Pomelos

As part of a recent theme of communication, I had to say this in regards to an incident last night, "I'm sorry that I yelled at you because you couldn't give me good directions for where to find the pomelos in the fridge."

It's ridiculous. I know. I hadn't had a hard day. I was really happy to be moving around the kitchen with him. I like my life right now. And yet. "I'm sorry that I yelled at you because you couldn't give me good directions for where to find the pomelos in the fridge."

Here is where I am just about the luckiest girl on the planet. I just received this email:

Time's Orphan

I was just watching an episode of Start Trek: Deep Space Nine with Jacob and it made me blubber a little.

We find ourselves fighting about weird things:

Rebecca: So I was really excited about the way my boss corrected me the other day because that's a good sign for the future.
Jacob: Really? What happened?
Rebecca Well, we were on a conference call and I was getting frustrated with the people on the other end. It showed on my face so he signaled me to back off and then . . .
Jacob: Wait, can you hold on? I've got something in my eye.
Rebecca: waiting quietly
Jacob: OK, it's out. Can you rewind because I didn't hear much?
Rebecca: You alright? Well, we were on a conference call and I was getting frustrated with the people on the other end. It showed on my face so he signaled . . .
Jacob: Wait, who were you talking to?
Rebecca: suddenly annoyed It doesn't matter who we were talking to! The story is about my relationship with my boss!
Jacob: Well, I was just asking because I thought I missed it when I was digging in my eye!
Rebecca: You didn't miss anything! You asked me to rewind and so I rewound! Why would you think I didn't do what you asked?

We also find ourselves talking a lot about big relationship sustainability things like investments and sex and careers. These conversations are really hard. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes I pout even though a little voice inside me exhorts me to stop pouting. Sometimes we walk away angry and come back calmer. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes we feel bad.

We are taking solace in something my friend who has been married twenty years told me after I wrote this: "I think the first year of marriage was the hardest." I'm not sure why that is so comforting but it is for us.

We laugh a lot and cuddle a lot and pinch each other's butts a lot and when I read this article on bonding to him this morning, we agreed that we were already doing a lot of the actions on the list. So, sometimes it is mystifying when we stumble into these other, harder conversations. That's when my friend's words comfort us.

On DS9 today, Myles and Keiko thought they lost their daughter forever in the space-time continuum (we're dorks). Jacob and I both watched with wet eyes and afterwards, we commented that it makes us think about how awful life can be sometimes. There are going to be terrible things that we have to live through. It's goofy and corny but it felt good to say to each other that we'll face the ravages of the space-time continuum together.

So this first year of marriage where the turmoil is generated internally is just something we have to do so that when the turmoil comes at us from outside sources, we'll be tighter to each other so that we won't get torn apart. If most other couples have this same experience, then it's just something we have to do, too. I think we can be OK with that.

Paradoxy

Once again, I find myself working in an entirely evangelical Christian setting. I am not evangelical and have, in fact, spent the last several years of my life finding myself in situations where evangelicalism has been the foil to my spiritual development. The biggest difference between myself and most evangelicals is the way we view religion. I see religion as a lens that I use to view the world. When religion is right for a person, the world comes into focus. It makes sense. Because I view religion as a lens, I can believe that someone who believes differently than I do can still be right. Just like prescription optics, different people need different lenses because of genetics or life experiences. My interactions with evangelical people lead me to believe that they think Christianity is a universal lens; that is, everyone else thinks they are seeing clearly but are simply deluding themselves and once they find Jesus, they will see clearly. I believe evangelical people come to this belief as legitimately as I come to mine. Every one that I know has an experience in their life where their experience of God came in the form of Jesus and was a clarifying epiphany for them.

I've spent the last several years healing from the wounds that these folks have caused (generally well-meaning ones) and through the help of my church community and the emergent movement I have found my theological place in this world from which to engage evangelicals in safety.

But I keep being sort of gob-smacked by them.

At work last week, one of my colleagues that I had just met was talking to his intern about a potential family who were willing to take a child into their home while the parents dealt with a crisis. "They're Jewish but they're actually a really nice family."

So, that's a start. But then he kept going in a tone of incredulity, "They're so warm and generous, you would think they would be Christian but they're not."

I said nothing. What would be the point? He would bluster and apologize and then keep his bigotry under wraps in the future.

However, I did start filling out my application to become a certified home and clearly wrote our Jewish affiliations on the forms. Since he does all the certification, I knew he would read it eventually.

Sure enough, he apologized on Monday morning. I acted like I didn't know what he was talking about because we still don't know each other very well so talking about it wouldn't do much good.

I told this story to friends on Tuesday night and one asked if I really believed that if I waited until we knew each other better it would make a difference. I told him a story from college.

I went to a small liberal arts college in central Illinois. Almost everyone there grew up in rural or suburban Midwest settings and, in 1995, had very little known interaction with homosexual people. This meant that most folks were just a little (a sometimes a lot) bigoted in that area.

It seemed like a third of the campus had been recruited by one admissions counselor who was revered and admired by those kids and by their friends once they got to campus and saw how cool he was. He was beautiful, athletic, came from the same background we did, had been in one of the fraternities on campus when he was a student and had been known to have a drink or two with students as if that were normal.

Then, he came out of the closet.

The entire campus had to examine how they felt like homosexuality. They had to say to themselves, "I feel this way about gays. I feel this totally opposite way about Jerry." Then, they shrugged and decided that they still liked him and if he was gay, then probably other homosexuals were OK, too. I probably lived on one the most gay-friendly campuses of the mid-90s. One year, Norm McDonald was hired to come and do stand-up for us and opened with a gay joke. No one laughed. He was visibly thrown and tried again with another. Again, we just didn't think it was funny. After that, he never really captured us as an audience and I actually got up in the middle because it was so boring.

So, I do believe that being liked by someone before you confront them with their bigotry makes a difference.

My office won't even know what hit them by the time I'm through lovingly demonstrating that even someone unequally yoked can be earnestly following the teachings of Jesus and even have a undeniable personal relationship with the man.

I just finished reading The Ladies Auxiliary and although the actual writing is only average, I found myself swept up in the consternation of a tightly-knit Orthodox community having their sense of what defined a member of the community challenged. The characters were perfectly round. No one was entirely evil or entirely righteous. I could sympathize with all of them, even the matriarch of the community who insisted that you could make your children into what you wanted them to be. If you couldn't, then her whole life of meticulous religious practice that connected her with generations past was a waste.

Still, the community had to come to terms with the fact that although their children still chose Judaism and even Orthodox Judaism, many of them were choosing to do so in different parts of the country. Judaism's gain was the mothers' loss.

