Advent again.

How I hate waiting. But how I love Advent.

A couple of days after Jess and I move in together years ago, she told me that I was moving too fast all the time and it was freaking her out. She was speaking quite literally: I wash the dishes fast, get the chips out of the cabinet fast, walk to the bathroom fast.

Sometimes as a kid I would lay in bed in the morning planning out my route around my room, the bathroom, the kitchen from the time I stepped out of bed to the time I walked out the door for school. I liked figuring out the most efficient way to get it all done. A lot of times, I would even sleep in my uniform polo, tights, and boxer shorts, so that all I had to do in the morning to get dressed was step into my skirt and slip into clogs. Is that weird?

I love doing things fast. I come by it honestly. My mom and I once decorated my entire apartment within two days of moving in, wallpapering included. I woke up pre-dawn and couldn't go back to sleep, so visceral was my desire to finish painting my room.

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?": Jesus keeps it real.

I really love Holy Week.  So much.  As a kid, I was in the choir at St. Albert's, and Holy Week was so intense.  There were certain colors we had to wear, weird prayers/songs/psalms in the misselette that we had to do that we only ever did on Holy Thursday, or Good Friday, etc. I specifically remember a big-ass fire lit in the middle of the nave on Holy Saturday.  And once on Good Friday, when the mass started at 3, the priest came up the nave in silence and laid himself prostrate, arms out to the sides, behind the altar and at the foot of the crucifix.

The choir director also put on an elaborate passion play that I was in every year.  (I loved that choir director, and she died several years ago.  Here's the new janky version of St. Albert's passion play.) I was just a kid in the crowd for most of the play, but I also got to play an angel several years in a row.  (1) I had the biggest crush on the guy who played Jesus.  (2) We got to wear these white leotards with flowy white skirts and do this silent and beautiful dance to "This is Holy Ground" with all of the lights in the church turned out except for the black lights shining on us.

The acute somberness of it all freaked me out in the best way possible.

I'm saying that facetiously, but also seriously.  I'm grateful that my catastrophically boring experience of religion during my upbringing did not ruin my capacity to really feel Holy Week.


Some favorite readings --

On Holy Thursday, Jesus acts like a straight-up human: "[H]e fell with his fact to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.'" (NIV Matthew 26:39)  He knows what's coming, and he's like, "Ohmygoodness, is there any way you could make it so that I don't have to do this?"



On Good Friday:

Before the cross is anything else, it is a catastrophe. It is the unjust and violent lynching of an innocent man. It is the murder of God. Jesus is sacrificed by the Father only in this sense: The Father sent his Son into our system of violent power (civilization) to reveal how utterly sinful it is — so sinful that it will murder the Innocent One. God did not will the murder of his Son, he simply knew it would occur.

Also, Jesus acts super human (not super-human) again on Friday, when he can't help but scream out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It's not easy for him to "just trust that God has a plan" for him, that "everything happens for a reason."  He's like, "Holy fuck, why are you letting this happen!?" (It's also a beautiful echo of the tortured and desperate faith expressed in Psalm 22.)




On Holy Saturday:

There are some things we can know on this Saturday. Jesus is dead, to begin with, dead and buried. He said the world was upside-down and needed a revolution to turn it right-way-round and so he was executed for disturbing the peace. He came and said love was greater than power, and so power killed him.

... 

Why should we expect that tomorrow will be any different? 

Seriously, just look around. Does it look like the meek are inheriting the earth? Does it look like those who hunger and thirst for justice are being filled? Does it look like the merciful are being shown mercy? 

Jesus was meek and merciful and hungry for justice and look where that got him. They killed him. We killed him. Power won. 

...

“But in fact,” St. Paul says, everything changes on Sunday. Come Sunday power loses. Come Sunday, love wins, the meek shall inherit, the merciful will receive mercy and no one will ever go hungry for justice again. Come Sunday, everything changes.
If there ever is a Sunday. 

