Lessons From My Horse, Part 2

What do you do with grief, any grief, perhaps, but more so a really traumatic grief, the kind that didn’t happen at the right time or in the right order, in its proper place?  Those who have never faced this kind of grief don’t have the ability to fully comprehend it.  Those who have are not experts in it.  They only know where they’ve been and where they are.  And even that sometimes feels elusive.  Loss has existed for as long as the world has, certainly longer than humanity has, and yet in societies where we’ve managed to substantially cut our number and types of losses, we’ve also managed to lose our understanding and handling of grief.  We so easily forget.  

Traumatic grief changes people.  It changes every part of who you are.  You fear things you didn’t used to fear.  You don’t fear things you once did.  You have more patience for certain things and less patience for others.  You care differently, see differently, feel differently, experience everything differently.  And you want every person you know and every new person you meet to know all this, to know what happened, to know your life was once one way and is now another, to know that what they see is so little compared to the strange, inexplicable depth beneath that, to know that this is important to you.  But you don’t want to say it, because that doesn’t naturally come up in conversation.  And you want it to naturally come up.  You want it so badly.  You want to be able to say to that new friend, that new co-worker, that new boss, that you got up this morning feeling happy and content about the sunrise and hot tea, and excited about new things at work and that you’re also afraid and sad and basically going crazy inside, and all that feels normal to you.  Because it is normal now.  Because we humans can live in the middle of greater paradox than we think we can.  And because if it ever happens to them, you want them to know they won’t be alone.

Grief is strange.  We can go along for weeks, months, maybe years just living our lives, when one thing that has happened a hundred times, hits a different button than usual and knocks us to the floor, making us feel little different than we did days after the original tragedy.  Someone named that experience for me.  She called them grief attacks.  They show up when they feel like it and don’t bother consulting your schedule first, maybe even forcing you to email your new boss and explain why you can’t function like normal and have to take the day off.  Or maybe not.  But probably.  And you hope she can handle with care the burden that has just been unwittingly handed to her, because not everyone can.

In these dark moments, unplanned and unexpected, the ones where you feel the most out of control, your brain seems to halt all activity of normalcy while simultaneously racing through all your life experiences and relationships desperately searching for the one thing that will make you feel normal again, the thing that will give you back your sanity.  It is no surprise that some people land on destructive behavior.  Sometimes, I’m surprised more don’t.  For some of us, maybe many, the spinning wheel of possibilities slows to a stop not on family or friends, but, interestingly, on our animal companions.  

For many people, in a desperate search for normalcy, we discover no one gives us that better than our animals do.  Our pets are uncomplicated: they eat and they sleep on the same schedule every day, and they love you so long as you keep it that way and maybe even if you don’t.  They don’t ask questions.  They don’t wonder if they’re saying or doing the right things.  They’re not afraid of your loss and your grief, and most of all, they don’t look at you differently for the rest of their lives.  You existing and loving them and feeding them on time is the only criteria they need.  In the kindest way, our animals remind us that time keeps on ticking and the world goes on.  The elderly Ms. Threadgoode remarks in Fried Green Tomatoes, “A heart can be broken, but it keeps on a-beatin’ just the same.”  Sometimes the only heartbeat that keeps us moving is the one we feel when our animals lean up against us.

Last week, I was surprised by grief and had to leave work.  I sent the truth to my boss and a short email to everyone else explaining nothing and saying I wasn’t feeling well and just packed up and left, with tunnel vision, speaking to no one.  It took everything I had to get out while looking like I was at ease, even though I couldn’t get enough air and the world was pressing in around me.  I got in my car and headed out to the one place that gave me peace.  I went to see my horse.  

When I got out of my car and called out her name, her ears perked forward and she looked up and walked toward the fence.  In that moment, when just minutes ago the world seemed crazy and foreign, there is nothing better than a thousand pound animal, in a pasture full of distractions, responding to your voice.

Stella was the first place I went after receiving the news about my sister and nieces; she was my solace in the weeks following, and she brings me peace, even now, when I need it most.  When I walk her in circles and work to get her hind feet moving, she is not wondering how I’m getting by.  As I guide her through serpentines, she is not distracted by my grief.  More curiously, neither am I, because in that moment, I’m focused on what she’s doing and she’s focused on what I’m asking and the world beyond us is of no concern to either of us.  For that hour, all is right and uncomplicated.

What do we do with our grief?  When you’re spending time with the four-legged friends you love, nothing, I suppose.  We don’t have to do anything with it.  As I sat observing a nearby horse clinic today, the trainer encouraged the only pre-teen rider there and said to her, “As you grow older, you’ll discover that things will let you down in this world.  It is true.  It will happen at some point, and it will happen a lot, but your horse--your horse will never let you down.  Not ever.”  Animal companions are consistent and unwavering when all else is muddy and uncertain. They’ll sit with you.  They’ll walk with you.  They won’t ask you awkward questions, and they’ll love you today no differently than they did yesterday.  Because no matter how different you feel and how your heart breaks, their heart keeps on a-beatin’ just the same, and it’ll beat for you until yours is strong enough to start again.  No questions asked.  

Lessons From My Horse, Part 1

So I have this horse. She doesn’t actually belong to me, but I see her all the time, and I'm pretty sure I love her more than anyone else, and I hope someday she gets to be mine.

Working with a horse has been a frustrating, eye-opening, and remarkably rewarding experience. Horses are powerful. They can break your bones or kill you if you're flippant or foolish around them. And yet if you know how to ask, they will do anything for you. They will trust you, and the trust of a horse is no after thought.  It is a trust that says, I know I will not die as long as you’re here. 

Training a horse especially when you've never trained one before, is challenging for a very specific reason. The horse can't speak. She can't understand English. And I can't speak horse. And yet, horses can be taught to do the most incredible things. Why? Because horses can learn from non verbals. In fact, that's the only way to teach them. And they learn surprisingly fast. They learn so fast, that you better know what you're doing before you ask them to do it or you could end up teaching something you have to un-teach and fix at a later date.  Like, next week when you realize you didn’t mean what you taught.  Or is it that you didn’t teach what you meant? 

Working with a horse has taught me a lot about action. I can stand in the middle of the round pen and look at my horse and say, "Okay, it's time to lunge,” (which means exercising on a lead rope in a circle around the trainer) and she'll just stand there and look at me. But if I step to the right so I'm in line with her hip and simultaneously move my left hand, with the lead rope in it, out and point to the left, she'll instinctively start walking. I don't have to say a word. I may train her to understand the words "walk," "trot," "run," but she will only understand those words because they were connected to non verbals as she trained. 

