reflections on easter

if silence took up space on a page, id have years of thoughts for you. i don't know if its a bad thing.

i guess this post is in some ways about death, but it is also about valleys and walking and trying again, too. if i finish it at least. 

my friend brianna recently lost her dad to an ugly fight with lou gherigs. nobody ever makes it out alive, but we always hope that the transition isn't so ugly. so brutal. but this time it was.

bri and i met because were both athletes who saw the same trainer, sometimes during the same hours. we had a hebrew class together where we translated while in slings, visible or otherwise. and then i worked at the coffee shop, where she retrained me and we laughed about things. there were a couple  other odd intersections, but i now think of them as less odd, and more woven. she is a fantastic human and one of my favorite people. I'm so grateful that we're friends. so so so grateful. God is intentional and i don't really ever know what he's doing, but he is surely up to something, and I'm willing to be its usually something redemptive. something good.

so anyways, we've become quite close friends, via choice and lots of God-proddings. i guess in my life, i don't really carry much certainty, which might be a recent thing, but who knows. one of the only things I've never really questioned though, is the presence of good friends in my life. close friends, and good friends have always been consistent, whether i was able to connect with them or not. even in crappy seasons. especially in crappy seasons. i had a rough year one time and it relationally kicked the shit out of me. so i absorbed all these fears that multiplied my uncertainties. maybe they just revealed my doubts, I'm not sure yet. but anyways, even with all of that, I've never questioned the presence of my good friends, seasonal or long term.

i have really good friends. like incredible, make-me-thank-God-a-million-times-throughout-the-day incredible. and I'm learning to live there, like they're really my friends, like its all real. but part of the realness is the tragedy of life. tragedy seems like such a strong word, but its fair sometimes, and for more than just rhetoric. some of my friends have been dealt rough hands, which is a metaphor that works on both levels. sickness and grief have settled in like an inexplicable plague. it is so sad. but it is also real, and you can't compartmentalize reality.

bri's dad passed 3 weeks ago today. lou gherigs is the disease that my parents shake their heads at. my folks work in the medical business. mom is with the babies, and dad is with the cancer folks. both ends of the spectrum. they have some atypical views on treatments and sickness, but lou gherigs is the one that gets them both. i was talking to my mom about it before he passed and she cried on the phone a little bit. its sad. in some anne lamott book that i read recently, she mentioned something about how as we age, the body starts to sag, as if it knows a secret that we can only begin to understand; that our bodies will let go, and soon enough we will too. we will finally learn what our bodies already know. maybe bodies are a metaphor for the rest of life.

Ted tried everything known to man, and some things known only to God too. and his body still failed. the people who loved him knew about it. the people closest to him saw it. there is a book called "love is a mixtape" and it is wonderful and sad. the writer talks about how heart-shaped box is a song about love, and how helpless you are when it comes to the people you love. how you can't really fix anything for them and you can't really protect them, even though you want to so badly, so much that you think you might burst. rob sheffield is brilliant. just read the book. i think the people who loved Ted wanted to protect him. maybe differently. maybe they wanted him to face things differently, but i don't think anyone who loved him wished for the manner of death that he experienced. i think the people who knew him best knew too much about the gospel and forgiveness for that sort of thing. maybe they didn't, but they strike me as that sort of crowd.

he passed away around 10am with his family in the room. the precise moment was nearly unknowable, but i don't know if that matters as much as having people present does. people holding each others hands and his, praying, walking alongside as much as time and capacity would permit. doing the best anyone could, with all the resources anyone had.

bri lives a state away, but she is still connected to this town. as soon as we found out, everyone started making plans, and asking questions, because sometimes you just go. i packed my bags, contacted professors, and cleared my work schedule. my bosses were kind enough to let me leave. there are few things in life that i would lose my job over, but this would have been one of them if they hadn't let me go. which is irrelevant cause they did.

i made my way over and showed up. i told jenna that my goal was the intersection between least stressful and most helpful. stacie & marlowe came too, and we all did whatever was doable. even if it was just a coffee run, or entertaining a relative who needed to tell someone a story. at night, we gathered together and shared our own, because laughter is healthy and stories are connective. it will always be funny that stacie said her arm was broken when we hit a dear on the way to the beach at 2am. the fur in the wheel well will always merit clapping, whooping, laughter. those things are important, and maybe even more so in the face of a funeral. bri was brave and strong. she was loved too, which was obvious when we all watched.

