[Image description: sunlight projected onto a blank wall through windowpanes, making the outline of the window, with the corners where two walls and ceiling meet visible.]
Disorienting, waking up to find I’d relegated wild, creative parts of myself to the corners of my own existence.
Wasting energy fashioning masks and filters from the more-acceptable parts and my perception of other’s needs, drowning in exhaustion keeping them in place.
Ill-suited, perpetually reconfiguring in attempt to fit my soul into soulless, man-made structures, never drawing a full breath, never fully seen.
Painfully slow, reclaiming space to be unwieldy, to forgive my younger self, befriend my contradictions,
and sit with my own words long enough to let them change me, breathing all the way in, all the way out.
[Image description: Old, faded beech leaves, paper-thin and clinging to a branch, with new leaf buds visible]
Last year’s beech leaves, green-glow faded, clinging ghostlike now where tomorrow’s leaves bud, waiting to unfurl,
reminding me somehow of hand-me-down World Books, once neatly lined on grandfather’s shelf, faux-leather binding brimming with yesterday’s meaning for words,
like the second-hand prayers meant for our forefathers and the scriptures that gloss over women— their contributions, their names, their very existence— to paint a man’s world for us all.
We’re supposed to learn the written words, acquire the knowledge, strive for perfection, become more logical, stick to the facts as told with only one side in mind.
But my soul wants to sit, unhurried, considering birds and lilies and beech leaves, in all their glorious beauty, watching them give it all away.
As lovely as I find translucent remnants fluttering in early Spring’s chill-tinged breeze and the nostalgia of leafing through old encyclopedias,
I long for Mother Earth’s wisdom, the understanding hidden within the trees they cut down to make those shiny-edged pages.
I need the knowing that emerges from standing under new leaves while they are soaking in sunlight, photosynthesizing, transforming energy to create new growth.
I want to give them my exhalation and drink in theirs until my marrow and bones and lungs and spirit take root in new revelations and ancient truths, renewed.
I’ve fought to wrestle my life from the grip of lies and outdated half-truths that make me less made in God’s Image for having two X chromosomes and fought equally hard to find full truths
and I am weary, wearing thin and papery, tired of clinging and unsure if I believe in resurrection,
but longing to know what happens when I give up fighting— for or against— and just let go.
[Image description: bare trees and my silhouette reflected in an icy, leaf-lined puddle]
“The Word became flesh and lived among us” always compelled me to stay or return, whenever I wondered if my religion was still my home. God with us, among us, example for us, living wisdom and healing and love for all.
Unsure if it’s cumulative, years spent watching abuse excused, hatred glorified, blatant disregard, or the breaking straw of a man using Christian teaching to justify taking women’s lives. Either way, I’m overwhelmed with wondering why I stay, if I’ll stay, or if I’ll leave once and for all.
Wondering, if many my religion elevates to power, puts in charge, promotes, allows to represent, are nothing like God-with-us, how I will reconcile these contradictions, and if I can at all.
Wondering why “acceptable” white women stay, why we do this dance where we allow ourselves treated as less than men, and more egregiously, trade sisterhood for proximity to power, allowing non-white women or not-assigned-female-at-birth women or women who would marry women to be treated like they are barely human at all.
Wondering if by staying I am assenting to, participating in this harm. Even when I qualify with “not like that” or “not that kind,” it seems impossible there is not guilt, not responsibility I must bear for association with it all.
Wondering if I’m always on the outside, trying to make exceptions, taking issue with everything from the conduct to the canon to the creeds, at what point am I by-default excluded, already not a part, clinging to false hope of redemption for it all.
Wondering how long I can live insisting “God is not a man,” questioning status quo, leaders, and traditions with my heart in my throat or on my sleeve and the nagging suspicion its never in the right place for the establishment at all.
Wondering where this goes and where I’ll end, if this is another dark night that transforms and returns me home or if it’s the abyss between God is not that religion and God is not at all.
[Image description; morning sunlight streaming through an early spring woods, with blue skies and a small creek visible]
Spirit of mercy, we often neglect to be merciful with ourselves and with each other. Our thoughts, words, and deeds fail to reflect loving kindness and we cause harm to our neighbors, our own lives, and the earth. We are grieved by this separation and set our intention toward healing, compassion, and right relationship with ourselves, our community, and the more-than-human world. Source of love and goodness, buoy us as we reorient to you, that we may be restored and bring restoration, be joyful and bring joy, and walk in the ways of truth and reconciliation.
