Every Skinny Tree

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26 de Febrero 2009

when i tell you

i love your story
i mean that i feel things about you that
bring me to my knees because
i know what you have been through and
how it explains
what you do to me.

i'm talking about the scenes from your childhood:
a father refusing to raise his voice but scaring the shit out of you with the look in his eye
a mother walking in on you, the floor strewn with building blocks and you
wielding a pocket knife
a brother so small and helpless you were afraid to leave but you knew you had to
christmas presents splayed beneath the christmas tree like a scene from a movie about a perfect childhood
or maybe there were no gifts at all, they were just bait or bribery in beautiful wrapping
a sister and her friends taking you in as their own, loving you, admiring you, hoping you will come visit again and again because you alone show her the reciprocity she craves.
a crazy extended family laying it on thick, their expectations and disappointments, the bearded uncles telling of grand adventures only the violently irresponsible
would have ever gone on.
your friends from school or church holding you at bay, pushing you into the lime light and then faulting you for having a fan or two
or maybe you were loved but somehow learned to give it up and start over again because their love was no match for the hate your family poured out on you while you were still living close enough for them to have access.
the day you refused to smoke out, the nausea you felt after your first cigarette, the depression, the circumstances of your first kiss.
they are all clues to what it means when you tell me you love me, or don't
and i need them.
i don't like all of them, but they are not nightmarish and i don't need to run away.
in fact i search them out, i search you out with every breath.

maybe these are not the traumas you thought would warrant my sympathies but they are the hand you were dealt,
the hand i was dealt when i promised to be your friend for a very long time.

and you try to tell me to quit
which i understand because i tell you that more than i tell you anything else.

leave me alone, i say, i'll handle this, i'll get my shit together and reemerge when everything is a little less wigged out.
but it just doesn't work like that
i never handle it, i never get my shit together.
and neither do you.
because the story wasn't written with a tidy moral at the end,
believe me when i say that i wouldn't want that anyway, that i don't want you to try to tell me your story isn't really that sad
because i know i don't want you to tell me my story isn't that bad
because you might still be able to lie to yourself and say it will all work out just fine in the end. i mean, it isn't that it won't work out, it is just that you saying that makes this, the most awful time seem like something we should just skip over even though hearts are breaking and lonely.
and what is more
you simply can't rewrite the past by reinventing yourself as a less shitty person starting over with a less shitty story--that would make all of us ill for sure.
so just be who you are, given the story you have and from you i will learn to do the same.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

24 de Febrero 2009

fat tuesday

i'm giving up bullshit for lent.
*****
when i was in grammar school we lived in a tiny house. four very angry people in a house that was built in 1906 as a summer home for a wealthy family from san francisco. the glass in the windows was watery and the walls were very thin. the house itself was near the top of a steep hill that froze in the winter so we slipped down it on the way to the bus stop every morning, often bruising our butts. if we were lucky there would be time to trudge back up the hill and change into clean clothes.

the hill street was a thin snake of paving, black top, one lane cutting a line up the hill. the trees were thick and if we took the paths they were sure to be muddy and brambled, rambling toward our single stop sign town through the thick of the riparian redwood forest. it took about half an hour through the woods to walk to school and you remembered to take a friend in case you met a drunk sleeping on the trail.

there was no hallway in that house, no central heating, just a few small spaces linked awkwardly by skinny doorways and anchored by a wood burning stove right in the middle of everything. we were literally living on top of each other and constantly falling onto the hot black stove. once i burned my palm so badly, trying to save the rest of my body from falling against it, i couldn't write for days.

you can imagine the clutter. books everywhere, bark from firewood carried haphazardly in, papers stacked, dust collecting, walls and ceilings always looking as though a new coat of paint was in order and i: the disorganized, chaos driven and agile, fragile member of the family.
i don't remember it well but my mother remembers what i have come to question.

i remember myself laden with jacket, sweater, rain boots, backpack, lunch box and umbrella fumbling in the cold or rain for the hidden key, unlocking the door, stumbling in and she remembers the trail of my belongings. she was rarely there when i arrived home; she only remembers my stuff strewn, like breadcrumbs, leading her from my point of entry to where i sat when she found me: on the bedroom floor, peanut butter spoon in one hand pencil in the other, math book in my lap, fisher-price record player spinning the lady and the tramp record--i was in love with peggy lee when she sang 'you're a tramp'. i was lonely and worried even then that she would discover me busy and make demands regardless.

