with me every Sunday leaves them without a love for The Body of Christ?

What if allowing for discussion and not expecting immediate, unquestioning obedience undermines their respect for authority?

What if teaching them to respect other religions leads them away from Christianity?

What if I’m doing it all wrong?

These are only some of the questions that keep me from going back to sleep when I wake up at 3AM.  

I realize that raising kids is a process, not a project.  Some things I will certainly mess up no matter how much I don’t want to and some things I will get right on accident.  I keep coming back to these words from Brian Zahnd that give me hope that allowing my kids to grow up in the way that they should go, will at least be less damaging than the heavy-handed approach I was raised with: 

Perhaps we will have to believe that the gospel story itself, faithfully told, still has the capacity to astonish. Perhaps we will have to believe that the risen Christ can still make himself known in astonishing ways.  When we take it upon ourselves to explain the gospel so we can promote its benefits and get people to sign on, we unintentionally but inevitably diminish the mystery and beauty of the gospel.

I had to realize for myself that even though I’d known about God my entire life, my faith was not my own.  It was indoctrinated into me and wasn’t something I understood for myself. 

It wasn’t until I discovered for myself the astonishment, beauty, and mystery of the Gospel that I was able to know in the depths of my being that I wanted to be a Christian.  It may sound somewhat reckless, but I don’t even care if it is true.  It is faith.  I cannot prove it.  The acknowledgement that it may not be true in no way diminishes my hope that it is or my certainty that this is the way I want to live my life.

If I try to make anyone else, my kids included, experience God my way, I’m not leaving space for them to be astonished by God in their own way.  Drawing again from Zhand: 

Christianity is not a science; it is a faith…. Christianity is a confession, not an explanation. We confess Christ; we don’t explain Christ. We confess the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, though we cannot fully explain these mysteries. We leave room for mystery. We honor the mystery. We recognize the beauty in the mystery. 

Perhaps I’m not doing everything right.  Perhaps my kids will have to spend years unraveling the way they were raised and will have to find their own way that looks nothing like mine, just like I had to do.  I hope not, but I acknowledge that it is possible. 

All I can do now is to keep raising them in the most loving way I know how and continue to confess Christ and Incarnation and Resurrection and all the other mysteries in my daily life.  I can leave room for them to be astonished by the beauty and mystery of the Gospel in their own way and remind them it is okay if we don’t always come to the same understanding. 

And I can trust that if it is true – that if God is who I believe he is – that it’s enough.

A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon;

where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

– A Prayer attributed to St. Francis

 

Grant that we may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

I feel increasingly isolated from people I used to feel close to.  I don’t know what to say to anyone, so I’ve barely been saying anything at all.  I spend a lot of time reading, a lot of time "listening" on various websites, but not a lot of time on Facebook and not a lot of time engaging in conversations.  I have emails and messages that have been sitting unanswered for weeks.  It isn't that I don't want to connect with people; it really is that I have no idea what words to use. 

I'm afraid if I start talking, I'll say what I really want to say.  I want to say that I feel I was sold distortions of Scripture, but that I have a different understanding now and for the first time in a long time I don’t feel I have to apologize for being a Christian.  I want to say that our preoccupation in this country with guns and violence and personal liberty in the name of God grieves my heart.  I want to say that I do not see love in exclusion, I do not see truth in nationalism, and I do not hear the Gospel in every-man-for-himself.  I want to say that I am falling in love with psalms and collects and the Church and – maybe for the first time – with my faith. 

But when I've floated variations of these words to the people I used to talk to, I’m often met with cautioning admonitions or incredulous looks or side-glances or criticism for sounding like I agree with the “wrong” people.

I keep asking myself if it’s me.  I wrack my brain, going over conversations word-for-word in my head, asking if anything that came out of my mouth sounded like I was judging.  Did I speak words that sounded like disapproval?  Did I sound like I was insisting on agreement with my point-of-view?  Did I seem insincere when I said, “I understand why people think differently, but this is how I understand it”?  No matter how lightly I tread on the eggshells, they end up broken and slicing tender flesh.

I want to say out loud the things my heart keeps repeating.  

I want to speak Mercy.

Mercy, not sacrifice.   

Lord, have Mercy.  

Lord, in your Mercy, hear our prayer.  

