PRACTICING BEING BOTH BURIED AND UNEARTHED (2020 WRAPPED)

 The year is winding down.
Praise God.
Anyone else feeling some kind of way about that?
Like you can't quite wait for it to be over
and you're afraid to wish it away
and you also found a lot of things
you didn't know you needed to find in the 
suffocating ashes of the year of hindsight?
This year has me feeling buried
like a seed somedays
and like the undead on others.
Both/And.

There were months this year that passed in the searing
pain of holding my breath.
First there was watching the news while an unknown virus started
ravaging China.  Then Italy.
Then the first wave as it made it to the US.
Now that rhythm has almost become normal.
Numbers and risk factors and hand sanitizer and trade-offs.
There was the election
a red-purple-blue wave of unknown 
that continues to test the boundaries of

 acceptance and unknowing and grace-giving.
There is the grief that will never stop being tangible
now that George Floyd will no longer breathe.
Or Breonna Taylor.
Or Chadwick Boseman.
Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Or the many many thousands of others
who were robbed of time or murdered by systems that continue
to grind our bones to make the bread.

In between breathless moments this year,
there were also riots of unexpected joy.
Right before the world shut down, we got a last minute ticket 
to see Lauren Daigle who exhorted us to 'Look Up Child'
like a prophet in the wilderness we didn't know was coming.
And while live music has shifted to virtual,
we've been able to see and support more of our favorites
than we might have been able to in a normal year.
From the boys to the chicks (and a host of others),
there's been new music, online singalongs, and fellowship.
I often connect to my Creator through music
and while I've had to learn new tricks and skills to find it,
that joy is still available to me through technology and privilege

that I didn't even know to appreciate until this year.
The glory of it runs over my heart like a giggling toddler.

Another joy that warms my motherless heart
is the way our nuclear family revels in this time together.
We don't just tolerate each other.
We nurture, support and enliven each other.
Daily hugs, riotous laughter over messy meals,
inside jokes through outside walks or car trips to nowhere.
We adore each other.  Each of us to each of us.
It's intimate and personal and nothing that I ever expected to have
with teenagers of all animals and I 
can't get over the ridiculous abundance of it.

A joy that snuck up on me is the relief from being in the world.
I learned so many new skills in 2019 and early 2020
and I wanted to practice those skills.
Of course, I was thinking that I would practice them OUT THERE
with other people, on other people, or just generally outside of myself.
I have struggled to see growth or progress in the past 

that weren't demonstrated in front of a crowd.

Thanks to 2020, I've had little choice than to turn those skills inward.
Like everyone, I've been sitting with myself
and sometimes only with myself
for months on end.
And the joy is how much I like her and accept her
and am so damn proud of her courage and perseverance and tenderness.

We're always becoming who we are intended to be
but I feel closer to her than I've ever felt.
This woman that loves tattoos, expresses herself with confidence,
knows her strengths and doesn't regret her weaknesses.

There were so many lessons from this year
but the need to cultivate joy like it is a living thing
is one I hope remains through the next.
My word for the year was practice.

And practice is what I have done all year-

just not in the ways that I ever expected.

How to hold so much grief as it rains down in waves
is not something that I have learned to do.

If anything, I've learned to see even more ways that the world

is broken and bleeding and deserving of the honor

that grief adorns the aftershocks of our actions.

And how to lean into the paradox of humanity

just a bit more.

We are both/and.

ALWAYS.

A spark of magic wrapped in mud.

Compassionate and careless.

Glorious and terrible.

Bereft and elated.

Brilliant and idiotic.

Forgiving and vengeful.

Holding those dueling natures

and attempting to integrate them

is a transformational effort.

It's the attempt that makes us worthy-

it's the intent and action 

that comes from repeated effort.

Practice.

To say that I'm over 2020 would be a simplistic fiction.

I am more because of the events of this past year

and I am also less.

I have practiced and will keep practicing-

and I am grateful to know 

at least for a few minutes 

that it is well spent.

NOTHING IS WASTED (NOTES FROM THE EDITORAL FLOOR)

The world is a lot right now.

I mean-the world has always been a lot-

maybe I'm just more aware of the profound fecundity

present in simple things right now.

In a time and place that seems to be insistent on scarcity

I keep being hit over the head with abundance.

