#inspired by the fact that i could never remember any prayers so when my grandma would make us pray i would see if my cousins opened their

[calbeloved]

projecting onto gal because theres no way he has ever prayed in his life. he was such a rebel im convinced that while all the other kids were praying before sleep he would just. make stupid faces to anyone who would open their eyes. or to henri. and he would NOT remember any prayer even though they were repeated everyday, multipe times

[beshert-bh]

My journey to/with Judaism

***This is a super long post, it’s the FULL story, not a brief overview, but it would mean the WORLD to me if you read it***

Upbringing: very much Not Jewish™️

I was born into a Catholic family. I have a goyish last name. I was baptized as an infant, and my parents took me to church each week as a kid.

In kindergarten — back when I still went to a secular private school — one of my best friends was Jewish. He told me all about the traditions his family did...told me all about the kippahs they wear, and how they had their own game called dreidel for this holiday they celebrated, called Hanukkah. (Of course this convo was at a basic-kindergarten-level of knowledge.) When I came home from school I was fascinated with Hanukkah, (this is cringey to admit but my 5-year-old self tried to integrate the traditions together and so in order to do this I drew up a “Christmas dreidel” complete with Santa Claus’ face on one side, a present on another side...you get it)

And that is when I was promptly put in “parochial” schools. I went to Catholic school from 1st grade to 12th grade. I went through Holy Communion and Confirmation like all the other kids did. My elementary soccer team’s mascot was an Angel. My high school’s mascot was a Crusader. Our high school was located on Rome Avenue. I went to a Catholic youth conference. I considered becoming a nun because I was single all throughout high school.

Growing up, around Christmastime we would always travel to visit my grandma, and she would always say we’re “German Jewish” — but I would write her off. In my mind, I was like, Yeah ok like 1%? .....It felt like my grandma was acting like one of those white people who takes a DNA test and says, “Look! We’re 1% African!” So I would dismiss her and remind her how we’re Catholics and she would drop the subject.

Falling away from Xtianity: my first 2 years of college

My freshman year I changed — politically — as I was only conservative in high school because of the ‘pro-life’ agenda being shoved down my throat. I really aligned more with liberal and leftist policies and views, though. Once I became open to new political ideology, I began to question my theological beliefs.

I always had a strong connection to God. My whole life. But I struggled with connecting to Jesus, Mary, the saints, and so on. So obviously my freshman year of college I began to fall away from Catholicism.

You see, Catholics are “bad at the Bible” as I like to say. Other Christians do a better job of teaching and analyzing the writings. They actually require school-aged children to memorize Scripture passages. Catholics mostly just teach the same stuff over and over. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, blah blah blah. Catechism, liturgical calendar, blah blah blah. Parts of the mass, fruits of the spirit, blah blah blah.

So since I was already doubting Catholicism, its corrupt leadership, and its mindless traditions.... I thought maaaaybeeee I would find purpose, truth, clarity, etc. in plain-old Christianity. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The other Christian churches I went to baptized people (which is a BIG LIFE DECISION) on the spot. For example if a newcomer felt on a whim that they wanted to be baptized, the church would do it right then & there. No learning, no planning or preparing, that was it. They promoted blind faith and circular thinking. I began to realize these were both normal attitudes and cognitive patterns within any and every Christian community that I encountered.

Even the Christians who exhibited curiosity mostly just asked questions in order to be able to understand, and then accept, the doctrine as truth. Questions never ever challenged anything.

Oh and let’s throw in the fact that I’m bisexual. Homophobia, transphobia, biphobia (and more) are rampant in the church. So needless to say, with all my observations about the lack of logical thinking in the church (and considering my sexual orientation) I fell away. I stopped going to church unless my family made me when I was home from college.

Enter stage right: Judaism

In retrospect I happened to have a lot of friends in my sorority and my favorite fraternity on campus who were Jewish (the frat happened to be a traditionally-Jewish one). Thought nothing of it at the time. Fast forward to junior year when I met this cute guy on Tinder. He’s now my boyfriend and we’ve been dating for over a year. He didn’t tell me this on Tinder, but when we went on our first date, he revealed that he’s Jewish and wanted to make sure that’s something I was ok with. Clearly I had no problem with that. I wasn’t too into Christianity anymore but I still identified as one (and I was still surrounded by Christian friends in my sorority) so I told him I was Christian/raised Catholic and asked hypothetically if he would be comfortable with a “both” family. He said yes.

We started dating during an October, so of course Hanukkah came up soon. There was a mega challah bake at our local Chabad, which he took me to, and we had a blast. From then on I decided I wanted to show him how supportive I was of his Jewishness. (The last girl he dated dumped him after 3 months BECAUSE he was Jewish... so I felt that I needed to be supportive)

We started going to shabbat services and dinner every week. We did Hanukkah together (we bought our first menorah together, he taught me how to spin a dreidel, his mom bought me Hanukkah socks...lol). At some point in our relationship I told him I may have Jewish ancestry from my grandma but it’s distant and my whole extended family is Christian so it really wouldn’t even matter. I don’t remember when I had that conversation with him.

Eventually, after another few months of Shabbat services and Shabbat dinners, Pesach came around.

We went to the first seder together. The second seder is what changed everything.

Deciding to convert

At first I wasn’t sure if I belonged at this second seder. My boyfriend had always brought me to every event. I had never attended anything alone at Chabad before. But I went anyway. Throughout the night I felt increasingly comfortable. I had never felt more like I was a *part of something* than I did at this seder.

I sat near a friend who I recognized. (He knows I’m raised Catholic.) Then he & his friends welcomed me. We all took turns reading from the Haggadah, we drank the four cups of wine together, and we laughed together as I had maror for the first time.

Then the familiar faces left to go home, and one of them even went to another table to sit with his other friends whom he hadn’t had a chance to see yet that night. Naturally I thought I was alone again. I almost left, but something tugged at my heart to stay until the very end of the second seder. Something told me to keep going and keep taking in this wonderful experience.

The rest of the night consisted of many songs (most likely prayers, in retrospect) I did not know. Everyone stood to sing and we all clapped to the rhythm. I knew none of the words but I still clapped along, alone at my own table. Then one of the boys — the one who had been sitting with my friends and I earlier — motioned at me to come over and join his other friends. I approached this new table full of people I’d never met, feeling awkward as ever, and they not only hoisted me up to stand on the table with them as they chanted, but they also included me in their dance circle. (no, I don’t think it was the Hora, we just spun around over and over. lol.)

This was the first night I felt at home with Judaism. Going through the Jewish history with the Haggadah, remembering the important occurrences and symbolizing them with various foods, ending the night by being welcomed into the community... it was transformative. After attending shabbat services for months and learning about Jewish values, it changed something in me when I observed Pesach for the first time last year. I knew this path would be right for me. I felt as if my soul had found where it belonged. The Jewish history, traditions, beliefs, and customs resonated with me. It all just... made sense.

I told my boyfriend I wanted to convert. I wrote three pages of reasons. But I sat on the idea of converting and did nothing for a while. I did do some more research on Judaism, though, as I continued to attend services each week.

The exploration stage

I began to actually research on my own time. If converting was something I was genuinely considering, it was high time I began actively learning as much as I could possibly learn. It was time to dive deeper than just attending the weekly services and googling the proper greetings for Jewish holidays.

I started digging deeper into Judaism and Christianity so I could compare and contrast the two. I needed to understand the similarities and differences. And BOY are they different. That was surprising at first, but the more I learned about Judaism, the more I loved how different it was from the Christianity I was indoctrinated into.

Not only are the values and teachings of each religion vastly different, but the Tanakh (which is “The Old Testsment” in Christian Bibles) actually contradicts:

The entire “New Testament”

The gospel books specifically

The Pauline letters specifically

How did I realize this? Some bible study of my own, but mostly through online research. And, of course, I would have gotten nowhere without the help of Rabbi Tovia Singer and his YouTube videos. He debunks everything there is to debunk about Christianity.

Here were some things I came across when researching:

It confused me how the four Gospels didn’t align (like, major parts of the story did not align at all...and supposedly they’re divinely inspired...but they don’t even corroborate one another?)

It confused me how the psalms we sang in church were worded completely different from the true wording in the Bible (essentially the Christian church is taking tehillim and altering it to benefit Christian dogma and Christian rhetoric.)

It confused me how we read in the Bible that Jews are ‘God’s chosen people’ and yet in every Catholic Church, every Sunday, there is a Pauline letter being read which depicts proselytization of Jews, as if Jews are lost and need Christians to save them. As if Jews would go to hell if they fail to accept Jesus.

It confused me why we would pray to Mary and the saints, because praying is worship, and worshipping anyone but God themself is idolatry.

It confused me why Christians make, sell, and use graven images. Idolatry. Again.

It confused me why Christians give absolute power to humans. For example, if you crawl up the same steps (Scala Santa) that Jesus supposedly crawled up before he died, you automatically get “saved” because *some old men who have no divine power* said so (they have a term for this and it’s called “plenary indulgence” lol).

It confused me why Jesus was believed to be the messiah considering he had to have biologically been from the line of Joseph. Wasn’t Jesus supposedly conceived without any help from Joseph? Wouldn’t that render Jesus, uh, not messiah by default? Even if he was from Joseph’s blood, he still did not complete all the tasks moshiach is supposed to fulfill. And even if he DID fulfill all the tasks required of moshiach... we still would not worship a messiah as he is human and not GOD.

These were all new thoughts I developed this past year between Pesach and Yom Kippur. New questions that challenged everything I thought I knew. It was like teaching a child 2+2≠22 but rather 2+2=4.

Hillel

This fall, after the High Holy Days, my boyfriend began attending shabbat dinners at a rabbi’s home. His new rav lives in the community and it’s exclusive to be invited, so I never imposed. We do Shabbos separately now (with some exceptions, we do it together sometimes).

I continued to go to Chabad with one of my friends who knew I wanted to convert. But one month, she couldn’t come at all, and I felt a little judged there anyway.

So I began going to Hillel a few months ago. And I honestly have found a home there.

From Hillel’s Springboard Fellow reaching out to me and taking me out for coffee to get to know me... to running into my sorority & fraternity friends at every Hillel event (shabbat or otherwise)... From getting included in various clubs like the women empowerment group and the mental health inclusivity group... to being the only college student to participate in Mitzvah Day (hosted by Hillel) with the elderly and the local Girl Scout troop... I feel truly welcome. I’ve started to attend every week. I even talked briefly with the rabbi about having Jewish lineage and wanting to convert.

Discovering new information

I went home to be with family during Thanksgiving break. My grandma flew in so she was there when I got home. She stayed with us from then until New Years (and she’s actually moving in with us next year.)

Of course, now I have a Jewish boyfriend, Jewish friends, and I’ve done extensive research on Judaism. So this time I had background knowledge when she inevitably said... “You know, we’re German Jewish!”

I inquired a little. I asked her what she meant. How is she Jewish? I know my uncle took a DNA test this year and came back part Ashkenazi. But I needed a deeper explanation than DNA.

She revealed to me that her mom’s mom was Jewish. We believe she married a Christian man. Together they had my great-grandmother, who I believe was Christian. She had my grandma, who had my dad, who had me.

And I immediately felt like that changed things. At first I was (internally) like, Now I definitely need to convert! But then I was like, Wait, does this make me Jewish? Am I Jewish-ish? ...Can you be considered Jewish if you’re only ethnically Jewish but not raised Jewishly? ...Can you be Jewish if your dad is your only Jewish parent? ...Can you be Jewish if your dad never had a bris or a bar mitzvah?

I joined a bunch of Jewbook groups, began learning the Hebrew calendar & holiday schedule, and found some folks who assist with Jewish genealogy. They did some digging for me and apparently I descend from the Rothschild family. THE Rothschild family.

Who is a Jew? Who “counts”?

This is something I’ve been muddling over.

At Hillel, at my school at least, most people are pretty Reform. They’re very liberal with their definitions of Judaism (they believe in patrilineal descent and not only matrilineal descent).