Working with my horse has taught me that what I do matters a lot more than what I say and what I say MUST be connected to what I do, and I don't think this is any different than with people. The difference is, people can understand what I say and if I say something that is disconnected from what I am doing, they can judge me for it.  

In a place and time where people throw words around like healing balm and gyuto knives all at once, perhaps we would do well to hold our tongue and consider a different way of understanding one another.  I think it would do all church leaders some good to connect with someone who truly understands the equine species and learn a little of what it means to work with a horse. Who knows? It just might do wonders for the church. Maybe even miracles.

Horses are incredibly forgiving.  They fill in places we're not capable of filling ourselves.

--Buck Brannaman

I lost my sister and two sweet little nieces on Friday when the fifth wheel they were living in caught fire early in the morning.  They were so loved and are so missed.

The dilemma of Quaker time

Quakers have a lot of terminology that can be overwhelming to convinced Quakers.  It can be daunting even for birthright Quakers.1  See what I mean?  We have our own terms for all kinds of things such as the Inner Light, after the manner of Friends, weighty Friend, open worship, recording, meeting house, and so many others, not to mention our many acronyms.  But a new term was introduced to me this week that I really like.  After one of the evening services at yearly meeting this week, the young adults invited the board of elders to come and listen to a great discussion that didn’t end until nearly midnight.  I was tired and still had to drive the forty minutes back to Forest Grove on entirely unlit backroads with someone else’s car.  On my way out, I mentioned to a friend to say a little prayer for safety and he responded, “Take your time--Quaker time.”  Immediately understanding the joke, I laughed.  But as I thought about it more, I considered the pithiness of that phrase, and I have decided it’s time to introduce this term into the lexicon of Quaker vocabulary.

Quaker time means taking the time you need to do something well and without unnecessary rush.    More like the kairos of time versus the kronos, to use old Greek examples.  In short, and slightly in jest, it means we take a long time to make decisions.  Indeed, one of my friends earlier this week compared Quaker decision making to the Ents of Lord of the Rings lore.  I had to agree and responded, “That is so true!” And then went on to quote Lord of the Rings because it’s always worth lingering on for just a little bit longer.

In Quaker tradition, we don’t vote on church decisions.  Church-wide decisions, local or yearly meeting level, are reached by consensus.2  This is no longer the case for all Quakers today, but it is still the way of doing business for many yearly meetings, including mine.

Consensus takes time.  Yearly Meeting annual sessions meet for a collective five days with the business meeting gathering for three hours a day on all but one of those days.  Easier decisions can be made over a course of a few days.  Harder decisions, ones with great potential to breed divisiveness, discord, damaging conflict and that come with an element of fear are approached lightly and with great deliberation before even reaching the floor of the business meeting.  These discussions can take years.  Sometimes the process does not feel so unlike the gathering of the Ents, and those who are unaccustomed to it, may feel much like the young hobbits desperate for the Ents to make a decision to fight.  “Our friends are out there!” they cry to Treebeard.  They need our help!  They can not fight this war on their own.”  Yet, Treebeard responds, “But you must understand, young hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish, and we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.”  That is not so unlike the Quaker passage of time.  It takes a long time to say things in Quaker-speak.  

And yet, some of these discussions come with a paradox, a sense of urgency, and the great quandary is discerning when to be urgent and when to be slow.  The paradox arrives when the sense of urgency and the need to be slow simultaneously hold incomparably dire importance.

This year, my yearly meeting has come to discover that we as a whole are not in unity over our feelings and understanding around homosexuality.  It was known that one church in particular held a different view than our conservative Faith and Practice statement, but that was about it until the conversation was broken wide open last year due to an outside concern from a mixed group of Quakers and non-Quakers.  When that portion of our Faith and Practice was brought to the floor of the business meeting this year, we discovered great disunity throughout our yearly meeting and recognized a need to have much longer conversations about it, especially with our local meetings.3  Because we don’t want a divide to happen, and because we recognize that God values time, too, that minds can’t be pushed to change, we know time is our only option.

Yet, equally paramount is the reality of the lives of gay children.  As a gay friend/Friend, who both stupidly and very bravely and wisely attended the sessions this year, stated in that above mentioned young adult discussion, children are dying at an alarming rate.  They are harassed, beaten up, disregarded, thrown out of their own homes, and given the absolute opposite of the love of Jesus.  With no where left to feel any sense of goodness about themselves, they take their lives.  And the worst contributor to this is the Church.

And so here Northwest Yearly Meeting sits, as with so many of the big questions in life, in a paradox.  We also rest, somewhat precariously, on the edge of a precipice we can’t yet see out over, wondering what we can offer to our youth, perhaps unaware of just how much our youth will end up offering us in this discussion as the years pass through.  

Many of us Christians are baffled by the strange story of Jesus’ progressive healing of the blind man, when it seemed to take him multiple times to accurately sharpen the man’s vision.  But that story carried a new kind of weight for me this week, a descriptive power I had never seen before.  Change and shift in thoughts and ideas don’t happen suddenly.  Life is constantly evolving; our thought processes are not exempt.  Like this man’s sight, clarity in our understanding of faith and issues comes slowly as we gather more information and stories so as to, as one of my seminary professors once said, give the Holy Spirit more to work with.  When a sizable group of people with differing opinions come together and desire to reach consensus on an issue, we have to recognize the time it will take for true clarity to come, and we have to be prepared to see in ways we never could have guessed.  

And yet, on an issue as urgent as the one before us, I am left holding a morass of questions.  We discuss homosexuality as an issue as if it can be shelved at inconvenient times, put on hold while we eat dinner and go to work.  But the LGBTQ community is more than an issue; it’s people.  It’s real human lives, and so many of them are hanging in the balance desperately wishing that someone would simply love them.  How many more children will die during the lengthy amount of time--years, I assume--it will take to begin making significant movement in this area as a yearly meeting?  But then how many lives would be lost if we rushed a decision and forced a gulf to open up between our churches and people?  Patience is a virtue, we know.  Yet when children are dying from utter despair, patience feels more like a necessary evil.  

It does, indeed, take a long time to say what needs to be said and to make decisions in the Quaker world.  We try our best not to do either unless we believe they are worth doing.  But we can’t deny the cries from those who continue to tell us their friends are out there, that they cannot fight this on their own.  What does it look like to be faithful to the Holy Spirit’s leading for the Northwest Yearly Meeting?  It’s hard to say.  Time will tell.  Quaker time.

