Tag: UCC

The Lanagan Library

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

Whether I like it or not, the Bible has had a bigger impact on me than any book I’ve ever read. That’s because yes, I’m into it. I nerd out on ancient Hebrew and Greek, trying to figure out what people are actually saying vs. the Baptist Evanglical interpretation, “it means just what it says it means.” Hint….. there were never forty days and forty nights, or any variation thereof. It’s like saying “the other day” in Texan. It could have been the day before yesterday, it could have been 20 years ago. Both “the other day” to Texans and “40 days and 40 nights” to Israelites are code for “an indeterminate amount of time.” The fight between literalists and people who take the Bible seriously, but not literally has fueled a lot of my need to run away from the problem. I cannot deal with Evangelicals well due to autistic rage. It is every bit as intense as chasing tax collectors with a whip from the temple, Hey, I found out I was autistic through peer review. Why shouldn’t he? It’s not like I’m putting him own by saying he’s queer or autistic, because there’s no connotation to either of those things, right?

To clarify, I did not call Jesus queer. I said it was impossible to tell given the information recorded, and it was every bit as likely that Jesus and John were in a relationship as Jesus and Mary, because there’s only so much Greek you can apply to “the Jesus loved.” At the very least, he had a deep relationship with a man, and queer people can see themselves in that relationship whether it’s factual or not. What I do know in the current day and age is that if Jesus was here and updated on today’s societal norms, what I believe his exact words would be are “get over it.” Whether he’s queer as a three dollar bill or John’s Patrick Stewart to his Ian McKellan- we’ll never know…… AND THOSE AREN’T THE QUESTIONS THAT MATTER. It’s just color commentary. He had close relationships with women as well. So, I don’t think you can define Jesus’s sexuality because “coming out” wasn’t a thing.

I’m also not denying that Jesus is heterosexual. Jesus doesn’t tell us whether he’s gay in the Bible because that’s not a question anyone would have asked him at the time. It was live and let live- the Romans occupied Israel. It was offensive to Orthodox Jews, but which was the dominant culture in occupied land?

Whether or not Jesus was gay doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It would personalize him to me if he was. And that’s what everyone in the world searching for Jesus’s truth wants to do to it….. they want to feel closer to Jesus, so they give him pieces of their own personality. That’s why he looks so different to me than he does to Max Lucado and Joel Osteen.

For instance, my Jesus was actually born in the Middle East, and looks like it. I think I’ve said this before, but Jesus is hot like Reza Aslan. If Reza doesn’t think he’s hot and finds this, you’re welcome. If he’s reading, I should also tell you that I love his book “Zealot.” It’s where I get a lot of my information on the historical Christ.

The impact that the Bible has had on me is trying to find this Jesus, the one that is like me. And in fact, I didn’t do it by going forwards in time, but by going backwards. Learning every bit I could soak up about history and culture at the time so that I could understand the book in context, because the way the Right and the mainline were handling it left a lot to be desired if they thought Jesus died for everyone’s sins and everyone got to come eat at his table except the people you don’t like.

As Reza points out, “God doesn’t love America. You love America.”

I extrapolate this all the time. Nothing in the Bible is written by the main character.

My best example of this would be this blog written about me by all of you. Those stories would be about me, but they would not be written by me. Things attributed to me may be accurate or they may not.

Especially if I asked you to write a different blog about me based on this one a hundred years after I’m dead. The only thing you can’t do is turn me from a brown person to a white one, but I have a lot more things that define me as a minority than that. Queer, nonbinary, and neurodivergent are at the top of the list, because my physical disabilities aren’t noticeable and therefore I’m faking it.

What I have noticed is that CP affects every muscle differently. I can dead lift 50 pound bags of flour (Dana can attest that I can lift them, although carrying them for any distance is quite comical. I cannot use enough force on a lever to push a potato through a fry cutter. The particular muscle that controls that part of my arm is much weaker than other parts or my body, and no matter what I do, it doesn’t get better because it can’t. So, people think one skill automatically translates to the other and get frustrated when it doesn’t, because obviously I’m faking it to get out of cutting fries (Why? It’s one of the easiest parts of the job.). An adaptation for the machine would be making the lever longer so I didn’t have to use as much force. But come on, Lanagan. You can do all this other stuff. You’re lazy. Same issue with carrying a mop bucket full of water (8lbs a gallon) up three flights of stairs because there was no elevator and no water access upstairs.

The other people could do it.

Little things like that were my downfall, and with 2D vision I could not see plating in the same way other people see it. I could not recreate it perfectly because I couldn’t. The tautology is real.

So, whether or not I like it, the Bible impacts me the most because I identify with Jesus as a person. I choose to believe that through both of our writings/preachings, it’s even easy for other people to see that we’d be good friends IRL. And, in fact, that’s just how I see him. On my Friends list, inactive status. Doesn’t mean I can’t still write the messages.

Remembering to write is more important than receiving an answer. You learn more by going back to your “Sent” folder than you ever will going back to your Inbox.

