weedle incognito

Churched...

As I continue to ponder this seminary experience as both a "next chapter" of my real-time life as well as a continuation of some life I lived before, this amalgamation of thoughts, cultures, mindsets and expectations seems more and more complicated.  The road of my past has not simply converged with the road I have more recently been traveling on, nor have I backtracked to something more familiar.  I am both label-less and overly categorized to the extent that I feel the world has trouble knowing what to do with me.  I want what I want but can't articulate it, can't put my finger on it.  I'm not even certain enough of what it is to know if it exists or can be created.

I've visited three churches now since arriving at the seminary.  The first was a church reminiscent of the one I worked at just after college.  Non-denomiational (but really evangelical of some shade), seeker-sensitive, rock band worship, casual attire, chairs instead of pews... There was a woman who sat next to me and talked my ear off about the church, especially her small group, and then invited me to lunch.  I declined.  

As I was driving home, I wondered to myself what I had expected?  I mean, I know how those churches work.  I knew the sermon was going to be three points built on some kind of acronym or silly theme (I was right - "Big 'Buts' of the Bible").  I knew the music would be modern-ish but hard to sing along to.  I knew it would be suburban and Wonder Bread white, not just in terms of congregants but in terms of taste - fluffy, room temperature, comforting but of no nutritive value.  I think I went just to see if my expections, formed from within the walls of such a church, would hold for the same type of body now, years later, as my current self.  They did.  I'm sure that that church means something to the people that go there, just like the church I used to work at meant something to the people I used to work for.  But for me, it did not resonate.

The other two churches I've visited were of the Presbyterian variety.  These visits I felt obligated to make on account of my studying now at a Presbyterian school, but if I didn't know before, I know now - I'm not a Presbyterian.  There is much about the tradition that I like, most of which can be summed up by the observation that they are a thinking and purposeful people.  But I just can't get down on this Reformed worship thing.  I don't like the prescribed liturgy, I don't like the creed recitation, and honestly, I don't even like the passing of the peace.  It all feels like a shirt with too tight of a collar.

Each time I go to a church service, no matter where it is, I am always reminded, usually by virtue of the contrast of the scene before me, of the other church experiences I have had and counted as "good."  That qualifier means nothing to anyone but me, in my own search for what church should be, but for me, there were things in these other experiences that resonated with me and with the people around me at the time.  

My Home Church:  The church I grew up in.  I loved this church because during the time I was there, I was a part of the cast and crew of what was being put on.  I was in the family - I knew everyone and everyone knew me.  It was home, in the same way I think of being at my parents' house at Christmas.  I was just being together; nothing flashy or over the top, just good, solid fellowship.  Aside from my own parents, I had handfuls of other mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, weird uncles and aunts that always had gum.  It was home, and I don't know if that will ever be recreated for me.

My Escape Church: Some friends, all of whom had become disillusioned with the church life we'd become accustomed to or worked in, came together to form a worship service that we literally just made up as we went along.  There were traditional elements and non-traditional elements.  There was evidence of all of our evangelical upbringings and our secret higher church longings.  But what I remember liking most about it was that I just respected everyone there - not particularly even because I liked them all or even knew them all, but because I respected that there were those of us who were not happy with the status quo and decided to do something different, not in anger or rebellion, not out of a desire to simply be "alternative" for the sake of being such, but because we just wanted to peaceably try to see what would happen if we had a community that was intentional about worship, intentional about conversations, intentional about our spiritual lives.  It was just an effort in joining together and paying attention and engaging, and I loved it.

My Last Ditch Effort Church: I was at the beginning of the end of my first church life, and I was going to a standard Southern Baptist church, in which I felt a sense of family through my adopted family-at-the-time.  At this church, a contingency of us sought to form a Saturday night worship service that was less traditional that our Sunday morning service.  I was in the band and taught some and enjoyed what we were doing, even though relationally (and as a result spiritually) my life was in utter chaos.  That time, and the relationships therein, marked my exit from the Church for a season, but what I experienced there, in some small way, was what gave me hope to come back, though I wouldn't have imagined it would take so long, and I'm just now beginning to see the redeeming qualities of that slice of time.  I remember a night where we were gathered at a house, doing a study on the Beatitudes (using Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship").  I was leading the discussion, and it was a mixed-age group, singles and marrieds, men and women.  We got to the end of our alloted time and the conversation kept going... and going... and going for hours, and no one wanted to leave, though I kept giving plenty of outs.  We were chewing on things and mulling things over and considering things in new ways.  A bunch of Baptists doing all that, imagine.  In that bible study, and in that time, I experienced actual life intersecting with actual God - a thin place - and I discovered that that is the only way that "church" has any meaning.  

And that if I can't get that, then I don't want church.

This takes time and effort, I know.  You have to build a community, build that level of trust.  But do you?  Really?  Should it be that kind of work?  The thing is, I'm not sure that it takes all the kind of effort that we're putting in.  Denominations, labels, systematic theologies.  I think it's more about the effort we must now put forth to simply listen when we're trained to talk, to be when we're trained to do, and to converse with we're trained to apologize and defend.  An old friend asked me once, "What determines who God is?"  For her, the answer is sola scriptura.  For me, the answer is also the word of God, but in all its various forms, when we will just shut up and hear it.  Or speak up and say it.  Or get up and do it, as the Spirit leads.  

