July 3, 2009
D and I were wandering around a clothing store today and as we headed out to our car D said, “You’re smaller than the other woman who was in the store.” [If you follow me over on Facebook or on my other blog you'll know that both D and I have lost a significant amount of weight over the last few months and so we're still getting familiar with the bodies we're now living in.]
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Thanks Honey but really, no I’m not.”
“You were standing right beside her and I just couldn’t help but notice you were smaller.”
“I can’t be. She was just a regular sized woman.”
“You are a regular sized woman Anita.”
We’ve had a number of similar exchanges over the past few weeks. Sometimes the roles are reversed but the conversation is the same with one of us unable to grasp the reality of being in an average-sized body.
I know I’ll get there, where I see my body as it really is. The reality is I don’t weigh 325 pounds anymore even if there are days when I feel like I do. It’s just going to take some time to adjust, to let go of how I’ve always seen myself in my head and instead look in the mirror and believe that what I see is really me and trust that when D tries to give me a perspective on how I look by comparing my size to someone else, she’s not lying to me just to make me feel good.
If I’m needing to work on seeing my body as it really is, even when the evidence is right in front of my face and starring back at me in the mirror, is it any wonder so many of us struggle to see ourselves as God sees us? We look at our life and remember every little mistake we’ve ever made and sin we’ve ever committed. We’re so obsessed by our weaknesses and failings that we barely have any vision left to see our strengths and the gifts we bring into the world. We remember every person we’ve ever disappointed but we go blank if asked to recount the names of just a few people whose lives were blessed for having known us. We sat in little wood chairs in Sunday School class every week and learned about our sin and wretchedness; our depraved fallen nature and sinful flesh; messages so loud and troubling that they drowned out the messages of glory and joy that we were created in the very likeness of God and that we are the beloved, the children of God, the apple of God’s eye, the delight of God’s heart. We are living epistles, a holy nation, a peculiar people, a royal priesthood. We are the lost lamb worthy of the Shepherd’s attention. We are the coin valuable enough to be searched for and celebrated when found. We are the child so loved God lifts up his hem of his robe so he can bolt down the road to greet us with open arms. We are the baby birds protected in the shelter of the Almighty’s wing. Wait. Let me edit what I just wrote. You are the lost lamb worthy of the Shepherd’s attention. You are the coin valuable enough to be searched for and celebrated when found. You are the child so loved and longed for that God lifts up his hem of his robe so he can bolt down the road to greet you with open arms and tear-stained cheeks. You are the baby bird protected in the shelter of the Almighty’s wing. There. That was better.
But for some that’s only the beginning because there are those of you who were told throughout your childhood that you were a failure, a disappointment, unwanted, unworthy, a waste; and those who came to believe through neglect that you were invisible nothingness or that you deserved the abuse you endured.
And what of the messages ground into the hearts and minds of young people and adults who in secret confusion and torment about their sexuality hear from church pulpits and loved ones that homosexuality is a perversion, a sin, an abomination, and that there’s no place in God’s kingdom or in the church for the unrepentant homosexual; messages that compare gay men and women to pedophiles, adulterers, murderers, and those who practice bestiality.
When I look in the mirror the main obstacle I have to seeing who I really am is letting go in my mind of the 160 pounds that are no longer there on my body, but to see ourselves as God sees us means we have to be willing to let go of so much more. We have to let go of messages, whether the intention be for good or evil, that in one way or another diminished our identity as God’s handiwork. We have to let go of any neglect or abusive that scarred our hearts and devalued our worth. We have to accept ourselves as being human and have compassion on ourselves for living that out in sometimes messy, fumbling ways while acknowledging those other moments when we rose to the occasion and let glory shine through us. We need to silence the voices in our head from those who judge us and remind ourselves again of what the gospel message tells us and only then, but certainly then, we will begin to see ourselves in shades and glimpses as God sees us. Beloved. Beautiful. Adored.
Repent and believe in the gospel, Jesus says. Turn around and believe the the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in the world the gladdest thing of all. (Frederick Buechner)
If you could but for a moment catch a glimpse of yourself through God’s eyes, everything would change. I pray for nothing more or less than each of you would see what God sees because then you would know and never again question or doubt the unfathomable love God has for you and all the delight that fills His heart with every glimpse of you.
