Cynicism
7 years ago
i'll keep this short since i know all of our ears are a little flooded with haiti information lately.
...also i have no idea how many people actually read my blog thus how effective this will be.
all the devastation in haiti has me reeling and i'm flooded with the helplessness i discussed in the ashton kutcher post. i saw footage of all the dead bodies on the tv screen above as i was getting a root canal...no such thing as novacaine for the heart.
as i'm barraged with heartbreaking statistics, videos, pleas for help, my first response is GIVE. but then there's all of the ridiculous arguing over which organization is "better" to give to. people say the red cross only gives 33 cents to the dollar and bill clintons organization isnt much better. i dont much care about the percentage as long as these people are getting help.
my point: i just found out that the lead singer of audio adrenaline has had a nonprofit in Haiti for some years now and was there when the earthquake hit. you can donate to his organization on the "hands and feet" website...he's been blogging since the destruction hit and it's cool to hear exactly how they are helping people and how the money is being used.
come on, audio adrenaline was the best!
...also i have no idea how many people actually read my blog thus how effective this will be.
all the devastation in haiti has me reeling and i'm flooded with the helplessness i discussed in the ashton kutcher post. i saw footage of all the dead bodies on the tv screen above as i was getting a root canal...no such thing as novacaine for the heart.
as i'm barraged with heartbreaking statistics, videos, pleas for help, my first response is GIVE. but then there's all of the ridiculous arguing over which organization is "better" to give to. people say the red cross only gives 33 cents to the dollar and bill clintons organization isnt much better. i dont much care about the percentage as long as these people are getting help.
my point: i just found out that the lead singer of audio adrenaline has had a nonprofit in Haiti for some years now and was there when the earthquake hit. you can donate to his organization on the "hands and feet" website...he's been blogging since the destruction hit and it's cool to hear exactly how they are helping people and how the money is being used.
come on, audio adrenaline was the best!
i've been working on the heaven chapter some more this week. still working tonight and tomorrow but here's what i've got so far. feedback? what did you used to think heaven would be like? what do you think now?
I’m often afraid of Heaven. If I think too long on it, I feel a shivery nausea run through me before my thoughts skip somewhere safer. The sheer, unfathomable Otherness of such a place or existence always overwhelms me. I think it’s the same with most people. I think that’s why books like The Lovely Bones are such a hit: they make our fear manageable. One of my earliest and most revisited memories is of my mom calming my fears about Heaven. She found me hysterically sobbing into Carebear in the dark of my canopy bed. When I admitted that the source of my panic was the thought of spending “a forever” in Heaven, she laughed (the nerve!), but then got very serious.
“What’s the hardest thing you’re learning in school right now?” She asked.
Sensing a diversion and feeling one hundred percent above her child-psychology tactics, I answered hesitantly
“…long division?”
“Now imagine an ant trying to do your long division homework…do you think that’s possible?”
I remember cracking up, thinking that was just about the funniest thing I could picture,
its little antennae twitching and fizzling as it struggled to compute. Haha! Stupid little
ant.
“No! Their brains are way too small!”
And then she told me that’s what it’s like when we try to understand something like Heaven. She said our human brains are too small to handle something so God-sized.
“You don’t have to be afraid of something just because you can’t understand it. The trick is learning to trust that God does.”
But that’s such a challenge from the very beginning. We have so many weird images of heaven fed to us – no wonder most of us are terrified. One of my least favorite childhood movies, All Dogs Go to Heaven shows it as this weird, cloudy void with a phone that can receive red-hot calls from Hell. And the dogs bounced from cloud to cloud as they sang their chirpy cartoon songs and I clenched my teeth thinking Don’t fall through! FOR PETE’S SAKE STEP MORE CAREFULLY! Because one wrong move and you could straight up FALL OUT OF HEAVEN. I remember having nightmares about that voice in the locket – you can never come baaaaaaack. You can never come baaaaaaack. What a horrible, horrible movie.
There’s the Philadelphia Cream Cheese indulgence view of heaven where we all lie on clouds half naked and eat piles of cheesecake or onion rings or baby carrots – whatever makes you happy. Because, to most American minds, in a place of no tears there must be partial nudity and plates upon plates of food.
And I was (ok, still am) a big-time fan of the Phillie Cream Cheese view.
