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[redwoodpress]

“Babel”

I watched my TV screen weeks ago as state after state bled the color red, foreshadowing a death that would break across not only my TV, but my America. Subtle whispers of profanity escaped my lips the same familiar way they have when tragedy affected my life, as every border dripped into the next, like a color by number sent from hell. The only thought that kept coming back around, “This is America. This is America. This is America.”

So many of you called me to weep into the phone, asking the static silence between us to change the outcome. Your fears were sent to me from other countries. The defeat that landed on your bones you gave to me that night and we tried to carry it together. You ranted, screamed, went silent. We all processed in a myriad of ways. I walked onto my school campus and familiar faces were gone. Protests broke out, everyone split like the Red Sea, and that night I cried myself to sleep because I realized I wasn’t Jesus and I couldn’t hold the weight of your emotions in my hands. I was tired for you. I was tired for me. I was tired.

I told a friend the other day that if the phrase, “God is in control” has become a language that is only used to silence you, I will not say it right now. I won’t erase your pain with empty Christian jargon.

You are mourning, I am too. I am listening. There is nothing but love in my heart for you. Before I say more, know that if I have any internalized racism in my body, I don’t want it. I never did. But we have the choice every day to love or hate each other. This is humanity.

Friends, we were destined to fall. From Genesis to now, we are still falling into some bad dream. Whether it’s Greek mythology or it is literal, whether the world was created in seven days or Charles Darwin’s view on creation wasn’t that far off, whether you kiss the bible or you want it to burn in the hell it speaks of, we are still broken. This is America. This is the world. This is sin. Hate me for bringing God into this conversation. Hate me for talking about sin; but look around, is anything else working? Do people, on an individual basis, suddenly believe you and fall at your feet when you argue? Are we getting anywhere?

I tried to remember as I sat in my astronomy class that this world is a dot in an expansive universe. It’s still spinning, at just the right angles, to keep us alive and well. We have made it through the Depression, two World Wars, the Holocaust. I am not decreasing those events, nor invalidating the present. But we are still here. We have felt deep loss and time has given us just enough to keep growing through and out of the pain. We watched 9/11 as children-we feared that day as something so strong and mighty fell. As dust storms chased after people like a horror film and fires choked them out of life; we wondered if we would ever recover. We are still standing.

But we will never have perfect stability.

Former wars, pointless like Vietnam took innocent lives as it depicted faulty images on our televisions. Media took us in its grimy hands and left us isolated, confused, devastated. Language made blanket statements out of us, human documents that anyone could read and somehow understand, instead of individuals who have been written by complex experiences, loss, love, heartbreak, humiliation, triumph. It became “us” and “them”. Power, privilege, oppression, entitled, injustice, white supremacy, woke-there are a lot of hot words floating around, and not everyone knows what they mean. The words reinforced the borders; pathways to individual people are getting caution taped. Dialogue is broken and conversations are dead-one word out of someone’s mouth is suddenly cause to crucify them, instead of educate.  I hear a tower of Babel; we’re all speaking a language that no one will listen to. The definitions have trapped us all. Enough.

We were told to love our enemies. We were told to bear with one another in love. Anger is good, hate is not. Focus. Fight for people, instead of just fighting.

We will never have perfect stability.

There will always be angry, ignorant, white men in the middle of America who hate African-Americans, the LGBTQA community, women, immigrants, Muslims. There will always be people in those groups who hate those white men back. Social media will always be a faulty platform to write atrocious things to people in anger.

Honestly, we chose to hear what we wanted to hear. We were living in the fear of the question, “Is it this bad? Is America this bad that these are the best candidates?” And then as politics progressed the fear ate us alive and vulnerability gave us no other choice than to believe a lie. That politics was all we had. That media from terrible sources defined us. And we became the borders that Trump talked about. They were both racist, corrupt, aggressive in sexual assault or passive in preventing it, drunk on power, drunk on money, fallen-whether they said it like a badge of honor on national television or did it behind closed doors. They still are. We lived within the walls of corruption before Trump even talked about his damn wall. Before he got elected, we chose hope against all odds in unimaginable filth. And then the nightmare came true and we threw out hope and fell back into filth. Hate. We let a single man get inside our heads and spin us in circles.

It’s a shame, it’s embarrassing and surreal. Because I look at the rest of the world, having been to third world countries, and their generosity is uncanny. They have nothing and their hands are open and they say, “Here. Take it from me. Take the shirt off my back.” Their hands are open for not only us, but for the seemingly improbable truth of hope.

And we are here, screaming our own pride into every facet of communication available, and to be honest, it’s making me sick. The story isn’t about us. Other countries seem to understand this.

We’re all yelling about self-love, and that’s important, but I have more things to do than to just love myself. There are a lot more people who need love, and it’s about time we start doing it.

Fighting for the orphan and the widow isn’t optional. Fighting for immigrants isn’t optional.

We are better than this.

We’ve worshiped fear. We’ve set up an altar and bowed down. One side mentions God and the others say they are privileged and white and don’t understand pain. Another side speaks out about their very real oppression and injustice and the others tell them that it’s not happening. Our experiences are not the same, you’re right. I am not you. But to be honest, I told myself that God was in control because I had nothing else; I was horrified at the state of our country. I didn’t say that God was on the throne to suddenly diminish that systems are still broken and people are still in need. I didn’t say it as a means to turn a blind eye to injustice, and I know many did. I say that God is control because I cling to nothing else, our world is chaotic, and I have nothing left that brings the sweet waters of peace. Maybe that sounds privileged, but it’s what I have right now.

The divide is getting wider, we have to stop it.

We somehow thought we should stack up our pain and struggle next to each other and let them compete. We’re not the same but we have both held hands with fear, and eaten depression for breakfast, and been paralyzed by tragedy. I don’t want to be in this game anymore, and nobody wins when we compare scars. Fear is real, fear is valid. But fear is still just that-fear. It’s easy, it’s natural, it’s a reflex, and it is something we can fight. Whether you are more affected by this election or not, we still have choices to make about the demons that tuck us in at night and how we are going to send them back to hell. We’re in this together, let’s act.

I don’t ask for ignorance. I don’t ask you not to feel, not to cry, not to see darkness, because we have faced a death of sorts. But I urge you, in this time, to look around at the people taking care of one another. I urge you to look back and see the ways people took care of one another in times of war, disaster, tragedy and learn from them. Look at how people love each other and wake up when nightmares become realities. We can do the same-give, share, find peace in calamity. People are reaching out with both arms in places they cannot see light for others doing the same. If we generalize others into groups without families, personalities, capacity for love and loss, capacity for understanding, we become our own boot camps of hatred. If we don’t help each other realize that, we will be alone, aching over an unstable America, asking it to be heaven. This is not heaven.

By the same token: I didn’t go to church for 5 years because I disagreed with a lot of the things the evangelical church was doing, or not doing. I was questioning, and I was frustrated that the church was not doing one of its primary jobs, to seek justice, peace, and love. This is what I proclaimed obstinately and obnoxiously over people who argued their case. I recently just sat in the car with my best friend after our church service. She has been a church-goer her whole life. She is someone who has watched me go in and out of churches most of my adult life, going once and picking it to pieces like a 5 year old at dinner. I consistently found something to be angry about. She told me that day, “I never wanted to argue at you about how church and community was right because I knew you had to come to that conclusion by yourself. I just knew I was always going to be at least your one friend who always went and I would let that speak.” I almost cried because her patience astounded me. She is a loyal friend because she doesn’t try to make me believe her, she’s just there for me, exemplifying what it’s like to live a life pursuing a God who loves all and waits for all.

So my point is, if I’m not around people who are different than me, how does anything change? If she didn’t stick around, I would have never been part of a group that has changed my life and pushed me forward into change and made me a better person. And if someone like me who is frustrated doesn’t stay, then how does the culture there ever change? Turn your frustration into finding solutions. Otherwise it’s for nothing.

We can’t afford not to change.

So I’m still going to sit next to someone who doesn’t agree with me politically. Do you know why? Because if I wait for them, like I know God waits for me, then maybe we can bridge the divide. My silence and cold shoulder only closes all doors between us. And you know what? This waiting doesn’t take any energy out of me, not nearly as much energy as it takes to be angry.

It doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight for justice; it just means I am going to focus on the people who are in need, instead of fighting at the people who are not.

There are times under the sun for everything. Right now, it’s time to grow up, even when the adults or the peers in our lives haven’t, even when mom’s we barely know get on our Facebook to scold us. We live in a time that people our age spend nine hours a day on social media; we can talk all day about change, but we have to live it. And quite frankly, it’s time to disregard the thoughts of people who don’t believe in peace. It’s time to forgive, even when it’s difficult. In the end, a bitter heart is only hurting you.

Don’t burn bridges. Light a flame to lead people out of their shadows. That’s more important.

History does not dictate how we move forward. Be present. Move. There will always be people who live in the past; we get to be the minorities, whites, women, men, LGBTQA community, immigrants, Muslims who don’t. So let’s move the conversation forward, too. Embrace your ancestry, but ask yourselves-who are we? Who do we want to be? That’s the question we have left, let it propel us forward into truth.