I want to say that sometimes in the way-too-early morning, when I’m awake because my mind started racing at 3AM and rendered going back to sleep hopeless, I get up and walk outside and it’s dark and calm and I hear “be still” echoing in my thoughts.  I want to say that in those moments I realize I am finally starting to believe that this faith, this hope, may actually be a beautiful way to spend my life. 

I don’t want to argue.  If other people experience God in a different way than I am or if they have a different understanding than I have, I accept that.  I am not trying to convince anyone of anything or talk them out of what they think.  We can disagree.  All I want is to look at someone in the face and tell them how wrecked I feel and see understanding instead of disapproval. 

And on one level, I know it isn’t wrong to want to talk to someone who understands.  I know it is okay for me to wish for that connection.  Yet, this isn’t really about me and I don’t know how to balance it.  I’m failing miserably.  I can’t avoid people I love because it hurts to get those looks and feel their judgment.  And if another person isn’t offering understanding or consolation or love to me, I should still be seeking to understand and to console and to love.  But how do I remember to listen to understand instead of talking to be understood? How do I learn to soothe and comfort when tensions are high?  How do I communicate love in the face of disapproval? 

I think it may have something to do with a table. 

And breaking bread. 

Perhaps I should start there.

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. 

Lord, in your mercy, hear my prayer. 

Where to Go From Here

After we got married, Ryan and I rented one half of a duplex in a tiny, map-dot-of-a-town, right off US 68, forty miles north of Cincinnati.  We thought of going on a vacation early that fall, but then remembered we had recently graduated from college with a stupid amount of student-loan debt and he was getting ready to go back to school and we had no money for a vacation.  Instead, we both used our paid vacation week to stay home and tackle painting white the hideous grease-brown cabinets in the rental kitchen.

And we seriously underestimated the investment of time and effort required for that task.

Thoroughly exhausted and with our patience wearing dangerously thin, we decided to take one day and do something away from the house and away from those damn cabinets.  We got in my old Nissan and started driving south on US 68.  (Because obviously, if you're sick of working together for 18 hours a day on a tedious project, the ideal break from that would be to spend an entire day together in the car.)

I don't remember anything we talked about.  We probably spent a lot of time listening to music and not talking at all.  I remember we pulled over at a few places along the way to take photos, as well as taking a lot of drive-by pictures out the window.  I remember that by the time we got to Lexington, Kentucky the trip wasn't seeming like such an awesome idea.  While we could drive away exhaustion and frustration for a little while with the open road ahead of us, we still had to drive all the way back home to our bills and our real life and those damn cabinets.

And it was a long drive back.  

Sometimes I think about what it would have been like if we hadn't gone back.  I'm not talking about actually running away, I just wonder what it would have been like if we hadn't felt like we had to do the standard jobs-kids-house thing and had done something totally different instead.  There were times we talked about it.  We talked about moving to the city, where I'd go to grad school.  We talked about moving to North Carolina so he could pursue a different type of job opportunity.  But we didn't.  We always went back to real life -- near our families and where we grew up -- just like we did that day when we got to the other side of Lexington and turned around.

Our road-trip experience is only going to get me so far as a metaphor for my spiritual journey, but as I was reading the Daily Office this morning, something reminded of that trip and that same feeling of wanting to keep going because there were so few good reasons to go back.

In terms of my spiritual life, there are days I ask myself what was the big deal with how things were, back when I was still trying to fit that ideal of the good Christian girl my parents tried to raise me to be.  Some days I wonder what the hell I'm doing with all this unraveling and shattering and searching and weaving.  I am tired.  I feel alienated from a lot of people I used to feel like I was close to.  Would it really have been so bad to have stayed where I was?

I read the words of other people who have left behind a lot of the same things I have discarded and they seem so sure of their journey.  They are so sure of it that they can blog about it almost every day while writing a book about it and debating their thoughts about it on social media.  They have answers and direction and purpose.  It's not that I want to be those people, it's just that their certainty makes me wonder how I am still so unsure.  If I made the conscious decision to unravel it all and burn down what was left and leave all those paradigms in the dust, why do I still have that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I have no idea where I'm headed?

