Everything is like birth. And everything is like death.

*I wrote this in April but it was way too much to process at the time.  I am a safe distance from these things now, so I can share.  

My grampa’s one year deathaversary was just last week.  I spoke to my grandmother on the phone and we were able to enter into that sacred space of being candid and vulnerable and imperfect.  She has not slept well this last year without her partner and friend of over 60 years.  I told her I could not believe it had already been a year.  It feels like he just died.  My father died almost 17 years ago and it feels like he just died yesterday.  So much time has passed and the wounds are fresh and tender.  

Me: Gramma, does it feel like he [grampa] just died?

Gram: Sometimes yes and no.  Sometimes it feels like he has been gone for too long.  And sometimes it feels he was just here.

Me: Yeah.

Yeah.  That is exactly how it feels sometimes.  I remember holding his soft cool hand by his bedside as he lay there dying.  I sang him hymns.  He struggled to breathe.  I compulsively checked his radial pulse.  His heart just would not quit.  His face was gaunt.  He did not speak.  We waited and watched.  We waited for his death.  It took him a very long time to let go and to die.  It feels like it just happened yesterday.  Every pain and smell and sound is so near.  

Last week I was able to see my best friend give birth.  I was there when her first baby was born.  Six years ago her daughter was born in a hospital.  She had an epidural and I held one of her legs and her husband held the other.  She breathed and pushed and her daughter was born.  Today her daughter is leggy with golden pink hair and a coy smile.  I held that kid once as a swaddled burrito, her belly button scab came off on my shirt and I thought I broke her.  The 6 year old (that she has magically become) and I have a mad crazy bond.  She will always be my first kid, my first baby that I desperately love.  It is strange that she talks to me in full sentences.  It is strange that she knows stuff.  And she knows so much stuff.  It feels like she was just born yesterday.  

Last week I saw her sibling born, at home- a natural tub birth.  It was much different from watching my friend labor the first time.  I still held a leg, though.  The labor was long.  There was breathing and prayer and encouragement.  There was hand holding and grasping.  There was waiting.  There was listening and checking for the baby’s heart beat; it was so loud and strong- that little beat.  The labor was 16 hours.  For her 6th child, that was a long labor.  But then she pushed, and her son shot through the water in the tub and bobbed to the surface.  

The stark similarities between my grandfather’s death and my friend’s birthing are not lost to me.  The events were so similar, but they were so different.     



  

Safety Not Guaranteed

For as long as I can remember God has been my center.  I knew this even as a small child.  Now, as an alleged grown person, I wonder what that means.  I was raised with a simple faith.  I do not think my family meant to give me such a flimsy faith, but they could only give me what they had.  I was told to put a Bible under my pillow to protect me from bad dreams (it has never worked and I still suffer from bad dreams).  I was taught that you pray.  I somehow absorbed that if we pray we can get everything that we need.  This is simply not true.

I have to tell you that every single time I realize that there is no safety net as I walk this high wire, it is as if my body is being slammed onto a brick wall at a high speed.  It just sucks that there is no protection for us.  So I have always struggled with prayer and to figure out who this God is that I am drawn to, whom I beg to stay by my side.  

Dear God, please be with me.  

I always thought that my safe passage in this world was guaranteed because I was in the God club; I was saved.  Isn’t that what saved means?  As a girl I had many prayers: that we could live in a house, that the scars on my knees would go away, and that my dad wouldn’t have cancer anymore.  My dad died of cancer.  I never lived in a house with my dad.  My knees are still banged up.  

God, I am so tired.  I need strength.

So with my heart and guts wrenched out, why is it that I still find myself praying to this God?  

God, you have thousands upon thousands of angels.  Can you send one in please.  I know you can.  

So what the shit is prayer for anyway?  I met a girl in college who I grew to love.  I knew that I could not live without her.  But I was so afraid of her dying.  She was so sick.  I wanted to pray for her healing.  I wanted to ask God to let me keep her.  I knew prayer did not work like that.  I prayed anyway.  My prayers were always frantic and beggy.  They still are.  I wept and sobbed.  I carry with me so many stories of unanswered prayers: stillborn babies, orphaned children, uncured illnesses, burned down and flooded homes, small wounds that led to amputation because there wasn’t enough money to see a real doctor, a starving mother with twins who only has enough milk to nurse one baby.  I hold these tragedies in my heart, and carry them with me wherever I go.  My natural inclination is still to pray.  

Please, God.  Please help.  Send help soon. 

[cricket chirping noises]

There isn’t anything else to do but pray.  That is why I still do it.  I get so mad sometimes that God brought me into this world.  I did not agree to the terms of this life.  Yet here I am- alive.  This life on this earth is so very, very, painful.  I have lost things I cannot live without.  I will continue to lose people I cannot live without.  We are subjected to great suffering here.  

God, I am so tired.  

Why am I still here?  Because I can hear God calling me to stay.  It feels like I am treading water in the cold open ocean and the sharks can smell blood.  Every now and then, I feel warmth, I get a deep breath, someone lets me rest my head on their shoulders and swims for me.  The girl I met in college is healed.