We can’t say that “Love trumps hate” and then cut someone out of that, regardless of who they are, no matter how much they piss you off. You have to give them margin to change, because you would want the same. Redemption is a story and it’s rolling, but we’re going to miss it if we don’t wake up. That means pursuing love when it’s difficult and grace when you don’t want to in a culture that tells you to do whatever feels right for you. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really work because whatever feels right for you is often easy, and it means to hate people and stay bitter.

We can’t do anything about the way we grew up, but we can do something for the way the ones after us get to grow up. We are not our ancestors. We don’t have to be our history books. We don’t have to lick our wounds. We are not our Facebook statuses. We are all made of the same stuff, flesh and bone; please recognize that.

Can we work together? I’m so tired of not working together. I’m so tired of division.

The color of my skin does not erase the fact that we are called to forgive each other, just as much as the color of my words don’t erase the oppression you encounter because of your skin color.

We will never have perfect stability.

But stability is stone cold cement, founded by old ideas, like the walls of Jericho.

Like the walls of Trump’s hate.

We are built by truth, love, grace, courage. And we move.

The sound of your voices are bleeding through. Can you hear them?

 P.S. This article doesn’t give you an excuse to suddenly start bashing millennial “snowflakes” and call them lazy, entitled, and stupid. It also doesn’t give you an excuse to bash all white people, all people of color, or the church. If you are, you’ve done a tremendous job in missing the point. And please don’t read one paragraph of something and say you understand all of it.

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[redwoodpress]

Monopoly

I have been afraid to take the risk and post this, but here it goes. Before you stop reading, hear me out, and hear out the cries of all women.

Today I walked into the women’s bathroom. On the way there, I noticed that the door to the men’s bathroom was closed, but the door to the women’s was open. A simple coincidence, but it made me think. This is how our society is ruled. Women are seen as these open doors, for anyone to walk through and invade. If you want to talk, all you have to do is shout over our spaces and let it echo off the walls. If we open our arms and our doors to you, we are too much, too clingy, too psycho, too emotional. But if we try to shut our doors, you take a crow-bar to pry open our “no’s” and find a way to graffiti blame on our stalls for saying it.

We are hurting trying to fix the doors of our privacy before you break them down again.

We are hurting trying to explain to you that we are not weak because we can’t hold back the door with an army of men on the other side.

Guys, I’m getting tired of this game. I feel like I’m your pawn in Monopoly and you’re either using me to pass Go-for marriage, for sex, for your delusional Joshua Harris ideas, or you’re trying to explain to me why my value isn’t good enough, and why I need to buy yours. You tell me these things in more ways than one. In fact, you tell them to me every day, like it’s my favorite bedtime story-you tuck me into the idea that I’m naïve and I can’t see past your covers. But we’re playing Monopoly here, which means we’re going to play 1500+ rounds before anyone wins, and each time we play the game, I feel like you’re sending me to jail. Your desire to win is so much greater than your desire to see me.  So welcome to this endless circle. We could walk forward in a straight line if you would just stop getting drunk on power and let me taste being human.

Whether you create me to be your 500 days of summer, or you whistle at me like a dog, it makes no difference-neither version is romantic, because I’m still an idea that gives you power. I’m tired of giving my confidence away in exchange for your greedy grip on what you think a woman should be. Get uncomfortable, for my sake. Love me enough to lose your socially conditioned  pocket change, to spend a few of your shiny minutes walking in my shoes, instead of using them to walk all over me.

Before I was old enough to know what the word “misogyny” meant, I felt it. When I was 12, a boy in my middle school class asked me if I “liked” anyone, and I replied no. He asked me why not and prodded me because he couldn’t comprehend why I wouldn’t be looking for a Valentine. Now, I’d probably reply with, “Because I love myself and my value doesn’t rest in how a man treats me.” I learned that being single is something to be ashamed of. My sophomore year of high-school my math teacher made blatant comments to the entire class about “how pretty” I was, and how I was going to distract the dude who sat next to me. I learned that I was a distraction. My junior year of high-school the boys in my chemistry class re-explained equations to me that I had already gotten A’s on because “girls aren’t as good at science and math.” I learned that I was stupid. My senior year of high-school, me and my friends got talked to about yoga pants for a solid twenty minutes and the importance of not enticing men who can’t control their lust. The summer after that, I got a thirty minute talk on yoga pants and was wolf-whistled at by youth pastors. I learned that I was a sin trap. Last year, I told a guy I went on one date with I wasn’t interested in him, so he proceeded to call me and ask me why I didn’t like him because he had never been rejected. Because my rejection didn’t work, I used Christianity, I lied about a boyfriend, and I stopped responding. He harassed me for five more weeks. I learned that my “no” is not valid.

I once went on a missions trip and there was a guy who was 21 on the team. On some days he would tell me how ugly I was in comparison to the other women around me. The next day he joked about raping me. When I told not only his mom, but the other men in the group about it, they told me they weren’t going to talk to him about it yet because he was just “misguided”. I was 15, and I learned that his reputation was more important than my safety.

I have been insulted for not being an incredible cook; I have been harassed for being too fat or too skinny, too loud or too quiet, too motivated or not doing enough. My butt has been grabbed and loudly talked about in public. I have been referred to as animals. I am called sweetheart when being talked down to. My own experiences have been re-explained to me. I have told men following my friends to get the hell away from them only for the phrase, “She’s pregnant” make them leave. I go on Facebook and I see a list of ten ways for women not to be so needy. My bra straps have been adjusted in public by other women because men are in the room. Men my dad’s age have knocked on my car window to yell profanities at me. They have also spoken innuendos to me at my old work-places. I have been called a bitch for sharing an opinion. My dreams have been laughed at. I’m laughed at when I’m angry. I am not the ideal proverbs 31 woman because I drink beer and my room is a mess, but I am a prude because I go to church. I stand up for myself and I’m “over-reacting” or I don’t and you do whatever you want. There is no way to win. I am seen as a trap, but you’re the one who has trapped me.

Whether you grew up in church or not, I still wear your footprints around. I am tattooed with your over-compensated man-hood or your passivity. In fact, men at church have either been faithful lifeguards, finding true strength through compassion or have pretended to be “anchors” through false pretenses of masculinity that steal the freedom that God so willingly threw out to me when I was drowning. This is because they can use Christianese-phrases like “ministry, blessed, after God’s own heart, God’s plan, God’s design” in order to trap the design of a woman and make her a color by number. They can take the translation “help-meet” in Greek and destine her with limitations. They dangle what they believe the whole picture to be, as if the patriarchy were God above us, and tell us we can only color in certain sections. They draw out the borders for us and convince us they are drawing out water for the thirsty, that they are doing a good deed by even allowing us women to take part. You let us strike a single match in the fire that God is actually inviting us to. Men-if you would stand with us, then we could take the whole match-box and illuminate the world by burning up the box we put God into.

I’ve learned loads of lessons from you, but I can count on one hand which ones empowered me as a woman. I weep for the way that young girls have to look at their hands and question them, and ask themselves if they can actually touch people’s lives and carve their Maker into the ways he made them. I hurt for women who have been asked to speak in hushed and dead tones when their words were meant to bring life to an apathetic world. I am praying for women who are holding out their arms to take care of orphans and widows, but no one has taken care of them; they’ve only been given more ways to work harder and burn out in the name of Jesus. I am saddened that women have turned to degrading each other with anger because they are trying to replace the passion that you have misplaced as “hormonal”. It kills me that we were told, “not to conform any longer to the patterns of this world but be transformed through the renewal of our minds”, and the only patterns I’ve learned are socially conditioned insecurities.

It took me years to unlearn that my voice is of no value.

It took me years to unlearn that I am a trap for pure men’s hearts.

It took me years to unlearn that I am stupid.

It took me years to unlearn that I am secondary to what he does.

It took me years to unlearn that he has a right to interrupt me and re-explain me.

It took me years to unlearn that my body is an object.

It took me years to unlearn that crying is weakness.

I have looked into the eyes of rape survivors who have only seen pointed fingers and the visitation rights of their rapists. I have talked to the single mothers working two jobs. I have cried with my ladies with eating disorders. I have held the hands of eight year- olds who have been molested. I have calmed the night terrors of girls whose fathers beat their sisters to death. I have heard the stories on the wrists of fourteen year- olds who cut themselves and almost bled to death because their father’s wanted them to be boys. I have heard more than enough testimonies about attempted suicide; if I only heard one, it would be too much. Every girl I know, every single one, has been harassed and fearful of men once in their life.

It’s funny to me when I’m with men who care about and respect me, and watch them have blatant encounters with men who don’t respect me at all. They are so appalled, but being slut-shamed or whistled at to me is second nature; being disrespected is part of my daily life. It is not part of theirs, so they continue to be surprised. Ask every woman you know and they will tell you the same. We sing Aretha Franklin to keep us going.

Can I ask one thing?

Do you expect a woman to ever look up towards God if you are continually asking her to look down at her body and be ashamed of it?

