Love and Roses

Traffic doesn't move any faster because you're grieving.

On the day when you found it difficult to get out of bed, difficult to convince yourself that it would be better for everyone for you were at work and chapel and class, the traffic lights will still turn red at inconvenient times. On the day when you had to remind yourself that when your body is still, your spirit is still, your mind is still, and that if you stay here, you will only end up immersed in thoughts that are not good for you, the drivers will still make unnecessary lane changes without signaling. On the day when you just needed to catch a break because things are hard enough as it is, you will instead get caught between a bus and someone trying to make an illegal left-hand turn and you will end up jogging into work with a cloud of aggravation around you and a soreness in your throat from all of the screaming you did at the beltway, at the universe, at your feelings.

The weather won't change because you're grieving.

You might hate clomping around in boots and fumbling with scarves and digging gloves out of bags and purses and corners of car seats, but the temperature will not rise just because it would make things easier for you. Your skin will continue to crack in the dryness and you will forget your lotion and your chapstick at home and you will sit with the uncomfortable weight of winter clothes in the uncomfortable greyness of a bland winter day and stare uncomfortably at the deadness of winter around you because nothing has told the bulbs it's time to bloom yet. In all likelihood, the forecast will promise snow and deliver freezing rain instead, all the misery without any of the beauty.

The world won't stop because you're grieving.

On the morning that comes after the night of poor sleep brought to you by the feelings death has swirled up in you, the guilt and anger and fear and disbelief and lostness, there will still be news about stocks and politics and systematic injustice. There will be meals cooked and meals consumed, somewhere around the world. There will be fights and arguments and love and agreements and ideas and doubts and laughter and tears and boredom and apathy and immense amounts of inertia and mind-boggling amounts of passion. There will be collections for flowers, maybe, or donations to organizations, and cards sent and support offered, and hugs and phone calls and messages, and we will do all of these things because we're alive. We're still alive. Today, this day, the world didn't stop for us, for any of us who are still here, not yet.

It has been beautiful to see the way my Sigma Alpha Iota sisters have come together to remember the sister we've lost. I know that many of us are still in shock over how such a genuinely beautiful person could be fine on Friday and gone on Monday, but it has been heartwarming to see the remembrances and words of kindness and comfort which have so quickly turned into concrete actions. I know facebook is much, and rightly, maligned, but it was a godsend yesterday, connecting those of us who have gone so many different places in the years since graduation. It was a deeply lovely thing to see all the comments and love poured out to each other and in support of another sister in her loss and grief. In these moments of sharing, we offer a testimony to the love that binds us now and promise of the love that we'll bring to each other when tragedy comes for any of us. Take a breath. Take a moment. Be kind. Receive kindness in return. Be loved.

Remember, love didn't stop because we're grieving.

Taking a Break

In general, I want to be better at things.

Actually, that's a lie.

I want to be naturally gifted at everything I do and never have to put in the effort of practicing in order to gain skills or a higher level of competency. 

But I've been told that that's not how anything works, and so, in general, I'm willing to practice and try and try again. The wonderful thing about keeping up a regular blog is that I get plenty of practice at writing. The terrible thing about keeping up a regular blog is that I get plenty of practice at writing in the same style and with the same level of effort. I'm comfortable and conversational and I'm not exactly sure that that's what I need to be practicing. I've entrenched some habits that I've found to be a little problematic. 

Since I know that about myself, I'm going to take some time away from the blog, do some evaluating, and hopefully come back with better posts that are less "let me dump all my feelings on the internet for strangers to see" and more "let me process my feelings in a way that will hopefully allow strangers on the internet to have more empathy for others." I want to practice being more thoughtful and less reactionary and I need some space to figure out how I want to do that.

Besides, last semester was a whirlwind and I could use a little bit of breathing room. I want to stare out a couple of windows and let my mind wander for a couple of hours each week instead of slamming my fingers against the keyboard, trying to make sense of things that I should probably just sit with. It'll be good for me. 

And some space will probably be good for you too. Take the fifteen minutes each Wednesday that you might have otherwise used to read through what I write and do a little bit of staring and thinking of your own, away from the internet. Here's hoping it's a restorative break for us all. 

New Year

2017 was a whirlwind.

So much happened that my person journal is broken up into two pieces, one that starts in January and one that starts at the end of June, because I felt that 400 single-spaced pages was a bit much for a document. So much happened that, as friends recount stories, I say, “Oh, yeah, that happened this year!” So much has happened that I have multiple print calendars and planners to reference and I still have problems processing everything I did this year. It’s worse than the year I spent less than half of the days sleeping in my own bed.

