Breaking Ground

I had a realization of my own after the goodbye-themed inter-generational Bible study I led at church the other night.

In a time of lifting up loved ones who have passed on or moved away, I named my grandfather (my eulogy for him is posted here), and I explained that I called him Grandsprout because he called me Sprout.

What I've realized since Sunday night is that no one else in the world calls me Sprout and what that means. When my grandfather's dementia deepened to the point of no longer recognizing his loved ones, we ourselves struggled to hold on to who we were to him. When he died, the me who was Sprout died, too.

It was not only the loss of a beloved person but also the end of a relationship, of all the relationships he had with his family and friends.

And at the heart of our relationship, his and mine, was growth. A love of greenery and soil and earthy things. A wisdom of seasons and perseverance and devoted care. My grandfather watched me grow up, and I watched my grandfather grow his garden. These were the joys we basked in together.

So it's only fitting that, when I finally found the language to heal myself almost two years later, it came to me in the form of plant life. Specifically, it came to me in an image that my professor, Angella Son, included in her new book, Spirituality of Joy. Although it took on a different meaning for me than it did for her, the image of the moso bamboo tree inspired me to compose a song.

The lyrics are a conversation between a soul and God, throughout the sort of experience that is often known in spiritual circles as the dark night of the soul. But in this case, the process is likened to the growth pattern of the moso bamboo tree, which grows roots for five years before it even breaks ground (and then it hits some kind of plant puberty and grows about 90 feet in six months, but who's counting?). To the unsuspecting gardener, those first five years look to be a failure, like nothing good is happening and any hope of vegetation is gone.

But the God I've come to know through my grief is a God with dirty fingernails and all the time in the world. A God who knows the strength of roots and the goodness of brokenness when a seed is breaking open, breaking ground.

It's through writing this song that I began to live again, and it's only now that I realize that the person I came to be, in some way, is still and always will be my Grandsprout's Sprout.

Growing Underground
Music and lyrics by Kimberley Fais, 2013

You plant. You feed. You water. I sleep.
Then I stretch, and I breathe, and take root in the deep.
Even though I can't see, You promise me
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
And I will grow out before I grow up.
It's a long way out.

You've got time in Your hands and dirt in Your nails.
You see what succeeds when everything fails.
It's hard to believe what You promised me.
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
And I will grow out before I grow up.
It's a long way up.

Deep and dark down here, where I weep with joy,
I'm not drowning out Your still small voice.
Little do I know I'm right where I should be.
I'm where You're tending me.

You planted. You fed. You watered. I woke.
Then I stretched, and I breathed, and through the ground I broke.
And I rose, and I grew. You said: "I promised you--
You were never going under. You were just growing underground.
You were never going under. You were just growing underground.
And I watched you grow the roots that would let you grow up.
Look at you now. . . ."

The Garden: A Revelation

When Hilary Rhodes of Woman at the Well sent me the post she wrote for this blog based on one of mine, her theological and historical exploration originally culminated in a beautiful personal testimony, which I loved even more than the insightful analysis of grace. I told Hilary that these parts' length and content (related, yet quite different) suggested to me that they should indeed be two separate pieces, so what you've seen this week is that first portion.

Because the second part is so personally meaningful, Hilary would like to make WATW its home, and I agree. It moved me, though, and so I'd like to make a point of recommending it to you and directing you over to WATW to read the full text. It's a descriptive piece about a spiritual vision she experienced; a story of depression and consolation, fear and grace.

Hilary and I differ in much of how and where we were raised and the theological and political landscapes around us. We have walked individual and intersecting paths. But I feel a sense of camaraderie in both her writing voice (particularly in her more personal writings) and in many of the issues she confronts. The blend of ideological differences and similarities between us, in fact, serves to remind me how simultaneously unique and intricately connected the parts of the Body of Christ truly are.

And so it is my pleasure to introduce to you Hilary's visionary tale:

I can’t tell you the moment I lost my faith. Sometime when I was about 14, when I was old enough to understand how shallow and fear-based and resistant to questions and dismissive of real need my experience of it had hereunto been. This was followed with six years of becoming an increasingly angry atheist. I can, however, tell you – almost to the hour – the moment I found it again:

The night of Thursday, September 6, 2008.