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Posted in Grace Meditations, Storytelling 
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July 2, 2009
[Note: If you hate, dislike, or have no emotional attachment to cats, run now. I mean it. Shut down your browser window, close the lid on your laptop and flee. Go clean up your dog's mess in the backyard or throw a slobbery wet tennis ball at the doggy park. You have now entered Cat Terra Firma.]
Two years ago my adorable howbeit it manically neurotic TweetyCat died in my arms on the way to the vets. This left us a one cat household with AnnieCat inheriting the reigning position of head feline. In our grieving over Tweety’s death we made a mistake. We assumed AnnieCat was grieving too and would be ever indebted to us for bringing a subordinate cat in the house, if for no other reason than to do her bidding and serve her as a living chew toy. We have come over the past two years to accept this was in fact not what she wanted. We know this because months later she continues to climb onto our faces at 3:00 a.m. waking us from a dead sleep with kitty paws on our eyelids to re-emphasize her displeasure at our decision to bring another cat into the house. But that’s AnnieCat’s story to tell and if she has more to say about it then she knows where the laptop is kept and she can start her own blog which would give her something a little more productive to do at say, 3 in the morning.
As for D and I we’re a two cat household and so a few weeks after TweetyCat returned home enshrined in a little wood box to join the feline ashes of the most furry Sophie and the certifiably emotionally disturbed Sarah, we began visiting nearby animal rescue centers for a new cat. D and I clearly knew what we wanted and did not want in a cat. We had a list. We did not want a male cat. We did not want a grown cat. We did not want a black cat. We wanted a fluffy little calico kitty with a pink bow tied behind her ear. We wanted a little princess to complete our house and since we were just entering May, the season when baby kittens are in bloom we felt the odds were stacked in our favor of getting just what we wanted and so on a Saturday afternoon we stopped in at the nearby pet store where the local animal shelter provided dog and cat adoptions every weekend afternoon from 1-4 p.m.
Let’s go over this again. For weeks D and I had discussed and agreed upon what we were looking for and just in case you already forgot or skimmed over the previous paragraph and missed it altogether, let me review. We wanted
- A kitten.
- A girl kitten.
- A calico girl kitten.
In other words, we were not looking for him. He was the antithesis of everything we wanted in a cat but there he was, a boy cat, the equivalent in age to a pimply teenaged sass-you-back-as soon-as-look-at-you boy and black as midnight in a sandstorm during an eclipse of the moon. His wire cage was situated between two other cages on a table and there he was, stretched out on the cage floor with one long arm reaching through the wires of the cage next to him with his paw lightly resting on the head of the cat napping there. That’s what did it. There was something so tender and sweet about seeing that little guy reaching out to touch another cat that it melted us. We watched him for the longest time, and then reminding ourselves what kind of cat we were looking for and that he wasn’t it, we left the store.
I was back in five minutes, having left D at the check out stand at The Container Store with the words, “I’ll be right back. I just want to go ask if the animal rescue will be having adoptions tomorrow.” Fifteen minutes later and tired of waiting for me to return, D found me in the pet store holding the cat we didn’t want who was hanging like dripping jelly in my arms. “We’re taking him home, aren’t we?” she asked. “Hold him,” I answered. “Just hold him.”
For the past two years, not a single day has come and gone that our little black cat, officially dubbed Simbakitty, has failed to make us laugh out loud and just as often scratch our heads. There are days when he acts so much like a rambunctious, curious little boy I fight the urge to dress him in overalls and stick a baseball cap on his head. He chases spiders that aren’t there. He walks around the house unaware that dangling from his pitch back face is a full white beard acquired in a wrestling match with AnnieCat that remains wedged between his teeth. He dashes through the house like a madman until he’s running so fast he slides out of control across the wood floor coming to a sudden and loud stop against the wall. He meows like his shorts are on fire every time either one of us gets out of the bath because at some point in his formative years one of us made the mistake of getting out of the bathtub and giving him a kitty treat and now and forever he feels compelled to remind us that baths, showers, the flushing of the toilet, the running of the faucet, or a bath towel in our hands must naturally lead to the immediate dispensing of kitty treats.