They accept me and see me as actually Jewish ...and the ones who don’t... they at least see me as Jewish-adjacent, an “honorary Jew” or an “ally to the Jewish people”.

My boyfriend, however, still sees me as Not Jewish.™️ (For context he’s Reform but he’s trying to become as observant as possible) I know he only thinks this was because of how we began our relationship and because of how I was raised. But I’m very confused here.

Do I count?

Do I not?

Do I count *enough* but still need to go through a formal conversion process?

So...now what?

I don’t know how to navigate this odd journey but I have felt for a while that I have a Jewish neshama and I feel a strong need to affirm it. I just don’t know how or what is appropriate. Do I learn Hebrew? Sign up for a trip to Israel/Germany/Poland? Put up a mezuzah? Or go toward the other end of the scale, and head down a path of a formal conversion/reaffirmation process?

Thank you in advance for your responses and thanks for reading. 🤎

[letterboxd]

Creative Limitations.

“The media’s already polarizing enough; I guess I’m looking for things that are not polarizing and are much more nuanced about the human condition.” —Lulu Wang, writer and director of The Farewell.

One of the highest-rated films of the year, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell stars Awkwafina as Billi, a fictionalized version of Wang herself, in the story of a family in cahoots to keep their matriarch in the dark. The film is based on “a true lie”: Billi’s paternal grandmother in China, Nai Nai (played by veteran Chinese actress Zhao Shuzhen) has cancer, and the family chooses not to let her know, instead staging an elaborate fake wedding to bring the family together.

Where other independent features often develop out of a short film, Wang took her story to This American Life, a bastion of American radio storytelling. The half-hour audio version, ‘What You Don’t Know’, is what her American film producer heard; from there, the feature film came to life. It’s a quietly powerful story that has resonated with Letterboxd members for many reasons, including the authentic, hands-off way in which it comments on “the many micro-tragedies that naturally follow any family whose members—for one reason [or] another—decide to leave the family nest and search for happiness abroad”. For others, it’s even more personal: “Seeing yourself on screen probably doesn’t get better than this.”

When The Farewell opened in US cinemas in July this year, its per-theater box office average topped that of Avengers: Endgame. The film was still showing in select theaters in October, and has just been released on streaming services, including in 4K on iTunes, with a commentary track by Wang and her director of photography, Anna Franquesa Solano. “We tried to talk a lot about process, so I think that’ll be interesting,” Wang told us. (Also, “we may or may not have been drinking”.)

In time for its streaming release, we chatted with Lulu Wang about aspects of The Farewell’s production, the useful limitations of independent filmmaking, and her favorite films, from holiday movies to best soundtracks. Interview contains plot spoilers.

Lulu Wang and DP Anna Franquesa Solano on the set of ‘The Farewell’. / Photo: Casi Moss

The Farewell is standing strong in our highest rated films of 2019, and the reviews are responding to exactly the things, I imagine, that were important to you: the non-manufactured stakes, the family realness, a sense of the specific being universal, the process of grief beginning long before a person you love dies. How does it feel that your film is being so well received? Lulu Wang: I fought really hard to tell the story in such a specific way that in some ways I think my biggest fear was that the specificity would put us into a niche, and only attract a very niche audience. So, you know, the fact that there’s so many people—Asian-Americans but also non-Asian Americans—who see themselves and their family in the story is incredible to me.

You often mention the films of Mike Leigh when talking about highly specific stories that nevertheless have a universal resonance. Can you talk about some other such films and filmmakers that do this for you? Well, Yi-Yi [directed by] Edward Yang is one of my all-time favorites. The specificity, the tenderness of it. The patience of the filmmaking. I find Yi-Yi to be that. Also the humor, there’s so much charm and so much humor in it, it feels just so real.

Kore-eda’s films speak to me in that same way. I just really appreciate the patience in filmmaking. I think so often nowadays the flashiest things get the most attention, and we’ve also trained our brains to need that, right? That kind of stimulation. And so there’s something just so beautiful about a film that takes its time and that doesn’t lean on easy tricks to get attention, but that takes time to get to the heart of something very nuanced, that isn’t so obvious, that isn’t so black and white. The media’s already polarizing enough; I guess I’m looking for things that are not polarizing and are much more nuanced about the human condition.

Through The Farewell’s run, you’ve been generous about opening up the filmmaking process—this Vanity Fair bilingual script breakdown, for example, gives a good insight into how hard you worked on the script. Could you talk us through the ‘wedding portrait sequence’, in which Billi’s cousin and his wife have a series of photographs taken while Billi and Nai Nai carry on a long conversation? It’s entertaining, but it’s also important for what it reveals about Nai Nai and Billi’s relationship, Chinese wedding culture, and the underlying lie of the whole story. You must be so proud of this sequence. I am. Yeah, I’m really proud of that sequence. The photo portrait was kind of inspired a little bit by Secrets and Lies, when he takes the portrait, and the falseness of what we present when we take portraits like that in the studio, right?

Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) observes yet another wedding portrait set-up in ‘The Farewell’.

One of the intentions, going through it, was minimising the dialogue and trying to condense the script, and so that made me say, “Okay, what are all these moments doing?” They’re all trying to do the same thing, which is to establish the relationship between Billi and Nai Nai, so condensing it into one sequence makes sense. And then also because so much of it is dialogue-driven, how do we make this cinematic? Because at one point the wedding photography studio was separate from these conversations between Billi and Nai Nai, you know, and so this is where, in some ways, being forced to have limitations, being forced to make a shorter film, you start to think more about layering and how do you do multiple things at once.

I really appreciate the limitations of independent filmmaking. Not always; when I’m on set and I get the budget I’m complaining! But looking back on it, those limitations are how we came up with many of our visual ideas. And then also of course it was influenced by the location itself, because we were scouting wedding studios and I wasn’t aware that these studios were so large, that they have, like, different spaces built into the same building. Because if you look at a western photo studio, like in Mike Leigh, right, it’s always the same backdrop.

So that sequence was inspired because we went location scouting, and we were like “this is ridiculous! There are ten different rooms and they all have different set ups!” So then we had this idea of them basically just wandering through the whole photography studio and we’d pick four of our favorite set-ups.

And then this idea of them being silhouetted was inspired by [Woody Allen’s 1979 film] Manhattan. I wanted to capture their relationship as a romance, and I was thinking about Manhattan and their silhouette—I think they were in a planetarium—so we came up with this idea of a continuous conversation, but that was spaced out in front of different backdrops.

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in a scene from ‘Manhattan’ (1979).

That sequence helps us learn more about who Nai Nai was before the events in The Farewell take place. At Letterboxd, we’re often compiling top ten lists, but “best grandmothers on film” is not a highly populated category, especially films where grandmas are more than just ‘kindly’. Tell us more about fleshing out Nai Nai’s life and the importance of giving respect to older female characters. I think about that in life, too, you know. We think about a lot of people in our lives as fulfilling a particular role in relation to ourselves. That’s my mother, that’s my grandmother, that’s my teacher. Remember as a kid you don’t even think your teacher goes to the grocery store! They hide in the back of the class and then pop back up in the morning! So as a filmmaker, as a storyteller, I’m always thinking about who they are, separate from the context of their relationship to you.

That’s also part of the sadness of not being with somebody or of losing somebody is you don’t necessarily get to see them in all those different contexts and then when they’re gone, there’s so much you don’t know about them and may never know about them. And as our parents get older, your relationships to your relatives change, you know, like ‘who’s the parent?’—children often have to become the caretaker. That’s where it came from, was wanting to make sure that Nai Nai was not presented as a stereotypical grandmother. That she felt like a three-dimensional woman, a woman who was once a girl, and a young woman, someone who was once in love, or maybe in a relationship out of convenience. And also that she’s not always sweet. That’s very real.

One of the motifs in The Farewell is birds appearing at significant moments. In many cultures, a bird is a portent of something big, for example, a death in the family. Where did your bird come from? The bird for me came from wanting to put [in] something magical, but not, like, literal, you know? Meaning, I wanted to insinuate spirituality and magic, but I wanted it also to be interactive with the audience, so based on what they believe and how they interpret that bird is the meaning they get out of it, without me saying “this is what it means”. Much of the movie is about belief systems and perspectives, so I think that if you believe the bird means something, then it does. But if you don’t, and you’re a much more literal, scientific person and you go, “Oh it’s just a bird, it’s just a coincidence,” then it doesn’t mean anything.

Awkwafina leans on Zhao Shuzhen’s shoulder during filming. / Photo: Casi Moss

That’s how it is in the movie and that’s how it is in life: what you believe, and where you find meaning, becomes your reality. With Nai Nai outliving her diagnosis, the people who believe the lie is what worked will continue to believe that the lie is what worked, and people who believe that prayer is what worked… In a way, we look for signs to validate the things we believe, because it’s how we get through life! We need signs, we need meaning, even if we’re the ones who are attaching that meaning.

This far down the track, what is your fondest memory of the production period? Oh gosh, so much of it. I think just being in China, being in spaces that were in my real life, with a crew. Any time that that happened it was really emotional, like shooting in my grandmother’s neighborhood. Shooting at my grandfather’s real grave. I hadn’t seen my grandfather since I left China when I was six, because he died a few years later. To now be at his grave site, gathered there with producers and the crew, scouting it and then shooting there, you know, it was an integration of two different parts of my life that I always felt were really separate, which was my family and China and my background and culture, and then the other part of me, which is being an American, being a filmmaker in America.

In many ways, I always felt that my family didn’t understand what I wanted to do, and also I couldn’t bring who I actually was into Hollywood, there wasn’t a space for that. With this film I was able to fully integrate, bringing my American producers to China for the first time, having my grandmother come to set and see me directing with all the lights and camera and crew. Having my parents be part of the table read. It just felt, really, like I was creating from a place that felt true and real and grounded to me.

Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen in a scene from ‘The Farewell’.

Speaking of being grounded, what’s your go-to comfort film? The one you’ll always throw on on a rainy day? Oh, I know: The Philadelphia Story. I love that story.

What’s the film you’ve probably seen the most? The Sound of Music.

Favorite song from it? Probably ‘Edelweiss’, honestly. I’ve been watching that film since I was a kid, it’s one of my parents’ favorite films. It’s such a family film for us, and every time the father sings ‘Edelweiss’ to all the kids, I get really emotional.

What’s the film—or films—that made you want to become a filmmaker Secretary. The Apartment. Annie Hall. I know that’s taboo, I shouldn’t say that, but I have to. Like, Annie Hall, you know? When I first saw it, I was really inspired by that. And The Piano. I think, with both The Piano and Secretary, it was the exploration of female desire and female voice—and obviously as a trained classical pianist since the age of four, the symbol of the piano for her, for that character, and for me, was really meaningful.

Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano’ (1993).

Alex Weston’s soundtrack for The Farewell, which leans heavily on human voices, is something you worked closely with him on. What’s your all-time favorite film soundtrack? So many, I don’t know how to choose! Well, I have a couple. In the Mood for Love. And then, because it is related, Barry [Jenkin]’s If Beale Street Could Talk is one of the most astounding soundtracks. Barry was inspired by Wong Kar-wai for Moonlight, and so yeah, thinking about In the Mood for Love reminded me that Nick Britell’s If Beale Street Could Talk soundtrack is just incredible.

Holiday season is fast approaching: what’s your favorite holiday/Christmas film? Home Alone is a classic that we all watch. Does Fiddler on the Roof count as a Christmas film?! I don’t know. That’s my mom’s favorite. And then I have a really embarrassing one, because when we got sick of Home Alone, we had to pick a new one, and somehow we landed on Jingle All the Way. For years, we watched Jingle All the Way and just laughed our heads off.

Finally, how is Children of the New World coming along? Very slowly. I’m working on the script. I’m writing it. It’s gonna take a while, probably after all of the press is done so I can fully focus.

‘The Farewell’ is available on streaming services now. Comments have been edited for clarity and length. With thanks to A24.

[writemywalks]

Disenfranchised grief

Disclaimer: if stories about people passing triggers you consider NOT reading this post and I won’t be posting people’s name to protect their privacy.

