Today's internet find of the week is this fantastic tumblr blog:

http://has-leo-won-an-oscar-yet.tumblr.com/

Shine on, Leo. Shine. On.

gif source

Thoughts on Women

image found here

My fellow women, we are not a monolith.

You, maybe, weren't created to do physics or change a tire or fly an airplane or study theology or design a building or fix a faucet or run at a 300 pound linebacker or lead a church or serve in the military or be president or an astronaut, but that does not mean that I was not created to do any of those things. When you say that I wasn't created to do everything a man can do, you cut me off from a world of possibilities, a world which is difficult enough to get into in the first place. Lord knows it's hard enough to stay in.

Please don't tell me what I was created to do based on my gender.

I get what you're saying by sharing this post. I do. I understand the value of femininity, the strength in our perceived emotional depth, in our creativity, in our motherly instincts and care, and in our natural grace and beauty. I agree. Women have a unique culture that does not need to be conflated with the male culture. There is great value in "women's things". We're often relegated to the side, we're not the target market, we're devalued and put away because we're not men and that is unfair. We have no need to be men. We are us and that is more than sufficient.

But we are not a monolith.

Nor are men.

I firmly believe that there are not things that men were created to do and things that women were created to do. I don't believe that the task list of the care of creation and the redemption of the world was split by gender. There are things that humans were created to do, individual humans with their individual abilities and strengths and weaknesses, that were not dolled out in exact correlation with reproductive organs. When you share this picture, when you say these things, you're participating in a binary that our daughters and sons are just going to have to tear down when the time comes for them to have this realization. Well, those of us who can have daughters or sons. Because if women are created to do all the things a man can't do, the only thing I can think of that we were truly made for is to have children by natural birth. If I can't do that, what was I created for? Am I not a woman?

Let us not separate ourselves by the ideas we've inherited about how a person should behave based on their body. Let's allow ourselves to do the things that we are best able to do, which may be exploring the universe or cooking a meal or telling a story or raising a child. Men should be good at that. Women should be good at that. Let's see the worth of all traits, those that are traditionally masculine and those that are traditionally feminine.

That's what you mean, when you share this picture, I think. You want us, as women, to value traditionally feminine things instead of adopting traditionally masculine things. While I have minimal interest in being bound by your traditions, I do understand them and the role they play here. But by continuing to separate the world into things women can do and things men can do, you're limiting everyone. Let's shed that limitation. Let's see our value as women and the value in the things women have done and let's move forward. Let's open that door, the door to things women do and the things women can do, to everyone.

That's all I've ever asked a man to do for me, to hold their door open. It's time we returned the favor.

Three Pictures and Some Paragraphs

I rolled out of bed around 6:20am on a Saturday morning to walk twenty minutes to get on a bus to ride four hours up to Loch Ness. On the way up, it was like we went through Narnia- there were all these mountains covered in white and it started to snow and there's a magic inherent in an early morning snowfall, I feel. We went to the ruins of a castle and then to town and then back home and I had to stop reading when we went through the mountains again because seeing this all at the end of the day was just as beautiful as it had been at the beginning, like our method of transportation was not a coach but a tape that was being rewound.

I didn't take any pictures of the snow.

And someday, probably, I'll get around to putting down the story of my thoughts for that day, parsing out why my heart ached for the hills and trees and mountains and communicating the dumb, childlike joy I feel when I get to climb around a castle and everything else. I'll get around to labelling all the photos and explaining what they mean and I'll do a write-up of the cathedral in Inverness like I used to for all the old churches I've visited. I'll dole out content like writing's my job. But right now, just feeling, just experiencing my emotions, is a hard enough job for me and so the processing will have to wait for another Wednesday. Or Friday. Or Monday. My will can only make so many promises before it's writing checks my mind can't cash.

It's been sunny and cold the past few days here in Edinburgh. I've not had anything to do in mornings the past few days and so I've woken up with sun coming in through my curtain and been able to just stay in that quiet for a little while, too comfortable to move, which I think is what happy feels like. And then I bundle up and mosey forth and settle into deadlines and adequacy.

