Glimpsing God

I have a new favorite blog: Ordinary Courage by Brené Brown, Ph.D.

Dr. Brown is a shame and vulnerability researcher. Her work is an important glimpse into understanding ourselves and our fellow human beings. So do something nice for yourself today and give her blog a little perusal, then check out her TED talks. You’ll thank me.

“The word courage comes from the Latin word cor meaning heart. When the word first entered the English language it meant to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” – Brené Brown

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity, innovation, and change.” – Brené Brown

I’m having one of those grumpy, angry weeks this week, and as I said in one of my very first blog posts, I believe in the power of praying as you can, not as you can’t. God knows what you’re thinking anyway, why not be honest? Why not be genuine? How are you supposed to work on a thing if you don’t let it out?

So, earlier in the week, it was with this personal philosophy in mind that I found myself hurling a Bible across the living room and yelling, “For the record, God, you did a shit job with the Christians! And I refuse to be associated with them anymore!” (I will spare you the details of the thing that prompted the Bible throwing.)  Then I crossed my arms over my chest and cried in a chair under a window for an hour, while having a conversation with God in which I said a lot of things like:

“No, really, I hate people. I mean it.”

And

“That’s it! This time I’m following through on my threat to move to the woods, live in a cave, and dance naked around a campfire. I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t.”

God is always very patient with me when I’m in these moods, and says rational things in the still small voice, like: “You can’t get cell reception or takeout in caves.” Which is a good point. They don’t call God omniscient for nothin’. So I calmed down a bit and went to church last night to help with the children’s program. Luckily, the lesson for the night was kickball, so the kids were spared “Storytime with Miss Neely the Bible Hurling Naked Cave-dwelling Heretic”. I think everyone benefited. And really, you can’t underestimate the power of kickball with kids as prayer.

You know what else you can’t underestimate as prayer?

A dance party of one (in your underwear) to this song:

Today is Sophia’s third birthday. I sat up late last night thinking about the journey of it all; birthing a woman into the world and the responsibility of raising her.

We named Sophia after Woman Wisdom, the feminine personification of God found in the Old Testament, particularly in Proverbs. We named her after Woman Wisdom partly because She’s a pretty kickass biblical character, and partly because our lives were such a mess at the time of Sophia’s birth. We hoped that God in Her infinite wisdom knew what She was doing.

I remember feeling rather overwhelmed at the prospect of bringing another woman into the world, into this world. I hoped that I wouldn’t let her down; that I wouldn’t pass on the baggage women have passed to one another for centuries. I will fail at this, of course, and one day Sophia will need a good therapist. But that’s life.

I am not one of those women you sometimes hear about, a martyr to motherhood with separate personhood swallowed up entirely. No in many ways, Sophia set me free. Her birth gave me a sense of empowerment. Having a daughter meant that there were things I needed to say, there were things I needed to do, there were ways I needed to be unswervingly me, and I had to be brave about it. It meant that I had to stop being a people pleaser, which I am. Oh! I am such a people pleaser. Every controversial blog I post hurts me a little – or, a lot. But there are things I must say in order to honor the woman that my daughter will become.

I know that she is watching me, imitating me. She has even started to use my little phrases and mannerisms. She is watching me to learn how to be a woman.

So…

*I take seriously my dreams and ambitions. I do not place them on the back burner. I do not sacrifice them upon the altar of home and family. I am not a martyr. Martyrs are dead and that is unhealthy.

*I set boundaries because healthy women set boundaries.

*I don’t trust people who make me feel bad about myself, and I keep them at a distance.

*I rarely wear uncomfortable shoes.

*I eat dessert first — a lot actually.

*I do not talk about my weight in front of Sophia. This was a gift my mother gave me, and it wasn’t until I reached college when I learned woman worried about stuff like that.

*I am mistrustful of things that cork me up, silence me, and inhibit me. Fear is one of those things. Fear is usually not to be trusted.

*Guilt is usually not to be trusted.

*I have fun. I laugh. I embrace my quirky, irreverent sense of humor. It’s who I am.

*I pray in any way that strikes me.

*I believe in being genuine.

*I believe in being frank.

*I believe in being kind.

*I believe that creativity is next to Godliness.

*I never play dumb, and I don’t let others treat me like I’m dumb.

*I keep company with other smart women.

*I do not keep a tidy house. I have better things to do.

*I remember that there isn’t much time, and so time should not to be wasted.

*I take time to do nothing, and know that is valuable.

*I read a lot.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I think that the best gift a mother can give her child is the gift of a happy and fulfilled mother, especially if your child is a woman.

Happy birthday, Woman Wisdom.

Here’s to good women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them. ~Unknown

In honor of GLSEN Day of Silence  ,  The Journey to Testimony (the man at 6:15 is a long time family friend):

Testimony,  performed by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

What will you do to end the silence?

