My life in a cartoon

Level Six Cleric

For my 500th post, I'd like to share with you another anniversary post that I was just referred to by my friend, Neal.

His friend Jack writes an overview of his previous year as a minister, in his words, "culminating in the declaration that I've 'leveled up' as a cleric." This is one of the world's best Dungeons and Dragons jokes I've ever read.

However, this is where the levity ends. As one reads along, one learns that Jack has encountered turmoil in his ministry and has made a drastic break in his trajectory. Let me quote some of it for you, but it is worth reading the entire thing.

He starts with a very emergent sentence, although he comes out of a Unitarian Universalist tradition, which is a sector that is not very involved in the Emerging movement. Of course, I've been saying all along that it's important to keep track of all folks who are emerging so that we can converge on each other. He says, "I still seem to be a better minister than ever, even as I seem on the verge of giving up religious ministry completely."

Here's something I didn't quite grasp when I set out on this journey as a minister: "religion" used to mean "that which binds." . . . You see, I never really bound myself to anything. Before understanding this meaning of religion, I laughed off my lack of bindings as typical male fear of committment, and spoke of my religion using words like "independance" "freedom" and "choice."

He goes on to describe that as his personal life suffered as all personal lives do: death, divorce, unemployment. His church encouraged him to relieve himself of his church duties to take care of these issues. The tone of his post suggests that although their intent was good, their very act belied that church was not religion and that this wasn't necessarily a good thing.

It was within all this turmoil that I really began to understand my deepest priorities in life. My true religion, if you will--that which I cling to, when all else crumbles around me; the mast I am bound to in the storm. I found there was another word besides religion to fairly describe these core bonds. When I looked for what was most important to me, what I found was family.

I don't just mean blood family, or legal family, but also and foremost those friends who are close enough to be called family. The people to whom I am tied, flesh and soul, and I cannot leave them behind without also leaving part of myself. The people I care about and love.

And I thought, "Eureka! Religion and family really mean nearly the same thing!" And I saw, in scripture and practice, how the familial terms used by religious authority were not mere metaphor or parable, but rather reflected recognition on the part of the leadership that their role was in essence the same as the role pursued by mother, father, brother and sister. They're playing the same game--not to imply that it is mere game--whose goal is nothing less than that which is most important, meaningful and binding in life.

My church is just beginning to talk about how to do membership. At the same time, I've had a conversation with a woman who had an almost identical experience to mine at River City, my old church. She felt like she couldn't get into the in-crowd and that her leadership in the ministry was unwelcome. How do I take that information and help ensure that my new church does not create the same kind of insularity as many of us are in the process of committing to each other as family?

Absent from our church was the patient introspection of priests and rabbis, whose rituals of initiation and advancement help ensure that everyone involved takes the religious bond seriously. Absent was the carefully considered theology that allows us to understand the commitments being made. Instead, we relied on various forms of bait-and-switch, calling people together in the name of religious freedom and independence, then arguing over responsibility and commitment only after they've signed up. These convoluded expectations mostly just created bitterness, burnout and resentment among our volunteers.

It's an easy mistake to make, but ultimately, it just doesn't work. Casual membership leads to casual dissolution when time gets tough; if you want a functional and healthy religious family that can weather life's difficulties, you have to approach membership with all the seriousness and reservation you'd give to any other familial bond. Yet the more you do that, the more you lose the openness and freedom that made our "universalist" institutions particularly worthwhile in the first place. There's always a tradeoff.

How do we continue to welcome new people while acknowledging that some folks have a deeper relationship with one another because of time and deliberate choice?

Jack decides to leave the church to pursue religion with his family. How do we create a new kind of church that is worth being religious within it?

I don't know but I'm glad we're giving it a try.

The Logic of Goodness

I've been having a good week.

I know that it seems every week should be good on this extended summer vacation that I'm having but the truth is, when I spend too much time by myself, I get morose and find the nearest pool of self-pity in which to wallow.

Saturday was another one of those days. I was just puttering around the house, getting only little things done, feeling sorry for myself and rehearsing over and over in my head different ways of telling off this guy who keeps expressing interest in me but doesn't necessarily follow up on his propositions even though I've now given him permission to formally pursue me. Also, I couldn't stop eating. It was like having the literal munchies. I would put the last bite of toast into my mouth, swallow the last bit of orange juice and stand up from the couch while still chewing to go to the kitchen to find myself something else. (Wow, I just typed someONE else. Mr. Freud? Care to chime in?) It wasn't a binge. I was legitimately hungry. But I tried to call my any of my girlfriends that I call in times like these and none were available. I ate every Fourth of July leftover in the house. Ultimately, I took a two and a half hour nap. When I woke up to go to a movie, I wasn't hungry anymore. I did go see Iron Man, which was fantastic. Goodness. Has any movie ever cut to credits better?

However, after dropping my friend off, my car died on Lincoln Avenue in the heart of a yuppie club scene. The group of nearby guys that I asked to help me push it into the loading zone turned out to be drunk, which affected their ability to speak English, as well as their ability to be funny. Then, they were overzealous in their pushing so I couldn't get straight against the curb. Since I was in the loading zone, the valet parking guy came over to tell me i couldn't park there, shaking his head and waving his hands horizontal to the ground to indicate that I couldn't park there even as I was explaining that my car was dead. I finally looked at his and said, "you can gesture like that all night but the car's not going anywhere." Then the bouncer came over and told me that the police were going to hassle me and tow the car to the pound if I didn't get a tow truck there first.

Great. The last two times that I've tried to use Progressive's Roadside Assist, no tow truck ever showed up and I had to resort to alternative help. Plus, it's 1:00 in the morning by this time. So, when I finally got a tow truck, I was so insistent that they come quickly before the police towed me, I forgot to get him to quote a price. The tow truck driver was nice and we had a pleasant conversation for the hour and a half it took to get out to the suburbs and I helped him out by stopping at the ATM to get cash but then he cheated me on the mileage we'd gone and I didn't have the energy to fight with him.