And he cuddles. Every night. All night. I come to bed and within five minutes, never more and often less, he stands up in his kitty bed, stretches and then ambles up beside me, waiting patiently until I throw back the covers far enough for him to crawl in (I lack all power to say no) and drop against my side like a furry rock. Once settled there and having licked my arm with his sandpaper tongue four licks short of blood shed he rests his chin on my arm and stretching one front arm acroos the bed his paw comes to rest on D. This is how we go to sleep every night.
We did not want this adolescent male cat with black fur. We knew exactly what we wanted and he was not it and yet here we are a couple years later and this guy owns us, heart, soul, and kitty treats. He’s the perfect cat for us. Silly, loving, sweet, affectionate, crazy. He’s our furry little knucklehead of a boy cat.
He was the cat we didn’t want.
What else in my life have I been convinced I didn’t want that ended up being the very thing that brought me the greatest joy? Too many things and moments and events to even count.
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Posted in Storytelling 5 Comments »
July 1, 2009
So the contest is over and the winner for the “My Life is Good Because…” is Rebeccah who offered the following:
Life is gooooooood because…
- Jesus loves me this I know.
- My g’friend is a Christian and she loves me.
- I am well taken care of by my Father
- I’m losing weight
- I’m going back to school at 46 yrs old to get my HS Diploma, with hopes of college.
As you can see by the photo the winner was chosen by a very sophisticated method which involved printing out all the entries, scattering them randomly on our home office floor, turning my back to them, and tossing a quarter over my shoulder! I believe that’s also the method used by the Publisher’s Clearinghouse when they do their 10 Million Dollar Sweepstakes…or so I’ve heard.
Unfortunately Rebeccah didn’t include an email address and so Girlfriend, you have 24 hours to contact me with your mailing address (email me at anita@sisterfriends-together.org) and if I don’t hear from you by then, the runner-up (aka the second fiddle) will be wearing your awesome tee shirts! Remember the saying, you snooze, you lose…so wake up and contact me!
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Posted in Contests, Giveaways, and Games 2 Comments »
June 29, 2009
…I have another one going over at my personal blog. Check it out! Now! Seriously, leave and get over there!
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Posted in Contests, Giveaways, and Games 1 Comment »
June 28, 2009
If I have 1 tee shirt by LifeIsGood I’ve got 10,423 of them. That’s a rough estimate of how many I’ve bought over the years though the figure could be considerably lower. Or not.
I love the simplicity and the whimsy of their designs but most of all I love the core message; life is good, and for the most part that’s been my experience. Even when life is cruddy (I should copyright that slogan before one of you steals it!) it’s still good if I pause long enough in the difficulties immediately before me to consider the wonder and brilliance that comprise the bulk of life.
In the photo to your left are three of my Life is Good tee shirts. The back of the yellow and white ones are blank. The blue one has the word “Optimist” and the number “7″ like a football shirt on the back. All are sized “women’s extra-large” (aka extra-beautiful) and all are in pristine condition because no one does laundry as skillfully as my wife. I’m not kidding. I do laundry and everything comes out pink and two sizes smaller than when it went in but D can take a pile of my played-in, cooked-in, eaten-in tees and make them look so new that I’ve come to suspect either she really is replacing them with exact replicas from a surplus inventory she’s hidden in the garage or she’s practicing some form of ancient laundry voodoo which, not that I think about it, would explain the odd chanting and smells of burning sage coming from the laundry room.
Wow. That was a scary glimpse into the way my mind can wander at will.
So here’s the deal. Between now, whenever now is for you as you’re reading this, and Wednesday, July 1, which is hopefully not after Wednesday, July 1, in which case you snooze, you lose, I’m inviting you to contribute a list of five things about your life that are good in the comment section of this post. The five things can be anything. Eating frozen candy bars on a hot summer day makes my life good. My life is good because I know with the deepest of assurance that God loves me. Silly or spiritual, it makes no difference. Whatever floats your boat. As you contribute them, I’ll post them, and we’ll all enjoy them. Then on Thursday, July 1, I’ll pick one at random from out of my ever-so dykey baseball cap and the following day I’ll send out the triple tees to the winner along with a bonus mystery prize. There you go. Have at it!
[Note to self: Avoid blogging when the temperature is over 100 degrees as the excessive heat apparently snaps your synapses, causing you to ramble incoherently.]