I am a storyteller, and this is a story of resurrection as best I know it:

We were driving in the car two weeks ago, Kelly and I. The little girls were all strapped into their enormous toddler car seats in the back, like a clown car filled with small, sticky, whiny, people who have been restrained for their own protection. There was three-year-old Linley, eighteen-month-old Alice, and my Sophia, a month shy of three.

We’d had a day of fun at a cat rescue, picking out two sweet, gray brother cats to join Kelly, Linley, and Alice’s family. Then we’d gone to the park. Then we’d had cupcakes.

Side note: Cupcakes are an absolute MUST in times of grief. It’s in the Bible, look it up.

We were headed home and the natives were getting restless. Whining and crying ensued. I was trying to control the situation with bribery, but as often happens with Linley when tired or upset, her thoughts turned to Daddy.

“I want my daddy!” she cried.

“I know you want your daddy,” Kelly said, calmly. “I do, too.”

“But I want Daddy right now!” Linley continued to sob.

“I want Daddy right now, too,” Kelly soothed.

“No, but I don’t want Daddy to be in Heaven forever!” Linley wailed.

“I don’t want Daddy to be in Heaven forever, either,” Kelly commiserated.

“Look! Jesus!” Sophia yelled from her car seat where she had also been crying, completely oblivious to what was going on around her, knowing only that she had been promised stickers that had yet to materialize.

“Where?” we all said, except for Alice, who doesn’t really talk yet and was starting to nod off.

“There,” said Sophia pointing out the window.

And sure enough, there was white, marble Jesus kneeling in prayer above a faux-flower, bespeckled cemetery.

“Oh yeah. It is Jesus,” I said. “Well spotted.”

It creeps me out when she says stuff like that and then I look around only to find that there’s no Jesus in sight. So, I was happy to see Jesus kneeling innocently there in the cemetery, rather than hovering around invisibly, up to God knows what kinds of shenanigans.

Linley and Sophia both started yelling, “Jesus! Jesus! Horses! Jesus!” (There were horses, too, by the way, but not in the cemetery)

Earlier, Kelly told me about a conversation between Linley and Linley’s grandmother, whom she calls Grandmama. Grandmama told Linley that her daddy was in heaven, too and that Grandmama’s daddy was maybe teaching Linley’s daddy to fish, and Linley’s daddy was probably teaching Grandmama’s daddy how to play soccer. Linley had seemed to like this idea.

So I seized upon the Jesus distraction to engage Linley in a little theological conversation.

“Hey Linley,” I said. “I heard that your daddy and Grandmama’s daddy are hanging out together in Heaven.”

Linley beamed, forgetting her tears for the moment.

“What do you think they’re doing right now?” I asked.

Linley thought for a moment.

“Do you think they’re playing soccer and fishing?”

She nodded.

“Like, maybe even at the same time,” I mused. “You know, soccer-fishing. It is Heaven after all, you can probably do stuff like that at the same time there.”

“Yeah and they are having a party, too,” Linley said, smiling.

“Oh, they are?” I asked, liking the idea.

“Well, it’s Jesus’s party,” Linley informed me, solemnly. (Someone has been paying attention in Sunday School.)

“Yes, you’re right. It’s Jesus’s party,” I agreed.

“It’s a princess party,” Linley continued, smiling again.

“A princess party? So they’re dressed up?” I asked, really liking the idea.

“Yes, and Jesus gets to be Cinderella,” Linley added reverently.

Ah, Jesus in drag at a princess party. I like that. I like that a lot, in fact. Out of the mouths of babes y’all . . . And if you know Linley, you know that letting Jesus be Cinderella is kind of her alabaster jar, so to speak.

The first image that sprang into my mind was Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper; only all of the disciples are holding tiny teacups and wearing tiaras, while Jesus presides over the holy meal in a pink feather boa and sparkly pink sunglasses. He’s wearing a tiara, too, of course. Duh!

The best part of the mental image is that Luis sits beside him at the table, hand raised, pinky aloft as he grips the handle of a small, china teacup between his large thumb and forefinger. He is wearing a wide-brimmed, lacy purple hat, a purple-feather boa, and the same mischievous grin he wore in life. He raises his cup in a toast and winks at us.

In the recesses of my being, where I sometimes hear God, I touch truth in that image.

What can you say when people call with a scary or heartbreaking prognosis? You say that we don’t have to live alone with our worries and losses, that all the people in their tide pool will be there for them. You say that it totally sucks, and that grace abounds. You can’t say that things will be fine down the road, because that holds the spiritual authority of someone chirping “No worries!” at Starbucks, or my favorite, “It’s all good!” at the market. It’s so not all good. And I’m worried sick.

