it's do! do! doo-doo, due, and dude...

I'm feeling "very undude, dude... dude..."

"Where is My Mind?" -pixies...

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin' ?

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind

Oh
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Oh
Try this trick and spin it, yeah

The first Chapbook!

It's almost ready...

I included some of your favorites, some prose, and some pieces that I haven't published online because the formatting ruins the linebreaks. So they'll be new to you!

Each book comes with a CD of readings by yours truly (you asked for it; you got it).

They're for sale: $10 each.
Proceeds from tomorrow night's Free Form sales will benefit
the Free Form Charity of Choice:
Collective Hope.

So bring your dollas--
Hope to see you there!

Mars Hill Graduate School
2501 Elliot Ave.
Seattle WA
11/20/2010 8pm

ordination examination

I just thought you should know this is where I'm at right now.

I easily confuse strengths with weaknesses. So, when my professor asked what I was going to do when—not if—I fail to bring order to chaos, I panicked. I thought that surely failure to order the chaos would be a sign of profound weakness. Then this same professor asked us to describe ourselves from the perspective of a friend. I thought back to the words of one of my more observant and attentive bosses. In my exit interview he told me that when I told him I would be okay, he believed me. He said, “I’ve always known you to be sturdy.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have panicked at the thought of chaos. Perhaps the idea that I may reveal a weakness should not scare me! I have a very high tolerance for both weakness and chaos. I know them intimately and, as a result, I tend to those in my care as though chaos is durable yet endurable.
As I look back on this professor’s class in particular I see that my time under his tutelage has paralleled the trajectory of my seminary education in general. We began by trying to minimize the chaos. We set out to do the work of defining ourselves and have found that we are very confused (and confusing). We have learned that we, the weak and befuddled, do indeed have power and must steward it gently.

Over these last four and a half years I have gained some practical wisdom (summed up by the professor of this class when he said “you will never satisfy all the people all the time… if you are doing your job well”). I also gained some impractical wisdom (e.g.: postmodern or no, leading means you have to land somewhere). And then, just when I think I’ll never remember this wisdom, it always dawns on me (again and again, as sure as a sunrise) that I’m not sure how I learned any of these things because they are not the kind of things that can be taught in the usual ways. Maybe they were in me all along and I just needed someone to help me dismantle all the carefully laid and mortared, well-ordered thoughts that had them entombed.

My time in graduate school has facilitated a re-entry into church leadership as part of a larger process. “Churching” (attending church, potlucking, becoming a member of a church, tithing, voting, singing hymns you like, singing hymns you don’t like, etc., …) is a process. It is a process of discovering how much order, how much chaos is enough for each created thing to thrive and then making a commitment to searching out ways for all to access that amount of whatever is needed. It is a system of exchange: churching is not only giving time, talent and treasure, but a system of exchanging tangibles and intangibles according to our capacity for restraint and justice.
Taking a leading role in the life of the Church requires us to accept only the order that blesses, while allowing for the chaos that edifies and that means we participate in discovery, discernment, and setting boundaries. It doesn’t mean we have to be perfect already—we will be perfected. It doesn’t mean we put an end to all chaos—it means we order the chaos we can and endure the chaos that remains, for the good of all.

There is no disputing that when I accept my Master’s degree in Divinity I am taking a step toward ordination. This degree will set upon me certain rights and responsibilities, one of which is to discern next steps. I have to face the possibility of Ordination and I have discovered that for now I will settle into what I like to think of as one of two very different types of ordination. The way I see it there are two kinds of ordination: 1) Traditional Ordination: This kind of Ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament is offered by the people in power. It usually comes with a title chosen from a short list of jobs. Certain rights and responsibilities are conferred on an individual after s/he has completed certain required tasks. The other kind of ordination is one I like to think of as Discerned Ordination: This ordination is realized through a process of discernment. For example, God has ordained each member of the church to accomplish a different task to the glory of God. This kind of ordination is akin to receiving a vocation that is discovered through a series of struggles and triumphs.

Each member of the body is tested, taught and otherwise prepared to live life according to the powers, rights and responsibilities only God can confer. There is plenty of power to go around but we rarely share it well. The politically inept or disenfranchised may never partake or participate in a way that would allow them to be Ordained as Ministers of Word and Sacrament in a traditional sense. The second definition of ordination, however is a broader use of the concept of ordination and so applies to those who remain socially or politically powerless or outside the narrow sphere of the mainline denominations’ influence.

You see, church is only Church when all the members of the body must come alongside one another in order to create opportunities for leaders to gain and relinquish power, to share and redistribute power for all of God’s people. For church leaders special attention should be paid to specific preparations. This should include fostering an awareness of the language and history of the God we attempt to serve and the people we live with and near—all of them. I work primarily with children who have their own ways of distributing power and so it seems only natural that I am choosing the second type of ordination.

I am choosing to answer the call to order the chaos for which I have already been prepared. Maybe one day I will do more to prepare for Traditional Ordination. But for now I do not see myself participating in the cycle of power distribution that bestows power on the few and neglects the ordination of the many.

This is my call to live in the liminal space, the space in which we may dwell so that someday we will know what to do with relationships that don’t move at the speed of Facebook; when my sense of time is different than yours; or
when industry or denominational changes keep pace with cultural changes that never seem to lead to transformation. These are not Holy Orders, but they have brought holy order to my life and so though this is not the kind of Ordination for which I thought I was preparing, it is nonetheless the orders and order I have been given.

too many of these lately

El Dia de los Muertos comes every year and every year it reminds me that I have been taught about death in certain ways.

I have a certain contribution to make whenever we discuss endings.

I wrote this piece in August last year and then uncovered it on the occasion of two very sad and very unexpected deaths. I didn't know the two who passed away, only the way their friends and families remember them. But I know a lot about death... more than I care to know, more than I thought I knew until it came pouring out last year and stayed relevant after all this time...
I don't know what you're going through but I do know this much...
and I hope that might be a little helpful.

080109:

There are days when I wish the story would end. Entire days devoted to frustration because the mystery of you is complete, but refuses to go away; I am haunted by the loss of you. And I have to live with memories that are just not enough.

Like this feeling when a relationship carries on with only a dead body, with a voice that I won’t hear again, with two arms that will never hold me again, two hands that will never pour out a beer or clutch the steering wheel as we careen down the highway,

the kind and hilarious things you said to me echo in my heart, but only there and it is proof that this heart is empty, cavernous, stone, cold and hardening with every throbbing pumping jerking motion, and it doesn’t stop just because yours has. You aren’t going to call anymore, you are not going to comfort me even over the phone anymore. I have missed you before, assumed your voice is enough, convinced myself it was but
now even that is gone.

And I am not ashamed (because you taught me to be proud of who I am) to admit that I am shrinking and filled with regret. Worst of all, sometimes I wish I had never loved you. I want to rewrite the story so it would end before you walked into that bar, before you jumped into that river to save a life more precious than your own.

And I am not ashamed to cry over it because that is all my body wants to do now. I can’t sleep or eat because I am somehow keeping vigil, holding on to the last meal we shared, the last restful night when I was assured I would see you in the very next day.

I can’t even hope anymore, not in the same things I used to, because all my hopes were wrapped up in you.

I can’t see the future because it was in your face and now we will bury it under the days that keep unfolding without regard for your disappearance and we will keep only photographs. And I will wake up tomorrow and stare at the photos and then
Perhaps I will start in with the yelling, the telling you off, the crying out to God or my friends or my lovers because it is not fair, it is not right, it is not ok that you aren’t coming around anymore.

So here we are, those you abandoned unwillingly, maybe. We are waiting for signs, for friendly faces, for warm bodies, for snacks and laughter and for it all to mean something again. We need something to boss us into hoping again. We need you.

And because all we have, is an already fading memory of what you would have wanted, I am clinging to it.

We begrudgingly admit that we know what you would have said. We know what you would have done because we know what you did:
you saw a choice and you made it.
You knew a risk and you took it.
You saw danger and you jumped right in.
You saw pain and you did all you could to end it.

Forgive us our anger—we know you can. And forgive us our sadness and our hopelessness—we know that if you could, you would hold us and tell us everything is going to be okay. We know you would cringe to see how upset we are and we know one thing for sure,
if you could you would rescue all of us from all of this.

I guess that is the work left for us to do now, in your absence, in your honor. We will keep you alive and with us by remembering
to rescue, to risk, to live, to play and laugh.
And when we forget the timber of your voice, or wonder what would have been,
we will remember, we will comfort ourselves with this fact:
you didn’t give up hope, you were unafraid of your own death, you were bold and loving and hopeful, and we can be too because you showed us how.

sensible of conditions

A professor sent this quote in response to the piece mi abuelito affectionately referred to as "the one about the baptismal fountain":

"...a favorite Annie Dillard quote: On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews."

nuevo apellido viejo

As Basque I have learned to understand this: It's very important to know what you're fighting for, especially if you were born fighting... and it's very important to know that when you fight for freedom there are particulars that make the fighting and the freedom more and more real if the battle scars refuse to fade.

I spent the last long months fighting for two things that I see as indicators of freedom: a new name and an unknown future.

