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As I mentioned earlier, I had a meeting with Jeffrey Thames, director of Hope Restored, over coffee this morning. It was a hot coal touching my lips that created a fire I’ve never experienced before. Jeffrey and I are on the same page, and it feels wonderful to have met someone that is so appropriately angry at the things going on in our county and has the power to help in a way that I don’t……………………. yet. #prayingonthespaces

Jeffrey is a Marine, and it shows in everything he does. He wears his dog tags even still, and that’s how I knew that shit was about to get real. If the director of this organization is a Marine, we are not going to sit idly by at our desks, because we are going to get it handled. Marines do not have “no” in their vocabulary. Jeffrey has already been labeled a “troublemaker” by the Establishment, and I told him that I couldn’t wait until they thought that about me, too.

In this meeting, we walked the Bible in a hundred different ways. We both talked about the fact that an MDiv degree is a “render unto Caesar” sort of requirement, because we are called to God the moment we are born. Jeffrey said, and I agree, that when you breathe in, you are taking on the power of the universe, and that never requires paper. In response, I said, “that is very similar to what I say, that God is simply every side to every story that’s ever been told and ever will be.”

I brought up the flip side, though, that the piece of paper has authority. That it means something to be pictured in the media walking with the people you’re trying to prosper wearing a clerical collar. I immediately thought of the Freddie Gray protests, and how one of the most powerful images on the Internet was the line of pastors in their stoles and collars, because it truly showed the world how when Christianity is done right, it means going where the people are instead of expecting them to come to you.

Jeffrey offered to take me to all of the homeless camps so that I could meet people, possibly staying overnight to really experience what it was like. I am not afraid. I am carried by the light of Christ, and if that isn’t enough, I have a badass Marine protecting me using the light of Christ as well. We talked about his Holy Spirit moment, the coal that touched his lips.

Tears ran down my face as he told me that in high school, all of his teachers had written him off as one of those people who would never amount to anything, because it just hit me where I live. I told him that very reason was why I was sitting in his office, and why I’d applied to Howard to finish my Bachelor’s and go on to seminary at the same school.

He looked at me for a moment like I had three heads and said, “you know you’re white, right?”

I laughed like hell and said, “no, I hadn’t noticed.”

Matt assured me in our conversation last Sunday that there were white people that go to Howard, but even if he hadn’t, the moment I heard it was a UCC school, I was in. There is nothing in the world that could drag me away. It’s not like I’ve never lived in a black community before. I went to University of Houston. South Tower, where I lived, was predominantly black. I don’t remember who said it, but I remember it clearly, that I might be a white cracker bitch, but I was THEIR white cracker bitch.

I know how to fit in anywhere, especially in a black community because I am interested in the issues that black people face trying to make their dreams happen. I get down and dirty into race relations, because I want to be one of the people that helps solve problems and not add to them. When people hear my name, I want them to smile and say, “oh man…. she is WITH US.” Yes. Yes, I am. I am in your community, I am fighting for your rights, and Jeffrey and I are on a mission.

It’s not just about race, but it’s clear that there are so many more black homeless people than white. I want to know why that is. The biggest issue that I want to take on is actually twofold, but I lump  them together. The first is for-profit prisons and how that affects black sentencing over white. I also want to know why the community where I live is choosing to step over the issue of homelessness rather than trying to solve it. As I told Jeffrey, I am incensed that the homeless shelter in Silver Spring is only open from November to April, because how cold did it get last night? For those who don’t live in the area, imagine sleeping on the ground while it’s in the 50’s and raining.

When I imagine it, I get angry. I have to breathe deeply and concentrate on the light of Christ, because when I don’t, I get Jesus God table-flipping angry. That anger motivates me with a fire I’ve never experienced, but it’s not going to help me in front of a judge, or a board of directors, or the Chamber of Commerce, or any one of the “Romans” I have to disrupt.

These issues and the way they’re being handled are showing the true colors of modern-day Pharisees. People who talk about God as if they own God and are speaking from a place of ego instead of energy working through them. If they truly went into their closets to pray, they would come out of them with a very different outlook, because their direction is skewed by professing God without really knowing what it means to use that energy.