On Easter Sunday:

Sundays have always been important to Black people. Sunday was the only day that slaves were given a break from their unpaid labor to praise God and openly dream of deliverance. Sunday was the only day that shines became pastors, maids became deaconesses, “boys” and “aunties” became “Mr.” and “Mrs.” But Easter Sunday took things to another level. Men and boys rocking pastel colored suits, little girls wearing shiny shoes and white gloves, and church mothers with huge ornate hats proved that White supremacy had not stolen our joy or stripped our style. Easter Sunday was a sartorial testimony to the beauty and power of Black culture.  

...  

Easter calls us to remember the plight of the prisoner. Because of his political activism and message of social justice, Jesus was declared an enemy of the Roman State and sentenced to the death penalty. His crucifixion was a State execution that was both “cruel” and “unusual.” His most important followers, Peter and Paul, were prisoners who died in custody. The story of Jesus is a reminder to challenge state authority, question unjust laws, and offer humanizing mercy to the prisoner. 

The holiday is a testimony to the power of actionable love. Most of us confess love for someone or something: our partners, our friends, our families, our community. But the story of Easter is a reminder that this love is best actualized through the choices we make and the sacrifices we offer. Love of the poor should translate into humane public policy. Love of the Black community should be reflected in investment, both by the State and other Black people. Love of women should lead to the elimination of rape culture. Love must become a verb.

I also really loved the way Tóibín took up Holy Week in this book.  All playful/for-real jabs at hypermasculinity aside, the book takes up Mary's horror in devastatingly beautiful ways:

"[I]f you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.  It was not worth it" (80).

And while we're giving Irish men the mic, this, too.

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured. 

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home. 

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme. 

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells. 

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky 

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

a book recommendation

The WG sent me The Testament of Mary, and it's so good.  (Another of my jams, by the way.  --- Is that Juliet?)

An excerpt, in which she talks about a young Jesus having friends over to their home:

But I should have paid more attention to that time before he left, to who came to the house, to what was discussed at my table.  It was not shyness or reticence that made me spend my time in the kitchen when those I did not know came, it was boredom.  Something about the earnestness of those young men repelled me, sent me into the kitchen, or garden; something of their awkward hunger, or the sense that there was something missing in each one of them, made me want to serve the food, or water, or whatever, and then disappear before I had heard a single word of what they were talking about.  They were often silent at first, uneasy, needy, and then the talk was too loud; there were too many of them talking at the same time, or even worse, when my son would insist on silence and begin to address them as though they were a crowd, his voice all false, and his tone all stilted, and I could not bear to hear him, it was like something grinding and it set my teeth on edge, and I often found myself walking the dusty lanes with a basket as though I needed bread, or visiting a neighbour who did not need visitors in the hope that when I returned the young men would have dispersed or that he would have stopped speaking.  Alone with me when they had left, he was easier, gentler, like a vessel from whom stale water had been poured out, and maybe in that time talking he was cleansed of whatever it was that had been agitating him, and then when night fell he was filled again with clear spring water which came from solitude, or sleep, or even silence and work. (pp. 11-12)

Man, I love that.  I like imagining the women around these men who wrote stories about one another -- rolling their eyes, holding back from screaming "OMFG STOP TALKING," and later, privately, calling them on their insecurity-induced, self-aggrandizing bullshit. 

I like to think that girlfriend woulda been my friend.

"sucking it up" AND grace

When I was thirteen, as is tradition, I got confirmed as an adult in the Catholic faith.  I didn’t believe in God, so I really shouldn’t have done it, but all my friends were doing it, and I was thirteen.  And I did like the tradition of choosing a new name.  It had to be a saint’s name, so I remember spending weeks worth of library time at school with my friends pouring over the indexes of encyclopedias of female saints.  I ended up choosing Grace.

