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Unholy morning

Posted in Church, Rants on August 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

I’m unsettled this morning.

Maybe it’s residue from saying too many feelings about too many true things yesterday.

Maybe it’s the three shared “inspirational” photos that I saw in the first five minutes of scrolling through my Facebook feed with captions simultaneously telling me how to get a man (put all of your energy into becoming the mighty – but not too mighty, because then how will you be a submissive wife – woman of God you are eventually supposed to be so that you can actually be lovable) but how not to worry about it in the process (just focus on God – don’t think about it – don’t look for a guy.  Just.  Focus.  On. God.).  Then God will knight-in-shining-armor his way in and give you the desires of your heart (i.e., a husband, which is still your desire…only deep, deep down – because you’re not thinking about it, if you’re Doing It Right).

Maybe I just need more coffee.

My gut reaction to these posts in the past has been to scoff at the fresh-faced, dewy-eyed, child couple in the photo.  You know, the couple who look like they weren’t even old enough to toast each other legally at the reception.  My old crone reaction used to be, “It’s easy to wait for a husband when you’re twelve.”  And I still feel that tugging at my mind, particularly when I am being given unsolicited advice from people twenty years younger than I am.  Also, God is not a gumball machine.  You don’t put in your time and pull out a spouse.  That’s not how it works.

But then I remember when I was twelve (and eighteen and twenty-five and thirty), and it wasn’t easy.  Nothing was easy about twelve.

Uncertainty and relationships – maintaining the ones you have and longing for the ones you lack – are never easy.

I don’t want to frighten anyone, but it doesn’t get easier as you get older.  At least the longing part doesn’t.  It’s never easy to be without something you want.  It doesn’t hurt any less.  You don’t get used to it.

There can be grace and joy in the midst of your lack.  Your life doesn’t have to be all about finding someone to share it.  Please let there be more to your life than this.  You really are enough – at every age.

There are also unholy mornings, when you’re done with temporary roommates, but you want someone to be there when you get home, so that every magic thing of your day doesn’t die unspoken when you go to sleep.

These are the mornings that I want to call in sick, go back to bed, and hide from the world.

These are the mornings when it is especially important not to do that.

So hello, world.  Hello, my unholy morning.

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Pie and…

Posted in Church, Food, Hope, Music, Resolutions, tagged on July 25, 2013| 2 Comments »

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This little beauty is a thing that exists at my house right now.  But not for long, for it is tasty.  If one were to promise not to judge the terrifying state of my kitchen, one could come over for a slice.

It was a community effort.  I put hands to it, but I couldn’t have done it without the contributions of several others.  The pie crust and strawberry-rhubarb recipe are from Smitten Kitchen. The suggestion of replacing the vodka in the crust with gin, which complemented this filling beautifully, came from Preston Yancey (if you aren’t already reading his blog and counting the months until his book comes out, go on and check it out.  I’ll still be here when you get back.).  The rhubarb was a contribution of my sister and brother-in-law, because although I hear the word in a southern accent in my head, the plant apparently does not grow in our intense southern heat.  So they helped me search far and wide.  The wisdom of my mother, my go-to expert on all things pie, reverberated in my mind, telling me the exact moment to stop fooling with the dough, which always comes sooner than I anticipate.  Maggie fielded all my skeptical texts of “this looks too much like celery” and “this looks like the greasy crust we didn’t like that one time” and encouraged me to press on anyway.

All this help, swirling together against Beth Rowley’s rendition of Sunday Kind of Love and You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger, which I’m convinced is how butter and sugar sound when you put them to music (especially if there’s also gin involved), produced one of the best things I’ve tasted this year.

I like doing things alone.  I prefer not to need others.  I prefer to go into a task, only depending on me, even when that doesn’t work out so well, because then at least I can chalk any bumps or ridges up to “Oh, well, I did my best – it was a lot for one person to handle,” rather than the ache of disappointment that I didn’t get the help I wanted – that I would have had “if only ____.”  I prefer not to be reminded of the “if only.”

I was told that I avoid community out of a fear of abandonment.  I admitted to a fear of being left, which sounded like agreement to me when I said it, but apparently it was not, as it inspired a rather spirited defense.  I suppose I downplayed the avoidance aspect, when that’s what they meant to be the theme of the conversation.  Anyway, it was an exhausting exchange.