The best analogy I can think of for this is lifting a heavy box. Do you see what dog I’m walking? When you lift with your arms, it’s a different experience than using your legs. When you use your legs to lift, you are putting all of the power in your body into this one simple task, and it makes lifting easier. Pharisees use their arms. They do not put the whole of their energy into their tasks at hand. As I have said before, the connection is God to head, head to feet, feet to floor. Modern-day Pharisees are not tapping into the whole of their energy. God resides in speaking in, not speaking out.

What do I mean by “speaking in?” It’s that truly great change comes from looking in the mirror and seeing all of the ways you are broken and using that brokenness to create soft power because you are not looking down at others with pity. You know that in your own way, you are as broken as they are…. you’ve just taken a different path. Your power comes from your humanity.

Modern-day Pharisees think that they have it all together and speak from a place of authority that was never given to them, because in order to receive the true light of Christ and the invitation to wholeness, you have to know yourself, first; If you don’t, you are simply projecting the way you think onto other people instead of joining them in their struggle. It is throwing money at the problem instead of really seeing it.

Today, I started to see. I opened my eyes a little wider and tried not to cry, because homeless people do not need my tears. They need my action.

May God add his blessings as I begin this journey, because it’s going to get harder before it gets easier. Here’s the difference now than when I was younger…. it is simply one phrase.

HERE AM I. SEND ME.

Amen.

Whenever I get lost in my own problems, I read Jeffrey Thames’ Facebook page. It reminds me of the time that I was just lost in the minutiae of my job and a case came across my desk; I called a phone number without looking at the company first, and they answered, “Doctors Without Borders.” All of the sudden, my attitude changed and a peace came over me that I hadn’t had in weeks. For all of the problems I had, I wasn’t in a war-torn country that day. I returned to my loving, attentive, “I’m Leslie Lanagan and I’m here to help” patois immediately.

Today, it was a post on Jeffrey’s wall that talked about why homeless people often smell of urine. Have you ever wondered why? I thought it was just because their clothes were dirty. I mean, that’s a reasonable assumption, right? Ummm, no. Apparently, when homeless people pee, the cops take joy in arresting them, giving them tickets, etc. So they pee on themselves in order to avoid getting taken downtown or getting tickets for indecency, which they cannot pay, anyway. The cops aren’t finding ways to help the problem, only compounding it.

I don’t have a problem with the police in terms of the ones I’ve dealt with personally. I’ve never been arrested, so the only times I’ve come in contact with them are when I’ve been speeding. Not one has ever been mean to me. Not. One. However, I am a little white girl. My experience of the police is going to be different, and there are a thousand wrong-headed reasons why (see above).

Those wrong-headed reasons are the reasons I’m most likely to be arrested in the first place, and if/when I do, I hope that the kindness I’ve experienced from the police so far carries over. I am not saying that I am planning on being arrested. It’s just a possibility, because there is no way on God’s green earth that I’m not going to be a part of peaceful protests, wearing a clerical collar or not. I don’t have to be ordained to be counted among people protesting for peace, and it’s “ironical” how quickly even the peaceful are taken away in handcuffs. In one of my friend’s cases, she was taken away in her clerical collar with a zip tie, and it caused permanent damage to the nerves in her hand.

Am I looking forward to it? No. Who is? But at the same time, I have to go into my profession with the outlook that it is a possibility. I’m not going to wait for ordination to be a protester, but at the same time, it would be the funniest thing in the world to me if my first mugshot was in my clerical shirt with collar, complete with silver ichthus from James Avery, because that’s where you get those sorts of things. Hilarious because of the absolute irony of the situation, because in order to walk in light, sometimes you have to be the one that walks into darkness holding it.

Who am I to say that I am worthy of such a mission? I certainly am not. However, neither is anyone else. We are called to Christ because we are perfect in our flaws. Moses beat a soldier to death when he was young, and God called him, anyway. I think he was surprised; he struggled with the unworthiness of that act and told God to call his brother, Aaron, instead. He said that Aaron was more well-spoken. I can see behind that mask in a minute, can’t you?

