Time is on God's side

The past few days, I've been thinking about the passage time, both in my own life and in the greater society.

Once again, states across our country are debating and voting on gay marriage. For those of us who support gay marriage, the news from North Carolina and Colorado is sobering. There is hope for the future, however. In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center shares some statistics about support for gay marriage (2012). Kohut notes that support for gay marriage has grown from only 31% in 2004 to 47-50% today (2012). When asked by NPR's Inskeep if "it's unusual to have that big a change on that kind of issue in a relatively short period of time?" Kohut responds:

Yes. On abortion there is no change. You can go back 25 years and you'll still see the same numbers we see today. What's happened here are two things. One is generational replacement. Younger people, who have joined the electorate, came of age accepting gay marriage, and 63 percent majority of those people currently favor.  And we also see people of all ages changing their minds a little bit, even the oldest people. But the big difference is that people under 35 are now more dominant than they were two cycles ago. (2012, emphasis mine)

It seems that time is on the side of gay marriage supporters; unfortunately, we need patience as we wait for "generational replacement" to complete. Eventually, those of us who are of Generation X will replace the Baby Boomers as society's elders. No doubt there will be some other issue we (the Gen Xers) oppose that our children will support, and generational replacement will play out again. Hopefully, as we saw with the civil rights movement (as the Baby Boomers replaced the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation), the wait will not be long. To quote from Martin Luther King Jr's March 25, 1965 speech in which he answers how long it will take for the laws and attitudes of the United States to change: "Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" (as cited in Howe, 2009).

Arc of justice?
Image: Sky with rainbow by Jon Sullivan

How amazing that in our short lives, we can see "the arc of the moral universe. . .bend[ing]."  When we're in the middle of the fight, it seems long. In terms of the history of Earth and of human life on Earth (let's call this "God time"), it's not long at all.

Which brings me to my own life and current struggles. As I shared in my post, "I'm not dead yet," one of my children is going through a difficult time. In my own life, I've learned to turn to God (or at least I've learned I can turn to God--as this blog shows, I often forget to do the actual turning). My husband and I have shared with her how we pray to God for help, but she doesn't seem to take in the message.

I want so badly for her to feel comfortable using prayer for help--and I don't mean Help, as though prayer will "cure" her of her problems; rather, I mean short-term help, the comfort of reminding yourself that you're not alone and that this huge, barely know-able force loves you, no matter what your problems.

I want her to feel better now, today, this minute. I want her to know, as a young child, how to do what took me 25 years to learn. I don't want this to take God's time. Unfortunately, that's what it takes. Maybe, with her father and me trying to teach her now, she won't take 25 years to learn how to turn to God for help and comfort. It's unreasonable, though, to expect her to learn in one day, or one week, or even, I think, one year.

I took the above picture on Mother's Day, at York Long Sands (York, ME). When we arrived, somewhere between mid- and late afternoon, the tide had turned and was reclaiming the beach. As the tide pushed our tide-pool poking towards the upper end of the sand, we came upon a grouping of water-worn boulders. Erosion had formed a small gorge in one of the boulders; when the waves crashed, the force pushed water up the boulder and then the gorge funneled the water over the side. In that short moment between the wave's crash and its recession back to the sea, we witnessed an ocean waterfall. The sound of the crash, the push of the water, the forcing of the water into the gorge and over the side, to fall on the lower bolder; all of this happened again and again as we watched.

It occurred to me that it must have been just this action, over years (hundreds? more?) that wore out a thread of weak minerals in the taller boulder, creating the gorge.  Here was the powerful process that had created the grand canyon, playing out beneath our shadows and toes. What a humble reminder of God's time. When given enough time, the forces of nature erode stone; the collective consciousness of a society grows inclusive; the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. What's the process of learning how to pray when compared to all of that?


References

Howe, A. (2009, January 19). The arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice. Salon. Retrieved from http://open.salon.com/blog/arthur_howe/2009/01/18/the_arc_of_the_universe_is_long_but_it_bends_towards_justice

Inskeep, S. (Interviewer) & Kohut, A. (Interviewee). (2012). Pew Poll: More Americans Support Gay Marriage [Interview transcript]. Retrieved from NPR Web site: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/11/152480805/pew-poll-more-americans-support-gay-marriage



God thoughts on a good day

Allow me to set the mood with a little music: It's a Beautiful Morning  (Go ahead and let that play in the background while you read today's post.)

