It Was a Holy Saturday Unlike Any Other...

It was a Holy Saturday unlike any other.

My parents had arrived into Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday. They were finally able to return to their previous home of 47 years, to visit with Brian and me for Easter, to see old friends. It’s also been opportunity for them to really learn that their new home in Portland Oregon really has become their home. My dad commented on how he is missing his new friends, which surprised him. [Emotional connection always seems to surprise him, for some reason—an important observation for what is to come.] After spending one night with us, they spent two nights with good friends of theirs up in Troy area before returning back to our home Friday afternoon. Good Friday. When Dad got the news from Aunt Betty up in Cleveland that his brother, my Uncle Karl, was fading fast. Hospice was being brought in…

 

I learned of this as my mother came downstairs, walking up to me for a hug. A longish hug for her, I noticed curious. “Karl is fading fast,” she said. I nodded, saying the expected “I’m so sorry…” I was beginning to shift my internal expectations, feeling an anxiety arise in me for how a trip up to Cleveland would stretch Brian and me over a very busy holy Tridium already in process. Mom’s next words startled me. “I am not going to let Betty drag us up there.” I think I hid my startlement well enough, staying present with where she was, what was unfolding for us as a whole… Now I'm reminded how little we know the stories that drive resistances in others--often stories that need honoring before they can be released. I felt a sadness for my mom and me at that moment, as some story clearly had her. My father was on various phone conversations upstairs so we waited quietly to learn more what would be required or invited.

 

As he came down the stairs, we gathered in the living room. He lowered himself into the side sofa and relayed the clinical news, what he knew about Karl’s dying—could be soon, could be weeks, he said. “I don’t see any reason to drive up to Cleveland,” he finally said. “He’s not very responsive. Not sure he’d recognize us. Once there, we’d be in a vigil posture, waiting for him to die. I don’t see any reason for us to go…”

 

It took me several moments to fully digest what he was saying. Here again, some story I could not perceive or understand had him. I could not fathom his words, his choice. We were getting ready to go to our Good Friday service. I had a leadership role in this service, both reading and then a ritual singing of Were You There? while walking the Christ candle out of the sanctuary. But the mixture of emotion was conflicted and simmering in me. I simply could not believe my father was not going to say good-bye to his older brother, when circumstance (Providence?) had brought him so close as to make it possible.

 

I said nothing to them, basically. I’m well versed now in honoring the decisions of others in my family that I cannot understand, stomach. It’s important to me to honor such difference, even if everything in my own being cries out for a different outcome or choice. So I simmered, and off we went to Good Friday services. The pastoral staff gathered in the office before service, and with the privacy there, I blew off a little steam about my parents’ choice and how I felt about it. But we prayed to begin, and then all went well. Afterward, back at home, we had a nice glass of wine with cheese and conversation. “No more news from Cleveland,” was all my dad said.

 

Holy Saturday morning dawned, and I awoke with the expectation of going to CrossFit, as is my practice, being home for my folks and brunch by 9 a.m. I sat on the couch with my cup of coffee, 6:30 a.m. or so, and Brian came out to join me. He had an air of intention about him, so I waited expectantly…

 

“There’s one question we did not ask yesterday afternoon, when pressing your dad about his needs and choices to come,” he began. Looking at me, he continued, “What do you need in this? What are you feeling, desiring to do?” I shook my head and said, “No, I did ask my father that question, directly!” Brian smiled and gently redirected, “No, I’m talking about you. Your needs, desires.” I startled, becoming aware for the first time that I was also an actor in this family drama unfolding. I could finally perceive what he was asking me. I startled as the tears arose in me immediately.

 

I paused, checking in with myself, my belly, my body. I let the tears and sadness arise in full. I’m not close with my uncle Karl, but few of us are. He’s a difficult man to know, to love. Angry. Assertive and cantankerous. But also the best hugger of the family. A good heart, fierce for tending the pain in the world. [picture below is Grandma Ruth and young Karl, before any brothers arrived.] He’s the eldest of the Brothers, who have been a fundamental force in my own life, formation. I dread the passing of this generation, knowing I will grieve so very much I don’t know how to name. As I began to thaw being the actor I could be, I became incredibly, sensately aware of the convergence of things, so puzzled that Mom and Dad seemed to disregard: their proximity, which Easter with us made possible; Holy Saturday; Karl’s fast decline while they were here, on this sacred weekend. I looked at Brian with surprise, “Oh my…I need to go say good-bye. I need to see him today.” The convergence could not be coincidental.

