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Tommy

There are certain days that don’t feel real.

We woke up on Saturday and I never felt quite settled. I couldn’t get comfortable in whatever chair I was sitting in and I felt compelled to pace around the house more than usual.

The hour for the funeral was approaching and the weight of its inevitability and meaning pressed into my chest.

I wanted time to slow down. I wanted it to pause and hold me in its arms for a while longer.

My father-in-law, Tommy, should have been half-jokingly saying, “I ain’t waiting on you all day!” while we attempted to scramble out the door in time. He should have been sitting in his green-striped recliner plucking a few notes on his banjo while waiting on us.

I shouldn’t be going to his memorial service.

–

That morning I walked into the kitchen to get some breakfast. The coffee pot was on and gurgling brightly.

Tommy and I always drank coffee together. When the four of us were camping at a music festival in central Illinois, he made coffee for the two of us every morning. When I was visiting family in Dallas a few years back for Thanksgiving he brought a French press and a bag of Community Coffee because he knew I’d want some. Every morning at work I pour myself coffee into a commemorative mug from Cornerstone festival, which he bought me every summer we went.

After he first got sick, Tommy couldn’t have any more coffee. He tried decaf for a while, but after so many years of drinking regular, decaf just didn’t cut it and he ended up giving it up altogether. He made me coffee once or twice after that, but eventually the smell was just too tempting for him.

So even though the brewing coffee in the kitchen that Saturday morning was everything I needed and it was going to help me get through the next few days of grieving, it was just another symbol of his absence.

–

It seemed like an eternity before we could get ourselves in the car. While we stood in the driveway, a mild breeze brushed our faces. My uncle Bill looked up and said, “I am so glad the sun is shining today.”

We arrived at the church. It was a small southern Christian church nestled in a tiny town square. A sanctuary with pews, white columns and arches framed the stage, and squishy flooring that was either green or red. (I don’t remember.)

There were several white boards near the stage covered in photographs of Tommy. There were displays of CDs, instruments he made by hand, and other artifacts from his life on tables surrounded by flowers. Tommy’s bluegrass CD played over the speakers, his voice and plucked banjo notes floating in the air above our heads.

–

Tommy’s laughter wasn’t a booming one, but rather one that would catch you off guard. After delivering the perfect sarcastic remark or dead-pan joke you’d look over at him and his nose was crinkled, eyes lit up and he was holding his belly in a delighted snickering.

Steve said to me, “I knew he liked you when we got to Cornerstone and within five minutes you two had teamed up and were making fun of me.”

–

The service was beautiful. It was almost three hours of music and friends talking about his impact on them. One of my favorite parts was at the beginning of the service when Tommy’s best friend, Dan, played “Amazing Grace” on the saw. (Yes, like a tree-cutting saw.)

Dan put the saw in his lap, pulled a violin bow across the edge and bent the saw just so to play the individual notes.1 The sound reminded me of what a ghost or a flower might sound like if it tried to sing. Its whistling, timid voice sang into our cracked hearts. The simple and familiar notes of “Amazing Grace” were more potent than usual.

This was the only church, the only afternoon. We were alone and that saw was at the center of the universe. Time passed on behind us while we remained in a cocoon between loss and some kind of adjusted, new life.

1. It sounded something like this.

 

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Easter, Year 3

It’s that time of year again.

Easter is the holiday that makes me the most tired.

It’s the most triggering. The most exhausting.

Other holidays I can handle. Most people spend time bemoaning the loss of whatever kitschy vision of Christmas they had, but for me, when the glow of Christmas sets in, songs sound brighter and food tastes sweeter. And when that same glow comes crashing down on my head after one heartbreaking phone call, it’ll still all be okay. Christmas still brings together the people I need, even through the grief and stress.

But with Easter, I just want it to go away.

In just a few short days there will be hundreds of good-looking, middle-aged Jesus’ draped in blue bed sheets coming out from behind Styrofoam rocks while the choir brings the cantata to a crescendo. Hundreds of my friends will post their celebratory, “He is risen!” phrases while I try to ignore the holiday that I used to know intimately and now hold in my heart like a bad breakup.