Who wants to go to that church?  Who wants to be that Church?  

Weedle, Renewed

During my freshman year of undergrad, some 14 years ago, I was the victim of a crime, concerning both my personal property and my spiritual well-being, leaving all my senses of security damaged. As we gathered to eat in the cafeteria each day, we would each leave our backpacks at the front of the room, around the corner from the partition that forms the line for meals. They were out of sight and generally out of mind. The cafeteria was a place to go meet with friends and, for a moment or two, refrain from overly concerning ourselves with our academic pursuits. We left the burdens of our Old Testament and (for me) music theory texts at the door, taking on the lighter yoke of fellowship and breaking bread.

In my backpack, in addition to the required reading materials, I carried with me the bible that I had used from the time I was in middle school, a beat up paperback student bible with an overabundance of highlighting and notes. I even had the Roman Road mapped out - if I could find Romans 3:23, each subsequent page number and reference were hinted at in the margin, an evangelical cheat sheet. This bible was more than a book that had sentimental meaning to me; it was the symbol of my spiritual upbringing to that point. It had within in many of my early theological rumblings, my foundations as a Christian thinker. It was, in physical form, the ground on which I stood as a believer, representing the way I had learned to think, to believe, to follow. As I began my time at college, all of those ways were starting to come into question. As I had my first real tastes of philosophy and comparative religion and literature and history, what I knew to be true started becoming what I used to know to be true. It is a frightening storm to be in when your ship has a rudder. When it snaps off, it becomes completely overwhelming.

And so, when after a lunch time filled with laughter and king ranch casserole, I went to retrieve my backpack and found it missing from its spot, I was panicked. I questioned everyone, put up flyers, begged security to check dumpsters and alleyways. I didn't lose any money or ID or anything more expensive than a textbook, but losing that bible, though I didn't necessarily tell anyone at the time, was like losing my whole identity. For whatever reason, I felt like the safe yet naive faith of my youth was gone, and I would have go start all over again. Looking back, it was my education that was really making me feel that way, my becoming an adult in a hundred different ways, but having that bible stolen was the physical manifestation of that loss of innocence, and with that test came a season of lost faith.

Fourteen full years later, as I begin seminary, a new season is blowing in on the autumn breezes of Princeton, NJ. I finally feel ready to start seeking after that which I lost back then - not a naive, easily shakable faith, but a faith nonetheless. A faith I have missed desperately, longed for, and not known where or how to find. Yesterday, at chapel, I saw that students here all leave their backpacks on the front steps before entering in to worship. They leave the burdens of their studies at the door for a moment to come together in prayer, in song, in reflection of their faith, in communion with God and one another. And they trust that when they come back out, they will be able to pick up those bags where they left them, and perhaps the load will feel lighter.

For me, it was a leap of faith (in humanity, if nothing else) to leave my bag there among the others. But I did so, and will do so for the next three years, knowing that nothing I could lose in that bag will take away the experiences I have had that have led me here, the hope of a renewable faith, and the joy of a salvation that is continuing to be worked out in me.

Check Please...

It used to feel like magic, like some someone was playing a strange but warm trick on me, when I used to sit in church and it actually worked.

When I would sit in a sanctuary, my troubles simple, like lock and key, and God would slide the bolt, creak open the door, and I would look up, during a song or a sermon or a prayer, and see the openness before me.  Looking back, I could see how all the steps of the day or week or last few moments had drawn the scene, and God, ever predictable (though when will I catch on?), unveiled the final stroke of truth and I could feel air in my lungs again.

The loose tooth finally falls out.

The seventh chord resolves.

I get it.

Alright, okay.  I get it.

There would be moments when everything fell into place with such ease that it would actually be laughable, like a sitcom ending.  Other times, the cure seemed worse than the ailment, once the truth came to light in a necessary but hard to swallow form.  But regardless, the truth would come, and it would make so much sense, it would be so clear that the line between believing this truth and blatantly ignoring it took me so near to the possibility of blasphemy that I could feel the heat of it on my face.  The right thing was so obvious that it made all the wrong around it that much more defined.

Every once in a while, God lets you see clearly, briefly.

Those moments are why I used to do church, both in the creation and the partaking.  

All the other moments are why I left.

If you ate at a restaurant all the time, and it was normally not great, sometimes even bad, with poor service and bad decor, but sometimes... sometimes it was exquisite and sumptuous and decadent and perfect... and you knew that these times couldn't be manufactured or forecasted, but there was always the hope that you would go on the night that the magic would happen... how often would you return?

Would it depend on how good it was on the good nights?  Or how poor it was on the off nights?