I still remember that January night, me and my father were having an after-dinner chat on his bed. We were expecting a phonecall from the hospital, because that very same morning, we had visited my grandpa who was at the ICU and the last time, we saw him, he was having a hard time breathing. Me, sensing I wouldn’t probably see him again, I grabbed his hand, that moved as if he asked for help, kissed it and told him: “I love you so much granpa”.

Holding back my tears, and exchanching looks with my uncle and my father, we left the building with our chest full of anxiety.

I don’t know how but somehow the bed chat turned out in a self-talk about how much I wanted to see the world and how I felt I was fustrated with my life.

“I so wanna travel” I said repeating the same wish I always say when I hate everything

“Remember you have your second cousin living in NY, I can put you through and you may talk to him, maybe he’ll give you a place to stay” my dad answered me

“Not until granpa gets better or... you know” I said brushing it off “besides I don’t wanna owe nothing to anybody, if I ever visit him, I’ll pay him”

An hour later and my chest, mixed with expectancy and anxiety, we received a phone call at midnight, with a rain outside that seem to devour our house.

It was THAT phone call. 

What we were expecting happened. And even though, I knew what was coming I remember crying a lot and awaiting for the funeral we were having the next day.

It was a very sad day. My another grandpa had tragically died, but I never had the chance to attend his funeral and when one of my closest friends died from cancer I refused to attend his, because I wanted to remember him how he was, full of life and totally devoted to the Lord. Therefore, this was my first experience seeing a dead body. The coldness of his body didn’t impress me, neither the fact that I would never see those deep blue eyes again, but I remember kissing him a lot and having a hard time breathing. It was like my lungs wouldn’t fit in my chest

On a cheerful sidenote, I remember meeting a side of a family I never knew before and the best of all, seeing people I hadn’t seen for almost twenty years. I remember being so glad meeting my dad’s cousin wife who would tell me anecdotes how I behave when I was a kid and how I would listen Xuxa non-stop. 

We burried my grandpa and even though I was sad, I remember feeling satisfied that we have had the best holidays and that, that last year we lived for what it was: his last year on earth.

Weeks went by and then it dawned on me that now nothing held me back from chasing the world and my second cousin came to my mind.

I remember stalking him on instagram and thinking “wow, he’s all I ever wanted to be and he’s a (insert last name that represents a heritage of fustrated people), that’s inspiring”

My friend Florencia and I had been planning a trip together but our schedules and economic situations never matched. When she got the job, I quitted mine. When I was free, her grandma got very sick and so we always pushed our dreams forward.

Finally the planets aligned and I got a job as a teacher and we both set our minds to plan the trip, once for all and she had a destination fixed in her mind: New York. To be honest, I never liked that city. I’ve never been there but I feel it’s just Buenos Aires with a little bit more of glamour and people talking in English but that’s it.

But it sounded like a good oportunity to catch up with my couz and I liked the idea to spend the holidays with someone I would glued to when I was a kid and who had lived in the back of my house the first years of my life. I remember having memories of telling him to wait for me because I wanted to go to the drugstore with him, some memories of playing in the patio and some others, playing hide-and-seek and doing some shinenigans. I love stories of people meeting after the years, so I made a mind note to send him a message.

But I felt awkward, probably he didn’t remember me or worst, it looked like I wanted free housing, so even though I wanted to DM him, I told myself to tell my dad to put me through him. But then my dad had an arrythmia episode and all this trip planning went again back to second plan.

The doctor advised my father to slow down and stress less. When my dad got better and the episodes subsided, I always wanted to bring the trip idea but he always seemed to be tired and not in the mood to talk so, I was always like “Ok, tomorrow, I’ll tell him about it. He must be tired”

Weeks went by and I was always almost about to tell him about the trip but due to the long hours he would be working, all he ever do at home was sleeping.

Independence holiday bridge was coming so my parents took a trip to visit my my mom’s dad grave since she hadn’t gone there since she burried him, so they planned it all out and left that weekend to spending it outside the city. So I told myself one last time:

“The moment he comes back, I’ll ask me to put me through that kid. I definitely will”. So they left and I stayed at my grandma’s house since she also tagged along the road trip. It sounded like a nice weekend.

I remember taking care of my grandma’s pet and making the budget list for the trip we were planning with my friend. I remember going to bed very excited, singing some oldies song and talking a memory lane to 90′s tunes.

The following day I woke up at 1 pm. I grabbed my cellphone and started to check upon my messages, when I came across a message the left me speechless and made my hands to start shaking

“did you know (name) passed away?”

It sounded like a joke. I replied back “are you for real?”

“Yes, I just send my condolences to his mother, she must be devastated. He died in a 4th of July celebration”

Let me be clear, with all this build up to the trip planning it sounds as if I was frustrated that my trip to NY would never happened, but to be honest, this kid had been very present in my thoughts these last years, since I knew about him and I was really eager to catch up and see how we would get along.

A part of me wanted to help, but at this point in time, I was a nobody in his family and even though I wanted to do anything to bring him back home, I didn’t have the power to.

It took almost two weeks to bring him back home from the States and I remember binge-watching the last season of Stranger Things because I knew he liked it. The time I watched the last episode, I felt like I was saying goodbye to something that we would have enjoyed together and kinda connected me to him.

And this is the part when desinfranchised grief starts taking place. I remember once writing down

“My life is a series of desinfranchised grief events that nobody will ever understand” because my life is full of pains that nobody acknolwedge. 

One of the most closest experience I had with it was my post-op. I never went back to the same girl I was before but everyone told me “be happy, you look better and you have no pain, it’s for your good”. But I was “Kid, I don’t fucking care, I wanna dance like I used to. Take this cage out of my body”

And here we were again. I sent his mother any help I could through my aunt but even like that, I wanted to do more but I also didn’t want to bother her in such devastating times. It was good I was on my own that weekend because I remember crying a lot about him. I remember my aunt showing me the last messages they had exchanged and he truly sounded as those magical people you would rarely get to know twice in life.

When my parents came back from their trip, they planned visiting his parents and since I didn’t want to bother I stayed at home. But when they came back hom,  I had to rush to my bathroom to cry after my mom told me about how his family recalled how much he adored me, how he will always be spoiling me “always was giving you kisses” and “ I don’t think you would remember how much of an angel that kid was”.

The day of his funeral was devastating. I know some people say it is the same an anticipated death and a sudden death. But to be honest, having to burry somebody who loved life and had so many dreams yet to fulfill sounded as a destiny joke. We all cried over that mother who lost her kid and I felt really guilty crying bitterly in front of her because I wouldn’t stop, when if you really think about it, I didn’t have a reason to.

Did I have memories with him? Yes, but I barely remembered them

How long since I last saw him? Almost two decades

I hope I didn’t make his family uncomfortable because my tears were real because I realized that what I perceived about who he was gave me a little motivation to push forward my dreams and that’s what connected me to him, besides part of our childhood together.

Once his close relatives left the room, I took the chance to get close to his coffin. “So soon my angel, we weren’t supposed to meet again this way” I said stroking his cold face, just-cut hair and long gone spirit and I stood there for some minutes. I kissed my hand, put it over his cheek and went back to sitting.

Things like this make you realize that:

we don’t have promised tomorrow

it could have been me

live your life to the fullest

These last days my heart has been very heavy and there’s still so many questions about his death, which makes it all more surreal, unfair and unsettling.

One last thing, it’s still lingering in my head was my mom non-chalantly saying:

“Life’s funny, the most I hear stories about his life, the more I realize that he was the kind of person you always tell me you wanted to meet”

Yes mom. Life’s a joke,

Special prayers:

I ask you to keep his mom, dad and brothers in your prayers. They are the ones who lost a piece of their life. May God turned this tragedy into a Holy-Spirit filled purpose in spite of the neverending bevearement.

[thehiddenlawyer]

At Last-- the Light!

(This is going to be REALLY full of split personalities and slightly manic…tones so y’know, you’ve been warned. 

And everything I say below is my own life experience, and it does not claim to be objective or the truth. Just me. It’s also frantic and disjointed so forgive me. I’ll try to be more articulate later.)

You, darling Patrick, have your lizard, your cigarettes and your drink, I have my words since I don’t keep alcohol in the house and refuse to get more cigarettes.

Oh my darling man, my darling Patrick, don’t let me down. Don’t let yourself down…just hang on a bit longer. It gets better, I swear. Just hold on tight.

A few months ago when the trailers came out, the people closest to me saw what a terrifying impact the trailers by themselves had on me. With no exaggeration I tell you that I cried 48 hours straight when the trailer was released that had the bits of Some Hope in it, where he says he wants to break out into the real world. I told my sister that I had a breakdown, I told my Johnny and my other best friend that I was reacting like this, predictably I told @sobeautifullyobsessed​ (hereafter SBO) that I wasn’t handling it well at all. SBO reassured me, as she always does in her loving way. My sister and two best friends were so concerned that they were insisting that I just walk away from Patrick Melrose altogether, basically just burn the books, burn the memory of the TV shows existence, just ignore it completely.

I know a few of you lovelies here did that and I completely understand.

But there’s always been something about me that likes looking at things that terrify me. Like I’m arachnophobic and willingly walked into the tarantula exhibit at the zoo once, just to face my own terror (I didn’t last long and ran out of there hyperventilating and literally crashing into the walls). I don’t do well with crowds and always need to see my exit (massive agoraphobia that kept me away from the Infinity War premiere in LA) so a few weeks ago when I in an overcrowded pub, I kept looking behind me to feel the helplessness of being trapped.

So I refused to not watch Patrick Melrose.

Hell, I’ve been waiting for this adaptation for lifetimes it seems, so why the actual fudge would I not watch it?

And me, being me, didn’t want to admit this was happening to my therapist. I was somehow convinced that she would certify me as a loon and tell me I’m beyond help. Like I had this actual fear that my reaction to Patrick Melrose was a sign of completely mental instability, not just mental illness. I felt like if I admitted to my therapist that I cried for 48 hours straight because of that trailer, or that I consumed every atom of information about the TV adaptation that I could even though it made me physically sick to see Patrick, she was going to call the hospital and have me locked away.

I was convinced.

But I told her, because I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

And she looked at me the way all therapists look at their patients, as if they know we’re waiting for them to tell us we’re hopeless, and she asked me to articulate why I loved this character so much. I outlined it the way I have for you guys, the way I have for Mr. C. in a hapless letter I sent along for him a bit ago, and she blew me away. She told me she saw the parallels, definitely understood why I was so taken with this character and why I was reacting so…viciously to it all.

Then she asked me the most simple question—she asked “how does his story end?”

And I very clearly remember sitting in my therapist’s cramped office and weeping when I remembered At Last, weeping because I remembered the way he picked himself up, the way he shed all that darkness and embraced this new and beautiful life with his wife and children. He rendered the venom useless, he was finally victorious.

But again, me being me, and Patrick being my Patrick, I was doing a book-by-book comparison with my life. I had this running list in my head:

Book 1- Never Mind- Patrick, aged 5. It begins, he escapes into the gecko. Me, aged 5. It began, I escaped into creating characters in my head to escape.

Book 2- Bad News- Patrick, early 20’s. Addictions galore. Ishtar, early 20’s. Addictions galore.

Book 3- Some Hope- Patrick- late 20’s. Law school. Wants to stop existing and start living, tired of hating. Ishtar- late 20’s….well, I’m late 20’s right now. Law school, want to live, tired of hating.

Book 4 and Book 5— early 40’s Patrick……..But I’m still 28.

So I saw the last two books as like a prediction to how I’ll end. Slipping and sliding through sobriety, failing at being a mother and wife, at being a daughter and sister, failing at being me because I haven’t been able to let go.

In my previous post about Mother’s Milk I talked about my inability to connect to the book but the 5th resonated with me.

Mother’s Milk Patrick, I’m starting to understand, hurt me deeply. He let me down.

He was this example for me. Like I got to Some Hope and I was like “okay. Good. Good! This is REALLY good. This means I’m going to be okay. This means I’m going to live through all these memories and nightmares and all my failures.”

