Belfast, N. Ireland

Upon certain subjects, there can be no end to musings. Upon some events, ideas, or practices, we must ruminate continually, never doubting their relevance or perhaps even profundity. For me, storytelling is such a practice. Good stories are like rivers, eroding away our facades to reveal haunting and beautiful images of what it means to be human. Stories shape us. They are forces that give us meaning, whispers compelling us to ‘go’ and ‘do.’ Thus, I can guarantee that many more “On storytelling” musings will be posted here in the future.

Tonight I attended a lovely session of storytelling at the Black Box in Belfast. Created and constructed by Pádraig Ó Tuama and Paul Doran, the event is called Tenx9 (as in ten by nine) and is structured around nine people sharing ten minute stories of their life. For this event, the stories must be true (in the “it actually happened” sense) rather than mere exercises in creative writing, illustrative metaphor, or symbolic parable. At Tenx9, real folks tell real stories. Tonight’s theme was “Things my parents never told me.” Calling upon the genres of comedy, poetry, and tragedy, storytellers imparted tales of their pasts. Some of these stories evoked roaring laughter and the applause that follows a well-told comedic line. Others elicited tears and a joyous sorrow that exists when the realization of the terrible brokenness of the world is coupled with an appreciation of the beauty found within, an awe of the “holy damned mess of the world’s suffering beauty,” to borrow a line from my brother’s blog.

We cannot, nor should we every try to, escape from stories. As 20^th century American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote, “the Universe if made of stories, not of atoms.” Despite the faulty science, she observes a truth: we are nothing if not our stories. With training in the discipline of history, I believe firmly in the forming nature of stories. Through our stories, we learn who we are, who others are, and how we exist in our orbit with them.

In my current understanding, we have two essential categories of stories: the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (to borrow Pete Rollins’ line) and the stories we tell ourselves about others. (Conversely, these ‘others’ do the same, but to them, of course, they are not ‘others’ and thus I did not create separate categories for these stories.) Both of these form our sense of identity. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves grant us a sense of placement in the chaos and order of the world. We draw on the stories of our past in order to inform our present.

I come from a family of storytellers. It is what we do. It is a rarity when table fellowship in my paternal grandparents’ home does not consist of my grandmother sharing stories of the family. The memories of who we were and are remain alive in the stories she tell us about us. By telling these stories, we keep them always in our vision and thereupon grant them significance and influence in the patterning of our days ahead. Thus, these stories exist both in our embrace of ‘the past that lies before us’ (to borrow John Paul Lederach’s phrase)[1] as well as in the proleptic notion of speaking of a reality that has not yet come to pass, one that we hope to live into, to invite into existence. In other words, we leap from our stories, while at the same time leaping into them. We tell ourselves a story we want to be true, a story we wish was true already. As I mentioned in my post On religion, Peter Rollins argues that this is the nature of Facebook. It is an idealized portrait of ourselves. Facebook is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, that we want others to believe actually represents who we are. And thus it is the story we ourselves want to believe is truly who we are. Trappist monk Thomas Merton tell us that only through contemplation can we strip away the layers of the false self and find our true identity in the union of love and dialogue with God. Thus, stories we tell ourselves about ourselves can be instructive and guiding while at the same time being full of deceit and thus seduce us to be less than we should.

The stories we tell ourselves about others equally informs our sense of identity, for we have a proclivity towards identifying ourselves by what we are not in relation to who others are. “I am me because I am not you.” Here in Northern Ireland we see this clearly: the Protestant identity, so it seems to me, is significantly formed in opposition to the Catholic identity and vice versa. In my experience back home in the American South (though I know this observation is not unique to the South), some folks seem to understand their identity as a Christian in significant part due to their perceptions of Muslims. In other words, who I am (or my understanding of who I am) becomes greatly influenced by my understanding of others are, or who they are not. Because of this, the stories we tell ourselves about others are dear to us, in much the same way that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are. If my perception of myself is contingent both on my stories of self and other, then I need to keep the other close so as to maintain my sense of identity. I need to know their story well so that I know my own, at least what my story is not. Thus the paradox: that while we often form our understanding of self by trying to extend the gap between ourselves and others, those whom we are not like, we are actually at the same time keeping those very people close to us, always within sight and sound, for our identity finds its place over against theirs. Thus, to let go of them is to let go of ourselves.

Granted, this exploration of stories constructed about others has just been traversed in a negative light. But certainly, these stories are not only formed in negative reaction to others. They do not only have negative consequences. This, however, calls us to the terribly important task of revision, of respect. The word respect comes from the Latin spectare meaning ‘to look,’ and thus etymologically, respect means literally ‘to look again.’ To respect others and their stories, then, means to take another look, refusing to let the stories we originally constructed of them form the final picture of their identity in our minds. Respect allows us to transcend fear, making it possible to embrace the “mystery of peace,” which Lederach says is found precisely “in the nature and quality of relationships developed with those most feared.”[2]

Respect therefore compels us to revision, to a rewriting of the story we had first composed. When we rewrite these stories, we now take into account the stories others tell about themselves. We allow our understanding of them to be influenced by their understanding of themselves. Then, if we are willing to wade into even more treacherous waters, we allow ourselves to hear the stories others tell about us. Just as we tell ourselves stories about others, so others do the same about us. We must always remember that we have a life in the imagination of the other.