i think now that what she calls the little trail of belongings bothered her because it encroached on her space. it was a reminder that i was out of control, taking up space, that i had a large presence in a small house.
think what you will. i haven't made her out to be a monster, but it wasn't pleasant to be treated as though i ought to be contained... or else.
i was always sort of in trouble, that's all, for taking up too much space, or being too strong, or not strong enough, i still don't know for sure.

i'm not sure when i began thinking seriously about what it would be like to be a very large person. i was tallest in my seventh grade class, i played center on the basketball team that year. but when we arrived for our first day of ninth grade all the other girls were taller than i was, their hair was longer, like their legs and even though they wore men's clothing i could see their curves were worthy of envy. it was probably around then that i knew i would have to learn to live as a smallish person in a world of impressive peers and huge family members.
i was painstakingly ambivalent, i dated a senior who must have weighed at least 160 pounds to my 100. i began greeting the boys of my posse by running and jumping into their arms, wrapping my legs around their torsos and arms around their necks trying to bowl them over, but knowing i wouldn't. eventually we all relished my ability to curl up and sleep on the bench seat of the gmc suburban or the seats in the bowling alley we went to every monday night. but i knew they would win when we wrestled and they knew to protect me at the punk rock shows we attended weekly.

of course i was strong. i lifted full cans of yard waste onto my shoulders and lugged gatorade coolers and canoes onto the banks of the russian river as well as anyone else.

and i was funny as hell.

so here i am, ten years later, still getting used to my real size, strength, presence.

this year for lent i've been celebrating fat tuesday: i had a huge breakfast at a fundraiser, four cups of decaf, half a brownie, a square of homemade caramel, hot chocolate, extra cheese on the quesadilla i had for lunch, and i haven't eaten dinner yet. i'm hoping amy will call and i'll eat at least half the nachos when we go out tonight. i think right now i'll go for a run and run farther than i have before, in the spirit of overdoing things before i batten down the hatches for lent.
because
it isn't that i want to be fat, it is just that i want to need to eat, i want to need fuel, to require complex carbohydrates and complete proteins, to take up space, not too much, but just enough to make a dent in the space between us, to move toward you without moving but by growing into you, toward you. not to take up your space but to take up the space you left for me that was just waiting for me to arrive, and fill it with my stuff, my crumbs and books and mess.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 3:37 PM | Comments (1)

18 de Febrero 2009

The poetree

there is this huge turquoise house on greenwood and it has a crazy yard all around and a chain link fence painted purple and there is this giant tree limb sticking up out of the ground with a ledge nailed to it. and a small bird feeder looking boxy thing that always has little poems rolled up with rubber bands.
and it says free poetry, take one. and i don't ever take one.
but today was a particularly weird day so i stopped and read this and thought i should send it on to you.

Birds Again by Jim Harrison
A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It's not uncomfortable.
I'm only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they're roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they're carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I'll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We'll say goodbye
and I'll return my dreams to earth.

that is helpful, isn't it?

Posted by crymytinyflood at 6:02 PM | Comments (1)

its true

we have been moping around too much lately, so you are right.
i probably shouldn't have thrown that book at you when you said that you want me to stop being so mad at myself.
because i borrowed it from the library--not myself, the book.
and because it is about pneumatology.
and it wasn't a shitty thing to say, even though i said it was,
you are right about that too.
it was the appropriate thing to say and it made me feel shitty,
i was confused about what exactly was shitty in that moment.
not you, not the thing you said, but how i was feeling.

