Reason Breeds Insanity

1) The article about Mother Teresa. Click here to check it out.
2) My recovery from Ale Fest 2007 Dayton. I am upright and speaking clearly.
3) Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Read it.

While I have long been enamored with Mother Teresa, I now know why. We are of the same cloth—the human cloth. Though I am by no means a saint, I mean we both have this difficulty hearing God. We share the problem of knowing God is there, and in her case knowing that she is doing the right thing, but being unable to sense the presence of God—unable to feel God’s touch. I cannot imagine being the woman she was with fifty years of darkness, fifty years of being estranged of her groom, fifty years of disengagement from the source of her salvation, fifty years of isolation from the source of grace. Her faith was amazing.

Doubt is a substantial portion of faith, but to wander in the desert for fifty years, well, ask Moses how it feels to wander for forty. Ask anyone around you who has wandered and wondered in her/his faith, how it feels to be estranged but seeking God with no sign that [They] are listening. What amazes me about Mother Teresa is her ability to function everyday as a beautiful example of God’s love while she struggled to hear God’s voice. Everyday we see people claiming to do whatever it is that God is “telling” them to do, and the fruit of their labor isn’t love, forgiveness, mercy, or compassion, but hate. If you open the page of any Christian publication, I can almost guarantee that you will find an article about a person hearing from God and acting in a way that is antithetical to the living presence of Jesus. I applaud Mother Teresa for living her life until her death as a human, living in grace, helping others to experience that same grace.

While I am sure that my mother will not appreciate my appreciation for beer, I am still going to say that we are all thankful that I am standing today. I am never eating olives again. And I really love IPA’s and Porters. Mmmm. Everything in moderation.

Finally, I have always liked Charles Dickens and now I remember why. He had this amazing ability to weave the cloth of a tale so tightly that I miss the threads laid bare at the ends. There are all of these strangely loose threads, but there are so many, so tightly wrapped, that I lose interest in the ones that aren’t sewn up. I am infatuated with David Copperfield, and I can honestly say that I want to know what happens next. I am interested in the theological ideas and concepts that are being worked out and also the gender issues and stereotypes that are being utilized. I just keep reading. It’s amazing.

Well, I would assume anyway, that by the time you get to graduate school your professors would not play favorites. Or if they did, they would at least try to make it less than obvious. I love sitting in class hearing about what an amazing teacher my professor is. Especially since from what I can see she is by far the most substandard teacher I have been exposed to since my undergraduate years. Well, I guess the rest of my classes make up for her lack of educational professionalism. I just have never disliked a professor within the first two class periods before.

My friend Sarah thinks I need to love Yeats, so she sent me a Yeats poem yesterday. I am sure it the first in a long line of Yeats-spamming, which I am sure could be a new online trend. Maybe a new virus even. Anyway. I thought I would take this opportunity to post one of my favorite poems. And, yes, Sarah, I know you love Adrienne Rich almost as much as I love her.

Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

In all fairness, as I read through my last post, it seemed as if I was making disparaging comments about my specific church. I was not. My church, Agape, which does live up to its name as well as any church I have attended, is the least showy, least predictable, most humble, and Jesus seeking church I have been to. I just am nonplussed by the whole Sunday morning “Sabbath.” I doesn’t seem so restful to me. It mostly seems like just another day with church instead of work or class.

Part of my church skepticism comes from the fact that I greatly dislike worship music, and I am iffy about hymns. Although I think that for the most part, hymns do tell a much more significant and thorough theological story than current worship music, I guess I just am too concerned about the loss or neglect of other forms of worship: prayer, dancing, writing, silence, drawing, painting, living, loving. I am not against theological music, and I love some worship songs, and several hymns, I just think that sometimes the “performance” gets in the way of the rejoicing and worship that that same “performance” is supposed to facilitate.

So much focus is on the sound equipment, the correct worship set, the musical talent of the worship team, and so little focus on any given Sunday morning is on the people who are in the pews waiting for Jesus to show up. If the music isn’t right, will he still come?I am pretty sure that Jesus doesn’t give a shit if everyone is singing in tune, and that God appreciates even the most tone deaf jovial utterance. The grunts and undulations of the most severely handicapped person are just as pleasing as the trained and amplified vocal stylings of the lead worship singer.

This post to say that while my church doesn’t have it all right, they have a fair bit of God-seeking and people-loving that many churches are too scared to embrace. My church, Agape, does MANY THINGS RIGHT. This church reaches out to the downtrodden, to the outcasts, and to sinners saved by grace like me. Our praise set is one of the least showy I know of, and the congregation actually functions as a community. I just can’t bring myself to love the Sunday morning assembly. I can’t stop thinking, am I singing well enough to help Jesus find our church: “Pass me not, Oh, Gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry. While on others though art calling, do not pass me by.”

I start school tomorrow and it is kind of like a clean slate for me because I quit at the BUX on Friday night. I decided I needed to concentrate on school, and that I needed no distractions. I will miss it for sure, but I will not miss the headaches of inept management, lackadaisical employees, or rudely condescending customers. I hope in the process of this I will get a piece of myself back. I know I used to be laid back. I know I used to be fun. I know I used to be nice. Maybe with time, I will be me again.

I went to Target today and was pleasantly surprised at their selection of fat girl clothes. I bought several outfits, but I did put back the “I HEART HOT MOMS” shirt. I was shopping for professional outfits. I thought I needed the t-shirt because it is pretty funny, but the professional side of me won out. I may not be able to hold out forever though!

I am excited and nervous about school. I am still trying to decide if this is the right choice for me, and I think maybe I should have tried to get into a distance education program at a seminary for a PhD in something theologically related. I am just not sure anymore. I have this deep distrust of anything religious but a great love for the theological and for the biblical. Jesus and I are still on the fritz, but I think it is more that his church and I are on the fritz than anything else. Yesterday Bec asked me if I was going to church. I said, “let me see….go to church or don’t go to church…let me think…” I love my pastor, so I feel so weird in not wanting to go to church, but I just am not in for the show. I am not in for the hype of the Sunday thing. I am not in for sitting for one more hour learning about what I should be doing. I KNOW what I SHOULD be doing. I just can’t consistently do it. I am excited to be solely entrenched in the academic again.