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%

Anything Dangerous?

Anything Dangerous?

           

This semester I am entrenched in two New Jersey State facility’s, the only women’s prison in New Jersey, and a state Psychiatric hospital (yes the same one from previous entries). Both of them are very similar and also very different. But both as the same questions, ‘anything dangerous on your person?’

            I know not to bring cigarettes ,knives, plastic bags, anything sharp and so on to both places but something dangerous I think I bring. I bring knowledge, books and compassion to both places. Why are these dangerous you ask? Because knowledge gives you the power to rise above, to see differently, to challenge yourself to be different well remaining true to your core. Compassion brings the danger of knowing yourself as a human and not a number or a patient or a level of privilege.

            Jesus in his time was very dangerous not only because he discussed and sometimes screamed justice for all people. He also was a boundary crosser in a time when crossing boundaries meant all kinds of things. Jesus was also radically dangerous when he met the sick in there infections, ailments, and contagious. When he met the poor on the street and invited them in for a meal. He lived on the edge he was dangerous.

            But are we dangerous today? To we live on the edge and yell out for justice? To meet the sick in the hospitals and on the sidewalk? What about the poor? Do we determine that others will help them and we do not need to do anything? I think that as people of faith we are not dangerous enough, we don’t live on the edge.

            Granted where the edge is, remains different for each person. But learning not to judge as much the poor off the county I work in has made me dangerous, because I see not the poor in them, but the humanness of them.  Forcing me to see a bit through the eyes of Jesus, who did not see the condition but the human in a condition. Not pathology but a person.

            So yes I bring danger with me when I enter into these places.

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…

Shattered Moments

So this week well writing my report to my church on my process to ordination, I was conflicted. I have long had the benefit of having a loving supportive sending church, who have proven there support in many ways. But how could I quite tell time, I am really struggling with my call, who I am, and how I believe in God. I was warned that I would face my ‘seminary crisis’ everyone does. I escaped my first year and a half (four and a half semesters! Fall, January, Spring, Summer, and almost my second Fall) without it becoming apparent to me.

Then life as it has a tendency to hit me in the face, getting hit at my job as a chaplain at a psych hospital. Then an important person to me became severely ill and was in the hospital for the entire month of December. I started then to shield the truth from a lot of people. This tormented me, because I like to be a straight shooter.

            Then Jan. Term rolled around and I took a class called “Ministry and the Imagination: Come Holy Spirit”. Well I think that class opened me up to the roller coaster ride that was going to be the next several months. We discussed the qualities of the Holy Sprit and how she is a pest. I talked about how I saw her roosting in places you would not expect. I felt incredibly close to her then. But suddenly I stopped feeling close to her and to God. Being who I am, I was doing 15 credits at school, and working two part time jobs. I was sure I could handle it; I always had in the past.

            I started to slowly fall apart; it was sleeping a little more, crying a lot more, not doing my homework because I had no energy. I was getting to involved with patients emotionally, brining work home, and starting to wonder where God had gone in my life. I loved school and I loved my hospital job. But somehow I had forgotten to love me.I was starting to crack.

            I cracked and had a complete meltdown that knocked me out of my status quo for two weeks. But also kept me from living and just kept me existing. I went from cracked and broken to shattered, in the matter of a few weeks. 

       How do I tell the people above my home church who discern my call to the church. They want people who are not shattered, broken is ok, but shattered not so much. I am still hopeful that my ordination will happen someday. But how long will it take, will it be in the tradition that I love (most of the time)?

            So what do I tell them, I tell them that its been challenging, I tell them about my classes, how I learned how to knit, the process but keeping it all vague. Shielding the truth again. I dislike it but until we have a church that truly wants shattered people these fears of mine will continue for me and countless others.

The power of a name

         The power of a name is seen in the Bible in several places but my two favorites are the Covenant God makes with Abram and Sari and the conversion of Saul.  By making new covenants with them God gives them new identities, new beings and new names into Abraham Sara and Paul.  The names we have and the titles we gain there is much that goes into a name.

            In one of my favorite movies Spirited Away directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the main character Chihiro is warned to not tell anyone her name. By telling your name you give your being away. Somehow she is tricked into giving her name to the prevaor of the bath-house and she forgets who she is and becomes Sen. With the help of a friend she is able to regain her name and begin to reclaim her life and the life’s of those around her. This is also a story of growing up and growing into your given name and titles.

            Last week I was conducting worship at the hospital and from my perspective it was not a great success but that for this story is beside the point.  As I was waiting for the director of pastoral care one of the patients came and told me thanks. But what made this different then in other times was that he called me pastor. 

            I still don’t fully think of my self as seminarian yet even though I have been doing this seminary thing for almost a complete semester. Even when someone asked me this, during a conference this week it took me a moment to say yes. Let alone a pastor. I do think of myself as other things, a social worker(even though no one has ever called me this, I don’t think that this has the same address as pastor though…), aunt, Christian. These are things I will fully proclaim that I am, but pastor? 

            The gentleman who was saying this was saying it out of respect and I like to think love. But also because he might have forgotten my name, which I take no offence to as I am only there once a month. But this got me to thinking will I want people to call me pastor Betty?  I don’t like it when people call me Ms. Betty, except when you are in grade 5 or below.  I also understand that for some cultures to call a religious official by there first name alone might be a serious no-go.  But what I think most of all that I would be desired to be called would be something like, Betty no better or no less servant of God. But even that in and of itself is a title so I think I’ll just stick with Betty.

            By knowing a name of someone you instantly empower them. You give them a quiet dignity that for some populations has been lost and is so hard to regain. To know someone’s name is to begin to know who he or she are and what they are. Their friends is the power of a name.