Now, Psalms are a book of the Bible, all official and unchanging. They’re beautiful and real and we’ve been studying them and worshipping through their words for hundreds of years.
Then, they were poems and prayers written by people going through some stuff, or having just survived some stuff, who wanted to bring all their fears, joys, frustrations, and praises to God. They reflected what people had on their minds and hearts in their everyday life–including the impulse to turn to God.
I loved teaching Psalms to kids. Not just because I love the Psalms, but because I taught their structure and had us write our own Psalms about what was going on in the children’s lives. Those were funny and heartfelt sessions. A child’s worries are precious cargo, and it was a privilege to give them spiritual tools for carrying that cargo to God, with others.
Here is the form I developed for turning what’s going on in your life into a Psalm. I’m going to be using it today: Election Day here in the USA. Because I’m scared. I know God did not give us a culture of fear, but that’s the reality of my human heart today, and probably many others.
All I can do is vote and make sure those in my sphere of influence can get to that voting booth–and write out my situation in a Psalm. The best sections are This is what I know about God and that This is what I’m going to do, because they help settle my heart every time.
I encourage you to write your own Psalm. The words don’t have to be pretty or publishable. You’ll notice that I’m not including mine here. It’s raw. Don’t forget the turn of This is what I know about God. It’s that And yet moment that comes towards the end of so many Psalms, when you turn from your own fears and feelings and look at who God is and remember what God has done in your life and in the world. It will ground you in the presence of a God who has been with his people through political turmoil for hundreds of years.
Here it is as a downloadable pdf you can print and write out by hand (my favorite practice): My Psalm.
To my affirming Christian Reformed Church brothers and sisters:
I’m so sorry for Synod’s recent decisions. For so many years you’ve gently but firmly advocated for theological positions that lean on grace — from playing cards to dancing to adopted children being baptized to divorced people being in full communion to women in office to the Belhar Confession to the current issue of accepting gay persons in relationships as full members of the church, eligible to serve as Officers. In many of those cases, the main argument wound up being that good Christians can be in disagreement about such issues, based on faithful interpretation of Scripture. This has worked in the past.
But no longer.
You have a year or two to knuckle under or be “disafilliated.” So much passive language there to make it seem like they aren’t kicking you out.
But we can’t deny it: you and your way of reading Scripture and being in the world have been rejected by the Christian Reformed Church. Rejection hurts. A lot.
For so many years, it has been your value to stay in communion. Some of you have endured hateful, abhorrent speech and attempts to get you fired from your job, all by people you were in communion with. You took Jesus’ words seriously when he tells us we, his body, are to be one. You have tried so hard, despite working with people who not only didn’t care about being one with you, but who were determined to purge the church of you.
I know exactly what this feels like, and not just because I was one of those more progressive CRC people who stayed through many Synod set-backs. I was married for 21 years. It was my value to stay and I was proud of the work I put in to have a marriage that seemed, in many ways, to be really good. When my husband was arrested for a sex crime and his infidelities were revealed, I experienced the deep wrenching pain of rejection–compounding rejection for all the years I was working to stay while he was going his own way.
Here is my advice to you based on what I learned through that experience:
Do not bravely deny your grief
Let the waves of grief come. Don’t resist them or try to explain them away. An institution you have loved and learned from and served and fought hard to remain in has rejected you. That hurts. Don’t harden your heart to protect it from the pain. Feel your feelings. All of them. The waves will not pull you under; they are cleansing.
Don’t be afraid of anger
There is a good chance that you are both sad and angry. You might be angry at the denomination, particular factions of the denomination, or even yourself. There’s also a chance that you are afraid of this because you think anger is not biblical. But it is.
Sadness is more socially acceptable. It’s easier to talk about how hurt you are. If you express your anger, someone will likely frown and talk to you about forgiveness. They may even quote Ephesians 4:26 at you. But here’s what a close reading of that passage reveals:
“Don’t sin by letting anger control you” (NLT), “Be angry but do not sin” (NRSV), and “In your anger do not sin” (NIV). The anger is not the sin. There is a difference between being angry and sinning. Sometimes anger is the right response. The sin would be in letting that anger turn your heart towards bitterness.
This realization is what led me to want to forgive my ex-husband after not even wanting to want to forgive him. Feel your feelings. All of them.
Lean into the mental relief
Relief may also be one of the feelings. Eventually. In particular, the relief of no longer having to twist yourself in mental spirals while you try to interpret the unloving actions of the denomination as loving. You’ve worked hard at trying to see the decisions of Synod and the actions of those who rejected you as still being Christian. You’ve tried to figure out the whys of their ideas of Scripture and their behavior. Because you wanted to be one body, to remain in communion with them.
What a glorious relief to no longer have to do that.
