the taste of leather

I fell in love with the taste of leather
while I was standing in a softball field
somewhere in central Ohio.

I was maybe eight, with two ugly rope knots for knees,
Coke bottle myopia, playing outfield,
propped up like a flamingo
to scratch a leg scab bloody
with the top of a tennis shoe.

My glove was pure grain calf leather,
rose brown and fragrant as the sun on hot arms.
It wasn't one of those stupid vinyl imports;
this was the real shebang,
a little too long for my fingers
bought to grow into,
and come evening,
Dad would sit with me in the living room,
showing me how to work the pocket back and forth
to soften it up.

“A good baseball glove will get better over time
if you take care of it,” he said,
popping his fist in the pocket of his old glove.

To sharpen a quality pocket knife
you spit a bead in the middle of a whet stone,
or you drop a little black pool of sewing machine oil,
then you hold your mouth together
while you work the blade.

And pay attention, because the angle matters.
It’s art and a science.
You don't want to ruin a quality knife.

When you polish your Sunday shoes,
you spread newspaper
and you take time to take the strings out.

When you thread a pinched off piece of night crawler
onto a little brass hook,
or take the skin off a squirrel,
or break the trash down,
or carry the logs to the pile,
there’s a way to be smart about it.

But I was eight and safe, and in all that luxury
I laughed at his liturgies as if they were rabbit's feet,
thinking America and childhood would stand forever.

So on Wednesdays I stood out in the grass
avoiding fly balls, saying, "I'll get it," to nobody in particular
but never running much,
chewing the thumb webbing between two molars,
and wondering if the Apache Indian girls
used to gnaw down scraps from the teepees
their Papas made to keep out the the night wolves.

 

A Post on the Rabbit Room

"...there are no promises from God that my charm, my research, or my artistry will create the cultural renovation I desire. There are some truths that can only be comprehended by the spirit, truths that will look foolish from any other vantage point. Because of this, there will be times when love is misunderstood or rejected. Because of this, there will need to be martyrs as well as superstars. When the values of a time are so skewed that what is beautiful, wise, and true cannot be appreciated by the masses, rejection will be an inevitable part of engagement."

CLICK HERE TO READ MY LATEST POST ON THE RABBIT ROOM "You Holy Fools" (Part 2 of 3)

"A Letter to my Graduated Female Students"

To my much-loved former female students.

You sat in my room talking about books for two years, but we didn’t just talk about books. We talked about prom dresses, and rules, and the future, and music, and boys. We laughed sometimes, and then I snotty-cried when you graduated, because I have the best job in the whole world, which is getting to invest in you.

Gosh, I’m proud of you. I mean that. And I’m going to miss the heck out of you.

Honestly, by the time you graduate, I love you as if you were a part of my own family. You know I do. So I'm not going to talk to you like a teacher right now, I’m going to talk to you like an aunt, which means I want you to listen as if you were my nieces.

Parties in college. That’s the topic.

1. First off, if someone in college (or anywhere else) ever takes advantage of your body, I want you to call me and tell me who he is, because I want to find that @#$)(@#$*()(*@#$ and rip his face off.

That’s probably not what I should say, but it’s how I feel. I never want you to go through that kind of pain. Ever.

And (God forbid) if it does happen, you call me. (I gave you my number. Use it.) I’ll pick you up, if you need me to. We can cry about it together and make a plan for recovery.

If that awful day comes, I’ll hand you Kleenex and listen to whatever you want to say. And I will tell you then what I’m telling you now, which is that a sexual assault is never, ever the woman’s fault. Never.

I don't care what you were wearing.
I don't care what you were drinking.
I don't care where you were.
I don't care who you trusted.

I don’t care how much you regret the choices you made the night before it happened. I don’t care if you knew better than to do whatever ends up seeming like the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.

If he used you, the blame is on him. End of story.

2. Secondly, I also want you to be shrewd.

This one is harder to talk about because it’s important (so important) for you to know that a sexual assault is never your fault. No matter what.

So this second part isn’t about blame. We’ve already determined blame. This is about strategy. Strategy for surviving a busted up, unfair world.

There are some feminists who argue that a woman should be able to wear whatever she wants, do whatever she wants, go wherever she wants without fear of men. I absolutely agree with them. 100%.

But what should be isn’t. At least not right now.

And I don’t want to risk YOUR body on somebody else’s idealism. I don’t want activists to pump you so full of ideas about your rights that you end up in a harmful situation.

Yes, I think you should be able to do whatever you want without fear. And yes, if something happens, it’s his fault, not yours.

But I’m not helping you very much if I tell you that you should be able to live like you please, and urge you to go claim that right, and then you end up getting hurt.

That would be like me telling you that you should be able to walk through a dangerous part of town carrying two fistfuls of $100 bills, because it wouldn’t be immoral for you to do that. Of course it wouldn’t be immoral. But whether it is moral or not, it’s not good life strategy. I couldn’t love you and urge you to go give it a try.

So here’s my advice.

FIRST THING:
If I could push a magic button to keep you away from all parties where college students get drunk, I’d slam that baby right now.

That’s not because I think all alcohol is evil, it’s because excess alcohol tends to lead to decisions that people regret later.

I know that frat parties are glamorized in a small, safe private school. They seem wild, and dangerous, and exciting. But you don’t know how many former students come back and talk to me after trying a few of those parties, saying they were boring, pointless, and stupid. Music so loud you can’t talk. Music so loud you couldn’t be heard if you were screaming for help.
I don’t expect any of you to graduate college enamored with that kind of experience. You’re too smart for that. But on your journey toward finding this out, I want you to be safe. There are thousands of ways to have fun on a campus, and if you can manage to find people who aren't so insecure that they need to get drunk to be social, hang out with them. You'll be happier in the long run, I think.

SECOND THING:
If I could push a second magic button to keep you from drinking alcohol in mixed groups, I’d slam that, too. That’s not because you drinking alcohol (at the legal age) is evil, it’s because if there is danger anywhere around you, I want you to be super alert so you can try to fight it off.
That blurry, relaxed feeling that is so nice about alcohol also makes it harder for you to notice signs that a threat is approaching. You want to be at the top of your game in a situation like that.

THIRD THING:

Thirdly, I want you to think carefully about who you trust and who you don’t. Ask your closest girlfriends if you are the sort of person who trusts other people too easily. If they say yes, ask them to help you judge character.

Ask them about the people you are thinking about going out with on the weekend. Ask them about who you are thinking about partying with. Ask them about any potential guys you are interested in. They love you, and they know you, so let them in on that process. If they see red flags, listen to them.

FOURTH THING:
Now let’s talk about what you wear. I read the other day that something like 215 percent of all males look at porn. OK, hyperbole. But seriously, so much money is being made off porn right now, and too many men are infected with it until they think a random woman’s body is theirs to just take.

I’m weary of the argument that it’s a woman’s job to make sure men never lust. That’s ridiculous. I want you to be kind, of course. I don’t want you to run around half naked and pretending like you don’t know that’s powerful. That’s just selfish. But you aren't going to do this anyway, because you aren't selfish people. I know you. I've seen how bright you shine.

And no matter what anybody does, a man’s thought life is HIS thought life. His lust is on him. It’s his responsibility to manage it.

So here’s my angle on clothes. I want you to wear things that are flexible and practical. Would the clothes you have on be a hindrance if someone tried to take an advantage of you? Would they help you get out of a situation where you felt threatened?

Are your strappy heels so high you would have trouble running? Is your skirt so tight you would have trouble getting over some kind of barrier?

I had to run from an attacker once, and I’m telling you, I was so glad that I had on clothes that were suited to getting out of there. (I had to jump over a bush. I couldn’t have done that in heels or a short pencil skirt.) So keep that in the back of your mind, too.

FIFTH THING:
Fifthly, wherever you enter, think about how you could exit. My grandfather worked in coal mine safety, and he trained us all to look for an escape route, no matter what room we were in.
As you enter places in college, think about how you could leave those places if you needed to. Are you getting in a car with someone? Are you walking into a frat house? Are you going over to a new guy’s place to watch movies? What if you start to feel uncomfortable? How will you get out of there? What barriers exist?

I don’t mean that you need to be constantly paranoid, but you do need to just take a few minutes to consider how you would exit a place you've entered, especially in unfamiliar surroundings.

SIXTH THING:
Finally, make yourselves strong. Sign up for some martial arts classes. (Seriously. Do this.) Get used to fighting a man back. Find out where his weak spots are and how to leverage your body to do damage. You will walk with more confidence if you understand what your own strength can do, and that will be good for you lots of reasons.

If you don’t do any of this, and if something happens, the abuse is not your fault. The blame will never be yours. Ever.

Also, you could do all of this stuff I'm telling you and still get hurt. I wish I could take that possibility away, but I can’t.

But if you read this over the summer, maybe a few things on this list could at least help a few of you avoid some pain. There are no guarantees in a world like ours, but I am all for being as strategic as possible as we go through it.

