Monday, February 15, 2010

Ice Floes part one

Too much has happened lately to be able to write it in only one part, so I'm unpacking this one in smaller pieces; for my benefit and for yours.
Understanding ourselves at present is entirely dependent upon whether we understand where we've been, who we've come from, what paths we've walked, and this is my time to look back over my shoulder at the places I've been and the people that have touched my life, the ghosts that still linger.
Such an integral part of our stories are the stories that are told before we come to be, stories that weave themselves into who we are and where we're going like a tapestry in time, a fabric of life and love and moments...

M
y father was fifteen the year he enlisted in the army. The "police action" in Korea was underway and he and a friend stood in line to sign their names and board a bus and take a flight to the other side of the world, to a winter-frozen hell where they would tread in soaked boots through feet of snow on endless marches, huddle together in muddy foxholes while the rain poured down, breathe in the thick air of a Korean summer months later.

As a child, the old black and white photographs of the Korean villages fascinated me
, photographs with tattered edges, carrying the faces of people I would never know in a land I would never see. I didn't know then how deeply those other lives, those far distant memories that weren't even my own, those days long past, would carve themselves into my heart, into who I am.
My father rarely spoke about Korea. The hurts were too deep, the scars still present; deep gouges on his legs where the shrapnel remained, where the bullet lodged itself. The scars on his heart were deeper and harder to see. His silence fascinated me, too. Unchartered territory would always draw me.

I can close my eyes now and see his face in the dark, bending over my tiny white bed to say goodnight, to rub his rough face on my cheek so he could listen to me laugh. It hurt, but it was worth it.
Tell me a story, Daddy.
He would sigh and ease his heavy boxers frame down beside me..."Once upon a time..."
"No, Daddy! About Korea! Tell me another story about Korea."
Another sigh.
"My commanding officer was a black man..." He would begin and in his deep daddy voice he would tell of heroism and bravery and courage.

In the quiet dark of my bedroom, with ruffled curtains and an array of little girl toys, with blue moonlight seeping in through the windows of that childish space, my father talked of Korea, of the villages and the people and his company of officers. He talked of the day he was shot and how his African American sergeant carried him for more than five miles to take my young father to the medics. He talked of the day the grenade fell into their foxhole and how another friend pushed him to safety and laid his body over my fathers to protect him from the blast. My father came home with metal in his legs. His courageous friend didn't come home at all. I don't know why he could talk about it then, in the dark of that innocent place, telling it to a child who couldn't really understand, but he did. And I'm so grateful.

I laid very still and listened and loved and was won over by the first hero of a girls heart. Sometimes I fell asleep while he murmured. Other times the stories were too enchanting and I would fall asleep much later, reliving them in my imagination.

I wanted to be just like him.

Those stories touched me and instilled in me a deep sense of patriotism, of pride and also, a deep need for this hero to approve of me. I would spend our remaining time together trying to prove that I was tough enough, strong enough to be his daughter. I wasn't weak or afraid or little. I was a hero, too. And hero's don't cry. They don't tremble. They don't hesitate. Hero's hold their chins up and keep fighting.
Over the coming years I would have plenty of opportunity to practice this hero's mantra. My father would eventually leave without even a goodbye. My older brother, another hero, would also go his own way and I wouldn't see him for almost a decade. That little girl in the dark, quiet room would wait forever for her father to kiss her goodnight, for her brother to come home, but they would not return.
I determined that not a tear would fall for that pain. I wouldn't cry for them no matter how my heart broke. I replaced my brokenness with rage and pride and buffered myself with sarcasm and sharp reposts. At fifteen years old, I could take care of myself, just like my father had. I didn't need anyone now. I wouldn't ask for help, admit weakness, shed a tear, voice a hurt, show love, express joy or come to need another person. Life became a battleground and every encounter was full of possible dangers, other avenues down which my father could walk when he left me again and again and again in memory and in the painful rejections of others. I made the choice to be alone.


And then, as if winter were somehow creeping like darkness into me, the angry cold of bitterness and hurt and utter aloneness formed like a coiling wraith, like ice around my heart. The child was gone. That quaint room with the white bed had faded into dim past and now only the woman remained, a woman who could not weep. Not for pain or joy or beauty or fullness- but who could only live the half-breathed life of self preservation, a life in shadows where the sun never reached, where soil is cold, dormant, frozen and sterile- a life lived in perpetual winter, starving for light.

This is my back story. The history of who my father was and how his life touched mine and made me who I am. This is my tapestry, woven of war, marred by winters frost.

In another room, soft with the glow of candlelight, another Father sits and thinks of his daughter. And he begins to weave, His old hands adding red and green and gold, threads of mercy and protection and grace to a life marred by loneliness and heartbreak. In the soft light He smiles and thinks of how pleased she will be when He's finished, when she finally knows that her father never left her, that He has watched her sleep and held her hand. He has plans for this tapestry of living and his eyes fill as He thinks of them. Suddenly though, he stops, as if listening.
Beyond His quiet weaver's room the snow falls, but beneath it, in the fertile soil of the weaver's garden, something stirs...

growth, it seems.

The weaver nods as if in agreement. Yes, it is time for spring.






Monday, February 1, 2010

Revolutionary Jesus

I want to be honest, and yet it's so hard for me to say this, like this, so publicly; this heresy. But I'm going to do it anyway, because I don't think I'm alone, because it's part of my process and because the very idea that I don't want to do something usually makes me all the more inclined to push through it and do it anyway, if only to say that I completed the difficult task.


I have hated Jesus.

