The Offering. (A poem about our words being an offering)

I have always known that words have power
to disappoint and even threaten.
They so often offend and injure, colliding with others
perceptions

of me,
of themselves,
of life together in this messy place.

And words heal,
offered as a rich confession that brings one to the edge of truth
and back again to our plain old lives.
Sometimes it’s a sweet and holy thing,
words. The offering.

If I didn’t choose to put pen to paper, finger to keyboard?
What if, what then? If I didn’t fight to get
this very moment down through distractions, through issues and problems of my day.
What if I stopped fighting for these words?
Driving along, I feel that anxious gnawing in my stomach, again.
I am full of self-loathing, doubt and fear. I hate this weakness, but I am questioning every word put down,
wondering how and why.
Why try so hard?
But then I know.

I would write even if no one tells me I’m good.
Then it’s said to me: “you’re good” and I don’t believe. Or I wonder,
is this enough?
These thoughts, do they change
anything
anyone
for
the
better?
This not merely about purpose.
It’s not simply about being good or even great at this craft.

I don’t know why I write, except that I was made for this.
Each thought, scratched out on a piece of tattered envelope is an offering.
Each confession a piece of me. My flesh, my hopes, my mind
are all there on the page. I write.
This is what I was made to do.
And I will have to leave the rest up you.

———————————————

Something else I wrote on the negative power of our words, Hatred’s Sweet Kiss.

Today I Said No

Today I said no.

I said no to something that might have been sweet and good, something that I would enjoy and that would make me feel good about myself – helping other people. It was something that was even noble. Can I be honest and tell you that I need some things to do that make me feel good about myself? The recent Stations of the Cross exhibit, which I was a part of, was profound for me in that it was a thing that I did, for me.

Today I said no.

No because there are other good things, needs, jobs for me to do. And I have to be careful as an addict, to not feed that need to help others.

Things are going on in my family, screaming out to me, which need resolution and clarity and my time. My children are of the age that they need my daily prayer, daily. My attention, fully. My love and affirmations, honestly. This takes the kind of attention that I haven’t had for them as of yet. My widowed mother living alone needs more of my attention, care and to be blunt she needs errands accomplished. My sisters each deserve my love and attention in a way that I haven’t ever had the courage to give them. My marriage isn’t perfect; it has holes that need patching even though, after eighteen years together, we know it’s for life. We’re in the boat together but we’ve sprung a few leaks. No one’s sinking but we deserve to give the time that a good marriage requires.

So, today I said no – no to something good. So that I could say yes to being a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife and more than anything I said yes to be a writer.

Today I said yes.

In the Space of Days I Grew Up

In the space of days I grew up. Not wise in years or experience, but still inevitably I became an adult this week.

I am not ready for this next stage of life but then, that’s how life works doesn’t it? Was it John Lennon who quipped that “Life happens while we are making other plans?” Seriously true.

When I was a child, I was often hiding — afraid. More often than not habitually worried and anxious about my father and mother, each for different reasons. It was the fights — the yelling, the meanness, and then Dad’s long absences which even as we savored them I feared what they meant.

And when he returned, I hid. I was attempting to be invisible. I think I was underdeveloped emotionally, for as I went numb to life I lost many, many years of my life that I cannot remember. Try as I might, and I do try so very hard, I cannot recall the early years in Papua New Guinea, then California, most of high school in Texas, and only a small amount of college years. All those years I lived with my parents. And in the years post college what I remember is still all intertwined with my parents dysfunctional marriage and relationships. My life was so tangled up with my parent’s happiness and my father’s happiness and success that even as they travelled all over the world doing “God’s work” I returned back home to them over and over again.

I worked for my father. I attached myself to his coat strings of always striving and never being satisfied. I had no way of knowing at the time, but all I wanted was to know him. To gain his impossible approval would have been a cherry on top of the Sundae of simply knowing my father and finally understanding why he was so angry.

But I never learned why he raged. He died without really telling me, except to say that his anger was “righteous” and to the end he justified it. Even as I told him the day before his brain surgery that he had hurt me, that he had wrecked me. I told him, out loud to his face that I was damaged and he said he always thought his was a righteous anger. For most of my life I doubted God’s existence because he didn’t heal my father – not to heal the brain tumors which I never asked for and never expected, but I prayed for my father to be healed of his raging anger that he took out on my mother for forty+ years and on his four daughters all of our lives, as well as on many of his employees and other innocent people.

