Glass

It is difficult for me to resist the temptation of fragmentation, for me to acknowledge the value of wholeness when wholeness is such a struggle in these times of ours. It is much easier to accept the fragmentation pushed upon me rather than to seek the wholeness I know I should want, easier to set my emotions in a box for later, when I can actually deal with them, or ignore that pain in my back until I finish the assignment, or sit and stare at my newsfeed until the tidal wave of ignored feelings and pains dulls and I can use my mind again. Mine is a functional fragmentation, a resignation to the idea that I cannot carry the entirety of me throughout my day, that I do not have the currency, the value, or the energy needed to be whole.

I heard a sermon recently where the preacher shared a story with a distinct image. The preacher had had a dream while writing the sermon, and in it, he had a mouth full of shards of glass. He asked us to imagine that, imagine what a mouthful of broken glass would feel like, and that was a powerful moment for me. You cannot help but be aware that your mouth is filled with glass. Every breath cuts. You can't speak, you can't smile, can't laugh, can't scream. You feel like you will suffocate taking these short, shallow breaths through your nose, like your jaw will freeze in the slightly open position you have adopted to accommodate the glass. You keep your teeth together and your lips closed because if these shards of glass fall out, they will shatter even more, spattering blood from your mouth onto the floor, and no one will be able to approach you to tend your wounds for fear of being harmed themselves. You know that what is inside of you is dangerous, and as the panic sets in, you wonder how long you can keep the danger from escaping.

Now, the preacher himself was not as captivated by the image as I was, instead moving on to connect the image of a mouth full of broken glass to the one found in Ezekiel 3, where the prophet gets a mouthful of scroll and it tastes like honey, and to make an important point about the necessity of good preaching. But if Ezekiel's scroll, Ezekiel's words from God, taste like honey, then this image that we're working with, this broken glass, surely means that there are words from God that are sharp, and cutting, and difficult to speak. They are words that were never meant to stay inside of us, but will require some pain and some loss to speak. We will need to be careful with them. We will need help. But we cannot keep these words inside of ourselves. They will kill us.

I would give anything in the world for this glass to pour out of my mouth, to fall on the ground in a million colors and settle into a pattern of stained glass beauty, all sensible and lovely and prophetic. I would love to let go of these little fragments of pain that absorb my attention, that stop me from caring for myself, that stop me from caring for others. We all have mouths full of glass sometimes, I think, times when we ourselves have shattered and fragmented and the things that cause us pain must be spoken, and when we speak them, if we speak them carefully, and purposefully, these things become holy words. They become words of prophecy, words from God, summoning the four winds and bringing life into places that had been dead. These shards that we carry, afraid to let them fall, can, in time, scatter goodness into the world.

But it is not easy. It is not without cost. It is not without struggle.

It is difficult for me to resist the temptation of fragmentation, difficult to stand against the lie that I cannot be whole, should not try to be whole, and so I stand with my teeth together and my lips closed and breathe these short shallow breaths through my nose that will in time suffocate me and I forget that I was not made to be this way. But let me now speak that truth into existence. Let me breathe life into the things I have forgotten. I was not made to be shattered. None of us were.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Open up.

---

It would be irresponsible of me to place an invitation like that at the end of a piece and not have any resources available to those who might be struggling with what's going on inside of them. If you are not in a place to be reading or thinking about suicide or self-harm, it's okay to stop reading now. There are resources below for those who want to scroll on.











First and foremost, for those who are wrestling with suicidal thoughts, you are loved and there is help. If you don't feel that you can reach out to a friend or family member, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255.

If that's not your situation, you can still get help from a counselor, therapist, or other mental health professional. I think everyone can benefit from therapy. You can start by looking for a therapist here and if you need any help at all on that journey (which isn't always an easy one), please reach out to me. Some mental health professionals have sliding scales and flexible meeting options if that's something that you need. I can recommend the Calm Harm app that might help those who struggle with self-harm or thoughts of self-harm as an aid to mental health treatment, but not a replacement.