2017 was breathless.

This entire year was like that time in the fourth grade that I fell off the landing of the playground at church, not the old metal one, but the new wooden one, before they got the new new plastic one. I was gonna slide down the fireman’s pole, this thing that I’d been scared of since I first saw it, and I reached out and I grabbed hold and I was going to slide and then suddenly I wasn’t. The sky appeared and started rushing away from me and the ground came out of nowhere and pushed the air from my lungs and every time I tried to fill them again, a thousand knives stabbed me from the inside and the outside, leaving me wanting to scream but without the air I needed to, which was maybe the most frightening thing of all. 2016 was the fall, 2017 was hitting the mulch and the subsequent fight for oxygen.

2017 was interminable.

They say that as you get older, the years start to rush by. I don’t know who “they” are, but my twenties have been some of the longest years of my life and that doesn’t really seem to be letting up.  This year dragged on. It was a whirlwind, it was breathless, and it kept on going. 2017 was like being trapped in a perpetual hurricane. No, 2017 was like treading water in the ocean with the tide forever coming in. No, 2017 was a never-ending dust storm. Nothing ever settled long enough for me to get my bearings and I started to think that the only thing I had ever been was dusty.

All of this is, of course, slightly dramatic. On a local level, it was like most other years. 2017 was a mixture of good and bad, with fewer personal tragedies than usual, I guess. I settled into a comfortable chaos sometime around September and while I’m glad 2018 looks to be less busy, I don’t regret how full my life was. I am uneasy about how my life intersects with the larger world, but I think I’ll be spending some time unpacking this year for a while yet.

That’s why I made everyone else talk in our year-end video on the vlog.

I’m not really sure what I want to leave in 2017. I’m not sure what I want to take into 2018. I know 2018 is a few days old already, but you have the option every day of setting something down and not picking it back up. I’ve got time. I want to leave insecurity, I guess, and exhausting myself, but I don’t want to carry pure bravado and desperate self-preservation in their place. I want to leave bad thoughts behind and take good thoughts with me. I want to be able to tell the good thoughts from the bad. I want to want the right things. I want to know what it is I should want.

In the end, all metaphors and constructs fail us and so maybe this was never going to be a method of processing that was going to work for me. Or maybe this year was dense and I need to do more work than I thought. Either way, I think I can say, along with most other people, that I’m glad 2018 is here. I’ll read more books and drink more water and exercise more often and sleep better and do my best not to obsess over the things that 2017 wouldn’t let me set down.

That seems reasonable. 

Winning

You will not always win. 

You are a wonderful, wondrous person, fully worthy of love and affection and kindness, and you will not always win. 

It's important that you know that both of these things are true. You are beloved simply because you are, loved with the deep love that spills from the foundations of everything, but the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. No matter how good or bad you think you are, no matter what you think you've earned or deserve, this world will be what it is. It is full of joy and wonder and delight and hatred and pettiness and deep sadness and you do not get to choose which visits you and when. You are beautiful and you shine with the light of the cosmos and you will not always win. 

Some days, some years, it will be the world that wins. Maybe the money won't be there. Maybe the support won't show up. Maybe everything that can go wrong does go wrong, all at the same time, and there is no way on earth to fix it. It is a fact that all those big sweeping events and systems and powers that we pretend to understand and control can and will take and take and take from you. Sometimes the world will knock you flat and leave you empty. 

Some days, some seasons, it'll be the worst parts of you that win. Those sneaky little voices that sleep curled up in the back corners of your mind will wake up when the alarm clocks of stress and self-doubt ring and they will not be silenced even after the alarms are off. They will tell you horrible lies and exaggerations and you'll listen to them, because you know they've always been a part of you and maybe that means they're right. Their noises will pull you down, drag you to your bed, lash you to the couch, and you will not be able to get your fingers to the knots to let yourself free. 

Some days, many days, it'll be other people that win, and win at your expense. Those unmanageable systems are set up and maintained by people whose interest does not extend to your wellbeing. Sure, other humans are capable of everyday unkindness, dozens of little insults and injuries that peck at your soul like a flock of so many hateful little black birds, but we all know our problems are bigger than that. Sometimes the people in charge, and the people influencing the people in charge, will display their apathy for your existence in astounding ways and you will be left breathless and insecure. 