I love you so stinking much. Even if you make mistakes in college I love you. Don't forget that.
You can always call me, no matter what. And you never need to be ashamed, because you've given me a chance to see the big picture of who you really are. I'm so proud of you.

Love,
Mrs. R.
 

A walk with an abused friend

 "A Walk With an Abused Friend"

You ask me to walk through the house with you, and I say I'll go.

Time has worn it down, made it so fragile that even our breath can make the walls shudder.

"It makes me blind," you say. "Every time I come here, every time I walk in the door. I don't know why that is."

"That's okay," I say. "We will go together. I won't leave you."

We shut the door behind us, and I see your hand flutter, searching for something. It lands on a thin red string, a string that I see runs all through the house, ducking behind faded picture frames, turning around door knobs. You whisper to me that we have to move carefully because the end of the string is tied to the pin of a grenade.

You take me to the kitchen of that house, and your hand pulls the refrigerator door open. The electricity has been cut off, and there is no food inside, no hum of current.  A dead fly. We breathe in air that’s been trapped inside of a metal box for two decades.

Dirty sink water is draining like a hateful sentence once spoken to you, and that water goes round and round, always leaving the room, but never able to empty itself.

"How does that work?" I ask you.

"I've never been able to figure it out," you say.

I follow you following the red string down the hall to that bathroom where you tell me that you used to cry in the shower until you puked. You run your hands over the hot and cold taps, crank them so that they make dry heaves, while cave crickets launch themselves like men from canons, blasting their little brains against the cold ceramic.

You remember folding your seven-year-old self into a naked ball here. The water hit your back in needles, and you tell me how you rocked back and forth on your toes and sucked the water off your own knees until you made four purple marks. The water tasted like salt and Irish Spring soap, and you wanted to stay behind a locked door in this womb forever.

The red string us leads down to a crude basement where words were shot at you with such fury that you wonder aloud if they left bullet holes in the stone walls. "If we could find them, I bet we could count them off like tick marks of days passed in prison," you say.

You feel for the shelves where your young trust was packed scalded into canning jars beside the skinless peaches and tomatoes. Those shelves are now empty, but you try to tell me what it was like to come down here and see yourself floating in glass quarts of brine.

Here was where the jar sat holding the first time he hit you.

And here, the first time she threw you down the steps.

This spot was for the names they used to suck the breath out of your chest.

They scalded you, and strained you, and packed you down in the cellar of "private things we don't talk about to neighbors." And your childhood was archived by years written in permanent marker on the tops of all those jars.

We make our way back up the staircase, and you feel the weight of yourself making the house supports groan and cry. You fear that the load bearing walls cannot bear you, that being honest will bring down everything into rubble around you. Because for so long you just had to survive, you never learned to be comfortable with your own gravity.

And it is strange, because even though you are smaller than I am, I seem to weigh nothing here, while you weigh tons and tons. This house remembers you. It nods back and forth for you, like a beloved friend mourning at a funeral.

You show me where you went to hide. This is where you learned to make yourself quiet and unobservable. Where you learned how to keep from pulling the trigger. Where you learned how to stop caring, how to slip out of your body and hover above yourself. This is where you learned to look down on the world like a character on a stage. This is where you learned how to light a match, and throw the flame into gasoline, and run.

You learned how to survive and to react, but you never learned to be your whole self there.

I ask you how tall you are. You say 5’6.”

I ask how tall she was. You say 5’5.”

I say, “Well, that’s a full inch taller. You’re bigger now than she ever was.” And you ask me to carve a groove in a wall so you can feel where 5’5” ends.

We start at the top of her head and carve our way down and around the shape she would have been. Here are the edges of her face. The edges of her arms. The edges of her hands. The edges of her legs. We dig deep furrows in the plaster of that house, and you trace them around and around for twelve or thirteen minutes, thinking.

You stand up and press your back against her outline, and ask me to make a groove for the top of your head so you can you feel the space the difference between you makes.

“But then there’s love,” you say. 

And you tell me you think it would be easier if there were no love, but that children cannot help but kiss the hand that strikes them. You tell me this second pain is even more terrible than the first, the pain of remembering how you cared so much about pleasing her. 

And then you tell me the stories you’ve learned from aunts and cousins, pieces from an ugly jigsaw puzzle that you have collected slowly.  This disease was inherited. A violent grandfather. A brutal injury that change him. Alcoholism. Abandonment. And then hurt children who became adults who had children. The family graveyard. A nest of copperheads.

You feel a twinge of compassion, then a rush of fury. You don’t want to betray the child you were by being too accommodating. You were too accommodating for too long. Never again.

You ask me where forgiveness ends and where weakness begins, and I say that I can never tell in cases like this. But I tell you that I trust you to find that answer because you are brave, and kind, and smart, and that you’re my hero for even asking that question.

“Let’s go,” you say. And you release the string to run your fingers down my arm until they find my hand. You grab it and squeeze hard.

"You're there?" you say, but it's not really a question.

“Thank you for trusting me enough to show me,” I say. “I’m sorry it was like this. Can you find the door without the string? Do I need to guide you out?

You laugh and your voice grows stronger when it answers. “No. No. That door… I know where that door is. I’ve got it memorized. I could find it in my sleep.”

Then you lead, and I follow. And we step out together into the open air.

“I can see again,” you say.

So we watch a Northern Harrier stretch his wings against the summer currents, sailing like a ship on good seas.

We watch a mass of yellow foxtails nodding their tickly heads.

There’s a beetle with legs too small trying to haul himself through some clover, and we laugh at his determination.

We realize that we’ve been breathing shallow, so we lean back and suck the wide world down into our lungs while the sun makes the oil on our faces shine. 

The Thing Nobody Teaches You About Kissing

I believe that our identity dilemma is bigger than gender and bigger than sexual preference. These are two slivers, two fragments of ourselves, broken off of a more complex question.

These labels may tell part of our story, but they do not tell all of it.

I can say that I am a heterosexual female. You can tell me you are a trans male. In some regard those statements might be accurate, but language is inherently metaphorical, a discipline full of gaps, so no matter what titles we give to ourselves, they will only show us a shadow of one another when we exchange what we have chosen.

If I am straight and you are gay, that tells me so little about you. It doesn't tell me how you feel about thunderstorms, or why you don't like the color green. It doesn't tell me what scares you most, or what makes you laugh, or why you're hesitant to talk on public transit.

Once we realize this, we can decide to make more time for our conversation. We can sit and tell stories about our attractions and our longings. We can go back and explain where we first felt whole (or kind of whole), and where we began to feel divided. We can talk about struggle, and shame, and loneliness, and anger. We can talk about who we wanted to be, and who we have managed to become instead.

We can scrape the sides of our memories and appeal to one another, and like all people do when talking about the world from one single spot - shout across the expanse of our biases and our hesitations and our suspicions - hoping to connect to another soul, hoping that the sentences we make make some kind of sense.

After we have talked for five thousand years and told every story there is to tell -- when all those labels that first made it so easy to dispose of one another have fallen into place inside of larger narratives, what will we have?

I don't know. But I will tell you my fear.

When we were children, we ran at one another with open arms, trusting. Like babies reaching for the breast of a mother, we wanted friendship to fill us up.

We felt hunger. That meant there must be milk.

And then we saw sharpness in one another, and selfishness, and deception. We kept trying and trying again, and sometimes people were a refuge, and sometimes they were a foretaste of hell.

The closer love came to filling our bellies, the more dangerous it became. So we flinched, and we fondled, and we laughed, and we grieved, and we grew frightened.

There are so many people I love, and so many people who have loved me, but even the best of the loves I have known have always been broken somehow. Though we were made for one another, we cannot be everything for one another. Either by death of body or by death of trust, we have a way of taking ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

There must be something deeper than two matched, human hands on opposite sides of a window glass. There must be, or we wouldn't still feel this want at the end of our sweetest joy.

The thing nobody teaches you about kissing is that you have to learn to breathe in the middle of it. Yes, two sweet mouths come together, but even in the tingle and honey of the best embrace, the lungs still cry for air.

New lovers caught up in new passion sometimes laugh, because in their delight, they have forgotten to inhale. "Hold on," she says, pulling apart from him. "I feel dizzy."

And so it is with man to man. Man to woman. Woman to woman.

Some say that God has made us so that we speak his name with every breath. The first word of life, YHWH. The last exhale, YHWH.

I don't know about that, but I do find it interesting that in our thirsty comings together, in our seeking of blessing and union, as we try to find a lover's name whispered over us that will nail us at last to ourselves like Peter Pan's shadow, even in the heights of deepest ecstasy, we must always still breathe.

No lover's thrill protects us from breath, no diversion, no legal bond. We air pump in and out. In and out. Taking in what is pure. Passing out what is toxic. And even if we pass out on our beds, little trickles of pleasure running up and down our limbs, as we sleep, we breathe.

