So This Is Christmas

December 26, 2016December 26, 2016 ~ Bethany ~ 2 Comments

“Uh, Bethany,” you may be thinking, “you’re posting this on Boxing Day, not Christmas Day.” Well, it’s still the Christmas season, so it’s still Christmas.

We tend to gloss over it, but Christmas is actually more than one day. That old song, “The 12 Days of Christmas” is a reference most of us who celebrate even secular Christmas know. Those of us who celebrate religious Christmas likely have the “season of Christmas” referenced in our liturgical calendar.

I’ve always been a fan of the season rather than just the day of Christmas, and this year it’s particularly helpful. All month I could feel myself getting more and more stressed and angry as we approached Christmas. It felt so wrong to have a Christmas without Dad. I know that most Christmas-celebrating people eventually experience one without their dad. Ever since I was diagnosed and told to not look at 5 year survival rates (my tumor make up was weird, I’m a really weird age for my type of cancer, etc), in the back of my head I’d just assumed that Dad would outlive me and I’d never have a Christmas without him.

And now, I’m one day into my first Christmas season without my dad.

My mom is in town for the holiday and her birthday which is really good. We went to a Blue Christmas service at my parish which helped. It didn’t take away the pain and grief, but it helped to be with others who were sharing in worship and grieving their own losses. In the service, we named our feelings and their bittersweet nature, and hung ornaments that symbolized our losses. Being in community and taking the time to acknowledge our grief helped. I suspect I’ll go again next year, since I expect next year will also be difficult. Though, I do hope it’s a little bit less difficult at least.

I’ve felt sharp spurts of anger every time I see or hear anything like “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” or “it’s the season for joy!” For me, it’s not. It’s a hard time of year and I haven’t felt especially joyful. The worst are signs like “Be Joyful!” because the angry, spiteful part of me looks at that and says “Nope. Not going to happen.”

Wishes for joy or peace, those don’t bother me and seem kinder. Yes, let’s wish for joy together. Let’s hope that we have peace in the world and in our hearts. It’s not that I don’t want to be joyful, more that I can’t stand a command performance of joy.

So was there joy yesterday? Yes, there were moments of joy. I also felt ill which might have been rich Christmas Eve food combined with All the Feels (my emotions often express themselves physically to me). There was definitely sadness, but there was joy. Seeing my nephew’s face light up when he saw the Corduroy bear peeking out of a gift bag from his parents and hearing him yell in his toddler accent “CORDUROY! CORDUROY!!!” — that was a moment of joy. Snuggling with him while we read Corduroy and My Name Is Bob was lovely. Talking with friends was joyful. Exchanging gifts with my family and seeing that we’d picked well was joyful, if bittersweet at times.

Today we’re meeting for lunch and going to ZooLights in the evening. It’s still bittersweet and hard. I’ve already sobbed once this morning (not fun when you already have a massive sinus headache). However, this is Christmas.

There’s a lot I’m still reflecting on from #FuckThisShit and #RendTheHeavens, but a big one is that the first Christmas was messy and a mix of pain and joy. Mary gave birth in a smelly, dirty stable. It was cold and she had strangers coming in while she was probably still dealing with afterbirth. Christmas isn’t just the singing choirs of angels, it’s the family being turned away at every inn. It’s dealing with fear and holding things in one’s heart. It leads to wise strangers warning that family that their infant’s life is in danger so that they must flee to a strange land.

Christmas is messy and a mix of emotions. I think that’s okay.

Hope Isn’t Easy

December 22, 2016December 23, 2016 ~ Bethany ~ Leave a comment

The usual TW of discussion of my religious beliefs as well as some profanity. Also this is a really long post. No apologies for that, consider yourself warned.

“Clusterfuck” That’s the word for today’s reading in the #FuckThisShit devotional calendar. I saw that, and before I even opened my Bible, I found myself laughing and shaking my head. Because yes, that is the word for how my life and how this world, this country feels right now. It feels like everything is in a giant clusterfuck.

On the corresponding, not so NSFW, #RendTheHeavens calendar it was “Roll(Out)” which just made me think of Transformers. My husband had great memories of the show while I had never even seen a single episode of the show. So, early in our dating, I bought the DVDs and we watched the original show together.

Thinking about Transformers reminds me of optimism. The Autobots were always able to save the day with (other than in the movie) no deaths (because, well, kids’ show). It also reminds me how simple life was back in that studio apartment where we watched the episodes together. We didn’t think about life-changing illnesses or sudden heart attacks.

