In Jack’s Absence

Jack tells me that whenever I’ve gone on a trip without him, I come back just a little different.  More confident, more relaxed, somehow stronger.  Whenever he says this I change the subject, not because it’s not a compliment, but because I’m afraid of what that means for the rest of my life.  If I come back independent, confident, and strong to the point that my husband is startled, it must mean I’m less these things in my daily life.  I’ve written on this blog before about my insecurities about being a wife, my fears that maybe I only married because I thought I needed a man, and that I’ll never be truly brave and strong.

A couple weeks ago I stayed home, and Jack went on a trip, which I don’t recall happening in our marriage before.  As I dropped him off at the airport a 5am, I wondered if he would come home to a more independent and confident wife.

The first day, I reveled in my aloneness for a good 10 hours, then I got bored and lonely.  So I invited a friend over for dinner.

Wait, what?

Spending time with people is usually a much more complicated process for me.  I’m never sure if I’m lonely or just exhausted.  I don’t know whether I want to see people or just see them on facebook while a movie runs in the background.  I hem and haw and fret and just don’t know what I want.  And eventually I decide to see people, or not see people, but I don’t feel at ease.  I spend the evening thinking that maybe I would have preferred the opposite.

But for some reason, on the day Jack flew to Boston I knew that what I was feeling was loneliness, and what I wanted was company.  To know what I wanted was, I’m sorry to say, the strangest feeling.

The whole week without Jack was marked by me knowing myself… as if my desires had cleared their dusty throats and started singing with shocking clarity.  And I was like, wait, who are you guys and what is that beautiful song?

I made french toast for dinner three nights in a row.  I left dishes in the sink overnight, not worrying about whether I’d regret it in the morning because I knew I wouldn’t.  I had 10 people over for a study group and loved every minute.

It was such a delight-filled week, but I was also scared.  Jack would return, and I didn’t want to have to say, “the week you were gone was one of the best of my life.”  I brought my ambivalence in to my counselor, asking her why just the presence of Jack (who is a very kind man) muddles my own thoughts and desires.  And we talked and came to some realizations, and I cried, and I left with more wonder and joy and sadness than I had come with.  PEOPLE, THIS IS WHY I’LL BE IN THERAPY TWICE A WEEK FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.  That’s $12,000 a year, if you’re curious.  But it’s worth it.  It really is.  Go to therapy.

The day before Jack came home, I read a chapter from a book called She Who Is, by feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson.  The chapter was on conversion.  Johnson writes about how religious conversion is often talked about in terms of “disowning oneself,” but this language is only really useful to those in power.

She writes:

If pride be the primary block on the path to God, then indeed decentering the rapacious self is the work of grace.  But the situation is quite different when this language is applied to persons already relegated to the margins of significance and excluded from the exercise of self-definition.  For such persons, language of conversion as loss of self… functions in an ideological way to rob them of power, maintaining them in a subordinate position to the benefit of those who rule.

Okay, there’s more, but take a deep breath.  If you’re anything like me, your stomach is churning and your heart is saying “more!” and “stop!” simultaneously.

Johnson continues:

Analysis of women’s experience is replete with the realization that within patriarchal systems women’s primordial temptation is not to pride and self-assertion but rather to the lack of it, to diffuseness of personal center, overdependence on others for self-identity, drifting, and fear of recognizing one’s own competence.

(Johnson, She Who Is, 64)

And my first thought after reading this was, NO FUCKING WONDER humility never worked for me.  I remembered myself at 20, a new convert, presenting myself and my new faith to roommates, family, and friends.  I tried to appear joyful (because that’s the image I was supposed to project), but was dying of fear inside.  A few people, mostly men, men who were probably used to power and privilege, scoffed or laughed or bragged about themselves in response to me.  It was painful and infuriating.  But I thought they would come around if I was more humble, if I listened to them and laughed at their jokes and was nice and gentle.

When really, I probably should have thrown some tables around.

Diffuseness of personal center.  Overdependence on others for self identity.  Fear of one’s own competence.