1. A convinced Quaker is one who came into the Quaker church from elsewhere and chose to become Quaker.  A birthright Quaker is one who is born into the Quaker tradition. 

2.  Consensus doesn’t mean everyone agrees wholeheartedly with a decision.  It means all are given the chance to be heard, the holy spirit is given the time to speak, and a general trust is built around the community and the subject at hand so that if an agreement is reached to approve an action and there are still a few dissenters, these dissenters have come to trust the community even if they, themselves, do not agree.  If they strongly disagree, they have permission to put their names on the official minute stating so.

3. individual churches

Fear Nothing

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and our strength,

who from of old has helped us in our distress.

Therefore we fear nothing--

even if the earth should open up in front of us

and mountains plunge into the depths of the sea,

even if the earth’s waters rage and foam

and the mountains tumble with its heaving.

There’s a river whose streams 

gladden the city of God,

the holy dwelling of the Most High.

God is in its midst, it will never fall--

God will help it at daybreak.

Though nations are in turmoil and empires crumble,

God’s voice resounds, and it melts the earth.

YHWH Sabaoth is with us--

our stronghold is the God of Israel!

Come, see what YHWH has done--

God makes the earth bounteous!

God has put an end to war,

from one end of the earth to the other,

breaking bows, splintering spears,

and setting chariots on fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God!

I will be exalted among the nations;

I will be exalted upon the earth.”

YHWH Sabaoth is with us--

our stronghold is the God of Israel!

The Inclusive Bible

Something in this psalm makes my heart stop.  There is a breathtaking power in the truth conveyed, a potency in the words themselves.  A God who from of old has helped us in our distress.  Therefore we fear nothing.  We. Fear. Nothing.  

I have a great faith in God.  I believe in miracles.  I believe God still heals and raises people from the dead.  I believe a lot of things to be true about God.  I believe, in the very depths of my heart, that God loves me, and I really do believe there is nothing so awful I can do that will change that.    But these psalmist’s words convict me, because in reality I fear a lot of things.  I fear being misunderstood.  I fear people thinking I’m stupid.  I fear riding my bike to church a couple towns over because there is a particularly unsafe stretch of road between here and there, and so I don’t go, because I can’t afford the bus.  I fear that I will not serve the children I work with to the best of their ability and I will end up with a missed opportunity that has no do-over option.  In essence, I fear the lack of perfection and guarantees.  

And yet, even if the earth should open up in front of us and mountains plunge into the depths of the sea, we fear nothing.  Even if the earth’s waters rage and foam and the mountains tumble with its heaving, we fear nothing.  I look into my fears and then I look at this psalm.  I place these two side by side and I see my fears withering into an insignificant dust.  I suppose this is the power of scripture.  In the city of God, the dwelling of the Most High, through which a river flows, God is in its midst, it will never fall--God will help it at daybreak.  The New Revised Standard reads, “God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved,” recalling, for me, Maya Angelou’s words in “Our Grandmothers,” where the black women of old declare, “We shall not, we shall not be moved.” Though nations are in turmoil and empires crumble, God’s voice resounds, and it melts the earth. Infused with the Holy Spirit, scripture contains great power.  I’m not sure how I forget that sometimes.

There are a lot of things I know about God, but there are fewer things I understand--not cognitively, but understand in the depths of my soul where it soaks into the roots of my faith and carries me into a deeper kind of knowledge and a richer day.  That kind of understanding.  Fear is a strange thing.  Not the great fears which we ought to be wary of, but that nagging worry that can take the joy from everyday moments.  I am not a fear ridden person, but my desire to not fail others can on occasion be paralyzing, those times when I seem to forget there is a God whose voice melts the earth, because of whom I need have no fear.  But in those moments when I remember to be still and know that God is God, I see my fears for what they really are: lies.  And weak lies at that. 

We live in a culture that tells us to conquer our fears, to let them go, to free ourselves of them.  The church tends to be no different.  But fear has a way of creeping up on you when your defenses are down.  I may think I’ve set it down, but it follows me anyway, sometimes because I think I’ve conquered them.  And yet, when I hold it up to the truth of scripture, it disintegrates.  Its weak foundation and lack of roots is exposed.  Up against this psalm, fear is as threatening as a mouse to a wildcat, and so I’m thinking what if this week, instead of trying to put down my fear, to leave it somewhere else, I take the scripture with me.  I will hold it in my heart, and I will be still.  In the light of the Holy Spirit, fear is powerless.  In a context that has outlived us all, a truth that has proven more real and constant than the air we breathe, fear has no home.  Fear can try it’s hardest, but we shall not, we shall not be moved.

Family

Every year, the evangelical Friends churches of the northwest come together in a mass of meetings, discussions, meals, and worship services for one week in July.*  Each year that I’m able to go, I get really excited, as in REALLY excited.  It is, in fact, ridiculous. Firstly, I love coming back to my alma mater, which I wasn’t particularly enraptured by when I left with my cap and gown in 2003.  For another, I am always taken by the quaintness of this little town, even though on any other week I would never actually want to live there again.  But I'll take it all, because really, at its heart, it's an annual family reunion, and I can not wait to see the people I dearly love. 

I have not lived in a Quaker community since 2008.  Before that, I had never spent extensive time outside of one.  I went to a Quaker church every Sunday from the time I was a week old.  I didn’t miss a year of camp and even volunteered as an adult.  I participated in Bible quizzing, albeit rather lazily.  I went to a Quaker university and then a Quaker seminary.  Once college started and I lived conveniently in Quaker HQ (what non Quakers call Newberg), I attended the yearly meeting annual sessions and loved them, even the business meetings.  I couldn’t get enough. I even participated in the Faith and Practice committee, which I really enjoyed (who wouldn’t enjoy working with Tom Stave??). And then in August of 2008, I left for a different seminary.  I left all the way to Kentucky and landed in a nest of Wesleyans and Southerners and even some Texans.  

The move was challenging, excruciating, eye-opening, amazing, and life-altering.  It was vital that I spend time in a different world.  My perspective on the church broadened significantly.  I saw a variety of ordination processes, experienced nuanced and bold differences in theology, witnessed great challenges in leadership structure and hierarchy.  And I discovered with an inarguable certainty that I am Quaker down to the very roots of my soul.  I have soaked it into my very being.  It will always be a part of who I am and the lens through which I see and know God.  

