old time religion
I walked around saying I am a cultural Jew for so long--that my family celebrated the big holidays, like Passover and the small holidays, like Hanukah (made big by its proximity to Christmas), but without God, and without any religious overtones or undertones. Even though it was pretty true, and even though people were born, got cancer, died on my family's watch, with respect and joy and sorrow, it has started to feel incorrect to keep using those words to describe how I feel. Someone from my support group for people with metastatic cancer was talking about her recommitment to the Catholic Church and she said if her mom was alive, she would accuse her daughter of cramming for the final.
By the time I decided to attend to the presence of God in my life, I had passed through the valleys of sexual assault, miscarriages, divorce, and death of loved ones all without consciously turning to God. If God was knocking on my door, I was in bed, with the covers over my head.
Of late, I have begun to feel not alone in the world but actually the opposite, as if there has been someone here all along and I'm just starting to pay attention. It's something like looking out at a sea of unfriendly people in the audience and suddenly noticing that your grandmother, with her kind face has been there all along. Or speaking in public and suddenly feeling like your audience loves you--no, not enough: the audience sees you and loves you.
What I'm trying to do these days is to listen for the presence of God. You've borne witness to my humbling attempts. When I do feel God, it comes close to feeling like a memory, which is complicated to explain but has something to do with realizing that God has always been here, kind of a sharp knock to the head which brings into instant relief the presence of God all along. If I was watching a film of my life, it isn't hokey like those midwestern drawings of Little Johnny at bat, with a smiling Jesus superimposed and holding the bat correctly. As if what Jesus is about is Little League inside-the-park home runs (although of course Jesus, or the idea of Jesus, or the idea of a love that is so sweeping and good that it pulls everything in, of course that would include the absolute bliss-out of that inside-the-park home run, and also, would include the other team, the disbelief and despair of the losing team. And the rejoicing audience and the audience that is holding its breath, watching their disappointed pitcher son, waiting to see his resiliency.) It's more like a movie of me weeping in the car after I dropped a sitter off, the night looking dark and my future (single parenting and no clear source of the income I needed to make our life work (so this is a just before I apply to law school era movie)), and the movie becomes a kind of companion to the woman in the movie, whether that is through the sweep of violins or the rainy sky and the night noises--the hoot of the owl and the rustle of the trees, or just the very fact that it is a movie, so people the actress has never met and never will meet are in a dark theater, holding hands, or drifting off to sleep, so that she isn't really alone in that car.
And then all the times I thought I felt something more and then chalked that feeling up to my imagination run wild--too many books, or something like that. This sounds hokey as all get out (as we used to say in junior high in Ohio, that and "big whoop," in a withering tone when someone like a younger brother, or daringly, a mother, tried to impress you), and maybe it is, but I am comforted. I am made peaceful by allowing myself, finally, to recognize God where I find God in my life now, in these mid-summer days of cancer.
You know how my golden doodle puppy is afraid of the dark? I think I have mentioned that here before--it does not do anything for an unquiet mind to be outside with the dog on a dark country road and have him suddenly stop, eyes peering into the night, frozen with fear. What are you seeing, Sebby? "Stop it, Sebby," I will say, my voice braver than it is, so that I instill fear in the thing that is instilling fear first in my dog, and now me. Because dogs don't lie. Avery told me that the other night she was walking Sebby in the night when he suddenly lurched to the side, and then began trembling, as if, she said, he had just accidentally banged hard into a ghost. I have been thinking of the dog's nervous night energy lately, and had paused, if only to dismiss, on the thought that maybe Sebby is feeling God, and is scared. That can't be it, my logical mind told my animal brain--God isn't scary like that.