I am so thankful that my parents love me first and love their desire to replicate themselves eighteenth or nineteenth in the grand scheme of things. If they had been evangelical in their theology, I don't know that we would be as close as we are.

On Sunday, Jacob and I spent the day at their house, quietly and in front of a warm fire. They have an old farmhouse so the wood-burning fireplace actually warms the room. I was able to leave him there without awkwardness while I went to an event for work. They all read and napped on their separate couches while I was gone.

A few weeks ago, we stopped by a friend's house to drop off a quiche and coo at their 2-day-old baby. It was a little chaotic as her father-in-law, husband, and newly 3-year-old son were heading out to Chucky Cheese to celebrate the toddler's birthday, leaving her and her mother-in-law alone for the afternoon. After we left, I talked with Jacob about how we have a long way to go until I would be comfortable in that scenario. Exhausted from childbirth, overwhelmed with my status as mother-of-two and also needing to be gracious by making space for my mother-in-law's insecurity - which usually leads to an intense desire to be helpful - that often results in the opposite result. He agreed that being left alone with her in that state would be difficult for me but we also discussed our hope that over time, as we love her, she might grow less insecure and it will get better.

It seems to be one of my callings in life is to get into relationships with objectionable people while having hopes of softening their well-meaning, self-defensive stone hearts a little. I'm humbled by the task because it is so difficult to do it well and not be caught in the trap of believing that my way is better. Paradoxy. Holding two truths in tension and acting on both. I'm up for the challenge.

Hospitality

Last Monday, I walked into my office that is only large enough to house three desks, some file cabinets and a few car seats. Inside there were two babies, a bio mom, two case coaches and our Licensing and Authorization Specialist. The writing that I was planning on doing wasn’t going to be even close to possible during the next two hours. Even if all temporary residents were totally quiet so I could concentrate, one of the case coaches needed my computer to find a placement.

So, I scrapped my plans and picked up a baby and spent some time getting to know her.

For those of you that are just getting to know me, I recently got a graduate degree in Public Policy and this is my first full week at my new job. We have a pretty fast deadline coming up to outline some pretty radical new plans for growth and I have been working to apply all of the discipline and work ethic that I developed while getting my degree to this new project that I’m working on. There was definitely a moment of panic for me when I walked into my office on Monday.

But I work hard to live a life that can be picked up and redirected by God whenever necessary. I try not to get too attached to my own goals and plans so that my life can be dedicated more easily to the needs of others. I accomplish this with varying success. But, I picked up little 3-month-old Alma and listened to her for awhile.

I had tea with the Social Justice Pastor at a large affluent church yesterday who completely believes in the mission of my organization that finds volunteer families to care for children while their parents are resolving crises like homelessness, addiction and joblessness. As a single woman, she has taken a pregnant teenager into her home for 6 months and has been completely transformed by the experience. She is spreading the movement amongst her church as a means of spiritual development and I’m trying to learn from their experiences how I can better develop a network of organizations who do as well as they have to implement the programs. She said to me, “There is something disarming about a child.”

Last week, the other of the two babies was in my office again and since she was only 2 weeks old, I held her in my lap as I typed. I talked to her often and talked a little bit to myself, as well. I looked at her at one point and remarked, “You know, Jesus was a baby once, too.” It seemed so incredible to me as I held that tiny little girl who breathed so shallowly that I had to hold my cheek near her nose to be sure that there was actually life in her that God could have been a baby. The next time you hold a tiny newborn, you think about it. This could be God?

But the pastor I had tea with was right. There is something disarming about a child. Jesus said that whenever we clothe the naked or feed the hungry or visit someone in prison, we are clothing and feeding and visiting him. But something in the way society has shaped us makes it easy to reject Jesus when he is represented by homeless people and terminally unemployed people and incarcerated people. We so often play the role of the wealthy young ruler who walks away from Jesus sadly because he cannot sell everything and follow.

But there is something disarming about a child. The relationship walls society forces us to put up come tumbling down when a toddler asks us a question. “What are you doing?” becomes an invitation rather than the intrusion it would be if a strange adult asked the same question. The best defense is a good offense and the habits of our interactions with strangers keep us protected from harm and discomfort. We avoid eye contact and stay polite but distant. We try hard to project a confident air so that no one takes advantage of our vulnerability. All of these are arms we take up to protect ourselves and those we love. But children are disarming and Jesus was a child. Jesus was also homeless and unemployed and in prison but so many of us find it easier to follow the teachings of Jesus by caring for him when Jesus is represented by a child. There is nothing wrong with this. Putting down our weapons and working towards peace, toward shalom, is good and worthwhile regardless of our motivation for disarmament.

We are better Christians when we do it. We are better people, too.

I make a lot of my decisions based on whether or not I want to live with the person I will become once I make that decision. I find that I want to live with myself more when I take care of Jesus when he represented by people in need, including children.

Jacob and I are considering whether we would be able to take in people in need (or even people who will pay rent). We both value intentional community but I’ll admit, I hesitate on starting right now. I am really nervous that if we disrupt this time of newlywed intimacy, we’ll be damaging the foundation that we build the rest of our lives upon.

I know the counter-arguments: lots of successful couples (including my parents) start their married lives in community with other people, in fact, it might be healthy not to get in the habit of coddling our relationship. But we all know there is a fine line between giving something space to grow and helping it grow by exposing it to adversity. Metaphors abound and I won’t repeat most of them here but, you know, birds need time to fledge so that their wings become strong enough to support them.

I do think the counter-arguments are valid arguments but the reality is that in my gut, I’m nervous about moving out of this stage and into another too quickly. It’s hard to ignore that kind of visceral communication. You know, when my soul speaks to my brain through my guts? I know that often that feeling is just cowardice but sometimes that gut instinct is absolutely right.

I don’t know how we’ll resolve this. There is definitely need out there for our spare room. I don’t mind the inconvenience of sharing a shower. I do fear the opportunity cost of the time Jacob and I use right now to examine - through self-reflection and conversation - our interactions with one another. I am not a very good partner sometimes: I make selfish choices that support my own comfort level rather than making space for Jacob to feel comfortable on a daily basis. I fear that if we bring new people into our home, these choices will become habit because I will be distracted from looking too hard at them.

I’m going to try to trust that our commitment and love for one another will push us to do good things for a relationship whatever context we find ourselves in. I wish I felt as good as that sounds. It feels a little bit better to say that I will trust that if I like myself better for following the teachings of Jesus, then I will be a better partner. It's no dis to my relationship with Jacob; I've just had more practice with things turning out well when I trust Jesus. 30some years is a whole lot more than 1.5 years. I'll get there, though. Jacob is definitely worth it.

