The woman I am

In order to guard against the graduate student tendency to write scathing, sophomoric criticism of other scholars, one of my professors gave us a rule of thumb for writing literary reviews: “Always pretend the author is sitting beside you as you write it,” she told us, “and that he is in a wheel chair.” A good rule of thumb.

For Christmas this year, my family (the few of us who are not in China, at least) are hosting my two elderly grandmothers: the frail Southern lady in her late 80s who could talk the ears off of an elephant and the short Polish woman in her early 90s who could keep Armageddon a secret. It’s been one of the strangest Christmases I’ve ever had.

And somewhere in-between the occasional “yes’um”s I inserted to punctuate the stream-of-consciousness tales that went from her father’s scandalous affairs that were ironic considering he had initially joined the KKK because he thought it existed to beat up men who walked out on their wives when he was a cruel man anyway and forced her to drop out of high school so she could work at his firm and make money for him to pocket while he told her that all she would ever have going for her was her good looks, which she used to the best of her abilities anyway at least four times over beginning with the blond teenager whom she married because she was getting a little too old to be single and whom she convinced to joined the marines because she liked their uniforms the best until she sent him a “Dear John” letter when he got shipped away during the War because she had never been all that crazy about him anyway, not anymore than the man whose marriage produced her first daughter right before it was annulled, not like my grandfather who nevertheless wouldn’t initially sell his car to buy the particular ring she wanted which almost cost him her hand in marriage because she determined he didn’t value her enough to show her off as the high class person she was, the high class of person she declared us all to be which my brother’s nice car and new job demonstrated.... somewhere in-between these stories and the lite suggestions for selective breeding of humans that ironically harkened to the eugenics that I associated with the Nazis her various husbands had been fighting.... somewhere in-between all this I realized two things:

One: that my grandmother is not unlike the various girls who had made my life miserable when I was in high school and who I strove tirelessly to avoid becoming.

Two: that in her withered frailty I could not criticize her the way I had spent my adult life criticizing those women.

It made me reflect that every one of those cheerleaders who hurt me in high school will all be old frail women like my grandmother one day, unable to see the make-up they still put on their face every day and the wig that covers their bald heads, unable to color coordinate their clothing that is still important even if they can’t see it anymore than they can control their bowels or taste their food. We are called to forgive our enemies because the eugenics that Hitler organized is not unlike my frail grandmother’s suggestions for selective breeding at the dinner table, because the arrogance of the prom queen is not unlike my grandmother’s haggard dignity.

Then I reflected that I will be like my withered grandmother one day as well.

Then I reflected that I already am. In contrast to the woman I was created to be, I am that frail woman trying to maintain a dignified poise while wearing Poise panty-liners. In contrast to who we have it in us to be, we are walking on brittle bones and can hardly make it up the stairs. We are called to forgive demented autocrats because we ourselves suffer with dementia. Sin is an ailment we all suffer through together, like old folks at a nursing home sharing the latest news of our recent medical disorders.

Rejoice, Christmas reminds us: Christ has taken on our osteoporosis. He is sharing our dementia and our irritable bowel syndrome, our blindness and deafness and shriveled skin. Rejoice; if he could cross from radiance into dung, there is hope that we may cross from our dung into his radiance.

Any hope I have to be reborn into that radiance is the same hope my grandmother has, and that those cheerleaders have, and that my great-grandfather who may have been a Klansman had. What is there to do but to forgive?

Genocide with Morning Coffee

Edmund Spenser was the poet who settled me once and for all on Renaissance literature, and in that way at least you could say he changed my life. While I was still living in my intercity commune imagining that higher education was the Isaac I had sacrificed on the alter of service to the poor, I found myself sneaking cantos here and there of the half-finished masterpiece The Faerie Queene, finding the beauty of the poetry, richness of the allegory, and depth of the ideas just the medicine I needed to keep my spirit alive.

After coming to graduate school, I could only fall further in love with his poetry. I wrote a paper on the Amoretti, in which Spenser is instrumental in directing the Petrarchan love tradition toward marriage. I wrote a paper on the Epithalamion, which C. S. Lewis cites as being one of the few successful portrayals of pure joy in English poetry. And of course, I wrote a paper on the breathtaking, masterful Faerie Queene itself.

I decided that if I were to ever have a son, I would name him Edmund.

“I love Spenser!” I said to Seamus last summer in response to a mention of where he had stayed in Cork. As the words spat recklessly out of my mouth, I anticipated my error, and was tempted to look over my shoulder for fear that members of the IRA or their 16th-century equivalent would emerge from the shadows in response to my flippant utterance.