First, I fought because names matter to me. Your name is like a little poem written about you, just you, never forget that. I wanted the name of my living grandmother because it is beautiful and worthy and so is she and so am I. I didn't return to my mother's maiden name (I am no longer a maiden). I returned instead to the Bay of Biscay and the Basque shepherding ancestry that taught me the wonky kind of Vizcarra shepherding that makes me valuable in my community. I returned to the name you cry out in a crowded room because you can trust there will be at least one Perez to answer! If you want something done, ask a Perez.
I kept part of the name my mother chose for me because it is a tangible connection to her hopes for me to be known and treated as a Pearl of great price. But the latter half I replaced.

Now my name is half and half: a lovely blend of whole creamy freedom-fighting sheep's milk Vizcarra Perez with even-keeled, transparent and staunchly imaginative Abigail Pearl.

But I also fought because of inheritance. I fought for the pennies scrimped and saved and passed on to me so lavishly by the woman whose name I let go.

That is why this poem goes here. It is about moving on because you have to, it is about death in general but my mother's mother dying in particular... Funny, I put it here around this exact time last year... so if you go back in the archives you'll see another story about it... I take it to be proof that a helpful poem has more than one use, more than one story to tell, and probably knows the future better than it's author.

As soon as they called to tell me she had died, I called the hospital and told them I wanted to see her body; I wanted to see her one last time. The voice on the other end said, "it will all be all right." And the hoping poem began there...

The hope poem

When you died you were wearing a pink nightgown and looking quite vulnerable as the rigor washed over you.
Your pale skin had a power over us, what was left
of your thinning hair refused to rest
against the pillow.
You were the dead with a bed head
and you would have laughed at yourself, the way you always had.

They said you weren’t alone, and I suspect
there may have been a nurse in the room when the last little bit of life fell
out of you, rolled across the floor in search of another haunt,
across the hall perhaps?
Maybe a memory of family lodged in the corner of your quiet little brain
finally showed itself
a picture of you with your sister
keeping you company.

Then eventually
we arrived, gathering like seagulls on the cliff
Standing over,
your little brittle body, like a precipice and we, forced to jump toward
(your) death,
our life,
Suddenly unsure of my wings,
I began asking the questions:

Who will I be
now that you
are gone?
What will I do with the voice that sounds like yours bouncing around
in my memory?
When I say your name again you will not answer;
Will I be angry in your absence? Will I be anything at all?
What do I want now that you are gone, after my desire for your love defined me, your presence filled spaces and now those spaces are like wounds:
You cut yourself
out of my skin,
You widdled the edges of my self coming close to you
wielding guilt like a pocket knife.
Though Love has cauterized the edges
The pain is real.
Disappointment threatens to move in like an infection
If we deny the Lacrimal disinfecting.
There is swelling and throbbing but there is no emptiness here.

We are full and heavy with your presence among us.
The words for your leaving are caught in our throats
So we gave in to hope, not the big Hope
But the little hopes:
That we will each touch your hand once then
Look into your face then
Then go eat breakfast
Without you.
That we will sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods then
That we will remember you well, not fully but
With respect
fully.

Not for you
For ourselves.
We will hold onto what we enjoyed and sort out
The painful pieces of your presence remaining.
We will find a way to leave them behind,
In our own time
Not just because you died
But because we have been working on that project since the day we were born.

And all this time we must have thought we were doing this for you, with you
But now you are gone and we go on.

We go on in the ways you taught us
Saying the words you said
And laughing
Saying the words you said
And raging like a wild fire
cuts a swath through the forest of story.
but we are the forest people
loving the tall trees crowding the fueling dueling underbrush—we know what fire means
what fire brings:
the heat the seeds need
to tell them how the old is dying, drying and burning away
making room for (the new)
you.

We are the Phoenix seeds, rising slowly from the acid of the ashes.

You asked to be cremated, never knowing (how hot) our anger
was burning you alive all this time.
You shrieked at us, and we put the fire out with our tears,
now the tears come all salt and oil: splashing across the fire, sizzling, splattering and finally crystallized across the soiled floor,
You are the salt of the earth and we have salted the field crying over the loss of your dried marrow.

Looking across, bearing the pall, it seems all (hope) is lost
Just because you are lost.
But the truth is we are not lost
Just because we are losing you.

for the caretakers

Thank you

The rooster woke me this morning,
warning
the sun rise
while I laid still beneath the patchwork of memories.

Would the lambs and ducklings sleep all day
if the howl of the bantam were not fowl enough to wake them?
Oh cocky doodle-doo!
How many innocents, exhausted with a new life,
would miss this dawn and the next,
if you didn’t sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops?

A city rain pools below:
the sounds of strangers bounce between raindrops,
their brash splashing tires screech out a counterpoint,

But the once-wild cockerel wakefully cooped inside my heart
scratched earlier than the boots against the sidewalk below
and I mistook it for a hope of my own.

The Shekinah Gory:

The Dangers of Worshipping and Other Reasons to Keep Children Close

Contrary to most assumptions, a person can drown in a puddle. You only need a little bit of water to drown the old self and that is why we had a shallow, open baptismal font in the center aisle of our church. It was pretty basic: a glass bowl tucked inside a wooden pedestal. Some churches use a font that remains covered all the time. These fonts are often placed near a back wall, where they safely stand their ground until we bring them front and center as needed. This story is not about that kind of font.
This story is about a font that stood right in the middle of everything, like a birdbath—always open for business of one kind or another. Whenever the congregation processed toward the altar rail to receive communion they peered into it or poked the waters with their fingers. I hadn’t worked for the church long before I saw a four year old dip his hand in and then straighten his eyebrows with the holy water on his fingertips. Parents carrying babies walked carefully around it on their way to sit on the altar steps for children’s word. I once tripped on the shaggy rug underneath, nearly falling right in, face first. There was even an incident involving junior high girls washing their faces in it during an overnight youth event.
This font and its big brothers (one medium and one large horse trough brought out and filled with warmed water for full submersion baptisms) were in constant use. There were lots of babies and even grown ups cycling through preparations to drown in front of God and everyone—Alleluia! The fonts were always there and always ready.
Late in Lent 2010 the pastoral staff realized that despite our best efforts some of the babies just weren’t ready for baptism at the Grand Easter Vigil that year. It would be the first time, in a long time, that we would simply affirm baptisms rather than perform them at this annual celebration. We were saddened a little, but only because we loved seeing the shock on a child’s face before the plunge. We loved watching a grown man rise drenched and happy as we sang and rang in the new member of our family. This year the shallow font would stand stalwart and lovely as ever, not to be used for baptism proper, but as a reminder that we had all been washed—Alleluia just the same!
We continued the usual preparations for a raucous and holy celebration of resurrection. The grown up choirs learned a song in ancient Hebrew and a Spiritual that brought tears to our eyes even during rehearsals. The children’s choirs learned a special dance. During rehearsals the older children partnered with the younger to hold hands, they wound themselves around the edge of the sanctuary and danced up the aisle. They raised their little hands, turned around and around, stepped lightly forward, and then carefully high-fived …the whole lot enjoyed themselves immensely as their beloved director gently corrected any missteps.
During one such rehearsal, just as I ushered the younger children into the sanctuary to join the dance, we heard a loud bang. I instructed the children to halt and we stood as still as we could to asses the damage. It wasn’t an explosion in the kitchen or a falling beam from the ceiling. The roof hadn’t caved in, as we might have thought from the volume of the boom. Instead, we saw the wooden pedestal of the baptismal font lying on its side like a felled tree and all around, sprayed out evenly across the carpet were tiny shards of glass. The bowl that had held the Holy Water had shattered and spread like diamonds thrown at the foot of the processional cross.
During the dancing one of the older girls had bumped the font and accidentally pushed it over. She cried from the scare, wounded only in spirit, not in flesh. The pastor scooped her into his arms as the children and I stood watching him calm her. We listened silently to him explaining that it is really all right, just an accident. Her tears were pouring out as a testimony to her love for the font and respect for the worship space. She sat in the lap of her pastor soaking up the truth that she is wholly forgiven. There were only four adults in the room with upwards of thirty children ranging in age from five to twelve… and thousands of shards of broken glass.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have been warned that the sanctuary is not a good place to bring children to dance. And obviously I was worried for the children to be so close to the dangerous remains of the font. But in this moment the warnings and worrying were all for naught. Our attempts to protect our children from their own frailty, the sharp shards of the truth and the danger of dancing at the water’s edge were muted by the thunder of the falling font in which most of them had already been drowned.
Alan Hirsch writes in The Forgotten Ways Handbook about the rabbinical teaching that explains “a cosmic crash in which God’s glory was scattered into myriad sparks and caught up in all created matter.” He explains that this metaphor urges us to respond to creation in such a way that God’s glory (The Shekinah) will be loosed from it’s locatedness within each created thing, and that The Shekinah might explode all around us. If Hirsch is right, if this is really what the Rabbis taught us, and what God hopes for us, then safety is little more than an illusion anyway. God’s explosive, gory glory has always threatened to engulf each human ever exposed to it… just check the Old Testament for hearts that won’t stop burning and faces that won’t stop glowing.
Since the falling font incident I have begun attending a different church with a font of a seemingly safer kind: covered and stowed—not out of view, just out of the line of fire, so to speak. In this new church children are swept away to a safer more comfortable Sunday School room before the prayer concerns and sermon are spoken. But Hirsch hints that glory finds a way to wreak holy havoc on leaders and followers alike in spite of safety precautions. And that begs the question: if there is no way to protect our children should we attempt to send them somewhere safer while the adults continue with worship? Should they be excused from sitting in oversized pews against which they always bonk their giant heads? Maybe they should be excused so they can avoid a parent’s scornful glances lest they misbehave.
I work with parents of all kinds who want to sit still and undisturbed for a few brief moments during Sunday morning’s liturgy. Sitting through an hour-long service with their children is their worst nightmare. They want their children to be cared for elsewhere while they pray, sing and listen “in peace.” This may not seem like a scandal waiting to happen; perhaps Bonhoeffer’s Ethics doesn’t cover this subject directly, perhaps this dilemma doesn’t involve sexual misconduct or gross negligence but it is a hot topic nonetheless. It is a real problem because it is on every congregant’s mind and every pastor’s list of problems to solve and if its not, it should be.
To the chagrin of many parents I argue that the invitation we extend to all God’s children must be extended to the least of these. Hirsch writes that if we want to call ourselves “Missional” we will serve everyone and share everything as the apostles did and so we must dig deep in the treasure chest of the past. Hirsch reminds us that the churches in ancient Rome were not given over to Youth Groups, or Sunday School classes aligned with Public School grouping methodology. They worshipped together and so must we. When we allow parents to protect their children from the wilds of worship, when we teach parents to protect themselves from their disruptive children we may be allowing them to treat their children and subsequently any encounter with the Shekinah as optional. When we usher our children from the worship space we are passively communicating to parents and children alike that one ought to be comfortable in order to worship.
To exile our children so that worship becomes convenient, restful and well-ordered is to deny that the glory of God is threatening to explode from within each of us. Throughout his text The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Ronald Heifetz, et al. encouraged leaders like me to do the difficult work of discovering what is most important and this is it. And so, I am compelled by Heifetz’ argument to point out that I am passionate about the presence of children in worship. As a result, I often wonder (silently, to myself) if we are no better that the Babylonians who dashed the heads of the Hebrew children against the rocks because that is what exile can do to the children of the church.
Leadership in the church must make space for rest but we also must make space for worship—messy, dangerous, life-altering worship. We may not be able to make worship safe and comfortable, but since when is worship supposed to be safe or comfortable? Worship is always a sacrifice. The sanctuary is meant to bring us into a worshipful context. It is not meant to protect us from all harm or alarm. A child may never have to consciously confront the threat of Holy Baptism but she will have to confront death and danger. The story of the shattered font demonstrates that leaders in the church can bring entire families into the worship space in a way that prepares even the youngest hearts and minds for just such confrontations. If we do our job, the families in our care will be better prepared to recognize God the next time they come face to face with the overwhelming Shekinah.
Of course I’m not encouraging the church to expose children to unnecessary danger or disruption. I am instead insisting that church is not always safe, convenient or comfortable. Glass shatters, candles burn, wood and stone surround tender bodies. And this is precisely why we must keep our loved ones close to us. We don’t keep our children or exile our children in order to protect them. We do so to encourage them to worship and to see God’s glory in myriad forms—especially when it all seems to be exploding into countless pieces all around us.

