Blue Christmas, Part III

Every year, the church I serve provides a "Blue Christmas" service.  "Blue Christmas" (or sometimes called "Longest Night") is a time of reflection and shared grieving during a season that is very often hostile to anything less than holly-jolly. 

My sermon was based off of Matthew 11:28-30:
Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

------

I stared at my computer screen and my stomach churned.  Once again, I moved money from my savings over into my checking account.  I had to pay my mortgage, I had to pay rent, I had to pay my student loan, I had to pay for Gareth’s daycare, I had to pay for groceries….my expenses were exceeding my income and my savings account was slowly disappearing.  Then I realized that next month I’d have to dip into my son’s savings account and I felt like a failure.  I was a full time pastor with a good salary, but it was all too much; I was also a single mom paying a divorce lawyer with money I didn’t have and no hope of ever getting child support.  Every night I went to bed and I found it impossible to sleep; I couldn’t rest because the burdens I was shouldering by myself could never be put down.  I ran every morning but my anxieties chased after me with unwavering stamina.  I was so tired but rest was nowhere in sight.

Are you tired, my friends?  For all the purported joy of π season, many of us are wearing thin veneers of smiles over tightly pursed lips.  We zip from crisis to tragedy to responsibility to expectation and we wear our Christmas themed clothing like plate armor.  The jolliness is only skin deep, because inside we are churning, exhausted, unsure.

We are tired because our marriages are failing, have failed, are dead.

We are tired because our jobs are thin threads of accomplishment choked by bureaucracy and politicking.

We are tired because the ones we love are sick, are lost, are buried.

We are tired because liberty and justice doesn’t truly seem to be for all of us; just the ones with power.

We are tired because people in Paris die at concerts, in Syria while they sleep in their beds, in San Bernardino while they celebrate the holidays with their coworkers. 

We lie in our beds and our souls twist within us and we whisper pleadings into the dark of our bedrooms, “I just want to rest.”

To churn with worry is a heritage of our common humanity.  Our great-grandchildren will one day have cause to toss in their sleep as did our great-grandparents.  Even in Jesus’ day, the people were tired with worry and fear, burdened by an uncertain future.  His disciples had left behind the businesses they would inherit from their fathers; they uprooted their wives and children for a life of vagabond homelessness; they gambled that following Jesus would gain them power only to end up chased out of cities as insurgents.  Their faith systems piled rules and regulations upon each other, the Sabbath a day of fraught negotiation of the 600+ rules of how they should rightly live.  The people of Israel felt themselves pulled between the demands of the Roman empire and the demands of their temple and watched their lives fray in the tension.  They lay in their beds and their souls twisted within them and they whispered pleadings into the dark of their homes, “We just want to rest.”  

And then Jesus speaks.

To his exhausted, excited, confused, fearful disciples he spoke: “come to me, you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, I will give you rest.” Now to we here and all those in the world churning from life’s cruelties, he speaks: “I am gentle…[in me] you will find rest for your souls.”  Do we believe him?  It is for folks like us that Jesus was born in the first place.  The Prince of Peace for a world wracked by war.  The Hope of the Nations for people who had forgotten what hope felt like.  Living Joy amongst a people bowed under sorrow.  God’s love made manifest in the middle of those for whom hate had become the common language.   

But do we believe him?

Mary believed; though burdened in body by an unexpected pregnancy and the possibility of being stoned for adultery, she believed.  Jesus would give his people rest.  Joseph believed; though bewildered by fate that would make his firstborn child not of his own blood and the possibility of being murdered by Herod in the night, he believed.  In Jesus, people would find rest for their souls.   

But again I ask, do we believe him?

I can only speak for myself, friends.  And I can tell you that through every gut wrenching turn in my life, when everything failed, when I was left standing alone in the fragmented pieces of my former world, there really was rest in Jesus.  I could rest because I knew that God’s long plan for justice and inclusion couldn’t be screwed up by my prideful mistakes or fearful neglect.  I could rest because I knew that God’s love for me wasn’t conditioned upon my sexual availability or my willingness to hide my opinions.   I could rest because no matter how many parts of my identity turned out to be temporary, God could find me in my grief and remind me that everything I am rested in who God always will be.  I could rest because when the world grew dim with injustice and cruelty, love and goodness would flash brightly into view, a reminder that Love Will WIN.