As I posted in late April (Ernowrimo and the anchor of prayer), I had great plans for May. A month off from teaching! The kids still in school! Lots of quiet, alone time to work on my book!  May was going to be Erica Novel Writing Month! It seems, however, that God had other plans for me; to quote the title of Julia Sweeny's memoir, "God said, Ha!"

In my most recent post, I'm not dead yet, I wrote about finding acceptance in the midst of a family crisis. I have no doubt that if I'd not come to accept the current problem affecting our lives, I would not be feeling quite so cheerful this morning.

The rainy week has passed into a sunny Saturday, leaving behind thick grass (and weeds!), trees nearly in full leaf, and my bleeding hearts, pansies, and creeping phlox in full bloom. 

Now that I have some calm and perspective about everything, I can see that under the flow of anxiety over my child, there was a smaller current of disappointment and frustration. I was supposed to be writing, darn it! I wasn't supposed to spend all of my "free," non-teaching time scrambling to find resources. May was supposed to be about my novel and making good progress on it before my next set of workshops and the start of the kids' summer vacation.

This morning, this very good morning, my mind clears as does the sky. Having May off wasn't about having time to write; it was about having time to mother when my child most needed me. I could be completely present for her and not have to hold any emotional energy in reserve for my students. What a gift! I know some amazing parents who work full time and manage serious issues for their children. I tip my hat to them. I know they are simply doing what needs to be done and if faced with full time work and a family issue I would as well. I'm beyond lucky that my child's crisis happened during my free time. Such serendipity! How can I rail against my lack of writing time when that time is spent, instead, being with my child?

Today is a good day. Yes, the sun is shining and the sweet smell of cut grass pleases me as I type, but the best part of today is my heart beating steady with acceptance, feeling gratitude for what is instead of frustration at what isn't.

Now, please excuse me as I end this post. I think I'll follow the Rascal's advice and go outside to take in some clean, fresh air. I'm already smiling.

I'm not dead yet! (A treatise on acceptance)

Wool Cart Replica

As is often the case, my title is both a reference to my current state of mind and a nod to popular culture. Bonus points to anyone who recognizes the movie quote (and bonus bonus points for those who say it with a British accent).
For those scratching their heads in confusion, check out:
"I don't want to go on the cart!"

It's been a week since my last post. As my title reassures, I'm not dead. At first, my silence was because I had to recuperate. It's been many years since grad school (and even more since college) and my last post, Fleeing the sheep rustlers, felt very much like writing a critical response. Frankly, it was kind of exhausting to my out-of-shape English-major brain.

This exhaustion only counted for a couple of days last week; sadly, the rest of my silence has been because I've been focused on a crisis with one of my children.  I don't want to provide details that would compromise her privacy and, anyway, the details do not really matter. What matters, in terms of this blog, is that I have been praying but it was only when I turned to prayers away from her and onto myself that things fell into place for me.

I was caught off guard by how quickly things escalated that the only words and thoughts I could pull together in prayer were "God, help her" or "God, help us." Slowly, I began to expand on what I needed help with, "God, please give me patience. Please help me know how to help her."

Then, the other night in bed, it came to me (and this was, perhaps, God helping me by giving me a nudge toward this insight). While it's horrible upsetting to see your child struggle, it wasn't only my sadness over her struggle that had me feeling all mixed up and confused inside. What was making my life difficult was my own struggle against the problem. I wanted to skip this part of our lives and go back to the ways things were before. I didn't want to deal with any of it (in fact, my Facebook status on the 3rd was "I do not want to deal with today"). I was stuck because I had not yet accepted the situation for what it was.

Just as we should not confuse humility with humiliation, so should we take care to see acceptance for what it is. Acceptance is not resignation or surrender; accepting a situation does not mean we have to like it (certainly it's much easier to accept situations that we do like!). Rather, acceptance is stillness. We stop railing against what we do not like. Instead of tantruming, internally, about the hardship, we relax into it. We roll up our sleeves with quiet determination and prepare to live fully, even in the midst of crisis. This quiet, determined "fight" is much different than the flailing, internal tantrum we have before we find acceptance.