Then pie happened.  And it took a whole lot of not-just-me to make it so.

It also took a measure of solitude.

It took both.  Both had value.  One did not take anything away from the other.  In fact, both were necessary.

I know that this post is disjointed.  I know that I’ve been quiet, but I’m starting to put to practice the idea of solitude and its value to community.  More later.

For now – pie.

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What It Would Mean If I Wore a Bikini

Posted in Church on July 4, 2013| 2 Comments »

I don’t know about your circle of friends, but my circle seems to be talking a lot about modesty lately. Well, kind of. They’re talking about an itsy bitsy corner of modesty – specifically, whether or not it’s immodest for women and girls to wear bikinis.

They’re not talking about men being modest. They don’t tsk-tsk at them for going shirtless – that is, completely naked from the waist up – detailing how that might affect others around them. They’re not talking about men wearing those ratty t-shirts with the entire side cut out (you know we can still see everything, right?) and how that might lead someone into temptation. They don’t seem to take issue with that.

They’re also not talking about the interpretation of the biblical passages on modesty that is a little outside the mainstream school of thought that suggests that the problem of immodesty is primarily material. They’re not discussing the possibility that biblical modesty might mean not dressing in a way that is showy or puffed up or exudes privilege – that it might call for us to lay down that privilege in order to unify across socioeconomic boundaries rather than divide between the Haves and Have-nots. They don’t even want to consider it, because isn’t the whole point of the American Dream to be a Have? Surely, the Bible wouldn’t call for us to be less American!

*cough*it does*cough*

They want to define modesty. The difficulty with trying to do that, though, is that this pesky concept of modest dress is culturally bound. What is perfectly innocent in one culture or subculture (or even in a particular situation within that culture) is scandalous in another. When asked to give a clear definition of immodesty, even its most outspoken dissenters are at a loss. What comes out is the answer historically given to other provocative behavior – “I can’t give you a definition, but I know it when I see it.”

Enter the bikini. The bikini is the perfect scapegoat du jour. It shows a lot of skin, and it does it on purpose.

It seems that this recent call for modesty started with Jessica Rey’s PR campaign for her new modest swimwear line, and while her speech ruffled my feathers in all the wrong directions, I have to hand it to her – it’s a brilliant marketing scheme. Say something to this effect (I’m paraphrasing, of course) – “Here’s a chaste, modest alternative to our Godless, sex-crazed culture” – to the right crowd, and just watch the money flow in. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. And to have such initiative to identify this need/market, develop an answer to it, and present it in such an articulate way at such a young age…I can’t even be mad, despite my disagreement with her premise.

It also doesn’t hurt that her designs are super cute. In fact, I have my eye on a couple of them. Well, I might have my eye on them in the future, in the unlikely event that the thought of having to wear any kind of swimsuit in public – to have my worst flaws that exposed and vulnerable – ever stops being the stuff of nightmares to me.

You see, what I wear doesn’t have anything to do with modesty. In fact, the issue of modesty never even enters my mind when I’m choosing my clothes. Don’t get me wrong – I dress in a way that most people would find sufficiently covered. In fact, I dress in a way that most people would find old-maid-school-marm-going-home-to-twenty-three-cats. I wore a knee-length skirt the other day without tights. Six people said to me that day – “Oh my gosh – you have legs!” I routinely cover up, usually to what many would consider excess.

But it’s not about modesty to me. It would be convenient for me to claim that it is. It would be easy to present myself as an example to young girls about how to honor their bodies and safeguard their predators the people around them from seeing them as sexual objects.

That wouldn’t be honest, though. Covering up to guard my virtue/prevent others from having impure thoughts/etc. never even crosses my mind. What does cross my mind are all the reasons why I should cover up to hide the truth of how I look. My thighs are too fat. I have a lot of bruises and don’t know where many of them came from, indicating that I am so clumsy I don’t even know how to maneuver myself correctly. My scars are ugly. My arms and stomach have lost their tone and are mostly flab. And my gargantuan ass is such a source of embarrassment to me that I can’t even bear to write anything more detailed than that in such a public place.

If I were to wear a bikini, it would not be for attention or compliments. I would not wear it to lure poor, unsuspecting men into my bed or even to tease them into thinking about it. If I were to put on a bikini and walk out of my house that way, it would be because, for the first time in my thirty-eight years on this planet, I looked into the mirror and didn’t so despise what I saw there that my immediate reaction was to conceal it. It would be because I finally no longer hated my body. It would not be about immodesty or making a statement or proving anything to anyone (except possibly, to myself). It would be about grace. It would be about freedom. It would be about actually believing that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

It would be a miracle.