Sunday morning, a friend who had made a date with me to have brunch called to tell me that she had decided to help some friends stain their porch instead, which was the second friend blow-off I've received lately. It doesn't actually bother me all that much but it does baffle me: I have spent a lifetime being a good friend in order to get friends. I would never cancel established plans unless there were an emergency. I certainly wouldn't risk making one friend feel like she was less important to me than another friend. In my psyche, I would worry that the dissed friend wouldn't be my friend anymore because of the slight.

Add this to my bewilderment that even though I try to be the best person I can be to other people (the tow truck driver), I do not necessarily get the favor returned. In my Geez Magazine this month, one of the writers used the phrase "the logic of goodness" in an off-handed way and it perfectly encapsulates my dilemma. What is this impulse in us to be good, when there is no guarantee that the return on the investment will be positive and, if fact, often seems negative.

So, Sunday was kind of a wash, too. Not the pits because I just hung out at my folks' house enjoying the beautiful day on their screen porch and reading a book. Church was good and tasted a little bit like family. Now that I look back on those balms, I think they must have led up to my seemingly impulsive decision to just call Mr. Man to say HI rather than waiting for him to pick up our sporadic email conversation so that I had an opening to sever the relationship. (Since it's informal and friendly, a regular old break-up would be inappropriate and awkward.) We ended up having a great 2-hour conversation that led somewhat naturally into a conversation about this gradual, hesitant inching toward each other that we're doing.

And when I woke up on Monday morning, everything was OK. I mean, it was like the world had more color and someone had greased the gears that had been squealing dully in the background every time I tried to move.

When I went swimming that morning, the 82-year-old ladies ogled my naked body and exclaimed that I must work out every day because I looked so good. (BTW, I'm totally telling everyone every day how old I am once I'm older than 80, too.) Then, the cute check-out guy at Whole Foods liked my t-shirt and flirted with me, talking about zombie movies and Elizabethan theatre. At the Trader Joe's, a toddler came tearing around a corner screeching and the woman next to me said simply, "Oh. A pterodactyl." I laughed and when we heard him again from the next aisle after his mother had corralled him, she explained, "My two have pterodactyls, too." It's good to share non-judgement of mothers with a stranger.

On another day, I would have beaten myself up for forgetting the peanut butter, not getting cash from the check-out and forgetting to mail the Netflix. But I just shrugged my mental shoulders and adjusted.

At church last night, we discussed how we might get folks to transition from greeting each other to beginning the service. In the end, we decided that instead of attempting to manipulate them in some way with music, changing the formal start time or by starting before everyone was quiet, we would just lay the different issues out in front of the larger group and try to do better. Rob said, "That's very much in the nature of Wicker Park Grace."

I love it that the "nature" of my church is one that values relationships more than regulations or hierarchies. Got a problem? Let's talk about it. It is a nature I am trying to cultivate. Practicing it led directly to the unfettered lens through which I engage the world this week. I am free of my self-pity and righteous indignation and can feast on the eccentricities and community that are offered up to me.

Tuesday, I went out for a couple of drinks with a friend I was close to while I was married but have only seen sporadically since the divorce. He's grown in so many ways since when we were close, including falling in love and buying a house. It's amazing to see. It was really nice to just hear him laugh again and to see the world through his perspective for a little while. At one point, he was interpreting something that I said and told me, "Well, you look pretty different than you did when you were married." I thanked him and agreed, "I've lost a lot of weight."

"No," he corrected me. "You have a vibrancy about you now that you didn't have before."

You see, the reward for being the best person you can be is not that other people will treat you well in return. The reward for being the best person you can be is that you get to go through your life as the best person you can be, rather than something less than that.

Pretty good logic, isn't it?

Rent Party: A Skiffle of Sorts

Since my church is not about guilt and obligation, we're trying to figure out new ways to funds our operations than, you know, passing the offering plate. So, we're having a rent party.

July 12th at 8:00pm
at 1741 N. Western Ave.

Phone: 312-399-2081



In the tradition of those who have laid the path before us, Wicker Park Grace will be holding a
Rent Party: A Skiffle of Sorts

Door Fee: $15
(free food and drink!)

Historically, to pay rising rents in neighborhoods that were filing up with people moving north in the Great Migration, folks would ask a few musician friends to play in the living rooms of their apartments, asked a few other friends to make some food and mixed up a little gin in the bathtub.

Charging admission at the door generated cash to pay the rent and a party whose celebratory energy burst from the intimate setting for all comers. Rent parties were a quintessential example of communities of people joining together to work towards mutual benefit.

Wicker Park Grace will carry on this historical tradition on July 12th with an evening of music & art, food & drink, conversation & dance.

Performing will be:

Rob Clearfield & At This Point We Don't Have the Luxury of Silence

Kate Haralson

Dave Spaulding with The Moves

Ira Gamerman w/ songs from the band, Even So

Michael Mc Bride

If you can't come, you can still contribute to the effort here.

d20

Speaking of warriors, princesses and sorceresses. . . I played Dungeons and Dragons this week for the first time in 6 or 7 years.

It was fantastic.

I told the story before about meeting Joshua on the El and inviting myself over to his house to play. I've also told you before about learning to play D&D with my ex-husband and his friends.

So, Monday night, I drove out to Joshua's house, which was a little bungalow that has been entirely given over to gaming. Every wall was covered in D&D maps, white boards or shelves to display miniatures and action figures. Book shelves were everywhere and stuffed with rule books. The most amazing part of the decor was that the giant dining room table had a gingham table cloth that had perfect 1 inch squares so that once the clear plastic sheet was laid over it, it could be written on with overhead markers. So, Joshua could draw the landscape of certain settings if we were going to be fighting and we could put our miniatures in perfectly scaled relationships to each other and to the savage mutant monkeys that were attacking us.