Except with words.

I don't have a lot of words lately-

at least not the kind that hold my attention long enough

to be strung together into sentences.

There is so much to witness and process,

that I rarely feel that I've got something to add to the cacophony.

Or maybe it's all I can do to hang on myself.

Most days it's difficult to pull the tangle apart

well enough to understand my own perspective.

It feels nearly impossible to share any kind of insight.

Also, I am on the computer errr damn day from 7am until 7pm.

It's a zoom life right now and in spite of my blue-blockers

and my melatonin, I'm feeling more and more like a frantic monkey

stuck inside a space ship.

It's no secret that I'm often offended by the lies we tell ourselves-

so you won't be surprised that someone using words to hurt

themselves was the push that motivated me to come back to

the screen after hours.

Just so we're clear...I've used this same lie in the not to distant past.

I bet you have too.

I hope we all find the keys to freedom by connecting.

If I ever say something that causes you to shackle yourself

tighter with shame or heaviness-please reach out to me

so I can make amends and adjust my words.

I have a friend who is going through something hard

and she was talking about all the time she wasted

by bending and twisting herself into a situation that doesn't work.

She was full of self-judgement and shame.

She should have known (she said) that it wasn't a fit.

She should have called time earlier instead of doubling down.

She was in full blown crisis over all this wasted time

and she could not get past that to see anything else.

What a waste was said over and over.

While is is true that she spent a lot of time in a certain posture-

it is not true that the time was wasted.

Friends...NOTHING is wasted.

There are layers in this lie-

and that's part of why it's so powerful.

Sneaky lies are sometimes hardest to see.

I'm going to try and break down the layers

but it'll take a minute.

First of all-time is a human concept.

We made it up and we get to decide what it means.

We generally agree as modern humans on the hands

of the clock and how that time passes.

We've created international boundaries that

help orient the collective group so that we can 

efficiently do things together.

But a second is not a real thing.

It can't be held, tasted, or felt.

Some seconds seem to drag forever,

others fall like water through a sieve.

How can you waste something that doesn't exist?

Do you know how much time you have left on this plane?

How many minutes, seconds or hours are in your account?

What does it look like to fritter away time?

Are you throwing seconds in the trash by not experiencing them?

Who qualifies the proper use of time?  Do they wear a uniform?

Have a badge or an official second keeper?

Are there categories or gradients of time?  

Useful through wasteful?

Where does sleeping fall?  Reading fiction?  Laughing?

Snuggling a baby?  singing?

Does time increase in value that can be traded on some 

international exchange system?

The person who decides the value of your time is you.

You're choosing how to look at that concept every single time you think of it.

Here are some questions to consider:

What if you have exactly the right amount of time?

What if the time you have is more than enough?

What if all time you have is equal in value and that value is infinite?

Next, let's talk about experiences

and how those things get processed by your personal narrator.

I think we all have our share of choices we wish we didn't make

or roads we would have preferred to have avoided.

Or those things that happened to us that weren't 

a result of our own decision or active choice.

We start from an early age deciding that some 

things are positive and some are negative

and this is our first step into a fundamental human 

behavior:  story telling.

We live and breathe in story-using it 

to do incredible (and sometimes terrible) feats of magic.

Often our only novel is the story we tell

ourselves about our own life and our only audience is ourselves.

When something doesn't fit into a nice neat chapter

in that biography, we want to throw it out as part of a rough draft.

Here's the main problem with kicking out certain experiences:

you're in the middle of the story.

You can't actually see where this is going yet.

And that will forever be the answer as long as you're alive.

Trying to edit your story in real time means you're not living

the actual life in front of you.

This is why we go to therapy-because we get stuck

trying to take out chapters that hurt us or don't fit

so that we can actually move forward to new experiences.

A lot of what you learn in therapy is that you 

need to accept that chapter and stop trying to

sugar coat it into something that fits better or pretending

that it didn't exist at all.

What you tell yourself about the story is often

more important than the actual events that took place.

For those of us dealing with traumatic chapters, here are a few more thoughts:

Acceptance does not mean approval.

You are the author of your story-but you are not

the omniscient controller of events.  

When something terrible happens, you couldn't have changed it.

You can only change how you understand the event

and if you're trying to cut it out, you

are not allowing yourself to have the power that is actually yours.