Oh, for most of my life I was asleep, numb, and afraid to breathe. Stomach aches of stress we remembered this week as we recounted how each of us daughters live with various ailments from having ulcerous stomachs, frequent headaches, addictions including alcohol, the raging, and for me at least, I have ongoing anxiety, cataclysmic fear and depression.

In the space of days, this week I grew up as I realized that my father is gone these nine years and my mother is old. There is no one else to take care of her and she has no plan. How could he have left her with no plan? Because he didn’t ever believe he would die — stupid man. And so, we the daughters who are still fraught with the consequences (of him) will become the adults who care for her. This is right. This can be done.

But in some ways I am angry. Just as I have begun to wake up, to see that my life was half-lived, full of fear and frequently put on hold pain, even as this is so, I must once again become the care giver, in the space of days. I must grow up and forget the past which I cannot remember and step bravely into the future.

I must grow up.

Family in Town (a poem about family, loss, addiction, and change)

Family in town and from out of town
sometimes means heavy remembering,
and just a little trying to forget though you are
no longer disappearing.

Into the bottle.

Family in town means many goings-on,
even when you’re sick and tired. It means
running out of money. It means trying hard to make everyone
happy. Trying hard to just be.

Happy.

Family in town
means someone drinking too much, and
everyone else acting like it’s not true.
Your triggers activated, but sticking to the
almost- four- years- sober- kind -of- truth.

Family in town means laughing, lots of gut busting laughter,
Eating too many desserts, and wondering if you’re
forgetting something important.

Family in town, you remember and forget.

People gone. People here.

You don’t get to choose
Family in town.

Choking

You choke on the words.
You hurt me.

Three simple words,
a confrontation that won’t come.
The fear-scab
comes off the child-grown-up-into-woman wound.
The mutilation, scarred over long enough
that you had actually forgotten.
Again.
Impossible.

You needed to forget.
Until
mother-sister-blood
family rips it off again.
Their indifference,
your insignificance,
that’s what you need to forget
their command
over you.

They are the only ones
Wielding the control, able to make
you choke on the words.
You hurt me.

They don’t read.
They don’t come.
They don’t care.

You choke on the words
You hurt me.

Good People (those that toil, so that others can create)

There are people,

good people who toil every day

at work they don’t love and some

days simply endure.

Why do these people, good people do that?

They’re partnered with a creative soul;

a dreamer, someone

who scribbles words one after another, collected into pages

of an idea that is yet to come;

that hears a different drum beat and dance;

who changes others’ trajectory through an image or a song;

who observes life for its beauty and complexity;

who follows an uncomfortable path into the unknown.

These people, good people do

their everyday work because they love a dreamer.

Here’s to the good people whose love’s labor

is a gift to us all.

For Tom and Carol and the other good people.

Jesus, Fully Human, Fully God.

JESUS IS HUMAN. JESUS IS GOD.

(edited for theological accuracy!)

It was important for me to learn that Jesus was fully human in every way, even though he is also the Son of God.

Jesus hungered. He grew weary after a long dusty walk or a difficult day. He prayed, yes he talked to God and it was necessary to do so. He required food and water, even human love. He is fully human.

Jesus had people, his people, his community – a mother who loved, a step-father who provided, half siblings all with their messy lives and needs, friends who gave to him and took from him. He had friends who got sick and died.

He wept salty tears. He thirsted as he hung there, dying slowly and painfully.

If he was not fully human his dying would be meaningless. If he is not the Son of God his dying would be meaningless. It is in the joining, of being fully human and fully God, that his sacrifice is fully known to us.

The day I was able to absorb the idea that this Jesus died for me, my heart and my life were forever changed. First to fathom it, was just the just beginning. But then to accept the notion that Christ would have died on that gruesome, utterly painful cross for me – even if were I the only sinner needing his sacrifice – yes, only me. Still he would have died.

Owning that concept fully and completely, that Christ died for me, changed me into a different person. The trajectory of my life altered, its purpose settled into a different rhythm as I was able to understand, though I will never know fully, this sacrifice.

THE WOUNDS OF MOTHERHOOD

As I worked on this piece “the weeping women of Jerusalem” I thought about how often I weep as a mother. It is often because of motherhood — the burden and the responsibility to care for, guide and protect my children, my deep love for them and even more so my strong desire that they would come to know the Jesus that I know. My heart breaks from it, sometimes.

As Jesus met the women of Jerusalem, who wept for him, according to Luke 23:27-31, it is said:

There followed him a great multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

I know the wounds of motherhood, the weeping for my children. Jesus meets us there — in his sacrifice. And he will meet our children too, though we must trust him to do so and allow him wipe our tears.