If you pointed us towards God as much as you pointed to the way we dress, then hallelujah, welcome to loving us well.

It is implied so often that our bodies are weapons, like we’re out to threaten men with what we wake up with every day. And yet, we could wear medieval armor and still be threatened, attacked, and raped. Then we are blamed for being afraid, even though all of us, subconsciously, follow a rape and violence schedule of places we will not go, people we will not see and eye contact we will not make. In addition, looking at her in church service, and asking her to go change her shorts straddles a very fine line between the message to change, and the deeper message that a man’s potential for lust is more valued than her potential to hear the word of the living God and be transformed by it. If you are still saying the phrase, “Modest is hottest” you are confusing everyone because you are still equating the worth of a woman to what she puts on her body. We have to be careful; both this message and the rape culture message are not all that different; church or streets, you are telling her she is an object of blame and disgrace. Point her to higher grace first, and then watch her change-not her clothes, but her heart first.

I find it ironic that we are telling people that sex inside of marriage is great, so go ahead and do it and simultaneously we are implying up until that point that her body is wrong and sinful. This is a mess.

Each way we look we are a prize, an object, a chess piece you allow yourself to move around. Out there, we move out of the way of rape culture. We pray we are not assaulted by Brock Turner’s, we are appalled that we have to fight for our bodies that you see as corpses, and we cry for women whose lives have been altered forever because of it. And in Christian circles we are put onto game boards of Life, and we’re asked if we’re getting married by the second date, and if we are having kids by the day after the honeymoon, and essentially, when we are going to settle into suburban life. Everyone expects us to be playing a game of Where’s Waldo for our future husband. They create “singles groups” for us, like we are in a lottery to be made whole because we aren’t if we are not married. Let’s be clear, “single” is not a curse word, nor is it an event. Dating is no longer a normal practice of getting to know someone; it’s like trying to put the ring on someone who shows the first signs of being a normal person.

Again, we are valued because God calls us valued. Not because you do. We are beautiful because we wake up every day and exist not because we wear mascara or have hips for child-bearing. We don’t come with labels of “sexy” or “not sexy” because who we are is not based on the foundation of what you want. We breathe because God breathed into us. Regardless of how the beauty industry makes us its contortionist for money, the truth is that sexy is being comfortable with who we are.

I have been so afraid to post this, to speak about it, to ask for some compassion because I am still afraid of men. I’m afraid of the ways you will dismiss me. I am afraid of the ways you will tell me I’m too emotional. I’m afraid of the ways you will label me a man-hater, and a church-hater, and other things that are not true about me because my aggressive way of asking for change makes you uncomfortable. But if I said it any quieter, none of you would listen. A lot of you still won’t listen. Do you see how this is an issue? Do you see how if I’m quiet, you ignore me, and if I’m loud you are annoyed and defensive? Of course I don’t hate you. I love you. But why should I have to specify that all the time? Why should I have to give you a peace offering in exchange for justice?

The most frustrating thing to me of all, though, is this. I root for you guys. I wake up every day with new faith that you will treat me respectfully, like a human being, with kindness. I rejoice over your victories, and I am so grateful when you love me well. I’m excited for you to succeed. I still want your voices to be heard. I think you have great ideas. I think you have revolutionary voices. I think you’re funny, and smart, and worth knowing. But you take my faith in you and you pummel me with it. I cry every time you fan out my compassion and smoke a blunt off of the ways I believed in you. I want to crawl back into bed and take back the mercies I gave out every time you expect me to fail because I am a woman.

You mock the way I keep getting back up and throwing punches at the negative ways I have been impacted by men, to protect the men who treat me like I’m capable. Please stop treating our hearts and souls, the ones that keep giving second chances, like they are weak. We are so much stronger than you take us for.

If you want to help, first start by listening. Listen to the women around you. Listen without thinking of a reply or comeback. Listen with compassion. Listen without interrupting. Listen with genuine interest. If I speak for myself, I know I speak for millions who have been interrupted and talked over. If you care at all about us, then care about equality. Care about the voices we are losing because you are so intent on winning the argument. The more you try to win, the more you lose us. We were first silent because we were conditioned to be. Now we are silent because we give up.

What shame it is that there are women giving up because they are not heard. For nineteen years I followed a narrative that men were worth more than me. At this age, people started to tell me my words were life-giving. People poured encouragement all over me about having a gift for writing that I had never even noticed before. At this time in my life, I had the chance to sit with one of my favorite writers and share my work-but I couldn’t get up the courage to ask. I beat myself up about it and it took me months to understand that I wasn’t the coward I told myself I was. I was fighting an internal struggle that had been present my whole life and was asking myself to erase nineteen years worth of lies in a single moment: to believe I was worth listening to.

The thing is, I tried so hard to be anti-feminism, because in our society feminism is a curse word. The moment the word comes out of my mouth, it is interrupted by fifteen defensive comments that start with “But not all men…” Please, if you have an ounce of respect for all women, do not say this. We know, “Not all men”…we know so many great men. You are missing the point. The point is that all women have been harassed, marginalized, threatened, embarrassed, and invalidated by men once in their life. I find this to be a problem since you’re still interrupting my plea to be a human being. All I’ve ever asked is for you to see my skin as something other than a soul-less dish to feast your eyes on. By simply asking for your support, you are already offended. If you guys keep doing this, how is half the population supposed to succeed? I wonder.

Let’s not forget that God chose Mary to carry his son, the savior of the world in her womb-birth him, raise him, and watch him get crucified. An angel came to her and told her this and her response was, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” Her trust was relentless. How about Ruth? After mourning the loss of her husband and her sons, she left her home to attract a husband so that she could put food on the table for her mother-in-law and says, “Where you die, I will die.” That’s one of the most sacrificial acts in the Bible. Esther set Jews to be executed free, by risking her own death in front of a king. Mary Magdalene prepared Christ’s death before crucifixion and did not abandon him during his death, was the first to witness his resurrection, and was faithful to Christ in his ministry the whole way through. Let’s not forget the prostitute Rahab who hid spies in the city of Jericho on a hunch that the God of Israel was a true God. Jesus Christ elevated women and valued them just as highly as he did men-it would be great if you followed suit.

Guys. I love you. I grew up around the best men ever, and keep shaking hands with and meeting new ones. I would not be who I am today without those men, not even close. I will never deny that. But I’m tired, and so are other women, and we all need to know you hear our hearts, ones that have been ringing inside of our rib-cages to the bells of discouragement and violence, but you keep silencing them. If you want to love us, honor our “no’s” and raise a fist in the air for the ways we say yes to changing the world alongside you. If you don’t like feminism, you are part of the problem because you are saying you don’t like who we truly are, you like an idea of who we should be. If you are not for feminism, you are for yourself. Feminism means the human experience- join it.  Join us in the boxing ring, where we can sucker-punch our biased culture and make them bleed out their untruths.  

[redwoodpress]

Word Vomit

Every time I have these words inside of my body, that hold so much power and are so ugly, I have a choice. I can vomit them out again, knowing full well how they taste. To let them out is to show not only myself they are not true, but to give others the authority in my life to take care of me and help me clean them up and put them where they belong-down the drain. Oh how I wish every single time I harbored these words I would recognize that I need to be washed clean. And I wish that I would allow people to be part of how disgusting I am, to allow them to be part of the process- to throw my dirty clothes in the laundry and rinse the words from my mouth.

But often times, I make myself sick holding onto a language that should hold no place in my heart. I invite anxiety to sit with me as if it’s an old friend. And I create a new language. It’s a monologue about the reasons why I can’t ask for help. I write on the chalkboard of my life like I’m in a 90’s detention classroom the same phrases over and over again-the reasons of why I’m unlovable, and why I can’t ask anyone to love me. And these phrases curl my backbone inward, curving me into the broken questions I ask myself, and they cripple my true form, the way I was designed.

How often have you been crippled into a question mark and grown used to it?

How often have you become a hunchback for weight you were never meant to carry?

How often have you convinced others that you are steady when you feel you are consistently standing on the ledge of your fears and looking down?

I walked into a church this week, after a very long break because I am learning what the word “healing” means. To be honest, it wasn’t until fairly recently I realized that I am not fully healed. I haven’t always been able to kneel at the altar of my life experiences and mourn properly for them. I feel like I keep reaching up my sleeve, and finding the root of one problem attached to another, like some bad magic trick. I realized I could never fully say hallelujah because I never fully allowed myself to weep. Not for my losses, but my almost losses. I’m understanding that someone doesn’t necessarily have to die to feel like there was a death. Because change is inevitable; stories die so that resurrection stories can take place. But we’re not always ready for the death of a specific story. We’re not always ready for the grief of the end of familiarity-with ourselves, with our lives, with our loved ones, and with the way we thought time would move. This is especially difficult if we don’t know what is moving from death to life.

Nevertheless, I believe I am moving into life. I am learning how to ask for help. Death is being made into a question mark, embodying the question of if you are valuable because you are carrying the weight made for many. If God is the great weight bearer, the strength that never fails then we, as his image bearers, can most certainly lighten the load to help each other see that we don’t have to curve inward, becoming the untruths we fear, but instead cast our fears on him and in this continual practice, become who we were truly meant to be, walking upright again.

