Donuts

Sometimes I suck as a parent.

And sometimes I should get a high five for being a rockstar.

I suck because there was one old-fashioned donut left in the box the other morning. I suppose I knew somewhere in my soul that my beloved eldest daughter was saving the donut, but I was just going to have one bite. Then it looked uneven, so I ate the outside ring.

Hannah was saving the donut because she knew it was going to be a hard day and she wanted something to look forward to. 

I felt bad. And was reminded of how much I suck on a regular basis. 

So I made it right. 

I was in Anchorage for a conference and bought two of what were supposed to be the best old-fashioned donuts in all of Alaska. They sat in a bag safely tucked away in my carry-on while a little voice kept saying Hannah would never know if I ate one and only brought one donut back. There are days I want to smack that voice, but I ate airplane biscuits instead and thought how two donuts were needed to set things right.

Yay me! And they did. No more guilt trips. At least about the donut.

It got me thinking about forgiveness and reconciliation. Hearing again the horrendous murder of James Byrd Jr. as they executed one of his killers in Texas this past week and listening to folks trying to make sense of so much pain has made me think again about forgiveness and setting things right.

I've been sitting with an excerpt from a recent interview on NPR with author Philip Gourevitch about Rwanda 25 years after the genocide.

GOUREVITCH: But what's interesting to me, too, is - what does forgiveness mean? I mean, to some extent, when I went and I heard the word forgiveness, I thought it sort of meant you'd restore whatever the relationship was before.

MARTIN: Yeah.

GOUREVITCH: And they would say, no, that involves trust. That's a whole different thing. Forgiveness doesn't require trust. Forgiveness simply means letting go of the idea of getting even, forgoing the idea of revenge. Right? Now, even that's a big ask. But it means accepting coexistence.

This is all obviously way bigger than my donut issue, but what does it mean to live in our relationships, community and world letting go of the idea of getting even? 

Justice is different than revenge. 

Justice creates safe spaces where relationships can be restored or at least coexistence is made possible. 

Revenge is inflicting more hurt thinking that will somehow create less hurt. I'm thinking at least part of the message of the cross is the end to the cycle of revenge. 

I'm also thinking I had lots of time to think sitting on the plane trying not to think about how yummy the donut would be with my coffee.

Expectations

There are so many wonderful surprises that come with age - like where hair starts to grow. 

It makes me laugh and I keep reminding my beloved that I have a secret crush on Chewbacca so any extra hair he grows doesn't matter. Then our conversation devolves into Chewbacca not wearing pants, his hygiene and sooner or later dingleberries. This keeps us from ever talking about my hair.

We're in for the long haul together and it has lovely times, challenging times, and times when I talk to my chickens. Part of what keeps it lovely is being open to surprises. I'm not going to mention that I'm ahead in the ping pong game count, even though that's a huge surprise.

I'll share instead my surprise over Ip Man. I do like martial art movies, not the gory ones, but I enjoy a well choreographed fight. It was Kirt's night to choose the movie and he chose what looked like a pathetic martial arts movie and I might have whined and talked about how much it was going to suck. I'm not always charming and kind.

But, I was wrong. If you haven't watched Ip Man, even though it's not a real promising beginning, it is amazing. It's based on a true person Yip Man who was a martial arts master and teacher of Wing Chun (one of his students was later Bruce Lee). Ip Man stood up to the Japanese army when they invaded China and he had to rebuild a life after persecution and poverty. 

So I had to apologize for whining and admit that I was surprised and thankful that my beloved didn't listen to me. It wasn't what I expected. 

Expectations are not always helpful, especially when we are so set on them that we'll ruin an experience just to prove we were right (or it can go the other way and you post a million smiling pictures even though the experience stunk). 

We're entering Holy Week in the church when we relive and remember all the surprises and upended expectations of Jesus. He washes feet, he weeps in prayer, he is betrayed by a dear friend, he dies a scandalous death, and he leaves the tomb empty. 

I try not to overthink and analyze this week. It's not the week for cynicism, but a week of showing up willing to be surprised because life is rarely what we expect.

Kids

I should stop saying that I don't like kids. 

It's partly true in the same way saying I don't like chickens is true. 

