I’m listening to the Argo soundtrack as I type. It’s one of my favorite albums, because the Eastern and Western blend is so exciting and comforting at the same time. The title track is the backbeat of some of my entries, and actually, so is a piece called “The Mission.” The music allows me to expand my mind so that I can think bigger, similar to a doctor in the operating theater. Some of the best rabbit holes of this web site have come from a piece called “A Spy in Tehran,” which is a conversation musically between danger and the rest of the world. It’s a dance beat, friendly in its fire. The power comes in with rhythmically undulating chords of darkness. With every measure, my mind goes deeper into myself and just wanders to see what’s there. What’s left. What is still standing in darkness that I cannot yet remove and want desperately to do so. I have given myself up to surrender when I thought I had to have control to keep everything together. Life got better when I realized that nothing could be controlled and I was a pawn in a chess game writ large. I had to willingly serve in order to receive power granted to me voluntarily, rather than think that someone was going to knock on my door one day and say, “poof! You’re educated enough to hear people without judgment.” I know I hated it being done to me. Those people who thought they knew more than me. They were right, they did. But I was not in a place of surrender. A place of control said that I knew best even when I was heading the wrong direction. Other people have gotten to the right one before me, and I couldn’t reach them, an alien on my own planet, to say how much I needed help and couldn’t ask for it.

When I got the help I needed, I fought it tooth and nail. My therapist rejected me, so that meant there was no one on earth that could listen to me process. Someone thought my words mattered enough to tell me, and my past darkness said to repel her because her light was too bright and I couldn’t stand in it. It was just too healthy. It’s just conjecture on my part, but I feel that we are on the same page and running in opposite directions because we haven’t learned that there’s no barbed wire fence between us because it’s there, as in “object permanence” and the verb “to be.”

Barbed wire fences make themselves.

Coming at each other in a negative way was just building the castle and the moat behind it. Emotional surrender was destroying them in my mind even if she doesn’t destroy hers. It was a redirect that cost us time in peace, and it’s something that I will regret always. I did not take care of her heart, and that statement stands alone.

In the past, I would have run from that fact by saying that my words could never have enough impact to do that and mean it. You say horrible things because it takes that much to get through. It’s using darkness to get light, and even if you use darkness to get to the light, it matters whether you can show your work or whether you hang your head in shame. It’s the difference between being an honest human being or not.

If it seems like I am hammering a point home, here, it’s because I am. When you use darkness to achieve a goal, it matters that you can’t look in the mirror very long. I tested that boundary, and it wrecked me for the greater good. I surrendered. I wasted time with darkness and when I saw the light, I had to respond. It’s not fair to leave her wondering whether I’m sorry and wish for forgiveness or not. She does not have to forgive me to appreciate that I said them.

It’s a new thing I’m trying…….. being more patient, turning off my immediate impulse control, and knowing that the answer will come more deeply, down from my raw intuition, if I spend the time to get it while thinking about the fact that my own words are large and they have the ability to hurt people as well as heal them.

Because I can turn off my emotions, I choose to use light or dark every day. The decision is inside me now, whereas before I could not see the tapes from childhood that told me darkness was the best I could ever hope for. I had to see that surely I was worth more than that.

I changed when I realized I was.

I went to church for the sermon, because Christine and Lisa are so different in both style and substance. Since Lisa is a presbyter, she doesn’t preach as often as Christine, so it’s fun to show up and not know who I’ll be hearing. You just cannot compare the two. One fills her sermons with laughter, the other fills her sermons with the feeling that something is happening in this place when it is quiet and serene and listening intensely.

When Christine preaches, the congregation is right with her, laughing right up until the moment it clicks in our heads the picture of pain she’s trying to express. There is a light bulb, and sometimes an audible gasp at people’s recognition. I am amazed at her ability to draw in the crowd bit by bit, so that they slowly reveal their feelings about themselves in their minds because who is afraid of a little self-degrading humor? Working for the remission of sins is ridiculous, because we’re never going to have a world where sin is erased. The best we can do is laugh about it so that the next week it hurts a little less.

Before the service, I saw Christine as she was about to go in. I said, “I brought my notebook so I could think.” She says, “well if you like that, this is a good sermon. Most of the time, I’m just like, “Bah Dum Pum………. Jesus!” I laughed so hard I had to strain myself from coming unglued on the sidewalk, just snot and tears everywhere. I thought of my Dad and how he’s going to spit something on his keyboard when he gets to that line.

When Lisa preaches, the entire room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. She takes you to emotional places inside yourself that you didn’t know you had, because she’s just that kind of writer. She holds the congregation in the palm of her hand by speaking quietly so that you have to lean in to hear every detail, and you want to because she slowly unpacks, detail by detail, until all of the puzzle pieces drop together.