If you think about it, your e-mail is your own version of the Bible about you. It is a story of your reflections/actions with other people. People you met, virtually or in real life. Things you liked. Even your subscriptions are important. Which brands you genuinely support because you read their e-mails when they come out. I will read anything from Wendy’s or Trader Joe’s because they’re so entertaining. For you, it might be Old Navy. Whatever. It is a thing that is important to you (I don’t eat a lot of Wendy’s, but I spend a lot of time wishing I was in their writer’s room. I’m just too “Cards Against Humanity” for them, I think.).

It’s your “Stories That Are All True…. and some of them actually happened.”

Another book that really touched my soul was “The Giver.” I read it in 8th grade English and it changed my life, because I finally found a character in science fiction that represented me. My emotional abuse made me feel like The Receiver, my emotional abuser giving me memories through touch. That theme has continued throughout my life, because several people have given me War now, from Mireille Enos to Daniel to Zac to countless others.

It is a different playing field to feel War.

However, my emotional abuse gave me a frame of reference for CPTSD, both in how to recognize it and how to treat it. One of the things I have learned is that you cannot talk away a chemical imbalance, and in general people who are reluctant to get on medication are people who are too stubborn to see it’s not a weakness, it’s reality. I am not speaking to anyone in particular, I just know that is a universal response by people who have been raised to think that therapy and medication are for the weak while their nerves are actively screaming. It makes them too quick to anger, not realizing it’s because their serotonin is fucked up.

You can’t talk away a chemical imbalance.

It’s a different playing field when you feel Mental Illness, except that is a memory that I got both by it touching me (I’m Bipolar II), and others’ stories touching me as well. The Givers are all the people in my life, because I soak them all up like The Receiver would. I, too, have bright eyes and am not built for the world of Same. I’m trying to escape with my baby, and we’ve just crossed over. Except the baby is also me.

Lastly, if I had to pick a third book, I haven’t even finished it yet. We are currently writing the sequel. It’s the e-mail between Supergrover and me, which we both refer to now- she hesitated in “re-opening our book,” a line that touched me to my core because again, I thought, “you hear me.” I’m not expecting anything of her now, because she’s proven to me that she wants to be more capable on her own. I have been heard. I do not have to be heard again. I know how we both feel, and the conflict is over.

In effect, we don’t want to re-open our book. It’s the Old Testament, sinners in the hands of an angry God. Except that was our reaction, not our response. PTSD has retired us both, and neither one of us can help from melting down when we feel threatened. I didn’t want to feel threatened anymore, and neither did she. We realized we were tired of bad communication, not each other.

Once we both cut the shit, we were free to start the New Testament, the God of promise and abundance.

And I know that even though she is not a Christian, or even a believer in God, that she gets the metaphor. The lesson is true, even if the story never factually happened.

By making each other subtractions of the divine and recognizing both our divinity and our fallibility, we are stronger than ever. When she was angry, she always got very angry and said “you don’t know me.”

Then, when she was vulnerable, she told me I’d hit the nail on the head many times. “Victory is mine. On Left.”

I used to have Stewie Griffin set as the voice on my GPS, so every time I really have been touched by Winning, I hear his voice in my head. The “On Left” invariably comes with it, because now it’s drilled into my head.

I do not mean that I won anything over Supergrover, that I had any part of me dancing in “I’m better than you.” It was in realizing that we had more power together than we have apart. We both know twins connected by DNA, but it’s weird how we seem to be The Wonder Twins anyway, our connection manifesting in our neurons and brain patterns rather than a biological connection. In short, doing our trauma dump affected me chemically. I don’t know if it’s the same for her, but it feels like it because no matter how mad each of us got, we couldn’t stay away from each other. There was nothing on God’s green earth that has kept us apart, and I look forward to more of it.

I don’t think there’s a roller coaster of emotion anymore. I think that we can get to writer and editor, the team the world needs instead of two angry people who pick on each other.

All of this has come to me in writing, which I count as a living document because the Bible affects me so much.

Things That Make Me Laugh

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This meme, which I posted on Facebook with the caption, “they would never tell us if they were watching us through our microwaves. That is Pop Secret Information.

But as I have said before, I am not offended by the NSA or CIA because if China and Russia are spying on me, I want my people in the room, too. People do not realize that they are willingly handing over their every move to the Chinese government. They do not believe that we (the US) are trying to protect people by banning it. It’s a huge injustice to content creators, when all we’re trying to do is keep US information inside the US. It’s not working when people actively invite China into their mobiles. Why use the back door when you can walk through the front? Social engineering at its finest. For that reason, I do not have the Tik-Tok app installed on my phone. I do watch them, but on the web site in private mode or re-vlogged on YouTube.

I honestly don’t care if the US knows what I do and don’t. I really care if China can pick me up out of a lineup, because I am dangerous to them being interested in intelligence. I would not go to Iran because of this, either. I would love to see Tehran as a tourist, but if anything would get me marked as an American spy, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s “writing about American spies.” Just a wild guess.

