Shaken and Stirred, Broken but not Crushed

“Jesus looked directly at them and asked, ‘Then what is the meaning of that which is written: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.” (Luke 20:17-18)

 “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” (Job 13:15)

 It’s no longer ”What will happen to me if he dies?” but “What will happen to me when he dies?”  Mr. Chiton (so-called in two verbatims I have presented this semester) is going to die, and it will be soon.  Maybe he’ll survive this weekend as he has several other weekends, beyond the expectations of everyone who has had contact with him.  But he will die soon.

 The ‘me’ in the middle of the question is the important part, because it’s the question asked of me when I presented this case.  I have now seen this patient 12-15 times.  And a month ago he was already actively dying.  We had a single visit when he was able to communicate even minimally.  It has been hard.

 As the first questions were asked about the verbatim, I began to feel the weight of this thought on my mind: “I feel like I am being crushed by this, and I don’t know whether I should choose it.”  I had to say it to the group, and out in the open it is a thought which goes deeper than I know.  I am in the middle of this thing.  I feel deeply about it and when I speak or write it is clear how much I am involved, personally, emotionally, far beyond professionally (whatever that means for Christian ministers offering pastoral care).  Consider that both of my verbatims and several weeks’ worth of written reflections have centered on this patient.

 This patient has become this unit.

 It was helpful to present on him yesterday.  It was freeing to have others know.  But still he eclipses this unit.  He is the center and he has all the gravity and every other patient that I visit is planet circling him as the sun.  In this metaphor, it seems to me that my care to other patients would be suffering.  Perhaps it is.  I am not this one patient’s pastor.  I am this whole congregation of patient’s pastors.  Is my care for them suffering?

 Inasmuch as I can be objective, if my care for them is suffering, I don’t think they notice.  Is that good enough?  I can be very critical of myself on this point, cling to my ridiculous expectations of myself rather than listening to the fact that other patients are being ministered to.  But I do feel like I’m cheating on all those other patients.  I don’t find myself thinking about them at various points of every day.  I don’t find myself talking about them in oblique ways in every conversation I have.  I’m not writing yet another weekly reflection on them.

 It’s been a grace to me that I haven’t been able to see the patient as much as I would have chosen to, were I actually in charge.  Some days, education has squeezed a visit into a hand wave from the door frame.  Other times, my unavailability has led me to feel very good about having S visit.  I know that I offer this family something very good, but I am certain that others can offer very good things (different things) as well.  And there has been yet more grace, beginning at the end of last week and continuing throughout this one.  The patient’s wife, with whom I talk, has not been there when I have been there.  I want to name that as a grace.  I might have already been crushed by this had she been there every time that I’ve been able to stop by, even with S visiting.

 What will happen when Mr. Chiton dies?  What will I do when Mr. Chiton dies?  The evidence of how personal it has become is that I find myself viewing his death the way I would view a loved one’s death.  I will hurt, I hope I will cry (as sometimes I can’t when I want to), I will hurt for others (perhaps more so in this situation than in the deaths of relatives who have always been a good deal older), and I will still find that I have hope, that I have love, that I can see Death and his death swallowed up by Christ.  Will I mourn?  Yes.  Will I grieve?  Yes.  Will I be wounded in ways I might not recognize for a long time, even years?  Will I receive (stomach dropping as I write it) wounds that I will die carrying?  Very possibly.

 It’s too late.  Too late not to be hurt.  I already care too much.  I already hurt now, before he’s dead.  I mourn, am filled with tears, for his wife in particular, for their children (although from a distance for them).  This morning, she wasn’t there and I prayed for her and for their children.  I want to end this reflection hopeful, and I do feel hopeful.  But hope is the first olive branch that came up in the wasteland after the Flood.  Like that first branch, something may even come along and pluck it.  Will I be crushed? Will I be crippled?  No, I don’t think so.  I really don’t believe so.  Will I be deeply hurt, wounded, wounded deeply?  Yes, and it’s already begun.

