On the occasion of my daughter's first birthday

For You

Time does not make a single sad line;
each tick of the clock
a pebble and we toss them coyly together

watch the puddle where
they shine
ring joy,
they gather and leave no choice-
only growth.

Movement is a miracle you discovered slowly,
raise your arms in praise of the world coming toward you.
Laughter weaves a warmth around your world-
branches holding tight
the moon.

Speak the language of your soul soft and wild,
know we understand,
a song that can
sweep the desires out of their hiding places,
bite the traces of sweetness arriving,
all this only ever
an offering.
It rises to the surface,
naturally.

Pull the fabric of our faith,
trust it's twisting in your fist,
a prayer occurs with teeth bared-
an honest smile- your eyes search the heaven of you reflecting
mine own.

on parenting

On (Pa)Renting Children

as an extreme
full contact sport played
prayed
to St. Anthony, the one who finds
the lost
as an exercise in ambivalence
as in hope.
We bow but seem
only to be staring
at our shoes
in humility.

bodies and blood: for the feint of heart

Please read this post with caution: It may be somewhat upsetting.

The first week of our work there was an RV set ablaze in the parking lot.
The first week of our second month there was a pool of blood in the entrance used by our foodbank volunteers.
Yes, shocking.

Querido and I have been in ministry together and to one another for nearly five years. We have experienced profound loss, the birth of our first girl child, the realization of dreams and we have set a course into the storm. We have been appointed by our Bishop to serve South Tacoma and are willing to admit that this particular ministry is quite a squall.

It rages. Sometimes we join it. We rail against the God of muscle and bone, life and death even though we know these things are part of creation and they are good.
They are good.
God says they are good.

We preach body and blood. We know therein lies hope: blood is the fluid that nourished my baby daughter in my womb, carries oxygen to my brain as it conjures hopes and prayers. We avoid the more traumatic elements but we offer the cup of hope when we serve the Wesleyan Love feast of bread and juice. We know that God has provided food and thereby has blessed our bodies acknowledging that we are not just spiritual beings. We interact with all of creation: wheat, fruit and so are nourished by the very soil we will become someday when our bodies return to their former state.

Perhaps this is why the blood at my feet caused me to lose sleep last night.
My feminine imagination went first to the pain of childbirth. My male colleagues were generous enough to join me in this. A real man will be affected by his female pastor's concern and seek out the lost even if it means bravely facing the unknown contents of a dumpster. God spared him finding anything but melon rinds and used plasticware... This time.

Many of you have careers that call you into relational struggle, test your creative endurance, require that you remain the un-anxious presence. My career choice compels me to invite you to lean on me when these challenges upend your spiritual practices and knock you off center. When you need a hand to hold as you approach the end of the day, the season, the life you have been given I will be with you.

My career, my calling is to remember blood as a ballast, rage as redeemed, Christ in the storm calling us deeper in so the salty brine will cleanse our wounds. My vocation is to witness the dumpster contents and know they are all capable of holiness especially when they have been discarded on holy ground where they may be found by someone with eyes to see them as such.

This is what I've been called to tell you. They say there is a section of the book we claim called "gospel"; if it doesn't sound like good news it probably isn't what we ought to be preaching. The good news here is that whether we know the source or not the evidence of human suffering on our church doorstep is a holy and beautiful reminder that God is calling the broken to come home when we are battered, broken, abused, afraid.

My mother worries these fires and blood are evidence that I may be in danger. I say there is no doubt I am in danger... We are all in danger but God is in it with us, calling to us from within it. The earth cries out as it receives our blood, redeems it, knows what to do with it and so will we.

It doesn't get safer, I get braver. It doesn't get easier, I get stronger. Join me on the journey; we will borrow bravery from our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. We will redefine beauty and feast on love. We will know the earth and return to it daily as the fearful parts of us die and we are reborn with every breath, every heartbeat feeling the source pumping through our veins and pouring out of our hearts.

holy mother, for chrissakes...

They need a baby Jesus

My mother is a special mother and this is why: she is respectful of my many boundaries. Early in November she called and said, “I don’t want to overstep any boundaries but… They need a baby Jesus.”