Motivations and aspirations

This picture is so awesomely bad that I needed to share it with you.We are at the home of Jacob's extended family for a 90th birthday party on the day after Thanksgiving. It was actually a very lovely party because it was pretty much just a laid-back day for everyone to hang out in this giant house and at some point there was a cake and singing. I dig that vibe.

However, I was still pretty sick and I was on the emotional defensive because these were all pretty much strangers and Thanksgiving the day before had been a little prickly (I admit that my expectation that Thanksgiving would be hard probably contributed to the weirdness.)

I am glad that Jacob also looks tired and maybe a little angry. Then, the picture is not a reflection of my conflicted insides but of the fact that we were listening to a story and so our faces are just slack.

Aren't pictures like these just so interesting? I am amazed when the face I see in the mirror is not the face I see in pictures. My face is so pale and my nose is so long. My hair is much longer than I remember it being. The big crease under my eyes makes me look so much older than I think I look.

Pictures like this remind me of the giant gap between how I think the world sees me and the way the world actually does see me much of the time. I have 32 years of experience knowing my most intimate motivations and aspirations to color my self-image. The world only has light and shapes and observed actions and possibly a history of talking about my motivations and aspirations with words. Words are such paltry replacements for the complexity of how motivations and aspirations feel on the inside. So ephemeral and powerful at the same time. So apparent and so hidden. Words. Not enough.

But how else do we get to know each other? Yesterday, I spent the day with several people who actually implement the programs that I am replicating by designing a framework for other organizations to implement. Up to this point, I have spent most of my time listening to the founder, who is a really effective vision-caster. I am inspired daily by him. By the reality of every social service organization is that on-the-ground service delivery is often chaotic and messy both because people are involved and people never fit into a organizational model perfectly AND there is frequently a gap between the vision of the founder that requires constant fund-raising to maintain and the amount of time and effort the founder can spend on setting up infrastructure. This is very normal and I was expecting that my high-flying delight at being given the opportunity to change the world would be brought down eventually by the reality of how hard it will be to scale up when I have no control over how stable the foundation is. This is good thing. Remember what happened to Icarus when he flew too high?

So, I spent the day being very deliberate about the words that I chose to communicate my motivations and aspirations. I spent the day listening very carefully to the motivations and aspirations that my co-workers were expressing through the words they did and didn't say. I want to know the complexity of the institutional and interpersonal dynamics of my program before I go out and tell other people they should take it on as a means to better help the under-resourced folks that they love.

It was a hard day. I was exhausted by the end. But like almost every experience that I've had at work up to this point, I feel like I have the life experience that enables me to live up to the challenge. How often does that happen in life? How often do we feel like we are in exactly the right place at exactly the right time because all of our life experiences to date are useful in some way to the experience at hand?

I feel pretty lucky to be here. Lucky. And tired.

Quote of the day

Seriously? Seriously? This rocks.

In raising the status of wife to one of presumed equality, lesbian marriages have the potential to improve the status of women in straight union as well. Freed from being a term inextricably linked to “husband,” “wife” can take on new meanings. Once we accept the possibility of “wife an wife,” the whole system of opposite-and-unequal terms gets thrown out of whack. Instead of falling into preordained roles of husband as king of his castle and wife as “trouble and strife,” individuals can explore innovative ways to express relatedness.

- Audrey Bilger, “Wife Support,” Bitch Magazine, Winter 2009

If this is what gay marriage does for my marriage than I want it even more. On the flip side, when conservative groups claim that gay marriage will destroy marriage as we know it, is this what they mean? Is this what they are afraid of?

A new year sounds like the unlocking of a door.

On the radio a couple of days ago, an NPR commentator summed up the last decade and it was the first time that I actually paid attention to any of the decade-in-review-stuff because I finally made the connection that this decade that we just finished up exactly parallels my first decade as an adult grown-up person. In 1999, I graduated from college, got married and got my first job. Since then, I've been on tour with a theatrical production, become a fairly decent high school teacher, gotten a divorce, got fired from a job I loved, lived on an island, broke my addiction to shopping, built myself a supportive community, developed my storytelling skills by dating some really different men, gotten a Master's Degree, built a fairly gigantic craft supply collection and become a little bit of an artist in the process, gotten married to a man who will help me become everything God wants me to be, and have taken a job that may very well be my niche in the world for years to come.

When I look back on all of that, there are two fairly powerful things that I have experienced that can't be summed up in perky little phrases that pass the parallel structure test in grammar class.

The first is that my relationship with my family has become something that's pretty amazing. We have gotten to a point where we can say to one another, "That thing hurt me," and, most of the time we can get the response, "I'm sorry." Generally, the conversations put us through the wringer emotionally because both of us have to examine ourselves and look at what is ugly in there out loud and using words. But the ultimate apologies (since once we pull apart the situation, it's pretty clear that both of us need to apologize) are not as important as how much better we understand one another. And this repetition of positive conflict resolution just makes home safer and safer as the years go by. How many people can say that? I feel astoundingly lucky. When I say that Jacob has become family, it is this dynamic that I am referring to and I am lucky to have found him, as well.

The second powerful thing is this new person I have become in the last decade. I look back at the woman I was in 1999 and she was sparky and intelligent and passionate and so very, very innocent. She felt like the oldest woman alive but was completely uncomprehending of how the world actually worked and the affect she had on other people. She hurt a lot and was hurt a lot. But she had the space to discover and think and sit down with caring people over tea or dinner and tell them stories and listen to their stories. And so she emerged from the tunnel of her own experience.

I can only imagine that when I look back on 2009, the wide open space around me that I experience now will be a relative tunnel to the place I am when I'm 42. It is a beautiful prospect.

I have recorded only a few New Years on this blog (2006, 2007, and 2009) but I am struck by how tumultuous the first two feel and how much hope is contained in last year's. I am grateful for the progression and, although I know that life is cyclical and I will go back to the tumult, it will be different and there will be hope again also. This decade, it was about finding my place in the world. What will next decade's be? I'm ready to put down roots and stretch out my branches and learn what the weather is like by experiencing it rather than just speculating about it.

Welcome 2010. Let's hold hands and push the door open together, shall we?

Charter for Compassion

I learned from one of my favorite bloggers, Baraka, that the Charter for Compassion has become a reality. It was the wish expressed by Karen Armstrong when she was selected as a TED Prize Winner:

I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principles of universal justice and respect.