This is the tremendous importance of what is known as revisionist history. For example, in most U.S. grade schools, state-structured curriculum informs students primarily of patriotic stories of the past, those that involve triumph, glory, and the creation of the ‘noble idea’ that was the United States. These stories are necessarily told from the perspective of the victors, for that is one of triumph’s many benefits. We form our understanding of who we are as Americans based upon these stories. But what happens when we begin to read the accounts of African slaves forcibly removed from their homes and brought to build the country we so often praise as the embodiment of freedom? What happens when we hear the testimonies of Native Americans butchered and expelled as “unfortunate albeit necessary casualties” in the wake of Manifest Destiny? Our understanding of who we are as Americans should be fundamentally altered by the stories these others tell us about who they perceive us to be.

In short, this is why an event like Tenx9 is so helpful. It is a space created for encounters, for the exploration of identity, a time of abiding in the orbit of others, where we exchange stories in the hopes of mutual edification. As iron sharpens iron, so we can sharpen each other through our storytelling. In the end, what choice do we have but to tell each other stories? They determine who we perceive we are and who we perceive others to be, and we cannot escape each other. As the Irish proverb says, “it is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”

I welcome your thoughts.

Belfast, N. Ireland

I recently began reading Pádraig Ó Tuama’s book of poetry Readings from the Book of Exile (London: Canterbury Press Norwich, 2012). Insightful in its profundity and subtlety, his poetry pushes us to the edge of our pods of comfort and forces us to look beyond, to others and our communion with them. I hope to offer an occasional reflection on some of his verses, and where he permits me, post pieces on here. Pádraig has graciously allowed me to post his poem “Affirmative Action” here now.

Pádraig’s poetry on occasion draws on the poetic nature of the Irish language. He opens his book with an exploration of exile, entitling his poem “Deoraíocht,” the Irish word for exile. He explains in a footnote that the word carries the implication of “to be in a state of tears.” In “Affirmative Action,” Pádraig discusses, via Irish linguistics, the importance of marrying our words to our actions. To me, this ties in well with my earlier discussions of Peter Rollins’ notions of understanding our beliefs as our actions rather than our espoused doctrines or values. My words, then – while carrying significance and weight, and certainly with a power that can simultaneously encourage and demean – do not reveal my positions, indicate my priorities, or point to what I find meaningful in nearly as profound a way as my actions. St. Francis of Assisi is often regarded as saying, “Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words.” We convey our beliefs and our values more through concrete, observable doings (or not-doings) and less through well-articulated language. With that, I offer Pádraig Ó Tuama’s “Affirmative Action” and invite your reactions.

Affirmative Action

In the Irish language, there is not a word for ‘yes’. There is
not a word for ‘no’ either.

You can only answer in the affirmative – you can say ‘I
will’, or ‘I won’t’. You can say ‘I can’. You can say ‘I am’
or ‘I am not.

It is appropriate that a language so poetic as to suggest
a bridge between the world for exile and the word for
weeping would be rooted in an earthy solidity that requires
answers to be linked to an action. Affirmative answers are
indicated by action.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Let your yes be seen in your doing.

Let your no be not-doing.

If you say yes, but do-not-do, it is a no.

So, forget all your talk.

Tell me by what you do.

Belfast, N. Ireland

(What I am writing here is not an analysis or representation of Ikon. It is an analysis of my interpretation of Ikon.)

Tonight, I attended my first Ikon event. What is Ikon you ask? For me, describing Ikon is like trying to describe what it is like to feel warmth to someone who has never felt it. Warmth is something to be experienced. Likewise, Ikon is a unique experiential space that briefly inhabits a place, so that it exists N-O-W-H-E-R-E – that is, simultaneously nowhere and now here. Having said that, allow me to share Ikon’s description of itself:

Inhabiting a space on the outer edges of religious life, we are a Belfast-based collective who offer anarchic experiments in transformance art. Challenging the distinction between theist and atheist, faith and no faith our main gathering employs a cocktail of live music, visual imagery, soundscapes, theatre, ritual and reflection in an attempt to open up the possibility of a theodramatic event.

What Ikon is, is other. And that was tonight’s theme: others. As we entered the room, my friend Pádraig stamped our foreheads with artistically scripted ink of the word other. We sat in a semicircle around a chess table where two people “played” chess. I use the quotation marks because, having played chess competitively as a kid (…yeah, I know), what they played was in no way “real” chess. No observable rhyme or reason existed to the pattern of moves. I still do not quite know how to interpret it… Through music, video, costume, call-and-response, and ritual, we shifted bewilderingly through an exploration of others, what we don’t know about them, and in turn what we don’t know of ourselves. As Pádraig said at the closing, when we meet someone and we are asked who we are, the most honest response is to reply, “I will let you know who I am when I learn who I am with you,” for we are only a little bit of ourselves each day. We are one bit today and another bit tomorrow. We learn who we are in relation to our other.