It doesn’t take much, because they’ve got relatives selling prayer rugs on La Brea. 😉

There is an “Argo” quote or reference for every occasion, and that makes me laugh.

I’ve also gotten a huge kick out of watching Donald Trump go blissfully into every hearing and genuinely believe that he has never done anything wrong in the history of his life. It’s catching up to him in a major way, and I do not have schadenfreude. It’s fascinating to watch, like JK Rowling if she ever showed up at Pride.

Surely neither of them is that out of touch, and yet they are.

People say that both parties are the same, and on some issues, they’re right. I do not like the way either party funnels money to Israel. I do not like that Republicans are fighting over who gets to be a person. Who gets to be an American. So far, the mold is white, cis, straight, and male. It is unsustainable, and yet we continue to uphold it….. or at least more than half the nation does, because not all Democrats are that liberal. They do not see the problems inherent in treating minorities like shit, because none of, say, my problems affect them.

For instance, abortion would look different to most politicians if they were poor.

It makes me laugh, because I always laugh at people’s blind spots. It is better than rage or depression. Like, how dense are you if you don’t know that the news of a new baby is not always happy?For some women, it’s a death sentence because they made the devastating mistake of not trusting the bear instead.

The most vulnerable time in a woman’s life is pregnancy, because some fathers don’t support abortion. They support killing the mother because they’re not financially stable and the pressure becomes too much. The woman becomes the problem.

It makes me laugh that men do not understand this, because it makes them look like they don’t have eyes. As my friend Evey Winters points out, one of the reasons we trust bears over men is that good men stand there and say nothing. What am I supposed to do but laugh at their stupidity? I cannot solve everything by not leaving the house. If I didn’t laugh, I wouldn’t function.

My jokes are dark because the world is dark. It’s black humor to deal with an often black world….. or as I’ve put it before, trying to be an Easter person in a Good Friday world, but the way I go about it is to shed light on problems. I often am using dark humor to make a greater point, and I just have to hope that people come along with me. I think that most people who are minorities for any reason have a blacker sense of humor than the majority because there are so many more obstacles in our way….. and the more obstacles created the more things that make you a minority. For instance, AFAB (assigned female at birth), queer, neurodivergent, physically disabled, and poly are all separate sets of discrimination. The only way I escape all of it is by claiming it, because there’s no way to blackmail or shame me over any of these things. I learned that lesson at 14 when I came out as queer and it’s one of the few things that’s stuck.

Don’t cut myself into more manageable bites. Let them choke.

Republicans are asking minorities to either be just like them or get out of the United States. That should not be acceptable behavior in any country, much less “land of the free, home of the brave.” I quote this a lot, but it’s apt here:

Only the Americans would put “free” on a note so high no one could sing it. -Tony Kushner

I mean, I can, but that’s because I’m a classically trained soprano, not because I’m free.

Singing makes me laugh because that’s what I do when I hit a wrong note, and I hit a lot of wrong notes while trying to find the right ones, especially since it’s only now that I have a piano in my house (electric keyboard in the music room). This is also the first house in which I’ve been able to work out, and by that I mean “sing.” The attic is soundproofed, and so is the basement. David is also a singer, so hearing me warm up would not send him into hysterics the way it would have with my other housemates. I was very lucky that I got to sing at Bridgeport, because I was terrified to go into opera voice at 2300. I cleared it first, but permission is not reality when you have never heard someone sing before and they go full hat with horns in what would be considered “the middle of the night” in my neighborhood.

That thought makes me laugh in and of itself. It also makes me excited for January, because I might be in shape to try out for the opera chorus this year since I have a practice room that is ACTUALLY a practice room. Singing, like everything else you do with your body, gets easier as you limber up the muscles. I have not used those muscles in a long time, so I would prefer to be in a sound proof room until I can get control of it.

I can “fake it til I make it,” but it’s not how I prefer to sing. I will warm up for an hour before a performance. Otherwise, the chances of missing a note are greater, as are the epiglottal stops that make it where I can’t sing at all. The funniest time that’s ever happened was that I was filling in for another soloist in something that went up to a B flat (the highest note in the chord for the Star Spangled Banner, as well). I get up to the A and I have an epiglottal stop and just glissando down. It was…….. something.

I would like to work with Giles again, but he’s not taking students because he’s an elementary school teacher now. Giles was my voice teacher at University of Houston and we just happened to end up in the same city. Because he studied with Katharine Czienszky (apologies if I’ve spelt that wrong…. don’t have time to Czech), I have a lot of singer friends in common with him all over the country….. some of whom have known me since high school.

I think knowing really famous people before they got famous, like Robert Glasper, prepared me for the life I have now…. which is knowing that life doesn’t get better. You do. I just happen to know a lot of people that have defied insurmountable odds to get where they are, like Mireille Enos (The Killing, Good Omens) and Justin Furstenfeld (Blue October). One of the best plays I’ve ever seen starred Mireille as Anne Frank and Justin as Otto. Justin didn’t go to PVA for music, he was theater as well…. although one of the violists in my orchestra, Ryan Delahoussaye, is also in the band.

