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. 

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