Their roommate is a minor local celebrity. At least, when I tell people that he does the Weird Chicago Tours, my friends say, "Oh yeah!" in recognition. He's kind of cute. I wonder in the fact that he's a professional psychic and ghost hunter puts him out of the running.

The group was Joshua, his wife, Scott and Darrin. All four were, as my dad says, straight out of Central Casting. Darrin was a big bearish oaf of a guy who smiled the whole time. He dropped his giant gym bag full of rule books and jumped in immediately to help me put the finishing touches on my character, laughing at my jokes and enjoying my slightly abrasive retorts. Scott looked a little like Steve Buscemi and had a giant red velvet drawstring pouch to hold all of his paraphenalia.

I loved it. It was like coming home.

I mean, I made my own dice bag for the occasion. If you click on the picture, you'll notice that the bag is lined with flannel to give it the appropriate-looking heft and that it was designed to fit my mechanical pencil, my halfling miniature and the plethora of dice I bought that morning at Gamer's Paradise, having discovered that my ex-husband got ALL the dice in the divorce.

This group plays a little differently than what I am used to. They focus less on storytelling and character development and play it more like a computer game, calculating strategically what choices they should make about the character now so that later, it can increase in levels in the most efficient way. Almost like getting experience points and being the most powerful you could possibly be was like crack. That will make it less fun for me in the long run, but they responded well when I said that I wasn't going to do what they were encouraging me to do because it wasn't in my character's nature.

It feels good to be expanding the foundation of people that I am friendly with. Even if the number of people that feel close enough to be totally myself with remains small, I might soon have a wide enough base of a variety of personalities that I will always have someone availalbe to match the individual facets of myself that I want to be at any given moment. You know, like my nature is a 20-sided die and only one side of it can ever be facing up at one time.

And, as that network is being built, I'll be having fun killing savage mutant monkeys and hearing other nerds like me laugh at my jokes.

Hen, hen

My friend Cliff posted this YouTube video that his friend posted. I actually really like Joe Cocker and love his musical style and ability. However, John Belushi's impersonations entertain me equally. So, for your amusement, here is my friend's friend's send-up.

Warriors, princesses and sorceresses, oh my!

I love costume shops.

In my life, I've been able to see (and sometimes rummage around in) the costume shops at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Cedar Point Amusement Park, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Broadway Costume Rentals and my high school. This is not an impressive list to people in the business. However, to a theatre layman like myself, it's huge.

When I read, I get completely lost in a very visual world that is being described by the words on the page. It's like I act out the scenes in my head, like when you imagine conversations that you wish had gone differently or even when you dream. As I've mentioned this before, this often results in catatonic reading that I don't realize I'm doing until after I snap out of it. Like Professor Godbole says, "But how, if there is such an event, can it be remembered afterwards? How can it be expressed in anything but itself? Not only from the unbeliever are the mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them. He may think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls under the rules of time." Occasionally, when I come out of the ecstatic state, I have a deep desire to maintain and continue the experience in some way. Like keeping the balloon suspended in the air with light taps. When I was younger, this impulse took the form of wanting to surround myself in the clothing that the characters wore, especially characters in novels where the heroines wore medieval-style outfits. Bodices, mutiple skirts, cloaks, peasant blouses. I wanted these things. Have you ever seen Labyrinth? I hadn't then, but if I had, I would have been eternally jealous of Sarah.

More often than not, the impulse would fade and I would forget my desires until I had another literary episode and then the longing would begin again. But since I had very few sewing skills and no money to spend on expensive costumes ($100 - gasp), I did without.

Imagine my delight when I entered high school and got access to my first costume closet. It was a giant collection of fanciful clothing that included just about every outfit that I had ever imagined myself wearing while immersed in a book. When it was left unlocked, I stole away to stroke the textures and to explore the construction with inquisitive fingers while holding pieces up to myself in front of the mirror.

Costume shops are important because each piece takes hours (10 to 40) to construct and a fair amount of cash for materials, not to mention somewhat advanced crafting skills. Average people just don't have the resources to devote to making costumes that theaters do. We have, you know, jobs and families and household chores. But for costumers, it IS their job to create these things.

I just recently returned from a trip to Miami to visit my friend Camilla, who is cut from almost the exact same cloth that I am, and who moved to Miami to be the costume director for the Florida Grand Opera. She has three degrees in either fashion or costume design and is amazing. We met while we worked at the Renaissance Faire and she designed and made my wedding dress. Since the season is over for the summer, she's the only employee there and she let me wander around while she got some work done.

When I enter a costume shop, I'm overwhelmed by the combination of industrial decor and the casualness with which these individual objects of my intense desires are simply smooshed together on the rack.

For instance, upon walking up to this rack labeled "cloaks and capes," I'm first just struck dumb. Do you know how badly I wanted a cloak? I made a purple cotton one for my friend Dan for our Junior Honors Medievalfest but I still have the yards and yards of forest green wool that I bought for my own but never had the courage to actually cut. Ultimately, I found a basic one at a thrift store for $18 and actually got to wear it on the 6 cool days I experienced during 5 years working at the Faire.

But Camilla's shop has dozens of all colors and styles. How could I not love this one?Can you picture the dramatic entrance I could make in it, pulling back the hood to reveal a tumble of raven hair belying my female status to an inn that assumed the rough-and-tumble adventurer must be a man?

Occasionally, I have pretty-girl fantasies and so buckets of parasols catch my fancy, as well.Must preserve my alabaster skin, you know.