I remember reading about the process in a fantastic post written by my friend Mike two years ago.

The Charter for Compassion was unveiled on November 12th and is available for all to sign and affirm, online and in their lives. I have signed it because it resonates so much with my spiritual practice that seeks justice and compassion (to feel with) on both a systemic level and a personal level (the second is harder than the first, for me).

In Mike's post, he writes about immigration but his words are applicable to foster care or education or any number of societal ills that are perpetuated by institutions. He writes:

Would you say "Well the law's the law," or would you say "Laws can change, and this one needs to, because justice and compassion ought never to be opposed to one another"?

I think Karen Armstrong says something similar when she writes:

"I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.”

It seems to me she is saying that whatever unseen thing into which we put our faith is important to each of us as fuel for our spirit but what we do with that energy is even more important. And no one would claim that we are called to act selfishly when we experience these intimations of holiness and sacredness.

I am excited to see that one of the paragraphs of the Charter addresses our participation in systems of injustice like sweatshops and harmful farming techniques.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

This is the area where I am working the hardest on a personal level, committing to buying organic and fair-trade food(chocolate is a recent tough addition to the list) and buying all of my clothing second-hand or from scrupulous vendors. I will think about how I can live more deeply in accordance with this Charter, which I think accurately describes what God wants for my life.

Please learn more about the Charter below and here and then consider spreading the word to your networks.

Viscious cycle of poverty

When I used to teach high school kids in under-resourced settings, I used to marvel at the stupids mistakes they made. Not on their papers (who hasn't put a stray apostrophe down?) but in their behavior. It was so easy to catch them in their mischief. Sometimes I thought they were doing it to screw with me but the shock on their faces that they didn't get away with whatever petty trouble was palpable. They really didn't expect to be caught. This dynamic was confirmed when they would tell me stories of how unfair the world is to them. So often, their ire was aimed at some consequence that they could have easily avoided.

Today, I found this summary of research here. The first part of the post discusses that people in poverty get caught in the Tyranny of the Moment because there are so many fires to be put out, they can only think of the "now" in order to survive. This completely squelches any ability that they have to plan for the future.

Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, a holocaust survivor who studied the impact of the holocaust and war on children realized that:

If individuals cannot plan, they cannot predict.
If they cannot predict, then they cannot identify cause and effect.
If they cannot identify cause and effect, they cannot identify consequence.
If they cannot identify consequence, they cannot control impulsivity.
If they cannot control impulsivity, they have an inclination toward criminal behavior.

Can you see how the stress of daily life affects how people in poverty act, feel and view the world? What other things can you see being affected by the stresses of daily survival without stable resources?

One of the challenges that the folks encounter at work is that resourced families who take in children of under-resourced parents feel angry that the parents have let the situation get to such an awful place. This kind of research helps them understand where the guest families are coming from.

Christmas tradtions

I recently wrote out the Christmas itinerary when I invited Jacob's brother and sister-in-law and I thought I'd share it with you. I love Christmas.

We typically head out to Mom and Dad's house on Christmas Eve, hang out, eat a bunch of stuff that is casually set out on the kitchen counter and often involves cheese and/or cookies. We go to church, which has candles and whispered jokes. Then, there is dinner. Did I mention dinner? We all head off to bed eventually and wake up whenever we feel like it in the morning. Coffee is consumed and eventually we all wander into the living room where there is a blazing fire. We open some presents, make fun of my dad, open some more presents and then take a break to eat breakfast. My mom traditionally makes a casserole that involves stupendous amounts of eggs, cream and cheese. There is often bacon, as well. Then, we open whatever presents are left and do a short Advent candle-lighting service. After that, lounging in front of the fire is the order of the day unless we rouse ourselves to go see that new Sherlock Holmes movie, or something equally inane and full of violence (one year my mom really wanted to go see Bad Santa).

Merry Christmas, folks!

New job

My first day at work was wonderful. It felt a little like plopping down on the couch. Some of that may be because a few folks are away for Christmas so it’s a little quieter but still, since my office is located in a residential facility for foster kids, I hear them giggling in the hallway quite often and felt so comfortable that I was able to express my delight about the atmosphere to my boss. His response was to roll his chair over to the door and shout, “Hey Davey, comere!” He likes that atmosphere, too.

My office has a soothing and modern paint job but smells a little like farts and old coffee. One of the file cabinets is covered in signs that read, “File at your own risk!” and “Open one drawer at a time!” There are also several sizes of car seats.

I have already been identified as a mark to my colleagues. I think I gave too much away when I talked about my excitement regarding my brother’s child about to be born and my love for babies in general. A few hours later, the social worker who does placements and the head of the program were agreeing that some Friday there will be a baby that needs a place to stay for the weekend and I’ll be helpless. They’ll load me up with equipment and diapers from the store room and that will be that.

A mark.

They see me as a mark.

When I told this story to my husband, while also protesting that I wouldn’t ever actually do it, he said very quietly, “It would probably be OK every once in a while.” I love that man.

I must admit, it’s hard to sit in the office all day and listen to the social worker call around to find a placement from December 23-27 for a quiet teenaged mom of a 3-month-old who is succeeding at getting her life together while she’s living with her current family, who are going away for Christmas. I think, “How hard could that be to take out to the suburbs with us for the holiday? My family would be cool with it? Only monsters would not be.”

This is why I’m a mark.

While thinking about t this girl on the bus this morning, my eyes started to tear a little. This job might break my heart but I think it also has great potential to mend it again and to stitch up the world a little while it’s at it. Because I’m pretty sure that someone will take her in. We have 500 families in the local database who have volunteered to be available for just these kinds of phone calls. How cool is that?

It’s nice to know I’m not the only mark - the only fool for Jesus - out there.

What story are you telling?

So, Meg continues to provoke lots of good thoughts in me. Go read this post about how important the stories are that we tell ourselves. She writes about how so many people in their lives tell them that the choices that they are making (marriage, kids, etc) only lead to boredom and drudgery.

I have to say that this is not my experience and I am grateful for it. When I got engaged this time, I myself felt a little like it wasn't really a big deal. People get married all the time. People get divorced all the time. People live together and it's just like getting married. Gay people can't even get married, for heaven's sake. We're just going to do this thing and get on with our lives.

There might have been just a little bit of self-protection there. You know, if I don't get my hopes up, they can't be crushed again?

But again and again, people acted like it was a big deal. They would get so excited on my behalf. They would ask questions not just about the wedding but about the relationship. They offered amazingly grand gestures of help and really meant it.

