May 18, 2012

The value of girls

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I’ve been writing vignettes about my past, and there are more to come, as I try to reach a deeper understanding of myself and how I got to be the age I am without figuring out sooner that I’m not straight  (in case, gentle reader, you hadn’t caught on to that part, on which there is more to come.) I thought I was pretty much the last girl raised with the post-Victorian genteel Southern attitudes I like to blame for my late epiphany, but I’m discovering that women considerably younger than I am and raised in very different social settings internalized the same ideas about how their value derived from the attention of men.

My friend,Lia, said it would be good to have a discussion about it, in longer phrases than the 140 character limit allowed by Twitter, so here we are.

Living the dream: yours truly as a bride, dancing with her father, 10/8/83.

Some questions to get us started:

  • What was your socio-economic and geographic setting when you were growing up?
  • What were the expectations for you?
  • Who told you what value and success might look like for a woman?
  • Was that success wrapped up in attention from men?
  • Were there definitions of what kind of attention was appropriate?
  • Was there cognitive dissonance? (In other words, did you hear one thing and see another?)
  • Was there an a-ha moment suggesting there was something wrong with the whole social construction?
  • And since I’m reading “The Purity Myth,” did virginity form part of the definition of your value?
  • And how about marriage?
  • Do your past and/or current understandings of sexual orientation (yours and others) form part of the subtext of this conversation?
  • What’s your basis for valuing yourself now?

I look forward to your thoughts and stories and hope you’ll share them here.

Filed Under: Grrrls, Living in This World, Orientation, When I was a little girl ·
Feb 13, 2012

They Removed the Roof

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I’m terrible at artsy-craftsy things. Terrible. But I understand why we do crafts in Sunday School, because making the image of a story has the power to imprint it on us in different ways. There are some stories I remember because of the pictures in a book or a children’s Bible, but there are others that became part of my life through cutting paper or coloring or gluing things together or twisting pipe cleaners or some combination of the above plus or minus popsicle sticks and string (although I prefer yarn).

It must have been a group project. I want to think it was, because it’s hard to imagine I constructed the three-dimensional paper house with the removable roof and the man on the stretcher alone. I also hate to think of the poor teachers who might have been supervising a classroom full of kids all working individually, with scissors (I forgot those before) and crayons and string and all that paper.
When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. (Mark 2:1-4, NRSV)
I remember the house, and I remember how fragile it seemed, and I can see the flat little man on the paper stretcher. I think the edges of the paper folded around a string on each side, the long ends used by the friends to lower the paper man into the house.
We children, of course, lowered him ourselves.
We were the friends who removed the roof.
There is a long discussion in the story about the difference between healing and the forgiveness of sins.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ”Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk?’  But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” –he said to the paralytic–  ”I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” (Mark 2:5-12, and isn’t it a pity we don’t read it every three years?)
I don’t remember that part from when I was a little girl, sitting in the big Sunday School room at Court Street Baptist Church, where Mrs. Kersey, the minister’s wife, oversaw everything with grace and creativity and kindness and beauty, oh my goodness, such beauty in the eyes of this little girl. I only remember it was his friends who made sure he got to see Jesus.
They removed the roof of a house. Listen to that! Don’t just pass it by. Read it out loud.
They removed the roof!!!

And after having dug through it…dig that!
I have an unsurprising tendency, as a liberal Christian who also majored in English, to suck the reality out of Bible stories and teach them as metaphor. And there are surely many metaphors to be explored. But we need to hear this story literally.
(Make a note of the date. I asked you to read something from the Bible literally. This won’t happen often.)
We need to hear it.
They carried their friend on a stretcher, their paralyzed friend, and because the crowds were so enormous, they took him to the roof of the house and REMOVED THE ROOF and DUG THROUGH IT and lowered him into the middle of the room where Jesus was.
Sometimes I wish someone would do this for me, put me right in the middle of it with Jesus, put me right in front of his face and make it so he will look me in the eye and see me and fix what is wrong with me. And I’m not sure whether he would offer to heal me (my toe joints are pretty bad right now) or forgive my sins (they’re pretty bad right now, too), but I know I would take either.
And sometimes I realize that’s exactly what we’re doing for each other, friends, when we pray for one another. We see the crowded situation around Jesus, and we find a way to get on top of the house and remove the roof and dig through it, and we put our friends in need right where they need to be, in front of Jesus.
Thank you for doing that for me. I’m glad to do it for you, too.
Filed Under: Epiphany 7B, Forgiveness, Mark 2:1-12, Prayer, Rheumatoid Arthritis, When I was a little girl ·
Dec 3, 2009

The Day of His Coming

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(Thinking about Advent 2)

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and
the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger
of the covenant in whom you delight–indeed, he is coming, says the
LORD of hosts.