Costume shops are also fun because most have been around for decades. Since pieces can be used again and again for different productions in new combinations, when you look at a wall of belts, you'll find antique purple velvet belts and pouches sharing the same space as newer plain brown belts. Notice that the purple is faded on the side that faces out compared to the lining.

To survive this long, older pieces have to have been well-constructed and that care and diligence is reflected in the little details. Look at the needlework on this one.Even the more modern pieces have amazing details that no one in the audience will ever appreciate. It just looks like a big blur to them but if it were missing, the costumes would look flat. Less like clothing and more like Halloween, which would pull their focus away from the experience.This dress has layers and layers of small shapes appliqued individually to create the gauzy magical look.

Another delight of costume shops for me is that people that work there tend to have similar aesthetic sensibilities to mine. Actually, of the three colleagues that Camilla got a chance to introduce to me, two assumed that I was "in the business." In bewilderment I asked her what made them think that. She said I just looked like someone who would be.

Lots of costume people love vintage stylings and details that make objects special in addition to being utilitarian. Although the wig staff could have easily just bought a standard barbershop chair. Instead, someone found and paid for this beautiful antique chair. Look at it! It even still has the attached ash tray for when the whole world walked around in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
You push the button to open the hatch that lets the ashes drop into the compartment below. It just makes me grin with delight that such a beautiful piece of furniture still gets used.

Camilla has one hard and fast rule in the costume shop. Apparently, this is a really hard concept for many of the singers to get. Luckily, she has the ability to send them home and not to pay them for the fitting if they disobey. She has stories about sticking her hand down the top of the back of someone's pants in order to pin the seam only to receive the nasty shock of her skin coming into contact with a man's sweaty, hairy butt. Apparently, he thought the sign didn't apply to him.

So, when I turned a corner and saw this shot framed in front of me, I had to take a picture and title it "Butts."

A companion to that shot is called, "Heads."

Thank you for being my friend, Camilla. Thank you also for letting me fall deep down inside my imagination, where I am a warrior. And a princess. And a sorceress.

Come Thou fount of every blessing

Being single is hard.

Right now, I'm not say that for the reasons you might expect. I've stopped worrying that my eggs are getting old, as Anne Lamott says, "like the eggs you get at 7-11" and I can live without cuddling and intimacy and someone to talk about my day with on a regular basis. I can also live without having an automatic date for the wedding and being included in my friends' "couple nights."

But I'm having trouble living without someone who fucks with my shit. I'm having trouble living without someone who needs to forgive me and does. I'm having trouble living without someone who thinks I'm funny and annoying and sexy and slovenly and needy and a blessing and who wants to hang out with me most of the time despite those contradictions. I miss having someone I can get angry at who will stick around until we both feel better. I miss having someone who rests his head on my chest and lets me stroke his hair while he cries in the safety of my arms and the dark.

I've been reading Debbie Blue's book From Stone to Living Word. It's blowing my head off. She is able to lay out the logical narrative ending the journey at truth I believe intuitively and so can't explain.

She writes that the Garden of Eden was about humans convincing themselves that to be god-like is to be independent heroes. She points out that so many of the heroes we admire are shown to be weakened when they attach themselves to other people. Look at the Jedi Knights and Spiderman, she says. But the reality is that God actually gave up being alone in order to attach himself to humans. I think we can all agree that God gets to be the ultimate role model for humans, right? And She does this both at Creation and again by taking on the form of Jesus. God invited the mess that is relationship as the ultimate state of perfection. It was good.

But we don't like chaos. We hate that the sea can wash over us in a tsunami and the rain can alluvasudden dry up or that mothers die of cancer. We want order and rules. We want experiences that we can hold in our hands, analyze and understand completely. Even if these rituals, rules and explanations don't actually keep destruction and hunger at bay. Anything that assures us that life is not a mess - just like a relationship - is an idol, according to Debbie Blue. Because life is a relationship between us and God. God keeps insisting on it. No matter how often we walk away from the truth that we cannot exist unless God wants us to, no matter how much we want to believe that the highest position to aspire to is as a lone-wolf tycoon, God insists on fucking with our shit and forgives us and thinks we're funny and annoying and sexy and slovenly and needy and a blessing and wants to hang out with us most of the time despite those contradictions. She writes:

It would be revelatory to recognize that somewhere we believe (or if not quite believe, then act in ways that suggest we believe) that it might be good to be alone - not just part of, but better than, bigger than, more important than. Not one with but removed from, set apart from, somehow transcending the masses. I think this story [the apple] in Genesis might help us see that somewhere, consciously or unconsciously, we question the goodness of our relatedness all the time.

I agree with Blue wholeheartedly both regarding the superior state of being in relationship with all of its mess and that we tend toward aloneness by default. "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love." I think Laura Kalpakian says it similarly in Steps and Exes but gives it a feminist twist:

Only men think it’s so romantic to go it alone. Look at you – you’re off with your boat – you and no other. Man against the sea! Why do men think you can only be a hero by yourself? Man against Nature! Man against Society! Why don’t men ever acknowledge that keeping something together can be just as heroic as being all alone? Men are always against something. Why can’t they be for something? [. . .] I’m not committed to universals. I’m for very modest, particular things. An ordinary life. Watching my daughter grow up. Making a home for us. A living. Nothing very grand or ambitious.

Kalpakian resonates as well as Blue does for me because my experience with men is the same as her character's.

I have been thinking about the ex-boyfriends that I am beginning to stack up in my backyard like firewood since the divorce. Although one or two of them didn't work simply because of a lack of chemistry, the majority of them didn't work because the guys wanted to date me but didn't want to be my boyfriend. They didn't want to get their lives all mixed up in mine.

Jeffrey was the exception when I lived on the island. Tom noted once that Jeffrey and I had such distinct shared mannerisms that it was hard to imagine us as individuals.

I miss that. I don't really know how to find it again. From either God or a man. I have some guesses but my batting average is pretty low.