I'm reminded of an incident early in my relationship with my husband. He was washing dishes and trying to balance a fry pan on the pile of dishes in the dish rack.

The pan kept sliding off the pile. In his frustration, he threw the pan on the floor, breaking the handle. (Yes, he's quite embarrassed about this.) 

Why does this remind me about acceptance? When I'm struggling against the realities of my life, I'm like my husband with the pan. I want unexpected problems to balance nicely on top of the rest of my life. I want to set them out to dry, with minimal effort. Of course, like the pan, they do not balance nicely. They slide off repeatedly, reminding me again and again of their existence. Without acceptance, I become frustrated and risk tossing them to the ground, where they break and cause yet more problems.

To carry this analogy further, acceptance is when I accept the problem/pan's inability to balance. Instead of repeatedly setting it, precariously, on top of the other drying dishes, I pause and survey the dish rack. Could I move this plate forward and fit the pan behind it? Could I finish drying the first batch by hand, thereby freeing the dish rack for the pan? Could I set out a towel and leave the pan to dry flat on the counter?  In order to problem solve, I need to accept the situation as it is: the dish rack is full and the pan does not fit.

Thanks to this epiphany, I was able to pause my racing thoughts and heart and center myself. My daughter has a problem that will not balance nicely on top of our existing lives. Now that I've accepted it, things feel better. Life with this problem does not feel easy, and I am not happy that she has to deal with this in her young life (it seems quite unfair). However, things feels manageable. My husband and I have not only marshalled support and help, we've allowed her to see us doing it (what a great lesson for her! We're showing her how to find and accept help).  Thank you, God, for the gift of acceptance.

Rock Balance by David Sky

Fleeing the sheep rustlers

I've been thinking about body image lately, not in a personal, "how do I look?" way, but in the context of understanding my body's function and appearance in spiritual terms. My pondering began earlier this month while reading a poignant entry (Poodle Head and other body issues) in my friend, M's, blog.

I recognized my 3rd-grade self in M's post (only it was my chubbiness, rather than a poodle-head hair cut, drawing negative attention to me). I also recognized my current self, a mother of a 9 year old, 3rd-grade girl. Like M, I want to "raise a girl who feels good about herself" and, like M:

I ask myself every day how I am going to do that for her. The bumbling answer is often to be a good role model: to fight, accept, ignore, and change the world when those things are called for. (M, 2012)

Chubby by magnetbox

In a follow-up post, Poodle-Head, redux, M. shares a less bumbling, more specific answer. To raise a child "who feels good about herself," we need to "make our bodies a worship of the world. . .[not] an enemy to be broken but a thing to be honored in every way" (M, 2012).



We need to, M writes, make a ritual of seeing the good in our bodies:

In silence

In the music of physical movement

In recognizing its boundaries and limits

In pushing them (scraped knees ARE an essential worship of this body)

In taking in what's good (food? ideas? emotions?) and being willing to let go of what's not. (M, 2012)

Poodle-Head, redux energized me, as a parent. I shared the post on Facebook, imploring my Facebook friends, "Can we PLEASE all do this?" I went to bed, thinking about the next day and how I would honor my body, and model that honoring for my children (take them on a nature walk?).  If you, dear reader, have read any of my previous entries in this blog, you will not be surprised to learn that morning's arrival signaled the end of my enthusiasm and by the end of the week, I still had not taken that nature walk with my girls.  This does not mean that I no longer felt concerned about fostering a positive body image in my daughters. Just as I want to write my novel but lack follow-through and focus, so do I lack follow-through and focus in this area of my life, as well.

Why? What makes it so hard to do the things in life we not only think or know we should do, but those things we even want to do?

Sunday brought me some insight. My pastor, Reverend Michael Lowry, spoke on John 10: 1-10. For those unfamiliar with this passage or the bible (or those, like me, who may recognize stories but not have any idea of their chapter and verse), John 10 is one of Jesus' famous parables, in which he likens his followers to sheep and himself as the shepherd, and even the gatekeeper of said sheep.