In the beginning of Mother’s Milk I had the sense of “okay! He’s married! He has a family! He’s having babies! Good! That means that by the time I’m his age, since everything else has held true….then I’m going to have a family of my own too.”

And then he slipped. And he broke my heart.

Darling please don’t drink, for us.

He led me down. He led me down big time, because if Patrick slipped and fell, then that was my inventible fate…Weird thinking ain’t it?

But that’s the way it is.

Don’t give up. Hold on a little longer. It gets better.

It has too.

The last book was…weird for me in A LOT of ways.

I don’t deal with death very easily or at all. I know most people don’t but…I’ll explain in a bit.

I’ve told people that I thought I could trust and gotten a horrendous response to my confession.

I’ve been obsessed with sex, understanding sex, understanding the difference between sex and intimacy in my own life, failing, and finding myself disgusted with the simplest touches.

And the tv adaptation caught something that I really appreciate—the resistance to touch. I’ve never verbally talked to anyone except my therapist about my past, I’ve mentioned it in passing to my sister and friends. But even if I’m just thinking about what happened, I can’t stand the idea of being touched. I hate being touched, I really do. If you ever meet me in real life, do not be offended that I don’t like being touched. Like, even if I’m sitting on the couch with someone I adore, and their thigh is touching mine just because we’re squished together, I will contort my body so that we’re not touching.

I can’t stand it.

And I like that the TV showed it, when he’s with Mary and telling her about his rage.

Death—

I’ve emphasized this a few times but I want to again—I have a great relationship with my parents. I don’t tell them everything but I confide most things in them. I worship the ground they walk on but they are human, and like all parents, they gave me some baggage.

As an adult, as someone both paranoid and curious about why I am the way I am, I’ve come to recognize that I had massive anxiety as a child. This anxiety in children usually manifests itself in the child’s inability to let go. I get teased, to this day, about the fact that I would cry if mom had to throw away an old pair of shoes or an old, broken tie. The concept of good-bye, of being deprived of someone/something was unbearable. I remember sitting in the spider infested attic alone in Iran one time, weeping, because I knew my parents had thrown away a pair of shoes that were completely useless. We also lived with my grandparents back then, and they were in their 80’s when I was born—beautiful, inspiring souls, I adored them. But my grandma would inadvertently say things that all the old women in my culture and most Middle Eastern cultures say, asking me what if I’d weep for her when she died, if I’d be sad. She wasn’t being malicious, she was just asking her youngest and favorite granddaughter about her reaction.

Instead of understanding from my parents, I got rolled eyes from them. They’d tuck me into bed between them, usually little spoon to mom’s big spoon, with dad’s lips pressed in a sleepy, mustachioed kiss to my forehead. They’d murmur sleepily that I shouldn’t worry about it, that I should just say my prayers, that it was all going to be okay. I’d fall asleep nestled between these two human beings that I love more than anything else, so secure in their love and comfort, and just have panic attacks about losing them someday.

Those grandparents passed away, out of my visual sight, in Iran a few years ago.

My other grandma, however, is a death that cut me very deeply.

I’ve always been this weird source of strength for my family and I have no idea why. I’m both my parents’ confidant, I always have been. If something’s bugging them, I’m the first person they turn to. So when my other grandma got extremely sick and slipped into a coma, my mom turned to me, and asked me if they should sign the DNR order.

I was 22.

I carried my family through that ordeal, making funeral arrangements…all the business of death because I didn’t want mom to go through it.

But that horrible, horrible anxiety tripled and quadrupled and I stay awake nights thinking about death. About the death of my loved ones, about death of my enemies, about my own death.

With everything happening these past few weeks, I’m going to admit that I have been suicidal in the past. When Patrick in At Last talks about being on the motorway or being in a tall building and wondering if the fall would be fatal…I’ve done that and I have bad days when I do that. It’s with…shame and terror at my own thinking that I admit the first thing I thought of when I moved to San Francisco was that I’m by the ocean, I live by a cliff, there are three bridges in my vicinity, the university is six stories tall, and even my own flat is high enough.

And the only reason I haven’t taken advantage of a tall building is I can’t do that to my mom and dad.

My best friend and I have weird sense of humor- my Jonny that I always go on about. Just like Patrick and his Johnny, we joke about death all the time. But sometimes I wonder if he realizes I’m not completely kidding…

So, I live, and I kept the promise to myself and I’ve found the light.

It flickers, but it’s there.

Just hang on darling, one more night. The sun’s going to shine again tomorrow, I promise. I swear.

Don’t give up.

So imagine my reaction when Patrick ends up in the suicide ward…There was a sense of “hmm, maybe I’m ahead of schedule?” and “shit! I’m gonna end up there too!”

As far as suicide, I’m ahead of schedule, I promise.

But how the fuck do you deal with death??? 

The Confessions

One of the most…nightmarish things I read in the book was Patrick’s confession to Eleanor that he’d been raped, and her response of “me too.”

Like what the fuck.

Christ this is gonna be a long post if I have to go into it….

I can’t forgive Eleanor, as much as I can’t ever forgive David.

Eleanor was raped and abused too, but she wasn’t a helpless 5-year-old kid.

I can’t accept any excuses for her. Patrick may have forgiven her but I really can’t.

When my need for verbal vomit and endless confessions started, I had this weird mental list of people I’d tell.

Jonny, by default. And everyone else kinda started popping up randomly, and I mean these people from my real life. My sister was a last minute surprise, so was my other best friend.

My other sister…she’s being proven a disaster…As some of you know, I’m getting a Patrick Melrose tattoo in a few weeks time and I’ve been having fun trying to figure out how I’ll justify it to people—especially my parents. But this unknowing sister of mine is going to be the one that protests the most, and I don’t know what to tell her. Do I just ask her to read the books again so I can gauge her reaction? Or do I just say “never mind” and walk away?

There are two other people that I’ve told that left me….bleeding, and so disappointed.

One is a cousin that’s more like a sister and my best friend. She’s pretty close to me in age but older. We’ve told each other pretty much everything since we were kids. We’re partners in crime. If I find a way to get into trouble, she’s always along for the ride. Everyone in the family just thinks of us as being joined at the hip. So during the verbal vomit, I went to her house because she’s a BC addict too and we used to have marathons (you’ll see in a moment why I’ve retracted from this great love of mine). She was in the kitchen, and this is a week after I started therapy, and she studies psychology by the way. We were chattering and gossiping nonstop like we always do, and I felt the words, the confession bubble through me in an unstoppable force. She would be the second person I was going to tell…and I basically just blurted it out, and told her why I was so angry when I found out they’d invited all three of my rapists to her wedding. She didn’t really say anything, just raged for a bit and we dropped the subject. When the craziness with Patrick Melrose started though, I ran to her first, and I told her that I was reacting this passionately and it was scary and could she please just listen to me.

You know what she said?

“Just stop thinking about it. Bad things happen to everyone. Just stop thinking about it.”

She shut me down, and I don’t know if she’s realized that I’ve completely shut her out too.

I share my joys with her, and she still turns to me when she needs an ear to chew but I haven’t had a real conversation with her ever since that day. I can’t trust her anymore, it still stings to get shut down like that.

I like the basic principal, I would LOVE to stop thinking about it but...it’s not that easy. 

The other disappoint was another friend, a former lover who has become a friend anyway. I emailed her my story, and she responded with an email that was more about her than me. But I forced sympathy between the lines and took it for myself, even though it wasn’t there. But she did reassure me that she would be there for me, no matter what, always and forever.

And when I couldn’t help being overcome by what has been happening as I heal…I sent her a text in a manic, panicked state, begging for a kind word, for some love, for some sympathy because I was trapped, and she was the only lifeline…

I got the most generic response from her “Oh, I’m so sorry” and that was it.

I had to shut her away too.

Hold me, love me, kiss me, hug me. never let go but darling I can’t stand your touch right now. Go away but stay…make it stop.

I have friends in this community now that I can turn to, that have made me swear to text them if I needed them and they are…beautiful, amazing life savers. And I dunno what I’d do without you guys, especially SBO and @stlgeekgirl​. Like you two? Muh fuckin’ lifesavers, straight up.

I also have my bestie. I wasn’t sure how she’d react. She teases me endlessly about my love for Cumberbatch (although her nickname for him is not at all flattering or worth repeating. She replaces the A with an I…) so I felt compelled to explain to her. Now she’s the one that I run to and she’s always there, waiting with open arms.

A few days ago (holy shit, yesterday—Friday), I woke up with a memory, that there is a picture out there of the day it started happening. I was convinced that the picture was real, taken at some family function, the day I was raped for the first time…and I found it. And I sent it to her, crying with my hands shaking and she lamented the fact that I looked distraught in the picture and my mom looked like she was trying to soothe me.

And she talked to me, and she talked me through it, and she made sure I was talked out before getting me to talk about the tattoo.

When Edward St. Aubyn talked about his mother’s reaction, and when it was brought to life on screen…I can’t begin to imagine what it was like for ESA to hear that from his mother. To have years of torture be so brazenly acknowledged and dismissed in a single breath. What happened to me wasn’t as horrendous as his experience, but I felt the pain, I’ve felt the dismissal. There’s a sense of betrayal. You can physically feel your heart breaking with disappointment.

Confession is not a light or easy thing.

I don’t skip around and just tell everyone I was raped by my cousins as a child. That’s not how it works.

When I want to tell someone about it, a family member or a friend, it’s a piece of trust in that person that is…beyond this world. It’s the hardest thing I can do. So to have that kind of reaction be your solace?

I can’t forgive ESA’s mother nor Eleanor.

 Sex—

For those who have read my writing it might come as a shock that I’m a bit of a prude in real life when it comes to sex. Well, sex with men…we’ll leave the other half unspoken of for now.

Being touched and getting touched…I can have the love of my life on top of me, telling me he wants me, that he loves me, and I’ll suddenly be frozen with fear and need him to back off and let me catch my breath. For me, for my brain, that’s how it happens.

Just imagine how terrible it is though—you crave someone’s touch, their body, the very air in their lungs, the beating of their heart in their chest, the heat of their bodies, the salt of his skin…you lay awake nights, your legs sawing beneath your blankets, imagining his breath in your ear

And when he’s actually there?

You need to push him away.

That’s me.

I’ll sit somewhere, I’ll chat up whoever (my love life is long and complicated so let’s not go into all of that right now) and I’ll imagine having sex with them with the same clarity and determination as Patrick. But when push comes to shove, I can’t handle being touched.

Will I ever tell the love of my life why I need him to physically stay away from me after months and months of separation?

I don’t know.

I’ve been on a murder mystery docuseries kick lately after filling my head with the Bar…I watched The Keepers on Netflix (Don’t watch unless you have a strong stomach!) and one of the women who was talking about her abuse was talking about how she was deprived, by her abuser, of her mother’s confidence and trust in her mother’s ability to keep her safe.

That struck me and I’ve been wrestling with it and trying to figure out if I have any blame that I might be parceling out to my parents, that they somehow let this happen.

But I can’t find it there, and for that, at least, I’m grateful.

Patrick Melrose has been a revelation.

I’ve always been really good with words and expressing myself bur he gave me a starting point, multiple starting points, to start conversations that needed to be had.

It’s the strangest feeling to be able to send someone a clip of the show and be like “I do that! I literally do that all the time. I feel like that, all the time! Remember that one time I nearly pushed so-so off the chair cuz they tried to touch me? Yeah! See?”

 But what At Last did for me was serve as a reminder that if I’m meant to parallel Patrick’s life forever, then I’ll find my peace eventually too.

One thing that REALLY struck me was an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch a few days ago where he says he hopes the show will remind people that “it’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be ok” and started reciting the lyrics of the song “come on come on come on get through this”.

I don’t think BC knows how much that meant to me.

I hope he finds out some day.