I identify with Moses a lot, because in that moment, he let his temper overtake his common sense. He probably thought the killing was justified until it was over, and I can see his serious “oh, my FUCK” reaction just as clearly as I see my own when my temper gets the better of me.

And yet, God calls me anyway, and it is a calling I’ve ignored for years. My closest friends on the ground, both past and present, have seen this holy fire within me and have encouraged me to get the MDiv in various ways since I was 16 years old. Before that, even, but it really started when I began looking at colleges and going to senior high church camps. They could see what I could not, because I was so scared that the reason they thought I was worthy of this ministry was just because my dad was already ordained; that I was somehow riding on his coattails instead of going my own direction.

It really took my dad leaving  the ministry and getting some separation from his enormous reputation that I thought I could do this on my own. By enormous reputation, by the time he left the ministry he was preaching to almost 1,700 people a week. Because I was not really there or too little to understand when he started playing small ball, I thought I could never live up to the expectations I had for myself. It was not anything that he said or did, it was my impression from watching him that he was successful in a way that I couldn’t accomplish.

So, I ran from this enormous calling, especially when I felt so rejected by the denomination that ordained him. The Methodists wouldn’t take me because I knew I was going to be gay whether they liked it or not. As soon as puberty hit, I knew, and even before that, I had an inkling. I was ten the first time I got “caught” liking girls.

Ironically, it was Jay Bakker that convinced me I had a future. You can look at his last name and tell where he comes from, who he belongs to on the ground. He has tattoo sleeves on both arms. He has nerd glasses, just like me. He’s a recovering addict, which isn’t like me and yet, the troubles I’ve faced render me into that category of person- the one that says you have to give up everything to find it all.

I didn’t find the divine until I got dirty enough to see that I was on the wrong path, that I was hiding so many things about myself that I was making up a personality and a way to be in the world that wouldn’t show anyone my cards.

In another ironic turn, given the direction our relationship has taken, that provided me another piece of the puzzle. Argo said, “you’re not broken. You’re just Leslie.” I carry that feeling to this day. I cannot be anything but me, and that comes with a lot of emotional baggage that includes an enormous ego to cover up the fact that my “small-l leslie” has so many flaws. Leslie Lanagan, Trademark has been an act. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is kill her. It’s taken years, and I’m not completely finished.

The purpose of this blog is to show myself when the parts of her get out of hand. In reading backwards, the question that comes up for me the most often is whether I am being my true authentic self, or whether I’m writing in a way that hides my sins…. and there are a lot of them.

For instance, Argo thought I was lying to her when I said I wasn’t the one that punched Dana first. It wasn’t that I thought I was lying. It’s that Dana is so much bigger than me that when she pushed me with such force, I took it as “throwing the first punch,” because there was no way that a shove from me would have hurt her  the way it hurt me. So, just for the record, now I’ve said it. When Dana and I got into a fistfight, I was the one that hit her. You can leave it to your own opinion whether I was right or not. I thought I was. Just when you decide, know how much smaller my fist is and whether or not Dana hit me first, who broke the barrier between us that would have kept it to a shouting match.

In that fight, I don’t remember anything in the correct order… not to preserve Leslie Lanagan, Trademark, just that it comes to me in bits and pieces of nauseating waves that do not line up chronologically, but hurt just the same. My cheek hurt for weeks in literal pain at first and phantom pain for long afterward. I am not discounting Dana’s pain, only that I cannot speak to it. I can only tell my own story.

I also waffle on whether I wanted to go back to her because the rainbow comes after the flood, or whether my abused personality needed to believe we needed to be together because that’s what I think I’m worth. It is neither, and it is both. Dana answered that question for me by saying that she didn’t want a relationship with me, because she sees me as the abuser in all of this. That my emotional abuse was so much worse than hers.

I disagree, but at this point, the internal fight is on its way to resolving itself, because I have done so much healing work. I don’t have to think about it like I once did, and by “have to,” I mean that I was stuck in the loop of rumination because I couldn’t not.

