13

See, the thing is, it doesn't say that love avoids situations which will aggravate or irritate or try love's patience. It says love is patient.

It doesn't say that love is nice when love can afford to be and caring when it's easy to be and helpful when it wants to be. It says that love is kind.

It doesn't say that love denies the good things about love so as to not sound boastful or that love detaches from the situation so as to not become envious or that love decides to be self-sufficient so as to never be in a position when resentment or irritability will arise.

Love does not endure all things because love has been kept safely away behind bulletproof glass. Love cannot bear all things if love is not around to receive things.

What I mean to say, I guess, is that when I reasoned like a child, I tried to be perfect, so I put myself in situations where perfection was more or less achievable. In speech, in knowledge, in self-sacrifice, in all the things I can work on by myself. I thought, maybe, and maybe still think sometimes, that love was attention and that you got attention by doing these good, achievable things and that in order to be loved, you needed to put yourself in the position to do good things and to remove yourself from situations in which you would not be able to do good things.

What a tiny view of love.

And I don't understand love, not really, not truly, and I don't love, not really, not truly, but I do see it, dimly, sometimes. I do see the outline, the shape of love, enough to know that it is this enormous thing and that it is not a distant thing. Love is present. Love is here. Love endures. Love remains. Love stays.

What a frightening thing we try to be.

Gentle

The kid that I nanny loves being outside. Mostly, he loves the plants. Trees, bushes, grass, flowers, anything I let him get his hands close enough to touch or grab. It was always a beautiful moment when he was smaller to see him reach out and pat a tree leaf or wave his hands through the needles on the pine tree because he was just so fascinated by it. Everything was new and he would spend long minutes just feeling things. It brought out this deep joyful nostalgia in my spirit, watching him experience the world around him. Now, though, he's a little older and a pro at picking up Cheerios and other foods, so taking him outside to experience the world also means making sure he doesn't experience the world by putting it in his mouth.

As soon as he could grab, though, he would reach for leaves and pull them from the trees. Part of it is wanting to hold things and part of it is exulting in his newfound skills, but part of it is that he loves watching leaves fall. His parents will gather leaves and throw them up in the air for him. I've never seen a baby laugh so hard. He wants to do what he sees us do and so he reaches for the leaves, pulling any green thing in reach to himself. Now that the year has marched on, when the wind blows in this first fall for him, I'll take him to the window so that he can watch the leaves tumble from the branches. He stares and smiles.

I know he won't remember me, but I want to teach him kindness anyway. When we're outside and he's reaching for the nearest flower, I let him reach, but when his fist closes tight, I wriggle my fingers into his and open it back up, saying, "Gentle, gentle." I show him how to touch the pedals with his fingers and leave the bloom still living and attached to the stem. We practice. "You have to be gentle with growing things," I say to him.

We have to be gentle with growing things. They are tender and vibrant but they are not always protected or safe. The sun shines and the rain falls and the wind blows and we cannot help those things, but we can, for our part, be gentle. We can touch. We can hold. We can be. But we should not tear. We should not crush. And when the wind and the rain batters and the sun scorches, we can help. No. Not can. As we're able, we must. 

And I have to remember that I am also a growing thing. I must also be gentle. I want to teach myself kindness too. Brush up against the petals of my heart and allow them to breathe. 

Apologetic

I am apologetically myself.

This means that I will apologize in advance before walking into a museum with you, because I know that I will run away from you and go look at the things that I want to look at and spend entirely too much time reading signs and then excitedly explaining them to you.

This means that I will talk at length about my opinions on quantum gravity or string theory or predestination and at some point in the middle apologize for talking so much before taking a breath and continuing on to my next point.

This means that I will get preachy about the Incarnation and at the end, blush and apologize for being so loud, it's just that I have some feelings on the matter.

It means that I will stare off into space for minutes at a time while I think about something, then snap out of it and look around guiltily, hoping no one saw me mentally be in the place I want to be.

I find that I come at the world confirmed in the knowledge that I am a lot, and I'm sorry about that. I know that I have thoughts and feelings and I understand that they should be kept in my brain for the most part because they are overwhelming when they come out of me. When I care about something, it shows, maybe more than prudence would deem appropriate. I hear this when people give me that confusing compliment, "I love your energy." I'm going to make a joke about coffee to get me out of the moment, but I'm also going to wonder what expectations I upended to make you say that. Because, see, I know that I am a bundle of enthusiasm, and that's probably what you think you're complimenting, but I also know that you're complimenting the relatively constrained version of that enthusiasm that you saw behind the pulpit. Like saying that the Hoover Dam is the most impressive part of the Colorado River.

I also know that this comes across as self-deprecation, but I don't know how to tell anyone that it's not that. I apologize not because I have any intention of changing myself or, indeed, because I think that I should change myself, but because I, maybe uncharitably, assume that the fullness of myself is not what anyone wants to see. I am an immensely prideful person. I have an inordinately high opinion of myself. I am too good to be shared with the general public. And since I haven't mastered the line between confidence and arrogance, I settle on apologies. Sorry I'm so enthusiastic about existence. Sorry I'm so excited about the things I know and the things I want to know. Sorry I'm capable. Sorry I care.

At the end of the first class every semester with a professor who hasn't had me before, I go up and apologize in advance for asking so many questions and talking so much in class. I had an English professor in undergrad who stopped me in the middle of class and said, "This shouldn't be a conversation between me and you" and made me let someone else talk. Ever since that moment, I've tried to be aware of how much class time I'm occupying, but I don't always succeed. I tell my professors that I'll do my best, but they'll probably need to actively tell me to stop talking at some point. Usually, this is met with a smile and an affirmation that questions are good. My ethics professor, though, did not have the usual response. She said, "Have you read Alice In Wonderland? You remember the mouse? I'll let you know if we need to put you in a teacup."

