The Grace of the Church

I had it in my head to put together a sort of Faith Profile of my year with the poems I've been writing.  So picked out the ones I was extra proud of and worked on editing them and putting them in some semblance of order.  I did this right before bed, which was a problem.  For one thing, it got my creative mind racing, and that takes ages to shut off.  For another, it opened up memories and feelings and doubts and worries.  I've been feeling pretty on top of things lately, and then I read my own words describing myself in my darkest emotions.  Not a great idea.

The result was that I skipped church today.  My alarm went off, I hit snooze.  Then I laid in bed for ten minutes thinking about how I was really tired and anyway I didn't want to go.  So I didn't, and I slept until 11:30.

It's funny, the days I skip church sometimes turn into big spiritual epiphanies for me.  That happened a little while ago, but it isn't what I want to talk about.

What I've been learning lately is the power of the Church.  I think I've always thought of it as God's people, I got that part.  I knew it was more than a building, more than a gathering of people who thought and acted the same way.  But in the last year or so, I've been deepening my awareness and appreciation of the sacred. 

One of the sacred things I've been stepping into is Communion.  That's honestly the main thing I miss whenever I'm not at church.  I've grown to love the cracker pieces and wine glasses passed down the pew.  I love taking strength there, remembering that I am here because of Christ, that it is only through Him that I can do anything.  I don't think the bread and wine are literally Jesus's body and blood, but I do think there is something far more sacred going on than I ever realized.  I think there is some special grace in taking Communion, some acknowledgment of our humility and dependency, some concrete action of finding purpose and strength in Him.

The other sacred thing I've been stepping into is the Church.  I just googled "Is the Church a sacrament?" and turns out the Vatican II said there is a sacramental nature to the Church, so good, I'm not alone in thinking this.  The thing is, as I've grown weaker this year, more aware of my sins and the sins of the world, I've found real peace in the Church.  Not as in they encourage me, though they have.  What I mean is, it's so comforting to know that while I struggle and doubt, there are others in the Church who are strong and faithful.  When I skipped church this morning, I took strength in knowing that there were others who went, men and women and children who heard the Word and took Communion and echoed creeds.  It's not a get-out-of-jail-free pass.  It's a genuine grace, I think, this acknowledgment that I cannot be strong all the time, but that God has me as one small piece of a Body--a Body that is strong, that continues when I am not physically present.  There is such comfort in seeing faith as communal rather than individualistic.

I'm turning mystical, I guess, and pretty High Church.  I just love it.  I love stepping outside of myself and realizing how dependent I am upon God's grace, how I need physical manifestations of His grace to eat and drink, how I need relational manifestations of His grace to serve Him when I cannot.  It's all just crazy enough to make sense.

Too Beautiful

I stumbled across this playlist of epically beautiful instrumental music, and I actually had to stop what I was doing to stare open-mouthed at my computer during one song.  It was so beautiful I wanted to turn it off, as if it were too much of a good thing, like my ears and my mind wouldn't be able to stand so much purity and clarity.

Beauty is, I think, sadly lacking in everyday life.  Efficiency and practicality are useful and good, but when we laud these virtues at the expense of beauty, I wonder if we aren't losing something precious.  Beauty is a sign, an arrow that points to the reality of "now and not yet."  This ache I feel around something too beautiful makes me all too aware that this is my life--I am meant for something great, and there is joy and peace in eternity.  But at the same time, right now life is streaked with selfishness and abuse and despair.  Beauty highlights ugliness.  It makes us aware of what life should be and in contrast, what life is.

We need those reminders, whether we find them in music, in stories, in forests, in architecture, in mathematical formulas, in gears aligning, in galaxies, in paintings.  We need beauty.

(Also I just read Rollo Mays' The Courage to Create, which has greatly influenced my opinion on the universality of creativity.  It's quite short and I highly recommend it for those who care about such things.)

Iceland

I'm reading The Geography of Bliss, in which a melancholy man travels to ten different countries to discover what makes them happy.  It's obviously right up my traveling, studying, melancholy alley.  It's also made me decide to move to Iceland.

I mean, not really, although I've long been in love with the name Reykjavik (ever since I learned to pronounce it).  Iceland is one of the most consistently top-rated happy countries in the world.  This is because, Eric Weiner, suggests, they acknowledge life in all its ups and downs.  They celebrate both success and failure.  They live through dark winters and bright summers.  They embrace paradox.

A man named Hilmar told him he was happy and that "I cherish my melancholia...You nurture your little melancholia, and it's like a buzz that makes you feel alive.  You snap yourself a little bit, and you feel this relief of how fragile life is and how tremendously fragile you are."

I love this.  I think part of what's made my foray into depressed thoughts so overwhelming is the idea that I need to get rid of them.  That these are all unhealthy and therefore bad.  The trouble is, there is a lot of truth to my sad thoughts!  The world is hard, and people do suffer unnecessarily.  I'm not about to abandon truth, and so I was stuck. 