We need people. When we reach out for help, we are being a resurrection story. When we give help, we are a resurrection story. It’s ok to ask people to love you in the moments you don’t love yourself. That is what the church was meant to be for each other. We get to encounter the wonder of pointing people to who they were always meant to be and seeing them rise to it. My roommate pointed me to my value today. My friend pointed me to my value today. My family pointed me to my value today. Keep the people around who never make you doubt your value. Love them until the day you die. Because they are your church. And we, together, can be sanctuaries for one another where it is ok to weep and ask questions and laugh and curse because our value doesn’t rest in the curve of our fears, but it rests in the lineage of grace.

 You were never meant to be a question mark, but a celebration, a divine exclamation point. Always remember you are someone to be celebrated.  You matter.

   �3�=�

[redwoodpress]

Red Rover

It took me a long time to figure out why I had been chosen in the summer of 2015 to lead kids the ages of 6-16 through river rapids and on high ropes and be their camp counselor for a week. I decided, on a whim, I’ll just learn how to be a raft guide and counsel girls from the criminal justice system, kids who have experienced an amount of trauma that is unfathomable for their short lives. As if it was easy. Ha!

 I entered that summer with a very tired heart, one that had been wrenched like a wet dish rag over and over again. It had grown used to disappointing circumstances and an alarming new numbness in a concrete city that allowed no room to truly breathe. I applied for the job because I heard the words “river” and “troubled youth” and was romanced. I thought I would run into magic moments, where I could be a hero, and speak life and love into hundreds of girl’s lives and race with them towards healing. They would all be stoked to go river rafting and to conquer their fears, we’d have so much to talk about and it would be a grand old time.

That didn’t happen. In case you were wondering. Not exactly.

It was within this summer I saw humanity at its finest and at its absolute worst. When I counseled my first week and received five girls between the ages of 7-9 who had come from the criminal justice system, I had no idea that love is written all over children’s faces and embroidered on their clothing, that it’s resting on their shoulders in the way they carry themselves. And you can tell when it’s not there. It’s so obvious.

 As a kid who had been loved and nurtured her whole life, provided for, taught basic moral principles, I couldn’t begin to comprehend the dysfunction these children had come from. I wanted to… but communicating with a normal eight year old is difficult enough; solving small issues at summer camp with little girls who had been neglected, beaten, shown a world of all kinds of sexual abuse, and been told from birth that they were not wanted, well- it was not an easy task. The first night, I chased after one of them in the woods, grabbing someone to run with me-terrified I would get in trouble with CPS and equally scared I would lose someone’s child in the dark of miles of woods.  

The second night I awoke to the beautiful sound of someone heaving from their gut….puking. And by the smell, I knew full well what it was. It’s hard to mistake full spaghetti noodles all over someone’s bed, clothes, and hair. As someone who values sleep more than anyone else I know, I was not amused. After cleaning every square inch that this girl could’ve touched with Lysol wipes, telling her that new pajamas were a good idea-yes- and sending her to the nurse at three in the morning, I thought I was home free. Wrong. The same thing happened with three of my other girls accompanied by an ant invasion, a bee invasion, a black eye, lots of band-aids, endless tears (both theirs and mine), and an unsightly amount of potty humor and an exhausted me.

This was my first week, so you could imagine how I was feeling.

Sometimes my girls wouldn’t eat, and then, other mornings at breakfast they would hoard cereal bowls, oatmeal, and pancakes- all because they had grown into these awful patterns of survival instincts. I had never had so many conversations with eight year olds to assure them that there would be food later and it was completely breaking my heart. One of my girls hid in a cabinet in our cabin because someone had told her she wasn’t a good singer, and man, I have never talked about Bruno Mars that much to cheer someone up. One night, during a huge thunderstorm that shook the trees , flashlights in hand, my cabin danced to one direction and then the next moment, I watched in awe as my 14 year olds crowded and prayed over one of the girls who sobbed through the story of her abuse. The next week I ushered my girls away from boys and they hated my guts and told me so.

I once walked up and down a mountain ten times for two bloody noses, a stomach ache, water cups for thirsty nine year olds, the result of those water cups (needing to pee within 15 minutes), and a girl who refused to go anywhere without a sleeping bag on her head after we had rafted all day-we definitely missed campfire sing alongs. This was the day my bloody big toe-nail came off when I smashed it into a rock after a water jug fell on top of me in the river. And I didn’t have any patience left, no.

Some weeks, honestly, in my own privacy, I threw up my hands and smashed them against my face in some vain attempt to rip it off, thinking that this would cure my unadulterated frustration. I was convinced I was going to quit during river guide training because I knew there was no way I was ever going to be as strong as the others and every time I cliff-jumped I was convinced I was going to die, probably. While they did back-flips into the river, I stored my inhaler in my life-jacket, praying to God I wouldn’t flip the boat.

I remember, specifically sitting down with one of the counselors and conversing with him about the sheer magnitude of the darkness we had walked into that first week, the over-whelming negativity, the string of hope left for humanity if this was what children were really like these days. As raft guides, immediate panic attacks, hysteria, and paddle wars ensued. For the kids, sometimes for us.

But...after only a few days, I fell completely in love with the entire summer staff and I realized something. They were the embodiment of love standing in the gap for me; every day we became a game of red rover for one another, catching each other in the strength that the other one didn’t have. Their actions practically screamed that they would never give up; through this I saw heaven, and it was communicating with me. This love re-aligned me, and my arms were no longer tired from pulling my girls back into the boat because I understood I was showing them the same heaven. And that’s why I stayed.

Getting these kids on a boat in fast moving water was no easy task, but we tried again every single week knowing full well the face of fear would be laughing. Three weeks in, my life changed even more drastically when I realized something pivotal to perhaps, my entire life. It had been three days in which I had pulled a raft of screaming girls off a rock we were stuck on, fake encouraged someone who needed to be rescued on the high ropes course, and almost lost it when one of them took almost 45 minutes to get ready in the morning doing her eyeliner. It was this particular morning I was just about to bang my head against a wall I heard something very small.

“Love is not convenient.”

I’m sorry, what? My whole life I had this concept of love and what it looked like to be proactive about it. Buy your coffee? Absolutely. Listen to you when life sucks? Yeah. Hug you, laugh with you, drive you where you need to go. But I had never experienced this sacrificial love, this giving up of my whole self for someone else’s well being, shining a candle in someone’s darkness that they can’t even communicate yet. I started to get a glimpse of what a mother must feel like. This was real love because it was messy. And I want to keep learning. I want to pursue a life that does not stop at just being fed by what’s good, but that is relentless in bridging the gap between heaven and earth.

This lesson continues to follow my heels and chase after me when I have become numb in duty. I’m learning it all over again now; this lesson that people need the love that is unique to them. We all have pieces of heaven and hell inside of us, and I get to choose, every day, to love the heaven inside of you. And it is not always convenient for me. Right now, my ambitions are screaming out of my calendar at me, and I have to remind myself to show the people I love that our friendship is much more important than my love for my goals. Some of my friends need encouragement. Some of them just need a hug. Some of them need my time; they need my ears for listening. Some of them just need me to show up. And I have to remember that the world is not going to stop for me to do this, but the beauty is in the act of remembering over and over again that relationships-love, connection is what keeps the world turning. Not grades or work or duty. Every time that I choose love over anger, every time that I choose hope in a sea of cynicism, I am choosing to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. Love is written on our friends as well-embroidered in their clothing, resting on their tired college shoulders, writing poetry in their heads-and you can tell when it’s not there. It’s so obvious. So if you have a moment to take away from studying or working or running from place to place, look into your friend’s eyes and tell them they are loved. It might take some weight off the poetry that told them that they aren’t today.

[redwoodpress]

Revolving Door

Like a revolving door we have spun around our whole lives in the idea that we must “do”. We must do for our families, for our friends, for our significant others. We must do for our government. We must do for our work-places, our schools. Our reward? A house, security, a life we were programmed to want to achieve by doing. I find it paradoxical that the world is constantly asking for more from us and in turn, molding us to be people who always want more, a revolving door culture that dizzies us when we’re young to convince us that it’s normal. The result is a society that is essentially raped of a life worthy of reflection, and in our programming we turn to our idea of a God that rapes us of real prosperity as well. This consumerism of achievement tugs at our sleeves and we are all in between juggling with the option to stay heavy or be light. But the weight is also contrived from a “Jesus culture” that allows us no time to think as well.

               I had a conversation the other night with my brother about this concept we were raised on, that somehow Jesus is the answer. This mantra to get close to God, and be close with God is something so unfathomably frustrating because there is no way to measure this. Jesus is the answer. Prayer is the answer. The Bible is the answer. But I’m not sure if that’s true. I think Jesus is the question. If I look at what I’m reading, there were quite a few people asking questions in the Bible-and a lot of them didn’t get answers. Jesus fired at them loftier questions. Maybe that’s the point.

