Emerging Women

One of my young adult (age 22) children has a serious chronic illness. In fact, he’s in the hospital this weekend. This is the third time this year that he’s been admitted to a hospital through the emergency room.

He insists upon living on his own in a major city which is a 3.5 hour drive from our home. He has only a high school education and wants to go to college, but spends all his physical energy at a minimum wage job which allows him time off when his illness flares. We help him out financially. We try not to think about his living conditions (at his age, the idea of living in a house of seven college students is still considered an adventure). Besides, in this city he has access to specialists who treat patients with his illness every day.

I am glad that it’s him and not me. I don’t want to trade places with him, and I don’t wish for one second wish that it was me that had this illness instead of him. Yeah, so there’s some guilt, for you: I don’t feel guilty that he’s sick instead of me. But I do feel a bit guilty for not feeling guilty.

I swear, every mother I’ve ever met has said that she would much rather suffer illness than allow her child to suffer illness. Where in the Big Book of Motherhood is that written, anyway? Did I skip that chapter? Was that page torn from my book?

Despite the lack of desire to assume his burden, I do feel great distress that he has a serious illness. But to convince myself of this, I keep evidence: Proof that I am in fact a good and caring parent.

• Exhibit One: When he was first hospitalized a few months ago I broke down into blubbering sobs at the bank as I asked how to get power of attorney to help us manage his meager finances long-distance.

• Exhibit Two: In private, I cry for him. A lot, when he’s really sick or we’ve had a visit with him.

• Exhibit Three: I cruise the Internet looking for treatments and/or ways to help finance his healthcare.

• Exhibit Four: In January I dragged him through an entire day of visits to the Welfare Office and Hospital Social Worker in order to get the paperwork processed to get him steps closer to receiving state health insurance and free medicine. At $1200/weekly treatment, we, his parents, do not have the financial resources to purchase the medication he needs. This meant that while the paperwork ground through the system, our son went with no medication for six months.

Yep. That’s pretty lame. Sounds like my feeling sad is more about me than about him. I look for ways to intellectualize the sadness: At least he has access to healthcare now; it could happen to anyone, why not someone I love; only he can walk his path, etc.

Upon the advice of a friend, I read Psalm 91. I see now where some people get the idea that God is a benevolent genie who dispenses magical protections to the faithful. The psalm is nonsensical in the literal sense and offers no comfort in the physical sense. I remember back to our church days, where I would have made the psalm fit into congregational doctrine. I remember when I would have spent 20 minutes convincing a hurting friend that the psalm provided just the comfort and hope they were seeking.

I think back to the story likening church membership to burning coals which depend upon each other to retain their heat, the sermons warning that the Bible makes no sense to the unfaithful.

I consider my new understanding of God. Of how I have recast God as a creator of universal, not just Christian, proportions. I intellectualize the sorrow a bit more, reminding myself that the here and now is only one manifestation of God’s creation. Even the Christians believe that.

I am left with this: This experience belongs to everyone it touches: The illness itself is my son’s path to walk, his burden to bear. Our family’s path lies in learning new ways of living with each other through sorrow and concern and changed expectations. Our path lies in developing bonds that strengthen our relationships, finding ways to accommodate the emotions and reactions that come when a beloved members lives with chronic illness. I don’t know where God is in all that, but I am confident that there is a God, and that God is really, really big. Bigger than the bible, bigger than the church, bigger than Christianity. Big enough and good enough to provide meaning for our existence, even if it’s not in Psalm 91.

As some of you may imagine, one of the most frequent search engine terms that bring readers to my blog is the “sensuous”+”posted in blog”. I clicked on this search this morning, and found a daisy chain of beautiful thoughts which I will share with you today.

The first link that caught my eye was “God’s Sensuous Prescence“. Y’all know, I am all about God and all about sensuous, so of course I was curious. This beautiful article is what I found:

“Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were looking Him in the opposite direction, down among created things and things of sense. The Saviour of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body.”

At first glance this sounded at once beautiful and potentially sacreligious. Because when my woman-who-was-sexually-abused brain hears the words “an object for the senses”, I recoil. But there was that beautiful phrase “in His great love took to Himself a body” and I believe that lock, stock and barrell, so I deliberately let go of my CSA thoughts and took another closer look. And what I saw astounded me with it’s beauty.

