Frustration & Compassion

The past couple of weeks have been especially challenging for me emotionally.  With my guy's visa process in limbo for nearly two months now, every week we hope that this will finally be the week when it will come through.  And while I try to pass the time as well as possible, with friends and family and work and books for company, the disappointment is never far below the surface - which means that my patience is thin, especially for things that stress me and stretch me even in happier times.

There is a common theme that unites the things that most easily scrape off the thin shell of normalcy and expose the irritated flesh below: slapping a smile over suffering.  I'm not talking about optimism, because optimism doesn't deny crappiness, but rather reflects a hope that the state of things will get better, and a gratitude for what persists that is good.  In that sense, I consider myself optimistic.  What irritates me is the lack of acknowledgement, whether by refusal to look, or inability to process, or sheer misapprehension, of the reality that sometimes things just suck.  And for the people going through a tough time, platitudes and encouragement to just look at the bright side are often the least sensitive response a caring person can give.  Sometimes the most compassion you can show is just to recognize the pain in someone else and allow them to cry, rage, or sit quietly while they work through it.  Don't tell them that God's timing is perfect.  Don't tell them it will all be over soon.  Don't tell them that, in the scheme of things, their current pain won't matter.  Let it be, and be there with them if they want you to be, even if it feels awkward and you don't know what to say.  It is not up to them in their time of need to make you comfortable around them or to try zooming far enough out of their reality to make it seem less significant and painful.  Just be there and be responsive to what they need, not what you would want -- this is compassion.

Election

This week has just been brutal.  I try to bear in mind that there are people in far worse perpetual stress, but it does not really make me feel any better (though I don't know why remembering other people's suffering is ever supposed to make anyone feel better...)  Anyway, I don't really want to enumerate the points of suckitude, but just knowing that such a list exists is good emotional context for this post.

So...last night was an election (if you missed it), and I was immensely relieved by the outcome as well as knowing that this means the stakes are even higher for getting things done in the next four years.  I was mercifully spared the vitriol that I hear a lot of other people experienced on facebook today, but there was one post that caught my eye, written by a woman who was a friend and fellow church youth group member in high school (and who, prior to yesterday, had not posted anything election-related):

I dont know why I expected anything different America....but the truth and the hope and encouragement is that before Christs return it WILL get worse ....so looks like the next for years we better spend a heck of alot more time on our knees....Nov.7th I am thankful for the Truth of Gods word- ALL of it....right down to Revelation!!!!! Pray with me!?!?

The thing that really gets me about this is that it's something many people would dismiss as extreme fundamentalism, and perhaps that's true, but it's hard for me to dismiss it because it's where I'm from.  It captures the essence of the thing that bums me out about my hometown, which is that I see a tragically narrow definition of God's love.  There are a lot of extremely eloquent and knowledgeable people who can articulate why I believe this is a misunderstanding  (Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Danielle from http://www.fromtwotoone.com/...I don't think I'm clear and focused yet, so I recommend checking them out.  )

What I really wanted when I read this was to chime in as an alternative Christian voice, at a level of connection and not rational critique.  This is what I said:

I'll pray with you even though I have a very different perspective on the result and what it means for people of faith!

A handful of people "liked" my comment, so maybe there are others that read her post and had the same reaction as I did, because they also were motivated by their deep-rooted Christian values to vote for Obama.  Or maybe they voted for Romney, but value an inclusive response rather than a divisive one.

The comments feed was mum for a while after I posted, and then the woman's husband (also a high school classmate of mine) wrote this:

What it means for people of faith is so so broad. What it means for people who follow the one true God and His laws is that we need to continue to pray for our country and the president as well. But we serve God and His commands trump mans. We should pray that Obama makes Godly decisions but we need to continue to make Godly ones ourselves. 

I don't plan to respond again to this because it doesn't seem the right forum for picking apart the implications of "one true God" and God's commands trumping man's.  The response was a signaled to me that this is not up for discussion (which has to be one of the most difficult things for me to cope with, since I want to discuss everything in detail and get people to understand what their premises are and where they came from).  It's not a surprising response, since I know from facebook context that this couple is a close, loving one with their lives built on the foundation of some of the doctrines that I have found to be dissatisfyingly flimsy bases for my own reality.  They would likely see that as me being prideful and lost, and their response would be to pray for my heart to be changed - a loving response, so I can accept that, if a bit grudgingly.  But I see them as self-limited as well, and I also really hope that with time and experience they might better understand the expansiveness of God's love and the many ways that humans can be and live in that love.

As Shakespeare's Hamlet said (in a couple of my favorite lines ever):

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Ambivalent

I have been ambivalent about blogging lately.  Partly I feel like there's so much to say, so I don't want to start and then lose steam.  And partly I know I have a very small audience, so I'm really writing for myself, which I'm not that motivated to do.  So here we go...