When I was younger I had a borderline frightening obsession with chicken wings – I would eat them day and night if I could, tearing through them like a savage feral child, just stumbled in from my woodland home. My parents say that the only reason us kids any self-control whatsoever is because of their mini temperance act: if things got out of hand, like if I got that look in my eye where they knew I was seeing everyone as a giant, talking chicken wing or when I would wake up early to try and eat the leftovers for breakfast, they put us on prohibition: I wasn’t allowed to have chicken wings and for similar reasons my little brother Ryan (who was a fatty little kid) wasn’t allowed to have candy. It was torture and I remember comforting myself with the thought: well when I get to Heaven, I get to have all the chicken wings I want. And I pictured me and Jesus sitting Indian-style at a sturdy, primary colored Little Tykes table, leaning back on our cloud chairs and sharing an enormous platter of chicken wings. And the platter would magically refill itself every time it started to get low and Jesus and I would throw our greasy faces back and laugh, laugh, laugh. Ryan of course, would be there too in an overstuffed armchair, his chubby ankles sticking straight out off the edge. He would have a similarly magical cut-glass punch bowl in his lap, filled to the brim with Blow Pops and Razzles and Pixie Sticks and Hubba Bubba. (And there would be no licorice present because I was fairly certain that Lord Licorice From Candyland was the devil and there was no way he was sneaking up into my heaven through his tasty consumer products.) We would eat and eat to our hearts content, therefore fulfilling St. John’s prophecy that in heaven there would be no tears, no suffering etc etc. And the glorious songs we sang would blend into an everlasting jingle for our favorite snacks, in order to show God how grateful we were for the endless food. I love these fishes cuz they’re soooo delicious! Gone goldfishing!!! Thanks for that blue box, Kraft macaroni and cheese – we got the blues!!!
And then, probably sensing that they were feeding the chicken and candy obsession rather than squelching it, my parents kind of snatched that snacky version of heaven away and start to teach us a more serious faith. No, you won’t be eating Smartfood all day, because you’ll be too busy praising God. And I pictured us all floating around in choir robes, our hands folded Von Trapp style, high on our chests. And there are so many versions of this boring Heaven from TV shows, movies, even children’s books to feed my imaginings. You know - people just kind of hovercrafting around, admiring the beauty, being pious, talking in library tones. Like my grandmother’s retirement megavillage in Florida. All landscaped and perfect and quiet and cookie-cuttered. There’s a pool but no splashing, bikes but no racing, shopping – but from stores like Chicos, Naturalizer and GNC. Let’s be honest – it sounds more like a punishment than an eternal reward.
To add to this, my parents started to read us the baffling descriptions of Heaven from Revelation. Then, in what used to be more of an echo-ey endless fog-filled buffet, some architecture slid into place. Now Heaven had streets of gold, mansions with countless rooms, seas of crystal, jewels everywhere and freakish multi-limbed (but friendly) talking creatures. It was like The White House, Emerald City and Narnia all rolled into one. I was torn between glee and terror. Because you see, places like that - that are terribly large and beautiful are generally very cold and lonely places. I would have much rather heard that Heaven was like a snuggy cabin from a Thomas Kinkade painting. And we would all gather around that magical fire and sing twangy bluegrass songs. A plain but homey Heaven was much more appealing to my small-town mind than a dazzling, colossal palace filled with sunshine and stainless steel.
Even as I’ve grown up and seen more of the world, I can’t say much has changed. I feel closest to God in small, warm settings – at candlelit Christmas Eve services, canoeing on the river, reading the Bible in a coffee shop, snuggled up by the woodstove. When I go to conferences, when I tip my head back in the St. Paul’s Cathedral, when I shrink down beneath a curtain of stars, it feels like there’s too much space. Like He’s dissolving.
Maybe I’m trying to fit Him into my little ant brain…or maybe my little ant brain is trying to tell me something - like that perfect communion with a God who is Love is less like visiting the Wizard of Oz and more like snuggling up by the fireplace. Like that when we’re all “up there”, chicken wings and all – it won’t feel alien, vacant or cold. It will feel a little bit like coming home.