Marriage is still sacred in our culture. Why else fight so hard for the right to marry or to retain the definition of marriage that you yourself got married within? If you need further proof, talk to couples that have parties after getting married privately and compare their guest list with couples who wait to get married at the big event. People will plunk down the cash for a plane ticket for a wedding in a way that not all of them will for just a party.

The act of promising scary things for the rest of life is something people want to support and participate in. I was blown away by how even the most jaded and cynical of my friends melted a little when we talked about being married.

My family was recently at a wake where we saw a childhood friend who has now been married for a few years. My younger brother, whose first child is due in April, asked, "So, when are you going to have kids?" He's a 30-year-old guy who waits tables and has come to terms with the fact that he'll never be a rock star but that he can continue to collect novelty wrestling t-shirts. In other words, totally cool and full of sage wisdom that is terribly unexpected because he still looks like a slacking hipster. Afterwards I said, "When did you become that guy? The one that elbows other guys and asks them about kids?" "I don't know. I just think it's cool to have a family and I want to know why other guys don't want to."

I realized that he is also telling these guys the story that it's OK to be excited about having kids. He's doing for them what my colleagues and acquaintances did for me in their excitement about my wedding. When we tell stories with the moral of "life is an adventure; keep reaching for it," we make the world a better place.

Marriage is awesome. Marriage is hard. Marriage is an opportunity that I am glad I didn't pass up.

This is the story that I tell.

A productive member of society

I have the exact same cold that I had three weeks ago. Really. The exact same symptoms that morph into the exact same new symptoms along the exact same timeline. The only good news is that although I know that Wednesday and Thursday I will be in excruciating pain and discomfort, by Friday life will return to normal.

Which is good because I start my new job on Monday!

Wha wha wha what?

That's right folks. I am finally going to be able to dig my fingers and toes into a project and grow with it.

And it came about in the best possible way.

Last week, at an event where I was networking fairly hard, I met my future boss. I had actually attended the gala for his organization three years ago and receive his monthly emails so I started the conversation there. We shifted very quickly to what type of work I was looking for because, honestly, my dad had earlier stood up in front of the 110 attendees of the event and begged them to give me a job.

It was pretty funny.

And full of love.

So, my future boss is asking me about my experience and I tell him about my master's degree. He says, "Oh, I started that program but dropped out."

Probably my humor was unwise at this moment but I said, "Was it the math?" in a mock-empathic tone with raised eyebrows and a knowing grin.

"Yeah but I figured that I already had a doctorate so I didn't need to do all that work figuring out something I wouldn't use."

While we were talking, my dad walked up, put his forehead on the guy's shoulder and said, "Please, please, please. Please give my daughter a job." And I was worried about my professionalism.

The future boss and I continued talking after my dad walked away and then he asked for my card. I gave it to him and moved on to talk to someone else.

Well, he followed up with me that night, sent 2 pdfs describing the program he is working with and asked if I could come in later in the week to talk. After we set up the meeting, he forwards me a working document that he just received from a mutual friend who is helping him with the vision for where the program is going.

I feel pretty attended to by the time I get to his office. I read all the stuff, print out some of it so I can reference it during the conversation and put on my suit for the meeting.

He spends, no kidding, an hour and a half alternately courting me and questioning me on my ideal job. He has an understated personality, which is always hard for me to read since it is so foreign to me. It wasn't until later that I realized that when he said, "It's not very often that you get the chance to actually change the world; it's kind of neat," he might have been persuading me and not just describing his own experience. I don't think he set up the phone call from Katie Couric's producer to come right in the middle of our meeting, but I'll admit, it worked.

I love the work he is doing. I love that it is being recognized as actually creating systemic change that measurably benefits under-resourced kids. I love that he has a secondary goal of revitalizing the Church by entangling people's lives with the lives of the poor. As Shane Claiborne says, "The problem is not that wealthy Christians won't help the poor; it's that they don't know the poor." Jesus knew the poor.

I also love that when he finally offered me the job, he said it like this: "When I met you on Tuesday, I thought, this is someone special. Then I got your resume and thought, here is someone with experience thinking about different forms of organizational design, someone who cares about marginalized folks, and someone with a lot of unique experiences. Also, you're really smart."

I have to admit that I misted up when he said. Professional, I know. It's just that I have spent this entire unemployment feeling like I was uniquely unqualified for every single job that was posted. If the job needed a master's degree, it also needed five years of experience in that particular field. Or they wanted an MSW instead of an MPP. Or it needed supervisory experience. Also, almost half of the reason I went to grad school was to prove that I had the chops and that I wasn't just getting jobs because my dad begged his friends on my behalf.

And here is this guy saying, "I wasn't going to hire staff to expand this program into a nationwide network in a decentralized way because I don't know how to do it, so I don't know how to tell someone else to do it. But I think you could run with this." And it's because of me and the work I've done, not because I'm my father's daughter (although in every other scenario, I am proud to wear that title). And he knows how hard I've worked because he took the same classes I did and struggled with them as much as I did.

After I said I'd go home to my husband and talk about it and pray about it, we bantered a little bit now that the climax of the meeting had been survived. He said that he thought my resume was playing with him since I describe myself as a social entrepreneur and he just won a fancy award for being a social entrepreneur even though he had never heard the phrase before he won the award. I said, "What should really freak you out is that when I reached into my purse to write something down, I pulled out from the linty depths the pen I got at your gala three years ago."

I can really make a difference for kids in this job. I believe deeply because it's been proven to me by all sorts of dry and boring research that the answer to society's problem can mostly be solved if we make sure that all kids are nurtured during their first 5 years. During that time, they learn non-cognitive skills that are crucial for learning cognitive skills later. Skills like delaying gratification to achieve a task, a desire to learn, the ability to sit quietly and listen, the rudiments of language acquisition. This job is preventing trauma in the lives of young children on a measurable scale, which allows them the chance to fulfill the potential that God gave them when they were born.

How could I say no?

So, I have been frantically finishing the Christmas presents that I thought I had another two weeks of unemployment to finish and trying to squeeze in some of the volunteer work I have been doing on my church's behalf.

I have been coughing at night, which keeps Jacob and I awake, so tonight I took the medicine my doctor prescribed which was a cough syrup with codeine.

Apparently, codeine keeps me awake so you all are the beneficiaries of the crash I'll feel tomorrow.

I hope things are going as well for you as they are for Jacob and me. Chag Sameach!