It wouldn’t mean what you think it means. And I suspect that that might be the case for women who wear bikinis now.

Maybe it’s because the bikini actually fits. Maybe she has a long torso and can’t find a one-piece that doesn’t give her a wedgie. Maybe she has a short torso and can’t find a one-piece that doesn’t bunch up comically in the center.

Maybe it’s because the sun and the wind feel infinitely better on bare skin than they do through a mesh of fabric.

Maybe she has children who need to see the skin on the belly that once held them – maybe she wants them to know that that is not only sacred space but space worthy of being celebrated and that it is beautiful.

Maybe she has a daughter who watches every move she makes, and she knows that how she views her body will likely temper her daughter’s view of her own body, and there are so many ways to screw that up, but if she must err, she wants to make sure it’s on the side of acceptance rather than shame.

Maybe she has a son who needs to see how people react to her in a bikini – to see how hurtful it can be – so that he will grow up to be a man who doesn’t see or treat people that way.

Maybe it is a little bit about you, but not in the way that you think. Maybe she’s mad as hell, and she’s not going to take it any more. Scoff and point all you want, but she’s done living her life as an apology for your weakness.

Maybe she just likes it, and she likes the way she looks in it. Do you know how rare that is – to be a woman in this society who actually likes the way she looks? Do you have any idea how hard that is to do? If you did – if you really had any clue – would you be so quick to judge her for it? Or do you judge her precisely because she seems to have escaped the body image hell that still plagues you? Maybe let’s stop doing that.

And maybe let’s stop acting like it’s okay/understandable for people (because despite popular opinion, objectification is not just a male problem) to demean others in thought, speech, or deed, just because they make different clothing choices than we do. Let’s stop pretending that our problem is their fault.  Let’s stop treating the symptoms and address the actual problem. That’s the only way this ever gets resolved. It’s number one on any twelve-step program – the first step is admitting that you have a problem. You. Not the girl in the bikini. Not the guy in the speedo. Not “the devil made me do it,” or “THAT woman that YOU gave me.” You.

If you look at scantily clad people and see them differently than you would if they were fully clothed, you have a problem. I’m not talking about thinking, “Oh, she has nice legs,” or “Wow, she’s pretty,” or “I like his arms.” That’s attraction. That’s appreciation. That is normal and healthy. Attraction and lust are not synonyms. But if you immediately start fantasizing about what you want to do to them, regardless of the fact that they have given you absolutely no indication that they would be interested or consent to it (because we all have been walking upright long enough now to know that wearing a bikini or a short skirt or going shirtless is not asking for it, right? Please tell me that you know that), you might have a problem, and you need to take care of it.

If you aren’t religious or spiritual or insert-your-faith-word-of-choice-here, you are not off the hook. You don’t get to be terrible just because you don’t have a God to blame or sacred texts that you can manipulate to rationalize it. See a therapist; find a support group.

I am shy about speaking to those of religions other than my own, because I just don’t know enough about them to know how to address this. I do suspect, however, that most of them have something to say about the value of humanity, so pray or meditate or otherwise get really near to that, however that works in your tradition. That should be a good place to start. Then seek out someone who does know how to address it. Religious therapy.

Christians. My people. My tribe. And oh, my breaking heart. Why are we so afraid of taking responsibility for our own sin? What do we have to lose? Pride? Self-righteousness? Shackles and chains? Good riddance! Do you remember the story where a group of men brought a woman caught in bed with someone who was not her husband to Jesus? They said to him, “The law says we should stone her. What do you say?” Jesus looked at her. He didn’t have to avert his eyes, lest he be led astray, even though she couldn’t have been wearing much clothing, if any at all. He didn’t look down on her. He didn’t go all Bro Code and say, “I know, man. Women these days,” and start a Bible study on how to handle it, peppered with thinly veiled misogynistic rants. What he did do was this – he turned their pointing fingers around and instructed them to look at their own sin. He stood up for her, protecting her from the people trying to slut-shame her to death. He specifically pointed out to her that she was not condemned. He didn’t ignore her problems – he said, “That thing you’re doing that’s wrong and hurts you? Stop it.” – but he waited until the others had all walked away. Because it wasn’t about them. It. Wasn’t. About. Them. That is how a person who values humanity treats people. So Christians, if you have a problem valuing humanity, get on your face before Jesus, and do not get up until you are changed. And if you have ever used the phrase “caused me to stumble” or sat idly, passively by while someone else excused your behavior by using that phrase to vilify your victims, go ahead and repent for that, too. Get free.