At the start of the evening, a voice came through the speakers, deep and morphed so that the gender was for all purposes indistinguishable. “Hell is other people,” it began. We learned that we fear others, scared of what they might say or do. The voice told us that the others were about to speak a word, but we should hush it, for we already knew what that word was. And it was many words, words which called forth images of terror and destruction. But at the end of the evening, a voice came through the speakers again, but this time it was the clear voice of a woman. “Hell is other people,” she too began. Her script seemed identical until she arrived at the place where the others speak their word, the word we are not supposed to hear because we already know what it is. And it is many words, but these words called forth images of community and good living.

I do not know what my friends at Ikon intended to convey with any of their activities, for as Pádraig answered when I asked him if they explain anything once it is over, he said (and I paraphrase), “Nothing. It is a silent canvas on which you create your interpretation.” For me, then, at the beginning of the evening, before our exploration into the darkness and mystery of the other, the voice is ominous and amorphous, much like the voice you hear in the films when a kidnapper disguises his voice when speaking to the parents of the captured child. The words of the other that this voice spoke brought fear and anxiety. The second voice, emerging in the midst of the dark mystery of the other, is now very human, and here, it is a woman. Almost all the words she speaks are the same as the first voice, but now her final words bring different images to mind, create different feelings, of security and shelter. To me, this was an artistic expression of the human transformation that is prone to occur when we dive into the mysteriousness of the other whom we’ve always feared. What once was foreboding and nigh unto demonic has become familiar. The words have essentially remained the same, but we now hear them differently.

Our final act of the evening was to come forward, like in the Eucharistic practices of the church, and take from a bowl a small cut piece of a mirror. The square was no more than half an inch on each side. Pádraig told us that just as we are never fully who we are, so we can never fully see ourselves, but only a bit at time. In our piece of mirror, we experience this literally, able to see only a small fraction of our whole physical self. But the part that we now see through the broken mirror in our fingers may very well be a part of ourselves we have never truly noticed before, never stop to consider before, for amidst the context of our whole self, it becomes lost and insignificant. But the tiny reflective glass allows us focus and thus discovery.

Though it was not stated explicitly at the event, this was to me a representation of the power of our encounters with others. As I have now repeatedly quoted, an Irish proverb suggests, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” As we embrace our living in the shelter of others, we begin to see, through our encounters and interactions with the brokenness of each other, a bit of ourselves that we may never have noticed, that was “lost and insignificant” in the swirling sea of who we imagined ourselves to be. Thus, through intimate connection with our other, we both learn something of them that we may never have believed could be true while at the same time learning something of ourselves that we never stopped to notice. And in so doing, we realize just how much of ourselves we do not know, cannot know, and will never know. So when we are asked who we are, all we really can say in the full honesty of the moment, is, “I don’t know. Let’s talk.”

Belfast, N. Ireland

(Save for occasional tweaks, this reflections remains as I originally wrote it for Thanksgiving 2010. I thought I would recycle it here. I send a special shout out to Lee C. Camp and the Tokens Show for inspiring this reflection after their November 2010 production “The Welcome Table” at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN. Hear the podcast here.)

For some, tolerance is a noble endeavor. Many speak of the need to tolerate other religions, other viewpoints, other orientations, other cultures, or maybe even simply other denominations. But for others, and hopefully for Christians (as that is my faith background), tolerance does not go far enough. Tolerance merely allows the other to speak without actually taking the time to listen and understand. Tolerance says the other can stay but just so long as we don’t have to genuinely engage one another. Tolerance, itself, is not a Christian discipline. Christianity teaches hospitality.

Hospitality takes tolerance to the next level. It is inviting, welcoming, and gracious. Hospitality encourages the other to speak, and then listens, and engages the other in their story. Tolerance says, ‘You may stay, but on your side of town.’ Hospitality, though, is an open door. It means inviting the nationalist or unionist enemy, the poor immigrant, the wanderer, the stranger, the friend to come inside and be at home. Hospitality invites everyone to the welcome table, to break bread and fellowship.

Since the creation of the Church, eating together has been a central component of Christian practice. The book of Acts tell us that the disciples met in each other’s houses for the ‘breaking of bread; they shared their food gladly and generously’ (2:42). Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is constantly seen participating in meals, eating with those mainstream society claimed should not be welcome at the table: tax collectors, debtors, prostitutes. In short, the ‘other.’

Many of the parables Jesus told describing God’s kingdom centered around the image of a feast table where the poor and outcast are ushered in off the street to share in the King’s celebration meal. The Gospels record Jesus performing two miracles pertaining to food: the feeding of the 4,000 and the feeding of the 5,000. For some scholars, particularly referring to the Gospel of Mark, the miraculous nature (or at least emphasis) of these stories is not the multiplication of the food, but rather the fact that there was enough for everyone. This is God’s kingdom. All of people’s basic needs are met. No one has more than they need, and no one has less. Everyone has enough. The meal was a microcosm of this now-and-not-yet-fully reality, but the disciples translated this ethic into all areas of their lives, sharing all they had so that all were provided for. As practitioner and theologian Ched Myers has said, the disciples, in keeping with the example set by Jesus, created an economy of enough within a cosmology of grace.