And may the knowledge that we are never separated from eternal love strengthen us, center us, and keep us connected to the source of life.
[Image description: Sun setting over a parking lot, with a small tree in the foreground]
I’ve thought of you more often than usual these past few days, most recently in a conversation on race and sexuality where I shared ideas you taught me.
Later, I walked in the woods feeling grateful to you for your generous wisdom. Sad I couldn’t remember the day, I looked it up. Four years ago this month
it was cold and I was sitting in the car outside a rundown gymnasium in a nearby town where one of my kids was practicing soccer.
First one, then another, there on social media, posts saying you were gone. It was sudden, unexpected.
Folks I only knew online, sharing about you, who I only knew online, all connected as participants in a weekly Twitter chat on queer theology
that taught me not to relinquish my faith to something smaller, not to surrender divinity to those who would diminish it,
not to abandon mystery to those who want to contain it, not to resign myself to traditions that no longer fit.
Your joy and big heart reaching me all the way from the west coast and soon we were sharing recipes and discussing our latest eco-friendly swaps.
I watched the way you interacted with people who didn’t have your understanding in a way that made them wish they did, a kind-hearted, fierce way that taught the rest of us so much.
From you I learned how easy it is to miss harmful isms and phobias that can pervade even seemingly good causes when I’m not their target. And to be always learning, always listening to those who are.
So often I’ve done my best to highlight something problematic in a way that honors your legacy, saying, “My friend Jane helped me understand…” Other times I find myself thinking, “Jane would love this.”
I wish I could send you reusable glass straws because they are far better than stainless. I wish I could meet you in person and that all the people who love you weren’t going into their fifth year without you.
I know I am both a better person for having connected with you and still have far to go in all the learning you helped inspire me to pursue. I miss your presence and your friendship, Jane. And I thank you for your light.
Note: I took the photo above right before I found out about Jane’s passing, and posted it the next day with the following caption: “Sunset last night while I was waiting at soccer, right before I found out my beautiful friend Jane passed away that afternoon. I never had the chance to meet her in person, but she was a wise and loving soul who I admired and learned so much from. I will miss her insight and compassion, and remember her for her fierce devotion to the friends and family she held dear, her passionate care for LGBTQ youth and others from marginalized communities, and her appreciation for the art of cooking. May the many mourning her passing be comforted by the love and light she shared with all of us.“
[Image Description: Black and white photo of the moon with some tree branches in the foreground. (This photo was actually take the day before the full moon, as we had rain here on the night of the full moon that prevented me from capturing a good photo.)]
Yesterday’s full moon, the Hunger Moon, brought to mind words from scripture that tell us those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be blessed.
A wise teacher taught me a way to think of righteousness is “to be in right relationship,” one of the most helpful teachings I’ve heard in a sermon.
Endless possibilities for the co-creation of right relationship— the earth, our community, our neighbor, the tree outside the window, the cashier at the supermarket, the technology we use, the entertainment we consume— everyone and everything we interact with has potential.
But do we hunger for that?
Robin Wall Kimmerer tells us her people, the Anishinaabe, called this moon the Hunger Moon because “the snow is too deep and the deer are gone and the caches are empty… After too many days, desperation is the only soup.”
It’s easy to imagine this, living close to the land and despite storing up for winter, running out of resources in the relentless dormancy of February.
What is difficult to reconcile, in our times of over-production to feed over-consumption, is how many still live in the shadows cast by the Hunger Moon, with desperation their only soup.
How far we are, as a culture, from righteousness, right relationship.
Kimmerer writes the Anishinaabe told their children tales of the Windigo, a human-turned-monster who consumes voraciously to the detriment of all, without ever being satiated, to ensure they knew the dangers of selfishness and excess.
The Hunger Moon brings reminders if we pause to ponder, that we can choose the path of righteousness, to live in right relationship, to hunger together to co-create a reality where everyone can have food and safety and joy and enough.
Or we can choose to follow the path of the Windigo where all that matters is our own hunger for more and what we are able to consume.
References to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work are all taken from her book Braiding Sweetgrass, specifically the chapter ‘Windigo Footprints.’ I highly recommend.
The Forest and the Trees 