the funeral was beautiful and well done. his memory was well preserved, and his personhood was honored. death is a weird, weird little thing. maybe a weird big thing, since it is THE thing. and when you are in the christian faith, it is the turning point thing, which follows rising action, right on up to climax, which is the resurrection. so its weird, but its also unbelievably important. i have a friend who says death is the thing that makes her question whether any of this life is real. i wonder sometimes if death is the thing that makes me think that it IS real. seeing someone you awkwardly hugged while dashing into the house to get the world's greatest chocolate milk on your way out of town, with eyes now permanently closed is weird. and hard. but the finality of things makes them feel real to me. maybe more than feel, maybe finality MAKES it real. all of the memories, the conversations, the words, the times, all of them are so real. and they are branded into the people who remember them, because death makes you remember.

remember is my favorite word in hebrew. it is "za-char", and it carries the connotation of "realizing something in actuality", like reliving. it is an important word to me, and it has been since i learned it. death makes you remember. even if it is not a physical death, and it is just the death of your previous self, or the death of your preconceived notions, or more maturely, the death of your own identity. but it does make you remember. with longing, hatred, or more commonly, grief. in a letter, bri said that her favorite word in the bible was redemption. i like that word a lot too. she talked about as a second chance, but more so, as a 'becoming-whole-like-we-were-meant-to-be' thing. some things get redeemed on this side of reality and some don't. but redemption is a real thing. and thats good for all of us.

at some point the other day, i started playing with words, deconstructing them and reconstructing them. REmember, REdemption, REconcilation, REal. so many 'RE' prefixes. in a letter to someone, or an email, RE means reply. in english, the prefix often means to do again. a response. so remembering is membering again. a member is a part of a whole, or a whole itself. it is also related to personhood. its almost like remembering is putting the person back together. i love that so much. redemption is the noun form of redeem. so RE, again + deem, which is to consider, believe, or hold. it is a word used in regard to opinions, but also holding someone in high esteem. to deem someone worthy. so an aspect of redemption might be, holding something again. and depending on who you ask, holding something again might be the greatest gift. it might mean considering something as worthy of remembrance. even in the word 'real'. in latin, al is inclusive meaning, all. so when you reference a work by multiple authors, you say, 'et al'. so the world, in its reality, is the response to all. maybe that is what makes something REal. your response to the 'all'. which makes your response the most real of all in some ways.

these are the things i thought about over easter. i like easter a lot, and for many reasons. for one, if it didn't exist, my degrees would be about things like unicorns and other likely-non-existent creatures, and that would feel silly and annoying. i really like easter because it says we can have a second chance at things. that things as they are might not be how they seem, and even if they are how they seem, they probably won't stay that way. things can change. we can respond differently. God did. Jesus did. the people did. we can respond to new things and we can even respond differently to old things. thats the hope in resurrection. the idea that it is finished, but in many ways, it is not quite finished. or maybe you are not quite finished. and you are somehow connected to the thing that set all of this in motion.

i got back from TN and thought so much about connections. partially because my mind works in concepts, not details, so i am constantly seeking out patterns. i like to compartmentalize, which is normal. but the thing is, it doesn't really work that well. i tried to respectfully separate my experience from bri's because i wanted to honor her experience. taking someone else's pain and making it your own is not always compassion. sometimes it is just transferred chaos, and i did not want to belittle all of the things that she and her community were walking through. but my body wouldn't let me separate it. i had a physical response to grief that wasn't totally mine. but i realized that it wasn't wholly separate either. i walked through some of bri's valley with her. and sometimes, i just sat on the dock while she was submerged. you can't walk through every part of the valley when its not your own. sometimes waiting out in the dark is helpful while someone else is wading out in the muck. it was not my grief, and yet i am still connected to it. because i have, and will always have good friends. that is God's grace in my life. that people will remain friends and walk through each others valleys together. that we will stumble together. but that we will keep walking alongside each other too. i bear the grief differently, and i will never bear all of it, because it is not mine. but some of it will drift into my atmosphere and i will gladly welcome its interruption. grief is never clean. not for the individuals directly affected. it is sticky in the sense that it latches on to whoever is around. and if you are fortunate enough to be allowed there, it will latch on to you too. that is the grace of soul friends. that we can be connected and we can walk with each other, across states and times. that the Lord grants a connected kindness in friendship. he gives us relationships and says okay, take care of each other, you probably won't do it right the whole time, but try for each other. and we do. we try. we show up and offer whatever we have, because love sees the other person, and sometimes it tries to sacrifice. we can't fix, but sometimes we can walk, and sometimes that is enough. 