I’d rather it pass quietly. I’d prefer to go to breakfast someplace and try to remember all of the real examples of resurrection and redemption that I know outside of church walls and Easter Sunday over a plate of scrambled eggs topped with biscuit gravy.

I know, how could I abandon the holiday that gives our religion meaning? Go on, shake your head. Put me out in some overgrown pasture in your mind reserved for the dropouts, the deserters, the doubters, and the backsliders.

The reason this particular holiday gets under my skin is not because of the events it celebrates, but because the way it is celebrated amplifies what I hate about Christian culture.

When my twiggy, teenage self stood in the church gym in my new chunky white heels and sea green shirt and skirt on Easter morning about eight years ago, I felt like I was a part of a grand play. Everyone had their roles and knew what to say on this celebration morning. But I think that was part of the problem. Even after leaving the place I grew up, the colossus Easter continued to clobber me. Easter isn’t a play or rehersal. This all is much more complicated than that.

When I questioned the catch phrases and talking about drowning in Christianese two years ago, I was talked down to and told that my questioning was “abusing” the Bride of Christ.

“You know what it means, Deanna,” they said. Shut up, girl. Quit trying to be edgy by pretending like you don’t perfectly understand everything we’ve taught you, they said in between the lines.

Easter is the height of deaf ears and at least for me, has always been the least empathetic holiday. They didn’t stop to ask about why I might have been flailing in sadness. I could rattle off any good evangelical answer like I had attended Sunday School yesterday, but the words I used for 18 years suddenly sounded foreign, strange, and hostile flying off my tongue (“lost in the sound of separation”).

When you’ve had the Good Christian script for the first quarter of your life and after years of performing your role with perfection you suddenly show up one year, blank-faced with tear and mascara-stained skin, a crumpled script, and refusing to perform until you get some answers… you tend to lose your spot for prom queen.

Easter is the height of pre-packaged, “just add water” religion. They say that this holiday is the answer to the religion. Any question you have about why Jesus had to die or why bad things happen to good people or why we supposedly can’t trust our emotions or why women are treated like temptresses and peasants in the common church — all are silenced by this holiday. This cross. This happening.

And when you say, “Well, okay, but I still don’t understand,” you are interrupted by the screaming subtext, “This holiday is the answer to your question, doubter, and if you don’t understand that, well, you weren’t listening when I said it to you the first time.”

And so, this holiday darkens my doorway again. When I can’t buy a new dress and attend brunch like everyone else and just play along! … The scab rips off and is a fresh reminder of an anniversary of a very different kind.

A friend asked me what specifically I believed while we and some old friends of ours were out to dinner. I didn’t know how to answer him then, and I barely know how to answer him now. It’s not that I don’t have principles I believe in — it’s that I don’t have a faith that’s buttoned up. I used to be able to serve up the theology of angels and specifics of hell and dispensations and whether I was pre- or post-tribulation. But now the things that I hold dear are not shiny acronyms. I used to have tidy answers, but those tidy answers betrayed me so I don’t have them anymore. I kicked them out.

The guilt I feel for admitting all of this is immense. These demons in my head tell me that I’m the monster you always warned your kids about. I’m the girl who had such a promising and bright future in the evangelical Christian realm but then let those millions of evolutionary years and gay people slip into my heart and look where we are now! I’m deserting Easter. I’m the one who, in your words, is soothing my itchy ears and warping scripture. Honesty has no place with you. Honesty is dirty. Pain is dirty. You’d rather me give you some syrupy “I’m just wrestlin’ with the ‘stuff of life’” answer than admit my 3-year (and counting) fraught relationship with this hallmark holiday.

It’s like what Rachel Held Evans said in her recent post, “Holy Week for Doubters”:

But you won’t know how to explain that there is nothing nominal or lukewarm or indifferent about standing in this hurricane of questions every day and staring each one down until you’ve mustered all the bravery and fortitude and trust it takes to whisper just one of them out loud on the car ride home:

‘What if we made this up because we’re afraid of death?’

And you won’t know how to explain why, in that moment when the whisper rose out of your mouth like Jesus from the grave, you felt more alive and awake and resurrected than you have in ages because at least it was out, at least it was said, at least it wasn’t buried in your chest anymore, clawing for freedom.