 Lord God, sanctify this (my and his) suffering.  Let it not be poured out on the ground for no reason.  Let me not be emptied out, burned out, disintegrated.  You are our God of mercy.  Have mercy.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Ocean of Words by Ha Jin

One of the best books that I’ve read in the last several years was Waiting by Ha Jin.  Something about the way that he writes has that beautiful quality I also admire in Sarah Orne Jewett or Wallace Stegner: stillness, silence, peace.  I think part of the reason I like those things in fiction is hereditary.  My mom introduced me to Jewett in high school or undergrad with a beautiful edition of Country of the Pointed Firs, which is prefaced by a collection of black and white images of coastal Maine.  Several years later she recommended Waiting (which we had both recently and separately picked up in thrift stores), while I introduced her to Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, still possibly my favorite novel, sometime in high school.

 This morning I finished reading Ocean of Words by Ha Jin.  It’s his first published book of non-poetry, from 1996, a collection of short stories about Chinese army life on the border with Russia in some tense years of the early 1970s.  I have long known that the majority of my knowledge of history (and plenty of other topics) comes from reading fiction, and it’s been proven once again by the fact that I had no idea that Russia and China were at the edge of war in 1970.  This certainly puts Nixon’s visit to China in a different light.  (The fact that we have traded with China and overlooked its human rights violations for decades begins to make sense, when trading with China is part of war with the USSR.)

 As regards Ocean of Words and history, I would guess that there is a lot of history to be derived, as the author actually served in the People’s Liberation Army of China for six years, beginning in 1969, and coming to the US in 1985.  Checking out his Wikipedia entry makes me realize how much of his work I have yet to read.

My hope now would be for a ridiculously good director to make a movie out of this book.  Too bad Altman’s dead.  Just to see, I did check out imdb for Ha Jin, and there is a movie version of Waiting being made (starring Ziyi Zhang!).

p.s. I added a new tab to the top of the page so you can see what I’m reading and recommending.

Seeking Entrance to the Mysteries

I just finished writing my weekly reflection for this week on this patient who (I realized while writing this sentence) I will never forget.  Life, death, decay, in a visible war in his flesh.  Death is winning.  For now.  What does it mean that his body will be redeemed?  Death will be reversed and he will be made new as he never was before.  Maybe that’s something his wife and I could talk about today.

I really want to do a verbatim on whatever we talk about today.  I wish I had done a series of verbatim to record this whole thing.  I will never be the same after this.  I just realized that too.  I need to say it to somebody.  Maybe more than one body.

I just said it to K, who’s sitting here in the office beside me, writing her own overly long reflection.  I told her about this ministry of the funeral procession that I’m experiencing and offering, and she told me this quote from the presentation she went to by Tom Long, in which he focused on the procession: “We carry the dead to the edge of Mystery.”  We are journeying with the dead as far as we can go (and, I think, perhaps a step or four further).  I am journeying with this patient as Death takes him where he does not want to go.  And I am journeying with the man’s wife.  Death is not taking us, but we are playing follow-the-leader. Death takes this man, the woman follows her husband—screaming, beating Death on his arms, faceless face, and back, trying to break Death’s unbreakable grip on her lover—and I follow after, walking beside the woman.

Or perhaps the vision is of the man in his sealed coffin.  His wife tries to break it open, pleading that he’s alive in there.  “He’s alive, don’t you see?”  And the pallbearers, perhaps wearing labcoats, perhaps wearing the nametags of the doctors, of the nurses, are walking relentlessly forward, are marching.  They may slow, and she cries out, “They’re bringing him home!”  She looks at me: “They’re bringing him home!”  She looks at the pallbearers: “He’s coming home!”

She looks at me and at my face, which says (as much as  I try to hide it) that I don’t believe her.  I’m involved in this too.  I’m taking this man to the grave too.  It doesn’t matter that I say we’ll put the body in the grave, and her husband will drop through fire and come out whole, whole in a way he’s never known. That his laughter and joy will overcome with tears this taciturn husband she knew, slow to emote but with a glowing hot heart.  On that day he will dance and sing.  He will leap to tap heels together, but leap over Saturn before coming down again.  He will laugh so deeply in the joy of his new wholeness that it will shake the stars, and they will fall to his feet, and he will eat them, saying they taste better than ice cream and fresh snow, this one like strawberry and this one like banana (which surprises him, as he never has liked banana before).