We all carry difficult things around inside of us, but the beauty of the gospel is that we are loved by the deep Love that made the cosmos and we do not have to stay as we are when we are broken and hurting. That Love lives in each of us, and brings us to care for each other. If you need help, reach out. If you don't need help but you know someone who does, reach out to them with gentleness and without judgement. I'm on firmer ground than I've been in a while and it's because of the love and support that has been shown to me by so many people in my life as I've started therapy and have, in fits and starts, begun to take better care of this body I live in. If anyone reading this needs any kind of help, let me know.

Pictures

One of my best friends is getting married today.

I have so many feelings.

It's not exactly like when my best friend from growing up got married and my other best friend from middle school and I got to the wedding a little bit late, having to sit on the groom's side of the packed church as she walked down the aisle to a hymn that made me think to myself, "This is why we're friends," and also, "I'm glad I'm not getting married anytime soon because I'm 100% copying all of the music for this ceremony." That day was full of joy and laughter and reunions with high school friends and the absolute ideal reception. I was so happy for Sarah and Robs and in love with their story and I involuntarily smile now seeing pictures of their kids and their life.

And it's nothing at all like when my older brother got married. I was and continue to be so happy for Stephen and Lindsey, but I was involved in that wedding (and its many pictures) and being so close to what is, best case scenario, a pivotal moment in two people's lives made me reflective. I made this video about how marriage is, in a way, our shout into the void, and I, remarkably, stand by most of that more than a year later. I did a lot of my formative thinking about what a life-long partnership could and should look like in the past couple of years, and I still think of it as this beautiful thing, this lovely attempt to go forward into this world that will disappoint us, holding someone else's hand, struggling against the current that pulls all of us back. Thoughtful, caring, dedicated marriages have legs. If you do this right, you can walk for miles and miles.

Today, as Pamela and Brock celebrate the ceremony that solemnizes their promises to each other in front of those who are important to them, I find myself trying and failing to work on schoolwork at Pamela's house, this little home of hers that I adore that will, in short order, belong to someone else as she makes a new home with Brock. I'm so excited for her, so excited that she found someone who smiles at her the way everyone wants to be smiled at, who jokes and laughs with her, who holds her when she needs it and who is willing to be held, who brings his family and his world together with hers in a delightful bouquet of people and stories and love. Pamela was there with me when I first decided that opening up to people was a good thing to do, and she has been there with me since, going on adventure after adventure, climbing mountain after valley after mountain. She has been there with me as both of us have figured out what love between two people could look like. I could not be more happy that she has found someone who can be the love of her life.

See, Pamela values people. This is her fridge:

It is covered with photos of friends and family. It holds memories of travels and adventures and important life moments. In her kitchen, in this central place where many of us just move through our days mindlessly feeding what needs to be fed, she wallpapers her space with the people who are important to her. She actually prints out physical photos of people and moments near and far. In this world of distance and remove, Pamela re-embodies us.

It's not just her fridge. She's a fan of collages as well, one of which features this delightful picture of me in Iceland:

I love that Pam chose this to go in the collage. I believe we were hunting waterfalls on this day, trusting the GPS in our car to navigate us from one place to another. In this picture, I am a few days past having left Edinburgh, a week away from moving to my new place in DC, and my hair is a fluffy nightmare. But we had been singing and that whole day had been this glorious exploration of beauty and wonder and dampness. I love that jacket, love the way we're smiling. Even though I cringed the first time I saw it on the wall, there are so many gorgeous aspects of this moment. I'm glad it's immortalized here.

So, to the woman who tends to find beauty in the times where even I fail to see it, and to the man who has made her so happy over the past two years, I wish you the very best. I pray that the days ahead, be they easy or hard, will be filled with joy, patience, hope, faithfulness, and love. I pray that you will always be able to see in each other the wonderful, worthy, glorious, valuable person that you see in each other today, and that as the years stretch out in front of you and redefine what family means to you, you will find the strength within yourselves and each other to persevere in this world that is so temporary, so finite. Make an infinity, my friends. I'm forever thankful that I'll be here to see you do it.

Weather

"How's the weather?"
"Rain."
"Oh."
"Light rain, which is not too bad. Coupla showers."

I'm listening to this conversation as I'm supposed to be studying or reading or something in the library and it exhausts me. Not that I wasn't already exhausted. Not that I haven't been exhausted. But it exhausts me anew. My exhaustion is perennial and it isn't helped by light rain.

