Category: Choices

Lemonade and Sponge Cake

Lemonade and Sponge Cake

When I was a child, a terrible thing happened to me. It wasn’t my fault and I had no control over it, but I was still left to find something to do with it – some way to survive. In my childish wisdom I decided that I could refuse to let it define who I was and that I did not have to let it affect my life. So I set it aside and ignored it, trying to live my life as though it had never happened.

That instinct wasn’t all bad – what happened to me indeed did not define me – but it was like trying to pretend I didn’t have a bad sprain, while the injured tendons and muscles continued to tear and never had the opportunity to heal. I ended up living a life adapted around the injury, designed to ignore the reality that something wasn’t right.

And that worked, until life required more of me than the damaged muscles or my work arounds could handle. I don’t know if my path of healing at that point was harder than it would have been when I was a child, I just know it was necessary, particularly if I was going to live a life that truly isn’t defined or restricted by my traumas.

I thought of that this morning as I listened to an interview on the radio and the woman being interviewed said something: “Life is full of suffering and disappointments; the art of living is to use them to make something that nourishes others.” (Those may not be all her exact words, but that was the gist of it.) She was explaining something she’d learned from her grandmother who, when an egg fell out of her overstuffed refrigerator and broke, would respond by exclaiming, “Ah! Today we will make sponge cake!”

I like the story, and the lesson the granddaughter took from it. It’s a better metaphor than the one I’m more familiar with, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” That one has never worked so well for me, the lifelong lover of pickles and lemons and things tart and sour. Lemons aren’t necessarily bad; lemons keep things interesting. And the downright bad things? The “manure” of life? I realized a long time ago that while it might be useful to help flowers grow better, it’s no less manure for that and it’s only helpful to name it as such.

But broken things, lost things, things I had hopes and plans for? Those I’ve had to work on what to do with.

That egg I’d meant for breakfast, with bacon, now I need to learn how to make sponge cake with it.

And I’ve worked at that – with a good deal of success. There’s little in my life today that looks anything like I dreamed years ago (though I do get to live in a wonderful city, and I always dreamed of that!), but I love my life and the people in it. As my dreams broke or disappointed me, I learned how to make new dreams. They don’t feel like settling, either.

While I don’t have children of my own to invest in and pour my life into, I’ve discovered that gives me a freedom to invest in others and their children, sometimes in ways that are riskier than those with families can afford. And my perspective on what is good for all children doesn’t have a trade-off with what’s “best” for my own, even theoretically.

Is it the same? Of course not. But that’s the point – it’s a different kind of purpose with its own meaning.

There are ways this world expects us to use our lives to nourish others. Mostly, it expects us to nourish those who are our own – our children, spouse, parents, siblings. I don’t have the first two, and the later are doing well without much help from me beyond a listening ear. And so I am free to use my life to try to nourish those who are not already mine. Those who are different from me in all kinds of ways.

The LGBTQ+ community calls this “chosen family,” and that gets at some of it. But it’s something beyond that as well. I can risk what I have for the friend who is working to change the world, and I can risk for the stranger as well. Of course I have chosen family, people I’m close to and share life with, but I am free to give beyond that circle. I actually believe we can all be free to give and risk beyond us and ours.

The lemons and broken eggs of life can either cause us to double down on protecting our own, or they can give us an opportunity to make something nourishing for others.

And lemonade and sponge cake sound like a wonderful offering for company – neighbors, strangers, maybe even new friends.

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Finding Justice in Voting

Finding Justice in Voting

I don’t think we have a vision for what racial justice in America would actually look like. At least, I haven’t, and I’m sure I’m far from the only one.

I always believed racial justice looked like each person accepted and judged for who they are and what they’ve done regardless of the color of their skin. And maybe that particular vision would reflect justice more accurately if it’s where we’d started from – if that’s how it had always been.

But it’s not. And that vision of justice tries to erase history, as if each day and each person starts with a clear slate rather than one filled with the scribblings and scratchings and scriptures of those who have gone before.

The history that’s gone before – the good, the bad, the biased, and the bigoted – is part of each of us. We bring it with us into community, faith, politics, family. And because we’ve always carried it, we can’t see it clearly – or sometimes at all. But it still shapes (determines, even) what our ideas about justice and fairness look like.

As I was taught is true of the Bible, “Context is king” for justice as well. I’ve been asking myself what would a context of justice in America look like?

We would need black and Native American and Asian and Latinx voices and decisions in the foundations – in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Black and native men and women would have been shaping education, finance, industry, religion – all the structures of society. But instead, they were silenced, and what we have was shaped and prescribed almost exclusively by centuries of white male voices and decisions.

That foundation matters. Inviting people of color and women to participate in white male systems isn’t justice. The rules are already set, and they were designed for white men to flourish. Everyone else starts the game at a disadvantage. If it were Monopoly, white men would already own all the property on the board before anyone else even started to play. They set the terms for admission, they wrote the rules, they decided how the game is won.

Where’s the possibility of justice in that?

The rules of the game have to change, and the way it’s played. New voices need to write new rules, and new players need a real way to catch up. The board has to change if there’s going to be a chance for justice to take hold.

