I Have a Thing About Time

I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve always been a pretty serious person. I recognize that life is both short and long and that all we have is the present moment. I was nostalgic even in elementary school. Yet, I have this other thing, where when it’s time to let something go, I really do. It’s a process to sift through, which was the impetus for creating this blog 10 years ago, but I release things initially pretty well and sort as I go. It’s a weird dichotomy because I imagine most people who are nostalgic also probably struggle to release. My ability to release has also grown quite a bit since I started my chaplain training.

Spending time with the dying has really brought this mindful part of myself into sharper focus. It’s a developmentally appropriate practice for the dying, if they are able to reflect, to engage in life review. Many people feel a sense of peace about the life they’ve lived, the relationships they’ve had, the work they offered. But sometimes people don’t. They have deep regrets. And it is in the privilege of holding space for the misery that is deep remorse with no way of going back, that I am even more committed to living my life as authentically as I can.

I left a long marriage. Every marriage is its own ecosystem. No one else knows what it is like to be in someone else’s marriage, even one you witness well. Not even the two people in it have the same experience. The relationship is shared, but the experience is still unique to the individual. Divorce is the same. Each person has the story of how and when and why it didn’t or couldn’t continue. And that is valid, because it is the story we create to cope. It is a tornado of loss, even when it is right. I have been so empowered by my decision to divorce. And it is fully in line with my values and my desire to live authentically.

We all live in the stories we make out of our lives. And at the end of it, we get to see if we think it was a good one. The fact that I get to sit in the room where this sacred work happens, and even more so, in the active stage of dying, where someone is leaving this life and moving to whatever is next, is such a tremendous privilege and responsibility. Learning when to touch someone and when to be still, recognizing when someone is doing their work of letting go that is not to be disturbed…I call it watching someone pull up their tent pegs. If we’re lucky enough to die gradually, as opposed to traumatically or suddenly, we go through a process where we pack up our bags. This is all happening on a spiritual plane. We release our people. We let go of all that is being left undone. And we rest.

We are embarking on a difficult time in this country and in this world. So the question is, what will we do with our one wild and precious life? How will we behave as structures in our country are threatened, as human rights are rolled back? I’ve been in a time of grief and reflection and the conclusion I’m coming to is that I want to double down on all the values I already live. If I have stuff in my car for houseless people, I’m doubling up. If I make donations to civil rights work, I’m increasing that payment. If I am part of creating and leading a congregation of marginalized people, I’m there every day I can join. If I have access to things other people don’t, I’m making sure I can have things to give away to facilitate greater access. This is the time to lean in.

No one knows the future. But I know who I want to be in it.

It's Official!

I was approved for ordination today. For those of you not in the know regarding the minutia of this process in the UCC, today was the culmination of 2 and a half years of ongoing work - writing, mentoring, gathering with the committee on ministry and my support team, a 6 hour psych evaluation, and a seminary-level course. It has been up and down. My insecurities and imposter syndrome, my defensiveness whenever I feel pressured to “land” theologically, my need for belonging. All of it made an appearance in the last 2 and a half years. Today was the last hurdle before I get an ordainable gig and plan a service to make it official.

What unexpectedly touched me this morning as I was getting ready, was that today was an affirmation of God’s work in my life since I was 14. I’m 42. When I saw the 50+ faces on the Zoom screen today from 20 something churches in my region of the US, gathered to discuss my 21-page (single-spaced!) final paper, the tears just started falling. Because in 28 years, this was the first time where I was standing before a community of people who were there to witness the work of God in me. I am not a threat to the work of God. I am, in fact, a participant. Of course, that has always been true (and is true of many others). When I was a teen, I received covert help over the years when ministers hoped the elders wouldn’t notice. The years in worship ministry, youth ministry, campus ministry, women’s ministry, children’s ministry, overseas mission work, and now chaplaincy just started scrolling behind my eyes. What a time I have had.

I thought about how much a part of my early connection with my former spouse was about ministry. It was something that brought us together. For a time. We made these beautiful daughters. At some point, he no longer shared that vision. The community agreed with him. I felt left behind. Because my access to use my gifts in ministry were tied to his calling before. Much later, we got divorced. But I wasn’t left behind. Our paths diverged. I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t deconstructed that tidy world I lived in then. Huh.

And now. Somehow. I’m going to be able to feed my little girls with money I make. In ministry. As their mom.

I don’t know if it is quantifiable how much having my gender be a determining factor in my qualifications for ministry has harmed me over a lifetime. The scars are there. I have done the grief work and can remain connected to those roots without having them continue to tell me what’s possible.

The faces of all my CPE colleagues - the people who took the time to call me out, to be with me as a grew and cried and integrated so much for so long, were all there. The supervisors. The educators. The patients. The colleagues. The security officers. My professors. My seminary cohort. The friend who gave me my first opportunity to preach. With all of this in my heart, and a feeling of awe in how many people continue to gather around for prayer and witness of God’s continuing work in me, I stepped into the spotlight today.

Wildly, someone from the church of Christ was there. Someone who also sojourned to the UCC. He private messaged me at the beginning - “do I know you? Are you so and so’s wife?” What a small world, y’all. The irony was not lost on me.

I am no one’s wife. But I am a reverend.