Update: I just realized that our friends of the male persuasion might want to play and not be so inspired by the idea of winning a triple hit of women’s tee shirts, so in the event a guy wins the drawing they will receive a Peet’s Coffee Messenger Bag, manly and yet oh so fashionable.
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Posted in Contests, Giveaways, and Games 30 Comments »
June 25, 2009
I’ve posted this photograph of my grandma and me before. My blog. My grandma. Try to stop me!
Grandma’s name was Rosina. She was a true Swiss and the quintessential grandma. She and Grandpa had a family dairy (that continues to this day) and my childhood is stuffed to the brim with memories of being near her side watching her bake dozens of cookies for the tour groups of school children who would visit the dairy so they could milk a real live cow or bake loaves of bread to feed the farm hands in the cook house. I’d sit in the kitchen nook near her while she made multiple calls on the old rotary phone to the florist as she ordered flowers for this or that person she knew who was sick or grieving or celebrating something or another. In the evening I’d be in the living room chair next to her while she sewed on one needlepoint painting after another until they spilled out of her and Grandpa’s home and found their way into our homes, onto our walls, and into our hearts. My grandma was a wonder. I adored her. I still do.
Last Sunday was Father’s Day. It was also the day five years ago when my equally adored dad, Grandma’s boy, died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. For the past couple weeks I’ve been thinking about Dad, about my Grandparents, about my childhood that was so ridiculously joyful and fun and filled with love that I should have been charged rent for growing up in my shoes. As a memory to the dad I loved, who loved his mom, who loved the Lord, I did the thing I knew that would make them both smile. On Sunday, I made a double batch of one of Grandma’s favorite cookie recipes for the church social hour. It was a small gesture. A silly one really. But sometimes you have to do something to say thank you and to honor the memory of those you love even if it’s a very small and silly thing and so I baked a few cookies and spoke their names among others. Judging by the crumb-less serving platters I took home, the church was incredibly supportive of my little cookie gesture.
If you ever want to make some unbelievably yummy refrigerated cookie bars then give these a try and when you do, remember they were first made by a Grandma with a heart just as sweet as the first bite you munch on.
My Grandma’s Graham Cracker Dream Bars
Line the bottom of a 9×13 pan with a layer of whole graham crackers. Cut the crackers so that the entire bottom of the pan is covered to all the edges. Don’t go all crazy trying to cut the graham crackers with a knife because they’re just going to break. Instead, use the knife to shave off one edge of the graham cracker until it fits perfectly in the pan. That’s how my Grandma did it. I’m just saying.
In a *double boiler melt:
1 cup butter
Add:
1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten
Cook everything above in the double boiler until it thickens slightly, stirring continually. It will take about 6-8 minutes over medium high heat.
Add:
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts (or any nut)
1 cup finely crushed graham crackers
While still still warm pour mixture over the graham crackers in the pan. Smooth with a spatula and then lightly place another complete layer of cracker grahams on top. Place pan in refrigerator to cool.
While the mixture is slightly cooling, make the frosting by creaming together:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup butter
a couple squeezes of fresh lemon juice
a teaspoon or more of lemon zest to taste
Spread frosting over the top layer of graham crackers and return to refrigerator until bar cookies are firm. Cut with a warm knife. Optional: Sprinkle finely chopped nuts over the frosting before chilling. Replace lemon juice and zest with vanilla.
*Okay. I know you don’t own a double boiler but it’s kind of important to prevent the egg from scrambling and the mixture from scrotching so do what I do. Fit a metal heat-resistant mixing bowl over a deep saucepan.
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Posted in Anita, Storytelling 1 Comment »
June 23, 2009
Today’s post is part of a larger initiative of more than 50 bloggers, all sharing their thoughts on how to “bride the gap” between people on the topic of faith and sexuality. You can find the links of other bloggers participating in this undertaking at Bridging the Gap, an outreach of New Directions Ministries of Canada. In the near future I will be providing a review of their interactive DVD resource, Bridging the Gap: Conversations on Befriending Our Gay Neighbors (clips available here), along with a blog interview with Wendy VanderWal Gritter, the National Director of New Directions.
