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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

i do not speak of this

justice is an illusion
oft' clung to, an ideal for those who
still have ideals,
but in the end, start and middle,

is never there.


fairness is a dream
dreamt by those who
still have dreams, by those
who've not encountered the great crush of Reality's taking hand:
fuck your dreams, it says.

truth only matters to truth
and to those who, weariness impending,
exhaustive pursuit neverending,
still chase after it. truth is what happens when we tell it.
but if the lies are spoke first, then the lies become it.
and if twists on truth are then believed, belief trumps it.
truth. ha. truth for some is now whatever this one decides to make it.

there is no better one than she,
this Thwarter so admiring her own games,
this one from whom the devil chose his ways;
behavioral spirals and abject denial's definition;
she can not survive in a world touched by justice.
she can not let her children alone. she will rip them,
limb from limb, heart from loving heart, until they are fragments.

But why? It's a fair question. I used to ask it, too. But then, my moral code has too oft' got a beating.
Being good used to have meaning. It used to matter.

Now there is
no matter
what
this feeling
that she'll just go on and
take
take
take
take
take.
She can
not survive
while giving.


Sunday, April 26, 2015

just a little note

I've been listening to the isolated vocal tracks of Marvin Gaye, Queen, Journey, and others (Coldplay, Gotye, etc, for modernity's sake), and it's got me thinking about noise. Music tends to take us, hold us, save us. We go to it, land on it, dance to it, rest in it. Without the pulse of the instruments, we are forced to rest our fledgling hope on the vocals.

Sometimes, the most powerful thing is to turn everything else down. The quiet actually wins, in a way, by showing us the truth of the lyric, the strength of the voices behind the song. There's so much space, it's jarring.

There's a certain honesty found in the stillness; one you won't find anywhere else. There's an echo that bounces and sticks. So be quiet. Turn down the racket, no matter how used you are to its rhythms, even if it's just for a little while.




Tuesday, April 14, 2015

weddings: thoughts from an idealist-turned-realist bride


your wedding isn't about your wedding.


www.unionphotographers.com
 

The thing about weddings is: they're perfect. No, everything doesn't go perfectly. My dress was wetted & smashed into a wrinkled mess, less than 12 hours before the wedding. Our cake wasn't the color I initially wanted it to be. My hair didn't come out like it did in the trial. I tell you these things and I will still tell you: our wedding was perfect. Did I experience grief over the loss of my ideals? Yes, yes I did. If I'm honest, there are pieces of my idealism I'm still trying to get over. But, I've learned a few things in the process.

1) No one will notice your dress.
Okay I'm lying. EVERYONE will notice your dress. What they won't notice is the thing you think is wrong with it. Besides, your sisters, if they are as heroic as mine, will stay up all night trying to rectify the dress-mess-situation, and they do. You will still see the differences between what it is now and what it was (only yesterday! the grievous travesty!), in fact you could draw the problems in detail if asked. But, you'll get married in that dress anyway. Because the wedding isn't about your dress. By the time you walk down the aisle, you'll only be thinking about getting to the end of it.

2) Your guest list doesn't matter.
There are politics and people to please, and then some. There are hearts to break and beautiful souls to delight, and people that will come only for the dancing. I'm being silly. Of course it matters, but not really. Though the room is filled with those who've supported and loved you the best, if you're like me, you won't even notice until much later who showed up. I saw only one face when I rounded that corner: his.

3) The dress and the aisle have their own time zone.
Part A: I was very late for our ceremony. I was just upstairs, and we were steadily putting ourselves together, but the second hand on the clock put itself into a time warp, and we were downstairs 30 minutes after we were supposed to be. Of the specific things I said I'd "never do," this was near the top of the list.

Part B: I spent a decade dreaming of walking the aisle to the song I'd picked (yes, silly me, a decade ago), and would you believe it? I walked too fast for the song. Which is funny, because I felt every step of that aisle, every flex of the bend in my dad's arm. I memorized my groom's face and I nearly burst open from joy, and I thought I was taking too long to get there. Time had slowed for me, when really, it was moving as normal.

4) It's all in the way you look at it.
Though I don't think I looked the best I've ever looked, I felt beautiful. I felt that way because of who I was marrying, what this ring means (ah, such relief when his ring arrived on my finger), and all that was and is to come for us. I've received a humbling number of soul-stirring looks from my husband, none quite like the look he gave me as I walked the aisle. Or the one he gave me as he said his vows, or listened to mine, or said I do. The thing about weddings is: they happen, no matter what else is happening. It's best if you let go of your idealism now.

