Jesus in a van Down by the River

       Starting my second masters in May to get my MSW appears to many like i’m a glutton for punishment.  I often question this of myself, why does one need two masters other than to get more letters behind your name and get lots of nice papers and tassels to put on the wall.  One of the critical components of the MSW is field work or an internship. This where the rubber hits the road to say and all of the theories and concepts that you learn out of books and doodle in your notebooks if you're like me hit you smack in the face.

    In seminary my field placement was in a food pantry in an affluent county in New Jersey where we competed for grants against cities like Newark, Camden, Paterson. Where the need is at least perceived to be greater. But the county I worked in had a great deal of the in be-tweeners or the people who are only one or two paychecks away from disaster. Heaven forbid the car needs repair or someone gets sick, they are right there at the welfare office begging for help to get past a hump. Known as ALICE, for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.  

    I have found in my work in social services both secular and religious that there is a huge gap between public assistance and not. But what of the in between, those who need that extra $30 in food stamp/SNAP benefits to make it to just exist not even save. But they make in their gross pay too much. What of them? My MSW field placement is at a men's homeless shelter in a country of great wealth disparity. One side of the county is tremendously wealthy but the other side is tremendously poverty stricken. Likewise this shelter takes men from a neighboring county where there is a MAJOR state university but won’t help you unless you are getting $2.00 a month or less it seems. I also work at 211 where I take calls from all over the state of NJ for people asking for assistance and do a lot of intakes for said county's residents. What can I offer them when they call in homeless at 9:00pm on a Friday night. Nothing.

          I am frustrated by all of this, my lack of being able to help, to feed, to clothe, to shelter, to keep warm in the winter, get needed prescriptions let alone give spiritual solace to.  Pope Francis recently said “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.”

This is an insurmountable task to even dream of some days after I'm done with work or my internship, when I feel most productive banging my head against the wall. I am left to wonder of the gift of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ time on Earth taught us anything at all. Jesus might today be that homeless person who goes to work, makes a wage, not a living wage but still to much for assistance other than maybe $16.00 a month in food stamps. But can not afford a safe decent place to live. He and the disciples instead of a boat might have had a run down van and an ‘Obama’ phone as the guys at the shelter call it, or a government sponsored phone with 250 free minutes and unlimited texts a month. Living the high life for sure.

    I might be blaspheming to some here but the truth and reality can slap you upside the head mighty fast. I see all the resources that churches and faith groups have an wonder why social service and faith need be separate. I hate giving referrals where there is a condition to get a meal you must go to the church service before hand. It's wrong and not the way that Jesus operated at all. You sat down you had a conversation you ate together even if it was a scrap of bread a dash of oil, and a tiny piece of fish. You did it together not forcing. I think this is where the disconnect often happens.

       Our buildings are becoming just that buildings that collect dust, what if we as people of faith were truly able to serve the in-betweeners and fill gaps to help people get strong for themselves and then return the good will to others who have become in-betweeners. What if  Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. In the letter of, James  we are told, "If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? (James 2 15) became a lifestyle and not just words on a page.

Anger with the Almighty

            One of the subjects and trains of thought I have been following for a long time is that of Anger with, and/or at God. When I first got really sick, as in I admitted it. God had not talked with me for a long time. I even sat in more silence then before to try and hear the voice of the creator to know that I was loved, especially when I could not love myself.  But still the profound silence remained. And not knowing what to do with that fact I became even more depressed crying “my God, my God why have you left me?”

            Well I know that I’m not alone in that anger and frustration with God. Heck even God in the person of Jesus prayed for the cup to pass to someone else. The prophets crying out with Gods displeasure often where going on gut and on strings of faith. I ‘caught’ somewhere along the line that it was not acceptable to be angry with God, I have no clue where though. But in a bible study the pastor who was acting as facilitator said ‘look to the psalms, lots of anger there. But likewise lots of hope, dreaming and praying’. Or as I like to think, nothing comes out of or exists in a vacuumed. As sweet is to sour the universe must hold a balance with itself.  So if there is love there need to be the balance, I often wonder if God is sometimes frustrated with us in our humanness.  Likewise as I was speaking to a colleague of mine at work today, if we are created to be in relationship with God in the image of human relationship, anger is normal.

            However I think the anger is more often a convenient mask for disappointment and frustration. I in my work within the community work with a young women and her family. She finally said yes to a residential treatment, where she could get the best help and go on trips to Dorney Park if she earned it. The facility was clean and bright, with trees all around. More like a retreat center then a residential program for youths with serious mental health issues. We got onto the property and 20 feet from the door she stopped. We played this game for three hours. Eventually I left with the mother after having the young women signed over to the facility.  As we where leaving she still had not entered.

