I have carried heavy silence

Have you carried heavy silence, have you let old sorrows win. . .?

This line from the hymn, "Could It Be That God is Singing" hit me pretty hard this morning.

Yes, yes, I have carried HEAVY silence. . .

"Like a sheep before her shearers is dumb..."

Why did I keep quiet?

Well, I shut up because I felt that the

security of my family necessitated that I shut up!

I shut up because my calling was a like a fire shut up in my bones and it was precious and worth defending.

I shut up because I could do so in good conscience-- I had done my duty and paid a price.

I shut up because I BELIEVED that reputation is a long game and because I believed that the the "mill of God grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly small!"

I shut up because I am a pragmatist and didn't believe that "speaking my truth" would concretely improve the situation.

.... But I have not forgotten. I remember. And here's the thing: the truth exists...

and within this truth I have experienced divine accompaniment, and hope, and peace.

Or, in the words of the hymnist, "Oh, the Spirit, she was singing, even when [I] could not hear her abundant streams of living, waiting for [me] to come near."

Blessings for the 12 Days of Christmas

May you know the peace of Christmas
Like the arc of a Swallow’s wing in flight
Or the spaces between the falling snow

May you know the noise of Christmas
Clamoring
Laughing
Ridiculous like the fictive drummer boy
Or the over-the-top toy from a wayward uncle
The whoosh of wind outside a warm home
Astonished bursts punctuating the night
the shouts of shepherds

May you know the silence of Christmas
… of the word pleading
Of answers that deflect wrath
Like the pause between the last cry of birthing and the first cry of birth

May you know the joy of Christmas
sticky hands on cheeks
The scratch of new skates
A tail thudding on the floor
an old miser born again

May you know the love of Christmas
Like a parent swaying in the night
The sparrow resting in the eaves

May you know the challenge of Christmas
Demands we are told are light and easy
Terrible creatures telling you not to fear

May you know the extravagance of Christmas
overstuffed turkey
apples syrupy on the edges of the pies
Green, blue, red, silver, gold papers
Round yon mothers

May you know the light of Christmas
On the trees
And corners
Like unreplenished oil
Eternal, fixed, and unfixed,
Like a comet scarring the sky
Light that darkness did not comprehend

May you know the darkness of Christmas
Deep, troubling
Revealing of stars, casting off shadows.
Intimate
May you know the hope of Christmas
Weary
Wondering
Curious
Rushing down the stairs or
Fighting the long defeat
or unashamed like a Heron

May you know the courage of Christmas
Like a cardinal red against the snow

Remembering my baptism

Sunday we took a brief trip to Goderich and the Beach.  The sun, the two-toned lake, and the cloudless sky were restorative.  The water was early June temperature--it made my feet and legs ache.  I have a bit of a ritual with Great Lakes and the Oceans--I always attempt to overcome my natural reluctance and jump into the water.  (I mean at normal times of the year...  I am not planning on joining the polar bear club anytime soon).  I almost always find the cold is a bit more manageable than I originally assume it will be, invigorating really.  

Sam was out there repeatedly dunking himself--crying out "one, two, three."  I thought to myself:  in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

I was baptised around this time of year.  I believe I was 13 or 14.  It was a big deal.  I was baptised with my best friend's younger brother and another friend's Mom.  I remember being very scared and embarrassed in that teenage angsty sort of way, but I had been reading my Bible frequently and felt a sense of strong conviction reading about Jesus' baptism. 

It was a simple thing, but it was one of the first times I remember choosing to be brave.  These memories flooded over me as I jumped into Lake Ontario this week.... the sense of letting go, the sense of relief when the water wasn't as bracing as I feared, the reminder that I can overcome my fears, the sense of cleansing and refreshment.

We are told in Scripture that in baptism we recall that we have been buried and raised with Christ Jesus.  Baptism is death and resurrection at the same time.  I wasn't baptised a Mennonite or even baptised into church membership.  Right now when so much that I loved and worked for the last 5 years, the last 10 years, the last 20 years is feeling stripped away... I remember my baptism.  I remember that I can be brave because of God's promised presence.  I remember that I can be brave because the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is present in my own life.  I remember that I can be brave because I remained joined to Christ even if important human associations are stripped away.  I have spent a lot of my early adulthood looking askance at my "just Jesus and me" faith of my childhood, but boy, sometimes you need it.  I need to remember that Jesus is close, proximate, ever-present and as Paul says:  "I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus or Lord."

Wonderful Minari

 

On Sunday I watched Minari with Doug and Johanna.  This movie would have delighted my Mom. We only went to the movie theatre a few times when I was a kid in the mid-80s (the era of Farm Aid) and it seemed to me that I watched a lot of heartbreaking farm stories. (This is my favourite).