Find a good therapist and work on yourself for as long as it takes.

That is not wasted time.

Rob Bell's new book is excellent

Finally, let's talk about how we assign value to experiences.

We each have an internal evaluation system

that starts assigning labels to experiences from the second

we are born.

And our brain builds from early, simplistic things

to more complicated or nuanced things.

'Food is good' grows into a preference

for certain vegetables over others.

But our overall life is not actually a linear experience.

What the baby version of you thought was

amazing will bore the adult version of you.

We are not all lamenting the wasted time

we spent pushing a walker as a toddler.

That's because we understand it was something

we needed during that time period.

We don't look at elementary children with disdain

when they become obsessed with power rangers

or Pokémon or certain book series.

We understand that's what is lighting up their brains

in this moment and we don't try to somehow make 

those preferences make sense in the life we project for them 

twenty years from now.

We allow them to find themselves and discard

items or ideas that don't serve them anymore.

Unfortunately, we call this childhood and stop allowing

it in ourselves at some point and that is a great mistake.

Play is as important in adults as it is in children-

it just may look a little different.

I want to be very explicit.

I'm not trying to subtly tell you that the things you experience

are all lessons that can be used.

I will tell you directly that there are LOTS of experiences

that turn out to be lessons that can be used or built on.

But not everything is a lesson sent here to teach you something

in an existential way.

Even if you manage to use it later, 

not everything will be understood by you in real time.

Most things are best viewed without the lens of judgement.

Somethings just are...or were.  But they were not wasted.

Nothing is wasted.

Everything is (or can be) holy.

Everything is (or can be) profane.

You get to decide.

Here are some other things that aren't wasted:

that long term relationship that didn't culminate in marriage or children

the years of marriage where neither of you honored or cherished

 that terrible fight you had with your brother just before he died

the years you spent hiding in alcohol or drugs

 that time binge watching Peaky Blinders with your half grown kids

 the carrots whose tops got eaten by bunnies 4 times in a row

the classes you took twenty years ago that don't apply to your career

the friendship that grew distant over time

the time spent trying to decide how you want to make money

the money you spent buying love or affirmation

the award you chased that didn't result in acceptance

the energy you spent hiding abuse from those that love you

the rage you feel inside when your father starts talking politics

the time spent worshipping at a church who doesn't think you're a whole person

the love you gave that wasn't returned

the love you that still fills your heart after the person has moved on

Nothing is wasted.

What would be on your list of wasted things?

Feel free to share the chapters you're trying to rewrite

so that the power they hold over the story can be reclaimed.

NOTHING EVER CHANGES (THE LIE OF APATHY)

Back in the way before times, I wrote a series called 'Watch Your Mouth' which consists of phrases we tell ourselves that are not necessarily true or useful but still persist because we don't examine them.  This is a new chapter for that series.  If you'd like to see the other installments, just click on the topic on the right hand side of this page called #watchyourmouth.

Remember when the anguish over George Floyd and Breonna Taylor was a fresh lament?

Not as far back as the anguish over Tamir Rice or Mike Brown 

but before the fresh heartbreak of Jacob Blake?

Can you remember that far back?

During that particularly acute season,

I was talking to someone I love about all the things in the news and in a 

strong, certain voice she said:

NOTHING EVER CHANGES

PEOPLE DON'T CHANGE

THE WORLD DOESN'T CHANGE

EVERYONE NEEDS TO JUST GET OVER IT

AND MOVE ON

I was struck dumb for a minute.

She was so emphatic; her eyes gleamed as she raised her voice.

After a pause, I waded back in to the complicated dance of 

discussing prejudice, politics and racism

in a country founded on the murder and servitude of certain people to others

but weeks later this part of the conversation kept coming to mind.

The conversation itself wasn't a new one nor did 

it contain any sort of resolution.

It's the same kind of conversation we've been having

as a nation for 300 years with increasing urgency.

Then why have I revisited it hundreds of times over the past few months?

What made this conversation stand out for me?

That ALL CAPS section in green above

keeps rebounding through my mind.

My brain can't let that lie stand so it 

keeps running it through the ticker tape of my thoughts

to remind me of its subversive nature.

NOTHING EVER CHANGES.