God, what I wouldn't give for a thunderstorm.

Not one of these pathetic thunderstorms that we've been having, which are mostly heat lighting and booms and drizzle, but a real deluge, one that lasts all night and rattles the windows. Or better yet, give me rain for days. Soak me in it. Leech all that humidity out of the air and condense it into droplets and let it fall fall fall fall fall until the sky is cried out. It has been so hot lately. So stagnant. You feel like you're swimming when you walk outside. The air is needy and clingy. It's hard to breathe, hard to walk, hard to exist. A coupla showers are not going to fix this. I need the heavens to open up.

But how can I ask for a deluge? At worst, it would cause flooding and at best, traffic delays. Not that I think this is a prayer that would be answered, either, because I don't think the weather or God work like that, but I feel selfish anyway, wanting, needing something that would cause problems for someone else. Best to just deal with the humidity. Shave my legs, wear dresses, make my body presentable for the heat. Carry extra water to replace the gallons that must be escaping through my skin. Make smiley faces in the condensation on windows because if you can't joke about your discomfort, you're not mourning properly.

But all of that requires energy. Energy that I don't have. Energy that I can't find through all this water in the air that refuses to fall. God, if you would just give me one good storm, to clear the air, to electrify me, I promise that I'd be better. I wouldn't just spend the day staring at the drops as they feed into the puddles, I swear. I'd go out and dance in it, splash around, be delighted. Pinky-swear, I would. Just give me the chance. Give me a thunderstorm and I promise I'll be better. God, don't you want me to be better?

In one version of the story, I bet Jonah prayed for the whale.

Those Who Mourn

This week on the blog, I'd like to bring you the sermon I preached on July 15 as a part of a sermon series on the Beatitudes, the opening verses of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. This sermon is the second in the series, based around the verse, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." The other scriptures for the morning were from Genesis 16, Psalm 42, and Revelation 21. 

I love the Beatitudes, and I especially love them given the role they play in Jesus' teaching. The Sermon on the Mount is presented in Matthew like Jesus just sat down and spoke it, but it’s more likely that the author of the gospel of Matthew was collecting together common teachings of Jesus, things he always used to say. Jesus was always saying things like, 

“Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are those who mourn.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

I think it’s especially important that these were things that Jesus was always saying given that our beatitude for this morning is, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” and I think remembering what people always used to say is a way that we comfort ourselves and mourn all at the same time. My friend Jessica, who died earlier this year, she was always saying, “It’s never too late to follow your dreams.” She had left a career and gone back to school to major in voice because she her dream was to be an opera singer. I believe she would have done it too, if she had been given more time. 

So as we focus ourselves for the sermon, I want you to think of something that someone who is no longer with us was always saying, some story that you tell to your friends or your children or your grandchildren. Hold that memory of who that person was in your mind and your heart for just a moment.

And would you pray with me?

God, you have told us that we are blessed. Help us see that. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Now, what I usually like to do in a sermon is give some historical context, look at where the passage we’re focused on is in respect to the verses before and after it, maybe throw some Greek in there, all so that we have a better understanding of this book that is sacred to us.

I don’t feel the need to do that with the beatitude for today. I don't feel the need to do that because grief is a universal human experience. We come into this world crying and our pain only gets deeper from there. I know many people in this room have experience deep grief in their lives, and so have deep experience with both mourning and comfort. There are many places in the Bible where Jesus's lived experience differs from ours. Grief is not one of them.

We know that Jesus mourns. We see him mourning over Jerusalem. We see him try to take time for himself after the death of John the Baptist. We see him crying at the death of his friend Lazarus.

In fact, the Bible itself is no stranger to mourning. It is full of stories of people who are mourning and who are seen by God. Take this psalm for this morning for example, or the story of Hagar, Sarai's handmaiden, her slave. Hagar is so moved that God comes to her in her time of deep pain and grief that changes what she calls God. She calls God the one who sees me. The Bible tells us that God sees grief.

And that is what this beatitude is telling us as well. Jesus sees the mourning that is happening all around him, that still happens today. He sees the pain. And he turns to those in pain and he says, you are blessed. I see you. I have not forgotten about you. You are blessed.

