The Mosher Pit

Someone said to me the other day that I picked a good summer to be pregnant. It’s true. I don’t have air conditioning and to tell the truth I’ve only missed it on a couple of days when it’s gotten really miserable. But for it to be late July in NW Virginia and under 70 degrees at night is kind of amazing! And it’s really been like this all summer long, one of the mildest I can remember, honestly.

I guess sometimes I take for granted how beautiful it is where I live. I don’t always remember to notice it, living right in the middle of town. D’s parents live on several acres about 10 miles south of here, outside of town and right underneath the mountains. We spent the day there, along with my son, and my stepdaughter, who brought a friend along. After a cookout and lots of frisbee time for the guys, D took the kids down to the creek to build a campfire, where they made S’mores.

I mostly sat by and watched, augmenting my recipe collection from various magazines that have been piling up, when suddenly I was ready to keel over and nap. Wasn’t really up for the campfire anyway; the smoke is overwhelming for me even when I’m not pregnant. But it really was campfire weather–as I slept and the sun went down, the air actually took on a chill.

The kids woke me up around 10 pm. You lose track of time out there–I have no idea what time I conked out, but when a passel of tweens and teens come charging through the house demanding ice cream (the S’mores, it turned out, had not gone so well–the chocolate had turned out to be of the unsweetened baker’s variety). After some time relaxing in the living room, with D curled up next to me, murmuring silly things to my thumping belly, Elder Son on and I got ready to go–hubby and his daughter were sleeping over.

As we walked out to the car, an overwhelming feeling of peace came over me. I looked up in the sky and thousands of stars… THOUSANDS! were scattered across the sky in patterns that came back to my memory easily. I said something to Elder Son about it, pointing out the Big Dipper, and he said, “Wow, you’re right, I’ve never seen it so clearly.” Coming across the sky, I pointed out Cassiopeia, and Perseus. Elder Son asked about the bright star dead center overhead, and I said, “That’s Vega. It’s a star in the swan.” “Cygnus?” he said. Yep. (except I’m wrong: it’s actually in the lyre, right next to the swan. but not bad for dredging up information I hadn’t looked at since Elder Son was about 9.)

Then I pointed out the swath of mist in the sky behind these summer constellations, explaining that it was the Milky Way, and not a cloud at all. That it’s full of stars, stars so finely grained and clustered that they look like a thin wisp of atmosphere, stretched in a ribbon from one side of the sky to the other.

I’ve long said that one of the joys of parenthood is transmitting a sense of wonder at the world and the universe. We had one of those moments tonight, and it’s so rare with a teenager that I’m pondering on it tonight. We’ll have many of those moments with Bunky, after so many missed with Elder Son and Lil’D, my stepdaughter, because of custody stuff. But each of those moments that we share with our children is a gift, one that will carry them into adulthood, as they get in touch with their own sense of wonder and transmit it to their own children some day.

Posted in Family, Life, Reflections by: Helen
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This has happened to me at every church I’ve attended semi-regularly as an adult: When I go to an event, the people at the event, when introduced to me, ask, “Oh, do you go to the 8 o’clock service?” At churches where there are more than two services, I get “So which service do you go to?” There is, I guess, an underlying assumption that in order to be a part of of church community, one must attend ONE of the services a church offers, and since they don’t see me there, I must go to the other one.

It has happened so regularly that I’m beginning to think there’s something to this, in spite of the fact that I have yet to actually meet a new person (i.e. be introduced to a strike up a conversation with someone, not just shake their hand at the Peace) within a church service.

Now, for the baggage part of that: I don’t go to the 8 a.m. service, and I sometimes feel like there’s something judgmental inherent in the assumption that if I don’t go to one, I go to the other. There’s a big part of me that feels like I got so much church service between the ages of roughly 3 and 15 that now, when I go, it’s a recitation. That’s not to say there’s not comfort in it: there is, it’s like meditation, it’s like practice, a regrounding of oneself in the pray, listen, reflect, repent, commune cycle of the Anglican liturgy.

But I really don’t go every week, at least not to one, single church. Sometimes I’m traveling and visit other churches. Sometimes I go to church in Second Life. Sometimes I flip open my prayer book right here in my office and discover something new in it. Sometimes I’m out hiking and it’s just enough to know that presence within the cricket and bird song, the rustling leaves, and the laughter of a partner who loves you pushing you along.