I'm not particularly fond of children or chickens en masse. They are often loud, kind of smelly and slightly terrifying in a group, but I often find chickens and children wonderful mysteries to love and encounter as individuals. 

I say I don't like kids for several other reasons, besides some truth in the statement.

1. I like to push back in our culture that worships youth and tries to hang on to childhood for as long as possible. We tend to romanticize and idolize childhood and it leaves us with folks without boundaries who need to grow up. I don't do things for children that they can do for themselves, especially if they are demanding about it. I don't coddle or sweet talk children, but I try to respect who they are and where they are in their development.

2. I also like to rebel against some of the assumptions made about female pastors. Churches often put women in children or youth ministry and I don't want to be pigeonholed into those specialties. Luckily I've served small churches so I get to do a little bit of everything, including fixing toilets and boilers as well as hanging out with kids.

3. It sometimes gets me out of volunteering for things, like chaperoning the middle school dance, which it didn't get me out of doing this last weekend. 

It was actually a lovely gift to get to hang out and observe middle schoolers for a couple of hours at their first dance. There is so much awkwardness, drama, meanness, gentleness, joy and hormones. It was a bundle of raw humanity that I got to watch and occasionally intervene in their dramas. There were little beachballs all over and shockingly they started throwing them at each other instead of dancing. Nothing shows you care like whipping a beach ball at someone's head. 

One of my favorite kids from summer lunch was there and I had to remind him of who he was and how we behave a couple of times, especially as he had other kids in chokeholds. 

When he was getting really wound up I had him come sit by me and tell me some stories about the school year and life. It's easy to be perpetually angry with this kiddo and I've found giving him space to tell some stories helps us both get reoriented and be a little more human. And I think it's in that space we figure out how to love, not an idealized love or affection for who you want a person to be, but a moment of shared humanity. 

I don't love kids as an idea, but I do like to create safe spaces where they can reveal what is lovely or painful in their lives. Like all humanity, kids are not objects to adore, but complex mysteries we get to encounter and figure out how to be in relationship with.

Hell

I had several sticks in my bra so it must have been a good day in the woods. Cassie and I had to bushwhack to get a better view, just in case you thought I was doing something inappropriate.

It was a stunningly beautiful day and that got me thinking about hell.

Before I broach this subject, please know there is no universally accepted Christian understanding of hell. I can break down some of the history of our concepts of hell, or here's a helpful link and you can do your own research http://www.earlychristianhistory.info/hell.html.

I'm content to join the leagues of folks like C.S. Lewis and Dostoevsky who approach hell with some poetic license so it doesn't turn into the place we send people we despise or who drive slowly in the left lane.

One point of theology, if we define God as the trinity, the mutual outpouring of love, then hell is the space where one is given the freedom to live outside that love. Let's say that's my basic premise to ground this imagining.

What if we thought of hell, that space for those who insist on living outside love, as stunningly beautiful?

Stay with me. Thinking of hell as a place of torture and punishment isn't overly helpful for many reasons, but imagining it as beauty allows vileness, hate, and evil to be revealed for the repulsive things they are. There is something about beauty that not only knocks the breath out of me, but it makes me feel alive, real, and in many ways exposed and vulnerable.

I hike on Mondays and bask in the beautiful because I carry so much brokenness and sorrow with me. People suffer and carry horrible burdens and on Mondays I offer them up to beauty; I let beauty wrap her arms around all that is grotesque in this world and even though it can't make everything right, it does put it back into perspective. Beauty is part of how I see God being revealed, but it's not beautiful in the sense of pretty, but as a wholeness that encompasses the love and suffering it takes to get to that place.

I'm not sure I can explain it well, but there is something about beauty that exposes and redeems, which is why I think it could be hell for some. One can disguise evil and hatefulness so much easier when one is surrounded with mediocrity and numbness. It is the extravagance and splendor of the beautiful that reveals anti-love for what it is.

I think it is hard for us to take salvation or hell seriously when we live in so much comfort and gray. Concrete and convenience make it hard to experience beauty or hell.

I don't know what I'm getting at other than I appreciate getting sticks in my bra and scratches on my face so I can find the ridge where the mountains stretch brilliantly before me. Somehow it lets the sinfulness of the world and the redemption of love meet and I can trust and hope that all will be well.