It’s not like life was 100% perfect. We dealt with job loss and the search for a parish home. But, there wasn’t anything big that challenged my optimism. I remember while I was between jobs, after receiving another “we really liked you, but that one other final candidate had just a bit more experience” email, I decided to call my dad.

I was frustrated and worried I was letting him down. However, Dad assured me that I wasn’t letting him down. Actually, he was proud of me. He liked that I was reaching for my dream of making a difference. He was also certain things would work out. He was right, of course. Within a few months of that call I was working for my dream organization with one of the best bosses I have ever had.

For most of my life I have proudly identified as an optimist. Until mid May 2016, any time I felt that optimism wavering, I could (and generally did) call Dad. I wasn’t naive and I didn’t think things would always be perfect, but I never had much trouble finding hope. When I did struggle, Dad would have the words to help me. I had my crabby moods and frustrations, but also hope and faith that things would work out — that hard work would pay off, that I could change the world because the world was always getting better even if it needed a push, that I could get through anything.

Part of why I was proud to be an optimist, was because it was something I shared with Dad.

Then I lost my dad to a sudden, unexpected heart attack. Then I learned my cancer was back. Then the tumor turned out to be much bigger than expected. Then my beloved cat got so sick he needed surgery followed by an emergency blood transfusion and a stay at an intensive care facility. Oh, then there was my radiation treatments. Plus shitty things happening in my friends’ lives.

Plus there was everything going on in our country and in the world. The massacre at Pulse; anti-immigrant and anti-refugee talk; bombings causing people to need to flee their homes; a candidate for president treating sexual harassment and assault as no big deal and people I’d previously respected claiming “that’s just locker room talk” (no, it isn’t); overt racism; people saying crap like “blue lives matter” while acting offended by the idea that black lives matter; somehow the most overtly racist, in-bed-with-a-foreign-power, neo-Nazi-enabling, anti-feminist, completely unethical fraudster of a candidate won the Electoral College (with Russia’s help); the whole of the GOP rolling over, including saying that it doesn’t matter if the president elect tweets falsehoods; acts of vandalism and violence from the fraudster’s supporters; the continuing destruction of Aleppo; the daily desecration of this country’s Constitution; and so much more.
My optimism isn’t so easy to find in the clusterfuck that life seems to currently be. At times it feels like my faith and hope that things can improve, let alone that they will improve is barely present. My hope seems like a cheap and dying flashlight at the bottom of a deep, dark well. I worry that maybe I’m not an optimist anymore, and that sucks.

At a time when I most need to have my dad with me, the aspect of him I most identified with feels like it might be gone. I’m not as generous as my dad was. I’m certainly not as calm and logical. There’s a lot about him that I don’t share, or at least don’t share now, and am not sure I’ll share again. That’s scares me.

But I do share his faith. Dad always said he suspected God was either laughing or crying (or both) at the divisions we humans make. So to Dad, the fact that his parish was Roman Catholic and mine is Episcopalian really doesn’t matter. It’s the same faith at heart.

While talking with my husband last evening, he suggested that my faith and wanting to be an optimist, are optimistic in nature. The fact that I haven’t given into total despair, that I’m not certain things will always be the darkest timeline — that’s hope and hope is a form of optimism.

And I do have hope. It’s dim, but it’s there. I hope that things will get better. I still think it’s worthwhile to fight for equality regardless of gender, race, creed, or sexual orientation; to speak out for animals; to care and not retreat into my own bubble. I think it’s worthwhile partially because I couldn’t live with myself if I ignored injustice. However, I also think it’s worthwhile because I think the fights can be won. It won’t be easy and we’ll suffer defeats. We won’t immediately stop the violence and mistreatment. But we can and will prevail, so long as we don’t stay in despair.

So what’s today’s verse? Revelations 22: 18-19

I warn everyone who hears the prophetic words in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words in this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city described in this book.”

I don’t have an easy interpretation. It’s the type of verse that makes me hesitate and even worry a little. Is it adding to the words to write about them? To understand them only in English? Is it taking away from the words that it’s been a long, long time since I tried to read the entirety of the Book of Revelations? I don’t know and that leaves me with some fear.

Underneath that fear? There’s hope that this someone comes back to the core faith that God so loves this world, and that somehow there are better days ahead. Somehow I have hope that the world can be healed.