It's an inch, you know? It's an inch and it's mine and I get to hold it, even when I'm overwhelmed or underwhelmed or unpleasantly surprised by the mediocrity of everything, which is not all the time. Just, apparently, every time I sit down to write this week. Which is fine. It's a thing. It's a thing that happens sometimes and we roll on. I dream achievable dreams and I mean to achieve them.

Just maybe next week.

A Million Dollars

We were having a talk, over a game of Settlers of Catan, what we would or would not do for a million dollars, and in this way I discovered how pragmatic I am. As long as the action wouldn't a lasting physical or psychological effect, I was mostly okay with it. The conversation included talk about moral stances. It's the principle of the thing. Money isn't everything. But I didn't have that principled moral stance anymore, for some things. And money, money may not be everything, but a million dollars after tax is nothing to sneeze at. Think of all the good you can do with that! 

I know that rings out like the famous last words of some well-meaning philanthropist before the robots he created take over the world, but a million dollars is a dangerous amount. It's enough to change an individual life, or a family's life, but it's not going to rock an industry or a school system or a political campaign. The budgets are too high. A million dollars wouldn't last the lifetime of the projects you want to fund. But it could last my lifetime. I could make it work. And it would change things. 

So that might be my new bar question, if I decide to discard the perennial astronaut versus caveman discussion. What wouldn't you do for a million dollars? What good would outweigh the bad? How malleable is that line? 

I have my own answers, of course, but for that, you'd have to buy me a drink. 

Applications

I'm applying for scholarships for the fall and it's a weird feeling. I feel like I should be applying for grants and putting forward a proposal because that's what real people do, isn't it? As adults, we have reached a stage where we no longer need to be judged on the positiveness of our attributes but on the content of our ideas. I hate to regress from that, but I know that what I need to do most of all right now is work on honing my own knowledge and sense of self and in that quest I will, of course, be willing to step into the scholarship arena with students who are "strongly encouraged" to have "a teacher or advisor" read over their essays before they submit them, as if I wasn't the person to whom most of these students would be turning to read over their essays. 

At the same time, I'm a little stumped at how to answer some of their questions, such as "What does the United Methodist Church mean to you?" in 300 words or less. I decided to go back to a tactic I used for my Exploration responses and share all the false starts and alternative directions I could have taken this essay with you all here. God has blessed me with the ability to spit out a thousand ideas, but left me alone to find the tenacity to follow through on any one of them. I'll figure it out before the application's due, I'm sure, but in the meantime, at the very least I'll get some jokes out of it.

---

Q: What does The United Methodist Church mean to you?

A: We were talking about Methodists the other day and I told that old joke that pokes fun at Baptists: "The difference between a Baptist and Methodist is that a Methodist will say hey to you in the liquor store." I believe strongly in both the literal and metaphorical resonances of that joke. 

A: I used to tell people that there was a cot in the choir room for me, the implication being that I was involved in so many church things, I'd need a place to take a break. I used to be a pathological liar, but the heart of the sentiment remains the same. When I get involved at a church, I get involved at a church. 

A: Through every storm I've weathered, the church has been there for me, sometimes as a conduit back to the God who promised me strength I could not find and peace I did not feel and sometimes just as a community of people whose love I could depend on at the end of the day. 

A: I've said it before and I'll say it again: I enjoy committee meetings. 

A: I've drawn out the Wesley Quadrilateral for multiple groups of friends.

A: My heart feels a little lighter when I'm singing a Charles Wesley hymn. 

A: I did not know what it meant to sing lustily until I moved to Scotland, but now the Instructions for Singing at the beginning of the hymnal make so much more sense. 

A: I know the Great Thanksgiving by heart and was delighted to hear the Anglicans use practically the same words, even if their wine was actual wine. 

A: I function really well within systems and boy, does The United Methodist Church have a system for you!

A: Listen, there are many things that I don’t know but one thing I do know is that I long to be a part of something bigger than myself and that longing becomes very acute when I read about my friend working on her ordination papers. 

A: Have you ever seen Diary of a Mad Black Woman? It’s a little bit formative for me, I admit, but there’s a speech that Orlando gives where he’s explaining to Helen how he knows that he loves her and he says, “I pray for you more than I pray for myself.” By that logic, the great love of my life is the Church. I pray for it with a passion that I am rarely able to muster up for anything else and I am unsure why that is, but I know it to be true.