No matter how you deal with it, though, you had better deal with it.

Because one day, I’m going to wear a bikini. It might be while I’m still 198 pounds, or it might be at another weight. I don’t know when it will happen, but I do know this – it will be a godly act of freedom. And I know I’m not alone in this, so while it’s about me, it will be a little bit about you, too. Just not in the way you might think.

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Easter weekend

Posted in Church on April 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

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First, meet Quincy, my cute, new chair.  He came home this Saturday and is fitting in quite nicely in the reading nook.

I pried myself away from him long enough on Sunday to go to church.

I was a holiday churchgoer this weekend.  I was one of Those People.

Growing up, Those People were looked on with thinly veiled disdain.  They were the ones who clearly only loved God when it was convenient or popular.

Yesterday, I was one of them.  And I can attest firsthand that my faith and love for God is neither convenient nor popular.  I can attest that people do things for their own reasons, which might be very different from the reason that we imagine we might have if we were to do that exact same thing.

A friend wanted to go to one of the mega-churches in the Metroplex and invited me to go with her.  I said yes.  Insert a few days of fear and trembling here.

Then it was Easter morning.

Snippets of the morning:

– Eating a very bland breakfast so that the combination of my fair-weather-friend stomach and nervous energy didn’t end in disaster.

– Fun one-on-one time driving there and back with a good friend.

– Uniformed parking police directing traffic at the church.  Benches in the middle of the parking lot, presumably for people to wait for the golf carts that come around and give those who need it a ride to the door.  I can’t…even…

– Thankful to be with someone who also finds that equal parts strange and practical.

– They have a choir.  I miss choir.  They were my favorite part of the service.  The choir director was a woman, and she was fantastic.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

– Standard Easter sermon.  Well-organized, thought-provoking, adequate passion/enthusiasm.  Hard to turn off the speech teacher ears.  I might have lost my patience with sermons.  I might not think that’s a bad thing.

– We sang hymns.  I miss hymns.  I mean, I sing them at home (you’re welcome, neighbors).  But I miss singing them with others.

– There was a commercial break.  It was a series of videos about upcoming events at the church and different services they offer, and I suppose the snazzy video is the fun thing that old people assume the kids are into these days.  But it was a commercial break.  In a worship service.  Again, I understand the practicality of it.  But it was jarring.

– The preacher started the sermon with the Paschal greeting “Christ is risen!” to which we replied “He is risen indeed!”  He coached the crowd ahead of time.  I wonder how many would have known how to respond if he hadn’t.  It would have been interesting to see.  Hard to turn the social scientist head off as well.

– I bought a friend-of-a-friend’s book in the bookstore after the service.  I only thought about money-changers in the temple and table-tossing and how I don’t think I’m rich enough to really go there a little bit while I was in the store.  I really love books.

Overall, I had a good morning, and nothing terrible happened.  I expected Easter to make me miss going to church.  I am not sure that it did.

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FemFest Day Two: Why It Matters

Posted in Church, Feminism, Hope, Rants, Work on February 27, 2013| 4 Comments »

{Day 2} Why It Matters: On Wednesday, February 27, link up at Danielle Vermeer’s blog, and write about these questions: What is at stake in this discussion? Why is feminism important to you? Are you thinking about your children or your sisters or the people that have come before you? Or, why do you not like the term? What are you concerned we’re not focusing on or we’re losing sight of when we talk about feminism? Why do you feel passionately about this topic?

Feminism is important to me, because I can’t do it alone. I need the world to want equality in both word and deed – for everyone. And I need feminism, because lately, I’ve been angry.

I want to be hopeful, and I am (sort of) – it’s just not the prevalent force in my life that I want it to be.

