music and memories

I. When I was in high school, my dad was briefly a silent partner in a used car dealership. That might seem wildly out-of-character if you didn't know him well, but before he was any kind of Bible teacher, he was a farm kid who had to keep tractors and trucks running, and he was always a motorhead. I don't think he got any money out of the dealership, he just had an agreement that he would help fund their startup and in return, they would provide him with a car to drive. 

My senior year, for about a month, that car was a (used) white Firebird or Camaro or something (I am not a motorhead), which were the hot cars at my high school, and which I had never even ridden in let alone had a chance to drive. He passed it to me to drive for a week or two, and my main memory of that car is driving around at night with the soundtrack to the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie blasting out of the 8-track tape deck, pretending I was in an X-wing-- my own private 70s movie mashup. 

So the other night when we were scrolling around trying to find something to watch, and we ran across a John Williams documentary on Disney+, of course we watched. If you're even a marginal John Williams fan, we both recommend it highly. He wrote the soundtracks to both Superman and Star Wars, of course, as well as Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, but he also wrote a bunch of stuff we didn't know about (the Olympic theme, for example). His music brings back an avalanche of memories, and his history is more complex than I might have expected. The documentary mostly concentrates on his collaborations with Spielberg, but there are plenty of other directors and musicians who contribute.

II. A couple of months ago, I realized I had stopped listening to music. I've never been one to always have music on in the background, but I used to turn it on when I was driving or if I needed to amp up my energy for a cooking or cleaning project. I've spent quite a bit of time and effort putting together playlists in our iTunes account over the years, and I had a couple of Pandora channels that I loved. And suddenly I was listening to none of it. It was as if I couldn't deal with anything but silence. I didn't have enough bandwidth for all the things I was worried about, all the things I felt responsible for, and listening to music. 

In other news, our son and I have shared a Spotify account for years because originally when he was in high school, I was paying for it. He pays for it now, so it's really his account, but I still have the app on my phone and I would --maybe 3-4 times a year-- pull it up to listen to something and he would be met with Carole King or Stevie Wonder the next time he opened the app. So when I decided I needed to get back into listening to music as part of my drop-the-weight-of-the-universe-off-my-shoulders plan, I found out that Spotify was offering three months free, and I signed up for my own account. When I texted Sam and told him, he replied, look at you all grown up and savin' China. Love that kid.

So all of that was just to tell you that I have recently been reminded that there is a part of joy that is located in my body, my physical self, in movement. And if you want a recommendation, can I just say that you should try swanning around the house to Pink Pony Club. Those youngsters are really on to something, ha. I've been surprised to discover that when my arms are thrown into the air, something wakes inside me that has been asleep. 

A thing I still hold dear, have always cherished since I realized it in college, is that we are all better and stronger when we support each other's individual selves, when we celebrate diversity ("Celebrate Diversity" was even the sign I carried in the Montana Women's March in Helena on January 21, 2017)(I just wasted about 20 minutes trying --unsuccessfully-- to find a picture). And if there was ever a song that joyfully celebrated diversity, it is Pink Pony Club. 

III. In case you didn't notice, I've been clearing out all my half-written posts so I can shut this thing down. It's possible this will be my last post. Wow, that sounds so.... final. Maybe not. Maybe I will be back next week. But (see this post) I've been praying about it, and it feels right. I do have some more things to add to that post, but I will put them in a comment so check back if it's a topic that interests you. Love y'all.

Late Night Thoughts of an Unfeminine Female

I am not a very feminine female. Even as a child, I was never a girly girl. I never played with baby dolls or had any desire to wear frilly pink dresses and sit quietly. Later, I never really got the fascination with clothes and makeup. I spent plenty of time trying out makeup and getting perms and longing for clothes we couldn't afford-- but it was never because I cared about that stuff. It was because I cared (desperately) about fitting in, and that was how I thought you did it.  

I had a few moments of proto-feminism while growing up, but it wasn't until I went off to the second half of undergrad on the west coast and fell under the sway of a bunch of second wave feminists that I was all in. It made perfect and complete sense to me. There were a lot of problems with second wave feminism, and it's easy to criticize forty-five years later. But at the time, when feminism was still new, it was a like a life raft for those of us who didn't fit the female mold, a promise of a better future. 

I understood at a gut level what those feminists were telling me about the patriarchy, and the suffocating box that was the role a middle-class white female could expect in adulthood. But 45 years later, I can tell you something that is equally clear, the mistake we newly liberated women made: we thought that was how all women felt. 