most people who don't know me don't know what they are missing.
most people who do know me don't know what they are missing.
and when they are too busy to worry about it
it becomes easier for me to pretend i have disappeared, that i don't matter.
so in the moment when i should just look at the dearly departed and now returning
and say to him/her (mother, father, brother, sister, lover, friend) loud enough for even my self to hear:
"you should have missed me (i missed you, which should signify to you that i am someone who wants you and if you go away, you are lucky enough--and ought to be grateful-- to have someone hoping you will come back and all the while you are gone you should be thinking about how happy i will be to see you and that should make you hopeful and hungry for me to be hungry for you. that should be enough...
at the very least you needn't be worried that i will lock you out of the house or be cold or be mean so there is no justifying detaching yourself from the possibility and mystery of my love for you. you should be very curious about who i will be when you come home to me, what i have learned in your absence, begging me to tell you why i am so glad you are home, but exactly
and
prying open the story of how the days unraveled in your absence because you happen to know that i want to tell you, if only you would extend a tiny invitation) because i am the only place you get loved like this; i'm the only one who can do it this way, tell you these things, i'm the only one offering and don't kid yourself into thinking you don't need what i have to offer: all that i have to say about who you are to me and who you are to the world around you.

i don't say any of that. instead i keep hoping you will lie and tell me you missed me because in that i hear that i exist in your world, which sets the bar pretty low with regard to what i need from you and perpetuates the cycle of my limping along toward self-awareness, using your ideas about me as crutches rather than the flashy accessories they ought to be.

you can see, it is entirely fucked up.

i am always afraid of departure, it is true. it may be my worst fear.
i am terrible at hanging up the phone, walking away, falling asleep, watching you go.
i don't even like to see the back of your head. of course, when it comes to men, there are times i think about the curve of his ass or the lovely way his shoulder blades push against his tee shirt, and like it a little and i wonder if this is what old ladies mean when they say they could watch that boy walk away all day.
i just keep pushing you away because i am so afraid you will leave, and i had better take some preemptive action or get blindsided. and since i am then super red ass pissed off that you would leave, of course i am broken in half, tired, weak and needy when you return.
which is a shitty way to treat anyone but also is a pretty impossible way to live in relationship. and i told you i can't help it and you said i can and i looked at you and in your eyes and i remembered how vulnerable you are most of the time and how i've often hoped, when you couldn't hope for yourself i took it up and hoped for you, that you could do something you never thought you could and that it actually felt good to hope for you and i wasn't going to punish you if you didn't deliver because you just don't deserve to be treated so badly. so who would i be to deny you that same pleasure by dashing your hopes for me against the rocks of my need to be angry at myself?

but that is just it: i've always needed to be angry at myself, it was the only way i knew to respond to myself in any meaningful way. you know this firsthand: in an atmosphere devoid of anger the child of a mother like yours and mine is like a fish out of water.
and though i didn't mean to make you angry, i probably had to a little or else i would never have listened to you. and it was beautiful to see you angry but not so angry you couldn't still access the words you have to tell me that you see me, hope for me, need me to grow, be, become, learn this.
you sat there, a good foot away and facing the screen of your computer so i could tell myself that you weren't even aware of me and said
i feel you.
you didn't say the things i was afraid you would say. even though i was desperate to make you.
you didn't say i should get over it, or that i had to grow up.
i read your exhaustion as a way to slough me off but maybe everything about you was working, grinding, striving, climbing over boulders and jumping hurdles trying so hard to find the way to press past my defenses.

it just might be true.
in fact i am beginning to hope it is true because i am growing tired of playing the game the old way with my friends, neighbors, spouse, coworkers, classmates.
it is a fuck off game and i've really got to quit it. i know, so thank you for hoping i will even when i try to tell you not to.

i think your hope is your best feature.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)

14 de Febrero 2009

yesterday

it began as simply as any conversation about step fathers could and then went careening out of control.
i realized early on in the day, before high noon crept up on us, hungry and failing, plodding unromantically across the parking lot to the cash machine that
the stories about my life hang innocently on white walls, artfully lit and beautifully framed behind an eighth inch of glass. but no one ever comes to the gallery, the cost of admission is often more than the simply curious are willing to pay.

but if you know the stories well already, if you are interested because you have already paid higher prices to get tickets to shows that will distract you from images like these and that is no longer working because you lived through it your defenses are wearing thin.
maybe you find that ever since you met me, you pay higher and higher premiums to avoid the images. you can't afford to continue to tell yourself you are all alone, you are going broke buying what you thought were cheap distractions.
with each conversation between us, you are realizing that you lived through it, the truth of which is a double edged sword, that my story makes yours true, that your story makes mine true.
and now you just want to check the details of my past against your own memories: of course you will want to drive past the house, throw rocks through the windows of my childhood home because you hope i will do the same for you, when circumstances and courage allow.
you will find camaraderie in my shaking limbs as i drive you past scene after scene, pointing to the line and form of my aching heart
and i look over at you, keeping watch for someone you've never seen knowing you would recognize him in an instant.
and as the memories of crashed bicycles, bloodied lips, childhood lost, stolen innocence and bittersweet independence shine like light through the trees in a the thick forest of my reserve
you realize you willingly paid the fare to take this trip, you are glad for a tour guide who tells a familiar story in an unfamiliar landscape, you listen carefully just in case i unravel the riddle because you have been puzzling and unpuzzling it for so long.