“Of course they do,” I said. “It’s the way we humans work. A tangible reminder of the holy is always nice this time of year.”

In our house we over think this fact. Who are we if we say YES? What are we really saying about the infallibility or historic value of the birth of Jesus if we say we will wrap our little girl in a piece of cloth and pretend she is the Christ child? If we say NO, we shy away from the invitation to take a place of honor among the children and families trying earnestly to remember Immanuel in the midst of December’s consumer chaos. Citing theological differences rarely brings us closer to becoming the Beloved Community. I needed to at least collect some data and it’s much easier to put on a costume than do research (especially for a family with a newborn).

The day of the pageant there was no Joseph in sight. We noticed the irony in this but finally gave in to the romance of a traditional tableau. Turns out we were going to need all hands on deck. Nathan reluctantly donned a scratchy poncho and joined Pazita and I in our blue and white cotton yardage. As we entered the hall I heard a little voice rise up: “Is it a real baby?!”

“Yes. We got a real baby!” I heard. They began to sing Silent Night and Pazita, who had been cooing quietly for the last 30 minutes began to scream as if she’d been poked by a piece of straw-just like a real baby- maybe just like the real Jesus. Our Pazita, Joy of Man’s Desiring, pitched a fit and there was nothing the reluctant father figure nor the inexperienced new mother could do about it, try as we might.

The angels and Centurians forgot the words to Silent Night and the melody faded into the sounds of cacophonous midday. Shepherds and cardboard sheep looked on in a mixture of empathy and surprise.

As I look back on that day, almost four years ago, I find it easier to believe that Mary pondered all these things in her heart; not because I need her story to have happened exactly as written but because I need to know that pondering is not any less important than knowing. I’ve studied the dangers of idolatry and often questioned traditions like Christmas pageants that make us believe that the most important question about Jesus’ story was whether or not it all really happened exactly as it is written. But in my heart I hear the Latin phrase Imago Dei: Image of God. It’s simply the idea that we all bear the image of God. Perhaps this means that each of us is invited to take a place of honor-not because we are perfect but because we are real.

The pageant coordinators at my mom’s church wanted Pazita with them because she was real, not because she was perfect. She delivered: her humanity interrupted their silent night. Empathy and surprise broke down the facade and what was pageantry became an unexpected show of real humanity. Nathan and I were no longer able to pretend this was a perfectly happy child of a perfectly happy couple.

I guess my mother failed. She hadn’t meant to overstep boundaries but all kinds of walls fell down that day. Pazita's floodgates opened and alligator tears tumbled down the face of God.

And here is what I learned: If somebody invites me to be the Christ among them, I’d better say yes. The challenge is to remember that the holidays may mean a breach of decorum or a change of boundaries. We may disturb the peace, because we are human, because we bear the Image of God and it need not be a stumbling block. It may, rather, be an invitation for us to see Life, Spirit, Immanuel, God with us.

© Abigail Vizcarra Perez 2017

here or somewhere like it (or not)

I said I'd be here for you and I meant it then as much as I mean it now.
But I think there might be a little confusion when it looks so tidy as that.
This post is my best attempt to muss it up a bit so it won't be swallowed whole and misunderstood.
It is not a tidy thing, friend-ship. It is a rollicking barge in a tsumani (now that you've all seen that footage, I feel even better about using the image). It is dangerous, large, carrying so much weight and yet daring to stay afloat.

Having repented of so many things over the course of my life I know I better keep it up. If you turn from one thing only once you will have to stand still with your back on half the world. So I keep turning, spiraling upward in widening circles of acceptance and hope. If I stop turning for too long I begin to lose my sense of movement.
So I keep moving,
which is as much to say, I keep moving.

We have entered the stage in pregnancy demarcated by the movements of the unborn-the feelings like you've swallowed a rock just before the loop on a roller coaster or the one that means someone is head butting your bladder. And it is teaching me that even the tiniest movements can cause great pain or great excitement. Such movements teach us about ourselves and the world we inhabit whether it is a womb or a tomb.

