Family Water: 14 July 2013

On lazy summertime weekends, I sometimes put aside my laptop so late at night, when I'm so tired, that  when I wake up the next morning, I can hardly remember closing it and setting it aside. And as the sun through my window wakes me up some number of hours later, when I roll over and drag my computer toward me to continue the lazy summertime weekend thing, opening it back up is like a jolt back into a train of thought the Sandman had forced me to abandon.

My mindspace opened in a similar way this morning, onto an image of the last time I was meditating with a friend of mine in a park on Friday. My friend is seven years old - just going into second grade - and had used his boyish hyperenergy to run out in front of us on the trail we were hiking. When I caught up to him in the grass by the parking lot, he was sitting cross-legged with an exaggerated long expression and his hands resting palm-up on his knees, fingers touching like a little Buddhist monk. It was clear that he'd been doing it partially as a joke, but he must've been sitting there for awhile, and he resisted getting up when I addressed him.

Intrigued by his interest - the kid is intelligent and has a keen depth of insight, as I believe many children do - I told him we should move away from the path, and we sat down on a shady patch of grass looking into the forest. Our eyes closed, and I found myself entering a normal posture of meditation, which I found strange, considering that he's seven and there were only two of us. When we both got distracted by a couple people calling to one another across the parking lot, I told him to just hear it and let it go, to let thoughts come and leave without reacting to them. I opened my eyes and glanced over at him to my right - he had dropped his playful expression and had this air of serene calm over him. After about half a minute, he moved down in front of me off of the little hill we were sitting on, repositioning his sweatshirt under him in order to be more comfortable.

It was clear to me in May that some important brainwork I'd have to do this summer would be a reconfiguration of my understanding of family, of nationality, of belonging, my expectations for the future, my priorities, the way I see myself and my religion - everything I've had firm thoughts about in the past and since deconstructed. These are things I did on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day, from seventh grade until college, but I got bored as I found myself capable of emotional maturity. That has also meant, however, that many of the emotional qualities I was best at a couple years ago have gotten traded for entirely different qualities, and the original strengths have become weaknesses. I no longer overprocess, but that itself is a shift which I find myself having to process - the irony.

For one, I've begun to self-identify as Quaker. Not only is it the only religious ideology in which I've felt comfortable for any significant stretch of time, in the objective, modernist sense, but the dogmatic parameters of the community are loose enough that I don't feel threatened by anything people say. I still hesitate to say that "I am a Quaker" to other people because I'm still fairly uneducated on the kind of thing you'd have to read to know and I've only been attending Meetings for half a year, but I intend to stick it out.

Another thing is that I'm re-confirming to myself - in the midst of a pretty intense submersion in queer language and culture this summer, as I'm throwing out norms left and right - that I still deeply want to be a parent one day. I don't want a husband, I don't want a big house, I don't want to be a homemaker, and I don't want to be a woman as much as I want to be an adult. But I want to have a partner and family, and I want other childhoods to be part of my life when I've grown a few decades removed from my own. I want to teach a couple kids my language and culture. I like the grandma / grandpa / uncle / neice / nephew / grandkids dealie. I'd love for it to work out that way.

As I sat on that piece of grass watching that seven-year-old kid breathe and listen to the birds in Meeting this morning, I realized that it's completely unnecessary for my genes to be part of any child I raise. Most of the deepest love and pride I've felt hasn't been dependent on genes or pregnancy in the past - my best friends, the people I've been in love with, my teachers, my cat, my tree, the communities I've been part of. When my friend joined me in meditation for those ten minutes at the edge of a parking lot, we shared a unique bond that transcended any blood or familial or age or gender or sexual or even religious ties, and the same thing happens in community with Friends every week. I have believed and have taught myself for years, but especially in these past few months, that this bond exists between everything and everyone. Why not give more connections the chance to develop?


* * *

The image was fascinating today. It was one of this kid in front of me on the lawn, as I said - and soon an ethereal bubble of water appeared above his head - roughly 150% its size. It seemed to represent the state in which his mind dwelled, a representation of his mindspace.

And then it broke. I can't say it shattered - it's more that a massive torrent of water suddenly fell out from it down upon him, as though it had been relieved of the tension that had kept it in its spherical shape. He was drenched, but he did not flinch or turn or shudder or react in any way. It seemed to cause him some kind of glow, in the way a plant does after you give it some fertilizer and sunshine. The memetic counterpart to the above thoughts came through my mind - the vivacity of this child and any child's life, its strength and independence from blood ties. The water was still streaming down in a small, cylindrical waterfall - and suddenly there came an intermission to the scene.

There were three tiny children of genders as fluid as the water - their genders flowed in and out of femininity and masculinity and androgyny and can't-tell and weird combinations of it all - that were climbing up a rope in the middle of the waterfall. This location seemed fairly similar to the one I blogged about in The Most Beautiful Nature I've Ever Seen, in a dreamlike kind of way.