Being single is hard.

Welcoming and affirming

Yesterday, I marched in the gay pride parade with my church. My friend Rachel posted some background to the organization that we were marching with.

It was an interesting experience both for what it taught me about myself and what it taught me about the gay community.

You see, I would generally see myself as worldly when it comes to exposure to gay rights and gay issues. I have honest-to-goodness gay friends, I've always believed that people were born that way so I've never really fallen for the "it's an abomination" line. By the time I started thinking about the issue, I was already thinking about translations of the Bible as a means of preservation for the social order so "the Bible says it's wrong" can be argued against a hundred different ways, in my book. I've never let my students use "gay" as an insult and actually converted some over to believing that's harmful, rather than simply obeying the authority figure. I worked at the Renaissance Faire for five years and witnessed all manner of after-hours flamboyance. Hell, Susan made me watch Priscilla when I was 17 years old and I loved it.

But for some reason, I was overwhelmed when confronted with so much flamboyance when I arrived at the parade site. Beautiful drag queens, fantastic costumes, glitter all over bodies, young and old. But there were also men in just their underwear and a pair of boots or women naked from the waist up except for stickers on their nipples.

I'm a fan of public nudity. I've had some great experiences on the island, learning that nudity is not always equivalent to sex but it sometimes simply an expression of the friendship intimacy you feel or hope to feel with other people. It says, "I'm comfortable that you won't judge me for how funny I look without any of my clothing supports that put my parts in the right places." Because everyone looks ungainly hauling themselves out of a hot tub. Everyone looks goofy naked because of all that unchoreographed motion. Being naked in the bright sunlight or even the dim light of the sauna is really not very sexy at all if it is devoid of sexual context.

But when I encountered public nudity at the gay pride parade, I found myself tucking my attention inside the safe sphere of my feet and my chest. I felt nervous and didn't want to make eye contact with anyone. Plus, it seemed a little gauche to look. I found my group but since I didn't know anyone, I leaned against a building and waited for a familiar face. I was overwhelmed but also moved powerfully and fought back tears at the huge show of support for people that have been so oppressed. It's so different when you are actually there in person. It's amazing that so many people can love so many other people all at one time.

But when talking with Nanette to give her directions, I found myself addressing her as Pastor Nanette, which I've never done before. As if her position of authority would protect me.

Because it wasn't just public nudity. It was public sex. Of course, not all of the parade is like this. A lot of it is just like every other parade that I've been to. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've ended up making out with a strange guy in a bar by the end of some South Side Irish parades, so it's not like I expect parades to be chaste. But this was often explicit. A woman wearing only her skimpy underwear and a strap-on. Lots of spanking, bumping, grinding, and bondage.

I suppose that for centuries, gay people have been told that they are deviant. So, to empower oneself, one flaunts everything that society considers deviant to eliminate the internal shame that has been impressed into one's soul. By going tot he extreme, what should be normal no longer feels extreme anymore.

While I was in Miami, I wore all my new sundresses. One is very low cut and several are strapless. Camilla exclaimed that I looked like the woman that she and Ruth (my boss at the Faire) always knew I could be but never was while I was married to Dennis. They used to marvel at how reserved and pure I seemed to be. (of course, this is part of why I was so successful at selling to little girls.) But my ex-husband wanted me to be sweet and innocent and so I was. As I've grown up since then, dated men who actually expressed an attraction to me and learned that I possess power because of their attraction, I wear outfits that are more and more revealing. I'm fairly certain that I stay within the bounds of appropriateness and good taste but my newfound power gets expressed to the world through the decisions I make about what to wear.

I suppose that some of the people in the parade are expressing their power by displaying sex in addition to sexuality.

As the parade went on, my nervousness faded. This was helped by the vodka lemonade that was offered to me out of a 5-gallon office-style water cooler when the parade was stalled because of an injury. Also, once we got started again, my group reached the main drag and I began observing the responses people had to a group of 50 Christians marching and handing out buttons that said, "God loves all of us." People would call out. "I'm a Lutheran!" or "I like churches!" When we would stop briefly, we were almost always engaged in conversation immediately by someone in the crowd, asking somewhat incredulously about our church.

What caused me to tear up if I thought too long about it as I marched was the sheer number of people that made eye contact with me and said, "Thank you." I must have heard it 40 or 50 times over the course of the parade.

Can you imagine what it is like to come out of the closet? I'm certain that every person who has was approached by at least one Christian who felt it was his or her duty to inform the person that homosexuality was a sin or that the person was broken or that the person was going to hell.

Whatever the context, those words hurt.

And I'm sure that plenty of queer people have heard much worse.

So, when a bunch of self-proclaimed Christians marched amidst the latex and the whips and the feather boas to say that God loves all of us, they said "Thank you."

Wicker Park Grace is what's called a "welcoming and affirming" church, which means that we believe that God gave all of us the mental and spiritual faculties to determine her will for our lives. Many of us do not believe homosexuality is a sin. Those of us who do are working too hard getting the plank out of our own eyes to worry about the speck in someone else's.

I am grateful to the people who came out to the parade, including my friend Amanda from school and my friend Monique (who saved me from a spanking of my own) ;-), because they mirrored back to me my own value in this world. In Genesis, God says to Abraham, "I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make you famous; you'll be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you; those who curse you I'll curse. All the families of the Earth will be blessed through you." The result of God's blessing is that Abraham must turn around and be a blessing to "all the families of the Earth." He is not allowed to keep it to himself.

I have been blessed by being allowed to bless others. They thanked me for that blessing but I wish that I could have thanked them without seeming trite for allowing me express the power that I have because I am trying to learn to love everyone, just like God commands both Abraham and me.

Spirituality of Imperfection

I just spent 2 and a half hours over very good dinner with Ernie Kurtz, the author of one of the most important books in my life.