and this is the work of healing:
i have worn this security blanket every day of my life and then
you held the previous shape, the withered corner of the coverlet, so gently, not hopefully, not ignorantly, not naively, not innocently,
you stuck your finger sweetly through the hole in the corner of the old blanket and pointed out the frayed edges when i tried to ignore them.
you said, "no wonder...", you said, "it makes sense", you said, "this is what friends do".
and you saw how cold and afraid i was even when i pretended i was warmed by it, all alone underneath its uneven darning, and dropped purl. and i'm sure it was your stealthy fingers that undid my own, clutching to cover myself, and, now exhausted and almost naked yourself, you hugged me quickly, quietly and though you knew i was angry and cold, you sent me on my way home, to show off the soft skin of my real self that had been finally revealed after all your working to teach me: there is a self with soft parts under this false comforter.
and though i don't know what it will feel like, sound like, look like i think i am finally ready to pull the thread, unweave the woolen fibers until they are loosed and almost flying away, just when things seem to be about to blow away i roll them between my hands and retie, reknot, rewind them in a new shape, almost magically, but heartily and almost sweating from the exertion of looping one centimeter at a time.
what was once the tattered and snagged security blanket is now a long and holy line of yarn untangled and dangling sweetly, dangerously dragging behind me and i am filled with hope, not much, but more than ever before, that i can make a sock, a sweater, a scarf and a body part or two will be warm again. and though this is where i am most afraid i will consider, in fits and starts, hooking the loops loosely so that this will again be a blanket to wrap you in when your own story fails and falls away, on a sober night a long time from now,
and warm the whole of you against my story because that seems a fitting gift, a way to thank you.
because your voice reverberates against the inside of my cold and bare body and it says over and over
no wonder...
it makes sense...
this is what friends do...
and the heat from the tears i shed warms my eyes and my face
and i think of how
you simply tied each phrase to my story with a length of string, harvested from your own unraveling quilt
and for the first time i didn't undo all your work (i watched your nimble digits curl the frayed edges of short pieces, scraps really, pulled loose from your most valuable possesion,
i watched you slwoly tuck them under, around and pull tight);
for once i listened.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 6:04 PM | Comments (0)

9 de Febrero 2009

about us.

when i taught the kids about confession i told them
confession happens when we tell the truth.
i drew a diagram, well, several really just yesterday morning in sparkly red gel pen ink, on a cocktail napkin.
they are pie graphs.
they are divided into large portions and tiny slivers according to how much her opinion really matters, which is as much to say, how much her truth takes over wherever it fails to match up with what you know to be true about yourself, how much power you give her truth.
in the first circle her opinion is huge, yours is just a tiny slice, only a thin line toward the center of the circle.
in the next the circle is divided right in half but her opinion isn't there: it is just you and God alone in the opinion ring.
in the last circle your opinion is huge and hers is tiny--just the reverse of the first.
that first one is called too heavy because you have asked her to decide how much you matter, and abandoned her to her opinion about you, you disappear.
the third is called disrespect because you have somehow managed to nearly dismiss her altogether, not totally excused her from dealing with the mess, but not given her opinion any consequence at all.
the second is called feeling lonely because you can't see her at all, and really it is funny that your opinion seems to be at war with God's rather than at war with hers and you seem all alone over there on your half, as if your opinion doesn't have any room for God's opinion of you. And neither of you seems to know what is really going on... or have any real power over the situation.

the only reason i know to draw it out like this is because i have this little problem with fielding compliments.
i never know what they mean, how much they mean or what to do about them. I never know if they are true because I am unwilling to give them any chance when they seem to contradict how I feel or what I know about myself.
i smile and say thank you because i am grateful for the confession, for someone taking the time to tell the truth, and tell it to me. i figure that they really believe what they are saying and so it must be the truth--even if they are saying something nice about me.