I texted my dad, knowing he was awake but upstairs at the computer. He came downstairs and we got him a cup of coffee. I told him my desire to respect his and mom’s decision, but that Brian had instigated an awareness in me just now. “I need to drive up to Cleveland today to say good-bye to Uncle Karl. I need to see him before he dies. I cannot ignore the convergence of your visit, Holy Saturday, and Karl’s fast decline. I need to go to Cleveland to see him today.” Tears sprung up in my father’s eyes as he looked at me, his face inscrutable. Then I probably pushed it a little too far to goad the point, “You and Mom can decide to stay or come with me, but I need to go to Cleveland.” He smiled, and a huge energy or sigh seemed to release within him.

 

“Oh my….” He began. A whole vista seemed to open up before him, within him, freeing him to make the journey to say good-bye to his brother that until then had been closed off for him. He spoke as he processed aloud for a while, eventually confessing, “I could not see any other option other than arriving there and being forced to wait in vigil until he died, perhaps for days, weeks. There was no sense in that to me. But to arrive, to be with him for an hour, and to drive back home to be with you and Brian for Easter just feels so right. I don’t know why I couldn’t imagine that until now…” He looked at me, tears still present. “As my mother said to me, so I say to you, ‘I’m so glad we had you.’ And I should probably go tell your mother that we’re going to Cleveland today.” We laughed a little, knowing she was still sleeping.

 

I fixed a high protein breakfast for us all to eat before I jumped in the shower and we prepared to depart. I texted my cousin Megan that we were coming, but to let Dad tell her mom. Dad called Betty to let her know. I picked up three envelopes of old pictures that another cousin, Winnie, had sent to me, so Mom and Dad could see them all. The above picture of Grandma Ruth and Karl that Dad had never seen before was in that collection. Brian cleaned out his car and prepared it with water bottles and extra face-masks in case those were required. It was never really named aloud, but we all knew he was staying behind with Nala, to be at home, to prepare for his responsibilities impending on Easter Sundy. Mom, Dad and I were on our way by 8:30 a.m., a light rain and extra coffee at hand.

 

The drive up to Cleveland—ostensibly 3.5 hours—was easy and uncomplicated. I was driving and so chose a mix I had not listened to in years on the car media via my iPhone. Breathing Together I had named it. Dad was communicating with various family members on his phone, and my mother sat in the back seat, comfortable and present. Various tunes came on that made me smile, raise my eyebrows, enjoy in the presence of my folks.

 

These ‘mixes’ on my phone are records of my prayer life over the years. This one was from a time when my folks asked for no contact from/with me, so pained and threatened they were by my feminine awakening journey. “I Walk with the Goddess” came on, and I sang it at the top of my lungs while my parents smiled at me, my clear enjoyment of this music they did not know. And this time, were not afraid of. Each next tune became a curiosity to me, as I could not remember until they came on what tune was next, what tunes were on the mix.

 

Breath, by Sweet Honey in the Rock, came on toward the end of the mix. I startled, with tears rising. It’s a song celebrating the prayers of the ancestors, the pact with the living that the dead have. It’s an African teaching in song about how the dead are not under the earth, but all around us. Dad’s ears perked up and he Googled to get the lyrics. He asked to hear that one again, so I restarted the tune, after he got Mom’s phone to show the lyrics. We listened to the song together, aware we were being spoken to.

 

At this point, I took the rosary that I had made last summer from around my neck. It’s glass pearl-beads, with tiger-eye hearts and beads, made “for my Grandma Ruth.” I had done some ancestral healing work last summer, within the context of my Fire&Water eldering journey, in which some of the obstacles I’ve felt between me and even the memory of Grandma Ruth faded away in a fire. When I’m aware of Grandma Ruth, I pray with this rosary. I gave it to Dad to hold for a bit, while I told him that work, that association. Mom held it next before giving it back to me. I honored that it might sound like gibberish to them, but they could understand it in terms of the Communion of Saints, if they wanted to…but I attributed the nudges in me, my spirit, to this ancestral wisdom she was knocking into them, through me, into me, through holy convergence. We laughed, a little shy about something that even she in her own lifetime would never have dared believe.

 

Dad asked for me to make a copy of all the music we listened to that day. He got how this music was sacred to me, finally. Not because of the words, per se, but how the words dance with the energy of Life, if you’re willing to pay attention to the dance. I felt seen and heard by my dad in a way I had not before. Deep gratitude for that gift…

 

We arrived about noon at the MacGregor facility where Karl was staying, meeting my cousin Gretchen in the parking lot. With tears in her eyes, she approached for a welcome hug. I held her a bit while she cried. She hugged both Mom and Dad, and thanked us profusely for coming. We walked into the facility and entered into Karl’s room. Betty was not there yet, so we approached the bedside and simply said our hello’s. His eyes were open but he was unresponsive, verbally. Gretchen sat on his bed, and Dad and I pulled up chairs to be within reach of Karl’s hands. We began to chat, catching up with one another as family does.

