Deliver Us

This is becoming far too routine, this jolt of anxiety which awakens me at 3 AM and renders my body unable to return to sleep.  There are numerous causes.  Some are personal, connected to my various physical vulnerabilities, or to ruminations over my failures of the previous day--the ways in which I have sinned by what I have "done and left undone" as the Book of Common Prayer puts it.  But mostly my mind swings between events like Brussels and Donald Trump.

Terrorist attacks now happen so often we have a template for them:  Insert name of city here, images of carnage and traumatized people there;  eyewitness accounts here, investigation updates there.  It seems only a matter of time before it is this country again.  And the terrorists will watch the agony with glee-- again. Will it be my city?  Will it be me?  And I am absolutely powerless to stop it.  All I can do is pray.  Which, God forgive me, feels second only to being able to do nothing.

"So. . . Does God embrace Donald Trump?" my sister asked after reading my last blog post.   It's a good question.  A very good question.  That God loves Donald Trump, I know.  But embrace him?  I cannot imagine.  Perhaps this speaks more of a failure of love and imagination on my part than it does about God, but while love may be unconditional, it seems to me embracing presupposes genuine sorrow and at the very least a sincere desire to repent; to turn around and change direction.  Even the prodigal son did that much.  I see nothing humble or penitential in Donald Trump.  What I see is an empty shell of a man utterly devoid of a core.  What I hear is God wailing in agony, "What has happened to my son?!"  Before God embraces him, I think God will put God's hands on Trump's shoulders and demand to be heard.  God will insist on an honest conversation which leads to confession.  And maybe repentance, if it is ever possible for Trump to turn around.

As it is, I think Trump has made himself a vessel for evil.  Evil is what Trump and the Brussels (and Paris, and 9/11) terrorists have in common.  I do not say that lightly. Evil is more than garden variety sin. Sin is what happens when ordinary people who do the best they can to care for and about themselves and other beings make mistakes; when well intentioned people make bad choices in difficult moments.  Evil is something else altogether.  It carries an air of deliberate malice.  It attempts to bring about the harm of another.  It enjoys watching others suffer.  New York Times columnist David Brooks describes Trump as someone who cares only about himself.  Commentator Rachel Maddow suggests Trump intentionally incites violence at his rallies.  If Brooks and Maddow are right, surely what they describe are elements of evil.  Ultimate diagnosis of evil is God's prerogative alone.   Yet we are called to do our best to discern it when it appears.  And respond somehow.

I'm not sure how.  Nothing I can think of seems anywhere near enough.  But a wise person once said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good [people] do nothing."  This post is my something.  My way of bearing witness and being counted, of providing concrete evidence that I am against this monstrous thing which Trump has unleashed among and within us.  This and the prayer, "Deliver us from evil."  In the hope that that prayer is far more than second only to doing nothing.

From This Place Called Lent

O God,

The arrogant racist bully who's running for the White House
says things we have thought more often than we'd like to admit.

Ordinary moments erupt suddenly into conflict,
and we blurt out things we would otherwise choose not to say.

Or we are silent when we should speak.

We have the best of intentions,
and we fail you miserably.

Yet you come to us
with open hands and a smile on your face.

What kind of a fool are you
that you embrace us again and again and again,
and give us another chance
one more time?

Tensions I Live With

A friend who reads this blog challenged me the other day:  "What would happen if you wrote something less structured--something that didn't make it seem like you've got it all together?"  I almost spat out the water I was drinking.  Me?  Have it all together?  Hardly!  I often wonder how people would respond if they could hear the prayers I think but do not say; the ones I keep between me and God.  There are probably a few I would keep from God if I could!  How many times have I bitten my tongue to keep from telling a caregiver or paratransit driver just how angry I am with them or exactly what I think of them?  And I do this not because I am particularly virtuous or saintly, but because I need them.  Because they hold my life, or at least a substantial piece of the quality of my life, in their hands.  And if they decide they do not like me, they can walk or drive away.  They can leave me half dressed or make the time they spend helping me get dressed miserable.  They can make it impossible for me to get somewhere I need or want to go, or make the trip to my destination even more of an endurance contest than it usually is.  Then there are the things I say to my body in the countless moments when it doesn't do something I want it to or move as fast as I want it to, words I say despite almost 58 years that tell me my expectations are beyond unrealistic and I should be use to this by now; despite all the spiritual people I've heard or read who insist our bodies are wonderful and we should love them.  None of whom have disabilities, incidentally.  I've tried and failed to do that.  Have it all together?  No.  Absolutely, unequivocally, no.

My friend would probably tell me I can stop there; that it's ok to write something that doesn't necessarily have a point.  But his suggestion makes me uncomfortable for several reasons.  I know there is value in the simple expression of feelings.  I know that dishonest writing, writing that pretends I am something other than human, is bad writing.  I also know that writing is a craft.  A craft by definition is something you attempt to shape consciously.  The only exception I know to this rule is journal writing, and while journal writing may be part of the crafting process, it is not an end in itself--at least not for anything I'm willing to share publicly.

