I Am Not a Fighter of Giants

I keep hearing people talk about having a place at the table. I’m not arguing that they shouldn't pursue a seat.  I know that a lot of good could come from more diversity at that table and I know some people have a calling to face off against giants.

But I don’t think that table is where I want to be.

I am not a fighter of giants.

I hate being in any situation where I don’t feel welcome. I’m not going to spend my days trying to get the attention of someone who ignores me when I extend my hand. I will let people exclude me, because I know I cannot make someone see me if they refuse to look or hear me if they refuse to listen.

I also hate to be in a place where I am welcome, but others are not. Even at a table where everyone is allowed a seat, if some of those seats are offered grudgingly, with averted eyes or conditions or shying away, I don’t want to sit at that table. That kind of table will not feel like home. I don’t to be where I know anyone else feels unwanted or where I am only welcome if I close ranks and ignore others who are still standing, unwelcome. 

I want to sit at a table where we see and honor all the ways we are different, as well as all the things we have in common.

I want to sit at a table where we see each other’s identities and bodies as reminders of Incarnation, without designating any single type or expression as the norm from which others vary.  

I want to sit at a table where pain can be spoken of freely and is heard without hostility or excuses, where we truly listen to each other and value each other as individuals. I want us to celebrate each other's joys and triumphs as though they were our own.

I want to sit at a table where we see the world as it could be, should be, as a beautiful tapestry with all of us woven together to make something strong and breathtaking out of whatever expression of God’s image we experience in our embodied selves.

I want to sit at a table where we are siblings in humanity and love is our language, where even if our names for God are different or even if people join us who don’t believe in things like Incarnation or the Imago Dei, they still feel welcome to pull up a chair.

I want to sit at a table where there is always more room for people who want to experience family and speak to each other with love.

Yes, I know many will scoff and say it is impossible. I will be called an idealist and a dreamer for wanting that table to exist and thinking people might join each other there. 

I don't care. 

I know there are others who also want that table and are already showing up, making connections, doing the work to try to make it reality.

So maybe, at least in some moments, it already is.

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.

Inevitability

I know everyone loves the colors and the days so brilliant and crisp they seem like a fairy tale. I know the grass is still green. I know the sun, when not hidden, still filters through the leaves with golden shimmers.

I know I should love it.

But to me it feels heavy.

I realize these are the year's last nice days.

I lace up my shoes. I force myself out into the wind, under the clouds. The puddles spray leftover rain onto my calves as my feet strike the pavement and propel me forward. Sometimes I can focus on my stride. On beating my time. On pushing myself to run faster, to stretch, to feel only the air enveloping me and the rhythm and my breath.

But sometimes I don't care how fast I am.

Sometimes I get distracted by the red-tailed hawk swooping gracefully to a tree and calling for its mate. Sometimes the clouds are too ominous and the colors too striking and all I can feel is the brilliant yellow and red against angry, dark skies.

Sometimes all I can see is a final, defiant display of beauty in the face of winter's inevitability.

And when I see that, I feel both exhilarated and defeated.

The dull, gray winter will come regardless.

The gloom will settle in and all will be shades of white and shadows and endless months of chill.

The weight is almost too much.

Yet I can't deny the faint whispers of hope in the falling leaves.

This isn't final.

Spring waits in the shadows.

Nothing can stop it.

It will come.

It always does.

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.