The Irishman looked uncharacteristically soberly at me, his constant smile dropping momentarily as he gained his composure. “Edmund Spenser essentially lobbied for the genocide of the Irish people,” he stated mater-of-factly.

What does one say to that? I remembered that Spenser had written something called A View of the Present State of Ireland when he was secretary to England’s lord deputy of Ireland, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it. “Oh,” I managed.

“He was a terrible man,” Seamus maintained, adding graciously to lighten the mood, “but he did write some beautiful poetry.”

Maybe so... but after all, isn’t that the way with most evil in the world? Weren’t lynch mobs composed of salt-of-the-earth Southerners who rallied after church on Sunday? Weren’t Nazi death camps run by fathers and mothers who were probably otherwise pleasant Germans? Weren’t Rwandan massacres carried out by joyful, hospitable Africans? Weren’t terrible atrocities committed by people like... me? Weren’t their hearts shaped a lot like mine?

It seems an undeniable fact of history that mostly-lovely people can have shocking blinders that somehow allow them to confuse genocide with morning coffee (oops!). Spenser was not the first to make this kind of error; “the man after God’s own heart” found himself committing murder to cover up his adultery (rape, by most modern definitions), and needed a prophet to come spell it out to him before he realized it had been a bad thing. I know a lot of people who are perturbed at God for thinking so highly of such a scoundrel. I sometimes figure that that very egregiously overlooking nature of his is the only hope most of us have.

Maybe the primary reason we are called to forgive is that we don’t know what genocides we may be casually supporting with our mundane morning coffee. Maybe most of us are likewise terrible people who write some beautiful poetry (or, more gently, beautiful people with some terrible blind spots). Thank God he likes the poetry!

Today in the Divine Office

Perhaps because I've been thinking so much about forgiveness this year, perhaps because I just stayed up until 3am grading papers that were anything but forgiving when it came to issues of American racial struggles (the most shocking moment was when a student declared that Huck Finn's father should be grateful that the government had not only allowed him to vote as an "ignorant drunk," but even to reproduce), the concluding prayer for this Sunday struck me. This is a beautiful picture of why forgiveness is tied to our salvation, and it also strikes me as an interesting parallel to the passage when the risen Christ tells his disciples, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld":

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
in your unbounded mercy
you have revealed the beauty of your power
through your constant forgiveness of our sins.
May the power of this love be in our hearts
to bring your pardon and your kingdom to all we meet.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

May we all be inheritors of the kingdom, and wear forgiveness like a weird birthmark or other strange family trait that characterizes the children of God.

But our citizenship is in...

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

I chose that passage from Mark to open up with because I was afraid to even think of the Matthew counterpart: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Yikes.

And as scary as it is (now more than ever) to think about my forgiveness of sinners being so intimately connected to God’s forgiveness of me, I might be beginning to understand it (now more than ever). Christ, we must remember, was not talking to people whose greatest trespassers would embezzle their company’s money or ruin their child’s high school career; many of these people would be killed or watch their families being tortured. And until I watched someone destroy a friend’s life, I never realized how offensive forgiveness can sound in that context.

In that context, as I am forced to live in a world where this person exists and in which I may bump into him from time to time, the thought has dawned on me that I don’t want him to be forgiven. I don’t want God to welcome him into the fold with loving arms. I certainly don’t want God to do that if he keeps sinning seventy-times-seven times. I like the thought of the Kingdom of God being built on the forgiveness of the down-and-out, on the lifting of the underdog; but I have a hard time thinking of so much as sharing citizenship with forgiven killers and rapists and scoundrels, at least when it is my loved ones they might have killed.

On the contrary, if those people are ever to be forgiven, I want it be only after they have realized the extent of their sin. I want them to come face-to-face with the realization of their despicable crime. I want them to bear the responsibility for it at the very least as much as those they hurt bear the effects. I want justice.

I suppose I want a place a lot like hell.

“Hell has been broken,” Christ tells me. “Do you want in?” Forgiveness is a “yes” to that new citizenship, a citizenship that puts me beside forgiven evil people. It is mine for the taking.

Though Grace shown to the wicked...

Once I knew a girl a Muslim girl who had been horrendously taken advantage of by an American authority-figure. The situation was despicable, and I was justifiably incensed.