What utter rubbish.

A day when it seemed like the whole world was on fire.

Things change all the time.

My life looks very different than my grandmother's life did

a few short years ago.

My daughter will not live with the same social

norms that I was raised to accept without thinking.

Those changes are hard to quantify in some ways

and even harder to determine the overall scorecard

relating to satisfaction, health and security.

But to refute any change has occurred is kind of ridiculous.

One reason this sticks with me because it is overly simplistic

and fails utterly to convey the complicated relationship

the speaker has with change.

Maybe the speaker is saying that 'good' change never happens

or nothing ever changes for her benefit.

Maybe it is an expression of futility and loss,

exasperation at the amount of time or cost of change.

The inevitability of change is like the weather-

it doesn't fit a moral code.

Whether a change is positive or negative is not a fact-

it's always an opinion that depends on your perspective.

Change occurs and then humans build whole

cannons of work determining whether that 

was a positive or a negative shift.

Our need to codify change is ultimately a reaction to trying to control

or understand the change in a way that keeps us from realizing

how insignificant we can be in the universe.

Things change.

Things are always changing.

It is a constant that you can count on.

Whether that change will make your life better or worse

is sometimes impossible to qualify-

particularly in the middle of a shift.

Hawk Newsome is an activist who will not leave you comfortable.  Don't @me if you don't like his perspective.

Here's another reason it stuck with me.

Saying that nothing ever changes is such a beautiful crutch

and I have used it personally often in my life.

From my non-existent relationship with certain family members

to my eyeroll at the long-time colleague who reverts to potty humor when stressed

or my avoidance of eye-contact with people wearing red hats.

If there's something I don't want to add energy to

because I've had a poor experience with it before

then lies that sound like this pass over the intercom of my brain.

Sometimes it sounds like

people never change

or 

same old same old

but the underlying message is that I have permission to not try

because my effort will not make a difference.

That my energy will be wasted this time

because it didn't appear to shift anything last time.

That people are unchanging and the laws of behavior are immutable.

I use this lie to limit my own creativity

and let myself off the hook way more than I'd like to admit.

source: https://www.instagram.com/ecofolks/?hl=en

Maybe you're sitting there, firmly rooted in this belief

and ready to send me a 3 page commentary on how it's truth with a capital T.

How do I know it's a lie?

Don't I see hate and injustice?  Misogyny and inefficiency?

Isn't that proof that the world is stuck in patterns that don't shift?

No.  It's not.

Here's a final reason this conversation stuck with me.

Nothing ever changes it too black and white, to harsh in it's construction.

Some things haven't changed yet, 

some things I wish would change are very persistent,

and some things feel overwhelmingly hard to change.

But other things have changed, are changing right now.

Some things changed so quickly and universally that our

collective heads are still spinning.

Some of those changes will stick and some will change again.

Working remotely for instance.

Shaking hands (or actually never shaking hands).

Eating in restaurants or meeting new people or watching movies.

Or even just the basics you need when you leave the house-

do you have your mask?

I can't find the source for this-if you have it, lemme know and i'll attribute!

THINGS CHANGE.

All the time.

So when I'm tempted to believe that a person, a system, a belief

is immovable-I need to be aware of what is at work within me.

Apathy often serves the very thing that I wish would change.

I'm not saying that you should go to every fight you're invited to attend.

I'm not saying to bleed out on every field.

I'm saying that we all need to pay attention to this lie when it shows up

so that we don't sleepwalk right into making the very thing that 

we wish would change more long-lasting than perhaps it might be

without our consent.

There is a tipping point for everything-

some things just haven't hit that threshold yet.

Jo Saxton is a gift to us all

FRUSTRATION IS THE INVITATION (YOUR ANGER HAS A MESSAGE)

Art by @HoneyBeanArt

Like most humans, I love to pretend I am more evolved than I actually am.

There are lots of things that I can focus on to distract us both from the fact 

that I am at my core an animal

living an experience that invites simplistic, surface emotions easily.

When I say surface emotions, I'm not talking about nuanced 

feelings like gratitude or overwhelm.

I'm talking about fear, anger, or surprise.

The sharp quick ones that happen without a conscious choice or discernment;

the ones that bypass all civility or electrify me like my own mini bug zapper.