It’s heartbreaking to admit that all these phrases describe me in relationship, even in my marriage to a truly humble man—the kind of man who, when I told him that I was more free and alive in his absence, responded, “let’s keep working on a way to let you be free and alive when I’m around, too.”

I do have parts of myself that are capable of harming others for my own benefit.  But most of my sin comes out of the belief that my identity is tied up in how others think of me, that my opinion of myself is secondary, and that I should check with someone else before doing, thinking, or even feeling anything.

Before reading this Johnson excerpt, I kind of worried that I was going about personal healing all wrong.  That all this therapy was “secular,” and God was impatiently tapping his foot waiting for me to get back to humbling myself and diffusing my personal center (God-construct, anyone?).  But Johnson gives me hope.

There’s theology and then there’s theology.  Some theology is like, “Oh, so that’s what perichoresis means.  Interesting,” and some theology makes you go, “Holy fuck, maybe God is good to me.”

A fundraising letter

Okay, this is like, really embarrassing, but…

I used to make fun of people who ran races for a cause.

I know! Who mocks fundraisers? I guess thought it was pretentious to link a personal fitness goal to a cause. “If you’re going to raise money,” I’d grumble to Jack, “just raise money. Don’t pretend your walking for 3 days has anything to do with it.”

Then I shuttered all my windows and fired Bob Cratchit.

The most I’d ever run before a few months ago was probably about 2 miles. Then one day my friend Grace told me, “the secret to running a long way is to tell yourself that you’re doing a great job, and to not let yourself stop, even if you want to stop.” The next day I ran ALL THE WAY AROUND GREEN LAKE without stopping.

If you don’t know, Greenlake is 2.8 miles, which doesn’t sound like a lot, BUT IT WAS A LOT. Greenlake was the barrier that separated me from People Who Are Fit. People Who Are Fit can run around Green Lake. The rest of us pick a day on our calendar to try to run, dread it all week, slog 1/3 of the way around the lake, give up, and tell ourselves, “I’m just not a runner, I guess.”

And oh my gosh, when I ran around Green Lake without stopping, I felt like I could do anything. Which is why it was so timely when, the following Sunday, my pastor made this announcement to our church:

“I’m trying to get a team together to run a 1/2 or full marathon in November so we can all feel really good about ourselves and brag to all our friends and finally prove that we are superior to others.”

At least that’s what I heard, but apparently that’s not what she said. She actually said, “I’m trying to get a team together to raise money for World Vision as they provide clean water to people in Africa.” But I didn’t hear that because it violated my core belief that it was pretentious to raise money while training for a half marathon. “If I’m going to raise money for World Vision, I’ll just do it,” I told myself. “It shouldn’t be connected to my personal fitness goals.”

My pastor spent the next few weeks reminding us that some people don’t have access to clean water. Some of those people are children. Children without clean water. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible.

But guess what? Africa is really far away. I don’t know anyone who lacks clean drinking water. Despite such tragedy, I can’t bring myself to raise money for anything so remote from my own life. So, I figure I have two options.

One, I could spend a few years drinking lattes and lamenting the Human Condition (which I plan on doing anyway, btw).

Or, I could joyfully give in to my narcissism, and connect my personal fitness goal to World Vision’s wonderful work in building fresh water wells. I can make it about me.

To get to the whole point of this post: I AM RUNNING A HALF MARATHON TO RAISE MONEY FOR WORLD VISION AS THEY PROVIDE CLEAN DRINKING WATER TO PEOPLE IN AFRICA. I AM ASKING YOU TO DONATE TO WORLD VISION ON MY BEHALF.

I would love to raise $100 per mile, for a total of $1,310. So, you can sponsor me for, say, one mile by donating $100. Then I will think of you for exactly one mile of my run.  Or, if you can give $10, I will yell your name into the heavens for that last little sprint at the end. You will have funded my poor broken narcissistic body over the damn finish line.

Here’s where you can donate. And thank you:

http://www.firstgiving.com/christinecanty

(One last thing. When I donate money, I’m always concerned about the integrity of the organization. I have a lot of trust in World Vision… they have been one of only two organizations allowed into certain closed countries because of their excellent work. If you have any questions about them or this project, feel free to call me. I would love to do some research on your behalf.)