 

Dad and Gretchen went out in the hallway to talk clinical details, of a sort, so I held my uncle’s hand, smiling. Mom sat on the other side of the bed, also smiling. It seemed time for me to sing what I had envisioned when Brian first asked me the question that morning. “Fly, fly little butterfly fly, to the calling of your spirit. Fly free and purposefully, and know you are held in Love.” It’s a little chant that Red Tent sisters would sing whenever anyone was facing a transition—a kid going to college, a woman getting ready to leave a job or home, a person preparing to die… As my voice filled the room, Uncle Karl’s eyes lit up and he looked at me, wide-eyed and smiling. Our eyes locked for a time before his eyes closed, and he seemed to sink back into himself, resting in the gentle, simple music. When the song ended for the final time, I leaned over to my uncle and whispered to him my love. “And it’s okay to go now, Uncle,” I assured him, uncertain if he could hear. “It’s okay to leave us… We’ll see you on the other side.”

 

My cousin Megan arrived next, followed shortly by her mother, Betty. We gathered around Karl’s bed, all of us, with Betty up close, holding his hand. She spoke to him and he responded verbally to her. “I was waiting for you to come…” he said with a smile. He seemed more present now, recognizing each of us in turn by name. It warmed me that her face and voice brought him more present to all of us.

 

We shared some stories like we would, being family with him woven into the speakings. A pause seemed to open for a little more singing, now that all the family could hear, receive. Standing at the end of the bed, I sang the Butterfly song, then an “Honoring Those Who Came Before Us” chant, also from Kelliana, Red Tent. Then all of us sang together the table-blessing the family has sung for generations. Three times, to fully inhabit the words, the music, and sound of our voices bathing him all around. His eyes lit up again, with a big smile. Then his eyes began to close, almost resting back within himself, knowing he was loved, home, going Home.

 

Tears were dabbed, hands were held, and then hugs were shared before my folks and I began our withdrawal from the space. Dad leaned over his elder brother, placing his hand on his shoulder, then kissing his forehead. “Good-bye Karl,” he said softly. I approached my uncle, kissed him on the forehead, and told him I loved him. I repeated, more softly so not to be readily audible to others, “See you on the other side. It’s okay to leave us…” As we were walking out to the car, we almost passed by Larry and Hal, both wearing the obligatory masks. I didn’t even recognize them at first, until it dawned on me I did know those eyes and foreheads! We laughed and I apologized, admitting it had been over four years since I’d seen Hal, so adult and solid. Finally, Mom, Dad and I approached the car, easing back into it for the long drive home.

 

We actually toured a little bit of their old home spaces close to Case Western, but found our way back to the southward highway. The sun was shining by now, but we were a bit teary and in awe for a while before we noticed. We listened to more music on the way home, though our capacity for any more sacred input was gone. We stopped for gas in Columbus, and picked up a loaf of Brian’s favorite bread from The Great Harvest Bread Company. We arrived back home about 5:30 p.m., to a nearly-prepared steak dinner with asparagus, mushrooms, red wine. Before sitting down to dinner, we landed in the living room. Brian made us cocktails, and while we didn’t have the ingredients for Karl’s cosmopolitan drink of choice, his second choice was apparently a side-car, which we could do.

 

I stepped outside with Nala after dinner, ostensibly for her evening constitutional, but so I could call my friend Lisa. I expected to leave a message on her voicemail, unsure even what I would say, but she picked up the call. We said hello and then she just held some silent space for me while I cried. I was exhausted. I had some alcohol in my system, which lowered the defenses I’d held most the day. I said whatever I needed to say, and she grieved with me, celebrated with me, laughed and honored this thin space we’d been in for so long…

 

Given the rich foods and wine, I didn’t sleep well that night. I arose on Easter morning to write the reflection I always do on Easter mornings…What does the resurrection mean anyway?...and the family stirred for coffee, the traditional sweets (cinnamon rolls this time), and preparations for church. I made us a protein breakfast, and got to church for choir rehearsal. The service was beautiful. Brian’s sermon was stunning. The music was nourishing, with descants abounding.

 

I was in my car after the service when I got the call from my dad.

 

“Uncle Karl died at 11:20 a.m. this morning.”

 

It was a Holy Saturday unlike any other… The generational transitions have begun…in such grace, such mystery, together.

Visceral Fear and the Swamp of Distrust

The panic began when the emailed-itinerary arrived, though I wasn’t conscious of the scope of the experience about to unfold until much later. Well over a month ago, I reserved an AirBnB in Covington, KY as the ‘retreat space’ for a leadership cohort-journey I had elected to begin. Given the pandemic, this retreat would be all on Zoom, but crafting a space ‘away’ seemed like a good way for me to fully enter in, fully focus, fully allow. I did my research for a couple days, as you can get lost on the Airbnb.com website with all the choices! I let my gut lead and eventually made the reservation that appeared to promise privacy, a nice kitchen in which to prepare my own meals, a nice sitting room with both comfy chair and desk options, and a nice bathtub. Fireplaces, plural--one inside and one outside--were a plus I could use if it were chilly outside. I’d even received a Spirit-nudge I’ve come to recognize that this was the invited course of action to take. All good.

