Ramblings of a Part-Time Hermit

God of Abundance

2009-09-14T10:24:00.003-06:00

Many of us--maybe most of us, I don't know--have had profound experiences of scarcity. Maybe there was not enough food when we were growing up. Maybe there wasn't enough money. Maybe there wasn't enough warmth. Maybe there was plenty of those, but there wasn't enough love or nurture or hope or peace. And even when we escape that scarcity and find ourselves surrounded by abundance, many of us still live in the scarcity we once knew.

Maybe we fear being left or abandoned and so we horde our love and horde other people's attention and affection. Maybe we fear that there won't be enough left for us, so we make sure we're the center of attention at parties or dominate conversations or refuse to give to others if they haven't first given to us. Or maybe we do just the opposite and feel like even when abundance is offered, there can't be enough for everyone so we'd better sacrifice our portion for someone else--be the martyr who goes without and is always the listening ear or the shoulder to cry on, but never the one who receives. Or perhaps we settle for abusive or damaging relationships, sure that nothing better could be out there. Or maybe we fear not having enough food or clothing again and so we horde our money, saving up "just in case," investing, fretting over our retirement accounts. Or maybe we feel guilty for having abundance. Maybe we feel like we don't deserve it and so work and work and work to prove that we're worthy. However we do it, it seems to me that most people are operating out of an inner sense of scarcity, even when there's abundance around them.

I know this is true about me.

A few days before I left for Trinity House, I had a trauma-therapy appointment. During the appointment I had a vivid image of a vampire sucking life out of me to feed her hunger, to fill her dead and collapsed veins. I could see the scarlet bite marks on my neck, feel the blood slowly draining from me. I could see the whiteness of my skin as the life drained out, leaving me pale, shriveled, empty.

And I realized that's very much how I felt as a kid and a teenager.

My mother--when I was growing up, her inner landscape was as dry and barren as they come. I don't think there's any part of her that hasn't experienced starvation, that hasn't known emaciation. And out of this brittle, exhausted land I grew.

She lived through her father's death by suicide or, possibly murder. She suffered abuse by her step-father, neglect by her mentally ill mother. She was hungry, poor. She--the oldest child--was the one to open the door when debt collectors came knocking. She was the one who took care of all her little brothers and sisters after her step-father assaulted them. She was the one to provide love, safety, for those kids. And she was only 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. She was a child and she raised her brothers and sisters. And by the time she got to me, she had been violated, sucked dry.

My mom, my poor mom--I imagine her carrying around inside her something like the hottest, driest desert--bones bleached by the sun, pounded into sand that stabs and stings those few straggling survivors as the winds tear through, whipping up the desert, with no trees, no mountains, nothing to soften its ferocious howling.

When my mom became pregnant, she says, it was the only time in her life she was free from depression. She was joyful. It must have been such an experience of life and abundance in the midst of a world that had been so barren. She must have felt so full. She says that when I was born she was so happy to have me. We were so close. She wanted a child more than anything.

But then...then I started to grow up. I started to separate. I moved away from our symbiotic mother-infant oneness. And she panicked. She could not see that I was getting bigger. That there was more of me to love, that the more I moved away from her the more I became me, and that the more of me there was, the more love there was to give and receive. She could not see that. She could only, once again, feel her hunger, her starvation, the losses, the barrenness--all those things that had been soothed by my soft, clinging, warm infant body and self that totally folded into her and made her feel whole, known, loved--finally. She felt all that pain again. I imagine it must have felt like dying to her--reencountering all of that loss again, that loss she'd momentary escaped as she sunk into our sweet, total intimacy. And as I moved away and she re-encountered her wounds, she got lost in her own barrenness, in her own hunger. And she decided I must be the reason she was so very, very emaciated...so very hungry, that her whole being felt ravaged by starvation. And she began to hate me. She projected all of that onto me, communicated in so many ways that the desert in her soul was my fault. I had robbed her of life.

We had moments--sometimes years long--of reprieve from her wounds. And I got to experience beautiful parts of her that smell of honeysuckle and apricot perfume, that taste of homemade candy, parts of her that taught me to love the wind caressing my face, to notice the shimmering of light on the translucent threads of a spider web, that taught me to dream in fairytales. But always her wounds came back. And the more I separated and got bigger and fuller, the more she seemed to hate and resent me, the more she could only feel her own scarcity and resent any abundance I experienced. And soon she seemed to become vampiric--sucking life out of me, telling me that there wasn't enough for both of us. There wasn't enough air. There wasn't enough love. There wasn't enough time. There wasn't enough affection. There wasn't enough life. And I was taking up what she needed to live. I needed to feed her. I needed to hold my breath so there was enough air for her. My presence, my bigness, my need for air, water, sun, light, love, hope, joy--they were a threat. My presence--my separate being--meant less for her, she thought. And so I learned to pour myself out into her. I learned to breathe as little as possible. I learned to ask for as little as possible. But I could never shrink small enough, give enough. Because how could one little girl ever give enough to heal wounds so very, very large? And soon some part of me felt that my very existence simply caused pain, lack, scarcity, barrenness, pain, and violence.

I went to Trinity House, still full of that vampire image. The physical scarcity I experienced there, coupled with the lack of emotional space (the Catholic workers were understaffed and had been really sick that summer and so were stretched too thin), hit me hard. It reminded me of the areas of barrenness and scarcity in my own inner landscape.

I spent a day on retreat during my time at Trinity House. I went to a nearby chapel and soon found myself on the floor shaking violently, sobbing hoarsely. In this place--quiet, simple, peaceful, and still--my sobbing, aching, furious little girl came screaming out. I hit the pillows on the floor as I yelled. I shook some more. I writhed. I felt my fury, my pain, at having grown large and abundant only to have life sucked out of me, only to be told that my bigness was taking what others needed to live, that I was selfish, greedy because I wanted to live, to be loved. I wanted rain and sunlight. I wanted to grow. I wanted to know that my existence was good--a gift, an abundant gift.

As I calmed down, as my hoarse sobs became quiet sniffles, I curled up in a ball and let myself sink into the solid ground beneath me. I felt the cool air drift over my exhausted body, my body over-heated from all the rage and pain that had come screaming out of me. I listened to the silence, to its bigness. And I felt as if God spoke to me.

"Do you believe all of creation rejoiced when your daughter was born? Do you believe every cell cried out with joy?"

And I answered without any hesitation, "YES! And if it didn't, it should have. Her existence is so very very good that no joy could ever express it--not even the rejoicing of every galaxy."

"Well," I felt God say, "That's how I feel about you."

And I believed it.

I believed it.

I felt it.

And I let myself grow a little larger, a little bigger.

I let myself soak in love and joy big enough to heal at least a little bit of my pain.

Hunger

2009-08-20T08:33:00.003-06:00

Lately, I am ravenous, always ravenous. The hunger pangs come on suddenly—sharp and quick, like the beginnings of labor. Something wishes to be born. Something—someone—who thought life was meant only for others. She wants to be born. And she is hungry. And she is calling my name. She is calling for me to feed her.

I don’t always know how to listen for this wild, little one’s voice. But I first recognized her in my hunger.

I was not your stereotypical pregnant woman. I did not crave food. I should have been ravenous, but when I am depressed, I cannot feel my hunger. And I was very, very depressed. I forced myself to eat to help the little girl inside me grow. I couldn’t really believe that I—the daughter of a mentally ill and abusive mother—could ever be a good mother, could ever really give life and love and joy to another, but I fed that little girl anyway.

She was born—SparkleEyes was born—a healthy, perfect little girl. I had given life even though I had wanted to die, felt that I deserved to die. But still…I couldn’t expunge the toxic messages I’d ingested as a kid—“you are dangerous, toxic, you don’t deserve life, or love, or nurture. You shouldn’t exist.” I stopped sleeping. I couldn’t eat. I lost about 20 pounds. You don’t feed something that doesn’t deserve to live. I was diagnosed with post-partum depression and post-traumatic-stress-disorder. I exercised, I joined a support group, I talked to a therapist, it got a little better, slowly. And then it got worse—much, much worse.

It was Easter 2 ½ years ago. I was supposed to be celebrating resurrection. New life. My perfect baby was asleep. But I couldn’t sleep—again. It had been that way for months. Insomnia, flashbacks, bouts of depression. I had slept so little, had fought so hard, and now I was empty, depleted, starving. I’d done years of therapy to heal from childhood trauma. But it wasn’t enough. The ptsd wasn’t budging—no matter how much inner work I did. When I closed my eyes to sleep and reached that moment—sweet and heavy like honey—that moment right before falling asleep, I would suddenly “see” a mad woman with a gun coming to steal my baby from me, and I would jolt awake, muscles coiled with tension, heart pounding a machine-gun, ragged, terrified rhythm. The world seemed utterly inhospitable to life. It was Easter and all I wanted was to die. I wondered if taking an entire bottle of my sleeping pills would kill me. I could just fall asleep—finally—and never wake up. And for the first time in my life, I knew I could and might actually seek to kill myself. And that moment, as I stared at that orange bottle full of tiny pills, that moment terrified me. I made my psychiatrist prescribe anti-depressants and I began a therapy designed for people with the kind of trauma I’d experienced. I got better fast, much, much better. So by the time I learned I’d gotten the FTE award, I was healthy, happy—happier than I’d ever been. But I was also burned-out and had no idea how to continue to relate to a God and a faith that had seemed to abandon me at my very worst moment. God had seemed silent, negligent when I was being abused. And when I relived it, when I reached the point of being able to kill myself, and called out to God again and again, I seemed to meet something like a black hole. And so I came into this project wanting to know what to do with this—I had figured out how to move past trauma in my everyday life, but I hadn’t figured out how to deal with the effects of trauma on my spiritual life, the way those experiences had made it so hard to believe—really, really believe—in God as good, loving, and present. And so I designed a project that gave me time for personal retreat and that would take me into two faith communities seeking to respond to social trauma—Trinity House in Albuquerque, NM, and Koinonia Farm in Americus, GA. Trinity is a Catholic Worker intentional community that works on issues of homelessness, hunger, white privilege, and nuclear disarmament. CWs take a vow of poverty and live in community with one another and with homeless, mentally ill, and others who need a safe space to heal. Koninoia Farm was founded in 1942 in the heart of rural GA as an inter-racial Christian community where African-Americans and whites lived together, worked together, ate together, worshipped together and had everything in common.

I have been baking bread. I have been baking lots and lots of bread. I’ve been making it from scratch, my 3 year old daughter pouring flour into the mixing bowl and then onto herself. We’ve been baking bread together, she and I. And we’ve been eating it.

Bread—it’s at the center of my faith, that communion bread, that “body,” that incarnate God, fleshy and intimate, embodied, touchable. Here. Within me. Eating with God, eating God, God filling my body, my soul, hearing my hunger. But often I’ve wondered if God might just let me starve, why God seems to let so many go hungry.

But this summer I watched as communities fed one another. I watched as the homeless, the mentally ill, the lonely came into Trinity House, were named “guest” and stayed for a night, for 8 nights, for a year. I watched as everyone sat in the dining room and ate and talked for hours over tortillas, potatoes, eggs, and coffee. We ate together—the abused woman trying to recover from mental illness, the man transitioning out of homelessness, the male prostitute who is regularly beaten by his brother and sister-in-law, the drug addicts sitting together shaking, veins collapsed, and the woman who looks at my baby with the sad, hungry eyes of a mother who can’t reach her own children across the fog of alcohol and homelessness. We ate together, she and I, and then she helped us make soup and we served it together to people living in a nearby park.

