Taking the Hints

I’m in my cave. I didn’t realize I was because I’m not “supposed to” be. I have assignments due tonight that I haven’t even begun reading for. My man is out of town, leaving the parenting fully in my corner for a few days. And yet here I am. Drinking tea, baking, doing puzzles and listening to Brandi Carlile. I knew that my intensive experience was forming me towards something. I’m picking up on the hints of what the future may hold. Choosing this grad program put me on a path. But it’s a trailblazing kind of path, not the kind that lands everyone (or anyone) is the same place at the end. I did that on purpose. Nevertheless, I am heading somewhere. And the hints are starting to pile up. I wonder if every semester after intensive I’ll be found in my cave processing. If I have to guess? Probably.

The piece I’m chewing on today is community. Part of what we’re learning in my Salvation and Human Identity class (can you imagine a more captivating subject for me than human identity? Nope. Doesn’t exist) is that humans are primarily relational. This seems obvious. But our time in history is fully built on what my professor called the “buffered self.” We make a lot of distinctions between ourselves and others. Just look at the shit show that is our political world right now. The other-ing is rampant. And repugnant. But that’s a different conversation.

So the question is, how do we become porous people (vulnerable, relational, compassionate, interdependent) when we live in a buffered world? In some ways, this is a well trodden path for me. I swear my life goal is to not be an asshole. And in order to not be an asshole, I must remain soft. It also kinda threw a wrench in my work on boundaries and freaked me out to an extent. It has been so critical for my health (especially as a 2 with a savior complex and a perfectionist black and white brain) to figure out what’s mine to hold and what isn’t. I’ve decided to stand by that work, knowing my porous self is still going to require boundaries. Maybe my instincts are innately porous and living in a buffered world has necessitated a bit of buffering just for survival. I don’t know. But porous living can’t be codependency. That doesn’t help anybody. Yea for life-long quests.

The reason I’m bouncing these ideas off the walls of my cave today is because whatever my future holds, I’m getting the hint (wily minx strikes again!) that it will involve a community. I love working with others anyway. I’ve been on my own so much with work and primary parenting (how many stay at home parents feel that way!!!) that it would thrill me to be part of something outside of just my ideas and ambition. But I’m wondering if whatever is coming involves more than collaboration. It might involve intentional community. I’ve met several people who have done my grad program and created intentional communities. While they’re all unique, the thread between them is the human need for unconditional love and support. As much as social media makes us think we’re more connected than we’ve ever been, people are fucking lonely. I think this buffered/porous thing is part of it.

We had the privilege of hearing from Paul Sparks from Parish Collective for a few hours during the intensive. He talked about integration of life in where we live, work and play. Across the world, neighbors are coming together and creating inclusive community. What a dream, right? Part of the reason we’ve lived in our townhouse for 14 years is because of the connection we feel with our neighbors. And that hasn’t been part of a larger, intentional movement. We just all love each other and are in each other’s lives. But what if whatever is brewing within me (and several colleagues) involves this kind of life? The kind of life where you have intimacy outside of your family? The kind of life that has a bigger, collective purpose? A place where everyone has a contribution to make and nothing about anyone disqualifies them from belonging?

I think part of the reason we have an opioid epidemic and hate crimes and suicide rates that are climbing is because people fall through the cracks in a buffered world. Not everyone can rely on their family to catch them. Some people are falling because of their family. People are overworked. Spouses can’t provide all the emotional and social support their partner needs (because that’s not what partnership is but we think it is). Social media can be a double-edged sword. Politics leave no room for error or nuance. We just want to watch something and sleep. We don’t get enough time outside. We don’t get the pleasure of healthy, affordable, easily prepared food. We’re overscheduled. Our kids aren’t safe to play outside unsupervised. It’s always raining (at least here!) Everyone wants more from us than we feel we can give at work and at home.

What would it be like to feel comfortable asking for help, knowing it’s there waiting for you? What would it be like to operate out of a place of wealth? Wealth of relationship, resources, energy - because it’s not an individual well you’re drawing from but a collective one. What can people accomplish when they live and work together? A lot. And that work starts within. It starts with moving along the spectrum from buffered to porous self.

***Okay this is weird. I was going through the post before publishing it to add links and I found this. Remember when I got trained to do Peace Circles because humans need connection? That was 18 months ago. Perhaps the hints have been coming longer than I thought!