The itinerary email arrived the morning I was to depart, just like clockwork. It had detailed instructions with complementary photos, for clarity. One of the home-front. Pictures of the street-signs to follow. The block to drive around to get to the private alley. The parking garage and the latched gate that would need to be opened. The number-keypad-lock. All of which were what sparked the panic. The house looked like it was in a potentially questionable neighborhood--old brick, small, tightly packed houses on an urban street. It was different than I had expected or imagined. To get to the parking space and ‘carriage house’ out back, you had to drive around the block to a private alley. Each picture showed more of a packed urban neighborhood that felt different from what I had imagined it would be. You were to park on the right side of the garage/drive-way, and the latched gate was to be unlocked (picture provided). The number-pad on the door was shown, with an entry code provided. From this side of the experience, all of this was hospitably provided and could be construed as a clear welcome, all information provided.

Except that is not how it all landed in me, in this body of mine.

Unaware of it at the time, I went into full-blown visceral fear. I immediately doubted my earlier research and review, imagining I had missed crucial details that would have insured my safety. I feared I had chosen a rundown neighborhood in which I would be then be unsafe as a woman by herself, in an unknown location, disconnected from resources to keep herself safe. I feared I had been duped by false pictures, misleading photoshopped images that suggested one kind of space but when the cancellation time had already passed, insured a moneymaking scheme, preying on clueless middle-aged white women like myself. I feared looking foolish in front of my husband and/or friends, having to cancel a reservation at a loss of a couple hundred dollars. I chastised myself the entire drive down to Covington, convinced I had made a mistake and would have to quickly rectify it before beginning a retreat with 24 unknown companions. 

I saw that the cancellation deadline was 3 p.m., so I rearranged my plan for the day so to see the property before 3 p.m. This meant a mad dash of final packing, getting the cold food into coolers and all of my clothes/necessaries into my roller bag. It meant rushing through any sense of ritual “beginning” this new journey, like spending time with my dear Nala or any sense of conscious presence of leaving my home for the first time in months, if not a full year, for a journey into an unknown Invitation. I’m usually pretty ritualistic about this kind of thing, but not that day. I was out the door in a flash, figuring I’d pick up anything I’d left behind, if I were to be even be staying in the Cincy area that night after all. It crossed my mind that I really didn’t want to be doing this after all. I took my Zoom grief-group ‘circle’ on my phone, on the road. I pulled over into an unknown neighborhood, to be present to my grief-circle-sisters for that hour of sharing time. Then found my way to the AirBnB, for an energetic sense of the neighborhood and the space itself. 

To cut to the chase then? The BnB was beautiful, just as advertised. The neighborhood was an historic neighborhood of the city, with grand old houses and beautifully distinct architecture to enjoy--large front porches and remarkably diverse buildings, textures, landscaping and more. The river I had hoped to enjoy was less than a five minute walk away, just as I had envisioned, and the local grocery was a 4 minute drive up the street. The living space itself was sparklingly clean, beautifully crafted, welcoming and cozy. The deck with the outside fireplace looked homey and the ceiling fan kept the temperatures just right. My stay involved several long walks, in loops, in the neighborhood as well as the next one over. It was everything I had hoped for, even prayed for. My earlier research was accurate, and my instincts were sound.

My experience of this day of departure is what interests me here. PANIC. Visceral fear that I did not really recognize as visceral. A collection of cognitive responses to a visceral event was my day. I problem-solved in response to the panic, rearranging my day so to be on the road and see the property before the cancellation deadline. I assured myself that I could cancel if I felt any hesitation about my safety. Yet it was all just as it had been. Nothing had actually changed in the world, but my relationship to it had been awash in fear and driven by distrust. Even after realizing it was all going to be fine, there were echoes of the visceral fear throughout the first day there. I slept with furniture in front of the door and an extended pocket-knife on my bedside table. I’m never “that anxious woman on her own”! The echoes of fear finally waned by the second full day there. 

The part that seems noteworthy to me now is that I was completely awash in a visceral fear that I did not recognize as a physical event at all. I problem-solved it all through logistics and an immediate, defensive distrust. I let the stories of distrust completely drive my body, my day, my behaviors. Arguably into 24-36 hours of all that was to come. Talk about noteworthy.