Yes, musicians. I know a violist with a gig.

Now that made me laugh.

I’m spending my evening writing because it’s distracting me from the fact that Bryn is not here yet and David has choir practice. I thought seriously about going with him, because I could commit to Tuesday nights. I have to think seriously about going to church twice a week again. However, it wouldn’t affect my schedule too much. I am rarely gone over the weekends and it would be a church in which I already had a ride. It’s a liberal church, but it’s Catholic. I would rather get paid as a ringer than attend a Catholic Church voluntarily, because I believe in open communion. I’m fine with the current pope and he’s one of my heroes because the Catholic Church is not where it needs to be in terms of being a liberal church, but it is better off than it has been in a long time. Christianity must change or die, and Catholicism would have been first due to their outdated views on, well, most everything.

However, church makes me laugh, and I’ve come a long way if I’d even consider it. What made me leave the last time was grief. I didn’t like going to church because I saw my mother in everything everyone did….. and I saw myself in the pastor. In fact, I’d been reading my pastor’s work for years because he’s also a blogger. I knew who he was online, but I was surprised as shit when I accidentally walked into his church.

There’s an Episcopal church near me now, so I might walk to it instead of Christ Cong, who was faced with closure due to their building issues. I think a reconciling Methodist congregation has it now, so that is also a viable option if I just want to stare my childhood in the face twice a week.

It makes me laugh, so it might be worth it. Or perhaps both churches are sharing the same space like “Little Mosque.” Maybe there’s a buddy comedy happening without me. I should look into this.

I’ve been a part of something like “Little Mosque” before, because we had a Jewish congregation rent our space at Bridgeport up until relatively recently, when they got bigger. I went to schul some Fridays just to listen to the transliteration, and I also enjoyed Ariel’s preaching. I also preach from a Jewish translation of the New Testament, because Jesus was a Jew and I’m trying to put him in the correct historical context. I once had someone say to me that “United Church of Christ” stood for “Unitarians Considering Christ,” and I don’t think that’s true at all. I think that people like Baptists depend on Jesus to comfort them when they’re distressed.

The UCC knows that Jesus was sent to distress us in our comfort.

And that makes me laugh.

In More Ways Than One

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever been camping?

My church had a campout on Mt. St. Helen’s so yes. I have camped. I hope it’s the last time until I find a place that’s warmer. It was great during the day. I froze my ass off every night. To her credit, Kari tried. She gave me a sleeping bag that was rated -20. It says more about me than it does about the sleeping bag, because my body temperature didn’t get high enough to provide the insulation and that’s on me.

Therefore, I have nothing against camping, per se. I don’t mind being dirty at all. It’s just that I’ve never been able to sleep outside without massive amounts of bedding. Which I have at home. In my bed. In a house.

Even my coldest outing wasn’t as bad as camping out in my mind tends to be every day. That’s because in order to maintain the good, I have to look at the bad. I have to go back and read what I’ve written so that I understand the context in which it was written and what I’ve actually written down…. and I can only go back long enough before the context fails, and then I can see if an idea is local or global. Am I ranting, or is it a problem that lots of other people deal with? Is it my bipolar spinning out? I have to make sure it’s not that, because it’s the kind of mood and behavior that isolates people. In a lot of ways, I camp out in my mind to make sure my story is consistent, and letting my emotions evolve day by day. The facts are consistent. It’s how I “treat myself,” and I’m delighted by that little double entendre.

When I see what my behavior is doing to people, I can look at others and see if my problem reads universal or personal. I can separate reactions from responses. I can separate their childhood shit from their adult behavior because I do it to mine all the time, comparing against the heuristics of all the human behavior I’ve seen my whole life. I had a platform to be able to see down, but I was looking up. My congregation has been teaching me to be a better human since I was born, both in learning to lead and singing in the choir.

The most disturbing thing I’ve ever thought is that if the woman who emotionally abused me had stayed, I might have been the pastor of the church. That she would have made me into her partner, and I mean the one she has now. If you look at who I am and who she is, it’s a fucking jump scare. She didn’t pick a person, she picked a pattern.

I could have turned into an arrogant asshole, but I didn’t. It probably wasn’t how she came across to her congregation, because when you’re already in love with yourself, you have the ability to lead and it’s whether you like it or not how the ones around you are treated. If you need to feel powerful because you feel powerless, you’ll take it from people who you deem inferior to you…. according to your own personal ranking system. Nature does not deal in absolutes.

I would like to think that I would have remained myself, and realistic about the fact that it was just the hand I was dealt. I don’t know what I would have done had I actually taken on pastoring a church… but here’s what I wouldn’t have done. I wouldn’t have made everything dependent on my mood and behavior so that pleasing me was a guessing game…. because microaggressions don’t lie. If someone picks it up, they won’t believe your words for a second because the energy is off. Your words and behavior don’t match. That way, other fixer/pleasers don’t feel like they’re not getting recognition, because it’s the easiest and kindest way to let them know they matter…. because they do. To treat them as anything else is crazy and won’t win you any points. If you have turf wars because you can’t delegate, it’s the beginning of the end because no one is empowered except you. Let your board feel like they’re failures long enough and berate them when they complain, and then either they’ll replace you or you’ll throw a fit and go tell them to fuck off and fire yourself. Picking up your toys and going home is never a good look, and you’ll burn down your legacy in any church at all. It was a difficult thing to stand in the flames because I had bought tickets to the show for 20 years.