Because I was writing down an outline of her thoughts, my brain was making connections like a supercomputer, and five seconds before she got to the “punchline,” a very serious conclusion, I might add, you will be able to hear me audibly gasp in the recording. When she was finished, Dana and I looked at each other like, “HOLY SHIT, BATMAN!” We fist-bumped and said, “Mic drop.”

Word.

I would like to think that I am a combination of their styles, and it’s interesting that I have the opportunity to study two women who come at ministry completely differently and merge their styles in an amazing way. It is preparing our way into Christ’s birth in a wonderful way- two different perspectives that come together in our midst.

I mean, I got out of bed even though I had a head cold because I couldn’t stand not hearing either one of them. I gave up sleeping late to go to church, people… even though I was so out of it that when the sermon was over, I realized how many people I did not want to infect. Communion is the gift that keeps on giving, but hopefully not like that.

Bah Dum Pum………………………. JESUS!

To hear Lisa and Christine every week, you can subscribe via Epiphany’s podcast feed, which is a great way to feel like you have time to go to church in your car. I invite you to show up sometime if you’re local, even if you don’t believe in God.

Because what matters, ultimately, is the way you use light to believe in yourself.

To

In the movie Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, there is a famous scene where Will Ferrell, as the title character, prays thusly: Dear Lord Baby Jesus, lyin’ there in your ghost manger… just lookin’ at your Baby Einstein developmental videos… learnin’ ’bout shapes and colors… It’s my favorite image for Jesus this time of year, and it comes across my mind often. In order to talk to God, I use a wide array of characters so that God seems approachable. I got the idea from the movie “Contact” when that guy from St. Elsewhere said it. I watch St. Elswhere all the time on Hulu, because between it and Hill Street Blues that was the only thing really worth watching at the time. I’ve learned all over again the world of the hospital and for advent, knowing the codes they run at birth is essential to set the scene in your mind.

I was born in Tyler, Texas in 1977 at a hospital that reflected it. Dallas was a short life-flight away, but when I first came into the world it was unsure whether I would need it. In those moments, I look at my parents like Mary after the crucifixion, because they both had to do the same thing in different situations…. go home without the baby.

But that’s not where we are in the story right now. Where we are in the story is that Mary has tried to check into a hotel, and settles for a barn so she won’t have to show her business to the hoards of people also trying to get a good night’s sleep. Life was a struggle just to stay alive. Everyone needed rest, and for Mary and Joseph, life was about to get interesting.

My mother checked into the hospital, but her labor wasn’t deemed far enough along. My mother already knew something was wrong, but she heeded the doctor’s advice because a doctor is a doctor. At the time, my dad was the pastor of a small and tight-knit church pretty far from the hospital. Luckily, she and my dad had friends to bail them out so they wouldn’t have to drive so far should the eviction notice get posted on the door and I start running cause I don’t want to pay the rent. My parents’ minister friend spent most of my stay in his living room pacing about, saying “This baby is not going to be born at my house. This baby is not going to be born at my house. This baby is not going to be born at my house……….”

Both Jesus and I struggled as babies to fight for our lives. He was born in a stable without antibiotics or sterile instruments should someone have had to scream “FLK” and push Joseph out of the way to go wait under a tree, because shit got real. Literally. If you picture a baby being born in a manger, the image will shock you because you’ve never pondered it. I’m guessing you’ve never stood inside it and smelled the hay mixed with manure mixed with human blood, sweat, and tears. You haven’t considered the horror of the situation when you think about who exactly was being born. The hard truth in the story is that it was the Messiah in plain sight but the Innkeeper nearly killed him. If you really want to hear a miracle in Jesus’ birth, look at the fact that he was born two inches from cow manure and lived to tell about it. The resurrection in the middle of that garbage dump of a situation is that it turned him from a regular dude into The Boy Who Lived.

I was one of the children born to this world that had a doctor perceptive enough to call FLK because I was in trouble. For those not in the know, it’s a signal to run the codes for an infant in trouble (Funny Lookin’ Kid) without shocking the hell out of the parents. I can’t picture the situation fully, but what I know is that no one was expecting me to be born, either. I don’t mean that my prognosis was low. I meant that it was unusual for my mother to need to deliver me eight weeks early. I had a pneumothorax because my lungs were not developed enough not to damage me in a little thing called breathing. I was oxygen-deprived for a short time, and it created a palsy in my brain. As I have said before, it did not delay me mentally, but I am tremendously uncoordinated. I like typing because no one has to watch me run. If Jesus is The Boy Who Lived despite tremendous odds, then I’m definitely a candidate for The Girl. My whole life I’ve been treated like Special Ed because of the way I move. People rarely stop long enough to know how I think. They’re starting to as I’ve achieved writing fame, but before then, I think that people thought they needed to coddle me because I didn’t move right. I still don’t. I’m terrible at balance and I always will be. I will always walk into doors, and people will always be nice to me the longer my eyes accidentally stay crossed….. until finally they get annoyed enough to say something and it always shocks me because I’ve known I’ve had this problem since birth. I’m sorry you can’t get used to it.