This election season, by which I mean this year, has been rough.  I refuse to be cynical because I think it's the easy way out, a way of disengaging and allowing the negative voices to set the tone.  But it's discouraging to see so much hate and hypocrisy and just utter lack of logic and willingness to reason.  Worse than the ugliness is the ways people justify it with religion - I don't say "faith", because I think there is more human misunderstanding and distortion behind it than an active relationship with God at play.  God is love: there's the litmus test, and it's not that hard to see where the love and compassion are lacking.  Love your neighbor, help the poor, seek first the kingdom of God...none of this, to me, points to an ideology of extreme (and I believe ultimately self-defeating) individualism and letting the free market determine if there's any value in our shared natural resources.  It means listening, trying to understand, and seeking mutual and collective benefit - which is admittedly more intellectually challenging than just trying to yell louder and tell more resonant lies in hopes that we can muscle our way ahead without having to acknowledge the legitimacy of the perspectives of others.

That's all vague, and it's because the specifics are too many for me to deal with right now.  Maybe another post for those...for now I am done.

Frustration

I'm writing in part to keep from continuing my streak of going to bed earlier than the five-year-old upstairs...

The rest of me is writing because I'm struggling with my career once again (or still), and I'm feeling trapped in my current job, stuck in an endless loop of answering emails and demands and never really going anywhere that I want to go.  I don't know if I have the energy to pursue something else for real, but I dread most of what I have to look forward to each day.  The bright spots are the individuals I work with, who are lovely...but I am tired of the tedium of project management.  Already feeling, for lack of a more articulate term, "bleh" about work overall, I got an email from my manager that was a delayed response to a revised project timeline proposal that I sent her.  The proposal takes into account a 3-to-4 month client-driven delay and other complications/adjustments and added 6 months onto the project overall.  Her response was to ask if we could proceed with something more like the original timeline.  I don't even know if it's humanly possible to hit the revised interim deadline with the client, so I am less than thrilled with the prospect of raising the bar further, and I feel frustrated that it's all management and coordination and working really hard during a busy and high priority time in my personal life, on account of first, being verbally committed to something with the client before I can chime in and say if it's really possible and second, not getting a reasonable amount of flexibility due to things outside of my control.  I don't want to spend the next 9 months of my life and beyond on this project.  I would love for it to end on time.  But it just isn't going to happen, and I am reasonably certain that nobody is more disappointed by that than I am.

I don't generally like to gripe about the particulars of my job in this particular forum, but I'm just trying to work through what the reasons for staying are.  I think it's unfair and ungrateful to just trash a job and walk out the door without some attempt to reconcile, especially with colleagues who are generally great, but since there are some irreconcilable differences (like my wanting to work in a sustainability-related role and there being little or no opportunity for that in my company), I see the constructive discussion that I will definitely try to have with my manager tomorrow as a stop-gap, not a real solution for me.  I'm discouraged, because I'm not sure what I really want, and I can see the good in where I am now, but it's ultimately not going to be enough.

Doubt and Belief

I preface a lot of my posts, but a preface to this one seems particularly fitting.  It's unlikely to be a complete take on my view of faith and its role in public life...more likely it's just going to be the rambling start of recording a thought process for me.

I struggle with the idea of faith, of belief.  Not because I think it's a bad idea, but because people of faith often seem to want to nail down the object of their faith (i.e. God) in fairly certain terms -- understandably, they want to know about the one in whom they are putting their trust.  They want to know if God is anti-abortion, or defines marriage and sexuality a certain way, or thinks government should help poor people, etc.  But I wonder how much this serves their own need for closure on each issue in question, versus actually promoting the Kingdom of God (to use a term familiar from my own upbringing).

Two reasons why this has been on my mind:

