Becoming

I've had a lot of time to think over the past year and a half. That's about how long I've been underemployed and realistically there were only so many blankets I could sew/crochet, bread I could bake, things I could clean and organize and fiction I could read in my spare time. Eventually thinking, meditating had to happen. It really was inevitable.

And I'm glad it did (and is still) don't get me wrong. I strongly believe in working on my own

You know...self awareness :)

stuff, in growing in self-awareness, in becoming still and listening for the voice of God. But if  am to be honest, I do a lot of things to avoid the process too.

I think of this process as "becoming." It's a process of integrating my experiences, both inner and outer, it's a process of organizing thoughts and listening to God with my whole being in order to allow my true self, the image of God within me to emerge. And it's a process that often seems unproductive. And as I mentioned here I grew up with a strong work ethic alongside a strong need to fulfill expectations and so sitting and meditating often seems...lazy.

But it's not. Not in the least. And I feel blessed to have this space in which to think. It's especially nice right now since my landlords are away for the winter. I can meditate in almost complete silence which is a gift I am not taking for granted.

And in the process of meditating, I have of late come to a conclusion, or at the very least a strong working theory that there is no point in me trying to be anything that I'm not. I know this seems rather obvious, but let me continue.

I'm not sure how, or where, but somehow over the past number of years I got the impression that pastors didn't get to be real or authentic. That pastors needed to always take great care in their public persona to avoid angering congregants and thus losing their job. Wait a second... I have actually been told this. And it has always felt very uncomfortable to me. I don't mean to say that I don't think that pastors should take care with their words. I believe STRONGLY in the power of words, both as beneficial tools to build up and harmful ones that tear down. But I think the discomfort grew out of a sense that I was being told that my own internal integrity didn't matter. What mattered was job security and "unity."

For me, "becoming" is about integrity. It's about aligning my outer life and my inner life in such a way that it is indistinguishable from the Divine will. Yes I know, that's a totally lofty goal, but I like to aim high.  It's about becoming so connected to the light within (think Quaker here) that I can choose no other way. Sometimes this might mean offending someone, sometimes it might mean being quirky or not being what people want or expect. But I've come to realize that when I meditate the pull of the light, the pull towards "becoming" is much greater than external pulls that compromise my integrity and in the end, help no one, not really.

I've been thinking about people I know who have hidden their true selves (thoughts, feelings, deeply held convictions) in order to make others happy or keep the peace. I've been thinking about the times in which I do this as well. And certainly, on the surface, peace is kept and people (certain people) get to be happy. But what about the people who were longing to hear from that authentic self? What if, in meeting traditional expectations, in being what some people want me to be, I am in fact robbing the Spirit of the opportunity to connect with others through my authentic self. What if offering my partial self, my incongruent self is really a cheap gift while reaching deep within to my authentic self (even if it upsets some people) could be the voice that someone was longing to hear? 

Convocation wouldn't have been the same without the Crocs!

Maybe the world needs a quirky whimsical person who wears teal crocs.

Maybe the world needs a person who loves to read fiction, especially fantasy because it sparks the imagination.

Maybe the world needs a person who is passionate about the biblical story and just won't let it go.

Maybe the world needs a person who doesn't feel called to be married and have children.

Maybe the world needs a person who has a giant menagerie of stuffed animals.

Maybe the world needs a person who has struggled with anxiety and who has triumphed!

Maybe the world needs a person who knows how it feels to lose a family member to mental illness. 

Maybe the world needs a person who believes and is willing to state that all people are created in the image of God, regardless of sexual orientation.

Maybe the world needs a person who advocates for children as fully human beings capable of tremendous spiritual depth.

Sometimes it's not "popular" to wear teal crocs (maybe an understatement!), or to read children's fiction, or to live in an alternative household, or to talk about my struggles with anxiety, or to voice my support for those I believe are being sidelined or ostracized. But maybe God didn't call me to be popular. Maybe God just called me to be me, not some watered down version of me whose entire life is focused on meeting societal expectations, but the authentic and dynamic child of God that I am. 

And the funny thing is, that thinking of myself this way, doesn't make me feel like I'm more than other people, or make me more "me" focused, it just makes me curious about who you really are. 

Grief...or Holy Saturday

I've been thinking a lot these last few days about grief and sorrow. About our culture's discomfort with such things. And I know I'm speaking in very general terms here, but for the most part North American society doesn't like intense or prolonged grief. We don't know what to do with the silence, with the tears, with hearing the story again and again and again. We don't know what to do with the sorrow. For that matter, I'm not sure we know what to do with intense unadulterated joy either. We tend to prefer to live in a middle space, a safe space where the deepest parts of ourselves can remain disengaged. It's a coping mechanism I think. But that's a whole other topic in and of itself.
 