I am a straight woman. A monogamist. A political moderate. These are my labels, but in none of these is my redemption.

I am a spirit thirsty for air. I am an exhaler of poisons. I am a pair of lungs in a cramp. And when I pray, I pray like a soul rising through deep green water.

"Jesus. I thought I would drown in that darkness. Whatever you see of me is true. I will not resist You. I will not defy You. Name me. Fill me. Change me."
 

Dear Chewbacca Momma

Dear Chewbacca Momma,

When I watched your video it only had 30,000 views. I watched it four times, and I cried laughing every single time.

I watched it over and over because I’m so tired of the Planet Earth lately. Here we’ve got cray-cray Donald Trump and bad-bad Hillary Clinton, vying for the top seat of the biggest baddest nuclear arsenal of all the everything there is, and I’m worn out from both of them. It feels like either the worst joke ever or the end of the world. And there you sat in your car, belly laughing.

I watched it over and over because everything feels so upside down lately. Right and wrong. Good and evil. Safety and danger. People don’t make sense to me any more, and it feels like I drag a thousand pound weight behind me too much. I look at folks square and ask, “What’s 2+2?” And they say, “15. If you disagree with me, you’re a heartless, hateful bigot.” But a joyful heart is good medicine, and Honey, you giggling like that was light in a dark place. Your levity made some kind of sense when an awful lot doesn’t these days.

I watched it over and over because I’ve felt ugly lately, and old, and bloated, and insecure. But I saw in your delight something my dad always said --- something that I always forget. You proved it, Chewbacca Momma. There’s nothing more beautiful in the face of a woman than a genuine smile. And ever since I watched you, I’ve been noticing how it’s true of women everywhere. That twinkle in the eyes. That readiness to find fun. The mischief. The secrets we have to tell.

I watched it over and over because you reminded me that there’s great joy to be found in simple things. You reminded me that I don’t need to be ashamed of the right kind of laughter. You didn't give us the cynical, cruel laughter of our day that makes people feel worthless and afraid, but the Lucille Ball sort of gigglefit that welcomes others into the joke. Wouldn’t it be grand if the glass gates of hell were shattered by the childlike laughter of the people of God? I’m not saying that’s what will happen, but you showed me how it might be a possibility.
Chewbacca Momma, thank you for taking the risk to give us all a dose of healing and hope. I don’t know if people will be mean to you online. There are some real monsters out there. (Insert Chewy roar.)

But Candace Payne you made my week this week. I needed what you brought. Thanks for opening the car door and letting a bunch of strangers hitch a ride.

Love, Becca
 

A Superficial Compassion

 "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace," when there is no peace."

Healing a wound lightly. It's such an interesting concept.

In a society without God, the best humans have to offer each other is affirmation. We can tell people that they are okay, we can accept them, and we can try to let our friendship and presence heal any wounds they have. And some kind of healing is possible here.

But only it's a light healing -- a superficial restoration that leaves the source of infection working beneath the surface.

Jeremiah says in that same passage that these people feel no shame at all for what is wrong. They do not even blush.

So in this lighter healing, a sensitivity has been lost. Mutual generosity is functioning more as anesthesia than a presciption for wholeness.

That's when God cries out, "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls."

God rejects the healing humans are offering one another --immediate emotional comforts in a shameless society. He rejects a culture of mutual affirmation and says, "Come through what is uncomfortable to what will bring lasting rest."

He calls them back to Himself -- the authority, and the power, and the truth that they have rejected.

This is why modern conversations on tolerance and compassion tend to be distorted. Yes, humans can offer a sort of topical generosity to one another.

But if our generosity prevents people from walking through repentance, sorrow, and even pain that leads to the rest a holy, living God offers, we have been harmful in our best attempts to heal.

Photo credit: MorgueFile

Mom and Pop's Lingerie Shop

Evelyn and Leroy Walker opened “Mom and Pop’s Lingerie Shop” back when the Buckshoe, Tennessee General Electric closed down in 1995. Both the Walker's sons were moved out and self-supporting, and even though the Walkers had a little goose egg saved up, it wasn’t enough to carry them through retirement.

Wal-Mart and the Food Lion weren’t hiring that year, which they decided was probably a blessing in disguise, because ever since their twenties, Evelyn and Leroy had talked about taking some sort of wild, entrepreneurial leap together.

"Dave Thomas had to flip that first burger," said Leroy one morning over his breakfast coffee, while Evelyn unwound her foam curlers and nodded her head up and down like she was listening to Reverend Sherwood unpack the second book of Timothy.

The Walkers pulled out the telephone book to take an assessment of the businesses serving greater Marlin County, and after a couple hours of scratching out ideas written on a manila legal pad, realized that while there were plenty of quick marts, and feed stores, and even a new ice cream shop down by the video rental place on Main, there was not a single place in Buckshoe to buy fine, feminine underthings.

The Long John Silvers on the bypass had just moved down near the Rivertree Commons, so Evelyn and Leroy rented that building out, tore out some of the walls, and painted it bubblegum pink with cherry trim inside and out.

Leroy had always been good at math, so he kept the books. Evelyn had an artistic flair, so she was the buyer. After spending hours pouring through supply catalogues full of French lace and satin, she chose an inventory that she liked to describe as "tasteful but daring."

She divided the store into two sections, the left side for pretty young wives and brides-to-be, and the right side for mature women. Then she and Leroy put a marquee out front by the road: "ASK US ABOUT OUR MONTHLY SPECIAL" on one side, and "20% OFF FOR FIRST TIME CUSTOMERS" on the other.

Marlin County only had about 7,000 people, which meant just about everybody knew just about everybody else. So of course it was a little bit awkward those first few weeks when husbands would nudge their wives as they were driving to the Dairy Queen and pass Mom and Pop's Lingerie Shop and say, "That's Millie Yontz's car pulled in right there."

A wife knew this meant Millie's husband, Frank, had a wife who bought French lingerie, which also meant that when your own husband was going to bed with a wife who wore Tweety Bird gowns from the Dollar Store...

So one by one, the women of Buckshoe dropped by to see what Mom and Pop had to offer. Besides, there was a growing respect for the financial risk the Walker's had taken, and maybe a little bit of community pride to have the first shop devoted to lingerie in maybe a hundred and fifty miles.

Mrs. Margaret Atkins, who spend summers in Paris when she was in her twenties, said she never thought she'd see the day when Buckshoe had honest-to-goodness amenities, and this got passed around as sort of a blessing on the whole endeavor.

Once you got in the door, Evelyn had one of those belly laughs that helped you forget that Leroy was running the cash register, and to his credit, he had a way of sliding whatever you bought into a bag full of tissue paper before scanning the tag. He did that while asking about your garden or your nephew, so you felt like he hadn't even noticed what you were buying. It might as well have been a sack of fertilizer.

Like Dante's Beatrice, Evelyn guided the women of Buckshoe through hanging racks full of undergarments at such ease that even the ladies from the Fidelis class at First Baptist church would relax their shoulders and giggle.

And because Evelyn ordered what she though would flatter women all the way down to size 0 (for Tess Carter, who was flat chested as she could be and had never weighed more than 85 as long as anybody who'd known her could remember) up through whatever size would fit sweet old Gerry Frost, every woman who visited left feeling prettier than she did when she showed up. And the married men of Buckshoe smiled a little more often.

Everything changed over the next few years. The Internet got up and going, and the women of Buckshoe, one by one, got exposed to all fifty shades of what people do out there in the wild, wild world. And the men of Buckshoe first curious, then caught, then owned by the click of a few buttons, grew more impatient and demanding.

Groups of high school girls would cut straight back to the clearance rack, never looking Evelyn in the eyes. They would laugh from the dressing rooms, making jokes their mommas wouldn't have wanted them to make, and then leave without hanging anything back up on the hangers.

And Evelyn started to get supply catalogues in the mail, advertisements that left a lonely, sad feeling in the pit of her stomach, because she could see that sweetness and generosity were dying, and that something frantic and greedy was taking their place.

Married women never giggled when they shopped any more; their eyes never lit up. They just looked strained and tired, and they carried their bags out the door with shoulders that said they weren't hoping for much.

Sometimes Evelyn would look over at Leroy as they were locking up the front door for the evening, and she would sigh and say, "You wouldn't believe what somebody asked me for today. And you wouldn't believe who asked."

Leroy would slide what he didn't know across the counter of his curiosity and put it away without further inquiry. Then he'd kiss Evelyn on her soft, wrinkled cheek, and tell her how pretty she was, and ask her if he could buy her an ice cream from the McDonalds on their drive home.

On Today's News

Graham Greene's "The Destructors" was published in 1954, the same year that William Golding's _Lord of the Flies_ was released. The two stories have similar themes - bands of boys who become animals when left to their lowest instincts - but I find Greene's a tighter, more powerful plot.