Jesus was an unusual kid. He could argue in the temple at 12. He must have been amazing, because I think that it was Jesus’ King of the Hill moment. You know the episode where they think Bobby is the reincarnated Dali Lama? People started saying that he was anointed with the gift to interpret God’s word at an impossibly young age…. I mean, they had to’ve. Otherwise, why would someone have bothered to write it down?

Last week we talked about John the Baptist preaching as the preview to the movie. Christine, my priest, said she likes that image and it always feels good to get a thumbs up from a professional.

This week’s gospel has gone from WHAT John the Baptist represents and what he did to express it. This week, we turn inward to look at the WAY he did it.

John’s testimony in front of the priests and Levites from Jerusalem when they asked who he was boldly proclaims that even though he is a minister, he is not crazy enough to believe that he has been the one chosen to redeem the world. John the Baptist says, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” In the face of incredible pressure, John the Baptist stood his ground. He’s not The One. He’ll just know him when he sees him, and he had enough courage to say it out loud. When you say it out loud, it makes it real.

It’s John’s courage that makes me love him the most. John the Baptist had the courage to tell the Jewish world that the one they were waiting for was real, but it wasn’t him.

It’s not me, either.

John couldn’t believe in the baby, because just like the people in his hometown, how was he to know that his cousin was the one he’d been preaching about all along? It is like meeting The Doctor, but only getting to know him as John Smith. John the Baptist was one of the people in Nazareth that didn’t recognize him… but not out of malice. It was his pleasure to preach the gospel of resurrection and promise for the Jewish people of the time.

As I said last week, John didn’t know who he was looking for, but we do. Paul is further along in the story than John the Baptist, and has met the risen Christ that John the Baptist could not. In his letter to the Thessalonians, another of our readings in the Lectionary, Paul says plainly that the risen Christ will sanctify you entirely if you will just believe what he and the prophets have to say, because he’s been through his own resurrection and IT WORKED. Can you not see the light of Christ in Paul, who completely surrendered to God’s will when he realized he needed it? Sometimes it takes that much.

Last week I brought up the point that not believing yourself or others until you’re crippled with emotion lets life pass you by at an alarming rate because you can’t react fast enough when you’re laden with emotional burden. I speak from experience.

My resurrection was when people asked if I was abused as a child, I knew the answer instead of “some stuff happened and I’m not sure.” It was a Saul to Paul conversion because I didn’t believe that she had until I was so crippled with grief and shame that it was causing blindness all over the place. Blindness to everything in my entire life because I couldn’t let my house of cards fall.

But someone is coming that is greater than me. Someone I’ve waited for all my life, and didn’t believe quick enough. Let go of those emotions that stop you from being ready to watch and wait. It doesn’t matter WHAT you get out of the experience. It matters how you ready yourself to receive it.

John spiritually enriched the lives of others while he was waiting.

It’s up to us to decide what we do. Maybe our job is to cross the finish line. Maybe our job is to propel someone else. In a perfect world, it’s a rolling hierarchy of both.

Shake……………………………………. and bake.

As I mentioned yesterday, I took one of my lesbro’s confessions, even though I’m not Catholic and neither is he…. I don’t think. I didn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. When you’re the ear that’s willing to listen, very few people need to see how much schoolwork you’ve finished beforehand. I warned him, anyway. I’m not a therapist, I’m just a stranger on a train.

This entry is not about him. It’s about what happened to me while he was talking. It was The Wounded Healer writ large, as if letting his pain temper me by fire, because we already had a chord. The fire made room for it to grow in all the right ways that you would want a friendship to go. Our on the ground connection is intense… someone that I saw nearly every day. Now our connection in the cloud is strong and comfortable, and the emotion was intense.

I notice that now the darkness and the light have made their peace with each other in me, I feel things differently and definitely with more intensity than before. I had so much clinical separation that I could not let others’ words change me. I could only let mine change them. It wasn’t that I was trying to lord power over them, it’s that I couldn’t get vulnerable enough to hear criticism from people I love and hold it in my mind at the same time that they loved me. Every interaction with everyone left me a barbed wire fence, for I could not get through the day without armor up. My ability to give love was entrenched, while my ability to receive it was burning before my eyes.

I still have that relationship with someone else. Neither one of us can stand the fact that the other loves us, and we run like hell to get away from that fact. Deep love turns into deep hate quickly because we have a very intimate emotional moment and then the “fuck yous” start because we each cannot believe we revealed that much about ourselves that no one else loves, so why should we? I surrendered to her when I realized what I was doing. I was giving her love without being able to take it. Without being able to rest in it.