At the welcome table, everyone is disarmed, and society’s classes are destroyed. As ethicist and theologian John Howard Yoder notes, equality is present at the table as the meal provides the space for the ‘condemnation of economic segregation.’ (It seems I did not have this cited in the original reflection, but I am pretty sure this is from Body Politics). At the table, host and guest are made one as everyone eats together. Power structures do not exist at the welcome table, only relationship and fellowship. The powerful are dethroned, and the poor are exalted – all by the sharing of a meal.

The night before Jesus was killed by the powers of his day, he broke bread with those closest to him, those with whom he had shared his life of ministry – essentially, his community. The welcome table is the lifeblood of community. We come together with those with whom we live and work so that we might encourage and strengthen one another in our vocations. The meal provides the opportunity for everyone to break from life’s hectic routines (except for maybe the cooks!) and be reminded of the presence of God and the vitality of community.

During the holiday seasons, the meal is often the central point of the seasons’ events. For many families, the meal is a chance to regroup and reconnect after a long day, or perhaps after many months, as is often the case for extended families. The meal is a place to be renewed and rejuvenated, and perhaps even to reconcile offenses. In my family, the table has always provided the occasion for laughter, tears, and meaningful conversations. Some of the most important lessons and conversations of my life have occurred around the meal table. Table fellowship has continued to be the essence of our family.

Hospitality and the welcome table are central components of many, many cultures. Within Islam, for example, one of the many names for God is hospitality. In Palestine, many families, especially the poorer ones, share a meal sitting in a circle, whether at the table or on the floor, and everyone eats from a single dish laid at the center of the circle. This beautiful practice illuminates equality. No one sits above or below anyone else, and no one has a greater access to more food. Everyone is the same. If inequality exists at all, then it is in favor of the guest, who is honored and cherished.

Jesus describes and incarnates God’s kingdom as such an event. All are provided for, all are welcome, and no leaves wanting. There is enough for everyone. During this Thanksgiving season, regardless of the origins or developments of this holiday, this kingdom can be celebrated. As we gather as family and friends, we both rejoice in the hospitality and fellowship that we experience but also are mindful of those who are alone. As Dickens so profoundly notes in A Christmas Carol, this season of the year is one where ‘want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices.’ May we always and in all ways extend the welcome table to those who so intensely feel this want and are left in the cold of despair and involuntary solitude. And may we also celebrate this economy of enough, dwelling in the shelter of each other and fellowshipping in the breaking of bread, as we both literally and paradigmatically participate in God’s beloved community.

Originally published this on the Tokens Show Blog on July 16, 2015. 

One such read is Pádraig Ó Tuama’s brilliant new work In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World. In it, he writes of guiding young students in a prayer exercise he calls an “imagination walk”: with closed eyes, they imagine themselves in a pleasant place and visualize a stranger approaching. This stranger, Pádraig tells them, is Jesus, and after a few minutes of silence, Pádraig asks about their conversations with the Christ of their imagination. One teenage boy said the Jesus he met in the woods asked him three questions: “How would you describe today? Have you seen anything interesting along the way? And: Is it working?” These questions struck Pádraig as an insightful “invitation to mindfulness.” Later, he observes that many have claimed three other questions as central to understanding life: Who am I? Where I am going? What am I supposed to do?  When I read this a few weeks ago, though, I felt a question was missing to both sets of three, though I could not yet name it.

I realized this was the missing question to the triplets above: What are you bringing with you? This question directs us back to ourselves, inviting an awareness of our stories that can be both discomforting and disarming. So often what we bring are our wounds and woundings, the stories we tell of those, and the truths and untruths we feel about ourselves because of those stories.

Yet, though we share these stories with much fear and trepidation, it’s from our wounds that we humans come closer to each other. It’s the wounds that let us connect in the deepest ways; they are the cracks in the hard protective exteriors we build around ourselves. For me, I’m drawn in when I recognize and resonate with the pain of another. Whether in a conflict-zone, prison, therapy circle, Tenx9 storytelling event, or coffee shop, I have come to see wounds as opportunities for connection, rather than just scab marks on the flesh of our stories. These wounds and woundings burden us and baggage us, and in so doing, they might bless us as well, as they open us up to connection and community.

We tend to speak of “baggage” negatively, naming things unwelcome, unhelpful, and undefining. The word itself implies externality, something outside ourselves. But the experiences I’ve always named for myself as baggage are neither external nor necessarily negative. They are certainly painful, but in that pain, they’ve been (trans)formative, watershed experiences. They’ve added further to the definition of who I am and provided more opportunities to connect with others who have hurt and cried and longed and regretted and collapsed and recovered and been ashamed. My “baggage” still makes me nervous to fully open to someone. I fear their response: Will they pull away, judge, reject, run? But I keep finding that when I show up and share what I’m bringing with me—all my “dirt,” to borrow a different metaphor—the stories of others tend to mirror my own. We can’t be ashamed of our stories. We need to own them, because they often own us.