My gentle learnings so far, then… One, I did not really consider as significant the felt-sense experience I would have in leaving my home and companions, post-pandemic, for the first time in a year. My days and weeks have had a familiar discipline-rhythm that was going to have to change to accommodate this new pilgrimage into Fire&Water leadership journeying. Second, I did not really know how to make room for the feelings of fear that were building in me as I prepared to enter into one of the most diverse learning communities I’ve ever had the privilege or opportunity to enter. I have learned in some intentionally diverse communities in higher education, but I so need this one to be different, to be grounded in human being together, compassion, vulnerability & grief, healing, interdependence and love. (Just to be clear, higher education is not interested in those things, per se). 

Ultimately, I think I did not know how to make space for the fear arising in me, which leads me to begin asking how I might learn to do just that. I did not make space for me to even wonder aloud with a friend if I would have the courage necessary to be seen as the flawed and unsophisticated white woman that I am. I do stand firmly in my gifts of presence, intuition, compassion and devotion, but I do not know learning environments in which those gifts are valued, with anti-rascist work, within social justice advocacy work. I’m not a very good social-justice advocate in the modern-sense of that term, and I am well aware that this can look like complicity with injustice. What I am, however, is fierce for those willing to enter into practice and journeying with me. When I can feel the relationship or even potential of relationship, I will advocate for them to the end of the world and back again. 

So I was not remotely prepared for the visceral fear that would ultimately break me open a bit, aerating the soil of me to be more receptive and open to whatever would unfold. Nope, I lost my balance entirely into a several-hour panic, relying on a cognitive approach to a visceral event, and an immersion into mental stories of distrust barely grounded in anything real. As I told two friends/elders when I picked up my ‘bag’ of candle&goodies for the retreat: “I am already exhausted and it hasn’t even started yet. So exhausted that surrender to the flow of whatever would come is all I have left.” 

We all smiled at one another and began to talk about horses, the invitation to draw near, and the skittishness that is so familiar in trying to draw close. So it begins...

Wanna Dance?

Becoming an adult in our society today, 

Most of us learn to dance, in some fashion.

Maybe not the old-fashioned Arthur Murray steps,

But at least the hold-and-sway we smile shyly at,

in junior high auditoriums to jazz clubs, 

beckoning younger and older ages to draw close.

No...I want to explore a different kind of dance

with a partner whose predictable unpredictability

can sweeten a romantic evening, or

ruin a family’s safety,

expand the sense of adventure in cultural exploration

or lead you down a path potentially dangerous, unforeseen.

Who’s the leader? Who follows in this dance?

Aye, my friends, that is the question!

My first dance in this was pretty predictable for a girl like me

I was maybe seventeen years of age, 

Old enough to know a little bit about it, yet underage.

I was risk-averse in my younger years, 

so the dance began with a wine cooler,

one. Split between four girlfriends out on a country road.

The dance opened anew in college, of course

This time, my first partner was a Peach schnapps, OJ, vodka swinger

incredibly sweet but wow did he pack a punch.

I was care-full, not a little afraid.

I do remember feeling good, though.

I belonged. Finally.

A Canadian lager next asked me out,

in the eyesight and hearing of my soccer team friends.

Moosehead was its name, which strikes me today as amusing.

It was gentle, a bit bubbly, shaky in hand only if one of many.

Mickey’s wide-mouth beer was a close second date in this venue.

Remember that one night in April 

when we spoke and learned

more about one another 

than anyone would have otherwise shared?

I still remember the embarrassment today,

if not the details, both with a wisened smile.

Seminary was by far the wildest and most frequent dance floor,

believe it or not. Folks becoming religious leaders, 

knowing their free-imbibing-dancing-days are numbered?

That they will have their wine bottles counted

and personal choices judged under a microscope?

Beer, tequila, wine and more asked me out

for those dances, my seminary dance-card full of punches. 

Most evenings. Certainly weekends. Relaxed inhibitions and

dances that got out of control for months, at least a year.

One night in particular where my ‘friend’ didn’t bring a glass.

Tequila straight from the bottle? so to salve his rejected male ego?

I rarely dance with tequila today, ever, even margaritas with salt.

Today, this dance-partner is much more refined, even dignified.

Both my husband and I get asked to dance, sometimes together,

sometimes as individuals. Rums have taken a shine to him, if not me.

Wine can be an easy waltz for both of us, with good salmon or steak.

Bourbon, or her spicier cousin, rye most often finds me a suitable partner,

as I find her. No carbs, which suits an active CrossFit life, 

more dedicated to fitness-health than I have ever known before. 

But she can pack a wallop, be a bit more seductive if you don’t monitor her.

Not unlike me, I suppose. She can flirt you into a bit of risk, if you wanna flirt.

Only one time can I remember not leading

In these moments of a tango, or waltz, or hold-and-sway:

a pandemic “pause” away from normal, away from community.

Cocktail hour? Sure! We’re not going anywhere, after all!