I figured out the reason for this. It’s that we write to each other, and I am the type person that responds quickly face-to-face. I have a hard time believing what people say, and I need to see what they do. I didn’t realize this about myself until I met her, so she is fundamental to understanding me. She was the first person to give me enough fire in love that I could see what she was saying for what it was, and not what I thought it was. I needed someone that could prove everything beyond a reasonable doubt, and when I got her I still wasted time not believing her judgment the first time around, because it was swift and not the reasoned approach I take to everything.

It’s not that she can’t look at all 82 sides of a problem. It’s that she can do it faster than I can. For real. It was like being a PIII and “taking the road to Xeon.”

For the first time in my entire life, I am the princess……………………….. and she is the thinker. She heard me already the first five times, and still doesn’t agree with me.

It’s changing the way I respond to her decisions that’s the fun part of being me. I’ve never been a princess before, and I’ve never had a thinker. Not a real one. I mean, I did…….. but we see how that turned out. You can see how long I’d have to test boundaries to make sure I wasn’t getting a raw deal.

I didn’t.

I learned that if I was willing to cut my bullshit and listen, she could teach me to overclock my processor.

When Aaron and I first started hanging out in earnest, you know, the “you can have anything you want out of my fridge” stage, we had a conversation at work that rings true to this day. We were talking about the fact that Fag Hag is so prevalent for straight women who fawn on gay men and vice versa. Why isn’t there a word for lesbians who fawn on straight men and vice versa? Aaron came up with “lesbro,” and it stuck.

Yesterday, we were sitting in his apartment and I told him about some plans for St. James. Then, we started talking about my struggle to be a leader because every day, I wake up and realize that if there is a real-life connection between the Bible and me, it is that I am Moses. Not Charleton Heston Moses. The teenager who killed a soldier in the desert and is running in fear. I’m at the point now where God has asked me to do something, and I’m still saying “why don’t you ask AarOH MY GOD YOU’RE AARON!!!!!

He looked at me like I had three heads and I said, “When God first asked Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, his first words were, “I think you should pick my brother. He’s better at it than me.”

The brother’s name was Aaron.

Never forget that, Fanagans. NEVER EVER FORGET IT. Hold me accountable to it. I cannot lose him, because if I am the visionary, he is the brains. He can engineer the fuck out of everything, and I can’t find my keys in the morning. If I ever need an IT Guy, I could actually ask him because he knows more than I do and is resourceful enough to hire the right people under him. People don’t think about IT for a church, but there is no way on earth that I am going to be responsible for donors’ transactions being revealed. I will have NSA level cryptography before I will let that happen, and you are lucky that I am one of the people that can say that no protection is too much- we’ll pay for it. I’m on the internet all the time. Don’t think I don’t know how dangerous it is and how much I want to protect you from it.

All of this is to say that I want to be your safe space the way you’ve been mine. Your secrets, your dreams, your donations to something greater than yourself. Yesterday, I got my first request over the internet to hear confession, and even though I’m not Catholic and am not ordained, I said yes with the caveat that just like Mental Illness Happy Hour, I’m not a pastor or counselor, just a waiting room that doesn’t suck. I can listen to you, but at the end of the confession, I will say you are forgiven in Christ’s name…. now go forgive yourself with a trained therapist. The only thing I can do is disconnect enough to listen to you without saying anything except “here’s what I would do if I were you….. I’d make an appointment with someone who’s been trained at this for a very long time. People solve their own problems with enough time to think about them….. this blog is case in point.

He called me Preacher Girl.

Ok, that boy’s a lesbro, too.

Just as long as you understand that OH MY GOD IT’S AARON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so excited to have a new job, but my expectation is body-slammed into the ground right now. It’s not because I was expecting anything to happen, I’d just already prepared for it and the reality is that I have to wait….. which I am about as good at as algebra, and I got a 54 for the entire semester the first time around.

We’ve canceled the DC trip so we could start our new jobs, but I wanted to see my friends this Christmas….. Giles, Zaid, Xavi, Nathan, Emily, A-dog. It will happen, eventually, but right now my heart is up in the air with both darkness and light. I’m happy to be here for my family, and sad not to be on a plane. Still waiting for a last-minute Hail Mary because I’ve been waiting for this trip for almost two years.

Because I haven’t lived in DC since 2002, I’m eager to get back in a ridiculous sort of way. I want to build a version of St. James on the Anacostia river, where I think it would do the most good. That’s not going to happen in one trip, but I can at least go to the Anacostia and sit on the bank, dreaming of where the pews go.

I’m also very close to my friends by direct message and Facebook, so we’ve seen each other virtually since I left. However, there is nothing like a hug from a friend you haven’t seen since your original hair color. Plus, Nathan and Emily and Zaid and Giles both have children I’ve never met.

I feel weird about not going, because I am incredibly good at pretending time and space don’t matter right up until they do. All the “what would it be like” rumination gone in an instant. Sad and overjoyed at the same time. No DC, but being able to pay the bills won’t suck.