Greene's story focuses on a gang that roams the ruins of post-WWII London looking for mischief. Amid all the bomb rubble, a single, gorgeous 200-year-old house stands, a house designed by architect Christopher Wren. The inside of the home is as marvelous as the outside, and its rooms are filled with historic and artistic treasures.

The boys decide to make trouble on their largest scale ever, sneaking into the house when the owner is off for a weekend and tearing everything up. They start on the inside, methodically breaking apart whatever is beautiful and worthwhile piece by piece. When this detailed work finally is complete, they fix ropes to the inner house supports, tie those ropes to a vehicle, and watch the whole building collapse as the vehicle pulls away. At last, the entire street is destroyed. What the Nazis began, the sons of England complete.

Greene was converted to Christianity in 1926, moved to faith by arguments that moved his intellect instead of his emotions. I am not as familiar with Greene's work as I would like to be, but from what I do know, I think of him as a bit of a contrarian. He was not the sort of traditionalist who just absorbs orthodoxy and moves on. He asked questions. He wrestled with hard concepts. So, it's super interesting watching someone like Greene rub up against postmodern thinking.

Deconstructionism is a postmodern movement that challenges the reliability of several foundational concepts in Western society. Everything from metanarratives (larger stories of faith and culture upon which we base smaller beliefs) to the reliability of language is disassembled.

Derrida, one of the chief minds of Deconstructionism, didn't write _Of Grammatology" until 1967, but forces of existential thought which fed the fires of disorientation and meaningless had been growing since the late 19th century, and they flourished in the post WWII era.

I don't know if Greene's metaphor in this particular short story was intentional or not, but as I look at where we stand in time, I can't help but see connections.

Today I read a news piece about a man in power using his political force to tie ropes to fundamental support beams in our culture. If he succeeds, a significant piece of our national architecture will crumble.

But as I consider this, I am reminded that the destruction of our culture didn't start with the big things. Just like the post war home in Greene's story, rebellious children of our own country have been sneaking in and tearing up what is good and beautiful piece by piece. What is now happening on grand scale began in little places with little hands.

I'm not sure if this problem can be fixed now or what it would take to repair it. From what I've read of the political processes of Mao and others, there are strategic benefits to politicians being provocative, benefits to throwing a society off balance into chaos. Knowing that makes me wary of being led by emotions, and almost feel like I am holding my breath. I keep sneaking off to quiet corners to just pray. Whatever action is to be taken, God's leadership and empowerment are absolute necessities.

In the closing scene from Greene's "The Destructors," the driver of the vehicle looks back on the ruined house and says, "There's nothing personal, but you got to admit it's funny." He sees a national treasure destroyed, a man's belongings wrecked, and he finds humor in it.

There is at least one good warning here, and this warning is that there is nothing funny about animalism. In the face of desolation, there is an appropriate time to grieve. It's a sign of sobriety to be sad about what is evil.

What happened today in our nation was ugly and wrong. It puts millions of children at risk. It is a rope around the beam of American culture, a rope around the neck of innocence, a rope around the safety of the vulnerable.

I hope you will take time to be sad about it. Don't diminish it. Don't laugh about it. Stay human. Feel the sorrow of the loss, for it is significant.

Then I would urge you to step back into your realms and find joy. Make beauty in any way God gives you. Redeem in a thousand private places. Find peace after you find tears. Mourn then look upward.

Multiply the gospel where it can be a balm. Ask the Living God what He would have you do, because He has planned our tasks for us since before time began.

Here we are, Lord. Send us to this barren land.

Even the Darkness is Light to Him

This morning I played a song for the first time in maybe fifteen years. "Even the Darkness is Light to Him" is on the Michael Card album that I used to use when my big teenagers were babies, and it's probably my favorite song on the record.

It was interesting listening to the lyrics after everything that has happened to us as a family. I felt a twinge of pain when I got to, "Would not Jesus safely keep, little ones He loves asleep?"

"Is that how this works?" I thought. "Does that mean everybody who isn't kept safe isn't loved?"

I thought about what I am reading in Shusaku Endo's _Silence_, the horrific torment of thousands of Japanese Christians, and the news stories of mass persecution and murder of Christians happening right now around the world.  I thought about the trajectory of our nation, and what is likely in the future for Christian families here.

I traced back through the stories of friends I know who were grossly abused as children. I hurt for friends who are fighting through serious illnesses in their beautiful sons and daughters, and I grieved for parents whose children no longer live in bodily form in this world.

I considered grown children of believing parents who are wandering or defiant, and I held the heartbreak, the regret, the disorientation that this creates.

I thought of the little girl in our area who was kidnapped a few weeks ago, about how thousands of us have been looking for her, praying for her, and how she remains in danger.

It almost makes me angry, in light of all that, to hear this question, "Would not Jesus safely keep, little ones He loves asleep?"

And yet the same Bible that tells us about Christ's love also tells us that we will be led like sheep to slaughter. It promises hardship, while telling us His yoke is light. It tells us that nothing can tear us from His hand, while saying that we must pick up our cross if we will follow Him. It urges us to rejoice in all things, then describes a world in which joy will be counterintuitive.

I'm currently listening to the audiobook for _All the Light We Cannot See_, and I am horrified by the vulnerability of a blind girl and an orphaned boy in the midst of a massive world war. I think part of the reason this book is so popular right now is that we all feel like this a little bit, unable to penetrate the forms of this present chaos, unprotected against overwhelming odds.

"Safety" is an interesting concept, isn't it? Jesus could sleep while the storm raged, even if that boat was sailing Him a few hours closer to His torture and death. He slept as if He were already safe -- then He woke to make the wind and the waves be still, almost as an afterthought. Taming nature was a far more difficult task than avoiding crucifixion. What does this tell us?

Was the ability to make the storm stop what made Him safe enough to sleep, or is there a deeper principle at work here? Did He understand that "safety" transcends the protection of a physical body? Is there a rest that comes with resignation to the sovereignty of a larger plan?

"Do not fear the one who can kill the body," the Bible says. Fear something else... but what is it? Why is that to be feared instead? What does that fear look like?

As I've been reading Bonhoeffer's _Life Together,_ I've been impressed that this disciple of Christ was known by his joy and gratitude, even in the concentration camp. When he was called to execution he was optimistic, telling a fellow captive that life was just beginning for him.

"Even the darkeness is light to Him, night is as bright as the day." As I hold all of these grave realities in the balance, I begin to see safety from a different angle. It is perhaps not divine intervention in all physical dangers, but grace that is large enough to carry us through the pain of our passing through this era of our lives. Perhaps the safety is in a love that, lo, will be with us always. Even unto the ends of the earth.

The Dominoes That Fall After Disappointment...

One of the hardest things about community is that the weakness of one person tends to impact the weakness of another. John Donne once wrote that “no man is an island,” and we tend to think about that in terms of interdependence. Yet it’s also true that we stand like a line of dominoes, primed to fall from the impact of another person losing his balance.

Last year one of my close friends left decades of selfless conviction to chase what felt good. I understand why that decision was made, and I tried hard not to be condemning. But inside, I was devastated, mostly because it made me so lonely to watch. I was in the middle of trying to make some hard choices of my own, and I hadn’t realized how much strength I was getting from the teamwork of two friends trying to hold to what was good and true.

My friend is smart and knew how to justify choices that defied God’s commands with spiritual-sounding language, but I didn't have the strength to argue much. I felt like the floor was gone under my feet. Deep down, I knew those excuses were wrong, but hearing them come from someone I had once trusted to walk with me broke me. I couldn’t get oriented. I wondered if everything I knew was a lie.

Disappointment isn’t like this for everybody. I’ll admit that part of the problem here was my fault, because I tend to love and trust a very few close friends too deeply. I expect a Band of Brothers sort of camaraderie, strugglers dragging one another across enemy lines and back again.

This week I’ve been reading Shusaku Endu’s book Silence, learning about the torture Japanese Christians faced in the early 1600’s. In the part of the book that I was reading tonight, a winsome priest who had been courageous, clear, and influential has been reported to have abandoned the faith after being brutalized. It is painful to see how this single apostasy affected the body of Christ.  Consequences of this one breakdown rippled outward from Japan into Europe.

As I think about areas in which I have abandoned faith, and as I think about how the abandonment of people I love, I see how Christ’s description of the church as a body is true. One part of us cannot be hurt without the others hurting in some way as well. What happened in Japan happens to all of us; the story is universal.

After a significant relational trauma happened to our family a few years ago, I remember having two strong thoughts in that first wave of my shock. My first thought was, “Am I even going to survive something this terrible?” (I thought the betrayal might kill me physically.) My second thought was, “This is too powerful. I can’t stay strong in my beliefs through the aftershocks. That means the traitor not only stole part of my life from me, he also stole part of myself from me.” I could feel my own imminent failure rolling in like a tsunami after an earthquake.