So while you go and proclaim, “He is risen!” red-cheeked in your pew and roll your eyes at the “holiday church-goers”, just remember some of them are like me. For them to even get near a church on Easter takes an incredible amount of will and a lot of Tums. For some this holiday is healing, and for others it’s triggering.

But wherever you are on Sunday morning, try to leave your cloud of intention at home, remember that this is water, and recognize that maybe — just maybe — one of those people is hoping to get through the morning without a gaping wound.

 

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Photo credit: Flickr / Sapphireblue

 

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jan 07 2013: mysteries of the universe and turtles

I know, an obscure title. But obscure date titles intimidate me less.

It’s the new year and resolutions are flying around. I’m a bit worried to talk about mine because it seems the moment I declare something I break it. Like the 1000 paper cranes I was going to fold for my wedding. I got about 200 in and didn’t know what to do with them. I couldn’t get them to hang right on fishing line and I told too many people and gave up. They are still in a box in my house because I’m pretty sure it’s bad karma to throw them away.

Last year was a year of focus. I poured creative labor into an article and it got published. I created another article out of a difficult thing to admit and it got published too. I found a place I could put my creativity and passion into. I was a finalist in an essay contest. I was published in a magazine in Chicago. I worked hard to start building a community. I finally figured out what I wanted to graduate with thanks to a quiet rooftop bar conversation. I continued my quest to have more honest, healthy conversation with the people around me. I embarked on a labor of love that was terrifying for a lot of people but deeply fulfilling for me.

In 2011 I felt so restless and ready to sink my creative fingernails into something. I didn’t find it where I expected, but when it did come it all started because I said yes. I sent an email. I made a request. I kept following, kept working.

And here I am, one year later, realizing that I am doing it. I am doing what I love. I am doing this life thing. I am achieving things that I never really expected to be able to do. But you know what they say: things don’t happen overnight. *

–

I was sitting at a bar the other night with a glass of wine surrounded by ten of my good friends. I tallied up that I’ve known most of them for 15 years. All bright-eyed, wearing clothes appropriate for twenty-somethings, all doing adult things. One’s in the military, one’s in a rock band, one is ghost writing. Blue eyes, blue eyes, brown eyes.

I grew up with them. I lived through the trenches of church and Christian life and middle school and hormones and high school with them. Through stupid romances and summer camps and teen-hood. But then I had to break up with the church I saw them in most. I got so much push-back for it, mostly yelling. I lost a lot of friends through that process, including a lot of them at the table.

I experienced so much turmoil and alienation because of leaving that shaped me as a person…

And yet 7 years later we can all come to the table.

We can share a pint, catch up, and send the warmest of smiles across the table. That is deeply significant to me. There aren’t many things that make me so happy I am wont to shatter, but that’s one of them.

–

I had to leave in a half hour and my ginger-haired friend at the table starting asking me about theology, which I could talk all day about. However, I felt suddenly awkward because I’ve changed so much in that area in just the last two years I hardly know where to start. I either have to tell the whole story or work through specific questions that make me sound, as my mom would said, “all weird.”

I mentioned the “It’s turtles all the way down” story from Stephen Hawking, explained some of the inner workings of the emergent movement which I identify with, and talked about why when I hit the “secular world” ** everything fell apart for me faith-wise. I gave almost zero definite answers as to my particular beliefs, but I felt like I gave the most honest answers even if it did make me want to flee the restaurant.

The truth is I don’t have the answers.

–

Speaking of not having the answers, I have been watching this trailer a lot over the last couple of days. It explains exactly where I am. I saw him in Grand Rapids along with another guy named Kester Brewin and it affirmed my life path like very few other things have before.

I drove home across the state through the sunshine and biting air knowing that I was exactly on the right path, which was so terrifying and so relieving. ***

I also wrote a post for the new year containing stories to refuel your faith in humanity which took off on Facebook.

* And other boring adages that sometimes turn out to be true.
** I put it in quotations because there is no such thing as secular!
*** As I said to @joshua_eaton, “We didn’t pick easy lines of work, did we?”
Photo credit: Flickr / allison.hare

 

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I am the “spiritual but not religious”.