but what if i disagree? what if i think i didn't do such a great job or worse

what if i agree that something about me is helpful or maybe that
i am talented or special or worth their while?

then i have to argue with my past.

i look back at the scene of a little girl and her stepfather, him jostling for authority, her, assured that he is afraid of something but not sure what.
and i tell both of them: one of you is more powerful, who's it going to be today?

i want them to figure it out between them and give me a call when they decide. i want so badly for him to man up, be strong, kind and take charge of the situation. even gently cajole her into trusting him just this one more time. Not that that would be good for either of us today, but for some reason that is what I want him to do now because that is what I wanted him to do then. i want him to smile kindly and mean it and tell her that she needn't worry, he will take care of everything.
but i am more sure that when i turn my back he will slap her or worse threaten to, though he never would, just to keep her afraid he might one day if she crosses the line, yell at her, tell her she had better behave herself because he knows what she did.

(Sometimes I think it would have been better if he had let fly with his calloused hand because being afraid of the back of his hand, assuming I wouldn't survive it, wondering if it would be worse than anything else I could have ever imagined or experienced, is more terrifying than the thought of him raging, stiking out and just getting it over with. I think the tension, the wondering and fear was worse than the event would have been.)

whatever. right? i mean, he never laid a hand on her, he never knew he was hurting her. he did the best he could; he had been treated far worse.

i'm not sure where i learned how to treat a child, how to care for one or hope for one but my intuition tells me i don't dare turn my back, leave the two of them alone together.

here is what i want to say to him:
you really ought to leave it alone. she is smaller, fragile, but she is a strong little girl and she will survive you and your broken down power play. make no mistake, the one thing you did wrong was the most important thing--there is no minimizing or justifying your behavior. if you really want to win this fight you are going to have to realize how precious this little girl is, how much hope she bears, how her future will determine yours. you will have to face her independence from you and the fact that you have no right to speak one word to her, no right to make a face at her or even look in her direction until you learn that she is and always will be more than you: more important, more beautiful, she will have more potential and more love. until your dreams for her exceed her God-given potential you should just steer clear, you may observe from the sidelines but that is all and if i ever catch the two of you in a deadlock deathmatch for attention, power or even the last can of soda in the fridge you will pay dearly, she will be excused and you will be sorry you ever met her.
you just remember that, you big baby.

because little girls are a precious gift and ought to be loved endlessly, appreciated honestly and sent on their way into the world with a knowledge that should they ever need help you will offer all you have, without questioning or trepidation.

but we are not often treated that way and so you ought not burden us, even when we are grown women, with solving your self-esteem issues; we have our own to deal with.
and you ought to keep in mind that if you disrespect us by foregoing our opinion altogether you will miss out on all we might be.
find a balance, put yourself in the game, but don't pretend you are the only one on the field and by all means:
tell the truth until you are blue in the face
tell us what you want, what you like, especially if it costs you dearly to do so.
tell us you are lonely and hungry for the way we taste and aching for the memory of our laughter in your ear.
tell us you intend to kiss us and buy us dinner.
tell us you need our permission or approval and get down on your knees to beg, with confidence that when we are ready to love you, we will.
when we are ready to matter, we will show up and do whatever it takes to matter to you.
And that is the truth.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 7:03 PM | Comments (0)

5 de Febrero 2009

in complete sentences

it has been brought to my attention that housing values have taken a dive, that the new president is not, as we would have thought, everyone's favorite person--Etta James is pissed at 'Bama and Beyonce for the at last not-tribute sung by the latter at the inaugural ball--and if you took all the folks who have been recently laid off in the Northwest region, and dropped them off in the forest of Sonoma County California you could populate and repopulate the town i grew up in, twice... and all this in spite of a new administration that can, as i read in The Stranger's Last Days column, address us in complete sentences.

all this seems like just the thing to keep me up nights, or at least one night... maybe next week.
instead i have been experiencing a sort of rallying in my personal affairs and perspective on things: our house was never worth the median value, which has yet to drop below what we paid for our little fixer upper condo with a yard, i am still celebrating the president's skin color, cadence and nicotine addiction, rather than his disappointing policy, and i am living on student loans which means i know exactly when i will be the victim of my financial hardship 2.5 years from now, unlike the 70,000 Americans who were silly enough to think they could borrow as much as i have, for far less worthy reasons and then put off repayment indefinitely.