These days, I live in a small town outside of Portland that does not have a Friends church. Without a car or money for bus fare, my little Quaker soul is still missing that community, so maybe it’s not quite so odd that I get a bit euphoric over the coming of the Yearly Meeting.  That’s not to say I’m not realistic about expectations.  I have been in the yearly meeting all of my nearly 32 years of life.  I have seen life-giving discussions and confirmations, and I have witnessed things that beg for forgiveness.  As always with family, it is the good, the bad, and the ugly, but on the whole, it is beautiful and curious and forgiving and welcoming.  For me, it is home.

*A couple notes of clarification for my non Quaker friends: 
1. Our Yearly Meeting is the equivalent of most denominations’ understanding of a Conference.  Everyone is invited to the annual sessions, though, not just the official church leadership. 
2. The term Friends and Quakers mean the same thing; I use them interchangeably. 
3. Quakers don’t have a thick, bound copy of “The Book of Discipline” like the United Methodists.  Historically, Quakers didn’t approve of heavy-set doctrine, so each yearly meeting creates its own Faith and Practice document (ours is around 90 or so pages) which remains in constant revision, as we don’t believe such things are set in stone.

With Liberty and Justice for All

On the news right now is the capture of suspect number two of the Boston Marathon bombing that happened earlier this week.  I’m watching my Facebook page slowly fill up with statuses about this currently live event, and it has gotten me thinking.  Thinking about America, thinking about justice, thinking about us.

Since 9/11/2001, patriotism has been hijacked by a sliver of our population and become narrowly defined.  If you are pro-specific things and anti-specific things, you are patriotic.  I am not these things, so I’ve been led to believe I must be unpatriotic.  And you know what?  I’d would like to say to those sliver of folks, “You’re wrong.”

I don’t explicitly talk much about my politics, but I will make an exception.  I am a pacifist.  I am an evangelical Quaker and hold an orthodox understanding of Jesus Christ.  I believe gay people have every governmental right to be married the same as we heterosexual folks.  I hold to a more socialist idea of economics.  I really do not like capitalism as it is practiced here (but I find great value in the free-market system).  I have really complicated views about abortion that can’t be solved with a yes or no vote.  I generally detest big business.  I believe all these things, and I am an American, 100%.

Let me tell you what I love about America:

1. I love that I can vote as a woman, and I love that I don’t fear for my life on voting day.  In fact, I really enjoy the ability to vote by mail in my state, because I’m lazy that way.
2. I have the constitutional right--as in, it’s written IN THE CONSTITUTION of my country--to practice my religion without fear of abduction, torture, or death, and to not have that religion dictated by the government.  It is not lost on me how precious that freedom is.
3. I can speak what I believe about an idea and authorities won’t come to my door and arrest me.  Freedom of Speech is sometimes misused, but it is a wonderful thing, regardless.
4. Especially important, I can outright disagree with my government and I have the constitutional right to do that, too.
5. As a woman, I am a full citizen of my country.  I have the legal right to drive, work, vote, speak out in public, disagree with men, have sex without being married (even if I don’t choose to partake in that right), and dress how I choose.
6. I generally feel safe when I walk out my door.
7. I am so thankful for programs like AmeriCorps which was the only place that gave me employment that will actually get me somewhere in life and that is really fun all at the same time.
8. I believe, as Americans, if we actually actively joined together, we really could make a difference in our government.  The problem if our rich, power-hungry congress is only there because we the people keep letting them back in.
9. I do not have to testify against myself in a court of law. AMAZING (and something I hope I never have to use).
10. My justice system ALWAYS presumes innocence, even when the media presumes guilt.

As I watch the news unfold, and I read the responses, I want to reiterate that last point.  We have become a country that assumes people are guilty because the media tells the story that way, because the authorities call them “suspects.”  But we are also a country of people who have every ability to think for ourselves.  What happened in Boston was a grave tragedy, and whoever did it, be this young man and his brother or someone else, is a coward, but our justice system was set up as it is for a reason and our justice system has something to say us.  Human life matters--all of it.  If we are going to decide to throw someone’s life away, we better do it carefully and with great trepidation.  There better be cause without a reasonable doubt.  

Our justice system is not perfect and at times is even corrupt.  But I choose to believe in it nonetheless because I believe this justice system still, for the most part, seeks truth.  Because of this, I still choose to believe people are innocent until proven guilty and to trust the ultimate verdict reached.  Maybe this idea has almost faded into oblivion.  Perhaps in our biased and untrusting world, it is outdated, but I have decided to stand by it.  Because if I can't believe this to be true, then I can't believe anything good about America.  And I simply refuse to do that.

A Little January

I am a Christian.  I love Jesus in a way I can not express in words.  I owe my life, my entire life, my eternal life, to Jesus Christ, to the God of the cosmos, and it is such a weight off my shoulders to know I’m not the one who needs to control everything--I’m not the one ultimately in charge of my destiny.  This is great freedom.

Except when I forget, and the weight of the world IS on my shoulders, and I can’t bear the heaviness of the world’s aches and cries and tears.  And when conflict flares up in my life, I worry and worry.  I let it eat at me like a voracious virus until it invades my mind and sculpts visions of a horrid future, slowly nibbling away at my sanity and kindness.  I panic when I have to depend on people and they aren’t following through on my schedule.  I believe the worst in some situations instead of the best, and I wonder if I’m wrong when I believe the best instead of the worst.  I am not a pessimist, but I am an idealist, and sometimes idealists make pretty impressive pessimists, the worst kind, really.  

Does this make me a bad Christian?  Is God unhappy with me?  Sometimes, I think it’s my responsibility to change myself, that God expects this of me.  Now that I’m reflecting on it, I realize I think this quite a lot.  Of course, when I ponder intellectually about it, I know that, theologically, this is very problematic.  But sometimes it is so hard to get my heart to believe what my head knows.

I love Jesus more than anything.  God constantly floors me with her grace and faithfulness.  Also, sometimes I freak out about things.  There are so many paradoxes in being human.  Humanity is a bitch, and it is such a blessing.

The Greatest Job

It’s hard to describe what my job is exposing me to.  In any given moment I am taking in profuse amounts of new information and experiences.  It is the best kind of schooling for me.  Hands-on, experiential, moment by moment--at times it feels like I have to shoot first and ask questions later (to use an unfortunately analogy).  

As the AmeriCorps member, I am thrown into an atmosphere full of people who spent at least four years learning about their jobs before getting into them, and in many cases who have amassed years and years of on-the-job training and research and even added months or years of coursework for a graduate degree.  I have walked into a world of PBIS, ERI, EBIS, ELD, CIT, Easy CBM, OAKS with more and more acronyms piling up constantly.  It’s worse than church.  I walk into meetings and lead tutoring sessions with four and a half years of training in English literature, five years of seminary training, and absolutely no training in public elementary education.  Time after time, day after day I feel like I’m applying what I’m learning and then being taught it.  My job is constantly busy, often overwhelming, very demanding of my mental creativity, and sometimes stressful.