I dislike the way we use the word “dirt” in these contexts. Our degrading usage strikes me as only possible due to our alienation from the land. The Genesis creation story says humankind came to life from the dirt of the earth and the breath of God. It takes both soil and spirit for us to be. Nevertheless, we dishonor dirt and therefore assign its name to our dishonorable stories. And so we offer forth our “dirt” with vulnerability and anxiety. On the other side, when I am privileged enough to receive the “dirt” of another, my task seems simple: to hold and honor the story. Is there anything else to say but thank you; I’m sorry; you’re okay; and you are loved? When I receive this response, I breathe. I breathe from relief, I breathe with hope, I breathe with joy, I breathe the blessing of welcome. We offer our “dirt,” holding our breaths in hopes that the blessings of welcome and love may grow, and if they do, we breathe again. It is from this offering of dirt, and from the breath of welcomed relief, that the life of relationship often springs forth, for life is easier when shared with people who understand.

After all, dirt and breath are the genesis of life.

Sometimes, I take notes in haikus. John Paul Lederach taught me this, though I’ve never met the man. In his brilliant book The Moral Imagination, he writes of the art of haiku as the art of finding simplicity on the other side of complexity. I have found that listening at conferences or meetings through the filter of haiku forces me to listen for rhythm and complex simplicities. We tend to only hear 10% of what’s said anyway; haikus are an honest way of acknowledging and embracing our discriminatory listening by naming and engaging it from the get-go.

Twice now in Northern Ireland, I’ve used haiku to express my listening. The first time was in 2013 at a conference called Genderpeace; the second was today at a forum of churches in the North. Both involved my good friend Pádraig Ó Tuama, who was invited to address the relationship of churches to LGBTQ people. I want to share some of those haikus here, followed by a few lines of context.

(Haikus are three lines of poetry, following a syllable count of 5-7-5.)

“You need brain surgery.”
Panic. Tears. What shall we do?
“Oh, it’s not you.” Whoops.

Context: A woman shared of the terrible fear when doctors told her she needed brain surgery after her examination for migraines. After a weekend filled with dread, tears, and prayers, she received notice from the hospital that the surgery notification was meant for someone else: she was fine. 

“My school was all boys.
We called some of them ‘homos.’
Maybe we made them…”

Context: A older man addressed Pádraig, a gay theologian. He told Pádraig that during his primary school, “there weren’t really gay people. We called them ‘homos.'” He then wondered if Pádraig thought single-sex primary schools, like the one this man attended as a child, was in any way responsible for “producing” more gay people. Pádraig spoke about the limitation of questions of causation, because of their direct relationship to questions of “cure.”

A “therapist” said:
“You don’t have, you give girls sex.”
That’s when I walked out.

Context: When Pádraig was nineteen, it was “strongly suggested” that he attend “reparative therapy” for his sexual orientation. Scared and keen to keep his connection with his faith community, Pádraig attended sessions for one year with an individual with little theological and less therapeutic training. It took language to save Pádraig from this “hell,” as he described it with great deliberateness. He confessed to his “therapist” that he didn’t know what there was to “repair” as he had never wanted to have sex with a woman. In fact, he would find it dishonoring to a woman to have sex with her only to prove his masculinity. The “therapist” replied: “Ah, but see–you don’t have sex with a woman; you give a woman sex.” This verb choice opened the gates of hell so that Pádraig could walk free. 

D-O-G theology:
“Have you ever considered
That you might be wrong?”

Jesus asked, “And what
Were you arguing about?
And who bled from it?”

Be care-full with words;
They may feel like theory, but
People go home to bleed.

Context: Pádraig explained that Snoopy is one of his favorite theologians. In a comic strip once, Charlie Brown said he hoped Snoopy had a good title for the theology book he was writing. Snoopy said his title was perfect: “Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?” At the invitation of the forum, Pádraig invited the gatherers into a generous space of discussion about the inclusion of LGBTQ people in their churches. As a foundational text, he used Jesus’ question to his disciples in Mark 9: “What were you arguing about along the way?” The writer of the Gospel of Mark doesn’t use the word “way” exclusively in reference to physical roads and paths; rather, he uses it more broadly as well, in reference to the journey of life and discipleship, a way of being. Pádraig proposed a theology of argument: In addition to
what we’re arguing about along our Way, it matters how we argue. Pádraig spoke of beatings, exorcisms, and curses he’s endured in his life from Christians because his capacity for romantic love had different recipients than theirs. He’s had friends who have died, friends who have bled. He wondered, if Jesus were to enter the halls of our churches, might he ask us, “And what have you been arguing about along the Way? How did you argue about it? And who bled because of it?” 

An Irish proverb translates, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” The Irish word scáth, translated here as shelter, can also be translated shadow: sometimes, we are shelter for each other; sometimes, we shadow each other. Disagreeing with each other is grand; it keeps life less boring. But how do we disagree and still seek each other’s safety? How do we differ and still offer shelter? Pádraig is uninterested in colonizing difference to create conformity. Difference fascinates him. He finds it far more important to work on how we argue and less on what we argue about. I tend to agree. I want to argue–moreover, live–in a way that doesn’t make people bleed. I find it despicable that Christians have spoken of and to LGBTQ people in such a way that those people do not feel welcome in the halls of their own faith, safe in the streets of their own cities, comfortable in the fabric of their own skin. To bludgeon others with our own convictions of the morality of their identity is a deep act of violence, and those of us guilty of such violence must engage in even deeper repentance.