I am angry that…

– Too many women still have to work harder to earn the same respect, money, position, or insert-your-desired-compensation-for-work-here that men do, and that’s ridiculous. Don’t know any woman who has had that experience? Welcome to me. I can name four specific times in the last ten years of my career when I have been passed over for a job, only to find out that the man who got the job not only had less education than I do but more importantly, significantly less experience. And I would like to be able to say that those specific men chosen performed those jobs just as well as I would have, so it all worked out, but that’s only true of one of them (who was great at it, and I’m so glad that he got the job). The other three performed exactly how any rational person would expect someone with their limited skills and experience to perform. It’s frustrating enough to lose a job where I know I’d be an asset, but to lose it to someone who does not excel at it is maddening. I’m not naïve enough to think that the choice to hire them rather than me was merely institutional sexism – there were probably many factors involved, some of which were likely my own doing – but I am also not naïve enough to believe that sexism wasn’t one of the factors. And it needs to stop being one of the factors.

I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I do have two jobs that I generally like, while a lot of people are having problems finding any job at all. And there could be more cards stacked against me. I could be a woman AND a minority. I suppose I should see myself as one of the lucky ones. But do you really want to defend the position that working sixty hours a week, just to make ends meet, is lucky? Is that what a system that works looks like to you? That’s certainly not what it looks like to me, and that it works even less for some people than for others is wrong.

– Too many people are bound by rigid, socially constructed gender roles, and their unhappiness that they can’t seem to conform to them, despite constant pressure from church/family/media/society to do so, is unnecessary. I want a world where people can grow into themselves, especially the part of the self where their gender makes sense to them, without being told who they should be and being punished for violating some absurd norm from some imaginary world that was birthed so that the limited number of people who actually fit the stereotypes could feel superior.

– Too many people live in fear. I hate rape culture. I hate that, as a single woman living alone, I have had to take self-defense classes, and that I have various tools that can easily be used as weapons (and yes, I’ve practiced) stashed around my home, and that I have an escape plan – from my own damn home – the place that should be the safest place in the whole world for me – should it become compromised or violated. I hate that I am terrified that I just announced on the Internet that I am a single woman living alone. I hate that education on the subject tends to focus on how not to get raped instead of how to choose not to rape, assuming that prevention is a lost cause or worse – assuming that some people somehow deserve to be degraded. I hate that, twenty years after being a first-year college student myself, our culture is still so stunted in its awareness of this problem that I still have to explain to first-year college students why it matters whether or not they laugh at jokes about rape or abuse – why it is a big deal, always and every time –that that’s how desensitization works and that the complacency created by their desensitization is a big part of said problem. I hate that survivors of violence and abuse are silenced because their real and personal trauma seems like nothing but a big joke to our culture, which leads them to think that no one cares or will believe them and that, more often that you would believe, they’re absolutely right. I hate that rape culture is “just the way the world is,” and I refuse to let it stay that way.

– Too many people – mostly women and girls – are sold into slavery. I need feminism, because sex trafficking exists, and that’s not okay. I need feminism, because it pisses me off to live in a world where I have to say that sex trafficking – specifically, the selling of someone without her/his free consent (i.e., without threat of punishment, abuse, homelessness, ostracism, personal rejection, etc.) – is not okay. I need feminism because this is a problem in my country, in my state, not just “elsewhere.” And if somehow you manage to live in this world and you still didn’t know that, then you need feminism, too, because clearly your churches and your classrooms aren’t even talking about it, and that’s a problem.

– Too much of the world has too many problems, and too few people are whole enough to see far enough outside themselves to resolve them. There are people whose lives are defined by realities that I merely fear. There are people who work themselves to death and still go hungry and homeless. There are people who have to resort to illegal means or means that we, the richest 1% in the world, judge from afar as unethical in order to feed their family, because making an honest living doesn’t actually make a living at all (but it sure does make it possible for us to get great deals at Walmart, so for all our judgment, it seems that, once again, we’re the problem). There are people plagued by disease and poverty who have a voice but don’t have anyone to listen to it. We need to stop being selfish, sexist, controlling, thieving, abusive assholes to one another, because the world needs all the help it can get, and there are only so many hours in a day, and sometimes it’s too much to ask that we overcome our trauma and everyone else’s trauma, too. I am embarrassed that I ever accept that as an excuse not to try.

I am angry that people can see problems right in front of them, hurting people they claim to love,and still not understand or care.

I am angry, because I REFUSE to be apathetic, and most days, those seem like the only two choices.