I visualized my beloved Jesus extending his hand to Thomas, such a human loving inclusive gesture all by itself, and then he speaks “don’t believe it’s really me? Touch me. it’s me, Thomas. Touch me, and remember all the many other times you touched my hand and were comforted. It’s me. really. Touch me, and believe.”

Of course, by then, poignant tears had gathered in my eyes and I was on board with the phrase “He became Himself an object for the senses.” Oh yes he did. And there’s my favorite name for Jesus too, Himself. A gift with purchase. Confirmation.

I wanted to hear more, so I clicked on the link provided by the blog author Eric Daryl Meyer (shown here with he and his wife. look at them! aren’t they precious?)

This took me to Faith and Theology, a guest post by Oliver Davies. And what a treasure trove I found there!

Get a load of this!

“We constantly treat Christianity as though it were a philosophy or a work of literature (I am not against philosophy or literature) rather than a disclosure to practical intellect which calls us into the radical freedom of action in and for Christ in the world (i.e. the ascended, wounded and glorified Christ). Faith is faith in Christ who acts rather than thinks.”

Seriously, y’all. I don’t wanna just be smarter. I wanna be CHANGED.

Wait, there’s more.

Instead of allowing ourselves to be opened up to the revelation of Christ in the world, communicated through command at work through the senses and the particularity of space and time events (“the command of grace”, in Janz’s phrase), we focus on the mind as the place of insight, generativity and meaning.

I’ll tell you what this means to me. All my life, up until the point of my spiritual and sexual awakening, I thought it was true “Spirit good, mind good, body bad.” I really did. As hard to believe as these words sound now, coming from from a woman who experiences God in every orgasm and feels the sweet nearness of the Spirit in every cool breeze on my sweaty face when I run, I used to really believe that. The condition of my heart, the condition of my marriage, the quality of how despised or cherished my sexuality was to me is a living lab test of what those ideas look like in behavior. When I believed my body was bad and my mind was good, I shrank from every touch from my husband and generally rolled my eyes at the depravity of man every time he got an erection. I’m not proud to admit it, but that was my reality. Oh but I was a good Christian girl who “selflessly ministered to her husband” by laying there and taking it. What a martyr! Not even good enough to be called a real martyr either, like Jim Elliot or the first disciple to be stoned to death, because I was laying down and dying for a cause that was contrary to scripture and so FAR from the life of joy God had called me to! What a senseless wasteful non-God-honoring martyr.

But you know my Jesus, he loves us just as we are and loves us too much to leave us that way. Read on.

“And here the third problem arises which follows from the first two: we have lost an understanding of the way we can and should access and be attentive to the presence of Christ in this way. We constantly bypass with mind the very place in which he is present for us in the here and now, which is to do with the senses and with command, since this is a place where the mind does not necessarily want to go.”

Yes! Yes! Yes! I used to do that all the time, and folks, I’ll tell you why. Because of my own sin and the sin of others, my senses were associated for me with sensations of pain, emotions of pain, shame, doubt, fear, self-loathing and just an overall sense of “ugh get me outta here”. Maybe some of you can relate.

But here’s the good part. Jesus still lives. And His Lordship in the nitty gritty details of our lives is the way we are to live not just as prescription (take 2 pills and call me in the morning) but as invitation. Invitation to the path to healing we are walk (come walk with me this way my darling and let me heal you, my love). That’s my paraphrase and I paraphrase it that way because I have lived it that way. This is the path I’ve been walking for 16 years.

Oliver Davies puts it this way:

“Getting it” entails seeing that incarnational revelation still comes to us through the senses (“Jesus still lives, and his Lordship in the particularity of our lives is the mode for us of that life“), and that the senses cannot be absorbed without remainder into mind. Thus ascension allows that our faith in Christ can be far closer to that of the apostles than we might ordinarily admit, not on our own account, but on account of the nature of the transformation effected in Christ. Doctrinally (theologically) and anthropologically (philosophically) we have lost the tools and practices which help us to “recognise” him in his transformed state in the everyday reality of our lives where he comes to meet us.

As so often happens in my reading since the internet, I connected the dots between three unrelated poets and writers that from my point of view seem tailor made for each other. On one hand we have these brilliant intellectuals—theology professor no less!— saying in essence, “Excuse me, everybody. Something precious has been lost. And I’m going to do my darndest to show you what and how and show you why and more importantly, show you how to get it back.”