And I love every minute of it.

Under AmeriCorps, I work as a member of Partnerships for Student Achievement.  Twenty of us work in elementary and high schools in four different school districts spread around Washington County (bordering the west end of Portland’s Multnomah County).  While we do generally the same thing, the specifics are catered to each district and each school.  

We all work in Title I schools.  Title I was created in 1965, and because I’m too lazy to try and summarize or paraphrase it, I will simply quote the Title I purpose in its entirety: “The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.”  This is followed by a twelve part list of how this is accomplished.  In short, Title I exists in schools with a high percentage of low socio-economic students and under-performing test scores, especially where there is an achievement gap.  The achievement gap, if you don’t know (I didn’t until I started this job) is the performance gap between ethnic groups/races and/or economic levels.  Title I is what gives schools the budget to do free and reduced-price lunches and to do special academic interventions.  Many Title I schools have full-time certified Title I teachers.

These days I am learning how different it is to be poor because my current situation makes it so versus being poor because your family has never been anything other than poor.  At my good friend and mentor’s suggestion, I recently picked up a book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty. The author, Ruby Payne, makes a clear distinction between situational poverty and generational poverty.  Consider a few of these statements from her quiz, “Could you survive in poverty?”  She asks the reader to check off each item we understand how to do:

1. I know which churches and sections of town have the best rummage sales; 2. I know which grocery stores’ garbage bins can be accessed for thrown-away food; 3. I know how to get someone out of jail; 4. I know how to get a gun, even if I have a police record; 5. I know how to live without a checking account; 6. I know how to live without electricity and a phone; 7. I know how to move in half a day.

Now compare this to the middle class quiz: 1. I know how to properly set a table; 3. I know which stores are most likely to carry the clothing brands my family wears; 4. I talk to my children about going to college; 5. I understand the difference among the principal, interest, and escrow statements on my house payment; 6. I know how to get a library card; 7. I repair items in my house almost immediately when they break--or know a repair service and call it.

(She also has a “Could you survive in wealth?” quiz which includes items like, “I fly in my own plane, the company plane, or the Concorde.”  I can’t even comprehend this kind of life.)

At my school, approximately 78% of our students are on free or reduced lunch.  Many of them partake in our free breakfast option every morning.  We have a high number of children who read and do math well below their grade level, and a number of kids on behavioral plans. Starting last year, my school began offering our backpack program.  Parents who qualify for free or reduced lunch can sign their child up to receive a weekend backpack of meals and snacks for their child.  Currently, we have almost 30 students taking backpacks home.  Many of these students fall on the despairing side of the achievement gap.  The connection between poverty and low achievement levels can not be overlooked.  I have very few financial resources, but my other resources are bountiful and gracious.  I have emotional support, spiritual support, mental support, good health, fantastic role models, and what Ruby Payne labels “knowledge of middle-class hidden rules.”  I watch some of our children walk through the school doors every day looking like the weight of the world is on their shoulders.  Many of them have very few, if any, of these supports.  

But these kids are impressive.  Against all odds, they keep coming to school and they keep learning.  They struggle.  And fighting against the never ending machine of poverty coupled with ambitious public school budget cuts can feel crushing on those who work daily with these children.

I had given up on the public school system.  Someday when I had kids, I knew the only reason they would ever be in public school is if I couldn’t afford a good private school.  All I ever heard in the news was about failing test-scores and strikes and impossible budget deficits.  One of the school districts a couple of my fellow PSA members work in cut well over 200 teachers over the summer.  When I heard that number, I just about choked.  It was all over the news.  The problems of the public school system were too vast and too wrapped up in hierarchy, out-of-date tradition, and government red tape for any difference to really be made, so I had washed my hands of it.

And then I got a job working here, and that vast public school system became local and began to have little six-year-old names and seven-year-old smiles and five-year-old stories and started giving me hugs; their faces would light up when they saw me.  The public school system became human.  Giving up on this system became giving up on the 290 little faces I see every day.

These kids make this job amazing.  It’s a taxing job and the end of the week is welcoming, but I always look forward to seeing the kids walk through the door on Monday morning.  

Despite maddening budget shortfalls and nearly unmanageable class sizes, the teachers and other staff at my school take it in stride and are always far more positive than they by all rights should be.  There is not one teacher here whose class I would not want my child in.  They are each unique in their own style of teaching, and they are all fantastic at what they do.  I love to walk into their classrooms and see how their personalities shape their classroom structure and style.  It is teaching me that there is no one ideal way to teach, and I am learning the importance of having a variety of personality types in one place.  They stick together.  They rely on each other and learn from one another.  I hear stories from some of my AmeriCorps co-workers who won’t eat in their staff lunch rooms because the atmosphere is exceptionally negative.  I’ve never once felt discouraged or uncomfortable in our staff lounge.  Every teacher is glad to have me there and they are always willing to answer my questions.

This week, I begin my after-school programs.  I was originally slated to begin both of them, but I had to push one back another week after failing to consider the time it would take for the letter I’m sending home to first be translated into Spanish.  On Thursday, I will begin a knitting club, and the following Monday, I’ll start a photography club.  I get the joy of putting my ideas into action and developing projects and strategies for these clubs, but unfortunately the stress of having no budget to go along with them.  I am searching heavily for donations, but there is still a lot of work to be done.  But this is how it goes, right?  Some things come easily and other things we have to fight for; these often come wrapped in the same box.  

I don’t know what is going to come of this year.  I don’t know if I’ll stick around for another year, if the school will even want me, or if I’ll end up moving on to new things.  I don’t know if I’ll succeed in finding what I need for the programs I’m running.  And I don’t know if my principal will even be around at the end of the year considering how hard the district runs her into the ground every day with a workload crazier than any I’ve ever seen, and considering who some of my friends are, that is saying a lot.  I don’t know if I will still enjoy this job by the time June rolls around.  But right now, I love it.  My finances are miserably tight and most of my friends still live too far away for me to see, but despite that, I am having the time of my life.  I am so blessed, and I love my job!

Whirlwind

My life has never been so busy.  It’s stressful and overwhelming and I absolutely love it.  Of the twenty schools who have Partnership for Student Achievement AmeriCorps members, mine is one of the best at utilizing my position.  I love it.  I feel both needed and wanted.  I’m always on the move, always working on something.  Right now, I am preparing for my extended day activities to begin.  It is time-consuming, and trying to get donations of supplies is an overwhelming task for me.  