Truth is, I have trouble imposing structure on my life — structure tends to impose itself on me, and the results can be painful. But on the other hand, I find that I’m always in a place of discovery and delight. I think it’s part of my ENFP wiring, that I like the unpredictability of “church where you are,” and thrive on it.

So what service do I attend? The one in my heart. I’m still trying to figure out how that works in community, but I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with why I have so many Episcopal priests among my Facebook friends.

Posted in Episcopal Church, Faith, Reflections by: Helen
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The Hopeline, 1-800-SUICIDE, is fighting to survive, itself, right now. They have an appeal out that a friend of mine helped produce, and I was privileged to be allowed to see an early draft of the video and offer feedback. The end result makes the case very plain, and here is a collaborative effort between the founder of 1-800-SUICIDE and the founder of Post Secret, which has received anonymous, creative thank-you cards that credit 1-800-SUICIDE with helping them go on, forward and up.

In 1998, I hit my own nadir and realized I’d been in a struggle against mental illness for the better part of my adolescent and young adult life. It was the beginning of the journey out for me too, and I don’t remember who I called that tear-stained night I hit bottom, but whoever you were, you lifted me up.

There’s a lot of people who think that “saving” people should be job one when it comes to doing God’s work in the world. But a person who is hovering on the thin end of a wire, struggling to come up with a reason to cope with another miserable tomorrow, and nothing but more miserable tomorrows on the horizon, often can’t make a connection with God, or if they do, it’s resentful. See, that’s the whole point of despair–you’ve lost everything, even your faith.

One of my favorite taglines about my journey back to faith is that I had spent my life placing faith in people, and kept finding my world falling apart when those people let me down. But I’m glad I didn’t stop believing in people just the same. Yes, it probably would have been easier. God knows I still have flashes of grief when I think about the graphic novel that Bram and I will never collaborate on, and wistful pangs to know that Greg, my fellow insomniac from freshman year at MWC, is the one classmate I will never reconnect with. And incredible feelings of joy that a younger me managed to work through her issues so that I could grow up and be strong, witty, fun, intelligent, talented, and oh-so self-effacing.

Keep the Hopeline going. Please donate.

Posted in Life, Link of the Day, Memories, Reflections by: Helen
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An ongoing theme in my work lately—my vocational work, that is—is that of listening. It came up last night while I filled Fr. Jim in on all the directions I feel pulled, including toward ministry. There was so much to talk about, largely because I had never had a chance to talk to him about, well, me, and the more self-absorbed side of me enjoys nothing more.

As a result, I have to be conscious of listening, even to listen. I’m one of those people whose ability to empathize rests solely in my ability to connect your experience to something I’ve experienced, and if you’re not savvy in the ways of dealing with people like me you’d mistake us for being utterly self-absorbed because we always have to make everything about us. But no, that just our way of connecting, and while it might be a bit graceless, it doesn’t lack grace.

I struggle to listen. Sometimes it’s struggling to listen to, and sometimes it’s struggling to listen for. It doesn’t help that I’m going deaf. (Children, wear your earplugs at loud rock shows. Every time. Like brushing and flossing.)

I stopped by the library on the way home and picked up a book by Phyllis Tickle. She is one of those folks who, as I suspect and Jim confirmed, lives out her vocation in much the same way that I think I am called to do. He also recommended Nora Gallagher, whose work I have not read, and Anne Lamott, whose “Plan B” was probably not what I should have started with. But I don’t know that he was recommending that I read them; he was just identifying how I might live out my call.

Here are the things I have to remember from last night’s meeting:
1. Pray.
1a. Listen.
2. Meditate.
2a. Listen.
3. Keep writing.
3a. Listen.
4. Develop circles of trust.
4a. Listen.
5. Listen.
5a. Discern.

I have a whole lotta listening to go on. I have never been terribly good at it, but getting good takes practice, right?

Posted in Features, Life, Reflections by: Helen
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…so to speak.

Today was Matthew 22:34-46. I was visiting St. Mary’s in Ardmore, PA, the parish that welcomed me when I timidly came back to church in 2002-2003, for today’s service. Lovely red doors, the embrace of the stone and stained glass nave. A sort of homecoming, with apologies to the other U2 fans reading here.