In spite of years of therapy and a lifetime of study

rage is my most readily available surface emotion.

It's there, waiting just under the surface.

A prehistoric behemoth of a reptile that is always ready for interaction, 

starving for a target, vigilant in it's service of my tender heart.

There have been seasons of my life where this guardian 

has very rightfully terrified me.

My anger left unchecked can be a terrible, destructive thing.

Combined with grief or betrayal, it burns so bright that everything else

 gets hard to see in the burnout.

I was taught that anger is not feminine, 

not safe, not justified, and just plain tacky.

The right emotion for me to have was fear, 

preferably in the form of a graceful swoon

or a cute little squeak.

If I had to endure anger, 

I should channel it into revenge (don't get mad, get even).

The world can tolerate clever revenge or petty jealousy 

infinitely more than an angry woman.

For a very long time, 

I tried to fit myself into this definition of a good woman and 

pretend that anger wasn't always along for the ride.

I tried very hard to sink it down deep into the mud of the swamp;

to kill it with kindness or drown it in excuses.

Which is why my anger would often leap right out of my mouth

in a surprise sneak attack that went right for the jugular of my target.

Through therapy, I've learned to make peace with this guardian;

not just understand it but love it, respect it, and cherish the gifts it brings.

I've learned to accept that the source of anger

is often rooted in the Holy Spirit

and that wisdom pays attention to the cage rattling.

I have learned that there's always a reason for her to show up

and if I can follow the breadcrumbs to the lesson,

if I can sit with myself or the catalyst that makes me angry,

then I will find something very interesting in her invitation.

An invitation to what though?

A younger me assumed that all anger was an invitation to an argument.

This is actually false information and an immature perspective

but it can take a long while to see that.

There are more kinds of shindigs than an outright brawl 

and not much ever gets resolved in an argument anyway.

Just more hurt feelings as people slog away at each other

and react to the surface without investing in the core.

Anger does not have to be an invitation to a fight.

In fact, if that's the only move you know

you'll stay on the surface forever

without getting to the underlying messages.

No matter how angry I get now,

I don't fight with people.

So if we're not taking anger to a fight, then where is it inviting us?

Anger is often inviting us to see what is broken or hurt.

Anger points the way to the throbbing injury

so that we can see what we would sometimes prefer to ignore.

We take all that energy and sometimes are so uncomfortable with it

that we pass it along and use it to hurt others.

If we can follow the breadcrumbs though,

we'll find something that can heal us.

The brilliant and wise Austin Channing Brown says it best -Check out th Evolving Faith Podcast.

Here's an example that I suspect is prevalent right now  

unless you're one of those zen masters who avoid social media

in which case this will be totally lost on you.

Bless your heart.  Go with God.

I am very vocally anti-racist.  

I am this way IRL

and I am this way on social media.

It's not a new thing for me but in the past few months 

there has been a lot more 

opportunity to show the fruits of our racist system and 

point out how we are all contributing actively to that system.

You can also find pictures of my kids, inspirational quotes, 

memes that fit my odd sense of humor and ALOT of gardening information.

Said differently-my social media presence reflects me, my values,

my heart, and sometimes just the things I f*ck around doing.

Me posting content provided by 

black scholars or activists IS NOT NEW.

I have been here for it and will be here for it.

On social media, I very intentionally share information that 

I hope supports people who are being harmed

and also keeps a conversation going.  

I know that silence in the face of active suffering is violence-

maybe a more terrible kind of violence than the actual harm that is intended.

I will not be silent in the face of someone else being hurt-

by a person, a system, a loved one, or a group.

Waking up to the ways we contribute to systems of oppression

 is haaaaard, forever work.

I'm not trying to make anyone feel shame or disown large swaths of people.

I love and am in relationship with a lot of people

who got programmed with some pretty racist ideas

way back when.

 I can definitely hold space

for people who are all across that spectrum of growth.

My grandparents freely used racist labels-

AS DID ALMOST EVERYONE OF THEIR DAY.

I do not love them less because of it.

AND

I cannot use those same racist labels, 

without understanding

how poor their legacy would be within me,

how much I would be letting them down to do so.

I'm not trying to say that I'm perfect here.  

I definitely screw up and miss opportunities.  