This past Sunday, I attended service by myself at a church we've visited numerous times, the church that baptized M last summer.  I like the church, though I don't really know anyone yet.  They're fairly run-of-the-mill theologically, not too liberal or conservative, literally no opinion on the gay stuff other than, "We love you, and maybe we'll figure it out someday."  Very social-justice minded.  Decent music.  Biblical teaching in the services.  On the surface, a fine place to do church.  

In light of my last blog post, I was thinking a lot about these moments in which an individual finds that they need God, or more specifically, the grace of God.  And also, those moments  in which "God's ways are higher than our ways," or more specifically...

...those times when God doesn't make a damn bit of sense.

The theme of the morning was, get this: Pivotal Circumstances.  Those times in your life when you have to decide to have faith, regardless of the sense it makes.  Those times when God seems merciless or heartless or cold or out to lunch, but we succumb to needing him anyway, maybe against our "better" judgment.  Those times when we feel at a crossroads, where maybe we think we want to move but we can't... until the moment that we must.

The teaching was on the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, focusing on the idea that Jesus waited those two days, allowing Lazarus, a man that he loved, to die to make his point, to bring glory to God.  Healing would have been good, but raising from the dead was better, and more useful to the arc that Jesus' story was taking.  And more useful to believers in general.

Though it seemed pretty senseless at the time, I'm sure.

And I'm sure that Mary and Martha would not have wanted to hear that God's ways are higher than our ways.  Especially if their bro had stayed dead.  True as it might be, it is not the right kind of comfort.

There has to be more to it that mere words in order to bring comfort.  Resurrection and life can't just be potentially empty future-tense promises.

They have to be real to be a comfort.

Jesus could say that he was the Chicken Soup and the Tylenol, but until he takes my cold away, he's not the cure.  When I'm cured, I'm cured.

This morning in church, I listened to a mixture of story - some Jesus-talk about following Christ being worth the pain of working on his timeline, according to the characters of Mary and Martha and Lazarus and Jesus himself; and some actual people-talk (church folk call them testimonies) about experiencing pain and following Christ anyway, in spite of or because of it.  Loss of career, sexual molestation, terminal illness, death of family.  These things push us to the edge, and we have to ask: Where the hell is God in this? Where?!

And against all our better judgment, we decide to believe that he's in there, somewhere, even though it makes us question his character or intentions or methods.  Even though we have to push aside anger and resentment and hurt that God caused us, if it is to be believed that he is in control.  Him being right doesn't make the medicine go down.  

The only thing that makes it go down is believing it's going to work.  Believing so fiercely that it comes just short of knowing.

What about the times when Lazarus stays dead?  Those times can't be suspended forever.

Church and God, while very different, have some qualities in common.  You have to have faith and patience to be able to stand them; otherwise they give you countless reasons to walk away, in their silences and perceived misgivings.  According to all our better judgments, it seems a gamble...  Until, eventually, you hit it on a good night, and the clarity in those moments somehow make you forget the chaos in the everyday, in the times where the brother stays dead, where the miracle doesn't happen, when the lights go out and stay out.  

Perhaps I am naive to think that those moments are enough to cling to, that faith is worth the gamble and that laying all my good sense on an altar in return for those fleeting moments of comfort and at least the fragrance, if not the actual sustenance, of understanding.

But I've spent some time in doubt's house.  There are no good nights.  There is no magic.  There is no comfort.  Doubt is not a viable option.  My choices now are belief or disbelief.

God, grant me the faith to choose well.

Before the Fall...

When David committed adultery with Bathsheba, got her pregnant, tried to trick her husband, Uriah, into slacking on his commitment to the war and take a break with his wife to cover up the paternity, and then, when all else failed, had the husband killed so that he could marry the girl himself and have the baby by his name, he thought, perhaps, that he had cleaned things up nicely.  The scripture doesn't give any indication of what David felt like while all that was occurring, because who could know?  Reading over the facts of the story as they are laid out, David seems selfish, calculated, and cold.  

There are a couple of outward gestures that seem to imply that, through all those events, David was very concerned about his outward image.  After Joab (the army commander), who had played accomplice to Uriah's murder, passed through a messenger that the deed had been done, adding for good measure a warning that surely the king would be upset by the loss, David replied through the messenger with a manufactured sensitivity toward Joab.  "Don't let it get you down, Joab.  It happens to the best of us."  

The messenger probably walked away thinking, "That David; what a good and gracious king."

Later, after Nathan had, in an effort to wake David up to his wrongdoing, told a story about a rich man who took that which he didn't need from a man who had nothing, David flipped out, demanding the pitiless rich man's head and that he repay the poor man four times over.  A good and gracious king would have demanded such a retribution, right?

Then, Nathan brought to light that David was missing the point - that he was, in fact, the rich man in the story, and as a punishment for the murderous plot, God would keep David's house at war always.  But, for the secretiveness, which apparently also pissed God off, God would do to David the thing that he did to Uriah, except right out in broad daylight for the world to see, taking his wives and giving them to others who were close to David.  And then, for the sin of having believed his own will to be of more worth than God's, God decided to let the child born of the affair die.

God does not screw around with this sin stuff, according to the Old Testament.

God can be a pretty merciless entity when push comes to shove.