It was two months before one of the most heated presidential elections in history. I’d just come off a tearingly difficult, lonely, and isolated sophomore year of college, where I’d battled depression so severe that if I didn’t have anything to do, I’d stay in bed until 3 PM with the shades shut. I was saved by a deep friendship with an absolutely wonderful guy in my psychology class. (Matt, shout-out time.) But I’d been struggling over the summer again, and although I was about to take off to Oxford University and fulfill one of my longtime dreams, I was faced with a dialogue that was (especially on the right wing) about nothing but fear and despair. About the “destruction of America.” About this scary dark-skinned guy with the scary “Muslim” name. About how there might not be time for me, and my future family and children and grandchildren.

I was lying in bed in the darkness, crying. Just so scared. So scared. I was screaming in my soul. I was in agony. I couldn’t even breathe.

I couldn’t do it alone. I just couldn’t. It was too big for me. It was too much. It was beyond my ability to bear. And so I did the only thing I could:

I asked for help.

I listened to it echo in the walls. I watched headlights pass on the ceiling.

I eventually subsided into a troubled sleep.

And that night, the Word came back.

This is what I remember...

Read more.

Hell Is the Suffering of Being Unable to Love

God, forgive me. And forgive me, brothers and sisters, for I have sinned against you.

In the midst of it, I believe I have glimpsed hell.

I find it necessary to interject that in all of my encounters with dark nights of the soul or perceiving distance from God, I'm not sure I have ever had the sense that any one was a literally hellish experience.

They were pretty invariably disconcerting, painful, sad, confusing, and all-around not ideal. They hurt. When they did not just plain hurt, they left me feeling sort of hollow. ("Is nothingness light or heavy?") And yet there was always something suspiciously good lurking in the background.

Each time, I discovered - whether I came to the conclusion during the experience or only long afterward - that there was something extraordinarily good not only in the God who got me through the dark nights, but even in those seemingly grotesque dark nights themselves. Those "nights" reminded me of my humanity and the Divine's divinity. They helped me to relate genuinely to other hurting humans. They made me realize that my clearest experiences of grace and love were no less real to me just because my mood had changed. Apparently one need not "feel" God constantly in order to honor one's past (and future) encounters. That was news to me.

Yes, in God's mercy, even my most harrowing spiritual droughts ultimately bore fruit.

But there is one moment - at least one that stands out from any other - when I experienced what I can only describe as hell on earth.

I've long thought that the phrase "hell on earth" best described the dangerous, poor living conditions inflicted on the oppressed persons of the world, and perhaps that is still the case. I have been fortunate enough in this life not to believe that I can gauge the hellishness of true social and systemic injustices. That may be an analytical exploration for another time.

But that isn't the sort of hellishness I'm talking about now. I'm referring, rather, to Fyodor Dostoevsky's hell:

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is hell?'
I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

-Father Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov

On a few occasions, I worshipped in a certain church in which I felt generally uncomfortable - theologically (different interpretations, teachings, and priorities than my home-churches'), liturgically (different style, content, and vocabulary), and spatially (different physical and social atmosphere). Considering how ecumenical I am in my approach to many church matters, this extraordinary discomfiture alone made a significant impact on me. It scared me and fascinated me.

During one particular service, the sermon wrenched my heart. To the gathered community, it may not have been remarkable; it may have been legitimately inspiring and galvanizing. To me, it was nearly unrecognizable as a Christian teaching, and I felt spiritually distanced from some of my fellow Christ-followers.

After the message came perhaps my favorite practice: Communion. But there was one problem. I was still so angry.

"But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be
liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable
to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother
or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go;
first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift."

-Matthew 5:22-24 NRSV

My first anger-induced inclination might have been to refuse Communion - something I had never done before - because of those who blessed it that day.