(And ya, ya, ya I get it that we will also be filled with awe and wonder and fall on our faces to worship, etc. But I don’t think it will be a trembly, fearful worship like so many pastoral type people describe. I think it will be more like the first time you see Mickey Mouse. You hide behind your mom’s leg at first because he’s freaking huge and you weren’t expecting such enthusiastic grandeur…but then you start to grin because you think I knew it! I knew you were real and I have believed in you for so very, very long and you’re FINALLY finally here! And he reaches out his arms to you and your smile nearly cracks your face in two because he wants to hug you. He wants to hug you of all people. )
i've been revising chapter 1 (mr. rogers shenanigans - from may 26th) and thought i'd share the new and improved version.
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 everything apart, understand how something came to be, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary for its health and development. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism- deconstruction of a person or society most always uncovers injustice- but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.
Like a surgeon, I spent my days as a Sociology student dissecting. Urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems – I took them all apart. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth and value. The more I learned, the more often I turned my scalpel inward. 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. I dismantled, learned my origins, reviewed the process of the making of me. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I have been trained to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self, my process, I continue to find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It goes back almost as far as I can remember. 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. My self is Christian self. My process is a Christian process. But with all of my sociological training, I can’t really figure out why.
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. I grew up in this Christianity – the Sunday school, VBS, Veggie Tales and McGee and me. I went to Christian school and youth group and Christian college. I married a Christian guy from a Christian family. Christianity is the back of my hand. I see it everyday, but let’s be honest – I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried.
My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She grew up a pastor’s kid 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.
So I did what any scholar would do: I turned to my books. And like a sociologist, I didn’t seek out the textbook, I found memoirs because people teach better than statistics do. I sat
on the floor in the Inspirational section of Barnes and Noble with a stack. Lamott, Miller, Lewis…But it’s frustrating and dead-ending because these people aren’t like me. They’ve come to know God late in life. They’ve abandoned the church and then been drawn back in. They’ve fought with God and lost.
They’ve been outside the fishbowl.
But what about those of us who have always been inside?
In the church, we act like the worst place to be is outside of Christianity. But I feel jealous of these people who have been outside. People like my mom. She 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 church with my Uncle Ralph. 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 that 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 just the water around me, not just 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. (and yes, I understand that Christianity is a heart change, not just a way of life)
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 - just the water that fills my lungs.
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 everything apart, understand how something came to be, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary for its health and development. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism- deconstruction of a person or society most always uncovers injustice- but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.
Like a surgeon, I spent my days as a Sociology student dissecting. Urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems – I took them all apart. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth and value. The more I learned, the more often I turned my scalpel inward. 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. I dismantled, learned my origins, reviewed the process of the making of me. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I have been trained to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self, my process, I continue to find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It goes back almost as far as I can remember. 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. My self is Christian self. My process is a Christian process. But with all of my sociological training, I can’t really figure out why.
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. I grew up in this Christianity – the Sunday school, VBS, Veggie Tales and McGee and me. I went to Christian school and youth group and Christian college. I married a Christian guy from a Christian family. Christianity is the back of my hand. I see it everyday, but let’s be honest – I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried.
My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She grew up a pastor’s kid 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.
So I did what any scholar would do: I turned to my books. And like a sociologist, I didn’t seek out the textbook, I found memoirs because people teach better than statistics do. I sat
on the floor in the Inspirational section of Barnes and Noble with a stack. Lamott, Miller, Lewis…But it’s frustrating and dead-ending because these people aren’t like me. They’ve come to know God late in life. They’ve abandoned the church and then been drawn back in. They’ve fought with God and lost.
They’ve been outside the fishbowl.
But what about those of us who have always been inside?
In the church, we act like the worst place to be is outside of Christianity. But I feel jealous of these people who have been outside. People like my mom. She 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 church with my Uncle Ralph. 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 that 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 just the water around me, not just 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. (and yes, I understand that Christianity is a heart change, not just a way of life)
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 - just the water that fills my lungs.
this is a chunk from an evolving chapter in the second half of the book. (for the newbies, other excerpts are in the earliest postings).and for the record, i'm not a fan of "hysterically hiccuping" either...but that's why i said it's an evolving chapter.
i’m often afraid of heaven. if i think too long on it, i feel a shivery nausea run through me before my thoughts skip somewhere safer. the sheer unfathomable otherness of such a place or existence always overwhelms me.
one of my earliest and most revisisted memories is of my mom calming these fears. she found me hysterically hiccupping into my carebear in the dark of my canopy bed. when I admitted that the source of my panic was the thought of spending “a forever” in heaven, she laughed (the nerve!), but then got very serious.