God, thank you.  Just- thank you.  Help me hold on to this relief.

Before I feel rested I am back to treading water again with salt water up my nose, chapped lips, and a sore body.

Ugh, God.  I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

I still hesitate to pray.  It is hard to ask when the answer seems to so often be a still and silent- no.  I just cannot resist prayer.  Even when I am filled with doubt, my mind does it anyway.  I ask for the easiest way out of things, and the only thing God gives me is God.  I am not promised safe passage through this world.  I will continue to have my heart wrenched out of my chest.  God will continue to be there by my side like a faint whisper.  

Conclusion to the Harassment Saga

I ultimately decided to speak with my HR person.  I was very nervous and my stomach made a lot of unwelcome noises.  I also have a hard time catching my breath when I get nervous- so that was a fun thing that happened, too.  I told her everything.  I told her about all three incidents.  She was most appalled that I was harassed about my ethnic ambiguity.  I explained to her that my defense is to joke about things, so I did my fair share of that while my boss was harassing me.

And it was like the mighty waters of the Red Sea parted before me.  My HR rep said, “Our supervisors are trained on this type of thing every year.  They know that even if the person goes along with the harassment or makes a joke- it is still wrong to do.  This was not ok.  I am glad you said something because there is a good chance that someone else on your team feels this way and doesn’t feel comfortable enough to admit it.”

Wow.

She affirmed my experience and she also threw in a bit of support and encouragement.  Is it sad that all of that was shocking to me?  I got so burned the last time I stood up for myself at my work place, that I forgot that some people actually do their jobs and care about professionalism and proper conduct in the work place.

The HR person did tell me that there had to be an investigation (and I almost crapped right there when she said that).  She was very clear about my rights during all of this.  I told her I was concerned that I would not be voted on as an official employee(your coworkers vote to keep you on the island during your first few months).  She was clear in explaining the confidentiality that had to be kept about this and she told me to come speak to her again if my bosses were treating me differently.  She told me, 

“You have rights and you will be protected.”  

2nd Wow.

It was really hard.  I am glad I did it.  Both my supervisors admitted to acting inappropriately.  Neither of them have been unprofessional towards me in any way or treated me poorly.  It is a relief and I am glad to have it behind me.

Even though all things confrontational and harassment related are settled at work, I still feel uneasy about something.  I feel uneasy about how I felt and about how I handled it.  I was afraid and I wanted to hide.  I expect more from myself.  I assumed that I would be braver and louder, sooner.  I actually considered not saying anything.  I really wanted to sweep it all under the carpet and pretend like it hadn’t happened.  I knew that ignoring it all would make me bitter, and it wouldn’t change anything, but confrontation is just awful. 

When I was younger and less bitter, confrontation did not bother me as much.  Perhaps it was because I did not know any better, I was more optimistic, I had way more energy to deal with these types of things.  Maybe I did not want to say anything at work because I know that all one needs to do at work is be professional.  I do not feel like I am being an agent of change at my workplace.  The only lesson my bosses only learned was to be quiet- there was no internal struggle or change.  They don’t know why the things they said to me are inexcusable, oppressive to me, and self oppression.  

And I am so fucking tired of contributing to and operating in a system that confuses proper conduct with liberated critical thinking.  This thing- this situation- is exactly what is wrong with our system, our culture.  The HR person said it perfectly, “We can’t change what people think.  They can think whatever they want.  But they need to know better than to say these things out loud.”

I nodded.  

I nodded because I know that it is not on my workplace’s agenda to do in depth diversity training in order to change the way people think about the world and the folks they share it with.

But therein lies the problem: we just walk around and slap band aids on everything.  HR’s job was to slap band aids on things and force apologies (much like my parents used to do).  My brother and I would smack each other and my mother would force us to apologize to each other AND forgive each other.  We would apologize through clenched jaws and we knew once our mother was out of sight we would start our quest for the justice that we really wanted- the last punch.  We learned nothing from our fights  about how to treat each other with respect or talk about our feelings or working together as a team/family.  All we learned was how to say the right things to get authority to leave us alone.  

My bosses did not learn about why the things they said to me were way out of line other than- stop saying illegal shit or this person is gonna sue us!  It is hard to be an active participant in that kind of ineffective system.  

And I just don’t know what to do with that.

Adventures in Anti-Semitism at Work: Part 2

Is this a bad dream?  When will it end?

So after my supervisor harassed me about my ethnicity for almost an entire shift, I got to have a break; my offending supervisor was out.  I had a day to think about how I wanted to handle things.  However the people that I had planned to talk to, my team leader and the HR person, were both off today.  My shift was going well, even when the person I was trying to avoid came up to me to shake my hand.  I am pretty sure she knew something was up because I am a very firm handshaker.  Today I barely returned her shake and she held on for awhile as if trying to resuscitate my hand.  For her- my hand has a DNR order.  