For a few months I fought hard to do the right thing. But over time, the pain got the better of me and I shattered. I gave in to rage. I despaired. I shot off into emotional and spiritual rebellion, looking for some sort of respite. I said things to God I wish I could take back. Years and years worth of sorrow accumulated into a single terrible season of doubt and fury.

So now I am left with a second wound. I not only know what horrible thing the traitor is capable of, I also know that I am capable of being a traitor as well.

Remember in Lord of the Rings, in the Mines of Moria, how the dwarves dug too deep and awoke the nameless fear from the core of Middle Earth? This is what trauma did in me. I saw what lurks in the reactive side of my nature, and because of that, I fear myself now. I see what a monster I can become.

Once you have lived through a really hard season, it’s hard to ever relax completely again. You find yourself drawing and redrawing maps of the past, trying to crack the code so you can  avoid pain like that in the future. So, I regularly find myself trying to cycle back and understand the chain of events that led to that dark time.

But every time I try to outline the mistakes made, I swing between two extremes:  blaming others and self-hate. When I see how false friends were, I grow furious and want to demand an apology. I want justice. When I see how false I was, I fear God cannot love me, and I despise myself for being so weak. I want to hide behind fig leaves.

I don’t mean these emotions are theologically sound, but humans are affective creatures as well as rational and spiritual beings, and feelings still tend to come, even if we know better. So these two defaults return to me again and again, and I have to fight them with truth or they will consume me.

But the strange thing is, when I’m looking for a single point of blame in another person,  I can’t seem to land in one spot. The weakness of one man points back to the weakness of another. I go back another generation (“He had a lousy father”), or zoom out to another relationship (“She’s never had a husband who loved her”). The more I know about the stories of the people who have hurt me, the more I see how the dominoes that fell on me have a source far away in time and space.

And when blaming myself something similar happens. I see how a divided heart in my 40’s began in a lack of gratitude in my 30’s. I can trace that back to the haughty pride of my 20’s, then see the roots of young adult hubris in the self-indulgence of my late teens. Before long, I am remembering the sins of my early childhood and seeing how those first bad decisions led to decades of infection in my character.

The secular world would say this sort of analysis is superstitious, unnecessary, damaging. Progressive Christianity would sing a similar song, saying that I need to just quit beating myself up and focus on love large scale. But I’ve tried taking both of those for an answer, and they simply don't help very long. I’m guilty. Other people are guilty. Those are facts. Together, we’ve kind of made a mess of things.

It’s weird when my own experience points to what orthodoxy has been teaching for 2,000 years. Evil entered the world and spread like a virus. It caused an avalanche of consequences. It hurt people who hurt people, and that damage continued to spread exponentially until our whole world is full of wounded wounders.

But God looked down on this massive domino disaster and said, “You’ve gotten yourselves into an awful lot of trouble. You can’t stop it, can you? You might be able to avoid one collapse or another, but this is too complicated, and it’s already hitting from too many different directions. I’ve got to provide a way for healing that allows for a chain reaction of disasters.”

His forgiveness doesn’t deny the problem. It looks at what people who hurt me did and acknowledges the wrong done. He looks at my reactivity and what it exposed and says that was wrong, too.

Then He says, ‘My grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient also for those who have hurt you.”

This is difficult for me to accept, especially after all the work I’ve done (and redone, and redone, and redone) looking for a cause. I’ve strained so hard to find specific blame, because I’ve believed that if I could only find the core, I could get some sort of control. I could either demand an apology, or realize that I need to run and hide forever because I am unforgivable. Both of those efforts are about me trying to save myself.

Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.”  Her statement reminds me of Paul’s recounting of the thorn in his flesh, how he begged for it to be removed and then was ashamed when it was not. And yet, through this very lack of strength, Paul was able to understand that goodness was a Person and not just a system of operation.

God’s answer to Paul was not a struggle-free life, among people who would never abandon or disappoint him, or in a body that never abandoned or disappointed him. God's answer was: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." And here Paul stopped dissecting himself and everybody else. He simply said, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.” He knew that when he was weak, he was strong.

That’s the beauty of the honesty Jesus offers. No pushing truth to the side. No blaming. It steps outside of all that chaos and say, “Where there is weakness, God is strong.” For the desperate, for the exhausted, for the guilty, for the unfaithful… what answer could bring a deeper sigh of gratitude and love than this. We are borne despite ourselves. Hallelujah.

For the Love of Mother's Day

Yes. Do celebrate Mother's Day in a way that expresses sensitivity to women who are not (technically) defined as mothers. Women create and nurture life on planet Earth in thousands of magnificent ways that never involve babies. The gifts of those women should be honored, never demeaned.

But also, as you do this, speak of traditional motherhood as the unique and vital pursuit that it is.

I can't think of any other human calling that requires the same level of vulnerability, risk, or constant care as traditional motherhood. In many endeavors, a woman can decide to shift gears when she is exhausted. She can change course. She can realize that she is not good at one task and pick up another. She can draw time limits on when her pursuit is to be chased and when it is to be put away so that she can restore her mind and heart.

Traditional motherhood is permanent and ever-present. There are very few boundaries a mother can draw in her time or resources, and there is no opportunity to step back if she realizes that she is weak or inadequate. If she has been able to survive the first part of her life a little bit spoiled, self-centered, impatient, foolish, lazy, passive, or distracted, there is now no place to hide from these traits.

The weaknesses of her character, the weaknesses of her faith, the weaknesses of even her physical body will be brought to the surface in the middle of the night, when she is sick, when she is sad... when she thinks she has nothing else left to give.

She will be grieved by her failures at a level that is difficult to experience in any other pursuit, because she will know that she has hurt someone who is vulnerable and who needs her.
Whereas performance, love of quality, or drive for praise may propel other endeavors, in motherhood there is an unskinned, unprotected, ever present love for a little one, a love that is almost desperate at times. Failure in motherhood cuts straight through your chest into your heart. Any wound a mother inflicts, she feels in herself.

The Bible says that women will be saved through childbearing, and there have been times in my life when I resented that wording. But now that I have been a mother almost twenty years, I understand it differently than I did when I was younger. This statement may not apply to all women -- it may not be a mandate -- but the truth of it applies to at least one.

I see how my children have been tools in the hands of my God, tools to strip me down in a way that nothing else could have done.

So many nights (like last night) I am awake at two or three in the morning, praying for my children. In that vulnerable quiet, I cannot keep any shield up before my Lord. I choke out, "Search me, oh God, and know my heart." And I am willing to hear difficult things about myself, if they will help my sons and daughter.

When our marriage was crumbling from our years of ministry, love for my children drove me to fight to stay. It saved me from a declaration of my own rights. It threw me on the altar and made me say, "No matter what. I will die here for them."

Fears for my growing children show me how I idolize what I cannot control. Reactively, I have come to God like a warrior and challenged Him to fight, because anxiety for my children has exposed limits in my devotion to Him. I have had to face the gaps in my allegiance because of my little ones.

And because of my children, I have come to know why it doesn't really matter what anybody else in the world thinks of me. These kids make a gravity that outweighs all honors, all accolades, all success. I can come to you more boldly and more openly because their love has broken me and shown me what truly matters.

Not all women need to be mothers. There are females who have vital, creative gifts that don't involve children.

There are women who live transparently and openly from an early age, not needing to stripped down like I did, women who are naturally more mature than I was, women who are naturally less selfish, naturally more pure before God.

There are also women who have wanted children desperately, but who have lost them to infertility or to death.

We lost our first child, and then I was afraid we could not have more. I remember the pain of that short season, and I ache for friends who have known this sorrow for lifetimes. They have fought wars of their own, and they bring wisdom from decades of grief that teach us all about disappointments. Their battles are monumental, and their pain should also be honored.

There are just so many stories being written. So many stories to tell.

But in the midst of all this diversity, in the midst of our corporate beauty and brokenness, I think it is important to look honestly at what traditional motherhood does in the women who pursue it. We should not shy away from praises and thanks that need to be given.

Aside from the silly, soft, floral, sentimentalized, idealized motherhood... there is a grit and grind to the soul work of maternity. It's important to acknowledge the women who chase this, who fail every day at what they most want to do well, and then who must get back up again and learn how God's strength might apply to human weakness. We should find ways to honor the battles of mothers facing impossible questions, of women being strengthened beyond their own strength.

And it should never be assumed that mothers hear enough affirmation.

Most of the women I know who are in the midst of mothering little ones have difficult days, weeks, months, years. Sometimes the work they are doing costs the death of a dream. Sometimes they feel unseen, unworthy, desperate. Often they feel like water poured out on sand.

All the world around us seems to shout that motherhood is secondary, small, and irrelevant. Whenever we try to praise the sacrifices of mothers (and especially by setting aside a day in churches to thank them), we hear kickback that "women can be more than mothers." The resistance to our gratitude is automatic.

"Women can be more than mothers." Think about that sentence and what it implies about the sacrifices of women who are giving everything they have to those in need.