It is a miraculous thing that Jesus says here, because we do not think that those who mourn are blessed. I would offer up to you the fact that the world around us thinks that those who mourn are weak. We see this in the amount of time we allow people to mourn, the time they are allowed to take away from work in order to mourn, and the services that are available to those who have suffered a great loss. It is insufficient. And so many of us walk around wounded, limping for so long that it becomes part of our gait. We tell ourselves that we have to be OK, we tell others that we're fine, we allow everyone to tell us how strong we are, and all the while there is an ache inside us that is never really going to go away.

Because we think that those who mourn are weak, we walk around unhealed, uncomforted. We see that this is true when we look at those who suffered a loss early in life. Those who had a traumatic event in childhood, such as abuse, an illness, or losing or being separated from a parent or parents, bear the marks of that trauma for the rest of their lives. The brain struggles to develop, the immune system flounders, and the body fails to become all that it could be, all because the body is trying to handle the stress that the child has encountered.

We see similar effects in adults too. The stress associated with grief can literally break your heart, causing a condition that makes it more difficult for your heart to function. Stress, when left untreated and unchecked, can cause your body to become less able to heal itself. As we hold in our pain, our muscles react, tensing up and knotting themselves together until it can become difficult to move. Pain and loss put a weight on us that can be too much to bear, and we so often go about our days as if we have already set it down.

But that is not what Jesus tells us to do here. Jesus tells us to mourn, because those who mourn are blessed. If Jesus sees our pain, we should too. Why should we mourn? Because those who mourn will be comforted.

I think many of us have experienced that comfort after a loss, when our family and friends and community and church come together and wrap us up in support. We get this beatitude intuitively because we know that when grief visits our doorstep and we cry out to those around us, we will be comforted. This is a great and good thing that we as members of the body of Christ try to do for each other, and it is a great and good grace when it happens in the world.

But what about when we mourn and are not comforted? What about the people around the world who mourn the loss of their loved ones because of war or famine or poverty? What about the people who mourn the loss of the lives they once had before disaster rolled into town? What about those who have suffered a tragedy that left a wound no amount of comfort could heal? How long are we to wait for comfort? How long does anyone have to live with this blessed mourning?

Thankfully, not forever. We might be blessed when we mourn now, but we have been promised that in whatever world comes after this one, there will be no more mourning. There will be no more pain. All things will be made new and every tear will be wiped away by the God who loved us too much to stay apart from us. This is the picture painted by the end of Revelation, when there is a new heaven and a new earth. I'm not one to spend time lingering on eschatological fantasies, but I think one of the most beautiful promises in the Bible is that the tears of grief that are beyond comfort in this world will be wiped away in the next. Jesus has promised us that. He has blessed us with it.

So, what do we take away from our beatitude for this week? Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted? Well, I think the first thing we have to remember is that we are blessed when we mourn. Life brings pain to each of us and we need to allow ourselves to feel it, to mourn all our loses whenever they come, to be open to mourning whenever it comes to us again. Blessed are those who mourn does not apply to only those living in the space between death and burial.

The second takeaway is those who mourn will be comforted, but that comfort may not come in the ways we expect. It may be the comfort of our loved ones or our community surrounding us. It may be the comfort of our faith, as the psalmist writes. It may be comfort that comes to us straight from God in this life, as Hagar experienced. Or it may be the comfort that can only be given when deep no longer has to call to deep but when we are reunited with the great Love of the universe which made us and longs to hold us, to wipe away each unconsoled tear from our eyes, and to offer us the comfort that will last for all eternity. Blessed are those who mourn, our Lord tells us, because they will be comforted. Amen. 

Using My Voice

At orientation for seminary, they had us go around the room and say our names, however much of our faith background we were comfortable sharing, and one thing we're sure we'll never do, like skydiving or holding a tarantula. I said that I would never be able to take a vow of silence. I don't do well without my voice.

And I've been having trouble finding it lately. See, every time I go to write, I end up distracted. Here, it looks something like this:

I want to describe for you the wonderful feeling of community that I had while singing the two encores at the homecoming concert, how for those ten minutes, I remembered what it was like to feel wrapped up in love, whole and holy, safe and they lost 1,500 migrant children last year.