               Socrates talked about humanity as already having knowledge residing within; we just needed to find a way to pull it out. Maybe the knowledge that God is within us and around us has always been present, Jesus just came to ask us questions to pull it out of us. If we are in the image of God, then are we not just reflections of these question marks? Jesus came as the example-to be the question so that we would follow suit; when we do, our higher questions only lead us to a higher God. However, this is where people get stuck, because it is scary as hell to start questioning the entire essence of your existence and it is a black hole. But people stop in this black hole and they either retreat back to their safe fundamental views to be comforted or they become cynical because the questions have wounded them. Nevertheless, I have found that by chasing the black hole, and pushing through it my dark questions became my beautiful ones. In truth, I believe that perhaps the black hole was always an illusion created by suburban cookie cutter spirituality and the light has always been waiting for me patiently.

               Our society worships stability, so they teach us not to question or not to question too much because it leads to being a rebel and that goes for our churches as well. And it’s a shame, because there is no safe place for people to ask their offensive thoughts and their curses, so they run away and act out. Somehow questions spiral into this evil invisible force that disrupts the masses. But all I can say is thank God for rebels, because it would be useful information to remember that Jesus was one. If we are claiming to “follow” the human that Jesus was, made in his image, then we must follow our questions into the great expanse of knowledge, and that includes science. Church, science is begging us with its questions to fall at the feet of a Higher Being that formed constellations and founded the organizational beauty of the periodic table of elements. Jesus did not bow down to these pews and social structures, he was the one writing radical equations in the dirt; he was the master equation that no one could pin. So how could we ever delete banned books, and science, and Charles Darwin from our Biblical lesson plans to simply learn about? Everything is connected and when we shy away from questions, we shy away from movement, change –Jesus turned the tables and changed everything so how would we dare stay complacent in our services and free donuts? Don’t let church become censorship for divine spirituality.

               It scares me a little bit because we are shying away from culture but we have to be in the culture to change it. When Jesus came and offended people who had cookie cutter views he defined the culture. How can we contain art to four chords, for God’s sake, play something different because just look at what Michelangelo painted. It was stunning. If we can’t even calculate the number of atoms that are expelled in one breath that we take after the blood within the chambers of our reckless hearts flood oxygen into our brains, then I think God should receive stunning. Because that is a stunning equation. He does not form creatures that are not magnificent, so let’s use it to our full capacity. If God designed this oxygen filled blood that keeps us pressing on every day that the sun rises, that allows our eyes and central nervous system to see the complex smidgen of an uncalculated universe above us, sent his son to bleed out of the only oxygen filled blood he had in order to breathe life into us, don’t you think we could talk about science in the “house of God”? They say it’s not about the song but the stance of our hearts, and I agree, but if we are created in the image of God, wouldn’t it make sense that the stance of our hearts be creative?

               Let us also not bow down to the Bible, which actually translates to the word book, let us use the Bible for the text that it is in addition to other beautiful texts we have. Pastors preach and preach scripture, and it is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but if we don’t connect scripture to socioeconomic class, biology, the solar system- we are stunting our own growth. The very story of the Bible is a magnificent compilation that makes countless dramatic, historical, timeless connections. It breaks the bounds of class, status, the separation of Jew and Gentile, it jumps every social hierarchal fence, so it kills me to ask-are we the Pharisees within the fence? Within money? Within suburban homes? Within white privilege? Within limited love, grace, hope? Because we seem to curse anything that breaks these binds, but if we sing, “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free” what does that mean? Free within the box? Or free? If we really believe that an Arab man named Jesus, the human gospel carried by a woman, who grew up to be a humbler carpenter and called highly religious people a “brood of vipers” we’ve already broken a few of our comfortable twisted assumptions.

               My teacher pointed out that we so willingly believe and anchor on politicians who only have short term interest in getting elected instead of long term economic collapse and yet we ignore scientists who have studied our world on the basis of long term interest. We take out hymnals and sing as children that “red, yellow, black, and white, they are all precious in his sight” like it’s our ABCS and all at once we grow up and scribble monotony over our hymnals. Color and gender and identity rip us apart and we only choose outlets that make the distance greater. We are so quick to jump on a political agenda that offers no solutions and we swear that these specific views are directly correlated to the gospel; we place our condescension on the same plane with God. And yet, we swear off solutions-science, learning, other texts that are honest about race, gender, and other philosophies-we swear them off because they scare us. But God designed our brains to make connections-they were made for this, so why do we insist on only using one portion of it? This is backwards. There are 365 “Fear not’s” in the Bible, do not fear language and ideas, they are not out to destroy us, but to empower us. We are in love with instant gratification so we get out our pitchforks at the political debate, speaking over everyone else and we accomplish nothing. We could be using our time to dig into a book or to have a conversation about a discipleship that creates a sustainable solution for our dying world. Environmental solutions, water solutions, literacy solutions, world hunger solutions, education solutions, poverty solutions-that’s what “on earth as it is in heaven” looks like. Aristotle talked about levels of happiness-one of instant pleasure and money, one of honor and following, and one of virtue-a life of thinking. Let us not be animals, stuck down below in instant pleasure, but let us pursue a life of thinking-especially in our spirituality.

We cannot pigeonhole God into a tiny box and call it “good”. We have forgotten he is the one who is good. If he has no room to breathe, if God (man, woman, whatever he wants to be) doesn’t take our breath away in cosmic proportions he is not God. God is an infinite exploration, and that is the point, that is why we ask infinite questions. Questions without answers do not burn in hell; questions ignite you to burn up the hell you create for yourself.

  ��\��m

[redwoodpress]

Education Reform: The Power of Why

In America we are well aware that education is highly valued. Some would argue that it is the cornerstone or foundation of America; I would even go so far as to say that it is the God we pledge allegiance to. We know the American dream story, the one that says education leads to success, and ultimately, fulfillment. However, this pillar of success that derives from our public education system is setting up kids from Pre-K to their senior year of high-school for failure, not only in their academia but in their lives outside of it. This is because we instill in children their answer to what they want to do with the rest of their lives, instead of their answer as to why they want to do it. When children and teens can continue to ask the “why” questions in their lives and have these questions answered honestly is the day when education will rise to new heights and suicide rates will drop.

It is scientifically proven that a child’s pre-frontal cortex in their brain is continuing to grow and develop well into their adulthood years (APA). This means that their ability to reason, plan, and control their behavior, as well as a sky-rocketing amount of social anxiety can all contribute massively to their adolescent years. Though this time of a young adult’s life seems to be critical for their development, I find it interesting that America’s educational system is not creating an environment sustainable for this. According to recent studies, an average high-schooler’s day consists of 5.6 hours or more per day in the classroom, as well as 17 hours of extra homework outside of this a week (HHS). Not only is this demoting their cognitive critical thinking skills and teaching them how to “learn through experience how to live in a dictatorship” (Llewellyn 40), it is also not sufficient time for them to retain this information.

Not to mention, this has enormous repercussions for their personal health as a human being. Think about this: currently, most teenagers are spending 1,008 hours of their lives (HHS) in a given year in fluorescent light, in a box, within the confines of a high-school building fence. If they are doing extracurriculars on the side, such as sports and exercise, they are finding ways to cut corners on their homework. If they are doing all of their homework, they are chipping away time from their families and their time needed for sleep, which is a whopping 9 ½ hours for their growing bodies to be healthy and well-rested (nationwidechildrens). If they are not getting enough sleep, their chances for depression and suicidal thoughts increase exponentially (WebMD). According to statistics in 2014, on average a young person between the ages of 15-24 every hour and 45 minutes will commit suicide (suicidology).Do you ever wonder why America has stigma for mental health issues when they are contributing to their increase?

The amount of pressure kids face today in school is astronomical and America’s entire attitude pertaining to education has shifted wildly. According to recent studies, the amount of school-work children receive has risen by fifty percent now from what it was thirty years ago (Kindlon). Although some would argue that to live in a progressive, fast-paced, achievement-oriented environment is the most beneficial, we seem to be lacking pivotal values our forerunners gave so honorably to us. We have replaced looking to children and teens for the “content of their character” (King 333) with the abundance of A’s on their report cards and pushed humility aside for the sake of their honor roll achievements. In a time when an adolescent’s brain is at the peak of expansion, we are teaching him or her only to memorize facts for the next grade level. Although this may benefit their college applications with “indefinitely prolonged and senseless growth” (Havel 42), it is not expanding their skill set for their lives.

Even within this world of academia that provides support for standardized testing and IQ levels and places teens on separate tracks according to their progress, will not do the same for their job applications. The required skills for jobs are quite different than skills required in school. According to a study done by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, college students believed themselves to be much more prepared for jobs than employers did (Jaschick). If kids are exhausting themselves over this enormous burden of course-work to achieve a vacuous idea of success only to fail, it’s no wonder they are killing themselves. My generation is discovering daily that the American dream was never attainable for us. But it’s not just the American dream; it’s the general pursuit of happiness (Jefferson 30) that is not feasible in our society anymore because our society has not allowed children the time to observe what makes them happy and how to practically pursue it. So if we are not creating healthy, educated, well-rounded children, then what are we creating? We are in the process of conditioning children with a “mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose” (Huxley 12). But this haunting nuisance of striving follows them into college, with teachers, family, and friends all whispering in their ears that they must know what they want to do with their lives or they are a failure. When we don’t cultivate an environment for children to discover, how can we expect them to know? We rehash this mantra over and over again, but when a college student finally starts to question it, society treats them with pity for not having their life together.