But none of this changes anything about you. You are unique. You are glorious. You are a miracle, just by the very fact that you exist. When you lose, when you're hurt, when your strength fails and your hope falters and the world takes advantage of that, you still remain this awesome thing, this amazing combination of brains and body and spirit and being. No matter what the world visits on you, you are still marvelous. 

And so is everyone else. 

In this new year, let's act like that's true. 

Falling

The first time I fell down the stairs at work, there was a moment of absolute freedom. It happened right after the sole of my right shoe failed to lift off the step, refusing to follow the rest of my body downward. Its stutter, rubber on rubber unwilling to move, caused my body to twist in a way it hadn't before and that I hope will never happen again. During that twist, I felt a pop in my lower back. That pop was the freedom, a release of years of tension as a problematic muscle finally gave up its struggle to hold the weight around it and tore. The two seconds before I hit the ground were memorably peaceful. 

Of course, on the ground, not being able to move my legs because of the searing pain that exploded in my back every time I tried to use that muscle, that peace was replaced by panic. Well, occasional waves of panic that I talked myself out of. "Okay okay okay," I said to myself and to the empty back staircase to the basement on which I had fallen. "You can lay here for ten more minutes but then we've got to get up and go home." I pictured myself driving back with my left foot on the pedals, taking back roads so as to avoid causing danger to other drivers, and collapsing on my mattress with a heating pad and some ibuprofen. I didn't worry that no one would find me and I honestly didn't really worry about my responsibilities for that day--my walkie had flown out of my hand in the fall, as had my phone, so I couldn't tell if my absence was missed, but summer camp was a well-oiled machine with plenty of replacement parts. It would go on without me. What I needed to do was to summon the grit to stand up and maybe find someone to drive me home. 

I told the IT guy who found me, laying flat on my back with my legs at an awkward angle, that I would be fine in a few minutes, and if he could tell my boss where I was, that'd be great, since I couldn't reach my walkie. I think I actually asked him if he had enough room to walk by or if he needed me to move, though that was more of a courtesy than anything else. I most certainly could not have moved. Luckily, he, and the subsequent six staff members who waited with me for the ambulance to arrive, realized that I was probably in shock and that there was the potential for some spinal damage and that I couldn't just go home with this kind of injury. They all winced when I screamed as the EMT moved my legs and again when the pair of them got me onto the stretcher. 

My boss went with me to the ER and read to me as we waited for me to be seen. Just a note: if possible, don't suffer a catastrophic injury on a Monday. Everyone who doesn't want to pay the weekend fees saves up their pain for business hours, so the line for morphine and an x-ray was long on that afternoon. The line was long enough that we got through several chapters of Game of Thrones (a reading choice which not my best, not my worst for this particular situation) and through a phone call to my parents in which I again dropped my phone and started screaming in pain. My mother had asked if I wanted them to come up, and it suddenly didn't matter that I was a strong, independent twenty-two-year-old with her own job and her own insurance and her own apartment two and a half hours from her parents. It was my first time in an ER and I wanted my mommy. I started to cry and I started to stop myself from crying, but that required me to use the very muscle that had brought me to this place and I dropped the phone in my pain. My boss picked it up and explained what was happening to my mom. My parents were there the next day. 

After the morphine, the doctors figured out that it was just a muscle tear and my friend Pamela came and got me. We picked up the pain med prescription and went home. Now, I have spent years of my life dealing with parents in chronic pain, so I know that in situations like these, you have to stay ahead of the pain and not wait until it hurts to take the next round of pills. I did not set an alarm, though, and so the worst part of this ordeal was probably after the morphine wore off and before the prednisone kicked in, when I laid on my mattress on the floor of my first post-college apartment in the worst pain of my life, trying and failing to stifle moans because I couldn't suck it up anymore. Pamela, who spent the night with me trying to sleep on the couch, still tells me that she remembers what it sounded like to hear me in pain, both of us unable to do anything more to help me. 

There's more to this story. I could talk about how I had to have a traumatic injury before I let anyone help me, or about how vulnerable missing a week of work made me as an intern and temporary employee. I could talk about how this fall almost cost me my next job. I could talk about the ambulance bill, the physical therapy, or the weird detached bit of my spine that's floating around inside my body and is apparently fine. It's all there, avenues to be explored as I think about the couple seconds that were oddly formative in my life. 

My mind flashed through this story and its extraneous bits as I fell down the stairs for the second time at work on Monday, the sole of my right shoe again failing to move, rubber stuck on stone. It was just skinned knees and a bruised shoulder, so I could just pick myself up after a few minutes with a few, "You're okay, you're okay"s, whispered to myself in the same tone I use for the kid I nanny when he tumbles down in his learning attempts at walking. It was an hour or so before my DCOM meeting to get my candidacy for ministry approved, so I'm lucky that I was just shaken and not actually injured this time. Candidacy is apparently difficult to reschedule. 