Especially if you and/or your congregation decide to leave, you won’t have to expend so much mental energy on Synod and factions of the denomination. It will take practice, and regularly reminding yourself that you no longer need to obsess about them. But it will feel so good.
Even now, 9 years later, when people ask me why my ex-husband did what he did, I might give a partial answer and then say, “That used to be all I thought about, but not being married to him anymore means I don’t have to. And I love the mental peace.”
Don’t be embarrassed if there’s a little seed of relief in your grief. Lean into it.
Look for where God is at work
You know God is already at work. He never stops. I’ve always found Romans 8:28 to be both one of the most hopeful and most offensive passages:
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (NLT)
Because the Synod decision and your messy emotions are some of those things that will work together for your good, and you’d rather they didn’t happen at all. But God is already acting, marshalling what you need to help you move into a place where you and your ministry can thrive. You may need words of comfort–look for them. You may need words of encouragement–look for them. You may need rallying cries–look for them. You may need fellowship–seek it out.
In that beautiful already-but-not-yet, God is at work and God will be at work for your good, because you love God and are called according to his purpose.
Realize you are God’s beloved
The Christian Reformed Church may have rejected you, but God has not. You are God’s beloved.
Even better, a time will come when you will not have to constantly fight your church governing body about the definition of who is and is not God’s beloved based on who they love. Whether you join a new-to-you affirming denomination or become an independent congregation, it will feel so right to not have to constantly bash your head against a brick wall.
Go forward in hope
For some time, congregational life will be full of hard decisions and drawing of boundaries and legal issues. Even after the dust has settled, life will not be perfect, because we are all humans here. But if you do the emotional and spiritual work along with the practical “what do we do now?” work, trusting that God is already and will be at work for your good, then you can move forward knowing that things will be better. Eventually.
I’ve been reading the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. And I love it. The translators call it “not a word-for-word translation, but rather it is a thought-for-thought translation,” with naming conventions, word choices, and cultural items being chosen to make it resonate with First Nations readers. For example, in Matthew 13:33, Creator Sets Free (Jesus) tells a story:
Again, think of the good road from above to be like the yeast a grandmother uses when she makes frybread dough. She mixes a little yeast into three big batches of flour. Then the yeast spreads throughout the dough, causing it to rise.
This is what that verse is in the New Living Translation: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”
I love the swap of “good road from above” for “kingdom of heaven,” because I know what it is to be on a good road, but kingdoms asks me to do some cultural context work. I’m enjoying the use of titles or what the name means for every person and every place that is mentioned. And those little touches, like referring to fry bread, help me come to the stories fresh, even though I’ve read them many times. Seeing different cultural contexts in familiar verses make me realize how specific the ancient Israelite culture was that the Bible was written in.
This translation has a Prologue, which I loved, and I normally resent Prologues. They take a few pages to put the New Testament in context by telling the story of Creator and human beings and the treaties they made with each other and how human beings keep breaking them and Creator keeps seeking restoration. The line that got me was this:
On the seventh day the Great Spirit rested from his work of creation, not because he was tired but because he was finished.
Not because he was tired but because he was finished
It made me tear up because I realized that I’ve been conflating the Jesus is rest for the weary verse and the God resting on the seventh day verse. We are often weary, especially spiritually weary from trying to fit into the boxes religious communities make for us. And Jesus’ perfect love provides rest from that business. But nowhere in the Bible does it say that in order to rest, we must be weary, that only the tired get to rest.
The New Living Translation also highlights that God rested because the work of creation was finished. God’s work in general wasn’t done. Just that part. And he rested. But there was something about how the First Nations Versions put it that flipped the switch for me.
So why do I twist myself into knots trying to figure out when I’ve done enough to deserve rest? Why do I withhold it from my own self until I’m exhausted and snapping at everyone I love? Why questions don’t have easy answers, so while I pursue them, I’m making this my new mantra:
I’ve been writing this post in my head for years. Even before 2020, when the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) made having pre-marital sex an excommunicable offense.
According to the denomination I grew up in, consensual sex between two adults who are not married to each other or to anyone else threatens their salvation. It is “incompatible with obedience to the will of God as revealed in Scripture.” Moreover, anyone who believes that consensual sex between unmarried adults might not be a sin is in a confessional-level violation of church teaching. In simpler words, they consider issues of sexual ethics something that proper Christians cannot disagree about, so anyone who disagrees with their interpretation can be booted out.
That “anyone” is me. But they can’t boot me out because I’ve already left.
I am nobody’s property
The church typically points at Exodus 22 and Deuteronomy 22:13-30 to support their ban on consensual sex between unmarried adults. Deuteronomy, especially, goes through a great many sexual offenses and details the punishments for each–usually execution. Yes, the punishment for not being a virgin when you get married, committing adultery, and being raped and not yelling loud enough to bring help is all execution. (Most conservative Christians interpret their way out of these punishments and do not consider execution to be a requirement, so they are able to see things in the Bible as culturally specific and not applying to our time period.)