Wherever you are rushing to in this season:

from job to job

from party to party

from hospital to hospital

from grief to grief

Jesus waits for you in the dark blue nights of your life and answers your whispered pleadings with crooning of his own: “Come here child.  You are weary, and your burdens are so heavy.  Come here child, I will give you rest.  Come here child, with me, you will find rest even for your soul.”  I know that you are tired, dear ones.  I know that the burdens of your life are real.  But with God, there is comfort; comfort of knowing you are enough; comfort in knowing the arc of the world is towards justice; comfort in knowing that God is with you whether you find yourself in valleys or on mountaintops.

Jesus waits for you in the azure of the night, waits to bring you comfort.

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For any interested parties, here are the sermons from the last two years:

Blue Christmas 2014 

Blue Christmas 2013

Metaphysical Quail

I need to get my house on the market.  But before I do that I need to get all of the landscaping taken care of.  And new doors bought.  And touch up painting.  And staging.  And packing.  I've known all of this for months but I'm getting down to the wire and I just need to do it.

But I haven't.  

It probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not moving where I expected to.  Late in February I got a call from a congregation in Southern Texas and since then I'd been in the interview process with them.  It felt right.  I felt called to be their minister and the search committee was on the same page.  In early May I went down and preached for them, talked with them and shared my own conflicted stories with them.  It felt right.  I felt called to be their minister.  But they wanted a week to think and pray before they voted and as I drove away from that church I felt a realization growing in the dark parts of my mind: "This week wait is a bad thing.  It will only give them the opportunity to be swallowed by fear.  I need to prepare for a No."  

And I was right.  On Mother's Day, the Search Chair called me and told me that I'd only garnered 50% of the vote and so it was a "No."  He was brokenhearted and shocked at the outcome.  I wasn't shocked but I was still brokenhearted.  And just like that, the moment of resurrection and joy and goodness that I so desperately needed was stripped from me.  I thought I was going to finally be able to leave Holy Saturday behind and walk on into Easter morning, but instead I'm still leaning my back against a firmly closed tomb and praying that dawn will come soon.

Instead of moving down south I'll be moving up north; north as in my parent's house.  My job as an associate ends on June 2nd and I have no prospects anywhere else despite the fact that I've been searching and praying and waiting for a new call for 15 months.

I suddenly understand the grumbling of the tribes of Israel as they wandered in the desert looking for the promised land.  God has been caring for me in the wilderness and I believe will continue to care for me for as long as this search takes but I AM SO TIRED OF METAPHYSICAL QUAIL AND MANNA.  I just want to GET THERE.   I understand the horror of Joshua and Caleb as they walked into the promised land and then had to walk away from it.  Not because THEY were afraid! Not because THEY were disobedient!  Not because THEY distrusted God and God's plans! Because OTHERS were afraid and disobedient and distrustful.  They suffered the consequences of other people's fears.  I get that now.  I'm living that.  

I'm thankful that I've never struggled with my faith during these terrible years of loss.   I feel good about who God is and how God loves me.  I trust in God's game.  I told a clergy group yesterday that the real difficulty has been finding the strength to have faith in PEOPLE, as all of my difficulties and pain have come at the hands of those who should have known better and acted accordingly.  Now I fear that the feelings I have when I think about my husband (I want to trust you but how do I trust you?) will be applied to any future congregation I interview with (I want to trust y'all, but how do I trust y'all?).  

::Deep Breath::

So here I am, wandering in the desert again.  God is leading me, clouds by day and fire by night.  I like to imagine that God is just as upset with the turn of events as I am, that the clouds by day are thunderous and heaving and the fire a crackling, whip of light.  That God is striding ahead of me with power and anger and purpose and peering into the unseeable places to find a place for me and my future.  And I will wait because how could I do anything else?  I will be a pastor again and not because I have some kind of stubborn chip on my shoulder.  Because its the song of my soul, the story that tells itself in all of my dreams, because its the weight of my bones and shape of my very breath.  I will do this because it is what God intends for me to do, because it is the shape of me.

