Revelation

I like our church. A bunch. And one reason I like it is that, unlike almost every other church I've attended in my life, it doesn't make me mad to be there. In fact, when we moved here we almost joined a church that I thought I liked because I felt at home there. But then I realized that the "at home" feeling was really the "pissed off" feeling. It had just become so normal to be pissed off that I mistook it for something good.

Yes, our church is a study in progessive orthodoxy, to put it simply. Led by a pastor named Heather (rather than someone named something like the Rev. Walter T. Glockenspiel, Jr. -- my apologies to the real Rev. Glockenspiel, wherever he is), it is openly committed to racial, economic, and cultural justice and diversity in a county known for its lack of all of these things, for its advocacy of separation of church and state (*sigh of relief*), and for the ways that it seeks to be imaginative and progressive and creative and open and interesting and intelligent. I *like* all of those adjectives. And it is still a flavor of Baptist, although you can probably guess that it's not exactly the conservative kind. In fact, it is precisely not the conservative kind, although it remains so truly respectful of the beautiful aspects of Christianity that it would be hard to call it anything but orthodox. So how's progressive orthodox sound?

Take, for example, a retreat that I attended this weekend, which was a lovely thing to behold in many ways. Good friends handled the music, which was lovely, and which was modeled after monastic chants. Children, cared for by babysitters (HURRAY! FREE BABYSITTERS!) bantered in and out, and were made a welcome part of all that went on. And everyone was glad that they were there. And some even told them so, personally offering them blessings and telling them how special they are.

We practiced praying and meditating with icons, colors, mandalas, labyrinths, and many other forms, and Jungian psychology, the Eucharist, scriptural meditations, guided imagery, God-as-female, and other items not so frequently discussed in Christian churches were happily introduced and embraced. And there was coffee (it was church coffee, so it tasted like dirt, but at least it was warm?), and good food, and I ate approximately 14 cookies.

And I brought my knitting and worked on a sweater while listening to the goings-on, and a friend leading the event remarked on the Benedictine nature of working with the hands as a religious affair, and everyone else admired the lovely Malabrigo silky merino that I'm working with, which in its variegated blue-green-yellow-purple self (something someone likened to a Van Gogh), is a prayer in color all its own. And the always terrific pastor Heather did what she usually does -- runs around, in, over, and under things and takes pictures -- and made sure that both my children and sweater made an appearance in the photos.

Yes, Heather is my friend :).

But I was arrested -- and I truly believe that there might not be a better word -- by a time that we shared this morning, during which we were challenged to take the theme of the weekend ("Brokenness and Blessing") personally by sharing with others the way that we wish we would have been blessed as a child, but weren't. There was also the other option of sharing how you actually were blessed as a child, but interestingly, few people offered that. It seems that everyone had a hurt to share. Now before you sigh and throw this off as another sappy excuse for Christian pop psychology, let me say that this time was led by a group of very educated theologians and otherwise intelligent and religiously diverse and aware people. In other words, this wasn't exactly a Christian Jr. High camp meeting, the success of which is almost always measured by how many people cry and subsequently get saved. No, that wasn't the ambiance at all.

My arrestedness was/is the result of one woman's utterance to me, a woman who I would guess is in her late 60s or early 70s, someone who undoubtedly has had sufficient time to have plenty of perspective on life. This was the first time I'd met her. This woman, K, revealed in an almost-whisper that she wished she had heard as a child that it was OK that she was a girl. Her dad had wanted a boy, she said.

And I sucked in my breath. Literally. And then I started crying.

I'm a semi-sobber, I will admit. This is a tendency that has grown since I've had children, since the world seems all the more tinged with poignancy and emotion. I could do nothing more at this moment, though, than to remember how scared I had been when, pregnant with Cole, I found out that he was a boy. Not to get TMI on you, but I didn't exactly grow up with the greatest healthy male role models. Or come to think of it, ANY healthy male role models. Marrying Brian didn't scare me, for some reason, perhaps because he's so different than any of my man-family. But producing a boy that would share the genetics of the man-family -- now THAT was a scary prospect.

But enough of that. Obviously I knew that there was a good chance of getting a boy when getting pregnant! I just hadn't internalized it. And for those of you who know Cole, and me and Cole together, you know that it is quite the love affair: he is a most sensitive, funny, and lovely person whose presence makes my life immeasurably wonderful. He is, in short, amazing.

But when he was a fetus, I was friggin' scared of him. In great part this was for what he might become ("the bad guys"), but in another way it was for the ways I might harm him if I couldn't pull myself together. Yes, for an instant it seems that I saw what might have become of Cole had those magical mothering instincts of mine not kicked in, the fear-made-flesh of all of my pregnancy woes made manifest in a 70 year old woman, the mourning that she experienced for an inadequacy that could never be fixed.

Now I certainly am not trying to make the woman out to be a basket-case -- she wasn't. She was a woman sharing what is, sadly, a rather normal sort of hurt. Would you be surprised to know that a very significant number of this group (ranging in age from 30s-70s?) mentioned their fathers as part of this lack-of-blessing? I for one, was not.

So thinking of your parenting in terms of what your kids need.....and the difference between this and what you give.......now that's an interesting exercise.