Heart work « Piecemeal

There are three friends I remember from Italy. My father was stationed at San Vito and I started kindergarten at the base school. During grade one I walked home with Rosa who was brown, and whose family seemed much more interesting than my own. Rosa’s family spoke Spanish and her older brother, according to Rosa, just stayed home because he felt like it. At sharing time, I stole all of Rosa’s details and brightly relayed that my family spoke Spanish at home. Really? Mrs. O’Brien said, and called my mother. One of many calls during those two years at the base school.

Yolanda was a black girl a year older or younger than me. Our families attended the same church and our mothers got the kids together to play. I admired Yolanda’s hair. Twists and braids. The plastic barrettes shaped like blue cats, green dogs, yellow birds. Hair ties with plastic marbles that click clacked at jumping, running. Yolanda said her mother could braid my hair, and her mother agreed. I sat in a kitchen chair and did not complain at the tugs. I was excited to have hair like Yolanda’s.

Sleep with a kerchief, Yolanda’s mother said. That night I could not sleep. All the tiny plastic barrettes poked my neck and shoulders. Each braid pulled a tight little square of scalp. I unclipped the barrettes and felt terrible. When Yolanda’s mother found out, she laughed. I cannot see her face but I remember her sound was warm.

Jessica was white and in my class at school. She had a parakeet and gave me a packet of smelly markers as a goodbye gift and really, that’s about all I remember of her.

I began second grade in Wisconsin and graduated from a small white town. Small white town: mostly/ predominantly. Diversity existed. An Albanian family moved to my hometown. A black teenager joined my sophomore English class. Our sport conference included a team from Beloit, the nearest city with a black population. Diversity existed: barely/ rarely. But my small American town isn’t different from many places around the world – I now live as the minority in a homogenous culture. I don’t fault a place for lacking diversity.

But populations migrate. I think this is a gift.

When we moved from Italy to Wisconsin, my parents eventually bought a house one town over from my mother’s hometown. I remember her joking that she’d never be local.

When we moved to South America, it was like going home. Maybe my childhood seeded the comfort of being foreign. Maybe I wanted to find another Rosa, another Yolanda after years of Jessicas.

I used to wonder what I’d be like if we’d stayed in Italy, if my father’s service moved us to another country, and another, if I learned alongside kids from Texas, Virginia, Japan. Here is what I am getting at: place is not at fault.

Our hearts. But when our hearts change, won’t our places also change?

All week, a growing tiredness. A necessary heavy spirit. Sisters and brothers, we have sisters and brothers born into an exhaustion made of exclusionary ordinances, inadequate healthcare, unequal and unfair education, voter suppression, racist criminal justice systems, and prejudice coming even from the mouths and hearts of people professing Christ. This ought not be.

Our hearts: we cannot know fully. Ask. And lament. We have much to grieve, and we ought to grieve, and we must accept that the process of this grief is not a season of protest or support but the ongoing work of repentance and restoration. Be a neighbor. Do the work of loving others. Listen. Listen. Listen.

I want to say this too. The American church permits the hijacking of its faith by a political party that does not love the least of these. Too many have been wrongly swayed to think that governments bear little responsibility for people in need. Systemic racism is just that. People do not choose to be born with a knee on their neck. We need social programs, from the government, church or other organizations: we must give food to the hungry, support people suffering addiction, offer literacy programs, and provide housing and healthcare. We must elevate those who are low. Lift. Raise.

The hijacking of our faith. I think this happened thirty years ago when the pro-life stance guaranteed Republican votes. I understand voters for whom the pro-life issue is their single issue. Moral contortion to vote against the least of these and for the least of these at once. What I say to these voters is: vote for the unborn, but live for the born.

Live for the born: sisters and brothers, we have sisters and brothers born into an exhaustion made of exclusionary ordinances, inadequate healthcare, unequal and unfair education, voter suppression, racist criminal justice systems, and prejudice coming even from the mouths and hearts of people professing Christ. This ought not be.

Be a neighbor. Do the work of loving others. Listen. Listen. Listen.