It was a wonderful experience: the platonic ideal of dinner conversations. Dr. Kurtz is about 70 years old with a smooth pale gnome face with spectacular eyebrows. He apologized that the heat kept him from wearing a tie but his seersucker jacket showed signs of yellowish foxing at the collar. I was utterly charmed. He's more soft-spoken than I expected him to be but not in a frail way. We talked about ideas and the world, asking questions and listening to answers that required life stories to be complete.

I have a feeling that conversations like this can only really be had amongst students and combinations of the young and the old. Students obviously have a maelstrom of abstract thoughts that need to be spoken out loud to gain shape. The young and the old are at such different stages of life that gossip about the personal details and immediate experiences of birth and death don't get exchanged easily if both participants are of equal footing. If one is ministering to the other (in the literal definition of attending to the wants and needs of others) this doesn't happen as often.

But Dr. Kurtz and I met in an egalitarian space. He had sent me an email after I wrote about his book and asked to meet me when he was in town. I was delighted to be noticed probably as much as he was tickled to be quoted.

So we talked about sin and shame and how those words have fallen away from their true meanings. We talked about emerging Christianity and if it can be sustained in the same way that AA has: decentralization. We talked about getting churches more like AA meetings. We talked about stigma and how it is sometimes necessary to keep a group cohesive. He said "sin is . . ." and I can't remember the rest of the sentence but it was subversive and unexpected and I'm sure I'll wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how I could of forgotten. Or else the concept will become part of my regular worldview and I'll be hard-pressed to remember a time when I wasn't aware of that particular truth. We talked about Judaism and its broadness that can encompass so many different expressions of spirituality. We talked about how the early feminist movement couldn't let women become themselves fully because our society equate strength with power. Therefore, they could not admit any vulnerability for fear of losing the power they were trying to gain. Now that they've had some power for awhile, the rules have changed a little and they can start to admit vulnerability. Because shared vulnerability is what it is all about. The ultimate truth is the acknowledgment that there is something not-right about all of us. We talked about how we can eliminate consumerism without destroying capitalism. He told me that the wisdom of his years brought him to the conclusion that materialism is the ultimate evil; the thing that keeps us from God. He asked me how metaphor influenced my faith.

I read in People magazine once a quote from a celebrity who was asked to describe the best part of an evening and she said. "Who can say which drop was the most enjoyable of a good, hot shower?" I feel that way about my evening. I am so lucky to have gotten to spend this time with someone of such wisdom, acuity and curiosity and to watch his face as he turned over things that I said or asked and generated a newborn thought in response.

When I am sad that I do not have a group of friends to form a daily family to support me and to rely upon me, I remember that what I do have are opportunities again and again to have one-on-one dinners with intelligent, empathetic people and that those social events need space so it's OK that they are not regular occurrences.

I am blessed.

Splash!

Vacations are supposed to be more fun than this.

Of course, I mean, this moment. Right now.

My vacation hasn't felt like this the whole time.

But right now, it sucks.

I have this rash that comes to haunt me every once in awhile. One doctor has told me it is impetigo. Another said it wasn't. Both agreed on a cream that tends to keep it from spreading too far but that shouldn't be worn out into the sun. The rash doesn't seem to be contagious but it does itch.

And it only lives on my face.

So, I have an itchy, puffy, bumpy red face since this time the cream didn't really seem to be very effective. I've had this face for the 4 days of this summer that have been particularly cool, sunny and beautiful. Also, I'm very tired. It's been a full week since my last final and I'm still sleeping 11 hours a night and taking anywhere from 2 to 5 hour naps. So, aside from brief forays out into the world, I have been sitting in my apartment, trying to ignore the blue sky that peeks in through the venetian blinds while I lie in bed because I don't actually want to do anything except try to stop my whole face from burning and itching just by willing it so.

I have things to say to you all. I promise I'll be back. But not today. Today, I'm going to get enjoyment out of this vacation, regardless of my face.

I'm going to read a book. It's going to have fairies and elves and dragons in it. I will forget all about my gross face while I live in Jane Yolen's world for a little while.

Do you know why I know this is possible?

Last Wednesday, I was reading my first novel since I started school last August. It had a 15-year-old female protagonist, fairies and dwarves and it was set in a Renaissance Faire that had obviously been informed by the Faire I worked at for 5 years. It was a joyful experience. Like jumping into a lake on a hot day. The transition from uncomfortable to soothed was immediate and absolute. I got on the El to go home from a meeting, sat down, noticed the guy sitting next to me looked at my legs, the opened my book. I didn't notice the world again until I was a stop and a half away from mine and as I savored the state of ecstasy I had recently been in, I looked around. Francis Spufford calls this state "reading catatonically." Proof of the depth of my immersion came when I realized that the man who had looked at my legs was my favorite kind of nerd: portly, pasty and making Dungeons and Dragons characters on the entire trip! How did I miss that? So, for the 2 minutes I had, I engaged him in conversation. Since he was wearing a wedding ring and has shown himself to be a person of similar tastes to mine, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was catching a glimpse of the title of my book when I first sat down. In the course of our conversation, he was incredulous that I would be interested and then as he began to trust me, I wrangled an invitation to play with his group sometime. Woohoo!

So I get to read my books AND I get to play D&D.

I'll be back to write some more. But right now, I'm jumping off the edge back into the water.

Flowers and rice

On Tuesday night, a friend told me about her friend who was breaking up with her boyfriend of 10 years. My heart hurts a little for the woman because she has to tell people that she broke up with her boyfriend. Like any other 16-year-old girl who casually broke the heart of some pimply boy and called a new one in a week. The reality is that this woman is divorcing her partner. 10 years? That's a common-law marriage. But we don't use the language of "common-law" anymore so unless this woman wants to dredge up details to every schmoe off the street, she is doomed to miscommunicate her situation and won't get the appropriate response from misinformed people in response.

