Resurrection

This is a poem about being beat half to death by life, and of looking God in the eye and daring Him to heal you. For my best friend.

(This poem came so quickly that I suspect I'm copying at least part of someone else's work. I hope not. If so, I'm sorry.)

Resurrection

Raise me up from ashes, burning...
Dreams that fall from me like stars,
scars that mark where I have tried
and failed, and bathe myself in ashes.

Raise me up from ashes, crying
tears like tiny raindrops, dropping
down to earth and watering
the flowers that will grow around my feet.

Raise me up from ashes, clutching
pain, and teach me how to let it go.
I wear the past like a coat of skins.
I'm tired of blood. Set me free.

Raise me up from ashes, lighting
a fire to fuel me forward, towards
resurrection. Ascending, I will rise
towards You, and reach out my hand.

Raise me up from ashes, singing.
Raise me up from ashes, dancing.
Raise me up from ashes, battle-weary,
scarred, with fire in my eyes.

Raise me up, let me shine,
and I will sing Your praise.

Hail Mary, Bad-Ass Queen of Heaven

(image from http://stwalburgas.blogspot.com/2009/01/mary-queen-of-heaven.html)

So next Sunday at Church of the Common Table, the Fabulous Dr. Weave and I will be leading a service on Mary. Mary and I have some Issues, so I thought that rather than make my contribution to next week's service a giant therapy session for Moffitt, I'd hash this out on the blog. Because, you know, the internet is a great place to work out one's Issues. *cough*

So, a couple of things have happened lately that have me re-hashing The Catholic Years. I know I've mentioned this before on the blog, but I was received into the Roman Catholic Church on the Feast of St. Lucia (December 13), 1997 at St. Mary of the Angels in Bayswater, London, not very far from Notting Hill. As part of being received into the church, I took the name Elizabeth after Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American to be canonized by the church, and an American woman who, like me, had found the Church while living in Europe. I remained Catholic until I was received into the Episcopal Church in November of 2001.

I was a Very Good Catholic, particularly when I was living in England. I prayed the rosary regularly, prayed morning and evening prayer almost every day, went to Mass at least once a week and spent regular time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. I was always in at least one choir in one church. In the summer of 1997, while I was in the process of converting, I fasted and prayed the rosary (often in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament) for three separate intentions, all three of which were answered. My friends at the time joked that I should be canonized. I became engaged to my Catholic boyfriend in July of 1998, and moved the following month back from the U.S. (where I'd returned to finish college) to the U.K. to marry him.

A year later, all three of my intentions had reversed themselves, meaning that two people who'd been "healed" were dead, and another situation that had righted itself had gone completely off the tracks again. My fiance had dumped me three weeks before our wedding and four weeks before my visa for the U.K. expired. After much discussion, I found that the main reason that my fiance had ended things was because he felt I would not make a good wife and mother. His main reason for asserting this was because I told him that I wanted to travel and see the world at some point.

I blamed him for wrecking my life with his last-minute revelation, but I also blamed Mary. I'd prayed countless times for her intercession for this relationship in addition to other intentions. I didn't see how I had an option but to believe that praying for her intercession had been a bad idea... not only had I not gotten what I'd asked for, but I'd hoped more than I ever would have had I not believed there was something extra-special about her prayers.

But more than that, I blamed the constant teaching of the Church about Mary and about her example for women. Almost every statue or image of Mary I'd ever seen, she was demurely looking down, either at Baby Jesus or just... down... like the Queen of Heaven was afraid to even meet *my* eye as I prayed for her intercession. Over and over again in sermons during Mass, I heard the phrase "she said yes" (referring to her response to the Archangel Gabriel) folded into messages that painted the Perfect Woman as passive, quiet, subsuming all her desires (and, evidently, her personality) to the whims and wishes of her husband and children.

I was pretty sure I knew that, on a level maybe he wasn't even aware of, Phil was comparing me to this Perfect Woman. *Mary* wouldn't want to travel. *Mary* wouldn't want to work outside the home, and Mary sure as hell wouldn't be spending time writing poetry or looking for singing gigs outside of the church (both of which I was doing). Oh, and Mary wouldn't swear. Or drink as much as I did (and do), or laugh as loud. Or talk at all, actually, unless responding to a direct question. I REALLY tried to be what Phil wanted me to be, tried to live up to all the unsubtle messages about the archetype to whom I was expected to conform. But I couldn't.