SO GUESS WHAT

I WATCHED THE EPISODE

I WEPT

FOR TWO HOURS STRAIGHT

THEN I WENT OUT AND RAN

I HOPED IT WOULD RAIN TO HIDE MY TEARS

BUT THERE’S NO HIDING NOW BABY

THERE’S NO HIDING NOW

LIVE IN THE SUNSHINE

STEP OUT INTO IT

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE PAST

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARKNESS

I STAND HERE AS A REMINDER THAT IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY

THAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE OKAY

THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

I GUARANTEE IT

I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT

I’VE FELT ITS WARMTH

I’VE TASTED ITS JOY

HANG ON

IT’S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.

AND WHEN THE DARKNESS GETS TOO MUCH, I’M HERE FOR YOU.

JUST LIKE MY FRIENDS HAVE BEEN THERE FOR ME.

PATRICK MELROSE HAS GIVEN ME A TONGUE, A PLATFORM, A LANGUAGE, A STRENGTH TO KEEP TELLING MY STORY AND ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO SHARE THERES.

YOU’RE NOT ALONE.

DON’T EVER THINK YOU ARE.

I might add to this because none of this makes any goddamn sense, but you know what?

I just took a deep breath.

[woodworkingpastor]

He left them. Matthew 21:12-17 April 14, 2019 (Palm Sunday)

Call to Worship  based on Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,

“Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.  And he will send them immediately.”

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying,

“This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Prayer of Invocation

Jesus, our Lord, you did not profit from your oneness with God, but emptied yourself to become servant to all humanity. You humbled yourself to lift us out of sin’s grave.  This week we have a front row seat to remember that work and claim our true identity as children of God, created in in the image of God, saved by the grace of God.

You are our Lord!  Amen.

I will confess that I’ve never been a huge fan of Palm Sunday.  I can’t really explain why that might be.   It might have to do with a Palm Sunday in the late 1970’s when the children were all given Palm branches to lay down on the center aisle as we processed into church.  Being kids, we all wanted to be the last in line, so we could walk on all the palm branches.  But I was one of the younger and shorter ones, which meant I was near the front of the line and only got to walk on a few of the branches.

So maybe I’m not a fan of Palm Sunday because my eight or nine-year old self is still pouting that he didn’t get his way on a Palm Sunday some 40 years ago.

But I’d like to think it’s because this passage sets off a week’s worth of difficult questions that are easier avoided by sticking with what we think is happening in this text instead of dealing head on with what is actually happening here.  I mean it’s Jesus, and he’s leading a parade, and then he goes into the temple and kicks out all the bad guys who are making it hard to worship God.  And the majestic hymns that were inspired by Jesus’ entry help fuel our misunderstandings.  It’s almost as if we look at this text and see Jesus-as-Super Hero, a character destined to be the focus of comic books and action figures who arrives on the scene to save us from all that threatens us so we can go on living our lives the way we always have, untroubled by the bad things.  Truth, justice, and the American way, Grandma and apple pie and all of that.  What’s not to love?!

The difficulty is that Jesus always does one of two things when he arrives: he either turns things upside down, or he is turns things right side up. And it can be easy to miss which one of those things is happening in our lives. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies.  Daughter, your sins are forgiven. ��On and on it goes.  Jesus doesn’t fit into our preconceptions; he has come to see the people and circumstances that we overlook or simply choose not to see. If we look at this passage and see Jesus the Super Hero, then we’re missing the point.

Once Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, the crowds begin asking a question: “Who is this?” It’s a question that should always be on our lips.  “Who is this Jesus?” What does Jesus see that we might overlook—or choose to ignore?

Cleansing the Temple

We typically think of the “Triumphal Entry” on Palm Sunday, but in Matthew’s Gospel the cleansing of the temple is also a Palm Sunday event.  Because we’ve both read and sung about the Triumphal Entry this morning, I want to make a different choice today and focus on the so-called cleansing of the temple.  There’s a good chance that we know the basics of the story: Jesus goes into the temple and causes quite a ruckus: he drives out those who are buying and selling sacrificial animals and overturns the tables of the money changers. But what is interesting about that description is what is not said: Matthew does not record anyone getting angry about this. It seems almost certain that some did, but we’re not specifically told anything about people being angry until later. So maybe we want to ask ourselves, “why did people get angry at Jesus?”

Let’s back up just a bit.  When Jesus goes into the temple, he finds exactly what he thought he’d find: the temple bureaucracy was functioning well that day, up and running for all the people who would come to Jerusalem for Passover.  Temple worship functioned on animal sacrifice, and there were very prescribed God-given rules for what condition the animals had to be in.  There were a lot of reasons why you probably weren’t going to bring your own animal for the sacrifice: it needed to be certified as unblemished, and it just wasn’t terribly convenient to travel with livestock. So people bought these once they arrived.  But to do that, you needed the right kind of money; Jewish sacrifices could not be purchased with Roman money. That means the first thing that Jesus or anyone else would encounter were the buyers and the sellers and the money changers.

No one seemed to think that this was a problem, and we might overlook the issue ourselves because we really don’t have anything similar to it in our faith practice. About the closest thing I’ve ever come to is a (very, very) few people who object to any kind of buying or selling in the church, that things like yard sales or spaghetti suppers or even renting out the fellowship hall to outside groups isn’t something churches should do.  I’ve never thought to ask if this Scripture is the reason why they thought that.

That’s not the issue here.  Jesus tells us the issue is that “My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers.”  The maintenance of worship had become a hindrance to worship, specifically to the poor.  Matthew mentions that Jesus overturned the “seats of those who sold doves.”  First century ears would have perked up at this detail that we easily overlook.  Doves were a substitute offering for those who were too poor to buy a lamb.  It is what Mary brought at the offering for her purification from childbirth after Jesus was born.  There were lots of animals available for sacrifices; the fact that Matthew only mentions the doves is significant—but put a thumbtack in that point for now, we’ll come back to it in a minute.

It is interesting to me to consider that Jesus doesn’t get in trouble for this. In fact, after he overturns all the tables, he doesn’t leave.  He is immediately surrounded, not by temple police, but by the blind and the lame, and he cures them.  People see the lives that are transformed and they begin shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David.”  This is when people get angry.

How could people possibly be upset by this?  Because over the years, the blind and the lame had become excluded from temple worship. I think we sometimes forget just how long a time span the Bible covers; over the course of about 1,100 years, a provision of the OT law that excluded blind and lame priests from serving in the temple had come to be applied to anyone who was blind and lame from entering the temple for worship. But here they are, people who WERE blind and lame (an important distinction!) worshipping Jesus as Lord in the temple something the temple authorities identified as blasphemy. They can’t see anything that is good or proper or acceptable here.

I’ll leave it up to your imagination to decide how much time passes in this scene. We don’t know, so let’s just say 30 minutes or an hour.  It just doesn’t matter. Because when we go back and pull the thumbtack out of that point about the poor and bring it into the discussion, we see that in just a very few minutes, Jesus has upended hundreds of years of worship expectations.  The barriers that kept the poor, the blind, and the lame from the worship of God have been removed.

On the first “Palm Sunday,” the wrong people are in the wrong place worshiping the wrong person as God.  This is what makes people angry.  Bureaucracies inevitably overlook the so-called little people of the world, but Jesus does not. Jesus always has time for those others have forgotten, so that the Kingdom of God may exist in all its fullness.

He left them.

As with some other texts we’ve encountered over the last several weeks, we would do well to stop and ask ourselves, “Who are we in this story?” The reason that’s important is because the chief priests and scribes confronted Jesus, they did so with literally a thousand years of religious authority on their side. It’s easy to think that we would be one of those persons rejoicing with Jesus, waving palm branches and rejoicing amongst the overturned tables and escaping animals and the now-seeing blind and the now-dancing lame.  But if our familiarity of this week’s events teach us anything, its that we wouldn’t be these people.  We are more likely to be Peter arguing about having his feet washed, or the crowd shouting for Barabbas, or the many who abandoned Jesus as he was tortured and crucified.  

What I don’t like in this text is our tendency to be too triumphalistic with it. We look at the people shouting and waving palm branches and Jesus making wrong things right and say, “Yay Jesus!” We like to think we’d choose Jesus’s side, making room for all the overlooked people of the world, but too often we end up pouting like some nine year-old kid who didn’t get to walk over all the palm branches in worship, because we sure our understanding of things is the correct one.

So maybe the most significant verse in this passage is the beginning of verse 17: “He left them.”  It might be nothing more than a transition, but maybe there’s a hint of condemnation and judgment—something like those times when our mom or dad sat us in a chair and said, “You just sit there for a while and think about what you’ve done.” Instead of rejoicing over healing; instead of considering that Jesus might be the one for whom they have been waiting, the authorities only have words of judgment.  So Jesus leaves them, hopefully to ponder what they have just seen and hear.  Visible evidence of the Messiah’s presence right in front of them, and they miss it.

Our worship this week takes us to some very familiar places.  Can we hear the Scripture with fresh ears?  How do your eyes, and mine, need to be opened this week?

[carterconlon]

Old Men Shall Dream Dreams by Carter Conlon

Download PDF of "Old Men Shall Dream Dreams"

"And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). You and I are living in the last days, which means that these wonderful promises are for us. In fact, the last days actually began on the day of Pentecost. It was on that day that the apostle Peter confirmed the words spoken by the prophet Joel. The time had come when God would interact in a supernatural way through all who turned to Him.

So what are some of the ways God will do this? Let's start by looking at the first part of the verse: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." The word "prophesy" in the original text means to declare truths through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

I have personally experienced this. For example, I remember as a young man being sent to Police College. The curriculum included a public speaking course and I was the only novice in a classroom full of seasoned public speakers. But each time I had to speak, I prayed, and God's Holy Spirit came on me as I spoke on Bible topics. It was amazing!

The last assignment was a thirty minute presentation which would determine whether you passed or failed the course. Before it was due, I was called in and told, "Carter, you are a nice guy; we really like you. But this is not an evangelistic association; it is a Police College. You cannot pass your final exam unless you speak on a police topic."

I was terrified! I knew it was only the anointing of God's Spirit that enabled me to speak thus far. But would God anoint me to talk about the preservation of a crime scene?

The next day when it was my turn to speak, I got up and said, "Today I am going to speak about a police topic: the Bible. When we get up to testify in a court of law, we are asked to put our hand on a Book and say, 'I swear, based on what is in this Book, that what I am about to say is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.' Don't you think it is important to know what we are swearing to?"

Everybody agreed, "Yeah, I guess so." So I started in Genesis and went through to Revelation. Thirty minutes on the dial, I said, "He is coming back as King of kings and Lord of lords!"

At the end of the meeting, they were supposed to evaluate me based on eye contact, voice intonations, hand gestures—but nobody did any of that. Everybody looked at me and, one after another, said, "I have never heard anything like that in my whole life!" One guy commented, "Boy, have you ever given me something to think about!" Another said, "Wow, this is what I am swearing to when I put my hand on the Bible?"

I went in there filled with fear, yet by the end, the instructors even asked if I would be interested in coming back to teach the course! That is what God can do! He enables us to declare His truth in a divine way through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS

The verse goes on to say, "Your young men shall see visions." The word "visions" means inspired appearances. I have seen visions, which tend to come to me like snapshots—often when I least expect them. One occurred during service as I was worshiping. Pastor David Wilkerson was beside me, and suddenly God gave me a picture of him going all over the world, standing before other pastors who had fallen onto the ground in despair. He was holding a censer, which indicates worship and prayer, and as he stood before them, they started to rise up. They began to give God glory again as hope and courage returned to their hearts.

I leaned over to Pastor David and said, "The Lord has just shown me that He is going to send you all over the world to speak to pastors." Pastor David leaned back and said, "Well, He hasn't spoken that to me yet."And I said, "Well, I can only tell you what He has shown me."

A year later, Pastor David launched out on what became a fifty-six-nation tour, speaking to tens of thousands of pastors. In one particular meeting, there were from eight to ten thousand people gathered, and everyone in the whole stadium went down onto their faces—even the maintenance people in the back—as the presence of God came so powerfully! When they rose to their feet, they were encouraged. They were worshiping again, exactly as God had shown me.