I like this Icelandic approach of holding both melancholia and happiness in each hand.  Of acknowledging the fragility of life and living it anyway.  I don't want to be blindly happy, nor do I want to be smothered in sadness.  I thought I had to choose between the two, when I really, I just need to choose to let them both exist side-by-side in my mental space and my experience.

That feels so relieving. 

Looking for Hope

One of the things I've learned from therapy is that I have a generally hopeless outlook on life.  My therapist took me back to middle school when I was most strongly depressed and vaguely suicidal.  I told how my desire to be dead was largely religious.  I was obsessed with Philippians 1:23, in which Paul says, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far."  I also took C.S. Lewis's quote to heart, the one about how if nothing in this world can satisfy, then we must be made for another world.  That's encouraging from an eternal perspective, but it has always struck me as depressing for the here and now.  It will never get better.

Had those feelings left? my therapist wondered.  And immediately I knew, no, no, I still feel that way.  I've learned to cover them up with busyness and friendships.  But whenever those things fall apart, I'm left staring at my philosophy of hopelessness.  What a shift, to realize that I don't suffer from periodic bouts of depression.  I constantly live from a foundation of hopelessness, only most of the time I can ignore it with distractions.

Two things have helped.

I'm making some really wonderful friends in Dallas.  One in particular is special.  We've decided to meet every week and get honest.  We've already addressed the fact that neither of us like vulnerability and we move away when things get too uncomfortable, so we're understanding of each other and committed to keep each other close even when the other is trying to run away.

Today we had lunch and talked about shame, casually mentioned some habitual sins, sharing an unhealthy desire to control everything, especially who I am and what I do.  It's freeing to talk with her, because we come from a place of "this won't get fixed immediately, and it doesn't have to.  God is patient, and what I can offer to you is my listening and my care and my acknowledgement that this is really awful for you."  I don't want people to fix me.  I'm tired of advice.  I'm loving having a friend who is screwed up and owning it, who lets me be screwed up and still wants to get coffee.

Life seems hopeless.  The one thing that gives me hope and makes me think I have a purpose is when someone says, "I wanted to be your friend because you're real.  You're not perfect and you don't pretend to be.  You're safe."  That's what I have to offer the world.  My imperfections.  In a screwed up world, that's rather lovely.

The other encouragement I had was from a job-searching book I have to read for class, ironically.  I get bogged down in the big picture, in the global sins and the ways in which nature and humanity cause pain on top of pain.  But this poem that the book quoted reminded me to look at the details for the reasons life can be good.

"What is success?
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded."
--Bessie Anderson Stanley

Vignettes

Yesterday Anju was trying to tell Ketan and me a story, but we kept interrupting, and eventually she threw herself on the couch and cried.  I went over and asked what was wrong.

"You wouldn't let me talk!  You know how adults always say 'Oh, if I knew it upset you, I wouldn't have done it' but you did!" 

"Anju, I'm sorry.  I didn't know it was upsetting you."

"No one likes to be interrupted!"

Well, she had a point.  "I'm sorry.  You're right.  I was focused on being funny and I wasn't thinking about how that might make you feel.  If it ever happens again, and it probably will, just tell me to stop interrupting."

She was looking up at me now.  "That won't work."

"You're probably right."  I put her face in my hands.  "Then just grab my face like this and look in my eyes and say, 'Stop interrupting.'  That should do it."

She reached for me and I flinched away.  She giggled.  "I'm not going to hit you!"

"I thought you were going to smack my cheeks."

She giggled again.  "I was."

And all was well.

___

Ketan has been taking a buttload of time to read House of Hades and he keeps trying to tell me things ("I promise it's not important!"  "Ketan, I want my reading experience to be a blank page--I don't want to know anything!") and it's awful.  He has to do a fantasy book report next month, and I tried to convince him to read something new rather than sticking with HoH. 

"You could read The Hobbit!  I have it; you could borrow it."

"Oh, I want to!" he said.  "We could do a book swap!  I'll give you House of Hades, and you'll give me The Hobbit."

"That would make me so happy."

___

Today I gave Ketan The Hobbit, and he reacted with just the exact right amount of excitement.  I turned up the radio and sang, and eventually the backseat devolved into an argument.

"Anju, are you crying?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Will you tell me why?"

"I was trying to talk with an English accent, and Ketan gave me a really mean look, and everyone likes Ketan better than me!  He's funny and outgoing and everyone likes him!  But I'm shy, and I can't be funny around people I don't know, and even my friends always talk about Ketan!"

"Oh, Anju.  That's a lot."  I reached behind my seat to squeeze her leg.  "First, I like you and Ketan the same."

Ketan chimed in.  "Yeah, it's just that Miss Trish talks to me more because we have more in common."

"That's not helping, Ketan," I said.  "I don't want Anju to think we're ganging up on her, so please let us have this conversation.  I don't think I talk to Ketan more than you, Anju."