Of course, over time I've become convinced that neither did Mary.

When I turn away from the Church's later teachings on Mary, and instead just go to the New Testament, I don't find a lot about Mary, and what I do find does NOT suggest a person of passivity. This is what I find:

- A young woman who looked THE FREAKING ARCHANGEL GABRIEL in the EYE and said "Yessir, I will give birth to the SON OF GOD." What the what?? This gives me chills even while I'm typing it. The word "precocious" doesn't even begin to cover the kind of Stone Cold Badassery it would take to

a) TALK TO one of the FREAKING HOST OF HEAVEN and

b) calmly agree to give birth to THE SON OF GOD.

She had to have known that doing this was going to put her seriously on the outs with everyone in her family, who would have absolutely zero motivation to believe her story about being impregnated by GOD and not by the cute boy that lived down the street. And she said yes *anyway*. This may be because she had a rock-solid faith and understood her relation to God as God's servant, but also because she was confident in her ability to make this decision and to deal with the inevitable shit-storm that was going to follow.

- A woman who, directly before her due date (and after above-mentioned shit-storm, which involved, among other things, being sent packing by her fiance so she didn't get stoned to death for adultery), was informed that she had to make a long journey because of some impersonal ruler in a far away place, and upon arriving at the destination, gave birth to her first-born possibly unaided by anyone except her husband and in a BARN. No pain meds, no birthing pool, just push that sucker out in a pile of hay surrounded by animal dung a few steps from the hooves of Bessie the Cow. Again, it took serious physical and mental strength to get through this ordeal.

- A woman who, only a year or so after giving birth was forced to flee to a foreign country and live as a refugee until the Insane King who wanted to murder her son died.

- A pragmatic problem solver who was not afraid to ask Jesus to step in and be Mr. Fix It in a Situation of Social Awkwardness. There is no story about Mary I relate to more than the Wedding Feast at Cana. I could TOTALLY see myself doing what Mary did. The conversation reminds me of the kind of conversation I might have had with my brother when we were teenagers (I kind of acted like his Mom... he'd be the first to acknowledge this):

Me: Ben... BEN, listen to me.

Ben: (annoyed) What??

Me: They're getting ready to run out of wine. (raising eyebrows) We can't let that happen now, CAN we??

Ben: (even more annoyed) What do you want ME to do about it??

Me: (to the waitstaff) Do whatever he tells ya.

Not suggesting that my brother is Jesus, of course, but it just feels familiar to me as someone who fixes problems quickly and often really doesn't care how it gets done. This is not the action of a passive, shrinking violet, or someone overly concerned with propriety. Mary was not the slightest bit afraid to ask the Son of the Almighty God to fix an immediate, practical problem involving a shortage of alcohol. *This* is a woman after my own heart.

- A woman who, upon hearing that her son had been lead away and sentenced to death, went to the foot of his cross to watch him die in one of the most gruesome ways possible. I know that mothers love their children to the point of death, but watching your child bleed to death slowly is, again, not the action of a person with your normal amount of stamina. I can see a mother not being able to handle this, or not being able to remain in front of it.

I can also imagine that it took quite a bit of doing to get to Golgotha, since Jesus' execution was kind of a Thing and there were undoubtedly a ton of people there to witness it. Mary was no spring chicken by this point, but she got herself there through the crowds and the chaos and probably a security checkpoint or two (there was a healthy amount of fear about Jesus' followers) because there was no other place she could possibly be but beside her dying son (who had, by the way, three years earlier refused to settle down and have grandkids, quit his job, left her and his home and the family business and wandered around for 3 years causing trouble with the religious authorities [which would, of course, equal trouble for his family... we don't have this in the scriptures but I can't imagine they were left alone through all of this]).

The bottom line for me is that I believe I and many other women who have loved (or been raised among) Catholic men have suffered directly from being compared to an image of Mary that doesn't fit what little there is about her in the Bible. I find this an abuse of Mary, and an abuse of women who aren't particularly demure or soft-spoken... not that I'm hating on women who are demure and soft-spoken, but as it so happens I don't really possess either quality, and neither do most of my female friends. To me, these are character traits, not moral qualities... but in my experience as a Catholic, they were raised to the level of virtue. I consider this to be tragic for women whom God has made with gifts of vision and leadership, women who are eloquent and talented and who shine even when they're not trying to. I'm not talking about myself, by the way... I'm thinking of specific women I've known who have suffered greatly beneath the Church's teaching on women... have suffered as they've attempted to emulate a neutered, silent, weak-spirited version of Mary not supported by the Scriptures. Women who, unlike me, chose to stay and suffer.

