Advent Confessions and Professions

As my last three final exams approach, I am finding it harder and harder to return to my books, lectures, and notes.  Too much is going on in the world outside my pathophysiology, health assessment, clinical documentation, and pharmacotherapeutics textbooks. 

Refugee crises.

Climate change summits.

Mass shootings.

Attacks on cities, nations, states, ethnic areas.

Assaults on healthcare facilities.

Denial of schools, housing, safe neighborhoods, healthcare, jobs, transportation, food.

Systemic oppression with roots in what some call heritage and what others call history.

Retributive justice: “an eye for an eye.”

We are making the whole world blind.

Those blind eyes are turned away from the inhumane treatment of fellow human beings because of certain distinguishing characteristics.

Race

Class

National origin

Sexual orientation

Gender identity

Economic status

Housing status

Political affiliation

Religious affiliation

One after another, after another, after another.

What do these events and processes have in common?

The exploitation, desecration, invalidation, and erasure of human beings, animals, and the planet; perpetrated by other human beings.

Vulnerable human beings, and the beautiful planet we live on, have been assaulted and hurt and maimed and killed by other human beings who have wielded tools of power over them.

I am not innocent of these crimes: I have contributed to climate change, I have not learned the best strategies to be an ally to my brothers and sisters in the Black Church and the Black Lives Matter movement, I am an imperfect ally to my friends who are fighting for a living wage, trans* rights, improved immigration policies, an end to dependence on fossil fuels.  My colleagues and peers around the country who have left their classrooms to demand an equal hearing, appropriate diversity measures, an end to death threats in the very places where they are trying to obtain an education.

And yet.  Not all of these issues are in the news every day.  When people of Northern European ancestry are killed in the workplace, in their homes, or in their churches, the nation rises up in grief and the call goes out for prayer, and politicians and peers ask God to “fix this.”

Last I checked, when black and brown people are killed in their workplaces, their homes, their streets, and in their churches, nations don’t rise up and call out for God to “fix this.” 

Recent history has demonstrated that politicians only tweet prayers for white folks.  At least, cisgender, heterosexual male, high socioeconomic status, politically conservative white politicians don’t tweet God on behalf of black and brown bodies.  Last I checked.  I mean, social media outlets and New York City daily newspapers don’t cover it on their front pages—so I wouldn’t know.

I am here to tell you, as a person of faith, a self-professed Christian, that God is not going to fix this. 

Why would God fix it?  A human mess means that the onus is on humans to repair.

I am here to tell you that God did not do any of this to us.

I do not believe that God does do things to us.

God is not in some heaven, light-years away, playing chess with the planet and laughing.  Not the God of my understanding, to use the phrasing of my friends of the Unitarian Universalist tradition.

God does things with us.  God experiences things with us.  God suffers with us, prays with us, holds vigil with us, cries with us. 

I also believe that God hopes with us, walks with us along the journey from despair to joy, and assists us along the path of growth and faith.

Why do I believe this? Why do I believe this so forcefully that I have spent half my night, when I ought to be studying, writing about a God of hope and love and accompaniment?

Because it’s Advent.  The season of active waiting and preparation for the arrival of Emmanuel, God-with Us.  The small child, the incarnation of God, the Word made flesh who came to walk on earth as a human being.  It is this God I believe in, the God who brings so much hope into the world.

I believe in the God who sent a baby—the most vulnerable iteration of a very vulnerable humanity—to a young unmarried woman and her almost-but-not-yet-husband demonstrated hope thousands of years ago.  Whether or not this story is true-as-written in King James English (or whichever version you prefer), think about the last newborn child you held.  Completely dependent upon the good will and care of others for its nurture, its safety, its food, warmth, and comfort.  Newborns are one of the ways I experience God—they are full of hope, promise, and love that gives unconditionally.   

Newborns don’t fix things.  They poop, they barf, they cry—they need to eat, they need changes of clothes, they need to go to the doctor, they need to sleep, they need lots of things.  They’re expensive.  It’s a lot of work and a lot of commitment.  It takes a village to raise a child. 

The God-with-Us, the God who comes at Christmas, the God whose coming we prepare for during the season of Advent is not a God who came to fix everything.  This God is the God who came to hope with us, to pray with us, to cry with us—to act with us as we participate together in the changing of the world. 