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Stations of the Cross is a visual art and music experience in Madison, Wisconsin, opening March 30, 2012, with exhibit hours during Holy Week from March 30 through Good Friday on April 6. See our website for details on the art and music exhibit experience, artists, blog posts, and exhibit schedule. RSVP on Facebook.

the middle years (a poem about aging and knowing that you don’t know…much of anything)

The middle years
of middle age come without fair warning.
Raising the young
who think they know everything.
And those of us solidly wedged into midlife know
with confidence, that we know next to nothing.

The middle years are half way to a certain death,
while breathing in a life we did not pick. For
life happens even as you make plans, dream dreams, and pray.

The middle years
when the body betrays,
the heart is crushed
by what actually happened,
not our plans.
The mind with every strong conviction
is suddenly even more
uncertain.
Oh, for the days of knowing everything!
But then going back there to certainty
would mean doing this
all over again.

Watching my Father Die, What I Learned

Whether I die of a prolonged fight with cancer or go quickly in a mishap, I hope that I will have no regrets.

I hope that I die knowing that my life pleased God.

I watched my father die and learned something. For whatever reason, Dad couldn’t let go of his life. He died resisting, even disbelieving that it was possible that he might actually die.

He wouldn’t allow goodbyes, because he believed that there was more he was supposed to do; there was more that God wanted him for, there was more to accomplish for God. I can’t help thinking how sad and arrogant that idea is.

And yet, I spend more days that I want to admit asking “Is there something that God wants of me?”

I have spent prolonged, painful years learning this simple lesson. (Or not learning, but banging my proverbial head against the wall.)

I have wrestled with God, fought, cried, and shaken my fist at God insisting that there must be something important I can only do — insisting that God help me feel valuable, necessary – even important.

Believing that there was more than this, that God has for me to do. How sad, how arrogant that idea really is.

Perhaps these years of frequent struggle were meant to help me absorb this one truth, this one hard lesson. I can’t do anything to make God love me any more than he already does. No more than he did at the moment that I came to know him fully. You see, I don’t believe our days and nights of toiling matter much at all in the Big Story.

To the God of the Universe.

When I die, he will ask did you love me. Did you love those I put in your way while you were striving for significance? Did you feed my lambs? How did you treat them? Did you give up your power? Did you give of yourself? Did you give away the things I entrusted with you – power, money, love? How did you care for those along the pathways of your life? Did you give up your life?

This tiny nugget of truth eluded my father. He died believing he hadn’t done enough.

I hope I die knowing God is pleased and that there isn’t anything more I can do for him. Whatever state of my mind and heart in those last days of my life, I hope that I will know there is nothing more that I need to accomplish.

I hope I will know when I die that I spent my days giving it all away.

Nothing you do today or ever will do will make God love you more. Do you believe that?

Lessons from the Monastery (When you are Bitter)

Do you ever have those days when “the shoulds “clamor but truth prevails?

I should have done the dishes piled up from last night’s dinner which are railing against me and what I believe—that one should always clean up after a meal.

I should have gone through piles of papers collected, hauntingly reminding me of bills due and deadlines I’ve likely forgotten.

I should have made an appointment to fix my daughter’s knee, which has hurt on and off for months. She will ask when she gets home: did you make the appointment Mama? Did you? When will you? Why didn’t you?

Rather, all I can think about is my bitter heart.

I am bursting with the awareness, the stinging tang of understanding.

Of how I have lived with it for so long – like Naomi in the book of Ruth in the Old Testament – bitter.

The awareness tastes sharp and severe on my tongue.

I sat in Taizé prayer today at the monastery — soaking in the echoing songs, the verse, the smells and comportment of the faithful gray-haired women sitting around me. For the first time I was hearing the story of the founding of the Taizé Community in France; learning of this tradition of repetition, listening and meditating, as we waited for the Lord.

But then, we were given time to pray. It was remarkable. I don’t know about you but I don’t pray – not much. At least not well. I am certainly no “warrior” of prayer. Martin Luther King Jr. said “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” Okay, it’s not so much that I don’t pray I suppose, but that I have so many doubts. My conscience won’t allow me to simply tell God what I want or need.

My limited theological understanding and lack of faith simply don’t impress it upon me to pray – not much.

(I realized recently I don’t think I even know what I think about corporate prayer. But that is for another day…)

We were given space, within the service today to pray. So I did.

And so, I let go of my control on my mind and heart. And go it did, racing – Airborne, soaring like so many spirits.

I began collecting my worries like a slightly frantic, manic creature.

I began to set my worries down — like weighty, heavy stones.