In the words of a Jesuit from Xavier: “Hope is not answers or solutions, it’s faith that something is waiting for us, that there are possibilities. Hope isn’t easy.”

Nothing worthwhile ever was easy.

What Sort of Person

December 9, 2016December 9, 2016 ~ Bethany ~ Leave a comment

TW: Swearing, Christianity, Progressive Politics

After reading the Medium piece by Jessica Vazquez Torres on today’s #FuckThisShit/#RendTheHeavens, I was torn. I had two competing, though complementary, responses to the daily prompt. One was simply a response directly to the prompt. That’s what’s in this post. The other was a response to the prompt in light of what JVT’s piece brought up for me. Because I couldn’t decide which to write, but knew they were separate enough to not belong in one essay, I’m writing two essays to one day’s prompt. Given that I’m not writing daily, I’m okay with that. Today’s daily prompt was “(DIS)COMFORT: 2 Peter 3: 11-13:

Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of person ought [you] to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire. But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Instead of using Google to pull up the passage, I felt pulled to get up from the couch and grab my old New American Bible I received 17 years ago (August 27, 1999 to be percise). I received it in my freshman year theology class at my Catholic high school. I forget the official name of the fall semester class, but I remember the teacher telling my class that we should question our faith and question what we believe, because unquestioned faith was untested faith, and testing would make our faith stronger. She actively encouraged our questions, and discouraged feeling any guilt about questioning our faith. That encouragement has stayed with me, even if I no longer can tell you details about the lives of all the prophets we discussed in that class.

I’ve changed a lot in those 17 years. A lot of that is because of times when I’ve pushed myself to embrace discomfort. Two of my favorite people in college were (and still are) nothing like me on the surface. I remember one, Casey, commenting my senior (her junior) year that she was sometimes amazed that we were friends. She and I had different personal views on dating, religion, sex, post-college goals, political activism, and reproductive justice. She wore dark eye makeup under a huge hat with long hair and often gestured with a cigarette. She didn’t gesture with the cigarette if we were indoors, I had a cold, or there wasn’t a stiff breeze taking the smoke away from me. See, I was an asthmatic who hated cigarettes. My general style was somewhat preppy with the occaisonal peasant top or loose skirt while her style was dark bohemian. We were not at all the sort of people you’d think either of us would be comfortable around, but we made each other better people. Or at least, I know she made me a better person precisely because of what about her could be discomforting to my 21 year old self.

More recently, there’s a theatre that my husband and I love, Forum Theatre. They’ve won awards and they have intense, amazing shows. I rarely watch sad television or depressing documentaries. I don’t like books that are devoid of hope. I don’t enjoy absurdist or abstract films. I get that all sounds anti-intellectual, but it’s who I am.

The shows at Forum looked like they would discomfort me and challenge me. I was intrigued but it took effort for me to embrace the likelihood of discomfort and challenge, and realize that I needed that in order to grow and be a better person. Again, I’m so glad that I embraced that discomfort.

two programs for Forum shows — Programs from Forum Theatre

Forum shows do always discomfort me, at least a bit. They challenge me and make me ask questions and look at societal issues in a different way. Some of them I saw multiple times because I want to catch new nuances and see what new ideas they bring up. They’ve pushed me out of my comfort zone and into the experiences of other people, people who initially can seem so different from me and whose actions can otherwise seem so inexplicable. Thinking about Pluto, which deals with a shooting at a community college, still makes me uncomfortable because it showed me how to identify with someone I’d more comfortably consider a monster.

So what does all that have to do with 2 Peter 3: 11-13? Because it’s part of the sort of person I want to be, the sort of person I think I’m called to be. I don’t think that any of us are called to be totally comfortable all the time. I think that we grow by pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Whether it’s friendships or theatre, or something else, we cannot live in comfortable, homogenous bubbles if we want to really know the world that God created and that I believe, as a Christian, I have a responsibility to help change into an “earth in which righeousness dwells.”

Discomfort is not always easy. I have anxiety for which I take medication. It would probably be easier to only do things that are comfortable, but that’s not what I’m called to do. Sometimes it takes deep breathing or medication, but I’m not going to let fear of discomfort keep me from being the sort of person I think I’m meant to be. I’m going to do my best to embrace discomfort so that I can become the Christian I think I’m supposed to be.

How Can I Look Towards Christmas?