And then I went to Georgia. I went to live on a farm. There was food—so much food—and there was rain, so much rain to water the food growing out of that rich, red Georgia soil.

I laid in the grass during one of those Georgia rainstorms. I laid there until I was soaked and the grass shimmered around me. The earth drank deep, and grass, huge trees, crops, and showy tropical flowers pulled water from the depths of the earth, transforming it into life, food, bigger leaves and blooms. And then I walked through the red Georgia clay, now thick, squelching mud—and I danced and jumped and played in it, letting it squish between my toes as rain water ran down my face. I thought about the people who had walked on this dirt in the 40’s, who had farmed this land. I thought of the life they brought, produced, even in the midst of the most virulent violence and hatred, even as they hid under their beds as bullets came through the walls, even as their children were beaten at the local schools. The community was formed in 1942—started by Clarence Jordan, a white southern Baptist preacher who was pretty sure the kingdom of God included blacks and whites, was pretty sure that God’s love meant no one should suffer oppression or poverty or violence or hunger. And so he and a brave group of people started a farm in the depths of rural Georgia where blacks and whites lived together, farmed together, had all their possession in common. The farm garnered mostly positive attention at first. Jordan, along with a PhD in Greek New Testament also had a degree in agriculture, and he shared his knowledge with neighbors. Koinonia members shared their harvest. They helped fix sent homes. They patronized local businesses. But then the neighbors began to notice some disturbing things. On this farm African-American farmers got paid the same amount as white farmers, but even worse, blacks and whites ate together at the same table. They shared their bread. And that—that could not be allowed. And so the violence began. The boycotts began. No one would buy from Koinonia or sell to them. But they stayed. And they grew food. And their story got out. And soon people wanted their food. They bought the pecans from mail-order catalogues and got them in packages marked with the slogan, “Help us to ship the nuts out of Georgia.” Koinonia members—they kept growing food together. They kept eating together. They shared their bread. They told stories of Jesus. And in the midst of a crazy traumatized world where blacks and whites just didn’t eat together, they ate. And they ate. In the midst of death, in the midst of a world that wanted to starve them, they grew food. They fed each other. And as they fed one another, as the earth fed them, so also God fed them, and they saw the world begin to change.

This year on easter weekend I wrote this: once God seemed to me this being up above who sent someone to die because I was so very, very bad only a divine death and resurrection could save my sorry soul. But this week I am discovering, instead, a deeply immanent, deeply loving, deeply present God; a God so close that each time I step into love, life, joy, hope; each time I choose to walk into and through spaces of death in order to find what's on the other side...well, God is there. Each time someone enters into a space of terror and oppression and stands on the side of joy, of love, of hope; God is there. Each time someone cries out for life, even unable to reach for it herself, God is there. Each time a blade of grass bursts through the earth, reaching for the sun; each time a baby cries for food; each time an immigrant cries out for work, for a better life; each time a woman cries out for justice; each time someone reaches for life, even in the feeblest, most trembling way; even each time my own abusive mother found it inside herself to say something loving, to get up each morning to care for her kids even as she lived through excruciating pain and mental illness, each time she won the battle to see us instead of her projections; each time someone seeks life, resurrection...God is there. Now I finally know I am made up not just of trauma and hatred and rage and depression and a broken past, but also of all these moments of love and joy and life. I am beginning to feel that it is life—even God—that runs through my veins.

Each and every time I have been on retreat this summer, it has rained.
When it rains, when the skies burst open in order to water the earth, to give it exactly what it needs in order to grow and bear life, I hear something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to hear: "It is good you exist. It is good to reach for life. There is water. There is food. It is for you. You can grow large. You can grow vibrant. You are meant to live. You are meant to be watered. You are good, worthy of life. You are worthy of the rain it takes to make you grow. I make the rain so that you can grow, get big, know sunlight and wind and sustenance. It rains because I love you.”

And I am hungry because God loves me. I am hungry because my body, my soul, my very being is meant to cry out for, to reach for life. And so now I am listening to my hunger. I am honoring my hunger. I am feeling my hunger. I am ravenous. And I am making bread to feed my hunger—knowing that God’s loving presence is in the bread I kneed with my daughter in my tiny house as we love one another, just as it was in the tortillas at Trinity House, in the bread Koinonia members ate together despite the crosses they knew would burn on their lawns; and here in the bread we eat together gathered around a table where we, again, encounter the God who breaks in order to enter into the our spaces of trauma and, most especially, God is here, in my beautiful daughter who came out already brimming with love and joy despite the despair she encountered as she grew in me, here in this laughing girl, covered in flour and delight—in this girl I gave life to—here is God. And in all these things God feeds us God’s own self—the bread of life.

Rain, Rain, pease DON'T go away...

2009-08-08T21:01:00.004-06:00

So I know a lot of people have been complaining about all the rain we've gotten in Colorado this summer, but I've LOVED it. I've written previously about how I feel sort of spiritually tied to rain, about how it speaks to me of God's love, about God's desire for abundant life for all--for me, for you--so I won't repeat myself here. It has rained so much this summer. So much. And it has rained each and every time I have been on retreat. It rained during that first retreat after I woke up from awful nightmares. It monsooned during a mini-retreat I took in Santa Fe while I was at Trinity House. I can still remember the sound of the rain pouring down, the smell of the rich earth, saturated with rain. Then it POURED while I was at Koinonia House during the one day that I spent entirely in retreat. I laid in the grass and watched the rain fall--huge drops, huge lines of water pouring straight out of the sky. I let it soak me, totally. It was the only time I felt COLD while I was in sweltering Georgia. I let that water just run all over me, totally soaking me through and through, watering me like it watered the huge tropical flowers, the crops, the abundant life bursting all over the place in GA. I played in the bright red dirt, now soaking wet and slippery. I danced in it, filled my hands with it, jumped up and down in it, covered my arms and legs and hands in its squishy delightfulness, letting it squelch and spuirt between my toes. I just let myself rejoice in the world--at least in the parts of the world that support and sustain life, the parts that grow food and huge tropical flowers, in the rain that pours out of the sky to water them, give them even more than they need for survival. I felt deeply connected to the soul of God--the core of God--this life and love that runs through our world just as surely as (hopefully more surely than) so many death-affirming things do. It just POURED. And during this last retreat of mine it poured again--the skies opening and just bursting forth with floods of water until the world around me smelled of rain and fresh pine needles and sweet pine bark.

Here during this last retreat, when I am so desperate to know that God still loves, can still be found, the oppressively hot afternoon cools off and the air feels soft, pearly, light against my skin. I breathe deeply, breathe in this mountain air, this space, this love. And I DO feel loved, so loved. Unconditionally loved.

Final Retreat: Dream

2009-08-07T16:21:00.003-06:00

Two things have become themes on my retreat this summer: rain and nightmares about my peaceful retreat space being violated. My last nightmare was much worse--last time it was rapists and murderers breaking into my retreat cabin. This time the intruders knocked and were---Evangelicals! So, I'll back up. I'm on retreat. I'm upstairs (trying to have sex with a really hot woman who then turns into my husband and then my brother--but that's probably way too much info about the inner-workings of my funky psyche...so, we'll revise that...) I'm upstairs, umm..."sleeping" peacefully and suddenly I look out the huge windows and see lots of people wandering around. I think, "that's odd. No one's supposed to be up here except me. Why are there other people on the retreat grounds?" And then I hear voices. I go downstairs and there are all sorts of people milling around, eating, hanging out, in my solitary retreat space. I ask them to leave. They dilly-dally. I start screaming. I yell that I'll call the caretaker who will kick them out if they don't go. And then the doorbell rings. I go to the door and recognize several people from my dad's church: three moms and a little boy (who in real life turned out to be gay, very much to his parent's consternation--they kicked him out I think). I hope they don't recognize me. I don't open the door. Through the screen they tell me that they reserved the house for a group retreat. I tell them I have it for another day. They go away but then come back with the caretaker. She tells me she's not sure what happens but she wonders if...I interrupt her and say, "You want me to share the house with them, don't you?" She nods her head. "No, absolutely not. They're nice people. I know them from the church I grew up in. But I am here for a solitary retreat and I just can't do it with them in the house. I'll leave if I have to." The dream gets fuzzy from there. I know went out walking on the grounds, feeling vaguely guilty for not sharing. And I know I didn't share the space. I don't know if I got the house back or not.

So the meaning of the dream seems obvious to me. The house had become for me a symbol of God's love for me--real love, lavish love...not love purchased by another divine being dying a terrible death and going to hell and paying my "debt" to make me acceptable, but real love. The sort of love that says and believes, "You are worthwhile. You are precious. You delight me. I truly want to be with you, just as you are. You delight me just as you are, even if you are not perfect. I may be better than you, holier, more loving, more perfect and mature, but all of those things make me long for you more, and all of those things mean that my presence (not some act of belief on your part) will make you more and more of those things. Come be with me!"...the kind of love--that utterly besotted, delighted love I feel for my daughter, but even greater and more prefect. And that house was being invaded--by people who represent the sort of faith I grew up with, the God I grew up with who doesn't really know how to love or to be present, who's even worse at it than I--an imperfect human--am! And I needed to kick them out. I need that house. I need to live in the love of God. I need to live in the presence of God. I need to live in that space that will make me more and more of who I am meant to be. And I think God wants for me to live in that house. I think God has been for years loving me out of the faith that re-traumatized me, that told me that God couldn't really love me, the me who found Evangelicalism full of contradictions and pain and weird illogical attempts to resolve all of those contradictions, but the me who, nonetheless loved God, longed for God, sought for God with everything. But that one fault, that one flaw, that inability to make myself believe--well, that was enough to kick me right out of the lavish "unconditional" love of God. I could have killed someone. I could have raped someone. I could have tortured someone. I could have done all of those things and God still could have loved me, could have wanted to spend all eternity with me, could have forgiven me anything just as long as I could believe what I was supposed to and pray that sinner's prayer and beg forgiveness. But this one thing God could not forgive--my inability to accept a particular faith system. And I' pretty sure that God has been slowly revealing Her kind, gentle, loving face, revealing His faithful, joyful, delighting love and slowly wooing me right out of the faith that once told me it owned God.

Final Retreat, Day Two--Escaping a "Borderline" Religion

2009-08-07T13:31:00.005-06:00

I had an experience earlier this week that forcefully reminded me of just how painful it was for me to be in the Evangelical faith, and just how painful it was for me to leave it. It reminded me of how emotionally violent the Evangelical concepts of hell and salvation feel to me now.

I chose this particular retreat spot precisely because I have been here before--years ago--and during that retreat had been surprised and awed at how powerfully I encountered God's love for me. In my retreats this summer I have been focusing on God's abundance, on God's goodness, on God's presence and love, trying to heal from my internalized images of God as abusive, borderline mother. As I walk the paths here, I am reminded of being here years ago--how I chose the retreat center at random and called last minute to see if there was any space for a retreat the next day and was told by the nun who answered that usually they're booked weeks in advance, but that someone had just cancelled. I got to the site, driving through winding roads, through canyons, through forest, having no idea what to expect. And I found a three story log house. It was simply furnished, but gorgeous--honey-colored wood, a deck, a balcony outside of my room, a jetted bathtub. Best of all, as I walked in to the living room I saw floor-to-ceiling windows, and out of them a stunning view of miles upon miles of forest.