I will wait.  

Confusion

I've been watching a YouTube series called the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (go here, I dare you), which is an adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as told through video-blogging.  I was surprised by how much I've loved it, especially considering how much I DIDN'T like the book.  Admittedly, I didn't catch the fact that the book was satirizing social conventions of the time period and was subversively feminist, but I walked away from the read convinced that Mr. Bennet was the only character of any worth.  This put me at odds with...most of the known universe, as P&P is considered a classic of literature and a love story for the ages.  But several weeks before Christmas, on a Friday off, I found Lizzie Bennet and watched her videos for 6 hours straight.  Seriously.

The series is coming to an end this Thursday (WAAAAH!) but last week was "Darcy-Day" when Lizzie and Darcy finally admit their love for one another and kissed.  It was passionate and lovely and I watched the video more than once.  I even texted my mom "DID YOU SEE THE NEW VIDEO?" because I wanted to share my glee with someone.  And as I'm wont to do, I promptly started to over-analyze my feelings for the show and the penultimate video.  Of course, it's satisfying to see things turn out "happily-ever-after," even if its for fictional people.   And yes, Darcy was a "good actor" (translation - SOOO CUTE!), so watching a cute guy week after week has its perks.  But then I started to consider - am I watching this episode on repeat for some other reason?  Like, perchance, that I miss this kind of lovey-dovey-intimacy and enjoy participating in a moment infused with that kind of feeling (however removed)?

My 6 year wedding anniversary is coming up in June and I am confused about these wistful feelings that I find myself bombarded by.  As a natural consequence of time gone by, would I still feel these yearnings for new romance and heated first-kisses if Cliff WASN'T in prison?  (You know, like the "7-Year-Itch.") Or are these yearnings a consequence of my long-and-despised sexual dormancy caused by Cliff's imprisonment?  I don't know if I'm supposed to take these feelings in stride as a natural, biological response or if I should be examining them more closely for implicit meanings or movements of the heart.  I have no answer for this yet, but I do know that when I watched the video for the first time I turned my head away when Darcy and Lizzie kissed.  It seemed too private to watch.

I thought, perhaps, that time would ease the pain of separation.  I thought that privation would teach my body to quit yearning for touch.  I thought that focus would prevent me from breathless longing.  But time has healed none of these open wounds.  Fortunately, however, I have learned to let the love, passion and tenderness of others (like Darcy and Lizzie) to be a balm to my wounds instead of astringent.  Just for a moment, I can rest in the bliss of love and not hurt.  That's something I'd guess; only a year ago, the joy of others was a stab in my blistered heart.  I'll give thanks, then, for the tools that time does provide me with - I'll take perspective even if I still would prefer healing.

On an unrelated note, does anybody own the Pride and Prejudice mini-series?  I've got a....friend....who's interested.

Aggressively Decorated

One of the consequences of celebrating Thanksgiving early was that I was ready to start listening to Christmas music in mid-November.  Also, it took every inch of self-control I had to keep the Christmas decorations in their boxes until after Thanksgiving day.  On Saturday night, though, I put up everything I had. The Christmas tree, the garlands, the wreaths, the candles, the table runners, all of it.  In fact, I decided that I didn't have enough stuff and took Gareth with me on Sunday afternoon to brave the bustling wilds of Target. I now have even more garlands, ribbons, tins, boxes, LED candles and other assorted decorations.  The only thing left to do is put the lights out on the outside of the house, but I don't know how to do that.  Cliff did it for me.  And then last year a kind man from church did it for me.  And now I'm looking resentfully at the box of lights in my back room and pondering how I'm going to get up on the roof without endangering my life. These lights MUST go up - it's NOT an option.  It's been quite a while since I felt so emphatically INSISTENT about something, but right now it is Christmas decorations.

DECK THE HALLS GUYS.  BE MERRY AND BRIGHT.  RIGHT NOW.

