prelude: werewolf jesus

I don’t have any grandfathers. Only Mem and Grammy, my grandmothers. I have blurry memories of my mom’s father, Grampy. He and Mem had been divorced for quite some time before I came along, so we didn’t see him too often. I remember he drank strawberry milkshakes and had an oxygen tank. I remember my little ten-year-old self being picked up early from a sleepover because Grampy had died, and then all of the sudden we had a new washing machine. On the other side of the family is my paternal grandfather, Ernest William Clark, - “Eunie”, as Grammy refers to him, her Japanese mouth trying so hard to form the “r”. I don’t know much about him. He passed away when my dad was my age, just finishing his second year in the Marine Corps. I know that he was a tall skinny man who played the piano when no one was around. I know that he was a pharmacist before pharmacology was a profession of wealth. I know he met Grammy in Japan during the war and brought her to America when she was pregnant with my dad’s older brother. I could parrot back the facts to you all day but I still don’t really know who he was because I never hung out with him. I know him through my dad’s stories and through my book report facts- I know about him. I couldn’t tell you how he would react if I said the word “bastard” (it’s not really a swear…some people are ok with it) or if he would cry during PS I Love You. I really wish I had gotten to know him in that way, so I could understand how my dad loves and misses him, even when he doesn’t say so.

I guess what I’m trying to explain is that I don’t know Jesus. I grew up Christian, with the person of Jesus tossed around in all of my conversations, like the ubiquitous imaginary friend. Like my Grandpa, I have been told about him my whole life. I was the frequent champion of Bible Quest in my house, so I can rattle off a list of facts about him. But I don’t know Him.  I know versions of Him and the longer I live, the less I trust that these versions resemble Him at all.

For my senior volunteer hours in high school, I worked at a thrift store run by a local church. It wasn’t a passion for elderly-scented hats or sequined sweaters that made me choose the Blessing Barn. It was just that my two best friends worked there and our supervisor was blind (literally), so we just did whatever we wanted. Our work days usually consisted of making fun of the clothes, playing with the creepy hand-shaped doll that no one ever bought, singing along to (blind) Christine’s gospel music and again, making fun of the clothes. Overseeing all of our mischief was Werewolf Jesus. I named him that, much to the giggling shock of my good Christian friends. It was a portrait of Jesus that hung on the wall, in which he looks as though he is painfully animorphing into some sort of shaggy beast. He had a unibrow, yellow eyes, heavy sideburns and a slightly voracious look. Without the divine glow about him, you’d think he was from a Geico commercial. We made a lot of jokes about Werewolf Jesus, always glancing sideways, not sure how close we were flirting with blasphemy. At the time it was funny because everyone at our little New England Christian academy knew that Jesus was blonde, with blue eyes and impeccable dental work. Plus, it was absolutely absurd to think that He would ever sport a unibrow. We had all watched the musical cartoons in Sunday school where Jesus, played by an animated, moustached Anne Hathaway, blinked his big, blue, Bratz doll eyes and healed people with his pale hands. Meanwhile, his fat, swarthy disciples, played by ex-Taliban members, looked on in tanned amazement.

I wish someone had told me back then that Werewolf Jesus was in fact, more on the accurate side of Biblical history than this cartoon Jesus - the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Jesus. For goodness sake, He was from the Middle East and slept in fields- He probably went days without washing his armpits. He was dirty. He was shaggy. He was hungry. He may or may not have had a unibrow. In modern times He would be “randomly searched” every time He tried to fly somewhere. Why was I taught by so many earnest Sunday school teachers that He was the kind of man who would fly first class and sip a mimosa? If I was going to fill my head with endless facts about Him, I should have at least made sure they were accurate.

If anyone ever trusted me with a Sunday school class, I would ask for middle schoolers or high schoolers. I would send them home to read the book of Luke or John with this assignment in mind: describe Jesus to me. Pretend you’re not a Christian; pretend you’re a dirty little pickpocket observing Him in a crowd, or an old man sitting on the porch, watching him preach. Imagine you ran into him at the market and did that awkward dance, trying to get out of each others’ way, or gave him a flat tire by stepping on his sandal. How would he react? How would he treat people, talk to them? Would he haggle for a lower price? Would he wash his hands after he peed – like really wash them, not just rinse and shake?

Then we would sit around and talk about it, based on what they had read about Him and His character. I would lean in and drink up everything these little detectives had to tell me about Him, all the things I missed because I can’t see the forest through the trivia. I wish I had had an assignment like that before I came to college. I wish that instead of things being fed to me in this condensed soup version of religion, that I had been allowed to wonder, to search out answers for myself. I wish I had been guided more than instructed.