real.

i went to open mic night & wrote a few letters before getting coffee with a friend. the time was good, and as i walked out, i talked to jon the barista.

he told me that he thought he just got scammed by the fidgety woman who begged for food. jon & i probably agree on a lot of things and probably disagree on a few too. he's a good guy & a good man. the woman had a few things going on that seemed like someone who was strung out, but jon & i can be bleeding hearts sometimes.

i walked out the door & started my walk home. its not far & the weather was nice tonight, so no major complaints. the same woman was unwrapping her sandwich and muffin, and once i walked by, she started to act frantic & sniffled. i continued walking and then i thought about all the crappy Facebook posts from people who had a thousand opinions and soft hands. my generation (and maybe more.. maybe its an evangelical thing, or maybe its a cultural sensationalism thing. i don't know, I'm not that wise) is often guilty of having opinions and talking about Jesus, but not many people get their hands dirty. the harvest is plenty but the workers are few. if this commentary was set in our own time, i think it would include a lot of people standing on the fence, chirping about how they would use different gloves, or how this company is sustainable and has better shovels. but no dirty hands.

last year, i was sitting in my house & i heard a crashing sound near the road. i have great hearing unfortunately, so i hear everything. i walked out of my house, furrowed brow & looked down the road. i didn't see anything. but i knew what i heard. i walked back inside & prayed for the sound. i guess i was afraid to walk down, or thought myself too crazy to have really heard that noise. about 20 minutes later, i went to check the mail, and instead there was an ambulance, and no mailbox. someone had driven their car into the ditch and crashed. shattered their window. it was a mother and her son. i think they were okay, or at least the paramedic said so. i had nothing to offer, and my presence was negligible so i walked back to my house, pretty bothered by my choices. i knew what i heard, and didn't look any further. i made sure that i could say with confidence, "i did all for that which i was able to see. anything more is not my responsibility". and i even prayed, because i listened in my evangelical services. but that deceptive self-comfort wasn't enough. had i actually walked down to the end of my drive way, i don't know that anything would have gone differently. at best, i would have called 911 & probably held someone's hand. who knows. i wouldn't have saved anyone, and i don't have a medical back ground. though my roommate was home & she was a nurse, so maybe. i replayed it in my head a lot. praying while i looked around was more comfortable. but it was a crappy response. i decided i wasn't going to do that again. prayer is great & it moves mountains. we can't address every need & fix everything. but that doesn't give me a pass on actually doing something.

so tonight, i walked by this woman, and i prayed. and in my head, i heard a crash, so i turned around. i said, 'are you okay?' she said, 'no & I'm beat up and have nowhere to go. i have no one'. she was crying. I'm a bleeding heart. jon gave her a drink & a sandwich. so i asked how i could help. she started to tell me a story about her boyfriend who beat her, how the shelters were all closed (mind you, there is no shelter in boiling springs. the nearest one is 10 miles away). my myers-briggs changes daily but the only constant letter is my N. i am intuitive, though intentionally ignorant more often than not. i had the feeling that she was lying to me. she asked me for a couple dollars for cereal for her children since her husband kicked her out, so they could have food in the morning. how her husband kept driving by, and there he went. and how she has nobody. how she was so cold. and she fidgeted the whole time. i wanted to believe that her piercings didn't fall into stereotyping. i wanted to not be a judgmental seminary asshole and make sure i heard what she was saying. but what she was saying didn't add up.