I decided to just keep my mouth closed unless she said something to me or asked me about my race again.  I did not speak to her or look at her if I did not need to.  I could tell that she tried to initiate conversation with me about produce and cooking, and she isn’t the type of person that participates in small talk.  I am glad she knows that I am not playing around.

One of my other supes (there are 8 total- and yes, that is insane), Let’s call her S, was returning from helping a customer and she looked wilted and devastated.  Customer service is a brutal business, y’all.  We often get treated poorly by customers and we just have to take it. 

Me:  Oh no.  What happened?

S:  I have never been so disrespected in my life.

Me: Crap.  What happened?

S:  She just kept saying to me, “Listen to what I am saying to you.  No! You are not listening to my words.  Do you hear what I am saying?”  She treated me like I am stupid and beneath her.

Me: I am so sorry dear, I know you guys get all the rudeness at the desk.  People are mean to me sometimes, but they spew all their garbage at you.

S: Yeah, and it was one of these types of customers [as she said ‘these’ she hovered her hand over the boxes that she had in her hand.  I work in a grocery store so it is not a mystery that she was holding food.  I just had not noticed what kind of food she was holding- because everyone is holding boxes of food at our store.  She was holding 2 boxes of matzo.]

I cannot remember what I did when she said that, but I know I thought, “AGIAN?!?  Are they trying to kill me?”  S tried to recover.

S:  You aren’t one of these are you? [She hovered her hand over the box again as if she was asking me if I was matzo, or if I was the sort of person that eats matzo.  But I knew what S was really getting at.  She was asking me if I was Jewish.]

Me: No.  But I wish I was. [I have a tattoo in Hebrew clearly visible on my wrist and there are Jewish folks in our department.  I am dizzy with disbelief]

S: I know there are a lot of good ones.  But there are also bad ones, too [insert her fumbling story trying to justify what she just said.]

My heart pounded as I returned to work and I all I could think about was how I have only worked at this place for 3 weeks and my ears have been on the receiving end of a lot of oppressive talk.  I was upset with myself for not being more forthcoming with my supe when she was harassing me.  So I decided that I would tell S that what she said really bothered me.  

S and I spoke and she knew right away that she had offended me.  She said my facial expression dropped as she was speaking (for years people have been calling me out about my face revealing my every thought- so you would think that my co-workers know when I am offended by their words).  She apologized and said she knew better.  She knew better because people say horrible things to her.  S is a white South African.  There are a lot of things we can all judge a white South African person for.  S also gets shit for not being a Black African.  It is complicated, right?  You would think (I would think) she knew better.  I also vaguely told her that someone was asking me my race repeatedly and that that was illegal.  She agreed and was shocked to hear about that happening to me.  She even said, “That IS illegal.”  So, yeah- I am going to have to talk to my department head about this.  Snarfblat.  

I was speaking to a dear friend of mine about making a social experiment of myself and how that backfired in a really bad way.  She was encouraging me to tell my team leader about the harassment.  I confessed to her a fear that stops many of us from telling our stories- I am afraid of being THAT person.  And then she said this to me:

But you are that person.  You are sensitive about race.  And that isn’t a bad thing.

She is right.  I am that person.  It is ok that I am that person.  Someone has to be.  Someone has to see these things and remember that they are important.  I did not intentionally pray about this, but I did say in my head, “Oh my God!?  Why the heck does this keep happening to me?  Why am I the one seeing this?  It is so ridiculous...it doesn’t even seem real.”  

I wonder if this 3rd thing happened to me because it has me so tired and so done that I have no choice but to speak with my team leader about E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.  I hope he is ready for an ear full.  I am afraid of not being voted on as a team member, but I also don’t think my workplace wants to have a person with a solid review record not getting officially hired because they complained about racism.  That wouldn’t look good for them.  So I am reminding myself to be courageous.

"What are you?": The question that I cannot seem to handle.

     I really do not mean to be melodramatic, but I have to tell you that I am done with almost everyone.  For the remainder of Lent I want to give up stupid people.

     Last week I had to tell my boss of two weeks that one of my superiors said a really terrible thing.  When this person said the offensive thing they said, I thought, “what fresh hell is this?  I left my old job so I could work in a safe and respectful environment and you had to go and be racist right away?!”  This is what happened at work last week.

Me: Working customer service is hard.

Cool supervisor: Oh yeah, I have some stories.

[Witty banter that is hilarious.  It is nice to let off steam.]

Me: When people do not make a 10 cent donation, I judge them harshly.

Cool supervisor:  Yeah.  At my old store people would walk all the way to the customer service desk to get their dime back.

Me: That is just insane.

Cool Supervisor:  Yeah.  And I hate to say it but this area is really-

Me:  Wealthy!  The houses are HUGE around here!

Cool Supervisor:  No.  I was gonna say that this area is super Jewish.

Me:  [cricket noises and rapid eye blinking that in morse code reads “are you fucking kidding me right now?”]

Formerly Cool Supervisor that is horrendously racist: I know that sounds bad but I have two Jewish friends that are dating.  Going out to eat with them and splitting the check is ridiculous!

Me: [Holy God.  She is digging the hole deeper.]