As I walked in the forest during my two days, I could feel and hear my heart beat. As I listened, as I sunk into the quietness of the forest around me, I felt intimitately connected to God, sustained by God; I felt that God's life and love moved through me, made me up, and and sustained just as fully as my blood did. I felt loved lavishly, felt as if I was hearing God tell me--insecure, self-hating me--that He (back then, God was definitely a He to me) really, truly, utterly, overwhelming loved me, found me worth lavishing with a weekend in a gorgeous peaceful place.

And so I came back to this place to help me remember...and to rejoice in the presence and the love I've encountered so fully this summer.

But nearly as soon as I left my house I started thinking about this experience--this experience that reminded me of the worst parts of my Evangelical experience. I often struggled with a sense of God's absence--even during (perhaps especially during) my most fevent Evangelical days. I often experienced God as abandoning, as unpredictable, as, in short, a lot like my mom. And once I finally got up the courage to leave my Evangelical faith, I really feared that God would stop showing up, that I would never experience God or God's love again. And certainly that's what I'd been told--God was only available to those who subscribed to this particular Evangelical understanding of Jesus' life and death, of sin and salvation, and everyone else was on their way to hell, to infinte and eternal separation from their Maker and from all that is good and loving.

As you may know, my mother has borderline personality disorder. There's a lot that can be said about the disorder, but it is perhaps most obviously characterized by narcissism and an inability to think in "gray" categories. Someone is either all-good or all-bad, and when someone in the "all-good" category does something that feels disappointing or like betrayal to a borderline, the "all-good" person is suddenly "all-bad." So relating to a borderline can be totally baffling and crazy-making. One minute you're connected and loved and it's all hearts and roses, and then suddenly you stumble upon one of the borderline's triggers (perhaps entirely unbeknownst to you) and next thing you know, BAM, you are evil--the embodiment of all that is awful. And such was my experience with my mother--a year of close mama-newborn interaction and then my brother is born when I am 1 1/2. My mother is gone at the hospital for a week and when she returns, I won't let her hold me. It's a typical reaction of an insecurely attached infant--I didn't have "object permanence" and thus had no way of knowing that my mother hadn't disappeared forever. I went into the infant-equivalent of depression. Healthy moms can help their infants recover from this with just a little bit of patience and steadiness and love, but my mom was not a healthy mom. She experienced my withdrawal as abandonment and rejection and began to hate me. She projected all of her previous abandonments (her father's suicide, her mother's mental illness, her step-father's sexual abuse) on me, and, let me tell you, tht's a lot for an infant to suffer under. As I grew older, our relationship recovered some, and I have many years of lovely memories (marred by a few moments of mom's screaming rages, calling me a selfish brat or the like). Mostly, though, I have memories of reading together, making-up stories together, going on walks and examining spider webs and flowers and rain drops together. And then BAM. I turned 10. I began the work of separating from my mom. I argued. I expressed my disagreements. I became interested in clothes and earrings and make-up and my friends and their opinions. And, again, she experienced my separation as abandonment and rejection. And for the next 10 years I have almost no pleasant memories of her. She raged at me verbally, and a couple of times physically. She disappeared emotionally. She rejected my affection and often literally pushed me away when I reached for her. She could see me as nothing but the sum of her life's disappointments and abandonments. In many ways it was like she died. The loving, affectionate, patient woman who had acted so lovingly toward me had disappeared. The woman who had made me feel loved, special, connected now treated me as if I were, in fact, horrible, unloveable, abandoning, cruel, dangerous--worthy only of rejection and anger and cruelty.

It's really no wonder God seemed similar to me. We do tend to extrapolate out our experiences with our parents and apply them to God. But I realized on this retreat that it's not simply my projection onto God. The faith I grew up in really did teach me to believe in a God who seems to suffer from narcissism and borderline personality disorder. And it's no wonder that when I left that faith I found myself certain of God's abandonment.

So here's what I was taught: God loves everyone and wants to relate to everyone. But God is perfect and holy and can't stand to be in the presence of sin. Humans are totally saturated with sin and as such are repugnant to God (because the first humans ages and ages ago ate some fruit they weren't supposed to and "fell" from grace). We deserve eternal suffering because we are so sinful. But God is loving and didn't want to be separated from us and so sent Jesus to die a horrible death in our stead so that God could stand to be in our presence. Jesus paid our debt--died for our sins. And so now we can go to heaven and experience God's love for all eternity. Oh, but only if we "accept" Jesus as our personal savior, which means saying and believing that we are sinful and deserve hell (i.e, eternal torment and separation from the God who made us), that Jesus died so we wouldn't have to go to hell, and that Jesus is God's only Son and is divine. Also, God's love is unconditional. Nothing you do can make God stop loving you. No sin is too bad to be forgiven. Once you've been able to believe and acknowledge these things, well, then you're on your way to heaven and can experience the eternal, unconditional love (rather than the wrath) of God. Also, I was told, "we Evangelicals believe in GRACE. We're not like those Catholics who think you have to do a bunch of 'works' to get into heaven. God already did all the work...you just have to accept it."

Okay, so,
1. "God loves you, but you're really, really awful. You deserve hell" (hmmm...where have I heard something similar--oh, my mom! "I love you even though you rejected me. I'll just keep trying to love you even though you're always rejecting me, even though you're so hateful and argumentative and betray me")

2. God is holy. God is perfect. God's holiness and perfection are so important to him that he can't stand to be in the presence of anything less than perfection. The most important thing to God is God's glory and holiness and name. No sin should be allowed to mar that (sound like a personality disorder to any of you who study such things???)

3. There's nothing you can do to earn God's love or make God stop loving you. God is so great and so big that God loves you just for you. Oh, unless you don't believe the right thing. Or unless you stop believing the right thing and begin to doubt the ultiamte truth of this version of religion (i.e., atonement theology). Or unless you're one of those poor people who never get to "hear the gospel" and "accept Jesus". Then you'll be totally separated from God for all eternity and experience eternal torment. (Wow--so much like living with a borderline--"I love you, I love you, you're wonderful. Oops, stepped on my 'trigger'. Off to hell with you! Now you're evil!")

4. God's love and salvation are not to be earned. They're free. It's all grace. You don't have to "work" to be saved. Oh, except, um, there is one thing you have to do: you do have to believe all these things. You do have to figure out how to convince yourself that they're true (especially that bit about how you deserve hell and how Jesus died to save you). And you should pray the sinner's prayer. And you also need to read your Bible. And pray. And evangelize. And not have sex before you get married. And try to be like Jesus. But none of that saves you. Just making yourself believe something--that's really the crux. But, really, we're not like Catholics. We believe in grace not works. (And, once again, God is the crazy-making borderline. "What do I have to do to get you to love me?" I ask over and over. "Oh, nothing. I always love you. Oh, but don't hit my trigger. Do this. Do that. And remember that you deserve hell and only my great mercy saved you. And you'd better work your ass off to show me you love me; otherwise everyone will start doubting your salvation...But, really, I am prefectly loving and would never abandon you. You are the one who abandons me. When you think I'm not near, it's that you're too imperfect to understand my love. etc...."). God's salvation is free...just believe! (Can't convince yourself to believe? Can't force yourself to buy into a system that's riddled with flaws? Well, hell for you!)

5. As soon as you are "saved" by believing what you're supposed to and telling Jesus you're a sinner and need his payment for your sin, God sees you as perfect. Even though you still sin, God accepts Jesus' death in your place and gives you a "Christ-nature"--God thinks of you as perfect and holy like Jesus. (Ah, ha! You were all-bad, but now you're all-good! Like Jesus!) Oh, but stop "believing in" Jesus (i.e., decide the theology you've been fed doesn't make much sense and doesn't gel with your experience of a truly loving, present God), well, you're "all-bad" again. Now you're hell-bound.

So, when I left my Evangelical faith--even though I was really convinced that its portrayal of God was ugly and untrue--I really, really feared that God was going to leave me forever because I just could not do the work of forcing myself to believe anymore...And I think leaving and losing my Evangelical community was so much like losing my mom when I was 10--going from all-good, loving daughter, to all-bad, abusive cruel, hell-deserving daughter--that I re-experienced that trauma. I think this seriously contributed to just how awful my post-partum period was...How very awful: religion that promises healing and salvation so often instead delivers deepening trauma and abandonment and self-hatred.

And now I've been able to heal (largely) from life with a borderline mother, but on this retreat I am realizing that I still have much to do to really heal from living with a faith that fed me God as a borderline Father who says he loves me but who really thinks I am so despicable and evil that I deserve eternal torment and who might abandon me to hell if I can't do just as he says, can't force myself to believe in a particular theological system try as I might...

Final Retreat, Day One

2009-08-07T13:25:00.002-06:00

Written 8/5/09

I am on retreat at a lovely retreat house in the mountains. I am surrounded by trees and blue sky and clouds. And all I want to do is return home to my husband and baby. I am tired. I am so tired. It’s partly lack of self-care: staying up late too many nights in a row. It's partly the demands of mothering a sick child who’s weaning off of her pacifier and not sleeping well, and it’s partly just this wonderful, wonderful summer. It’s been so very, very much. And really all I want is a chance to disconnect, to live my life, to have some space to let things settle. I do not want more alone time, more time to seek out truth to the big questions, to seek out healing. I want to just enjoying being for awhile.

I was supposed to get here early this morning, but found that I just couldn’t face leaving again. I spent the morning and afternoon playing with my baby, watching a sweet movie with my husband, cuddling…and when I finally decided I really should head off, well, I SO didn’t want to. SparkleEyes cried and wanted to come on “treat” with me.

It’s lovely to be at a place where my life--my everyday life--feels so peaceful and good and holy that I don’t want to escape it. It's lovely that I don’t feel like I need to escape it in order to find God. That is all very good. But I still don't want to be here. I am tired and grumpy and all I want to do is lie on the couch and watch a feel-good movie. Apparently, though, TVs are not "spiritual" enough for this place...

Building Fences

2009-07-22T14:54:00.003-06:00

I developed a nice rhythm while at Koinonia--sleep in, read silly book in bed while waking up (P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster series rocks!), eat a simple brunch, pray, meditate, breathe, meditate, breathe more, then join in afternoon work on farm. One afternoon I went to help some of the guys with fence-building (I say "help" but it turns out that sitting around reading theology and building a fairyland with an almost 3-year-old does not, in fact, build muscles useful for breaking through very packed Georgia clay with post digging tools...still, I did manage to make a couple of fence-post holes, even if it did take me 4X as long as it did any of the other people working with me!). It was a great afternoon, actually, and I found that working really hard and sweating in 90+ degree super-humid heat felt really, really good. Ah, the endorphins! My poor body just never gets all that much exercise, and it loved the chance to work. As we worked we talked theology. We dug. One of the guys break-danced. Another told me about his change in life--moving from being a successful engineer working for a wealthy oil company to disillusionment with living for career and money, to living on this farm, working with his hands, praying and thinking about what his life should be. I talked with a father about child-rearing. They were all very nice about my sub-par fence-post-hole-digging skills. By the end of the afternoon I was totally soaked in sweat. Totally soaked. I don't know that I've ever been so gross or so smelly. My entire shirt was wet. My hair was soaked. But there was something peaceful and calming and meaningful about working with the earth, building something so concrete and visible, and I could see how this life could be healing--working with others, talking about God, about the right way to live, about simplicity, building fences, growing food, building community, eating together, worshiping together, agreeing, arguing, debating, finding ways to live and work together. Every part of my day felt meaningful. And that was a very new feeling.