i said i would walk with her, part of the way home. she left the sandwich and the muffin, muttering that she lost her appetite. she told jon that she hadn't eaten anything all day and that all she wanted was a frappe. i asked her about herself, and she talked about being beaten and how she had no one. but maybe shelley would answer. shelley would be awake. so we walked. i had my passport long sleeved shirt on cause its my favorite. its soft & well worn. but she was cold. and i gave her the shirt and walked. she was lying to me and trying to get anything she could. pretended to be subtle, but was really just hustling me. i set my boundaries. she was digging for a couple dollars, a ride home, a place to sleep. i didn't have my car with me, and i live with other people. i hate that the paradigm for life doesn't let me give her a roof, but it just doesn't. we started to walk down to her house, even though the street she named doesn't exist. i drained my gas tank in this town so i know where the roads are. i certainly know their names. we agreed to walk to hardees, then it changed to mcdonalds. she kept telling me to walk home. the same way a user doesn't want you to see where they're going. so i walked with her to mcdonalds, even though the door was locked.

the things she said were incoherent because they were lies. she contradicted herself several times in our short conversations. we were together for maybe 15 minutes. if i would have offered any more, she would have taken it and shortly discarded it. i observed and in my attempt at being neutral, i still think she was strung out. thats what my evidence said.

we parted ways and i waved goodbye to gina and my passport shirt. it was on backwards, which made the logo bigger. i thought about all of the things i learned at passport. to embrace the discomfort. because if you're getting your hands dirty, you can't avoid it. what do you do when you mission script is about imagining homelessness, trying to fathom that which you cannot relate to, only to have randy the homeless guy in the back, high as kite, sitting next to you between your turns on stage? what do you do when he comes by every week, knowing that you just got a paycheck, knowing that he hustles everyone, and shoots for the bleeding heart folks? thats real. randy was high when someone pointed to the sanctuary where he could find me. he sat in the back row with me. he stood up while we sang worship, looking around, trying to interject for another 10 dollar bill. it takes a lot to make me uncomfortable. i can hang with the best of them and deal with the worst of them. it is unusual for me to be challenged by the messiness of any given situation, but i was. i couldnt avoid looking at randy while i read the script, wondering what he thought, if he was even thinking about it at all. he didn't have to imagine anything because he lived it. which is probably why he was high in the first place. what do you do with that?

but tonight her name was gina, not randy. even in this small town, ill probably never see her again. i don't know that any of what she said was true. in some ways, a lot of it probably was, though perhaps not in the ways that she meant. i walked back into the coffee shop and some high schoolers were sitting outside. they asked me if she was okay, and what was going on. i told them, 'you know, honestly? i think she was lying. i think she was strung out on something, and got lost. but i don't know, I'm going to walk home in a few minutes and in get into my warm bed, where ill probably be safe. i don't think the same is true for her.' we talked a little more, processed a bit. gina asked one of them for a lighter earlier. it didn't shock me. but they got it.

i walked inside and talked to jon. i told him that i think i was scammed too, but we both knew it in the present tense when it was happening. we knew that she was lying. but we came out with similar conclusions. we were both going home. he might have given her all the money from his tip jar, but he would have another shift soon. she would probably use the money for something that wasn't food. she probably doesn't have daughters who need a couple dollars for cereal. who knows, she might. i don't know. she said so many things that make hearts bleed. that obligated me to do something. and she did it in a way that told me she's done it before.

but what do you do? i don't think you walk by praying. i think jesus probably ministered to a lot of people who were never going to change. i think he knew that most people would play face to get what they wanted, and move on. the crowd at the cross disappeared pretty quickly when they didn't get what they wanted. and accessibility. jesus made paths of access for people who weren't allowed in. i don't know that i showed her the way to anything. i walked with her to mcdonalds, but i didn't give her what she wanted. i know i didn't give her what she needed cause i can't. i don't think gina will suddenly go to church after this wildly profound experience where a holy and loving, compassionate young seminary student gave the shirt off of her humble righteous back. did i mention the burning bush that showed up in this epic made for tv scene? i didn't? oh right, that never happened. because thats all garbage. we're reckless and foolish to believe that we know otherwise. maybe I'm a pessimist. i know that addiction doesn't change with a tshirt, long sleeved or otherwise. God will do what God is doing. all that was asked of me was to get my hands dirty.

i hope that i did.