I used to think that I worshiped this God of the Old Testament faithfully, maybe even fearfully, which if you choose to believe this story and all the others like it in the Old Testament is really the only way to do it.

The words that used to ring in my ears as a believer were, "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect."  And as an immature believer, I took those words at face value: here are the rules - don't break any of them.  And for a long time, I really felt like I had it down.  I didn't drink or smoke or go with boys (or girls) who did.  I made good grades and went to church and made my parents proud.  I was on a winning streak, and as any athlete can tell you who has been on such a streak, the pressure mounts and you begin thinking more and more about when the other shoe will drop.  When will I stumble, and what will the fallout be when I'm finally the goat?

The higher the stakes, the bigger the fallout.

David's stakes were pretty damn high.  In my little world, mine seemed even higher.  I felt blessed for never having dealt with temptation that I couldn't withstand.  I was so proud of myself and felt so worthy of God's hand of protection that it never occurred to me that that very pride could be my downfall.  It never crossed my mind that perhaps I'd been imperfect all along, and the pain would come from seeing that full on.  

In that first moment where I felt my leg quiver and my foot slip, ever so slightly from where I thought it should be, from where I thought God had placed it with his own hand, the lights went out for me.  At the moment when I realized that I needed grace, the foundation of "faith" that I'd built for myself cracked.  All that time, my belief system had been built on the idea that I was Atlas with the world on my shoulders, and that I would always be strong enough to be worthy of that task.  For my family, for my peers, for my church, for my own name's sake, I was perfect.  Grace hadn't been something to partake in, for me; it had been something to dole out, to preach.  It was like selling insurance but never buying it yourself, because something told you you'd never get sick, ever.  But then you cough, and you instantly sense that it's too late.

I felt the weight of an Old Testament God's impending wrath on me for years as I dealt in secret with my imperfection.  I had never really felt guilt for my sins, which had always been there, no matter how I tried to deny it, until the issue of my sexuality rose to the surface.  That was the thing that made me feel guilty.  That was the thing that ruined me as I'd come to know myself.  But what I've come to realize now is that homosexuality isn't a sin that ruined my perfect streak and cast me out of God's presence and good graces; it was merely the thing that brought to light my severe and all-consuming pride.  I had done the right thing to look good all along.  I had followed the rules to be the winner and I had toed the line to make others look at me and think, "What a good and gracious person."

I'd been sinning all along, and in need of grace all along, but I had no idea.

I thought I was above it.  And I thought God was lucky to have me.  

David's sin was thinking that he was in control and immune to consequence.  He wasn't remorseful in the midst of his deplorable actions because he felt in control of the situations and that he was doing the "right" things to clean up the messes.  If she just hadn't gotten pregnant, the affair would have never been an issue.  If Uriah had just been a normal dude and taken the opportunity to sleep with his wife, no one would have ever known.  If no one had ever known about the plot against Uriah, it would have all seemed fine on the surface, and David would have still been the good and gracious king.  

Pride.  It seems that it would go hand in hand with perfection, which is what God demands, through these words of Christ in his Sermon on the Mount, right?  I mean, if you're good at it anyway. 

In the Greek, that word "perfect" really means "complete" or "mature."  It comes in the context of Jesus talking about seeing the law differently - "You have heard it said... but I say..."  Don't just not murder; don't get that pissed.  Don't just not screw around; don't lust.  Don't just not break oaths; be authentic to a point of not needing to make them.  Be mature. 

Now they tell me.

So my path was (1) Become convinced to believe in a God that demands perfect behavior, despite all the talk in the New Testament to the contrary, (2) Work hard at such behavior, (3) Become aware of your hard work and success to the point of living on a nearly untouchable pedestal built of pride, (4) Finally face something you can't make sense of or handle which leads you to the knowledge of all your other imperfections, (5) Enter into the depression of feeling like you've failed at your life's calling, and finally, (6) Realize that God's grace is actually for you and there is hope for a bright future after all.  

I'm somewhere toward the beginning of (6), trying to hear that call to "perfection" voiced by Christ, not the vengeful God of the OT.  I don't know how to combine these images of the "same" God, and I don't know how to gauge success yet, or even if I should try.  The hope is that someday, I'll see this "fall from grace" that was brought about by a self-realization (that should be viewed as a gift - again, someday) as a gift in itself.  The closeness I felt to God because of my self-measured proximity to him in my faultlessness will be traded for a closeness to him because of the love and grace he's shown me.

Someday.  By grace.

"You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low.  
 You are my lamp, O Lord; the Lord turns my darkness into light."  - David (2 Sam. 22:28-29)

Perspective...

I was theologically formed in the Southern Baptist church.  Conservative Bible Belt Protestant teaching made up the bulk of my exposure to all things God.  It happened so long ago that I barely remember, at least top of mind, the main extractable "truths" that came from that formation:  Salvation through Christ alone, generally involving a walk down an aisle and Hymn #305.  Inerrancy of scripture.  Personal Lord and Savior.  Sanctification.  Missions.  Family roles.  Gender roles.  