Please Come!

Free Form Open Mic
Featuring
The Poetry (and everyskinnytree) of Abigail Perez Jimenez

November 20th
8pm-?
@ MHGS
2501 Elliott Avenue
Seattle, Washington
98121

Anti empiritanical Mexicredentials notwithstanding,

how do we stand?
Economically, empirically ecclesiologically?
Evidently there are lots of good ideas about sustainable living, many of which have to do with reviving the idea of a kind of victory garden. There is a new P-Patch in my neighborhood--it seems to have sprouted over night! As my Aussie friends say: Goodonya, P-Patch.

During a recent discussion regarding the "Evils of the American Empire" Such gardens were given as proof that "we" will pool our resources and learn to subvert our empirical (there wasn't a better word for the way I feel about it. I made one up: empiritanical is part empire, part puritan, part tyrannical) tendencies.

Admittedly, I am often hopeful that I belong in this "we" who "shall be saved". I am unabashedly American in so many many ways... And yet I also think of the "we" who "shall overcome" because I am Mexican. Go ahead, say it... you know you want to:

"I didn't know she was Mexican."
"Really? Like part Mexican? Or what?"
"How much Mexican blood do you have?"
"Wait, you were born here though..."
"Do you speak Spanish?"

Argue against my Mexicredentials all you want
I don't really (ever) want to engage such comments except to say this:
You want to know how Mexican I am?
I am just enough Mexican to think of Mexico first. I am Mexican first.

Sure you can tell me (one woman said it right to my face) that "Our community gardens will save us!" Go on and say it over and over again. Tell me--even though I live in an apartment now because I am losing my house and property in my divorce.
Tell me gardens are going to be our salvation--because its Wednesday, not Sunday: Wednesday is different from Sunday because Wednesday is not the day on which you corporately confess that Jesus Christ happens to be our Salvation...

Which begs the question: what exactly do you think we need salvation from? Hunger, famine, scurvy? And why do "we" need to be saved at all, isn't it that, the most empirical of our erroneous theological underpinnings, the most elitist thing we can hope for: to rescue ourselves without regard for the larger suffering? The suffering of all Creation?

And am I part of the "us" of which you speak, even after you discover my whiteness comes and goes even though it is the part that shows?

Who knows, maybe more than half of my genes are from Mexico... Those big "B"s tend to dominate. Nevertheless, all of my concern is for immigration reform... and not "immigration reform now!", but maybe even yesterday! Imagine what would happen if our national understanding about immigration reform could acknowledge the fact that the border crossed a lot of "us." All that fertile land on which your community (victory?) gardens grow may be given back to the people who lived on it first... Am I blowing your mind yet? Would you be totally effed? But Damn. Oh, wait... maybe you're not completely offended yet. That's probably good... I guess.

I'm not thinking of being saved--now that I'm $60,000 indebted to the government for loaning me the money to develop a satisfactory soteriology I don't worry about that. I worry about holding on: to the best parts of my self so I can give back, holding on to enough money (instead of saving) on groceries so I can pay rent... Are you still with me?

You can tell me what you want to do about the danger "we" are in and saving "us" but I will usually think first of Mexico and drug wars and dirty water... then I think of Mexicans like me, living on this side of the border: Third generation, accidentally accented. And our passion for those just one generation behind us: still scrimping and pinching pennies to pay for water to drink or bathe--how can anyone imagine having water with which to grow these gardens of which you speak? How can we imagine owning land or even paying rent on land enough to plant enough to feed our families? And then there is the matter of getting onto (should I say into?) this fertile land of which you speak. You don't want my family members driving through Arizona, much less crawling into California.
Are you so mad you could spit? I am, but I'm saving myself the trouble.

I sat in the meeting, one of two women of color--we were the only folks owning up to our minority status, if there were others they didn't speak up so I can't say anything about them here. The other woman, my elder and a beautiful, trustworthy woman, spoke about her concern for other countries where gardens are not the answer. And as soon as she did a white man spoke about American status and soil being ruined should our reliance on fossil fuels catch up with us. He said that soon we would all be living on barren land and soon all the white folks stateside would suffer as those in Darfur.

I asked him to reconsider that we, as privileged Americans, might offer help to countries like Darfur before that happens. I mentioned that we might not turn inward again and again but think of those less fortunate before we worry that someday we might be in their shoes.

I didn't say this at the meeting but I know that shen I am wise enough to give myself the choice I choose not to fear... I think we could quit fearing that we might suffer as they do and instead be as one with the poor and suffering, right now. If you can't suffer with, perhaps you can suffer for... and should suffering seem like a bad idea, maybe this is because you're afraid of suffering altogether... because you already know it so well. This discussion gets to be a labrynthine trek into the abundance of suffering in, around and through us, so it's probably better I quit before I got ahead of myself.

The folks who had been participating in the conversation began to treat me as the enemy. They related to me as though I were unimaginative, hopeless and fearful. They spoke to me as if to reprimand me. They told me I was uneducated and wrong.

But this is not new to me. I sat shivering in my folding chair, the way one does when one has hoped for the underdogs to be treated less like dogs and more like humans.
The hero of the night (an anglo man from the southeast: Que Milagro!) stood up and requested that the others recognize the voices of the women of color as a gift and respond with a moment of silence at least. Another white man shouted from across the room, "Oh, do you speak for them now?!"
He answered in the affirmative and then leaned down, put his hand on my back and asked if I wanted to leave and we did.
The pastor wrote to apologize.
The guest speaker contacted my best friend/white skinned, technicolor-hearted escort and relayed this story:
My people are the very reason he began working to educate folks about global economic powers and how they work against the very minorities they ought to be protecting. You see, months ago he met a child after having been told that the child needed counseling. In his professional opinion, and much to his credit, he discovered the child didn't need a therapist as much as a father. No, this father hadn't abandoned the child entirely; the father, like so many, worked two jobs to provide for the child's immediate needs: food and shelter. Look it up on Maslowe's Hierarchy if you want; that father did the right thing.