So, at the end of my Wednesday, these three questions move in my gut:
And what were you arguing about along the Way?
Who bled?
Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?

This piece was originally published on the Tokens Show Blog on Sept 17, 2015. 

I am not a mother. This must be clear as I begin writing thoughts that involve wombs: I don’t have one and never will.

I never spent much time thinking about wombs. I suppose the word has most often conjured up images associated with the birth story of Jesus: stars, horses, mangers, my mind-portrait of Mary, a bearded Joseph, etc. I like this birth story, so I don’t mind the association.

I also think of my father, a family practice physician of twenty-five years who specializes in obstetrics. By the time we moved away from the small town of Jellico where I grew up, my dad had delivered over 1,000 babies. The town itself had less than 3,000 people. My dad’s vocation and his livelihood—and thereupon the family’s—have been intimately connected to wombs. Even so, I have never given them much thought.

A few weeks ago in Palestine, however, I heard a Jewish Israeli man mention wombs. He explained that in Hebrew and Arabic, the etymological roots of the words compassion and womb are the same. A womb is a place inside a woman where another human grows and takes shape. The womb is the mother’s way of making space inside herself for her child. Just so, the man offered, compassion is creating space inside ourselves for another—for another’s stories, identities, and feelings.

Again, I am not a mother, but like all of us, I’ve spoken with mothers, and any mother will say that wombs, while so often loving spaces of nurture and joy, are also spaces of pain. In an interview by Krista Tippett, Walter Brueggemann speaks of the womb as “the capacity of a mother to totally give one’s self over to the need and reality and identity of the child.” This whole process, he acknowledges, is a “terrible inconvenience”—whereupon Krista delightfully informs that she would know better than him about such things—for it is painful and cumbersome.

As I have traveled through Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland over the last six weeks, interviewing dozens of people on their experiences of conflict and peace, I am struck by the aptness of the above understandings of compassion. In the experience of compassion, we shorten the distance between ourselves and the recipients of our compassion by creating inside ourselves a new space where we can hold their pain and stories alongside our own.

Today, they have built a friendship; not one floating in naïve, romantic euphoria, but one grounded in the womb-like pain of compassion. From just a few days after her father’s murder, Jo knew she needed to make something positive of such tragedy, and she set out to understand those responsible for his death. As she opened herself up to hearing stories in Belfast, she began to understand why someone might join the IRA. The space inside her for the other was widening.

In a similar way, Pat found, in that initial conversation with Jo, a desire to open himself up to her pain and story as well. According to Jo, Pat later told her that if it were not for the empathy and compassion she showed during their visit, he would have remained closed and guarded. Her compassion begot compassion, or at least the desire to become compassionate. Perhaps as we make room inside ourselves for the stories of others, they begin to realize they may have the same capacity themselves.

Again, however, this is not a rosy, ungrounded notion wherein enemies, through compassion, frolic into the sunset. Like the womb-process, the compassion-process hurts. When partners, for instance, make room for each other in their homes, items often get moved around, displaced or discarded. Things that once were priority get bumped down the list; things that once seemed essential may need to be tossed. Making room for the beloved becomes the new priority, the new essential. In other words, the blessing of making space for the other must also include sacrifice, and therefore pain.

This is just as true, perhaps more so, in the emotional and relational capacities of compassion between enemies. To feel compassion for another is to find resonance in the other’s experience, to put oneself to the other’s shoes, to situate oneself inside the other’s narrative. Especially, then, in areas and times of conflict, this experience is profoundly painful as it means stepping down from the assumed moral high ground to accept, or at least consider, that one’s narrative may not be the only narrative, that there may be multiple truths. Compassion requires sacrificing those parts of one’s identity formed in opposition to the other, releasing claims of righteousness, superiority, and victimhood. Compassion means admitting, perhaps for the first time, that the other is fully human, and perhaps not all that different from us.

*       *       *

Jo told me that as her relationship with Patrick developed, he one day told her that her father sounded like a wonderful man, the type of man Patrick would love to drink tea with. Compassion made space even for the man Patrick killed, and between Jo and Patrick, this space gave birth to friendship.

This was originally posted at Red Letter Christians on March 30, 2016. To read an intro to the Gospel Rewrite series, click here. To read the original gospel stories, click here.

In December I began working for a non-profit law firm that provides free assistance to vulnerable Tennesseans trying to access affordable health care. One of our current challenges is fighting for the passage of Governor Bill Haslam’s health care plan called Insure Tennessee. This plan would provide affordable health coverage to more than 280, 000 people in our state who currently have no option for health insurance. It would bring over one billion Tennessee tax dollars back to our state every year, not costing the taxpayer a single extra dime, and saving 20, 000 jobs by helping our more than 40 at-risk hospitals stay open. We have already had six hospitals close due to the overwhelming costs of uncompensated care. The Governor proposed a plan that would fix this. But two legislative sessions later, our legislators still have not passed it.I care about Insure Tennessee because I’m a Tennessean and a Christian. Jesus said he came to proclaim good news to the poor. I believe this plan would be just that.