Currently horrendously Racist supervisor: I mean one will say to the other, “I will give you 50 cents if you let me have a bite of your sandwich.”  Isn’t that insane?

Me: [Why does this shit happen to me?  I am so tired.]

My face at work today.

     My supervisor thought she was a good person because she would donate a dime or buy her friend dinner- all while being a horrendous and blatant racist.  And therein lies the problem.  She thinks she is morally superior while still being trapped inside of these thoughts that place value judgements on entire groups of people.  

     I did not say anything to her because I was shocked, tired, and did I mention that I am done hearing people say stuff like this?  I had a fight in my head that made me feel guilty for not saying anything to her.  Ugh.  I am beneath her and I am new and these folks have to vote on me in 2 months so I can officially be hired.  I need this job and if I tell someone, there is a good chance she will know I said something.  I ended up telling my big boss and he was super awesome about it.  He made me feel listened to and he was disappointed because this racist person is in leadership.  Unlike my last job, I was reassured that it would be handled in an anonymous way that reminded folks to be mindful of the diverse and professional environment that we work in.

     Hold on to your underpants because I am going to tell you about what just happened to me at work today.  

     The nature of my ethnicity is, for some godawful reason (rather- the reason is historical and obvious, but I am completely over it), a topic that interests almost everyone.  I almost thought I was out of the dark at my new job.  I have worked there for almost four whole weeks and no one has come up to me and said, “what are you?”  I think part of that is because we don’t have a lot of down time to be social and exchange pleasantries.  But today, as I was with a customer, one of the big supervisors of my department came up to me and dropped the bomb.  

Black female supervisor who I think should know better: What are you?

Me: Hmm. [frown]

Black female supervisor who doesn’t know better: You know- like what is your ethnicity?

Me: . . . what do you think?

Black female supervisor who I lost all respect for: Well we thought you are a mix of Latino and Black.

Me: [sweet god, she said “we.”  These assholes have discussed it.] Well- I am not Latino. [I love to tell people this because it really confuses them.]

     I continued to do my job (because I was at work and that is what I am supposed to do) and for the next two hours she kept randomly coming up to me and listing ethnicities.  I wanted to try a new approach to handling this question because I am so sick of being asked.  But I am suddenly dreading the fact that I have made myself a social guinea pig.  Fuck me.  I would be with a customer and I would hear yelled to me, “Native American?!”  I shook my head.  I was stacking up baskets and I heard, “Grecian?!”  I was hoping that she would drop it.  Then the other floor supervisor came up to me, “Armenian?”  

     Now two people were asking me.  Then my supervisor goes up to a co-worker and starts talking about it.  She thought it was light hearted, but I wanted to hide.  I said nothing.  All three of these women made about 15 guesses over the span of 3 hours.  Just when I had forgotten about it, I would get another question.  At the end of my shift, my supervisor came up to me and said, “Jewish?”  

     I know that I am ethnically ambiguous.  I know that in this country, in this world, I am can only go so far on my brain and my wit and my grit.  I know that I am probably one of the smartest people in my work place.  I am also a very hard worker.  I come from a long line of workaholics.  I am also fucking brilliant, folks.  I don’t shout it out often, but I am intelligent and I will wreck the curve in a hot minute- do not tempt me.  In my first lab class in college we had to pick partners and I dreaded it.  All I could think was, ‘I need to find someone nearly as smart as me because I do not want some idiot that I have to drag around for the semester.”  I am ruthless.  

But my skin is not white.  

     I do not just get to float on by, undisturbed with my white skin.  No, I have to tell people my race so they can figure me out.  My brain does not mean as much, it does not weigh as much, as white brains.  My work will never speak for itself.  It is hard to be reminded of the fact that I have to prove myself; I will always have to show people my papers.  I want to tell you that I have gotten used to it.  I want to get used to it.  I have very thick skin.  But this thing chases after me and I keep running as fast as I can, hoping that I can outrun it.  It gets me every time.  

     What makes it worse is that the three people who harassed me about my race today are Women of Color.  I wanna get up in their faces and say, "You should know better.  The same way you want to categorize me is the same sort of thing that boxes you in and allows people to label and limit you.  Way to oppress all of us.  Thanks so much."  

     I also want to blame myself for what happened today.  If I would have just told her, like I usually do, I could have avoided this.  But that small voice inside my head, the same one that didn’t want an idiot for a lab partner, knows that this was not my fault.  At one point I spoke up to my supervisor.

Me: I am sure this is illegal.  You can’t ask me this.

Black female supervisor who I lost all respect for: It’s not illegal.

Me: It is if you are only asking me and singling me out and making me uncomfortable.

Black female supervisor who I lost all respect for: I know everyone else’s race, though.

     She handled this with smiles and laughs.  

     The sad thing is- I just told my department boss about what happened with my other supervisor last week.  I do not want to be THAT person.  I do not want my voice and my complaint to be watered down because I am complaining to my boss again.  This fucking sucks.