This quickly dissolved into a more realistic, less self-righteous realization: I could not accept Communion in that moment because of the anger within me. As though to deny me the indulgence of letting my non-participation slip by unnoticed, by the time it reached my seat, the plate bearing Christ's Body was empty.

As the usher disappeared in pursuit of a filled plate, I wondered what I should do when he returned. Surely he would remember that the fed had ended with the one before me, and instead of the plate being passed along my row for me to decline quietly, he would extend it directly to me. Would I still refuse?

For a moment, I feared that he would take it personally. I got over that quickly enough and passed the refreshed plate.

But the weeping and gnashing of teeth, deep in my being, refused to cease.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell,* behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me,"
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

-Psalm 139:7-8 NKJV

* Here other translations read: "the depths" or "Sheol." A discussion for another day.


In my rebellion and inadequacy, I may have been tempted to believe that I had - if only inadvertently - escaped God's love. But I had not.

The love of God sought me out in my hell. It was the love of God which far surpassed my own frail attempts to love, and nevertheless met me where I had entrenched myself. For even when I could summon no love in myself for this Otherness, the Holy Spirit - in that unrelenting, no-nonsense sort of love - convicted my heart.

If God had not come with me to my hell, I fear I would not have known how to climb out of it nor remember that there was even an alternative to it. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in my core meant that I craved the love I still knew could be. Only that unconditional love, willing to reveal itself to me in the unlikely place, my undeserving state, could show me what pained me and what I must do.

And I realized then, as I passed the Communion elements along without partaking, that God was calling me to do what I honestly dreaded: love those - yes, even those - whom I find so difficult to love.

Familiar words? Of course they were. I was a Christian, after all... wasn't I? But oh, what that call meant to me in that moment! Never had I been so angry - so hopelessly, helplessly, irreparably angry; so willing to refuse to take part in a community; so determined to disagree, to declare that they said they followed Christ yet surely they were doing it wrong!

Never before had I found myself so incapable of granting grace, and in such desperate need of receiving it.

An Open Letter to God

Hi God,

Driving along the Interstate one day, doing nothing particularly blessed or interesting or special at the time, I embraced a promise that I have been struggling to receive. This has been a difficult season in my life, sometimes for reasons even I do not understand, yet I know your love is strong, your intentions are good, and your joy and mercy will prevail.

You know in the last several years I have experienced strange variations of the so-called dark night of the soul, each time so unique in the way that I was aware of your absence and aware or unaware of your presence. I know that dark nights are not all that rare, and I'd figured each person's experiences are unique to them, but I never dreamt that one person could have such varied experiences under a common category. This year, the theme has been a sense of your absence and in the most bizarre way to me yet; with it came a deep sense, somewhere in me that I can't identify, in which I - thought, believed, heard, understood? - 'This' is important. This is not eternal; you will feel differently again. It is part, and only part, of the journey. Continue on it.



I had never been aware of your "distant presence" before. In the past, we have wrestled. I would try to pin you down and before I knew it you'd wriggle free, amorphous and magnificent as ever. You never seemed to want to pin me. You took more joy in the movement, the tumbling, the energy. Even when I was stubborn and doubtful and angry, you loved me; loved that I brought my questions and frustrations to you.

Later on, we wrestled again, but instead of actively participating, I broke away, wandered off. I didn't want to fight anymore. Unfortunately, it wasn't just that I didn't want to fight you, but also that I didn't want to fight for you. And while at the time I occasionally recreated the scene in my mind to show you as the one who walked out, it became clearer to me that, even in my longing for you and recent growth in you, it had been me who had to get away. It was soon after something of a spiritual transformation, simple and yet significant, and perhaps I was scared, or resistant, or even unsure that what I had discovered was real. And even when I thought I had dug myself into a pit, you reached in and swept me up into your arms. All I had to do was look up. There you were.

But this time, it has felt like you have withdrawn from me, even without truly abandoning me, and I still don't really know why.