It's all engrained, so much more than I wish it were.  I lived and died by it then, even as a teenager, too young to know the power of these beliefs that I was letting seep into my core.  Then in college, I based my one shot at foundational higher education on these beliefs, and even as I graduated, knowing full well that I was on the brink (if not already doing so) of calling almost all of it into question, I forged ahead into the work of this church, buying into its "truths" even more deeply.  And whereas by day I would do as I was supposed to, by night, the church itself silently called me and every ounce of who I was into question, to the point that the guilt and conflict that I lived with nearly consumed me.  

Who am I kidding?  It did consume me, and to a point, it does still.

Not specific guilt, for any single act or trend of action, but the notion of guilt.  The spirit of conflict.  All individuals develop their own ideas about right and wrong, and by those standards either make or reflect upon their decisions each day.  I accepted the moral code of the Southern Baptist faith blindly, confusing this commitment with blind faith.  And I worked hard to the prescribed ends, just as I'd always worked hard to be a child who pleased her parents, to be a student who pleased her teachers, to the extent that I took more weight upon my shoulders than is healthy or necessary.  

But there were parts that I didn't love.  For instance: missions.  The Southern Baptists have a hearty dedication to missions, sending people out to the "ends of the earth" to share the Gospel of Christ, keeping a tally of how many villages are reached and converts are produced.  If you can go, you should, and you should want to; if you can't go, you should pay the way of those that can.  I found myself uneasy about doing either.

Now, obviously, I'm not a person who thinks you ought to stay in the place you're born and call it good.  I've made it 1500 actual miles from home and light years from that place in my mind.  I think a person should go to the place that draws them and do that for which they have a passion.  Go and do good where you are, or stay and do good where you are.  There is not one calling higher than the other.

But I'm not going to be a missionary.  And I'm not "refusing God's call" by saying that.  Some things you just know.  

Now, here in New York, I may live in such a way that shows that I have hope, the capacity for unconditional love, grace, mercy, and maybe any number of other qualities of life that could cause someone to ask -- "What causes you to live the life you live in the way that you do?"  And perhaps, in that moment, I can share some facet of my story of faith that might apply to the situation, not in an effort to tally them as a statistic of my success, but just to connect as a human being with another person.  If positive influence occurs, then all the better.

If my answer has something to do with Jesus, then that makes me a Christian, I suppose.  But it doesn't make me a missionary in a domestic field.

Clearly, my view of missions is nothing if not cynical, likely because of personal experience with missionaries, not missions.  But somewhere back there, this thought of "if you're not doing missions, you're not doing anything worthwhile" got buried in the grey matter that helps me figure self-worth.  

It's there with all the "good Baptist" qualifications:

• Good Baptists don't drink.
  
• Good Baptists only have sex with their husbands (if at all).  
• Good Baptists don't look at porn and they pray for their friends that do.
• Good Baptist women get married to pastors (or at least youth pastors or deacons with high-paying jobs) and have babies.
• Good Baptists go to church every Sunday and "volunteer" without question for whatever cause the gun is being put to their head.
• Good Baptists vote Republican.
• Good Baptists don't rock the boat.
• Good Baptists get rid of conflict with a smile and a shovel.
• Good Baptists don't get abortions (or get pregnant outside of marriage).
• And Good Baptists certainly aren't gay.  Obviously.

I don't live up to many of those things.  The list that I can still claim seems to get shorter by the minute.  And for awhile, years in fact, that made me want to stop being at all.  

When I look at the list now, from a distance, it's laughable.  These are not the measurables of life.  These are fringe issues.  Not for some, clearly; but for most, these issues aren't the things that help them know as they lie awake at night who they are and how God sees them.  These are simply the things that help you know how other Baptists see you.

And there has to be a night for me where I sit up and realize, "It doesn't matter how they see me."

They are not my judge and jury.  

And furthermore, whereas I know that God's role, traditionally, is one of judgment, in part... do I really believe that that is his primary function?  What's with all the talk of forgiveness, grace, and mercy if so?  Aren't those the parts of God's nature that draws us to him?  That we can be accepted unconditionally?  

Live this way or else face judgment.  This is not the voice of God.

This is NOT the voice of God.

Come to me, all you who are weary and carry a heavy load, and I will give you rest.

That is the voice that leads me back to a God that I wish to know.  

One good thing about Baptist faith is their belief in the free will of man.  I think I'll hang onto that.  Each day I get up and I do what I choose.  Maybe not what I want, but what I choose.  No one walks me around in shackles whispering threats in my ear.  My will is mine and it is free.  And no matter how much it pains me to admit it, it is not perfect. 

I know few things, but I do know that if anyone's will and intention and vision is perfect, it's God's, or else there would be no use in worshipping him.  I can't explain earthquakes in Haiti or babies dying of disease or heartache striking my friends, but I know that somehow, it's not all for nothing, and for as much as I don't know, there are knowable answers that I might never have access to in this life.  But someone knows, and it's probably God.  I know that God's perfect will is built around grace and mercy and love for all, because at the end of the day, those are the only things that make sense, for me at least.  And as a free person, how dumb would I have to be to refuse to accept those things, especially when truth and certainty of knowledge are not a guarantee?