What will he see as he looks back to his wife, who is mourning, who is caring for their shattered children?  What will he say about it to the God he will know face to face?  These are the mysteries of joy and terror.

Tuesday Reading Roundup

1. Saga of the Swamp Thing, vol. 1 (issues 20-27)–Alan Moore offers up some of the earliest proof that he is a great writer, although this in particular is nothing when compared to Watchmen or From Hell.   I intended to provide a picture of his version of the Swamp Thing, but Alan Moore is himself much scarier.  Really, this is his picture (the beardy one):

2. Beanworld: Wahoolazuma (i.e., Volume 1) by Larry Marder–I remember in high school that AF managed to get some of our female friends (LV nee P, I’m thinking of you) to read comics by introducing them to the cute Beans of Beanworld.  Many years later, I came across this at Lilly Library at Duke.  Think Middle Earth on the smallest scale possible.  No smaller.  Smaller still.  And probably smaller.  Marder has created an entire new world, but it is incredibly tiny and incredibly simple.  There’s something very ecological about it, with little new parts of how the world works being given out to the reader (and discovered by the Beans) bit by bit, and drama being created by small things creating major imbalances.  Definitely worth reading and worth seeking other volumes.  According to Amazon quoting Publishers Weekly, this contains the first 9 issues (of an according-to-Wikipedia original 21).  Just look at that:

3. The Minister as Crisis Counselor by David K. Switzer–Required for this unit of CPE, there is definitely some good information in this book.  There is also lots of terrible stuff, particularly the chapter on divorce care and any time (read, everywhere) that gender has a possibility of being involved.  I must admit that it is possible that the updated edition (mine is from 1971, but this book is hard to find in any edition) is better, though, and I say that because the chapter on suicide seems to be very good.  (If you are keeping track, I read the entire first edition and am now midway through an additional chapter on suicide provided in the updated edition.)  Check out the cover art (and that’s from the updated 1986 edition!):

4. Matthew (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) by Stanley Hauerwas–Do not trust my tag cloud to tell you how much I have read of Hauerwas (or to tell you anything else).  This is my second full volume, and I am reading it as part of a study of the Gospel According to St. Matthew I am doing just for the heck of it.  Personal edification, further pastoral education, etc., could also be listed as reasons, but the real reason I’m reading it is likely my continued pursuit of the perfection of knowledge.  Ridiculous, aye, but true.  In the next few weeks, you may also see a George Washington biography sneak onto the list, as I have this crazy idea that reading American history through the lives of its presidents might be interesting.  As you can see (and if you’ve ever talked to me about my theology reading plan) I’m starting at the beginnings (Matthew=GW=Apostolic Fathers).  All that said, to read a modern theological commentary alongside technical commentaries is beyond refreshing.

Grace is: God is Here

(With apologies to a misuse of colons which looks neat, this is a weekly reflection for CPE)

A Theology of Grace

            My tendency when talking about grace is to quickly shift into law.  That is, I start thinking about the wonderful and joyful springs of grace in God, and something in me immediately argues back, Yes, but there’s that law part, too.  I didn’t have a name for how my family of origin (and at least a generation before my immediate family) does Christianity until I took Church History II at Duke.  It’s called Pietism.  But I had experienced it through United Methodism as well.  John Wesley called it Christian Perfection.  And I honestly believe that the pursuit of Christian Perfection has contributed to my mental illness.  It’s part of the reason I left the United Methodist Church.  It’s part of the reason I left for a sacramental tradition.

            To me, sacramental Christianity is real Christianity.  Sacramentally centered worship, even in its basic pattern, proclaims that God is with us (literally, Immanuel is on the table before us and then in our hands and then in our mouths), that God comes to us, and that neither the holiness of the priest/pastor, nor the holiness of the people has anything to do with it.  Each Sunday at Anglican churches around the world, the last communal prayer before receiving the Eucharist is some version of

“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.”

            Such a prayer echoes the Catholic liturgy’s “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” (from Matt. 8:8) and stands in direct opposition to many of our popular understandings of the “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” spirituality I grew up with.