As I found out latter that afternoon, as I celebrated the young women getting to the property, I found that in her refusal the child welfare branch that was involved took her to a shelter because they felt that residential needed to 100% voluntary.  I ran through a gambit of feelings, anger, frustration, disgust, but ultimately ended up on disappointed. I think the most extreme type of anger. The knowledge that the services are there but can not be accessed because of systems, money and personal choice. Freewill gives us this last one and I think that is where God often becomes sad, that we never fully experience all that is offered to us to succeed.

            For me disappointment and anger, also lead to distrust. But in the course of my own recovery and Systematic Theology (yes of all places) I figured out and accepted “our no to God, can NEVER overwhelm God’s yes to us”. So the anger and related feelings, might just be our rebellion to the extreme emotional feelings of what that complete yes from God is.

CUT IT OFF!

      In a Mass during CPE the Gospel Lesson was Mathew 18:6-9. It’s a harsh parable to be sure. Doing CPE in a psych hospital changes a lot of what might otherwise be ok in terms of chaplaincy. The Priest did state quite clearly about not cutting off your foot literally, because in this environment the power of suggestion can be very powerful. But what I was lead to think of in this environment when your brain causes you to sin what do you do? If you cut it out you will die, it is like telling someone to cut out there soul in my view.

          

  As a person with a mood disorder in the six ring circus of the state Psych hospital I was lead to think about the ‘sins’ I know I did in my deep dark hole of depression. Such as cursing out God, not loving my neighbors, not telling or showing the good news to anyone, missing the mark and one might even say my thoughts of suicide where sinful. At the time I felt them to be that way.

 But to me this entire passage is interpreted in light of how you view sin. I see sin as “missing the mark” and breaking a relationship. But can sin truly and willfully be committed when someone’s biological chemistry is causing him or her to do so? When in there true heart they want to do every thing else but sin and hurt the people around them.  So the solution for some might be to cut off the offending part. But this countered with Paul saying each part of the body is important. I am siting with Paul here and not Jesus. 

Well the brain may be messed up and it might sound like the easy route to just cut off the offending part. This is where lobotomy’s had there base. Looking to ancient Greek medicine it was viewed as people’s humors or the four body fluids where off.  The term melancholia is derived from the greek words for ‘bile’ and ‘black’. It was and sadly is still not uncommon for people to view depression as demonic possession and the ‘anger of the gods’. Certainly the person is sinning to have   I think at this moment in time, that some sins in breaking relationships are truly from the person themselves. But more often I am sure that it comes from illness. 

gotten a demonic possession. But again I ask are they liable for the sins they inflict if they are not themselves? If they are possessed or if God is punishing them. I am mixed on this question even as I ask it. It for me goes to the idem ‘love the sinner hate the sin’.

I think of one patient who is a fanatic fundamentalist Christian that is convinced Harry Potter ruined her childhood (she is in her 60’s BTW). She has a nasty temperament and has burned through many chaplains. Part of her burning relationships I know comes from her chemistry, but what I think most of it comes from is that she is lonely and hurting. She does not know how to forgive herself she just wants to cut the offending part, or parts off in her veiws. 

What happens if the offending part just needs stitches, wound care, or antibiotics to cure the oozing, festering, infected wound?  Paul’s route is much harder, learning to love each part, to accept it, to not declare one better then the other. All parts are not always even or 100% but together we are all 100% and with the Grace of God we are 110%

i carry you with me

            Today I learned some sad news. My camp the one where I lived life fully for the first time is being sold. So goes my dreams of a wedding there (I had the colors and the locations planed in my mind, I just needed the SO), the hope that my niece would get to go to MY camp, that others would get to go an have transformation experiences under the stars and with the fireflies. But this is not to pass in the way of life in this moment or in God’s plan. I think of all the memories I have of this place. How I had my first true telephony, how I found my first boyfriend, holding someone’s hair out of there face on there 21^st birthday at 1:15 in the morning. Canoeing with said boyfriend on the creek and finding a skull, ending Harry Potter with the 7^th book, How sweet the grass smelled when it was cut, dancing around the fire pit, breaking a window within an hour of my arrival. Driving my brand new car on its first journey in my hands from home to camp. I grew up a lot that summer; it was a major life bridge for me.

            I will not lie and tell you I have not shed some tears over this. I was just talking with my therapist about how much I loved that area because of all of the good that went with it. The peace, the quiet, the stars, even the crop duster.  All of it mattered and still does. Somehow I thought I would always have the physical place of my camp, but this is not to pass either. However I have camp in my heart. I have the friends I kept from there, the learning’s I did that summer, the pictures and the treasured relationships I had with the kids. Camp was a study in conflict management for me, intra and interpersonal. I keep them close to my heart all the time. I think of the e.e. commngs poem “i carry your heart with me”

A picture from summer 2007, when I was a counselor at Camp

i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                       

  i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

A time,

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            As my second to last semester of Seminary draws to an end, I think of the past three years and all of the changes that have happened in my life. I came to seminary thinking one way, desiring different things then now, feeling differently, and in a much different health state.  I wrote my admissions entry about how I was interested in Eco-Theology, and while I still am my call and its related desires have turned my heart more towards behavioral health. I listen to many of my seminary friends and they all have similar changes they have undergone.