     Right now, I know that the right thing to do is to tell.  I always want everyone to tell.  We always need to tell.  We always need to hold people accountable.  But I cannot lie.  I don’t want to.  I am too tired.  I am afraid of being that person.  I want to curl up inside of myself and just talk to the few people at work who (I think and hope) are gonna leave me alone about my race.  I feel like I am betraying myself and so many other people by staying silent.   

I am tired.

I am so confused.

I am sick of being in awkward work situations.

I don’t want to have to be the one who speaks up, and teaches people how to act, and does the right thing.

     If I don’t tell, I will not respect myself and I don’t think you should respect me either.  If I do tell, I am going to be afraid and anxious all the time.  

I feel ubiquitously fucked.  

Responsibility: Why You Should Give a Shit

Responsibility.  Moral, Legal, or Mental Accountability.

Accountability.  An Obligation or Willingness to Accept Responsibility.

I don’t like semantics.  Or rather- I like to say that I don’t like semantics.  I think what gets under my skin is when groups of folks let words and meanings bog them down or distract them from all the really valuable and important things they could be talking about or (heaven forbid) doing with their time.  I recently heard about this guy at a Bible study I used to attend.  One day at Bible study he brought up the word responsibility and he wanted to explore what the word meant.  I was not an eye witness to this, but I heard he made a big ass of himself and it turns out that he is kind of a selfish douche.  Oh and he happens to be a pastor.  He is an example of my least favorite person: he is in a position of religious power, he gets caught up in what words mean instead of doing shit, and he is selfish and doing it wrong and making me look bad as a person who likes Jesus and some Jesusy-type things.  

I once got into an epic battle with my brother about responsibility.  It was epic because it had to do with things that I take very personally and that shit got heated.  
  

We were fighting because I was telling a story about some kids that are very important to me, that I met during a time that changed my life, and my behavior in the story was impacted by my belief system.  Needless to say I was locked and loaded for anyone who was gonna say shit to me about responsibility.  My brother, always the instigator, could not just let me tell the story.  He had to pick at it and put in his two cents.

I used to work this job that had your standard 9-5 hours.  I would walk to work and walk home everyday.  Almost everyday my roommates and I would see our 2 year old neighbor outside playing by himself when we left the house.  When we returned home in the evening, he was still outside by himself, but his diaper would be saggy and full.

Yes, it was heart breaking.  

So whoever saw him first (out of all my roommates) would usually play with him for awhile, invite him over to our place to play inside, grab a snack, and get a diaper change.  The sort of people I roll with give a shit about things like this.  

Did any of us have kids?  Nope.

Did my roommate go out of her way to pick up some diapers in his size?  Yes.

Did we all take it upon ourselves to care for this kid?  Yes.

Why did we do this?  Because it is the decent, human, solid thing to do.  It was and is the right thing to do.  

My brother did not agree that it was anyone’s responsibility to care for this neighbor kid.  

And I rained down upon him a storm of rage and wrath about empathy and mercy.  I yelled and cried.  I am a much better arguer now, but at the time this conversation was emotionally charged for me.  I loved that kid.  If I had had the resources or the opportunity, I would have adopted him (and I would have had to fight my roommates for him- because they all would have done the same).  But I was also disappointed because my brother did not understand why it is important that we care about a lonesome 2 year old.  

The fight started because my brother put a sweatshirt on his dog- she was shivering with cold and I happened to mention that lots of dogs get treated better than children (not to say that we should not treat dogs well, I am just saying that all the things need to be treated well).  

I yelled and cried because I am sad that I have to explain why it is important to care for small, vulnerable, children that you see with your own eyeballs.  I sobbed and hiccuped because I could not put in to words how important this is for all of us to do.  I cry because this is a true and sad part of life: there is great need in the world and there are folks that just don’t give a shit about it.  

Here is the part in the post where I get all religious and stuff- so feel free to stop reading if you want.  I was raised by some folks who love Jesus.  Jesus says that we should care because he cares.  One story about him is that he is giving this sermon to these people on a hillside.  They come to him because they heard rumors that he has done miraculous stuff and that he has talked back to the big wigs of their religion (think Joel Osteen and Billy Graham and all those crazy Focus on the Family people).  Jesus made all those guys look bad on the regular by quoting the Bible back to them.  He was a BAMF, for sure.  I mean- he made them look so bad that they plotted to kill him.  It was serious.  

Jesus is talking to all these folks on the hillside and Jesus’ inner circle was like, “You gotta send these people home because they have been here for so long and they are tired and hungry and a long way from home.”  Jesus was like, “If they are hungry, why don’t you feed them?”  And the disciples were like, “That would cost more than a year’s salary.  We can’t do that.”  And Jesus was like, “You guys don’t get it.  I will handle this.”  And Jesus fed all the people because he cared.  He felt responsible for them.  The gospels should be called, “The Books of the New Testament Wherein Jesus Gives a Shit about People- Especially Society’s Cast-Offs.”  

That was me paraphrasing a small portion of the Gospel of Mark.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Feel free to quote me on it, too.  You’re welcome.  