Just before we moved to Washington DC a very wise friend told me that moving means movement and that is good. He helped me to see that movement might require moving, even if I really wanted to stay in one place.
Remember, I whisper to myself,
knowing about locatedness does not require a certain amount of time in a certain place and
stagnant waters are excellent breeding grounds for mosquitos, which is part of the process but even mosquitos grow up and fly away and
holding still is really good but holding loosely is important also.

So when the earth is on the move and tsunami borne friendships barge in on my plan to be unabashedly brave in the face of all that I will sacrifice to be a good enough mother I want to refuse to give in to guilt I feel that I no longer have the energy to devote to friends who have comprised my family... because I have somehow, miraculously, come into a totally different configuration of family: my own.

The books about pregnancy don't mention that I will feel as though I am abandoning my friends and family. They don't say much about the grief we will all feel now that I am missing out on all the milestone markers you invite me to attend. So I'm left to my own thoughts on the topic.
I feel the movement within me: someone I've never met surpassing everyone who has held me dear.
It's all I can do to remember the woman I have been to you and with you is still here within me.

I am here. I will be here. But I will be there, too. I am for you, even if I'm not "here for you" in the traditional sense. I am "with you" even if we aren't mounting side by side bar stools, sliding between the same two pews, climbing the stairs in step or plying each other with two-ply separated only by the stall wall.

So I thought I should look it up on the log of advice and hope I have tried to offer myself and all of you in the past and I found this:

"4/23/2009

so here is the life lesson i am learning and it sucks to have to learn it but that is just what it is--no more and no less:
the onus is always on me to remember that any and all accusations do not account for all the good i am capable of and all the righteous risk i am willing to take,
and all the ways that even the best work can hurt or cost us and that
pain is pain and also prevalent
and though i may participate it is less and less likely,
as i become an increasingly compassionate person, that i am the cause of that pain or that i can't work with that pain when i do cause it (because i undoubtedly will),
to deepen relationship through reconciliation.

and it might come across like i am well adjusted, with lots of good ideas but i just have to tell you, today, a thursday of very little consequence,
i just don't know what to do about all that but i'm telling you because i think you will understand and that makes me feel a lot better. because even if i'm not actually a better person, i am at least not feeling awful about the person i am and i think that is
really important."

Fall Again

It wasn't the usual sort of emergency that would warrant a call in the middle of the night. By the time I heard the phone it was on it's last ring. Her voice on the recording was enough to break through the REM stupor and my head began to swim in thoughts of her suffering alone in the greying Seattle twilight while I tried to fall back asleep in my tiny DC apartment.

So I called her back. Instead of a real hello her voice was all gratitude that I had called until she couldn't help but let the questions tumble out in a rant-like succession: "What have I done? What am I doing? What was I thinking? Why did I come here? How did I leave my family and friends--for this! What am I going to do now that I can't go back..."

***

Every September students of all kinds return to schools in a flurry of paperwork, their parents' emotions, and maybe a few autumn leaves. If we were to compare it to a season from the liturgical calendar, August would be like a warmer version of Advent: riddled with expectant and nervous hoping, mounting expectations, families of all configurations wild with the spirit of preparation, shopping, evaluating the needs, checking the lists, more shopping... We can't possibly be ready but we prepare anyway for the big day that comes every year. The First Day of School is to August what Christmas is to Advent; and for some of us it's almost as hallowed.

In the US we are certain that the day is coming and as for our children, we are certain that they are going, ready or not. As a professional educator my job is to think through the reasons for all the buzz. I am well aware of all the reasons students go to school: the youngest students are delivered to their pre-schools, some at a mere six weeks old, because their parents have the privilege of access to programming that will prepare them for a lifetime of learning. The majority of students hit the books because the law requires and their families believe in the power of a formal education. Some go because they've been told they will make more money if they pursue another degree. Others go because they will be the first in their family to break the binds of the American caste system. You'll see them at the coffee shop or vending machine in the afternoon so they can suffer through night classes. They can be seen dragging around a five pound intro to biology text book or highlighting sections on the train ride to work. Some want to go, some don't. Some have a choice, some don't.