            In class yesterday my friend Chris played “For Every Season” by the Byrds. Based from Ecclesiastes 3:1-9, titled ‘a time for everything’. Almost every funeral I have been to has had this verse ready its sort of like the 23^rd Psalm-death stuff. But I have found more within the past 18 months of my life that this is a poem/scripture that is all about life.  With the season of spring supposedly coming in the Northeast where I live I am preparing my seeds to plant my veggies for the summer, I’m stressing out about finals and trying to figure out what I’m going to do after graduation. But I see that everyone around me has this happen too.

            I am taking CPE this semester at a Psych hospital. As followers of my blog you know that this is something very near and dear to my heart and the place where I meet Jesus in the other every moment. I lead a group called “Morning Centering” where we listen to music, I give a talk, they sometimes talk with me about the message and then we finish with music. I was not at CPE for about a week and the area that I do the group on had completely changed. The dominate personalities of the area where discharged out of the hospital. I had mixed feelings about this, I was excited that they had reached according to the hospital a level of wellness. But I was sad that I did not get to say goodbye to them.

            There absence changed the group dynamic completely, with a woman who was quiet now taking a large leadership role.  One of the first times I was with the group it snowed like crazy and I talked about how snow is the poor mans fertilizer. And how sometimes in the winter when it all looks dead it is merely regenerating, resting, renewing. A message I need to tell myself often and that soon the spring flowers would be blooming, and that they would be beautiful because of all the moisture in the ground.  Thus leaving us to contemplate a time for everything, a season for our lives at this moment, a chapter of the book of life completed. A time that we cannot always see…

Staying in love with God...?

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I have been reflecting a lot recently on the section of “stay in love with God” from Three Simple Rules, a way of Wesleyan Living by Ruben P. Job. I have read it three times, once for me, once for pastoral formation and once again for supervised ministry. The rules are simple, do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.  Now I have trouble doing all three, and argue quite vehemently about ‘do no harm’ as interpreted to ‘do the least amount of harm possible’ I’m not very popular with my classmates when I argue this point. I digress this is for another post. 

            But staying in love with God has been the hardest for me lately. As those of you following my blog have hopefully figured out, its been a crapy 15 months for me.  But for me the struggle with my mood disorder, and the complete disorder of my relationship with God and my own spirituality and faith has been heavy on my heart.  I say that I am angry at God, but that is the way to place a word to far more complex problems.  It’s a wondering, a wandering, a hopeing, a where the F* are you God!, and Hi God its me Betty, I’m leaving a voice mail…

            So I am trying to do my best to stay in love with God. Acting in a way that reflects the morals and values that I hold dear, trying my best to lift people out of the mess with there help. Trying to teach good, not evil and encouraging others in there own faith journey. But how do I stay in love with God when I wonder where God went. I know that God is, and that God loves me. But I miss the days when I knew God was around me.  It also does not help that I am trying to figure this all out well in Seminary, where God is 90% of the time the focus of academics. Even outside of the class room God is always in the conversation as we whine about our theology, bible, and practical theology classes, asking do we really need to know this random stuff about The Investiture Controversy?*

            So how does one stay in love with God when your not quite sure what that is now, how to let go of what it was, and how to mold it for the future?

                                                                                                               

*Throwback to Church History I, the main thing I remember from this class, in terms of uselessness for the history of the Church… (maybe it will be on Jeopardy some day)

Panik Yüklü

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       So I have a confession, I love tattoos. I think they are a beautiful form of artwork that is unique not only to the tattoo artist but also to the person who chose the tattoo to be placed on their body. As they say tattoos are permanent, not coming out completely even with surgery. So when I make the decision to have one placed upon my body it had better have a dam good reason for being there.  My most recent tattoo is “Panik Yüklü” on my left wrist. It means don’t panic in Turkish.  Now the story I tell people about this tattoo is somewhat bland. But the real story is so much more interesting.

            So Turkey has always been a place that I have wanted to go to. I can’t tell you why, but I knew in my soul that I needed to go to Turkey.  It’s been a gut feeling since my freshman year of high school, I HAD TO GO. So when the opportunity presented itself in in-between the summer of my second and third year of seminary I knew it was mine for the taking. When I signed up for the class in December I had no clue what changes where coming my way in-between then and May. Facing many of my demons challenged my ability to go to Turkey. It was unsure if I was going to be able to go.  But with a lot of strength and being a pest to the person who decided, I was able to go.