No one will ever win an argument by thinking they’re always right. But let’s be real. In a congregational church, you have a boss… and the boss is the equivalent of an Episcopal vestry. In a large denomination, you have a bishop, and the conference is responsible for conflict resolution because they’ve SENT you to a church instead of you applying for the job. If you’re not humble enough to work by committee, it’s a losing argument in the congregational church. The board’s general problem is thinking they’re smarter than the pastor, and it makes the pastor feel like “if you wanted to lead the church yourselves, why did you ask for someone with a Master’s and treat them like crap?” Doesn’t expertise count for anything? It’s a give and take, a spectrum just like whether there’s a Bible or not, a God or not. It takes a tremendous amount of vulnerability on both sides, and torture when either can’t do it. The pastor isn’t always right, and neither is the committee. They will repel and attract for the entire length of their stay, and it very much depends on whether you were on a committee or not as to how you feel the church is being run. Only the people in the room know what happened.

So if you are in a church, and someone tells you the pastor did something or another, have empathy for all this. Listen objectively, and don’t let them get away with anything, either. It keeps both parties honest to hear the ways they can help each other so their future keeps getting brighter. The same things that work with leaders and groups work in marriages. People in homosexual relationships know this better than anyone else, because marriage between a man and a woman comes with a very strict power dynamic. Letting your penis inside something is good, being vulnerable enough to give that power to your partner is bad….. and leads straight men to treat gay men like they’re sinning. Not because they’re gay…. because they’re vulnerable and men don’t do that.

Straight women don’t get their glory because straight men won’t switch hit. They know it will change the power dynamic and they just don’t want to do it. That’s because most of the time, it’s the only power they’ve got. They’ll do everything from raping women and children to pretending it’s not sex with men if they’re on top. That way, one person thinks they’re in a relationship and one doesn’t. It is……. problematic. I remember getting dicked around by a straight girl that way. I knew I was an experiment…. the next morning. Speaking about not looking at microaggressions… she was a walking time bomb.

It was just a coincidence that I started hanging out with her ex later, because she’d already left my life for good. That didn’t stop her from calling my answering machine and saying that Kat had been abused and listed all the ways in which it happened. That time, Kat was in the room where it happened. It filled me with love for her that I was able to hold her while she cried about it, to say to her honestly and completely that I loved her and that nothing her friend had said made any different. Her friend had outed her about something that I would never have wanted to hear about her unless she told me, but it did give me the opportunity to be even more loving than I could have been because we started the relationship both knowing everything about everything and nothing was holding us back from honesty. That’s why I called the police when the ex showed up at our house unannounced and Kat said she didn’t want to talk to her and stood her ground. The ex wouldn’t leave and broke our screen door. Whether that was on purpose or by accident is a non-issue. It happened, and facts are facts.

Being me is knowing that I’ve also felt like her, but never done anything to that degree in my life. Thinking is free. Saying something is optional. I try to wish things into being, and work toward it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not human. It doesn’t mean my words come out right all the time so that people never misunderstand anything because I’m so great. It depends on how much they desire to understand that makes listening to me get easier. That’s because the less I need to process something, the less you’ll hear about it unless something pops up suddenly that connects to something in the past………

Probably because I’m camped out in my mind.

The Resurrection Has Begun

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was red-letter for me, albeit a bit scary in multiple ways.

At 1:00 PM, I met with a recruiter in downtown Silver Spring face-to-face, something about which I was incredibly anxious. I felt the fear and did it, anyway. My comfort zone is Zip Recruiter, LinkedIn, and the hundreds of e-mails that come to me from recruiters in the area because my job profiles are listed as “actively looking.” I’ve gotten lots of bites this way, but as my father reminded me, my personality is usually what gets me jobs- impossible to show off over e-mail… well, not impossible, because I’m generally funny and engaging in cover letters to stand out, but the whole package is somewhat hidden.

I got lucky because the recruiter had literally gotten a call not an hour before about a job, therefore I was the first and so far, only candidate. He looked at my resume and thought I might be perfect for it, given my wide range of past experiences. He said to call him back on Monday at 11:00 AM and he’d tell me what the employer said…. but he didn’t think it would be a problem. My only issue is that it’s a contract that only lasts until August, so there are two things I need to do in response. The first is to continue my job search starting in June, and the second is to try my best to make myself invaluable so that there’s no reason for the contract to end…. possibly getting hired as a full-time employee.