She has no heuristic that communicates rightly the spectrum of emotions she might be feeling at any given moment. If she could say that she was going through a divorce, people would say they were sorry and what could they do and would adjust their interpretations of her behavior accordingly. Probably in a more generous and forgiving way. But since she has to say that she is in the middle of a bad break-up, people say they're sorry, might ask what they can do and adjust their interpretations of her behavior in a way that expects her to pretty much function the way she always has since it's just a boyfriend, right?

Divorce is crazy-making. I remember looking up at the girl who was ringing up my purchase and realizing that she was staring at me oddly. Though I tried as hard as I could, I could not remember what I had said or done to elicit such a look, but I also couldn't remember what else I was doing in the previous two minutes so I have no doubt I said something really weird. For the two years after my divorce, I overreacted to small conflicts, cried very easily, talked endlessly about the very minute details of the proceedings and personal injustices and yelled at far too many people who didn't deserve it.

But they forgave me, often before I knew that I needed forgiving, because I was recovering from a divorce.

Would they have let me streamroll them quite as often if I were just breaking up with my boyfriend?

At a BBQ this past weekend, someone asked me what was the strangest ritual in my brother's Hindu wedding ceremony. Honestly, none of them were. Human nature is apparently so universal that everything made sense. Their hands were tied together. They walked around a fire. They fed each other something sweet. Vows of fidelity were exchanged. They threw grains for future prosperity. They gave each other flower garlands that symbolized their hearts. I was a little afraid before the wedding that I wouldn't feel like they were really married since the ritual wouldn't be familiar. But that never became an issue.Is there any doubt in your mind that these two people have just committed to spend their lives together, supporting each other when life is good and when life is really really hard?

Because a community of people witnessed this ceremony and agreed with it, there is no doubt that they are married, regardless of culture. Everyone that was there believes it. What's more, everyone who hears about the event from those witnesses believes that my brother and Meena are married. The people that hear about the event from the people that heard about the event from the people that were there will believe that my Daniel and his wife constitute a family. As an extension of this community, the government requires that institutions and organizations provide certain benefits to spouses.

Marriage is about communities. We create these elaborate and ultimately simple symbolic gestures so that the truth is indelibly written in our very visual memories. The truth is that these two people have a specific kind of relationship that has deeply spiritual consequences. The relationship is greater than the sum of its parts and what fills that gap between what it is and what it is made up of is a total mystery.

So, when something happens to a marriage - divorce, illness or death - because we, as a community, have witnessed its beginning, we can grieve its ending. We have a frame of reference for what the survivors of the tragedy might possibly be feeling. Armed with this social knowledge, we are more inclined to forgive and be generous. Our government recognizes this loss by requiring the enforcement of the original contract in the form of survivor's benefits and kin rights. If someone has just broken up with a boyfriend, we do not feel such a great loss because we do not quite believe that the relationship ever had a spiritual element to begin with. No one in the community has witnessed it.

I believe in marriage. I believe in marriage for all people, whether they love people of the opposite sex or people of the same sex. I think that when we encourage long-term committed relationships to exist without a community/governmental blessing, we are actually threatening the institution of marriage because as a society we begin to believe that there is no difference between being married and living together.

But the difference is that one couple's marriage is integrated in community and the other's isn't. Other people in the community will be able to love the individual members of the couple more fully and appropriately if they are accurately aware of the actual status of the relationship and the best way to do this is a marriage ceremony and contract, whether officiated at City Hall with two friends, a judge and a clerk for witnesses or whether in a temple with 200 people throwing flower petals.

Practice

Sometimes a lifetime of preparation is necessary for just one sentence.

I started singing in choirs when I was 3 and was in at least 1 and sometimes as many as 3 until I was 20. I was a lead in the school play in the 3rd grade. In junior high, I played in the handbell choir and performed in The Orb of Khaladar, which was the 8th grade play, the same year that I won Chorister of Year Award. In high school, I joined the forensic speech team, practiced multiple times every week and competed every Saturday for 6 months of the year. Over the course of four years, I won over 20 tournaments in my events and advanced to compete at the State level in Dramatic Duet Acting both my junior and senior year. Also during high school, I began taking voice lessons and sang several solos in all of my choirs. I played Hodel in the production of Fiddler on the Roof my sophomore year and played one of only two female leads in Camelot my senior year. In college, I tried my hand at an improv in a Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind style production and took my first formal Speech class. I also participated in my one and only experiment in community theatre as part of the cast of Godspell. As an adult, I began to coach forensic speech with a fair amount of success for my students. I continue to sing in choirs when I get the time and I'm often picked to present group work at conferences and classes.

As a writer, I also started young, reading and writing short stories and poetry throughout school and majoring in English in college. I taught high school English for five years, which taught me the mechanics of good writing by having to analyse and guide editing of horrendous adolescent hack and slash emotive chicken scratch. I've written this blog for four years to a fair amount of positive feedback for my ability to communicate poignant emotions and experiences using words.
All of this is to say that I'm fairly poised, comfortable and articulate when I get up in front of a group of people.
When I was asked to stand up and give a toast for my baby brother's wedding, I thought about the years that we have spent together as partners against the world. I have no memory of life without him and countless memories of the comfort he has offered as the person who knows me better than even my parents do since he has spent a life kicking me when we used to have to share a hotel bed, fighting with me because there were no other kids on the block, complaining with me when my dad insisted that we should all play tennis at noon in August because, "the courts will be empty!", defending me to other kids in high school behind my back when my insecurity made me a bitch, helping me move from place to place as an adult, offering to rough up my ex-husband, driving me to my adventure on Orcas Island and every other possible experience two siblings can have with one another.
But, his bride is beautiful and a good friend and she makes him this happy:

So I raised my glass and said simply, "I am 20 months older than my brother and he has been my best friend for my entire life but I am so pleased to be able to give him to Meena so that he can be her best friend for the rest of her life."