It has left me little time to reflect.  I think everyday about writing on this blog, but the space hasn’t come yet to unpack my life.  I haven’t even finished unpacking all my actual stuff.  

A blog post will come.  One of these days.  Maybe.

Remembering school

My new job is pulling up every memory I have of elementary school, particularly the earlier years.  A few years ago I wrote a poem about the Kindergarten memory I will never forget.  I thought, today, I would post it.  I think I might also write a letter to my first grade teacher.

Something I Remembered Today
October 20, 2009
revised October 28, 2009

We gathered on the carpet every day
to watch her read, or was it twice a week
(for how should I recall such old details?)
and cross-legged we sat enwrapped in awe
of words that painted worlds for little brains.
We whispered of the pictures we’d create
and watercolor with our fingertips.
Except that one day when the wall rang.
And when she picked the phone up off the hook
she wept at what came from the other end.
We sat so still with nothing much to say—
for we were only five.

Turns out you died.
But I don’t recall your name
and I can’t call back your face
and I can see you in our class photo
but can’t point out which boy is you.
Cause what can we remember in the year
when we were five?

Except for this—my Kindergarten memory.

Or not

My part 2 of the previous post was in process, but it got sidelined by a project with a deadline.  And now, heavily into my new job, I'm just not going to get around to finishing it.  Suffice it to say, it was more fantastic than expected to be at yearly meeting and I got to spend really amazing time with some great old friends and even run into people I haven't seen in years.  It was a week I desperately needed, and one I'm so thankful for.

My Quaker Soul part 1

On Tuesday, at 5:28am, I hopped onto my first of four buses that would make up my sunrise journey from Vancouver to Newberg. At 8:30, I stepped off the final bus and wandered on over to the business meeting going on in Bauman Auditorium on the George Fox Campus.

I have not been to yearly meeting in four years. In August of 2008, I packed up my car and drove 2,500 miles to central Kentucky for seminary. With that, I left behind the only kind of church I had ever known and I stumbled into a vast wilderness of baptists, methodists, christians (the restorative movement, not the general religion), baptists (did I say that already? There are SO many different types of baptists!), and countless others. When I finally found a church I decided to settle on, I ended up driving by nine other churches every Sunday before getting to mine. I had certainly landed in the Bible belt.

I loved that church, still do, but I longed for quiet. I longed for room in worship, moments of silence and stillness in transitions, prayers without musical soundtrack, and long spaces of communal silence and centering. Lexington has a local Friends meeting house, and I attended a few times. It was the friendliest group of people I met in Kentucky, and I loved it, but desiring a common denominator of faith in Jesus Christ drew me to the nearby Christian and Missionary Alliance church which I discovered because the pastor's wife was the campus pastor at Asbury. Even as I grew to love that church, I really grieved the lack of a church that understood how to marry distinctive Quaker ideology and disciplines with a Christocentric view of faith and practice.

By a landslide, the United Methodist church is the most represented denomination at Asbury Seminary. Other historically Wesleyan churches make up the next largest representations. As a Wesleyan/Holiness based school in the South it was a foreign world to me culturally and religiously. It turned out to be an impressively painful and incredibly healing and life-giving experience, but one of the things it taught me, or perhaps reiterated for me, was the reality that I am a Quaker in my soul. No matter where I live and what church I may be attending, I will always favor the Friends way of being, and I will always call myself a Quaker when people ask.

Asbury is not officially affiliated with any denomination. It is an institution controlled by a dusty hierarchy which has no real structure of accountability. In 2008, I arrived at a school that was in the midst of administrative turmoil that had reverberated to every sector Asbury touched and had left nothing unscathed. A president had resigned on the day of orientation the year before, and the divisive weeks and months around that event had left a spirit of contention on the campus so clear that I felt it even a year later. Far beyond the time it should have taken, Asbury finally found a new president in the Spring of 2009, and when he and his family began work in July, the school seemed to exhale for the first time in a few of years and was finally able to really heal.

For the first time in my life I was able to place my experiences with George Fox University, where I had received my undergraduate degree and begun my seminary degree, and with the Northwest Yearly Meeting, where I was born and raised, in a larger context. We college students liked to complain about Fox, and there are certainly things to complain about, but after moving, I saw what the accountability of George Fox with the yearly meeting meant and why it mattered. I thought about who that accountability really was to--not to the paid administrative powers that be in the yearly meeting, but to every member of the yearly meeting, because Quakers believe all have a voice that matters. I imagined the uproar in the July yearly meeting business meetings, where everyone is encouraged to attend, every voice is given the chance to be heard, and no decision is made until common ground and consensus is reached, if this had happened at George Fox. I began to understand in a deep way the spiritual wisdom of the Quaker way of business and why it's necessary, and I discovered the sandy foundation of power without accountability.

Despite these issues, Asbury is full of broken people whose greatest desire is to seek out the truth and freedom of Jesus Christ. I do not regret my time there, and made some of my best friendships at Asbury. Though it took my stubborn and willful soul three years to finally be comfortable with it, I find myself reflecting warmly on the high church liturgy in chapel and wondering at the tangible vulnerability of receiving communion from my peers and mentors (I'm so thankful it wasn't the sterile disposable-plastic-cup-and-single-wafer-wam-bam-thank-you-ma'am way of communion). But there were countless times when I wanted to sit there in silence in my Quaker practice of communion, a communion where we all partake in the quiet together and invite in the presence and voice of the holy spirit in community. At the very least, I wanted them to turn off the music. Imagine the heightened awareness of vulnerability if communion were given and received in silence. I still would like to see that happen.

Being at Asbury taught me just how foreign my common Quaker understandings and practices are to the greater protestant world. Seminary was the first time I saw discernment discussed as an individual practice. I couldn't understand the idea of healthy personal discernment without a stronger value on community discernment. I still don't believe it's possible. And the idea of having a rich faith without practicing bread and wine/juice communion was absolutely incomprehensible to some. My world was as strange to many there as their's was to me.

Learning about the different facets of Christianity was eye opening for me. Attending a capital "H" Holiness school while coming from a background that pre-dated it exposed me to what it must be like when outsiders come into the Friends church which is full of practices, structure, and language that is unknown to people outside of the Friends world. In the end, I found myself simply wanting to teach everyone the value of Quaker theology (because its Biblical basis makes it really more than just an ideology), and I admit I delighted in telling people that Richard Foster was a Quaker and had, in fact, pastored my church at one time, albeit before I was born.