To prove that we were ready to be confirmed, we had to write a report about our chosen name.  I learned about St. Grace, a wealthy woman who gave up all of her riches to the church.  And I wrote about my beloved (Great-) Aunt Jeanne, who so loved the song “Amazing Grace.”  I also wrote about the little angry fairy named Gráinne (Irish for Grace) who one of my dance teachers told us lived in the fuse box in the basement we practiced in – his attempt to get us not to play in it. (Reporting about Gráinne showed my spiritual maturity. Ha.)

So I became Ellen Clare Mary Grace.

I also had a great-grandmother named Grace.  Years later, when I was hanging out with my Grandma (who is Kathryn Grace), she told me the story of one of her earliest memories: She could see her young girl self sitting on a bench, waiting for the bus with her mother (Grandma Grace), her sister (Aunt Jeanne), and her two brothers.  They had a suitcase with them because Grandma Grace was leaving their father, H.P. He was abusive.  Grandma was born in 1929, and it’s one of her earliest memories.  This couldn’t have been later than the 1930s. Imagine the courage Grandma Grace must have practiced.  Strength beyond what makes sense.  Grace.

(I love the way my friend Kristin talks and writes about grace.  I’m quoting her when I say “beyond what makes sense.”)

When I was graduating from high school, one of the school secretaries (from whose office I read the morning prayer and announcements over the P.A. each day – what a nerd) gave me a card in which she told me I was “grace under pressure.”  It’s rare that I remember a compliment, so I’m grateful that that one stayed with me.  How seriously kind.

These days, I’m trying to reorient myself toward grace.  “Grace” instead of “suck it up.”  Several weeks after moving to California, I remember reporting incredulously to my hearty friends back in the Midwest, “Holy shit.  Everybody here talks about their feelings so much.  And we’re supposed to listen and adjust accordingly.  It’s like nobody here has ever heard of fucking sucking it up!”

I think probably because I’ve missed my home people so much, I really took “suck it up” as a mantra this past semester. 

I’ve been so miserable.  I’ve lost a bunch of weight. I’ve slept more than I’ve been awake.  I’ve re-watched all of Friday Night Lights and five seasons of The West Wing. I’ve called my mom sobbing at least 7,000 times.  I’ve declined most invitations to get out of the house for dinner or drinks or coffee. 

But I’ve been telling myself that I’ve been “sucking it up” and pushing through.  Sucking what up?

My dear friend Suzanne and I have been talking a lot about “sucking it up.”  It’s an idea that has a lot of pull with both of us, and we’ve been trying to figure out why.  Speaking for myself, I know that in large part, I was raised to suck it up by two parents and four brothers who modeled on the daily that when someone needs something and you can help, even if it’s inconvenient, suck it up and do the right thing.  And I value that value.

I have been equating not sucking it up with being spoiled, privileged, not self-aware, whiny, and weak.  And honestly, I haven’t changed my mind about that. All of this is me trying to wrestle myself into sucking it up. 

I think what I’m trying to do now, though, is get to “sucking it up” and grace.  Rob Bell gets me good on this with what he writes in Love Wins (a book about heaven and hell that I’d really recommend to frustrated Christians) about Jesus' story of the prodigal son.  Most of what I’ve ever heard said about this story focuses on the prodigal son, the one who takes his father’s money, turns up, and then comes back broke, broken, and allegedly sorry.  I can’t relate to that character.  I can relate to the brother that stays home, sucks it up, and does what he’s supposed to do.  That brother is pissed when the prodigal one comes back and the father, instead of rightly chastising him, throws a party.  I always thought that this story was simply about the father extending grace to the asshole.  He gets love and mercy he doesn't deserve.

Here’s what Bell says about the older brother’s reaction to the party: 

First, in his version of events, he’s been slaving for his father for years.  That’s how he describes his life in his father’s house: slaving.  That directly contradicts the few details we’ve been given about his father, who appears to be anything but a slave driver.   

Second, he says his father has never given him a goat.  A goat doesn’t have much meat on it, so even in conjuring up an image of celebration, it’s meager.  Lean.  Lame. The kind of party he envisions just isn’t that impressive.  What he reveals here is what he really thinks about his father: he thinks he’s cheap. 