"You do!"

"Well.  I'm sorry.  We can talk more.  I love talking with you!  We can talk whenever you want."

"...I don't know what to talk about."

"I don't mean right now!  Whenever.  And hey, I totally get your frustration with being shy.  I am so the same way.  I feel like I'm awesome, but I'm scared to show people, and so they don't see it.  But I see you, and you are awesome.  But I know it's hard.  I've been there."

We pulled into their driveway, and I called them over to me.  They grumbled, "Whaaaat"s because sometimes I pull them in for Deep Meaningful Moments and they pretend to dislike them. 

"We're going to have a group hug," I announced, and pulled them both in.  They grinned and squirmed away after a minute.

"You hugged Anju more than you hugged me," Ketan said with a grin.

I swatted at him as he ran away.

Wrestling Prayer

I led my small group on Sunday.  We're supposed to pick a Psalm and talk about it, so I chose Psalm 34 since I memorized it in college.  Surely I could think of something off the cuff, since, haha, obviously I'm mentally empty.  So an hour before our gathering, I read the thing, and wouldn't you know.  The whole psalm is about God meeting our needs.

WELL.  That sounds exactly like the thoughts that have been sticking to my brain walls for the last few days.  So during small group, I gave an overview of needs and coping strategies and does God always meet our needs like it's promised?

And this woman, Linda, she just blew me away.  We were talking about God not meeting our needs, and she said, "I think Hannah's story teaches us a lot about this. [start of 1 Samuel]  She wants kids, she needs kids in that culture.  Her husband has at least two examples of barren wives from Israelite history.  Abraham and Sarah didn't trust God, and look at that mess.  Isaac prayed for Rebecca, though, and she became pregnant.  What we miss is that he prayed for twenty years.  But Elkanah followed Abraham and married this fertile awful woman who threw her happiness in Hannah's face.  That must have been miserable, just absolutely miserable.  And while this was going on, Hannah must have felt totally ignored by God.  She must have thought he wasn't meeting her needs, and it must have hurt so badly.  But God was working in her.  He knew Israel needed a judge, and he needed to wrestle this prayer out of her, make her so aware of her pain that eventually she prayed that beautiful prayer and promises to give up her son to God if only she could conceive.  God wrestled that prayer out of her, and he knew she would keep her word.  He knew she had fought for that faith.  So when she gave birth to Samuel, she gave him to the temple, and the great thing is that the Bible makes sure we know that Samuel went back to visit her often.  She got what she needed, and Israel got the leader they needed, and all of that could only have happened if Hannah trusted God while thinking he wasn't meeting her needs."

Obviously all I could do at the end of this was goggle at her and croak out, "Thank you for sharing."

Because what I was thinking was, "What prayer is God trying to wrestle out of me?  And am I willing to pray it?"

Practicing Piano

I've been working on putting together a resume to send out to counseling offices in hopes of snagging an internship for next semester.  In job experience, I completely blanked on describing my achievements as a nanny.  How do you say, "The kids are stronger and more emotionally intelligent than they were a year ago, and I think it's because of me."  All I've got are stories.

A month ago Anju would break down crying at the piano because practicing was too hard and she couldn't figure anything out.  I would sit with her and go note by note until she was abusing my time and wanting to play more than practice.  Then I would remind her of a couple rules of thumb and tell her to figure it out on her own.  Cue breakdown #2.  One time in particular she ran to her room in tears, and after a couple minutes I followed her to talk about it.

Did she understand why I wanted her to practice on her own?  No.  Well, I think it's valuable to learn to do things on your own.  I think she's totally smart enough to go note by note, to figure out hand positions.  I know it's frustrating and takes forever, but I see her do it with me, and I know she can do it by herself.  I want her to try because I think she will feel SO GREAT if she figures out a song on her own.  Did she understand?  Yes.  Did she like it?  No.

Fast forward to today.  Anju called for me from the piano room, and I walked her through an admittedly difficult piece.  But she was doing the heavy lifting herself.  "Okay, play it twice more," I said as I walked out.  "Pleeeeease stay with me!" she begged.  "Nope.  You can do it.  Call me in on the third time, though, and I'll listen."  She did, it was awesome. 

Two seconds later, "Miss Trish!  I need help with another song!"  I was helping Ketan with his homework (these kids!  So codependent!  They can totally do stuff, but they want someone to watch them do it) so I yelled back, "Try on your own for two minutes, then I'll be there!"  Way more than two minutes went by, but when I made my way to the piano, she was playing the song slowly but correctly.  When she hit the last note, I attacked her, tickling and poking her and saying, "ANJU, that was so good!  You did that all by yourself!  HOLY COW, look at you!"  And she was so proud, her little face.  Ugh. 

Alright, so that story?  It's totally boring.  Who wants to read about some nanny teaching a kid to play the piano on her own?  No one, but it was a massive achievement for Anju, and honestly, for me too.  But you can't put that on a resume.