That's the other tension I live with--the tension between the importance of being honest, even and perhaps especially about the stuff that makes it clear I am less than wonderful, and my right to--my need for--privacy.  Every artist, every human being, has that need. The fact that I have a disability makes it even more important that I recognize and honor it.  For most of my life, I have needed help with intimate things--bathing, dressing, even toileting.  The older I get, the more help I need with those things.  Able-bodied people do them privately.  I don't have that luxury.  If I try to do them by myself, they either won't get done or I will put my health at risk. One of the few places I can choose to be private is in my internal world, the world of what I think and how I feel.  As important as it is that I write honestly, as important as honesty is to my spiritual life, it is vitally important that I allow myself to keep some things private.  So while I will choose to share some parts of me I'm less than proud of, there are "not together" parts I will not share.

I'm not sure what the point of this reflection is, particularly for people who don't consider themselves artists or don't have a disability.  Which is why even though I think my friend is mostly wrong, I hope he's at least partially right.  And maybe sometimes the point you're making is hidden.  Or maybe sometimes the best you can do is hope that your readers will discover their own point.

Milagritos

Every time I'm in pain, I think about ashes.  I moved funny yesterday--twisted something, or leaned too much to one side.  So every couple of minutes a spasm of pain grips me.  It will go away in time, I think.  These things usually do.  For now, this is a "Just be" day.  So said the voice I know as the maternal God within me.  No expectations.  No need to accomplish anything.  Just breathe.  Yell when the pain hits.  Curse God, the world, and your body when you need to.  Surely this permission is grace. (Years ago, I was hospitalized for a procedure which caused excruciating pain.  My sister, who at the time was an agnostic, leaned over my bed and whispered, "Say anything to God that you need to." It remains the single best moment of "pastoral care" I have ever experienced.)  I'm surprised I'm writing, since it usually qualifies as an accomplishment when I do.  But this came unbidden, in the midst of a spasm.  I've learned to pay attention to such visitations, though they don't usually come with physical pain.  If anything, pain blocks them.  Perhaps this is a "milagrito."  Today, a package arrived in the mail.  From my sister, the pastoral care whisperer mentioned above--Two charms and a bright orange box with a flower painted on it. She bought them in Mexico.  "These are 'milagritos', " she wrote on a card.  Little miracles. I'm suppose to put them around an altar. I don't have an altar, but perhaps grace means I don't need one.  I got a milagrito anyway.  I'm writing while I'm in pain.

Physical pain brings me down to basics.  All my lofty thoughts and promises, complicated theologies, vanish.  I am plunged to my animal nature; connected to what I have in common with the rest of the created world--with plants and animals, insects and trees.  It's not a bad thing--to be reminded, once in a while.  We all seek relief from pain, and a part of us anyway will one day be ashes.

When I asked my Bible study group what they wanted to talk about this week, they quoted the verse, "From dust you came.  To dust you shall return." I don't want to remember that my body will be ashes.  I don't want to think about the fact that I will die.  I've thought of that more than enough since my mother died. But to be brought down low is not a bad thing.  To feel my companionship with animals and trees.  To think of them as friends; to imagine that they empathize, to feel a pull to empathize more with them. . .How would that change the way I live?  What gift would that bring to my world?  It might at least make me feel less alone in pain.  Small as that seems, it would be a gift.  It might even be a milagrito, a gift of grace.

 

Looking Toward Lent

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

                                            [Jesus, in Luke 4:16-19, reading from Isaiah 61:1-2]

Dear God,

As I prepare for Lent, let me first say thank you--
for anointing me, at my ordination, to proclaim release, forgiveness, and your favor
to the sons and daughters whom you so love.

And let me apologize--
for all the times I have failed to proclaim, and especially to live, that good news.
There have been far too many.

I am anointed and blind,
anointed and broken,
anointed and captive,
in so many ways.

I need to hear
the good news I proclaim.

Lord, I live
among so much brokenness;
among people who have been
forgotten and betrayed,
who are hurting and angry,
who feel as if
they are imprisoned.

And they too
have been anointed.
They proclaim good news,
They forgive and release,
They live as your flawed and loving
daughters and sons.


Enfold us God,
for we are bound together--
needed and needing,
anointed and flawed,
healing and broken
in this your world.
                                  

Dropping Another Stone

Yesterday was a successful day.  I successfully avoided the two things I was suppose to do: exercising and writing.  Instead, I watched the movie, He Named Me Malala.  It's the story of the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, who openly defied the Taliban's policy against educating girls.  They shot her in the head.  She almost died. 