I left Oregon with no plans of coming back. The only reason I did was because I ran out of money after graduation. I came back kicking and screaming, really. On my return, I wanted to try to plug into a new church, make my own new start. I found a place in Portland, but after a few months I discovered no matter where I tried, I craved my Quaker worship. I ended up getting a job that worked me on most Sundays, but on my first Sunday off, I gave into my need for some good Quaker silence and fellowship and made quite the nutty trek via bicycle and bus to one of the Northwest Yearly Meeting churches in Portland. Even though I had never been there before, it was like finally coming home. My soul really rested for perhaps the first time in nearly four years. I love my Methodist friends, my Catholic family members, my second home CMA folks, among others, and I find great value in their traditions, but my heart will always be with my yearly meeting Friends.

This past week, walking up River Street heading to my first business meeting since 2008 was a homecoming I hadn't realized I had longed so much for.

Sunday, June 17

Today:

Rodney King died at age 47.
Unofficial tallies declared the muslim brotherhood presidential candidate the winner in Egypt.
Portlanders marched for equality and gay pride while many others watched.
At least 21 people died in church bombings and countless wounded in Nigeria.
It's Father's Day.
A man was rescued this morning after clinging to a cliff all night after a kayaking accident.
Justin Bieber won a Canadian music award.
Madagascar 3 was the top selling movie.

Do you ever wonder what is happening all around the world at the same exact second?  You're drinking coffee.  Someone else is hiking up Mt. McKinley.  A child is sleeping after a long day walking miles to gather water.  A young woman is in between "customers," working the line in the red-light district in east India. Countless families are sitting down at the table for dinner.  Countless others are scrounging on their own.  A baby was born, a child just died, an elderly woman has just passed away after a full life.

We can't even begin to fathom the vastness of our world, even if we are aware of it.  The world is so big and so small all at the same time.  It is immensely connected and astonishingly disconnected.

And here we are.

As we wait. May 11

Today, I read David's pleading words to God, "Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror, while you, O Lord--how long?

For much of my childhood I would hear in great abundance about the number of psalms that praise God for his glory and righteousness and grace. That's what I knew the psalms to be. But one particularly difficult summer in college I turned to the psalms for solace and discovered, to my surprise, that many of the psalms beg for God's mercy, plead for protection, and expose fear and frustration.  And they reveal the vulnerability we confront when we come face to face with our inability to see the future.

A number of David's psalms were written in the midst of what, for David, was a great unknown. Wandering in the wilderness, running from Saul, David had no idea how long he would be stuck out there hiding and fighting. Scholars have estimated David drifted around in the mediterranean wilderness for fifteen to twenty years. Anointed by a prophet as a youth, appointed musician to the king, and defeater of Goliath and the Philistines, David was run out of town and spent years without a place to call home. Undoubtedly, it must have felt like it was never-ending. His psalms give us a glimpse into just how hard it must have been to wait without end.

Waiting is a necessity of building maturity, but its clash with human nature makes it frustrating and its entirely foreign relationship with American culture makes it maddening. Whether we're waiting to get better from an illness, waiting for our child or brother or sister to get a clue, waiting for an important phone call, or waiting for our life to start, the process (and it is a constant process) can make us question our very existence.  Waiting is frustrating, though, not primarily because of the delay in getting what you want. It is frustrating precisely because we are always aware of the lingering possibility and fear that we could be waiting forever.

The piece of the process that makes us (or at least me) want to, at times, rip our hair out is that foggy state of limbo--that blind walk through the wilderness with no map to guide us.  I wonder if David ever questioned his call to be king, if he had moments where he thought maybe he had it wrong. As years continued to pass by and he kept trudging around the untamed land, day after day, week after week, year after year, his vision must have blurred now and then.

But it turns out there is a lot of waiting in the Bible. Paul hoped for years to go to Rome, never knowing if he would finally make it.  Moses kept throwing plagues at Pharaoh and Pharaoh continually denied the Israelites their freedom.  (It turns out plagues only have a ten percent success rate in delivering freedom.) The widow waited for her imminent death before Elijah showed up in her life and brought God with him, or maybe I should say, before God showed up and brought Elijah.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. "...while you, O Lord--how long?"

When circumstances are beyond our control, we simply wait. We wait for our health to come back to us in the midst of sickness.  We wait for our finances to catch up with our bills as we diligently try to control our budget. We wait for a good job to show up in our seemingly endless search. We wait for miracles.

Some time ago I read the quote, "Everything will be all right in the end.  If it's not all right, it's not the end." David's story is great evidence of that.  Of course, David didn't have a fairy tale ending. He slept with another man's wife, killed that man who had been very loyal to him in order to cover his own ass when consequences of his bad choice spiraled out of his control, and his son, Absalom, ran him out of town.  But the story of his wilderness wanderings did come to a close and after years of wondering if Saul was ever going to die, David finally became king.

In our fast-paced, technology driven culture, our theology around waiting is poor at best. For the past year I have been waiting for my life.  I'm waiting to have my independence back, waiting for a job that I'm passionate about and that gives me good experience while paying me enough to live and cover all my bills every month. In the meantime, I work a job I have no passion for, am deferring a number of student loans, and I live with my parents in a very tiny house.  It's less than perfect, to understate it, and I find myself constantly wondering what God is doing and where God is.  As I think about that I realize just how fickle my faith is. God is great when I love my life but when the fog roles in and I can't see where I'm going, I think maybe I don't really understand God at all.  And then I see the inconsistency and wonder just what do I base my faith on, anyway?  I want to have that blind faith that fully trusts no matter what my circumstances are.

But then I read the psalms and I see David ask the same questions I want to ask. If David, who is described as a man after God's own heart, can ask those questions, maybe I can, too. Maybe wondering what is going on is part of faith and part of growing.  What I learn from David is this is not where faith ends.  David's pleas always seem to be followed by a note of recognition of God's faithfulness and holiness.  Psalm ten begins with, "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" But in verse fourteen, a shift comes with, 'But you see! Indeed you note trouble and grief.'

Waiting is trying to our patience, to our spirit, to our faith.  For those of us who desire that heart of God, we tend to believe even in endless waiting we will ideally never question what is going on with God.  But what if that's wrong? Maybe for me, for us all, the object in faith is not reaching a point where we have no more confusion and questions.  Maybe it's having the questions but making sure we don't stop in the middle.  Maybe the mission is simply to follow the questions through to the other end of the psalm.