The job itself is part customer service, part marketing analyst. It is responding to surveys in the Office of Government Affairs given to it by the Library of Congress, and creating new surveys after the response part is complete. Basically, the Library of Congress wants to know how it’s doing when people visit. I’m a voracious reader and writer. The Library of Congress is my jam. If I get this job, I will be over the moon. It will be a chance to showcase what I do best- talking to people and writing content for both web & print. You’d think I’d be awful at talking to people, but I am engaging and funny and not anxious at all when the conversation is for work. Anxiety about cold-calling is not an issue, because I don’t have to come up with things to say on the spot. Writing? Amazing. Off the cuff? Hit or miss (in the moment, it is often “I’m sorry, what are words again?”). Plus, working for the government I’d get more days off than everyone else. 😛

The hourly wage is more than I’ve ever made in my life, but there’s a reason for it. Because I’m not a full-time employee, I have to cover my own insurance. At that rate, I cannot continue to be on state-run programs. Now THAT irritates my anxiety. No private insurance is as good as the one I’ve got now. All my doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions are free (no-copay at all), and my medications are a dollar a bottle. Plus, Vesta does not take private insurance, so I’d have to leave both Leighton (my psychiatric nurse practitioner) and Sarah (my therapist).

I hate the thought of starting over with a new therapist, especially if I do not get a job right away after August and am back with Sarah again, having missed over eight months with her. Perhaps that will not happen, though, because this recruiting agency seems solid, and even if I have to go a couple of weeks to a month without a contract, that’s ok. I can save up enough to float me if necessary, thanks to that insane hourly wage. I have no doubt that my hourly would go down as a permanent employee, more than made up by a government benefits package. It’s exciting to think about embarking on this new path, because for over a year, I have felt dead inside.

One of the hallmarks of a parent dying is that a part of you dies, as well. The will to live life to the fullest is wrested away from you in favor of “what’s the point? They’re not there to see it.” Looking for a job is the one area of my life in which I have no problem, because applications are rote. Trying to fund my own dreams is another thing entirely. I’d like to work for myself by starting a homeless ministry, but that is the point at which I’ve felt the most ennui. My mother will not be there when I graduate from college and grad school, will not be there for my ordination ceremony, and will definitely not be there to play the piano and direct the choir while I find my own “Ed McMahon.”

Things looking up has provided me a way to start believing in myself again. This has been a garbage dump of a year, being so close to getting several jobs and then not, fighting the worthlessness of having nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Well, that’s not entirely honest. I’ve enjoyed working on myself and several different writing projects that may or may not earn money in the future. Time will tell once they are finished. I decided early on not to do NaNoWriMo this year, because it requires an entirely new idea and not a work in progress, as well as a time commitment I planned not to have. My works in progress are more important to me than trying to come up with something new. I dropped working on -frog.-, however, because the original idea was to explain the trilogy of Dana, Argo, and me in fiction…. and I just don’t have it in me to spend that much time thinking about them anymore. However, my memory is long, and maybe I’ll go back to it in five or ten years, once the grief has faded and I can look at the situation without exploding the land mines therein.

My main work in progress is a child/young adult novel called Fish Ralph, of which you can read an unedited and entirely off-the-cuff first chapter. I sent it to several middle school kids and teachers. The feedback I got encouraged me to not ask the teachers anymore. They thought it was too wordy, and something kids wouldn’t like. The kids ate it up.

Restarting that work was just one more step in raising my self esteem, especially when my sister said she was dying to hear what happened to Sarah and David Michael. One note- when you get to the part about geez, is the bike ok?,” I stole that from a story my first boyfriend, Ryan, told me about his dad. Now, his dad was just being funny. Sarah’s dad is just that clueless. Credit where credit is due.

On to the rest of my yesterday.

At 3:00, I went to donate platelets. I was pleased when I found out that my iron level had gone from 11.7 to 13.9. I passed with flying colors and they hooked me up to the machine. I wore all the winter clothes I could find, because when you’re giving platelets, your body temperature drops significantly and you cannot stop shivering. About 30 minutes before I was done, my body temperature spiked and I was so warm I had a vaso vagel reaction and almost fainted and vomited at the same time. They gave me some ice cold paper towels and orange juice, but it did not help, so they brought me a trash bag in order to try and keep me going. It didn’t help, either, so they stopped the treatment early. Because I was only 30 minutes from finishing, I don’t know if they had enough platelets to be useful, but the important thing is that I did it. It was excruciating to get ready, because you cannot take any NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug- basically anything in the aspirin category) for two days before you give, so my arthritis was extraordinarily painful despite Tylenol. Plus, it was pouring down rain, so I took an Uber pool both because I did not want to wait for 30 minutes for the bus in the rain, and because I was running a little short on time. This backfired, because two other people joined my pool and I was dropped off last, making me 45 minutes late for my appointment. You only have a 15-minute grace period, so I was lucky they took me at all. Sometimes a couple of dollars cheaper is not better.