I felt better about shaking in my boots that night. There is reason to quake when a room full of white folks make accusations. I came to them to learn from them and I was deftly accused and for what? For speaking for Mexico.

And then there is this, which will be your reward if you made it this far in reading this post because it is hopeful and helpful and many more lovely things:
Today a woman stopped me on my way out of church and asked if I am okay. Now, I have many reasons to say no, but I was polite, said yes and she became suspicious. When I said yes she pressed me. She recalled the way I slipped out of the meeting I just described, and she remembered it like it was yesterday. She just wanted, she said, to be sure I was okay.
I didn't want to lie to her and I did not want to let her off the hook too easily. Whether she knew it or not she was taking the first steps toward being an advocate: she was listening.
I'm not okay, I told her. I explained that what happened in the meeting is commonplace for me these days. I am often the minority in many ways. So I'm not okay, but folks who treat me as the enemy don't have enough power over me to ruin my day--and especially not my life. I explained as well as I could and asked if I was making sense because it is still very hard for me to explain all this. She listened well and responded with acute admiration for me. She was jealous that I was able to keep from being ruined even though I was fully aware of the situation's gravitas.

So, if you're not a minority reader and you're still with me, count yourself among the advocates. You are doing it, and, as a result you will know, sooner than you would have otherwise, that it is possible to wield your opinion like an ax and waste time trying to beat the enemy down. You may unknowingly attempt to ruin someone's life and then come up empty handed and you will probably choose to quit it sooner or later than you otherwise would have because you may already be suffering a worthy suffering that makes you aware of how hard it is to be in a room with someone abusing power.

On the other hand, if you are in the minority in your community I hope this will help a little. Don't forget to look for a chance to tell the whole story, don't let the hegemony off the hook and don't forget telling the truth is a big job, pero si se puede.

In other words: P-Patches are great, but listening with the ears of love is greater still and there are more times than there aren't when that is all that matters.

Por Laurita

Laurita sent me a link to this in The Atlantic... I'd copy the link, but I think you should just read it here to save time and if you need more in the way of citations, just ask...


Jackie Wang quotes The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke, on the eternal debate between being out in the world and writing about the world:

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.

You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, but it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.

You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open windows and the scattered noises.

And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

For Edgar

Edgar sells Real Change (not just the papers) near my school. We recently celebrated his new reading glasses. We always celebrate his wind up radio. We drink coffee together and shared cookies on my last birthday. When I introduced him to Miss A he said to me, "you are blessed." Then he looked at her and said, "you are what its all about."
Sometimes I think I can hear him singing this song, humming right along with us.

And that's good isn't it?

I edited the formatting on the old skinnytree so it won't nauseate me anymore... which means it is less likely to nauseate you too!

Also, I am not, as I thought I might be, cringing when I read the old entries.

in fact, if you're wondering what went wrong, what went right, what went down... it serves as a pretty good chronicling of the past five years. Until the new, blogger edition takes up where the blogger leaves off

http://skinnytree.berkeleyblogs.com/

In the words of one of my favorite developmentally disabled friends, "that's good, isn't it?"

even the invisible hand doesn't want to pick beans.

more on santos

I won't say that I figured it out, and I won't say that it was just now that I had this epiphany because I didn't figure it out.
Furthermore, this is hardly an epiphany... I think its more like clarification, or maybe confession--those are often intermingled for me.
I will just say that I lit some candles tonight, just because and I suddenly thought of a way to explain another reason why I love the Santos candles:
I don't light them because I think La Virgen de Guadalupe o Angel de la Guarda will make something good happen. That smacks of superstition and I am not optimistic enough to gamble on something like that.
I light them because its part of the routine I like to go through when I'm telling myself that its time to pay extra attention to all the good things that are happening.
I guess you could say the same about any of my prayer practices: I don't pray to ask God to make good things happen; I pray that God will help me to see the good in all that God is doing all the time and to remember that, deep down, in side where my own little light keeps shining whether or not I remember to tend the flame there.

think of it

this way,
when I can't think of the right thing to say
you have space;
think your own thoughts.

I knew. I know.

He had never learned about wind. The wind itself almost carried the question away. And so, in earnest, he wondered aloud.
“Where does wind come from?” It was like a gull against the breeze, or like a seed with wings and it landed at my feet, hoping for a crumb or at least, hoping to be spared the boot.
I knew. I know.
I know where wind comes from. I know about rotating planets, ocean currents, molecular movements, atmospheric pressure and barometers. Don’t ask how or where I learned; I can’t tell you. So I had a choice to make. Either let him in on the secrets of meteorology, or leave him alone to imagine. Instead of choosing one or the other I chose a path right through the deepest waters of his question.
“Lots of molecules moving at once.” I tried to say it the way I offer a reassuring comment, as though to second his amazement because, well, wind is amazing, whether or not you know what makes it. It was such a tender moment and had I not participated as he noticed the wind and the grandeur of creation, the teachable moment would have been lost. The gull would have flapped away; the seed would have been crushed under my foot.
He hadn’t imagined I would know. Now that I did know, he seemed to feel safer asking more question. Nestled in the following conversation were two seemingly common queries that belied his beloved bewilderment: “What do you mean? You know? How?”

Nevermind how hard I studied in grammar school. Disregard the months of preparation for my California teacher credentialing exams. The best teachers know in the core of their being that the states of matter don’t matter in moments like this. The best teachers remember that if I speak without love I am just a noisy gong. So we exercise the muscles of our awareness, we memorize facts and proverbs, all the while remembering that we too have fragile questions and that teachable moments must be handled with care.
To know me is to know that although I truly enjoy reliable answers to my questions and participate in modernity’s love affair with empirical data, I much prefer imagination to factoids. In a matter of seconds I run through a checklist in my head whenever a question like this is laid at my feet. I ask myself does the query matter to me? How? Why? Why not? But mostly, finally, fundamentally, I wonder how I can foster a love for creativity, imagination alongside the desire for knowledge? In other words, I wonder how can I use any question to deepen faith in all the things that make up a whole life.
I don’t want to offer facts alone, as though they were all we ought to try to believe. I don’t want to neglect facts or scientific method, as though they don’t matter at all. I want to use what I know of the world and the way life works as a spring board so we can jump together into what we don’t know. And I want to do so in a way that communicates my own curiosity and doubt.

It doesn’t always work out. My attempts to co-construct knowledge misfire if a more solid answer is needed. A child continues to pursue the adult asking, “but why?” until she is satisfied. Adults tend to quit vocalizing quandary while they’re ahead: hm hmmming along with the explanation even if they are lost early on—but then keep wondering, searching or feeling frustration for hours, days, years...
But this time it worked. I took a small stick of driftwood and drew the Earth in the sand, I blew the grains across it as if they were molecules of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. He said, “wow.” I said, “yeah, wow, right?” Even as I explained I thought of holes in the plot of the story of a breeze. I found myself asking questions too. I explained that I don’t know whether this breeze is because of the water or the hills or both. We wondered aloud together and then imagined these molecules had once flown over Argentina or been puffed out of a whale’s spout in the Atlantic Ocean.
And then it kept working.
Months later (many moons and traumas later) I heard him pose the question to a friend. This time it was with wonder and awe that he posed almost the exact same question: “Do you know where wind comes from?!” It was a shining moment for this self-designated teacher, preacher and poet. I caught his eye as I overheard him in conversation and we smiled at one another. It was as if he were about to describe a gift he’d been given or a story he’d read recently. He was honestly posing the question out of his hope for more knowledge, even though he knew more about the topic now than he ever had before. There was a tiny twist of pride in his voice, but not enough to stifle the curiosity of the person he asked. So it was.
Those who know me have heard me tell stories like this about my students ad nauseum but this one is especially important to me because it is not about answering a child’s question. It is about a grown man--a powerful, business suit wearing, beard-growing, bill-paying grown up. Somehow he managed to access wonder, awe, imagination in spite of all the chaos of his childhood reverberating in his heart, the aches in his overworked muscles and the daily stressors of adult responsibilities. But it is the perfect example of imagination at work and it goads me on in hopes that it is possible for adults to learn to imagine faithfully and to pass it on…

potent

For the sake of balance I am putting this here.
See, Jackson and I have a real problem with the idea of potential because it creates such a pressure and has such a cold front that nothing but a hurricane of emotions is sure to come of it. And then there are also people who use that word with such aplomb, like a giant Eff You to the pressure to be more than I have to be.
Vicki is one of those.

I started writing about all that confusion and it turned out so, well, helpful I just couldn't keep it from you.

We have such big plans these days... to bear such good fruit. Growing branches strong enough is tricky but not impossible thanks to folks like Vicki.

Potent
For Vicki

Her hands clench air near her heart
Like claws wrenching flesh from bone
To show me how this unraveling takes time.
It is as though her fingers are working
One strand of each:
Hope into past.

The things to recover from are still piling up
All around us even as she says
You would let them build with blocks,
Talk to them, teach them and listen.