I started a gratitude journal once, years ago. I made a numbered list of things I was thankful for and a few months later when I needed a writing notebook, I tore out the single sheet. The entire notebook was supposed to be full of thanks. I’d barely managed one page.

I am better practiced at fear and complaint. And I suppose that is the point of keeping a gratitude journal, to counter the inclination to worry and wallow.

Also years ago, a Lebanese woman named Adele took my hands after a church service in Kuwait. She was tender with her wisdom, and I prayed with her often. That Friday morning Adele opened her eyes at amen and said, Sarah, I see you like a child in a field of flowers. So much joy. Laughing. I nodded. I was glad someone could imagine joy for me. Adele spoke a promise I needed at the middle end of a dark run, and I still keep her words. I remember her warm hands holding mine, that we kissed cheeks at parting. I remember walking into the bright heat of day, looking at the sky and whispering please. Later that summer when I laughed like a child spinning circles I whispered thank you.

I am just out of another dark run. When I look at the shadows I lived in for months I am sad. I don’t want to go back. But I want to carry what I understood in the shadows. A thought came when I curled in bed, unmoving after sobs, to give thanks. A thought came at the tightening of fear in my body, to praise. When I prayed, gladness was like rocks in my mouth. Praise tasted like metal. But I expanded my prayer, reading the Psalms to speak wild glory like a new language. I practiced the sacrifice of praise.

My circumstance did not change. I was not suddenly content in my work, or healed in my body. I was still sad most days. But last spring, a ripple of impatience: I did not want just healing or just satisfaction in the day. I asked instead for peace in the middle. I asked for joy. What I wanted was to know that God really is enough. Enough is a tough measure. Enough is letting go of the scramble for more or better. Enough is trust that what I hold is good.

Last Sunday our church celebrated Thanksgiving. We sang “Blessed Be Your Name.” This was a song at my brother’s wedding. Blessed be your name in the land that is plentiful. A perfect marriage song, our mom said. This was the song I cried with my dear mom friends in Kuwait, the morning after Liana delivered a son who lived an hour in his daddy’s arms. Blessed be your name when I’m found in the desert place. This is the song my friend Els chose for her funeral. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, given slim hope of living another five years. Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering. Though there’s pain in the offering, blessed be your name. After the service, Els told me that in the weeks after her diagnosis she understood that no part of her illness was a surprise to God. She read from the Psalms. She ached for her young children. She ached for her husband. But she also lived. Els made dinner, read to her children, nurtured friendships. She is alive today, and that is a miracle. All that she knew of her faith was pressed into daily practice during her illness, and she has not forgotten her God who was present in her suffering. She sings her funeral song.

So I do not want to forget what I understood in the shadows. Again and again I read from 1 Thessalonians, writing in my notebook

Rejoice always
pray without ceasing
give thanks in all circumstances
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus
Do not quench the Spirit

On Sunday the message centered on this passage. Such direct instruction. I have learned this before. I know this. And in the shadows these past months I obeyed. I lived my sorrow deeply, honestly. But I also recognized the everyday swells of joy: the limbs of my children stretched either side of me at bedtime, as we read or talked about the day. My son playing with Lego, scripting the minifigures and animating planes and boats. My daughter bent over her sketchbook, humming. My husband turning to me in the night. The mountains on our summer drive west. The taste of a gin fizz twenty minutes in the making. The fun of a full dining table, a card game, and family stories.

Singing praise as you fall apart is heart work. Singing praise is trust, naming a God whose glory transcends circumstances. There is so much I do not understand. There is reason for this exhortation to give thanks. Gratitude is good for the body and mind. Something intangible turns on thanksgiving.

Knowing my proclivity for fear and discontentment, I couple my sacrifice of praise with another prayer. Renew my mind. I live in a body that will go to ash. I cannot hinge joy on what I touch. So renew my mind, I ask, so that gratitude becomes a natural breath in my day. I do not know what will follow this practice, but I am far enough in my faith to choose to continue on, even after a long stretch of darkness.

I am not starting another gratitude journal. But when I flip through the muddle of my notebook, I want to see thanks between the story drafts, petitions, and wandering thoughts. So too in my day. Amen.