We would never tell a doctor she could be more than a doctor. We would never tell a humanitarian she could be more than a public servant. We would never tell a novelist she could be more than a Pulitzer Prize winner. We would simply applaud the value of what has been done without comparing it to something else.

And yet we feel the need to push a life of constant service into a corner, as if it were some sort of lesser offering. Why?

There are ways to avoid wounding the disappointed, ways to honor the diversity of women, without holding back words that need to be spoken one day out of 365. Because traditional motherhood is beautiful. It is not all that is beautiful, but it is a beauty worth celebrating.

Dear mothers, what you are doing is not without purpose. I know you are tired, and that is one of the reasons why I'm so grateful to have a day to honor you. This battle you fight matters a great deal -- in our community, in your children, and in yourselves. Thank you for all that you give
 

Salvador Dali's "The Ascension of Christ."

A friend and I were discussing this painting last night, and this morning I wrote down some thoughts that might interest a few of you. The question this painting evokes immediately, of course, is in regard to the hands of the Christ. Why would they be shown claw-like, as if he were in great pain?
 
I have a theory about this, though I'm not sure I'm right. If you have any thoughts on the matter, you can let me know what you think.
 
 Dali had a lifelong interest in physics, quantum mechanics, etc. He also did some early work on measuring the torment of the martyred saint (in "L'Amic de les Arts"). I think we might see a combination of those elements here. 

This painting was created in 1958, almost ten years after the atomic explosions of 1945 had a deep impact on Dali. He wrote, "Since that time, the atom has become my favourite subject of reflection. Many of the landscapes painted over this period express the great fear I felt at the news of that explosion. I was applying my paranoiac-critical method to the exploration of that world. I want to see and understand the power and hidden laws of things so as to gain control over them. In order to penetrate into the marrow of reality I have the genial intuition of having an extraordinary weapon available to me -- mysticism, the deep intuition of what is, an immediate communion with the whole, absolute vision through the grace of truth, by divine grace."

In the early 1950's, Dali began to synthesize his interest in nuclear fission/fusion with mysticism.  He presented a talk titled "Why I was sacrilegious, why I am mystical," which described his integration into the Spanish mystics.
 
His paintings from this era interpreted religious themes through atomic discoveries that his peers were making. For example, in 1952, he wrote an article called "Reconstitution of the glorious body in the sky," arguing for the assumption of Mary in light of atomic physics.

I could be wrong, but when I first saw this painting, I noticed immediately that there were no marks of the crucifixion on the resurrected body of Christ. Though some scholars believe the nails were hammered through the ankles instead of the feet, the smoothness Dali chooses for the feet of a traveling, rural man is shocking.
 
Is this a post-resurrection Christ? His arms are clean of scars. There is no spear mark in his side. There are no healed stripes from a whip. His skin is hairless and perfect. This shouts for notice.

In contrast, the outer world Dali chooses for the Ascension is reminiscent of a nuclear holocaust. Jesus is lifting off a world of black seas and fire, but instead of moving upward, he seems to be moving into a different dimension. Beyond this, he seems to be moving into the corona of a single atom. ("In Christ all things hold together?")

At first I was baffled that Dali's wife's face seemed to be above him. In almost every Ascension painting, Christ rises above mortals into the heavenlies. How could he dare to put a human above a God?
 
But this pushed me deeper into the idea that Jesus is not rising upward so much as inward. He is passing into and not just above. (See how he goes into the center of the painting, instead of to the top?) This is not the typical dimensionality to which we are accustomed, but a transcendence of the perceptible world, which is a profound spiritual statement instead of just a physical one.

This leads to my theory on his hands. Christ is in the crucifixion pose here. Look at most paintings of the Ascension; they never look like this. Christ is typically in a more contrapposto stance when rising to glory. 
 
Here his feet are aligned together as they are on the cross. His hands are more reminiscent of agony than ecstasy. And he is not wearing traditional Ascension clothing, but the loincloth typical of his Passion paintings. Why would Dali do this?

To me, all of this comes together to make a mighty statement about the healing offered by Christ by his death... A death that seeps into the very fabric of the universe.  This feels more like an Ascension painting made mid-Crucifixion.
 
Why would those two events be combined?Perhaps Dali wanted us to see that this is not a cheap, easy resurrection (with flowers and butterflies), but a gift offered through cosmic agony, so that we might follow Him through this portal that turns everything inside out. (By his agony, we are healed.)

And as the woman looks on, to follow, she would almost have to twist and be pulled by the current He is creating. Imagine turning a long tube of fabric inside out... this is the motion. If this is difficult to imagine, think of Christ moving in the direction that the painting suggests he is moving already, and that all that is subject to the destruction man has brought to this planet would be pulled along behind him into a new atomic center. 
 

Deconstructing Books

So many college students have bad experiences with literary criticism.

The whole discipline is handed to them in a dry and dusty way that ends up separating them from books instead of helping them mine meaning out of them.

I'm always sad when I encounter a student damaged by this sort of delivery, because literary criticism is one of my favorite things in the whole world. Understanding different approaches to reading a text has helped me squeeze books like oranges and drink their wine to the dregs.

If you're not familiar with how literary criticism works, imagine a line of spectacles with different color lenses. When you put on the first set of glasses to read a book, you suddenly notice who the author was, when the author was living, and historical and cultural influences on the writer.

The second set of glasses blocks all of that external information out. Instead you are focused intensely on the language of a text itself. You are free to zoom in to the sorts of words used and the mechanics of how a book is structured, and (to your surprise) you find that this limited focus helps you notice things you didn't pick up when looking at the text historically.

The third set of glasses allows you to explore the effect that the book has on you. It takes time to unpack how the mix of 50,000 words and your past and personality mix to create a response.

By engaging with one method of observation at a time,  readers can build muscles. Like a dancer focused on repeating one move over and over, individual observation skills grow in the reader so that over time the scope of our ability to take in new information is wide and deep.

Someday I would love to take the time to walk you slowly through the benefits of various schools and expand on why knowing criticism can change your life, but for now, I want to zoom in on one specific area -- a school called post-structuralism.

Post-structuralism is the most complicated school of criticism that I have ever studied, and I'm not an expert on it by any means. It's very similar to post-modernism, in that morality tends to be seen as relative and objective truth tends to be denied altogether.

By definition, post-structuralism resists definition, so working with this school (which isn't a school), is a bit like nailing Jello to a wall. However, I'm hoping that just by naming a few things about this viewpoint, we can understand how it has impacted our daily lives and national culture.

The chances of you running into a person who self-identifies as a post-structuralist is relatively slim. There are few people who believe in post-structuralism who do so consciously. Instead, elements of this interpretational method have broken off like tapeworm segments, and little bits of method are living in the mind-guts of thousands of hosts. The fluidity of post-structuralism allows it divide and subdivide while living off other belief systems, until like a virus, it has retrained the RNA of its hosts.

But before I explain what post-structuralism is, let's look at structuralism. Understanding what this method rebels against will help us see what it is in itself.

For thousands of years, it was assumed that people could know truths with certainty.  Even though philosophers disagreed with HOW we could know things, there was still an underlying belief that it was possible to come to some sort of conclusion if we could only find the right system for finding it.

Through time, different cultures tried out different systems. The Greeks tried to build knowledge upon logic. Descartes started with confirming his own existence, and trying to move on from there.  Hume tried to find a way to use his senses to prove truth.

Then we have larger groups. Christians claim that Truth is a Person from which all virtues and wisdom exude, which is why they say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Materialistic science claims that because the world is observable and measurable, and because causes produce effects, we can find truth empirically through observation and experimentation.

Once one of these philosophers or people groups decides on a method for determining what truth is, a metanarrative can be created. A metanarrative (coined by Jean-Francois Lyotard) is sort of a "super story" that contains all the other stories.

For example, for a person of faith, the micronarrative of a sick child would fit into a metanarrative of sin entering the world and affecting the physical realm of health. For a person who trusts science, the micronarrative of  a sick child might fit into a metanarrative of evolution of species that is prone to genetic weaknesses. But either way, the bigger story of the universe determines how we understand the smaller stories.

Post-structuralism is deeply suspicious of metanarratives. It challenges the core assumption that any sort of singular truth exists, and it claims that all frameworks and systems (secular or sacred) are only imagined forms that humans have made up to try to make sense of the universe.

But not only do they believe these constructs are created to make sense of things, they claim micronarratives are created to control other people, to gain and maintain power, and to reinforce hierarchies.

In our American culture you might find a challenge to metanarratives in an atheist who claims that religion only exists to manipulate the masses. Or you might find it in a NRA member who believes that the government is stirring up fear about mass shootings with an ultimate goal of taking away civil liberties. Whatever large narrative is told, it is assumed that the story is told to obtain power.