The first half of this gospel passage is one that still echoes in my head in the Rev. Dr. Boston Lackey Jr.’s voice, rendered in the high archaic language of the Rite I penitential order:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Fr. Tim mentioned that he “felt sorry for all the lawyers” that Jesus used to wail on back in the day, and you couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. No one feels sorry for lawyers right? Except in this very passage we are commanded to feel compassion for even the lawyers. It’s that kind of love: compassion. The Buddha taught a great deal about compassion and how great a role compassion can play in ending suffering. I am beginning to understand how the Buddha taught me to overcome personal suffering, and now, with Jesus, I walk on the path on easing societal suffering. And yet there are so many parallels to each path, that I now feel comfortable jumping back and forth between them, while always remaining on both!

In the meantime, this important passage is one of the foundation verses in progressive Christianity. Love is a problematic word for me. It’s thrown up all manner of attachments–and still does, I’m still human–which lead to Dukkha. The idea of loving EVERYONE is anathema to the sacrosanctity of my close relationships. Or is it? We’ve talked in past entries about how we perceive our varying degrees of love, but for some reason, today I was catapulted back to when DFH and I were first wrestling with our nascent feelings for each other, and I blurted it out impulsively (how sacrosanct is that?) and he doled it out very carefully. But what he said to me that evening was very important to what grounds our relationship: Love is acceptance. We didn’t know each other very well when we’d first started dating, and we’d both had plenty of experience with meeting people and feeling that semi-magical “I’ve known you forever” feeling. So we went headlong down this love road with a hefty roster of exceptions, footnotes, and codicils. Not conditions, but certainly legal protections.

And we’ve tested each other on that acceptance. His financial responsibilities have left him little to contribute to the common cause, for instance. And I became consumed with the desire to find a home parish again in June to act on a call that I don’t recall perceiving. We’ve had a number of bumps in the road along the way that often arise from my own stuckness, at times. We all get stuck.

But when I get stuck, I think of the great commandment and the second that is like unto it. When I feel disappointed or annoyed, I don’t think of ridding myself of the attachment that is causing me suffering–as the Buddha taught me–but instead, think to put myself in the other party’s shoes. And even if I’m totally convinced that my cause is justified or righteous, I don’t think about it in those terms when I’m trying to communicate how I feel. Instead, I try to convey the truth that’s in my heart so that the other party can put themselves into my shoes, and then we’re on some fair negotiating territory. And both of us can apologize.

Loving God, loving yourself, loving your neighbor–a triune responsibility, each important. What of this? By loving God, I learned to love myself, I learned to love others. Not the love that I’d been conditioned to crave my entire life, but something else. Something again with many parts, many colors, many facets that shine in our hearts. And who taught me these things? Humans.

For teaching me romance, I give thanks to Justin.
For teaching me acceptance, I give thanks to DFH.
For teaching me caring, I give thanks to my dear friends in Philadelphia.
For teaching me forgiveness, I give thanks to my therapists.
For teaching me humility, I give thanks to ex-Tim.
For teaching me generosity, I give thanks to Ramon.
For teaching me nurturing, I give thanks to Julia.
For teaching me listening, I give thanks to Lin.
For teaching me respect, I give thanks to my grandmother, Emily.
For teaching me openness, I give thanks to the Buddha.
For teaching me love, once I finally stopped to listen, I give thanks to Jesus.

I know there are others I need to thank. And there will be more to come. As I move into a fuller, deeper relationship with God, it becomes more important for me to find the points where all this love (short of romance, and eros with it) belongs to all my fellow beings. Compassion, to the Lord Buddha. Love, to the Lord Christ. I’m starting to research our Christian responsibility as environmental stewardship in Chapter One of my journey to discover how radical grace intersects with progressive political causes. That journey will bring me before many, many teachers, some wise and experienced, and some young and inquisitive.

And for giving me all these wonderful teachers, I give thanks to God.

Posted in Faith, Friends, Reflections by: Helen
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DFH and I were having a theological discussion on the way home, borne of an argument I got into accidentally on his livejournal. I talked about how I was referring back to an interpersonal conflict not because I wanted to air my beef again but because I wanted to illustrate a point about being open to the idea of being wrong.