I haven’t ruminated about Dana as much as I’ve ruminated about losing Argo because I actually thought that Argo was the healthier relationship of the two, and trying to create solid ground with Dana was beyond me because of our roller coaster of family dysfunction that I did not have with Argo because she wasn’t physically there to experience it. The idea that she wasn’t stuck in our family dysfunction evaporated when she reached out to Dana and tried to arbitrate who was right and who was wrong when we were fighting. I lost it.

This is because Dana was so crazy in her rumination that eventually Argo and I would be a thing that I thought it was going directly to the person that disliked her the most and expecting a reasonable answer. Maybe she got one, maybe she didn’t, but it wasn’t the answer that bothered me. It was the question.

Argo and I were a thing in terms of close friendship, and I carried that betrayal for a long time. I gave it up when Dana decided to pick up her toys and go home, but I am the kind of person that forgives people and doesn’t forget.

More people than Argo have taken it as holding things over their heads, but it is not my intention. It is my endless repetition of the facts I believe in order to create a different reality later on. I don’t want either of our past behavior to affect creating a new reality, and if I can see a behavior pattern that smacks of the old either one of us, I will say something about it… and we are not talking about Argo anymore. Take any one of my deep relationships and you’ll get  the picture.

Again, I forgive, but I don’t forget. The question in my mind is whether I’m supposed to or not. What does a healthy relationship mean? Does it mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to bring up past behavior? I have an elephant memory when it comes to behavior, and that’s just a part of my personality… but what am I supposed to do with it? I am not holding on to anger. To me, facts are facts. Emotions are emotions. I can talk about facts without attaching emotions to them.

For instance, I never would have been able to forgive Dana for everything that’s happened to me if I hadn’t looked at my own behavior and owned it. At the same time, though, I will never forget how past actions affect our present or our future, should there be one even in friendship. I have said, and I mean it, that when she shows up, I will receive her in love and not anger. The problem I have right now is that she won’t. Show up, I mean. She doesn’t want to talk about things. She wants to sweep them under the rug and just have a “ladies who lunch” relationship. I am not that kind of person, and I never will be. If we have this level of conflict, it takes that level of resolution for me to interact in a merely friendly way. You have to accept the flood to get the rainbow. Dana says that being in relationship with me is too hard. That I’m too much to handle because I require a level of emotion that she’s just not willing to give.

It was realizing that I’m not a hard person to love that has gotten me through this time in my life; it’s her unwillingness to unpack and face the music and go through the hard parts instead of ignoring them that gets me. The fact is that when I tried to unpack with her, she called my dad and told him I was having a psychotic episode. The fact is that when I tried to unpack with Argo, she freaked out like I was some sort of psychopath on a mission to destroy her.

It was so easy to look at me that way, and probably still is for both of them. But their unwillingness to see me for who I really am instead of who they want me to be is the crux of my problem with both of them. There is no rainbow, because when the flood arrived, neither of them wanted to get wet. Because getting caught in the rain with me is an acknowledgement of the part they played in making it rain to begin with.

Their unwillingness is not my problem. Their versions of me aren’t my problem, either. Their parts in the play of my life have caused unrest, and they are unwilling to sit in them. I just want to shake them and say……..

Perspective. Get some.

I can’t imagine Argo hasn’t gotten all of my requests to unsubscribe to my blog, because she is generally umbilically connected to the Internet. So, if she’s going to keep the connection to me, I’m going to keep the connection to her and try to let it stop bothering me. In the past, my reaction would have been to rant and scream about it. That’s just not me anymore. I am walking in light, and to get mad about this is just antithetical to who I’ve become.

So I’ll just remind myself of all the good things about her that I love and not the fact that it irritates the shit out of me that my simple request has been ignored. I never asked her to stop reading, just to break the connection that says, “I am here. I am listening.” Her past is to take the things I’ve written and and use one sentence as a gutter snipe instead of taking the entire letter as one narrative.  They are her best IEDs ever.