Recently, Bruce Parks, a 50 year old with major heart issues and no health insurance, met with his state representative to ask him to support Insure Tennessee. His legislator expressed his sympathy but said he felt Tennesseans should be required to work at least part-time in order to get health coverage. The more I’ve paid attention to the news around Insure Tennessee, the more it seems this argument appears from legislators: people must work to deserve health care. Never mind the fact that Bruce has worked his entire life until a massive heart attack almost killed him and reduced his heart to 15% capacity. Doctors tell him, without a pacemaker, he may die if he returned to work. But without insurance, he can’t get that pacemaker. The cycle is vicious, while the legislators remain indifferent.

Since a great many of these same legislators claim to be Christians–believers in that good news Jesus came to proclaim to the poor–I want to rewrite two familiar gospel stories to reflect these legislators’ apparent values. I wonder how many people would follow Jesus if he had behaved like this.

Luke 18:35-43

As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.

He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

“Lord, I want to see, ” he replied.

Jesus said to him, “I am sure, but should you not have considered this before you began begging? Instead of spending your life on the side of the road asking for money, why not go to the businesses throughout Jericho and ask for work?”

“Lord, ” the man began, shocked at Jesus’s response, “I would work if I were well, but employers believe me unable to perform any useful labor, for I am blind.”

Jesus began to turn away. “I am sorry, my hands are tied. In order to heal you, I need you to work. Otherwise, you are just receiving handouts, and I am enabling laziness.”

Jesus moved ahead of the crowd, while the blind man sat in silence, stunned, hoping never to encounter Jesus of Nazareth again.

 

Luke 6:6-10

[One] Sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so. Then Jesus said, “Are you currently working?”

The man with the shriveled hand looked up in surprise. “No, ” he said, “no one will hire me with my hand shriveled in this way.”

So Jesus asked, “When was your last job?” The man replied that it had been some years since he could work. Then Jesus turned to the Pharisees and all those around and said, “Truly I say to you, unless a man works, he shall not be healed. The man who labors shall earn his due. The man who does not must go without.”

The man with the shriveled hand recoiled from Jesus. “How can I work? No one will hire me with this hand! If you healed me, I could return to the fields or learn a new trade.” Some who had gathered began nodding in understanding, recognizing the poor circumstance of the man. Without healing, he could not work, but without work, he would not be healed.

Yet Jesus remained unmoved. “If I were to heal you now, would not word spread? Would not the multitudes begin ceasing their labor, having no reason to continue working when I might heal their ailments without condition? Will the masses not take advantage of my power? Instead I say to you, find means by which to earn some manner of living, and then I will consider restoring your hand to you.”

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were joyful and began to discuss with one another how they might include Jesus among their ranks.

---

I wonder, would you follow this Jesus?

For four days at the end of June, I attended the annual summit of Narrative 4 in Limerick, Ireland. I’ll do a longer post on Narrative 4 later, but in short, it is a global non-profit working to build empathy through the exchanging of personal stories. Before arriving, we were asked to craft a poem about where we’re from, based on these two examples by Lemon (Brooklyn, NY) and George Ella Lyons (Harlan, KY). Here’s is mine, in three parts, as I wrote it in June 2017. I may come back to update it as I find other ways to express where I’m from.

Where I’m From

I.

I’m from exit 160 off I-75 North.

It’s easy to miss if you blink.

I’m from the house by the side of the road.

128 Logan Street

the one with the porch and patio.

“Y’all must get lost in there”

a neighborhood boy once said

and

I learned that even small town doctors live

in houses that stand out.

I’m from 19 years in one place.

I’m from parents who never missed a game—not one of

all.

those.

games.

I’m from wanting to be special but scared to be different.

I’m from Halloween Hell Houses, more churches than restaurants, and never seeing

a woman in a pulpit.

I’m from potlucks at the park, cookouts by the pool,

and liking girls more than others wanted me to at that age.

I’m from the hills, as far as you can see—

too many now with stolen peaks.

I’m from coal country.

I’m from Jellico.

II.

I am from happy pictures in black frames

dried flowers in whiskey bottles

and dusty books on wooden shelves.

I’m from “Walt”

the brick and mortar home holding the scent of incense

burned

for the prayers I once said, and the olive wood rosary I keep on my desk

hoping I’ll say them again.

I am from “never enough time” and “Will we ever not feel so tired?”

I’m from writing on the couch

morning light streaming through the glass door, warming the spot where

Charlie dog lies in the sun,

watching for her.

I’m from Fajita Fridays and The Office when we’re too tired to talk.

I’m from wishing I could get up earlier and

knowing there still won’t be “enough time.”

I’m from puppy prints on the floor, paper piles on the table, and

how will I ever keep up with this calendar?

I’m from putting off running and putting on weight.

I’m from hoping that maybe people don’t think as harshly of me as I sometimes think of myself.

I’m from the city,

from the city of Nashville in Tennessee.

I’m from the city where sometimes

I wish I was still from the country.