            Let me lift up the line, “that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body.”  The most recent version of the American Book of Common Prayer does not contain that line, but it’s important to knowing grace, and it’s gone because of our discomfort with the Incarnation.  Grace is about bodies.  God’s grace is not for my disembodied spirit but for me, an earthy body; and God’s grace is not for the Sweet Hereafter but for now.  Grace is bodies.  Jesus’ body primarily, in the Eucharist.  But then the way that I offer my body to those whom I serve.  And the way that other people’s bodies become Jesus and offer grace to me.

            I think about bodies, and I start to think of clay.  God got Adam under God’s fingernails.  This means dirt is not ‘dirty’ as we use it—synonymous with ‘guilty’ or ‘ashamed.’  ‘Dirty’ means filled with grace.  ‘Soiled’ (from ‘soil’) means holy.  ‘Earthy’ (referring to still more dirt) is what we are called to be because God is eternally earthy in Jesus.

            So what is grace?  Grace is: God is here.

            I need to pursue this further.  Where is grace when I wake up?  Where is grace on the bike or car ride?  Where is grace in the badge-in?  Where is grace in the men’s bathroom shower?  Where is grace in needing caffeine?  Where is grace in the hospital?  Where is grace when I pray?  When I am ‘pious’?  When I kick my own soul and condemn me?  God is here.  Grace is: God is here.

 Readings Week of September 21, 2009

Selections from Matthew 1-13 (Ancient Christian Commentary series)

Selections from Matthew (Brazos Theological Commentary) by Stanley Hauerwas

Selections from The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

The Minister as Crisis Counselor by David K. Switzer, pp. 102-210

Holy Rood (i.e., Cross) Day

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, in glory everlasting.  Amen.

(1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 244)

Movies for Which I Have Some Hope, Episode 1

Up in the Air: Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You for Smoking) returns, as does Jason Bateman (at least in team with Reitman).  I have enjoyed both of Reitman’s first movies.  One suggestion: the intricate opening credits he seems to love really kill my love for his movies.  I think I saw Touch of Evil on Turner Classic Movies right before seeing Thank You For Smoking for the first time in the theater, and whoever introduced Touch of Evil talked about how important it was to Orson Welles to just start his films, with as few opening credits as the studio would allow.  Reitman seems to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.  He has to be pushing his producers to allow him to do those ridiculous opening credits.  And his movies would actually be better without them.  Still, this is an excellent trailer that makes me want to see his film (a quality of all recent trailers involving George Clooney).

For fun, compare Clooney’s narration of the Up in the Air trailer to Sean Penn’s opening narration from the 21 Grams trailer:

Comixed.com

from the makers of failblog.org comes comixed.com…

(Additional note: I was able to both recall and spell correctly ‘Ricardo Montalban’ and ‘Khan Noonien Singh’ without looking them up.  Also, did anyone else ever notice that Khan is of Sikh ancestry?)

Three Cheers for the Weird Book Room

AbeBooks.com has just introduced a Weird Book Room.  And it is awesome.  Consider these fine titles which could be yours:

And then check out this article from Abe: “Codex Seraphinianus: The World’s Weirdest Book.” An excerpt from this surrealist encyclopedia from another planet (and feel free to buy me a copy):

Life Among the Savages

Last night, before bed, after a delicious dinner (savory crepes and salad, and chocolate ganache tarts for dessert) at Skyler and Tim’s, and after consuming an entire chocolate tart that Skyler sent home with us, I finished reading Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages.  It was a mixed bag of hilarity (described by Jackson herself as “a disrespectful memoir about my children”) and still-under-my-skin matter-of-fact portrayal of 1940s household gender roles.  First the under-the-skin part: it is not clear from this book that Jackson’s husband does anything.  Anything.

During this period of their lives, both were trying to establish their writing careers.  Jackson went on to write short stories such as the heavily anthologized classic, “The Lottery” (available in full here), and the lesser-known but still widely acclaimed “The Possibility of Evil”, in addition to novels such as the 1960 National Book Award nominee The Haunting of Hill House (you may have seen one of several unsatisfying movie adaptations) and 1962’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (selected by Time magazine as one of the top ten books of that year).

