Today I read in a "Christian" book by a woman Christian for Christian women. In the part that I read, it said that God has a plan for my life.
Is the plan that I sit here, now miserable with flu and phlem, and waiting for the magic to happen, the magic when God reveals the plan for me. This makes no sense. If there's a plan about my life, I want to know what comes next and when.
When I read that statement, I thought to myself. Poor fools who read this stuff and believe it. I used to believe a lot of it, but I never believed that God had a plan for my life except that I, like all creations of God would live into eternity with God someday, in perfect unity.
But today, I got a letter from a friend who is a translator for Wycliff and who volleys her life with her husband's between New York and Kenya and Oregon. The part about Kenya was so devastating to read. People burning up in their homes and bodies. AID victims, orphans with nobody waiting for somebody to help them.
Our problems are whether or not we'll have another election or not in Michigan and Florida. We're a bunch of whiners. Americans are sissies, pansies they used to say, but I don't think that's as gender neuter as it once was. God I'm tired of being a brave person in the crowd of people who think life is too hard....having AIDs and being orphaned in Kenya while someone is burning down the hut you're standing in, now that's hard.
Dear God, where the hell is my new job in this PLAN that you have for my life? Here I wait with my husband day after day, tucked neatly in a former parishioner's home....the widow's penny maybe, only she's never been married.
I want the blue print and I want it now. I've been patient and thankful and grateful for every little thing but the truth is, nothing is going on. My sister almost died last week with her teeth. Now they're telling her she may already have heart problems from the stress that life has done to her.
I wanted to get well so I could help her. I want to get well so I can do the plan, damnit!
I'll be quiet now and I will be still and I may whimper, but please, please dear God, could you find me a job and a place to call home?
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
She was lying there in the coffin. Her hair was coiffed like I'd never seen it before and they had pasted long fingernails on her. I never ever remember her wearing fingernails, not long like that. Her face was puffy.
For some reason, I walked up and talked to her for a moment and then I made the sign of the cross on her forhead. I had done it before but she was warmer in those times. I remember the Sunday when she knelt at the communion rail on a regular Sunday. Before I could administer the host, she said, my cancer's back; it's gone to the brain. I wanted to say Shit! But instead I scurried to the Ambry and grabbed the anointing oil. I didn't care that others were waiting for their little round piece of Christ. Only this was what was important I prayed and crossed the oil on her face. Maybe my gesture tonight was a remembrance of that Sunday.
Her face was so puffed up. Can't they drain that out while they're shooting the embalming fluid in? I don't want to be embalmed and I certainly don't want to be dead and looked at. Dying is private, personal. People don't realize the sacredness of a person's death. All those people and sprays of flowers and nobody was really even paying attention to her there in the coffin.
I laughed hard when I read the e-mail that said that she would be "laid out" at Muir's. Laid out. That's precisely what she was was laid out...like a slab of extruded clay. It didn't change anyone's behavior...she was laid out and quiet and cold and decorated and everyone stood around or sat and talked, mostly about things other than the one that was laid out.
I saw a picture or maybe it was a movie where people sat around on their knees while at a table low to the ground. In the center of the table, there lay a sexy naked woman with fruit and sweets on top of her and around her. She was "laid out" but not dead. However, if I'd had to do that for any reason, I would have to pretend I was dead to endure the time while people were eating the sweets off of me. Carnavors, we are all carnavors--we eat it or we stare at it or we wish that it was ours...their body, their sacredness, their private parts, their beauty within. How can we consume like barbarians?
God, help us realize the sacred life of the body and spirit of the ones that die or sleep or pretend.
For some reason, I walked up and talked to her for a moment and then I made the sign of the cross on her forhead. I had done it before but she was warmer in those times. I remember the Sunday when she knelt at the communion rail on a regular Sunday. Before I could administer the host, she said, my cancer's back; it's gone to the brain. I wanted to say Shit! But instead I scurried to the Ambry and grabbed the anointing oil. I didn't care that others were waiting for their little round piece of Christ. Only this was what was important I prayed and crossed the oil on her face. Maybe my gesture tonight was a remembrance of that Sunday.