She talked of my potential as though it
Were my best friend
And the future
Is someone to meet for coffee
I imagined I could chat and reminisce with whoever
I want
to be,
Who I am going to be
When all this unravels and I
Go along with it.

how to

There is this awful thing we did when I was growing up in daycares. It went like this:
"She hit me!"
"Say you're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
There were usually three people involved. You might be thinking an adult always proctored the exchange, but that was not always the case as I remember it.
These days, in the places I work, it goes more like this:
"She smashed me."
"Are you all right?"
"She smashed me."
"Let's go talk to her."
"Did you mean to smash her?"
"Yeah, she wouldn't move when I asked her to."
"Oh, I see. When someone is in our way, we try to use our words first. So that was right. But the hard part is to go slowly and to be patient with our friends when they don't do what we asked. Look, at her face. It's telling me she is still hurting from when you smashed her body. When you're ready to go slow again you can come back out and play with her. You might even get ready to say you're sorry. But come sit with me for a few minutes to rest your body and give yourself a time out. You can tell me a story while you rest. I'd like that."

Sometimes the offender does apologize, sometimes she doesn't. When she does her friend just thanks her for apologizing, rather than giving her the vague ol' "it's okay" routine. If you have more questions about how and why it "works", when to use it, or what to do when it doesn't work just let me know.
Grownups often insert their sense of deeper injustice into situations like these, and then compensate by oversimplifying the dialogue because they've given up on confession, repentance, and much of reconciliation on a deeper level anyway.

At my house, we've been talking about being pastoral toward people we really can't handle.
We say things like, "How would you be pastoral with him?" or "I don't think I can be her friend, but I can be pastoral... right?" or "What would it take to be pastoral in this situation?"(I know there is a good chance this kind of dialogue annoys you, but we can't get enough... call it cheese ball heaven, living in fantasy, or a downright misrepresentation of dinner table conversation, but we chalk it up to a love of vocation and a return on our investment in seminary and therapy.)

And most of the time you can substitute the word compassion or even the word human for the word pastoral. I don't know that I'd advise the feint of heart to try it out... but if you're up for a little growing up then I'd say, go for it with gusto.

The real hard part is that you can't just dabble in being compassionate, human or pastoral. You've got to go big or go home when it comes to being anything (yeah, the scent of college football season is in the air--even the skinnytree abides the first day of practice). Being is a big job. You might think you could go around just sort of being, but then you start to simply do stuff, instead of really being. And, I know you're about to get lost in the philosophy-ish tone of this post, but hold on!
Insert some adjectives if you want, they may help. Try this on "You might think you could go around just sort of being, but then you start to simply do stuff, instead of really being... being anything compassionate, angry, eccentric, ________... You fill in the blank.

I don't want to mess with your interpretation of these thoughts too much so take a little break, reread that last paragraph and then read this:

I think I'm finding out that if I try to do too much stuff, I can't be anything really good. If I try to do something compassionate about a problem or person its a sort of one time deal (sure I did something--one thing--compassionate or maybe compassionately but then I find it that much harder to really be compassionate which is to have compassionate thoughts and feelings because I was too busy acting the part out there instead of in my head, in my heart.

Apologizing and receiving an apology well are the rocket science behind compassion because they are all about changing, choosing, curiosity and they allow us to rewrite the script and the story.


So here is the open letter to the folks who I'm struggling with and for.

Dear _________,
I know you* treated me like junk because people often treat you like junk.
I know I have treated you like junk too. But I really regret the nasty things I said and thought about you. And I hope it will ease your pain to know that I see how I'm hurting you and you're hurting me in return is a very understandable and human reaction.
I won't be returning to our friendship until we can get this straightened out and writing is the best way for me to do that. And even when we reconcile things will be very different. This is scary for me and I am pretty confused by my feelings, which are very strong these days.
So send word if you want because sometimes when I stop talking and writing folks they tell their friends and family I'm giving them the "silent treatment." But in my head and heart I'm just trying really hard to shut up and listen well. I'm trying to talk to myself about all that went down between us so that I won't be exposing you to more words that could cause more confusion for either of us. I figure you'll either get to a place where you are ready to say the things I need to hear. When you're ready to repent or confess or apologize, in your own way and time too I'll be all ears, I promise. And we can go from there.
Thanks,
Abigail
*Notice I didn't say, "you only treated me like shit the other day..." I do speak that way sometimes. But only when I'm scared. I'm trying to cut back and anyway to use a minimizing word would undermine the power of the shitty treatment, and offer them excuses for inexcusable behavior and neither of those is what I am trying to write about.

And then I guess I go on from there. Depression is real and comes in various stages and strengths so I'm not pretending that a letter like this won't bring it on or be cause to work harder to fend it off.
I either get on the Feelings Schedule (I'll re post it underneath to refresh your memory) and work on myself or I won't. But if I don't then I'm breaking the promise I made and that sucks for me and the offender. In fact, I don't know what I'd do if one of you just copied and pasted the letter in an email and sent it to me. I hope I'd be able to respond right away by thinking through what I am ready to confess to you, figure that out, write an honest email that says, "I'm ready to repent." And nothing else: no excuses, no reactions, no withholding behaviors, no drama or hyperbole. But that may take me a long time.
Just to put it in perspective: It has been a year since my husband of almost 7 years and I split. And though there has been healing this year I am nowhere near knowing what to confess, how to repent, or what reconciliation will mean for us.
You can go on and say the letter is controlling or manipulative or rude. You can criticize it all you want but maybe you just don't like it for the same reasons I have never written it down before today: it is a lot to deal with... and rightly so! When we hurt people there is no easy, right or graceful way out. You have to go deeper in, you have to risk, trust, slow down, be awkward and its going to hurt. It might even get messier than it already was. But not the destructive, chaotic kind of mess, more like the sewing room, the craft shack, the workbench or the potting shed.
And it is growth, creation and so it takes time.
Jackson says she and I will be friends for the rest of our lives and so I am constantly reminded that grace can be spread out over a long period of time. She refers to the way we'll have the rest of our lives to watch reruns, but it also reminds me that I will have the rest of my life to learn to be a good friend.

I guess I spend a lot of time hoping that the things I regret and want to change would match up with whatever offense hurting friends have located. Often it doesn't and won't.
For example, I've been accused of being a bitch and that is just too vague so I can't apologize for that. I've also been accused of being mean, which I most certainly am, and more than I should be, but I can't apologize for that either because its too big a part of my story... I'd need a more direct and caring call to repentance. I'd need someone to brave the windstorm of my insecurities, look at me and carefully, slowly (as should have been done when we were children) say, "You have hurt someone you love. You don't have to do something right now, but you have a choice. You can choose compassion. There is no need to be ashamed or afraid. But there is a need for you to be aware of your impact on the people around you. Practice compassion in a safe place and when you're ready to risk bigger, to be curious and forgiving, you can be compassionate with yourself and everyone else in ways you have neglected today."

I've been accused (quite recently, and harshly) of dishonesty, infidelity,unchristian behavior, chicanery, abandonment, distrusting, antisocial behavior, passing judgment, insanity, stupidity and narcissism. I've been told that therapy, marriage, a certain book, a certain spiritual practice, a better outlook on life, or a change in habits or friends would force me to change my behavior, then I'd be a better person, then I'd be worthy of forgiveness, then I'd be worthy of friendship or trust or generosity or... compassion.

I will admit it probably works that way for some people sometimes, and I will admit that if it worked that way for me, if that were good enough for me, I'd be easier to live with already!

But! I am human which means two things: 1)I'll never be able to earn your esteem, 2)I'm a part of creation and that is enough to make me worthy of compassion--even yours.

Although I am honest, faithful, willing to believe in God's goodness, generous, loyal, trusting, social, justified, sane, intelligent and self-aware when it is safe for me to be so, I cannot act in all those ways all the time--no one can. Therefore I cannot do anything to change myself so much that I would someday earn your friendship.
And what is more, I am trying real hard to stop expecting you to, too... I'm trying to stop expecting so that I can live in the grace of curiosity over the particulars as to why it is so hard for the president, the mothers, the bothers, the congressmen, flight attendants, baristas, publishers--everyone from St. Peter on down to the neighbor kids to be more of who we were made to be.





As promised: You might need this later because you probably have regrets or repentance to deal with... or maybe just because you're human.


The Feeling Schedule is a little poem I wrote last summer it is actually called

Today

Wake up
Stare at the ceiling
Refuse to get out of bed
Think of the things that make you feel
overwhelmed, angry, hateful, sad, depressive
count to ten, slowly
Roll over, yes you have to.
Think of all that you don’t have and feel pretty shitty, count to ten, or maybe twenty
But you can’t stay there
There are birds learning to fly just outside

Push away the mattress, slide out from between a blanket or sheet, stand up as tall as
you can
Lift your head, yes you have to.
Think of the people that make you feel
Loved, angry, loved, angry, loved…

Eat breakfast, watch television, pull on some clothes, socks, a hat maybe, yes you have to
Feel the soft clothes against you
Don’t worry about what it smells like, looks like or
the way they mock the shape of you and the shape the day will take.