A: The United Methodist Church lets me be authentic in my faith, which is my one great desire. I want to come as I am before the Lord, with all my doubts and fears and questions and frustrations, and I want to be renewed in my trust of God and my faith in the Christian story. There is such grace here, a sometimes maddening ability to pull in people with different points of view and different dogmas and unite us through song and deed. I have a deep-seated belief in unity as our only way forward in this world and I believe that The United Methodist Church gets that right most of the time. 

A: Let me sing to you the song of my people. *Takes a deep breath* Oh for a thousand tongues to sing

A: When I went to college, the choir at my new church met for rehearsal at the same time as marching band, so I joined their bell choir instead. This was not odd to me.

A: I have a tendency these days when I find something that I absolutely adore to set that book or idea or website or TV show down, lean back, and say, “Shit,” because I know that I will now be driven to dive into this book or idea or website or TV show and I will not come up for air for days. There is a consuming fire to my love that requires a kind of wonderful abandon, a loss of control that my rational mind objects to with a resigned vehemence. If I were more colorful in the sixth grade, I may have had this reaction to my confirmation. 

A: A friend of mine was talking about church shopping and she complained about how, when she went to a Methodist church, she couldn’t really tell what they believed. I had to restrain myself from responding, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I understand her critique, but I love the words, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In everything, charity,” so much that I could get them permanently inked onto my body. I see my friend’s frustration as evidence of an outworking of a greater good. 

A: I remember being at my grandmother’s funeral and listening to the pastor list off the days of the week and the reasons my grandmother had for being at church on any given day and sitting back and thinking, “So that’s where I get that from.”

A: When listing my extracurricular activities for college applications, when I was a shorter person with more spunk and less existential dread, I didn’t know where to put all my church activities because they never felt like volunteering positions or clubs or sports or anything like that. Church was what I did. It was who I was. I felt like I needed another category for it. "Activities That Formed You As A Person, Even When You Weren't Really Aware Of It, And Maybe Point To A Vocation That You'll Deny For Years To Come" might work.

A: There was a phase in my life where I thought I was going to move to LA to be a TV writer and while I would not be upset if that was a dream that turned out not to be deferred, I think it’s telling that the first spec script I wrote was about a young lady pastor running a church. Re-reading that script is a fascinating look into my personal theology. The ending is something so personal, I’m amazed I wrote it down and then showed it to other people. After a Sunday of activity after activity, the pastor finds herself drawn to the empty sanctuary in her church. Walking in, she thinks about her place in life and in the church. 

GINNY (V.O.)

I didn’t come here to fix people. I didn’t come here to make saints.  I didn’t come here to be a saint. 

Her eyes travel upward past the all the accoutrements of the chancel to the ceiling of the sanctuary. 

GINNY (V.O.)

I came to listen.

She stands up and walks, arms crossed, to the aisle, standing in front of the entrance to the chancel, centered in front of the altar. 

GINNY (V.O.)

God is… complex. Difficult.  But not the church.  All my life, the church has been here for me. More than friends, more than family, it’s been a community, one that loves and supports me. Why wouldn’t I want to give myself back to that? 

She stands still for another few moments, eventually closing her eyes and dropping her arms to the side, palms open, clearly waiting for something. Nothing happens. She peeks one eye open, then the other. She stares at the ceiling for a second more, then shrugs her shoulders and sighs. Somewhere out in the night, a car door slams or an siren goes by or a loud group of friends walk by, talking unintelligibly and laughing. It pulls her back and she walks to the door, pausing for a second with her hand on the chancel light switch.

GINNY (V.O.)

Oh well.

She flips the switch and we cut to black.

GINNY (V.O.)

There’s always next week.

A: What does The United Methodist Church mean to me? I’m not entirely sure, but I believe it to be something profound, something I keep coming back to, and something for which I can praise God for bringing into my life. It’s something I don’t know how to quit, so I may as well lean into the dance and see where it takes us. I’ve read The Christian As Minister. I know the wealth of options here. I’m ready to start actualizing some of those dreams.

A Spark

I've been looking for a spark. 

You know what I mean. I know you've seen it too.