But the rest?  The morality?  The details?  I'll figure it out or I won't.  And I have to remind myself to wonder, how much does it really matter unless you're figuring it out from the right perspective...

Stare...

I sit, and I stare at this computer screen for hours, sometimes, in the evenings, when I'm all by myself in the apartment.  Sometimes I stare in silence, sometimes with the television in the background, drowning out any semblance of thought.  Sometimes I'm watching videos or checking other people's blogs or Facebook or Twitter or the news or stocks or applying for jobs or waiting for someone to pop up on IM.  Anyone.  

But mostly I'm just staring blankly.  Waiting.

I could sit and waste time for hours.  And I do.  All the time, several evenings a week, I sit and stare.  There's a game I play on the computer called Bubble Spinner which is basically the mental equivalent of spinning a pencil around your finger - it takes a little bit of skill, but once you've got it down, it's pretty much mindless.

I was on a Wii kick for awhile, actually playing games that got my heart rate up a bit, but I got a cold, got out of the habit, got lazy.

The novel's still there...

I have hundreds of books in this apartment I could read.

I could clean.  Make the bed.  Scrub the tub.

I could take up piano.  I could go to my friend's house where my drums are staying and play them.

I could call my friends.

But I just stare.  Because it's easier than all that.

I'm convinced that it's not because I'm lazy.

I just don't... I don't know what I want to do.

So I stare.

A few years ago, I feel that I would've been able to write a stirring, entertaining, touching, funny account of my boredom, of my staring problem.  Now?  No stirring.  No entertainment.  Just... staring.

Where am I?  When am I going to snap out of this?

And what the hell am I paying this therapist for, if not to get my creativity back, my energy, my self-ness?

I miss me.

I Wished I'd Gotten a Pound Cake...

The girl at the coffee shop I go to in my neighborhood was struggling with the muffin box tonight.  I heard her mutter, “I hate this thing,” as she banged it around trying to get the lid back on after pulling out a chocolate chip muffin for me. 

That muffin box, which is really just a cake cover that fits over a tray of assorted tempting muffins each day, probably gets on her nerves every time she works.  It was crammed onto an already full counter, next to the cash register, under the tip cup that was dangling off the cash register by a rubber band, adjacent to the very narrow space where money is exchanged and coffee is handed off.

I felt her pain.  For me, it’s ever changing passwords on the company computer system.  And the fact that the mop bucket never seems to be where I need it when I need it.  And the ice scoop I like to use is just about three inches too high.  And that smell coming from the floor drain in my office that the plumbers even refused to deal with.  And all the sugar packets that lay on the floor of the stockroom that I keep refusing to sweep up because someone else should have done it the last time they were in there.

All these annoying little things add up.

I feel your pain, coffee shop girl.  I have your pain.  I have muffin boxes of my own.

May you have the ability to not let the muffin boxes eat at you after you’ve clocked out, coffee shop girl.  It’s a peace I yearn for myself, and a gift I wish you to have.  

Pursuit...

I can’t make you happy.  No matter what I do, your happiness is not under my control.  I can try to contribute to conditions that could have bearing on your happiness, but I don’t have the final say.  And you should not act as though I can do this thing, that I am capable of this feat of which I am naturally incapable, I along with everyone else.  I can’t make you happy.

I can’t make myself happy either.

I cannot wake up I the morning and flip a switch that ensures I will smile, and that my stomach won’t churn, and that my brain will be able to process things rationally and reasonably.  I can only hope that those things will just occur in my favor, by some stroke of good fortune.

I see commercials for medications that seem to be able to find a switch that can make a person happier.  These people go from not being able to get out of bed, or from staring out the window on a rainy day in their sweatpants, to walking dogs and drinking tea with friends and smiling all over the place.

Last year, I started seeing a therapist, and I really hoped that she would prescribe for me one of those magic potions that made me want to walk dogs with a smile on my face while wearing real pants.  But, no, she just wanted us to talk.  And talk.  And for me to cry.  She tried to convince me that kids that never learned to lie were missing something in life, that they had skipped a major developmental milestone.  She tried to convince me that 30-year-old adults should not base all significant decisions on the beliefs and opinions of their parents.  She tried to convince me that all the things that worried me all the time were not as big as I imagined they were.

And when asked point blank for a prescription, she denied me.  She is clearly not familiar with my long-thought philosophy that the best way to solve problems is to just ctrl-alt-delete.  Shut down operations and reboot, crossing your fingers.  I felt that perhaps medication might do that for me.  If I could just wake up happy and without the grumbling worries and stress that camped out constantly in my mind, then maybe I could focus on learning to make decisions for myself in a healthy way.  I just need a way to clear my cache and reboot.