Okay. That was the very official sounding introductory blurb. Now let me just talk to you who follow this blog regularly for a minute; those of you who feel fairly banged up and battered emotionally and spiritually by some within the church over the issue of homosexuality. You know where I stand on the issue of homosexuality. I’m a lesbian who is happily married to the finest of women and I’m a Christian who is committed heart, soul, and mind to God through Christ Jesus. Though today’s blog is part of a bigger project and in participating we’ve been encouraged to not defend a particular position I could never in good conscious hold back from sharing up front that a personal relationship with God is available to all who seek God; gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, queer, same-sex attracted or confused. I have to go through this little bit first on the off-chance that someone would chance upon this blog today for the first time in desperate need of hearing that God loves them just as they are. Here’s a word from my heart to yours free of agenda or hidden motive. The word is this; be assured that right now in this very moment God loves you. You always have been and you always will be, and there is nothing you can do or become that will make you more or less worthy of that love. You are God’s beloved, precious and cherished in His sight. Please hear that and take it in as deep as you can allow it.
After having said all that for the one person who might stumble across this blog today, this post isn’t about being a gay Christian. Neither is this post about ex-gay ministries or gay-affirming congregations or about the issue of homosexuality within the church today. It’s not even about differing opinions on faith and sexuality or the Bible and homosexuality but instead it’s about how we are to embody honor and respect in our conversations and relationships with those with whom we may disagree on the topic of homosexuality.
Let me be clear about something. To possess a willingness to enter into a conversation with someone else means having a shared commitment to listen to them as much as having them listen to you and we all know fully well there are those on both sides of the gap who have no interest in conversation but instead are given only to diatribes that wound and destroy. I would suggest that for the time being we put those folks to the side; not that we forget about them, or write them off as impossible but instead we begin by turning our attention and energy to one another; to those on the other side of the gap who are equally committed as we are to meeting in the middle; not in the sense of compromising our convictions but in the sense of approaching the other from a place of compassion and grace that says, “Despite our differences you are my brother, you are my sister. Know me and let me know you.” When we who share that same commitment can find a way to come together in Christ then together we can reach out to the edges, to those stuck in their agendas and deafened by their own rhetoric and through our unified spirit and in the Spirit’s power and love draw them in.
So. Here we are. We’re standing here on this side, they’re standing over there on that side, and the place we want to come together is in the middle where Christ is calling us to meet one another. How do we do it? I mean really. How do we take that first step in their direction when we’re all too aware of the risk involved, the all too familiar risk of being rejected and ridiculed, of having words of hate targeted at us, of being patronized and stereotyped or judged and condemned? How about this as a starting off point? How about casting our vision toward the people on the other side of the gap and seeing that for them there’s no less risk than there is for us. We’re all making ourselves vulnerable to one another, willing to risk being hurt by the other for the hope that a community of mutual love and respect can be born and nurtured up among us. As Christians we follow Christ who led by his love for God and the other was forever crossing bridges at incredible risk and had he not take that risk time and again, the blind would never have healed, the leper never restored to community, and the outcast and sinners would have forever been left alone at the table. It makes me wonder what healing and reconciliation we’re preventing in the lives of ourselves and others by hesitating in stepping forward, let alone what incredible glimpses of the invisible kingdom could be seen by all the world were we to step forward with open hearts and hands. Risking all for this moment to lose nothing in the end.
And for me, there’s one basic truth underlying what I just wrote that I keep coming back to every time I’m not sure if I want to bother to keep trying or to reach out again or to stay in the conversation. It’s just this; that what we have in common with one another is more than what divides us. Okay. I got it. They think homosexuality is a sin and that same-sex relationships aren’t God’s ideal for humanity while they think we’re being intolerant and exclusionary in who we welcome and don’t welcome into the church. I’m not minimizing the harm in either position but really folks, for the greater good, that being God’s glory, and the witness of Christ’s church in the world, could we let all that go and focus instead on what we share together? How about these for a start?
1. We’re all human. At least on our good days.
2. We’re all created and loved by God.
3. we’re all of equal worth and value.
4. We’re all equally flawed and messy.
5. We all desire to do what’s right before God.
And then 6 through 10,000 would cover the gambit from we all want to be loved and to love, to none of us want to be seated next to a screaming baby on an international flight. Make your own list by looking at your fears and joys, at your greatest desires and expectations and then attributing them to the other; that one over there on the other side near the edge of the bridge. If I can look across the gap and see him or her as God’s very own, then I stand of chance of being part of what God so longs to do among us; that we would let go of all our judgments of the other and of our need to be right and for them to be wrong, and just allow God to be God, extending Divine compassion and mercy as equally in their lives as God has shown time and again in mine.