The Unraveling

You guys, if I said before that I was up to my ears in school, I was not. I am now, officially, up to my freaking ears! My third simultaneous class began this week. And the work is LEGIT. That being said, I’m reading 8 million things at once, taking notes, watching online lectures, writing responses and I realized just now, I am unraveling. Not in the bad way, like I’m dying or going insane. I’m unraveling in the way I engage with work and mystery. I am reminded of the many nights I have sat behind my daughters and worked with untangling their long, thick, matted hair. A lot of my mommy friends have no reference for the level of untangling I engage in often. One of my girl friends was here a few months ago and was totally baffled! It’s my normal. And it was my mom’s normal with me. Partly because we let things slide sometimes until they get bad and we’re not particularly vain or worried about having pretty hair. But more than that, it’s just what happens when you’re active and have a lot of hair. You just sit down and do the work, even if it takes hours.

In the same way that I have to bolster myself before I start the untangling process, I am looking at this school work with the same vision. Not just in tackling the actual work, which is daunting (how am I going to do it all in the time frame I have?) The vision that the work is worth the effort expended, that one day it will eventually be smooth enough to put the hair to use (braids, typically), and that there is learning in the process of the untangling. As you all know, I have been sifting my theology for 7 years. And looking at theology from the worldview I have post-sifting (though, will I ever truly be post-sifting?), now armed with books and professors and a cohort, I am ready to re-engage. Each reading on trinitarian theology or conversation about the historical Jesus or project with a church focus group is a knot I’m working through. It is something to come prepared for with eyes towards a future where I will have benefitted from this process. Some use will become clear for this learning and this experience in the end. But for now, I’m gonna keep brushing, keep reading and keep soldiering on.

Suffering Isn't Evil

I have to tell you guys, I am really enjoying graduate school. I'm sure school in many areas would be fun or interesting, but the program I'm in specifically just fits like a friggin' glove. I'm so pleased! I'll be even more pleased tomorrow as it'll be the first day both of my kids will be at school (yea for the teachers strike ending!) as the program has been going on for a few weeks now and I feel an urgent desire to really hunker down.

One of the things I've been reading for class is a book that's actually out of print but I have no idea why because it's so brilliant! (Man, I am geeking out hard right now, sorry). The topic of one of the chapters is about suffering. There was a line he wrote that really brought clarity to something for me. He said, "the evil is in the intent to harm, not the suffering.” His greater point is that suffering isn't a problem to solve but just part of the human condition. But our modern/post-modern interpretation of pain is that it's always bad. I've written about this time and time again. I especially love that he brings intent into it as that has been a bit of a talking point for me for some time. It is so heart-breaking when you are held to a standard outside of your intention. I mean, I have had people hold me to things based on their own projection of what they decided my intentions were (or worse, outright claimed my intentions have no value in community), and I found myself at a total impasse. How do you resolve conflict (relational suffering, in this case) when what you say has no bearing on how others interpret your intentions? You freaking can't. 

So what I am continuing to learn is that if people don't give a fuck about your intentions, they don't give a fuck about you, not really. I don't mean that your intentions are your "get out of jail free card" but if they have no value within community, there is no grace or compassion in community. That's a community I cannot be accountable to because it is one in which I cannot be a human being. There is no space for feelings or frailty or straight up fucking up when your intentions don't matter. And so as I try to recover from experiences such as these, I can hold on to the fact that my causing suffering is not evil. It's evil to cause suffering if you're trying to do so. And that's legit, dude. Not okay. But if you cause suffering accidentally, you're just a person. It doesn't mean you can't apologize for unintentional harm, however, that apology only gains credence in a community willing to accept it. Sometimes that's more elusive than I imagined. 

It also means that when I feel harmed, I get to go back to my understanding of the other person's motives. Because I do my best to assign positive intent, rarely do I hold to this idea of evil. I have had a few occasions where the other person made it really damn clear they intended my harm, and that made it very easy for me to determine my response. But if I can have a reasonable doubt about another's intent to harm me, I get to reframe the suffering through the lens that it was possibly not on purpose. There are two sides to every story (let's face it: many more usually) so even when suffering is great, unless I am sure it was deliberate, I can choose not to receive it as evil. I can choose to receive it like grief, loss, heartache, but not true destruction. And that has merit.