I did, though, forget the sunscreen and wound up with a raging sunburn...thank God for the Georgia rains...

More Koinonia

2009-07-15T20:31:00.003-06:00

Right at the moment I am loving Koinonia enough to want to move it, or at least to wish that there was something like this closer to me. I'm having amazingly stimulating conversations with people and am just delighted to find that people really run across the theological spectrum here--from pretty solidly Evangelical (hell, atonement theology, the whole bit) to very liberal (me--Bible not innerant, no hell, etc.). What I find fascinating about the New Monasticism Movement is just how theologically diverse it is. One the one hand you can find queer Catholic anti-nuke anarchist activists like I did at Trinity House and on the other you can find people who quote Bible verses at length, preach against premarital sex, and wonder if I might be headed for hell because I don't think the question of Christ's divinity really matters all that much. But both of these people are living the same sort of life--renouncing material goods, embracing non-violence in thought, word, and deed, hating the way the U.S. has become so materialistic and imperialistic. They're both seeking to live how Christ lived, to take him seriously in his call to sell all possessions and give to the poor and follow him. They live lives of simplicity and generosity in community. I spent the afternoon (in 90+ degree humid weather) trying to dig fence posts (seriously not my calling in life) and talking to said Evangelical and just LOVING it...finding in him such a deep thirst for understanding who God is and how to live like Christ, such a deep desire for love and peace, that I felt real respect and honest interest from him as I talked about my different understanding of faith. I felt no hostility or judgment. People here seem to be finding a way to live in community (with lots of squabbles and problems but also lots of love and joy) alongside those with very different viewpoints but joined around the figure of Christ and this radical way of living that Christ represents--a way of love and peace and justice and hope. My Evangelical friend (though I'm not sure how he would identify--his theology struck me as solidly Conservative Evangelical but I imagine he might object to the label) says he's trying to figure out what it means to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and that seemed like a great description to me of what I've seen in my travels so far--people who want to say that there's another way of being, another way of living that neither the U.S. nor the church has figured out. They want to say that there is a higher reality that can permeate this one and help us to found communities based on real love for one other, based on sharing what we have with one another, based on caring for the poor and the oppressed. Both communities I've been to draw heavily on the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain to inform their way of living, and that seems to cut across what might otherwise be insurmountable theological and political difference and bring Republicans and Anarchists and Radical Leftists and Evangelicals and liberal Episcopals and agnostics together in a way of being together and loving together.

I've also been learning more about the history of Koinonia. And WOW. Wow. I wish this story were told more. It's such a moving part of the civil rights movement. I can't possibly do it justice, and plan to buy the documentary I watched recently to share with people when I get home, but here are a few highlights: Clarence Jordan was a Southern Baptist preacher in Georgia who had gone to school in agriculture out of a desire to help poor sharecroppers in the South learn to better utilize the land and move out of poverty. He became a pacifist early on as a result of his study of the life of Jesus, and after getting his doctorate in Greek and New Testament became convinced that the concept of Koinonia (meaning having all in common) that is often addressed in the NT was essential to Christian living. In 1942, horrified by the brutal racism and poverty around him, he decided to start a cooperative farm where blacks and whites would work alongside one another, earning the same wage, and having all in common. They would learn together the best agricultural practices and support one another and live off of the land, selling off surplus to support the farm. So, in 1942 in the depths of the rural south, this white Southern Baptist preacher with a PhD in Greek and New Testament starts a farm/pacifist interracial Christian community--years and years before the civil rights movement really began and years before segregation would end. I LOVE it--this white southern guy studies his Bible and concludes that he's supposed to live another way and so he just does it. He defined faith not as the ability to believe in things with little evidence (that's foolishness, he says), but rather as the ability to live without fear of the consequences.

And of course there were consequences. Though the farm went on with relatively little resistance for a few years, trouble began when white Koinonia members started bringing people of color into their white churches. Pretty quickly all members of Koinonia were barred from nearby Rehoboth Sounthern Baptist (Clarence had been banned previously for his views on racial equality and pacifism). The white children of Koinonia were banned from local schools for fear that they would corrupt the morals of the other children. When a court forced the schools to let the children in, the children were beaten, ostracized, and taunted for their four years there. I saw several interviews with them that reminded me of the experience of the Little Rock Nine, some of the first African-American students to integrate an Arkansas public school. The farm was targeted by the KKK, and families often had to hide under beds as bullets came through the walls. Nobody would buy or sell from Koinonia, but eventually the story of Koinonia got out and support came in from elsewhere. Some members of the community were evacuated out of fear for their safety, but many people refused to leave, saying they would rather die than back down and stop living the way they believed Christ called them to live. The farm and its way of life--blacks and whites living, working, and worshipping alongside one another and caring for the poor and needy in surrounding communities--continued, and eventually as racial violence died down and poverty and the housing crisis became pressing local concerns, the community became the birth place of Habitat for Humanity. Clarence Jordan died at 57 (can't remember the date) of cardiac arrest but the farm continues. The community who live here keep Jordan's legacy alive and study his writings regularly, seeking to live like Christ and continuing on Jordan's vision. Now, though, the peace and justice focus is less a community focus and more something individuals do in their own ways. Still, though, they seek to embody a different way of being that seeks out peace and justice for all people. What I'm most moved by in the story of Koinonia is that before the culture around him had begun to shift at all, he just started to live as he believed Christ called him to. He just started something new. He thought about what the kingdom of God should be and sought to help bring it to earth. And he did. He created a space in the deep, deep south where whites and blacks lived in harmony and love with one another long before it was acceptable or even legal to do so. When he began the farm, he an idealistic view of what might happen and how it might be received and was deeply pained by the truly violent, hateful reaction he got, but that didn't cause anything to change for him. Instead he and the other whites who were a part of the farm chose to give up their privelege--chose to give up their option to be safe, to not feel the affects of racism, to not be in harms way--in order to live with and love their black brothers and sisters. I think this might be a viable model for those of us who are white and privileged as we think about social change. I may not be able to understand a truly oppressed person's world enough to come up with a viable model to "fix" it (nor is it morally ok for me to seek to come in and do so), but I can choose to enter into community with those who are most disadvantaged in my world, to seek to live with them and share with them, to give up the comfort I get to experience from being distant, unaware, white. I can choose to be in community with the homeless like those at Trinity House do, really getting to know them and care about them and share life with them, or perhaps it's migrants or LGBTQ people...But what I love about what Jordan did is that it was so, so radical and it showed the possibility of another way of being to a world that didn't believe that white-black communities could or should exist. All the work that was done (and is still being done) in the civil rights movement to change laws was absolutely necessary, but even before any of those successes happened, Jordan chose to live as Christ would have him live. Often I feel like the structure has to change for any real progress to happen, and of course that's the ultimate goal, but I need to be reminded that I can live differently even in the midst of unjust world, and, in fact, that is precisely what Christ calls me to--not just to work to change the world, but, in fact, to begin that new world right here and right now, being a peace-maker, being a citizen of the kingdom of God here on earth where the love of Christ reigns--this topsy-turvy kingdom where the first is last and the last is first, where the persecuted and the oppressed are now the happy, where the rich give up everything to gain their souls, where the most despised inherit the earth, where violence and division and hatred have no place.

Welcome!! (Koinonia Day One)

2009-07-12T21:34:00.004-06:00

I haven't had a chance to finish writing about Trinity House, but I'm already at my next destintion--Koinonia Farm in GA--and so the Trinity House saga will have to be a to be continued...for right now.

After a ridiculously long day of waiting around in airports in between flights and too little sleep and too much grumpiness, I finally arrive (exhausted and a bit naseuas) at the airport in Albany where a Koinonia member met me. I am alarmed at how very, very, very hot and humid it is and quite certain that these Christian radicals will not be into air conditioning anymore than the Trinity House people were. I am right, BUT when I arrive I am greeted by various chatty, out-going, fascinating people. One has been traveling for a year visiting different intentional communities and stayed for quite awhile at Trinity House as well. We talk and I ask her for recs about other communities to visit (she suggests Open Door in Atlanta and the L.A. Catholic Worker). She's making saurkraut from very fresh looking cabbage she rescued from a dumpster. "Dumpster-diving" seems to be a trend in these communities--I guess to illustrate how much fresh food people waste, to illustrate our excess and our utter disregard for the hungry--we throw away our extra, still-good food rather than share it with those who need it. I feel very welcomed and really like the laid back atmosphere. I haven't been here a full day yet, but I'm told that people work on the farm until 5, eat together, worship together, and then are free in the evenings. It's a rhythm that sounds good to me, and the relaxed atmosphere I've experienced so far seems to suggest that it works well for people.

I feel very peaceful here. I also feel very welcome. When I came in I was greeted very cheefrully by all sorts of people and also found a colorful, hand-drawn welcome sign on my door. It's a sun with a smiley face and green grass and the words "Welcome Muser" [well, my real name, but I'll stay anonymous!] in bright pink and turqouise. It's such a little gesture, but my soul (that was starved for love for many years) just delights in it. Given how hard it often was to feel welcome and wanted when I was a kid, I really notice these things (and also notice their lack). When those little gestures are present, I find myself immediately feeling safe and secure and big and bright rather than closed down. It's a good thing to remember as I begin ministry. I imagine there are many more like me in the world who could use just a simple reminder that they are welcome and wanted, that their presence is good and desirable. It also feels very healing after much that came up for me at Trinity House (and that I'll write about more later). It is good to be reminded that I am welcome--and to remember to speak to that part of my soul that still feels so very neglected and ugly and unwanted, and to say "welcome!" Welcome, welcome, welcome! :)

Day 2 with those radical Catholic anarchists

2009-07-08T12:52:00.006-06:00

I started writing about day 2 in my last post, but here's more detail:

It's "hospitality day" at Trinity House and so, despite getting in late, I want to get up to witness the hospitable festivities. The frying pan gong sounds for morning prayers and I rush around trying to look semi-decent (I assume the Catholic anarchists who have taken a vow of poverty are not so much going to care if I manage to style my hair or put my make-up on). I walk into prayer a bit late and am a little surprised as I see three very young women in pjs and no one else. I hadn't expected teenagers, somehow, but M., one of the full-time Catholic workers is only 19 (and has about the coolest mohawk/semi-shaved head hair-do I've ever seen. I keep wanting to pet it as if it's some exotic animal...but I resist). I actually feel a bit put off and yet again encounter all of those -isms lurking in my soul--this time ageism. We finish prayers and a couple of others filter in. Mariah gives those of us who are volunteers and interns some jobs to do as the house prepares for hospitality day--we'll make breakfast, do laundry, and open up our bathrooms for showers for any homeless or others in need who might drop by. C., one of the guests at Trinity who lives in the backyard in a tent surrounded by lovely glass art pieces and one of the Trinity House beehives, begins cooking--eggs, potatoes, tortillas. I don't know C's story, but I am guessing that he was formerly homeless and is now living at Trinity as a guest (for up to a year) in order to try to find a way out of homelessness. He tells me he loves it here. And it's obvious. He's constantly cheerful, talkative, smiling. He seems jovial even.