Institutionalizing fluidity

When I tell the story of my faith journey, sometimes I begin to doubt that I was rejected as much by traditional church people as much as I felt like I was. Sure, I have some specific anecdotes. For instance, I clearly remember being told by my friends from youth group that marrying my first husband was wrong because we would be unequally yoked and realizing that such an unsupportive comment was indicative of a deeper judgment that those friends felt for me. I remember being angered by Sunday School classes where volunteer teachers insisted that the interpretation of Revelations in their book were the only possibility. I remember arguing with the new youth director when he brought in a guest speaker who cared more about declaring "right teaching" than about how unwelcome he was making my friend Nels feel. I remember the condescending tone of voice of the member of Intervarsity who told me I used scripture incorrectly in the fundraising letter I had written as a favor to him. I also have a slew of experiences with my extended family (who I am quite close to) where they used dirty argument tactics to try to convince that my liberalism wasn't right in God's eyes. My aunt once told me that if it was right to make condoms available in schools then everything she believed was wrong. That's a heavy weight to put on an 18-year-old's shoulders if she wants to stick to her convictions. An uncle was so insulting as he argued that we celebrated the Sabbath on Sunday because it was literally the day that Jesus was raised from the dead that my father left the table in and announced his protest of the way I was being treated.

However, the vast majority of experiences that I have had with traditional church people have been strikingly positive. I have felt safe and loved and supported in most of my life. People who welcomed me into this world at my baptism are on my Christmas list and show delight at seeing me when I show up at Christmas Eve services. The church I attended in my early twenties welcomed me and valued my participation in the choir and asked me to be a deacon.

Still, by then, I was learning only to bring part of myself to church. I had doubts regarding the fallibility of translation or my thoughts about homosexuality not being a sin or my discomfort with the idea of good people going to hell simply because they hadn't acknowledged Jesus as their lord and savior. I knew, just knew, that if I discussed these thoughts, I would be labeled "heretic" and a gulf in the relationship would widen between the church person and myself because I would now be viewed as the sheep who had wandered from the flock and needed to be rescued rather than being part of the in-crowd. Since I was desperately looking for community, I left these parts of myself at home when I went to church. I did this with all of the churches I attended before I found the emergent movement. And it didn't work.

I was still lonely.

Unless I was being loved for my whole self, it just wasn't enough to feel like actual community.

However, once I reached adulthood, I didn't give any of those three churches even the chance to love me. I had my defenses up and didn't want to give them the chance to hurt me with their rejection. So I don't really know how they would have responded.

So, I come back to my original statement that I wonder sometimes if I'm not remembering my history with the bias that comes from my insecurity. Once bitten, twice shy, you know? Do I think that my experiences were worse than they really were?

The reality is that it doesn't matter if people were as inhospitable as I thought they were. What does matter is that I perceived them to be that way and acted on that perception. If I felt that way even though most people were nice to me most of the time, then other people are also feeling alienated from God and alone in this world even though most Christians are nice to them most of the time. (And this doesn't include people who feel alienated from God and alone in this world because most Christians think they are an abomination just for being who they are.) If I felt this way when maybe I shouldn't have and other people feel this way when they don't have to, they why do so many people feel disaffected with the Church?

For my experience (which is probably generalizable), I believe my fear of being rejected stemmed from two sources:

1. A growing sense that I didn't like the person I was becoming when I did things that traditional Christians were supposed to do. The greatest shame of my life is telling my best friend that I thought she was going to Hell. In addition to feeling remorse that I had hurt her, I slowly (so slowly) began to realize that I was damaging all of my relationships by practicing a faith that was so judgmental. So, I feared rejection from other Christians because I myself had been repeatedly judgmental.

2. The larger Christian culture and the traditional institutional framework that churches function within emphasize insider and outsider statuses as a means of reproduction and survival. They need people to profess the same beliefs despite different experiences, and those beliefs need to create an "other" so that folks within the community will bond together more cohesively. This is the definition of ideology, isn't it? A system of living that protects individuals from the hard work of dealing with a changing environment? Traditional church policies ensure that our experience with God is predictable: we will be buried the way everyone else we know was buried, we can raise their children the way we were raised, our spouses expect the same things out of life that we expect. And for most of history, this worked for Christians because the world changes only gradually. However, with the introduction of instant communication, the world changes quickly and traditional church paradigms no longer comfort everyone but instead push out more and more people for the sake of the few who remain within. So, I feared rejection from other Christians because Christian ideology made it very clear that I could be rejected for the sake of the group.

So, although it's possible that many of my fears would never actually come true, I believed they would and that caused me to leave part of myself at home when I went to church, a completely unsustainable habit if I ever wanted to feel fulfilled.

I have since found a church and a movement that are trying to create new Christian norms and new church infrastructures that do not rely on some people being on the inside and other people being on the outside. These inclusive churches try to make everyone feel welcome to bring their whole selves to church, without fear that they need to change in order to be fully loved. These churches know that encounters with God rarely leave folks unchanged but we are content to leave that work of transformation to God and focus on the task we have been given: to love one another.

I have found great healing in being part of this movement and being part of the leadership team of my church, which might be a model for a new generation of churches that are trying to remove the systemic obstacles that our culture has put up to block access to God except to those who are "approved" and safe.

I know that I have healed deeply from my fear of rejection because I have recently begun re-engaging Christians who still function within the old model. I am meeting monthly with a group of pastors who have good hearts and are friendly and want to serve the poor with humility. They know that my theology is comfortable with being married to a Jewish man and they know that I am active in the emergent movement but I'm comfortable enough in my differences from them that I don't need to throw it in their faces.

Occasionally, though, I get surprised. Today I was talking about the new community of young people in which one of the young men was participating. He earnestly described for me his struggle to keep them from "heretical ideas." I think I did a physical double-take. I have spent so much time now with emergent folks who sometimes reclaim the label "heretic" to make jokes about themselves, like gay people call themselves queer or women call themselves bitches. I have spent so much time with people who believe that our understanding of God will never be complete and so the only way to know right from wrong is to be in community, groping for the right path while we keep in sight of each other to make sure that no one goes haring off down the wrong path. I have spent so much time in this new paradigm that I forgot people still talk about "heretical ideas."

I said, "Wow. That is so outside of the framework that I work in that I'm intrigued but don't want to start a fight." (Yeah. I really do talk like that.)

He acknowledged my motives and I asked him for an example. He said that yesterday was the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which is the celebration that Mary was also born and lived without sin and so was as divine as Jesus.

He expressed discomfort that by saying that Mary was also divine, folks were putting her between them and Jesus. He never used the word, "idol," but I think that's what he meant.