Wine with dinner too? Why the hell not?

Our dances never got wildly active, like tarantella or grunge slam-dancing,

but we were dancing in a new pattern, a different leader, amidst tough invitations.

America is teetering on her dangerous edges,

experiencing our first overt non-peaceful transition of power,

still not accounted for, still unperceived as the threat it is.

Black and brown bodies lie lifeless in the streets, 

facing resistance or mass-incarceration, refused suffering, reactive anger.

Increasing gaps between the horribly rich and desperately poor

hide in plain sight, befuddling and bemoaning in unequal measure.

My own rage is more obvious, ever present.

Traditions refusing to change. Sufferings increasing and neglected.

Entertainment is news, and news is a lie.

How much easier the world can seem, softened with a bit of haze…

How much more bearable do the challenges appear,

even as they promise most to

destroy our health,

alter our views, if

deaden the pain.

Something new always needs to stop the music, and start a new tune,

at least for me, my chemistry, my blessed freedom

from this particular dance-addiction.

Fitness community can reboot itself, when invited.

Sanity can reassert itself, remembering the graced and good TOO.

The beauty of the snow can remind us all of times to rest, to slow down

And spring is on her way, just around the corner, with sunshine beckoning

opportunities to walk to the preserve, spend time lying in the sun with friends,

and yes, chances to sit on the porch, in love, 

seltzer bubbling her sassy flavors

and bodies beginning to feel good and hopeful, once again.

Wanna dance? I can still hear most nights,

whether in the voice of my husband or simply my own voice.

Nah...even life today is too good to be diffused in any haze. 

Movement most mornings beckons more than any booze.

Feeling good in my skin and bones, after a full night’s sleep?

Priceless.

Not tonight, I say with a wisened smile.

Thanks anyway.

Good to Be at Church? It's Been a While...

[Another segment exploring my very first Artist's Way journals from 1999, listening in for what I hear today...]

Good morning all. … I am...I don’t know. Sad? Unsettled, afraid perhaps? A little lonely, I think, after such days substantially alone. I am feeling distant from myself too, let alone God. It’s Ash Wednesday and it’ll be good to be at church. And with choir friends. I’m living in fear again, more vividly and unpredictably. … I just don’t know how to do my dissertation work without it taking over my life. … The twins arriving soon will be quite a task as well. Come July, wow. 

There are lots of things that drew me into this particular entry of 1999. [edited summary below] The strongest eye-brow response, however, was the realization of Ash Wednesday 1999 and “It’ll be good to be at church. And with choir friends.” This touches some of the energies that have driven this whole project’s beginnings, so I want to spend some time here. 

I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve said that first sentence--years, maybe? When was the last time it was good to be at church? I was in church on Ash Wednesday this past week, to sing an anthem and lead in the hymn-singing. I was asked, and I said yes. Was it good to be at church? Well, of a sort. It was worth doing, somehow. It wasn’t good as I used that word back in 1999, however.

Those words hearken me back to the days in which I still had choices to be in church...or not. They were days in which church was a safe haven for me, a community that held my life and desires for love. The choir, mostly, which became my primary social-web in these dissertation years of little classmate/grad school interactions. These were days of intellectual passions and explorations of anything that caught my heart-sense, with felt-holy invitation to something More that would make a difference. I had believable dreams of theology as a vehicle for transformation of the world. I had an all-in trust that while the church could be fragile and flawed--I wasn’t blind to that, ever--my sense of the Holy was untarnished and unbreakable. Wow do I miss those years, those words meaning that.

I did not know in 1999 that this goodness would never last, at least if I were honest and curious, which for me means true to whom I would become. My first ‘faith-fracture’ was serving as an intern at the battered-women’s shelter in Trenton, where I was broken open to see much more fully God’s utter lack of protection of vulnerable women and children. My bearing witness to this suffering, then my increasing outrage, split me down the middle. I remember the October evening I left the shelter, mostly home from the 25 minute drive back to my dorm, before I became aware I was crying. Something in me was completely disassociated from another part of me. Never before had I felt such anger...finally at God. And yet within months, I was companioned by elder-singers in the Touring Choir to name the anger, feel it whole and righteous, and eventually, to let it go into a broader living space for the Holy. Over a glass of chardonnay, at the outdoor tables in front of the Met, I was asked, “Do you think God’s not strong enough to withstand your anger?” I remembering laughing aloud. Something came back together in me, and I began to trust again...provisionally at first. Eventually, the Sacred Abundance was simply too obvious. I was back to all-in devotion. Healed fractures are stronger than the unbroken bone, so the saying goes. Scar tissue is thicker than unblemished skin. This journey then repeated itself over the years from then to about seven years ago--unbreakable trust and devotion, breaking open, then a return to a larger living space for the Holy.