And that's the thing about going somewhere without any real plan.  At some point, the sense of adventure loses its luster and you get tired and irritated at yourself for agreeing to such a thing and you can't decide if it is worse to keep going or to give up and turn around.  Even if you're mostly sure it is worth it to press on, you can't be sure that what's ahead is actually better than what you left behind.  Perhaps what you're getting away from was painful, but maybe the unknown isn't actually better.

I am not sure.  I continue reading and questioning and praying and processing.  I'm squinting, trying to determine if this direction is really where I should be going.  I have this feeling that it's right there.  I can't see it, I can only sense that ahead is a better understanding of this beautiful mystery of the gospel and that this journey is about grasping the hem of Incarnation and astonishment and redemption and love.

I recently read Beauty Will Save the World by Brian Zahnd.  In it, he writes, "To rediscover Christianity in all of its astonishing mystery and beauty will utterly overwhelm us and make all of our notions about its devaluation feel completely redundant. It will leave our skepticism in shreds."  That is exactly how I feel.  Everything is slanting and my cynicism is falling away and it seems that rock around my heart is starting to crumble.  I can feel myself being broken and wrecked and I feel raw and exposed and I'm quite honestly a little frightened, but I keep going.  In a way, I'm not sure I could turn around, even though it seems that might be easier.

At this point I can't tell if it's me and my stubbornness or if the Holy Spirit may actually exist in the way I've always wondered was truly possible.  I really hope it's all true.  I really hope that if I keep going, someday, I'll manage to reach the point where my awareness of the mystery and beauty assures me I'm going in the right direction, even if I'm still not sure of where I'll end up.

I really don't want to go back.

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.

More than 'Just' Friends

Relationships between men and women that do not involve romance and sex are usually referred to as ‘just’ friend relationships… few people seem aware that ‘just’ friend relationships can blossom into relationships of dialogical love. Those of us who have experienced the abundant being that can come from a deep personal relationship with a person of the opposite sex would never speak of our relationship as ‘just.’  Calling these relationships ‘just’ is not only misleading; it trivializes the relationship in a way that seems sacrilege. – John Scudder and Anne Bishop quoted in Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions

Some of my dearest friends are women whom I deeply and intimately love.  Because of the deep bonds we have formed, I would never say these women are ‘just’ friends.  I also have several dear friends who are men.  Yes, I am committed to honoring the vows I've made to my husband – and my cross-gender friendships my be of varying levels of familiarity and physical proximity – but I could never with good conscience say they qualify as ‘just’ friends simply because these friends aren't women.  

Several years ago I reconnected on Facebook with someone from my high school years.  It was right at the beginning of all my unraveling, when my process looked ugly and angry and I often argued with people who still believed all the old things I was in the process of discarding.  Even though he is hundreds of miles away, he was a gracious and calming presence, never balking at my anger or turning away when I was far from gracious.  From his years of religious study, he generously shared his perspective in response to my theological questions when I asked.  He introduced me to Volf and Keating and kindled my love for theological reading.  He would gently rein me in when I was disregarding the value of another person's unique life-experience for the sake of winning an argument.   

There is an undeniable bond that forms when someone can look past your pain and ugliness while you burn down the framework of your life, and treat you as though you've already risen from the ashes.  A person who does that is not ‘just’ a friend.

Five years ago, over shared office observations and a similar sense of humor, I became friends with the guy who sat on the other side of my cubical wall.  We don’t sit near each other anymore, but we still chat with each other every work day.  We share stories of what is going on in our lives outside of work and try to add a little levity to the daily grind.  Sometimes we go to lunch and talk about our kids.  Sometimes we grab a beer after work and commiserate about our jobs.  We talk a lot about beliefs, which can be a challenge considering that we could not be more different from each other when it comes to faith and politics, but we navigate the conversations with a great deal of mutual respect. 

There is an undeniable bond that forms when someone becomes a witness to your daily life and allows you to be a witness to theirs.  A person who does that is not ‘just’ a friend.

I have an ongoing dialogue with a long-distance friend I met over social media.  He messaged me one day to say he’d read some of my posts and that my thoughts and unraveling process resonated with him. We have swapped stories about our similar youth experiences and navigating family relationships while straying from our upbringing.  We check in with each other regularly, discussing work and faith and posts we read online, and we frequently swap prayer requests and commit to praying for each other.

