New Orleans encounter : the not-so-silent mime

I was really blessed by the conversations with people on the streetcars… We met a man who was a musician at the house of blues. I had a conversation with a woman – for some reason, I think her name was Mimi, but it probably wasn’t. She was a street-mime. I think the musician even joked about her – saying something about how ugly she looks with her silver powder, so you don’t even want to imagine what she looks like without it… She came onto the streetcar another night, and sat behind me. I turned around and tried to talk to her. She was really hard to understand, her eyes were bloodshot, and her voice quiet. She kinda mumbled, but it was still profound to hear her stories. She had lost her job at work, and so she had a cousin or brother who helped her start as a streetmime. They turned off her water, and she said she would have to pay $600 to get it back on… We talked about her cats and dogs. I showed her pictures on my iPhone of my cats – she thought they were dogs, because my orange cat is soo big. It made me laugh to tell her it was my cat. She said she doesn’t like being a streetmime, that it is not very fun. I told her at least she gets to make people laugh… And said that kids probably love it. She said kids were easy. There have been many times in my life where I have struggled to get by – so I immediately recognized a similarity when she talked about having her water turned off, but it also made me realized how blessed we are… Not because of the things we have in life, but because of the relationships we have. I am blessed to have shared that small fraction of a lifetime with a woman in silver powder… Who cannot bathe until she comes up with $600. It is no wonder her eyes are bloodshot, but I am glad that for a moment, I let her life touch mine. For a moment, we could talk about dogs and cats and making kids laugh. Not in the sense of forgetting the pain, but remembering the good.

Inspirational Jane

I remember sitting next to Jane, hearing her story for the first time, in Evangelism with the Arts. I ended up crying as the familiarity of the words rang in the air. Her life contained so much hurt, battling with depression, and the reality of her pain – and her simple acknowledgement of how she had learned to deal with it through her life struck me. I had lost so much, and I had never been able to admit my own depression. Even in high school, I always struggled with feelings of guilt associated with my feelings of pain. When I lost my fiancee, seemingly due to my episodes of overwhelming grief, it merely weighed my spirit down with tears… Jane, however, spoke calmly about her life – not matter-of-factly, but with an assurance, that opened my ears.

It took time, of course, to realized that I needed to be diagnosed with clinical depression – and that was hard, but I am glad that I had the opportunity to have met Jane. When the buzz about her death occurred initially, I shrugged it off. I didn’t recognize her by name. It was when I talked to Bundy, and heard of a woman who loved to knit, a woman who pastored two churches, a woman who lived on a farm and died in a tractor accident – the pieces came together…

I can remember sitting across from her in class, a looking up to her smile. She was always knitting in class, and I almost envied her talent. I love getting knit hats, socks, anything! She always wore black, as though a constant reminder that life was hard and full of sorrowful.

I cannot remember if I ever gave her a hug, but I am grateful for the tears. I am blessed to have heard her story, though I cannot remember the details, I know that she faced a lot. For that I know that I can say thank you, for enduring through your trials, for being a woman who did not die because of her depression.

Thank you Jane, for inspiring me to continue to live…

And maybe, I’ll learn how to knit one day too.

the pendulum perspective

Some days, I wonder whether God likes it better when I am swinging back and forth or when I am standing perfectly balanced. I am no physicist, but I know that a pendulum has tension, angles, motion, in particular, back and forth motion, and can also rest still in the middle…

Seek not to be understood, so much as to understand.

I want to tell you how my life shifts back and forth, how I do not know whether to preach feminism or child-bearing, how I do not know whether or not I can be an ally for those struggling with same sex attraction and in the same breath believe that it reflects brokenness, how I do not know whether or not I will be intimidated by the liberals at seminary or if I will be tempted to fit right in.

Seek not to be understood, so much as to understand.

I want to tell you of my paradoxical relationship with the Bible. I want to tell you how I binge on its words when I need them most and do not feel the need to read the Scriptures otherwise. I want to tell you how I believe its words to be both inspirational and also another myth. I want to tell you how I do not think the Bible is as important as Christianity makes it out to be, that the Story is what is most important. That the Bible is just another means to an end.

Seek not to be understood, so much as to understand.

I want to tell you that I am as much of a Feminist as I am a Lutheran as I am a Christian as I am registered Republican as I am an Artist as I am a Theologian, etc. Labels will never ever define who we are. If congruency is indeed living and doing and breathing what you are, than I will never be more than what I am: breathing dust.(It’s pretty cool to think that dust can breath at all.)

Seek not to be understood, so much as to understand.

I do not claim to be anything much. I will tell you that I can relate to a swinging pendulum. Some days, I feel a little bit more on one side than the other. Most days, I feel somewhere in the middle.