..us

Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware people's use of language. How people refer to 'the homeless', 'the poor', whether or not they include themselves in classifications of people groups, their use of possessive pronouns when talking about their belongings. Personally, the use of language often reflects where I am in relation to some sort of other.

Currently I am in a state of confusion about my pronouns. Mostly the terms 'us', 'our', and 'we'. As much as the culture I was raised in has instilled in my psyche that my worth and maturity depend on the strength of the 'mine', 'I', and 'me's that I exercise, there is little comfort to be had in these terms and states. At times there is sanity, but rarely comfort. I find comfort in the communal language I am blessed enough to use. But I no longer know what to call so much of my life right now. All of the pronouns seem awkwardly misplaced on my tongue when they slip out in reference to my living situation.

Being in college, displacement and transition are a medium that comes with the territory. I will have grossed six residences once I walk down the isle at graduation, possibly a seventh soon after. Each moving experience requires cardboard and time, but also includes a shift in my language. I have a new 'us' to manage, to engage, to represent, and to ruminate upon. Over the  last few years, the liquidity that seemed to mark all of these transitions startled me and I began to ache for a sense of belonging that was more difficult to enter, navigate, and exit. I was hungry for ties that where more robust and characterized by commitment and devotion. The process into this new way of living is a story independent of this little catharsis but it can be summed up as a lot of me, a lot of others, and more of God. So all of us walked into this year together, surrounded by a sometimes suffocating cloud of witnesses, to see if this risky 'us' lived up to its radical sex appeal.

Thinking back on my naively blind ambition and hope-filled idealism, I grin at the innocence and faith that it radiated. Now my grin turns into a chuckle and I feel far away from that sugar-coated fantasy that propelled me into the new over a year ago. I deeply respect it for what it was and am proud that it welled up inside on my ribcage, pushing me into the unfamiliar. My idea and understanding of 'us' has radically morphed over the year, being shaped under the fury of my emotions and ideas. The validity of my every evolving thoughts remain to be tested by time and I can hardly evaluate them. 

I would like to think that the unrelenting flame inside of me that led me into this 'us' is leading me out of it, into a larger, deeper understanding of my belonging and relationship to the others that I am blessed to be with. Sometimes my hope takes a vacations and I feel as though I am pacifying my selfishness and bullshitting my way out of an understandably difficult commitment. Time, one of  the most just judges, will illuminate this; I am forced to remain in a state of musing for a while longer. Moving on.

Since I have been processing this year I have learned that much of my understanding of belonging is marked by fear. Fear of being known, fear of asking for what I want, fear of being hurt, fear of being rejected, fear of not getting my needs met, fear of not being able to handle the weight of relationship and the task of loving another. There is something so basic and primitively human about the desire to be in relationship with others, and when I found out how deeply this desire penetrated, it became my biggest fear because it was my biggest hope. 

There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out all fear, because fear has to do with punishment.

After a year of intentionality, learning, and growth, some roots of  fear have been extinguished, while some others live on to be tackled at a later time. Right now I fear being lonely. I fear leaving and forgetting and loosening my grip on profoundly formational relationships. I fear replacing my longing for connection with a numbing cocktail of American independence. But I also fear becoming satisfied with the falsely mature sense of community that I hold now. Just as my preliminary understanding of 'us' was sweetly simple, so too is my present understanding of the complex realities of lives lived together.  As I walk away from an 'us' over the next few months, I am shedding my present understanding to step into something else. Some of the previously employed formula is being reused, mixing the influence of God, personal motivation, and the grace of other people in my life; making me think that this is really the way that all substantive development occurs. It makes me realized that I believe in a gospel of slow, purposely inefficient transformation and the fumbling of my language gives voice to that reality in my life.

..today

If I could inhale air until it reaches the bottom of my lungs, close my eyes, and disappear for a few moments I would. Right now. Sometimes the thought of disappearing is overwhelmingly attractive.