There is an undeniable bond that forms when one person is vulnerable enough to reach out to another person and say, “Yeah. Me too.” and the two of you commit to regularly praying for each other.  A person who does these things is not ‘just’ a friend.

The reason I’m sharing about my experience with cross-gender friendships is to bear witness to their significance in my life.  They aren't taking the place of my relationship with my husband, but they are extremely important to me.  If someone has looked close enough to see all of my messiness and chosen to live life with me anyway – that person is dear to my heart.  The appropriate response when I reflect on all my close friendships should be to readily acknowledge that she or he is a dear friend or a kindred spirit or even a person I love deeply.  Life is too fleeting to distance myself from people who mean so much to me because I’m clinging to a religious or cultural narrative that is preoccupied with sex and only allows me to see my friends as “men” or "women" rather than individuals with whom I've formed a relationship that is a vital part of my life.  

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Several weeks ago, Natalie Trust wrote a blog series prompted by Dan Brennan's book Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions on the subject of cross-gender friendships.  This book was already on my to-read list and after reading Natalie’s posts (here, here, and here) I moved the book to the top of my reading stack.  I appreciate Natalie for inspiring me to read it sooner rather than later and I’m thankful to Dan Brennan for writing it. For most of my life, the most prominent narratives about relationships between men and women have been ones that are narrow, contradictory, and often promoted shame and confusion.  We are often cautioned against cross-gender friendships because attraction or closeness are equated with sex, even though the same type of relationship with someone of the same gender would be encouraged.

What Dan Brennan does in his book is provide historical, social, and spiritual reasons – ranging from an exploration of pre-Freud friendships to insights we can glean from teachings on chastity in the Catholic tradition – for why we should reevaluate how we think about cross-gender friendships and embrace a new narrative; he does this while providing a depth of insight to help establish that narrative.  Reading Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions and engaging in Natalie's discussions has been extremely valuable to me as I continue to unravel much of what I was taught about gender and relationships.  
 

I appreciated the analysis and criticism of the romantic myth an how it affects both our romantic and non-romantic relationships.  Dan explains, 

Idealizing romantic passion as the unique, one-and-only, exclusive form of love between a man and a woman has created a pervasive romantic myth in our contemporary world when it comes to male-female paired relationships…This is the fruit of romantic idealism, not romantic realism. The notion that one idealized relationship is the be-all, end-all for passion, intimacy, emotional commitment, friendship, happiness, fidelity, and depth, has a cluster of powerful myths supporting it…

The myths to which he is referring are found both in Christian culture (which tends to idolize marriage) and also in popular culture (with the idolization of romance and sex in movies, books, television, and music). I have seen personally the devastation the romantic myth can cause to marriages and the tainted light it can cast on friendships.  

I know that words like “passion” and “intimacy” have become synonyms for sex and can make some uncomfortable in the context of friendship, but the real synonyms for those words are actually: affection, fondness, love, familiarity, belonging, warm friendship, faithfulness, and loyalty.  In fact, the definition for the word 'intimate' includes phrases like: “belonging to or characterizing one’s deepest nature" and "marked by a warm friendship developing over a long association.”  Aren't those desirable characteristics in all close friendships? I think it is beneficial to examine the religious or cultural myths that might hinder intimate cross-gender friendships. 

While the criticism of the romantic myth can apply equally to any cross-gender friendship regardless of religious belief, one of the other points I've spent a lot of time reflecting on relates directly to my faith.  Brennan notes the “one-another’s” in scripture and how we often overlook the obvious inclusion of both genders when we read them:

Consider all the “one another’s” – none of which have a sex-segregated command embedded in them.  Here are just a few: “welcome one another” (Romans 15:7), “pray for one another” (James 5:16), “be kind to one another” (Ephesians 4:32), “greet one another with a holy kiss” (I Corinthians 16:20), “teach and admonish one another” (Colossians 3:16).  None of these contains transcultural  sex-segregated warnings to keep men and women from meeting privately or in public, or from avoiding the powerful intimacy that may grow because male and female friends seek to be obedient to these commands in their nonromantic relationship.