For as I read the scholarly article, I remembered the last time—the only time—I’ve heard a scholar talk about these ideas. It was when I heard Christopher West speak about Theology of the Body at a Created and Redeemed Seminar. I remember Christopher’s main point being “Jesus had a real body and our bodies are important because God Almighty thought to inhabit one so we should believe our body is important too and inhabit it well and with truth and honor.” That is my paraphrase after attending the 7 hour seminar. (By the way, I do not believe that using birth control violates this cherished concept, since I believe any lovemaking between a husband and wife has the fruit of pleasure and oneness if not the fruit of children) So first as I’m reading, I’m reminded of Theology of the Body.

And then, I’m reminded of the song I sang in church last week. The song that so grounded me and comforted me by reminding me that every area of my life matters to God and is inhabited by God. The song that gave me opportunity to respond to this newfound hope and comfort by pouring our my adoration upon Jesus, or as we say in the South, “singin’ my little heart out”. Listen to this!

God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping

God in my resting
there in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

God in my hoping
there in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
there in my breathing
God in my hurting
God in my healing

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me
the hope of glory
you are everything

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me
the hope of glory
be my everything

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

God in my hoping
there in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
there in my breathing
God in my hurting
God in my healing

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything
you are everything

So yes, beloved friends, our bodies matter. They matter to Jesus too, as he—by living in us—inhabits our bodies every single day. And everything we do in these bodies matters very VERY much! If it’s sin that we’re doing with our bodies—slapping our children, abandoning our husbands in the marriage bed, or using drugs or food or the absence of food to numb our aching hearts— we need grace and healing to get to the root of that sin and let Jesus heal us. And if it’s not sin that we’re doing with our bodies—laying our cool hand on our child’s fevered brow, welcoming our husbands and drawing them into our body with passion and tenderness, or caring for and cherishing our bodies in beautiful small ways like eating with gratitude in an attitude of self-care—then we are in the acts of doing these very things, bringing the hands and love of Christ into our world, which is a humbling, immensely gorgeous thing to think about.

Isn’t it?

Love,
SW

Epilogue:
Parenting
Once in the course of my life as a mother I lost my temper and slapped one of my children. It was listed as a sin in the article and also listed as a sin I am living in active repentance of. I don’t refuse my husband anymore or do emotional eating anymore either. I don’t believe there’s a mother alive that hasn’t lost her temper and slapped her child once or been sorely tempted to do so. But my experience of losing my temper like that disturbed me enough that I took myself to a licensed marriage and family therapist and learned some better parenting strategies. I also took my child to a child therapist and got some treatment for them and we’re all doing much better on that regard. The licensed marriage and family therapist who treated me counseled me that my unresolved guilt over slapping my child that one time was far harmful to my effectiveness as a parent than the slap itself because that guilt gave me a propensity to cave into their demands and not keep firm loving boundaries. I hope any parent who reads my story will not hesitate to seek wise counsel for their parenting challenges.

Singles
I want to cherish my single readers by saying that there are many beautiful ways use use our bodies to bring the hands and love of Christ into our world, many many more than the 3 ways I listed. The reason that drove what I listed as ways to bring love is that I began with listing 3 ways I personally used my body to sin and 3 ways I used my body to repent and to love. You’re not excluded, beloved darlings, or exempt from embodying the love of Christ just because you are not a wife or mommy. Never meant to imply that, beloved. Not in a hundred years did I mean to imply that. (squeeze your hand and look you in the eye for good measure) Love, SW

I wanted to pass on an blogging opportunity from Rachelle Mee-Chapman to the community here –

Hello! We might have already met at an Emergent Convention, or at your blog or mine (Urban Abbess or Magpie Girl). Now I’m the contributing editor for Religion and Spirituality at BlogHer.com I’m trying to rustle up great posts to feature in my Monday column on Religion and Spirituality.

I’ve been following your blog for awhile now, and was wondering if you’d like to be on my mailing list of Spirituality Writers. It’s a select group of bloggers, and I’d love to have you along. You wouldn’t get a ton of email from me. I would just send out periodic requests for gridblog participation on a given topic. Then I would feature some of the most relevant posts on BlogHer, and maybe at my personal blog as well.

If that sounds interesting to you, reply to this email and ask me to include you on the Spirituality Writers mailing list. I’d love to have you along for the journey.