Empathy, Listening, and Confidentiality; or, Everything I’ve Learned So Far.

I’m doing my first real counseling-related project through my school.  It’s confidential.

No no, listen.  IT’S CONFIDENTIAL.

There’s something so grown-up about having confidential work.  After my first meeting for this project, I went home feeling panicked and unqualified, but I still relished the moment where I said, “Jack, I’m going in the office to do some confidential paperwork.”

“Okay hon.”

“That means you can’t know about it.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s confidential.”

Sigh.  “Okay hon.”

Mostly for this project I sit and panic that I won’t have anything useful to say to the people I’m interacting with, or that I’ll say something really wrong and they’ll act on my words and end up suffering even more.  Then I think, “All I ever do is make thing worse.  I’m going to ruin people’s lives.  I should just stay in bed all day.”

Then during my next counseling appointment I tell Susan I feel depressed and I have no idea why.  And she says gently, “no idea why?” and I say, “Well, I’ve been telling myself daily that I suck.  Could that be related?”

Step one to becoming a therapist: learn your own patterns.

When I started my first year at Mars Hill I figured the main qualities of a good therapist were empathy and listening, and I believed that for the most part, I had those skills.  They just needed some fine-tuning.  Turns out my empathy and listening skills were in the wrong key, on the wrong instrument, and not even the right music.  Fine-tuning actually meant unlearning and relearning the song.

Empathy isn’t just understanding another’s emotions.  It involves knowing how you feel in the presence of the other.  Next time you’re with your best friend (or better, the friend you’re not sure that you really like), or your sister, or your kids, having a conversation or baking cookies or whatever, ask yourself what emotions you’re feeling right then.  It’s tough.  You’ll leave that person and realize you had no idea at the moment how you really felt… especially if you felt something not noble, like anger or boredom or disgust.  Most of us were never taught to listen to our quietest inner voices, even though they whisper truth about ourselves and others.

The prerequisite to empathy is knowing your own story.  We all know the surface events of our lives, but not always the underlying currents.  I thought I knew my own story before, but holy shit.  HOLY SHIT.  If you want to hear more, buy me a beer.  If you want to hear more and you’re related to me, buy me 2 beers.  If you want to hear more and were in any way involved in my conception and/or birth, please ignore this paragraph completely.

If you don’t know, really know, your own story, then your feeling of empathy for another is more likely the ache of your own unfinished business.

So much for empathy.  Let’s talk about listening.

I realized with a shock around February that I’m a terrible listener, even though I’ve always been a very gifted nodder and smiler.  But listening actually means recognizing a person’s patterns–what words does she repeat?  How does she draw you in, and how does she push you away?  What does she want you to believe about her?– and catching when those patterns are interrupted, say by anger or sadness or delight.

I’m getting better at this pattern recognition.  But it’s tough to look for another’s patterns while you’re tracking your own emotions and keeping your own life in mind.  You need to make sure you aren’t seeing the other through the lens of your mother’s criticism or your middle-child issues or whatever else you might have going on.

Sometimes, when I’m not preoccupied with proving myself to others (which is pretty much never… that would be one of my youngest-child issues), I have moments of empathy and listening that surprise me, and usually whoever I’m with, too.  I love watching friends connect the stories of their lives, take hold of their own heartache, and put words to their as-yet-unnamed strength.

It’s hard not to come home bursting with the beauty and tragedy of these stories… stories of friends I’ve known for years!  But I try not to spill everything to Jack, at least not in the first 3 minutes of walking in the door.  The hardest part of my future career might be confidentiality.  I need to start practicing.

Blogging and Spirituality

(I wrote this post for the “Blogging and Spirituality” series on experience.mhgs.edu.)

Everything that can possibly be said about blogging and spirituality is already written on the internet somewhere.  Same goes for blogging and politics.  And blogging and family.  And blogging and anything, really.  Blogging is like, so 2004, and analyzing blogging is so 2005, and that means I am four years too late in writing this post…which is pretty standard for how quickly I catch on to trends.  At least I’ve stopped talking about the Information Super-Highway (raise your hand if you came of age in 1997).