It’s fine to know, but not to say, that in some inadequate and surprising ways, things will be semi-okay, the way wild flowers spring up at the rocky dirt-line where the open-space meadow meets the road, where the ground is so mean. Just as it’s fine to know but not to say that anger is good, a bad attitude is excellent, and the medicinal powers of shouting and complaining cannot be overestimated. ~ Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually)

Last summer I chaperoned a youth conference. During the week a young man in attendance received word that his best friend had been killed in a car accident.

“Shit happens,” he said; chin quivering, lips pursed in a hard thin line as he fought back tears.

The other youth sitting in the circle shifted nervously, wondering how we adults would react to the cuss word he’d just let fly at “Jesus Camp” of all places.

I – rather fond of cuss words, myself – looked at him and said, “Yes, shit does happen.” I drew out the S-H, savoring it between my teeth before I slammed it into the hard I-T sound. “And I’m glad you said it that way. I’m glad you used the word shit, because sometimes in life there is nothing else we can do, but name it. And sometimes there are no other words, but the raw ones.”

Two months ago, I had the privilege of hearing author, Chris Crutcher speak at a writing conference I was attending in New York. Chris Crutcher has the delightful distinction of being one of America’s most banned authors because, as he puts it, “I tell hard stories, and hard stories must be told in their native tongue, or they’re not authentic.”

Yes. What I had defined as raw words, Chris Crutcher correctly identified as the native tongue of hard stories.

That same Friday morning, January 27, 2012, as I sat in a Manhattan conference room, my friend Kelly was waking up to a nightmare turned reality.

You know those friends in your life that are really more like family? That’s Kelly, my former college roommate.

Kelly was waking up to find her husband, Luis, age 34, dead in their bed.

Friday morning, Kelly was watching the paramedics try to revive her husband even though she knew by looking at him that he had been dead for several hours.

Thursday, January 26, Luis was very much alive. He was a funny, handsome, romantic Latin lover of a man; a playful, devoted daddy to two little girls, ages 3 and 16 months.

The next day, he was gone. In the blink of an eye, he was no longer, and that gap between vivacious and no longer is utterly inconceivable.

January 27, 2012, the world changed.

As I said, Kelly is one of those friends in my life who is family, and I have had the honor to be privy to some of her most intimate moments of grief. Everything she does in life, she does with great poise and grace; grieving the loss of her husband has been no different. I love her for the honesty with which she goes about it.

We were talking last weekend over wine and Twizzlers, about the overwhelming grief she feels. A hole has opened in her life that is so deep and so wide she cannot begin to wrap her mind around it; so deep and so wide there are no words that can express it. How do you name something of that magnitude?

This is where I come in; her somewhat cracked writer friend, bringing my fondness for raw language to the table. A snapshot of our conversation:

“I can’t…I can’t… There just are no words,” Kelly says, groping the air with her hands as if she hopes to find them there.

“Dude, it sucks,” I say.

“It does suck,” she agrees.

“It sucks ass,” I add, helpfully.

“It does suck ass,” she says, trying on the words to see if they fit.

“It fucking sucks ass.” I roll the trifecta around my mouth, like the wine I’m sipping from my glass.

“It does fucking suck ass,” she says vehemently through tears, and then laughs, a wet mucousy sound. “That’s some nice imagery there, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’m a writer.” I shrug.

We sit in silence, eating Twizzlers and drinking wine, our Eucharist of loss.

All of the platitudes have been spoken, one or two of them by me:

• He’s in a better place.
• Time heals all wounds.
• It was all part of God’s plan.
• Heaven has another angel.
• God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.
• At least you have your memories.
• At least you have your children.
• Be grateful for the time you had.
• At least you’re young.
• You’ll get through this.
• You’ll be with him again someday.

Why do we say such stupid things when someone dies?

There is a weird, forced quality to Christian culture sometimes that seems plastic, or false; sugar coated.  We smile in the face of loss, bleating in chipper tones, “If we didn’t have rain, we wouldn’t have rainbows.” (I hate that phrase, by the way.)

It’s as if we think our faith can be measured by how cheerful we pretend to be in the presence of death and hardship. Seems like a betrayal of our humanity to me. Why don’t we just call a spade a spade? Why are we afraid to hear hard stories in their native tongue?

Although I admit, “Dude, this fucking sucks ass,” is not likely to be my new standard condolence as I come through the receiving line after a funeral, even Jesus doesn’t remain cheerful in the presence of death.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord come and see.” Jesus began to weep. ~ John 11: 32-35

The reality is that part of Kelly has been annihilated, like a bomb was detonated in her life, leaving a barren wasteland for her to rebuild. The destruction is so deep and so wide that it is ungraspable and insurmountable.

This is holy week: a week of death, a week of agony, a week of heartache and loss. This is the journey to the cross. It’s ungraspable. It’s insurmountable. It fucking sucks ass.

Next week we will talk about resurrection. But not now. We’re not there yet. Now we grieve.

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.