Later, her father came to visit from the mid-East and learned about the situation. Those who knew about it were ready to deal with the wrath of an offended Arab father; we were seething on his daughter’s behalf, after all.

With a firm resolve, he sadly thanked the offender for the good he had done in times past, expressed regret for the situation, and forbade him from seeing his daughter again. That was all.

The American in me could have been enraged about Muslim dismissals of women. The Christian in me could have been indignant about the godless dismissal of justice. After all, if there is any situation to which I could apply our ambiguous theology of “righteous anger,” it would certainly be this one.

But instead, I was humbled. A Muslim man with every right to be angry (with responsibility to be angry, actually) had just shown me up with grace and forgiveness, and I found myself trembling the next time the words “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” came out of my mouth.

“But God,” I wanted to argue, “we are supposed to be angry when the powerful take advantage of the helpless, right?” Maybe. Maybe we must become enraged since we (and the Muslims) serve a God of justice. And that is why Grace is offensive, why it is unfair and may even seem evil from our limited perspective. Grace does not just apply to me; if it really is Grace, it applies to those who hurt those I love.

I pray I rarely need to muster up the magnanimity of grace my friend’s father demonstrated. But if the need arises, I pray I can find it.

Peace of Christ

“So, I just want to get this straight,” I asked the priest after mass one morning. “I can’t take the sacrament of the Eucharist, but my baptism counts, so I’ve had one of the Sacraments.”

“So far,” he answered with a smile, enjoying the fact that my friendship with him has given his brain more work than it has had to do since his seminary days.

“Are there any others I can do, or is Baptism the only one?” I asked. “What about Confession? Can’t I confess?”

He squirmed good-naturedly. “I can hear your confession; I just can’t absolve you.”

“Aw, that’s rotten,” I smiled. “You can’t proclaim absolution for a Baptized member of the Church?”

“That actually gets into one major difference between Catholics and Protestants,” he explained. “You tend to be very vertical in your faith; it is a matter between you and God, and confession and forgiveness is a matter of reconciling your individual self to God. For us, faith always must be both vertical and horizontal, so confession and forgiveness must also involve being reconciled with your brothers and sisters.”

Of course, there is good, sound theology behind that picture of the Church. It is why the liturgy includes passing the peace with confession. It reminds me of Ephesians 2, a major salvation-chapter. “For he himself is our peace,” Paul says, right after the famous passage of being saved by grace through faith, “who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross.” The horizontal and the vertical happen together.

I was thinking about that this week in the context of the difference between the Anglican and the Catholic prayers of confession. When I first heard the Catholic prayer, I thought it was missing a significant part, the part a three-year-old once prayed: “You have to forgive me for all the bad things I’ve done.” Perhaps a Catholic hearing our prayer would feel a similar significant hole.

Anglican prayer of confession
Most merciful God, I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what I have done and by what I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart. I have not loved my neighbor as myself. I am truly sorry, and I earnestly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on me and forgive me, that I may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name.

Catholic prayer of confession
I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do; and I ask the Blessed Mary ever virgin, all the angles and saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

His Stupid Mouth

On Friday night I went to a concert to support an old friend of mine. He and I have known each other for almost eight years now, which, at my age, translates into almost the entirety of my adult life. As I have watched his music career slowly progress over the years, I’ve learned that the most effective way of demonstrating friendship to him is to attend his shows.

“I’d better go,” I told him afterwards, excusing myself before the next band began.

“You don’t want to listen to these guys?” he asked. “They’re pretty good.”

“I’d better get some sleep,” I explained. “I have to get up early tomorrow for driving school.”

“Driving school?” his eyes twinkled teasingly. “Did you get a ticket?”

I nodded. “They say women are supposed to be able to get out of tickets,” I complained. “I never have. Maybe it’s because I’m not blonde.”

“Diet,” he casually suggested. “Your sister did.”

Initially, I was taken aback. But in our eight years of friendship, he has made many such carelessly hurtful comments. At some point I accepted that he doesn’t think about what he says, and normally feels bad about it later. He often suggests in his concerts that John Mayer wrote “My Stupid Mouth” with him in mind.

Thus instead of reacting to the insensitive (and somewhat odd) comment about dieting, I simply swiped his Grace credit-card. I ignored the insult and instead questioned his data.

“My sister did? I didn’t know that.”

He looked curiously at me. “Well, I don’t know how long she kept it up, but she did for a while at least. Wasn’t she blonde this summer?”

I blinked a few times as the pieces fell together. “Dye it!” I exclaimed. “My hair! You told me to dye my hair!”