5) Just. Stop.
If you're going to get married, take the best wedding advice I got: slow down. Enjoy the process and more importantly, the day. Be slow about it. Take breaths, pause, look around, notice the good, and be present. Once the day starts, you can't change anything anyway.

6) The way it is.
As it turns out, I liked the cake better with the color swap. We didn't even get a picture of my shoes. Or our rings. I forgot to put my "good side" to the camera, almost all day. But we did get pictures that steal our breath; photos that will stay and heal our hearts for life. The flower girls were charming and delightful, and their sashes wouldn't stay where they were supposed to; they spun wildly around their dresses from the aisle to the dance floor; such is the thing that happens when you are a charming flower girl, delighting in your task. Our flowers, though we scrambled toward the end, came out perfectly: our florist turned out to be ethereally talented. I guess what I'm trying to say, is this: weddings are great, as they are, no matter how they happen, so don't worry.


7) On we go.
Find humor in the missteps; you'll need this skill in the coming days. Say thank-you to the helpers, because there are lots of them, and our journeys are all marked with the need for other people. Hold hands. You'll find so many reasons to cling to that hand, over time, and you'll be thankful for the practice in fine weather.

Embrace the day as is, and your day will be much better. It isn't about the building or who shows up to it; it isn't about the seating chart; it isn't even about the wedding. It's about the marriage.

The day isn't about the day; it's about the rest of your lives.








Saturday, April 11, 2015

why Christians should practice yoga and play the drums

This is long. Not particularly interesting.
Written over time, actually, but finished today. So, here it is.




I attended Bible college. Admittedly, there's a bit of a confessional feeling in saying that. I know the stereotype, and remember a time when I happily cozied myself up to it (and preached it, and breathed to its beat, and waved it around like a holy flag). And though I'm now less comfortable with much of my former mindset, I have realized that my years in the Praries hold a lot of value; in a different way than I expected, though. The things I learned about life at Bible College aren't church-friendly.


It is important to swim upstream.
I remember what it felt like to watch a good friend challenge the status quo. She read up on other religions -- from a non-Christian perspective. She asked questions no one else would dare ask, and in class, to boot! She breached uncomfortable subjects like sex and women's rights with boys. Christian women were to be submissive and soft spoken; this girl was anything but. Outwardly, I played the part of fisherman. Inwardly, I was conflicted, and perhaps a little jealous. We would sit, friends and I, for hours sometimes, trying to get her back. To what? To the way we had been taught. We so believed in, and so relied on, our rightness, that we couldn't see the value of what she was doing. We couldn't go there, or we'd collapse.

I remember the first time I started to ask questions in church. I was in my early twenties. It was very uncomfortable, and I was losing friends. So I stopped. Mid-twenties, the questions began again, only this time, I was less afraid and more pissed off that nobody would stop to answer or converse. Glazed looks, uncomfortable pauses, brilliant re-enactments of the character of Polly-anna. Hours spent by friends, trying to get me back. Way too many one-shoulder-squeezes to count. But no honesty. No one would go there with me. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good. But what about when it seems he isn't? And isn't he big enough to go with me to the edge? According to the church I attended at the time, or rather, the people I was speaking to, the answer is No. God is not big enough. The God I was being coerced and convinced to believe in was small, fragile, and tempermental.

They say there is value in trying to see yourself in others. But when I saw that version of myself, that guilty clingy plugged-ears version, I recoiled. That version didn't love me, it wanted to correct me for the sake of itself, to reprimand, to corner. I wanted to believe in a God that was big enough for questions; I couldn't find him in the church.

I think of a younger me, looking at my friend with awe and disbelief. I couldn't fathom how she could go around asking questions; I couldn't figure out how her entire belief system didn't collapse. I didn't yet realize that mine needed to.

Sometimes it is important to swim upstream, and sometimes it's important to switch rivers. In the first you build the strength to change, and in the second, you discover the courage to swim as you wish.



Dancing with Natives.
One of my strongest memories from college was the year the Natives came (the band was Broken Walls - check out Holy Is Yahweh, or River of Life). I'd never experienced God like this, so loud, so artistic, so....free. I knew God like the baptist girl I was: neat, tidy, studied and packaged. I knew God like the Christian I was: obedient, conformist, afraid of the water. But these people with their beads, drums, dancing, and voices in unison, floored me. I'd spent my life sitting quietly in a pew, and now I was encouraged to get up, hold hands with these aged women and vibrant men, to dance in their circle, to be unashamed of wanting to move to the music. I spent that weekend in the chapel, letting the drum move my feet, and beat my heart for me.