Soundtrack: “Low Rising” by Glen Hansard

For every church I attend, there comes a day when the pastor tries to convict everyone in the room by railing against the “spiritual but not religious” crowd. My heart quickens because I belong in the group, yet I know I can’t say this publicly because of the miscommunication and rejection surrounding this phrase.

When fundamentalists or evangelicals say “spiritual” it means “secular” or “worldly”, and “religious” means “god-loving” and “good Christian”. The church sees “spiritual but not religious” group as Jesus-hatrrrrs who want squishy, watery faith in the “universe”. (I am putting that last word in quotes because the ‘gelicals say it with air-quotes.)

When someone outside of the church talks about the “spiritual but not religious” group, “spiritual” means closer to the Hindu word “brahman”, which is the word that means all of space, time, matter and energy. As my World Religion professor explained it, “It is all that is beyond.”

To many people outside of the church, “religious” means the stuffy church leaders who bully their members into assimilation, and who cause the world more destruction than they repair. To people who aren’t in the church, the phrase means more like, “I appreciate the whispers, flutters, and mysteries in this great big universe, and I appreciate the truth that I find in unexpected places.”

Do you see how this immediately causes problems? One group is trying to lecture the other about how they can’t commit to having Jesus as their homefry, and the other group says, “I’m this way because you refuse to recognize anything outside of the church walls and churchy things as spiritual, except for fairytale houses and trees because Thomas Kinkade painted those.”

The really ironic thing about this is that if one of the fundamentalists is witnessing to someone and the witness-ee says, “Oh, you’re one of those religion types,” the fundamentalist will respond with, “Actually, I like to think of it as more of a relationship than a religion.”

You’ll hear things from the pulpit like, “These so-called ‘spiritual but not religious’ people are trying to sound cool and smart, but ultimately they just can’t commit to the truth. Why? It makes them uncomfortable. They can’t admit that they are sinners.”

The “spiritual but not religious” group gets rejected, shamed, and treated as deceivers by church folk. They are told god will spit them out of his mouth. While true for some people, when you blame the movement on arrogance or commitment, you severely discount people like me who have left forms of suffocating religion and are rediscovering faith in healthier places.

♦◊♦

How do I show you this world? How do I show you this stupid, gorgeous rock we live on? How do I show you that we are all here together and are here for each other?

How do I show one of the most transcendent nights of my life that was at a Glen Hansard concert even though he said “f*ck” on stage a couple of times? We walked through the Zinzinatti Oktoberfest to get there. The air had a slight chill, a slight rush, and smelled of good beer. Glen Hansard didn’t phone it in or restrain himself on stage; he sang like the stars and Milky Way needed to hear him.

How do I show you that afternoon in the rain running across the Applebee’s parking lot when my husband (then boyfriend) caught me by the waist and kissed me? Some whisper poured into me and I knew at that moment I would be there beside him at the altar.

How do I show you the purity that comes from reading a poem by Rumi (a Sufi mystic) that strikes just the right note to where you look up and say breathlessly, “Oh, I get it”?

How do I show you the questions about anger and busyness that I and three Zen Buddhist women wrestled with over bowls of homemade cinnamon vegetable soup on a humid afternoon?

How do I show you that room years ago where I was sitting with a dozen people, and wishing I knew if which of them were gay, or straight, or bi, or trans, because then I “would know how to treat them”, and how I suddenly realized that my logic was the problem all along? I thought, Wait, so I need extra information so I know which people to mistreat? Because of who they might love? That’s when I started to see my LGBTQ brothers and sisters as equals and when they became perfect and beautiful humans worthy of my deepest friendship and love in my heart. That’s when I claimed them as my friends.

How do I show you the perfection of going to the birthday party of an old friend where wine, hugs, and science fiction jokes were abundant? We proclaimed, “This is family,” to each other after sharing stories of broken hearts and betrayal. We laughed, sat close on the couch and started to healed.

How do I show you the funeral of a friend who died too early? His friends and siblings, in their twenties with ink and piercings and jeans told stories about him in a small, plain church. Swear words sometimes slipped out while they spoke, but that was just how intensely they felt about him, and the gravity of how much they missed him. Those closest to him sat in each other’s arms in the back of the room and sang an Old Medicine Crow Show song at the end of the service. They rocked and sang, rocked and sang. It was the most appropriate and perfect funeral I have ever attended.