The top child was blonde, had short hair, and was the quickest. The middle one had redish blonde hair and was very curious, but slower than the first. The third had mopish, curly, brown hair that stayed the same shoulder length regardless of gender. There was a playful back-and-forth banter between them, Blonde urging Red and Brown on, Brown complaining of splinters, Red telling Blonde to wait up, Brown getting distracted by something cool on the rocks. Each child's face and hair changed from moment to moment as genders and gender expressions changed, as if all their different cheeks and chins were nothing more than images in a stop-motion movie. The rushing of the water seemed to drown out their shrill, excited voices after a time, and my thoughts wandered into formless Brain Just Needa Process Stuff mode.

Four people gave ministry today, and every one of them mentioned the recently-announced verdict of the Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. Their messages were about inclusion and exclusion and the horrors of racism and compassion and the importance of nonjudgment, the importance of making all these values a political reality for the communities we interact with. That fit particularly well with the first image and train of thought I had been following, and just as Meeting was about to close, it came back in a sort of classical recapitulation.

I was back at the edge of the parking lot and the kid was in front of me on the grass. But as he slowly turned around to look at me, he was not just a he - he was all genders, and all races, and all sizes, all shapes. Every seven-year-old child in one body, grinning at me soaked in this water, which had returned to a bubble above their head: a bubble that I now recognized meant family, meant mindspace connection, meant the Life and Light that binds us together, the water that flows in and out of humanity, the same formula in each body and animal and plant and bacterium. The breaking of the water was like a baptismal water and like a uterine breaking of water - the Living Water is what brings us into this life and whence we return when we leave. It is the Fountain with which we commune when we pray and what we see in our brothers and sisters when we call them by name.

 It has been said that God, Jesus, is the Fountain of Life - in every other sermon I heard as a child, in countless praise songs, in Christian books and prayers and stamped into the fabric of the culture I was raised in. But I believe it is of equal worth - not blasphemous, not insane, not even unChristian - to say that we are also the Water of life. It is my deep conviction that God invites us with every breath we take to discover the extent to which we might one day incarnate that reality.

From Lost to Listening: 7 July 2013

A couple weeks ago, my younger brother Jaco and I finally made it to University Friends Meeting in Seattle. We met the experience with a degree of glee - for me especially, it had been over a month away from one of the first religious institutions/traditions I've ever really loved associating myself with. There's a sign by a spot in the parking lot that reads "NO PARKING. VIOLATORS WILL BE HELD IN THE LIGHT." We both erupted into smiles and it only took a couple seconds for smartphones to come out.

We were there way early, and it's already awkward being new somewhere, so I was more than a little thankful I had Jaco there to talk to while standing around uncomfortably. The building is square, with a fellowship hall on one side, the worship space on the other, and the library, offices, and stairs down to the children's space on the third side. In the middle is a Zen-looking garden - please forgive my complete ignorance about Japanese architecture and culture - and the walls facing the middle where the little garden is are all glass, with panels I believe are meant to look like sliding doors. The worship room in particular is heavily influenced by the clean, square design of Japanese buildings. There is a light fixture in the middle of the room that is probably about 10 by 25 feet that lets in natural light where this picture above has lightbulbs. The chairs under it are organized in four triangles, facing each other in a really interesting clean-cut visual interpretation of what I'm used to. It's definitely much bigger and has a different feel from the early-1900s, ornate old family house that Grand Rapids Friends Meeting meets in.

This building is a mid-20th century creation, inspired by the Japanese architecture one of the Friends had had experience with when he was rebuilding houses there after the Second World War. (This man was in the habit of going wherever every major American war in the 20th century wreaked destruction to rebuild afterward. I was inspired by the story.) We were told this by a kind, very typically Quaker-ish man (about 60; white hair; intelligent, calm disposition; deep eyes; lots of stories about history from both American colonial times and the 20th century) that approached us while we were standing around hoping that anyone that happened to see us and think we were a couple would hear our Afrikaans and assume something else.

There was a 9:30 adult religious education gathering about the structurally-engrained racism inherent in our current American prison system, and particularly the prison system in our county. It was amazing to witness this kind of conversation the moment we walked into the Meeting house. First impressions can be so telling. There have been other first times at places where I've walked into conversations about how there's a disturbing growth of the doubt, among our secularizing youth, that miracles are possible; others about how the church was dying; others about the incredible healing power of Jesus; others about the peace God brings when we surrender our busy busy lives to Him. Though none of these churches were churches I disliked, it was clear how I would come to relate to them very quickly.

I feel a million times more at home anywhere where I can walk in and randomly attend an "adult religious education" session that's literally about racial injustice. I cannot describe how happy that, on its own, makes me. But that it was conducted by a woman that had just authored a book about it and that was very conscious of the fact that we were almost all white and mostly pretty privileged, that it was received critically, earnestly, and practically by the group? This is the kind of religion I want to be part of.