THE GRANDFATHER SIDE

I have given prophecies, I have seen visions, and now the Lord has reserved the best for last: This old man is beginning to dream dreams! That is the third promise. And while I can honestly say that I have had more in my life than my heart could wish for, now that I am "Papa" to eight wonderful grandchildren, I get to experience a side of God that I have never known before.

We see this side of God in the book of Genesis. "Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name" (Genesis 2:19). This is the grandfather side of God! God created this man Adam out of the dust and then He created all the animals and brought them to him.

A father would say, "Adam, this is a giraffe, now remember that."But a grandfather would say, "Adam, what do you think we should call this?" And the Scripture says that whatever Adam called every living creature, that is what they are today!

I have the privilege of experiencing this wonderful side of God. You see, Mom and Dad represent the law. "Get up in the morning. Brush your teeth. Where are your books? Put on your good shoes. Eat your supper!"That's Mom and Dad!

I have been there; I understand the necessity. It is the legal side of God that says, "Touch not, taste not, handle not" (see Colossians 2:21). "Be careful crossing the road. Don't do this; don't say that."It is the legal side, and moms and dads have to go through that.

But Papa and Grammy get to represent grace—the other side of God! I have a closet in a home we go to in the summertime that I have turned into "Papa's Store." It is filled with candy from top to bottom—Oh Henry! bars, gummy worms, Jujubes, Swedish Fish! At the end of each day, if everybody has behaved, they get to go to Papa's Store and have a handful of whatever they want.

Mom and Dad say, "Eat your brussel sprouts!" But Papa and Grammy get to say, "Ice cream? How much do you want? How about a double scoop cone?"

Just the other night, our grandchildren were jumping on the bed. Now we would never let our kids do that. "You are going to wreck the mattress! You are going to fall and get hurt!"But now we say, "See if you can go higher! If something breaks, it's no big deal!"

You see, I believe that is the way God intended to reveal His character: through the family. And maybe you do not have family, but remember, you are in another family now—the Body of Christ. You get to be Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa here in the Body of Christ!

DIVINE REVELATIONS

So, what exactly are these dreams that old men dream? Why are they considered supernatural? The commentator Matthew Henry says these dreams are divine revelations. In other words, as Jesus said of the Holy Spirit: "He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:13-14)

Divine revelations are when God speaks to your heart about the future of not only your children, but of your grandchildren. He will tell you things that He is about to do in and through your family—especially regarding the little ones He has put in your care. These are whispers of God! For example, the Lord promised me years ago that my family will be known for missions long after I am gone. I do not know in what capacity, and I thank God I do not have to make it happen. As the Lord reminded me, "Carter, if you have to make it happen, it is no longer a promise. This is a promise: Your family will be known for missions."

Your old men shall be given these divine revelations! We have more power as grandparents than you and I realize. God gives us the power to speak into the lives of the next generation. He gives us the power to tell them what God is going to do; the plans that He has—especially if we take the time to pray.

It says it this way in the book of Malachi: "I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord [which we read about in Acts chapter two], and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:6).

In other words, your words have the power to break any curse of sin this world would like to use to captivate your family or those over whom you have influence. I believe that is why the devil has tried to sow selfishness into the Body of Christ, knowing that if our hearts are turned only to ourselves, we lose that power and vision God was willing to give us for the future. However, when our hearts are turned to the children—when we do not see them as just something to be babysat but rather regard them as tomorrow's Church and the future of this nation—we have the power to break the curse of sin on the earth.

What a phenomenal thought! There is incredible power in your speech when you walk with God and your heart is not all about yourself. You are not thinking only about your retirement and your own comfort. Rather, your heart is toward your children and your grandchildren; toward other children whom God has put under your influence. As you are thinking about them, praying for them, living for them, suddenly the divine begins to flow through your life. Those are the dreams the old men begin to dream!

You do not have to make them up; God will simply begin to speak to and through you. And it does not have to be outlandish. It might simply be, "You will be very courageous. You will have a heart for people. Just let God do what He wants to do in your life."

I am entering that stage of my life now, and it is the best. I have preached to five hundred thousand people. I have been in the homes of two presidents; I have traveled. It has been amazing, but nothing beats this! This is what makes growing old the most joyful thing. I see things in my grandchildren—good things. God gives me the ability to speak these things into their lives.

THE POWER OF A WORD

Growing old in the world is fearful—it is all about aches and pains, and your kids are just trying to decide how to look after you. But in the Body of Christ, power is given to old age! It is a power beyond prophesying and seeing visions, as those things are generally about larger events. But at the end of life, it is about the people whom you love. It is about the ones closest to you—those whom God has put under your care. It is about nephews and nieces, grandchildren, or that mother and her three kids across the hall.

That is what it is all about! When you get old in the Body of Christ, you do not have to curl up and die. You start living! And so our cry must be, "Oh, God, turn our hearts to the children of this generation! No matter how far away they might seem, show us their future. Give us the courage to speak into their lives and leave a lasting impact."

It is amazing when you realize that you have the power of speech to make a difference in somebody's life. I remember as a young Christian in my early twenties, I went through a season when I felt like a failure. I had so many struggles in my life, and I ended up under this cloud of despair for a couple of months, feeling that I would never change.

One day I was out with an older police officer named Doug who happened to be a Christian. "What's wrong with you?"he asked.

"I'm just so discouraged," I explained. "I feel like a failure. I want to be different, but it's just hopeless."

He looked at me and said, "That is just the devil trying to condemn you. But there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk after the Spirit, not after the flesh. I know you want God, so let's just put that thing away."

To this day, I still remember those words that he spoke over my life! They were not especially profound; he did not open a text in the Bible. It was simply an older man speaking into a younger man's life, and it enabled me to get up again.

That is the power God is giving you now! It is the power to speak to your family; to make a difference in a generation of young people. He is giving you the power to live for the benefit of others, beginning in your own home. Whether or not your children are still at home or your grandchildren are close by, you still have that power. You can make a phone call. You can write a card if your children are not speaking to you.

Perhaps in the past, your words were not what they should have been. But this can be a new day. Despite our flaws and frailties, God remains faithful and will empower us to speak to the next generation.

Remember, all children in the Body of Christ belong to us, not just our own physical lineage. There are also many out in the streets who belong to God and just do not know it yet. But He will give us the power to get up and go get them. So let's take this promise given to the prophet Joel—this mark of the supernatural that "your old men shall dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). We simply have to choose to dream these dreams to their fullest; to take the deep deposit the Lord has sown into each of our lives and speak a word in season to a troubled heart.

Let's display God's power and make Him known to this next generation!

This newsletter is an edited version of "OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS," a sermon given on March 19, 2017 in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in New York City. Other sermons are available by visiting our website at tsc.nyc. You are welcome to make additional copies of this sermon for free distribution to friends. However, for all other forms of reproduction or electronic transmission existing copyright laws apply. This sermon cannot be posted on any website or webpage without permission from Times Square Church. Unless otherwise noted, all scripture references are from the New King James Version.

[divinelydivorced]

My Mom

In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to share my gratitude and overwhelming love for my mother.  Her and I couldn’t be more different, which is devastating, because I’d do anything to be even half the woman she is today.  She’s meek and mild, kind and welcoming, overflowing with patience. If you met her briefly or know very little about her, these qualities have less weight.  But those of you who’ve gotten to know her and her story, must hold these traits with the same esteem I do.  

My mother always made me feel loved.  I still remember her dropping me off at Kindergarten, me sobbing and refusing to go in.  It got so bad, she wouldn’t even walk me inside, hoping my tears were only for show and the minute she was out of sight, I’d be fine.  But, after the teacher kept finding me with tear-stained cheeks, hiding in the hallway, my mom couldn’t stand it any longer.  She got a job as a teacher’s aide in my classroom, dropped my brother off at daycare, and spent the day with me so we wouldn’t be apart. While this may seem extreme, I have to tell you, there are times now when I wish I could cry enough that she’d quit her job and come spend all day following me around.

She insists during my teenage years I’d scream at her from the top of the stairs and slam my door.  I, conveniently, have no recollection of this.  In my mind, there has never been a moment when I didn’t have anything but unending love for her.  I adored college, relished in my freedom.  But each time I came home from break, the night before returning, I’d lay my head in her lap and cry at the thought of having to leave her again. She’d run her hands through my hair and assure me once I got back with my friends I’d forget about her.  Not true.

There has never been anything I had to keep from her. All my dark secrets have been laid at her feet.  She’s never judged me or criticized me.  Sometimes she looks at me a little too long in silence but the words out of her mouth are always one of support and comfort.  

In fact, the only time I remember her being very upset with me was when I was moving from Michigan.  She showed up the night before and arrived to find I hadn’t packed.  Her, my grandma, and two friends spent the entire evening boxing up my things and loading them into the van.  Her and my friend would be laughing, then when they’d see me, I’d get icy cold glares. At the end of the night, she shoved the van door closed, put both hands on my shoulders and said in all seriousness, “Lisa, I love you.  But don’t ever do this again.”  To this day, I start packing twelve weeks prior to my move date, spending the last two weeks eating take-out and re-wearing the same clothes.

That’s one of my favorite qualities of my mom. She always reminds me that she loves me. It’s not just at the end of a phone call when most of us throw it in.  But she’ll send me cards fully expressing her love or will slowly and deliberately say it aloud at different moments.  One time after a trip when she ventured up to the city on her own, as we were saying our goodbyes, she hugged me tightly and said sweetly, directly into my ear, “Lisa, I love you.  (Pause) But I hate this city.”  Then, as if it’s something everyone must say before being let out of Chicago, she simply got in the car and drove off.

She’ll be the first to tell anyone I always have grand plans.  She learned soon not to panic because ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them will never come to fruition.  When I insisted I was buying a tiny house, she told me I could park it in her back yard. Upon hearing about my yoga business, she bought me a dozen mats.  After spending years finding and mastering new allergy- friendly recipes to make for me when home, I announced I was no longer eating meat.  She cried.  But the next time I came home, she’d printed off a whole slew of Pinterest recipes and shoved soup and gluten free pasta in every form in front of me.  

Heart break after heart break, she has listened patiently as I’ve talked about another guy who has left me damaged and scarred.  She even texted one of them recently, writing things I did not know my mother was capable of thinking, let alone saying.  Shocked, I asked her why she did it, and she said, “There were so many times when I never stood up for you and should have.  I wasn’t going to let this be one of those times.”  

Then, when I’d, inevitably and stupidly, return to one of those guys, even though she knew I was setting myself up for further despair, she didn’t say a word.  She’d ask questions, listen, and after it all finally came to a horrible end, she’d never say she told me so.  She’d act just as surprised as I, literally, was and say how sorry she was for me.  

She’s put her foot down few times, so when it happens I know she is serious.  Once when I was unbelievably ill, she drove up, despite my objections, and nursed me back to health.  Recently when she wanted to offer me a gift I thought was too expensive, her voice got very shaky and she said the decision was made and she wouldn’t hear otherwise about it.  As a “But, mom-“ came out of my mouth, she started sobbing, causing me to relent. (I guess, maybe we do have something in common.)  

My vegan beliefs get a bit extreme at times, yet she never rolls her eyes or argues with me.  Instead, she does quite the opposite.  She lets me adopt a turkey in her honor every year for Thanksgiving and proudly totes the photo around at school, showing it off likes a new grandbaby. Last time she was here, and she saw how upset I was over a horse about to be slaughtered, she slipped me $25 and said to donate it to the next animal I found in need.  Once, I called her crying so hard words would barely come out. Terrified, she kept asking me what was wrong.  In broken words, choking back tears, I said, “They-are-killing-baby-chicks.”  Then I described a video I saw where thousands of baby chicks were having their necks snapped.  Instead of lecturing me on how she thought someone had died or that I was horribly hurt, she said, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry you had to see that and that it happens,” and just let me cry.  So many times I call crying over animals I can’t save and she can’t save, but when my heart breaks so does hers.  One time she even prayed on the phone with me for Stephanie the cow in need of rescue. She added Stephanie to her literal prayer list she keeps hanging up, and when I called to report Stephanie had been rescued, she rejoiced with me.  She does, however, refuse to fence in her yard and provide housing for rescue chickens, potbelly pigs, and goats yet, but I have high hopes.