Have you left this time? Or am I recreating the scene in my mind that way to spare myself the truth that I have strayed again? I have so many questions, and I find it difficult to bring them to you when I can't seem to tell where you are. I don't know how you will come back to me, or how I will come back to you, or why I'm in the midst of a dark night even as I keep finding myself to be where I ought to be.

And while I knew when this experience began that this is indeed part of the journey, part of what I must learn, whether so that I can do the work you would have me do or simply so that I can be the soul you intend for me to be - I think I "know" it now. Thank you.

Looking forward to this being more of a dialogue again. Wrestling match would suffice as well.

With love,
Kimmery

Clinging to Hatred

I just read a really well-written post about hatred at the blog Christian Girl at College. It is particularly poignant in light of the complicated response to the death of Bin Laden.

Click here to read Midwesterndiva's thought-provoking post.


Image Source

And here is the response I wrote to her post and the subsequent comments, an interesting discussion on judgment and righteous anger/hatred:

At the risk of proof-texting and skipping around Bible verses in a way that does justice to none of them, this conversation reminds me of the warning against hypocrisy in Matthew 7:5 and Luke 6:42 - taking the plank out of one's own eyes before attempting to remove the speck in someone else's.

When we are called to hate evil, we are called to hate the evil in our own hearts and at our own hands just as much as we hate evil elsewhere. There is too high a price for assigning a point system based on human understanding of which acts are more evil and thus which people are more evil.

If we justify our hatred of people who have murdered and terrorized, perhaps we are not as different as we think from those who justified their hatred of the people they then murdered and terrorized. This frightens me, yes, and it is difficult to look at my own life and realize that even if I have never killed another person, I have certainly been angry with others and perhaps unjustly so. The best I can do is to reconcile that in myself and strive to live out the love I have unduly received.

God is in the Detours

My alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College, has unique course registration methods which sometimes work in a student's favor, but usually only if the student has recently sacrificed a rack of veggie burgers on the grill behind Westlands. (Now you know the real reason for all those orientation BBQ picnics.)

Alas, in my sophomore year I was bumped from the apparently popular course called Psychoneuroimmunology, which had taken me a substantial chunk of the summer to learn how to pronounce... so it's probably for the best that I didn't get to take it. Still, I suspect that I would have (blissfully and ignorantly) enjoyed it, because I'd bought some of the textbooks in advance and started reading early. This, in light of my procrastinating nature, was downright miraculous.

Being bumped sort of popped the miracle bubble.

Reluctantly, I returned my orphaned books and began the well-loathed ritual of Alternate Registration. I revisited the course listings, jotting down feasible second choices. Possibly the most fear-inducing part of this process is that registration takes place the week before classes begin, and by the time Alternate Registration rolls around, you have both fewer options and less time until term. Not uber conducive, I feared, to good decision-making.

I eventually narrowed it down to two courses, including a philosophy course called "Language and Religious Experience." The title hummed back at me from the page, like a fiendish zombie or a frustrated teenager (obviously interchangeable): Take meeeeeeeeee.


Source

It drooled. Or I drooled. I'm not really sure. Anyway, it suddenly sounded especially interesting, and the very fact that both of my remaining options were each somehow theological in nature (and I'd not yet studied anything of the like) sort of whacked me upside the head with insight.

Okay, God, I get it.

Ultimately I decided that this two-and-a-half-hour, 8:30 AM class would be well worth it.

Mind-blowing academia aside, it certainly left me with a few quotable gems, like this one from a discussion on humans' "sense of time," and the student was entirely serious and unaware of what he was saying (TO OUR PROFESSOR) until it was out:

"Sometimes time seems to go by very quickly and other times it moves very slowly. Like this class is two and half hours long, but it feels like forever."

Beat. Laughter. Yeah, it was a good time.

But most significantly, I gained vivid understandings of ideas that had absolutely baffled me, particularly the doctrine of the trinity and the duality of Jesus' humanity and divinity. By the end of the course, I still couldn't articulate it for beans. Yet there was a distinct time of growth in my spirituality, mostly toward reconciling intellect and mystery of faith.

The irony is that these are exactly the sort of topics (and then some) with which I am struggling now in my theology program.