I’m fed up. I’m tired. I could have written this post twenty years ago, because so little has changed. That’s exhausting. It’s disheartening to work so hard – to teach so much – and see it make so little difference. And I’ve only been at it twenty years. I think of those who have worked toward these goals for two or three times as long as I have, and I sometimes wonder how they get out of bed in the morning.

But between Jesus and feminism (which I suspect Jesus has a bit of a hand in), I have learned how to hope, so I can’t wait until I’m fixed to help others. There might be many pains outside our control, but there are enough pains that are fully within our grasp to alleviate or prevent. So let’s alleviate or prevent them. Let’s all cause each other less trauma. I need feminism (and my Jesus who taught it to me), because at its core is the theme that everyone benefits not only by our being less terrible to one another but also by our being good to one another.

So I am angry. But there is hope. Reading other FemFest posts this week has refreshed some of that hope in me. More on that tomorrow.

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Feminisms Fest, Day One – Feminisms and Me

Posted in Church, Feminism on February 26, 2013| 10 Comments »

Here’s the prompt:

“On Tuesday, February 26, link up at J.R. Goudeau’s blog, and write about these questions: What is your experience with feminism? What’s a story or a memory or a person that you associate with that word? Why does it have negative or positive connotations for you? How do you define the term, either academically or personally? What writers have you read whose definitions you want to bring out? Or, if you don’t have a definition, what are some big questions you have?”

Here’s my answer:

The person whom I associate with feminism is someone who probably wouldn’t identify with the label – my mother. She’s the strongest woman I know, and her strength cannot be contained by the boxes of gender roles. She taught me the importance of education (insisted on it, really), the value of honesty (even when it’s not popular or “nice”), and that there is nothing that I want that should be out of my reach. She reminds me of the quintessential Southern woman – self-controlled and genteel on the surface; hell-raiser and in control in reality.

One morning, while helping my sister get ready for church, Mom caught her singing Let’s Go All the Way.

She told her, in the drawl only possible from native West Texans, “T., nice girls don’t sing songs like that.”

My sister quickly ratted us out, as little sisters are prone to do. “S. and G. sing it.”

My mother didn’t miss a beat, as she said, with a barely noticeable smirk of pride, “S. and G. are not nice girls.”

I like that. I’m not sure she meant for me to like it, but I do. I embrace it. She is the voice in my head, and that voice is a glorious troublemaker.

It was that voice that set the stage for my pursuit of a graduate degree in Communication Studies with an interest in gender. Those two years at UNT introduced me to the trailblazers and writers whose work shaped feminism, and I fell in love with all of them. Betty Friedan and bell hooks, Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir – their words painted my world. I discovered in Eve Ensler the kind of person I want to be.

I am not an easy feminist. I am one of those annoying ones who see everyone’s voice as important, even those voices that disagree with me. They are all feminism to me. They are all essential. They should all be required reading in any worthwhile education.

I am also a Christian, and this informs my feminism, to a point. This is often confounding to both Christians and feminists. I feel the same need to put an asterisk after “Christian” when talking to feminists that I do to put an asterisk after “feminist” when talking to Christians, because both seem to always want an explanation as to why I’ve chosen to engage with the enemy. I don’t really see them as mutually exclusive, though. I think that feminism and Christianity, at their roots, have more commonalities than differences. I won’t deny that they are often unkind to each other. Maybe that’s what the asterisk is for –to indicate the “not the jerkface kind” footnote.

My definition is not an easy definition. It’s a general definition with infinite applications. My definition of feminism begins at the understanding that all are not born with equal opportunity and thus implies the exhortation that to be a feminist is to equalize, not just for myself but also for others, in any and every way imaginable.

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What I Need From the Church

Posted in Church, tagged on February 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I’m participating this week in Feminisms Fest (details can be found at  From Two to One  – also… DO IT.  You know, if you want), but first I want to sweep out some cobwebs that have been collecting on my brain for a while.  A bit of thanks goes out to the authors of this post and this post for handing me the broom.

My mom asked me on Saturday why I don’t go to church regularly anymore.  I didn’t have a good answer.  She dropped it pretty quickly, which was both a surprise and a relief.  I’ve been expecting the question and subsequent awkward conversation for a while.  I haven’t attended church regularly since Christ Fellowship ended.  I’ve made a piddly effort, but I’m not super-concerned about regular attendance.  I don’t often say this out loud, because the people who ask that question would be super-concerned by that answer, which would lead to more indepth conversation on the subject, and I usually don’t care to discuss it further.