My husband Jack is never behind on internet trends.  Which is why, before starting this post, I asked him what he thought it meant to be “a spiritual person on the net.”  I hoped he could give me the 2011 answer and I, for once, would have archived proof of my coolness.  Take that, The Future!

Jack got really excited, as he always does when I ask him about the internet, and started speaking in engaging, witty, and fully edited paragraphs about blogging and spirituality.  I hate it when he does that.  He explained that everything online is instantly open to everyone else’s response, and he called this the “Rapid Feedback Cycle.”  You write, you publish, and you skip the process of meditating on your own writing because you already have 36 comments on your post (or, in my case, maybe two).  Contrast this with the Apostle Paul, Jack said, who sent off a letter and six months later the church in Corinth was shocked to read that their pastor did not approve of incest and adultery.  Imagine if Paul had a comments section at the end of his epistles!

This Rapid Feedback Cycle (oh please tell me someone got here by googling that phrase) is what makes blogging hard for me.  What can I say that won’t be criticized, debated, or objectified?  Will there be space for my voice before it’s drowned out?  Will my writing be my own, or will I numbly absorb the praise and criticism in my inbox?  Will my readers know that there’s flesh and a heart and tears behind my words?

I keep these questions close when I blog.  I write about normal things, like what I learn at Mars Hill, or the women in my church, or how many moles my Italian ancestry gave me.  But before I hit “publish,” I have to acknowledge (at least to myself) that I don’t understand this internet thing.  I wish I could see the faces of the people who read my blog, and ask them why they were searching for “celebrity teeth” or “restless in marriage.”  I’d like to tell them that I am not very smart and they shouldn’t listen to me, but to please still give me lots of attention and continue reading my blog.  It all seems so desperate and impersonal, both on my end and theirs.

And yet, relationship still happens in the rapid feedback cycle.  Sometimes I feel a stranger’s humanity as if it was radiating from my laptop.  Often, in the security of that private-yet-public blog space, I write words that are truer than even my best friend could coax out of me.  I don’t love the rapid feedback cycle (especially now that I know it has a name), but it might be worth dealing with.

My White Identity Development

I’m taking a class this term on Multicultural Issues in Counseling, and our mid-term assignment was to write a paper on our own racial identity development.

Part of my white privilege, I’ve learned, is that I never really need to think about my race.  I’ve been told through my schools, churches, government, and media that White is normal.  Not until college did anyone tell me that I belonged to a race and a culture like everyone else, and that maybe my idea of “normal” was culture-bound and oppressive.  And it wasn’t until last month, at the beginning of Multicultural class, that I began to see just how much racism I’ve inherited. Shouldn’t I have known this from elementary school?

I’m re-printing part of my midterm paper on my White identity development.  I’d love to hear your thoughts, but please keep in mind that there’s a tendency to change the topic from race into other forms of oppression (gender, class, sexual orientation, etc).  I’ve certainly done this, so I’m now trying to stay with the topic of race, even through the intense guilt and anger it brings up in me.  Also, know that I’m beginning a process that I wish I had started years ago.

Here it is:

On the first day of Multicultural Issues class, we were asked to discuss the question, “Who makes you dance?”  The “dance,” Professor Hollins explained, is one of anxiety followed by awkward cover-up.  Two panicked steps back and one embarrassed compensating step forward.  A nervous and silly-looking jig.  I thought, “does she seriously want us to name an ethnic group?”  I hoped, as I had in college, that I could admit to being a white victim of societal racism without naming the particulars of my own unconscious beliefs.  I tried to think up a softer answer than the one that jumped into my head.  But I knew that the professor was asking me to give that first answer, the one that nagged from the pit of my stomach.

I sat at a table with four other white people.  The first person said she grew up in the south with many racist attitudes, then when she went to Africa she understood how hard it was to be a minority.  This answer irritated me.

The second person said he felt uncomfortable in large groups when he was one of the only Whites.  Then he added as an afterthought that he felt uncomfortable in all large groups, so it was hard for him to tell how much of it had to do with ethnicity.  This answer irritated me too.