Sometimes we have to take multiple detours.

And all the while, there is a pervasive sense that any such pain truly is an aspect of growth, that this is just one step in a complex process. Like wanting to loathe the detour of Alternate Registration, yet knowing in my core that I'm headed to where I must be.

For Brian: Prayers for a Mourning Traveler

As you may have noticed, I've been on a blogging hiatus during my travels. I'm pleased to report that I'm back, safe and sound, and ready to return to writing - and even strangely excited for classes to begin again.

I would just like to take this moment to ask you to keep a man named Brian Miller in your thoughts and prayers.



I met him in the airport on my way home. My scheduled flight had been cancelled due to the winter wonderland that hit 49 out of 50 states (all but the Sunshine State where we were), and I found myself at the boarding gate the following day, talking to Standby #1 for the new flight.

While I had been waiting for weeks in anticipation of my trip, Brian's had been a spontaneous and somber one. His mother had become ill and died, and he was clearly returning home after an especially trying week. I offered my condolences and a listening ear, feeling inadequate and nonetheless like God was nudging me simply to be there for him.

When the airline staff called Brian over to tell him his seat, he excused himself and headed up to the counter.

I had the sudden feeling that perhaps I had somehow fallen short of what comfort and healing I could have offered to him. I prayed hastily: "God, if there is more that I should say or hear, let him sit by me."

Brian returned in somber triumph, resting again with boarding pass in hand. "I made it. I'm in Row 12. You?"

"Row 32," I read from my own. For a moment I thought, 'Well, he's not next to me.' As though to believe that meant my work here was done.

But inwardly I heard the words, He's sitting next to you now.

And I realized the mistake I'd made. Perhaps my heart was in the right place, and I was all geared up and ready for God to use me in whatever way my inexperienced ministering spirit would manage. But even as I prayed for God's will, I'd already had a preconceived idea of what it would look like.

Sometimes we pray for God to let us touch the lives of other people when we'll find them later. Sometimes they are already there beside us.

And sometimes we pray for God to let us touch the lives of other people. Then they touch ours.

Brian and I talked until it neared the end of the line of passengers and specific rows were being summoned. As I left, I asked if he would like me to put his name on our prayer chain, and he agreed.

Please keep Brian and his loved ones in your prayers, and perhaps say a prayer for all those who are mourning and those who are weary from traveling this season.

In Praise Of No Awkward Ice-Breaker Games

For our last bit of orientation on Friday morning, we were divided into groups to rotate between three rooms.

My group's first stop was good ol' Seminary Hall 101, where we learned this gem:

Critical thinking is "thinking about thinking."

Now if that isn't metaphysical enough, just imagine: we spent a half hour thinking about criticul thinking, i.e. thinking about thinking about thinking.

Surprisingly, it was not a particularly long half hour.

Dr. Melanie Johnson DeBaufre, "MJD", explained the rules of the game. She would put a quote on the board, and we would need to respond to it with only questions. We could additionally respond to other questions - but still only with more questions.

Sort of like this:



Only everyone playing at once, with no audience, no wages as big improvisation stars, and no Wayne Brady shaking his bum.

Shame.

But it was fun!

So MJD wrote this on the board: "You have all you need, if you just believe."

Ready? Go.

Questions poured out, punctuated with the natural rhythm of group collaboration and just a few lulls for silent thought.

Questions like

Believe in what?

What does it mean to have?

What is it to believe?

How will I know when I have it?

How will I know when I believe?

Why is it conditional?

Who is "you" - is it singular or plural?

MJD broke one silence with one of her own contributions:

Why are there quotation marks?

Instantaneously someone's interest was sparked -

Who said this?

- which began a conflagration of new ideas.

When was it said? Where? To whom?

Ultimately we discovered that the quote is a line from a Josh Groban song used in The Polar Express, which a number of us had never seen.



(This right here is the first I've heard/seen of it.)

The text took on still a new flavor when everyone in the room realized some had encountered it before and had some connotations of it, while others would never have known it was anything more than a Hallmark greeting. Even with a simple lyric, our impressions were different. It's certainly only a taste of what we'll discover as we discuss doctrine and history and philosophy.