Shalom,

Rachelle Mee-Chapman

Contributing Editor, BlogHer.com

http://www.blogher.com/blog/rachelle-mee-chapman

P.s. Please feel free to pass this email along to women bloggers you love, even if they only write occasionally about religion and/or spirituality.

Rachelle Mee-Chapman

moi (at) magpie-girl (dot) com

http://www.magpie-girl.com

Chaos: proofreading, feeding the dogs, running out of hair conditioner, asking my husband where I put the…stop.
And then the silence erupts. One time when I was little and my impoverished family took a rare trip to the city, I chose “The Berenstein Bears and Too Much Birthday” to take home. And every once in a while, I think about it. Sister Bear gets overwhelmed by the good things of her birthday and crashes.
I love life. I love the changes, the ups and downs. Every once in a while, my overenthusiasm for, well, everything tanks the spirit, and a tugging ensues. Psyche? Brain chemicals? EQ? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Holy Spirit. But my soul is put in the time out chair, my mind laid down for a nap under a favorite blanket, my groove put on pause. The silence erupts.
One time a personality inventory told me that my personality craves balance. Probably because that same personality likes to go hog wild, as I learned my Sophomore year of college. Join what? Of course!
What people call wisdom in me has rarely come from the whirlwind. It comes from the calm after the storm, the nap under the blanket, the deafening silence that longs to embrace my thoughts and shake them free from inner nagging.
You know that verse? “Be still and know that I AM God”? To me, that usually reads, “sit down, shut up, and know.” My grandmother, when I was a toddler, cast a knowing glance at Mom and commented about my temperament, “she’s going to talk early – and a lot.”
I have begun to learn silence. The beauty of stillness. The peace of the absence of information. What do we learn when we’re quiet? Much is said these days of dialogue. But what of stillness? Some will always be doers. Some will always be contemplatives. I hope, wherever you find yourself on the pendulum, that there are loud moments of serenity. The kind where you can almost hear the trees growing, as the wood between the worlds shows in “The Magician’s Nephew.”
Perhaps blasphemy is casting out the still, small voice. Strange things happen in the quiet – the quiet of the room just before the Holy Spirit began banging shutters and ruffling rugs, ensconcing Pentecost on the shoulders of the praying. The quiet of a leafy garden surrounding a bent figure pleading with his Father, drops of blood falling on a rock. The quiet of a cemetary at dawn on the first day of the week. Perhaps a split second of silence as a rock hammered a Philistine in the skull before a deafening roar from the army ensued. Stillness when Abel’s blood soaked into the dirt, muddying humanity. I think Paul probably had very few words during his hours of blindness as Saul. Quiet prayers humbly aiming at heaven in repentance for his former blindness.
Does a moment of silence really do it to honor the dead? How can the world be redeemed through blaring noise? Maybe the earth will be reborn not only in the trumpet blast (heard Over the Rhine’s Trumpet Child album?), but in the moment right before and after, when anticipation and closure beat the air.
Forget inside voices. Let’s be quiet.

Time once again to enjoy a round-up of thoughtful posts from Emerging Women around the web this week. If you have read (or written) a post you think should be included in a weekly round-up please email the link to emergingwomen (at) gmail (dot) com. Enjoy!

Rachel wonder what are the next issues evangelicals will eventually change their minds about.

Rebecca reflects on the danger of turning the church into saviour.

Heather asks how we might view Biblical stories differently if we were to stop reading them through the lenses of patriarchy.

Heather K-D gives her thoughts on the spiritual themes in Prince Caspian.

and Jan comments on her ecclesiastical non-negotiables.

What do you think . . . ?

Should the Democratic votes cast in Florida and Michigan count?

What do you think the DNC will do?

join us for an evening by the fire…an informal gathering for those in the denver, colorado springs, fort collins, boulder area. our agenda is relaxed with the goal to continue building relationships and support

saturday, june 21, 2008 at 6:00 pm
appetizers, desserts & conversation

at the home of kathy escobar
for directions and additional information, please rsvp to:
kathy@therefugeonline.org or
amy borjas at eaborjas@comcast.net

this invitation is open to anyone interested in coming so feel free to pass the word to any women you know who might want to come. everyone is welcome!

if you are able or willing, please bring a dessert or appetizer to share.