I don’t know. Maybe I missed the point of what this whole synchroblog on “Bridging the Gap” was intended to be about, but then again, i’m still trying to figure out what “synchroblog” means anyway.
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Posted in Christian Living and Faith, Christian Unity, Perspectives 22 Comments »
June 23, 2009
What can I say? The weather has been beautiful and so I’ve been outside. Walking, bike riding, strolling through the fresh produce at the farmer’s market, sitting in the shade in front of the coffee shop reading and generally playing like a kid on summer vacation. This little pastoral photo is of my beloved from a biking adventure we went on last week in Sonoma Valley; that would be the same beloved who took me at my word when I shouted, “No, you go ahead, I’ll catch up.” She did and I barely did.
And along with playing with my sweetie, I’ve cleaned the house, had my hair highlighted back to my natural hair color (at least according to my selective memory), baked cookies for hospitality hour at church, and even curled up on the floor a time or two next to one of our cats who had found a perfect spot near the entry way window to enjoy the warmth of the first of the summer sun. [Note to self: You are too old to lay on the hardwood floor and not pay for it later you knucklehead!]
I just wanted to give you a heads up that a) I’m still here with no plans of abandoning ship or site, and b) I’m going to be participating in a synchroblog project tomorrow, Wednesday, June 24, that involves more than 50 bloggers. Each blogger will be adding a post to their own blog that deals specificially with how they think we might begin and/or continue to bridge the gap between people on the issue of sexuality and in particular homosexuality. This initiative is being sponsored by Bridging the Gap: Conversations on Befriends Our Gay Neighbors, which is an outreach of New Direction Ministry. I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation to participate in this blogging event and would encourage you to set aside some time tomorrow to come here and read my post and then go to Bridging the Gap where you can follow links to the other bloggers posts so that you might hear the wide range of voices of those who are committed to meeting on the bridge and joining hands in Christian fellowship to which we’ve been called.
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Posted in Anita, Christian Unity No Comments »
June 18, 2009
I preach as often as I clean out the junk drawer in our kitchen which is to say about two or three times a year. One of those rare preaching gigs seems to traditionally fall on the Sunday after summer break begins which means attendance is somewhere between scant and minimal. I like it that way. There’s a cozy family feel in the sanctuary and few enough eyeballs in the house that I can make eye contact with the entire congregation during the course of the sermon, which I tend to think of as a spiritual chat rather than a sermon. It eases the internal expectations I have of preaching by re-framing it in that terminology. Whatever works.
The Gospel reading for the day was Mark 4:26-32 that includes two brief parables.
Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’
I tend to be a visual learner…and teacher and so when I read “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…” I reached into my right pocket and hurled a heaping handful of seeds at the right side of the congregation, and when I came to “It is like a mustard seed, which when sown upon the ground…” I reached into my left pocket and flung a fistful of mustard seeds over the left side of the congregation. I took no small delight in watching these dear people I love ducking for their lives but at the same time I had a greater purpose than my own personal amusement. I wanted to tangibly communicate that the kingdom of God is no less a present reality in their lives here and now than as the seeds that crunched under their shoes and that fell from their hair with every shake of their heads. The kingdom of God slipped into the realm of this world and humanity when the Son of God came to us. It is present reality and a future event, it is now and it’s not yet. Yet another head-scratching mystery of God.
After exploring the parable of the mustard seed that turns up in all the Gospels, we looked together at this parable of the growing seeds that appears only here in Mark. A farmer plants seeds in a field and then the farmer leaves the field and returns home. Day and night he goes through his regular routine and all the while the seeds in the field are growing. The farmer has no idea how the seeds grow but the thing he does know is that he can’t make them grow and become a harvest. All he can do is scatter the seeds and then it’s up to the seed, the earth, the sun, and the rain to do their part. And they do. The seed grows and becomes a stalk that grows a head that blossoms into full grain. Only when the harvest has arrived does the farmer return to the field with sickle in hand to gather the full harvest.