It’s just that all I wanted was to see people in the flesh and not what they look like in a few Facebook snapshots. It will happen, but on God’s own time.

Screw mine.

The fiction in my family is that my great uncle was CIA, supposedly killed in a military coup somewhere in Africa. What gave us that impression is that we did not get his personal effects until years and years later. None of these stories have ever been proven. It’s just our hunch. The CIA does not advertise if it doesn’t want you as a basic analyst. We have no proof, but we believe it to be true.

I was abused as a child, therefore, a lot of my personality screams sociopath. Light is a choice I make daily. I choose to be filled with Christ’s love, and I am strengthened by the same holy spirit that worked through him. It allows me to have more love and compassion than I can ever gather on my own. God fills the spaces in me that feel nothing. Light is a direction, and I am going with it… because the light did not shine the brightest until I surrendered to the idea that I am a sociopath and I need God more than most. The biggest problem I have is not inflicting that lack of emotion on others. It’s something I’ve made the choice to work on daily, and it has made me silent on the outside as I sit and ruminate on the choices that God is asking me to make.

The way those two paragraphs merge is my head space when I was reading the CIA torture report. The sociopath in me thought the operatives were………………….. creative. The risen Christ in me said that my responsibility is not to care what those people have done and to love them anyway. It’s a tape that’s been running since childhood. I can love people no matter how far they fall because I’ve sat with evil longer than anyone else and we know each other now. My entire life I have known that my great uncle was in the clandestine service, so the idea of extorting intel has never been offensive to me. Under the right set of circumstances, I would be capable of doing it myself. I know that because it has been proven over centuries that under the right set of circumstances, anyone can do anything.

Just because I can doesn’t mean I will. Living in clean, white light has been the best thing about using my web site to think in longhand. Others’ reactions to my writing have helped me learn the invaluable lesson of surrender, because I have had to learn to compromise……. to give more than I thought I could and love more than I thought I could to the glory of receiving the light that flows through me. I’ve really had the time and space to reflect on what I think, regardless of others’ reactions. I invite dialogue with the recognition that this is my web site, and you have the right to your opinion, but at the end of the day your disagreement probably belongs in your own blog entry because I am not threatened by the fact that you take up as much emotional space as I do. In my world, your stories are all as large as the one happening on this page right now.

The light I have to give you is that I came into my relationship with God as someone with two distinct personalities…. one light, one dark. As those sides have merged, my darkness hasn’t gone without a fight. I expected it to. I wanted it to. And the reality was that I kept coming up short. I had to seriously piss myself off enough at the decisions I was making to see that I was perpetuating a darkness I didn’t need. I moved myself out of the way, and God started talking to me differently….. and I know why.

Until my personalities started merging, I thought I was smarter than God while at the same time convinced that even if I thought God was smarter than me, I wasn’t worthy of redemption, anyway. Two things happened to ease the darkness down the road a bit.

The first was changing my focus. God isn’t the grandfather in the sky. I am God. You are God. We are all God together, because society’s response to the divine is more important than the divine itself. You go to church, pray, and give money because it should feed the divine in you, not that God cares one way or the other.

My answer to whether or not God exists will always be the same. “Why does it matter?” With faith, you can’t factually prove shit. I choose to believe so that I am not the walking sociopath my history tells me I am. I choose light. I choose faith. I choose belief.

Because I know God, and she is wonderful.

Time decides who you you meet in your life. Your heart decides who you want in your life. Your behavior decides who stays in your life.

I got that from a Facebook graphic, and it was the first time that one of those things shared all over everywhere sent a knife through my chest. I have been dealing with want vs. behavior for months. My WANT says “please be in my life forever.” My BEHAVIOR says otherwise. I manage to piss people off regularly, and the bitch of it is that I don’t mean to. I think all the time. Thoughts flow out of me like water. I don’t have a very good gauge as to how my thoughts are going to come across to other people….. that other people aren’t going to see me for the tiny philosopher king I strive to be. They’re going to see me as a meddling asshole. And of course I don’t mean everyone thinks that, but when I’m in the middle of a conflict with someone, it takes the color out of my world.

The reason it does is that I know I participated in emotionally bombing someone because I didn’t think about how my words would change from being written to being read. I sit at my computer and calmly type away, because typing allows me to look at huge issues while keeping land mines untripped. I can talk about things easily because when I’m typing, I don’t generally emote as well. There have been times, like when I wrote When We Were Young. During that one, I cried and screamed all the way through it. 90% of the time, I am stock still. Only my fingers are moving.

Then, when my words are read, I sit there in shock as I realize my words have hurt someone, because it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t be reading in the same headspace I was when I was writing. That they might emote where I didn’t even flinch. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about constantly, because writing is something that I just can’t help and their reactions aren’t, either. It’s their choice whether to continue to interact with me or not, and that’s where my helplessness reaches its height.