This year I have all access to students of a different ilk. They are an unknown quantity to most of society. Their friends and families are befuddled by their decision to return to school this year. They find their only compassionate supporters in the small pockets of men and women who have already been through it... They are those we may affectionately refer to as the seminarians.

They untangle themselves from hard won community ties and lucrative careers. Some move thousands of miles from support systems comprised of church ladies, gym buddies, softball teammates, devoted parents and older siblings. Or they choose to bring the support system (and all it requires) along: packing up two dogs, two children and a loving spouse only to deliver them to a tiny apartment in a strange college town where there is little they can do but replace family and friends with 20 something babysitters and great beer.

And then they call, in the middle of the night, to ask those of us who have been there and done that to answer to the hardest question.
What do I do now that I can't go back?
They call because they have suddenly realized that this time a return to school burns the bridge between the present and the past. They have been through the first day of school so many times but this catches them off guard. When the school is a seminary, the going back to school means you can never go back to the life you knew. What is worse: they prepared diligently. Many are candidates for ordination so they have passed a battery of psychological exams, taken numerous tests, written introspective essays and spent a year or more in discernment. And then they come home from the third night of New Student Orientation knowing only one thing, prepared for only this: it's time to confess I don't know what I'm doing.

They want to quit but they can't. They can't quit because its not a job or an addiction; its a call. And thank God it is. It is at the request of the very communities they left behind, at the urging of their best friends, with the support of their parents and siblings--most of whom have no idea they ever requested, urged or supported this endeavor--that they have come. Maybe the call was audible, spoken aloud by a mentor. Maybe the call was more like a surrender to fate. Either way it was an irresistible, insatiable and  unbelievable series of events that brought them here to the intersection of faith and knowledge. When the sun sets and the path goes dark it's all they can do to dial a familiar number--who cares what time it is wherever you are, as long as you are there for me when I need you.

I have my MDiv (obviously I didn't find my way out of this conundrum) which means all I have is empathy and habit to guide me. So I do what my days in seminary prepared me to do; I answer the call.

Hopefully you will answer more eloquently than I did (I have a tendency to swear when impassioned). It was late, I was exhausted but I remember telling her she is right where she needs to be. She is not crazy to feel lost and alone. She is not crazy to think she can't do this one minute only to be sure she has  to do this the next minute. She is right about one thing: she can not go back... but that is not nearly as big and bad a fact as her fear has led her to believe. "Is it me?" She wondered aloud as if to ask, am I offensive, is that why I feel so alone? I could almost swear I heard her sniff her armpits.

No, for the first time it's not about you. From now on it's not about your abilities or your goals; it's about a bigger picture and finding your place in it. This is a big task, you're not overreacting to the burden your choices have brought upon you. Your reaction is warning you that you are coming to the end of your comfort zone, closer to the edge of yourself and you will fall off the edge. You will fall in love with the new perspective you gain when you finally take flight into the future of the church, into the new view of God that this risk brings.

Soon it will be Fall again. Seminarians across the country will be back at school. They have been moving, preparing, coming closer to the end of the lives they have known. So when you hear the Convocation bells ringing like a midnight emergency, answer them: it's the future of the church calling and you have been here before. Fall again.

Please Come!

Let the Children Come: Faith Formation for Small CongregationsSaturday, October 13, 10am to 4pm, $30
At The Student Leadership School 
sponsored by The Church of the Savior CommunitiesThe Festival Center
1640 Columbia Road NW
Washington, DC 20009

Contact Tim Kumfer to register
Phone: 202.328.0072

We not only inherit the faith from our ancestors; we also bequeath it to our children. We can leave our children with a stronger faith community than we were given...if we seek guidance, knowledge, and encouragement to do so.

This one-day workshop will give church leaders and teachers the opportunity to ask tough questions, discuss particular trials, and discover practical ways to guide our youngest members in anything from sacred practices to potlucks. Come to learn new and effective means for including the children in your midst. We trust that by doing so you will enliven the worship experience, deepen the faith of the congregation and authentically respond to Christ’s call to “let the children come.”

Abigail Vizcarra Perez, MDiv, is the former business manager of Jubilee Jumpstart.  Previously a minister and teacher, she has extensive experience in faith formation with children and families.