moreover
i have received much encouragement over the past six months or so, more than i ever have in my life. not in monetary form, but in personal contact.
so when i started feeling really guilty this week for celebrating my success in life i started asking around and got this:

Jen explained it to me this way: there are three kinds of business in this world
your business
my business
God's business

though this kind of thinking usually makes me feel nauseous,
and though it is nearly impossible to know who's is what and what is whose, i think she was just trying to tell me to get some effing boundaries, which is not a new idea.

if the global economy is tanking i should look around, reprioritize according to what really matters: love, family, hope, and focus on people, instead of stuff. to laugh when it is funny and cry when it is sad, to keep my friends close enough to hug them, smell them, look into their eyes and tell them that we were never promised anything but love and even that doesn't usually show up in the ways we want it to because it isn't something we can control.

if global warming is causing the weather to freak out, animals to die and homeless men too, i should take a deep breath, remember i can do my part to quit shitting on the planet and move ahead, rather than sit around in a cesspool of worry.

the people who love me most in the world grew up in subpar housing, eating rice and beans they picked in the fields. They didn't speak the right language, or know the right people. They didn't have half the education I have. They survived abusive alcoholic fathers, busy mothers and endless sibling rivalry. They married too young, too poor and raised brave, if mildly dysfunctional children, who got over it for the most part well enough to guide Sarai and i through to this point in our lives and guess what:

we have never had it better than we have it today.

whenever i am most worried i think of 1928 and remember that it was a great year in spite of the crash:
it was the year there was a man dumb enough to build our little solid house so well that the foundation still hasn't cracked 80 years later (sure it is kind of a run down little place but the bones are good)

and mostly

it was the year my grandfather was born... why, you ask, would anyone have brought a child into this world, that world, that barrio, en el campo, at such a dark time in our country's history? because.
because they could.

because they could.
not because they planned it out and figured it would end well, not because they wanted to or had to or even because of some God-given mandate to multiply and subdue.
just because sometimes the mortality rate cuts a girl a break or mother nature forgets to misbehave or any number of the wrong things went right
which could happen at any time, for any reason to any one.
accidentally.

worrying about it isn't going to help, that is for damn sure and hoping seems kind of played out. but some of us are just dumb enough to pretend we're bucking the system.
we're listening to the sad songs and the dance songs and drinking hot drinks and telling dirty jokes
in spite of it all.

and we're calling it "doing our part" or something like that.
we'll keep you posted if it stops working, if we realize that this is not a good way to stave off the worries, we'll let you know, but for now we're sticking with this plan.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 1:54 PM | Comments (1)

3 de Febrero 2009

this is what i told them:

when i preached my first sermon day before yesterday:

Mark 1
22The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

Deut. 18
Raise up a prophet from among your brothers... For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, "Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die."

1 Corinthians 8
1Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge.[a] Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3But the man who loves God is known by God.

We went to the dump the other day. We loaded up a half-ton truck with things we were sure we wouldn't need again.
when we arrived the attendant looked at my husband's face,
rather than in the bed of the truck, and asked him,
just to be sure.
"Garbage?"
Yes,
he answered with authority. The sheetrock, broken bricks, bits of wood, empty paint cans, old,
rolled up bits of carpet and linoleum
had served well for at least a decade
they were now destined for the pit.
To be honest, we had fought, there were plenty of angry words, about most of the so-called garbage,
until this moment we had not been willing to name it.
Who were we to call it garbage?
I felt guilty for throwing it away, for our inability to redeem all this stuff. Were we just too ignorant to find a better way?

"Do you really want to throw THAT in a landfill,
what if we could use it...later? What if it could be recycled or reused?" My ever-green husband asked.
To which I almost always answered:
Good grief, I just can't look at it anymore!
We were only loading something into the truck if we were going to absolutely love tossing it overboard. If there was even a tiny twinkling of hope for a broken brick with a nice marbling or a hinge that hadn't yet rusted through, it stayed.