The punishment for a man who seduces a girl who has not yet had sex is to pay the full bride price for a virgin to the father and marry the girl; or if the father refuses the marriage, to pay him the full bride price for a virgin.
Because what that seducer has done is damage the father’s property and affected the economic prospects of the father and the marriage prospects of the girl.
Happily, women are no longer considered property, and in most of the Western world at least, virginity is neither an economic factor in nor a barrier to marriage. Even in the Christian Reformed Church, engaged couples no longer have to appear before the congregation to confess and ask forgiveness for “anticipating their vows,” like my grandparents did in the 1930s.
Rules that are based on women’s status as property are as unnecessary to me as any biblical rules about persons as property. In other words, most Western Christians agree that slavery is wrong, and no longer see the Bible’s rules about how to treat slaves as applicable. I think I can be a faithful person and apply the same interpretation to Old Testament rules about sexual ethics. I could be wrong. I choose to live in the tension.
I am not married and neither is my partner
But what about the 7th commandment: “You shall not commit adultery”? That’s where the CRC gets its prohibition on every kind of sex that isn’t one man married to one woman. For all the things in the Bible that aren’t clear (see the following section), adultery has a clear definition: voluntary sex between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse. The commandment is about breaking covenant and violating a promise made before God. I’ve got no argument with that. God is all about keeping covenant and promises and I want to be, too.
But neither I nor my partner of 6 years are married. So we cannot be committing adultery. Trying to make that verse about all unmarried sex is pushing it.
What about all those verses against sexual immorality?
Indeed, God does not approve of sexual immorality. But the Bible does not give a complete definition. It could mean only things most societies still consider wrong: incest, child abuse, rape, ritual temple sex, bestiality, adultery. Or it could include any sex outside of 1-man-1-woman marriage. We cannot know for sure.
I talk with God about this, and I plan ask him when I meet him. But for now, I choose not to interpret those verses as broadly as other Christians do. I’m going to live in the tension.
It is something obedient Christians can disagree about
So sometimes I choose to be what others would consider a little heretical. And I don’t buy that it affects my salvation. God has promised that my salvation is sure because it is the result of what Jesus did, not of what I do (other than believe in what Jesus did).
It is, in fact, very Reformed of me to believe that my record of sins has been replaced by Jesus’ record of righteousness: “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Cor. 5:21).
***
If you want to read a playful short story about that very Reformed idea (that has fancy names like imputed righteousness and justification by faith), wherein Isaiah tries to represent me in the Court of Heaven:
Last week I saw America’s Sexiest Couple. And they were middle aged!
No, I’m not talking about me and my beloved. It’s the name of a wonderful play at Lowell Arts that has 3 more performances July 28, 29, and 30.
This is a laugh-out-loud romantic comedy with some serious moments to make you feel invested in the love story. The play was written by Ken Levine, who wrote for M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, and The Simpsons, so if you liked those shows’ mix of situational and character-driven humor, you’ll like this play.
There are only three actors, and no intermission. It takes place in one room, and the 90-minute runtime is how long the action on stage takes — no jumps in time or place. Just an unrelenting focus on this couple (and occasionally the bell hop).
Susan and Craig are actors who were dubbed America’s Sexiest Couple when they starred in a hospital sitcom for 5 years in the 1990s because their characters were the central “will-they-or-won’t-they” couple of the series. They were the top of the TV heap. But they haven’t seen each other or spoken for 25 years after Susan’s abrupt exit from the show. Now they are both in Syracuse for the funeral of a castmate and Craig is in her hotel room the night before.
The play is full of wonderful tension, much of it embodied in Susan. Vicki Kavanaugh gives a great performance of a woman stretched by opposing forces, both within and without. She and Craig were like family for 5 years, and had great chemistry and played all manner of love scenes on screen, but never in real life. Would they finally sleep together now? She couldn’t let him know how much she hoped to, in case he didn’t, but still had to keep things moving in that direction in case he did. She wants to put the best face on her life since the show, but she can’t keep reality out. There are some topics she doesn’t want to talk about, but she also needs to talk about.
Craig is played with great charm by Dave Benson. You can easily see him as an easygoing actor that people are drawn to. But he has his depths and his insecurities, his frustrations and his own hopes that he doesn’t want to admit to, either. He has some beautifully tender moments with Susan late in the play.
Josh Youngsma brings great energy and humor to the production as the 22-year-old bell hop. The clash of generations jokes may not be new, but they are true, and delivered so winningly, so we laugh.