I place them there, one after another.

… For a friend, who lives with chronic illness. I want to see her more. I have many regrets.

… For my children and specific things I worry about for each of them, faith, academics, relationships, health, and futures.

… For my 74-year-old mother’s future and all that is involved in her long-term care.

… For my future, for my past, for my days – it’s been two weeks since I really let myself stop, slow, truly listen.

… For my days, yes I worry so about my days. I worry about being wasteful. I worry about being useless. I worry about not helping others enough. I worry that my life is a waste.

And there it was. The awareness.

I have puzzled out what the book of Ruth means. Which character in the tiny book that I relate to, Naomi – bitter, Boaz – faithful, Ruth – Bold. Oh, there it is so crystal clear.

I am bitterness. Sure, I’ve come a long way. I have had some healing.

God has loved me through my addiction and through my fear of failure and through my bitterness.

I have believed {I am so bitter that} God has forgotten me and there is no longer any purpose for my life. I have tried to do the things in front of me – certainly the obvious one motherhood, the creative work of writing and photography, but deep, deep down I have felt abandoned by God.

There it is.

Aching, reaching, grasping for some deeper purpose to my life and surely knowing all the while, that this time of dearth, of learning was and is important. Just like Naomi, who said “call me Mara (which means bitter),” I have been bitter.

I sit with the weighty knowledge, almost crushed, but not. Still wondering what God intends to do. Jeremiah 29:11 says; “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

I do believe that. I do even as I taste bitter. As I sit and wonder and pray.

—————————————————————————————–

This is part of a Lent Series, Lessons from the Monastery.

Lesson One.

I learned today this type of listening is called kenotic listening. It is characterized by reverencing what is sacred in someone else. So often, when interacting with each other, we dwell on all their faults. Their failings, their annoying bits and pieces, even how they disappoint us or let us down. A kenotic listener affirms the good in others.

Lesson Two.

I don’t find it hard to confess that dissatisfaction comes easily to me, along with the admission that my life has disappointed me. Disillusionment too, as my life is not what I thought it would be. I can admit this is true. Well, that’s not exactly right – I had no plan. No grand scheme. I didn’t have any idea what I would do with my life as a youngster. One thing I knew. From that moment when I was swiftly rescued, “healed” in an only God could have done it miraculous sort of way.

This was lesson three.

Why Stay in the Church? (Here’s Why I thank God for Mine.) UPDATED

God has many that the church does not have, and the church has many that God does not have. ~ Augustine

Even though it is totally embarrassing to be labeled an “evangelical” Christian today, mostly because of the politicization of organized religion and because there are so many crazies on the religious right. (I know. I’m not helping by saying that.)

But seriously, it’s plain mortifying to be considered “evangelical” most days especially if you turn on cable television whether it’s MSNBC or Fox “news.”

Still I have been attending mine for more than ten years and have good reasons to stay at my evangelical church.

Sojourners Magazine does a good job of describing the type of evangelical Christian that I consider myself to be. I care about racial and social justice, the environment, human rights, having a consistent life ethic and trying to be a peacemaker. I do not always succeed.

The truth is there is no perfect church.

But I think there is an ignorance and arrogance to think that you do not need a church home.

I’ve already written once at least, that I can remember, about what I love about my church. It’s here, titled I Like My Church. They Don’t Tell Me What to Think. But Rachel Held Evans the author of Evolving in Monkeytown is discussing why she left the church and why she has returned. In a response to this, I replied. I’ve expanded it here.

Why I stay in church?

These are not in any order but how they toppled out of my brain.

A significant reason that I stay at my church (even though it has grown into a mega-church since we’ve been there) is because they don’t take sides on political issues. They teach what the Bible says and they intentionally stay away from hot “issues.” This shows great maturity and wisdom, in my opinion.
I also stay at my church because although they are more conservative on women than I would like, they love and accept me as I am. (If you are regular reader of my blog, you know that I can be a sometimes ranting, sometimes angry and frustrated, and sometimes hurt feminist, a misfit in the evangelical church.) I stay because I believe as I grow into God’s grace, I may be heard since the message isn’t mine, but the truth of Jesus. I stay because although the “church govt. structures (being a part of a denomination)” haven’t caught up with their beliefs, what they are practicing is an affirmation of women fully using their gifts and abilities and serving out of those God given gifts, almost.
I stay because there are people in my church that are spiritually alive and actively living out their faith, who love Jesus and express that through loving one another, in order to reach our community. I see it every day. It is beautiful. It’s radical. It is only from God.
I stay because of the community that I have found within a smaller group which buoys my faith, prays for one another, serves our community together, confesses sin and accepts one another quite unconditionally.
I stay because they have a solid biblical hermeneutic, one that I can believe in. They don’t read the Bible literally, thank God!
They encourage questions and regularly say that there are varied perspectives and interpretations. Amen!
Their position on science, faith and creation which fits under number five, but is important enough to me to be it’s own reason. (I’ve listed some links to talks below.)
I stay because through the study of scripture, through learning in community, through developing a life of devotion I am being transformed. I am not the same person.