Despite all she has done for me, I think the most she’s ever meant to me is now, during this phase of my life.  She is my biggest fan.  She always answers her phone-ALWAYS.  She reminds me I’m never alone, that I will survive, and that God has great things in store for me.  

My mother has experienced many trials. Shamefully, I often forget this fact, because she doesn’t wear her battles on her sleeves for all to see.   She doesn’t hide them but also doesn’t feel the need to proclaim them.  My life’s story could be a children’s book compared to what she’s lived through and seen.  Yet she is stronger today than she’s ever been.  Watching how she has handled all the tragedy and tribulation is a constant reminder that it’s not what we experience but how we handle it.  With grace and unshaking faith, she continues on in the full belief good will overcome evil.  I still remember coming home one day and finding her going through our childhood home, blaring Christian music throughout the house, and saying a prayer aloud in each room.  When I asked her what she was doing she said, based on some recent events, evil was trying to get inside, but there was no way she was letting it get us.  “If these demons think they’re staying, they are wrong. They’ll have to fight me first. No.  Not in my house,” she said, turned the music up louder and called out to God.  She looked insane.

But she wasn’t.  Evil had gotten into our house and despite its best effort to take us all down, she fought hard, eventually pulling herself out of its grasp, when so many of us would have succumbed.  Her bravery saved me.  It saved all of us.  I’ve never been prouder of her or more inspired by her.  My mom is a fighter, a champion, and a believer.  I may never have the privilege of being someone’s mother, but if I do, I hope I grow up to be just like her.

[michealsinclair]

Losing My Mother At 25 & Why Suffering Is Grace In Disguise

I'm writing this from grandmother's kitchen table in my hometown of Laurens, SC. My mother's birthday is today and I came home to celebrate with my family as I've often done in the past but this birthday will be different than all of the others I've experienced with her. This year I can't call her and joke with her about turning 21 for the 30th time.  I can't surprise her with flowers or a sweet card. There is chocolate cake here but it's what's leftover from what my grandmother baked for last Sunday's dinner, not a birthday cake. I won't see her smile or hear the voice that has calmed me more times than I can count. I won't be able to physically experience her at all this year because she passed away due to complications from Pancreatic Cancer in June of 2016. My mother was the third child my grandma has had to bury and honestly, I came home to be around her strength today. It's been nearly 7 months since my mother passed and the space between then and now has been filled with a lot of grief that I often don't know what to do with. This grief is preceded by about 2 years worth of confusion and guilt and depression and anxiety and anger and hopelessness and probably any other negative emotion that you can think of. I've suffered so much since that morning she called to give me the news. I definitely couldn't see it while going through it, but that suffering eventually led me to learning how to heal from the trauma of my past. That suffering brought me closer to my mom and closer to God than I've ever been. That suffering inspired creativity that I didn't know that I was capable of. That suffering led me to start questioning myself and everything I had ever been taught and has allowed me the grace to learn who I really am and become whole again.

I moved to Oklahoma City in August of 2013 to chase dreams of becoming a musician. I expected my mother to put up more of a fight when I told her the news that I was leaving but I think she knew how I felt about my hometown at that point. This would be my 2nd big move in less than a year -- the first being 16 hours away to Boston, MA and this one being 15 hours away.  She fought hard to keep me home before I moved to Boston, even going so far as to put my weeping 10 year old brother on the phone to beg me to stay home after I called and told her that I was considering a job offer up there.  But this time there was not much resistance from him or her. So off to OKC I went, guilt free, and started what would end up being one of the most magical experiences of my life but it certainly didn't feel like magic all the time. In fact, it's in Oklahoma City that I first learned that my mom had cancer. As if hearing that kind of news from your mom isn't enough to make you feel awful, imagine hearing it while also being 1000 miles away from home and not being able to hold her and console her when she told you. What do you say to your mother when she calls you bawling with news like that? I don't know and didn't know then so I lied and told her everything would be alright. I told her that we would beat it. I told her not to worry about the statistics that the doctors gave her because statistics had never applied to us before so why would they start applying to us now? I held it together as best I could on the phone because I assumed that I needed to be strong but as soon as we hung up, I lost it. I'm not sure the words "terror" and "hopeless" accurately describe what I felt in that moment. I didn't know what to do so I did what anyone else would do after hearing news like that, I got on the internet and started looking for ways to beat it. What I found instead were a lot of statistics that essentially said that we probably won't beat it. Statistics like, "95% of people diagnosed with PanCan die within 5 years of diagnosis". I've always been a glass half full kind of guy and it's really pretty hard to get me unhopeful about the future but I'm also a realist, and 5% is a slim margin. Not to mention, my mother's cancer was already in stage 4 when it was detected. These statistics haunted me everyday from the first day I read them. I've never felt more useless and hopeless than when talking to my mom who was suffering and not being able to make it better. Feeling useless was kryptonite to my superman complex. I needed to be in control and having no control in this situation made the pain so much worse. But eventually, through meditating and doing yoga, I began to forfeit control. I began to accept what is, instead of being so worried about what might be. I started living in the present and I stopped worrying about not having my mother in the future and instead switched my focus to appreciating her while she was here. Appreciating her fully -- something I should have done a long time ago but I needed tragedy to remind me of what I had.

Like most of the other relationships I have with the women in my life, my relationship with my mother was complicated. Also like most other women in my life, we had trouble communicating and often I felt like she'd hear something completely different than what I said. There was always a lot of love between us but I felt very misunderstood growing up and I think that contributed to the issues me and my mom had with communicating our feelings to each other.  When I was 11, my little brother was born and I became a self-made victim of middle child syndrome. I started to feel forgotten or at least secondary in the family and I think that's why in my teenage years and a few years beyond, I didn't feel as close to my mom.  I also always felt judged by her and everyone else in my family because my style, goals, and interests in general were different from most others in my family. Judging is a normal thing to do in my family but it always pushed me further away and made me feel more isolated. At home I'd often hear comments like "why'd you buy those ugly shoes?", "why do you like those tight pants?", "you need to shave that hair off your face", "those tattoos are ugly" and again, never were those comments meant to be harmful -- it's just the way some of my family members talk to each other but that stuff starts to get to you when it's coming from your family. I can brush off the judgements of strangers but it's different when it's coming from the people you've known the longest and are the closest to. Because I always felt judged by my family and because I couldn't stand my racist, closed-minded hometown, I couldn't wait to leave home for college. When I got to college, I didn't come home often at all even though I only lived about an hour away. I didn't realize it at the time but I later learned that my mom was hurt by this. Fast forward a few years to December of 2014, I came home from Oklahoma City to visit on Christmas break. It's worth mentioning that this is the first time I'm seeing my mom since she got sick and seeing how drastically she changed physically and it really impacted my mental state for the worse. At some point while being home my mom tells me that she doesn't like my hair which was in a natural (read: nappy) afro at the time. All she wanted was for me to comb it out and get it shaped up but I liked it how it was and I was such a hurt person back then and was so tired of feeling judged by them about how I chose to dress and live in general, so I decided to confront my sick mother about being judgmental right then and there. We got in an argument and I told her that the reason I couldn't wait to leave Laurens was because I felt like I was always being judged here. What she heard instead was that the reason I didn't come home was because she was always judging me and it really hurt her feelings. For sake of time, I'll leave out the gory details, but eventually me and mom finally had a talk about it all while I was still home for break. A talk that the little boy in me had been longing for a long time. A talk that eventually led to her being more accepting of me and of my little brother's budding uniqueness. We both apologized about that misunderstanding and other misunderstandings and we honestly have never been closer than from that point on. My mom was sick and suffering and I felt so bad for causing her more pain. But us finally talking about the pain she felt and the pain I felt brought us so much closer together. That pain tore down walls that were built over 2 and half decades and really gave me my first friend back, not just my mom.

Initially I felt like God was picking on me for no reason when my mom got diagnosed. Of course it was her who had the cancer, but I felt like I was being punished through her getting it. I remember being so angry at God. I couldn’t fathom the idea of how some superior being who supposedly is love and loves me unconditionally could allow my mother to contract one of the worst diseases known to man. My ego was literally offended -- I remember thinking that cancer wasn't supposed  to happen in my family even though my great aunt had just passed away from lung cancer a few years prior. Growing up, church was something I did because I felt like I was supposed to but always was repulsed by it deep down because I felt oppressed by it. By the time I left home for college, I felt like God was an authority figure always pointing the finger at me saying what he approved of and what he didn't approve of. I felt like he was always watching me but I wasn't really looking for him at that point in my life. I'd holla at him in a prayer when I was really down or if I wanted something, but other than that, I really didn't actively try to foster a relationship with God. I've always been spiritual so I thought about God often but usually as an afterthought.  When my mom got sick, I became so empty and so mad. The anger that I felt led me to begin a search for God. Not to beg him to heal my mom. I was more than done with seeing him in that regard. No, I began to search for God because I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. I began to search for God because I was pissed off not only about my mom, but also because of Mike Brown and all of the other unarmed black people being murdered in the street with impunity around the same time. I wanted to confront God about those evils and all of the other evils he allows in this world. I wanted a fight and had forfeited any fear I may have had of Hell because I felt like I was already living Hell everyday in not knowing how soon I was going to lose my mother. I'm happy to say that eventually I did find God. Not in the heavens but in my heart and not until I stopped looking for God with binoculars and started looking with a mirror. In that mirror I met the God that I always knew existed but had forgotten all about.  A God that is love so he would never punish you because where there is condemnation, there is judgement, and where there is judgement, there cannot be love. A God that would never hurt me, but allows pain because suffering is grace. Suffering is the sandpaper that transformed me from being an ignorant, ego-serving, self-absorbed, inconsiderate human being that I was into the person who is constantly working on bettering himself that I am today. The pain I endured made me more compassionate for the pain that I know that all sentient beings endure.  Suffering also taught me that if I continue to allow my external circumstances to effect my happiness, I'll never be happy because I can't always control my external circumstances but I can always control how I react to them.  

I've always liked that quote "smooth seas don't make for skillful sailors" but it took on new meaning to me while dealing with the storms that came along with my mom getting sick. Up until that point in my life, my happiness was directly correlated with what girl I was with, how much money I had, my relationships with friends and family, whether or not I felt like I was succeeding at life, and a ton of other circumstances that I don't have full control over.  For the first 6 months after hearing her tell me the diagnosis, I was depressed pretty much everyday. The anxiety was constant and at that time, I really didn't know what anxiety was, let alone how I could treat it. Now don't get me wrong, there were certainly days in which I experienced happiness but it always felt like that happiness was marked with an asterisk. That "happiness" was usually just pleasure in disguise that I was getting from the sex, drugs, and other vices I used to escape the pain. I felt guilty for enjoying anything while knowing that my mom was suffering everyday. My pain, which sucked while it was happening, now seems to have been absolutely necessary for my development. That pain led to my heart opening and allowed me to forgive myself and the people I felt had wronged me. That pain allowed me to consider if what I thought I knew about everything was wrong. That pain led me to meditate for the first time where I first met unconditional love and where I could successfully find solace from the constant neuroses of my mind.  While there's nothing I want more right now than to call my mother and congratulate her on another successful trip around the Sun, I know that she finds peace in knowing that her suffering and early death wasn't in vain. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you made to make me better, mama. Thank you for suffering and for the grace that your pain allowed me to heal. Thank you for waging hope against Pancreatic Cancer and for beating it everyday for 2 years.  I miss you but I'm so grateful that you don't have to hurt anymore and that you can continue to inspire without the burdens that this material world placed on you. I know that our parting, like all other things in this place, is temporary and I look so forward to being reunited with you again.

M.S.