The day is hot and wet, give in to the sweat and feel the knot in your stomach, or throat
Think of all that grows here: trees, boys, and clouds that refuse to gather and
Tell yourself that is good

And when the anxiety comes
When the hatred and fear swell like a tsunami
When the nausea and sickness threaten to engulf you

Try them on,
think of wind and rainstorms inside your body,
thunder and lightening in your veins
Think of boys racing down the slight sloped hill on skateboards
girls hoping you will call and lots of lost love
Try to think of mothers screaming in the throes of birthing pains and
Little boys with fat tears falling on scraped knees
Think of bandaids generous enough to cover new wounds
And scars covering old wounds
&
when you are alone again,
Hiding in a public bathroom stall, against the wall holding you vertical
Or in the car, put on your seat belt and let it press into your chest
Like the hand of God pressing against your lungs
so all you can do is
Stay right there
Slump down, against a wall or window and
put your hand On your head,
cover your face and cry. Let the sadness and frustration and grief
shake your shoulders, shake itself out.

The hot tears are sticky and ooze out and you have to let them out
Let them out, spit them off your lips, blow them out your nose,
Push them out, not in
Wipe them on your shirtsleeve like snail trails,
So you can see the tracks of slow moving sadness

Breathe in and out
Breathe in and out like a dog panting in the heat of your emotions
Open your mouth and lungs
and the ache will either get worse
or dissipate

If it gets worse, stay a little (one) longer, wipe away a few more tears

If it goes away, and trust me, that ache will go away eventually,
If you respect it,
Then you can go on.
&
At the end of the day when you crawl back into the bed
Just lie still
Scrunch up your nose at the stench of wrongdoing all around you
Clench your jaw and steel yourself against the nightmare you are living.
Think back on the day, the downward spiral you are riding
Jokes and drunks and all
And imagine what you would tell the one person you want to talk to most

That this is bad
this is not good
That you are so lonely and you don’t know what you are doing here and
Why did your mother fail and your father get you into this mess?

Imagine the face of a friend, tearing up, eye lashes sticking together and nose running
For you
All for you, over you, all around you

Wrap the blankets around you tight and think of the warm bodies of close friends
Next to you
On a porch, on a bench, on a beach, on the hood of a car, on a diner booth bench,
on a bar stool, on a couch,
on a hopeful day
&
think of how hard it is
to loose your innocence over again, just when you thought
you didn’t have any more innocence left to lose

think of a carpenters’ roof beams raised high above your head and let your soul lay across

think of the ancient Egyptian pylons and let self and body stand tall between them

think of Grecian columns, slant 6 engines, old growth redwoods, and tug boats
because you are stronger now and you are taking your place among them
whenever you feel this way
whenever you feel
whenever
you feel
this way
everyday.

for Cristy whose maiden name matters.

My new best friend, Mrs Madeleine L’Engle, has quite an interest in science and temper tantrums and theology (She’s the one who wrote A Wrinkle in Time, which we told you about today)… I read this quote today, only a few hours after hearing about your struggle against putting plow to earth, telling your best friends that their opinion isn’t God, and deciding whether to put your own story in its proper place in the order of things so that you can be healthy and whole…
so I thought this might be helpful to you… and lots of other friends of the skinnytree who are going through similar ordeals over ideals:
“In a world where fewer and fewer people believe in God at all, where life is for so many an unimportant accident with no meaning, where we are born only to slip back into annihilation, we need to stop arguing [even with ourselves and our deepest desires] and affirm the goodness of creation, and the power of love which holds us all. As far as the evidence of science shows today (and the evidence of science is always open to change with new discoveries), evolution [or perhaps the science behind nutrition and psychiatry] seems a likely explanation… If new evidence should prove that evolution [or Bastyr or MHGS] is not how it all happened [or should happen] that won’t do anything to change the nature of God, any more than Galileo’s discoveries changed the nature of God. Nor would it shatter my faith. …Not only are stars and people and fireflies born, not only do they die, but what we as creatures do during our life span makes a difference. We are not just passive, acted upon; we are also actors in the great drama of creation. …God urges us to be willing to change, to go out into the wilderness, to wrestle with angels, to take off our shoes when we step on holy ground. And to listen. God asks us to listen, even when what el [sic] asks of us seems most outrageous.”
So…(sigh) there it is, as I see it.
Or maybe: You want to point at those meanies that criticize you for taking such risks and say it: “So there!” But probably its best to do that quietly, to yourself for now: revenge can be sweet but often requires that you make an ugly face… and there is no need for them to see your gentle smile so contorted. Besides, the mothers and aunties are always telling you, “you keep making that ugly face it just might get stuck like that.” And I think that is probably one of the truer things in life.

But it is true also that:
You (all of you!) are very much inclined to change, even created to change, to evolve, to grow, to be an actor in the drama of creation. Science will only validate this over and over… just as surely as your story will, my dear.

And I am so pleased to hear that you are
That you are that…
You are!

And then there is the old Avett Bros bit about “when you run make sure you run to something and not away from, lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere.” Don’t worry about the running from… sometimes it is okay to run toward safety (which I am finding does require a certain abrupt leaving which can often look like “running away" while it is yet simply a running from), toward what it best for you. When they try to tell you that you are wrong to dream a big dream and follow it, it is a lie and lies like that will always follow you, but they are still just lies. Maybe that isn’t what the song is about, but that is often what it makes me think about, and that matters too.

One more thing for you who are so easily judged because you don’t try as hard as they want you to:
Firstly, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again until you have all looked into it: sometimes trying harder is simply not the answer
Secondly, my new discovery is that the folks who are judging you for doing whatever it is you need to do today were always slated to judge you at some point in your life… You can’t make them love you more, you can’t change their opinion about you… you can only change your mind about the value of their remarks—and you may find that in the end you love them more as a result of this change in yourself.

I know the grammar of this post makes it a bit awkward but I simply had to rush it because, well, I can't let perfectionist tendencies run our lives... So go back and reread if you have time, or go with what you got the first time--that may very well be all you need for now.

usually hate

Transition is like a trek into a wilderness. It seems equilibrium, balance, and pattern are all in question. This wandering is foolishness. What kind of a leader abandons the post and moves into the woods, away from the people she came to serve? There isn’t much to do out here but pay attention to myself and those who are willing to risk a visit. It is a frightening negotiation to pay such attention to myself, to raise the drawbridge against the onslaught of opinions and feelings in order to protect those sequestered close to me.
My friend Donna says that when you stop trying to win the fight by getting big, you can actually shrink your ego, dig a hole, climb out from under the fence and be on your way… away from the things that kept you penned in and scared. Care of the soul is such an important part of ministry, but who will care for mine? I suppose only I will be able to do that. I only wish it didn’t seem like I was doing it at the expense of caring for the souls of others.
So that is where frustration hardens into hatred, for myself as I seem to be running like a bandit from the scene of the crime, and for others who would cover me.
I usually hate (I was going to keep going with that sentence but maybe it should stop there for a moment and rest).

I usually hate.