And for the first time, I'm not even feeling touchy about Christmas being "too secular" or even calling it Christmas instead of the liturgically appropriate Advent.  Reindeer? Sure! Snowmen? Awesome! I want it all, secular AND Sacred: Santa Claus and misfit toys and season's greetings and happy holidays and where does Hanukkah fit in and Salvation Army bell ringers and fake snow spray and baby jesus and live nativities and candlelit services and gaudy trees and homemade stockings and cheesy music and shopping and and and and....

Last Christmas was a blur.  My family was here and daddy was less and less able to eat because of the chemo and radiation and I was heavy in my fugue state and I was barely aware of anything except the fact that Gareth wouldn't sleep and it wasn't even that cold and why is everyone staring at me and and and.... And I couldn't enjoy it.  I couldn't see any of it or let the season slip into my frozen brain and so I know that I decorated the house but I don't remember it.  And now I'm suddenly the aggressive Christmas lady, and every day I'm tempted to buy a Christmas sweater or wear Christmas jewelry or buy 15 Poinsettias and artfully arrange them on my lawn.  I swear, I even considered buying one of those huge and terrible inflatable Christmas lawn decorations.  What is wrong with me?

You know how people talk about the "War on Christmas"? (BTW, that's not a real thing). Well right now, I'm waging a war on behalf of Christmas, but its a battle between me and my past.  The specter of last year's tragedy keeps threatening to bring me low and it almost did as I put ornaments up on the tree that said things like "Baby's First Christmas" (6 days after Cliff's arrest) or "Our First House" (that he no longer lives in) or "Our First Christmas" (who knew we'd only celebrate 4 together?).  Gareth unknowingly helped me from being floored by those unexpectedly painful ornaments - NO GARETH, DO NOT EAT THAT - but I was so MAD about losing this Christmas too.  So I'm aggressively celebrating, seemingly DARING my haunted past to try and take another holiday from me.

See THAT, grief? It's a BIG GLITTERY PAINTED SIGN THAT SAYS JOY!  Oh yeah, sadness? MY TABLE RUNNER HAS SANTA ON IT.  These hand-sewn Stockings ARE MY FOOT SOLDIERS OF HOLIDAY CHEER.  I'm in a battle with my memories and my weapons are baked goods and tinsel. Yes - I seem to have gone a little over the edge.

This Christmas is nothing like last year.  But also, it's nothing like any other Christmas I've had.  That seems to be the repeating refrain now - things are never, ever the same...

Early

My 2 & 1/2 year old son does not sleep late.  Ever.  I now am an early riser, though I'm not a cheerful early riser.  I'm dreading Daylight Savings this Sunday; we'll "fall back" and I fear that means Gareth will be getting up at 5 instead of 6.  That's TOO EARLY.

I voted early this year - the first day I could.  I feel that I should now be exempt from all political chatter, as I have done my civic duty.  I wish there was some way to input a "I voted early" code into my tv or computer that would then filter out all political chatter till after November 6th.

Saturday I got up very very very early (even earlier than usual) and left home by 6am to go visit Cliff.  It was cold and I'm pretty sure God was still asleep.  On a gruesome note, there is a LOT of road kill on the side of country highways very early in the morning.

I celebrated Thanksgiving early this year - Saturday afternoon, in fact.

In just a few short weeks I'll be reliving the past: the one year anniversary of Cliff's trial, conviction and incarceration is just on the horizon.  And because it happened JUST before Thanksgiving, and because Daddy got his cancer diagnosis JUST DAYS before Thanksgiving, I knew this year that the holiday would be full of bad memories.  So, instead of having Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday season ruined, I decided that I was going to have Thanksgiving early, preempting the weight of the anniversary of "All the Evil."

My mother, father, brother and sister-in-law all came to Waco for what we called "Harvest Day" or "Late Canadian Thanksgiving" and we had all of the traditional holiday foods: turkey, gravy, stuffing, rolls, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, green salad, pumpkin pie, & strawberry rhubarb pies.  I made the pies and cranberry sauce the day before, brined the turkey, prepped fresh green beans from my father's garden, and my mother generously prepared everything else.  And it was not fraught with pain - we'll call that a win.