About two weeks ago, my roommate Alicia had a short article published in The Messenger, her denomination's periodical on the topic of reclaiming Holy Saturday. That space of grieving that falls between the trauma and shock of Good Friday and the joyful resurrection (or return back to life) of Easter morn.  It is the space we tend to ignore. It is the space of grieving, of discomfort, of uncertainty. It is a prolonged space. No one likes this space.

We have learned, in a way, to handle Good Friday. We have services in place for the literal remembrance of the death of Christ (again, I'm speaking in generalities and from my own experience). And we have protocol for handling the literal deaths in our own lives as well. There are funeral plans and crisis care and the space of shock that is expected and honoured. We don't always do it well, though quite often we do. Quite often it is a powerful space where tears and sorrow are allowed to permeate our lives. Quite often these spaces are a gift that place us on a wonderful road of honouring, remembering, and eventually healing.

And sometimes for a few days, a week, or maybe even a month the road we travel is...respected. But it doesn't take long until our culture wants us to move on. To get the heck out of Good Friday and live a normal life again. What I'm getting at here is that grief seems to be seen in our culture as a problem. A problem that needs to be solved so we can be happy again. We try to jump straight from Good Friday to Easter Sunday without allowing for the space of Holy Saturday. And I think this happens even more so with young children. They remember and we are afraid they'll become upset so we change the subject. They begin to cry and we promise them an ice cream or a toy if they stop. They wake up at night and so we give them Tylenol. We do the same things really in our adult lives, it just looks a bit different. But with kids it seems the need is somewhat more intense because children shouldn't be sad, they shouldn't suffer, they should sleep all night without fear.

The problem is though that they do suffer and so do we. And the only real way to Easter Sunday, to a return to life (a new life that has been forever changed through death) is through Holy Saturday. Try as we might, we cannot fully circumvent the need for grief. 

So when our children bring up the topic of death, let us engage them. Let us answer the questions we can answer, and sit with them in the mystery for those questions that rightfully escape easy answers.

When they remember the one they loved, let us remember together. Children are most often instrumental grievers. They grieve through doing. Think creatively about projects or activities you can do together to remember and grieve well. 

When they begin to cry, hold them and cry with them. Acknowledge their grief and their sorrow. And in doing so perhaps you will have the chance to acknowledge your own. 

When your child wakes at night, go to him or her and be together. Yes I know there is school tomorrow, or work or lessons of various types. But this is more important.  It truly is. Sit together with your child in Holy Saturday. 

The space of Holy Saturday is a natural space. It is a space that lasts awhile. But do not fear, it will not last forever. As Alicia mentions as well, there are occasions when individuals become stuck in Good Friday, but these instances are relatively few. When these occasions arise speak with a pastor or counselor for guidance. 

 For the most part however,  Holy Saturday just is. It's a vital part of being human in a finite world. It is a space of transformation, a space of becoming, a space of movement from death to life. And the only way forward is through.

Why I support Bill 18

Bill 18 has been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps that's an understatement. It's all become a bit crazy it seems to me. With angry sermons and cries of attack on religious freedom. For the past number of weeks my heart has been aching for the students in our schools, and I feel like it's time that I said something. 

I'm a Christian and I stand behind Bill 18. 

I'm totally fine with people offering constructive criticism on how Bill 18 might better define bullying, or helpful suggestions for the inclusion of consequences. I'm not sure myself if I fully understand the implications of the manner in which bullying is defined in the bill and I am totally ready to let informed educators take the lead on that one. If the majority of school teachers and support staff found the definition to be entirely unhelpful, then I think I'd trust their judgment. They're on the front lines everyday, they know what will be beneficial and what won't.Thus far, I haven't really heard a general outcry in this regard.

And I would be totally fine with people also offering constructive criticism on the ways in which the bill offers support to LGBQT youth. Perhaps there are better ways to support persons of varying sexual orientations in our schools than Gay/Straight alliances. Again, I'm not in the schools so I trust those who have developed such alliances and monitored their benefits to speak in this regard.

But I'm not fine with the argument that this bill is an attack on religious freedom. Religious freedom means a freedom to practice one's faith (any faith) as well as the freedom not to practice a particular faith. This applies to every single student in every single school. Religious freedom does not, however, make space for bullying or marginalization...of anybody. Religious freedom does not make space for prohibiting LGBQT students from receiving support as they seek to live and discover their identities in the world.

My faith in Jesus Christ compels me to love all people. My faith in Jesus Christ compels me to speak up for those who are marginalized. My faith in Jesus Christ compels me to tear down walls that divide, walls that oppress, walls that deny the cherished image of God that is in each of us. I think offering love, support and protection to LGBQT youth can help tear down those walls.

Demanding the right to keep LGBQT youth and their supporters silent, making sure that these youth in our schools believe they are alone, seems an awful lot like bullying and very little like love.