Her face was so puffed up. Can't they drain that out while they're shooting the embalming fluid in? I don't want to be embalmed and I certainly don't want to be dead and looked at. Dying is private, personal. People don't realize the sacredness of a person's death. All those people and sprays of flowers and nobody was really even paying attention to her there in the coffin.
I laughed hard when I read the e-mail that said that she would be "laid out" at Muir's. Laid out. That's precisely what she was was laid out...like a slab of extruded clay. It didn't change anyone's behavior...she was laid out and quiet and cold and decorated and everyone stood around or sat and talked, mostly about things other than the one that was laid out.
I saw a picture or maybe it was a movie where people sat around on their knees while at a table low to the ground. In the center of the table, there lay a sexy naked woman with fruit and sweets on top of her and around her. She was "laid out" but not dead. However, if I'd had to do that for any reason, I would have to pretend I was dead to endure the time while people were eating the sweets off of me. Carnavors, we are all carnavors--we eat it or we stare at it or we wish that it was ours...their body, their sacredness, their private parts, their beauty within. How can we consume like barbarians?
God, help us realize the sacred life of the body and spirit of the ones that die or sleep or pretend.
Monday, January 21, 2008
less is more
Where has all the money gone....long time passing; where have all the Christians gone, so far away. Where have all the churches gone....long time passing; they've gone to worldly gain, they've gone to worldly gain.
I wish Peter, Paul, and Mary were still singing. Where have all the flowers gone seems so pitiful right now compared to the lack of everything right now. And yet my body and mind have so much more. Why in the world would my call lead me finally to a place where there is nothing of my call to do but be? Without a church, without a cure, without a liturgy to make, where have I gone? I have gone within...so far away, so far away.
For four years I have suffered physically and psychologically because of personal tragedy accompanied by the caustic tongues and cruel actions of two dysfunctional parishes. I know it's not their faults; they can't help it. They are doing what they were taught to do, what was modeled to them. But decay is what happens when this happens to someone in my vocation, that is when the creative beauty that was first called is ignored or snubbed.
Is it a hate crime? It's alienating, that's for sure. But what happens while waiting, finally what happens is that God wins. God restores, rebuilds, refreshes and finally births a better me. I am still alienated but not alone; I am a recluse, but not cut-off; I am tranquil, and there is no reason I should be this way. God, during my time of no work, no congregation, no singing, I am emerging with a new physicality, a new psychological strength, and a new more solid foundation of being in my soul----and all from less.
Just the size of a mustard seed and yet an enormous bush grows. That seed within was never obliterated, only left fallow for awhile. Where have all the faithful gone, long time passing; they're here in hearts of silence, waiting for the cue to begin anew.
I wish Peter, Paul, and Mary were still singing. Where have all the flowers gone seems so pitiful right now compared to the lack of everything right now. And yet my body and mind have so much more. Why in the world would my call lead me finally to a place where there is nothing of my call to do but be? Without a church, without a cure, without a liturgy to make, where have I gone? I have gone within...so far away, so far away.
For four years I have suffered physically and psychologically because of personal tragedy accompanied by the caustic tongues and cruel actions of two dysfunctional parishes. I know it's not their faults; they can't help it. They are doing what they were taught to do, what was modeled to them. But decay is what happens when this happens to someone in my vocation, that is when the creative beauty that was first called is ignored or snubbed.
Is it a hate crime? It's alienating, that's for sure. But what happens while waiting, finally what happens is that God wins. God restores, rebuilds, refreshes and finally births a better me. I am still alienated but not alone; I am a recluse, but not cut-off; I am tranquil, and there is no reason I should be this way. God, during my time of no work, no congregation, no singing, I am emerging with a new physicality, a new psychological strength, and a new more solid foundation of being in my soul----and all from less.
Just the size of a mustard seed and yet an enormous bush grows. That seed within was never obliterated, only left fallow for awhile. Where have all the faithful gone, long time passing; they're here in hearts of silence, waiting for the cue to begin anew.
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