I remember one of the men was speaking at one point, about the drum. It was huge, majestic, prominent. It accompanied all of their music - like I said, I spent the weekend to the sound and feel of it. It was also controversial. Traditionally, he said, this drum is used to call up evil spirits. Since he was now a Christian, could he play it? His culture and tradition historically opposed his use of the drum in a new context, and the Christian tradition certainly opposed it. Could he sing to the Lord to its rhythms? He broke belief and decided: objects are what we make them. Could the drum be reclaimed? Could they use it, instead, for worship of a different sort? Surely they could. And they did. Using their drum, their music, their stories, they've traveled the world. They've been invited into countries and colonies that would normally not accept outsiders, simply because of who they are. They used the drum for good.

Through them I learned to want a God that would move with me when the world shifted. I came to want a God that would let me make noise, go against the norm, feel him deeply through the rhythms of reclamation. That weekend marked the last time I felt truly comfortable in a tidy pew.



Context vs religion
I'm a big believer in context. No truth is full without the story surrounding it. Growing up in the church, I was told a lot of things. Mostly, I was spoken to in blacks and whites. I should read this book. I should not want to read other things more than this book. I should question what I hear from outside the church. I should never question what I hear inside the church; ideas that come from anywhere but here are heretical. People who don't believe what we believe need to be corrected, or made to feel uneducated for their beliefs.

About half-way through my first year of college, when I was 18 and happily sheltered, I still liked to hold hands with my friends.  I remember taking a new friend's hand after a service as we skipped up the aisle. She lost her smile and step immediately, throwing my hand back at me. "I don't want people to think we're lesbians," she said quickly and quietly. "Oh," I said. I was shocked. The idea had not crossed my mind, and once she put that thought out for me to think about, I realized I still didn't care (either what people thought of me or lesbians).

We'll call this one of my first noteable gray experiences. Suddenly, in that aisle on our way out of chapel, the context of my love mattered more to me than the rigidity of religious opinion.



hiding is everywhere.
I'll always remember a friend's response to why she and her kids participated in Halloween festivies. It's Satan's day! Said the church. It's an unholy day! "Satan doesn't get a day" said my friend. Instead of hiding in her house with the lights out, she lined her walkway with candles, opened her door, and met the neighbors.

Some time ago, a conversation about yoga popped up in my aquaintance circle. I'll save you the dogma, but it went something like this: an elementary school teacher leads her kids through yoga inspired stretches, breathing exercises, and hand movements. The teacher does not teach them the spiritual beliefs behind yoga, but simply has them breathe calmly, stretch, and move. This mom was considering pulling her child from the school because of it. To be clear, I know the roots of yoga, and I know how it can be practiced. I don't ascribe to the belief system, but I view yoga like that drum: it is and will be what you make it.

Between hiding from the world and doing what they do, we find ourselves in the murky Christian veiwpoint of being IN and not OF. If we are IN, we are surrounded. If we are OF, we are motived by, or seeking the approval of, or drawn to be more like. When it comes to the frights of THINGS!!!! I would rather my child know the truth of the power of God - because I do believe in it - than run in fear from anything different. I would rather my child be equiped to handle observation, dissection, engagment, questions, and conversation. Quarantine is neither necessary, nor safe.
Downward dogs and deep-breathing won't send you to hell, nor will banging on a piece of animal skin. Neither will I. I've read the Bible, too, and despite what those people on the street yell at you when you pass: it's not their place to condemn you, either.

I digress. What matters is why you do, what matters is the what-for. Bricks and mortar are amoral; it's what you do with them that counts.


In the world.
Maybe the point of belief isn't seperation, class or caste systems, magic wands to make good feelings. It probably isn't to create heirarchy, or determine worth or value, either. Belief in God isn't a guarantee, a waiver, a safe-haven from the stuff of life. Belief in God won't make you rich, happy, thin, successful, or good. It certainly doesn't make believers smarter, better, or wiser. The point of belief is to do something about it.

We're not high-ranking keepers of a secret, we're stewards for a Kingdom. Get to work. Feed the poor instead of whining that God doesn't feed them. Be a voice for the voiceless, instead of complaining about the lack of justice in the world. Go IN to the world. Stop hiding from it, praying yourself out of it's troubles. Get IN there. Get your hands dirty. Come alongside the people you encounter, don't smack them with your Bible. Bible thumping gives me a headache, and I believe what's in it. Anything done without LOVE as a motivator is useless.