When I was home-schooled for part of my life two things were ingrained in me. One was that my education solely relied upon my predisposed desire to learn, and secondly, that it was okay that I questioned the world and my purpose in it. When I entered public high-school later on I realized quickly that these two ideas didn’t fit the social structure I was in and I became very frustrated. I realized as I sat in class that teachers loved to answer my questions about who, what, when, and where but asking why was taboo and brushed off. After all, asking “why?” disrupts the class and goes off the script. As time went on I felt constrained, trapped, depressed, and I lost interest in what used to matter a great deal to me. It wasn’t until two years later I could identify that depression and ultimately come to the conclusion that I felt this way because there was no sense of purpose backing what I was ingesting. I didn’t care about grades or jumping through hoops because I never had them before, but that was all I could reach for in high-school. Learning no longer held the same depth of meaning for me in that it had the power to transform me. Learning could only crush me with the weight of busy, pointless, and tiresome.

Busy-work does not have to crush this generation. The solution does not rest in putting young adults in school for longer hours and creating “new machines, new regulations, new institutions”, but to “develop a new understanding of our true purpose and existence on this earth” (Havel 42). Instead of deciding how to teach kids, let’s first go to the source and ask them how they learn. Instead of preaching to children about when they need to be at a specific reading level, let’s ask them what they wonder about. We do not cultivate brilliance by encouraging mediocrity. We don’t invest in active minds when we mold children to the clay of educational boredom. We have this system backwards, like Ezra Miller states,

“It makes sense that we came up with our public education system in the Industrial Revolution because it’s like everybody is a factory worker, eating their terrible food, and going back to the room where they are silent” (brainyquote).

We cannot deny that children are being crushed under the weight of this old system. Martin Luther King once reminded America that to change segregation they could not “take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” but to come at the issue with the “fierce urgency of Now” (King 32). With suicide rates on the rise, the “fierce urgency of Now” is upon our schools to reform. Perfect test scores are not perfect children; on the contrary, perfect test scores could very well mean anxious children. We must cut back or eliminate homework. We must allow adolescents the time to spend with their families around the dinner table and to sleep in peace.  We must revolutionize our ideas of higher knowledge if we ever want to see change in the behavior of the next generation. Only when we allow a society following us the structure to question will we see that “the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already” (Plato 3) and the truth of a well-rounded intellectual is the rebellion from the educational infrastructure we have established.

       ~C�u�4 �

[redwoodpress]

Porches and Prodigals

I want to be for people.

Three of my friends have taught me this over the past month. One of them, about six months back, went through a very, very dark period of time. If we all have holes to fill, he had been poked and stabbed by continual disappointments like a map of push-pins. That’s how it happens anyways. These people, the atrocious ones we are disgusted with-the ones who murder the masses and commit hate crimes have been stabbed at across the entire map by society. Then we wonder why one day they just rip apart like a crumpled napkin even though they’ve been used in the hands of others their entire lives.

 My friend is brilliant. He’s the type of person that will tell a dad joke, hug a person like they’ve been gone for five years, but remain entirely punk rock. People love him like he’s their brother, it’s difficult not to. Six months ago, I’m not sure what happened to him. I also don’t feel qualified to judge the situation though I’ve learned from it in a tremendous way. Rumors flew around that he had a very bad LSD trip. Others speculated mental illness. Still, people inquired that he’d lost his mind. They were right-he had flipped a switch. It was as though his twin had taken his place as an obnoxious, overweight narcissist. Some were really angry, and yet some were worried sick.

 I saw him the other day and he was an entirely new being. He sang to me surrounded by band equipment (badly) as I walked through the door. He immediately ran around the house like a fire-cracker, ignited by being alive. He gave me a hug and said, “Jill. I f***ing love you. I’m so glad I’m better now. ” He went around hugging people that day, telling them that he loved them, as if he was Ebenezer Scrooge and had just seen death. He laughed like a hyena as though thinking about tomorrow’s anxieties was hilarious. That night, surrounded by a porch full of people talking loudly with their cold hands in their sweater pockets, he said through a cigarette, “I used to think that I always had to have something to contribute to a group. I just realized it’s ok that I have nothing left to offer.” Farther in the conversation he said, “It’s like…look at this. We’re talking and I’m being exactly who I am and you’re being exactly who you are. And it’s beautiful, man. It’s almost… spiritual.” He was sober when he said this.

 About two weeks back, I went to a church worship night with a few friends. This particular church I knew I was going into a worship show, rather than a service. It was quite flashy and the kind of service that has been frustrating to me for a very long time. More than ever I have been questioning what worship and art are, who God is, and what money has to do with any of it. I have been landing in a place in my mind that computes very differently than this church’s service. That night I went into the sanctuary doors very jaded, feeling alone, and I sat in a seat very unsettled with worship like I most often do at mega churches.  However, in the midst of a song, I looked over at my friend there, who has been struggling with a myriad of issues over the past year. He was singing at the top of his lungs and at that moment I thought, “This is bringing him to the feet of Jesus”. I think I dropped my pride in that moment. What does it matter how I feel about it? I know there is a time and place for me to be creating change and fighting for something else, but then and there, I wanted to fight for my friend and his capacity to be loved.

 Two days ago my third friend brought me to her favorite coffee shop in her city and as we started talking, she drew me a diagram. She knew I couldn’t comprehend what she was trying to tell me, so she drew me a diagram with stick figures on a note card. The note card summarized how my mental thought process works, and the way that I was deceiving myself by caring about factors I couldn’t control. It was hilarious. I laughed out loud. But it got the point across and I needed to understand it, so she sculpted it in a way that I was able to. By talking to someone outside my perception of myself, I was able to see the truth and be brought to the feet of Jesus by this friend. In turn, I was able to point her to truths she could not see either. Our limited worlds were given a larger scope of vision.

Because of my first friend, I want to welcome people back home. Because of my second friend, I want to give up my pride for his well-being.  Because of my third friend I want to see outside my world of vision to see something she sees. Have you ever wanted to look someone in the face and see home, and instead only saw hatred? Our society teaches us that it’s our own self-respect and right not to forgive people. I believe that this is a lie. I want to welcome prodigals back because I’m realizing we are all in between being prodigals and saints every day that we wake up and hold heaven or hell on earth. I want to give up my pride because someone’s opportunity for abundant life is more important than my opportunity for narcissism. I want to see outside my world because to believe I know everything is to build brick walls around another’s deepest questions that need to breathe.

In these separate situations, I didn’t belong perfectly in any of my friend’s worlds, but the extraordinary part is that I don’t have to belong perfectly in someone’s world to love them.  Are we willing to bring our friends to the feet of Jesus? Are we willing to walk into their environments, whether it’s a crack house or a church, a theatre or a third world country, a protest or a porch? Are we for people? Or are we for ourselves?  I think the problem we most run into every day is that we are not necessarily cold and heartless creatures, but by instinctually surviving, we are numb to everyone else. What I find so captivating about true love-older couples that have been married for a very long time, is that they have been able to step outside their limited worlds to love another’s limited world for fifty plus years. This is what is so enthralling about love-it frees us to think about more than just ourselves. I want to challenge myself to see people and not their behaviors.

Awhile back on camping trip I remember hearing about someone I loved and a behavior they were exhibiting that hurt me and made me angry. I started being a jerk, ranting to my brother about how stupid this person I cared so much about was being. He stopped me and told me to rephrase. “Jill, I think it’s more of a question of, do you want good things for him?” Do you want good things for the people around you?

Do you want to be for opinions and ideas and things? Or do you want to be for people?

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520 Feet Below

     A week ago I got in a car with some friends and we crossed state borders into Seattle. If I could describe the endeavor as a whole in just one word I would say it was magic. We drove under bridges and into city lights singing to “Hello Seattle” and the only idea on our brains was the Space Needle. It was touristy in just the right way. It had to be done. So we zoomed to the top, freaked out a little bit, and looked through binoculars at 520 feet. My friends exclaimed with star-crossed eyes how much they could see through the lens in the world surrounding us down below. We watched a police car pull someone over and made up stories about what could be happening and what kind of outcomes would take place. One of my friends said, “I wonder if this is what God feels like.” It made me chuckle.