There comes a point where I can’t make it right again. There aren’t enough amends in the world.

My behavior decides, and I crumble with want.

Dana just got hired as the Receiver for the Spec’s in West U. I told her that now we could both be Receivers together (because she keeps track of inventory and I am a Lois Lowry fan). The most interesting part of Dana’s interview (after the part about “you work here now”) is that they need cashiers at other stores and I’m already hired if I need a job. That’s right. Dana showed up to an interview and I got a job. I wasn’t even there, and I got a job. I was telling some of my friends at church that this was the best thing to happen to my web site in a long time. Plus, it’s a liquor store. They’re closed on Sundays. That’s God right there.

It is as if God is saying to me, “when you put light into the world, you get it back.” I have been working honestly on a writing career, and I have been working so hard that my wrists are numb at the end of the day, along with my lower back. I also put out into the world that I wanted a job where I wasn’t on call…. that all I had to do was spend 40 hours a week making money and the rest of the time I was free to write away. Because working at a liquor store will be my job, not my career. I am not defined by anything but my words. My words matter to me, and they’ve started to mean something to other people. I cannot and will not walk away from that fact. It is not my opinion that my writing heals people. I didn’t start saying it until it had happened three or four times (always get at least three sources). I have a benchmark for success, and that benchmark is how many people are healed by my words instead of hurt by them.

I tanked Clever Title because I could not see the forest for the trees. Writing about my life hurt my friends, so therefore, it wasn’t worth doing. This time around, I have done it differently. I have told all my friends up front that I’m a writer, I’ll always be a writer, and you’ll always be a part of me. I am not using you to get hits, I am talking about my life AND YOU ARE IN IT. If I don’t write about you, you don’t mean much to me at all, because it means that you don’t value my talent or are running in fear of it because you see yourself as some sort of target.

I will say this again, because I’ve said it before and it’s still true. I don’t write to hurt anyone. I write so that my friends will live forever. Three hundred years from now, people will still know that Aaron, Argo, and Dana are the closest to me because they are officially NOT. IMPRESSED. When I told Argo that I was going into the ministry, she said something about not being sure about the whole God thing. I said, “I don’t need you for that. I need you so that when I start talking to God, I don’t start to believe I am one.” She said, “I can do that.”

I didn’t think it would be a problem in the slightest.

Here’s what Jesus wouldn’t tell you that I will. When you’re a leader that comes from the people, when you start to get recognized elsewhere, you need to keep the people around you that were never impressed in the first place. Why do you think that the Disciples are so important? How are James, John, Thomas and Peter any different from CJ, Toby, Josh and Leo? To the Disciples, they had to take it on faith that Jesus’ ministry would be successful and that by following him, they were doing the right thing. They put up with a tremendous amount of emotional bullshit, because Jesus and I are a lot alike. When you ask us questions, sit back and be prepared for the answer, because it will be the equivalent of you asking me how my fish and chips taste and getting back the entire history of fish and chips because that’s where my mind went when you gave me that starting point. Questions do not get answers. They get trails and ellipses. I think out loud to my detriment.

People say that my mind fascinates them. I never know what to say to that, because I’m not sure what they mean by it. It’s too generic a compliment for someone that has serious self-doubt issues, because my first thought was, “like a zoo animal?” Of course. Of course that’s what they mean, jackass.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

This is also why I’m glad to have a job as a cashier. I can be polite, friendly, courteous, and at the end of the day, go home and enjoy my career.

When one of my friends writes to me, she always uses these long ellipses…………. When she does it, it makes her writing voice sound like William Shatner. I am…… pleased. I was even more pleased when I realized that the long ellipses were the story, not the pause…..

To that end, I started a hashtag on Facebook called #prayingonthespaces, and I’m trying to get it to go viral, because this is a bigger idea than a one on one conversation. In my prayer life, I see the words, but God sees the spaces…. the parts that aren’t filled yet. The things that need my love and attention because they’re not getting it already because my responsibility is in the wrong place. Part of being an abused child is learning to take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault. Part of being a healthy adult is putting responsibility back where it’s supposed to be, which is not a one-time endeavor. It’s a lifelong process. I feel that when I go to God in prayer, there’s not much I really have to say except a variation on Anne Lamott’s three prayers:

Help.

Thanks.

Wow.

Where am I going………………………………………….?

#prayingonthespaces

As I was preparing for my sermon this morning, I started reading the Gospel for today. It’s another excerpt from “Chicken Little,” but at least the language is somewhat more expository than “I don’t know.” One of the things that theologians struggle with is that since Mark is the earliest written record chronologically (as in, Mark came first but is not the first gospel in the Bible), they’re not sure whether Mark is the gospel OF Jesus or the gospel ABOUT Jesus. There’s a difference, and even though it might be a millimeter of difference, theologians thrive on that millimeter for centuries. The practical application is tense. Is Jesus speaking in first person? Is Mark speaking in third-person omnipotent? We don’t know, but we try like hell to figure it out (pun intended).