If God is with us, we are partners in changing the world.  In bringing about the beloved community, in which we do not take out our neighbor’s eye.  In which we do not turn away our fellow human beings because of any characteristic that distinguishes them from us.  In which we participate in breaking down the borders that divide us from each other and recognize our common humanity—that humanity that God shared with us at Christmas. 

If God is with us, it is up to us to take up the work of ending homelessness, ending gun violence, ending attacks on health centers, ending assaults on cities and workplaces and places of worship, ending violence against gender and sexual minorities, ending unlivable wages. 

If God is with us, this is the work of bringing about the kin-dom of God. 

I believe God is with us.  I am committed to this work.  It is the work of lifetimes, the work of all of us. 

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

On Albatrosses and Dancing Under Spider Webs

I am a believer in full disclosure.  I believe in telling the truth, even when it hurts—especially when it hurts. 

However, I’ve been hiding something about myself from people I don’t see on a regular basis.  It’s really an omission, in that I don’t tell you the whole story, even when I attempt to tell the truth.  Hiding is comforting, it’s a place of refuge and relative anonymity, it can offer a sense of safety in a world in which exposure is dangerous, damaging, and death-dealing.

But hiding becomes a web of intricate lies and delicate stories—a spider’s web of the thinnest of filaments, easy to bend and even easier to break if you don’t watch yourself at every moment.  Even lying by omission becomes hiding after a while, and you stick with it because it’s easier and more comforting than the vulnerability of truth telling—even when it is burdensome to hide.

That burden weighs down, like an albatross, even though you might feel free in a significant portion of your life.  The albatross causes you to duck out of sight, yoked with the burden of hiding, avoiding the spider’s web like your life depended on it.  Because it does.  It becomes an issue of life and death, weaving and ducking to protect yourself as you carry your albatross, showing just enough of your personal truth that you can get by.

Because of that burden, I have become a poorer ally for myself in situations where I would normally have the courage and strength to speak up on my own behalf.  That burden prevents me from speaking up when I am/people I love are microaggressed or discriminated against in interpersonal situations.  That burden silences me, keeps me in the dark, avoiding interactions that risk my exposure.  Disclosing the truth is such a daunting obstacle that I file it in the furthest recesses of my mind, hidden behind boxes of History of Religion and Constructive Theology and Pharmacology for Nursing notes, exams, and research papers.  I forget that my truth is even back there, gathering dust even as I live it out each day. 

Here is what I have realized: I live my truth in some respects and not in others.  I thought I would be okay with this, content with a modicum of truth-telling while concealing pieces of myself from people, from institutions, from myself.  It will be better this way, I thought.  Less risk, less vulnerability, less painful disclosure, less anticipation—and, frankly, dread—of others’ reactions.

As I have continued to think about the burden of not telling the truth—that is, my whole truth—the ways in which people may or may not react is what paralyzes me, keeps me carrying my albatross as I continue to duck the spider’s web.  What will they think? What will they think of me? Will I lose relationships? Friends? Family members? Community? Connection? 

My professional training as a healthcare provider and as a pastoral caregiver tells me that the ways in which other people react are a direct reflection on what they think, feel, and believe.  This is easy to learn in theory, and even easier to tell other people.  But when it’s you, it’s different. And hard.

Other people’s reactions are not about me—until they are.  Until they jeopardize personal and professional relationships, opportunities, and support networks.  Then other people’s reactions directly impact how I work in the world.

My pastoral training would like me simply to dismiss these people and their reactions.  But I’m here to tell you it isn’t that easy—to dismiss relationships you and your family have had for years, decades, generations, that have stood the test of time.  Well, the test of time until you elect to tell your truth, your whole truth, out loud and without apology.

So what is this truth?  Why haven’t I told everyone everything from the beginning?  Why is it both an albatross and a spider’s web?

The truth of it all is that I am Caroline.  It has taken me a long time to get to learning who I am, but I am not apologetic about that.  Every single piece of my lived experience plays in to who I am and how I work in the world. 

Being Caroline involves my years of graduate study in Nashville, to learn better how I can be of help to others as I have been the recipient of so much assistance and love.

Being Caroline involves my spiritual life as an Episcopalian, a person of faith, continuously exploring, asking questions, and growing as a child of God, loved and beloved from before it all began.