The play condenses a lot of “I like you – I hate you – I want you – I hate you – I need you” into one evening, but the production grounds it in the tensions that these two characters bring before the action starts. Director Richard Mulligan and Stage Manager Lilleigh Christopher have provided excellent guidance to make this play about two people, not just two joke-machines. Mulligan asked Lowell Arts to employ an intimacy consultant to ensure that the actors feel comfortable, confident, and safe with what they are asked to do and to talk about.
It’s an adult night of theatre, so don’t bring the kids unless you want to explain a lot of stuff about sex. The Playbill calls it “frank,” and it definitely is. But do come out to Lowell this weekend to see it. You will laugh, you might tear up. Ticket information here: https://www.lowellartsmi.org/upcoming-production I’m going again on Saturday, 7/29!
My father was born in the Netherlands in 1942, almost two years into the Nazi occupation. He was young enough to have only one real memory of wartime: sitting outside and playing, refusing to come in while the air raid siren blared and his mother and nanny tried to get him to come inside.
But he had three older brothers who remember the war.
They tell only a few stories from that time, but one of my generation’s favorites took place during the last winter of the war when the families of three Fonds sisters were all living in one house out in the country: 6 adults and 12 children (plus any people they might be sheltering in the hubbub). All the husbands worked in the resistance movement.
With that many people, everyone had a job. Even two-year-old Peter had to go into the woods to collect kindling. Tante Nell made sure the household ran.
One day, it was the job of one of the boys to do the dishes. But children are still children, even during war, and he didn’t want to, so he hid in the bathroom under the stairs.
Nell saw that the dishes were not being done, figured out where he was, went there, banged on the door and announced loudly for all to hear: “Poop on your own time! Dishes now!” He came out and did the dishes.
That’s the story they told us when we were young, and we laughed and laughed. Between the pounding on the door and the yelling about poop, it was fantastic.
I asked to hear it again when I was in my 40s. That time, they gave me the actual story.
With that many people in the house, everyone had a job. Even two-year-old Peter had to go into the woods to collect kindling. Tante Nell made sure the household ran.
One day, it was the job of one of the boys to do the dishes. But children are still children, even during war, and he didn’t want to, so he hid in the bathroom under the stairs.
Nell saw that the dishes were not being done, figured out where he was and gathered everyone in the living room. She gave a very serious speech about how hard things were, how they were all sacrificing, how they all had to pull together and play their part, that each person was needed. The boy felt so guilty that he came out of the bathroom in tears and vowed to never try to skip his chores.
Not nearly as funny, but I was glad I got to hear the real version.
This makes me think of Hannah Gadsby’s first big Netflix comedy special, Nanette, where she initially plays a lot of painful situations for laughs.
“When you laugh you release tension, and when you hold tension in your human body it’s not healthy psychologically or physically…it’s even better to laugh with other people…. When you share a laugh you will release more tension because laughter is infectious…. Tension isolates us, and laughter connects us.”
Then she explains that jokes just need a setup and a punchline; jokes are frozen at the middle, at the trauma point. Stories, on the other hand, need a beginning, a middle, and an end. In Nanette she takes us past the joke point and tells her real story about how those traumas affected her and, writ large, how they play out in society as a whole. And we discover that truth and vulnerability can connect us even deeper than laughter does.
We’ve all told the joke instead of the story, like my uncles did with their war story. When we were kids they never introduced it as, “In July of 1944 the Nazis searched our house in Velp, hoping to find proof of our father’s work in the resistance cell headed by our family doctor. The cell was dismantled; several members were arrested and either executed or sent to concentration camps, where they died. We fled to our mother’s sister’s house in Ermelo, in the country, a couple of months later. On the way we had to sleep in a barn because the farmer would only let our mother and baby brother in the house. Another sister’s family fled there, as well, and all of us rode out the Hunger Winter and avoided starvation together.”
It’s human nature to play trauma for laughs, to tame it for chit-chat purposes.
For example, I could say that the day after my marriage ended our daughter came home with lice. Lice! On top of everything else, creepy crawly little bugs!! And then talk about all the different ways I tried to get rid of them over three rounds of treatment.
But any further conversation would dig into more vulnerable territory. How it was actually the day after three police officers came onto my porch to arrest my husband of 21 years for a sex crime. How angry I was at him, how hurt, how shocked but not surprised. How I had to tell the kids and our parents about his arrest. How I’d stopped eating and drinking from the stress and wandered the aisles of Target, light-headed and overwhelmed, buying new bedding and pillows and lice removal systems, worrying about spending the money because my husband would surely lose his job and I was a stay-at-home mom who only worked freelance.
How I oddly came to appreciate the lice situation and the three rounds it took to get them truly gone from her long beautiful hair because we had to sit together for hours, me tenderly and patiently running the fine comb through her hair. Over and over and over. It would have been easy for us to retreat to our corners to nurse our wounds, but the lice forced us into close proximity. So there was good in it.
The joke versions of our stories are fine. But I hope we keep getting better at telling each other the full stories.