At least five times in the gospel of John, Jesus implores his audience to “love one another;” and other variations of this phrase can be found throughout the New Testament.  It strikes me that there are entire books centered around a very few scriptures that speak specifically to one gender or the other and that those verses dominate admonishments for the interactions of men and women.  In contrast, it seems these multiple “one another” verses are viewed in the abstract, as an almost sterile “love” for some mythical “other.” I had not previously dwelt on these “one another” verses as a call to deep friendship with other embodied people, regardless of gender, but now I can think of them in no other way.  I’m learning to embrace an understanding of cross-gender friendships that can be both encouraged and celebrated within my faith tradition. 

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I know Christians are the intended audience of Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, but there is a lot to learn from this conversation even if you don't view cross-gender friendships through a religious lens.  It could be invaluable to your emotional health to evaluate what narratives govern your relationships.  If shame or the romantic myth are keeping you from forming intimate connections in your life, it may be time to look at things from a new perspective.  

As a Christian, the book left me hopeful that we won’t always be trapped in a destructive narrative where we idolize romance and are taught we should avoid cross-gender friendships.  As Dan points out, “The mystery of incarnation is that God in Christ overcame the boundaries between heaven and earth, between the spirit and matter, between flesh and spirit, and between men and women.”  The example of Christ is deep friendships with both men and women, who he lived life with and embraced and loved.  I truly believe that through understanding a narrative based on Christ's example the Church can see the truth of how cross-gender friendships can be deep and intimate, as well as holy.

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

Shattered

"The price of recognizing Jesus is always the same: our idea of him, of the church, of the spiritual journey, of God himself has to be shattered. To see with the eyes of faith we must be free of our culturally-conditioned mindsets. When we let go of our private and limited vision, he who has been hidden from us by our pre-packaged values and preconceived ideas causes the scales to fall from our eyes. He was there all the time. Now at last we perceive his Presence." - Thomas Keating

I've immersed myself in theology as of late. I do have some non-theology books on my to-read list, but this is where I am right now, still mulling over the wisdom and experience of others to help me figure out where I am and what I believe. I've noticed several themes over and over again in the various books I'm reading and one of them is "shattered."  Whether it is a shattered view of life or shattered ideas as mentioned above, I keep finding this thought as I read.

Here is the thing about something that has been shattered: it cannot be un-shattered.  Even if you tried to painstakingly fit every shard back into the whole, it would never be as pristine and smooth as before it was broken.  If something is merely chipped, cracked, or broken into a few pieces, you can attempt to put it back together.  However, if it is really shattered into hundreds slivers, you can a) choose to use the pieces to make something else (just look on Pinterest -- people make a surprising number of things out of broken glass) or b) you can replace the shattered item with a new one.  Regardless of what you choose, you cannot put it back together to be exactly as it was before. 

I didn't realize it at the time, but this shattered experience had a lot to do with my break from church. I really could not continue to go to church week after week, trying to appear that I was okay when my idea of God had been shattered and I felt betrayed (at least in a way) by my own beliefs. The truth seemed too messy and made me feel too exposed and I wasn't in a place where I felt safe sharing any of those things out loud or face-to-face with anyone other than a few close friends.  I felt too broken and confused and lonely -- and maybe even scared -- when I went to church.  With my previous framework in shambles, I needed to take the time to become a student of my faith and sort out what I believe about God.

So, a lot of that is still true.  I am broken.  Any illusion of certainty I had before is shattered and has been for quite some time. The way I see it now is that I will either begin to perceive God's presence as something new among the shattered pieces or I will replace the pieces with something new.

This past weekend, I read the following passage regarding the way our preconceived ideas about God can keep our faith from maturing:

The means that we needed in the early part of our spiritual journey (but which we may have come to depend on too much) are gradually removed... Family, ethnic, and religious values are important and may support us for a certain time and to a certain place in the spiritual journey, but not to the place of total freedom that is God's ambition for each of us. - Thomas Keating

I may be broken, but I'm not scared anymore. I realize now that this is simply my journey. If I'm going the wrong direction, I will figure it out eventually. If no one else I know is going this way, that is okay. The more I read and learn and think about the beliefs of people I'll never meet and the generations of believers before me -- with all their passion and hunger for truth and differences and brokenness -- the less lonely I am.