Being Caroline means that I have been on an amazing journey of learning more about my sexuality.  I thought for a long time that I was meant to date and be in romantic relationships with male-identifying people, but as it turns out, that is not true.  I believed for a long time that this meant I was broken, somehow defective.  No one told me this explicitly, but they didn’t have to: it’s something I learned from society at large.  So I convinced myself that I would remain the “fun aunt,” help raise my nieces and nephews and godchildren, and live a happy life.  While I would have enjoyed being the fun aunt as a single person, I still felt like I was not called to a life of intentional singleness. 

Through several beautiful, crazy, life-changing years, I have come to know myself as a woman who loves women.  Terms for this include same-gender-loving, lesbian, gay, and queer.  I use queer to describe myself to other people for several reasons:

First, I do not meet social norms in my romantic life—that is, I am female-identified, and society tells me that as a female-identifying person, I am to be in relationship with male-identifying people.

Second, I believe it to be part of my vocation to work for the liberation, rights, and equality of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender identity, and/or gender expression.  I derive this meaning from the work of theologian Carter Heyward, who uses the term to denote “all people, whatever their own sexual identity, who stand in public solidarity with gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered/transgendering sisters and brothers.  To be queer is to struggle enthusiastically without apology against heterosexism (not heterosexuality) and homophobia.”* I acknowledge that this term has a storied history and is still used as derogatory slang; however, it is also the term that most fully describes how I operate in the world as a human being.

But how I identify myself to the outside world matters substantially less to me than how I feel inside myself.  Labels are external and artificial, and create boundaries that I view as destructive and hurtful.  But that’s an entirely different conversation.

This process has been full of love.  I have fallen more in love with God, with others, and with myself.  I increasingly understand that human beings cannot look into the face of God and live: I am struck, daily, by the love of God, self, and neighbor that grows and develops within me as I become more of myself.

I haven’t changed, but I have.  I’m still Caroline, and I am more fully Caroline than I ever thought possible.  My world has expanded, I have become freer, and I am so much happier than I ever let myself believe.  I am madly in love with an incredibly beautiful and brilliant woman and we are committed to love and to each other. 

I am Caroline.  This is my truth, my albatross that I have carried because I have feared the loss of relationship.  I am because we are—you and me, together—and I believe in full disclosure.  I am willing to be vulnerable, to take risks, to expose my whole truth in the interest of true relationship, community, and love. 

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*Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus From Those Who Are Right: Rethinking What It Means to Be Christian (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 224n3.

Reflections, 11 August 2014

I found it interesting (from a position of social analysis) and disheartening that the death of a celebrity secondary to mental illness temporarily overshadowed news coverage of the murder of an unarmed teenage boy by a representative of the local government.

Many systems of oppression and power are at play on each situation: on the one, celebrity, addiction, and the stigmatization of mental illness. On the other, privilege, racism, profiling, the inherent discrimination of stop-and-frisk, and the undeniable escalation of violence in areas of lower socioeconomic status. These two tragedies--for this is what they rightly are--display different levels of oppression and ostracization within the same nation.

They should not be compared, or one used to edge the other out of headlines, but both considered and given their time. People are hurting, and to diminish the hurt of a fellow human being because it is not the hurt you are feeling is disrespectful and inappropriate. I find it intolerable to insult the memory of the community around the victim of one tragedy simply because awareness is being raised about a community surrounding the victim of another.

I find it troubling that the murder of an unknown unarmed black male teenager was ignored in the news media to cover, in a sensationalist fashion, the death due to mental illness of a white male celebrity.  I find it equally troubling that the memory of the white male celebrity is disrespected as a result of the news media's failure to follow up on the story of the black male teenager.

Overt action is not required to impugn the memory of the black male teenager. It has already been disrespected by being covered up by sensationalist celebrity news coverage. This is unacceptable in a society founded on the belief that all are created equal, and daily it is more apparent to me that that is not true in this nation. This is not a new realization; however, it has been demonstrated to me in the last week in a blatant fashion across social media outlets and selected news coverage sources.

I am committed to work for the system to change. But it takes all of us to change a system that unfairly impugns a tragedy to highlight another. This is why I am in graduate school, this is why I participate and activist work, and this is why I believe it in a radical love for all people. I ask you to recognize the spark of the divine, God, or whatever beliefs system you subscribe to, that is inherent in each human being by virtue of their very being.