Even though I felt like death warmed over, I pushed through to make it home on public transportation, because Uber was spiked at that hour. Even a carpool was $20. I was so out of it, though, that I added time on my commute because I completely walked past Farragut North and ended up at Farragut West. However, that’s not important. I wasn’t trying to make it to another appointment, just home. My biggest concern was not throwing up on another passenger, which I thankfully did not. By the time I reached Silver Spring station, the Uber spike had ended, so I gratefully paid the four bucks to get home. My Uber driver was new to the area and despite navigation, missed every turn. But that was okay- we were having a wonderful time talking. I wish I had gotten her number, because we could have talked for another four hours…. and what person new to the area doesn’t need friends?

We were in the same boat- she’s two years older than me and still has a year and a half left on her Bachelor’s thanks to having two kids very, very young. Now, her kids are both in college and I told her that was somewhat lucky, because as a young empty nester, she actually has the energy to work and go to school. She laughed and said, “truth.” She said her youngest just started at Howard, and I became animated- “that’s where I want to go!!!” I started talking about my dreams to finish my degree and go on to their UCC-affiliated seminary, and for the first time in a year, I felt passion about it.

It’s funny how things change. When I first got to Maryland, I wanted to go to seminary in Virginia to become an Episcopal priest, jokingly joining what they call “the Virginia Mafia.” What changed my outlook is that I did not want to use the Book of Common Prayer at every service, because I am talented at writing my own liturgy. In the Episcopal church, this is just not done. My ultimate goal is to create an Anglican-inspired service, because there are elements I love. For instance, the choir will have to be in cassocks and surplices. There are just no other options. For starters, they are WAY more comfortable than those polyester piece of crap robes. Plus, most cassocks have slits where you can reach your pockets. Invaluable to me as a singer for Kleenex and cough drops, as well as being able to pull out my phone for pictures, video, and recording the sermon…. although I don’t know how I feel about recording everything I have to say. Sometimes my sermons are brilliant and engaging. Sometimes I feel as if I am a danger to this profession…. there is no in between.

It is weird how the sermons you think are total pieces of crap you phoned in are sometimes the ones people like, and the ones you think are brilliant and engaging just don’t connect. Every Sunday is just a complete crapshoot, and pretty much every preacher alive would agree with me. I remember a story from long ago about a bishop who was asked the best thing about retirement. He said, stopping the interminable march of Sundays. It’s funny ’cause it’s true. Coming up with sermons and liturgy is not unlike the writing schedule at Saturday Night Live. Sometimes your best ideas come to you at 2:00 Sunday morning. Even better ones come to you the moment you step down from the pulpit. 😛

All I have to say in conclusion is that it’s nice to feel something again…. regaining the piece of me I thought was lost to history, feeling the resurrection coming in the middle of the mess.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

Learning to Fly Solo

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have approached this church differently from the beginning, not joining as a parishioner (although I will), but telling them from the second Sunday I attended that I needed continuing education just as much as I needed their blessings as my leaders.

I am also now in the choir so that I have a sense of normalcy to my world.

Just as an aside, it was my mother that convinced me I needed to join the choir, and not necessarily internal drive. She didn’t tell me anything in terms of parenting. She just said that it’s hard for her to sit anywhere in a church but the piano bench because that’s the place that feels like home. Her words hit deeply into my smallest place, the one that says, “I feel that way, too.” I don’t play the piano, but it’s hard to sit still in the pews knowing that it’s not really my “place.” If I am not in the choir, I am wishing I was up there, just as much as I tell myself that I don’t. I can do this. I can sit in the back and make notes.

I tell myself that, because it’s true right up until it isn’t. I can maybe attend a church for three services before I realize that I have to join the choir, because singing in the congregation leads people to turn around and say, “you have such a GORGEOUS voice. You should join the choir.” I get embarrassed and I blush and I don’t know what to say. Standing with the other singers is a way to avoid that moment, really, because I don’t stand out. I’m just one of the crowd.

I want it to be the same way in terms of my theology. I want to listen to Matt (senior pastor) and Gloria (associate) until I am ready to take on the large dreams I’ve created for myself. The still, small voice of God is what called me originally. Creating a legacy is what keeps me there. I don’t want to be famous, but I do want that for my church. I want people to know St. James and All Sinners like they know Riverside Church, or Cathedral of Hope, or any one of the churches in the United States that are familiar even to people who don’t live close geographically.

I can hear you asking why.

Because I want to be a church that is capable of giving more, doing more, seeing more in the name of Christ than is currently available. There are pockets, but my mission is about STEALING BACK OUR WORDS. When you hear the word “Christian,” what kind of imagery does that bring up in your mind? Conservative, “pull yourself up from your boot straps even when you don’t have shoes ‘faith'” is fucking bullshit (there goes my Jesus God flipping tables anger again…. sorry). You don’t preach with power over. You preach with power in the middle. Shared hope. Shared faith. Shared ability, the fruits of the spirit in perpetuity. I don’t create all of this by myself. I empower you.

Now is the hour in which I begin my journey, but now is not the hour where I step out on a ledge. I have schoolwork to do, along with clinical rotations in pastoral care. I have to walk with the homeless and feel what it is like before I can step up and say I can help care for the problem. I have talked a lot about “you don’t get to see Jesus. Have some wine.”