You see it with athletes who are beyond skilled at their sport, the kind of players of games who it is a genuine joy to watch. Or with musicians who speak through their instruments. Or composers and performers who make something that speaks to your soul. Lin-Manuel Miranda has the spark in spades.

Because words are the way that I interact with the world, I'm more likely see the spark in anything world-related than anything else. Say what you want about YA lit, but John Green has the spark. Say what you want to about fantasy books, but Neil Gaiman’s got the spark. I live and move and breathe in the spark The Avett Brothers have. Spark somehow becomes liquified and oozes out of almost every word in Night Vale. The whole reason that people pay attention to the Daily Show and Colbert and Last Week Tonight is because the writers and hosts have that spark. I’m a sucker for every Sorkin speech, every Shakespearean play, every Whedonism because their words give off sparks like firecrackers. The opening scene of the Newsroom is this perfect combination of spark and idealism and information and frustration and I can watch it over and over again because I know the heart is there and the fits and starts and pops of the spark carry it forward.

I see the spark in places where people make things. I have to trace it sometimes and sometimes it’s buried, but I love it when I find it. I love finding that idea that shows me that this person’s got that spark. I hold on to it and when I’m older and wiser, I’d like to foster it, watch it grow, help it live a life freed from the expectations it has had set upon it. I guess that’s why I end up dancing around teaching or training or mentoring in my life-- the preservation of every spark I see is the song of my heart, the one it sings when I’m not paying attention to what it’s doing. I gather up words and ideas and beautiful things people have made and ponder them, keeping them tucked away and safe in case the day comes early when the sky blackens and there’s no one left to remember humanity’s spark except for me. I don’t believe in that day, but I fear it all the same and so I collect my sparks.

And I get frustrated when I don’t see a spark. Frustrated, or bored. Reality TV? Have difficulty finding a spark. Rom-com? Again, the spark’s pretty damn buried (unless it’s When Harry Met Sally). Every day of your life is full of these inane, spark-less conversations, or it can be, anyway, and that’s why I need someone with a spark to keep around. I need to be able to trust that it’s there, that it’ll come to the fore, that I will every once in a while be surprised by the beautiful newness that’s coming out of this person.

Sparks are hard for me to walk away from. I can’t help it. I’m a moth drawn to this particular flame. Actually, no. I don't like the incapability implicit in that image. I'm... well... I was going to say one of two heat-seeking missiles following each other's signature in the vastness of space but that doesn't work, exactly, so moth-flame analogy it is. Firefly to flame, if biology can be overridden in metaphor. Give me something that lights up my life and chances are I'll follow you forever. 

It's subjective, I know. But isn't all love?

A Word From My Friends

Lent is supposed to be a time when you give up things, when you fast and repent, I believe? For the kingdom of God is near? And, sure, I believe that the kingdom of God rolls in with thunderous announcement on Easter and I know that my heart could use some preparing, some lot of preparing, before it can rise again from the dead on Easter day, but this Lent has not yet been the same type of preparation that others have been and I'm fairly certain there's a good reason for that. I'm still trying to suss out what that is, but I believe the reason is there and that's a step farther than I've gone in the past few months, so Lent's already doing its job.

I didn't get ashes on Wednesday, but I did go to a seminar and a games night and to see Deadpool and each of those things in their own way breathed a kind of life into me. I went to communion on Thursday as a way of making up for the liturgy I'd missed the day before and the songs and the homily and the sacrament all felt like home in the best way possible. On Friday I found myself without any helpful words of my own but with piles of words from my good friends. I am so proud that we grew into the people we've become.

I've got some processing and some thinking and really, truly and honestly, a lifetime's worth of reading to do, so today I'd like to share the words that came across my life on Friday, and on Saturday afternoon.

My beautiful friend Noelle is writing a blog this Lent about singleness and dating and being a Christian twenty-something and it's so life-giving to hear someone else say the words you've been thinking and feeling but are unable to express. Check it out here, starting with I'm giving up dating for Lent.

My also beautiful, also wonderful friend Sara Beth took time to write about the struggle of giving up coffee for Lent as a pastor who's still working through her ordination papers, which sounds so specific that it would not have any applicable lessons for others in different walks of life, but the grace and community she highlights can do nothing but make me smile. I'm hoping facebook will let you read about that if you click here.