Sometimes "early" is unavoidable - especially if you have small children.  Sometimes "early" is by necessity - a measure of responsibility and time-management.  Sometimes "early" is a matter of survival - an attempt to preempt suffering or loss.  I think about "early" a lot.  If only Cliff had confessed EARLIER, he would have been able to accept a plea deal with a vastly shorter sentence.  If only I had confronted Cliff about his patterns of infidelity EARLIER, he could have gotten help and (maybe?) avoided his crimes.  If only....

But I can't change the past, and ruminating on if only's is a recipe for disaster, so now I just consider the "early" that I can control.  I CAN have Thanksgiving early so I can enjoy it.  I CAN plan a birthday party for myself early so that I don't spend the day ruminating on what I'm missing.  I CAN make plans with friends and family early so that I don't spend day after day after day without adult companionship.  I CAN schedule therapy appointments early so that I make my mental health a priority.  I CAN vote early so that I don't spend election day in long lines listening to political opinions I find alarming.

So right now, I'm trying to think ahead, trying to plan early for the "DAY OF", trying to build an emotional fall-out shelter to survive the storms of grief that are right on the horizon.  The Early Bird gets the worm?  For me, it will probably be more like, the Early Girl has enough wine.

Awareness

I remember very vividly the first time that I saw another person and realized they had a whole complicated existence outside of mine.  I was riding in the family mini-van and looking out the window as we drove when I saw woman on the corner of an intersection.  All she was doing was standing, probably waiting to cross the street - nothing incredibly interesting.  Suddenly an errant thought flashed to the front of my attention: "she has a mom."  And that was it - that realization began a spiral out; not only did she have a mom, but she must have a father and she might have brothers and sisters and she lived somewhere and maybe drove places and did she go to school or have a job or have a cat or a dog and and and and.....

And none of it had anything to do with me.  At all.

I was stunned and my expanded awareness was a bit frightening.  The world was so much BIGGER than it had been.  Or, to be more honest, I was suddenly SEEING the world more clearly than I had before. That woman, and all the other men and women of the world, had always been there but I had never really been aware of them before. To this day, when I see a man or woman standing by the street or getting into a car or walking into a store, I think "he/she has a mom."  And I am reminded of the narrow nature of my vision.

We all experience moments like this, moments of expanded awareness when we are overwhelmed by the realization of a broader reality than the one we have been previously inhabiting.  Sometimes it's the child like expansion that I went through - there are other people and they don't know me!  Other times it is an internal realization:

• Oh no, ALL political ideology is flawed, even my own!
• Surprise, my parents are funny and smart and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice.
• Well crap, I'm kind of racist!
• Uh oh, I'm 100% responsible for this new baby and I have no idea what I'm doing.

And still other times, we become aware of darker external realities

• When I buy these luxury electronics, I'm feeding an industry that relies on underpaid, almost-slave workers, and the environmental devastation of small African nations
• If support this company, they use my money to fund organizations and groups I consider hateful and or discriminatory
• When I judge prostitutes as whores complicit in sexual sin, I turn a blind eye to the slavery of sex trafficking and the human wreckage it leaves behind.

Awareness can be beautiful and it can also be devastating.  When we learn to see the world more clearly, we see both shadows and light.  And sometimes when we find ourselves fully aware of not only the joys but also the pains of this world, our desire is to retreat back into ignorance.  We didn't want to know, because the knowing made us responsible to ACT.  And Lord, action takes so much ENERGY.  Energy that we might not have.

When Cliff was first interviewed by police in November of 2010, I became suddenly AWARE of the legal system - of police and lawyers.  Then when he was arrested in December of 2010, I was uncomfortably AWARE of bail-bondsman and the price-tag of lawyers and justice.  And when Cliff was convicted I tumbled unwillingly into the once-hidden world of prison visitations and single-motherhood and appeals and parole and probation.