Sometimes a lifetime of preparation is necessary for just one sentence.

Now I've seen everything

OK, this is weird and delightful and just a little bit gross. I'm totally fascinated. Isabella Rosselini has done a series of short films called Green Porno and you can watch it here. She acts outs the actual mating rituals of various bugs dressed in strange costumes and narrating. I particularly like the "bee" one. As an example, she says with a very straight face, "I have many sisters and I communicate with the by dancing: I tell them where the flowers are." Then, acting out the male bee, she deadpans in her sultry Italian accent, "I would fly after her. I would mate her in flight. It is our nuptial flight. But pulling out from her, my penis would break off!"

It is totally worth seeing for yourself.

And He never said a mumblin' word

My church prays in Spanish even when none of our Spanish-speaking members are there. Sometimes we sing one of the Taize vespers in Spanish. Often, that doesn’t work very well. People start mumbling. They are confused by having to use the line of text further away from the notes than the English words and they are uncomfortable with having to form their mouths around syllables that don’t mean anything to them. Our Spanish-speakers members aren’t our strongest singers so the mumbling drowns out the people that are pleading with God - for once corporately - in the language of their hearts and childhoods and families.

But we keep doing it as part of our liturgy. We do it even when no one is there who benefits from a familiar language other than English. We do it because we benefit as a community. We benefit as a community because it makes us into a welcoming community and a welcoming community is a community that is more aligned with the plan God has for us than a community that stays within its comfort zone, which is really just water that is rapidly becoming stagnant.

A dominant aspect of the Evangelical movement that swept through our country for the last 30 years was something called a “homogenous church growth strategy.” Basically, pastors recognized that if they wanted their churches to grow (for whatever reason), like attracts like. No pastor would say that different people didn’t need Jesus, just that all people would be happier with Jesus if they worshipped alongside people who were similar to them in culture, language and socio-economic status. In our country, those three characteristics added together equate to race. So, the white Evangelical movement grew by making itself attractive to other white people. The music sounded like Top 40 pop songs. The liturgy was a familiar blend of 30ish-minute sermon, music and corporate prayers. The food served at Fellowship hour and at events was comfortably suburban. The energy was calm, reserved, and professional. The dress was casual but not too casual. Since these were all trappings of a lifestyle that white people were already comfortable with, churches gained new members who almost always happened to be white.

The emergent movement is about identifying church traditions that were formed during the Modern era and replacing them with practices that are more appropriate to the Post-modern era that we are currently living in.

I think we’ve done a good job as a movement. We’re re-examining doctrine. We’re reframing the requirements to be part of the club. We’re flattening our hierarchies.

But, as a movement, we have not yet replaced the homogenous church growth strategy with a new paradigm.

On Thursday, I met with Professor Soong-Chan Rah at North Park University. He’s been fairly critical of the emergent movement on this issue and I think he’s right. We had a good and somewhat casual introductory conversation and then he said something that made me reach into my bag and take out my notebook. He said:

The emergent church feels like a perpetuation of white privilege and that has to be the first thing to go.

He cited that overwhelmingly white pastors and writers get media attention and book contracts when churches that are doing the exact same work but that are led by non-white pastors get ignored. He didn’t need to tell me that my own church is an exception in the movement for being willing to be messy, uncomfortable and awkward by moving out of our comfort zone to make worship something that appeals to more than just white people: to mumble in our attempts to be a welcoming community. Any study done of churches that claim to be emergent are going to show that they’re over 90% white. My own experience of trying to start a conversation with over 80 cohort leaders and over 300 local folks by sending out an email, asking them to read and comment on my first post regarding race and the emergent movement got no response. Not one comment. I put the less effort soliciting comments on the quilt I made and got 8 responses. No response?

I know what people say in response: we’re a movement that grows through attraction, not prosyletization. But who is it we’re trying to attract when we make decisions about our practices? Usually, it’s people who already like what we like. For instance, the ancient futures movement goes back into history to find relevant practices today. But whose history? Are we plumbing the depths of Coptic traditions, a definitively African form of Christianity? Professor Rah has found evidence to support the opposite.

Other people will say that they can’t control who the publishers give contracts to. But that’s the white privilege talking; thinking inside the box. Why not say to publishers, “I’m flattered that you want me to write this book. Do you mind if I co-author it with my non-white colleague who knows just as much about the topic?” or “I will write this book for you if you also give a contract to my non-white colleague,” or “You know what? I’m flattered but my non-white colleague knows more about this than I do.” Foot-washing is not just something that is done with a hand-towel and a basin.

My church hasn’t gotten it right yet. When we focus a discussion on immigration issues, attendance goes down and, I’ll admit it, I’m part of that problem. But, as a movement, we cannot be afraid that our attendance will decrease. The Kingdom of God is multi-cultural. The Post-modern world is multi-cultural.

If our churches are not multi-cultural, then they are neither reflective of the Kingdom of God nor Post-modern.

We cannot simply wait for non-white folks to come to us. They would only be tokens if we did. We must go out and get them, welcome them, and let them change the agenda so that it more accurately reflects the concerns of the entire Post-modern Kingdom of God, not just the white post-Evangelical, post-Christendom, post-colonial folks. Alternately, we should consider going to them, submitting to their leadership and learning about emergence from folks that have arguably been in the midst of it longer than the white folks have.

Professor Rah pointed out that the emergent movement still has hope that it will not be left behind in a stagnant pool of its own homogeneity because our conversations and writings pay lip service to pluralism. We have the foundational support to change our paradigm if we’re willing to mumble a little.

But are we?