We were out there pushing boundaries, taking jobs and demanding careers, being competent and professional, proving that we were capable of doing anything that men could do, and loving every minute of it. Every single little advance that inched us "forward," that took us away from diapers and vacuuming and cooking three meals a day and sewing your own prom dress and downing a couple of valium to get through the day. We were so into it that we were sure all women felt that way. The ones who said they didn't just hadn't realized it yet, we assured ourselves. We thought all those poor deluded females were looking to us to lead the way into a new future.

You know what we missed? We missed the women who loved the traditional feminine life. Who loved every minute of cuddling up with an infant, even if it meant sleepless nights and endless inexplicable crying. (I love my kids, but to me, the infant stage was just something you had to get through in order to have kids who could walk and talk.) The women who found fulfillment in cooking delicious meals for their family. The ones who were expert seamstresses and knitters and weavers, who had more expertise in their craft than I've ever had in any of my professional skills. The women who took great pride in creating a comfortable, beautiful home where their family felt cared for and they could host their friends and relatives. 

I still can't do any of that, and the things I have to do (like cooking), I don't do particularly well. It gives me the heebie-jeebies to think about a world where that's all a woman is allowed to do. But I understand now what I didn't understand then, because I've seen it in women of all ages and all backgrounds-- there are millions of women out there who would be perfectly happy and content to be married and spend their lives taking care of their kids and their house and their extended family and their entire neighborhood. (There are a probably a bunch of men who would like that, too.) There's nothing wrong with them. They don't need to be enlightened or have their consciousness raised. They are just wired differently than me. The same way I felt that I didn't fit in the mid-century housewife mold, they felt they didn't fit in the 80s career woman mold.

I can make all the standard arguments that my feminist mentors have made before me-- the traditional model only works if the husband wants the same thing, has a good job, doesn't gamble or drink or drug the money away, and doesn't run off with his 24-year-old secretary when he hits forty. It only works if the husband doesn't die in a car accident while the kids are still in diapers. Because in those scenarios, you've got a woman with a family to support and no job skills. And there's no question, all of that is true. 

But it still doesn't mean that all women want the same thing, and we were wrong to think they did. But you know what? We had good intentions. We were trying to help, and I genuinely thought we were. I thought we were making the world a better place for all women. The newfound excitement of our exit from the homefront was so fresh, I couldn't imagine that other women wouldn't want the same. It would be a dozen years before I figured out that not only did I not understand the women who loved the traditional roles, I knew nothing about how black women felt, or lesbians, or second generation immigrant women, or any number of other women.

Why is this so hard for us? Why do we so deeply, deeply believe that what is best for me is what is best for you? It happens all around us, in different ways. Parents who think since I loved college, it's the right thing for my children, too. Exvangelicals like me who think, since I found freedom and fulfillment in leaving the faith I was raised in, everyone should leave their native faith. Men whose greatest joy in life is a friendly, competitive game of golf or basketball with their buddies, and assume their children just need a little push to find the same joy in athletics. How do we curb that first, almost unconscious impulse to assume that what works for me is what’s best for you, too?

There's no easy way. but I guess it starts with just seeing the people around you, really seeing them, and trusting them to know what they want, or if they don't, to be able to figure it out. Which sounds pretty obvious now that I've typed that out, but it's also hard. Sometimes really hard.

There are some obvious directions I could go from here, but I would very quickly be out of my depth. I guess I just wanted to make the point that sometimes when you think you're being supportive, if you're telling someone else what they should want or how they should act, really you're being coercive--even if your intentions are good. Even if you think you're making the world a better place. And that's not good for anyone. (And also, eventually it will backfire.) 

And that's enough about that from me. 

Why I am Still Christian

After some of the posts I've written in the past six weeks, you might be wondering if I'm still Christian, and if so, why. It's very late, so this will probably not be as well thought out as it should be. But here you go. 

First of all, please read this post, that I first wrote years ago, and that I edited and re-posted in 2015, and that I could re-post again today with only a few minor changes. 

Then the next thing to say is that I still find Jesus to be one of the most interesting, compelling characters in any religion. I've spent a fair amount of time reading about the search for the historical Jesus and I've studied scholars who deconstruct Jesus' cultural presence and etc etc. But I've finally come back around to accepting that what we have in the four gospels is what we have, and the person of Jesus may not be exactly, accurately portrayed there. But the person that exists in the New Testament is still a phenomenal teacher, and always has been. The sermon on the mount is one of the great spiritual texts of any time or place. 