I'm the child sitting in the mini-van again, slammed with awareness of people outside of my existence.  Except now, now I'm a grown woman sitting in a prison visitation room and those people are now IN my existence. We share this recurring pain together when we visit our loved ones for two hours under the watch of guards with guns.  And I look at the men (young and old) wearing their prison white and the parents/wives/girlfriends/friends/children who are visiting them and I think "he/she has a mother" and I'm suddenly TOO aware of the pain that has brought us all to this point.  Drugs and sex and violence and alcoholism and theft and sin and and and

And I wish that I could just close my eyes and unsee, unknow, unhear this shadowy realm of life.  But I can't.  And now that I know, I know that somehow I'm responsible to it, to them, to all of us who are navigating this    alternate reality.  But Lord, what action to take? And where will that energy come from?  Energy that I'm not sure I have...

Have you ever sung that song, Open my eyes that I may see....
Are you sure?

Memory

On Sunday during the Children's moment, I shared a story about the aftermath of 9/11 and how the very rich and very poor came together to serve those who were cleaning up the site of the WTC tragedy.  It's been 11 years since those terrible days, and I didn't even know anyone who was hurt/killed in the attacks, and yet I still choked up talking it.  I couldn't hold back a few tears, and I had to pause during the story so I could get myself together.  As I said to a friend lately, everyone touched by a tragedy, even those tenuously connected, experiences long lasting effects of it.  I think I wasn't the only one in that sanctuary on Sunday who felt the continuing weight of that tragedy.

Today on FB, I merely posted "I remember, I remember, I remember."  There's so much I remember of that day - sounds, and conversations, and startling images - but what I most remember is the shock at the horrific reality we all suddenly inhabited.  Suddenly the world was darker, or maybe it had never been as light as I thought it was.  It was like a bubble around me had popped and left in its wake the realization that the world was dangerous and that mortality was the rule rather than the exception.  I was only 17.

The difficult thing to admit in the days afterwards, was the fact that what America experienced on 9/11/01 was what many countries all over the world had already been living through.  The desire was to say "THIS IS THE WORST TRAGEDY EVER" and "NO ONE HAS EVER EXPERIENCED ANYTHING LIKE THIS" or "NOTHING WILL EVER BE THIS SAD."  But those statements are completely untrue.  It was a  terrible tragedy and it's exact likeness will never be repeated and the whole day will be forever (at least for me and the generations that have preceded me) drenched in sorrow.  But categorizations of "worst" and "nothing like this" and "never" are unhelpful and dishonest and they smack of competitive sorrow.  And that is unnecessary.  As I'm learning in the aftermath of my own tragedy, platitudes and comparative suffering have no place in our language.  The best that we can really do is speak truthfully about the sorrows that we undergo.

I imagine that survivors of the WTC & Pentagon attacks are a bit out of phase today, lost in terrible memories, in triggering conversations.  And if I knew any of the survivors, I'd like to imagine that I would find them in their haze and sit/stand with them and say "Today is a bad day.  I'm sorry.  I love you."  Because really, what else is there to say?  Nothing.  I may be projecting, though.

The weather has started to cool down and yesterday when I let the dog out to relieve herself, I stood in the chilly morning air.  And felt a stabbing thrust of GRIEF.  The dog trundled about in the grass as I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what had triggered me and I realized that it was the cold air.  Just that.  Because last year, when it started to cool down, we were on the downhill free-fall into Cliff's trial/sentencing/conviction.  And last year at this time, I was in the throes of anxious panic, of nights sleepless with fear, dreading the relentless passing of days. The cool air reminds me of the suffering that had already begun and the suffering that was about to shatter my life apart. I imagine that the survivors and victim families have experiences like this, days that lead into September and down the rabbit hole again to dark and rending memory.

I experience my own selfish moments when I want to say that my tragedy is the WORST tragedy ever, that NO ONE will ever suffer like I have, that no one's life will EVER be as sad as mine.  But I know that's not true.  Mostly, what I need is someone to sit near me when I'm in a haze of triggering grief and say "Today is a bad day.  I'm sorry.  I love you."  No platitudes.  No explanations.  No prayers.  No scripture.  Just presence and acknowledgement.