Waking Up Surprised

I was leaving the YMCA yesterday and saw a houseless man with one leg in a wheelchair, the other having been amputated just below the knee. He was using his one leg on the ground to propel him forward and seemed to be used to getting around that way as he was not actively struggling with it or seemingly upset.

I’ve worked with so many patients who have gone through amputation surgeries and for whatever reason, this type of loss is one of the ones I am most drawn to support people in. I have been with houseless folks pre-surgery, showing me their black feet (when I say black feet, I mean BLACK feet…this was a new sort dead tissue for me to see before working at an inner city hospital) as a kind of anticipatory grief practice. I knew the next time I saw him, instead of his uncovered black feet, I would see two nubs covered in bandages. We imagined how his life would change, being discharged to the streets without feet. We joked about the difficulties of stealing from stores in a wheelchair when his practice had been to run. The wounds from these surgeries require high levels of hygiene, which is completely impossible in a tent.

I’ve had so many patients at the VA who had undergone these types of losses years earlier only to adapt and come back to us with other health issues. But sometimes the trauma of those losses remained unprocessed. It is a strange thing to lose part of your body.

I bring all of this up to say, there is a certain kind of disorientation that comes from waking up to a new/changed/different body. And though I am unbelievably lucky so far to have kept all my wanted body parts, every once in awhile, I wake up to my very different life and feel a sense of surprise. Surprise that I left my seventeen-year marriage, surprise that I am the only adult in my house, surprise that my house is full of pets, surprise that my life has fully de-centered men in every way. Of course, this feeling of surprise is often followed by a little thrill of excitement and pride.

It seems kind of shitty to even compare this type of total reorientation in life to something as major as losing a foot or a leg. Like, in some ways, saying this is just not cool at all. I’m guessing my houseless friend isn’t feeling thrill when he looks down at his new nubs and bandages. But I think all humans experience grief and disorientation. And the feelings themselves are often so similar even if the details are really different. Maybe he is thrilled to know that he will no longer have to see those black dead feet. I’m not really sure.

Perhaps having a beloved but dead body part excised in order to live a safer and healthier life is not unlike leaving a relationship that has since died* and feels like a weight one can no longer bear. That in leaving behind what is dead, new life is on the horizon. Even if it’s not the life that was imagined and sacrificed so highly to reach for. It’s an opportunity. A new future that is unwritten.

I was raised to believe that divorce is a bad thing. And certainly there is a lot of pain in divorce and it is a hugely destabilizing process for children and adults.

And. Would I tell my houseless friend that it was a bad thing to remove his blackened feet? No. I don’t think I would. There is a quiet dignity in burying our beloved dead body parts and relationships. It is intellectually honest. And it makes room for the spirit to breathe again, to stop the creep that dead tissue sometimes does, invading healthy tissue in a race to win it all.

In many ways, I’ve left behind the binary thinking of good and bad. I’m learning to be in my body, to awaken desire, to FEEL, really feel the full human experience. It is a wild thing to be alive.

*Please know that these comments are specific to my experience and a relational dynamic I was part of and participated in for two decades. This is not a reflection on the personhood of my former spouse.

When Ash Wednesday Fits Like a Glove

For those who follow the Christian liturgical calendar, Ash Wednesday comes 40 days before Easter and commemorates the beginning of the Lenten season. It’s a time to honor the reality that we are mortal. We say things like “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” While this may seem morbid and even gross as we literally put ashes on our faces, as a Palliative Care chaplain in the middle of a divorce after a 17 year marriage, it could not be more fitting. I am not living a life right now that can ignore loss and sorrow. It is all over my face.

As seems to happen more often than not since the pandemic, my community’s plans had to change as we received an unexpected deluge of snow today and the city shut down. So I self-administered the ashes I swiped from work before I left for home early to beat the anxious Portlanders to the freeway.

I arrived at my quiet and beautiful home, to the stillness that comes on the days my children are with their father, with the communion cup of ashes clutched in my grip to protect them from the falling snow.

I took a nap. I had an orgasm. I ate pasta in bed. I listened to my favorite women on a podcast. Then I hopped on Zoom to see my people and to hold the tender truth in community that we all are dust and will return to dust one day. And, that somehow, this dust is magic. Magic put here on earth, animated and full of life and love and hopes and dreams. We lit our candles, burned our pages, had our communion, anointed ourselves with oil, and imposed our own ashes. We talked for awhile afterwards, checking in on each other, inquiring about the lives of new folks (there are always new folks), and sharing our community’s joys and concerns.

It is a bittersweet thing to spend so much time with death. So many of my friends from work are dying patients. And, we are the only sentient beings as fully aware of our impermanence. We live in this reality we so often would prefer was not true - that everything we know and love and rely on will eventually end. Our very deepest attachments are all temporary.

We can imagine that dust is so insignificant that it just blows away with a small gust of wind, never to be seen again. It would be so easy to think that the dust, that we, are inconsequential. And yet. That is where the magic comes from. This God who breathed life into us, gave us these deeply feeling, deeply attaching hearts with the full awareness that all will eventually go back into the ground. The meaning is not in spite of the impermanence. I think it is, at least partially, because of it. It is because we know that everything we care about is temporary, that it becomes worthy of our full presence, attention, and being while we have it.

We have it. Right now.

We’ve lost some of it already. What do we need to be present to in this moment? And what do we need to mourn and bury?