Minari follows a young Korean family that is trying to make a life for themselves on a 50 acre farm in Arkansas.  Some aspects of the story are universal to the genre:  the perils of drought and inclement weather, the untrustworthy nature of city people, tenacity, health concerns,  the strain on marriages, and the isolation.  Other aspects are more particular:  the challenges of crossing-cultures and generations, the unique relationship between the Grandmother and the youngest child, and the unique friendship  between the Father and his strange Pentecostal neighbour.  Again, and again, the movie, eschews easy stereotypes allowing each character--even the ones that only flit on the stage briefly--their own complications.

I really loved the movie.  There were bits that especially resonated with my own history: the Sunday School bus, the intrigue of going to a friend’s house where the rules are much more lax, and just the general look and feel of a rural community in the early 80s.  

I found myself wishing that it had won more awards.  I love Frances McDormand, but Nomadland and the way its storytelling floated detached from material conditions--the loss of industrial jobs and the way that precarious employment atomizes people and destroys selves and communities--left me cold.   (It isn’t surprising that the director has a Marvel movie lined up).

 Those 80s farm movies my Mom loved were very much stories told in the shadow of Reagan. These movies fit well with stories about coal miners and mill works. Artists were trying to understand something that was being lost, perhaps the dignity of work....

Minari reminds us that work must connect us to place, to family, to weird communities and friends.  Nomadland is also a story about  resilience and work, but it makes resilience a characteristic of the individual, another way of saying rugged individualism. In this way it is the perfect parable of our neo-liberal moment.

Minari reminds us that resilience requires roots, connection, and buttresses.  We need one another to be resilient.  We need other people to be  more than passing shows on our road of life. We need other people to confuse us and complicate our lives.  We need our roots to grow twisting  together--wonderful like Minari!  

An open love letter

 Doug,

You wrote such a beautiful love letter.  Thank you!  I have been wanting to respond for quite some time.  What has delayed me?  Well,  I do have a particular gift of knowing when I am out-matched--  "know when to fold em!" 

 I can't possibly write as beautiful of a love letter to you as you have written to me, but I will do my best to speak earnestly and straightforwardly. 

I became a bit too obsessed with the Holocaust when I was an adolescent.  In particular with the question: "What would I have done if I lived in Nazi Germany and a Jewish family asked for my help?"  I read the Hiding Place several times.  In that intense time of faith discovery the question: "am I brave?" loomed large. .. this became a kind of test question for me regarding the authenticity of my own faith...  what would I do?  

I worried/worry that I would not have been brave.

I do not have those doubts about you, my love.

In the last year I have failed to defend you as vocally as you would have liked, but in a critical moment that should have made a world of difference this is what I said:  "I have no doubt what Doug would have done if he had lived during Nazism in Germany. He is the best person I know."  

What more can one say than that? 

You know that I also think that you are a royal pain in the ass.  We have disagreed vehemently about tactics and strategy since last October, but I don't think you ever wanted to be married to a "YES woMAN."  Sure....I know it is difficult to be married to one of those Muppet hecklers, but I also think you have the grace to realize that a bit of a heckler is precisely what you need! -- A bit of a ballast against your cocksured-ness.  I know this year has winded you. 

I also know that you are the more gentle of the two of us.  

I know it feels like your capacity to sit so patiently at a bedside, or write such a thoughtful eulogy, or make the impossible possible for a heartbroken Mother, or help a newcomer family secure a home or a sense of calling has been forgotten, but I remember. 

And also God....

Nothing is lost to the heart of God,

nothing is lost for ever;

God's heart is love,

and that love will remain,

holding the world forever.

No impulse of love,

no office of care,

no moment of life in its fullness;

no beginning too late,

no ending too soon,

but is gathered and known in its goodness.

I hope you know that you are loved... by me... and with an everlasting love that does not require computation or this-worldly accounting. We have both banked a lot on that being enough, more than enough, more than sufficient. We will see.  We will continue to see.

With Hesed, 

Your Jo.

Though Christmas has been a show (12/29/2001)

Christmas has been a show

Plotted in October.  Texts, words edited, the songs 

deliberated.  

Fussing over "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."

This year it will have to come--if it comes-- the way that disappointed me once ...

as a young adult.

 no candlelight services.  

or Oratorios.

This world that I have built to inure me 

from that farm falls away.

I remember Christ singing "O Come Emmanuel" to me

in the disappointment of a tabletop tree and illness and a sense of unremitting loneliness. 

But...

This story turned and glistened differently on another December Eve.

And so we have lived hope 

and it changes the way we wait. 

An Armistice --11/11/2020

 You danced on the beach on Armistice Day.

There were no kindly sellers of poppies.

we did not need to justify our lack of red to anyone.

Your bones and sinew are as fragile as any girls. 

this is true of every little boy.

your curls, your pointed chin, the way you laugh as an alto.

As a young girl,  I wanted to be sturdy and strong 

to save things.

 I was not taught that the keeping of the world

depended on body's destruction. 

It was my soul that would be be required.

My soul and the too pointedness of my chin.

We can be strong together, dear boy.

You and I.

You do not need to be cannon fodder.  I do not need 

to bury desire 

God, Mother!

We can walk together.  We can have the same heroines (heroes)!

We do not have to become scared in order to be brave.