The rest of us help with the food prep and cleaning, and soon our first breakfast guest arrives--S.. She's a regular and looks distraught. She doesn't want anything to eat but just drinks coffee. As cooking and cleaning is under control C. suggests I sit and chat with her. I feel nervous and self-conscious but sit down at the table with her. She tells me that she's really upset because she got drunk last night, which she's not supposed to do (she's in a rehab group at the Salvation Army) and called her "old man" who's currently in another state and left him a bunch of messages. She's worried he's mad at her for drinking. She'd been planning to go live with him but now worries that he won't have her. Her phone is out of minutes and so I let her use mine to call him. She leaves another message. She calls to check her bank balance and finds that she only has 64 cents. Though she has an apartment currently (she's been homeless on and off for about the last 30 yrs) she says it's a bad living situation and she wants out. She's also has a car but is worried it'll run out of gas if she drives. We talk for awhile and drink coffee and then I go into eat. I offer her food again and she declines. We have more guests now--J., who's charming and shaky and keeps pulling a thin robe he's wearing as a shirt tighter around his bare chest. G, J's brother and his wife L, and D. who's clearly very well-educated, and one of the only homeless or near-homeless who frequents the house who doesn't have a current addiction. L talks with me animatedly and is very polite. G. tells me through near tears about losing his father and one of his brothers when he was young. L and G and J all live in a shell of a house--they say it was burned down by a gang. M. tells me that all three of them are addicted to hard drugs and alcohol. L's arm is clearly injured and she tells me that J hit her and broke it. I later ask M. about it and she tells me that J and G and L fight constantly, but generally L and G physically abuse J who sometimes retaliates. J "turns tricks," M. tells me, saying the other two only keep him around for the money and that Trinity House tried to help him leave bcs of the abuse. He refused. M and the other long-term people in the house know all of these guests well and ask them questions about their lives, their recent hosptial stays, recent jail stints. I've seen the homeless fed and "ministered" to, but never really related to like this. The normal line of separation that keeps those who serve separate from those who receive just doesn't seem to exist here. We all eat together. We all talk. S. wanders in and out like a lost ghost and tells the group that she's sad. M. looks at her and says, "Oh, I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?" S. says she doesn't think so. I notice that I'm surprised by M's response and then wonder why. I realize that it's because I'm so used to seeing the homeless and the poor treated as objects--either of contempt or of demeaning pity rather than as people who deserve to be related to just like anyone else in our communities--not as objects to be fixed or ignored. S. begs me for my phone again and leaves her "old man" another message. She sits on the couch silently while the rest of us eat. D. begins leafing through Natl. Geographics and showing the group stories and images that seem especially powerful to him. We talk about massive caves of crystals and newly discovered species, talk about what it would be like to be the photogropher who gets to go around documenting these strange, wonderful, surprising parts of our world. L. marvels at how much D. is always wanting to learn. People come in and out as they take turns in the shower. They use the house phone. They talk some more. They clearly know and respect the house rules (no one in the house's bedroom areas, you can't leave and come back--too many people getting high or drunk and then returning). I've volunteered in places where those sorts of rules seem sort of demeaning or fear-based; here they feel more like a community agreement made out of respect for all in the community, much like the expectations that the CWs and interns and volunteers all agree to abide by in order to make life good and safe for as many as possible.

As the morning goes on, a few people do the breakfast guests' laundry as the guests eat and shower. I stay and talk with people. Finally S's "old man" calls and she comes in beaming. "He called and isn't mad and now I'm happy! How co-dependent is that?" she asks. I can relate and wonder how much more my struggles with emotional dependence would intensify if I was always on the brink of homelessness. I can't really fathom any of these people's lives, any of the tragedy and disasters and human evil that went into each of them ending up in their current place. But I can still relate. We can still drink coffee together and talk. I love this model--treating the poor and homeless as guests, as community. I love that Trinity House serves breakfast right in the dining room where all of the house-members eat all of the time rather than in some sterile public building. I love that we've been here for 3 hours and talked and hung-out. I help clean up until a bit past the end of the morning shift and then tell M. I'm going to head out for my "mini-retreat" that I've scheduled for that evening as well as the next day.

Those Radical Catholic Anarchists...

2009-07-04T17:18:00.005-06:00

I've just returned from two weeks of a truly rich, empowering, exhausting experience of retreat, of family time, of camping, and of living with the homeless. It's so hard to know where to begin. But as the March Hare tells Alice in Alice in Wonderland, "start at the beginning and when you get to the end, stop." So I will start at the beginning, but to spare you an even longer post than the gargantuan ones I usually write, I will stop before I got to the end. At least for today's post.

My first stop for this leg of my trip was Trinity House, an intentional community in the tradition of the Catholic Workers and Dorothy Day. Here's their mission and vision statements:

VISION STATEMENT:
Trinity House is a welcoming community of hospitality, where the fundamental spirit of a healthy family is encouraged and created, in order to become alive and well. We offer an open table fellowship and a safe haven for the poor, including the physically, intellectually, and spiritually homeless.

Our intentional community is grounded in the humanity and teachings of Jesus Christ, especially as manifest in Jesus' mission statement of liberation [Luke 4:16-19]; his new world view, love of enemies, Sermon on the Mount [Matthew: 5-7] and Sermon on the Plain [Luke 6: 17-49]; and the joy and unity of a community of compassion [Matthew 25: 31-46].

MISSION STATEMENT:
We are a House of Hospitality based in the tradition of the Catholic Worker movement. We seek to imitate Jesus Christ by living a particular lifestyle with three priorities: First, to co-create with God a community that is built on faith, love, hope, prayer, compassion, gratitude, joy peace and justice; Second, to express the Love of God by helping to alleviate the pains of those in need, primarily those of the Poor and Homeless folks in New Mexico; Third, to peacefully challenge and change those social structures which create division, alienation, isolation, domination, exploitation, and involuntary poverty.

CWs take a vow of poverty and community and seek to live with and be in community with the poor. In this house, there are three full-time CWs, several long-term guests who are working on resolving various life struggles including homelessness and mental illness, an intern, and others who stay sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for a year or more either because they need shelter and hospitality or because they want to help out in the work of Trinity House. At least once a week (usually more often) the house is open for the homeless and house members make breakfast and eat with the homeless, do their laundry, and allow them to take showers. Often they give away food or clothes, or other necessities. They provide community and conversation too and have come to know several "regulars" very well. Strangers in need can stay for up to 8 days per month at the house when they need emergency shelter and guests can stay for up to a year as they seek permanent housing. Sometimes families or others come and stay for a few weeks. There's so much more to say about the house...but that will have to wait for later posts.

And back to the story...I flew into Albuquerque, NM, late on June 23, got my rental car, and drove myself out to the house. I can't see much as it's past midnight, but it's clear as I drive that the area is getting poorer. I remember that we no longer have comprehensive car insurance (we have liability only now that our car is older) and I wonder about the wisdom of turning down the supplemental insurance on the rental car, realizing that the homeless who spend time at Trinity House could certainly use the money they could get from a nice, stolen rental car that I would then I have to pay for. I'm not even at the house yet and I am becoming aware of my very high-class, individualistic concerns (what a luxury to worry that my rental car could get stolen as I traipse around the country using scholarship money!) After much wandering, I drive past the Center for Action and Contemplation, which is just down the road from Trinity House.

I pull into the driveway and see a jumble of old cars, murals painted on walls, and a porta-potty painted black and red and labeled ("Toilet Access For All"--more on the toilet later!). Jerome, one of the board members who lives in the house, greets me and takes me into the house, which is actually two houses that have been joined together with a long hallway. I am aware of bare light bulbs, concrete walls, old broken down furniture, a large table, the smell of cat urine. Jerome is wonderfully welcoming even though it is past midnight, offers me water, gives me a quick tour of the place, and tells me when and where morning prayer will be. I go to my room and am surprised by the massive hole in the window screen, by a couple of dead cockroaches on the floor, by the jumble of stuff sitting on the top bunk of my bunk bed. I am put off by the heat in the room and by the smell--the sweet, slightly rotting scent of the compost pile outside my window. And then I'm surprised at my own reaction. I had been expecting, without realizing it, a comfortable room, with a comfortable bed, with matching furniture, with a nice fluffy towel set out for me. But, of course, these people have given up middle- and upper-class comforts to care for the poor. I feel like I am in a foreign country, in a much poorer country than the U.S. And I don't like it. Already I want my comforts, I want the luxury of time and money and resources to provide a spotless, clean, safe space. I want to feel like I am at a hotel. And then a cat jumps into my room through the hole in the screen--and then another. One black, one yellow. The yellow one purrs, rubs up against me, lets me cuddle her as I orient myself. She sleeps on my feet all night and I begin to enjoy the hole in my screen that has allowed me to enjoy a furry midnight companion.

I wake up the next morning to the sound of a gong (which is actually an old frying pan hung from the ceiling and now used to call the community to prayer and to meals. It sounds remarkably like a gong. Who knew you could do that with old pans?). I drag myself to morning prayers. They're somewhat familiar, with a Catholic liturgical feel. But they're radical and I can see the Christian anarchism that philosophically undergirds the house in them (you can read a tiny bit about Christian anarchism on the page about Catholic Workers here--scroll down to the section on "personalism." I'll post some of their prayers later). We read together about a saint in China who was originally a missionary and was kicked out of the church for trying to really honor those he ministered to, wearing their clothes, learning their customs. Mariah, 19, Caucasian, and one of the full-time Catholic Workers who lives and works at the house, talks about a Catholic priest she knows who works with the homeless and who seeks to really identify with and honor them. He even looks homeless and often surprises people who don't think a priest could possibly look like that. She wishes there were more like him. It's clear she and the other members of the house who have given up a lot of privilege are seeking to do just that...

Retreat Two: It Rains Because I Love You

2009-06-18T15:15:00.005-06:00

(Continuing to read about Celtic spirituality, especially the concept of a truly immanent and present God and about panentheism--the idea that God and God's essence is actually present in us and the world around us even though God also transcends us and the world around us; panentheism says that God can be found in humanity and in nature because God created all of us out of God's own self/love/life and somehow is, thus, present in all. Reading The Cry of the Deer by David Adam, Listening for the Heartbeat of God by J. Phillip Newell. Also re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, which, I believe, reflect some of the Celtic understanding of panentheism or at least the Celtic understanding of nature mysticism).

A few weeks before this retreat I laid down on my bed as SparkleEyes napped in another room. I spent the few minutes I knew I had to myself before she woke up in prayer. As I spread out on the bed it was as if I heard a divine voice whispering, "It rains because I love you." I don't even remember if it was raining at the time, but I began to weep. It's hard to explain exactly what that meant to me, but I can say this to try to explain: I've lived most of my life in the desert--either the high desert of Colorado or the low and much hotter desert of Arizona. It doesn't rain much either place, but when it does, it always feels to me like an extraordinary, mystical event. The clear blue skies become moody and swirl with gray clouds--some dark, some light, entertwining. And then the sky breaks open and the dry, dusty earth runs with tiny rivulets, minature rivers everywhere. Life springs up almost immediately afterwards--all those little seeds just below the surface, just a little too thirsty to have budded before. The world, once brown, is suddenly green and vibrant. When I was in high school I often celebrated thunderstorms by going outside by myself at night in the rain. I twirled and danced in the dark, wet, world, letting it soak me through. I even once danced naked, hoping no one in my suburban neighborhood loved the rain like I did, hoping they were inside their houses unlikely to happen upon naked me. I jumped in puddles. I hated to use an umbrella--the feel of water on my skin bringing me into the present moment...it was one of the few things that could lift me out of my self-concious brooding and depressions and make me feel a part of something very alive, something bigger than me.