The fall made me think, though. I've spent the past year and a half learning to live in my body. Or, better, learning to love and listen to my body, learning how my mind cares for and challenges my body and learning how my body can help heal my mind and keep it accountable for my wellbeing. Take, for example, the hug from a friend that taught me what a good hug could be; the half-marathon training and running that showed me what I could really do; hours of holding and carrying and rocking the part-time baby in my life to sleep, which somehow conspires to use more strength and affection than I knew I had; a class on doing liturgy that had me thinking about my shoulders and my feet and my hands and my face as I pray and sing and lead and be. In these and other ways, thinking about my body has been inescapable. 

Life has brought me into my body over the past months. And the scary thing is, I like it here. I like the newfound awareness in my stretching in the morning. I like being able to identify the tension in my shoulders and neck instead of assuming that they had always been one gigantic knot of stress. I like letting my body feel things. I think about how my body felt free for a few seconds as my muscle tore five years ago and I wonder at all the years before that led to that feeling of bliss in detachment. I don't want that anymore. I want to be here, even with the pain. It is frightening to have to so much to lose. 

Here's the other thing about getting to know my body: it makes me incapable of not caring about what happens to yours, no matter who that "you" is. Caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, the sick, the imprisoned, wherever you are and however I can, is a direct consequence of knowing my body and what I need to live in it. The things I consume, the things I throw away, how I regard people with bodies different and more vulnerable than mine, my perspective on all of these things shifts when I live in my body and I think about others in theirs. We are such fragile, precious things, with only each other for help. What we do to each other matters immensely.

Maybe that's why Jesus came into all our fragility, the Word of God shrunk into the form of a precious baby. Being God, he knew that one day his story would reach across the centuries to people who had forgotten their bodies and ignored their pain and, in so doing, forgotten and ignored those around them. He knew that it would speak to the people who, having fallen or having been pushed to the ground, needed to get back up again. He knew it would be with all of them, challenging and comforting. He knows us. He knows what we need.

We never get back up alone. 

Sheep and Goats

Gather around. Let me tell you a story. 

You see, when the Son of Man (that's Jesus) comes in all his glory (to this mess of despair that we've made of the planet), and all the angels with him (and that's the scary kind of angels, you know, the ones with flaming swords and like eight heads and eyes just, like, everywhere, not the cute ones with, like, blonde curls and ish), then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 

All the nations (like, everyone, everywhere, without exception) will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Do you have the mental image in place? Jesus, throne, scary angels, and literally everyone else in the world, and he's going to split everyone up, like apparently shepherds used to do. Sheep on the right, goats on the left. Not literal sheep and goats. That's just an image. He's going to split the people up and put some on the right and some on the left. His right and left, not ours. We there? Perfect. 

So then the king (also Jesus, the Son of Man, from before) will say to those at his right hand (the sheep, remember?), "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

See, that's how you get to be a metaphorical sheep, the people on the right hand, the ones that go on to the good place prepared since before the Earth began: you feed the hungry and you give water to the thirsty and you welcome strangers and you give clothes to those who need them and you take care of the sick and you visit those in prison. These are the things that you do. 

But see, the metaphorical sheep are a little confused, because they ask him, "Lord (Jesus again), when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?" 

See, they didn't understand what they were doing when they were feeding and watering and welcoming and clothing and caring and visiting. They didn't know that in the way they were living their life, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. So Jesus breaks it down. He says, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." 

And now he turns to the rest of the people, the goats, those at his left hand, and he says, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (so, you know, hell); for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."

So what Jesus and all his scary righteous angels is saying here is that the goats Jesus are going to hell. So the goats panic. They start making a case for themselves. "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?" Jesus, if I had seen you, I certainly wouldn't have treated you like that. I know that you are worthy of my attention and care. You're Jesus. The Lord. The King. I know how to treat people in positions of power and authority and I unquestionably wouldn't have ignored your needs. Here. Have a tax break. 

Jesus is having none of this. He says to the goats, "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." 

So, you know, when you let food assistance programs for low-income children expire, or when you do not fix drinking water crises, or when you turn away refugees and immigrants, or when you let people sleep out on the streets, or when you limit access to medical care, or when you turn a blind eye to overcrowded prisons and mass incarceration, or worse, profit off of it, you go to hell. 