My mind was swirling because I live in this spiritual place where I see Christ as a tool that God used to communicate infinite love and to bring people closer to God. Again. After trying to communicate love and to bring people closer to her in a billion other stories throughout the Old Testament. I guess I don't see Christ as an end onto himself so if some Latino Catholics can get to God through the female-friendly door of an immaculate Mary, I don't really mind if that bypasses Christ.

I expressed some of this and expressed my discomfort with the idea of heresy since it created a divide between people on the inside and people on the outside. I said that if it were my community, I would wonder why people needed to define Mary that way and examine whether or not the God we were worshiping was too small to fulfill them since it was a strictly male god.

He agreed with me that God was neither masculine or feminine but protested that our theology should not be informed by our experiences. I asked him to expand on that chicken and egg idea. He expressed that theology (what we believe about God) should come from what we find in the Bible; that we shouldn't change the Bible to suit what we think the world should be like. I agree with the idea that we shouldn't just justify our desires with new interpretations of Scripture but I do not agree that Scripture is straight-forward enough to extract God's will from it whole, like Athena being born from the head of Zeus. I'm a mystic at heart. I think you can only glimpse truth with peripheral vision. So to believe that Scripture alone can dictate doctrine is a heinous denial of the human element of interpretation. And once you deny that humans are involved in the process of creating doctrine, all sorts of exploitation and oppression can get by unchallenged.

At this point, I must have given off some non-verbal cues of consternation that maybe made him fear a little bit. Or, at least, he should have picked up that vibe because I was nearly bursting to tell him how wrong he was. I am relieved I was able to refrain from talking about translations of the Bible and how they can be used as tools of the hegemony or no one knows what the Bible really means and we're all doing selective interpretation and isn't that a cotton/poly shirt he was wearing and doesn't Leviticus tell us that is an abomination, also? I stayed quiet, though.

Before I could figure out what to actually say, he quickly changed tacks and asked if he could give background about why he was saying those things. I really respected his desire to let me actually see inside of him instead of just insisting he was right. He talked about how he was an Anglican (which set me raging on the inside again but I am constantly groping for a non-judgmental habit so, again, was relieved that I said nothing) and told me a few stories about his experiences that lead him to be disgusted with the Episcopals on their side of the schism. He said two things that sounded like alarmist propaganda and would surprise me very much if they were true. He sounded like a little kid complaining to his parents that his 58-year-old, established, much-beloved grandma of a teacher told him he was dumb and would never amount to anything. It just doesn't make sense within the larger framework of what I know is true. She wouldn't be all of those other things if she went around telling little kids they were dumb and would never amount to anything. The child's statements shouldn't be dismissed out of hand but they should be evaluated with skepticism about his motives. So, the man today said that Episcopals are now stating that unless you are Episcopal, you are not going to heaven. Then, he said that Episocpals have literally re-written the Bible to make it fit their world-view about homosexuals. Actually, I don't think he ever mentioned The Gays out loud but since that is what caused the schism, I'm not sure what else they would have re-written the Bible to support. Neither of these extreme acts seem to fit within the context of what I know about the Episcopal denomination. It felt like the complaint of someone who was trying to recruit others onto his bandwagon because he is feeling a little unstable up there alone.

So, I actually could have gotten pretty righteous at this moment since I would definitely qualify as someone who literally re-wrote the Bible because I look at the historical context of those 6 Bible verses that seem to oppose homosexuality and come to the conclusion that they are not describing homosexuality as we know it in our culture. Luckily, a few more people arrived and I was able to thank him for his story and blow him off a little about finishing the conversation later. Actually, now that I think of it, that wasn't very loving of me. I should probably try to have coffee with him soon and give him a chance not to reject me.

That kind of growth and chance for more healing is why I want to stay with this group, in addition to the other good things I get there. I'm not afraid of their rejection anymore because my spiritual home accepts my whole self. If they reject me, I have a safe place to retreat to.

My church is the kind of place that I want to support and also to dive headlong into building infrastructure to build capacity so that it is sustainable and can make a lot more people feel as safe as I have felt. My pastor calls it institutionalizing fluidity and no one has figured out yet how to do it. I want to try. It's crucial if we want everyone in this world to have equal access to God. It's work worth doing.

Forgiveness, gratitude and joy

I'm having some seriously entangled thoughts about gratitude, joy and forgiveness.

The first of these is that I find myself longing for the joy that comes with wisdom and spiritual enlightenment. Descriptions of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu (I love titles) almost always involve descriptions of embodied joy, often in the form of giggling. I find myself longing for that. I'm tired of being offended and upset and brittle. I want the freedom of living out joy.

But wait, Rebecca, didn't you just marry the man you never thought you'd find? Aren't you getting an extended vacation to quilt and bake while you look for a job? Don't you have a great spiritual community that values you? Isn't your family healthy?

Yup.

And still, I find myself offended and upset and brittle more often than I would like to admit.

Meg, over at A Practical Wedding keeps talking about wanting to have a Brave Marriage and go traveling and having adventures and I love her spirit. It's made me think about what I do not want to regret about our marriage and I find that I'm not all that concerned about travel and adventure. I had a lot of that as a single person. As my friend Jess put it, "It about roots and investments for me now." Will that possibly involve a certain amount of radicality for Jacob and I? Probably. But new experiences for the sake of being new aren't what I'm looking for. I want to find joy in the life that I'm living at home. I want sustainability for that joy. Everything has been in such upheaval over the last year (finishing school, meeting Jacob, moving, marrying Jacob) that I want to spread my toes into the carpet and take root so that I can keep spreading my arms up into the sky and stretching my sideribs into growth. (On a side note, I want to keep practicing yoga, as well.)

I find that it is hard to live this out when so much of my energy is spent being offended and upset and brittle.

On the surface, it seems like these are reactionary emotions. People in my life are offensive. People in my life are upsetting. I rightly need to protect myself from some people in my life.

These people can be found in two different areas right now: my in-laws and friends of my ex-husband.

Let me explain. I have never been more thoroughly disapproved of than I have by my in-laws in the last year. High school was a cake walk compared to this family. Five out of the eight family member have told my husband at some point or another that they were upset by something I did. An email I sent, a voicemail I left, a decision I made, a story I told. Additionally, even though I have asked them to come to me directly, they still communicate their disapproval through my husband, so I have no recourse except confrontation, which has felt inappropriate.