When I envision having peace with Mary again, I imagine a Mary who would look me in the eye and tell me to get my shit together... with love, but also with a gleam in her eye that would let me know she was serious and would open up a can on me without a moment's hesitation if necessary. I imagine Mary with a firm jaw, saying "Yes, if I could bear the Son of God, bear the shame of my pregnancy and all of the difficulties with and questions around raising Him... and then watch Him die, then you can handle what God places in your life." I imagine a Mary who even now says "that's not too trifling a problem for me to take to God for you. Hold on, I'll be right back." I imagine her tough and strong and a little weathered. She was a carpenter's wife, after all. It's not like she had it easy.

And I also imagine her slowly shaking her head at all of the people who have promoted an image of her as weak and passive and demure... and I imagine her having a word or two with God about THAT, too.

If I make peace with Mary, it'll be with Mary, Bad-Ass Queen of Heaven... and I'll ask her prayers for a Church that accepts women as they are, quiet or loud; leaders or followers; with many children, few or none; married or single. Maybe I could go to that Church again someday. Maybe.

the optimist, waiting

So, my friend Richard Russeth wrote and posted a beautiful poem today, which inspired me to try and write a poem, too, since it's been a while. It's not great, but it's what I have today.

the optimist, waiting

Hope sits out here, glittering,

like a hill of ruby quartz

in the middle of a plain of

dry grass, the wind blowing.

The sun strikes it, and it sparkles,

casting light like shooting stars

everywhere, everywhere,

blinding and brilliant.

And then the clouds grumble in,

blocking the light. Rain falls,

tears sliding

down

the ruby rock.

...but also, washing it clean

of dirt, dead leaves and ashes.

The sun shines again,

and it glitters, brightly.

How long until the rains wear it down?

How long can hope hold out,

sitting alone,

and waiting?

Not forever.

Not forever.

Not forever.

Degas and the Virtue of Never Being Finished

"He is like a writer striving to attain the utmost precision of form, drafting and redrafting, canceling, advancing by endless recapitulation, never admitting that his work has reached its final stage: from sheet to sheet, copy to copy, he continually revises his drawing, deepening, tightening, closing it up."

- Paul Valéry (1871-1945), writing about Degas -

So I went to spend some quality time worshiping in the Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection today (it feels like a chapel to me, so I consider it to be one). When I got there, the room was crowded, so I ambled upstairs to check out the Phillips' exhibit on Degas. I wasn't particularly excited about it. I like Van Gogh, how you can see his wrestling with insanity in the frenzied lines of his paintings. I like Rembrandt, how he uses light to channel your focus and create a sort of dream-like state, how he often tells a full story with really very few subjects on the canvas. I like Kandinsky and his use of mathematical/musical/fractal themes and bright colors. I like Rothko's outright obsession with intense, intense colors. As far as I was concerned, Degas was a Guy Who Painted Chicks In Fluffy Dresses.

This, of course, is why we have art galleries... so that we're pushed to think more deeply about the image in front of us, if for no other reason than we can see the artist's brush strokes and are forced to confront that this image is here because a person made it become. When an image becomes clichéd to us, it feels as though it has always been. We forget there was a process, and we forget that there was a moment at the beginning where the artist wasn't at all sure they knew what they were doing. We forget that they were human... that maybe they never really knew what they were doing.

The most striking thing to me about the Degas exhibit is that it consists largely of studies and sketches that he did of dancers and nudes, with the same images again, and again, and again. Dancers resting, dancers standing, dancers stretching, women bathing... the walls are covered with half finished renderings of the same few models in the same few poses, over and over and over. I'm not used to this, from the Phillips or from any other exhibit that I've seen. I'm used to seeing one or two studies hanging near finished works so that you get some idea of the artist's process... plus it feels pleasantly sneaky to think that you're seeing something they didn't intend to be seen.