Which is what happens. The goats go away to eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.

Now, what do we take away from this story?

Because we do treat it like a story, like some over-the-top thing Jesus said that we get to gloss past because we don't really believe in hell anymore. We don't believe in angels and the eschaton, so Jesus is just telling us that we should be nice to people, but, like, on an individual level, because we don't think that the nations are actually going to be brought before the throne. We don't think we're going to be judged on the systems we create and participate in.

But if you visit the poor and sick, or even the semi-rich and sick, how can you not want to tear apart the heath care system and fix it? If you visit the imprisoned, how can you not want to reform the prison system and the justice system? When you see the hungry and those that die from lack of water to drink, how is it that you can go back to your homes and sleep in comfort? 

And I think that's part of the point. How can we, as people who ignore the deep pain of the world, pretend to have hearts that could abide being in the presence of the living God? Of course we would be sent away from the throne. We couldn't stand it. When we see what actual goodness looks like, our apathy toward those who suffer would infinitely torment us. Our regret and shame would tear us into pieces. When we really understand the pain our selfishness causes and the pain we could have stopped if we ever looked outside of ourselves, our only response will be to cry and grind our teeth. Being measured and found wanting? That's hell to me. Knowing I caused another pain and that my heart was so hardened that I didn't even care? That's torture. That's eternal punishment. I think we can take Jesus at his word on this one.

So go. Be sheep. Be the righteous one who feeds the stranger on the street and the hungry in your community. Be the righteous one who fights for housing programs and potable water initiatives and health care and criminal justice reform. Meet needs. Do not allow injustice to stand in your presence. This is more than enough work for a lifetime, but we have to do it.

It's the work that Jesus tells us to do.

Normal

In the months leading up to and the months after the election, we reminded ourselves that this is not normal. This was not politics as usual, this was not governance as usual, this was not the behavior we expected from those seeking office and those in office. It was important, we told ourselves, to remember that this was not how things were supposed to be. We couldn't settle in and let this become our new normal. I remember reading several very earnest thinkpieces about this. A whole bunch of tweets, too. 

It's an open question, I guess, as to whether we actually settled into a new normal or not. Depends on your definition of normal. Normal is what you're used to, maybe, and eventually what you're used to becomes what you expect and what you expect becomes what you think is right. The ever-present veneer of stress that's coated everything from the last year maybe means that low levels of panic are the new normal, but I guess that's up for debate. It's not like it hasn't been a stressful year in my individual life, in its own small way, and it's hard to separate the subjective from the objective, or the shared subjective from the individual subjective. But regardless, we're all worn down, I think, and rightly so. If you're not, you're not paying attention. 

These past few weeks have given us a powerful example of that. If you think our nationwide conversation around sexual assault is telling us something new, you haven't been paying attention. If you think it's an anomaly, you've been living in a different world from everyone else. Those with power have always abused that power, whether it's the physical power to force themselves on someone or the social power to make someone do something they don't want to do and then keep quiet about it. Talking about sexual assault forces us to see vulnerability in myriad forms and confronts us with all the ways in which we have not protected or cared for the vulnerable. 

Advent is a time of repentance, though goodness knows we never think about it like that. It's a time of confronting what we've allowed to become normal, to measure our lives, our communities, our societies against the standards brought to us by the prophets and by Mary and, eventually, by Jesus. We have settled into either presumption or despair, asserting that this is the best we can do or that this is just the way things are, but that is not what the prophets tell us. The prophets scream that this is not normal. This is not the way that things should be. This, our world, our lives, these things are not right. They are not just. They are not love.

And so we must repent. We must turn away from these things that should not be and turn toward the vision of things as they will be. The mighty are sent away empty because they have already received their reward and the vulnerable are cared for and kept safe. The world at war because of pride and conceit will become the world at peace, where weapons are changed in shape from things that end life to things that tend it. The unfixable mess of a world that we have made will be redeemed into the world as it should be, where an end to tears comes not from hardness of heart but from healing. The new normal of the kingdom of heaven will be a beautiful rest compared to the normal built from the turbulent norms we've let accumulate here. 

So this Advent, as 2017 drags us on through its final month, let's seek a new normal. Let's tear down the norms inside of us that we've accepted in our presumption or despair and rebuild our expectations with justice in mind. Let's prepare ourselves for the night when we, with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and all of the least of these gather around a manger and see a normal that we never could have expected: all the unjust powers of this world brought to their knees by a vulnerable little baby asleep in the hay. 

Oh, Jesus. 

Get here soon.