My Story with Feminism

Okay, so I don't have a good history with feminism. And those feminists out there who have uber specific definitions for feminism and have thought deeply about how to have sensitive discussion on these topics are probably going to cringe, but I'm going to talk about it anyway since I do see myself as a feminist. 

To me feminism means overturning systems that allow one group or groups to determine the story of another. It means acknowledging that all people are created in the image of God and all people are valued and cherished. It means paying attention to our words and actions because so often we oppress others simply because we don't stop to think. It means that limiting roles/pay/toys/spaces/opportunities etc. because of gender/race/ethnicity/sexual orientation etc. is wrong. Period.

So definitely, by my own totally un-researched definition, I am a feminist. But the reason my history with feminism isn't great is because I often felt threatened. I felt threatened because it felt like my story (not perhaps the predominant one) didn't matter. And I'm fully willing and incredibly embarrassed to admit that in return I made sure that others felt like their stories weren't valuable either. I stomped on their stories.

Not Cool. 
Not. Cool. At. All. 

I offer my apologies to all of the women and men out there whose stories I have not valued. I am deeply sorry. 

My own story didn't involve oppressive men. Not in almost any concrete kinds of experiences (though I have a couple from more recent years). I grew up believing I could become whatever I wanted to be. I watched my mom mow lawn, garden and go to work. I watched my dad vacuum (I actually thought that only men vacuumed for years!), wash dishes and drive a tractor. And I heard my parents both repeatedly tell us in a joking manner, to ask the other parent because "they were the boss." I certainly have come face-to-face with oppressive gender stereotypes in my life, but it tended to come more from media (yes, I know that men are in media, but so are women), or from other women. 

First, other women. Other women have boxed me in far more often than men. Aside from a few quite non-representative samples, most of the men I have related to over my lifetime have been relatively or incredibly supportive. One professor at Canadian Mennonite University sticks out in a particular way. I had never met a male as devoted to feminism as he is until I began to attend CMU. His support of women is clear and his attempts to value their stories and the stories of women in the Bible is admirable. But since I just so happen to have spent a great deal of my life with women, I have far more experiences of being boxed in by them than by men. Most of that "boxing in" was the product of erroneous assumptions about who I am and my story. For this reason I think listening and not making assumptions are central to my understanding of feminism. 

And for me, a great deal of the assumptions have to do with the experiences that women see as "normative" alongside gender stereotypes in media. I see these as feeding off of one another. It seems like a chicken/egg scenario to me. A complex intertwining of messages, impossible to discern which came first. But either way, the assumptions of people around us and the messages we receive from media create boxes. For some, those boxes are not really a problem at all, since they fit in them nicely (though perhaps some are only trained to think that they do). The problem for many of us comes when those boxes don't fit at all with our stories, or with our created nature. 

I do not yearn to have a baby. I just don't. This puts me outside of a pretty significant box for my gender. I also don't yearn to have a husband. Neither do I yearn for more shoes. I also despise shopping. And I can't stand the particular shade of pink that is part of the "girls" toy market. I find these boxes and the assumption that I belong in them to be oppressive. The pressure to be in a romantic relationship and to give birth is a powerful one in our culture and I feel it frequently. Yet when I'm in close contact with a highly feminist culture there are a whole new set of boxes that I'm expected to fit into. And I don't fit into them either!


 



There's only one box that I fit into
and it's a pretty strange and delightful shape. 






And since I work a lot with young children whose identities are being formed and the shape of their own "boxes" is just emerging, I get really ticked off when I look at the tiny boxes these magnificent people are expected to fill. It hurts to see them look longingly at toys on the other side of the room/store/playspace and then turn back to the toys they are expected to like. It hurts to see young girls trapped in tight little shoes with heels and frilly dresses as they attempt to run and play and live fully in the world. It hurts to watch little girls ask their mommies if they are fat, or pretty, or if it's okay for them to like baseball. And the same applies to boys. I ache for boys who force themselves to engage in combative play when they would rather be painting, or building, or playing house. It hurts me when all the boys I see look exactly the same, because this season blue and green striped rugby shirts are what's "in style." I'm sure at least one of those boys just wants to march out of his room in bright purple or yellow. 

Youtube videos like this one by Feminist Frequency do an awesome job of helping us to think about the way media impacts gender stereotypes, particularly for young people. This one is about 10min. long, but well worth the watch!

So, these are some of my feminist concerns that I'm highlighting on International Women's Day. Not because women are more important than men, or because this day is more important than any other. But because I care about issues of injustice. I care about ALL people having the freedom to become the gifts to the world that they were created to be. 

Feminism for me, is not just allowing people, but EMPOWERING people to live into the glorious boxes that they've been gifted with and choosing to dismantle boxes that are oppressive for the benefit of the world.