Memories sink down into your bones and sleep and wake in fitful starts and stops, ever present but never constant, silent passengers that grab hold of you and grip tightly and then suddenly release you again.  Time passes and experiences accumulate, but some memories will never loosen their hold upon you.  We know that because of 9/11 and the national mourning that we all participate in it.  And some of us know it because we carry around the hidden wounds of un-commemorated personal tragedies.

We remember.  We remember.  We remember.

Who Won?

An Excerpt from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

(Don and his friends talk about setting up a "Confession Booth" 

at their college's wild party weekend)

"Okay, you guys."  Tony gathered everybody's attention.  "here's the catch."  He leaned in a little and collected his thoughts.  "We are not actually going to accept confessions."  We all looked at him in confusion.  He continued, "We are going to confess to them.  We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry.  We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will them them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus.  We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them."


All of us sat there in silence because it was obvious that something beautiful and true had hit the table with a thud.  We all thought it was a great idea, and we could see it in each other's eyes.  It would feel so good to apologize, to apologize for the Crusades, for Columbus and the genocide he committed in the Bahamas in the name of God, apologize for the missionaries who landed in Mexico and came up through the West slaughtering Indians in the name of Christ.  I wanted so desperately to say that none of this was Jesus, and I wanted so desperately to apologize for the many ways I had misrepresented the Lord.  I could feel that I had betrayed the Lord by judging, but not being willing to love the people He had loved and only giving lip service to issues of human rights.  


For so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn't a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.
---
This Chick-fil-a thing yesterday...it made me feel so sad.  You probably wouldn't have guessed it b/c my facebook posts were mostly snide asides, but mostly I felt sad all day long.  This blogpost explains a lot of what I'm feeling about it.  Mostly, I thought of my gay friends and my transgender friend and I thought, "What do they feel when they see hour-long lines?"  And they probably felt like these folks: afraid, judged, depressed.

I know that many people who were in those lines were thinking that they were supporting a business and others were making a statement about political beliefs and most people probably weren't thinking about actively hurting someone else.  Some people I love were in those lines and I don't love them any less.  But I'm still thinking about my gay and transgender friends and how they saw those lines and how it probably felt devastating to see a queue of people lined up saying (whether intentionally or not): "I value this fast food restaurant more than your rights."

So this morning, as I tried to process how I was feeling after the whole chicken-debacle was over, I thought of the passage above from Blue Like Jazz.  About how I just wished I could go up to gay persons, couples, whatever and say "God loves you! I'm SORRY! We are WRONG to choose chicken over YOU.  YOU MATTER."  And I'm probably saying too much, revealing a spiritual/political conviction that could get me in trouble, but I just can't stay quiet about how SAD THIS WHOLE DAMN THING MAKES ME.  I wish I could build a confession booth on the lawn of Chick-fil-a during tomorrow's "National Same-Sex Kissing Day" counter-protest and APOLOGIZE ALL DAY LONG.

IT'S CHICKEN.  CHICKEN! And gay people? Transgender people? THEY ARE PEOPLE! Their rights MATTER.  Their lives MATTER.  They MATTER.  And I'm so TIRED of the "CHURCH" ending up on the wrong side of this issue.  I'm so tired of the "Church" being complicit in pain and injustice and being known for something OTHER than love.

Because you know how Gay people felt yesterday? NOT LOVED.   Do you have any idea how much HARDER this makes it for people like me who want to share the good news of Jesus Christ with those who feel unloved, marginalized, forgotten?  A lot harder.  Because they'll have no reason to believe what I'm saying - yesterday will be burned into their mind, a day when millions of people defended a corporation instead of a minority group and its desires to have equal rights in the eyes of the law.

So who won yesterday?  Besides a corporation who sold a helluva lot of food?

No one.  No one won yesterday.

Gay people didn't win.
The Church didn't win.
America didn't win.

We all lost.  The Church lost credibility, the gay community lost hope and America lost MORE respect from the world community that watched in incredulity as millions of Americans spent money on fast food rather than aiding the dying and persecuted in SYRIA or SUDAN or SOUTH SUDAN or anywhere else.

I'm with Don Miller on this one:
The best thing we can do now is to apologize and get out of Jesus' way.  Cause Lord, he has a lot to fix before the day is done.

I'm disabling comments on this one.