I came to believe very early on that my own mother wished I had never been born. I came to feel very early on that my existence caused pain, took up space and breath and food and love that others more worthy than me needed. I heard loud and clear that my desire for nurture, for protection, for joy, for love, for comfort, for life were an imposition, that I even sucked the life my mother needed, stole from her. I felt that she resented me for even existing. I existed to feed her, to comfort her, to heal her. I existed for her, not she for me. And when I failed to mother her, to heal her from her nightmarish past, and when I, instead, asked her to meet a need, well, if she was in a bad place, I felt her rage, her hatred. I became the blank slate for her to project all of her anguish, her rage about the awful abuse and neglect she had experienced. Unable to find a way to accept and heal from her past, she projected it onto me and rejected me instead. The messages I heard from her were something like, "Because I love you, you should heal me. Because I love you, you should give everything for me. Because I love you, you should hurt instead of me. Because I love you, you should carry this burden, this pain. Because I gave you life, I deserve to own and emotionally exploit you. Because I gave you life, I am allowed to suck it from you to feed myself." Even now when I get caught inside this message and meet the particular depression it carries, I find it hard to eat. You don't feed something that doesn't deserve to exist. I believed deeply (and unconsciously for many years) that I caused pain, death, wounds too deep for words. I felt that I was made to be abandoned, to hold others' rage and pain. I was not made for food, for water, for life, for joy, for love.

My birthday used to trigger awful flashbacks for me. It's hard to celebrate when you feel like you're not meant for life, for love, for joy; when you feel that you shouldn't exist, that your existence causes pain and rage. This year I knew I had met extraordinary healing when instead of experiencing flashbacks I found myself instead staring at a tropical plant at the botanic gardens in awe of the abundance of life in our world, in awe of the fact that my home--this earth--produces an abundance of food, oxygen, light, water all for the sake of nurturing life, existence. I felt as if I was standing right in the middle of the world's heartbeat, wrapped up in a huge, pulsing stream. I felt as if God was rushing through me, surging around me, through the world, through everything alive like blood surges through a healthy body. I felt that I belonged, was created for life, for nurturance, that every time my heart beat and sought life, God was there, at the center of that life, beating through it, through me. I felt made up of and made for love and life and joy. As I stared at these plants that produce abundant food, that sustain so many forms of life, I suddenly knew viscerally, perhaps for the first time, that I was meant to exist, that my existence was good, that I was made for sustenance, love, food, water, life. On Easter weekend--the other part of the year that used to trigger flashbacks--I felt this even more fully. I wrote this: once God seemed to me this being up above who sent someone to die because I was so very, very bad only a divine death and resurrection could save my sorry soul. But this week I am discovering, instead, a deeply immanent, deeply loving, deeply present God; a God so close that each time I step into love, life, joy, hope, each time I choose to walk into and through spaces of death in order to find what's on the other side...well, God is there. Each time someone enters into a space of pain, terror, oppression, death and stands on the side of joy, of love, of hope; God is there. Each time someone cries out for life, even unable to reach for it herself, God is there. Each time a blade of grass bursts through the earth, reaching for the sun; each time a baby cries for food; each time an immigrant cries out for work, for a better life; each time a woman cries out for justice; each time someone reaches for life, even in the feeblest, most trembling way; even each time my own abusive mother found it inside herself to say something loving, to get up each morning to care for her kids even as she lived through excruciating pain and mental illness, each time she won the battle to see us instead of her projections; each time someone seeks life, resurrection...God is there. And each time someone breathes, embraces life in even the smallest, most elemental way, God is there and, thus, so is the possibility of resurrection. I began to feel that I was made up not just of trauma and hatred and rage and depression and a broken past, but also of all these moments of love and joy and life. I began to feel that life and that God--ran through my veins.

When it rains, when the skies burst open in order to water the earth, to give it exactly what it needs in order to grow and bear life, I hear something I rarely got to hear from my mother: "It is good you exist. It is good to reach for life. There is water. There is food. It is for you. You can grow large. You can grow vibrant. You are meant to live. You are meant to be watered. You are good, worthy of life. You are worthy of the rain it takes to make you grow. I make the rain so that you can grow, get big, know sunlight and wind and sustenance." But this symbol of rain is not something I get to enjoy much living in Colorado.

On day two of this retreat that began with so much pain, I encountered all of this life again. As I meditated, sunk deeply into the books I'm reading, drank in the world around me, the world seemed to pulse with God's presence. God seemed no longer some hugely separate being up there, but rather present in all that is good, all that is life-seeking all over the world, present even in my own skin.

I walked in the unusually green mountains around my cabin and felt as if I could almost hear the trees speak, could feel their life--God within them--reaching for me, around me. The world felt like a womb wrapped around me; God seemed the heart beating, pulsing love and blood and life, into my nascent, healing self. And then it began to rain. It stormed like it never storms in Colorado--the sky just broke and melted, and water rushed all over the mountains, and my high desert streamed and streamed and streamed with water.

I began this retreat--this summer--hoping to rediscover the presence of God in my world. I began it hoping to again believe that I am beloved--made for and of the love of God. I didn't expect--or want--to have to encounter yet more of the trauma I am seeking to heal from, but entering into that trauma on the first day of this retreat somehow brought it out to be healed. That part of me got to speak, to be heard, and to feel met. On day two of this retreat, I found myself believing that I am beloved as I watched the rain, as I read my books on celtic spirituality, as I practiced the presence of Christ in all things, as I nurtured my body, my soul. I began to hear God calling my name, calling me beloved, even as I heard God calling the name of all that lives, naming all of it beloved, all of it holy, calling all of us into more and more of what we truly are, what we are created to be--beings that move toward life and love and hope and growth and transformation; beings shot through with the love and life and essence of God.

Retreat Two: Trauma and the Breath of God

2009-06-08T23:31:00.002-06:00

Retreat Two: May 23-25

I found a space near my home in the mountains to go to for a couple of days before my summer begins. I've been tense and feeling internally cramped with too much going on internally and externally and too little time alone to process, cry, heal. I've been looking forward to this space of quiet and healing and solitude, a space I very rarely get as my husband works from home and I spend most of my days taking care of a 2 1/2 year old who is utterly delightful but not yet capable of understanding "personal space."

This place mostly does group retreats, but said they could do an individual reatreat for me. The morning before I left I got a call from one of the caretakers asking if I would mind if two other people came up to do retreats at the same time. He said I'd have the first night to myself and they'd come up the second and he said that they'd be in the same building as me but assured me that I would still have plenty of space of privacy and solitude, so I agreed. I'm sure you can imagine my shock and anger as I drove up to the "dorm" I'd be staying in and realized it was, in fact, a 700 sq. ft. cabin I was expected to share with two strange men. I shit you not. No locks on bedrooms or bathrooms, one small common space, tiny rooms, no way to get from my room to go anywhere else without running into them. I immediately told the caretaker I didn't feel safe and that he either needed to reschedule the other two or I would leave. He acted like I was being unreasonable but said he'd try to get ahold of them.

I was amazed at the intensity of my reaction. Feeling threatened (cetainly in terms of my safety but also in terms of losing the space and solitude I'd come up for) and having the caretaker act as if I was being unreasonable set off a trauma reaction, I think. That night I found deep, throaty sobs coming from my gut as I felt myself wondering "Do I matter? Does my safety matter? Does my heart, do my desires, matter?" As I felt my heart splitting open--again--breaking as this moment of feeling my fear, my need for space, for a healing, nurturing space stolen again (and, oh, now that I have a child this retreat time is so much more rare and precious than it has ever been). I found myself reliving the emotions of a terrified little girl being abused by a mentally ill mother, not protected by her loving but often cowardly father. I found myself again swallowed up in the heart-break of being abandoned over and over again, left in abusive spaces to fend for myself, found myself aching as I did when my normally loving father would give in to his cowardice and would ask me to do something to make things better with my mom or, worse, would lash out at me verbally, as he did when I explained that I was taking space from my mother because I was having flashbacks, was not sleeping, was suicidally depressed. He called me "feeble" and irresponsible. I learned quickly that my pain, my safety, my mental health--none of that really mattered, not compared to keeping my rageful, depressive, irrational, mentally unstable mother happy (a truly impossible task). I got used to being sacrificed.

That night I had intense nightmares. In the first I am in my room in the cabin. It's pitch black and I hear the door open. I sense a terrifying and looming presence over me. I awake with my heart pounding and reverbating throughout my body. My back and shoulders ache. I take more sleep meds and do my DNMS exercises and get back to sleep. This time I dream of 2 men and a woman coming into the cabin ready to rape me, holding a rusty knife up to my neck each time I do something to try to escape. I finally distract them a bit and am able to dial 911, but the person on the other side can't figure out where I am. I am screaming to him, loudly and clearly the name of the place, but he can't figure it out. I yell, "They're raping me!" Finally unable to get help, I trigger the fire alarm. The sprinklers go off and alrams start to sound all over the retreat camp. Though my rapists are still threatening me (this time with an ax) I tell them that firefighters are on their way and they'll get caught. I'm remarkably confident looking and sounding. It occurs to me that they could easily kill me and run, but they don't. They just flee. Later in the dream I'm with the idiotic caretaker who thought it a good idea to put me in a tiny cabin with two strange men. I ask him if he still thinks my safety concerns don't matter. He says he still thinks I'm being unreasonable, but his wife takes my side when she learns that he booked two other men in my cabin and berates him.

Later that night: I dream of my first boyfriend--the one I'd had a crush on all year in 7th grade, the one who I "went out with" for a week until he kissed another girl at his birthday party. I dream of a beautiful woman, a professor with sharp but lovely features, a short and sleek haircut, much like her sleek and slender body, who shames and shames a friend of mine--a sweet, kind, insecure girl--who had not finished all of her work. We are working on a group project, but the professor kicks her out of the room for not being prepared and my friend begins to wail loudly, overtaken by her exhaustion at working so hard all the time and never, never being able to do it all. I gently and firmly tell the professor I think it had been uncalled for, that my friend works harder than anyone I know, that she simply needs to be told she is doing a good job. I tell my friends that we are leaving too, and firmly tell the prof that we'll reschedule for a time when she's able to be more reasonable and has been able to deal with whatever is going on for her. We rejoin my wailing friend and calm her and reassure her that it's all going to be okay, that she's not going to flunk. We start to work on our project and I start talking about the Divine Feminine, talking about the Hebrew word for breath (Ruah, I think...at least that's what I say in the dream). I say that God is pictured as breath, as Ruah, in the creation story, that it is a feminine word. I talk about God as this powerful feminine presence breathing life into the world, brooding over the world, this chaos, powerfully forming it. I talk about God as being as close as breath, as vital to life as breath, as fully at the center of all things as breath, as fully a part of me, as totally intertwined with me as breath(I wish I could remember this part of the dream more...I remember it was an intense moment of connecting to this wild, scandalous, powerful, nurturing, fierce mothering part of God for me--and speaking absolutely confidently about Her).

I wake up exhausted and spend some time relaxing in bed. I call the caretaker and he tells me that he's managed to reschedule the other two. He was so much more accomodating and kind that I'm guessing either the two men I was supposed to share the cabin with said, "Oh, well, of course. We would never have asked to come up at the same time if we'd realized it's just one cabin" or that his wife had told him he was being an idiot. Either way I'm finally able to relax and let go of the risidual emotions. I feel heard by God, heard by myself. Protected and defended. I find it interesting that I used to have these sorts of dreams all the time--calling 911 or going to the emergency room and not being able to get through, being ignored even as I'm bleeding to death. But in these nightmares I am so much more active than I used to be. I am defending myself. And God is breathing...creating.