       When I thought about those binoculars later I realized I had only one eye open the entire time, out of focus, and made up a story about it as if I was standing on the street corner witnessing it. Were they funny stories? Absolutely. Were they true? Obviously not. And I’m obviously not good at looking through binoculars. If I’m honest though, how often do I actually do this in my everyday life? How often do I see situations from a very long distance away and decide I know everything about it as if it was close up and personal? I saw blue and red flashing lights; I associated certain colors and the language of a siren with sure and certain situations and then I made up a story about it. Isn’t that what we are doing all the time? We have small pieces of information handed to us at just the right time by biased people who create biased media, processed and convoluted by our own upbringing and our own ideas. We see something happening in the Middle East while squinting with one eye open and soon enough we are closing both eyes to a Muslim. We see a situation through a faulty lens and suddenly we must choose if we are pointing and shooting at a human being who came out of the womb wearing a black or white filter they call their skin. We have one fleeting moment in which we are high and mighty and we decide if we have the chance to look down we should marginalize someone-race, sexual orientation, gender, you name it.  We think we know. We don’t.

    We have a ferocious ability to see our differences instead of our similarities. We have an uncanny disposition to make hatred the truth.

     When I was nineteen I walked inside a museum in Israel; it took a walk with with me and told me a haunting story I can’t forget. I walked in and smiled as I saw pictures of families sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and little girls giggling, husbands coming home to their wives. My knees got weaker as their stories got stronger and Nazi voices grew louder and I saw hatred at its most belligerent. I processed images of humans whose skin had stretched itself over the knobs of their bones. I counted baby shoes one by one and I memorized the songs the children who were left alive sang as the Holocaust came to a close.  I walked into the last room and cried. A library full of names of those who had died because someone had looked at people with one eye open, out of focus and had decided he knew who they were close up. I don’t want hatred to be my truth. I don’t want to have Hitler’s first subtle thoughts ringing in my ribcage, infuriating me and poisoning my body with ignorance. When dead things awake inside of me, destruction moves outside of me.

     We need to stop seeing groups and instead see human beings who laugh, weep, think, and feel. We need to stop thinking we have someone all figured out. The world inside of me is already expansive enough and infinitely too much for me to explain, how could I dare to believe I understand anyone else perfectly?  I cannot do that. However, someone wise and fictional once gave me the advice that I could not understand anyone from their point of view until I “climb into their skin and walk around in it” (Harper Lee). There is a whole world within the Black Lives Matter movement that I cannot experience fully because I popped out of the womb with pasty white skin, but I can weep with them; I can stand up with them and say that this is unjust. There are police officers that I know who are humble and kind, and I don’t know what their average day looks like, but I would like to understand. More than half of all of my friendships are with people in the LGBT community or with people still figuring it out. I can’t fully understand because I’m really attracted to dudes, but I can stand and fight with them against the criticisms they face all the time.

     The stories we are making up and the stereotypes we worship are hurting our brothers and our sisters. We can’t keep waving our hands around to keep suffering animated and pain lightweight. We can’t keep snuggling in blanket statements no matter how comfortable they are. We can’t keep breaking up with fear and chaos just to run back into its arms on the news channel.  We are all human beings and we all have choices to make. Many people could put me in a middle class basic white girl box because I find lattes enjoyable and I keep a Tumblr account and I might say the word “literally” often. But does that mean I’m a selfish, shallow bimbo? Sometimes, but not always.  I don’t like to be put into a box, just like everyone else. So please, if you dig into your heart, try to understand other people. Not just people on your side of the argument, not just people who look like you, but all people. There are multiple sides to every war; there is suffering in every country, and an abundance of good and evil, triumph and despair in every race of people.

     I don’t want to see with only one eye open.

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In Between Ties and Tattoos

Philosophy class.

My small, eight week community college class in a dingy, dirty room is rocking my world currently. I step inside those four walls as an outsider, someone who believes in something crazy.

My teacher, incredibly passionate about what she teaches, speaks exuberantly about Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, other cultures. Last class she explained that the world and all of its questions are like Swiss cheese, and religions are just trying to fill the holes. She implied that being an agnostic, in a sense, is true wisdom because they always continue to question.

I understand her point. I never want to stop questioning. I think that the moment we stop questioning, is when we stop believing. In matters of faith, doubt it part of the journey for truth.  I am easily frustrated with pastors who haven’t studied well. I turn away in an instant from pastors who do not allow space for questions, who do not marry science and faith as one. To me, that is a statement of ignorance and it draws no one from my generation back in.  I will not sit in a church pew for someone who cannot raise challenging questions or poke at my thoughts. I’m over it. I need water when I’m thirsty, not sugary fruit punch in a Dixie cup. But I can’t run away from the fact that I need truth, and I need it desperately.

I can’t accept this other life even though I want to. This other lifestyle that half-heartedly mumbles about caring for something shallow. The idea that it’s better to not care about anything really. I know this world well because a lot of the people I love the most are living within it. I get it. It would be super great to do all the things that made me feel awesome. And I understand why everyone walked away from the church, because quite honestly no one wants to be fed bullshit anymore, and it’s tiring to keep looking for places that aren’t.  Somehow I did. But we don’t want what are parents want. Our baby boomer parents grew up in a society in which truth was attainable and integrity mattered, honorable things were worth chasing. I didn’t. I watched 9/11 on TV when I was seven; my presidents were liars and quite frankly, immature, and I only learned negative lessons from them.  Most of my best friends were shunned because they are gay. My teachers in public school lied to me and hit on me, and kept me complacent in memorizing useless facts I had been studying since I was in 5th grade…a watered down curriculum. The churches we went to when I was young were legalistic and watered down Jesus just the same. All these people were individuals I looked to as I searched for a higher calling, and I could not find it. In a few people I found fantastic examples, and I am forever grateful to them for being intelligent and real and incredible mentors to me. But we need more of that.

I have chosen to believe that Jesus became human and walked and ate and talked among people like us and called them friends. I believe that he carried his own cross to be pierced and crucified and bleed out for me-sacrificed, so that I could live fully, without guilt, loved wholly by a holy God in the hands of grace, and this outline of grace that surrounds me is not dependent on my ability to color it in with the good things that I have done. And I know how nuts that is. And I think it’s crazy every time I explain it. But I also think it’s crazy enough to work and transform people, because I see it all the time. It’s funny what happens when people realize they are accepted exactly as they are, without an agenda, without people holding conversations in an attempt to convert them, without picket signs that have told them to force themselves to love God or else they will burn in hell.

I’m lucky that I’ve found the few and far in between groups of people that have realized they are loved and in turn, love well. I’m thankful that we can converse about the stories Jesus told, and how we can live good stories as well over a beer, even though we’re poor and have no idea what we’re doing with our lives. And that’s ok. But I’m upset that I’ve found these people, and so many others haven’t. I’m very disheartened that this kind of community is so difficult to find. I’ve looked one direction and I find a church that spends more money on their light show and appearance than they spend on their communities outside of their buildings, making positive changes, helping their poor. Jesus was about justice.  I look the other direction and I see an entire generation that has been screwed over so they have in turn said, screw all of it, screw religion, screw trying to force a feeling, we’re going to do what we want.

In a way, this can lead to something beautiful.  A new generation of people that stand for things that actually matter. But in another sense, we’re still sort of lacking a foundation. That’s the issue because we have an older generation (our parents) who realize that truth is something that is pivotal in their life and they stand upon that rock. Simultaneously, we have a younger generation that wants change and movement and positive life goals. The problem is that no one knows how to combine the two. An older generation is upset with our tattoos and our questions and our ever broadening spectrum of social media, and we are upset with them for staying traditional and staying at arm’s length from us (at least, that’s how I feel). Where is the exchange of learning from one another? Why are these conversations still dead between one another? We have so much to give and receive, but so many have given up on this.

I have a few older people I’m close to, who have impacted me in unimaginable ways. They are ten steps ahead of me, and it speaks volumes in my life. We need more of you. I’m not the only person who feels lost half the time, needing help, needing mercy, throwing myself on a couch for psychoanalysis. People my age are lonely and anxious and starving, and they cannot find much to fill them anymore. I know a lot of great people and have a lot poured into me, and I still struggle a lot.  There are so many people my age who need good mentors. They need people to show them that there is light and it is available to them, and they can have it right now while they are swimming in the dark. Pastors are too busy. Teachers aren’t always available. Parents don’t always offer the best help. We need the church to be who they were meant to be. The world is way too disappointing without people who love well.

There are a few women who show me again and again what it looks like to live humbly, love mercy, and learn fiercely. I often fail at this-but the important thing is that they continue to give me hope that people who care about life and love and purpose still exist and that they are willing to teach me how to be a better woman, not through a stupid self-help book or ten easy steps or ways to keep exhausting myself; but simply living under the idea that I am a creation made to create for a creator.

You can say that that’s cliché. And you can tell me that you hate this and I’m full of crap, and you’re tired of hearing religious jargon. I understand. I am too. But that’s the only thing that makes sense to me. All other religions have told me that I must climb a ladder to reach for God or a sense of fulfillment or wholeness. Jesus is the only one who climbed down the ladder to reach for me. To reach for people. I’m already exhausted in my everyday life; I don’t need another religion telling me how to be tired. Do I question it? All the time. But the important thing is that I keep running, or crawling, back to this faith, and there is a reason I do. I’m welcomed to. Grace holds me in a position to keep crawling back to what’s beautiful and honorable. I can’t accept Christian jargon anymore, and I can’t accept legalism. But I also can’t accept the lie that it’s better to not care about anything. There has to be an in between, and I’m going to keep fighting for it.