Everything I write about the spiritual life here on my blog, and I do all the time, it is because of what I am learning, how I am being challenged to grow and develop, because of these things.

This is why, I regularly thank God for my church even though there is no perfect church including mine. Why are you at your church? Or why not?

April 2, 2011
“Evolution or Creation: A False Dichotomy?“ :: Jeff Hardin Series: Science and Faith Conference – April 2011

April 2, 2011
“Faith-Based Approaches to Environmental Ethics“ :: Rick LindrothSeries: Science and Faith Conference – April 2011

April 2, 2011
“Myths in the History of Science and Religion“ :: Ron NumbersSeries: Science and Faith Conference – April 2011

April 2, 2011
“Interpreting the Bible’s Creation Stories“ :: Tim MackieSeries: Science and Faith Conference – April 2011

October 10, 2009
“The Lost World of Genesis One – Part 1“ :: Dr. John WaltonSeries: The Lost World of Genesis One

October 10, 2009
“The Lost World of Genesis One – Part 2“ :: Dr. John WaltonSeries: The Lost World of Genesis One

Call Me Crazy, But I Talk to Jesus too (Thoughts on being a Christian Woman in the 21st Century)

Call me crazy, but I talk to Jesus too.
And so, I can say that I don’t need you to liberate me.
Jesus already did that.
No, I don’t need a church to say what I can and cannot do,
I’m already free.

Call me crazy but I don’t believe in a Jesus that oppresses you or me.
You see, I’ll repeat it in case you didn’t understand, we are already free.

Yes, I’m going there.
Call me crazy but I don’t worship a male God. Sexuality just cannot matter
to Yahweh — who is the creator of the universe – who formed the stars and galaxies, and all kinds of life.
I believe in a God who isn’t male or female, he is everything.
God is spirit.
God is breath.
God is here.
God is everywhere.
God is everything good.
God came before us and will be here after us.

That I am a woman is nothing to him.
And here’s something else I believe.

God doesn’t love you because you’re a man.
He sure doesn’t love you more than me.
For a long time I thought he might.
But then, crazy me I talked to Jesus too, and then. I read the Bible for myself. I learned
yes, God loves me
for I am made in his image and by that he doesn’t mean male.

Because Yahweh, our creator God, isn’t male or female.
Don’t you get it?
We are already liberated and free.
I even think, if Jesus returned today he might not come as a male, no not today. I’m just saying,
he might not. Why does that scare you?

But as the Son of God it’s true. Jesus came in human form, two thousand years ago
and

way

back

then,

even though Jesus came to liberate us all,
even though God allowed a woman the great honor of being the first witness to the Resurrection,
still, way back then …

Women had nothing.
Women were chattel.
Women were owned.
Women were property.

Call me crazy, but I am not that two-thousand-year-old-oppressed-and-dependent-kind-of-woman,
I’m free.
I just need to learn live like it.

If you look. If you really care to open the eyes of your soul and read the Bible, then you will see.

No, I don’t believe in a God who oppresses anyone, least of all me.
I talk to Jesus and he told me

I’m already free.

MHH

Inspired by and written as a part of the Synchroblog March theme, All About Eve. As a part of Women’s History month,

Women’s rights have been all over the news recently, from bills in Congress and state representative bodies to crass “jokes” by national broadcasters. The idea that women are or should be equal to men has become a polarizing topic of discussion on the national stage. So we thought Synchroblog might jump right in. Anything concerning women in general, women and the church, balancing women’s rights with religious freedoms, the differences between men and women … these are all good topics for blog posts. There is one caveat, we are asking that the Synchroblog be a voice of moderation and temperance. You may have strong beliefs on this subject and that is good. Giving voice those beliefs in a spirit of cooperation and bridge-building is also good. We would like these posts to step in that direction. Here are a couple of great examples of moderate writing on women’s issues to prime your writing … An Apology From Limbaugh, But The Damage Is Done by Denny Burke. And now…on the other side (critique of extreme complementarianism) by Roger E. Olsen