I have all of these Sunday school notions drilled into my head and at times it feels like it has been a detriment to my relationship with God. Like all the Sunday school and Christian books and Christian school and Christian college has created a lot of white noise with Jesus buried somewhere in the center. I just read an account of some girl who noticed her Christian friend really, truly loved people. One drunken night she started crying and got on her knees and told God she wanted to genuinely love and help people, like her friend, but she couldn’t because she was selfish and needed something bigger. I wish I could boil my faith down to something that simple. I think maybe sometimes its better to develop a worldview and then realize how Jesus is the significance that is missing, who fits in so perfectly and fills all the gaps, than to start with WASP Jesus and this complicated stigmatized view of how to live like Him that is so big and noisy that it fills your vision.

It makes me want to shut down the arena in my head and kick everyone out- just erase everything and start over. Find out who He really is.  

animaniacs (from chapter 2)

The first time I went to church I got tied to a pole. Something like that kind of gets burned into a five-year-old’s mind, so I remember the details very clearly. I had been feeling ambivalent about this whole church thing ever since my mom had mentioned it. On the one hand, my brothers and I would miss out on our usual Sunday morning ritual of Animaniacs and apple slices. But then weighing it pretty heavily was the fact that I had heard Church was a place I could wear my new green dress with the big white ribbon that made me look like my Rebecca doll. It’s all very ironic, you see, because I had almost named Rebecca doll “Renee”, which turned out to be the name of the girl who tied me to the pole in the church basement, using that pretty white ribbon. Then Renee’s big brother David told my little brother Ryan that his beloved Peter Pan hat was for girls because it had a feather and I thought “that’s it…I’m going back to Animaniacs”. But the thing is, a five-year-old has zero control over her own life, so I was back at church the next week and every week after that.
Church is fun when you are little. You get to wear your prettiest dress while snacking and gluing things together in the basement. There is a 70 percent chance that an enthusiastic “God!” is the answer to the question being asked, so you look smart and pretty. The Donutman led you in sing-alongs about love and joy and then, just when you didn’t think it could get any more magical – they introduce Flannelgraph. Oh, the hours I spent in front of that red felt board, listening to the stories of Moses, Daniel and Joshua, (interchangeable) itching to arrange the pieces myself and be the one to give them life.
As my parents grew in their walk with God and knowledge of how the church expected them to act, we started shifting to be a Christian family. We prayed at mealtimes (even in restaurants! Out loud!), my parents got new friends and we learned a new language. I’ve heard it referred to as Christianese. It’s very subtle, but for example, we didn’t say “lucky” anymore, we said “blessed”. I scolded the kids on the bus who took God’s name in vain and we said weird things in secret Christian code that must baffle anyone not in the loop. Imagine walking by someone and hearing them say “Hallelujah! I’ve been washed in the blood!”
Once, during this transition to Christianese, my parents set up a fantastical scavenger hunt for my two brothers and me. It took us all over the yard from the “waterfall” (our bright blue slide) to the “diamond mountain” (our neighbor’s granite wall), even to the woods, where a snack was buried for us under a log. It kept us busy most of the afternoon and we couldn’t wait to get to the end where we would find “the greatest treasure you will ever possess”!!! We were sure it was gold or rubies or Sega Genesis. Inside a rotting log, we found a wooden box. I held my breath as Billy opened the lid.

It was a Bible.

Not even a colorful Psalty bible like Karise had- just a maroon leather Bible like the ones you found in a hotel. We looked at each other, crestfallen but also guilty that we didn’t think the Bible was even as cool as Sega Genesis. My mom made us sit on the log and have a lesson together and I remember being really annoyed and bitter. But it was all a part of this new life we were starting together.


(I’m going to add more to this section and discuss how Christianity becomes a culture within itself, with it’s own language, select people group, artifacts, etc. I just need to brush up on my sociological definitions....Trista!? Jason!? The point was to show how we had to change into almost a new “ethnicity” or something in order to fit in. It seems fine when you’re in it, but as a kid it was weird at first and rightfully so)

quick note

hey guys...thanks for reading...its been nice to get some feedback/encouragement. I really hate this whole self promotion thing but i think i'm getting better...here's the thing: you reading my blog is really only helpful to me if you become "a follower". that way, when a publisher sees how many followers I have (a grand total of 4 last time i checked...), he/she will want to sign me on. So take 5 seconds and become a follower of...me.

mr rogers shenanigans (from chapter 1)

For the most part, I hated Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I hated that he changed his shoes when he got home (why not just take them off?), I hated the way he spoke his songs instead of actually singing them, and I especially hated that stupid cat in the Land of Make Believe who only spoke in meows but somehow everyone understood her and liked her.