In today’s reading, Mark focuses on the ministry of John the Baptist. John is historically representative of judgment and repentance. However, John leaves out the thing that Jesus can and will provide- salvation. Here is the difference in one conversation (Matthew 11:18-19):

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’

The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”

This is ancient language to describe an ongoing problem. If you set yourself apart in righteousness, you are seen as wholly other. People cannot relate to you. If you are the visionary that comes from the people, you are going to have a hard time overcoming their very real earthly impressions of you. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

No. No, it can’t.

You notice that Jesus was not a very popular preacher in his hometown until he was recognized everywhere else. Reminds me of preaching to Argo, Aaron, and Dana…. “been to Vegas twice, saw a tiger fly around the room. Your act ain’t nothin’ special, slick.”

John the Baptist preaches from the holy fire of judgment, but not his own. His God is old-school. Judgment does not rain down on you from him, but from the spirit through which he is strengthened. John is supposedly humble enough to know the difference, but I believe that both John and Jesus were also INFJ. The difference is that John’s emphasis is all J(udging), and Jesus’s is all F(eeling). To accept the ministry of John, you accept that you sin and you can’t help it… you give the power to God for accounting your works. To accept the ministry of Jesus, all you need to know is that the account is reconciled before you do anything else. In fact, what account? Any sin that you may have committed is already forgiven, which is why John is not shy about saying that someone is coming greater than he. It is as if he is saying quite plainly, “I only have the emotional ability to get thisfar, but someone is coming that can take you the rest of the way.”

As a writer and theologian, I feel this way daily. DAILY.

I can bring you the light of Christ, I can tell you what it means to me, but I am not stupid enough to think that there aren’t millions of ministers smarter and more capable than me… and not only that, I would prefer you seek them out. That way, I don’t have to be responsible for your emotional freakout when you discover that I am just as human as Jesus. I won’t be there to know when your mindset suddenly changes and you don’t think anything good can come out of Nazareth. You know it.

It is the conundrum of every good pastor in the world. “Please, God. Do not let me show my humanness because they think that since I am anointed with Christ’s light that I somehow have new superpowers that they don’t.” As a child of the Methodist church, my friends would apologize for cursing in front of me. I honestly think it created the tape that made me so vulgar now. Yes, you can have the mouth of a sailor and still be worthy of God’s love… no matter how holy I feel, it’s not going to stop me from saying “fuck” a lot. Sorry. Not gonna happen.

The day I stop cursing and telling outrageous jokes is the moment I set myself apart and start my “John the Baptist” crap. The people around John thought he was possessed by a demon because he wasn’t partying with them. People accepted Jesus because he was just a regular dude with an extraordinary calling… and it had been that way since he was a baby.

Last week, our Advent devotional was about waiting for the baby… preparing for the miracle of Advent to occur… when the preparation leads to permanent changes in how we react and respond, how we listen and how we talk to each other.

This week is no less an enormous change. This week, the buzz word is “watch.” We are waiting for the one John the Baptist calls “greater than himself.” We have met John, who is perfectly happy to preach as the preview to the movie. It is a sacramental interpretation- that baptism is a spiritual change from darkness into light. Where John trips is that he himself was not waiting for the baby, because he expected that the Messiah to come would reign in the fire he attributed to him long ago.

He wasn’t waiting for the baby, because he didn’t know he was supposed to.

But we do.

We have the benefit of four gospels that tell us exactly who that baby grows up to be. But John, like most Jews of the time, was waiting for the heavens to open up and for God to yell down and say, “THIS IS IT! HE’S HERE!” There were going to be signs and shit all over everywhere so that no Jew on earth would mistake the Messiah for anything else. The reason that there’s so much geneology in Matthew is because Matthew is literally screaming to get his Messiah recognized by the Jewish community at large. He is, in effect, walking around with a huge tome to factually argue everything to the last tooth and nail. Matthew is all, “he comes from the House of David, bitches.”

Please, for the love of God, make Matthew stop. Part of faith is not having to make people prove that they’re telling the truth. It’s fine to debate, but when you get down to the basest parts of yourself that say this is all crap, stop and remember that the gospel writers, John the Baptist, and even Jesus were just as human as you and I. They didn’t understand any better than we do right now. They had the same emotional tools and less in terms of research. We have had the benefit of thousands of years to think about it, and we’re still arguing like all this came down on our heads last night.

It doesn’t seem that belief in the gospel writers or even Jesus has real-world application, and yet, it does. If you are that analytical about your faith, are you that analytical about your life? What does it take for people to get you to believe? It doesn’t have anything to do with God at this point. When your kid comes to you and says, “I have a problem,” how long does it take you to believe them? How long does it take for belief to become action? How long does it take you to help them?