Then it was my turn.

I was furious.  Were these two really going to leave it at that?  Give their vague answers that touched the topic of race then revoked it?  Were they really sitting there claiming victimhood?  How would I look next to them when I gave my clearly racist answer?

I looked at my hands and said, “I, uh, find myself really anxious around… African American men?”  I didn’t mean for it to be a question, but I felt like I needed permission to say that.  Someone at the table nodded.  Then a flurry of words came out of my mouth, about movies and newspapers and the media and how I didn’t mean to develop these attitudes about Black men, but I did.  I suddenly felt that it was very urgent to emphasize my victimhood, and minimize the clear personal racism I had just expressed.  My table seemed just as nervous as I was.  There was silence, then we moved on to the next person.

When I got home I told my husband about this exercise, and started wondering out loud what personal experiences I had with African American men that might have led to my discomfort.  I haven’t had close Black friends since grade school.  I could name a few interactions with Black men that might have confirmed my stereotypes that they are “dangerous,” “angry” and “seductive,” but I could recall far more neutral or positive interactions.  I realized how deeply and unconsciously I must believe advertisements, movies, and news outlets in how they portray Black men.

In the Resistance and Immersion phase, Sue and Sue (2008) write that “for the first time, the [White] person begins to realize what racism is all about…Racism is seen everywhere (advertising, television, educational materials, interpersonal interactions, etc.).”  As I become more resolved to name racism where I see it, I realize how daunting that task is.  I cannot sit in public, watch television, or browse items at a store without noticing how our world caters to white people, and overtly or subtly oppresses people of color.

As I have read, written, and participated in this class, I’ve experienced a lot of what Sue and Sue (2008) describe as “guilt, shame, and anger toward oneself and other Whites” that typifies the resistance and immersion phase.  I worry that I must somehow pay the world back for my privilege, which is a terrifying and impossible task.  I feel guilty for how easily I was able to go to college and now graduate school because of my race and social class.  I am weighed down by the thought that I have not earned my keep in this world.  It’s a relief to know that guilt, shame, and anger are a normal part of the resistance and immersion phase.  Perhaps that means these feelings will not last forever (especially since they are helpful to no one).

Despite feeling so much shame, I am finding that I can stay in the hard and messy conversations much more than I was able to as an undergraduate.  During the lunch break on the second day of class, one student said that she wished Multicultural Issues had been offered the summer before our regular classes started.  But after a pause, everyone at the table agreed that we were glad to be taking the class now and not earlier.  The inner work we’ve done in the past nine months allows us to engage in conversations about race.

It’s paradoxical to me that the very privilege I feel so guilty about– the “luxury of the middle and upper classes” of being able to “sit and talk about things” (Sue and Sue, 2008, p.150)– is what allows me, little by little, to be engaged in conversations about race without completely shutting down. When Sue and Sue write that we have all inherited racist beliefs, I am able to understand that this sad truth is not an attack on my right to exist (it helps that Sue’s language is not personally attacking).  I do not hear the anger of oppressed minorities as a demand on me to somehow make up for years of past pain.  I am slowly able to enter conversations about race as an adult, learning how to be responsible for myself and the harm I’ve done without accepting burdens that are not mine to carry, and without backing out of the conversation in terrified self-defense.

A Counselee’s Week

I see my counselor, Susan, on Wednesdays.

On Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, I look forward to my next appointment.  I have conversations with Susan in my head, drawing on the memory of our last meeting and the many before that one.  I try to formulate her response to the things that frustrate and confuse me, like the seemingly normal conversation I had with a stranger that left me feeling angry and dirty and powerless.  Being unused to compassion, I practice it like a stubborn new sonata, transposing Susan’s kindness into the key of my everyday life.

Then on Sunday Jack and I rest from work and everything else, including imaginary conversations with therapists.  I read magazines and take a bath, or maybe two baths.