For most of my life, I've admired Martin Luther King, a man who did die for what he believed in.  As a Christian, I follow one who suffered an agonizing death because he could not stop challenging injustice and living a life which proclaimed, in word and deed, the inestimable value of those whom society  tried its best to pretend did not exist, or at the very least did not matter.  That same man declared that the greatest love any person could have was to lay down one's  life for one's friend.  He was very clear that everyone was God's, and therefore his, friend.  So if I follow Christ, I'm suppose to be willing to die for what I believe in; for any and all of God's children.  Just how willing am I ?

What is it that makes someone able to die for what they believe in?  What is it that made Martin Luther King able to march through Montgomery, through Birmingham, through Memphis, knowing only too well that those steps could cost him his life?  God?  But his God is my God.  God is just as present with me as God was with Martin Luther King, and. . .King lived the life of an early to mid-twentieth century Black man.  In far too many ways, it was a brutal, dehumanizing life.  King also had the opportunity to think deeply about the meaning and cost of discipleship.  If those realities to some degree explain a man's willingness to face death, what on earth explains the willingness of a child, of a teenager, of Malala?  Is whatever explains that in me?
 
How willing am I to lay down my life?  Not very.  Do I have what Malala has?  No.  Years ago, I participated with a disability rights group in a protest.  My biggest worry was that I would get arrested, so I did my best to make damn sure I didn't.  When a friend who was willing to get arrested asked me to guard the door he was blocking while he went to the restroom, I did as he asked, but I was scared to death.  If it was that hard for me to risk arrest, I doubt I would risk my life.  And that's the problem with admiring Martin Luther King and Malala, let alone with trying to live as a disciple of Christ: I often feel like I failed.

Martin Luther King led a bus boycott when he was twenty-five.  When I was twenty-five, I graduated from college.  It pales by comparison.  And although I know the comparison is unfair, I still do it .   Every time I do it I wonder, What have I done with my life?  When I was Malala's age, I was an American teenager absorbed in adolescent angst.  It would never have occurred to me to risk a huge sacrifice for the sake of other people.  Is that ok?  If I admire and try to follow extraordinary people, is it ok that I am in so many ways ordinary?

Today was also a successful day, more or less.  I successfully avoided exercising again, and almost avoided writing.  This time my method of avoidance was Carrie Newcomer.  A folk singer grounded in a deep and rich sense of the sacred, she sang the Word of God to me--Not out of the Bible, but out of ordinary life:

So today I'll drop stones into the river,
And the current takes them out into forever,
And the truth is,
Most of us will never know
Where our best intentions go.
Still I'll drop another stone.
 
I'm not Martin or Malala.  I'm Mary.  I write blog entries and do a Bible study for ordinary people I love and care about who love and care about me. I know some people who read what I post, and each of the four or five people who sit with me and ponder questions about God and life every Monday.  But the truth is, in a very real sense, I have no idea where my best intentions go--how they mix and mesh --or don't mix and mesh--with what's inside you.  I can't determine outcomes or entirely control their impact.  All I can do is drop stones into the river. . .

So I'm dropping another stone.

Mangers, Christmas Parties, and the Energy of God

We had our Christmas party last week--"We" being the residents and staff who live and work in the place I call home.  I am not much for parties.  Introvert that I am, I prefer being alone.  But my power chair had been broken for six weeks (I would have written about that, but it was basically  a repeat of the "My chair needs a new battery" post I wrote not long enough ago, and "ditto" doesn't count as writing). Life in my manual chair was less than fun. Even I was tired of sitting in my apartment.  I went to the party.

Someone had hired a band for the occasion--a perfectly decent band I suppose, but in a space as small as our dining hall, their amplifiers and mics turned the music into a wall of sound--a wall I felt like I had just crashed into. Conversation was impossible.  A friend pushed me to a table.  It was sprinkled with candy--Hershey's kisses, mints, chocolate Santas.   Miraculously, I didn't want any.  The band played; I twiddled my thumbs, literally. I'll stay for thirty minutes, I promised no one in particular.  Then I looked up, and saw Sasha.

She was dancing.  I mean really dancing.  She moved like Elvis.  I swear each hip wiggled independently.  I stared at her.  I broke into a smile.  I think I actually laughed. Almost involuntarily, my hand began to tap on the arm of my chair. I was keeping time with the music, which had apparently stopped being a wall.  Speaking of Elvis, Santa could dance too!  The head of our maintenance department, whose name really is Elvis, was Santa this year, and he and Sasha made quite a pair!  I looked around the room.  People got out of their chairs and joined the dance. Our executive director was taking pictures.  She and the rest of the staff were laughing with each other, and with us.  This was worth coming for, I thought, and this is God.

The pure, unadulterated joy; the energy that moved through the room, that moved my hand to tap and my lips into a smile--that is the God my religion sings of, who delights in surprising us, who loves to show up in unexpected places, like mangers and dining halls, and even grumpy people who don't like parties.  In life's best moments, that God fills us to the brim with his--or her--exuberance, extravagance, and generosity, which then spills out as loud music, joyous dancing, and occasionally, a run-on sentence or two!

May your new year and mine be filled with that God.