The Salty Vicar makes the same argument not with regard to interpersonal conflict but with regard to intrainstitutional conflict, as we face it in the Episcopal Church in this incredibly well written entry.

I’m willing to also say, however, unlike Estes, that I’m willing to be wrong. He, and others, can work it out for themselves, whether pro or con. I’ll continue to break bread with them, and my bishop. Estes and the conservatives fear for their souls because God will not have mercy upon them for making a mistake. I have no such fear. I have faith in God, and I have faith that God is the sort of person that will love me for either being righteous if I’m right, or forgive me for being wrong. The scriptures illustrate such a God. And it is because I hold traditional, orthodox, and biblical views, I can say such with authority.

Then, in a silly online personality quiz we took last night, it posited the question:
Relationships take compromise. Whose? Yours, or theirs?
We were amused by the black-and-white nature of this question. I’m not always graceful at compromising, or admitting I’m wrong. This is especially true when I feel like I’ve been misunderstood, or wronged in some character-wounding way. A petulant thing said in anger: Who do I turn to when the darkness comes? My friends, family, love, and self. Never Jesus, she said. Such anger. Such anger.

The darkness comes when you cannot save yourself, when you reach out to those around you so much and so hard that your burdens become theirs, that your loves give up on you, your family doesn’t have answers, and your ’self’ languishes in the empty pit of despair. If you never know that darkness, you may never have need of a direct spiritual experience. God, whatever name you have for it, blesses you.

But that’s not what I am talking about here. I’m talking about the reaction this person had, her anger restrained, her tone indignant, defensive, imperious, when all I had meant to do was share my story. I should have just pointed her here, I guess, but she’s aware of this journal’s existence. She could come here on her own instead of asking me about my spirituality and then bolt in anger when I answer honestly.

I needed that humility check. OK, check. But it made me realize that there are two kinds of people, and they aren’t people of faith and people of secular persuasion. They are open people, and closed people. I think of my own experience, when I was the angry one, bolting. I wasn’t open. I figured I had all the answers. Buddha taught me that there were no answers. You know all those crazy koans, with their accompanying stories about a monk with a question that demands an answer, and every answer he comes up with, the Buddha laughs and says “You are almost there?” You are always almost there.

Last night in Kerygma we talked about how reading scripture creates more questions than it does answers, and we talked about how that is a cause for joy. Ever-approaching circles, as Jeff put it. The path is the destination, as DFH put it.

We must stay open. To the idea that we might be wrong about something we hold dear. It doesn’t mean that we cannot hold things dear. It means we can respect those who don’t share our beliefs.

And that can be hard to do some days. Strength and grace, O Lord. Let us do more than see and hear: Let us look, and let us listen. Let us be open, 24/7, like a 7-11. Thank heaven.

Amen.

Posted in Faith, Reflections by: Helen
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I came home from the conference and from scooting around on the cathedral grounds for an hour after the closing Eucharist only to find the most ridiculous, small-minded email forward from my mother.

It suggested, in a “Think about this” tone, that God smote New Orleans because he's pissed off that we don't have school prayer tone. It cited a relative of Billy Graham, saying that God was sad, but that if we no longer wanted his protection, as evidenced by our lack of prayer in schools, why should he grant it?

There are so many things wrong with this that I can't even think of where to begin, but I called her and asked that she not send me such blasphemous BS again, noting that if God was that arrogant, I'd be happier in hell. But that's not the God whose presence I sense in my life, and as such I cannot, CANNOT believe such a thing.

God is inscrutable, but given my understanding of what disasters he's influenced or effected in scripture, the message that he's usually trying to get across is that we have turned from him. And some have said that it's in the sinful nature of New Orleans, and now this is our sin as a nation whose government is not divinely ordained (would you like that back?) and therefore divorced by constitutional mandate from the church in order to provide the blessings of liberty for all, or is it that he wanted to shine a spotlight on the failings of our administration, and that he's sick of Bush's constant blasphemy? Did he want us to turn as one people to address the poverty and racism that still pervades our society? Did he open our hearts to a new understanding of our stewardship of his creation, that development gone amuck and greed and corruption disappoint him every day?

How have we turned from you, O Lord? Sleepers, wake!

Posted in Grrr!, Politics, Reflections, Religion by: Helen
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