We figure
if a particular piece of possible refuse inspires you to greatness, you get to keep it--but you have to know, for sure, it can be used.

Martin knows what to do with scrap
wood: he is the authority on which scraps we keep, where they are stored and when they will be used.

I know what to do with broken dishes and dying plants, and I do not hesitate to salvage shards of hand-painted china or nurse a geranium through a snow storm.

Authority was a big deal to the Scribes and Pharisees in Jesus day. They wanted to know,
for sure, exactly how Jesus knew what he knew or
said what he said. They checked and double checked
prophetic texts, they studied the signs of the times
and were sure that when the Messiah arrived, they would be first to KNOW.

We look back on them in judgment because we see Deuteronomy through the lens of Mark's Gospel and Paul's letter to the Corinthians.
We give the New Testament authority because we figure it all adds up,
to an extent:
Deuteronomy predicted it,
Mark recorded it
and Paul summed it all up.
It makes sense to us, in a way, Jesus as Messiah seems obvious, almost a fact of life at times.

But there is something to be said for those who were surprised by Jesus' authority
as much as we know about Jesus being God, we will never reconcile his authority with facts and figures.

Jesus' authority is a mystery. Sometimes I try to settle into one pat answer for questions about who/why and how long of authority according to human understanding of historical figures, war, famine, economics, chaos theory and psychoanalysis.

But Love has a different way.

When Love gives authority it goes like this:
In our house, if it isn't your turn to be in charge of cooking dinner, you offer your services as sous chef and do your best not to get overly emotional when something seems about to burn
You try not to roll your eyes when the head chef needs help finding the chocolate chips in the back of the deep freeze.
It has to be about more than which of us KNOWS how to cook,
it has to be about loving each other in spite of impending doom in the form of charred
onions and missing ingredients.

The text today says plainly that knowledge, which is so often requisite for authority, only puffs us up. But love builds us up.

These texts don't ask us to mimic the mvp on the high school debate team, they don't encourage a battle of wits or
conjure an image of Jesus calculating his next move in some
salvific chess game.
A superior intellect seems to have very little to do with it. It is not about being right,
it is about
grace.

Today's text ignores those who seem to know more, in favor of those who are willing to love more,
imagine more,
redeem more, even when it seems ridiculous to do so.

the text for today calls me to reimagine authority as loving assuredly rather than knowing for certain.

Before we left for the dump we scoured our house and yard, looking for things we ought to throw away. Hidden behind the shed lay a cement birdbath, left to us by the previous owners, in three
ugly, awkward lumps. I had plotted against it before we even bought the house. I was sure it was missing huge chunks and I had it destined for the dump
TODAY.

Martin and I stood over it,
me: calculating
how many mosquitos would be born in it if I let it stay. I asked him to help me put it in the truck.
He just looked down,
hopefully and told me, once more, with gusto that
he wanted to fix it,
that he could fix it, it could be great. I was sure the
data proved otherwise.

somehow he managed to crack my resolve with his optimism. He bent down and fit the pieces of the pedestal together,
like a puzzle. Then we both, almost kneeling in the dirt, bowed down
I to his hope and he to my skepticism,
We hoisted the shallow bowl of the bird bath and I found myself saying, "this should fit perfectly on top."

We stood back and admired
how lovely it had become,
suddenly full of the possibility of happy birds splashing and shaking and it stood, proudly, like a baptismal font
poised perfectly between the heat of the compost heap
and the alley where the neighborhood kids
smoke
pot.

To be honest, Martin had no way of KNOWING
how I would react when the pieces came together; he had only imagined.
He had not calculated this outcome;
he had only hoped,
for over a year, that he could put together all the pieces of the birdbath puzzle and I would suddenly
see its glory.

His authority (over the birdbath)
came like Christ's--
from his hope for redemption, for his creation to be beautiful in the eyes of the beloved. He had preached a gospel
of
cracks in the stone
that didn't make any sense,
he had taught a lesson
that flew in the face of my facts and figures about
what is garbage and what is NOT garbage,
what is to be rebuked and what is to be admired.

And I tell you the truth because I wouldn't make this up: we returned from the dump that first sunny day in January and looked out on our backyard filled with all kinds of little birds we had never seen before in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

and it went quite well.

Posted by crymytinyflood at 12:38 PM | Comments (1)