But its time for something different and this is how I can tell.
There is this book.
It’s the kind I usually hate because of its polished look, bible bookstore styling and cloying, inefficient title. Not to mention the lengthy forward, far-reaching preachy “Praise for…” page, and prescriptive subheadings—even the title has one (apparently six words wasn’t enough)! But I also worry because it was written by someone who used to work for Willow Creek Community Church and still claims her work there in her author’s bio, like it’s a huge accomplishment, when really, I find it to be more like a warning. See, plenty of reasons to hate it, right? Of course. But I don’t.
Turns out you can’t judge a book by its cover… or by its title, subheadings, references, its author’s so-called credentials, or awful serif!
Turns out there are lots of good ideas in this book. Ideas about wilderness that came at just the right time for a lot of people I know and love, but especially me. Try this on: “Just as the physical law of gravity ensures that sediment swirling in a jar of muddy river water will eventually settle and the water will become clear, so the spiritual law of gravity ensures that the chaos of the human soul will settle if it sits still long enough.” Or this: “Some of us will wear ourselves out trying to change ourselves before we realize that it is not about fixing; it is about letting go—letting go of old patterns that no longer serve us.”
I freaked out yesterday. It was lunch time, which is such a wicked time for the unemployed. You know how Carson McCullers wrote in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that 3 o’ clock is the worst time of day or night? Well, I think she must have been employed when she wrote that because clearly, were she unemployed she would have realized that lunchtime can happen at 3! So I think, logically, we should go with lunchtime, don’t you agree? Anyway, I am Hispanic and always have been, so it seems strange that I would burn myself making a quesadilla. But I did. And I blame it on Lunchtime being such an awful time to be cooking. I began cursing, and swearing (yes, they are two different things when I do them) and I accidentally turned the whole kitchen into quesadilla. Not a very domesticated way to do things, I know, because if there is one thing I know for sure: I am the kind of woman who is willing to entertain the notion that I am better behind at typing than making lunches.
I burned my arm. It’s going to leave a mark. I’ll have this scar for a while. A pink mark, in the spot where my friends have tattoos, I have this reminder that the skin I’m in is fragile.
I have such self-loathing when I end up acting like a real domestic. For example the laundry piles up and I consider it evidence that I must be getting the writing done instead of the wash. When I’m in a good mood that means I am busy doing important things; when I’m in a bad mood that means I’m busy with trivial things. I hate it piling, but I really don’t appreciate doing the laundry alone these days. It just seems so responsible of me, and that seems disingenuous. I do like going to the Laundromat, I like the smell of clean laundry, I like the sorting and folding but this week I feel like it’s too house-wifeish a task for someone like me.
This shouldn’t bother me because I have such respect for women who run the household while the men are behind desks or hammers. These brave women are the domestic technicians, efficiency experts and nurturing whizzes. I admire their ability to self-motivate, micromanage or see the big picture and then conduct with aplomb the speeding bullet train of family life. I am not angry with them for doing all these things with such grace and dignity, I just get angry with myself for participating as though I know how to do these things—as though I am one of them. It feels like such fakery.
I hate how I must have been such a let-down as a domestic partner. How I missed the mark because I couldn’t pull it all off perfectly anymore. Moreover, I hate that I tried so hard. and I hate knowing that, in the end, I handed over the housekey, even though I’ll be responsible for the mortgage if something goes wrong. What is more I’ll be paying for that house and all that went on inside of it (and inside of me when I was there) for many years. And it is now impossible to go to the office and hide behind work.
So Laurita has come in and saved me once again. Even though she is all the way out in Gulu learning about reconciliation between murderers and rape victims she is unabashed to reconcile me to myself when I just don't know what to do about this new rhythm of life. I feel a little lazy for not working but so exhausted by the idea of working because I have so much to do that has nothing to do with parish ministry and even less to do with house keeping. In fact, the things I have to do have more to do with cleaning out my little brain, rather than the kitchen sink or organizing my gentler thoughts instead of organizing Sunday school volunteers.
I know this is getting a little sickening but don’t you dare stop reading now because I’m trying to tell you something really important: I’m trying to tell you that it is okay to take some time to think this sort of thing. In fact its so important that if you don’t stop and think about why you hate what you hate or love what you love you’ll go crazy. Or you’ll have to quit your job too. You won’t be you if you don’t take time to think about yourself, for yourself, in between driving your kids (either in the car or crazy), reading theological texts (Calvin! Hobbes! Even Calvin and Hobbes), paying rent, convincing your boss to give you a raise so you can pay your rent, shaving your armpits, flossing your teeth, planting perennials and rearranging furniture. Find time, make time and do it goddamnit.
So here is what Laurita and I came up with: Grace.
But not your average, cheap, two for a dollar, gravelly turn-out, moss-covered, pasteurized prepared cheese product grace. She has it figured out like there is a certain kind of grace offered to renegade women like us who don’t have a soul connection to what composes everybody’s everyday dishes and wishes and washing. What I mean is that there are plenty of women out there who found a way to see the divine in doing the chores—I’m just not there yet.
And I will never get there by forcing myself.
Laurita said to tie on a bandanna and consider myself a kind of renegade partner… you know, more like somebody who’d ride the dusty trail with you, cook over an open flame and risk the burn. We are the grace-rustling, hope-hustling, grin-toting few and we’ve been riding all day. We’re more likely to break the dishes than wash them, tickle the babies or encourage them to wail it out—this life is rough! We’re prone to running after buses, pouring cocktails out on mean men, and, well, we dance like we mean it and don’t care who knows it. We even stop them dead in their tracks. We even stop ourselves as we ramble on… we brake mid-sentence and decide to shut up, whenever we tire of nagging our partners, or over-explaining things to little ones. We are the William Wallaces of womanhood, making ourselves up with blusher and mascara like war-paint, embellishing, but never covering up these good eyes God granted, with which we survey the terrain and spot the target of our affection. We raise our fists and spears and then we wisely shout, “Hold!” And we know this requires its own brand of wisdom and grace.
So we offer ourselves grace, the expensive kind, that is so hard to find. And lots of it. I’m sure it’s the same quality of grace that the classic forms of wifehood and motherhood require, because it comes from the same source. It is the grace that we know as a result of giving in to what we have discerned to best for ourselves and those we love, right now.
And that means I’m holding, still, and in a way I never have been before: the way a woman knows how to wait and watch even when there are dirty dishes in the sink and dust on the window ledge. So thank you to Ruth Haley Barton. I’m sorry I judged you so harshly at first but you won me over because you seem to be one of us. If you don’t want to be associated with us I apologize. And for superimposing the image of renegade, I apologize—I may have misread your pages. But I will say this: ever since you nearly crashed into a fellow employee as you ran down the office hall, cell phone stuck to your ear, checking on your sick child as you rush toward a meeting—ever since that is what it took to make you realize the importance of holding still—you are one of us. So welcome: welcome to my affection and admiration, welcome to the renegade band.

is this a... what day is this?

i have a habit of falling asleep to the The Big Lebowski... the morning afters are one of the best reasons for why I do this. See, my computer allows me to clap it shut and fall asleep so
when I wake up and open it in the morning the movie starts playing again. Its like a jump start to the day without all the commitment of taking a shower.
So this morning I woke up, made coffee while I did the dishes and sat down to get some writing done only to open my computer and there he was
Jeff Bridges, The Dude, His Dudeness, dressed in an old hoodie, shorts, dirty white V neck and jelly shoes. He is seated on the receiving end of a giant, antique, F*&# you! desk and he leans in to address well, me, I guess and says, "Employed?" and laughs. The fat, white suit on the other side of the desk lectures him about going out on a weekday to look for a job, dressed like that and the Dude answers, "Is this a... what day is this?"

yeah, I am living the dream.

fame?, us?, here?

I think I like the idea that you can google "liturgy locatedness" and the skinnytree appears as an option. So you don't have to go back to the old skinnytree, which is formatted all crazy now, I'm re-posting this here, where it is exponentially easier to view.
But that isn't the only reason for re-posting and re-reading. There is also this: Laurita Mia is so far away and I'm really trying hard not to worry about her. I keep asking myself, "Why does she have to go all the way to Uganda? Why there? and so it has been comforting to re read my own answer to the location question... you know, it keeps my hypocritical tendencies under control.

so, without further ado...

A Strategy for Local Theology

But why here?
I’m going to plant a tree here. I live here, I work here and though I know the soil in California better than I know the soil here, though I respect the California native Banana slugs, though I have delighted in Californian riparian woodlands encroaching or shading over Bouganveillias in my home town, though I was willing to fight back the blackberries and Vinca Minor there in ways I have been unwilling to do so here, I am beginning to trust the way the rain will come when Seattle grass begins to brown and cedars go to seed. This is where I am right now, and I know trees will grow here.
So I’m going to plant a tree. Here.
The theology that is just a branch, just the beginning of an idea, I clipped from another time and another place is ready to put down roots. My ideas about God and God’s people are ready to be grounded in this location. My theology is daily changing and being changed by the people and problems of this time and place. It seems to me that my little branch of theology needs the nourishment offered by questions posed here and now.
I will have to dig a hole for my little tree, the way they dig for a building’s foundation: find a spot and dig deeper than anyone expected. Maybe even put up a temporary barrier to protect the hole, and those who come around to look down in it. On the friendlier days we have talked to each other. They usually ask, “why are you doing this in Seattle? What was wrong with California—you know people there.”
And I respond as transparently as I can, “I just fit in better here. I am more readily accepted here. They understand my love of children and are more community oriented. They are like a city but also like a small town. I think it is a good place to try new things. It is good for me to be rained on and greyed in and I am learning to appreciate sun, the water and the trees in new ways. I think I could be here a good long time. Besides, it wasn’t until I got here that I decided to stop wandering around and put down roots and there is no way of knowing exactly when and where to start digging—sometimes you just have to start.”
“How long do you think you will be in Seattle? Would you ever go back to California?”
“Sure, I would. But I want to put down roots so badly and this is where I am right now. I want to invest here, to reach down and grab up and give back in this place and the only way to do that is to be here now, fearlessly and graciously. I want to contribute, to say something meaningful and that won’t happen unless I discover the local currency. I don’t worry about getting out or back to Cali, this is good soil.”
So I resume digging. I dig a deep hole and sort out the rocks of hardened hearts from the fertile soil, dark with nourishing elements like curiosity and mystery. I never had to do that in California; I wasn’t ready to do the work of local theology there. Now I look down, bow down, to the differences, respect them enough to sort them, carefully and with love. I will have to or my theology will never put roots down deep enough. I decide which of the hard parts and hardened hearts to deal with now or leave in place knowing that the roots of my local theology will navigate around them.
I get down on my hands and knees, not with a shovel, but with my fingers and tenderly grapple with the hard parts of the people close to me. I know some of the fears and habits of the local people: the way they are afraid to tell their children “no”, wonder what will happen if they don’t recycle every can and bottle. I see the way their hearts and money are spent on their dogs and boats and second homes in Island County. These, the stony bits mixed in with the fertile soil, are not a loss, but neither are they to be ignored. They must be turned over and looked under. I will have to make judgments about those hard hearts and stony faces I am sorting through, I will have to take them into consideration as I plan to set a theology into this place. I will mourn, surely, if I can’t find their beauty. Sometimes it seems there are more rocks than soil but those times are so far few and far between.