I can't prove that what my faith is becoming now is what it is ultimately supposed to be.  I can tell you that even if it feels like God is so very different from who I'd previously thought, letting go of those preconceived ideas and acknowledging that I'm working with shattered pieces feels so much more like freedom than pretending at certainty ever did.

Ugly and Scary and Stubborn

In his book, The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience, Richard Beck uses Sigmund Freud’s assertions about religious belief in Future of an Illusion and William James’ observations in The Varieties of Religious Experience as the framework for analyzing religious experience.  He utilizes James' "healthy-mind" and "sick-soul" worldviews throughout the book as he explores and tests various dynamics of faith.  While James includes multiple religions in his work, Beck chooses to focus on how these descriptions apply to the Christian faith.  There is no way that in a single blog post I can do justice to the full content of The Authenticity of Faith and all the details, data, and insight it provides; I will, however, attempt to delve into how reading this book has given me a deeper understand of my own religious experience.

For the sake of expedience and context, I'll quickly explain that according to James, healthy-mind believers are able to find meaning in their lives by focusing on good and their faith is comforting to them because they believe it can overcome evil and suffering.  They embrace their faith wholeheartedly and rarely, if ever, entertain thoughts that it could be misplaced.  When bad things happen in the present, they seek consolation in their beliefs and in the promise of a joyous afterlife.

In contrast to the healthy-mind worldview, the sick-soul believers are those for whom their faith does not create a constant sense of well-being and for whom the promise of a wonderful afterlife is not a consolation in the face of existential discomfort.  Beck describes the sick-souls as those who "exist in the murky middle between belief and disbelief, between faith and unfaith."  These are believers who, despite doubts and uncertainty, continue to choose the realm of faith.  Beck goes on to explain:

I think the sick soul is willing to live in between faith and unfaith, belief and disbelief, because this is the only way they can remain truthful to their lived experience. The pieces of life and the life of faith are not so easily fit together. There are gaps, there are missing pieces... life is experienced as broken glass. Life is experienced as shattered... And as we handle the pieces, we are often cut and wounded. Life resists our attempts at putting the pieces together, intellectually and emotionally.  As a result the sick soul lingers, perhaps for a lifetime, in this ambiguous location, holding onto pieces, God among them, that don't quite fit together.

I've been trying for days to work out how to explain what this has shown me about my own experience.  I am still new enough to the study of both theology and psychology that I have no delusions I fully understand everything Beck explains or everything about the sick soul; I also know that reading one book on a subject does not made me an expert.  However, it is compelling to me to know that the sick-soul is something that has been identified and studied by people who do have a lot of experience in theology and psychology.  Again, I'm not an expert, but based on what I know so far I can say that I identify very much with the sick-soul experience of faith.

Growing up in an environment where it seemed, at least to me, that behaving in a healthy-minded way was the measure of a healthy faith, I always felt like something was wrong with me. I would hear people talking about their own experiences with God and feel like an outsider.  It has been a somewhat emotional experience to read about the sick-soul and realize that is how I experience my faith.  I have spent years trying and trying and trying and try, try, trying to figure out and explain why I simply do not identify with much of what other people have told me about their faith.  It is the oddest sense of relief to learn that someone has studied and can explain my experience based on real studies and data.  It also helps me justify how I can feel the way I do about my faith without abandoning it.

I've certainly considered giving up my faith, but that choice has never been right for me.  On some level, I feel in my bones and in my soul that God IS, even if I'm not completely convinced that my religion has it one-hundred percent right in what we say about God.  I know that there is something to my faith that is real, something intangible I can't deny, even though that knowledge is not necessarily comforting to me. I am also not consoled in the here and now by the thought of heaven or some better future existence.  I never experience or hear of a real-life horror and think "Yes, that's awful now, but it's going to be okay because someday we will all be in heaven" in the way that healthy-minded faith has a tendency to do.  I have learned to embrace my faith this way, despite all the sharp pieces that don't completely make sense or fit together.

I know this post is getting extremely long and perhaps I haven't explained enough of the background for this to make sense to anyone else, but I’ve tried to include the main points that have been rattling around in my head and heart for days now.  I don't want to give the impression that being a sick-soul is a negative thing, because Beck argues the opposite and discusses several of its virtues; I simply haven't highlighted them here because I know that I often fall far, far short of those virtues.  I'm not trying to present myself as an example of an ideal sick soul, I'm merely attempting to explain how identifying with that faith lens has given me hope. Imperfect as I am, knowing the potential virtues of the sick soul gives me something to aspire to.