And he still resonates. Here is just one example. I can't tell you how many times over the past eight years I've been reminded of the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler in Mark 10:17-22. A young man comes up to Jesus and asks him what he (the young man) must do to be saved. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments, and the man says he has done this all his life. There's not much detail, but reading between the lines, it seems pretty clear that the young man is expecting Jesus to pat him on the head and tell him he's in good shape, no worries. But instead, Jesus looked at him and loved him, and told him to go and sell all his possessions to give to the poor, "then come and follow me." The young man is shocked, because it's not the answer he expected, and he goes away very sad, because he can't bear to part with all his things. 

There's so much here to think about. If this young man had been really listening to Jesus before he came to ask his question--and we don't know if he had-- he would already know that he was asking the wrong question. If he hadn't been listening, it means he just strode up and sort of barged in with his demand for approval. Either way, he's misinformed and doesn't really get what's going on. 

But Jesus looked at him and loved him. When I think someone is misinformed and doesn't gets what's happening, I look at him and judge him. Roll my eyes. Silently mock him, even if I'm not saying it out loud. But Jesus loves him, and gives him a real answer, a true answer, but not the answer the man wants to hear. I heard a wise teacher, talking about this story once a few years ago, say that the man's mistake at this point was that he walked away. The point wasn't necessarily to sell all his goods, the point was following Jesus, listening to him, learning a new way to think, a new set of values. 

I think about that story all the time. And there are moments like that buried all over in the Jesus stories. I'm not the best at finding them-- I have so much hurt and heartache around the way the New Testament was shoved down my throat long ago that I find it difficult to open my bible without a nagging sense of dread that I will be pulled back down under. But I have been gifted in my life with many wise teachers, and they have helped me re-interpret the old stories so that I can see new life in them. I'll never be Evangelical again, but I'm still a follower of Jesus. I still believe in his radical ideas. 

One other thing that I'll add on here, and if it weren't very late at night and I weren't trying to get everything I want to say out on the page so that I can close down this blog, I probably would not say this. But a a bunch of years ago I wrote a post about how disappointed I was in how my life had turned out. I knew it was whining when I wrote it, because who is more privileged or luckier than me? But it was how I felt at that moment, and sometimes you have to go with what you feel in order to get over it. And I have to admit that sometimes I'm over that feeling of disppointment, and sometimes I'm not. But about six months ago, it occurred to me that one of the things, maybe the thing, that has disappointed me most is that God did not turn out to be who I thought God was, the way I was raised to believe God was. I know intellectually that's because I was badly taught, I was handed a bunch of worn-out cultural assumptions about God, and about the way we teach our children about God. It was the way I was taught that was the problem, not actually God. And right on the heels of realizing that most deep disappointment, a little voice said, but wait, what if God is true? what if God does exist, not the cardboard cutout I was raised with, but real God? Those of us who are highly educated have been handed a bunch of science to make it so we don't need to believe God exists anymore, but WHAT IF SHE DOES? (I phrase it like that not because I think God is female to the exclusion of being male but, well, partly because there's no way in english to describe a living, vibrant entity that is beyond gender, but also to emphasize that this tiny bit of hope that burst forth is different than what I previously believed). And just that little bit of breakthrough, the crack in my cynicism that lets the light come in, has made all the difference. A deep part of me is (slowly) coming back to life. I can't prove God exists, but I feel it. I'm not re-writing this or editing it, because if I do, I won't post it.

Letter to an Evangelical with Questions, part 2

When I finished editing part one of this post, it was about 12:30am and I was so tired I just wanted to roll into bed without even brushing my teeth. (I didn't of course, because that would be gross.) But I had what felt like a zillion ideas running through my head about more things that I would say in part two. 

But after a couple of days, I could only remember two of them, and the first is to tell you that if you were raised Evangelical, you may not realize that there are dozens, hundreds, of different kinds of churches and religious practices out there that offer perfectly legitimate ways to worship. I was raised with those Evangelical blinders on, and I didn't think you could be a "real" Christian if you didn't go to a Bible church, or maybe a Baptist church in a pinch if there was no Bible church available.

But I discovered that there are plenty of faithful people in other traditions. I am embarrassed now to admit that I was surprised to find that there were people who knew the Bible better than me at the first non-Evangelical church I tried (and to be fair, also a bunch who didn't). There were people who were doing more vital outreach in the community, and doing more to help the poor, than had ever happened in my previous church. It doesn't hurt to look around. You can visit other churches without having to commit, and see if you find a place that is a better fit.