Wonder, 4/28

On the MAX today, in downtown on my way out of Portland, twin eight year old girls got on the train with their mother and their mother's friend. Their eyes were lit up like they had just walked into a candy store, and energy was bursting from them as if they were about to explode the moment the train would actually start to move. They chose the sideways facing bench and sat up on their knees, their feet hanging off the seats, their hands and faces glued to the window, mesmerized with wonder and newness at the strange morphing scenery from downtown to the railway station and all the way up through north Portland, which offers a big park, old houses, abandoned graffitied buildings, and an array of particularly sketch hotels with flashy neon signs, all along the way dotted with bars and restaurants and at least one organic grocery store (they're not just for rich people in Portland). Right next to their seats was the junction of the train car, and with the slightest turn one would call to the other as the accordion walls would crunch together on one side and stretch apart on the other and the ribbed lines on the floor would deviate all at once in a semi-circle. Oos and awes followed and then right back to the window. Numerous times in their wonder their mother had to tell them to settle down. They were clearly wired with excitement.

With straight nearly-black hair and thin-framed glasses, they reminded me of me at that age (except I had the stylish glasses of turn-of-the-decade 1990), when everything was grand and new and sparkled with the adventure and anticipation of the unknown. Whatever was around the corner was clearly going to be amazing. How could it not?! I have never forgotten that wonder, what it feels like surging through your body. As I sat there, delighting in their excitement, I remembered being that excited on the MAX at their age and I wished I could experience life like that again.

But wonder like that doesn't come around much anymore as an adult. Life gets heavy and full of responsibilities, both personal and community. The sadness of the world's depths of darkness weighs on us. Wonder doesn't come in giddy energy. Instead, I think as we get older and busier and more full of things to know, wonders come in the small moments, in the whispers, in the split seconds, in the every day, little spaces of goodness and beauty.  Sometimes we have to look for them. Sometimes they look for us. But now and then they just show up on the train with their own wonder to share and remind us why it's good to always know children and to once in a while be a little giddy. When we see the world through their eyes, we remember it is spectacular.  

As I was getting off that train I wanted to turn and say to them, never lose that spirit! But I didn't. I just walked on by and stepped off the train. I hope they had a fun day.  And I hope, by some chance, that I may see them again on the MAX.  Hours later, I am still marveling, and it is still making me smile.

When it matters, April 25

Being beautiful isn’t about what you wear or about making sure you burn more calories every day than you eat.  Living a life that is floating somewhere in Limbo is teaching me a few things about the depth and meaning of beauty.  Yesterday, in a conversation about this strange land of foggy limbo I’m in, a friend said to me, “This is just a season.”  It is good to be reminded of that, but at the same time I responded, “I would just like to know when this season is going to end.”  Sometimes it is hard for me to see the beauty in life.  I can dress so that I look really good, but I have realized that has no bearing on feeling beautiful--feeling good about myself, yes, but not feeling beautiful.  Perhaps it’s because I am me or perhaps it’s because I’m 30 and not 21 anymore, but in my life beauty has become something that strikes my heart.  Beauty has a depth and a meaning so much better than what the world will have me believe, and it can be seen in little moments, not just epic booms.  Beauty has to be found in little things I see each day.  The days in which I’m most distressed about my life are days in which I have blocked the ability to see beautiful things, or maybe a better way to say that is the ability to see things beautifully.  

Life ceases to be enjoyable when beauty ceases to exist.  Sometimes we have to work at seeing beauty, we have to be intentional.  And, yes, there may be days here and there where we simply can’t see.  

Today, I’m going out to Portland.  I’m going to go to Stumptown where I will enjoy the beauty of getting around when I can’t afford a car (because before this I lived in a place where that was very difficult), and where I will enjoy the beauty of a place that values a prize-winning cup of coffee even more so than mass profit.  They really do make the best mocha I have ever had.  And then I will go meet up with a friend. Sometimes I get bored in Portland, because overall, it is not new for me, and I want a new adventure, but the truth is that Portland is an amazing city.  It is beautiful to look at.  You never know what kind of people you will see on the street and on the bus.  Its unique character shines in the funky local business that can be found everywhere, not the least of which is the most amazing bookstore in the world.  So today, instead of being disappointed that I’m bumming around Portland, I will look for something interesting, something beautiful.  I may still be a little disappointed, but I will not let it rule my day.

April 17

Standing at the transit station today, I watched an airplane take off from the airport, soaring up and up into the sky.  I dreamed to be on it.  I have no idea where it was going, but I didn’t care.  I just wanted to be flying somewhere, anywhere, far away.  Just a little bit earlier, I sat on the MAX as it pulled into a stop and thought, I wish I were in a different city, a new city.  The plane was so inviting.  And then I turned around and saw my bus coming, which would simply take me into the next town.  It was such a let down.

What does it mean to be a woman?

April 9

I do not believe women can only find ultimate worth in getting married and having children.  There are many women in the world, and each of us have our own paths to walk.  Marriage is one path.  Marriage and children is another.  Singleness, widowhood, convent life are yet other ways of being.  My path right now is a path of singleness, a fact which I don’t generally have a problem with.  I love being single.  I love the freedom to go places, do things, travel, move without having to consider a whole other life of dreams and desires independent from mine.  The single, childless life is every way as worthwhile as the life who has birthed a multitude of children.

Every life is valuable.  

And yet, I found myself, today, believing someone else’s life was better than mine based largely on the fact that she is married and has children (really great children).  It was so inherent that I didn’t even think about why I thought her life was better until I took a moment to consider it.  The reason surprised me.  And yet, maybe it didn’t.  My friends who have children of their own, whether the children are six months or thirty years, speak about pregnancy, childbearing, and the emotional and physical ups and downs of parenting in profound ways that leave me in awe and starkly aware of the self-centeredness of my life.  I feel, perhaps strangely, less like an adult, and, not so strangely (unfortunately), less like a woman.  

That I would feel less like a woman is not really a surprise.  The value of womanhood has been defined by numerous cultures, in many cases for thousands of years, by the ability to procreate.  In some cultures in history, a woman who could not or did not have children held no purpose in society.  Such an understanding has been long pervasive in the church, so much so that today it saturates the mind without even being overtly discussed.  It simply permeates the air.  

I don’t know what to do about this disconnect between what my head believes and what my heart feels.  I don’t believe my life is any less valuable than this other person’s life.  But I find, despite my own disapproval, that I do see my life as less worthy, and I’m at a loss with this, because it goes against everything I ever want to teach young women about where their worth comes from.  

I’m not sure how this needs to change, but I know that it does.  Perhaps first we need safe space where we can even begin to talk about it.  There are too few safe spaces for women.  It is worth the consideration.  This whole discussion is.