Reteat One: Rediscovering Grace

2009-06-08T14:39:00.007-06:00

This was a sort of mini-retreat--about 5 hours long, really. I flew out to Tucson for a graduation but got there early enough to have the morning and afternoon to myself. I don't have a whole lot to say about the time itself (though it was wonderfully nurturing--even 5 hours of totally free alone time now feels like a huge gift!). But I began reading this book, which is wonderful and may salvage my connection to Christianity, and I would like to share a couple of pieces of writing that came out of that time for me. The first is a little prayer I wrote based on the celtic prayers and spirituality in Newell's book (link above) which see the natural world as a sacred text, able to speak of the goodness of God. My husband (C.) and my daughter (SparkleEyes) and I now say this prayer every night as a part of our bedtime ritual. The second is a revison of a paper I had to write for my feminist theology class about whether or not I see feminist theology as necessary (if you really want the full more academic version w/footnotes and all, feel free to ask for a copy, but I figured most of you would want to be spared!). I worked on both pieces on the plane on the way home.

Bedtime Prayer

We bless you, Sister Sun,
for the warmth and light of your rays
that have illuminated our day,
for reminding us of the light and warmth of Mother God
who fills the world with life.

We bless you, Brother Moon,
for filling our night with your gentle light,
for reminding us
of Father God
who fills the world
with gentle, healing light.

We worship you, God,
Three in One,
Our Creator,
Our Redeemer,
Our Sustainer
for bright day,
for dark night,
for death,
for life,
for sleeping,
for waking,
for food for our bodies,
love for our hearts,
and hope for our souls.

Amen.

Grace Undone and Redone: Naming, Renaming, and the Powerful Potential of Feminist Theology

Grace—this particular story begins with my middle name. My story begins with Grace. There it stands—that word—at the center of my name. There it stands—that concept—at the middle of my identity.

Naming, it’s a powerful act, naming. When we name we shape identities even as they emerge from the womb. Naming, giving a yet unformed self definition, boundaries, a way to be and be known in the world. And what a powerful act to re-name, especially to rename oneself, or, as Hagar did, even to rename God. Language—in it we live and move and have our beings. Language—the words spoken to us, of us, about us—weaves us into a way of being and weaves its way through our being, framing us, creating the boundaries around how we can perceive and act on our worlds.

I was named by my father. I was named by a five-point Calvinist. His world and self, marked as they were by violence and mental illness, seemed too shattered, too far beyond repair, too full of awful, unspeakable evil for him to believe easily in a God of love who loved him simply because he was, in fact, loveable. Once he said to me, “When I get to heaven I think God will probably look at me and say, ‘Alright. I guess I’ll let you in. You’ve sure screwed up, though.’” Unable to conceptualize of a self good and loveable enough to be greeted with joy and delight, my dad at least found a way to stop the terrifying visions that filled his teenage years—visions of being swallowed by a pit of fire, visions of being forever tormented in the eternal flames of hell.

Irresistible Grace—God chose me. I am too damnable, broken, vile, to choose God, to move even one iota toward God, toward salvation, toward heaven. God chose me and I was unable to refuse.

Born of an angry alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother who suffered post-partum psychosis and probably other illnesses as well, it is no wonder my father’s teenage years were filled with anxiety attacks fueled by those visions of hell. No wonder Grace—this Calvinist understanding of grace—wooed him, changed him, finally let him believe that perhaps hell was not his fate. Though he could not believe that he was worth saving, at least this faith taught him that he was saved anyway because God had chosen to save him. And this faith—this Calvinist faith that affirmed his sense of his utter depravity—well, this faith changed him enough that years later he could throw his arms wide, smile, and with a joyful shout grasp me in a hug and say to a friend nearby, “This is my daughter. Isn’t that wonderful?!?” He had at last found a way to sometimes be for me what God was not yet for him. In my dad’s new visions—his visions of salvation—God might not greet him at heaven’s door with outstretched arms and a shout of joy, but his faith had healed him enough to sometimes believe in goodness, to sometimes believe in my goodness, my lovability, if not his own. He could at least greet me with joy even if he could not imagine the same greeting for himself. But these moments of affirming my goodness, my lovability, well, they were not the only moments.

Grace—God chooses me though I am through and through marked by a curse, utterly depraved, carrying the searing hot lava of hell in my veins.

I think he meant the name—the word right at the center of my name—to speak of love, of freedom, of liberation. I don’t think he realized it would also first whisper and then shout to me about the self-hatred he still carried, the masochism, that prompted him to marry a mentally ill woman who would abuse him, would abuse their children, even as she wished to love, to rejoice. I don’t think he realized it would speak to me of his belief that awful suffering is inevitable (and thus not worth fighting) because the world is an awful, depraved place. I don’t think he realized it would speak to me of his cowardly inaction in the face of my suffering, that it would tell me that I deserved to be hurt, to be destroyed, to be sacrificed. I am certain he didn’t realize that someday it would lead to my own suicidal depression. I don’t think he realized this name—this way of being and seeing the world—would torment rather than free me.

Grace—it is not a liberating concept. Not this kind of grace.

Visions of hell tormented me when I was a teenager too, but believing myself to be one of the “elect,” I feared for my classmates rather than myself. If God chooses us because we’re too fallen to even move toward God, if God predestines to hell as well as to heaven, then what would become of these twenty non-Christian teenagers filling the desks beside me? As I stared around the room, picturing those young bodies being licked, seared by the flaming tongues of hell, I lost my faith in five-point Calvinism—in this God who plucks people up, flinging some heavenward and some down through the gaping mouth of flames below. My brother, though, feared God had plucked him up simply to fling him downward. He hated afternoons and sunk into silence when confronted with the fiery flames of day. He collected stray and broken black umbrellas and decorated his room with them, creating flocks of delightful, disheveled creatures that reminded me of something from Wonderland. Years later through sobs he told me, “That’s how I felt—broken, discarded, ugly, cast aside because no one wanted me.”

Grace—watch out! You might be on the other list, on God’s naughty, vile sinner list. If you’re not, you sure as hell deserve to be, you lucky, undeserving bastard.

Because theology and the faith I embraced so early played such a crucial part in my becoming, I cannot now conceive of myself or my journey apart from theology. My work to heal from this past has necessarily been theological. It is no exaggeration to say that feminist theology saved my life as it gave me a new language and, thus, helped me to rename myself and my God. It helped me to read, write, speak my way out of a theology that said my self, my world were utterly depraved and that as a woman I was especially depraved and linked with evil. It helped me journey out of the theology that told me that if I, a woman, preached, I would unleash demons on my congregation. Feminist theology helped me to speak, read, and write my way into a new, more life-giving, way of being. I experienced (and sometimes still experience) the alienation and the grief and agony inherent in the work of deconstruction, what Mary Daly speaks of as “a radical encounter with nothingness” (211) that “emerges when one turns one’s back upon the pseudo-reality offered by patriarchy” (216) a pseudo-reality that has, nonetheless, through language, through religion, constituted our beings down to the very depths. But I have also begun to experience that simultaneous discovery of my “own depth of being” (216) and that “surge of ontological hope” (211) that came as I realized that my own “exclusion from identity within patriarchy has a totality about it which, when faced, calls forth an ontological self-affirmation” (216). As I discovered that my own story, my own experience, my own existence was denied (and, when acknowledged, hated and demonized by the tradition I had loved)—I also discovered the sometimes terrifying space suddenly open within me. I discover a space once filled with misogynistic, self-hating religion into which I could now become.

Grace—feminist theology has opened me up to new ways of understanding it and, thus, myself. Through feminist theology I have begun to—with God(dess) and with others—speak a new self into being.

No longer do I see grace “as opposed to nature, but as cooperating with it, restoring it or releasing its essential goodness. […] What has been lost is not the light that is within all life, for as St. John says, the darkness has not overcome it. Rather, what has been lost […] is ‘the true beholding of the light from the inner eyes.’ Grace is given to heal that inner sight, to open our eyes to the goodness that is deep within us, for God is within us” (Newell 36-37).

I gave birth to my daughter 2 ½ years ago, just as I was learning the pain and the joy of discovering new names for myself and for God.

I named my daughter ___ Grace. A few weeks after she was born I wrote this:

Grace—it is a theological concept that has troubled me, that has been defined for me as “unmerited favor.” But I am understanding grace a bit differently these days. I hold my daughter and stroke her soft downy hair and her silky skin and I want to weep with the beauty and joy of it. Sometimes I do weep, just overwhelmed that so much beauty can exist. Of course there’s nothing I could ever do to deserve to hold another life, another being so totally inside and with me, but it’s not that I don’t deserve her; it’s just that the gift of another self is too great, too precious, to carry a price, to be bought. Now grace doesn’t feel so much like a “get out of hell” pass issued to a lucky undeserving few; instead, grace feels like a moment of stunning beauty that comes simply because that is its nature. It drops on me and is mine to receive—this shimmering, stunning moment is mine to bask in. Grace is the feel of my daughter’s skin, of her hair, the smell of her clean milkiness, the sound of her soft sighs, her desperate grunts and gurgles as she looks for my breast, her very being in all of its goodness, in all of its miraculousness—her infinite otherness given to me. It is a gift I can only return with myself, a “debt” I can never repay except by receiving her and then giving myself—this equally precious, infinite gift—to her .

Grace—a world, a life, a self, love, beauty, community—given to us to see, to discover, to make, to remake, to rejoice in.

At the heart of my daughter’s name is the same word, the same theological concept as mine, but I hope it is now a new name with liberating potential. And I hope that if I, like my dad did to me, unintentionally harm ___ Grace with my imperfect grasping at God and at freedom, love, and joy, I hope that feminist theology will be there to help her deconstruct and reconstruct. I hope it will be there to help her claim her power to rename and remake herself and her world. I hope it will be there to help her discover the abundant goodness and joy that is at her core because it is at the heart of the Goddess and at the heart of all of creation made in Her image, made out of the overflow of her abundant, creative, fertile, life-giving, life-affirming love.

Works Cited

Daly, Mary. “Why Speak About God?”. Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. Revised edition. Eds. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow. Harper, SanFrancisco, 1992.

Newell, J. Phillip. Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality. Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ, 1997.

Project Outline

2009-06-01T17:05:00.002-06:00

Here's what I'll be doing this summer!

Three mini retreats that will allow me time to slow down, rest, meditate, pray, and engage in those things that ground me and help me to experience God's goodness. Recently I’ve been working with a spiritual director who specializes in spirituality and trauma and we’ve talked a lot about the sorts of things that help me to stay grounded and to experience God as present and good, things that help me slow down and engage my senses, filling them with beauty to remind me of all of the ways God is present in the world around us. Doing this reminds me of the many ways God is gentle and good and loving to me, like a mother who rejoices in introducing her child to delightful experiences. Some things I’ve found that really help me do this are natural beauty, dance, spicy and flavorful food, yoga, and spiritual practices that emphasize the essential goodness of the world around us and of humanity, a goodness that God seeks to help us uncover and restore in our damaged selves and our world.

Visiting communities of faithful contemplation and social justice in the "New Monastic" tradition:

Community One: Trinity House Catholic Worker in Albuquerque, NM
Description from webpage (can’t be linked to directly—have to search from http://www.communityofcommunities.info/). A progressive Catholic community in the tradition of the Catholic Workers that runs a house of hospitality for homeless, protests nuclear weapns, and distributes food and groceries through Food Not Bombs.