(To follow a brief diversion here, consider what kind of novel you had to write in the 1960s for people to take critical notice.  Jackson’s National Book Award nominee class of 1960 included works by folks such as John Updike, William Faulkner, Philip Roth (who won the award that year for Goodbye, Columbus), Saul Bellow, Robert Penn Warren, and John Hersey.  And then look at 1962, when Time lauded We Have Always Lived.  Other folks who published new works of fiction that year include James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, William S. Burroughs, William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, Doris Lessing, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O’Connor, Anthony Powell, Katherine Anne Porter, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Kurt Vonnegut, Elie Wiesel, and Herman Wouk.)

Back to the main thread, Jackson’s husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman (never named in the book) was at the same time establishing himself as a literary critic.  But daily life looks like Jackson attending to everything around the household, not only the things you might assume–childcare, cooking, and cleaning–but also things you would think traditional gender roles might hand to Hyman–finances, car repair, etc.  Jackson’s characterization makes him look like a head-in-the-clouds, slightly-overwhelmed-by-life-and-especially-life-with-lots-of-children kind of guy, trying to find various niches where he can get a handhold (coin collecting, for instance).  Today, fifty or sixty years on, it is hard to see him charitably (even though Jackson doesn’t ever talk about any family arguments or tensions that might have gone on between her and Hyman).  (Another strange omission in a book about family: there is never, except in passing, any extended family in their life.)

But I promised you fun too, and I will offer it after this break…(note to copyright police, this extended excerpt is for educating my readers (FAIR USE!) and can only help sell your books)…

It was when Jannie was nearly five that the question of her name became desperately important.  When she was born her father wanted to name her Jean and I wanted to name her Anne, and we compromised upon an arbitrary Joanne, although I frequently call her Anne and her father very often calls her Jean.  Her brother calls her Honey, Sis, and Dopey, Sally calls her Nannie, and she calls herself, variously, Jean, Jane, Anne, Linda, Barbara, Estelle, Josephine, Geraldine, Sarah, Sally, Laura, Margaret, Marilyn, Susan, and–imposingly–Mrs. Ellenoy.  The second Mrs. Ellenoy.

The former Mrs. Ellenoy–I have this straight from my daughter–was a lovely woman, mother of seven daughters, all named Martha, and she and Mr. Ellenoy used to be very angry with one another, until one day they grew so very angry that they up and killed each other with swords.  As a result my daughter is the new Mrs. Ellenoy and has inherited all the Marthas as stepdaughters.  When she is not named Jean, Linda, Barbara, Sally, and so on, but is being Mrs. Ellenoy, her daughters are allowed to assume these names, so that there is a constant bewildering shifting of names among them, and it is sometimes very difficult to remember whether you are addressing Janey Ellenoy or a small girl with seven daughters named Martha…

For example: I glanced out of the kitchen window one Sunday morning and found my older daughter up to her knees in a mud puddle.  “Joanne,” I said sharply, rapping on the glass in traditional manner with my wedding ring.  She turned and smiled and I dried my hands on the dish towel and made for the back door.  “What are you doing in that mud?”

My daughter looked at me, amused, “This is Mrs. Ellenoy,” she said.  “I’m over there.”  And she pointed.

One trouble about all this is that it is extraordinarily easy to be taken in by any particular comment.

“Joanne,” I said, addressing the empty air where she was pointing, “get out of that mud puddle this minute.”

“Get out at once,”  Mrs. Ellenoy added emphatically.  “Joanne, I’m ashamed of you.”  She turned to me.  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with her,” she said.  “Joanne,” she added again, “you heard your mother.  Get out of that mud puddle right now.”  She nodded reassuringly at me.  “She’ll be right in,” she said.  “I’ll stay out here and wait for her.”

I went back inside, talking to myself, and after a minute Mrs. Ellenoy poked her head in through the kitchen door.  “Martha’s out here,” she said, “and she won’t stop crying until you give her a cookie.”

“I’m not giving a cookie to any little girl covered with mud,” I said.

“Martha’s not covered with mud,” Mrs. Ellenoy said reasonably.  “That was bad Anne.  Martha’s been playing quietly under the apple tree all this time.”