I woke up this morning really sad and disturbed because I had a dream about child abuse. I have been having troubling dreams recently, not where I have been injured or attacked but where I am watching others be victimized. They make me feel like I have been chewing on nickels for hours, with the throbbing headaches and a stomach of guilt. In all of the dreams I am trying to help, but always come up short, never quite getting assistance and never quite making the right decision. In my dream last night, I actually made the situation worse by clumsily calling attention to it. The next thing I watched was the little girl being forced across the Safeway parking lot, guided by the strong hand of her tuna eating father (My dream started when I was grocery shopping & I met the two as they were shoveling a mountain of canned tuna into their cart.) Sometimes I feel as though its  hard enough to process through the actual shit that happens in the world.  I do not often read novels or enjoying watching movies highlighting social problems because I can barely sift through what my response should be to the factual problems in  my life. Processing the fiction seems too daunting most of the time. Maybe next time I have a dream where I am given the chance to intervene I will actually learn something. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday night and this morning I have been dealing with things. I took the rain as a symbol of "You actually need to do your to-do list, Lindsey" and wrote emails, purchased books, did things. It was nice but when I am sorting through my mess of chores, it becomes overwhelming when people add other tasks to them. Perhaps this is why they have entire graduate classes on  'The Helping Relationship',  because its confusing.

Most valued helping relationship today: I was riding my bicycle to work and noticed a  poor Golf  driver with his messenger bag on the top of his car. 4 stop lights later I was able to catch him, knock on his window amidst the confusion of traffic and throw the bag in the car. Hope nothing broke. I liked it because it was a mostly silent exchange. There were no strings attached on either end, no public recognition to be had. Just a friendly action with a 20 second life span. If I had powers, I would alter all of my 'random acts of kindness' to be silent and invisible. Sometimes the layers of social exchange are too complex and overwhelming and  I am paralyzed by their magnitude to do anything nice because nice is far to simplistic.

Today I want my internship to be over. My boss man has spent an annoyingly long time stammering out confused instructions about a damn workforce housing report. I think that Jesus filled him with a  desire to deposit the checks at the bank because I was about ready to throw acid on him. Not that I have acid or actually would want to harm him, I was just annoyed.

I love people. I don't mind making decisions. Large groups of people often cannot make decisions. Maybe I want a vacation with someone else where we do things but it doesn't feel like a constant pause... then a passive, vague dialog... then an exchange of indifferences... then one of us getting irritated enough to fling a decision forward just so that we can progress. The absence of decision making sounds like an island vacation (or something relaxing. Think of relaxing imagery and slow breathing.)

..three

• The struggle between individualism and communal life is ever present. I have definitely felt the tension this living situation and social situations this year but have started noticing in many other areas as well. Identifying a person by their race or any other social grouping can be harmful, placing  too much weight on the community one inhabits instead of their individual distinctions and characteristic. The other side of the coin is our desire to belong. We always want to be in the  know, invited, and regarded worthy of inclusion. Finding the delicate balance of these two worlds is difficult enough in my own life but being sensitive to  it in others can often be a daunting task.
• I have been increasingly disturbed by the notion that people want to be like God. I realize that there are hundreds of biblical passages that affirm this longing but I think that it can easily be skewed. My biggest fear is the dichotomy it places in my life. If I am to become more God like I need to decrease in resemblance of myself. I don't know if this is exactly what the bible means when it mandates things such as, "Be holy as your Father in Heaven is holy."  I think all of  this can  happen within a context of self acceptance and love. If my ultimate end is to become a miniature God figurine then I should despise and reject almost all of me. I don't really want to become God or Godlike.  I want to be in  love with God and I want be shaped and purposed by them, but I  do not have aspirations of divinity. I think that they can handle it themselves.
• Having sick friends sucks. > Mostly just because I can't really stand the game of information competition that sometimes happens. It seems as though, when a person has a medical ailment that word gets passed around and people know things  and people where there and people where called. Maybe this isn't something that other people deal with, it may just be a personal quirk,  but I find that I often feel socially displaced and uncomfortable when a friend is sick.  I also feel like sometimes it is a situation where this is an invisible, ideal response that people should have, filled with wisdom, decisiveness, and compassion. I always feel like there some great standard that I should achieve,  but never quite reach. People should just not be sick.