But today I do, because cobwebs are sticky and annoying.

My background with church in my adult life is this:

I went to First Baptist for a while, because I grew up attending a similar (although not as wealthy) church.  Also, I enjoy singing in the choir, and it had a good one.  That was enough for a while.  I stopped going for a lot of reasons, most of which had more to do with my own busyness and being-21-ness than with anything specific that the church did to drive me away.  Another factor was that my community/support system/whatever-you-want-to-call-it wasn’t there.  Going to church took me away from them, if only for a few hours a week.  It was the thing I did on the side of the rest of my life.

Then [a few years later], I started going to Christ Fellowship.  I came to my first meeting out of curiosity.  My roommate and I had been out for breakfast one Saturday morning, and I saw a group of people there, two of whom I knew.  These two were the last two people in Denton I expected to be having breakfast together – the very definition of opposites – yet there they were, clearly enjoying each other’s company.  So I went to their church, and I loved it.  It was the first community/support system/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that I had ever been a part of where I thought I really could call any of them at 4:00 in the morning, and they would answer and listen and give me a ride or help or whatever I needed.

So I stuck with them, through fights and splits and side-aching laughter and awkward tension and tears and joy and so very many meals.

Then we broke up for good.  The church stopped meeting.  Some people were super-concerned about those of us who are single getting left behind or falling through the cracks.

But I wasn’t worried.  I assumed that nothing would really change.  We were friends, right?  Friends don’t need an official weekly meeting or two to be each other’s community/support system/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

I should have been more realistic.  Yes, we were friends.  Yes, we love each other.  But there are only so many hours in a day, and when you stop meeting when you normally meet, especially after you start meeting at that time with other people, you stop seeing one another.  It would be easy to blame them, but my life and schedule contribute to our no longer seeing one another just as much as theirs does.  And the phone works both ways.  It’s no one’s fault in particular.  It’s just how time works.  People get forgotten.  People get left out.  People fall through the cracks.

I fell through the cracks.

I’m not mad at The Church.  I mean, I’m often annoyed with it in general.  The Church does some pretty ridiculous things and is occasionally a gigantic asshat.  But that’s just people.  The Church doesn’t have anything figured out more than anyone else.  Perhaps it’s too much to expect that they would.

But I still need a community/support system/whatever-you-call-it.  And I want to know that it’s  still mine, even if I miss meetings or stop going altogether.  Will I still know you if our church falls apart?  If the answer is no, that’s not community, and that’s not what I need.  I already have enough of that – so many friends that I hardly ever see – and all the abandonment issues (fair or not) that accompany it.

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Fat Tuesday

Posted in Church, Resolutions, Seasons on February 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

My New Year’s Resolution has been enlightening. Annoying. Frustrating. And enlightening.

In focusing on a lot of things I want to stop doing, it has become more obvious what I want to start doing. I mean, I knew already what I wanted to start doing. Cooking at home more, eating better, actually going to the gym that I pay for or running or something at all active, writing every day, reading every day, living in a home that doesn’t look like some sort of natural disaster hit it…and the list goes on. There are moments of these things, but moments flee almost as soon as they arrive. I don’t just want moments of what I want my life to look like. I want a whole life of it.

The problem is that there are only so many hours in a day. Stupid time limits.

Lent for me has been a special time for increased reflection and mindfulness, and that will lend itself well to this process of whittling down what is extra to make room for what is good. The last month of following my resolutions has revealed a lot of things that I do that are just extras – things I do because I’m resting or restless or just wanting to do something but not too much, but that don’t necessarily add anything to my life other than pass the time. I am going to limit or eliminate these things altogether for the season. I won’t be playing Facebook games at all. I’ll be watching no more than one episode of TV a day (if that much) – so no weekend marathons for Lent. Those are the two main things that I do that don’t really add much to the pursuit of life as I want it to be, but I’m sure that there are others that Lent will reveal.

I think I am also going to cut out fast food for Lent. I might like it so much that I cut it out for good. I suspect that my eating it has a lot to do with my not doing a lot of other things (cooking, being active, etc.), so we’ll see how that goes. It may just turn into 40 days of soup, sandwiches, carrot sticks and bean dip, but we’ll see.

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