On Monday and Tuesday, I resume my imaginary conversations, but by then it’s been too many days since my last appointment and I’ve forgotten Susan.  Stronger and deeper memories eclipse her compassionate words from the previous week.  My imagination changes her into a more familiar figure, one whose kindness masks rage and disgust.  I try to win over this harsher imaginary counselor by being witty and insightful.  Then I worry about what she’ll think of me when I go back to her office and am not witty and insightful, but stumbling and confused.  I imagine she thinks I’m incompetent and wonders when someone at Mars Hill will tell me I’m not cut out to be a therapist.  On Monday and Tuesday, I’m afraid of Susan and her silent judgements.

When Wednesday comes again, I trudge in for my appointment, hoping to be witty and insightful, but within five minutes on her couch I’ve almost certainly a) stuttered, b) opened my mouth only to let out a tiny squeak, c) giggled inappropriately, or d) started crying.

A couple weeks ago I was in Susan’s office being particularly mean to myself, narrating the contempt that I’m convinced (on Mondays and Tuesdays) she feels toward me.  She had tears in her eyes during that hour, which I didn’t notice because I was too busy being afraid of her, but she pointed them out to me.  She asked if, in the following week, I would remember her compassion, or if I would instead believe the relentless criticism I project onto her.

I was honest… I told her I’d remember the compassion for a few days, then I’d have trouble holding on to it.  I didn’t tell her that Sunday is a day of rest from work and thinking about your therapist, and sometimes I take two baths, because that sounds crazy.

There are more technical ways to talk about therapy, using words like “transference” and “splitting” and “introject.”  But those words don’t feel right when it’s your life being examined, your heartache exposed, your butt on that damn couch.  I talk about my own counseling in pretty simple terms:  I’d like to remember Susan’s kindness from Wednesday to Wednesday.  Maybe once I can do that, her kindness toward me will become my own.

Endings

This week I had to say goodbye to my practicum group.  Before our last meeting, we talked about endings.  Our Practicum Facilitator, Jeanette, told us that people usually try to make goodbye less difficult.  We find something to get angry about, so we can brush our hands off and be done, good riddance!  Or, we create distance, convincing ourselves that we don’t need that person as much as we thought.

As Jeanette went through the list of ways we make parting easier, I heard my own voice at every airport: “I had a great time with you, and I’ll call when I get back.”  We’ll talk soon, I say mostly to myself, so this isn’t really an ending.  I borrow from the future to alleviate the pain of leaving.  And by doing that, I’ve missed so many chances to end well.

Good endings, Jeanette told us, involve remembering.  Ending well means telling stories.  It means recognizing that we’re at the end, and not cheapening the end by backing away from it.  It means celebrating and mourning, together.

So on our last day of practicum, we told stories.  We remembered each other, how we were in September, and how we are now.  I didn’t console myself that I would see these people next year.  I will see them, but we’ll never again be in a group together.  I told each person how I would remember them.  And I heard their words to me, which were almost too good to bear.

Then, the next day, I had my last one-on-one meeting with Jeanette, and that was a billion times worse.  I did not want to say goodbye to that woman.  How do you let go of the person who first confirmed that parts of your own story were dark and tragic, and told you your tears were right and good?  I just couldn’t.  So I didn’t say goodbye for the first 40 minutes.  Instead, I found less painful things to talk about while I creatively didn’t look at her.  Or swallow.

Then when our time was up, I panicked that if I wasn’t honest now, I might never again say anything that mattered.  So I took the world’s shakiest breath in and said, “I was scared to come here today, because I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”  I’m not sure if the last few words were audible or not, but she seemed to get it.  She looked surprised, choked out a soft, “oh,” and started crying.

We sat for two minutes, and I hope to remember those two minutes my whole life.  At the end she said, “You’ve touched my life, Christine, and I won’t ever forget you.”  I think she said that because it’s true, and because she knew I would have trouble believing it.  Love must be much bigger than I imagine.

Since then, I’ve been seeing endings everywhere.  What if I left each visit with my sister saying “I had a great visit, and now it’s finished.  We’ll never have another like it.”  What if I let myself comprehend that, next time I see my nieces, they will be different people entirely.  What if, on our anniversary, Jack and I told stories, celebrated, and mourned the quick passing of our newlywed years.  What if I told my sweet 2-year-old nephew, “I remember your first cries, and I will never hear them again.”