..liberal

Those people who don't talk about politics have always baffled me. Even though it can be an unpleasant and abrasive conversation to have with some people, I have always viewed it as a necessary way of understanding and comparing my opinions with another person's for refining and reflection. This idea of political conversation is touted as a great accomplishment and what we, as members of a democracy, should always be striving for. A civil exchange of ideas and perspectives that informs and challenges our perception of the reality of society for all of it's members.

This cotton candy philosophy of democratic sparing is charming but quickly melts away when most conversations about politics actually commence. Politics is a dirty, contrived game of pride, manipulation, and self-seeking preservation.

Within the political world, apparently I am a liberal. This is not a label that I put on myself but after a weekend with my family I will gladly align myself along this party. Maybe it just means that I give a little bit of a fuck about people, the environment, the -isms of society that are all alive and acitvetly debilitating their recipients, and the widening gaps between people groups that perpetuate hostility and obliterate the possibility of peacemaking. Call me a liberal if my stance on issues falls predominately into a 'leftist' way of thinking; it really means little in the end.

This label of liberal that is so easy to brand others with is shortsighted and is causing hemorrhaging in my relationship with my father and family. With a philosophical bent towards 'the poor', 'the marginal', recycling, small corporations, and 'a social nanny state', my understanding of the American society receives the stamp of granola and I cease to be a daughter, becoming a wayward youth in desperate need of enlightenment and re-education. In the bold name of 'truth' and 'freedom' my father makes his assault on my proclaimed stance on issues, looking to inform my ignorance with the seasoned wisdom of years of government failure and excessive taxation.

Great. Let's talk. Charter schools, Seattle's bag-tax, immigration reform, public transit, affirmative action, fair and efficient tax policy, consumer safety regulation, women in the workforce, the prison system, crime, foreign aide, welfare: bring it on. The few requirements of the engagement being consistent logic, polite discourse, and a desire to understand the other's perspective. Without these prerequisites I have little interest in meaningless political racket ball because it is a pointless endeavor that leads me to a whole bouquet of pain to wade through post-fact um.

The problem with the scarlet L that is burning on my chest is that it is impossible to see past it. My father looks for an opportunity in every debate to weld the sharp corners of that L into a more acceptable and realistic C. The part that he consistently misses while he is prying and twisting in vain is that this label holds no meaning or weight in my life. It simply is a condensed, oversimplification of a massive structure of ideas and beliefs that I have constructed through education, conviction, logic, and compassion. My father is so often fruitlessly distracted by my liberal leanings that he misses the fact that my political beliefs are formed directly out of my understanding of humanity; in all of its twisted decay and inherent worth that demands respect.

So when I am eating eggs, cantaloupe, and cinnamon bread with my Caucasian, conservative family and they casually hop from racist comments about the littering habits of illegal Mexican immigrants, to the oppressive restrictions of the Seattle bag tax, and then effortlessly into the unavoidable reality of sexual harassment in the work place, my outrage does not come from the fact that I voted Democrat in the last election. I burn with outrage internally because the meaningful situations that pain beautiful groups of our society are disregarded as infringements upon our comfortable lifestyle. The grievances of the people around that table are legitimate to their situations but may hold little weight when juxtaposed with the conditions of millions of people that are flippantly disregarded over the course of a meal.

But at the end of my vacation I have come to the end of my rope and I am deeply wounded by another battle round that I have forfeited from exhaustion. Ultimately my views on issues and my political affiliation are deeply reflective of the person I am and desire to become but are not the essence of who I really I am. To be ridiculed, interrogated, and lectured because of them is not painful because I am a liberal, it is wounding because I am daughter that is being misunderstood in the name of re-education.