“what’s the hardest thing you’re learning in school right now?” she asked. sensing a diversion and feeling wholly above such tactics, i answered hesitantly
“…long division?”
“now imagine an ant trying to do your long division homework…do you think that’s possible?”
i remember cracking up, thinking that was just about the funniest thing i could picture, his tiny antennae twitching and sizzling as he struggled to compute. stupid little ant.
“no! their brains are way too small!”
“exactly. that’s what it’s like when we try to understand something like heaven. our human brains are too small to handle something so God-sized. You don’t have to be afraid of something just because you can’t understand it. the trick is learning to trust that God does.”
she asked me if the two of us could just keep sitting there on my bed and talking, would that be scary, even if there was no end in sight? no, that didn’t feel overwhelming at all.
and really, would i want to worship a God who fit perfectly inside of my tiny little ant brain?
i think it was mother teresa who said "may God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in". i used to pray this prayer, like a good social worker, but after a while i realized...the whole world is pretty freakin huge and that actually hurts...alot. once God starts to crack your heart open to fit people in, it feels like He will never stop. (and i get images of all of my middle school classmates cranking their palate expanders, as the gap between their front teeth grew ever wider. i always wondered if they cranked too quickly if their head would split in two, right up between the eyebrows) and if He doesn't stop, where do i begin? who do i help?how do i help the refugees in Lynn but ignore all of the homeless people i pass on my way there? how do i focus on them when overseas, there's villages of girls brought into sexual slavery? and the crack babies and the lonely old men and the battered women and the crippled children....it never ends. IT NEVER ENDS.
for assistance addressing this particular overwhelmtion (yes, i made up that word), i'd like to defer to my good friend ashton kutcher and his co-star from The Guardian, kevin costner. (and my only viewing of this movie was also the first time my now-husband, then-"he's so dreamy!" put his arm around me, so forgive me if the details are blurry.) quick overview: the movie is about rescue divers. the people who - if you are stupid enough to get caught kayaking on the open sea in a hurricaine - will jump out of a helicopter to save your foolish self. so ashton (cocky, insubordinate trainee) is asking kevin (troubled, seen-it-all veteran trainer) how he decides who to save when there's more than one person drowning.
and kevin, in his simple drawling wisdom says
It's probably different for everybody. Its kind of simple for me though. I just, I take the first one I come to or the weakest one in the group and then I swim as fast and as hard as I can for as long as I can. And the sea takes the rest.ashton thinks about this for a while and they have a real heavy moment. and the camera is zooming in on their serious eyes and capturing all the meaning in the room and ashton asks:
do you think i'm ready?
if i did not think you were ready, i would not drop you in the Bering Sea.sometimes it feels like there's too much hurt in this world and if i come across one more hurting person, my heart is going to crack in half and fall to my butt. so when i start to feel the overwhelmtion take over, when i start to feel like i'm in the bering sea, surrounded by drowning people, i have to remember - i have to trust that God wouldn't drop me out here if i wasn't ready. i have to focus on the ones closest to me, the ones who are the weakest. i need to love them as hard as i can and as long as i can and keep swimming until He takes me back up. (too many metaphors?)
but here's the thing. i have to also trust that He's dropped other people in with me and we are all trusting swimming and loving the hell out of those around us. i have to believe that like frenchpressedfridays says, God has come to each of us with a vision for our lives and like mary, we have the choice to say no thanks or to say "my soul magnifies the Lord." we're all dropped in a specific area of the bering sea with a specific set of talents, abilities and passions that we are supposed to use.
i have to believe this because there's too many drowning people out there for me not to believe this.
another wise person said that sometimes in a world that's bleeding out, all we can do is hold our palms over the wounds. so jump in, reach out and find a wound you can reach. find one that your individual hand fits. and hold on.
so maybe mother teresa is right - maybe God will continue to stuff people into my heart until the day i die. but the thing is, i have to remember that i can't fix them all - i can't save them all. but i can swim around all day, every day "preggers with grace and truth".
there's a new post brewing in my head and it's ricocheted off of another blog. check out frenchpressedfridays in my "inspiration" tab and read the Dec. 6 "Preggers with Grace and Truth" posting.
percolate on that for a while. i will too and maybe post some thoughts of my own by the end of the day...
percolate on that for a while. i will too and maybe post some thoughts of my own by the end of the day...
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