Endings are everywhere.  Death is everywhere.  Sometimes it seems like Good Friday lasts forever, and Easter is only a sad illusion.

Revelation

When I worked at Peet’s, I would often take a person’s order, and while I was making the drink I’d ask that same person, “Can I get something started for you?”

I have a real problem remembering faces.

Jack is very gracious to me when we watch movies, and I have to pause every five minutes to ask, “Wait… I’m so confused. Is that the new lover or the old lover?”

And Jack will be like, “THE OLD LOVER IS WHITE. THE NEW LOVER IS BLACK. HOW CAN YOU NOT KEEP THEM STRAIGHT?”

And I’m like, “They’re not straight?!? But what about the woman? Or was it two women? I’m so confused!”

Beyond just not remembering faces, I’m not a visual person. I don’t have a mind’s eye, and my real eyes barely work (contact prescription: -7.5). Recently a friend tried to teach me how to wear makeup, and she was talking about rose shades and berry shades and bluish browns and greenish purples and I was like PLEASE just give me a tube of lipstick that doesn’t make me look like I forgot to sleep last night.

I’m intimidated by all things painted, drawn, sketched, sculpted, or visually representative of something else. This is one of the reasons I’ve never read the last book of the Bible. Revelation is just too visual for me. (The other reason is the people who love Revelation. Or more precisely, people who love thinking that Revelation is about them. You know what I’m talking about.)

So when I saw “Apocalyptic Literature” on the syllabus for my New Testament class, I was intrigued. I was pretty sure no one at Mars Hill would claim that the European Union was a sign of the End Times.

At the beginning of the 3-hour class, the TA, Rob, talked about features of apocalyptic literature. Then, for the second half of class, he turned off the lights and read the book of Revelation, out loud, from beginning to end, with no interpretation or commentary.

Image after image bombarded us. Four-headed creatures and fire and swords. Sounds of thunder and weeping and rushing waters. An earthquake. Shining white linen with golden sashes. Pus-filled sores. A woman in labor and a dragon waiting open-mouthed at the end of her vagina to devour her child.

And it was too much. My poor imagination has not been worked so hard in years. It tried to keep up, but like a rusty old bike chain it snapped and got tangled in itself. And whenever it became too much, whenever I was tempted to go get a drink of water or check my email or stand up and beg Rob for mercy–whenever I thought I would burst into tears if my senses were strained any further, one of Revelation’s horrific creatures would cry,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!”

As if they, too, were full to the brim and begging for mercy.

At the zoo

Last month I went to the zoo with Jack, and we discovered the indoor tropical exhibit. The first cage held an ocelot, which I had never even heard of. I took one look at it and immediately told Jack three things:

1) I want one.

2) If I were in Harry Potter my patronus would be an ocelot.

3) That face just turned my insides to goo.

It was seriously the most beautiful creature I could imagine:

A few weeks later I was sitting in class thinking about ocelots when it hit me: what do the babies look like? I googled, “Ocelot babies” and found out that two kittens had been born to the Woodland Park Zoo ocelot in September. I immediately gmail-chatted three things to Jack:

1) Ocelots have babies.

2) Ocelot babies are near my house.

3) There is a God.

Yesterday my friend and co-student asked if I wanted to go to the zoo and talk. It seemed like a good place to go on a February afternoon. Because February is tough, especially for students. It’s a good month for ruminating and brooding. I liked the idea of brooding with Grace while watching otters play. It seemed like such a ironic, both/and, already-but-not-yet, ambivalent, “hold everything in tension” thing to do.

When I saw the sun this morning I thought, “No no no, this takes away February’s usefulness. How can I possibly brood when the sun’s out?” But of course, it was wonderful. The animals were displaying their best quirky/horny spring behavior. AND. The ocelot kittens were to be in their exhibit at 2:30.

We had an hour to kill, so we meandered towards the day-and-night exhibit and talked. February has been hard. Grace talked about her tears, and how she had hoped that Mars Hill would erase them, but instead people call them a gift. I’ve been realizing my own secret fantasy that Mars Hill would teach me how to be bold and outspoken, so I could be seen and heard and fully accepted.