A friend of mine from summer camp in high school who's working as a hospital chaplain has a blog post on the Alliance of Baptists blog about the power of poetry in his life in ministry that just floored me brought a whole perspective back into my world. You can read that post here.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to a one-hour spoken word poetry show about happiness, a sentence that I'm surprised that I'm still surprised to type, and it was wonderful. This is one of the poems that Agnes Török did that I'm quite happy to share with everyone here. Her TedX talk at St. Andrew's is also spot-on and worth a listen.

In a way, I'm exceedingly glad that one of my love languages is language. There doesn't seem to be any lack of words in my world. But it can be hard to find those words that speak the things you want and need to hear and the only way I can describe the way these words found their way into my life this week is blessing. I'm so happy to have these blessings come out of the woodwork and into my heart and hopefully, there's something here for you too!

The Impracticality of Indifference

Wanna pretend like I'm busy, but I'm really just struggle busing with the writer's block right now, so here's this week's Flight of the Vlogyries video, where I ask many a question and attempt to process things.

Technique

We used to have planetarium team meetings at least once a semester where we'd get together and go over any new technical information about the system and talk about best practices for doing shows. Like any job, in the planetarium you're continually developing as a presenter, tweaking your vocabulary and refining your pacing and working on your laser pointer technique. After some months away from that, I miss it. I had my footing there, you know? I felt that seven years of working at something was enough to start to get good at it. And sure, there's a good plenty of transferable skills that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life, but there was a kind of comfort in being in a profession that you've seen personal growth in. You have a history to look back on and readily evaluate. It makes it easier to see your worth.

I remember one meeting where we talked about saying "it's pretty cool" when talking about astronomical objects during shows. The message was don't, but the thought behind it was bigger than unimaginative word choice. You could have said fantastic or fabulous or awe-inspiring or magnificent or marvelous or phenomenal or stupendous or tremendous and you would have had the same problem. When you bring up, say, a full sky picture of the Ring Nebula,

image from Hubble

the audience doesn't need to be told how cool it is. The sky speaks for itself. Your value judgment on it only takes away from the song it sings on its own.

When you talk about how interesting or exciting you find something in space, you're also telling the audience how to feel and that's not the goal with a planetarium show. You're there to teach, to present the information and let the people take what they will from it. We do have a little bit of a polemic when it comes to light pollution and space exploration and preserving the planet but I'd say that partially comes from seeing the Earth all alone in space so often. It's hard to keep that out. But still, you're not there to tell people what to believe, just to show them what's out there in space.

And it's a bit frightening, really, knowing that we get to choose what we believe. I know that the culture we're born into and grow up in and live in greatly dampens that choice, but at the end of the day, it's still there. All of our joy comes out of that. All of our pain too, but also all of our love. With the entire depth of the human experience at stake here, it's no wonder people fight over what to believe, or that those fights contain such vitriol. We have such precious freedom and we don't always know what to do with it.

There's a slow, quiet stillness as the sky wakes up and takes all the stars away and I always glossed over that in my shows. I made a moment of the sunset but sunrise was an afterthought, the thing you had to have in order to bring the lights back up and let the people back out into the world. I suppose people have always appreciated the beauty of a sunrise, when they're awake for one, and drawn meaning and comfort from it, but I was never one of them. There's a tiredness in the morning light to me. How anemic the sun's first rays seem!

But then, I was never one for pale beauty.

What I mean to say, I think, is that I have found for myself the things I believe to be true, even if I forget those things sometimes. We never stop changing as humans, I know, but I feel more solid than I once might have been. Ideas might push into me, but I retain my shape. I know what resonates with me, even if I might not know why at first. And the person that I am, she was always there throughout my life, just maybe a little more malleable in the past. I think that might be what happens as we age- the malleability fades until we become brittle.

I have a lifetime before that brittleness sets in, though, and I want to live it preserving our freedom to choose. I want to educate and I want to share information and I want to open up the world for people and help them to recognize and pick up and carry their burdens of love and care, but I think the step before all of that is preserving their choice. You have to let people find their truths for themselves. It won't be real otherwise.

And I think we'll be surprised by how much we agree on those truths.

After all, the sky speaks for itself.