I am slow on the uptake a lot.

I am so analytical that it takes me twice as long to figure out a problem because I have to look at all 82 sides. It stops me from springing into action quickly, because I look before I leap. I have learned to spend the time and look after a whole swath of my life got eaten up in “don’t want to think about it.” I baptized myself in John’s name, because I wanted someone else to judge me as harshly as I do. I wasn’t ready for Jesus, yet. In order to be ready for Jesus, you have to believe that all your sins are worthy of being redeemed, and that it’s ok you keep on sinning, because there’s really no way around it.

This year has been a marked (Marked?) change in thought process as I wrote about waiting for the baby, and am now watching for the Messiah to come. I went to the pre-service concert, and I am tapping my wristwatch for the main event.

Come sit next to me. I need popcorn.

It’s still Diane’s birthday, and I’m getting ready to go to sleep. Emotionally, I’m fairly exhausted, because as I told Dana, “just because it’s emotional work doesn’t mean it’s easier… it’s still work. In fact, sometimes I think it’s harder.” I’ve had a lot on my plate emotionally, and tonight I just want to relax in the comfort of my own bed, because then while I’m dreaming, the pain will float away. To that end, I am publishing my favorite Diane Syrcle quotes of all time:

“AIDS will kill you, but herpes is for life.”

“I like your lady. I like you WITH your lady. She is a good lady.” Dana and I are going to have to record this at some point. It loses something without Southern inflection.

“You are free therapy for someone older and often not wiser.”

“You can’t make love to someone else if you don’t know how to make love to yourself.”

Diane used to wear contacts all the time, and once at church when I was 13 she ditched them and wore glasses. I said, “Oh, Diane! You look so smart in your glasses!” She pushed them up on her nose and said, with dripping sarcasm, “as opposed to WHAT?”

“Bless it and release it.” (more important with age…..)

I don’t want to lose her. I try like hell not to. People around me, especially my wife, say that I am too kind. I tell Dana that I don’t love Diane because it changes her. I love Diane because it changes me. I cannot live in that much anger, fear, and shame. Loving her despite her flaws allows me to walk in light even when the darkness consumes what I really hold dear… which is the ability to funnel light to others.

If people say that makes me too kind, then let them say it. It’s how I’d rather be remembered, anyway. Do I really want to be known as “that bitch that came after Diane on her web site,” or do I want a story of redemption?

Well, I believe in the risen Christ. It seems only fitting that I allow the risen Christ to work through me. This is not a resurrection between us. The resurrection is for me. What she does with it is her choice.

I’ve already made mine.

My sister Steffi (well, technically, she’s my sister-in-law, but I hate semantics with family) is running in the California International Marathon tomorrow. Mama and Papa B have gone out to Sac to support her, and both Dana and I wish we were there. It’s just unfortunate money and timing. Even if we had the money to take off for Sac tonight, we are still performing in Lessons & Carols tomorrow at Epiphany. So tonight, even though my body is in Houston, my thoughts are sitting on the couch next to her.

I’m not sure what to say. I don’t know anything about running. All I know is that marathons are like, 8 bucks a month on Netflix and I’m okay with that. It just seems important to recognize that Steffi SAW what she wanted to do, and once it was in her mind, she just tore after it like a house on fire. It’s inspiring. If Steffi can run a marathon, what can I do?

The skies are limitless on that one, and when I find a direction, I’ll be the first to say that Steffi gave me the endurance to stay in the race until the end.

I love you, Counselor. Maybe we could watch The West Wing while you’re pounding the pavement. Both marathons. Seems legit.

It’s Diane’s birthday, and I am emptier than I thought I would be. It’s a range of emotions, from brick wall armor to histrionic mess. I, like I do every year, remember the first birthday present I ever sent her. I conspired with my mom when I was 13 to send her flowers at school when she was a teacher at Hodges Bend- a rosebud with a card that read, “for all you do, this bud’s for you.” Then, I called 104.1 KRBE and had them announce her birthday over the radio.

Her totem animal is a dragonfly, so one year I got her a toilet seat with a huge dragonfly embroidered on it. It was so tacky it hurt. Then for Christmas I got her a turquoise bracelet with a card that said she deserved it because I totally Punk’d her on her birthday.

Today it’s all about the good memories so I don’t drown in bad ones. In my head, we’re singing “Happy Birthday” together at Bridgeport, dueling divas style, because we had that shit wired. When our voices connect, there’s so much power it’s a magnetic field.

I have to be careful that my thoughts stay on the ground, because my tendency on these days is to sit and stare into the Mirror of Erised and the dichotomy is so stark my breath becomes fight-or-flight.

But I totally nailed that rosebud thing.