And the other thing is that although it took a few years, eventually I realized that to treat the Bible as a collection of historical texts with a historical context is actually to show it greater respect than to claim that it was written to you and me today. It wasn't. It was written to specific people in a specific time and place, and you can read it for guidance and inspiration without having to believe that Jonah really lived inside a whale for three days. If you can't imagine how the story of Jonah and the big fish would have played around the campfire to an audience of desert-dwelling nomads, I think you're missing part of the point.

And that's really all the advice I can give you. Unfortunately, you have to figure this out for yourself-- do you want to continue to be Christian, but find a different way to practice? Try an Episcopal church (especially if you love liturgy, ritual, and formal church music), or a PC-USA Presbyterian church, or a UMC Methodist church. If you really can't deal with Christianity at all anymore, try UCC or reformed Jewish. If you can't deal with religion in general, you can try Buddhism, which is non-theistic, or jettison the whole thing and be agnostic or atheist. But you lose something, something you'll probably not find anywhere else. I wish you well.

Feeding the Soul: things that are helping me

This was originally going to be a long (probably boring) series of posts with a full post for each topic, but the more I tried to sit down and type them out, the more resistance I encountered within myself. So in the long tradition of solving writer's block by making lists, here are the things that are working for me right now-- not intended to be your list, or even really advice, but just to get you thinking about ways you can deepen your experience, slow down a bit, and treasure the texture of right now. 

Sorry, that sounds a bit twee, but that's part of the problem, isn't it? Our culture defines anything that takes spirituality seriously as a bit twee and ridiculous. Don't let that deter you: keep working on it when you can, and make your own list.

1. In the brief periods of my experience when I have tried to reject spirituality entirely, the losses I have felt most keenly are the experiences of reverence, awe, mystery, and community. Those don't all mean the same thing, obviously, but they can be connected. Reverence and awe can be magnified when you experience them in a communal setting. When you find a healthy community, it is a mystery and a miracle. and so on. 
- those feelings are either rooted in, or result in, humility. Or maybe both. Learning humility is the life lesson that keeps on happening. at least for me.
- genuine reverence, awe, and mystery are the antithesis of cynicism. If you're still feeling jaded and smug, it's not awe.
- part of reverence is valuing other people, other individuals, acknowledging the unique, worthy person that each of us are. Including yourself.

So anyway, figure out what leads you to those feelings, or inspires those feelings, because a life without them is not a fully experienced life. For me, it's sometimes spectacular scenery, or being in the presense of something huge, like the ocean, or mountains. Or when we stood on the edge of Canyon de Chelly last March. Being inside a sacred space can work for me, and that's something I know doesn't work for everyone because I've had (very gentle) arguments about it. Certain types of music, or the experience of being in a group that is creating music, especially singing songs of praise in a group in a sacred space. Sometimes reading a really good book.

2. Try praying, and don't give up too soon. Even if you don't understand how it works, even if you're sure it shouldn't work, even if you hate the idea of it working. Because whether or not it "works," which presumably means your prayer is answered, the mental posture of asking for help and offering your cares and concerns to a larger entity is powerful-- not powerful in terms of getting your own way, but powerful in terms of your own growth. See #1, humility. Mary Karr deals with this in her book about getting sober, Lit.

3. Also, try to find a group of like-minded souls, and don't give up too soon. It doesn't have to be church, although church can surprise you sometimes, especially if you visit around and find the one that fits.

4. Meditation. Books and books have been written. I've even written posts about it before--wow, more than I realized (I just went and searched). I'll put some links at the end. I don't have anything all that useful to add, except maybe that the thing that's helping me the most right now is to think about connecting with something that blooms or bubbles up from underneath-- feels like hope and lightness-- as opposed to trying to top-down control my brain, which feels like clenched teeth and white knuckles. Apologies if that doesn't make any sense, but I don't know how else to say it. 

Thinking about Meditation (again) Nov 2018
How Not to Meditate June 2015
How Not to Meditate part 2 June 2015
Meditate Me Home - June 2015

5. Find the thing that you create, that only exists in the universe because you do it, that feels like genuine self-expression (even if no one else ever sees it). The process of doing it can clear out some mental space to sort through your experience. It's writing for me, and sometimes making music. For some people maybe it's dance or creative movement, or maybe you cook. Maybe exercise could do this, or maybe creating a group for communal experience would be it. 

The point is: figure out what you need to feed your soul, the care and feeding of your own soul. And then figure out how often you need to do it. Maybe once a week is plenty, while others need something every day. Don't try too hard to create a rigid schedule. If I decide I'm going to get up early every morning and meditate, it never lasts more than a week or ten days. But if I just keep working on inserting a few moments of a meditative mindset whenever I can, it's much more successful, and I actually end up meditating more often. Don't let anyone else tell you what your spiritual life has to look like, because only you know what is going on inside you. 