Music Videos Part Five

Man, I must be super busy. And if I'm super busy, that means I'm probably just a little down and could use some smiles in my day, which is, yup, going to come from the music videos I'm going to share with you!

1. Jenny by Flight of the Conchords

Once upon a time, I was riding to a Habitat for Humanity work site with a person I had just met that week at a campus ministry. I don't remember anything else about the conversation, but she told me the whole story of this song. I spent maybe five minutes googling the bits of information I remembered and found this version and a lifelong love of Flight of the Conchords was born.

2. Take On Me by a-ha

What is going on in this video? How does it pertain to the song? Why is there...? I have so many questions.

3. Will You Return by The Avett Brothers

Apparently I can't make a post without an Avett Brothers video. And I haven't even used Laundry Room or Another is Waiting or I and Love and You. But this is one of my favorite versions of Will You Return, so it's the one you get today.

4. Just Give Me A Reason by P!nk, featuring Nate Ruess

Do I know the backstory of this song? Do I care? Did I maybe listen to this over and over again when I was having a time? Do I really want a floating mattress bed and TV set? Will I maybe watch any video with Nate Ruess in it? Some of those are good questions.

5. Main Theme from Jurassic Park, Melodica Cover

I watch this any time I'm having a bad day. You're welcome, internet. You. Are. Welcome.

The One With All The Seals

So I filed my taxes yesterday, a tax which I enjoy immensely. It's like budgeting. There's something very soothing about it to me. I must have been an accountant in a previous life.

But in filing my taxes, I needed to look up the address for the University of Edinburgh. (I know Carolina's by heart because one does not attend a school for four years and work for it for another four without having to google that a time or two.) When I looked up the address, I was treated to the school's motto, Nec Temere, Nec Timide, which is Latin for "Neither rashly nor timidly."

I like that motto. It sits weird in my heart, though. I want to hold it in my hand and say, "Yes, this is a thing I want," the way I do with Carolina's motto, but I'm not quite there. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's motto is Lux Libteras, Latin for "Light and Liberty," which, just, hits me right in the gut.

Scotland's motto, by the bye, is In my defens God me defend, which is in Scots. Much of the time you'll see it on the coat of arms as IN DEFENS. There's a Scots prayer to go along with it: "In my defense God me defend/ and bring my saulle to ane guid end O Lord."

Angry unicorns aside, I do love the Scottish national motto and the very Scottish attitude it embodies. But don't you worry, friends of mine who think I may leave my homeland's fair shores forever, my American side is going to show itself in 3, 2, 1...

I would get the North Carolina state motto tattooed onto my body, if that weren't such a weird thing to do. Esse Quam Videri, latin for "To be rather than to seem." Let's talk about that, NC. Let's talk about that.

And the US's official motto may be "In God we trust," but E pluribus unum made the seal and the fastest way to make star-spangled banners come rushing out of my eyeballs is to bring up the notion that we as a country are inherently out of many, one.

What I'm saying is that I'm a sucker for systems. I'm a sucker for words in a dead language that meant enough to the founding ideals of a system to emblazon it on every official document available. And I have myriad feelings about mottos and how you live up to them and the responsibility you have to the ideals you inherit, but that might be a story for another day.

Talitha koum

There's this chapel right by the library at New College and it's one of my favorite places in the way that single malt whisky is one of my favorite drinks-- I have high hopes for it, it never disappoints, but I feel as if I should save it for special occasions or times of need. I've been there a lot the past few weeks.

It's a little nerve-wracking sometimes, though, because no matter where you sit, the door is always just out of sight and I tend to pray out loud, in what can be a very animated whisper, and I know that I can get lost in those moments and that I look like I'm just the crazy person yelling at the corner of the ceiling in public. Then again, sometimes I don't care. In any event, I keep an ear out for when footsteps walk up to the door so I know when I need to leave. The timing tends to work out. And last week, there was someone coming in just as I was going out and he said, "You don't have to go." And I smiled and waved a hand and said, as I walked away, "Oh, I was done, I was just convincing myself that I wanted to move."

Sometimes, we don't realize how true the things we say are.

***

A fact about living and studying in old town Edinburgh is that a canon at the castle goes off at one o'clock every afternoon. I jumped and looked around in a panic the first time I heard it. On Saturday, when I walked up to the library, I heard it and thought, "Ah, must be lunchtime." Didn't miss a step. 