I’m going to give Gadsby the final word:
Stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine…. Your story is my story and my story is your story…. That is the focus of the story we need: connection.
Alternative title: Gratitude practices for the grieving, ashamed, and stuck
Of course we should be grateful—everyone says so. Literally everyone.
Expressing gratitude to their deity is central to every major religion. Thinkers as diverse as Cicero and Oprah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Tony Robbins tout not only its benefits, but also its necessity for a well-lived life. A Gratitude Industrial Complex has sprung up to sell us journals, coloring books, posters, wall hangings, online courses, greeting cards, candles, jewelry, and social media memes. They all say that gratitude is the root of happiness, grace, beauty, love, sweetness, abundance, comfort, and success.
That sounds lovely.
But life is not always lovely.
Gratitude experts know this, too, and will remind us that there are always things we can be grateful for, even during difficult times. These are often small things in our lives that make us happy, bring us comfort, or are admirable—a hug from a child, a warm sunbeam, a gift of a meal.
Again, lovely.
But akin to using a chef’s knife only to spread butter on your toast: an underuse of a powerful tool.In relegating gratitude to the realm of the pleasant and admirable, in linking it to happiness and comfort, we weaken its ability to change us for the better, especially when life is difficult.
“Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G.K. Chesterton
If gratitude is happiness, what am I supposed to do with my gratitude that my cousin Esther died of colon cancer in more pain than a human being should be able to endure at age 39 with a 3-year-old daughter who would have no natural memories of her—but secure in her father’s love for the first time in her life?
Because I’m grateful for that, but I also fervently wish she were still alive to know the daughter who is the spitting image of her yet is also her own glorious person. Being grateful that she died secure in her father’s love does not make me one bit happy. Years later, I still grieve her.
Esther and I were born a month apart in the same city, went to the same tiny school for grades 5-8 where we were the top grade for the last three of those years, lived together for a year in college, and became close as adults after my move to New York City gave her a free place to stay. We both saw the spirit of our Opa (Dutch for grandfather) on the same night when we were 9. I’d thought we were as close as the sisters neither of us had, with the petty rivalries and jealousies and intense confidences.
But she never told me how unhappy her home life was. I didn’t find out until she was dying; some stories I didn’t learn until after she died. Her mother struggled with mental illness and alcohol abuse and their family life often revolved around managing or reacting to those. In addition, the things Esther was interested in and good at weren’t things her parents put much stock in, so she didn’t feel appreciated.
When it was clear that she wouldn’t make it through her cancer, she and her father were discussing her desire to be cared for at home. They went back and forth until Esther plaintively asked, “Don’t you love me enough to take care of me?”
What could my uncle say but, “Yes”?
Because he did. He’d loved her that much all along, of course.
In the months that followed, he took the tenderest round-the-clock care of her, burping her colostomy bag, managing her mountain of medications, hand-feeding her when she became too weak. She died not only secure in the knowledge of her father’s love, but completely wrapped up in the experience of his love for her. I am so grateful for this—not only for her, but also for my uncle.
But happy? No.
“Gratitude paints little smiley faces on everything it touches.” Richelle E. Goodrich
If gratitude is all about feeling warm and cozy, what am I supposed to do with my gratitude for my friend Bernadette, who called me out on a matter of racial stereotyping? Because I’m grateful to her, but any warmth I felt at the time was due to the heat of shame burning up my neck. There was nothing smiley about it.
Friends and I were talking about poll statistics before the 2016 election and I made a desperate joke about Hispanic people and cell phones and she called me on it. At first, I defended myself, because I knew my intentions, and I knew my love and respect for the people I’d stereotyped. I wasn’t mean-spirited. So I justified my behavior.After we parted it took all of 10 minutes for me to realize that I’d been wrong, that my intentions were not the most important thing in our interaction—that my words were.
I immediately sent her an apology, and by the time I saw her the next day, I was grateful to her for calling me out, and told her so. Because she had the courage to say what she did to my face, I was given the opportunity to hear my words from another’s point of view: I couldn’t hear the stereotyping until she revealed it to me. I asked for her forgiveness, she gave it, and our friendship deepened. I am grateful for this experience because it made me a better, more humble person.
Was it cozy? No. Is there a smiley face on the encounter? No. My gratitude has not made me any less embarrassed by it.
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” Dalai Lama
If gratitude is all about highlighting things that are admirable, what am I supposed to do with my gratitude that my husband of 21 years was arrested for a sex crime, enabling me to leave a marriage that was good enough, but that was also breaking my heart every day? Because I’m grateful for that, but what he did was not at all praiseworthy, and caused both immediate and ongoing trauma in our family.