That's all I can think of right now. I greet and acknowledge the light in you.

blue dot in a red state

As a Democrat who lives in the middle of one of the reddest counties in the country, a county that has only become more conservative as its reputation as a safe harbor for the right wing has become known, I have to say that I get so disgusted with how tone deaf liberals can be. It's just unbelievable to me how arrogant and smug my fellow liberals sound. Even when I agree with them (which I do on most issues, nothing has happened in the past ten years that has convinced me I should start voting Republican), I cannot believe how rude, disdainful, and disrespectful my fellow Democrats can be of our conservative neighbors. 

I'm pretty sure it only happens because they've so thoroughly isolated themselves in their liberal social media feeds and their favorite liberal commentators and their liberal friends that they no longer have any contact with every day normal conservatives, and they think all conservatives must be racist, homophobic nut jobs who don't deserve to be heard or respected. 

Freedom of religion is bedrock in this country, but right now no one (on either side) is paying any attention to it. Conservatives want to believe that we are a Christian nation and thus it's OK to discriminate against anyone who isn't. Liberals want to believe that every religion deserves respect except conservative Christianity. When I first decided back in 2016 that I needed to do a better job of listening to my conservative friends and neighbors, I was surprised how often this came up: there is a build-up of decades of bitterness and resentment about how liberals will go to the mat for pretty much any religion in the world, but they have nothing but sneering disdain for conservative Christians. 

I understand about punching down vs. punching up, and that's the way I used to feel, too. Until I started actually listening. So many of us who are over-educated liberals see Christianity as optional, maybe because so many of us who were raised Christian have left it behind. It seems like something you grow out of, something that no intelligent person could believe. I've ended up becoming deeply re-committed to a more progressive version of Christianity as I've aged, but that was how I felt 15 or 20 years ago. But I've learned, and I was wrong. 

Let me assure you, there are millions of people who feel differently. Their faith is not optional to them, it is deeply embedded in their hearts; it is fundamental to their identity. And when you sneer at them, or say dismissive things about their beliefs, or ignore their legitimate concerns about things that are happening in our country, you don't help your position. You are not convincing them that you are right. You are not changing minds. You're just pissing people off.

Over time I've come to see our reaction to faith as something that is wired into us. Some of us never felt like we fit in with the faith we were raised in and left as soon as we were old enough to get away. Some of us (me) wanted to believe it, but for various reasons were unable to make it work and left it behind. 

But I think some other people are just wired into their status quo. They are not going to question it, they are not going to appreciate your ability to make mincemeat of their theology, and they are not going to change their minds. In fact, the louder you get, the more critical you get, the more you mock and bluster and shout about your outrage at conservative Christians, the more you blame them for all our social ills, the more resentful and bitter and angry they will become. 

Until eventually, maybe because of the accumulation of years of bitterness, maybe because you've finally hit the one issue they will not compromise on, or maybe because you've just become so unbearably smug that they can't stand to listen anymore, eventually they feel that they will follow anyone who is willing to support them in what they should have been supported in all along-- the right to practice their faith in a country that promises them just that.

I write these posts fairly often, but then they just sit in my drafts folder for weeks or months because I can't believe I'm defending conservatives. Some of the things they've done this year make me sick to my stomach--but that's the power mongers in Washington. The conservatives I know personally are people who are volunteering at the food bank, or visiting sick people at the hospital, or knitting afghans for folks in nursing homes. They're not perfect, and we disagree on local politics about as often as we do national politics. But at least I can see them as people, people who love their families and work hard to make ends meet. Sometimes you just have to bite your tongue, not say what you're thinking, and listen.

I become more thoroughly convinced every day that the kind of intellectualism that I have admired and loved and practiced for my entire adult life is not going to solve this problem. We've argued our differences, and argued and argued, and if we could convince each other through arguing, it would have happened by now. Instead, we just get further and further apart. 

I've told you before that Doug and I were separated for almost a year back in the 90s. We spent a lot of time finding the right marriage counselor, and then we spent a lot of time talking to her, and then we had to figure out what we were going to do. And finally one time she told us, you can talk yourselves to death trying to agree on what's wrong and who is responsible for what. but if you want to stay together, at some point, you've just got to let all that go and move on. 

To apply that to our national situation would be a vast oversimplification, but it also is kind of true.