Something is different in these years, and whatever it is has lasted for a much longer time. On the one hand, my current sense of the ‘larger living space for the Holy’ nearly blew my life out of the water it was in. These seven years have been stunning, enlivening, soul-opening, terrifying, demanding, utterly Holy and utterly shattering of that Holy. So it strikes me as strange, for instance, my use of the word God in this 1999 entry. I rarely use that word anymore, unless I’m holding space for someone else’s faith journey. I’m perfectly content and satisfied to be doing that holding-Work--it’s sacred, spacious, and creates more of me somehow. What we would name a ‘calling,’ in the Biz. But the Silent Treatment in me for ‘God’ remains true as well. ‘God’ is so silent today, even though theological-practice unto wisdom is loud and engaging. This basically means I don’t know of what or whom I would be speaking, were I to speak of ‘God.’ The word itself is too conflicted a symbol. The paradoxes to hold within it are too heavy for me to sustain. And trust me, I've done the research here. I've drunk this chalice to the very dregs.

On the one hand, I think I’m weary of being duped, again and again, with any sense of the Holy that will only need to be broken open again. What’s the old adage, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”? I don’t know what the count would be, but it doesn’t feel or look good for me, “Fool me 70 times 7? and shame on whom then?” I’m weary of trusting and then being duped again. This weariness lives alongside an overwhelming sense of the Holy, sometimes coming out as Rage, other times as the Silent Treatment. And the grammar there is intentional--is the referent of the predicate nominative the weariness or the Holy? I don’t know. I can’t tell if it’s the Rage that’s Holy, or the Rage erupts from a wound to be healed to re-welcome the Holy back into my spirit-spaces as intimate, as Friend.

Some part of me feels sorry for this younger me, even as I also envy her too. She has no idea the terrifying days of utter abandonment that are coming, or how horrified she’ll be to realize her family’s not the Cosby Show anymore, and the world creates so much more suffering than she could ever imagine. [To be fair, with an impish smile, my family’s not the actual reality of Bill Cosby in those days either, but still...]. I was emotionally and spiritually abandoned by my parents/family, my husband, my church, my colleagues--for growing beyond what they could consider (I see now). When I refused to carry her pain for her anymore, my birth-mother said plain to my face, “Well, you’re dead to me then.” My father stood by, unspeaking, when she said plain to my husband (in my absence), “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you divorced her...she’s grown so strange…” Part of me knows I have forgiven my family for these fragile-flaws when my path demanded more than they could give, but I will never forget them either. There are days when I envy that young self, who still believed her father and uncles were larger than life, her mother might be her best friend, and her theological work would change the world. 

But then I’m returned to a bit more realism, with the grief chasers I often refuse to swallow. The whole enterprise of ecclesiastical Christianity can smell rotten so many days of the week, from where I sit in academic isolation and attempted-loving pandemic support of a congregational pastor.

If I am not intentional about seeing the good, most of what I see is the political pettiness of folks, swamped in fear and reactivities of our day, and my husband’s inability to work enough hours to match his own obsessive sense of duty and obligation to ease their pain. The whole structure is set-up for all of us to look outside ourselves for what only the inner work each of us has to do can offer. They would rather believe he can ease their pain as religious services tendered for tithe. He would rather believe he can do that for them. Tending to his own pain is excruciating and too hard, most days. He thrives on duty and obligation, sugar and carbs to sweeten the deal. Of course, with intention and tenacity, I can see the shared journeying, the hopes shared in community, the good-intentions and good-hearts of people really doing the best they can do. But I so easily slip into judging the people who participate in such a community whose pace of transformation is achingly too slow for me. Particularly when my own pain or rage has been nicked by something. I’ll flame-throw the room with my rage, if in measured speech and surgical precision. None of this offers a pretty road for a seminary professor to be on, for herself, or her own loved calling of teaching/learning along others on the journey. Pointing out the hypocrisy of the church is like shooting fish in a barrel--it can be a good liberal party game, but it’s not that difficult or challenging. Even when it’s obviously true. None of us should stay there, in my view, including me.

So what is challenging, engaging, is staying with the tensions that won’t let me go anyway. Sitting with the feelings of being duped, for instance. It’s clearly an ego-oriented word, for one. Feelings of “should have known better” or “incompetence” come to the surface here. Why should I have known better? And I know I was not, am not, incompetent. Wildly successful, by most worldly terms. The natural-energetic counterpart to any act of trust must then be having that trust broken, in some way, intended or not. You do your best to be wise about it, of course. We try to discern who we will trust in our inner worlds, and we try to minimize the conscious damage as best we can. But trust means you will be disappointed. These words are the yin/yang of the whole of what is. Just as faith dances with doubt in order to breathe into life, trust always dances with betrayal. My grounded heart-sense of mind knows this… 