So when I talk about Jesus, this is who I am talking about.  I am talking about this guy that spat in the face of a religion that was for show.  He fed and clothed and helped whoever came his way and asked for help (people that were so weird and gross most people would not even acknowledge they existed), and he even helped a few people that did not ask.  He cared about folks. He says in the Gospel of Matthew, “When you give a shit about society’s most vulnerable and oppressed and ignored members, you give a shit about me.  If you don’t care about them, then you don’t care about me.” (also paraphrased by me).

I don’t speak this way about the Bible or Jesus to shirk the holiness of it all.  This is real to me.  This is the way I see the world.  I have been living this way for so long that it does not make sense to me when people do not feel responsible for 2 year olds that are all alone.  

My brother is ultimately right.  I know this and it kills me (it does not kill me necause he is right and I am wrong, but that I know that most people don’t consider themselves responsible for other humans).  It is not his responsibility to care for anyone.  This life is so hard and resources are so scarce that you should just work to get yours and hoard your resources and call it a day.

But I really want to believe in Jesus.  And he may not be real.  I am totally ok with that.  Yes- I just said that I am fine with the idea that Jesus could be a made up character in some very entertaining literature.  My friend says that the Gospels (all the stories of Jesus’ life) could be written by squirrels for all she cares.  It is the simple fact that the stories of Jesus tell us to be responsible for others.  And when we do this thing, when we are responsible for one anther and we care for one another, magical things happen.  Love multiplies when we take responsibility for each other.  We create the world that we want to live in when we take responsibility for each other.  We become better people when we take responsibility for others.  We also help show people that they have value when we take responsibility for them.  Paradoxically when we care for other people, those people will return that love in a greater way (happens every time and it is very shocking, trust me).  

That 2 year old boy, his name is Calvin, has value.  Sometimes the people in his life forgot about that.  I made it my responsibility to make sure he was cared for, as did my roommates.  We did not do it because we had to.  We did not do it to avoid the guilt we would feel if we left him there.  We did it because Jesus has completely changed the way we look at the world and we could not stop ourselves from caring for this boy.  

A long time ago I decided to start trying to live my life like the stories of Jesus (the ones that may or may not have been written by squirrels).  I drank the kool aid, if you will.  I told the sky that I would give a shit.  I haven’t turned back since.  It has impacted my life in the strangest ways.  One day, as I was walking home from work, Calvin broke out into a run when he saw me down the street.  He had his arms open wide and he ran to me.  I scooped him up and we were glad to see each other.  As I was carrying him home he puckered up his lips and came at me.  What flashed before me was the knowledge that 2 year olds are microbial incubators and his nose already had snot crust on it.  But in that same split second I did not turn my head away from him- I puckered up my lips.  Toddler kiss.

YOLO.

He then rested his head on my shoulder and I carried him to our place to play.  

I said to Jesus, “Why don’t you care for Calvin?”  And he said, “Why don’t you?”  I don’t regret taking responsibility for Calvin for the small moment that he made a cameo in my life story. 

He moved away a few months later with his family, and I hope that whatever people saw him next took up the torch and felt responsible for him, too.  Because if they did, he might just make it.  And I think that is why Jesus wants us to take responsibility for each other; so that we can all make it.    

Figuring out Grace

So this happened to me-someone asked, “What is grace?  Tell me what grace means.”

I did not want to tell her, because I was afraid that my definition might be too narrow, too western, or too Christian, or not Christian enough, or maybe too blasphemous (as if blaspheming was a thing I tried not to do), or that it would just not live up to what I feel when I experience grace.

I tried to wriggle my way out of talking about it, but the ball was passed back to me.  I cannot remember all that I said, but I tried to limit my usage of Christianese (few are fluent), and I tried to make it applicable in non-religious contexts.

Since then I have been trying to think of what my definition of grace is.  Writing always helps me to sort through my thoughts, so I will just start writing and see what happens.

The grace issue came up because I have been tossing around ideas of karma and manifestation in my head.  Karma says that what goes around comes around (eventually).  It says that we reap what we sow.  It says: you do good, you get good, and if you do bad, you get bad.  Manifestation is very similar to karma (in my brain).  It sometimes goes by the name “The Secret” and this woman I went to college with bought me the DVD because she thought I was too negative.  Well, the DVD was dumb and I watched half of it and then promptly returned it to her (with a thank you note- I was raised with some manners).  The Secret says that you can dream up things and think up things and you can attract them to yourself with good energy.  

I do not believe in any of that noise.  Do not be offended by my soap box rantings, but life is too ambiguous for that to make sense.  As I like to say, “the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous," as in- sometimes shit happens to good people and sometimes nothing happens to bad people.  And does this ever suck.  I do not believe in karma or manifestation or the secret or laws of attraction because I believe in grace.

My faith might be shattered and fractured into pieces the size of electrons and neutrons or fucking quarks (I just threw science in to my religious speak, because it is all the same to me), but I still believe in grace.  I believe in grace because I need it.  I believe in grace the same way I believe in the sun and gravity and oxygen.  They keep the world working  and they prevent us from dying terrible deaths.  Grace does the same thing in my universe.