But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he
appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify
the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until
they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years. (Malachi 3:1-4, NRSV)

I used to stand next to Mrs. Buckley in the choir loft at Court Street Baptist Church. There are many pieces of music I will always hear in her gorgeous alto, and the solos in Handel's Messiah are among them. I was a high school freshman and then a sophomore. We had a crowd of high school students in the choir then, I suppose because she was their school choral director, and perhaps because her own daughter was in high school then, too. We swelled the ranks of the choir–how happily for the choir I do not know–and we learned good music. So much Handel I learned standing at her elbow, and although I played the piano, I did not have the sight-singing skills to get the parts easily. I leaned on her.

From the balcony, she sang every year during the Christmas Pageant. Her magnificent tones filled the sanctuary with "The Birthday of a King."

Oh, I admired her.

And I learned from her, qualities of kindness and love and patience, as well as musicianship. I learned friendship as I watched her with her friend, Mrs. Kersey, the minister's wife.

That part of my childhood and youth feels almost mythological, and I have lived far enough away for long enough that it hardly seems it could have been real, particularly the Christmas Pageant which in memory is gorgeous beyond what could have been possible. Ask my family, they've heard the stories over and over again, of the choirs, including the little children, processing to "O,Come, All Ye Faithful," electric candles in hand; of the solo I sang at 12 and the time I almost fainted while garbed as an angel; of my disappointment that we moved to Williamsburg before I got old enough to be Mary. Every pageant I write or direct or observe I hope will hold some fraction of the wonder that pageant held for me.

Mrs. Buckley has gone on ahead, to what I hope is a beautifully musical beyond. The dark Sunday afternoons I listened to her in the balcony, the wonder evoked by her voice, are all far in the past.

I have wondered if the people who were so much a part of my life would remember me, or if they did what they would think of hearing I became a pastor. How have I been refined? Am I what they would have imagined?

Today I found my same-birthday friend, the minister's son, on Facebook, and he sent me a message, glad to hear from me. He tells me one of our old friends mentions my name frequently around the Pageant.  And he signs off with a :-)

Filed Under: Advent, Holy Days, When I was a little girl · Tagged: ,
Jul 9, 2008

Interim Training, Day One

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Skipper Goes to a Hotel
Originally uploaded by revsongbird

For most of my life, going to a big meeting would have been the source of some anxiety. Would I make friends? Would I sit with the cool kids? Would no one at all pay attention to me?

But in my pastoral effort to be a non-anxious presence–no, let me amend that–a self-differentiated, non-anxious presence, I have actually changed, gentle readers. I have changed such that when I arrive at such an event I no longer think about such things. I trust that the Holy Breeze will blow me where I need to be.

And thus it was today, as I somehow ended up sitting next to a charming Episcopalian in a gorgeous red blouse who had noticed the sign for the Village Traders thrift shop in the church basement. We finished our lunches quickly and hurried down to the shop.

While tempted by a set of rose-colored Limoges china, in the end I merely liberated Skipper. I felt I owed it to her, given the hatchet job haircut I gave to one of her sisters many years ago.

Skipper enjoyed the afternoon session and feels quite prepared to deliver a discourse on church size, preferring the Lyle Schaller model of cat and dog, but wondering if perhaps the arising micro-churches might be Dollhouse Churches? I join her in meditating on this question.

Contemplatively yours,
Songbird and Skipper

Filed Under: Ministry, Photos, When I was a little girl, Whimsy · Tagged: , ,
Apr 16, 2008

The Building Block

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Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For it stands in scripture: "See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame." To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner." (1 Peter 2:4-7, NRSV)

"The building block (buil-ding block) that was rejected became the cornerstone of a whole new world."

I heard it on the "Christian" radio station in Williamsburg and recognized Noel Paul Stookey's voice from the Peter, Paul and Mary albums my daddy bought when I was a little girl. What possessed him to buy folk music I do not know, but I loved those albums and played them over and over again. When their music pops up in my iTunes, I feel I am listening to old friends singing directly to me.

"Building Block" went through me. I searched out the scriptures to which it referred. I sang it over and over again. I remember listening to that radio station more than I might have, because it was the only source I knew of for the song. I see myself in that suburban bedroom with the windows that were high and small in the fashion of the late 1960's, in a neighborhood so carefully carved out of woods to preserve nature that the trees felt oppressive.

When I am down and unsuspected
With a burden that does not show
I think what time has resurrected
And how the sun can make the water flow

I suppose it felt pertinent in the midst of my teenage angst. Passionate about God and boys, and not always in that order, struggling with relating to other girls, struggling to co-exist with my mother, sure I was misunderstood everywhere, I found my hope at church and in music, so music about Jesus was a winner. I wrote my own, and accompanied myself on the guitar. It may not have sounded good, and really, I am not being falsely humble, because I have no idea how it sounded to others, but it felt good to sing about Jesus, to sing about God. I felt like part of something.

To a disconnected teenager, a rejected savior meant everything. A misunderstood Jesus became the cornerstone of a whole new world.

Filed Under: 1 Peter, When I was a little girl ·
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