It came as a surpise to me, at some point, some time ago, that God is not here to make me feel good. Oh, He listens, and comes alongside, and speaks, and gives. But these things he gives me are not meant to stop with me. He's here to give me what I need so I can care for, provide, give to, and serve others. It's one thing to notice trauma, it's another thing to sit next to somone experiencing it. It's yet another thing to try and stop the bleeding, if stopping the bleeding means I ruin my favorite sweater. This is all a terrible metaphor. My point is this: saying I care about hungry bellies and cold nights on the street, abandoned children and the needs of the refugees, well, that's one thing. Actually doing something about it? Yikes.

Listen, I'm terrible at this. Full disclosure: this final rant is for me. I'll read it later and go, "yah, I know," and I'll struggle to leave my house. I'm not putting this out here as a method of building up my soapbox. Actually, I am very much attempting to dismantle the rickety thing anyway.


Upstream Believer (hey, that sounds like that one song)
Bible college was my holding-tank. It was the final resting place for my childhood experience of church. It was prep school for all of the ways in which Life would disappoint. It was many things, and it was beautiful, but it was not the solid ground I wanted. It was, instead, the catalyst for questioning, observation, and journey.

I expected a lot from it, and even more from my life after. I didn't get what I expected, at all. Instead of perfection and order I have, over the years, earned stripes of imperfection, and seasons of disorder. Loving God has not left me full and strong, it's left me weak and in need of him. My witness does not come from my mouth, but from how I live and treat others.

I am not called to live in a bunker, I'm called to live IN the world. I am called to get my hands dirty, not obsess over their cleanliness. I don't worship the holy, I worship God. Truth is a public forum and anyone can take it; it isn't mine to give out. I don't teach, I converse. I don't demand, I listen. I don't comment, I act.


At least, I am trying.








photosource: unknown.



Friday, April 10, 2015

dancing with the elephant in the room

Dovima with Elephants 1955 | From a unique collection of figurative photography at https://www.1stdibs.com/art/photography/figurative-photography/
i have all
but given up

illusions these are:
peace
rights
and ease

as it turns out
we are fated
to be released
into the night;
to freeze,

in the wind
of all we are forced
to give up.



Friday, April 3, 2015

leaving Eden

The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
Paradise Lost, Book 12, 646-649


 fallingforoctoberandecember: Autumn Hollow on tumblrI was born and raised Evangelical, and as such, I became quite familiar with story of The Fall of Man. Adam and Eve. These names are synonymous with a number of images, including but not limited to: nudity and poorly placed leaves, apples and snakes, and that fated, pretty tree.

This story frightened something in the core of my little humanity, each time I watched those Sunday-school Teacher’s hands place felted characters upon the board. I can still remember the yellowed walls of the church basement, the smell of dust bunnies and old carpet. I remember the long walk upstairs, back to the world of adults, wherein I spent each step wondering if I needed to hide from God. I became more petrified, each time I heard the story, that I’d already done myself in. Sinners are exiled. This, the lesson.

So, I began to see myself as exiled. Anywhere I went, I felt alone. When they taught us about Eden, they didn’t teach us about grace. When they taught us how we fell, they didn’t tell us we would be able to get back up. It was humanity’s fault, after all, and they deserved what they got. Had Eve simply chosen contentment! Had Adam shown self-control! If they had been perfect, the perfection they had once laid claim to, would still be theirs. God would still love them enough to keep them close. The moral became my mantra: don’t lose Eden, sinner.

I guess we all have our own version of loneliness, and mine came from this striving; this longing to return to a place I knew I could never get to. The trouble is, Idealism only seems cute. In truth, the Idealist survives on something that doesn’t exist. Perfect Peace doesn’t happen, and if it does, it doesn’t last, which only exacerbates my feelings. Nevertheless, I involuntarily strive for it. This is a terrible cycle, and it’s never worked. Eden, or what it has become for me, remains endlessly out of reach.

But Eden is already gone, isn’t it.  I cannot find it in my circumstances, and I know now I’m not supposed to. Sometimes I think I find it, like tiny threads in the chaos.  They vanish just as quickly. So I sit, to myself, think on that little bit of grace, what it felt like. Perpetually, goodness leaves. I’d rage at the loss, but rage is purely isolating. But then again, so is everything outside the garden.


The sacred shows up in gasps. To the lucky, to the blessed, to those who call themselves chosen; the sacred stays. The rest of us seek out wholeness in any way we can find it, by pretending we know how to love, or how to receive it. We, the wicked, hold on to what we can in a wicked world, and we do our best.

Perhaps, for the first time, I am truly leaving Eden. I've got my hand in a hand and my eye on Providence, and all the world before me. 




photosource: etsy