Yeah, sometimes I get angry, but in the same letter I will also say good things, because I see her as a whole narrative and not just a one-dimensional character.

But.

There have been times where the IED has gone off and I couldn’t help but react instead of respond. The whole goal now is to stop, in all things, really. I want to stop being a hotheaded jackass when she doesn’t see the point I’m trying to make because it will serve me well in other areas of my life. Because I’ve been that hotheaded jackass in front of her, she may not ever believe I am truly capable of changing that aspect of my personality…. but she doesn’t have to believe it. I do.

That doesn’t erase the angry things I’ve said, and it never will if she doesn’t let me grow and change in her mind. Because she only knows the virtual side of me and not the Leslie that lives on the ground, her version is skewed into a crazy that my friends on the ground would fall on the floor. Anyone who’s ever met me will say that I am an emotional roller coaster AT TIMES, but at heart I am full of hope, faith, and love. I have bad days, but so do everyone else.

I have mentally obsessed over this relationship because that’s what my personality dictates. That I am more interested in emotions, responses, and the way things could be instead of the way that they are. I am an Idealist, and idealists don’t want to live in the bounds of conventional reality. They want to create utopia and will try anything to get it. I don’t obsess over everything that’s gone wrong, but how to make it right.

The thing that’s new in my life is stopping the obsession with how to make things right with Argo and starting to obsess over what my perfect reality looks like. I am heartened by my dad’s “you go, girl.” I am heartened by all of the people that send them, really. That’s the change in focus. Why obsess over everything that’s gone wrong when I am creating new things that go right? Why live in the past when I can put so much energy into the here and now?

I am going to work with homeless people. I am going to be the Writer in Residence at a church I’ve come to love. God willing, I am going to get an MDiv and start the church that has lived in my dreams for many months. If Argo needs to believe that I’m too batshit crazy to accomplish all of this, then let her. She can sit in that reality for as long as she wants, because while she’s doing it, I’ll have changed in a million different ways without her- she just won’t be there to see it and celebrate with me.

It feels good that it’s not my problem. It’s hers.

So, as long as I take what I’ve written to heart, I am going to be just fine. Sometimes, stopping caring what other people think is the best thing I can do for myself. Letting go of the version of myself that says I am incapable of incredible things is the best thing I could have ever done for my sanity. I wouldn’t have met BBQ, Stefon, and Rez. I wouldn’t have met Cookie. I wouldn’t have met Jeffrey virtually and get to meet him on Friday. I wouldn’t have gone to Prianka’s wedding.

And most of all, I would have been stuck with a wife who continually beat it into my head that I would never amount to anything. It’s not a goal to prove her wrong. It’s a goal to prove me right. I am not competing with Dana’s vision of me. I am competing with mine. What can I accomplish in this life that will become legacy? Will there ever be a congregation that names me pastor emeritus as it grows beyond what I’ve created? Will there be congregations all over the world that use the liturgies I’ve written?

I have already been read on this blog by at least a few people in every country in the world.

Sit there. Take that in. EVERY COUNTRY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Here’s what I have to say about that.

What’s next?

My admission essay to Howard University:

You have asked me, “what makes you, you?”

What makes me myself is writing about it. I have a blog called “Stories That Are All True… and some of them actually happened.” The point is that I am interested in the life lessons of a story, and not the facts behind it. I don’t care if I remember dates and times, but I do care if I lose the essence of how an experience made me feel. It is the essence of Leslie, the yin and yang inside me that struggles to walk in light and can’t help but walk in the dark, because it’s more comfortable. I love my sins, just like we all do. However, I’ve been invited to walk in the light permanently with Christ, because when he asked, I listened. When I struggle, I have someone to ask for help in finding the right path for me. Today it was talking to my pastor, Matt Braddock, about the divinity schools in the area. He said that Howard was affiliated with the United Church of Christ, which is the denomination I’m currently looking to for ordination. In order to achieve that, though, I have to work backwards from the darkness of leaving school when I was younger.