Or staying with the sense of envy then. Probably cliche to even go here, but I believe this is a generational thing for me, at the start. My older me yearns for the younger days back when… When intellectual passion could be met with books; when romance & sex seemed the end to all things loving; when the world looked and felt a little less daunting than it does right now… Back when… Then I wake myself up and shake my head. I am mis-remembering then how very challenging it was for me to find the resources that would nourish me, how I was really struggling while doing the very best I could do too. It wasn’t easier back then, it just feels like it from here. And I kicked ass to get here. I'm not only pleased about that, I'm damn proud (to teasingly quote my Grandmother, who thought 'proud' was a bad word). The younger me sits up, takes notice, and calls me out on it. Do what I did, ya weary lout! Get back in it if you want to live!!

Maybe a better question here is What does a full life require to be full...or what does it invite in fullness? What does refusing to trust look like, and can that life even be full? What is the life I really want?

Some words caught my attention this past week, or perhaps it was February 16th itself. When the snows are all gone and the ice has melted, you look down into the bottom of a well and witness a paradox: bright blue sky reflected on black water.

The secret of heaven is that I hide heaven in lowly sunken places where no one thinks to look.

Religion has never defiled Me. Technology does not annoy Me. … But the workings of deep, slow, and certain things...these I observe carefully and respond to adroitly. Their prayers are always heard.

There is no body, no leaf or bough or branch, no fallen sparrow or butterfly that passes unnoticed by Me. But all are embraced by Me, and reclaimed by Me, as a Loving Mother who forever knits the tissues of dying and decaying things into the bodies of living, breathing beings. I have been doing this forever. And so you must decide who you will trust. ...

Religion has never defiled Me…? Really? I remember gasping aloud, in denial and disbelief. This 'speaking' comes to a 'circle of friends' group called Way of the Rose, devoted to Our Lady, every 16th of the month. It's new every month, but a monthly oracular-feeling speaking is posted on the group Facebook page. Our Lady Speaks... Even allowing the stretches into mystery there, How can Our Lady say that?!? How is it that religion does not defile Her every week, even every day, in our world? And never? That’s a long time, with seemingly ample evidence to the contrary. Right? Has She not been present in Christian liturgy in my seminary today, for instance?!? She might as well be on the Moon... (smiling...giggling now...). Yes, the MOON.

I probably would have just let the words wash over me, but for the final sentence here: And so you must decide who you will trust… Notice now that the words are who you will trust, not whether?… Bob Dylan has a song that feels structured like this too. You’re Gonna Serve Somebody… It’s not like you can choose to serve, or not… It’s a question of whom...or what…

What am I trusting...? More than Her...? Can I trust Her? Do I trust Her, even provisionally?

I founder a bit here, not quite knowing how to proceed, or what else needs saying, except that's all I've got for now. No answer that feels honest. This is already longer than will be good for my small group tonight, but so much of it has been necessary. Maybe I’ll just lower the bar a bit, from my beginning. It’ll be good to be at church, I said, which meant one thing in 1999, though probably couldn’t mean the same thing to me in 2021. Not only am I different, the church is changing too, if at a slower pace.

How is it good today to be at church? (Again, note not if or could it be, but how?) I love to sing, and for that singing to be a valued contribution in my husband’s congregation today. It feels genuinely me, particularly as I change all the masculine pronouns that I feasibly can, and it allows me to be seen in something genuinely me as well as being supportive in Brian’s work. He can become vulnerable to congregational gossip and the pettiness of the disaffected if ‘his wife’ does not attend ‘their church.’ It is good to be finding my way to deeper transparency, which feels more honest to me, in these words, which often arise as I am sitting in a pew. It is good to see friends and colleagues of Brian, some of whom I even traveled to Israel with last February. In those small ways--which are not small from whence I come--I will say today, “It will be good to be at church."

* * * * * *

[Other things that caught my attention from my journal entry: I smile to realize I was already attuned to my ‘inner committee’ of voices, Good morning all. Julia Cameron’s work invites that awakening and a sense of how to honor each voice, if not be governed by the defeating ones for very long. “The twins arriving soon…” also caught my heart-strings, for a couple reasons. One, to be brought back to that time when my sister was pregnant with the twins, a variety of emotional currents there. But mostly, to feel the image colliding within me of Brian coming into my life within months, though I was not clear about any of that at the time of this writing. [Brian first met my sister after her Caesarean section surgery, when she was quite high on the drugs necessary. We’ve smiled about that over the years--not an ideal setting for first meetings, but in another sense, it may have been for the best. They are so very different, with little patience for one another. Or B has little patience for her, perhaps. Regardless...]. There’s something anticipatory and wondrous that rises in me, sitting with my 1999 lonely self, who is about to meet her life-partner (again, for the first time).]