1. There is an upcoming presidential election, and as usual, there is an attempt to define one party as being for "values voters" - which suggests that if you are a true Christian, you will vote for a Republican, without ambiguity.  This drives me crazy, because I know a lot of Christian Democrats who actually vote on the left on account of their convictions, not in spite of them.  I get the sense that the "values voters" on the political right simply think that everyone else is wrong, lost, warped, sinful - which assumes that they, more than anyone else, are in touch with God and are thus uniquely qualified to choose leaders who will fight moral decay.  I just think, in all of the fear of moral disintegration of society and the opposition to change, many have lost sight of the big picture.  I think that the way we learn and grow as individuals is reflected in the way that society progresses as well -- and a lot of good has been done by pushing the boundaries of what is normal.  We weren't built to be automated robots, and we weren't meant to live the same way as people who came before us.
2. I've become less devout over the past few years...though perhaps "devout" is not the word to best capture what I mean.  The best quote I can think of to describe my worldview is from Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."  Essentially, whatever details people cling to, whatever we tell ourselves, I think we should persistently call into question, test, doubt.  As Thomas Jefferson said, "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.  Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."  Instead of trying to memorize verses and pore over obscure Bible passages looking for very specific answers to my very specific questions, I more often doubt that there is an easy answer.  This leaves me scratching my head sometimes over how, exactly, God influences my judgment and decisions...but I find it dissatisfying when people match a truism with every question.  I think part of faith for me is that things will be okay even if we leave things ambiguous, even if we don't get them entirely right, even if there isn't an entirely right solution - after all, there are a lot of trade-offs, and what is optimal is not going to be flawless.  A lot of what motivates the way that I interact with people and my political decisions is a sense that none of us knows entirely what's best, and rarely is what's best a universal applied to all people in all contexts, so we need leniency and flexibility.  The same way that it drives some people crazy to leave matters of belief open-ended, it frustrates me when some people are more intent on nailing them down as quickly as possible, because it seems motivated more by fear of the unknown than by serious consideration and knowledge of God's will.

That's all I have in me tonight...possibly to be continued...

Where to start?

I'm such an inconsistent blogger, I sometimes wonder if anyone is still reading!  But just the same, I like writing for the sake of writing sometimes, so I'll try to get back into regularly putting down some of my thoughts.

I guess the best place to start is personal.  After years of hyper-long distance love, my guy is moving to Chicago.  It didn't hit me fully at first, but my excitement and joy keep building as his arrival gets closer.  I know that I'm likely to have some characteristic existential crisis - about being in one place for a while without the assurance of regular travel (which is both awesome and anxiety-inducing), about living with a long-term partner again (also both sweet and scary), about the general "what now?", now that I have the stability to focus on other parts of my life.  I want to build a more normal life with my guy while keeping our flexibility and craving for new adventures - it will be wonderful to take off to new places together instead of traveling around the world to see each other, and it will be fantastic to know that we'll call the same place home.  I'd love to take my career aspirations more seriously and figure out what I really want to do next, to take better care of myself by getting into a healthier routine, to cultivate deeper friendships, to become more involved in my community, and to get back in touch with my creative side.  It's the start of a new phase, and I can hardly wait til he lands here in a few weeks and we begin, officially!

A calling

To begin with, I'm not really a regular follower of the great modern evangelical blogger, Rachel Held Evans, but her post yesterday on egalitarianism is fantastic (you can check it out here).  One bit in particular that I loved reading:

I am troubled by the common teaching from the Church that “motherhood is a woman’s highest calling.” A woman’s highest calling is to follow Jesus Christ. End of story. And she can do that if she is married, single, divorced, widowed, a mother, or childless.

There are a lot of ways to be human, male or female - a lot of great ways.  I think as someone who falls into categories 3 and 6 above, and who at times has a difficult relationship with both of these choices (to the self doubting tune of, "What on earth am I doing with my life?"), I appreciate hearing affirmation of the value of diversity of lifestyle and experience.  My child-free status has been troubling me more than usual lately, and I think a lot of it's probably that I'm thirty and so many of the women my age are mothers or intend to become mothers as soon as possible, and I am still having none of that.  And along with being surrounded by new and expectant mothers, there's also a sort of cult of motherhood that suggests that you're missing something big if you don't have kids, and it's hard for me not to internalize that.  Women who love their children dearly claim they didn't know what love was until they had their children - one photo celebrating parenthood on facebook even claimed that one's "heart would be empty" if not for their children.  Even people who don't subscribe to so-called "traditional" gender roles often adhere strongly to this thinking - that only having kids can fulfill you, and naturally it only follows that if you don't have them, you are making a regrettable mistake that you don't even realize so you had better keep reconsidering it until you come to your senses.  


My natural tendency towards existential anxiety makes my seemingly counter-mommy-cultural (but actually not at all abnormal - as of two years ago, almost 1 in 5 women in their early 40s hadn't had any children) choice a difficult one.  Because so many women derive a sufficient sense of purpose from raising children, or at least claim to, I sometimes wonder if I will be able to find fulfillment while remaining child-free.  Mind you, having a child does not sound particularly fulfilling to me, and in fact I know that in many ways it would be mind numbing, but still - where do I find fulfillment when other people default to parenthood to meet this need?  


Zooming out a bit, I know this is part of my ongoing struggle for purpose, and not knowing if it's ever going to come from a career, or a really wonderful committed relationship, or a continual learning process...or some combination of these and a few other things.  Most of the time I just can't see the overarching point to the brief frenzy of one lifetime.  


I don't really have a better ending than that, so that's all for now.