As I've been evaluating all that I've learned about the healthy mind and sick soul faith experiences, I've frequently gone back and re-read entire sections of the book.  I'm still trying to wrap my thoughts around the various aspects of both worldviews and I have been thinking a lot about what is truth in my faith.  There are multiple verses in the Bible that give examples of either the healthy-mind or the sick-soul, but I keep coming back to Micah 6:8, which could really apply to either: "The LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

I may be a misfit in some religious circles and faith discussions. I may still be working all of this out in my head.  I may still wish at times I could be a healthy minded person because that would solve many of my struggles, but my mind doesn't work that way.  I may be a sick soul, but my faith is still real to me.  It may be a murky faith, even ugly and scary to some people, but I refuse to pretend it is anything else.  For me, my faith looks like caring about justice, it looks like loving mercy, and it looks like walking with God in the most humble way I can – as imperfectly as I may be managing any of those things right now. 

And my faith also looks like love – murky, flawed, imperfect, broken, stubborn love that perseveres despite all my doubts.





Note: I apologize that I have woefully oversimplified some of Richard Beck's very thorough analysis of religious experience and highly suggest that if you are interested at all in theology or psychology, you read his book. 

$#!&-y First Drafts

My beautiful friend Kara, who happens to be one of the world's best givers of gifts, sent me books for my birthday.  I recently finished the last one, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by author Anne Lamott.  I highly recommend it even if you don’t write.  I have no plans to write a book, but I have been trying to incorporate some of her instructions into my writing here.  Presently, I've been focusing on the chapter titled “Shitty First Drafts.”  Ms. Lamott offers some amusing narrative on how she views these terrible first drafts, but also offers this bit of wisdom:

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts…. Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.  You need to start somewhere.  Start by getting something – anything – down on paper.  A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down.  The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up.  You try to say what you have to say more accurately.  And the third draft is the dental draft where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

After considering this, I realized I need to break a bad habit I picked up when I was in college.  Between working two part-time jobs, taking a heavy course load, serving in student government, and trying to fit in a bit of a social life, there wasn't much time left to set aside for all of my writing assignments (Political Science major + English minor = a ridiculous number of papers).  I would try to do the reading and research in advance, but I rarely started writing a paper until the night before it was due.  At that point, I would write until the wee hours, review the paper, sleep an hour or two, glance over it one more time to correct any glaring errors, and turn it in.

Although I managed to do pretty well with this routine, it certainly was not ideal.  I realize now that never developing any kind of true editing and revision process back then has bled over into my current writing.  Until the past week or so, I used to write and post most of my work in the same day, without putting in much time for real scrutiny.  I went back and read some of my older posts and realized the ones I’m most proud of are those I worked on for several days before I posted them.  There are a lot of filler or ranting posts in between the better ones which are, quite frankly, just shitty first drafts masquerading as actual blog posts.

I’m trying now to focus on spending more time in the editing process so that I post less first-draft work.  I've found that taking a break from a draft for a day or so and revisiting it later makes errors more obvious to me; I also find I’m much more willing to delete sentences or entire paragraphs once I've distanced myself from them a bit.  When I used to write/review/publish all in one sitting, I felt more attached to what I’d just typed and ended up leaving in a lot of superfluous writing.

My writing may or may not be improving, but I feel like I've produced some better-edited posts, which is a pretty big deal for me.  I am extremely critical of my own work and almost always have a twinge of panic as soon as I click "Publish," wondering if I really should have shared whatever I posted.  Being more intentional with my editing has helped me feel a little more confident in my work, which is not an insignificant thing for me.

In the words of Flannery O’Connor, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”  That pretty accurately sums up the entire reason I write this blog.  Improving my writing will help improve my understanding of what I think and believe, so I should absolutely put in the effort to be intentional about it.  Better editing and more clarity may also be a welcome change to the few people who read what I write.

Of course, I've spent several days editing the heck out of this post, but there are probably still superfluous words and flow issues and errors.  I'm okay with that.  I'm not trying to be perfect, just better.