The farmer couldn’t force the seed to grow anymore than the zealots in Jesus’ day could usher in the kingdom of God through a revolution or the Pharisees could make the kingdom arrive through strict adherence to the law. The kingdom of God will come in it’s own time and it’s own way. Like the earth produces of itself “automatically” so too does the kingdom of God. We scatter the seeds of the kingdom…seeds of love, grace, mercy, compassion and peace, and then it’s up to God’s Spirit to take those seeds to produce the harvest that God desires and sees fit.
What this parable teaches me is that all God asks is that I be faithful to do my part in tossing the seeds, and then let go and trust that God will be faithful to bring forth a harvest. There’s nothing I can do to make people or the world change. I can’t force people to be committed to equality. I can’t bring forth a harvest of understanding, love and acceptance. I can’t make anyone accept gays and lesbians. I have no control over the injustice others do or the lies that others speak. All I can do is scatter the seeds I’ve been given as faithfully as I know how. I’m not called to bring forth the harvest. I’m called to go out into the field and with these hands and this heart and this voice and this life sow seeds of kindness, truth, mercy, forgiveness and love and then I’m called to do the hardest thing of all. God calls me to walk away from the field; to stop striving and laboring under my own power to make the seeds grow into the harvest I think they should be and blossom at the time I think they should bloom but to entrust the fields to God’s care. It will be God’s Spirit who will watch over the seeds you and I have scattered and from them God and only God will bring forth a harvest, greater than any harvest we could have anticipated or hoped for.
Now, here’s the beautiful thing. It happened after church.
As soon as the benediction was given and the congregation began to leave the sanctuary for the table of cookies in the fellowship hall the children came running to the front of the church to scoop up the seeds that were on the floor. As they gathered them up in their hands they were so excited and happy, telling me how they were going to take them home and plant them. They had no idea what the seeds were or what they would grow in to. Not one of the children even bothered to ask me what kind of flower seeds they were. They didn’t ask because they didn’t care if they were posies or petunias. They just wanted to take them home, scatter them, and see what would happen. The activity of seed scattering excited them more than anything else. It was only the few adults who remained behind picking up seeds for themselves that continued to ask, “But what kind of seeds are they? No really, I need to know. I need to know what kind of seeds they are to know when and where to plant them.”
That was the real teaching of the morning for me. Not the sermon I preached but in what I saw after church in the joyful excitement of the children. I long to be that free of expectation so I can take delight in scattering the seeds and stand in wonder at what God brings forth at the harvest.
Just last evening, a day late and a dollar short for the sermon, I read this wonderful quotation by Henry David Thoreau that seems more than fitting for the mystery that lies at the heart of Jesus’ parable.
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
I’m with Thoreau on this one. I’m prepared for the wonders that will spring forth from the seeds of the kingdom of the God.
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June 10, 2009
I’ve been obese all my life. I spent my life transitioning from baby fat to chubby to overweight to obese to morbidly obese. I only knew what it was to be the biggest kid in every class and the largest woman in every gathering. There were limitations on my life because of my weight. There were things I wanted to do that I didn’t have the physical health to do. There were places I wanted to go I couldn’t go because my physical girth made it too difficult to get there. Being big became my place in the world and while it wasn’t easy and make for some agonizing moments of humiliation, it was all I had ever known and so in the way that humans do I found a way to be comfortable in what was familiar even if at times familiar was painful, embarrassing, miserable, and inconvenient.
Over the past dozen years I’ve lost nearly 160 pounds, the last 50 since January of this year. I’m at a weight I haven’t weighed since high school when I was merely passing by that number on my way to a higher weight. My entire life I daydreamed about what it would be like to be within a normal weight range and now at the age of 52, I’m there. I’m at a place with my body and health I never dreamed was possible and now that I’ve arrived, I’m understandably thrilled and grateful, and at the same time it’s totally unnerving and just plain weird. I look in the mirror and think to myself, “That’s not me. This isn’t who I am.” When I’m standing at the store counter buying size 12 pants there’s static in my head telling me, “They’re too small for you. They don’t belong to you.” In a way that’s hard to explain I feel at times like an impostor in the world because this body I’m in isn’t the body that I’ve always known and lived inside while relating to the rest of the world. I don’t want to go back to life before my weight loss but at the same time, that life is definitely more familiar to me and this new one has me a bit rattled and unbalanced on my feet.