Lambs by Jon Sullivan

Reverend Michael built his sermon, "One True Voice," around Jesus' statement that the sheep know the voice of their gatekeeper but do not know the voices of thieves and bandits who wish to steal them. Luckily for me, Reverend Michael posted a copy of his sermon on his blog, so I can quote him directly instead of trying to remember his exact words.  Reverend Michael explains:

Jesus is not really talking about the risks of shepherding; rather about the risk to our lives that arise from the fake and hollow voices that seek to call us away from good and right pathways. Jesus does say that the sheep won’t listen because they know the voice of their gatekeeper, who is Jesus himself, who came “so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of,” as The Message translates it. Which is a beautiful assurance – and yet, you and I know that the sheep rustlers of this world are many, and oftentimes it becomes very difficult for us to know which voice is that of God in Christ and which is not.

Truth be told, some of those competing voices are enticing indeed – they emanate from our need for connectedness; for popularity; for security in life and living; the desire for wealth and power; sometimes it comes out of the warped view our modern culture has of what makes someone attractive or desirable or of value. (Lowry, 2012, bold emphasis mine)

As M noted in her blog, this is what we--parents like M, and me, and perhaps you, reader--are up against. These voices are everywhere, spoken from television screen and screaming from magazine cover and advertisement and even whispered by our own neighbors ("Mom, why does their lawn look nicer than ours? Why can't we drive a car like that?") Touching on this idea of how values permeate our daily living, Reverend Michael quotes theologian Debra Brazzel. In speaking about "'the casual decisions that we make which over time give expression to our values and shape the character of our lives,'” Brazzel says:

What kind of relationships we have; how we spend our time; what kind of work we do; how we spend our money; …how we get involved in our community; how we treat other people; what we keep and what we give away; how we worship; how we play. . .we are faced with choices about how we will live. And taken together, these decisions reflect who we are and the values we hold most dear. (Brazzel, as cited in Lowry, 2012)

M was on to something, wasn't she? When we make the decision to appreciate our bodies in all things, we are best able to "reflect. . .the values we hold most dear" (Brazzel, as cited in Lowry, 2012).

So how does this all tie in to PUSHing through life? I don't know about you, but I find all of those competing voices very distracting. They've been speaking to me since I was old enough to hear them, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting. They were speaking to me before I was old enough (and wise enough) to see them as what they are: rustlers and thieves "only there to steal and kill and destroy" me (John 10:10, The Message).  Just because I'm now savvy enough to recognize them (usually!) does not mean I've been able to erase 30+ years of the sway they've had over me. These voices distract me from the things--the good things, like nature walks--I want to do.

The answer for me, once again, comes back to maintaining my spiritual center and I do this through prayer. I've also been making time, the past week or so, to do some form of meditation. I take to heart the old saying, "Prayer is when we talk to God; meditation is when we listen." I find I'm most centered and serene when I incorporate both practices into my life. Quiet meditation is very important because, as Reverend Michael notes in his "One True Voice" sermon:

It’s not that God isn’t loud enough for us to hear; rather it’s that we’ve become too loud to listen to God! Maybe this all comes down to getting out of the noise of our lives long enough that we might actually be able to pay attention to the presence of God and hear his voice. (Lowry, 2012)

The more I pray and meditate, the better I become at recognizing the gatekeeper's voice in the midst of life's noise. I'm able to become like the sheep in Jesus' parable: refusing to "follow a stranger's voice. . .because [I am not] used to the sound of it" (John 10:5, The Message). When I'm present, spiritually, and fleeing from those voices, I do a much better job of helping my daughters see themselves as "a reflection of all the beauty, all the joy, all the awesomeness (and I DO mean AWE-someness) of the world" (M, 2012).

As my children grow I not only want them to discern God's voice in the midst of all the other voices in this world, but also to have that instinct I've lacked, that of the sheep who know to flee from the strangers' voices. The louder my actions reflect God's voice, the more strange and wrong those other voices (the school bully's, the advertiser's, the young friend already talking about calories) will seem to them.


References

Lowry, M. (2012, April 29). One True Voice [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://pastoralponderings.wordpress.com/

M. (2012, April 19). Poodle Head and other body image issues [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://nowletmetellyousomething.blogspot.com/

M. (2012, April 24). Poodle-Head, redux [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://nowletmetellyousomething.blogspot.com/