I believe in grace.

So what am I talking about when I talk about grace?

Grace is getting good when all I’ve done is put out bad; getting goodness that I could never earn or work hard enough to achieve.  Grace is an unreasonably generous gift.  Grace gives me more room to breathe, it does not make sense, but I greedily take it up because I need it.  

Grace is when the Coast Guard shows up after I have been treading water.  My ship sank because I did not know how to use a boat or care for it.  I ran my boat in to a bunch of shit because I did not know how to drive it- so it sank.  And I did not make preparations for a disaster or an emergency.  I have been treading water for some time now and I can hardly breathe and I have choked on so much water.  I want to give up and let myself sink.  I wonder if inhaling water will be a relief to my tired and sore body.  I am in this position because I failed.  And then they come with a rescue boat and they wrap me in warm blankets and they feed me a hot meal and they give me warm things to drink.  But I call the captain nasty names, and I kick a few people in the shins, and I scratch and bite folks who try to feed me.  And then, as if that weren’t too much already, they treat me with kindness and love and dignity.  

That is grace.  I believe that this thing exists.  I believe that this thing exists because it has happened to me.

Obviously, it is easy to get on board with this grace idea when I think about myself.  Of course I want grace: sign me up, please and thank you.  But it is harder to accept when I remember that there are some people who I don’t think should get grace.  

Grace doesn’t fucking work like that, dammit.  And therein lies grace.  

I don’t make the rules, thank god, because I am a cruel shit when I want to be.  And if I did make the rules, I don’t think grace could exist.  The very nature of grace is disturbing and alarming.  The people who I don’t think should get it, can get it and that is what grace is- getting goodness that you never could have earned.

Boom goes the dynamite.  

I don’t want to convince anyone that grace exists, I am just trying to define the thing.  It is elusive and ever present.  We are given grace, but we want more of it.  See- that is another thing about grace- sometimes it is with me and I just do not care to admit that it is there.  This happens because I want more of it, or because I want it my way.  I want McDonald’s grace (or at least I think I want McD’s grace).  I think this is an aspect of grace as well; those of us who can admit we need it, want it cheaply, and quickly, and our way (see: Dietrich Bonhoeffer), but if that is how it worked it would then suddenly cease being grace.

My least favorite thing about grace (I am rolling my eyes at myself even as I type this) is that it is usually not delivered in the package we want.  I usually want grandiose sweeps of relief (large sums of money, the cancer suddenly disappears, world peace); I usually want the Coast Guard to arrive.  Sometimes they do arrive.  But sometimes grace is when a friend gets in the water with you and they let you hang on to them because they are wearing a life coat.  With that life coat they can swim for a bit and you can just rest for a moment.  Grace might be that they have a cup of fresh water for you because the salty ocean has you parched.  Grace could be that they have a flare gun and they are gonna wait with you until there is a rescue.  Those things are good and those things are grace.

I wish that grace would have taken all the suffering away when my grampa died (his suffering and our suffering).  I wish that grace had that jurisdiction, but it simply does not.  Grace is that he knew I was there at his bedside.  Grace is that I could hold his hand and that he could squeeze it.  Grace is that I could sing to him before he died.  Grace is that my friends were so generous to me as my heart shattered.  

Did it hurt?  Yes.

Was it awful?  Yes.

Did God do anything to stop the natural cycles of life and death? No.

Did that make me mad?  Yes.

Did I get what I wanted?  No.

Did I get grace?  Yes.

I have been on the receiving end of grace more times than I can count- thank god.  There are so many people in my life who love me and, no matter how awful I am, they just keep on loving me and doing nice things for me.  I don’t know what is wrong with them- to tell you the truth.  But I need them.  And I am thankful for them.  

They are my grace.  

PS: blah, blah, blah, God is grace, blah, blah, etc.  You get my drift and I don’t need to bore you.  If you are interested, I think God gives this grace.  And when I say God,  I am referring to the one of Isaac and Jake and Israel.  Yada, yada, yada.  Look it up if you want.  Holla at me in the comments for some verses on grace, if you want.

2012: The Year that I Would Like to Invite to Suck a Giant Bag of Dicks

I want to start off this blog post in some gracious way, some way that shows how enlightened I am and how in tune I am with peace and understanding and all that shit, but one of my very annoying strengths is that I am compulsively honest.  So I have to start this way:  

2012 was a shitty fucking year.  

It was as shitty as they come.  I have not lived long, I am in my 28th year on this spinning ball of earth.  But I have seen a thing or two since I have been a resident here, and even I am surprised that this year has been the most painful year of my existence.  I don’t mean to be dramatic, I just know that I need to be honest so I can shake it off and try to have a good 2013.  
I know that the marking of the new year is very arbitrary, but it is a nice cultural marker and I would use anything- really any excuse- to mark an end to this shit fest.  Watching my dad die in my childhood home, before my very eyes, was easy peasy compared to this year.  