And I’m not the only one reeling from the changes. People who have always known me as “the big girl” are acting a little disoriented too. I was with someone recently who has always related to me as someone much bigger than she and so throughout the day our conversation was interrupted with random comments of “I just can’t get use to you looking like that!” and “You’re nearly the same size as me!” And that’s the thing. Not only are people getting use to seeing me in a differently-sized body but the changes in my body are making them aware of their body which is why their conversation is drifting more and more frequently toward their own interest in losing weight and getting in shape.
There’s a lot of crazy thinking that goes on in the head of someone, at least this someone, after losing so much weight. I’ve gotten to know a number of former abundantly-padded people who share the same experiences and feelings and so I know I’m not the only one who goes through an adjustment period in getting the old head and heart matched up to the new body. It just takes time. It takes time to learn how to relate to the world in a different body and to get comfortable with how the world relates to you.
I imagine the same would be true for anyone going through any major life transition where they leave what’s familiar for something that’s entirely new to them. Maybe that’s part of what increases the internal tension many of us go through in coming out as queer. We spent a good number of our days relating to the world, or at least believing we did, as straight women and men (and just imagine for a moment, if you dare, how it must be for our trans brothers and sisters!) We had our place in the world, knew how we related to the world and the world knew how to relate to us. And while we might have felt less than who we knew we really were and felt the pain of not being fully whole and fully alive, most days we were okay because at the very least the life we were living was familiar.
Coming out to ourselves changed all that. We came to see something about ourselves we’d never seen before, maybe for no other reason than we had refused to look at that part of our lives and if we had happened to catch a glance of ourselves had pretended we didn’t see what we saw. Accepting we were gay was difficult for a number of reasons including conflicts with our faith teaching, but it was also uncomfortable simply because it was “the unknown.” We knew what it was like to identify as straight because we’d done it for so long but accepting ourselves as GLBT or Q was like free-diving into whole new territory! It wasn’t familiar and so that made it uncomfortable for us in the beginning. I look in the mirror and see a normal sized person but my head is still saying “This can’t be you. You’re suppose to be bigger than this!” and in the same we might have always known deep within we were gay but our head was still saying “This can’t possibly be true. I’m suppose to be straight.”
A huge shift in self-identity and how we see ourselves in the world is always bound to come with some pretty dramatic internal upheaval, and then just for good measure, go ahead and ratchet up the intensity off the charts by notifying the world around you that a part of your identity is different than it appeared and was presumed to be. Just like people who’ve known me all my life are temporarily relating (and reacting!) differently to me as a normal-sized person, people relate (and react!) differently to us when they’re put into the position of leaving their ideas of us as a straight man or woman behind for that of a gay woman or man. We’re changing how the group (church, family, friends, society) identifies with us and anytime anything or anyone in the group changes, there’s going to be transitional chaos for everyone. Did I emphasize that last sentence enough?
It’s going to take some time for me to grow accustomed to the new reflection looking back at me in the mirror. I’m going to have to buy a few more size 12 pants before I can let go of my plus-size clothing brain. When this body becomes more familiar to me then I’ll be more at ease in it because the head will have finally gotten in sync with the body. And other people will need time too. People who have always known me as morbidly obese will need to spend more time with me in the smaller body I’m now residing in to adjust to the idea that a smaller Anita is still the same Anita. It just takes time.
If you’ve just come out to yourself or have taken the next step to come out to others, it’s a little more complicated than all that. There are all the religious and societal considerations that complicate our own internal acceptance and other people’s reactions but there’s still this one basic aspect of shifting identities underneath it all that will naturally be resolved in due time. You need to give yourself and others time to adjust to the changes. You need time to get comfortable in your own skin. As a lesbian. As a gay man. As bisexual. As a man. As a woman. And others need time and usually they need more time than we do because we have the advantage of embodying the changes 24/7 while they’re trying to make sense of it from the outside looking in.
My physicality and your sexuality might have taken on a different form but we need to remember, as they need to remember, that at our heart and soul we’re still the same as we always were, and that these shifts we’ve gone through in our self-identity will only be for the better; allowing us the freedom to be more fully who we always were but was held back from fully expressing trapped in a body or identity that never really fit us to begin with.
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