I am not used to being disapproved of. My friends think I'm great and tend to know me well enough to forgive me if I'm insensitive. My family doesn't generally practice disapproving either. My parents have always said explicitly, "There is nothing you can do that can make us love you any less." And living that out has generally taken the form of live and let live. Sometimes my parents aren't happy about choices we've made but they believe their job is to love us, not to judge us, so it doesn't affect how we interact. So, it is a completely new sensation to find myself on the receiving end of disapproval from people whose opinion I care about. I'm just not used to people thinking I should be anything other than who I am and expressing it (however indirectly). Although I know with my head that their behavior probably has very little to do with me and very much to do with a pre-existing dynamic, I can't seem to help myself from feeling wounded by it. As a result of those wounds, I find myself offended, upset and brittle a lot of the time.

On the other side, I went to my friends' wedding last weekend and it was one of the loveliest weddings I have ever attended. It was full of laughter and funk music and a general sense of gratitude on the part of the guests that two people who are loved so well would take this step and make each other even happier.

However lovely the event itself was, it has had a certain amount of emotional upheaval on either side because so many of the guests know my ex-husband. Everyone was very polite and glad to see me and one woman even made vague apologies for how weird everything was, which I very much appreciated. I had a great time immersing myself in their particular brand of humor. But I learned that some of the people whom I really like, who never told me I was a bad person, who indicated that they knew he was lying, whom I would love to rekindle friendships with, are still actively friends with my ex-husband and his new wife. They have monthly dinners together and invite each other to parties. I am surprised by how angry this makes me. I feel like if someone knows how absolutely rotten he was to me, how could they keep being his friend? Who could trust someone capable of such atrocities? How could they reward his affair by letting their babies play with the child of his mistress? It hurts me that they would choose him over me. This hurt leads me to feel offended, upset and brittle a lot of the time.

This is very far from the joy that I would like to be living in.

As luck would have it, a perfect storm of commentaries has come into my sphere of attention to remind me about forgiveness and gratitude.

For the last three days, I have been confined to the couch with a raging head cold. Most of the time, I have not been able to open my eyes because they were so swollen. During this time, I listened to the backlog of podcasts in my iTunes. Randomly, the first three were sermons on forgiveness by Rob Bell.

He started each sermon with a caveat of sorts. He made sure to say that forgiveness is about the state of our owns hearts. It is a personal things. It is about setting ourselves free from the feelings of bitterness that can own us if we let them.

This is not new to me. Certainly, I have dealt with my feelings about my ex-husband with this understanding. But I've not done a very good job of applying it to the rest of my life. When looking for that last link, I found this post, which shows that I haven't grown much in the last seven months.

Anyway, to make his point clear, Rob says that forgiveness is not condoning the behavior. Forgiveness does not require forgetting. In fact, we should set boundaries to protect ourselves in the future. Forgiveness does not necessarily involve interrupting the natural consequences for someone's actions or forgoing justice. Finally, forgiveness is separate from reconciliation, which is a process that requires two people.

In his sermons, Rob speaks about the destructive nature of revenge. How when someone hands us a hurt, we want to hand it right back and that this can be a passive response, as well as an active one. I fear that this is how I feel about Jacob's family. I certainly repeat the litany of offenses in my head as I swim or fall asleep or wash the dishes. I form the words in my head of what I would say to them if I got the chance. And no matter how graceful those words are, no mater how well they utilize reconciliatory language, I mean for those words to hurt them as much as I have been hurt.

It is a form of revenge. And I know it won't work. I know it will escalate the situation, like the story of Sampson.No, not that one. The other one. In addition to escalating, it probably wouldn't hurt them anyway since my retorts all work on the assumption that they care how their behavior affects me.

So what do I do?

I will not act on these feelings. I have come that far in my spiritual journey. I have learned to stay quiet until I can speak from a place of tranquility and stable self-esteem. But if I can't hand the hurt back to them, what do I do with it? How do I keep it from eating me up, as it clearly has been since I feel mostly offended, upset and brittle right now?

This is where the perfect storm comes in. On Sunday, my pastor closed vespers with her usual benediction,

Let us go out into the world in peace;
Have courage;
Return no one evil for evil;
Strengthen the fainthearted;
Support the weak;
Help the suffering;
And in all these things;
Take courage in the Spirit,
Who nourishes us and makes us whole.
May the fire of God
Burn deeply within you
And shine brightly upon you,
Now and always.

There are a couple things there of note. It reaffirms the other things I have been thinking about returning evil for evil and reminds me that I am not alone in this effort. The shekinah of God will help. I probably need to pray to really access this one.

This reminds me of Alcoholics Anonymous advice that I've received: "Pray for the bastard." Of course, this goes along with Jesus's advice to pray for those who persecute you.

Also, I recently finished Eboo Patel's book, Acts of Faith, in which he describes Islam by paraphrasing Fazlur Rahman,

I learned that Islam is best understood not as a set of rigid rules and a list of required rituals but as a story that began with Adam and continues through us; as a tradition of prophets and poets who raised great civilizations by seeking to give expression to the fundamental ethos of the faith.

. . . [T]he core message of Islam is the establishment of an ethical, egalitarian order on earth. . . .The central aspect of this moral order is merciful justice . . . God . . . gives each human an inner light, which the Qur'an refers to as taqwa, the writing of God on our souls. [It] is the single most important concept in the Qur'an. It is the piece of us that innately knows the mercy of God.

I think that if I try to actively remember that God loves me and so forgives me, much like my family and she wants me to love others just as much. In other words, if I develop my taqwa, my sense of merciful justice, it might get me a little closer to forgiving my in-laws and the friends of my ex-husband. Also, I need to remind myself that God has set up a higher order of things and just because I do not see her justice does not mean that it is not being enacted. I do not need to be one more misguided vigilante for God.

I think that fostering this sense of taqwa might involve remembering the good things that I do have. Yesterday, our rabbi posted on the benefits of gratitude journals. Although it feels hokey, I'll do just about anything at this point to stop feeling so offended, upset and brittle.

Finally, I am currently reading Don Miller's new book and he writes, "And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don't have a choice." I have been thinking a lot about volunteering during this time that I am looking for a job. My life feels so hectic and that it might even be irresponsible to take that time away from the search but I'm starting to think it might be essential. That this might be the better story that I need to be living. That it is part of the roots and investment that I crave right now. If I put my time into the children of our neighborhood at the Boys and Girls club down the street, I will make this place more of my home and find more joy here.

Rob Bell leaves me with this haunting image. When we do not hand back a hurt that has been handed to us, we are left with the agony of holding onto it. That agony is like death. But as people following the Jesus Model, that death can give us hope for a resurrection and a new life and a new world order. I am hoping that my three days are up and this Thanksgiving marks a rolling away of the stone. I am ready to be thankful for what I have and so filled with joy that I have to forgive because there is no room in my heart for bitterness.