Usually I tell myself, "It is okay," to bind up my wounded heart and love again next time, with naive hope that something will be different. The truth is that I am not okay. I am broken because of this treatment and feel deeply unloved because of it. Where to go from here...

..bleh

Today wins for one of the best conversations of the summer. Lee Grooms gets the award. He works for Grace Church and read about our house in the Mustard Seed Sampler. The questions that he asked and the perspective that he held were remarkably nuanced and subtle. I will be reflecting on them for a while. Thanks Lee.

My uncle called me today. After walking to two different Tully's in the U-District and still missing them, they finally made it by my work. It was strange seeing him. I almost started crying before they came and became nauseous after seeing him but while we were together it was fine. I still do not know what I think about this. I don't have much sympathy for him but my heart breaks for his wife.

My dad bought my mother a car that she does not like today. Last time he bought her a car, she didn't like it either. It is not as though he is ignorant to her tastes, they have been looking for a new car for months. The rush? We are driving to the beach tomorrow and he didn't want to take the Explorer. To be honest, this part of my father really, really pisses me off. The part of my mother that repeatedly takes it and complains to me instead of talking to him is just as equally irritating. Awkward moment: My dad asking me if I liked the car when I walked in the door. Sometimes familial bullshit is needed.

Tomorrow I am going to the ocean. I want to go there. I think it will be relaxing. Honestly, my family isn't that relaxing. My dad says things like, "Change the channel. There is no reason to watch the Olympics if there isn't an American competing." They don't understand my humor/life/person. It might be a situation where I need a vacation after my vacation. There may be a reward of charcoal All-Stars so I will hold my breath. If all else fails there is the self indulgent luxury of sunbathing. Bleh.

I have been moody recently. Sorry.

..patchwork

This weekend a herd of friends came to my house and experienced the peaks and troughs of 'Valley' life. It was fun, I am tired. There was also a point where my 'SPU friends' were meeting my eclectic family, getting grilled about their vital facts and what college my cousin Spencer should attend. Having so many new eyes peering at my family gave me the chance to re-examine it to, comparing the person I am now with the person that my family raised. I found that I am strange patchwork quilt of my mother's hostessing style of diligent background work and cleanliness, my aunt Lisa's eccentric style and energy (at times..) and my aunt Brenda's flexible extrovertedness and flightiness in conversation. Duh. It would make sense that I would try to piece together parts of each of these influential women's styles into my personhood.

Snag: My family is hella screwed up. I realize 'hella' is a flexible term and that there are plenty of  other stories about families that are more dysfunctional than mine. Tell me them later, but I don't want to compare them to each other.

I found out this weekend,  rather abruptly, that my aunt voluntarily admitted herself to the hospital for alcohol abuse, reinstating the cycle rehab, system navigation, co-dependancy, helplessness, manipulation, and rhetoric. Two day after, another aunt drove my bi-polar uncle  up to the University of  Washington psychiatric ward for him to wait out his first manic episode in ten years. I found out in the middle of a beyond shitty hometown fair but for some reason it hit me harder this time than it usually does. The family gossip usually causes little effect in my life, since I  learned  from an early age that family talk is cheap and worthless and that I have very little influence over  the poor  choices my  family members make. Probably not  a relational position that I would advocate but it's where I am at.

So I  am so much of my family and yet the little part of their personalities that magnetize them to co-dependence, chaos, drama, and addiction are active in my life too.  I can see the splinters  of their struggles in my life and recognize the 'Beachness' of it but have to hope that there is something better than that. I am bored with this post because it is the same hair ball of an idea  that I have been choking out for years. Basically:  I love/admire/desire to emulate portions of my family. I want to reflect upon/respond to/evolve out of the places that my family has historically festered in, not out of spite or fleeing, but just because I want to have hope that resounds in my  body and  life.

Side-note: Exhaustion does not = a mark of success. Relaxing does not = being alone, doing nothing; it might, but it probably will rarely repeat its previous form.  