By suspicion and cynicism, the hierarchies and establishments of culture are torn down. Meaning is scraped from the sides from the bowl and from between the cracks. We deconstruct what we are expected to observe and look for the marginalized and the unsaid. We doubt. We challenge. We break apart. We invite chaos and then watch for what emerges.

There are some positive aspects to this approach, of course. Power does corrupt, and it is shrewd to look behind the scenes. But there are also conclusions drawn from post-structuralism that are too extreme.

For example: language is metaphorical, therefore it isn't trustworthy. Is that statement true? If I say, "I'll take care of you," is that a threat or a nurturing promise? See how confusing that is?

A post-structuralist would look at the lack of precision in a sentence like this and say that because words cannot be definite, and because words are how we find truth, there is no truth. Nietzsche, for instance, said, "The various languages, juxtaposed, show that words are never concerned with truth, never with adequate expression."

I find that conclusion a bit whacky. Thinkers as far back as Aquinas acknowledged the metaphorical nature of language. This is not some sort of modern discovery.

Dorothy Sayers wrote "We need not"... "suppose that because it (language) is analogical, it is therefore valueless or without any relation to truth. The fact is, that all language about everything is analogical; we think in a series of metaphors. We can explain nothing in terms of itself, but only in terms of other things." ... "we must think by analogy or refrain from thought."

C.S. Lewis, likewise, saw the metaphorical nature of language as a strength instead of a weakness. Dr. Bruce L. Edwards writes, "Influenced by his friend and linguistic mentor, Owen Barfield, and cognizant himself of the cognitive power of metaphor, Lewis saw language as 'incurably' mythopoetic, inevitably and simultaneously linking hearers/readers to items, persons, and relations on one plane of existence -- while also pointing them backwards and forwards to ever deeper, resonating layers of meaning that lay beyond any single soul, lifetime, or civilization, into eternity."

So we have (at least) two options here. We can follow thinkers like Derrida and Nietzche into questioning the reliability of meaning because words are inherently indefinite. Or, we can follow thinkers like Sayers and Lewis into seeing the limitations of language for what they are, following them along a trajectory until we glimpse a bigger, more meaningful universe instead of a scrambled one.

To close, I want to include some excerpts from a chart created by Ihab Hassan, exploring some of the differences of modernism and postmodernism. As you look at each of these opposing beliefs, let your mind unpack how embracing each extreme might have an influence on a culture. What are the dangers? What are the benefits?

As an individual, what might you want to keep? Where does each position you in regard to an external authority? Where does each position you in relationship to a truth that is possibly bigger than your capacity or understanding?

Roland Barthes has written that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author."  That's not just a method of interpreting books. That's a belief that impacts how we engage with the world.

MODERNISM: form (closed)

POSTMODERNISM: anti form (open)

MODERNISM: purpose

POSTMODERNISM: play

MODERNISM: design

POSTMODERNISM: chance

MODERNISM: hierarchy

POSTMODERNISM: anarchy

MODERNISM: mastery/logos

POSTMODERNISM: exhaustion/silence

MODERNISM: finished work

POSTMODERNISM: the process

MODERNISM: grande history

POSTMODERNISM: small history

MODERNISM: genital

POSTMODERNISM: androgynous

MODERNISM: origin/cause

POSTMODERNISM: difference/trace

Photo credit: Morguefile

Donald Trump and Socks and Underwear for Christmas

It's strange when we ask God for one thing and he offers another.

The friends of the lame man of Luke 5 worked so hard to reach Jesus. They went to desperate measures, cutting through a roof and lowering their buddy down on ropes, hoping that they would find the answer they were looking for.

But Jesus offered something else first -- a gift they weren't even seeking -- a gift he knew they needed more than physical healing.

I suppose "your sins are forgiven" felt like getting socks and underwear for Christmas when all you've wanted for years was that new Star Wars toy with the bells and whistles. But Jesus had a purpose for their trouble that was bigger than their biggest dreams.

So many Christians have prayed for our nation this past year. We have approached the throne of God like friends cutting through a roof trying to reach healing. "Please give us a good leader!" we have asked.

But last night a lot of us realized that if this is healing, it looks way different than what we'd hoped.

We realized that there is more wrong with the United States than a couple of broken legs (a charlatan, and a buffoon). The nominations of Clinton and Trump mean that America is jacked up by the millions, jacked up at the soul level ... which is going to call for power greater than anything we've got.

A goofed up election is not the answer we wanted, but being forced to square up to the sins of our nation is an important gift.

Without this level of serious reckoning, we could just trot on our merry ways, throw down a vote, and keep chasing life with a faith that doesn't run too deep.

Thank you, God, for loving us enough to postpone the healing we asked for.

Thank you for using even our desperation and disappointment to show us our ultimate need for you.

Thank you for forcing us to see the most dangerous problems churning under our surface.
Yes. Heal our souls before you help us walk, so that if and when you restore our mobility, we can do good instead of harm.
 

After the Worst Political News You've Heard All Year...

Ted Cruz stepped down tonight, which doesn't mean much to most of us in itself. I know a few die-hard Cruz fans, but most everybody I know is really just looking for some way to avoid voting for Trump or Clinton.

That makes tonight a difficult night for a lot of people. There's a lot of fear floating around. There's a lot of frustration and anger. We've never known a dilemma like this, and frankly, it makes us feel nauseated.

We're not sure who to vote for now. We're not sure what to hope for now. News like this has a way of overshadowing everything, of sinking our hearts and paralyzing us.

After the announcement was made, I felt despair clawing at me, so I sat in the quiet and wrote down a list of resources still at my disposal. I made a list of beautiful things that I love that politics can't shake.

I don't know if this list will help you, because we might not share the same values, but writing it helped me to find my courage. This list gives me a sense of grounding and purpose, so I'm sending it along, hoping it will inspire you somehow as well.

What would be on your list? What can't tonight's announcement take from you? I'd love to hear what remains after the dust settles.

EIGHT BEAUTIES POLITICS CAN'T STEAL:

1. The beauty of the English language.

I’ve read Hamlet more times than I can count, but after listening to this year’s primary election speeches, I cried while unpacking those delicious, old words of the Bard. My soul felt like it was going to explode at the density and color of Shakespeare’s language. I found myself thirsty for his precision, his wit, his careful constructions. Yes, we have seen some of the ugliest traits of human communication this year, but what we have seen is not all that humans can be. Instead of soaking in the barbarism, let’s make time to dip our brushes back in good things. Let’s draw some boundaries on what discord and chaos can infect.

2. The beauty of generosity.

We have been maneuvered by fear. We have been led to hate and mistrust those in need, and this is a double wound. The first blow harms those who are desperate for shelter and healing. The second blow bruises the hearts of those who could give help, but who find their compassion turned to stone instead. But we have a choice. We can continue to hear the cries of the needy. We can continue to respond to those nearby by opening up our own stores and giving of what we have.

3. The beauty of gratitude.

Politicians win votes by leading us to feel resentful and entitled. They tell us that we don’t have enough. The allure us with promises of more. But we don’t have to follow them into the bottomless pit of greed and discontent. We can be grateful for what we do have, notice our opportunities and our resources, and be thankful. Even as we work shrewdly against what is wrong with this world and try to bring about healthy change, we can abide in gratitude for what we have been given.

4. The beauty of true patriotism.

This word has become stained by misuse. Patriotism is not anger. It is not fear. It is not haughtiness. True patriotism is love for ideals that derive from universal laws of morality. True patriotism is love of order, love of human dignity, love of self-sacrifice, and loyalty to others who share those ideals. True patriotism is unity for the purpose of charity (in the good old sense of that word). I don't have to withdraw into an apolitical, apathetic Pilate's stance, washing my hands of the whole mess, and letting my commitment to my country grow dull. My spirituality doesn't somehow set me above "all this petty voting stuff." In fact, it protects me from the twin idols of political passivity and political hyper-aggression. It gives me a calm in the storm. Faith allows me have a good, clean love for America; it keeps me close to the earth; and it helps me care about the core of my homeland in a way that is healthy and beautiful.

5. The beauty of true strength.

The buffoonery and bravado of our currently political spectrum has left true strength in the shadows. That makes this a good time to trace back over the lives of those we admire and find ways to articulate why these men and women have impacted us. Deitrich Bonhoeffer. Corrie Ten Boom. Why do they move us? What can their lives teach us? Let us set our eyes on men and women who have known injustice, rejected the currency of corrupt leadership, and who have risen above it to focus on what matters most.

6. The beauty of memories.

I love that scene in the movie Camelot where King Arthur shouts, “Run, boy!” to young Tom. Even in the demise of his kingdom, Arthur realizes that the good vision has been caught and that all is not lost. Memories aren’t just the work of the past, they are a whisper that can move the future. There is generation coming behind us, and we need to whet their taste buds, strengthen their backbones, and tell them stories that will put whatever is about to happen into a proper context. "These are not darker times but sterner times," said Churchill. He was right. 