We are equal (if not in the eyes of the government, at least in the eyes of the Divine).

We are worthy of notice.

We are deserving of love: we have been loved it since before we understood what love was.

For me, all of these things begin and end it at the principle of radical love. I have love for you, my neighbor; I have love for you, person who does not agree with me; I have love for those I have not ever met; for these are all my neighbor.

It is as important to combat the stigma against mental illness in this country as it is to combat police discrimination and racial profiling that is the direct cause of the death of unarmed and innocent black men. Both of these systems perpetuate death.

The farcical great American melting pot is threatening to boil over. Instead of making us all one, the melting pot erases what makes us different in favor of a narrative that eliminates diversity from being a value, and it stigmatizes anything that does not look white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, heterosexual, and middle-class.

Deep wounds have been reopened, scabs picked until they seep, new gashes ripped over fresh scars.

I ask you to treat one another gently, with compassion and grace.  Please do not forget that we each carry our own burdens, emotional and physical; as well as the emotional and physical repercussions of past and current events on the local, national, and international stages (why aren't we hearing more about ISIS, re-militarization of Iraq, folks evacuating Syria, debt crises in South America, how many innocent civilians died today across the world?).  We cannot guess the sum total of what each person carries within him/her/theirself by scanning their clothing, posture, skin color, and gender expression. 

I commit myself to seeing you as a person first, loved and loving.  I commit myself to expanding my love to work against systems that perpetuate oppression of and discrimination against my neighbors who don’t look or behave like me.  Would you do the same?

The kin-dom of God, as experienced in North Carolina

On a trip to Asheville in early May, we stopped and experienced the drum circle that is a standing tradition on Friday nights. Visitors and residents alike sit, stand, dance, play, and embody what it means to be alive and truly free.  This is the Kin-dom of God: open and embracing all who come regardless of their appearance, beliefs, or who they love.  The little children also came: they moved to the beat, or against the beat, or in syncopated half-steps that matched only the rhythm of their hearts.  This is what it means to be a participant in the Kin-dom: smile, dance, wave, welcome new arrivals with open hearts and open arms.  After a couple moments of watching, I couldn't help but move in tandem with the drums and let my own heart's rhythm let me fold myself into the music.  

I wanted to stay in that spot, swaying back and forth, forever.  To watch the men, women, non-gender-conforming/non-label-claiming folks, and children dance, skitter, embrace, and throw their heads back in divinely joyful laughter.  Genuine expression, warm hospitality, a welcome into the rhythm of shared life in the drum circle: this is the life I strive to live, the way I want to dance, the welcome I seek to extend to all I meet.

The drum circle reminded me that God is truly all around, everywhere, inside of each of us.  How else could we respond to the beat of a drum, the beats of a hundred drums, with a sparkle in our eyes and a willing movement in our steps, smiling at each and every manifestation of the God Who Dances With Us?  The drum circle reminded me to look at every person as if she/he/they are God, for they truly are: they are made in God's image, out of the love of God, intended to live out that love in all that they do.  So now, when I'm feeling sad or downtrodden, I simply look at people--that stunning array that shows us only a fraction of who God is, was, and can be for us.  The God who is texting everyone the photos of the drum circle in progress, right next to the God dancing with Her child while wearing a pink fuzzy top hat, immediately in front of the God who embraces His dancing partner as they together move to their unique rhythms, to the left of the God embodied in the movement of God's children who smile and laugh as if they know no pain.

But we all know pain: the drum circle's magic is that everyone brings who they are into the circle.  Their abilities, their different capacities for love and relationship and physical engagement, their needs and desires and wants, their joy and their aching hearts.  No baggage is unwelcome and no baggage is left behind.  God is big enough to hold all of it, God welcomes us and embraces us just as we are--whether you've got a matched set of leather valises or a dusty, world-worn duffel bag full to bursting.  God is big enough to stretch out God's (anthropomorphized) hand past where we are told that God ends, past our hurts and joys and pains, past the horizons of our imaginations.  

This is why, for me, God can only be (more) fully experienced in community (I would argue that we cannot experience the true fullness of God and live).  Without the presence of others, others made in the image of God, how can we truly know what it means to have faith in ourselves, faith in each other, faith in the future?

Today I am thankful for those shared moments in the drum circle, the moments in which I saw God, praised God, and danced with God in community.