I only knew my dad for 11 years, and for most of that time he was very sick.  So we never had a solid relationship.  But I knew my grandfather always.   I am very close with my grandparents because of my father’s illness.  They often cared for me and my brother while my dad was in the hospital.  They were my refuge and I consider their home to be my true home. 

My grampa died this year and it was just the worst thing ever.  Not only did it just suck that he died, but it kicked up all this old shit and ripped open old wounds that hadn’t really healed from when my dad died.  So I spent most of the year feeling like a vulnerable and sad and lost little kid with all this grief that I was trying to feel.  And I did this with some amazing support from people who love me and I did it with little support from people that I expected to support me.  And that made it all confusing and awful and yet I made it because lots of people kept telling me that they loved me, even if I didn’t want to hear it from them in particular.  

And as I felt like a little kid all I could do was look at my gramma, my Sun and Moon and Stars and Earth, and just torture myself over the fact that she will not be with me forever and she is my last link on this earth that keeps me from being an orphan.  And I am really trying not to do that, but you have to know that when a kid loses a parent at a young age, their ability to be terrified about losing people is pretty impressive.  I wish there was a competition for this because I would have a gold medal in terror.  I may have collapsed in tears a few times this year yelling out, “Everyone I love, I lose.”  And I wasn’t even being dramatic about this- it is just a theme of my life. 

This year was also shitty because people I assumed would be around to support me through the shit, just did not show up.  My heart was smashed habitually.  A true friend devastated me with so many lies and let my heart drop so many times I swear to God I heard that thing shatter.  And I cannot go into the heart break and all its details, but I have grown up a lot.  And in the few places that I was an optimist before, I am no longer.  

This life is so hard and I am so bitter about that.

I have continued my life long battle with my faith and I am trying to hammer out what I believe.  My grampa’s death re-sparked this.  I heard my family members say the most asinine and stupid things as they tried to comfort themselves during and after his death- and I let them.  But I rolled my eyes so hard I almost sprained my poor optic nerve.  I cringed as they spoke about his funeral service in front of him as he was in hospice, and I don’t really give a shit if he isn’t suffering anymore- I am currently suffering here without the old-right-wing-nut-job-republican-coot in my life.  The spouting about God’s will and heaven and what-have-you did not sound theologically sound and it brought me zero comfort.  So that left me all bothered and agitated and angry and bitter and I am trying to figure out what the heck I believe about this world and God and who God is and who I am and what that all is.

Lots of personal shit went down in my life that I would love to word vomit about but I really cannot get into it.  I did overcome a giant personal issue this year- YAY ME.  But there are other things that just took their toll on me.  And now I am so damned sick.  I have had so much sickness, and then so much sickness return, and then shingles has been the icing on top.  I was diagnosed with it almost 4 weeks ago and I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I am still in so much pain and I am abusing so much ibuprofen to get through the days and nights.  So my body is so angry and sad and tired and I just can’t lie to myself about it anymore.  

Oh yeah- money trouble and debt abound at our house this year.  And lots of our stuff is just on the brink of breaking and we don't have the money to save to try to replace it when it breaks.  We need some manna from heaven at this point and we are hoping that our shoes will last 40 years, but with the way my husband runs- that is not going to happen.  There just never is enough and we owe everyone and their momma some money.  Yes, some folks have been so generous to us this year- and without them we would be in deeper water.  But it feels so awful to be up to your eyeballs in debt and have no wiggle room in your pocket.  Scarcity terrifies me.  And I am so tired of the scarcity.  I am so tired of it all.

And this year I continued to struggle with myself.  This has been a  lifelong dance of trying to shake off all the stupid shit I learned and trying to love myself just how I am and where I find myself.  I berate myself for not being thankful, but then I get all messed up when I lie to myself that I am fine because I didn’t let myself just be angry and complain when I needed to.  It is a horrendous and confusing cycle that I still do not have a handle on.  Even writing this entry makes me feel bad for not seeing more of the good that happened this year.  I do see it, I swear I do.  So many people were good to me this year and loved me and were so generous and loving to me.  But that doesn’t take away that this year hurt so goddamned much. 

I have been waiting for a good year for a long time.  I really hope this one is better.  It really doesn’t have to do too much to be better, but I need it to do so much and be better.  And I hate that bullshit that says that I think my way into making it better.  A positive attitude is swell, but fuck that thinking.  I am super pessimistic and I have had great years.  Grace is that even the Grinch and Debbie Downer can have good years, and I believe in grace.  So fuck everyone that says I need to be positive in order to get better.  Shingles will suck the positive right out of you and I don’t want to hear objections unless you have had it.  My gramma’s sister in law said, and I quote directly, that when she had shingles she, “Wanted to die.”  You can’t think yourself happily out of neurological pain, friends.  You just can’t.  

So- here is to 2013.  Hoping for a year of grace.  I only have a string of hope intact still (and bravo to me for having that little bit of string left) and I am hoping that happiness and wiggle room come for people that need it.  Because we need it so badly.  I hope there is some rest for the weary.  I hope there is some relief for us and regeneration and renewal for all of us that have had so much devastating loss.  And dammit, I need a vacation.