Truly, I am an Episcopalian at heart, but what I realized is that with the UCC, I have the capability to write liturgy instead of just turning to page 355. Writing and preaching is where my heart sings, because it leads people in their own invitation to Christ, which is what he asked me to do in the first place.

I make enough money doing computer support work that getting a degree isn’t necessary for me to survive. I am safety-netted that way. But at the same time, doing that work does not feed me. Darkness was choosing money over spirit, and it is a decision I’ve regretted for years. Howard University has the ability to help me right that wrong, to choose the direction I know I am called to walk.

I am applying for an undergraduate degree because money is want, and soul is need. My major is Political Science, and my minor is Psychology. Those two things are inextricably interrelated into my ministry, because I will be doing everything from weddings to funerals to voting for policy that helps the less fortunate. In order to lead, I have to know how the system works. In order to break rules, you have to know them all.

It is an exciting time to be me. Breaking rules is not meant in disrespect, only to promote political change for the homeless, the mentally ill, and those for which the safety net has crumbled. Please, will you join me in my vision and let me complete the work I have already started? I have put one foot down on holy ground by saying “enough is enough. Stop playing with darkness and accept what God has been trying to tell you.”

Amen.

I have walked through fire, and I am heading toward the mountain top. My pastor is interested in starting an Artist in Residence program at our church, and wants me to be the Writer in Residence.

I have a title now. Titles are cool.

So. This just happened.

In a way, the fight with Dana was freeing. Now she’s just one more person in my life who believes I’ll never amount to anything. Over the years, there have been plenty. Now she can high-five with that crowd while I work toward wholeness. Far be it from me to stop her. What I will not allow, though, is for her to throw me away and then later on act as if she always knew I’d be successful. When I said yesterday that I thought what she was saying was mean, it wasn’t really the words themselves. It was taking my insecurity and thrashing me with it. Taking something I already felt horrible about and using it to beat me down further. Nothing about my writing to her is reaching up. Nothing about my writing is making a better life for myself whether it comes from my blog getting famous or from me using my words to propel myself into a different reality. In this blog, I have something she will never have unless she reaches for it. I know myself. I know myself so well that there is no insult on earth that anyone could levy at me that I haven’t struggled with in my own heart.

When I said that it hurt that she was there for all the pain and none of the promise, I realized something important. She’s paid so much attention to the pain that she could not see the promise when it arrived. Does she believe I am a well-respected author? No. Does she believe that I am capable of writing a book? No. Does she believe that this blog is anything more than self-serving ruminations? No.

That is not the truth and I will not accept it. My truth is that people have taken money out of their pockets and with it said, “we believe in you.” I have made enough money now from different donors to know that I am on the right path. Of course I need a real job to supplement my income, and I am not scared of that fact. At the same time, though, that will always be a “real job,” and this will always be my career. I am never more in my element than sitting in the quiet, writing to all of you. It’s the reason I am so dedicated. You lift me up in ways that I cannot lift myself.

The weirdest thing has been happening…. the more I share my work, the more people quote me to me. People tell me the lines that have stuck with them and I know my words’ importance because they have life past my own mind. For Dana, this is my delusion…. that my words matter, that I am respected. I have money in the bank that says that’s not true.

My reach is extending further. My roommate is from Iran, and she started reading my blog. She said, “you are a wonderful writer…. perhaps you would write my story, too?”

All of the color drained from my face and I started to sob. She was surprised and said comforting words, “oh, Leslie…. you shouldn’t cry…. it’s ok….. why? Why these tears?” I said, “you would trust me with something like that?” As you can imagine, her escape from Iran is not an easy story to hear, and I haven’t even heard a tenth. To hear the whole thing and to have her trust that I could do it justice was more than I could emotionally bear without showing so much emotion that I shook with it. I am still recovering, honestly, because her words touched a place in me that said, “Dana is wrong. You will do more than you ever thought possible, much less more than anyone else thought you would.” It set me down a path of hope, redemption, prosperity.

I asked her if it was okay to give her a hug. We stood on the porch, the light streaming around us as our arms reached across an unspoken divide, the one where all the feelings are.