PS.  Thank you again for the book, Kara!  I loved it as much as you said I would.

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.

Baffled

For anyone who either grew up in the church or is familiar with the more often-told Bible stories, you probably know the story of the woman caught in adultery.  If you are not familiar, here is an excerpt from John 8:  

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her....” At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

I've seen this story come up multiple times in discussions over certain social issues around which there is much debate and disagreement.  When I read this story, two things stand out to me.  The first is, where the hell is the man?  Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it takes two people to commit an act of adultery.  Was he in the crowd with a rock in his hand?  What injustice that only this woman is facing death for a crime committed by two equal participants!

The second thing I see is how Jesus stands up for her, this scorned woman who is facing the judgment of the religious leaders of the day.  He not only saves her from a brutal death, but treats her with dignity.  What a scene that must have been and what confusion she must have experienced at this shocking change in her fate.  When I read this, I see a story of mercy, grace, and love, but also of justice -- the woman is treated equally with the man and does not receive solo punishment for the sin of two. Those are the things that stand out to me in this story

I've noticed, however, that what some people focus on in this story is that last line, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”  In the KJV translation, it reads, "Go, and sin no more."  To some, it seems, the main point of this story is that Jesus tells her to stop sinning.  Sure, the rest of the story is nice, but look!  Jesus made it clear that she had to lead a blameless life for the rest of her days!

It has always troubled me, this split in how the story is explained and how some seem to use it like a weapon against those they believe are sinning in a way that is less acceptable than their own sin.  I would always be baffled that the proverbial "moral of the story" could be so completely different to people who all seem to agree on the basic tenets of the Christian faith. 

I just finished reading a book by Richard Beck titled Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality that shed light for me on why there is such a difference in approach when this type of story is discussed.  I wish I had read this years ago.  I have re-read this section of the book (below) numerous times, and now that I've had time to consider it, it makes perfect sense.  For anyone who has spent a lot of time studying psychology, this may be old news.  For me, well, mind = blown.

Given that the experience of the divine is often regulated by disgust psychology, conversations about God, sin and holiness are often being torpedoed at some deep level. A dumbfounding is occurring. These dynamics make conversations about God inherently difficult because our experience of the divine is being regulated by emotion rather than logic, affect rather than theology. I think people in churches have always known this, and felt that people in conflict within the church were generally talking past each other....

Conservatives make appeals to the Purity/Sanctity foundation while liberals restrict their moral judgments to the foundations of Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity. This is simply another way of saying that liberals, weakly or strongly, reject appeals to a vertical, transcendent dimension... in favor of the horizontal dimension of human affairs.

Conservatives will contend that there are times when the sacred...should be privileged over the... call for justice or equity.... For liberals, the metaphysical (“the sacred”) isn’t a category worthy of consideration if real world harm and injustice are at stake.... (emphasis mine)

 I highly recommend reading Dr. Beck's book, as this excerpt really doesn't do justice to his thorough examination of the analysis he offers, but I hope you can see what he is getting at here and what his words illuminated for me.  When I read it, I immediately thought of the different responses to the adulterous woman story. Due to our life experiences and the way our minds work, some of us are thinking more of what is fair, caring, and just when we consider what is "right" and what is "wrong" or what we focus on in certain issues.  Due to the same factors, others are thinking more of what is righteous, pure, or acceptable when considering what is "right" or what is "wrong."

I know this insight doesn't actually change anything.  It doesn't make me more likely to think about the story of the adulterous woman in a different way or change my mind about other frequently debated issues.  I will still disagree with people over where I stand.  However, it does help me see that there will be times when I need to step back and appreciate that I'm arguing in a completely different right vs. wrong "language" than another person.  It doesn't make either of us bad people, it just means that our brains work so differently that we may never be able to agree on that subject.

This knowledge reminds me that there will be times when I need to determine if my relationship with a person is more important than trying to get them to see where I am coming from.  I may never truly grasp the point of view of someone whose mind works differently, but there may be ways to compensate for this difference.  We may never gain full comprehension, but maybe we can get to understanding in the sense of "a state of cooperative or mutually tolerant relations between people."  If we can find a way to relate to those on the other side of this divide, cooperation may be possible.  I have to believe that even if we never get there, it is a goal worth pursuing.