My vindicated friend looked bewilderedly at me, unaware of his narrow escape from jerk-infamy. “Yeah... what did you think I said?”

And once again I find myself reminded of the need to extend Grace to those around us, as I’ve written about a couple times before. We are a race of fumbling creatures, bumping awkwardly about into one another’s pain and annoyances, and any kind of relationship is bound to frustrate. But we are also some pretty stunningly beautiful creatures, and without the Grace to put up with the awkwardness we would miss some of the richest gifts life has to offer. I for one am not willing to pay that price.

Forgiven much

“Those who have been forgiven much love much.”

I have been forgiven much, and I always assume the response is supposed to be my being changed, my being better, my not sinning again. There are certainly “Go and sin no more” passages of Scripture too, but this one struck me today. Maybe the most appropriate response to forgiveness is to love. Hopefully I will become a better person too… for now, when sin does not seem as conquerable as I always expect it to be, the great act of faith for me may be to respond to my being forgiven by loving in return, whether or not I have changed.

My new milk cow

In one of my favorite scenes of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye is obliged to visit Lazar Wolf. Tevye assumes that Lazar Wolf is going to ask him to sell him his new milk cow. We the audience know that Lazar is really after Tevye’s daughter. It makes for a hilarious scene.

Tevye,...

Yeah?

I suppose you know why I wanted to see you.

Oh, yes, I do. But there is no use talking about it.

Tevye, I understand how you feel. But after all, you have a few more without her.

Ah, I see. Today you want one. Tomorrow you may want two.

Two? What would I do with two?

The same as you do with one.

Tevye. This is very important to me.

Why is it so important to you?

Frankly, because I'm lonely.

Lonely? Reb Lazar, what are you talking about? How can a little cow keep you company?

Little cow? Is that what you call her?

But that's what she is!

What are you talking about?

Don't you know?

Of course I know! We are talking about my new milk cow. The one you want to buy from me.

A milk cow! A milk cow so I won't be lonely? I'm talking about your daughter. Your daughter Tzeitel.

It’s hilarious in the scene. I’d like to hope that there exists a perspective that makes the similar misunderstandings we encounter in life funny as well. There are times I have stood back and watched competing sides fight each other down without realizing they are talking about two different subjects. There are times when I have hurt and been hurt, and discovered months later that I and the person in question were talking about different things.

I used to think that the way around that problem was to keep a balanced perspective. But maybe, since our perspective is always more tilted than we realize, we are in a more detrimental position when we imagine we are searching for balance. Maybe, as a humorous anecdote from French class once indicated, the only viable approach to the situation is to expect it, admitting that our own perspective and judgment may be faulty. (Speaking of French class, La Rochefoucauld could contribute his delightful cynicism to this discussion: “Everyone complains of his memory; no one complains of his judgment.”) If we expect these sorts of misunderstandings, the only appropriate reaction to our frustration in the middle of them is grace.

Grace… and, as Fiddler on the Roof may suggest, a good hearty laugh afterwards.

Amen to Calvin!

I've been out of town for a bit and have only just now figured out my San-Francisco internet rutine, so that's why I faded out of blogger existence for a little bit. I've been having an amazing couple of days so far, and may indeed come up with a way to formulate some of experiences into listening-posts. For now I need sleep, but I thought I'd re-enter blogger-world with a link to one of the regular blogs I check.

"Calvin" is one of the most amazing little three-year-olds in the world, and the funny things he says often startle something in me. This little prayer he prayed the other night was one of those.

"Dear God,
Thank you for all the wonderful things you've done. Don't take your Holy Spirit from me, forever and ever. And you have to forgive me for all of the bad things I've done. Jesus Christ is Lord. Amen."

I'll need to remember that one. You have to forgive me! Jesus Christ is Lord! Amen!

Give War a Chance?

I don’t have much time these days for superfluous writing (thus the scarcity of posts), but I enjoyed this anecdote from French class.

One of my peers was asked to translate a sentence. The answer should have been “No one was waiting at the station,” but as it turns out, the French word for “station” looks similar to the French word for “war.” She looked at the sentence for a few moments, trying to tie the various words together in a coherent way, and finally came up with:

“War waits for no one”?

How dramatically one word can change the understanding of an entire sentence! Though the principle is much more dramatic when comparing different languages, it applies to speakers of the same language as well.

Let us be patient in our misunderstandings with one another. Misunderstanding is too abundant to be avoidable, so there is much room to extend grace.