But what stuck with me about this moment was how normal it was, existing with the same kind of comfortable happiness you find settling into your favorite booth at your favorite place to eat. Usual. Quotidian. At home.

***

The sun is getting ever closer to staying up until 5pm. I feel like I should congratulate it, bake it a cake for making it through a typical workday like the rest of us.

***

When I was a kid, I did not understand the Holy of Holies in the temple. It's a place that only the High Priest gets to go to once a year and it's where the spirit of God dwelt, right? So he'd get to talk to God one time a year? I never got that. I mean, the High Priest goes there once a year, sure, but what about the custodian for the Temple? They go in the Holy of Holies once a week to dust, at the very least. So I always thought that if you want to meet the person who's in the presence of God the most, you want to talk to the cleaning lady.

***

I broke a plate on Friday, maybe, and it was one of those slow motion moments where I watched it tumble from the dish drainer, spinning three times end over end before hitting the ground where I hoped beyond hope that it would survive the fall. Instead, I watched in fascination as the force of impact sent stoneware shards into the air like the tiny pockets of light that fireworks throw into the sky. And even though my heart sunk as the plate shattered in the shame and frustration of fucking up in such a juvenile way, it was oddly beautiful.

Then I vacuumed.

***

I am incapable of having a conversation about tax code quietly.

***

I was listening to Hamilton on the way back from the train station, as always, and it got to that part in the battle of Yorktown where the tailor who's been spying on the British government comes center-stage and says, "Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction, when you knock me down, I get the f--- back up again!" and I realized that getting back up again looks different for everyone. For me, it meant going to a choir rehearsal and I like that about myself.

***

Sometimes I feel like the world is a play being staged for my benefit and the act that began with a glance in the middle of a conversation ended with a shoulder holding open a door, with the in-between best suited to a montage, all the boring stuff cut out. The temptation to lean into those moments is stronger than it has any right to be, to latch onto those resonances as if they were truth rather than the complicated and confused firings of a mind dragged through the dust of human relationships by a heart on a warpath for connection and affection.

***

I woke up early on Saturday morning to see snow coming down like a rainstorm. The dusting was gone by the next day, but I was still struck by the way those flakes fell with such ferocious intention.

***

I'm not even sure exactly what I said or exactly the words that set me off, but I do distinctly remember taking in a deep breath and listening as a veritable thunderstorm of words poured out of me at a clip that would make Lorelai Gilmore proud. I do know the place that the words were spoken out of-- I firmly believe that in order to live in this world, you have to start from a place of equality, equality of personhood and experience and ideas. You have to allow everyone and everything a voice. And it touches a nerve when thoughts that could encroach on that equality surface or show themselves as fundamental to a worldview, and that nerve that is apparently directly connected to my mouth.

But in exploding like that I forgot that the only calling I have ever truly know for my life is that of a bridge. My goal is to connect. It's what I'm built for. And bridges, they have to have anchors on both sides and they cannot choose who crosses them, nor do they ever really get to cross themselves. I had forgotten my responsibility to one side because of the present usefulness of the ideas of the other. But to stay in either place for me is a siren's call and I need to be mindful of that in myself. My goal is connection, facilitation, and I can't do that by just shouting from one side back to the other.

***

So there's this beautiful section in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus does three connected things- he calms the storm, he exorcises the demons out of a man who's been living in a graveyard, and he heals a woman on the way to bringing a dead girl back to life. And I love it because the man who can do such wonderful things as ending a hurricane, restoring a man controlled by forces he has no chance of defeating, and healing illness and death also reaches out to this woman and calls her daughter. He takes two people who should be beyond repair and says, Love, get up. There is such care and compassion here, such healing. 

The guy who was preaching on this on Sunday, his verbal tick is, "Can you see that?" It drove me up a wall the first time I listened to him because of course I see that. I'm not an idiot. I saw it the last ten times you said it. But here, existing in these stories, I feel the need to hear it again. Jesus healed this woman. Can you see that? Jesus fixed her body and brought her back into the community. Can you see that? He called her daughter, called her for his own. Can you see that? He saved her, in every sense of the word. 

Do you see that?

Do you see?