After I figured out that she was not going to write me a prescription for happiness – like it seemed all these other conflicted Americans had be able to convince their doctors to do – I settled into the whole talking thing.  We laid all my issues out on the table.  We established that I have some control issues, that I feel like I need to be the hero in all situations, that I assume a great deal of responsibility for the things that go on around me, whether I am able to control them or not… She tried to help me understand that sexual orientation does not prohibit one from having a healthy and productive spiritual life, that God does not hate me or wish me to feel guilty every moment of my life, that the Southern Baptist church does not have to be my be-all-end-all source of spiritual approval.  She tried to help me understand that I really don’t have it so bad, and that even the things that are hard for me aren’t that hard to deal with if I can just take a breath and think things through. 

And I get it, I do.

I did, anyway, so I quit therapy around the first of the year.  And then… I got engaged to my girlfriend.  I went home several times to say goodbye to my dying grandmother.  I had some heart-wrenching conversations with my mother that have probably forever changed our relationship, and she doesn’t even know it.  I’ve had a few, subtle moments with my father where he showed me more support and encouragement than I expected, which probably also changed our relationship, for the better, and we’ll likely never discuss it.  I hit my stride at work and couldn’t just be happy with it, so I asked for a bigger challenge, which I got, and now it’s beginning to take its toll, just like the last big challenge did.  I got better at ignoring my need for spiritual nourishment, though I did try to wade back out into those waters, supporting my beloved getting baptized, attending a relatively non-stupid church, trying to read scripture again… though most of that has faded back to black now. 

I attended the National Equality March this weekend in DC with my beloved and a good friend.  On a Sunday afternoon, across from the White House, I was standing in this place in which I really wanted to feel comfortable.  We were all interviewed for a national news show, and I almost hyperventilated when it was over, thinking about what would happen if my mother saw me on TV, doing this, obviously mortifying her on purpose…

One of my signs read: This is my pursuit of happiness.  And it really is.  With this fight I’m fighting, these decisions I’m making, I feel that I am chasing down happiness every hour of every day, but that son-of-a-bitch is fast.  And it makes turns that I don’t expect.  And there are days, like several I’ve had this week, where I wake up and think, “Run all you want.  I can’t run after you today.  I’m too tired.”

But I have to keep pursuing it.  The fact that I need to remind myself of that, I think, makes my situation a little harder that that of some others.  I think most people don’t have to remind themselves to try to do what they can to be happy.  It’s a strange cocktail of selfishness (wanting to be in control, being consumed by thoughts of self) and self-loathing (never thinking I’m good enough, feelings of failure) that I’ve been nursing. 

So I called up the therapist this week and went to see her today.  Same shit, different day, I told her.  And we talked, about being gay, about family, about making our own decisions as adults, about being in a relationship. 

But if I don’t get this same shit unpacked, I’m never going to be successful in this pursuit.  Happiness is too damn quick and cunning, and right now I’m running too heavy.  And come to think of it, I guess going after it in a haze from a happy pill just puts an unwanted asterisk on my life. 

This is my pursuit of happiness.  Wish me luck – looks like training season is underway.

On Hearting NY...

I was safe in my home, enjoying a late start to the day when my mother called me and told me to turn on my television.  She sounded worried and bit stunned.

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I just spent a few minutes watching back over the footage from that morning's news, a day that expected the major headline to be Air Jordan's return to basketball.  Watching now, the events on those videos seem so unreal, and I remember thinking at the time, from my distanced vantage point, that it all felt unreal in the moment as well, as though the things we were watching, the events we saw unfolding were surely not as they seemed; surely we misunderstood.  

I remember sitting on my couch, eyes glued to the screen, mouth gaping open, for hours.  As I sat there, I felt a wash of fear gradually take me over, and when the time came to leave the apartment, I remember feeling like every muscle and nerve in my body was fighting my brain's instructions to walk outside.  The sky seemed lower, and the world felt different - less free, and less mine.

Even in the fear that I felt, which I'm sure was a mere fraction of the sheer trepidation felt in New York that day, likely as palpable as the dust and debris itself, I was also overwhelmed with the thought that I should've been there.  Not that I wished to be, as I was afraid to even be where I was, hundreds of miles away - but just that I should've been.  

I'm in New York now, a part of the America that the rest of you see on the news, on the Today Show, in the movies, and surrounding the celebrities in the magazines.  I'm here, walking the streets, riding the train, everyday, living a typical New York life.  For me, considering where I come from, that typical life is extraordinary and remarkable, and it represents an odd dream that has lived since the first time I visited this strange and wonderful city and knew that I wanted to come here.  I remember on one visit, post-9/11, having managed to wrestle away a couple of afternoon hours alone in the city when my fellow travelers were setting sail for Ellis Island, I sat on a bench in Battery Park and watched people pass by as I wrote in my journal about my desperation to be a part of this world.  An extension of my calling, this city, and a part of my legacy somehow.  I felt it when I came as a teenaged tourist, riding a tour bus and snapping pictures.  I felt it when I came to visit looking for the prospect of a job.  I felt it when I've come with people who had never been before, willing them to love it as much as I do.  I felt it when I drove a U-Haul through the Lincoln Tunnel for the first time to bring myself, my love, and all our worldly possessions to a land called Astoria.  And I feel it every time I come back into the city after going away, whether driving a rented car over the Triborough Bridge or flying low over Queens into Laguardia.  