Hated him and not just a little, but in the depths of who I am. I believed him to be an absolute FAKE. What a hoax! Man in God, on earth, to take my sins, pay the price, ascend into "heaven" to be seated at the right hand of God and someday to return to Earth and establish a perfect kingdom and rule forever. Sounds like a fable.
But the fairy tale qualities of this story were not the root of my avoidance, my anger or hostility towards this kind shepherd who's always pictured in clean, white robes and sandals, hands outstretched, red cloak around his shoulders and a peaceful expression on his tan face. Those were Sunday school images and I knew they were the fabric of imaginations. I know that still.
I couldn't know that picturesque Jesus, that man who never made a mistake, or had a personality, or told a joke. That Jesus didn't solve world hunger, heal my cancer-stricken grandmother even though she believed that He would. The Jesus that so many Christians want to follow didn't always do what he was supposed to do. And He wasn't very real, this marvelous lie, not even real to His own people; not in the churches I've visited. Not in the chancel of my own heart.
Modestly dressed women stood in worship in the sanctuary's of those churches, raised their hands in worship and then bit each other in the backs once they were out the doors, ignoring the desperate needs of other women to be loved without judgment, to talk to someone, to relate, to be free.
The suit clad men stood alongside their wives, looking dignified, sometimes humbled, other times strong and straight, exemplifying traditional Christian manhood, even preaching the 'word of god' from the pulpit, all the while having gay lovers waiting in the wings, a bottle in their desk drawer, pornographic websites bookmarked on their desktops, perfection too heavy to carry, humanity demanding to be released, acknowledged, unavoidable though they try, though we all try.

What are we to make of this modern day church? What am I to make of this ridiculous, pompous display of our "convictions"!? I am shouting this in writing. No WONDER non-believers hate us. No WONDER they don't believe a WORD THAT WE SAY!

WE DON'T EVEN BELIEVE A WORD THAT WE SAY.

What an arrogant church we've become. What an arrogant people. What an arrogant person I am. I look back over my years as a 'Christian' and wonder if I was ever really following Jesus or just putting on nice clothes on Sunday and showing up at the clubhouse for practice. I hate the Jesus that lived in me because that Jesus looked exactly like the worst parts of myself; prideful, judgmental, critical, arrogant and conceited, 'perfect' and proud of it, better than you. And I don't need that Jesus. I can be all of those things by myself, no assistance necessary. And I'll probably get a lot farther in life because I can stop giving my money to causes I don't believe in or really, know anything about.

I didn't believe a word I said, a thought I held, a conviction I possessed. They were all just 'initiation fee's' for the club I was attending at the time. Did I tell people about Christ? About His love? About a change in my life? Well, no. Because I didn't have any idea what that love crap meant, because there hadn't really been a change in my life that behavioral modification couldn't explain and because I hated Jesus. He was so freaking unappealing. Also, the thought crossed my mind that if I talked about my church to whatever person was in front of me, they might attend. And we can't have just anybody you know.

God forgive me, my soul whispers. Forgive me.

Forgive me for avoiding the eyes of the needy, for pretending to be too busy to acknowledge the homeless, the ugly, the bedraggled, the abused. Forgive me for being choosy about the 'kind of people' I associate with, forgive me for my righteous indignation when someone doesn't live life my way, doesn't worship my way, doesn't take communion my way, doesn't look the way a good Christian should look, behave and be. Forgive me, God, for allowing my personal Jesus to come to the forefront; that Jesus who is the mascot for my own desires and prejudices and for taking up my martyr's cross to follow him. Because, yes, I HATE the Pharisaical Jesus of my own invention. No wonder he's unappealing. He's constructed of fantasy and wishful thinking, formed out of pride and raised to life by the breath of self worship.

I want to walk the lakeshore with a God who is real. That God who whispered to me about His delight in who I am, his presence in the darkness calling me forward to know him truly, to abandon this charlatan Jesus of my selfish ideals and become a follower of the man who fed the hungry and loved the poor, who offered water to the thirsty and gentle grace to the adulteress, the prostitute, the lost. The man who's greatest instruction for our lives was to love one another. Who told me to care for the orphans and the widows, those who suffered, those who hurt, those who were lonely and broken. Would I know that Jesus if He stood before me? I'd like to say yes...

I want a faith who's hands are rough and calloused, worn from action, marred with the beauty of beliefs put to use. I want a faith who's feet are covered in the dust of villages with no running water and tired from walking, running, driving, to those who need a friend, a meal, a conversation, encouragement, love. I want a faith who's heart breaks for the children of our worlds orphanages, breaks for China's mothers who are forced to put their daughters to death, breaks for the fathers of Malawi who watch their wives and children starve and waste away to ashes, breaks for the fifteen year old kid next door who's mother is on meth and who's father died last year, breaks and breaks and breaks, this heart of faith that pounds out it's convictions on the inner workings of my soul.

I am done with this ridiculous image of jesus that I've been carrying around all my life. I don't want the tidy god that welcomes the tidy Christian to church every Sunday. I want the messy, dust covered, blood soaked God that walked the streets touching people with healing hands. I want the God who turned over the tables of injustice. I want to follow that Revolutionary Jesus into a life marked by love, marked by change, marked by growth, touched by grace and full of mercy.

What do I know of who He is? What do I know of this God who calls me? I know the call is irresistible, irrevocable, beautiful. And I'm drawn forward into knowing Him and through Him, to knowing myself, another mystery.

"An identity grounded in God would mean that when we think of who we are, the first thing that would come to mind is our status as someone who is deeply loved by God."
David G. Benner
The Gift of Being Yourself