..fireflies

The future is something that I tend not to think about. I do not plan it out and most of the time it does not bother me.  I also do not have a list of things that I want to do before I die,  or a list of children's names I have selected, or a list of places to visit. I do, however, want to see fireflies before I leave this planet but that is the only desire that makes the list.

Recently I have been reflecting on relationships and 'relationships' that I have had in my life. Bad news: This is a area of my life that is severely underdeveloped for a myriad of reasons and I am exhausted with being relationally weak and indecisive. Remembering (read: building experiences that may or may not have actually occurred) past events and situations has caused  me to realize that I devalue my  personal experience in most relational circumstances.  I will heed advice, logically plan  out every possible outcome, or simply just  wait for circumstances to  blow over, all at the detriment of engaging and utilizing my personal experience. The past situations that I have been in will never exist in  reality again, they will simply be incomplete quilts sewn together by the sporadic memories of me and sometimes another.  I can remember  the ways that I experienced those situations and tangibly engage the way that they impact my life (and consequently others).  I could waste my time trying to rebuild a past that will never be  complete or I can look at the skills and shortcoming I have and  think progressively about ways  that I can move forward. Being a 12 year old relationally is easy, it takes the skills of calculated innocence and avoidance, but I am ready to grow up and switch those digits around.

The last twenty-four hours have been bad bicycling hours. I came so close to 'T-boning' a little red SUV last night and was almost doored on my ride home from work. Whenever this happens I don't say anything. I just stare,  not because I am trying to invoke a death glare but because I am scared and a little shocked.  Riding today made me realize that I think about what it would be like for a car to hit me almost every time one passes by. No more 45th; Greenlake, with its peaceful bike lane, is where I will be spending the rest of my summer. 

..moments

Today at church I realize that I try to create holy moments.

Explanation:  I have started going to Grace Church Seattle. It's a great church, with solid teaching  that encourages me to have a realistic understanding of  my faith and  a grace-filled understanding of God. Going there has been a refreshing and deepening experience and I really enjoy attending there. However, there is liturgy. I like liturgy a lot; it is refreshing since it is so distinct from my Baptist background,  I love the focus it pays on personal confession wrapped in the setting  of  the body of  Christ, it connects well to the Church past and present, and there  is a sense of  reverent sacredness that I find lacking  in  many relevant churches  in  Seattle. I  do feel  pressure though. I feel pressure  to  feel remorse  when we start the service  with confession. I  feel  pressure  to feel concern for the different issues we pray about in the middle  of  the service, and  I  feel pressure  to  have a  deep and moving  experience when I take communion. Half  way through the service I was  trying to piece together a prayer for the children of the  church, stringing together fake requests for parental wisdom  and obedience and then I just stopped. I stopped bullshitting  my way through the  required  prayer.  It felt very right to  stop. I took communion and  didn't feel anything. Sometimes communion really impacts me but today it was  normal  and just  part of my life,  a  small blip  on  my  radar screen. 

Having the  realization that I often try to create  holy moments for myself  was freeing. My experiences with  God  are not  something  that I can demand or create or manipulate. They  simply happen.  When I rode my bicycle back from Scum today,  I had a holy moment.  I believed in God and liked them  a  lot and was deeply  happy to be riding my  bike. Recognizing  the moments when  I am intimate with God is far more important  of  a skill for  me to possess than having them  on command. Sometimes I initiate with God and  sometimes he initiates with  me. We give  and take and it is very selfish  and narrow minded of me  to  think that I will have  a rousing, transformational experience  at every religious event I  go  to. I want a  God  of  my  life and my boringness not a God of liturgy or  church buildings.

Side note: Today  we found a tandem bicycle in  the dumpster. It is  gorgeous  and frosted  purple  with white walled tires  and in impeccable  condition. It might  redeem my feelings about tandems. We also found beer and doughnuts  and sat  in our garden and laughed and consumed the  loot. Today community  was unexplainably satisfying and  it  is a  gift that  I am truly humbled to receive. Thanks be to God.