My marriage wasn’t horrible. My spouse and I could still have fun together, and we worked well on negotiating the needs of the kids and family life, but there was an essential hollowness to our near-sexless marriage, and there were years of agreements that he didn’t live up to, deals he didn’t keep. I was last in his life, but I decided over and over that I wouldn’t leave him; it was part of my deep value system to stay and I couldn’t imagine explaining why I was leaving to my kids. So I used the practice of gratitude to make my marriage livable for me: focused on what was good about our relationship, worked at being compassionate instead of bitter, and was disciplined about thanking him for every little thing. The day-to-day lived experience was more pleasant, but gratitude didn’t address any of our deep problems, neither did it heal my heartbreak.
I told very few people about this because I didn’t see the point: no matter what I did, he wasn’t changing, and I wasn’t leaving, so why make other people frustrated with him? After all, he was my husband and I loved him. It left me utterly stuck and lonely.
So once he was arrested and the truth (and then more truth) came to light, making sense of years-worth of his behavior, it was a relief: here was a solid reason to leave. I was grateful for that (and that he was caught before anything worse happened), but was there anything praiseworthy to focus on? No.
But that’s also not entirely fair: our marriage produced two wonderful and sometimes infuriating children. It nurtured and encouraged our friends. We supported each other in our artistic pursuits and made it possible for each other to grow in our chosen fields. I can be grateful for that, but it’s a complicated gratitude.
A.J. Jacobs ran into a similar problem when he tried to thank everyone involved in his morning cup of coffee. In Thanks a Thousand, he writes that when he told his friend Brian that he was thanking dockworkers and truck drivers, Brian asked whether he was going to thank the meth dealers for selling drugs to the drivers so they could drive all night. That put Jacobs in a quandary:
“Brian’s comment may be flippant, but it sticks in my mind. It’s brought up an interesting problem. Not everyone who helps get my coffee to me is a good person. Or at least not everyone is acting in a way that is good for the world…. So…does the CEO of Exxon deserve my thanks?”
Jacobs doesn’t answer that question, but thanks the CEO of Exxon anyway, sending what he describes as a passive-aggressive, “Thank you, now please change,” letter.
Gratitude can be more of a mixed bag than theologians, thinkers, and marketers often give it credit for. And I haven’t even gotten to people who are grateful for things other people think are tragic, like people with disabilities being grateful for their disability.
“Attention must be paid.” Linda Loman (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman)
So what gives these non-pleasant experiences of gratitude their power? At its base, gratitude is about paying attention. The pleasant versions of gratitude have us paying attention to things that make us feel happy, warm, cozy, and positive. The more robust versions can withstand us paying attention to things that are true whether they make us feel sad, uncomfortable, ashamed, or free because the more robust version highlights our connectedness–and we need connection.
“As adults connection nourishes us in a literal, physiological way, regulating our heart rates and respiration rates, influencing the emotional activation in our brains, shifting our immune response to injuries and wounds, changing our exposure to stressors and modulating our stress response.”
Chapter 6, Burnout, Emily Nagorski and Amelia Nagorski
Because of my cousin Esther’s illness and death, I know her better and I know my uncle better—I am connected to both of them in deeper ways than I was before. Because of my friend Bernadette’s forthrightness and her forgiveness, I am better connected to her, and better connected to myself as a person who can be wrong and not be destroyed by it. Because of my now-ex-husband’s arrest after years of lies and neglect I am better connected to myself because I’m no longer trying to convince myself that grievous behavior was loving; I’m better connected to my community because of the help they gave me in the aftermath; I’m better connected to friends whose families have gone through something similar; and I’m better connected to my children because of the intensity of what we went through together. My gratitude for each of those events is rooted in those connections and branches out in my writing, my relationships, and my work with children.
I am both more compassionate and more courageous, with myself and with others, than I was before these events. There’s no need to hide from or to deny sadness, grief, shame, or anger as incompatible with the practice of gratitude, or to expect gratitude to lift me out of those states, because I know I can be grateful for things that have made me feel each of those emotions.
So let’s free gratitude from the cage of loveliness. Practicing gratitude may bring you happiness, beauty, sweetness, and success. But gratitude that rises from situations of grief, shame, and anger may connect you more deeply to yourself and to others.
I’ll take gratitude-fueled connection over unrelenting sweetness any day. The more tightly knit our connections are, the more they’ll sustain us, encourage us, and challenge us to see connections where we’d been blind to them before. That can change the world. And that’s something to be deeply grateful about.
My earliest memory is of injuring my little brother and being consumed with guilt and worry.
I was 4, my brother 2. We lived in a construction zone. My parents bought a hippie squatter house in Toronto in the early 1970s. Every room was painted differently: black-out, neon splatter, each wall a different color. They got it for $1 down because it was in such rough shape. The first night, they tucked us into bed on mattresses on the floor, went downstairs, picked up sledgehammers and started making the space their own.