Mars Hill is not known for fixing problems. One of our professors says that a therapist’s job is to make things worse before making them better. I’m beginning to think that the “better” is much more beautiful and painful than I can now imagine.

There’s a little walkway between the zoo’s indoor day and night exhibits. The walls are painted with dark, shadowy forest against a night sky. A Wendell Berry poem leads you from the day exit to the night entrance:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

We stopped. “I’m reading that really differently today,” said Grace.

Yes, I thought, me too. It’s not just about bats and owls today.

Maybe things don’t get better. Maybe I will be lonely and unseen. Maybe Grace will always have tears. Maybe everything is always and forever dark.

We paused, and Grace finished both our thoughts: “But it’s been traveled before.”

Russia, kitchen tables, and gratitude

Usually when people ask what I studied in college, I say “Russian,” even though I double majored in Russian and Comparative Literature (or, as I delighted in calling it when I was 20, “Cliterature”).  If I admit to my literature degree, people ask if I’ve read Anna Karenina, or what I think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism, and I’m forced to admit that I am poorly read and lack critical thinking skills.  But people generally don’t know anything about Russian, and I enjoy appearing impressive, so I stick with the short story.

Like a lot of college students, I studied abroad during my Junior year.  I flew to Russia in January, because if you’re going to live in Russia you might as well see some real winter.  After I landed in the country that had almost killed me 5 years before (see, Anaphylaxis: a severe allergic reaction), I walked out of customs to a swarm of sneering taxi drivers.  I was supposed to see a man named Andrei holding a sign with my name, but I didn’t.  I still remember his name was “Andrei” because I sat on my suitcase for a whole hour, fending off taxi drivers and chanting his name as if I could will him to appear.

Andrei finally showed up carrying a sign that said “Kristin Kachison,” which was a good attempt at my then last name, Hutchison.  A for effort, Andrei!  Or if you want Russian grades, 5 for effort.  Except Russians don’t grade their children on effort, only performance.  You fail!

Andrei drove me to the small city where I would live for the next 6 months, and delivered me to the apartment door of my host family.  I had my own bedroom, and there was a good sized living room.  But I was to spend most of my time in the smallest room: the kitchen.

My mom once wrote an essay, after my grandma died, about kitchen tables.  She said that women’s lives center around kitchen tables: big ones, like the one I grew up with in Portland; or small ones, as my mom remembered from her childhood in a Brooklyn apartment.  Being a knowledgeable and righteous 15-year-old, I told her that was ancient and unfeminist.

But then I logged, oh gosh, probably over 400 hours on that tiny, yellowed, plastic-covered table that was crammed against the only free wall in a cramped Russian kitchen.  I would drink tea while my restless host mom cooked and sighed and listened to me “practice my Russian.”  Which meant I sat and complained about the language.  But at least I complained in Russian.

Every once in a while she’d look over the top of her glasses at me and raise her eyebrows, and I thought I might be in trouble.  But I came to learn that look meant something like, “This is life, girl.  Choose your response.”  It was the look she gave me on her birthday, when I came home and asked where her husband was.  She raised her eyebrows slowly so her glasses slid down her nose, looked at me over the rims, and said, “He… celebrated… my birthday all day at work, and now he’s lying down ill.”

This is life, girl.  Choose your response. That look bore so much love and sadness.

One of the best days in my life was on my 3rd trip to Russia, last year.  I walked the old route to my school and thought about how many people had loved and sheltered that wide-eyed 20-year-old Christine.  My host mom.  The American missionary who invited me to live with her, even though I never cleaned anything.  The Russian teachers who couldn’t live off their salaries yet delighted in their students.  The other wide-eyed 20-year-old girl in the English class that I visited, who raised her hand and said carefully, “I would like… to meet you… to drink coffee and talk.”  She ended up coming to my wedding four years later.

I like to think that one of the best days of my life was characterized by gratitude.  As I left on the train later that night, I was overwhelmed with it.