But I watched that show all the time.

I sat there through the shoe removal, and the song-speaking and the echolaliac cat, waiting for one thing: the Picture Picture Factory Tours. I sat raptured by the process of wax dying and paper wrapping required to make crayons, fascinated by the many different molds used to cut pasta shapes, intrigued that toothpaste tubes are filled from the bottom and then sewn shut. (Who knew!?) For a while, after I had to grow up and stop watching Mr. Rogers, I really missed those tours. You can imagine my delight when I came across How It’s Made on Discovery Channel. Now I know how guitars, hot tubs, snowboards, gummy worms and rocking chairs are made- and I don’t have to deal with Mr. Rogers’ shenanigans.

To make my point, I am a person who loves to know the origin of things, especially if it involves a process of sorts. For this same reason I love cooking, children’s museums, arts and crafts and history. I love when makeover shows don’t just show the before and after, but the in between stages. I like to take things apart. I like to know how things work. I think this is why I chose to study Sociology. It’s like a Picture Picture tour of people and the things they do. Sociology teaches critical examination of everything. It teaches you to take things apart, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism, but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.

And so I have scurried along in this world for the past three years, being kicked along by the steel-toed boot of Inquiry. Look closer! Look closer! Why, why, why! So I dig and I dig for significance.

Like a surgeon, I dissected the urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth. I turned my scalpel inward and I took apart my childhood (did being a ballerina put pressure on me to be thin?) ,my womanhood (do I feel like I have to be independent because my mom is a housewife?) my class (what is middle class?), and my ethnicity. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I learned to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self I find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It trickles down to every particle of my existence. It is in my thoughts, my actions, my motivation and my ambitions. It affects the way I treat people and the way I treat myself. It makes me feel guilty and it brings me joy. In any other setting, in another person or society, I would dissect this Christianity and find out whether it was something that was positively or negatively permeating that social organism. But I can’t.

My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She was raised by a pastor and says that for someone raised in the Christian culture, trying to examine your faith objectively is like asking a fish to describe water. It can tell you that water surrounds it, that water fills it’s lungs-but ask it the quality of water, how it moves, how it sits in the bowl. It is impossible. The fish would need to take a mighty leap out of the bowl, lake or ocean and sit outside to examine the water. That is what it feels like to me to try and look at Christianity with my sociological mind. I cannot take it apart and examine it because I cannot even see it.

My mom grew up Catholic, disenchanted by a church who taught her that God is angry and wants to catch her doing something wrong so He can rub his hands together and zap punishment into her life. When I was five, my dad started going to a small Baptist church with my Uncle Ralph (who is not really my uncle, just a lifelong friend). Uncle Ralph would come over after us kids went to bed and answer all of my dad’s questions. My mom would read her book and pretend not to listen, but couldn’t help overhearing about this God of love and patience who time and time again redeems His people. She says it was so beautifully different from the God she had pictured and she thought “I want that God”. I hear stories like this about people being drawn to God’s beauty and the grace of the Gospel. Looking in and thinking “I need that”. It makes me so fiercely wistful. I want to know that feeling. I want God to be something new and beautiful that I discover and choose, not a reflex. At times it feels like I can’t stop being a Christian any more than I could stop being Asian or stop having a northern accent or stop my feet from turning in. It takes more effort for me to be “unchristian” at this point.

I just read a book about a woman who heard someone speaking Italian and thought that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She decided that she had to learn to speak those lovely words. Like my mom, drawn by beauty she overheard, she knew it was something she needed in her life. In comparison I feel like I am the homegrown Italian who grew up speaking my native language, hearing it all of the time- both to bless and curse others. I love the language, believe it is what I need to communicate, but to me it is not beautiful, it is functional. I don’t hear the inflections and pronunciations that made that author’s heart flutter. To me it is just life.

"my adventurous life...

...is writing and trying to publish a book called Werewolf Jesus about growing up Christian and how it affects your perceptions of God."

So most of you have probably already seen my blip on the Gordon radar, as i spit out this ridiculouly long sentence in the Adventurous Life commercial. I look a little undone and a little unsure.

Well, I am.

I had planned on giving the whole back story to this manuscript but I realize no one really cares about that. Let me just say that this was my Thesis for my Advanced Creative Writing class and with the vigorous encouragement of so many, my undone and unsure little soul is tiptoe-ing it into the publishing world.

Apparently, publishers are more willing to take a risk on first time authors if they already have a 'following'. Apparently, blogging is the new way to muster such a following.

I have 45 pages done so far and I'll post them one by two when I have time.