This post originally appeared on michealsinclair.com

[nolimitsongrace]

July 1: Study To Be Quiet

Study To Be QuietJuly 1, 2020

And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business…. — 1 Thessalonians 4:11

When I was a young boy, Grandpa and Grandma Renner lived two blocks from our house. Almost every day, I’d go visit them. When I’d arrive at the back gate, I’d yell out, “Grandpa!” — knowing that he was probably somewhere in the backyard or doing something interesting in his garage. When he heard my voice, Grandpa would quickly appear from seemingly nowhere and cheerfully open the back gate so I could follow him to see what he was doing in the yard or garage.

I also always knew, without even asking, where I would most likely find Grandma Renner. I could almost be sure to find her talking on the telephone — a beige rotary telephone that sat right next to a notebook filled with the names and phone numbers of her dearest friends. I can vividly remember hearing her say, “Hello…this is Ethel….” Within minutes, the gossip would begin — something she was committed to as seriously as Grandpa was to his yard and garage! Then as soon as that conversation ended, she’d pick up her pencil, put the eraser end into the circles on the rotary dial, and begin dialing the next girlfriend on her list to start the whole gossipy conversation all over again.

*[If you started reading this from your email, begin reading here.]

There was Grandpa — working contentedly in the garage and minding his own business, fully satisfied. Meanwhile, Grandma was in hot pursuit of knowing everyone else’s business! As much as I loved Grandma, it was just a fact that she was continually repeating what she had just heard from someone else and expressing her opinions about people’s personal issues that were none of her business.

Unfortunately, talking about other people’s private affairs is a characteristic of the fallen human nature. I shudder to think how many people’s reputations have been scarred or stained because of false information spread from person to person by those who didn’t know what they were talking about or who really had nothing to do with the matter. Even if they had “inside information,” it still wasn’t their business.

This inclination of human nature to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong is not new. Two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul told the Thessalonians, “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business…” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). What does it mean to study to be quiet?

The Greek word for “study” is philotimeomai, a word that means ambition. This means Paul was actually telling readers to be ambitious about being quiet. Before we proceed further, let’s look deeper at this Greek word and learn more about what it means to you and me when used in conjunction with the idea of being quiet.

This word philotimeomai pictures an individual who is totally committed to obtaining or achieving a specific goal. He is determined to reach it, and he is enthusiastic about his pursuit of it. He has a strong, inward yearning to attain it that drives and motivates him — propelling him toward his goal. He is absolutely fixated on obtaining the object of his desire and will not stop until he gets it. He simply won’t let go of his commitment to attain it.

Although we usually think of ambition of this sort in a negative sense, Paul used it here in a positive context to describe a person who is totally committed to do whatever it takes to be “quiet.” The word “quiet” is the Greek word isuchadzo, which refers to keeping to your own business instead of prying into other people’s affairs. By using this word in this verse, Paul was calling on his readers to refuse to be busybodies. Someone whose behavior fits that description might be known for eavesdropping, snooping into other people’s business, intruding into others’ personal matters, prying into the affairs of others, and gossiping about other people. In other words, someone who behaved himself in this manner would definitely fall into the category of a busybody!

We are to follow Paul’s admonition: “Make it your ambition — that is, give it your fullest and most enthusiastic effort — to stay out of other people’s business.…” Then he continued, “…And to do your own business….” In other words, instead of poking around in matters that have nothing to do with us, we are to keep our mouths shut, keep our eyes from wandering, and focus on our own personal affairs. We don’t have a right to delve into the private matters of other people for whom we have no responsibility. In such cases, we need to take a firm stand and refuse to allow gossip or hurtful information to enter our ears. Period.

This must have been a problem for a few believers in the church of Thessalonica, because Paul addressed busybodies several times in his first letter to them. In each case, he reprimanded them, even telling others to disassociate with those who acted in such a manner.

Today I ask you to look at your own life and see if you need to make an adjustment in this area. If people were talking about and delving into your private affairs, wouldn’t you appreciate it if they stopped it — completely refrained from doing it? Of course you would! So I encourage you to decide today to obey these scriptures and give the same courtesy to others that you would want them to give to you.

And if there are people in your life who do this — those who try to use your ears as garbage receptacles to receive trashy information — politely tell them that you’re not going to listen any longer. This may offend them at first, but it will also make them think twice before they open their mouths. And remember, if people gossip about others to you, they won’t think twice about gossiping about you to others. It’s just so much better to obey God and determine to never let yourself get into that kind of conversational trap!

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Lord, I repent for the times I’ve allowed my tongue to communicate words ignited by the flesh and for giving place to devilish discussions that were not inspired by the Holy Spirit who indwells me. Words of gossip and slander proceed from a polluted heart. To speak such words destroys reputations and relationships — and taints the hearts of those who hear them. Holy Spirit, I ask You to cleanse me from all defilement and from twisted speech and inappropriate communication. Please set a watch over my lips and create in me a clean and quiet heart.

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I declare that life and death are in the power of the tongue. Therefore, I will not use my tongue to insert hell’s suggestions into people’s ears, but rather speak God’s will and promote God’s perspective. Because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, I choose to fill my heart with God’s words, and I cultivate a quiet spirit that is trained to wait upon God. I will heed His direction concerning when to speak, what to say, and when to remain silent. In that blessed quietness, confidence and discernment shall be my strength. I do not speak about or involve my opinion in matters that are none of my business. And I do not allow others to bring gossip to me wrapped in the guise of a prayer request. Like Jesus, I speak only the words I hear my Heavenly Father speak. His words are love-filled and life-producing, releasing health and strength in me and in the hearts of those who hear them.

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

Have you been guilty of talking about other people for whom you have no responsibility and therefore no reason to discuss their personal lives? If your answer is yes, what actions are you going to change as a result of reading today’s Sparkling Gem?

Often when people talk about others, they dress up their negative words in the guise of a prayer request. Isn’t it possible to address a prayer need without talking about another’s private affairs? How can you request prayer without divulging private information or delving into other people’s personal matters that don’t concern you?

What would happen if you told those people who gossip that you aren’t going to participate in that kind of conversation any longer? After all, it’s almost certain that they are also talking about you.

[nolimitsongrace]

July 1: Study To Be Quiet

Study To Be QuietJuly 1, 2019

And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business…. — 1 Thessalonians 4:11

When I was a young boy, Grandpa and Grandma Renner lived two blocks from our house. Almost every day, I’d go visit them. When I’d arrive at the back gate, I’d yell out, “Grandpa!” — knowing that he was probably somewhere in the backyard or doing something interesting in his garage. When he heard my voice, Grandpa would quickly appear from seemingly nowhere and cheerfully open the back gate so I could follow him to see what he was doing in the yard or garage.

I also always knew, without even asking, where I would most likely find Grandma Renner. I could almost be sure to find her talking on the telephone — a beige rotary telephone that sat right next to a notebook filled with the names and phone numbers of her dearest friends. I can vividly remember hearing her say, “Hello…this is Ethel….” Within minutes, the gossip would begin — something she was committed to as seriously as Grandpa was to his yard and garage! Then as soon as that conversation ended, she’d pick up her pencil, put the eraser end into the circles on the rotary dial, and begin dialing the next girlfriend on her list to start the whole gossipy conversation all over again.

There was Grandpa — working contentedly in the garage and minding his own business, fully satisfied. Meanwhile, Grandma was in hot pursuit of knowing everyone else’s business! As much as I loved Grandma, it was just a fact that she was continually repeating what she had just heard from someone else and expressing her opinions about people’s personal issues that were none of her business.

*[If you started reading this from your email, begin reading here.]

Unfortunately, talking about other people’s private affairs is a characteristic of the fallen human nature. I shudder to think how many people’s reputations have been scarred or stained because of false information spread from person to person by those who didn’t know what they were talking about or who really had nothing to do with the matter. Even if they had “inside information,” it still wasn’t their business.

This inclination of human nature to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong is not new. Two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul told the Thessalonians, “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business…” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). What does it mean to study to be quiet?

The Greek word for “study” is philotimeomai, a word that means ambition. This means Paul was actually telling readers to be ambitious about being quiet. Before we proceed further, let’s look deeper at this Greek word and learn more about what it means to you and me when used in conjunction with the idea of being quiet.

This word philotimeomai pictures an individual who is totally committed to obtaining or achieving a specific goal. He is determined to reach it, and he is enthusiastic about his pursuit of it. He has a strong, inward yearning to attain it that drives and motivates him — propelling him toward his goal. He is absolutely fixated on obtaining the object of his desire and will not stop until he gets it. He simply won’t let go of his commitment to attain it.

Although we usually think of ambition of this sort in a negative sense, Paul used it here in a positive context to describe a person who is totally committed to do whatever it takes to be “quiet.” The word “quiet” is the Greek word isuchadzo, which refers to keeping to your own business instead of prying into other people’s affairs. By using this word in this verse, Paul was calling on his readers to refuse to be busybodies. Someone whose behavior fits that description might be known for eavesdropping, snooping into other people’s business, intruding into others’ personal matters, prying into the affairs of others, and gossiping about other people. In other words, someone who behaved himself in this manner would definitely fall into the category of a busybody!

We are to follow Paul’s admonition: “Make it your ambition — that is, give it your fullest and most enthusiastic effort — to stay out of other people’s business.…” Then he continued, “…And to do your own business….” In other words, instead of poking around in matters that have nothing to do with us, we are to keep our mouths shut, keep our eyes from wandering, and focus on our own personal affairs. We don’t have a right to delve into the private matters of other people for whom we have no responsibility. In such cases, we need to take a firm stand and refuse to allow gossip or hurtful information to enter our ears. Period.

This must have been a problem for a few believers in the church of Thessalonica, because Paul addressed busybodies several times in his first letter to them. In each case, he reprimanded them, even telling others to disassociate with those who acted in such a manner.

Today I ask you to look at your own life and see if you need to make an adjustment in this area. If people were talking about and delving into your private affairs, wouldn’t you appreciate it if they stopped it — completely refrained from doing it? Of course you would! So I encourage you to decide today to obey these scriptures and give the same courtesy to others that you would want them to give to you.

And if there are people in your life who do this — those who try to use your ears as garbage receptacles to receive trashy information — politely tell them that you’re not going to listen any longer. This may offend them at first, but it will also make them think twice before they open their mouths. And remember, if people gossip about others to you, they won’t think twice about gossiping about you to others. It’s just so much better to obey God and determine to never let yourself get into that kind of conversational trap!

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Lord, I repent for the times I’ve allowed my tongue to communicate words ignited by the flesh and for giving place to devilish discussions that were not inspired by the Holy Spirit who indwells me. Words of gossip and slander proceed from a polluted heart. To speak such words destroys reputations and relationships — and taints the hearts of those who hear them. Holy Spirit, I ask You to cleanse me from all defilement and from twisted speech and inappropriate communication. Please set a watch over my lips and create in me a clean and quiet heart.

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I declare that life and death are in the power of the tongue. Therefore, I will not use my tongue to insert hell’s suggestions into people’s ears, but rather speak God’s will and promote God’s perspective. Because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, I choose to fill my heart with God’s words, and I cultivate a quiet spirit that is trained to wait upon God. I will heed His direction concerning when to speak, what to say, and when to remain silent. In that blessed quietness, confidence and discernment shall be my strength. I do not speak about or involve my opinion in matters that are none of my business. And I do not allow others to bring gossip to me wrapped in the guise of a prayer request. Like Jesus, I speak only the words I hear my Heavenly Father speak. His words are love-filled and life-producing, releasing health and strength in me and in the hearts of those who hear them.

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

Have you been guilty of talking about other people for whom you have no responsibility and therefore no reason to discuss their personal lives? If your answer is yes, what actions are you going to change as a result of reading today’s Sparkling Gem?

Often when people talk about others, they dress up their negative words in the guise of a prayer request. Isn’t it possible to address a prayer need without talking about another’s private affairs? How can you request prayer without divulging private information or delving into other people’s personal matters that don’t concern you?

What would happen if you told those people who gossip that you aren’t going to participate in that kind of conversation any longer? After all, it’s almost certain that they are also talking about you.