III.

I am from stories. So many

it’s a wonder we don’t drown in them.

My grandmother used to dream of “faraway places with strange sounding names.”

Then she and my granddad found them. We’ve hardly talked

of anything since.

I’m from David and Joan and all those people in that family tree.

I’m from Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas

Kentucky, Virginia, Scotland, and Ireland.

I’m from Franklin County, Holdenville, Lebanon, and Searcy

Antrim and Kintale and Fort Worth and Wetumka.

I’m from McRays and Wilkersons

Jacksons and Garners

Stuarts and Spicers and Waldens.

I’m from Clarks and Deadmans

Walshes and Bryans

Masters and Morrises and Stubblefields.

I’m from Champions and Lynches

Griffins and Terrells

Owens and Hales and Scurlocks.

I’m from Jarretts and McDonnells

Woodsons and Starkeys

Gibbons and Wheatleys and Moores.

I’m from faraway places with strange sounding names.

I’m from here. I’m from everywhere.

mtm

Where are you from? How would you express that through poetry?

Not too long ago, my friend needed to talk about a “work dilemma.” He spent most of his time advocating for condemned men in prison, investigating their cases, learning their stories, building relationships, and finding any mitigating factors that might get them relief.

He said he’d recently begun working with a new client and despite his best efforts to remain open to the man’s goodness, my friend just couldn’t seem to like him. “I feel so bad saying it,” he confessed, “but the guy really does seem like an asshole. I’m pretty sure he consistently beat his wife before his incarceration, and he doesn’t seem too sorry about it. I’ve never had a client I didn’t like.”

I nodded with understanding, having spent a significant amount of time visiting that prison too. But I didn’t see the dilemma.

My friend explained that he worried he wasn’t as radical as he thought, that not liking his condemned client perhaps meant he wasn’t truly “down with the revolution.

This conversation illuminated an increasingly noticeable pattern, especially among my peers: put simply, the more we get “radicalized,” the more we’re tempted to romanticize. This is particularly pronounced in the work of advocacy and solidarity. We sometimes seem to think that to be true advocates we must believe rosy stories of those we work with or for.

I get where this comes from. When I speak and teach in Nashville, for example, about the injustice of the Israeli occupation, someone almost always pushes back with, “What about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority?” “You know Muslim men oppress their wives, right?” “What about the internal conflicts between Palestinians themselves?” The implication of all such questions is that Palestinians do not deserve freedom because they’re flawed; they don’t deserve equality because they’re not exceptional.

Over and over, I’ve seen this need for a perfect victim. For too many, solidarity seems contingent on excellence; an uncomplicated cause becomes a prerequisite for compassion. It does not surprise me, for instance, that people who’ve never stepped inside prison tend to believe ungenerous and un-nuanced stories about prisoners. The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls these “single stories.” Part of my vocation has become combating these single stories. I use storytelling to flesh out the humanity of marginalized friends for people living with fear and underdeveloped imaginations.

Much of social justice work has been and will continue to be challenging single stories. It’s essential we make clear the beauty of those burdened by other people’s bigotry and narrow-mindedness. And yet, like in most historical movements, we may find ourselves swinging the pendulum too far. We can end up operating on the flipside of the single-stories coin.

In a legitimate effort to challenge damaging single stories, we may find ourselves crafting romanticized ones. These certainly contain essential truths that must be heard, but they can also become tainted. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard social justice/movement/woke/etc. people shut down the first whisper of critique with immediate labels beginning with “anti-” or ending with “-ist.” We then script our own ungenerous and un-nuanced stories of the people we seek to silence. To be fair, critiques of marginalized people do often sprout from racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and a host of other oppressive ideologies. And—sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, and only sometimes, some truth lies in critique.

I believe our hearts and bodies are in the right place. I believe we try to shut down dissent and critique because letting it breathe has literally taken the breath of people we love. We shut it down because we know in our bones that the people in those single stories are more than those simplistic reductions. We shut it down because we’re tired of letting poisonous language win. And we must continue fighting these stories.

And…

We also must take great care not to find ourselves walking unknowingly into another harmful way of thinking: i.e., that people’s worth is based on their goodness. We cannot decide that those on the other side of the battle lines are less worthy because of their vices, all while claiming that the people on our side are worthy because they have none. If we arrive in such a place, we must finally admit that we are in fact not all that different than what we’ve been resisting. We may realize that all the bigotry, narrow-minded groupthink, exclusivity, and rigid rules we’ve been reacting against for years, we actually brought with us on the journey. We just chose different targets, different ideologies, different parameters and rules.

Telling fuller, even “romanticized” stories may indeed be a necessary strategy for challenging the sheer weight of the systemic single stories at work in our world. But my fear is that in this necessary work, we unnecessarily internalize such romanticism, attaching belief of these rose-colored stories to beliefs about true radicalness. The revolution will not be won by romanticizing who and what we’re fighting for. And we cannot give in to the belief that to be truly radical we must see no guile, no flaw, nothing suspect in the people on “our side.” Being radical is not standing with perfect people; being radical is embracing their imperfections and demanding their right to life and liberty anyway.