7. The beauty of friendships.

We are not alone. We have a network of family and friends to tend and to enjoy. While we obsess about the news, we have friends who are sick, grieving, frightened. We can care for them. We have friends who are funny, brilliant, called to work these fields. We can encourage and enjoy them. The big “out there,” doesn’t change what we should do about the “in here.” And if all of us begin to devote ourselves to what we can do in small circles, perhaps this will do more good from the roots up than any politician could ever accomplish from the top down.

8. The beauty of God.

He knew what happened tonight was coming. He has a plan for today, for tomorrow, for the next day. He will never leave or forsake us. He loves us, and He's right here. He's got this. It's going to be okay.

You Holy Fools (Part 1 of 3)

"...the fatal flaw of most writers is to try and make sense of things before they have come to their natural end."

(I have an essay up on the Rabbit Room today, if you want to read it.)

https://www.rabbitroom.com/2016/05/you-holy-fools-part-1-of-3/

A bruised reed he will not break

I love how Isaiah 42 shows God's heart for the broken. Even in the midst of delivering hard news for his people, pumping through this chapter is a beautiful reaffirmation of the deep, deep love of God.

Christ (who wouldn't come until about 700 years later), is described so gently:

"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not stuff out."

And look at what's happening, even as old resources and surroundings become unfamiliar and hostile:

"I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools.

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, Along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;

I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will follow. I will not forsake them."

So even as everything that has provided security is suddenly removed, God still shows up personally to lead those who are in need. A journey that is unfamiliar to the blind is known and planned for by the All-Seeing. Darkness so thick that it is internal, physical, and impermeable, is transformed into brilliance. Impossible terrain is made bearable, because the grace of Jesus is sufficient for every weakness. 

I have lived through a season like this one, a time when everything familiar was stripped away from me, and I didn't see how life could go on.  But in this wilderness, even in the way trauma broke me down into elements of myself that I hated, I found Him chasing me.

And his message for me was not shame. It was not a battering for my inability to live a perfect life. Though I am cerebral, self-sufficient, stubborn, driven, I had to learn to forgive myself, depend on him, and move forward.

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

He makes a way. And he makes a way personally. This is the character of the God we serve, our pursuer, our sustainer, our author, our developer. We cannot break His love. He says:

"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more."

He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. Though the dust clouds roll in, and it seems you will not survive, he loves you. And whatever you are living right now, he will lead you through.

 - - - - -

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

Soren Kierkegaard

My hair is turning grey...

My hair is turning grey, and it's gorgeous.

Every day when I'm sitting in some parking lot, I look in the rear view mirror and pull out four or five pieces, but I don't know why I keep doing that.

Even as I weave my thumb and my second finger through a snarl of auburn to get to a single line of silver, my spirit is almost congratulatory.

"Look how pretty that is!"

I hold each strand up to the light once it's out, marveling. This is perhaps the most beautiful change my body has ever given me. Despite every terrible mistake I have ever made, I am becoming elvish. This is unmerited grace.

It's not even grey, it's pure, perfect white. At least it looks white one piece at a time. Maybe I am just too in love with it to know the difference or to care.

How could I have made something so exquisite? And even better, it's untamed, going against the grain of hair that has never behaved anyway.  This new grey is not compelled to please a single earthly soul.

I tried to dye it the other day just because I felt like I should. Loving the grey makes me feel guilty, like I'm being a bad wife who has just given up on herself or something. My husband has always had a thing for older women, but still... it feels almost ostentatious to let this happen without a fight.

So, I put this box of stuff on my hair and for about three days walked around with a flat, single color that looked like the hair of a corpse. Three days is how long it took for the grey to shiver, and shake, and laugh itself free.  Every strand of auburn stayed dull and dark while the silver blared, "Tada! I'm back!" all bright and clean as a newborn babe.

I cursed something about "resistant grey," but secretly I was delighted.

I've wanted to be a 50-year-old woman as long as I can remember. I've wanted to be one of these delicious ladies who wears a shawl at the beach and funky, swingy clothes. I love those glasses that sit on the end of a nose. I love messy white hair that's cut in a wild crop. I love laugh lines.

But walking into grey hair is like being 15 and wearing 3" heels for the first time.  It's not comfortable to stand up straight. You feel like a siren, and a fraud, and a fool. You feel like a little girl pretending to be a woman. You wobble. You twist your ankle. And now I feel like a woman pretending to be an angel.

A few months ago I was looking at my thighs, five pounds heavier than my summer weight - just like they are every January - and before I remembered to hate them, I thought that they were utter perfection.

Seeing them was like passing a beautiful woman out in public, in the corner of your eye catching her with her head thrown back laughing, and you feel light on your stomach because her joy is contagious. In that split second I forgot to despise myself for being unconventional, for not being worn down, for not being compliant to the communal disgust.

I saw paintings from a hundred years ago, and I saw memories of women in my family from when I was a child, and something deep down in my instincts was smitten with softness and maternity, with a visible tenderness that the bodies of gym rats can never evoke.

I don't mean that critically. I know it's unkind to body shame, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But there is a poetry to every body, and sometimes women hear the opposite message so much - we hear that our only permitted ideal is sinews and angular hardness. The yang of femininity is lauded to the point that we can barely remember that the yin of our kind is also a wonder.

The slow. The soft. The yielding. The the moon. The nighttime. White cotton gowns.  The smell of Noxema and Oil of Olay. A gentle hand on a fevered forehead. A kiss on the eyelids. The smell of pie in the oven.

Ever since I can remember I've wanted to grow a moonlight garden, to fill it with white, fragrant plants, and to set a painted iron bench out among all that magic, angled to a clear view of the stars.

Because while being twenty-four is a hot pink bikini, suntans, loud music, and a tight little backside, being forty-four is my favorite of all, for it is a peony and a Russian lilac under an indigo sky. This latter time is the best of all times, and better times are coming, because fifty and sixty and seventy are the Milky Way, flickers of flame in darkness. Grace in shame.

Those next years make a wide, soft lap to welcome the hurting, and as you grow into them, all the world becomes your offspring. Those next years are the time for laughter,  for warmth, for seeing things through to their ends, and here I am being offered the first strands of that coming glory.

I will try to hate it, I suppose. I will gripe and complain, since propriety demands grief of me in these circumstances. But beneath the mourning clothes, I will also feel giddy, because I am growing silver hair, and silver hair is (above all things) a coronation.

By Andrew Tallon

22,630 days. (Luke 2:36-38)

The story of Anna only takes up four sentences in the book of Luke. However, in that tiny amount of space, one of my favorite characters in the whole Bible is described.

Here's the text:

"And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem."

 

She was married. She was widowed. Then she spent the rest of her life in prayer. It's easy to breeze through that, so let's look at her story a little more deeply.

If Anna got married when she was fifteen and then lived with her husband for seven years, that means she spent sixty-two years fasting and praying day and night.

Through the sharp grief of a young bride, through the disorienting transition into middle age, in all of the thousands of questions that come during a woman's loss of youthful beauty and the onset of senior aches and pains, she stayed in the temple in the posture of trust.

2000 years have passed since Anna walked the earth, but has the essential nature of a woman's heart really changed so much that we cannot imagine what she felt?

As the tight, young skin of the back of her hands developed liver spots, as large veins emerged, and as her knuckles swelled, was she never tempted to despair? Did she never ask, "Have I been a fool to spend my life in expectation?"

Was she never lonely? Did she never see other women living different lives, easier lives, and long for what she could not have?

Yet, she stayed in the temple.

Not only did she pray, but she fasted, a sign that she was actively directing her hunger toward unseen filling. In the cold, aching silences of night, she sought God. In the day-bright monotony, watching worshippers who were just going through the motions, she sought God.

Did cynicism never creep in? Did she never doubt the presence or the character of the Almighty? Yet for 62 years, 22,630 days, "She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day."

It's hard for me to wait on God for a year, for a month, for a week. I throw out my questions and demands and want God to patch them up pronto. I expect an empirical, logical answer. I resent mystery. I resent discomfort.

I grew up in the era of large Christian organizations promising easy marriages, faithful children, strong nations, a theology with every loose end tied up, and large bank accounts for those who simply followed God's plan. A + B = C. Even though I know that's an oversimplification of what Scripture says, some of that entitlement got in my bones.

But Anna spent six decades leaning into a trust that superseded entitlement. She stayed in the humble posture of seeking God for an entire lifetime before she saw the fruit of her search with her own eyes.

We don't use the word "prophetess" much these days, but the Greek word that the Bible uses to describe Anna is the feminine form of a word that describes someone who proclaims the mind and message of God. Sometimes this communication predicts the future, but often there is simply a speaking out of God's voice to a certain people at a certain time.

Thinking about Anna, seeing how she spent so much time chasing what was unseen, seeing how she allowed herself to remain small and thirsty for God's character and company, I am not surprised that she was able to recognize and vocalize Truth when it arrived. What a beautiful woman. What a beautiful life.