To make the exhibit largely about the studies themselves, to center it around partially finished work, seemed very profound to me. Maybe this is only due to the fact that what the Phillips has of Degas' work is largely sketches, but I felt like it was something deeper, like it was about Degas himself, or about art more generally, or maybe about humanity. Or maybe I was thinking about it too much... but here's what I was thinking...

I can't find a really good internet rendering of the image at the top of this post, but that image is the first one that took my breath away. The effect is better served by the image at right. As with the rest of the sketches, there's a lot of vagueness... scribbled lines, colors, shading not really worked out... but then BLAM, there are shoulders, a face, an arm, real enough to look as though they were photographed. The stark, surprising beauty of that had far more of an effect on me than any of the other finished paintings. I felt like I was witnessing a living being emerge from the paper... the creative process of a man who died almost 100 years ago in a continual state of re-birth on the page.

After I got over my initial reaction, the first thing I thought was "here's the dignity in not finishing", and the second thing I thought was "...and the dignity in starting even when you're not sure you're ready". What these sketches suggest to me is that Degas was so thoroughly committed to his process that finishing things was almost a sidebar. The point was to keep trying, to keep showing up at the page, to keep attempting to render these images that he found so compelling, to keep trying to make a static image on a page move like a dancer.

Beyond that, I think I was touched at how these sketches felt to me like what it is to be alive. I've been meditating a lot on how much of life is improvisation, but that this creates a level of tension when you're on a spiritual path and you believe in God and believe in truth. On the one hand, there is a responsibility to be present to what is in front of you and to what the Holy Spirit is revealing through your life, but on the other hand there's truth and the dictates of conscience/ received ideas of morality/scripture, etc. I don't know that I can make this make sense, but seeing that image of a dancer's firm, fleshy shoulders emerging from squiggled lines and vague colors on a yellowed piece of paper seem to speak to that for me. There are always things that must remain true, firm, and concrete or I/we risk just kind of falling apart, but there is also always a lot of becoming... firm shoulders and squiggly outlines can co-exist, and still be breathtakingly beautiful.

Even in his finished works, Degas often seems to maintain this sense of vague edges to great effect. Standing and observing "Melancholy" (image at left), I was struck again at how much he chose not to define in the background, or even, really in the foreground when compared to the woman's face. Again, the greatest reality in this image is that of flesh, and his attentiveness to that makes it nearly impossible to look away from the woman's face. I thought to myself that "Melancholy" wasn't a strong enough word... this woman has been obliterated by something and is hanging on by a thread. So much communicated in this little space because he choose to fill in only what was important.

The quote at the beginning of this post is on the wall at the Phillips beside the sketch of the dancer tying her shoe. I scribbled it down in my little red moleskine, which I carry with me all the time and which contains a lot of scraps of things that I've tried to capture when they've dropped into my brain. It's also full of notes to myself... titles of albums, books, and paintings that I was trying to record because I knew I'd forget... as well as the blood pressure and pulse readings I get every time I give blood. This is how my life is... bits of some decent-ish writing, some singing here and there, occasional songwriting with friends... also books, papers, color, chaos, and quite a bit of blah.

The quote suggests a considerable amount of discipline on Degas' part, but in the context of a roomful of beautiful sketches nowhere near completion, it takes on a different tone, suggesting instead a man comfortable with the chaos of creativity, willing and able to be a beginner every day... someone who, perhaps, also had small notebooks filled with ideas and maybe also didn't clean his apartment as often as he should. I'm grateful to get a window into the kind of beauty that can emerge from showing up to participate in that creative chaos, day after day after day. It gives me hope.

Sounds like Jupiter, doesn't it?

So I went down to Occupy DC tonight, for various reasons, but largely because I felt that, after what happened in Oakland, CA earlier this week, this was the place I wanted to be tonight. I got there in time to stand at the edges of the evening General Assembly for about an hour and a half, listening.

This is my fourth time down there, and every time I've been I've come away with mixed feelings and a sense of something I struggle hard to articulate. I want to try to articulate it here.

First off, I'm fascinated and a little in awe of their decision making process. I know a very, very little bit about group decision making in a flat leadership structure. I learn more and more through Common Table all of the time, and I learned some things in my masters degree about facilitation and group decision-making, but I've never witnessed something like this: a culture of its own emerging in a public space... a little mini-society, complete with rules for decision-making and administration of resources. My understanding is that the process they use, as well as some of their lingo and use of common gestures and symbols, has been adapted from Occupy Wall Street, but that doesn't make it much less amazing to me. I watched two young women facilitate a large gathering, complete with occasional ranting from folks who appeared mentally ill, with competence, purpose and clarity. Decisions were made. Plans were formed. Tasks were delegated. In other words, shit got *done*.