I don't think about 9/11 all the time, and it's not something that comes up in everyday conversation all that often.  I pass by the site every once in a while, though M works a matter of blocks from it everyday.  It's like the magnitude of this city itself, not geographically but culturally - it's not a front-of-mind thought, but we all just know.  I'm just here, living.  When the idea first entered my head to move here, I just knew it was going to be to do or be something as large as the city itself, as though I thought all 8 million pairs of eyes might, for a moment, be on me.  As of yet, my status is still very much small-fish-VERY-big-pond.  

But I'm thankful to be a part of it.  And on days like yesterday, weeks like this, it's a humbling experience to be able in even the smallest way to lay claim to just a piece of this place.  My love for New York may be evolving from its initial "puppy love" phase, but I still love it.  It's soaking into me, into my marrow.  It's a part of my story, mine and millions of others.  

We millions are the lucky ones.  

Growl...

I laid awake the other night, which I never do.  My gray matter churned with thoughts of work; my new store has been consuming all of my energy, though for the most part, things are going surprisingly well.  In other words, I didn't need to be thinking about work, it just happened to be the thing that filled the silence.  I couldn't get comfortable.  I couldn't relax, and rest would not come, though I was mentally and physically exhausted.

I think maybe I've forgotten what rest feels like - true rest.

For the past several years, I've battled frustration about my own inner dialogue.  Way back when, as a youth, I recall the clarity of my thoughts being astounding to me.  I could sit, either in a silent room with nothing outside of myself to distract, or on a bus seat surrounded by screaming menaces, or in my own car, or in my own room, or with my family or friends or whomever, and I could think well.  I could streamline everything that swirled in my head and make sense of it, placing it into neat rows of beliefs and opinions.

More importantly, I could pray.  In real words and sentences and paragraphs, coherently, with both meaning and emotional quality.  And I heard, or at least felt, God's reply through his presence.  I really did.

Really.

I'm not trying to convince you.  I'm trying to convince myself.

When M and I were first getting to know each other, it's as though we were passing each other at the doorway of spirituality - she was looking to get it, and I was stamping my way out.  Our paths crossed and we spent a lot of time talking about the bible and God and church, me as the Baptist college grad and former minister, and she as the girl who had somehow escaped the perils of growing up in the Bible belt without the scars I myself wore.  She was innocent to the whole thing, which I found refreshing, and I enjoyed relaying the stories and knowledge I'd been collecting all those years to her eager ears.  Somehow though, she only heard the good stuff, stoking her eagerness to hear, just as I was running out of steam to tell the stories.  I burnt out as she got fired up.  

Now, she has learned to be very patient with me and gently work around me to feed her own spiritual curiosities.  We go to church occasionally, almost always on her suggestion.  She buys books and reads blogs and asks others her questions, knowing full well that I may know the answer, but my version will be coated in a slimy skin of skepticism.  She has struggled through the loss of a friendship with someone who she felt had been weathering the same storm as her, finding a balance in wanting to be a follower of Christ and loving, in this life, who she felt led to love.  This friend changed her mind, it seemed, and the whole thing dissolved into anger, then a feeling of betrayal, and now a quiet awkwardness.  M has fought through this with heart and courage and tears, while I've stood in the corner, nodding bitterly, muttering something about, "Yes, this is what they do..."

I feel betrayed by a church who I know would turn their back on me if they really knew me, out in the open.  This "church" is made up in my mind of people I've known in the churches I've attended, people with whom I've shared intimate moments of my spiritual walk, only to find that when the going got tough, I stood alone.  As I sit tonight and force myself to really think about who these people are, it's not some mass crowd of faces I know - it's a gray crowd of negative possibilities, mostly, supported by a few actual figures from my past.  A pastor who I knew never thought me fit for ministry.  A missionary who was tempted and thought the only way to flee was to cut out my heart on the way.  A roommate who shackled me into a closet and hated me for rescuing myself later.  These nameless "friends" of my parents who cause the fear of their embarrassment if anyone were to ever know the truth.  The people who see me from time to time back home, when I come to visit the old church in my tailored suit and flat shoes, who greet me warmly and then turn to whisper to their pew mates.  My own former ministers who ignore the facts of my life and choose to keep conversations at a comfortable triviality.

It's not the church I blame for my spiritual difficulties.  It's just the church I've known.

Truly, I know it's on me to get over it.  If I don't, rest will never come.  It's as though my head knows I need to eat, but my stomach never growls.  I know that I could starve to death here, frozen in these moments of hurt and rage, and what a sick fate.

Most days, I can't slow my brain down enough to change the record, to stop the same tunes of the day-to-day.  I distract myself in my relationship, or in front of this screen, or at work, or buried in one thing or another.  When I do manage to wrench the needle away and change the vinyl, and I set it back down expecting to hear the voice of God, I still just hear the scratches of my past life in the kingdom.

God, I'm hungry, I know I am.  Please just let me feel it.