I have said things, done things, or imagined things

that required an apology from my current self.

I have biases that I have to understand and undermine constantly.

Racism is evil and pervasive and foundational to the American experience.

To deny it is to allow it to continue and to be complicit in it's evil.

(See, I got all fired up.  It only took a few short sentences).

In the past few weeks I've had lots of extended family

dropping videos into my DMs on social media.

They are on lots of topics but one we can focus on is

the flavor where a black person is decrying the Black Lives Matter movement.

These videos are usually people who make their living by being

 'personalities' of some sort-

comedians, instagrammers, influencers but not always.

Sometimes they are just a man in his car talking about how 

he loves everyone and wants everyone to get along.

They are usually insisting that 'all lives matter'

or that they don't want their white friends to feel bad.

All people are entitled to their own opinions and black people are not a monolith.

Of course there are black people who don't agree with the BLM movement.

I don't agree with everything every white woman says either.

That doesn't mean that the white woman saying she must submit

to her husband because her preacher tells her to

gets to justify all domestic violence for the rest of us.

That's just not how that works.

Or at least it's not how it should work in a world where

people love each other.

At any rate, the people sending me these videos are extended family

who love the confederate flag or hate the democrats

or think every.damn.thing. is some conspiracy to attack them personally.

It's fine, I'm used to some amount of this.

It's just usually out in public-in front of the rest of their friends

and our family.

Where I can respond with something like this:

Except lately these videos have pissed me off.

And I was honestly struggling to figure out why

until I paid attention to the invitation.

See, these videos are not from people who have conversations with me.

The people sending them haven't bothered to check in with my family in months-

maybe years-

unless it was something centered on them.

If they need something or feel owed,

then suddenly they remember where the phone number or the email address is written.

The couldn't tell you anyone's birthday in this house,

when they were last sick,

our dogs' names or our favorite past times.

They do not have a relationship with a single soul here.

But they feel entitled to privately message me 

a video.

When I asked for context, the senders couldn't

or wouldn't provide any.

They didn't want to talk through why this video spoke to them personally 

or how it might apply to me.

They just wanted to ding-dong ditch some lazy,

racist content into my inbox.

For me to deal with and provide my own context

about their intentions and perspective.

What did I learn from anger?  (This is an actual to-do list for work that I no longer understand)

Anger showed up for me here so that

I can understand more fully my relationship to these people.

I am not real to them.

I do not matter to them in the way a whole person would matter.

I am an idea to swat at for fun.

But that's not all.

These people also think launching videos and memes 

at people is a replacement for connection.

That this kind of passive aggressive communication

will somehow stand-in for time together.

Or maybe it's like the abuse and trauma many of us suffered-

maybe they were hit in this way so many times 

that they think I'll see it as a love tap.

Hit me back it seems to say-but harder so I know you mean it!

The thing is-that might have worked.

After all, I've had my fair share of abusive relationships.

If there were anything else in that mix

that showed a personal connection or empathy-

I just might use that as a bridge back to some sort of shared humanity.

The invitation didn't stop there though.

Anger showed me how sad life must be for someone to justify

sending a virtual stranger multiple poorly edited rants as a token of their attention.

How afraid or confused someone must be for those 

items to represent their viewpoint.

How overwhelmed someone has be to confuse a 

soundbite with truth or love.

I've been all these places at some point and I'll probably be there again.

This invitation from anger was welcome.

I appreciate knowing where I stand with people.

I appreciate knowing who values me and who doesn't.

I'm also curious about what matters to people

and what pulls them.

I appreciate understanding loneliness and sadness with a new lens.

It's never wasted to gain new insight-

even or especially when it breaks my heart open a little more.

I used to wish that therapy and work meant that I could

change my most readily available surface emotion.

I really wanted a different one than the one I got,

wanted to be someone I'm not.

I have finally learned to love myself and it has allowed me to love my neighbor.

Even the ones that I don't like.

Even the ones that don't value me, my opinion or believe I should have agency.

Even the ones that are ashamed and terrified.

Frustration (for me) is the invitation.

Maybe it's also an invitation for you-

What fights have you been invited to but declined?

What insights have you learned when you got really pissed off?

I'd love to hear about your journey-in your own words please.

Not through random videos of strangers in my DMs.

source @contemplativemonk