I spend a really, really disproportionate amount of time in meetings, and the fact that a group of people could self-organize with this level of efficiency and conduct a meeting that is actually productive in the middle of a park on a cold Friday night kind of blew my mind. Whatever ultimately comes of these protests, there are graduate degrees to be had studying the conditions that have led to these mini-communities forming and sustaining themselves all over the country.

However much admiration I have for their process, though, I always feel a little ill at ease being there. I thought this was because I work for the Government, because I can only spend limited time down there, because I'm not a "radical", whatever that is exactly.

But tonight I looked around and saw other people like me... people in work clothes, with sensible overcoats, carrying laptops. Some of these people spoke, and mentioned their day jobs and their desire not to be arrested because it would jeopardize their employment. As I looked around the crowd, I realized that the people who'd clearly come from work appeared to be about a quarter of the crowd. I wasn't expecting that at ALL. So that wasn't the source of my discomfort, exactly. What was?

My friend Micah Bales has been involved in Occupy DC from the very beginning. He's the reason I came down to the protests the first time, and my admiration for his dedication to this cause is the main reason I keep going. He's struggled very publicly on his blog with being a person of faith (he is a founding member of Capitol Hill Friends, where I worship on Sunday nights) who is there as a result of those convictions. I found his thoughts at this post clarifying tonight, particularly this quote:

"There are many Christians involved in Occupy DC - I discover more all the time. Nevertheless, the overall culture and worldview of the Occupy movement is a lowest-common-denominator, generally left-wing set of assumptions. So far, almost all of the discourse at Occupy DC has been about "restoring democracy," "building power," or the plight of "the 99%." I have not heard anyone - including the folks whom I know are Christians - talking about the Kingdom of God and Jesus' mission to liberate the poor and oppressed."

When I read that, I thought, oh. That's it. It wouldn't honestly occur to me to expect Occupy DC to have a Christian message, but without that message, the desires of the protesters for a better, more ethical and just society feel to me like clothes that just don't fit right. It's not that lack of faith makes what they're asking for inauthentic... but without faith, I can't access it. I can't get beyond the irony of folks on smart phones (including me) protesting the abuses of capitalism. I can't get away from the twinge I feel in my gut walking away from the park and into the train station, where the actual homeless people are slumped over in the corner. Without Christ at the center, so much of what is being asked for seems put on to me, inauthentic.

The final point: for all I would say about community forming spontaneously around the protests, no one ever talks to me when I'm there, and that might bother me more than anything else. I understand that the nature of a protest is such that the participants are going to be self-conscious, but the level of self-consciousness feels really inauthentic to me. Walking out of the park, away from the protesters and where the usual street people are, one man greeted me: "Good evening, Queen." I said "hullo" and smiled and he said "God bless you, have a good night", and I said "you, too" and thought gosh, it's nice to be called "Queen". Waiting at the intersection, a man in a fuzzy blue hat who seemed like he was probably high approached and said "Good evening, ma'am. You're very beautiful. Pencils and lights. Sounds like Jupiter, doesn't it?"

And I smiled and thought, yes, it sounds like Jupiter. And that I suddenly felt much more at home than I did in that park.

For all my confusion about what I feel about Occupy DC, I'm still glad they're there. DC can be so numb, and so numbing. Last Sunday, when I walked into the park and stood around an impromptu concert featuring a stand-up bass, violin, mandolin, guitars and rhythm instruments, I was deeply grateful for that. I am grateful to see evidence that people who choose to step out of the flow of "normal" life can then choose to organize themselves and have a medical tent, food tent, a legal consultation team (!) and even tech support. I love that there are always people painting and at least one person playing a drum. I love that people have named their tents.

I don't know what the end of Occupy DC will be... but I know that when it ends, I'll feel like we've lost something... a site of protest and rebellion in a town that is often too well-off and comfortable for its own good... an outward manifestation of my own inward frustration at the injustices I'm a part of without my consent. So I'll continue to visit, and I will pray for it. That is all I know to do.