October 2012

           

I do have terrible anxiety, I’m told its Generalized Anxiety Disorder,(GAD) and Panic Disorder. And I was already anxious about going to Turkey and having to be ‘perfect’ in terms of my moods and not have any epic meltdowns. Because I was a ten-hour plane ride from my therapist, and a 3AM phone call would not have been appreciated. So each day was a challenge to me, but it was so very much worth it. It was an amazing trip. The trip of a lifetime, yes I did get a carpet that I love very much. But on our second to last day in Turkey we where headed into the European side of Istanbul and one of my friends on the trip with us tripped on a turnstile and got very flustered. A transit worker was standing nearby and yelled ‘panik yuklu!’ to us. Unsure of what he said we asked our professor and she translated it as don’t panic.  It took me several weeks to think of the powerful message that this man had said to us.

May 2012 w/Emily and Susan

            I continued to panic nearly everyday for the next three months, but I worked and work very hard to check my anxiety and know my triggers.  But ‘Panik Yüklü’ stuck with me. So I decided to get it as a visual reminder where I would see it a lot.  I when to the tattoo shop when they where having a fundraiser for 11^th Hour Rescue, a rescue group for dogs about to be put down. So I felt good about it all the way around.  This one hurt a little more then my other two that are on my ankles. But it was good pain (ah the curse of tattoos, they only hurt badly for a bit! And you don’t remember that bad hurt). I watched the ink seep into my skin and knew I had made the right choice.

            All of my tattoos have a spiritual meaning to me, my Jesus fish and my red balloon. The red balloon and panic yuklu have the most meaning because the represent triumph for me. Having the courage to tackle my demons, to face them and to not let fear be my basis for life. For me courage is the bedrock for faith. This is why the gospel of Mark is my favorite. When you read the true ending, you don’t know Jesus was resurrected. But the disciples had the courage to trust that they had experienced something, supernatural. However they still had the courage to follow Jesus’ instructions to them. To go into the unknown, to go places that are potentially very dangerous, yucky, and a host of other un-pleasantry’s. This is my type of faith that we don’t know the plan and it requires trust and courage to go forth. Courage requires the ability to not freak out all the time but rather to ‘Panik Yüklü’.

God is a Knitter

Even God is a knitter (in addition to being a potter, an artist, a poet, fire, and lots of other creative pursuits). The Psalmst tells us,

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”

Psalm 139:13-16

As I wrap gifts for CHRISTmas this year for the first time ever I get to give a ‘grown up’ handmade gift. Not an ornament, not a foot angel but a scarf. Last winter I got the fantastic idea that I was going to learn how to knit. I had done it before so really it was just going to be getting back on the bicycle. How wrong I was, knitting for me was not like getting on a bicycle, or maybe it was as learning how to ride a bike for me was very difficult but more on that another time.  After a tense December for a multitude of reasons I looked upon January as a time of new beginnings, a way to restart to learn something new.

            Again I had no idea just what I was getting myself into. Susan who taught me how to knit and I would sit on Sunday nights and watch ABC’s Once Upon a Time and knit together. Even though she taught me our techniques where different but both still produced knitting. She was a knitter who would rip out messed up stitches and I would just let them be. I’m not really sure why I did not feel the need to rip the stitches out. Granted in my first scarf this led to a HUGE hole. But she also told me that knitting reflects the state of our souls. I think of knitting as an embodied prayer, the clacking of the two sticks together the conversations that go on during group knitting, the bumping of hands that meet when trying to show how to hold the needles just right. That first scarf became a goal scarf for me; it was a sign that I could do something good, after a time of feeling that I was only capable of failure.

            But back to the Christmas scarf, I started this scarf in my room at Drew casting on 30 stitches. Then knitted a few rows in the international terminal at JFK, a few more rows in Antakya Turkey, then some more on the road between Tarus and Nevisher Turkey. More on the Turkey trip some other time. Then I got home and worked on it on and off, trying to work out my frustrations with life in those sticks and fiber. Trying to knit the holes of my own life together. I had thought from the start that I would give this scarf away. But about half way though I wondered how I could give this scarf to anyone with all of these broken feelings that I had fed into it in the process of turning it into a scarf.

            But then I thought of the person I was giving it to. Someone who fully gets the brokenness that I feel, for they have felt it also.  Working to battle the holes and the frustrations, the sadness but likewise the joy that I worked into that scarf. So I give this scarf to this person with all of this, knowing that all of the individual stitches work together to create rows of bumps, that form into inches, that form into the scarf. Knowing that this person and I are knitted together forever in our souls just like this scarf.