They eventually took every wall down to the studs, removed interior walls, smashed the kitchen cabinets and re-built everything themselves according to my dad’s research in home design and efficiency. I loved that house. But on this day, there was nothing: no walls, no cabinets, no furniture.
No barrier at the edge of the first floor and its open drop to the basement.
But there was a big, enticing rope laying about.
While I was generally very well behaved (to the point of goody-two-shoes-edness), I was still a kid. My brother and I picked up either end of the rope and ran around yanking on it. I’m sure we thought we were having the best time ever. I wondered,
“What would happen if I let go?”
I did, and my cute little brother with the big head fell onto the concrete floor of the basement.
I only have a vague memory of the rope and the wondering and the light being diffused by the ever-present construction dust. My vivid memory is of sitting on a sawhorse with a large woman from our church; she comforted me as I cried, guilty that it was all my fault and scared that he had to go to the hospital.
He lived. And thrived. And cracked his skull several other times as a result of his own risk-taking.
It took another 20 years for me to get over my big sister over-protectiveness.
How about you? What is your first vivid childhood memory? Is it sweet? Silly? Angsty? Who else is there with you?
** My mother’s notes on this story: “I had gone to the basement to put in the wash. You kids were on the 2nd floor. The bottom of the stairs [stairs were L-shaped, and this would be the bottom section of the L, 4-5 steps] had been removed and blocked, so how you guys managed to climb over that obstruction and run around in the first floor construction site is still hard to imagine. We had just spent a couple of weeks with Oma and Opa as your dad tore the first floor and bathroom apart and started to rebuild. He was desperate for us to come home. I never thought you two would be so athletic!” **
We love to talk about caterpillars turning into butterflies. It’s such an encouraging story that we totally make about ourselves:
Even though you may start out crawling on your belly in the dirt, eventually your true colors will emerge and your wings will unfurl and you will fly like you were always meant to.
That’s glamorous.
But that isn’t what happens to caterpillars. They don’t enter chrysalis and curl up in there all cozy growing wings.
They become goo.
Whatever is happening while the caterpillar transforms is not pretty. It digests itself. If it happened without the protection of the chrysalis on our deck or sidewalk, we’d probably think something had decomposed or rotted and we’d spray it away with the hose so we wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
But the caterpillar is supposed to become goo. Turning into soup is a crucial part of the transformation. We know this, but it’s also mysterious.
Which makes me think of the events my Christian tradition remembers this weekend. Today (Good Friday) we commemorate Jesus’s death and his three days being dead before God makes him alive again (Easter). What happened 2000+ years ago for these three days is a mystery. We get hints from what Jesus said while he was on the cross.
At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
So Jesus was alone, abandoned by the father who he always felt in complete oneness with.
But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die?We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.”Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”
And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
At some point of time, Jesus would be in paradise.
But the specifics are a mystery.
Whatever happened to Jesus changed him so much that people who had followed him didn’t recognize him. Mary Magdalene sees him when he’s alive again and thinks he’s the gardener; she doesn’t recognize him until he says her name. The men on the road to Emmaus walked and talked with him for hours and didn’t recognize him until he broke bread in front of them.
We don’t know what Jesus was doing during those 3 days, so I like to think of him as in his goo time — in between his ministry on earth and his ministry untethered to the soil, transitioning from his time as fully-human-and-fully-divine to fully divine. What form did he take? Was it painful? Pleasant? When did he return to oneness with the Father?
Maybe I like to think of it as Jesus’s goo time because I experience goo times, too.
I’m going through one right now, when I know what was but I don’t know what will be and I feel all messy and chaotic and anxious but also hopeful.
Both Jesus and the butterfly get through their goo times in similar ways.
There’s no rushing the process. Jesus said it would take 3 days, so it took 3 days. Caterpillars have different chrysalis periods, depending on whether the conditions are right for the caterpillar to feed and reproduce. It might take a few weeks, or it might take a few years. I hate this. Because I have no idea how long my goo time is going to last and a number of steps are not up to me.
Trust that you have what you need. Jesus understood what was going to happen to him. It’s why he didn’t want to do it, and why he also submitted to it. He knew he had what he needed to get through it. A caterpillar has all the genetic material it needs to digest and then transform itself. I hate this slightly less. Because I know that I have the love and the presence of God, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the intercession of Jesus. And people who love me. And a whole lot of actual things that I need. I have worked through goo times before. Still, it’s not exactly fun to be soup.
How do you get through your goo times? Does it annoy you that sometimes you don’t get much of a waiting period between said goo times? Just me?
This short TED Talk (Derek Sivers’s, “How to Start a Movement”) tells the story of a man dancing alone at a music festival, how first one person joined him, and then another, until crowds were running to join the dance. It’s only 3 minutes long and kind of funny.