Community Two: Koinonia Farm in Americus, GA. This community grew out of the civil rights movement and continues to be a strong space of Christian peace and justice work. (It's really a fascinating place. Visit the link above!)

Fun/Delighting in God's goodness/integrating faith and mommyhood: Taking my family to Ghost Ranch in Abuiqui, NM for family week, hosted by the Southside Presbyterian (birthplace of the Sanctuary Movement) youth pastor and his family. Click here for a description. It's beautiful! Georgia O'Keefe used to paint in the canyons of Abuiqui.

This part of the project, though it might seem a bit out-of-sync with the rest, feels very essential to me. I’ve spent much of the last three years overcoming prenatal and post-partum depression and working through my own mother issues. Now that I’m healthy (though seriously burned-out) I am mostly working on how to integrate this new part of my identity as a mom into my spiritual life, ministry, and understanding of the work I am called to in the church. Much of the spirituality and models for church leadership I have been exposed to are still based on the idea of a celibate male or a male pastor who devotes time to work and church needs rather than family and who develops a spiritual life primarily through solitary devotional acts. I need a more integrated model of leadership in my own life, but I also think the church needs this. I'm hoping Ghost Ranch will give me some ideas for how to develop a deeply engaged, deeply faithful, deeply progressive spiritual life with my family and in my everyday existence.

Final retreat--maybe Costa Rica, maybe Ireland, maybe local--a week-long period of rest, fun, contemplation and integration for me!

The Project: Spirituality, Trauma, and (Re) Discovering God’s Goodness

2009-06-01T16:44:00.003-06:00

As way of introduction to this project I am including my project proposal. I had to go through four "phases" as I prayed about and planned this project, and this piece chronicles my movement through those four phases:

As I begin this proposal, I am struck by how much my movement through this process feels like a sacred cycle, moving me through the same themes over and over again, each time with a new sense of God’s voice. When I looked at the requirements for this proposal, I thought, “This is going to be so disjointed—I don’t know if anything really coherent has emerged for me in this process that I’ve had to engage in such fragmented, busy ways.” And, yet, when I look through what I have written throughout this time, I see themes and stories I wasn’t even aware of.
When I began this process, I struggled to write my application essay. Writing the essay meant really acknowledging my call to ministry in a church and religion that has brought me life and hope but that has also damaged me in unspeakable ways. It meant acknowledging my call in a religion that once told me that I could not hope to be a pastor (or any sort of leader) because I am a woman. Acknowledging my call was painful and frightening and reminded me of aspects of my faith journey I would rather forget. As I went through the application process, I sought spaces of prayer and retreat and found myself at one point at the foot of a sculpture of Jesus at the local archdiocese thinking about how oppressive so much of Christian history has been, how often our symbols have been used to justify conquering people, stealing their lands and their dignity, destroying women, silencing people of color. I found myself wondering how I could possibly continue to relate to these symbols that, in my own life, had been used to tell me that I am dangerous, bad, innately unlovable. But as I sat there, I found myself thinking about my church’s weekly Eucharistic ritual and realized that I can’t escape this story, these symbols, this faith because in it ultimately (as I wrote in my essay), I hear God saying, “I am broken. I am broken because I am in solidarity with the broken, with the needy, and with the oppressed. Each time a human body or soul is brutalized, I choose also to be broken. I choose to be shattered as the oppressed are shattered so I can be fully present in this broken world. I give you this broken body of mine so that you can be a part of reconstructing it. Bring my resurrection into the world.”
This week I have been struggling again to write an essay—this essay. Once again I am struggling to acknowledge my call, this time as I take my first steps into the ordination process in the Episcopal Church. This week I have found myself once again wondering why I don’t simply abandon these symbols and this story and this life path toward ministry in this messy, messy religion we call Christianity. As I have talked about this with mentors and friends, three people have asked me, “Why Christianity?” And though I was not thinking about this essay or my project, I gave pretty much the same answer I came to as I sat below that sculpture of Jesus in a chapel in the archdiocese last year. I said that I cannot abandon Christianity because at its heart is the Christ story that tells us that God is present, that, in fact, God is so present it is as if God wears a human body, gets inside the human self and story, inside human history. God is so intimate, so in love with us, that God chooses not to stay separate but instead walks with us, suffers with us, is born, dies—God breaks, just as those Eucharistic wafers at my church break in my mouth and fill my body. I again found myself affirming those words I had written in my application essay, that God breaks in order to fill us with pieces of God’s own self so that we can birth resurrection and wholeness into the spaces of terror and death that so often rule our world. But through the process that has led to this essay, I have also discovered just how very much I struggle to truly believe what my own theology tells me, and the discovery of the depth of this struggle is what has ultimately shaped this project.

In my first phase I wrote that I have some trauma in my background that has seriously affected my ability to really, deeply, fully believe—and experience—that God is good, present, and loving. I'm not always sure how to fully recover from personally experiencing deep evil coupled with a sense that God did nothing to stop that evil, did nothing to protect me from that evil, and was not meaningfully present in the midst of some of those awful experiences. In phase two I found myself more fully exploring this theme—this fear that maybe God is absent—and linking it more explicitly to my understanding that at the heart of this struggle is my early experience of personal trauma resulting from my mother’s mental illness and abuse later reinforced by abusive “healing” programs in the Evangelical church and by the misogynistic theology of my childhood church. After many years of therapy and spiritual and psychological work, I feel like I have a fairly good grasp on some of the reasons behind my sometimes-fear that God is absent, dangerous, and abandoning. Though my work in therapy and spiritual direction has been enormously helpful, I also am aware that I have a different sort of work to do—work that is more reconstructive than deconstructive.

Years ago I left the church and faith I grew up in largely because I recognized just how misogynistic it was and because I finally let myself admit that I just couldn’t believe what I’d been told to believe with any sort of intellectual credibility. Leaving was liberating and healing, but it also left me adrift. I’d lost the structure through which I first met God, experienced God’s love and goodness, and believed in the possibility of healing, redemption, and joy.
As I worked through phase two, it also became very clear to me that becoming a mother shortly after leaving my Evangelical faith made it even more difficult to rebuild a foundation. I had a baby just as I was beginning the work of rebuilding, and I was totally overwhelmed with post-partum depression and motherhood. Becoming a mother has been the most life-altering, shocking, painful, healing experience of my life. And I feel like it’s entirely connected with my call to ministry. The growth I’ve embraced and moved into—as well as the intense pain—as I’ve become a mother will all be vital parts of my ministry someday. As I have learned to be a loving, present, good mother, some of my images of God have shifted, and in my own parental love for my daughter, I have discovered and experienced new aspects of God’s love for me. Nonetheless, it often feels as if motherhood gets in the way of my spirituality and has interrupted this journey I’m on toward faith and ministry simply because it is so consuming and because the post-partum depression and personal healing I’ve been working so hard on has left me very burned-out.

By the end of this phase it was very clear that I needed some way to tangibly, richly experience God’s love and goodness, that in the midst of all of the really hard psychological work I’ve been doing I also need something that is purely restful and good and joyful to remind me of who God is. And things like natural beauty, dance, slowing down enough to let my senses really ground me in the world are all ways that I’ve noticed really help me attune to God’s presence and love and delight in me and in this world. They help to remind me of God’s liberatory, loving work.
In Phase Three as I attempted to articulate a “theological vision,” I found myself again (unconsciously) returning to some of the same themes I explored in my application essay: I believe that true and meaningful (though not complete) transformation—personal and societal—are possible in the here and now and I believe that God labors to bring that about. I believe that God has made us to be co-creators: we are meant to labor alongside God to birth transformation—to birth God’s new life into our worlds. And giving birth to something so earth shattering and self-stretching is simply not possible alone. This birth happens only in community—with others and with God. And, despite my many, many struggles with this, I do believe that God is somehow present with us in the midst of these labor pains. I believe that God’s work—and our work—is to identify what is most death-affirming in ourselves and in our culture and to bring God’s love and grace and creativity into those spaces: personal spaces of psychological brokenness and pain, of sexual brokenness and pain, of physical and emotional brokenness and pain; and social spaces of oppression, exploitation, racism, sexism, and heterosexism
In my application essay I wrote that my intellectual gifts and my gifts as a teacher and a communicator will benefit my ministry, but what I really have to offer to the church is my own experience of being both damaged and healed by Christianity. I carry within myself a very personal understanding of just how much damage the church can inflict on its people through its interpretations and uses of Christian symbols, rituals, stories, and theologies. But I also carry within myself pieces of the God who broke through these imperfect rituals and stories to find me. Through them, I have glimpsed the God who chooses to break in order to be with us, to fill us with pieces of God’s own self so that we can birth resurrection and wholeness into the spaces of terror and death that so often rule our world. It was true when I wrote it, but I want it to be much, much more true before I enter into ministry. Thus, as I entered phase four, I knew that there were several things I wanted to do with this project: 1) build some space into my cluttered, mommy/student life to really discover (and rediscover) spiritual practices that allow me to experience God’s presence and goodness deeply 2) consciously seek out joyful activities that will help me to continue to heal and to know the playful, delightful/delighting parts of God, and 3) have an experience of worshipping with and working alongside a community that deeply integrates a contemplative spiritual life and work to bring God’s love and transformation into places of brokenness and injustice. Ultimately I would like this project to help me get to a place of being able not only to articulate but also experience and believe more deeply in God’s love and solidarity with the suffering, in God’s brokenness, presence, and healing in myself and in my world.

(As this is already long, I'll post the project outline in the next entry!)

Seeking Healing

2009-06-01T15:03:00.003-06:00

When I was nominated last year for a $10,000 scholarship from the Fund for Theological Education aimed at people pursuing ordination, I found myself petrified. I wrote about it here, so I won't repeat myself. Suffice it to say acknowledging my "call" is hard for me. I won the scholarship and found myself even more petrified. And then I had to come up with a proposal for using my money. I could use $7,000 for any bills I needed to pay and had to use the other $3,000 for a ministry project, something that would help me in my future ministry, help develop me as a pastor. And then I was seriously freaked out. Hard to avoid dealing with your fear about your call to ministry when you're having to write up a proposal about how to spend $3,000 to become a better pastor...As I worked through this stuff, I at one point said to a few people, "I can't imagine any other life path more likely to cause me deep angst. Sometimes I wonder if I have a call to ministry or if it's just an inner-masochist intent on finding the life path most likely to keep me in therapy for the rest of my life." Hmmm, let's see, I'm a pastor's kid whose dad told her that female pastors unleash demons when they preach, I'm a bisexual woman whose church/college/community told her that her sexuality was sinful, broken, ugly, and unnatural, and I often feel deeply abandoned by God when I think about the pain and abuse I suffered, that generations of my family have suffered. So, planning a life of ministry in this religion sometimes seems insane to me, but, then, I can't shake the sense that this is what I'm called to do, this is what I am made for, this is where my giftedness can most speak and flourish and be a part of making something new...And so I finished the proposal (amidst much angst...). I decided that what would most benefit my future ministry is a project that would help me heal from some of the ways the trauma I've experienced has affected my ability to experience God as good, loving, and present. As I only have a few minutes before my little one awakens, I won't go into all that my ministry project entails in this entry, but as I begin my project I am using this space to record my experience as I rebuild my spirituality, as I heal. Thanks for walking with me!