And you tell me those moments aren’t spiritual?

You tell me god wasn’t there?

♦◊♦

Am I supposed to just shut this out? To destroy all the important moments that changed my life that took place far away from any church? To abandon all the “unacceptable” friends that helped me survive and showed me what love is? To unceremoniously bleed out all the memories that contain cuss words and sex and keys to the universe?

I experienced more faith, truth, and heartbreak in a few hours with them than I did in years of pews. It’s not that the things I heard in pews were meaningless, but there I only received the textbook version and my heart starved.

Should I leave behind the ex-boyfriends that captivated me and that John Lennon play I assistant directed and sacrilegious kissing in movie parking lots in high school and blackberry mojitos and unorthodox books and delicious music by Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and decade-long friends …

… all in favor of a religious interpretation that dictates I condemn all the people and memories that have made my life as rich, beautiful, and meaningful as it has been?

How can you ask me to leave behind the people I love and who love me because you consider some of them unclean? It’s not that I can’t commit; it’s that I can’t commit to that.

I still have faith in the same god. It’s just different now. It’s gritty, it’s visceral, it’s blooming, it’s healing.

I have experienced true communion, fire-like transformation, unbending faith, white-hot hope, and resurrection of the soul all outside of sterile church walls.

Thanks to these people in my life, I don’t have to hide now. I don’t have to pretend I don’t have questions, or be afraid of judgment when I need to talk to someone. I don’t have to worry about being blacklisted by my community when I mess up. I have people who care about me and who embrace me.

True love comes not from passing stale bread down from your pedestal to those you decide you like. True love comes from the bottom of your feet, hangs in your rib cage and screams at you because you know you couldn’t leave them if you wanted to.

I can be a spiritual person and still believe in a god because I don’t believe those two things are mutually exclusive.

I know there are some people who are uncomfortable with this, but it saved me.

 

Inspired by the wonderful Crystal Lewis and her post, “God In the Gray Areas: A Defense of the ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’”.

Photo credit: Flickr / www.metaphoricalplatypus.com

 

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Swimming Pools and Old Friends

He has eyes the color of swimming pools.

I met up with him and a couple of our friends from high school in the middle of the day. We went to a family-owned coffee shop downtown that was completely empty except for the four of us.

I hadn’t seen the swimming pools in two years. He was bubbling about hiking in the mountains, which he did nearly the whole time we were there. We played a version of pong on his iPad and I asked him questions. I couldn’t quite reach him, but after two years, I knew I wasn’t really supposed to be able to.

The other two friends across the table sipped their zebra lattes as they talked about minor frustrations with friends they have drifted apart from. I was surprised, because I guess I always thought their friendships were perfect and never changed. I remember arguing with one of them about Mohammed and feeling like they probably didn’t want me. But here we were at the table together, talking in a way we haven’t had time to in years.

This not being wanted thing is probably a lie. I figured it was better to maybe stay away, thinking that I was bound to only cause more problems than I was worth anymore. But maybe not.

I have always felt attached to this group of people. I used to have this sense of, “I was in the trenches with these friends.” The trenches don’t matter as much as they used to, but I still feel connected. As in: if I had my own room like the one in “Lost”, a couple of them might be there.

More talking about the mountains.

“As you can tell, I’m quite enthusiastic about it.”
“So, there’s ‘quite enthusiastic’, which is where you’re at. But then there’s the regular ‘enthusiastic’ underneath that, and way at the top is ‘overjoyed’. Is that what I’m hearing from you?”
He smiled, a laugh hanging right behind his teeth. “Hm, yeah. That sounds about right.”

His laugh is a little bit different. Same rhythm as it was the night we decided to have a mock alcoholic birthday party all those years ago—now it’s just coming from a different place.

On my way home, I put my head down on the window sill in my car as I waited for the light to turn. The air smelled like espresso, good coconut, and grilled fish. The sun licked my skin in happiness.

Time just sits back in her chair and laughs. Sometimes, I know nothing.

 

Photo credit: Flickr / Lee Coursey