The kid I nanny thinks my name is Go-go. He's trying to say Jo-jo, which is not my favorite of nicknames, but he's not great at the J sound yet and so Go-go it is. I marvel every time I smile at it, unaware that my heart could melt like this when they're taking babies from their mothers.

You know, I'm not sure that I really understood what the word "triggered" meant until I was watching Obama's immigration policy didn't welcome the stranger either but it's so much worse now. 

There are glorious summer days, you know. They're sandwiched in between the days of oppressive humidity and heat and some of these are asylum seekers. It's an international human right.

As I watched the blue dye wash out of my hair, I thought they have no plan for reuniting these families.

I woke up this morning and THEY ARE KEEPING CHILDREN IN CAGES.

I— these CHILDREN will be damaged for life. This is terrorism.

Now, listen, I know I need to be taking care of myself and starting today, I'm going to be doing just that, but the reason that we take care of ourselves is so we can be loud in times like these. Don't forget about these children just because it's not in the news this week. Don't imagine that the policy is better just because a toothless executive order was signed. Don't get distracted by whatever new scandal is popping up. 

I don't know how to solve all of our problems but I do know that ICE under this zero tolerance policy is functioning as a terrorist organization and we already have other immigration security in place. I do know that you should call your representative and your senators and tell them to defund and abolish ICE. Do it daily. This policy does not make us safer, kinder, or better. This is not the United States of America we want to be. Use your voice. 

Stay This Way

It is very important for me to continue to feel this way. 

At least, that's what I think, every single day of my life. 

I visualize my feelings as a house that I walk into, one that it would be rude to leave before I've had a proper visit. Sadness is a comfortable cottage where I can see and be seen, a place secluded from the world but with the clearest view I could ever imagine. I settle into the window seat and accept whatever drink I'm offered. I stay so long that I forget I have lived anywhere else. 

Eventually, though, I flit about to other places. Anger is a third-floor apartment right above the space that Guilt and Resentment share, a space of hard corners and no money for rugs so you cannot help but alert everyone to your presence through stamps and swears. Exhaustion rents out the basement suite and Loneliness has the top floor. You can get the key to the roof if you ask the super.

Contentment and Self-assurance always have a guestroom set up for me and bananas and coffee in the morning. They don't mind when I invite people over to sit on their wraparound front porch and put hours of use on their wooden porch swing with the comfortable creak. Their kitchen is huge, their dining room larger, and there is somehow always enough seating around the TV or the coffee table or anywhere you want to set up a game. I don't mind looking in the mirrors at their house. All the same, I'm always surprised to wake up there. 

There are others. Excitement has a townhouse whose walls are covered with bright colors and books. Happiness has the most comfortable pillows. Worry has an entire lake house, complete with a dock where Fear can tether its boat. Resilience keeps a garden outback and grows herbs in her kitchen. Everyone has music playing. 

I probably spend most of my time on the road between Sadness and Contentment, but wherever I go, I feel the need to take off my shoes and stay a while. This feeling, whatever it is, it's something real. It needs to be experienced, lived, not just visited or, worse, ignored. 

But there are places we don't need to linger in life. We are predisposed to it I guess, but there are homes that we were only meant to pass through. 

I'm finding that that's the trick. Don't eschew the company of your feelings, but be wary of taking up residence in any given place. Follow the hand-drawn map from Anger's building to Determination's house. Answer the phone when Excitement calls you up at Sadness'. Let Happiness take you by the hand, even if you can't stay long. 

Because this thing that we're doing, this living, it takes every bit of us. Our outrage and our sorrow and our joy and our love and everything in between and beyond. Feel everything. Be wonderfully, delightfully human. And then carry on doing the good works set out before you. 

Tired and Angry

I have been so angry.

I have been so exhausted.

I have been so exhausted that when I see posts from friends who talk about how tough this second year of seminary was but how we all made it through anyway, I just laugh at them. I laugh at them the way I laugh at the self-evaluation question that asks whether I feel prepared for the realistic demands of ministry. Sure. Whatever. I feel prepared. It can't be worse than this.