The question of water and wind
This place and these people affect the growth of my theology. This place invites me to relinquish all that I know about God to the holy water and spirit wind here. I set it down and let weather, neighbors, dogs, babies and music come close to what I have hoarded so boldly. When it is time, I search out the right tree and get it in the soil. I know a lot about trees, and yet, it will never be enough because it is impossible for me to understand all the ways each branch interacts with the elements in this location. There is no formula to determine how the leaf buds shudder in the ruach of the local wind, or roots will soak in the waters from the local font.
I recently heard a story of a church that unearthed a giant baptismal font during renovation. The day of their first post-renovation worship service they baptized babies in that antique font but because it wouldn’t fit in the newly renovated sanctuary, they lugged it out onto the sidewalk and did the liturgy there. I want to ask the pastor of this Capitol Hill congregation how this reveals his theology of baptism that allows for naked babies to be dipped in a giant font on a busy sidewalk.
As for the congregation I serve, we have a small bowl-like font, a smallish metal trough and a giant, coffin-sized trough. They are all three employed with equal fervor and regularity. We exchange stories of our interactions with the font on a pretty regular basis. I like to tell a story of the night I tripped and nearly fell face first into the small, waist-high bowl. I heard one recently about two sixth graders washing their faces in it. The font is central to our theology, but also to our daily lives.
We all have stories about it interrupting our routines and tempting our children, calling them to dip a finger in and then lick it off, just to see if baptism tastes like they remember. The taller kids walk by and put a whole hand in, just to check if it might be good for swimming in, and then wipe the water all over their best dresses, their hair, or their baby brother. Parents hold their four year olds over it so they can stare down into it, hoping to glimpse fish or pennies or God. I have never seen any of these behaviors in other churches. I have never before seen theology worked out like this, around a font so tempting and present because of its location, its place, its central role among us.
Recently, I asked my pastor if I could use the giant font for a Vacation Bible School game. We both considered how this would affect the adults and children in our care. The children are ever increasingly familiar with the font. They have played in it before—during baptismal liturgies younger siblings often spend so much time enjoying the water that the whole family ends up soaked. But do they see an affirmation of baptism in the precious asperges as a soaked big sister runs to embrace a grandfather who flew in from Florida to attend? What would happen to their idea of baptismal sacrament were the font carried carefully onto the front lawn and filled with fully dressed children soaking, wiggling and cheering for their friends to run to the waters, and jump in? What kind of water is in this trough, in this place, that calls theology to be informed or adapted be a scene like this?

A sort of arborist
If we understand that theology comes to us locked in a seed, only to peek out after a blazing wildfire, we understand what growth will cost, how much energy it takes to respond to a harsh environment in constructive ways, what we must do to harden the outer bark just enough to protect xylem and phloem, veins and structures. I have landed in this place, these fonts, these winds, which will beat against my theology and I must let it happen.
Theologically grows stronger if I let the voices I know, both near and far ask questions about the varied fonts and Spirit they know personally. I become a sort of arborist, reading the details of the lives in my care, watching how the differing theologies grow near to each other or far apart and why. I look for signs of health, growth, disease or decay.
Theology grows, moves and gathers strength from the winds of change. It either shelters kindly or crashes down through the roof of the house if the roots are too shallow. Theology has branches and little bits at the tips that fall away at the end of the growing season. Theology bears sexy little blossoms, which wait patiently for the breeze and bees to disseminate its tiny totality.
If we learn to appreciate the variety of theologies like we appreciate the power of the seasons in a forest ecosystem, we will be better prepared to acknowledge substantial theological hardship as it comes and goes. We will see that certain trees suffocate in certain climates and dominate in others because of wind and water. Theology is the same way and happens according to the smallest components connecting, gathering fodder, and gaining strength by standing against indeterminate forces.
The problem with trees, is the same problem with theology: transplanting is difficult and not always in everyone’s best interest. Of course seeds transport well, with or without a human to carry them, seeds are fragile and hopeful but they are not the whole. The whole tree, the whole theology will not do well if it is dug up and moved too far and left alone. So it is best to prepare realistically and imaginatively, or come humbly with the seeds of a local theology and hold them loosely knowing that they are to be scattered and may not survive.
One part tree hugger and one part theologian, I am predisposed to the task of planting in the best of conditions, and nourishing the seedlings of theology, all the while knowing that I don’t have any say really in how well a thing will grow. Trinitarian theology grows best in conditions of heightened community. Rupture, and repair are to theology, as they are to the bark of a tree, evidence of growth. They are evidence that we are in the presence of salvific community, that we are gaining, changing, responding to outside forces like water and wind, that call us to be more ourselves, to put down deeper roots (reaching into the dark and unknown) and risk putting forth tender leaves and blossoms. There are choices to be made and freedoms to be exercised in order to grow a local theology. Doing local theology means extending roots and branches fully into the spaces we perceive between our location and God’s. It is in this reaching that we find how close God is.

One tree or one branch
I know that in the process of doing local theology there will be erosion of the soil, bending of the trunk, pruning of branches and grief when an old growth theology falls hard. It is hard to determine if local theology is just one tree in a forest of theologies: biblical, covenantal, feminist, reformed, Muslim, etc. Perhaps these are just branches of one system. Either way, they work together, live together, move in the same wind and grow in the same sun, from the same soil.
There are certain things I do, as a budding theologian, that are part of formulating and living a theology that is self-aware, taking into consideration my locatedness, vocation, gifts and struggles. My coworkers help me to see how my style of relating informs the relationships that affect my theology most. Recently, a coworker’s wife shared with me her husband reports back to her when our pastor/boss and I occasionally experience mismeeting. He tells her these stories because it is in my struggle to be understood by other theologians that he recognizes his own.
For example, I have both loved and hated our weekly staff meetings because I am often invited to share my perspective. My perspective on ministry is colored by my expectations that I will work against oppression; that others will work against oppression; to hear and to use inclusive language; to be hopeful rather than condemning of the mistakes coworkers make; to think creatively about the future of what happens in the church building, and in this particular neighborhood, with an eye for those who are not already a part of our community; to deepen relationships, in order to deepen faith; and to take risks in order to create a safe place for other risk-takers to land should they be in danger—that is what I think it is to lead. Though these are not so different from my coworkers’ expectations, they have been formed by my very personal experiences of particular oppressors, my own mistakes, certain neighborhoods and specific relationships that my coworkers will never fully understand.
The Parish Administrator, our minister of outreach and lead Pastor are all highly sensitive to concerns like mine and I am learning from the way they voice their own concerns. They seem to have a relational style very different from my own, if not a theology that differs significantly. And yet, week after week, I am able to exegete, both the text and the congregation, in light of our locatedness, and explain myself in a way that builds bridges. The strategy here is to tell the truth as I see it, to listen humbly and be honest when I am too angry to do so.
When I offer the children’s word I try to tell the truth as I see it. I offer a thorough exegesis in a non-threatening tone. In age-appropriate language I offer them a taste of prayer-infused preaching so that rather than sum up the week’s lesson, which I am very much afraid to do, I simply choose to lead them in bowing heads and offering a question to a loving God. When I write Sunday school curriculum, I think first of the questions the students have already asked, problems they already face. Then, when we are together for the lesson, we begin the work of integrating their experience of God, what they have been taught about God, and what they hope to find out about God from me. As we work out our theologies, we ask a lot of questions and are intentional about leaving space for more.

The mini(s)tree
It is my hope that we will do the work of local theology together for the duration of my ministry. I plan to be ordained so that as the lives of my parishioners intersect with sacrament and struggles, I will be allowed by the larger church to preside and participate. But I am also aware that the ordination journey is as important to the local theology as is the ordination itself.
The ordination process is a process that affects the theology of all participants. Committee, candidate, sponsoring church, the candidate’s family and friends are all called to be honest and even angry at times but to always tell the truth in love, and ask difficult questions that will change the way we live theologically together. My call to be a ordained as a female minister of word and sacrament (whose particular interest is in the faith formation of children and families) is a call to action for those in my sphere of influence. Sometimes it elicits anger and highlights doctrinal differences. At other times it unites and validates those who have been othered over against hegemony.
I have chosen to move far from the Presbyterian congregation that is sponsoring my ordination. This geographical distance has called my home congregation to wonder how I will repay them for their support and how the distance between us will be bridged. How many and which trees will have to die in order that we may build a bridge of solid timbers? They have been curious about my motives and discernment processes. One woman in particular feels a heavy burden to be especially available by phone for me in ways she has never offered other candidates and admits that this very particular kind of connection to me has changed the way she is in relationship with me, with our church, and with God. The members of my sponsoring congregation are those who stand over the hole I am digging, the tree I am planting wondering what will come of all this digging, planting, questioning and hoping. They watch my theology change as a result of my surroundings and warn against certain influences and celebrate others.
Not only has my home congregation been called to the struggle but also those who write me a pay check every month. My position in the Lutheran Church has called into question the ecumenical motives of the church as it employs someone who maintains a theology very different from theirs. They love me deeply and each one of them has adopted a different way of working out the meaning of our theological differences.
Both churches have ecumenically informed theologies with deep roots. Though these roots may mean that transplanting is impossible, it also means that these old trees will bear new leaves, if not heirloom fruit, faithfully and in turn. These theologies, though locally informed and reformed by my very participation, are reaching deeply down into the fertile soil of tradition. Those roots reach down deeper than their most recent political agendas and even deeper through the habits that have yet to stand the test of time. As a result, we are learning to form a theology that works for us and against us in different seasons, like wind and water against a tree, according to what we need. And we see that even a local theology will speak of God: the God we experience, the God that is One in the here and now and forever.