Third, he claims that his father has dealt with his brother according to a totally different set of standards.  He thinks his father is unfair.  He thinks he’s been wronged, shorted, shafted.  And he’s furious about it. 

All with the party in full swing in the background. 

The father isn’t rattled or provoked.  He simply responds, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”  And then he tells him that they have to celebrate. 

“You are always with me,
and everything I have is yours.” 

In one sentence the father manages to tell an entirely different story about the older brother. 

First, the older brother hasn’t been a slave.  He’s had it all the whole time.  There’s been no need to work, obey orders, or slave away to earn what he’s had the whole time. 

Second, the father hasn’t been cheap with him.  He could have had whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it.  Everything the father owns has always been his, which includes, of curse, fattened calves.  All he had to do was receive. 

Third, the father redefines fairness.  It’s not the father hasn’t been fair with him; it’s that his father never set out to be fair in the first place.  Grace and generosity aren’t fair; that’s their very essence.  The father sees the younger brother’s return as one more occasion to practice unfairness.  The younger son doesn’t deserve a party – that’s the point of the party.  That’s how things work in the father’s world.  Profound unfairness. 

People get what they don’t deserve,
Parties are thrown for younger brothers who squander their inheritance. 

After all,
“You are always with me,
and everything I have is yours.” 

 …  

Now most images and understandings people have of heaven and hell are conceived of in terms of separation. 

Heaven is “up” there,
hell is “down” there. 

Two different places,
far apart from each other. 

One over there,
The other over there. 

This makes what Jesus does in his story about the man with the two sons particularly compelling.  Jesus puts the older brother right there at the party, but refusing to trust the father’s version of his story.  Refusing to join in the celebration. 

Hell is being at the party.
That’s what makes it so hellish. 

It’s not an image of separation,
but one of integration. 

In this story, heaven and hell are within each other,
intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other. (166-170) 

“Hell is being at the party,” works for me.  It speaks directly to my frustration with myself for being miserable instead of grateful.  I live in a beautiful part of the country, in a lovely apartment.  I grew up in a loving family, and I have never really wanted for anything.  My inbox has filled up each week that I’ve been home with warm and funny notes from people at home that I love and who love me.  I've had brilliant teachers who have helped me to understand how systematic privilege and oppression works in our world, and who have helped me see my serious privilege.  I really haven't earned all of the wonderful things* in my life.  "Profound unfairness."

And yet I can’t stop crying.  And that makes me feel really ashamed of myself.

But the father in this story doesn’t tell the older, more responsible brother to “suck it up” and act like he’s having fun at the party.  He just reminds him that he’s deeply loved and provided for.  Matthew 6:26-27:

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away barns, and yet God feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

I’ve got this sense of entitlement to doing work that matters.  And I agonize about it.  I want to do it well; I must.  And I don’t think I’m wrong to feel such a sense of urgency. What I need to do is suck it up and get to work gratefully -- because I can and everybody can't.

But I have probably developed an inflated sense of self-importance, and ironically, in doing so, have demoted myself in my understanding of how God knows and loves me.  I’m not a sacred (if broken) child of God, made in God’s image, because of the work that I do; rather, because God created us in God’s creator image, we get to participate with God in re-creating more sacred, less broken versions of ourselves and of our world. Just because we are.  Not tied to a particular job.  We’re always already at the party, if we can just recognize that we are.  God graces us unconditionally, and we must (and we get to!) practice grace by recognizing that.

Now.  What the hell that looks like, to simultaneously suck it up and practice grace, for me or for anyone, I don’t know.

*In no way do I mean to suggest here that White privilege is a "wonderful thing."  I believe deeply that racism significantly dehumanizes white folks, just as for example, sexism significantly dehumanizes men, so often immobilizing them emotionally.  My privileges are inherently tied to disadvantages experienced by people of color, and that makes me lesser.  But the way that White privilege can and has manifested in my life -- e.g., not fearing for my life because others think me monstrous, and etc. -- has afforded me serious comforts.