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I’m always struck by this observation: “New followers emulate the followers, not the leader.” I can’t help but think of Jesus and his first followers, who constantly got him wrong even though they had him right there with them.
They left everything to follow him but didn’t understand who he was
They’d been with Jesus for some time, watching him heal and preach, and argue with religious leaders. One day, when they were sailing across a lake, a dangerous storm came up. The followers wake up the napping Jesus, who tells off the wind and waves, which makes them calm.
The disciples were terrified and amazed. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “When he gives a command, even the wind and waves obey him!” (Luke 8:25)
Peter is the only one who will say it out loud
In Luke, after they feed the 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, Jesus asks them point blank who they think he is, and only one gives the answer:
One day Jesus left the crowds to pray alone. Only his disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.”
Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
Peter replied, “You are the Messiah sent from God!” (Luke 9:18-20)
I imagine all of them silent and nervous about Jesus’s question, either because they aren’t sure or they’re afraid to get it wrong, and then Peter blurts it out (as he often does).
They are obsessed with greatness
Jesus ate with the despised and rejected, healed people no matter their socio-economic status, and constantly beefed with the authorities, but his first followers were obsessed with greatness. In Matthew 18 they ask Jesus who was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. In Mark 9 Jesus confronts them about their “who’s the greatest” argument on the road. In Luke 9 they argue about which of them was the greatest. In Luke 22 (at the Last Supper) they argue about who would be the greatest. In each instance, Jesus gives a similar response:
“Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.” Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not only me but also my Father who sent me.” (Mark 9:35-37)
He even has to correct his first followers for preventing parents from bringing children to him to be blessed: “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children” (Matthew 19:14).
They didn’t get that his theology was so different from what they grew up with
When the followers see a man blind from birth, their question to Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” sounds odd to our ears, but reveals their theological assumption: if you are sick or suffering, it’s a punishment for something you’ve done or something your family has done–you deserve it. But Jesus says something radical:
“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.” (John 9:2-3)
This was a radical healing all around. By making it so a man born blind could not only see, but understand what he was seeing, Jesus put everyone around this man in a tizzy. He got dragged in front of the Pharisees, some of whom were upset because this healing took place on the Sabbath (when nobody was supposed to work) while others thought the healer must be from God. They hauled in his parents to ask them what they thought of this Jesus who healed him. Kept grilling the man, who could only repeat what his experience was until they threw him out of the synagogue.
They didn’t get that he challenged the status quo on purpose
Jesus has been arguing with the Pharisees about what makes a person “unclean” or “defiled.” The Pharisees ask him about ritual hand cleaning and Jesus ups the ante by talking about how what you say reveals the state of your heart. Jesus draws a crowd to tell them,
“It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.”
Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you realize you offended the Pharisees by what you just said?” (v.11-12)
He sure did! He already told the Pharisees, “you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. You hypocrites!” And goes on to call them the blind leading the blind. The followers’ “do you realize you offended the Pharisees” is kinda sweet, but reveals that they didn’t understand Jesus’s ministry.
One of them betrayed him
Judas has always sounded to me like a disillusioned true believer: Jesus wasn’t who Judas thought he was, so he set Jesus up so the authorities could arrest him. In Matthew, the last straw for Judas seems to be when Jesus allows the woman to anoint his feet with very expensive oil. But whatever it was, he goes to the people plotting to kill Jesus and offers to hand him over. Then he follows through and does it.
Even Jesus seems surprised
At the Last Supper, when Jesus is trying to sum up his entire ministry for the disciples who will be charged with spreading his message, his followers are still confused about who Jesus is.
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?(John 14:8-11)
They never understood what the kingdom was
Even at the very end of Jesus’ time on earth, post-resurrection, his closest followers still didn’t get what he was all about:
So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” (Acts 1:6)
They were with him for 3 years, hearing him speak, able to ask him anything, sharing meals, travelling the country, hanging out with him after he died, and they still didn’t understand that Jesus was not about kicking out the Romans and restoring Israel’s political power.
So what about us?
We’re supposed to be following Jesus, not the first followers. But we’re only human. Like they were. It seems inevitable that we would be like those first followers: not understanding who Jesus is and what he’s about, obsessed with the wrong things, not grasping just how deeply Jesus challenges rules-based religion.
Sivers wants his listeners to embrace the crucial role that first followers play:
“First follower is an underrated form of leadership…. Have the courage to follow and show others how to follow.”
For Christians, I’d change it a little:
“Have the courage to follow the leader (Jesus) and show others how to follow the leader (not you).”
I’m glad we’ve got the example of the disciples and all the ways they get things right and wrong. It means we get to be aware of our human tendencies to get obsessed with the wrong things and to see Jesus through our own cultural lenses. But we are also aware that we are to be Christlike, not disciplelike. We are to be first followers, ourselves, enticing others to join the dance.