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the scents of past journeys down from the shelves.

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Dreamers

“Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.” -Ethan Hawke

I think you must live underneath a rock if you have not experienced a small taste of the ever broadening spectrum of people who have forgotten how to dream. The kind of people that narrow their eyes at you when you love the arts instead of the sciences, or have an idea that seems impossible, or simply want to…live simply; and your biggest goal is not a white picket fence. Maybe you are one of them. You are one of the many who have forgotten what it’s like to let the possibilities sit down in your mind and converse with them. Maybe fear has pulled up a chair and started pouring your possibilities a very strong cup of anxiety. Or perhaps, you are too “busy”. May I ask, with what? Are you moving in purpose? Or are you moving within convenience?

Over the past few months I have had too many conversations that beat around the bush. And when I say that, I mean that people I know and love are terrified to pursue their passion. “It’s unconventional. It doesn’t make money. It’s not secure. It’s not professional. My parents won’t approve. My friends will judge me.” The excuses could keep rolling on. Why do we all have this in common, rewinding reasons not to try instead of letting it play on, to see what happens next? Have we forgotten that all things will be made good in their time? Personally, I think we are afraid of the in-between stages. The times in which money is tight and we didn’t get the response we thought. Or maybe, we just have to wait. And waiting sucks.

Today I went into the Verizon store to get my phone fixed. The man at the counter helping me started making small talk about what I do with my life. Which is funny isn’t it? One of the first questions that people ask within the walls of small-talk is what we do for a living. As if the occupation is the window to the soul. Regardless, if someone asks me what I do for a living, I want it to be something good. Something interesting. Something I have such a zest for, I can’t contain it because half of my life is SPENT doing that THING. So he asked me, and I told him the only thing that I want to do because it’s as natural as breathing-I want to be a writer. He laughed in my face and asked what I was going to do with that. I told him I know darn well what I’m going to do with it. Just kidding. I wish I did that. Ironically, this is why I write. I imagine clever comebacks I come up with later.

The point is, that guy didn’t know that it had taken me three years to realize what I was passionate about and have the charisma to chase after it. He didn’t know that I had taken a gap year to figure it out, and then stumbled into college convinced otherwise by baby boomers and articles that had told me my passion was worthless. He didn’t know that I had changed my major, hated it, and felt completely stuck. He didn’t know that I had run a rat race in a desperate attempt to have something to tell people when they made adult conversation and came up dry countless times. And finally, at this point in my young adult life, had decided I’m going to do what I want. And I don’t care what anyone thinks about it. Because I’d rather risk epic failure and die throwing around inspiration like confetti than listen to some old man who forgot how to be inspired.

I don’t care if this reaches one person, because it is what I love to do.  I have been ignoring creativity because I forgot it was created within me, I have been putting out the fire because I have lived with the response that it is not ok to burn. Remember that the kind of response that belittles new dreams and new stories stems from a person who has not yet had a good story to tell.

Isn’t it better to live the idea that crashed and burned, than the excuse comfortable people told us to learn?

I want you to know something. You have permission to fail. You fail half the time in everyday life anyways-but, suddenly, once you fail in your career it seems that the entire world is watching you, waiting to point a finger and say “I told you so”. Forget that. Because you could very well point a finger right on back and say, “See? I told you so. I told you would be bored.” That’s not the best response, speak in love, obviously, but fight the urge to fall back into monotony. You do not owe anyone a life plan. You do not owe them an occupation. You do not owe them who you used to be, or who you are going to be. You do not owe them a dream that is not yours as payment for their “put together” lives.

That’s not your job. Your job is to find out what lights your fire and make a living out of that. And make a home around it. And invite people into it. Take up residence within the hands that formed oxygen to keep your fire burning.

The world is complex and beautiful and strange all at once, and people are lovely and devastating and hilarious all at the same time and it would be a mighty shame to miss out on that because you are keeping your head down in what makes sense to everyone else, but not to you. Keep your head up, champ. You’re not failing. You’re not a mess. The sum of your parts is not built upon your major or career choice. You don’t have to run around in circles to prove that you are significant. You’re doing great just by figuring it out. You’re important just for being on the earth.

So forget those who are numb and burn, burn, burn.

  FjNia6 Vg.�

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6:48am and 6:57am San Francisco

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I closed the box and put it in a closet. There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.

Joan Didion, Where I Was From (via paradoxicalsentiments)

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What Would History Books Say About Us?

I always really enjoyed mountains. I enjoy them because they don’t ask for attention, but just by standing, they are glorious and beautiful. I also like them because in every way, they seem to me to be a picture of our lives. Mountains can be very difficult to climb. On the way up, we must only look at our feet taking one step at a time versus looking at the top; otherwise we quickly wade through discouragement. We have to be present in our desire for the future. There are many chances to stumble and fall, and at certain points we must take our time in solving our transition from baby steps to larger ones. I often get dirty on the way up and I must beat my mind in the battle for joy or for weariness. Not to mention, I don’t always know where I’m going, I just know that I have to keep moving forward.

                But when I get there? Every bit of it was worth it-every struggle to breathe and every aching muscle; it is one of the most captivating things I’ve ever seen and felt. And well, folks, the top is worth the climb-always. Every mountain is a trial and every time it is my choice to take a deep breath, face it head on without looking back, and open my eyes wide to see that it is a real story created to impact others. I am a raw and colorful page-turner, and so are you. I’m slowly becoming a collection of children’s books, filled with adventures, dreams, efforts, courage, nightmares, laughter, hope, conclusions, rebellion, deep love, and deep loss.

                However, somewhere in between sleepy treasure islands and tired alarm clock eyes, I found monotony. I found boring. Dive into the lives of those in our history books and realize we were never made for boring.

                What would history books say about us? Alexander the Great was a military commander conquering parts of the world before he was 16, Joan of Arc was winning victories in France before she was 19, Albert Einstein discovered the Theory of Relativity when he was 26, and Harriet Tubman at the age of 31 was leading hundreds of slaves through the underground of the dark so that they could catch a glimpse of the light. What are we doing? We’re putting Afterlight Instagram filters on our own faces. We’re bathing in social pornography, soaking in the idea of ourselves we want others to perceive of us.

                I’m not saying all of us are like that, but if we keep being careful, especially about who we are, or in fact, who others think we are, we will rapidly dig ourselves underground into the pit of narcissism.

                Everything in creation breathes out life, beauty, and something wild. Maurice Sendak, who wrote “Where the Wild Things Are”, though writing a book for children, targeted something that resides in all of us. We are wild things called to higher living…to wrestle and love the world, run towards others with arms wide open, to balance the reality of growing up while finding within it the hope to dream big, and to really, really LIVE. Max sailed away in his dreams, we were meant to sail through fiercely stunning storms. God didn’t make mistakes with the power of nature, nor did He with human nature. We were meant to be messy under a heaven spangled sky and we were meant to fall in love with mystery of God.

                Yet, we’re oh so content with watching life happen. Guess what? It doesn’t happen if we don’t let it. God puts things in our way to interrupt us but it’s our choice to look up from our desk jobs and our Iphones or to speak through our actions that life isn’t a gift. I don’t want others to have a lack of what to say at my funeral. I don’t want to look back on my life when I’m older and see the experiences I didn’t have. I want to have flash-backs of mountains and tree-tops and stars, of conversations with paupers and princes, of running, dancing, singing, of getting dirty, of putting it all on the small tight-rope line that God gave me to walk. It’s not a coincidence that God gave me this working body to do all of that. The question is, am I a good steward of that? This body, this whole self, was made to glorify Him. He is worthy of all I have, and Jesus, my friends, is the best interruption you’ll ever have.

                When you’re thrown off, or something goes wrong, or in fact there is something different stirring in your heart, let it.

Because God IS.

History repeats itself. Let’s have the courage to lead revolutions, not slowly commit suicide through our addictions. You are important, you have gifts, and you were made to create and to create change. Even if you feel you have nothing to offer, let your life be transformed and stand as a testament to the power of God to break the mundane.

                Do what you were meant to. There are plenty of people in the world like cars in a junkyard. They would run again if only they allowed themselves to be fixed, they would go places if they knew there was something else outside that confinement. Instead they choose to sit broken, among others who are broken and live within those fences. People want you to do what you’ve always done and what everyone else is doing. The funny thing about that is that, that type of thinking is so backwards compared to the world around us. Trees reach out their branches and grow, fish swim upstream, weather changes, disasters happen, cities are rebuilt and all of it screams change. All of it whispers, “new”. All of it beckons freedom.

                Don’t live for headlines, live because your soul depends on it. Live because your heart pumps every second bringing tension in your limbs and air in your lungs. History books on other people’s hearts will be written without you in the text if you don’t dare to move. God is moving every second. God is moving outside the restraints of time. He can move with or without you, it’s your choice.

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”-Winston Churchill