Hope

I hate hope.

There,  I've said it.¹

I hate the idea of hope, what Emily Dickinson called that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. Yeah, that thing. I cannot stand it.

And I know that I should like hope, right? I know that hope is biblical, probably, right? and it's just one of those things that's supposed to sustain our existence in some way and I should always be in support of that. I mean, hell, I have a quote tattooed on my arm that is ostensibly an argument for believing in the hope that is inherent in the human spirit. I would not make that argument, but you could. If you're a pansy who believes in such useless ideas as unfounded faith in eventual fruition of events that you can't bring to pass. 

Ugh, sorry. I know that that's not what hope is supposed to be. Hope is supposed to something, I dunno, pure and genuine and real, something that you can cling to, something that, as Dickinson followed up, never asks a crumb of you. Hope is something you can have when you have absolutely nothing else going for you, something substantial that gets you through the day. I hear that.

It's just that I have such difficulty with that idea. Hope to me feels very passive, like, "Well, all we can do now is hope." And I acknowledge that there are situations in which yes, all you can do is hope, but that feeling of powerlessness that accompanies hope is what I always want to fight against. It seems that hope is your place of last resort, your solution when all else fails. I'd argue that if you're at the "hope" stage in life, there has to be another solution out there. I also acknowledge that this is probably because I've spent more time living in comic book movies and fiction than in living in the real world. In the real world, you come up against situations that rob you of power much more frequently than a comic book hero (a statement that I find surprisingly true). 

Hope points out my insecurity. I'd rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic with the best of them, while the people performing the real profound service for humanity are the ones playing hymns as the vessel breaks apart. The damage is already done in this case. The damage control has already reached its limits. And in that moment, you can either choose to lean on something bigger than yourself or you can spend your last hours in a flurry of activity that idiomatically helps no one. 

Then again, I don't care that my action doesn't have any results as long as I'm taking that action. I have spent so much of my life oscillating between action and inaction and I have found that because of my place and privilege in the world, action on my part is always better. Speaking out is always better. Taking a step is always better, even if it ends up being a step in the wrong direction. Waiting, hoping for something to occur is painful to me because it means that either I'm not taking advantage of my situation or I have been robbed of my advantages. I do not like either of those ideas. 

I'm wiling to admit that there may be a trust or control issue here. I am not good at trusting other people to get a job done. Whenever I delegate a task, I have to very specifically stop myself from taking that task back for myself. I know how I want it done and, frankly, if I'm delegating the task in the first place, it means that I know that I can do it and do it well and that I believe it to be simple enough that someone else can do it for me. It is difficult for me to trust that they are going to do it as well as I can, but trust them I must. Believe me, if I had a Time Turner and could just repeat each day enough times so that I could complete all of my tasks on my own, I would. American Individualism at its best.

Which brings me back to hope. I think that there's an ethos in America where hope is something to be acted upon. You bring hope into fruition. The world is in our hands. We have the sometimes frightening ability to change things. And we should take advantage of that ability. We should act when acting is prudent, and sometimes we act even when it's not. That's what we do. In a country founded on a kind of idealism, on this belief that all men are created equal,²  we judge people based on their actions and not on their hopes or the hopes that have been laid out for them. The proof of your worth is what you've done, not what you've hoped to have done. Action is the language that we speak, maybe one that we deify.

On an absolutely personal level, the only arena in which I will allow myself to hope is that of human relationships. I hope that someone will be my friend, will look at me, will smile, will understand where I'm coming from, will think well of me, because I know that I can't really help in these situations. I can only try my hardest to present the best version of myself possible and then hope that the person sitting across from me sees some glimmer of value in me. There's a real abdication of causal ability there. And I hate that.

So while I hear that hope is helpful and hope is useful and hope is a comfort and hope pulls people through the situations that no human should ever really have to go through, I have difficulty accepting hope for myself. It's something that I know that I should work on. I know it.

But you must forgive me my bias. That thing with feathers has only ever let me down.

---

¹ Not you, Hope. You're a phenomenal human being and I wish I had longer to work with you because you just seem like a trip and a half. Keep fighting the good fight, friend!
² I know, I know, "All men" really meant all landed white males, but work with me here. We have expanded our definitions since the time of the Framers.