I wonder if that's what Moses thought, though, when the burning bush began to speak to him. God isn't scary like that. Probably not, because the Old Testament God is scary like that, and thinks nothing of tricking man into believing he is asking you to kill your own child just to prove you're loyal. I used to think, back when I said I didn't believe in God, who am I to think God is so interested in me, has enough time on his hands that he would spend it making me feel nervous out alone on a dark country night, but now I think I was really mistaken when it came to thinking about God and time and intention. I think imagining God as just a giant version of a human is probably not the right tact for the imagination. That kind of God wouldn't have time to be felt like a deep breath on a plumy, dark summer night because he would be busy rescuing Thai soccer children, or wondering what to do about the rise of fascism in our beloved country, or making difficult decisions in Afghanistan, for examples. I don't think God is limited like that, and I don't think its hubris to believe God loves me, particularly. You, too.
The idea of sacrifice, though. The Hebrew term usually translated as "sacrifice" is "korban" which literally means "drawing near." Sacrifice is linked with an approach to divinity. Studying the torah and prayer are the primary means of drawing near to God, since animal sacrifice went the way of the Second Temple. The linking of sacrifice with sin seems to be a very New Testamenty idea--Paul interpreted the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins, and that framework of sin and expiation is deeply rooted in the way we sometimes talk about sin as a kind of insult to God's awesomeness, or majesty. But sacrifice is really an interpretation of an event, whether it is me sacrificing the last coconut cupcake for my child (and there, the joy that he takes in eating the cupcake translates for me into no loss at all, only the recouping of joy) or our lonely Jesus: is the story truly that was he sacrificed for our sins and left to die? Or is the parent model so very far off? If one must give up one's life so that others can live, can it be done joyfully, which is not to say happily?
David Steindl-Rast says that "suffering is not the last word. We suffer when something that is dear to us in our temporal existence is being destroyed--we lose health, friends, possessions--but this is a wake up call, an invitation to raise our eyes and look at what cannot be destroyed." A well-known haiku by Mizuta Masahide, a seventeenth-century samurai makes the same point:
Since my house burned down
I now have a better view
of the rising moon.
At any rate, I visited MGH this week and the oncologist, who, by nature, is neither effusive nor cheerful, gave me a relative clean bill of health and the keys to the kingdom for another six weeks--if, in fact, it is cancer which will take my life, rather than a car accident on the way to the cape next week, or an unexpected heart attack, or even, if something wicked were to this way come. All of our fears, really, are fears of dying. How can it be me with cancer, me with my legs dangling over the edge of the table, the blue crinkle of the examination jacket, my heart pounding so loud it seems a farce when the doctor straightens up, his stethoscope falling, and says, "good."
Big whoop, said the universe.
By the time I decided to attend to the presence of God in my life, I had passed through the valleys of sexual assault, miscarriages, divorce, and death of loved ones all without consciously turning to God. If God was knocking on my door, I was in bed, with the covers over my head.
Of late, I have begun to feel not alone in the world but actually the opposite, as if there has been someone here all along and I'm just starting to pay attention. It's something like looking out at a sea of unfriendly people in the audience and suddenly noticing that your grandmother, with her kind face has been there all along. Or speaking in public and suddenly feeling like your audience loves you--no, not enough: the audience sees you and loves you.
What I'm trying to do these days is to listen for the presence of God. You've borne witness to my humbling attempts. When I do feel God, it comes close to feeling like a memory, which is complicated to explain but has something to do with realizing that God has always been here, kind of a sharp knock to the head which brings into instant relief the presence of God all along. If I was watching a film of my life, it isn't hokey like those midwestern drawings of Little Johnny at bat, with a smiling Jesus superimposed and holding the bat correctly. As if what Jesus is about is Little League inside-the-park home runs (although of course Jesus, or the idea of Jesus, or the idea of a love that is so sweeping and good that it pulls everything in, of course that would include the absolute bliss-out of that inside-the-park home run, and also, would include the other team, the disbelief and despair of the losing team. And the rejoicing audience and the audience that is holding its breath, watching their disappointed pitcher son, waiting to see his resiliency.) It's more like a movie of me weeping in the car after I dropped a sitter off, the night looking dark and my future (single parenting and no clear source of the income I needed to make our life work (so this is a just before I apply to law school era movie)), and the movie becomes a kind of companion to the woman in the movie, whether that is through the sweep of violins or the rainy sky and the night noises--the hoot of the owl and the rustle of the trees, or just the very fact that it is a movie, so people the actress has never met and never will meet are in a dark theater, holding hands, or drifting off to sleep, so that she isn't really alone in that car.