Party on, Wayne.

When it’s time to join me, you’ll know.

I am including the text of the first e-mail I sent Matt and Gloria, because I think it is important to record here.

Hey Y’all (you can take the girl out of Texas…),

Just wanted to say how much I am looking forward to being a part of the life of this church. I asked Matt if I could send him some of the stuff I’ve written/preached over the years, so I thought I would include you, Gloria. I am interested in all the possibilities we have the ability to create now that I really feel I have found a *home.*

As a writer and preacher myself, I have no doubt that I will move on to my own church someday, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a home base right now, a church to love that will love me back in all the right ways until I am ready to fly solo. I originally wanted to be ordained an Episcopal priest, but then I realized that I wanted to be able to *write* liturgy rather than turning to page 355.

Thank you so much for your grace and kindness. Many blessings. Many, many blessings, and thanks so much for reading.

Pax,

Leslie

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These are sermons originally preached at Bridgeport United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon:

Sermon for Lent 4B

My Very First Sermon Ever- July 21, 2003

These are things I’ve written for my web site:

My Jesus (Mar. 2006)

Sermon for Advent 3B: The Messiah? Jesus? Really? He Eats Paste.

The Power of the Universe

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I cannot stop thinking about Jeffrey Thames and all the work we have the possibility of doing in this community. I am serious when I say that meeting was my hot coal, the thing that took the fire in my belly and refreshed it anew in a way that I haven’t felt since the senior high youth retreat at Christ United Methodist Church. I was 15 or 16 then, and Mikal Bowman was my best friend, the one I could safely say I loved more than myself. I was just as invested in her happiness as I was my own. She was the one to whom I could submit in my daily life without even realizing it was happening. This was the day that realization became reality, both in the chord between us and in my own chord with God.

They put us in groups of two, and blindfolded one… me. There was thick, thick twine called the “lifeline,” and it was a trust exercise to get us to submit to our partner’s direction. We could hold on to the “lifeline,” but we couldn’t see. It was the partner’s job to make sure we didn’t run into anything, to be our eyes in the darkness. Mikal (whom my dad affectionately called “Mikalwave”) and I had gone about 15 steps when I GOT IT. My enormous ego crumbled into the dirt and I fell against Myke, crying so hard I COULD NOT EVEN.

Maybe there’s not a God, and maybe there is. I took Logic as a math requirement at University of Houston, because apparently Logic using symbols and Algebra are the same thing (never in three lifetimes). We spent the first half of the semester proving God exists, and the second half of the semester disproving. No matter what we did, we couldn’t prove it either way.

THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT ENTIRELY.

Faith is, as Elaine Pagels so eloquently says, “beyond belief.” The question is why? My answer is that God is too big to comprehend, and will never be proven with fact. This is because we cannot know that anyone is listening when we pray, but we see its effects every day when we are willing to submit to the idea that there is something greater than ourselves; a deep chord, manhole covered in size that can only be accessed by looking inward.

You will know this feeling intimately if you are a musician or singer, because there are two factors at play. The first is that in either singing or playing, you are breathing all the way down, using your entire body to focus on every breath. The second is what happens when everyone in the room is taking those breaths together.

Let’s extrapolate.

What would happen if everyone in a congregation saw God as individually breathing all the way down, and taking those breaths together? How would church politics change when everyone in the room is focusing on the chord that runs between them? How would church politics change when everyone in the room submits to it?

How would the American system of caring for “the least of these” change if we, as a country, were all breathing together?

Diane Syrcle has a great line about this, which she said in front of a treble choir (meaning it was all women), hands in a triangle around her uterus, that “singing is breathing all the way down into the power of the universe… because it is.” New birth, new life, new hope… the power of the universe so close we can touch it… literally. Catholics are onto something by praying to Mary, because it is praying to the power of birth… as tangible an evidence of faith as there is in this life.

If you can’t believe in a God, can you believe in a baby?

Can you submit to the power that comes with a tabula rasa, a clean slate that so many permutations of growth that it would take eons to calculate?

There is never a time when I feel more religious than Advent, because there we are, all waiting for the baby together. What kinds of growth will we do when we realize that we have the chance to be born again every single year? What kinds of ego will fall away? What kinds of sins will you release in the name of rebirth? How will you grow as that Holy Spirit touches a hot coal to your lips and burns away the old versions of you? What will you accomplish that you didn’t in the year before? How will you force yourself into a different reality? I often say that life is a series of learning to commit different sins rather than the same ones over and over. That is the very essence of acknowledging your humanness, that you cannot live life without flaws, but you can let go of them as you forgive yourself; they disappear into the ether as you grow.

The power of the universe comes into play when we’re all doing that very thing at the same time…. the way musicians breathe.

How you forgive yourself is the question with which we struggle- not once, but over and over and over. I cannot speak for you. For me, the answer is that feeling- the way my muscles stretch to accommodate so much more air. As Jeffrey would say, “when you breathe in, you take in the power of the universe.

Whether you believe it or not.

Amen

#prayingonthespaces………………………..