November 29, 2016November 29, 2016 ~ Bethany ~ 1 Comment

TW: Christianity, Swearing

Starting Advent, looking toward Christmas, is hard for many people this year. It’s easy to feel like our world is broken. It would be easy to just say “Fuck this shit!” I don’t blame anyone who does. There have been moments that I’ve said that with full passion and conviction when I just can’t find the strength to keep hoping and working and trying.

Whether on the personal or the global level, it’s easy to see pain and wonder how that could possibly connect with singing “Joy to the World” or “Silent Night.” How can we watch Rudolph, listen to Christmas music, or put up lights when our hearts hurt?

XMas Lights on black background from Flickr via Wylio — LadyDragonflyCC, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

For me the pain is layers of personal and societal. I hurt for missing my dad. I desperately miss him. I miss knowing that Christmas will come with his jokes about the real tree vs a fake tree, his enjoyment of my husband’s signature Christmas Eve margaritas, his voice singing Christmas songs as Christmas Eve mass, throwing wrapping paper at him as we open presents, the good natured ribbing as he and my mom try to remember which wrapped gifts are for which recipient, the Star Trek books he’d give me that I’d share with him after reading so that we could talk about the characters we still loved more than a decade after they went off the air, the looks of love shared between him and my mom as they exchange their Christmas presents — both clearly delighting in having found gifts that brought joy to their beloved. I can’t think for more than a minute or two before I start crying. It’s hard to focus on the joy of those memories, of the joy of Dad’s clear faith and belief, of the joy of my imperfect family sharing love and laughter and our traditions of burritos, oplatek, cheese plates, and Mannheim Steamroller.

I hurt for wanting to hope for my own health. I won’t know for six months and I know that worrying does no good, but it’s a struggle to not focus on that. It’s a worthy struggle to find my inner optimist and have faith that everything, no matter what the six month scan shows, will be alright in the end — even if it’s alright in a way I cannot possibly imagine.

I hurt for friends dealing with personal difficulties and stresses related to divorce, jobs, children, and more. They’re not my stories, but I hate that people I love are in pain.

I hurt for the world and for my country. I hurt for the individuals so ashamed of their vote that they act as cowards and stick their heads in the sand, refusing to take any action to help the people already being harmed and harassed because of the vote they chose to make in determined ignorance of the facts that were plain to see. I hurt for my friends who are any sort of not heteronormative straight white people. I fear that my friends who are witnessing harassment will be harassed or harmed themselves. I fear that friends who are public school teachers will witness the destruction of public schools in the United States by people who have no understanding of the need for public education. I see pain and hate in the world and it’s easy to question how that connects with Christmas stockings and trees covered in lights and ornaments.

But, those stocking and trees are just part of Christmas. Christmas is also about three magi bringing gifts fit for royalty to a poor family huddled in a stable outside an inn in a major city of an occupied country. Christmas is also about God asking for faith that things will turn out okay in a way no one really imagined.

Christmas is also about hope coming not in the form of one who was powerful, but in the form of a squalling baby born to a Jewish family seeking shelter and care while travelling against their will, living under the rule of a powerful occupying country. It would have been easy to look at the young pregnant woman and her husband, huddled in the straw, and say that their lives would be hopeless. It would have been easy for Mary or Joseph to give up their faith. Maybe for a few minutes between Mary’s saddle sores or Joseph’s blistered feet, as they were unable to find an actual room, as they prepared for Mary to give birth without any help in the straw, surrounded by animals, maybe they did find their faith dimming. If so, that’s okay. They still came together for the birth of a baby who would change the world and bring hope to the hopeless. They welcomed shepherds and foreign wise men. They found hope in a situation many of us would have called hopeless.

I’m not saying that makes everything okay, or means I’ll be able to jump both feet into Christmas this year, but it’s what I’ll keep coming back to. Christmas is about hope coming from what can seem like hopeless circumstances.

“So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” — Matthew 24:44

Maybe that also means that hope can be found when we least expect it. That’s something my dad would have gotten behind. He always said that there was something good around the corner, just often enough to keep him believing. I’m going to choose to try to be hopeful, even when it’s hard.

–Inspired by #FuckThisShit/#RendTheHeavens Advent Devotional Calendar by @crazypastor and @tvrasche, though admittedly a few days late. The passage from November 27 is one that has been rattling in my head ever since I discovered this as a way into Advent that my tired heart not only could handle, but seems to have needed.