And then all the times I thought I felt something more and then chalked that feeling up to my imagination run wild--too many books, or something like that. This sounds hokey as all get out (as we used to say in junior high in Ohio, that and "big whoop," in a withering tone when someone like a younger brother, or daringly, a mother, tried to impress you), and maybe it is, but I am comforted. I am made peaceful by allowing myself, finally, to recognize God where I find God in my life now, in these mid-summer days of cancer.
You know how my golden doodle puppy is afraid of the dark? I think I have mentioned that here before--it does not do anything for an unquiet mind to be outside with the dog on a dark country road and have him suddenly stop, eyes peering into the night, frozen with fear. What are you seeing, Sebby? "Stop it, Sebby," I will say, my voice braver than it is, so that I instill fear in the thing that is instilling fear first in my dog, and now me. Because dogs don't lie. Avery told me that the other night she was walking Sebby in the night when he suddenly lurched to the side, and then began trembling, as if, she said, he had just accidentally banged hard into a ghost. I have been thinking of the dog's nervous night energy lately, and had paused, if only to dismiss, on the thought that maybe Sebby is feeling God, and is scared. That can't be it, my logical mind told my animal brain--God isn't scary like that.
I wonder if that's what Moses thought, though, when the burning bush began to speak to him. God isn't scary like that. Probably not, because the Old Testament God is scary like that, and thinks nothing of tricking man into believing he is asking you to kill your own child just to prove you're loyal. I used to think, back when I said I didn't believe in God, who am I to think God is so interested in me, has enough time on his hands that he would spend it making me feel nervous out alone on a dark country night, but now I think I was really mistaken when it came to thinking about God and time and intention. I think imagining God as just a giant version of a human is probably not the right tact for the imagination. That kind of God wouldn't have time to be felt like a deep breath on a plumy, dark summer night because he would be busy rescuing Thai soccer children, or wondering what to do about the rise of fascism in our beloved country, or making difficult decisions in Afghanistan, for examples. I don't think God is limited like that, and I don't think its hubris to believe God loves me, particularly. You, too.
The idea of sacrifice, though. The Hebrew term usually translated as "sacrifice" is "korban" which literally means "drawing near." Sacrifice is linked with an approach to divinity. Studying the torah and prayer are the primary means of drawing near to God, since animal sacrifice went the way of the Second Temple. The linking of sacrifice with sin seems to be a very New Testamenty idea--Paul interpreted the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins, and that framework of sin and expiation is deeply rooted in the way we sometimes talk about sin as a kind of insult to God's awesomeness, or majesty. But sacrifice is really an interpretation of an event, whether it is me sacrificing the last coconut cupcake for my child (and there, the joy that he takes in eating the cupcake translates for me into no loss at all, only the recouping of joy) or our lonely Jesus: is the story truly that was he sacrificed for our sins and left to die? Or is the parent model so very far off? If one must give up one's life so that others can live, can it be done joyfully, which is not to say happily?
David Steindl-Rast says that "suffering is not the last word. We suffer when something that is dear to us in our temporal existence is being destroyed--we lose health, friends, possessions--but this is a wake up call, an invitation to raise our eyes and look at what cannot be destroyed." A well-known haiku by Mizuta Masahide, a seventeenth-century samurai makes the same point:
Since my house burned down
I now have a better view
of the rising moon.
At any rate, I visited MGH this week and the oncologist, who, by nature, is neither effusive nor cheerful, gave me a relative clean bill of health and the keys to the kingdom for another six weeks--if, in fact, it is cancer which will take my life, rather than a car accident on the way to the cape next week, or an unexpected heart attack, or even, if something wicked were to this way come. All of our fears, really, are fears of dying. How can it be me with cancer, me with my legs dangling over the edge of the table, the blue crinkle of the examination jacket, my heart pounding so loud it seems a farce when the doctor straightens up, his stethoscope falling, and says, "good."
Big whoop, said the universe.
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