My apologies have a root in a need for reassurance, I think; in a need to be told that I'm not wrong about myself, maybe. I hate being wrong. Or maybe it is a need for acceptance, a need for a teacup. "I know you're a lot. That's okay. We can handle that. The things that you worry are flaws, the things you think you need to struggle to tame on your own, they're not as insurmountable as you want them to be. You're just as special as everyone else is. And you're not alone in this."

A friend of mine recently told me, with a hint of sarcasm and at the end of a long conversation about my doubts and my fears and my tinny attempts at realism in the face of them, "Sorry the universe doesn't confirm your poor opinion of yourself."

Well. I mean. When you say it like that...

Sorry.

Preacher Voice

I've been thinking about how spent the better part of two hours of a recent Sunday morning sulking. See, I had been priding myself on how calm I was behind the pulpit, and how well I was reading things, and how natural this all felt, and how with my calmed heart came a slower pace of speech. I really thought that I had begun to luxuriate in the words I was saying, letting them take their time as they travelled from my eyes to my brain to my vocal cords and out of my mouth, the sound waves propagating away from me with appropriate weight and purpose. I was paying attention and I was sure that my speaking speed was appropriate, for what may be the first time in my life. I allowed myself to think that I'd finally tricked my brain into a sense of peace and out of that peace arose a clear voice annunciating well-timed words.

Then the end of the service came, and the pastor and I shook hands with everyone who came past us, and a lady walked up to me, and reluctantly accepted my handshake, and, after she took her hand back, said, "Now, I know you're new."

My pulse shot up but my smile stayed on, still genuine and cheerful.

"But you really have got to--"

My face froze.

"...slow down when you're speaking into the microphone."

For a tenth of a second, I'm seven again, crying into my mother's pants leg while she talks on the phone with my first grade teacher. I had been too loud during center time and the whole group at my center had lost a strip, this teacher's elementary school way of monitoring behavior, and the fact that I was now a disappointment to my teacher and my parents was too much for my little heart to bear. I couldn't stop my tears enough to explain what had happened and so my mother had to call the school, thinking I'd been bullied or had an accident or who knows what else, and, well, come to find that the only problem is that her daughter just can't handle the consequences of her actions. I had thought I was so good. It was devastating.

Then, as the remainder of the second ticks by, I'm twenty-six, reading the feedback form where a teacher calls me hateful. I'm eleven, looking at the one problem I missed on a hundred-question multiplication test. I'm eight, looking at my barely-passing score on the writing test. I'm twenty-five, listening to a friend tell me all the signs I missed. I'm fourteen and my drama teacher is telling me I've got to slow down. I'm twenty and my boss at the planetarium is telling me I've got to slow down. I'm twenty-two and the worship leader is telling me that I've got to slow down. I'm twenty-three and a teacher is telling me that I've got to slow down. I'm twenty-eight and my dad is telling me that I should slow down. I'm twenty-four and I'm trying not to cry because my grandmother never told me to slow down and now she's gone and she spent the last decade of her life without understanding a single word I said because I was too comfortable with my stupid racecar of a brain to think that someone else might need me to be different.

In the present, the lady has more to say. "If you listen to the pacing--" (and here she gestures at the pastor beside me) "you'll hear that there's a speed you've got to use. And like I said, I know you're new, but you've just got to think about these things."

"Of course," I say. Some kind of accent comes out of my mouth. "I know I talk a mile a minute, so it's always good to be reminded that I still need to work on that. You're absolutely right. Growth opportunity."

"Especially when you talk into the microphone," she continues. "It echoes."

"Yes ma'am, I should have noticed that. I'll keep that in mind."

"Well."

There's someone else in line after her but I don't really have anything to say to them, because now I'm the shy girl who doesn't want to talk because of her lisp and the shy girl who doesn't want to sit with anyone because she won't know what to say and the shy girl who knows everyone will just mispronounce her name and so it's better to just not be noticed at all. I smile and shake hands with the next person, and make quiet polite conversation with the next, and when the whole line is gone, I go and sit in the choir loft and stare up and to the left, up and to the left, urging the saline to stay in my eyes and off of my cheeks.

Of course, five minutes to myself and I'm on an even keel again. I'm defensive, but I've committed myself to my planetarium voice, which I know is as close to slow as I'll ever get. I train my breathing, I relax my shoulder blades, I fix my posture. I'm fine. After the second service, I only hear compliments about how well I read the liturgy. At coffee hour, someone asks me if I want to be a pastor and insists that I'll be fantastic at it, despite having only met me twice. I'm full of an aggressive, vindictive pride. 

I hate that. I hate that I have an Achilles' heel and I hate that hitting it brings out the worst parts of me. I hate that how I deal with it is anger and self-reassertion. I hate how I can feel the stone creeping back into the muscle of my heart. I hate how I can't find any generosity in my heart for this woman who wanted to make my ministry better with her intentional, direct, and accurate comment. I hate how whiny and pathetic and real this pain is. I hate how it took me out of worship. I hate that I gave it that power. 

I know my value. I know that I shouldn't get hung up on this. I know that I will forever be working on this. I know I'll get better. God willing, I'll look back at this in ten years and smile and shake my head. It'll be fine. I shouldn't let it bother me. 

Well, woulda, shoulda, coulda.