After our own Questions Only and reviewing an amazing little handbook on Critical Thinking that I wish to God I'd had in undergrad, MJD wrote a new sentence on the board for us to discuss. This time, we were allowed to make statements as well.

Critical thinking is an important practice of ministry or a life of faith.

A hypothetical battle ensued in which we knew MJD was role-playing, but boy was her devil's advocate (no pun intended) going to be a tough nut to crack. It was a greatly informative exchange and it would be difficult to do it justice after the fact, but the most progress we made toward effective communication was one student's input in particular, giving a solid example of how love and kindness are sometimes not enough. She explained how U.S. American missionaries traveled to rebuild homes in Central America, and while they had the best of intentions, accepting the work in these struggling communities took away the wages from the people who lived there. They did not know it at the time, but if they had thought critically about the conditions and the actions they chose to take, they may have found an even more helpful option that would not only reflect their compassion but also a more informed decision.

"...Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind..." (Luke 10:27)

Can I Get An Amen?

It has seemed, throughout my own experience, that God teaches and shapes and transforms someone all the more not in times of great human brilliance but in moments of meekness, humility, and even confusion. If theology - religious discourse, God-talk - were solely a matter of intellect, what could a student of theology ultimately strive to attain but the omniscience of God alone?

And so it is in the spirit of not-knowing, of accepting the immense magnitude of an omniscient God, that I embark on my seminary career. Now at Drew Theological School, just a few days before the beginning of the semester, I realize that even as I seek knowledge, I do not seek concrete answers as much as I seek peace - the acceptance of not having them - and thus a balance between intellectual activity and all other growth.

This morning I seized the opportunity to take a writing exam using a computer. A child of the late twentieth century, my hands are seemingly incapable of handwritten decrees. Having come to accept this as both circumstance and personal identity, the thought of organizing an essay by hand strikes fear into my heart. It seems inevitable that many students planning to pursue ministry have certain roles and places to which they plead with God not to send them. As Dr. Westfield said earlier this week in advising students how best to select a cross-cultural program, sometimes we must go to the last place in which we envision ourselves. And though it may seem a weak comparison, for me, a handwritten exam is much that place. When my computer seemed less ready for the writing test than I was, and I watched as it processed, simply processed, I took out my pen.

I spoke the other day with Larry, an alumnus of Drew. Larry has worked in prison ministry for many years, a vocation he discovered through his wife, who had been set on this particular form of ministry long before it ever struck Larry himself as "suitable" for him - or rather before he believed himself suitable for prison ministry. He spoke about his reluctance and concerns, but also about the dismal place in which he found the inmates. The incredible crossroads that brought them together came out of something seemingly hopeless, and although many found it difficult to persevere, many lives were transformed entirely.

Larry and I discussed being grateful for times of concern because of the growth there. It is being thankful for the flood washing over the earth, for the despair beneath the juniper tree, for the agony of the cross, that in all these things there may be new life. It is the "amen" of assent and approval, the acknowledgment of truth and divine providence, shouted in times of apparent disorder and uncertainty and suffering; the faith that something great is happening beyond the grief, the hurt, the hopelessness, even if the greatness is yet unseen by human eyes. I pray that God will take who I am and do something despite the tohu vbohu, the mishmash, of who I would be - not without my knowledge of God but rather without the presence of God's own wisdom and peace.

Arriving at the threshold of theological education is rather like waiting for my computer to "wake up" beyond the point at which even the computer itself seems baffled. As I set out by hand, still eyeing the stagnant screen, I knew that eventually the computer would find focus and move on, but I knew, too, that I haven't all the necessary wisdom to understand how it works - or why it does not. And so I waited, and adjusted to a method of working that makes me incredibly and wonderfully uncomfortable, adjusted to the idea that perhaps it is easier to set about something along the best course one can find than to fear that the way is not familiar or safe or well-lit, and never take a step.

And when both I and the computer were ready, I began to type.