Another very kind man, named Robert, talked to us after the gathering disbanded. He's in his 70s and has a Southern accent - he only moved here about ten years ago, and was, according to him, a very stubborn, dogmatic, old crotchety Southern man until a few years ago when it all fell apart and he sought out the Friends meeting. He was a Biology teacher in his young life, and then a professor of Education in - what was it? Guam, I think. The melting pot of identities bottled up in this one very simple and sincere character was amazing to me. I wish I had had more time today to go up and say hello to him. I very much appreciated his story and his conversation.

I regret that I did not write about the experience two weeks ago directly after I got back as I normally do. I had a fascinating, refreshing time of meditation, and some beautiful, fascinating images. The one that stuck with me most was that of a gigantic bird in the middle of the same room I was sitting in, but the room was much larger and flatter - the detailing seemed smaller as well. It seemed much like a bird cage. When the bird flew out of the room, I hung onto its feathers like a little kid riding bareback. I saw everything from above - the water, the cars, the University, the trees - and then I landed back in my seat again.

Everything would suddenly seem like it looked so much smaller than I knew it really was in those moments. It was as if I were being shown the enormity of the world, the openness of possibility, the importance of thinking of the world in those ways. The humanity and clunkiness of the world outside of this joyride on the back of the bird seemed, counter-intuitively, to minimize the importance of thinking of the world in that clunky, limited state of mind. The sky was the limit on the back of the bird, and everything seemed immeasurably fresh and real.

Today, there was no such exploration. There was no ball, no flame, no air, no journey. I have never had the kind of meeting as I had today. I know that a large part of that is because I really know no one at this meeting and had talked to no one before sitting down, and I could tell there were several others present that were in my shoes. There was a vibe - where the vibe was clean-cut and fresh and pure and straight-edged the week prior, this week it was its antitheseis: void, still, clinical. Those words may sound more negative than I intend them. What I mean to say is that for the first time since I began attending meetings, nothing really happened today.

I focused for a long time on the bodily feeling of discomfort I brought with me. Part of being slanted towards a tendency for depression is that sometimes tiny things set me off and I'm unsure what they are until I examine the feeling very deeply, and even then, it's not the incident itself that was responsible. Someone had asked us to move our conversation from the space outside the meeting hall about five minutes before the start of meeting, and it served as a way for me to channel my insecurity about being in a new place, leading a sibling that was hiding in my shadow.

My reading from Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano, has given me new thoughts about the nature of what she calls "body feelings" - a deep sense of where and how things are in your body that contributes meaningfully to your self of self and identity. I spent some time doing body scans, focusing on the location of the faint pains, trying to decipher for myself what "discomfort" actually felt like, bodily. This exercise has replaced for me a process that used to be going to God "with open hands and an open heart," carrying the burdens I was bearing. The reason that this no longer works for me is that it's a passive, weak motion - it's not productive for me to risk becoming needy and whiny (as I have in the past) as a byproduct of finding emotional community and release.

Again, this process of mediation may not seem to have anything to do with the standard conception of the Christian deity, but I never rejected that deity as I've morphed into the understanding of the universe  I have now. Whatever it is I am doing and whatever it is that God has become to me, I do it all in God's presence. God is the mother's blood flowing through my thought fetuses - my meditation is just the umbilical cord, and the place I meditate is just the placenta. God is life and movement and learning and community - I love using a mother or father figure to represent the metaphorical source of all these things, because it grants a sense of unity to experience. The unity rings so true when I dwell in it: I see reflections, pieces, of God in every person I meet, in every tree, in every book, in every article I read.

That is no different than it's ever been. The way I think and believe has changed immensely in the past year, and with surprising apathy on my part. But while I was taught that this release would surely be surrendering to darkness, this process of letting go is as much surrendering myself to God as anything I have ever done. Probably more. It means I'm no longer occupied by the existential strain of truth and falsity on my own mind. God - my metaphor God - directs my thoughts and my revelations and my understanding of truth without my trying to coerce reality and rightness into boxes.

My thoughts this morning were cloudy and uncomfortable - a kind of Pepto Bismol texture, murky and amorphous. I saw a piece of chalk start sentences on a green chalk board over and over and never really write anything coherent - it was the same sentence over and over, in fragments: "My thoughts are a sea of disjointed restrictions." It only existed to deliver the emotion I seemed to need to express, and it went nowhere. But then I gave up.

It was like taking the needle off of a scratched record - like finally popping your ears after a sudden climb in elevation and being able to hear again - like turning off some static background noise your subconscious had been distracted by. I just gave up, and gave in, and listened. I did nothing. I just sat there and rested. I listened to some annoying tapping sound someone on the other side of the room was making. I listend to the yawns and coughs and shifts and knuckle cracking of the people in the room, the birds outside, the cars, the sound of the room itself. I felt my body in that space and kept feeling the way I physically reacted, despite the numbing of my previous physical discomfort. And something just worked, somehow. It didn't feel brilliant or bright or hopeful like the best weeks, but it was honest and plain.

Maybe sometimes Meeting is like waiting for a bus that never came. But listening to the other cars as they come by seems a worthwhile activity in and of itself.