I mean, it can. I'm sure that being a full-time pastor will bring with it more stress than I feel right now, and more despair, and more complications. I'm sure that I'll feel pulled in ten thousand different directions and that it will sometimes be unmanageable and that I'll have to make decisions that seem unfair to everyone involved (because they are) and that there will be days I will never want to revisit again. I'm certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that working three jobs while taking a full load of classes and an internship while trying to maintain a new relationship, after having gone through the all the rigamarole of becoming a certified candidate, has in no way truly prepared me for the trials and travails of ministry. Ministry, I'm sure, will be overwhelming in ways I could never have imagined. If this past semester has felt like treading water in an ocean with the tide perpetually coming in, I'm sure that ministry will feel like a never-ending series of tsunamis. There's just no way I can be ready.

God, it makes me want to scream.

Contrary to the assumption built into the question of whether I feel prepared for the "realistic demands of ministry," I am not some sweet summer child who has never dealt with anything of import. I am not naïve, I am not unaware, and I am not self-absorbed. I am not a stranger to hard work, to complicated work, to delicate work. I have weathered this storm and I will weather others. Like most of the women I know, I learned how to endure long ago. I learned how to endure the world and I learned how to endure your inaccurate expectations of me, so you know what? You can step off.

But you know what drives me nuts? You know what sends me over the edge? It's not these suggestions that I can't handle what will be put in front of me. No, I can endure and I will endure and I will put up with all the challenges thrown my way and you can bet that I will be here shifting the world towards better as long as there is breath in my lungs, but the thing that knocks the breath out of me is when the people who should be standing strong by my side are the ones who I have to turn my efforts against.

I love Rudy Francisco. I'm a sucker for Button Poetry and spoken word in general and I know this about myself, but what I appreciate about Rudy Francisco is that his vulnerability happens for a reason. He is willing to name difficulties by the names we'd actually recognize and he is willing to pop off about things that matter, things that we should be angry about. 

More than one of my friends has said that they were warned about going to seminary because in seminary, "they take away your Jesus." Which is fine, I guess. I get it. We all misunderstand who God is, who Jesus really is. We forget that if Jesus showed up in America today, he'd for sure get stopped for a "random security screening" at the airport. The Son of the Heavenly Father came down to Earth and lived and died and rose again for us and for our salvation and a whole bunch of the people who claim to follow him likely wouldn't give him the time of day if they saw him on the street because Jesus, you see, was brown.

See, seminary didn't take my Jesus away from me. I am set on following this Arab Jewish carpenter rabbi from the backroads of Palestine. I'm just glad that the salvation he won extends to me. No, seminary didn't take my Jesus from me. It took my church.

Because the church I knew would never have doubted my ability to lead. The church I knew would not have questioned someone's call because of who they love. The church I knew didn't struggle with integration. The church I knew would have lived into its polity and its principles in the prophetic way. The church I knew could have sang In Christ There Is No East or West and They'll Know We Are Christians without a shred of cognitive dissonance. The church I knew was guided by the Holy Spirit who is Love.

And it exhausts me to have lost my church. It exhausts me to have lost my songs and my worship and my surest connection to God. There is death and new life in abundance in the world and the everlasting purgatory of the inbetween that this past year has been was electrified with it, but I have no idea how to ground it. All the electricity of new events has shocked me and then dissipated into the air. I have offered more hugs of condolences and congratulations than I care to count, sought out more hugs of comfort while in stasis than I care to admit. And all the while I have sought out every empty piano in every quiet room with a hymnal that I could find because God has been difficult to locate here in the inbetween and my spirit has noticed the absence.

It is tiring to not know where you belong.

It is enraging to realize that your home was taken over by someone else.

But I have found that the quietness of tomorrow offers you the chance to try again, to sweep clear the room and invite a new spirit in. I don't know how to fix our problems. I don't understand why faithfulness looks so different in so many different hands. But I can pray that the God of love will fill me and you with an everlasting Spirit so that we can dream dreams that are unheard of in this age, and I can pray for the Spirit of strength and patience to dwell deep in our hearts so that we endure until the day when the kingdom comes and the will of a good God is done on this earth as it is in heaven.

Until then, though, we have work to do.