And some of us are going to need to step back, shut our mouth, sit on our opinions, and listen to those who have been silenced if we’re ever going to cleanse the windows of our souls enough to even see justice for what it should be, much less contribute to it.

Maybe if, for the next fifty years, no white people could vote. And then white women could vote, but white men would need to wait another hundred years. Maybe then we’d have a shot at an America that would be truly just. An America actually shaped by all her people.

Can you see it? I’m trying to, but it’s not easy. It flies in the face of everything I was taught to value about my voice, my vote, and how important that is – critical, even.

But I can’t get past the need to at least see – to have a vision for what actual justice in America would look like. It’s not a utopian vision. It’s not Dr. King’s dream, as beautiful as that vision is. It’s not all about achieving a particular outcome. It’s about the justice of the journey. It’s about giving those who had no choice in what they were forced to build for others a chance to rebuild for themselves, for all of us.

And it’s not going to happen. I know that. White men and women are not going to give up their votes en masse for generations. And in light of that, the best thing I know to do is to give my vote to a person of color – to vote the way they direct me even, especially, if it makes me uncomfortable.

The highest thing I can do with my vote as a white woman is to use it to represent the voice of someone other than myself, someone whose voice has historically been silenced, discredited, devalued.

So I’m listening to native people, and Asian and Latinx and black people – especially to the women. I’m listening to particular people, some I know personally and some I do not, and I’m voting for their concerns and interests as they themselves understand them. I’m supporting the candidates they are supporting, with my money and voice as well as my vote.

It’s what I can do.

It’s what you can do, too. It’s not easy, though. It’s not easy to let go of something we were taught is sacred. But I think perhaps my vote may only become sacred if I can loosen the grasp my own interests have on it and let it truly serve justice.

Adult Friendship – Finding, Keeping, Letting Go

Adult Friendship – Finding, Keeping, Letting Go

Every Sunday night I go to a church in a bar filled with people with stories, all kinds of stories. Stories we believe are “the word of God for the people of God,” because God is still speaking in and through our lives. This month we’ve been talking about adult friendships – finding them, keeping them, losing them, and starting all over again. In a world full of lonely people, we don’t talk about friendship enough, or even make room for it in all the things competing for our attention and priorities. And as adults? We often are at a loss when it comes to making the kinds of friendships we want. (The Nancy podcast has done some great stuff recently on how queers can find a “gaggle” of friends, but I think we all need that help.)

This is the story I had the opportunity to tell this week. It’s one that’s still going…

——

It was Easter Sunday 2014. We’d had the sunrise vigil, and the Easter breakfast, and I’d just finished leading the liturgy I wrote for our Easter service. I was walking with my friend Angela to our cars in the parking lot, and I remember telling her, “I think maybe this should be my last service. Everything is good, but if I want my life to be different – and I do – nothing’s very likely to change if I don’t change something.”

I was 41 and tired of being tired of being single. I hadn’t had a date in seven years, and I wasn’t meeting possibilities. Something needed to change and church seemed like the most doable thing.

And that was scary to say, because church meant more than the place I went on Sundays. Church meant six years of friendships, of lives lived together with a group of families and a few singles who lived in my neighborhood. We had dinner together every week. I’d known most of their kids since they were born. When I was sick, they brought me extra plates of dinner and DVDs. When there was a birthday, we threw a party. Some of their children were the only kids I’ve ever felt move and kick and squirm in their mama’s belly.

I spent the years after seminary building my life around these relationships, and now I was going to change that, and I didn’t know what would happen. What all that would mean.

So I started visiting churches.

At the first one, I met a pastor – another single woman – who came from a conservative background not too different from mine. We had lunch and met for coffee and started sharing our stories (she didn’t tell me then about her dream of starting a church where people could share good food and tell true stories and make beautiful worship together!).

At the second one, when I told a work acquaintance and his wife why I was trying to make changes in my life, Judy – a woman who is five feet (maybe) of major general, cheerleader, and CEO all rolled up together – gave me marching orders: “I’m proud of you! And I want you to go home and sign up with a dating site online! You need to go where the men are, and that’s where they are! And I mean today! Report back to me with a text this evening.” And like I imagine everyone in her life, I obeyed. (And had ten first dates in the next three weeks!)

At the third church, I found a community of gay couples who also knew what it meant to be a deep disappointment to a conservative family, as well as how to be a chosen family who could keep me afloat through that storm. I ended up landing in that church, and they gave me the support I needed as I started dating, then moved into the city, changed jobs, and even as I got involved in the queer, quirky new church in a bar my pastor friend was starting.

And when my last birthday came around, I looked across the table at the improv club where we were laughing and celebrating. There was my first friend from my new job, a beautiful friend from that new church, and two of my closest friends in the city – both of them men I met dating. And one of them came with his girlfriend of the past year, who I’d enjoyed hanging out with on many other occasions.

Those friends from my old neighborhood in the suburbs? They weren’t in the city celebrating with me that night, but they cheered me on through it all. I still go up north for the breakfast we all have together one Saturday a month. And I’m still a part of their kids’ lives. And this summer, they all loaded their kids up one Saturday morning (no small feat!) and hauled them into the city to have breakfast at my place.

One of the hardest thing I’ve had to do, the thing that never seems to get easier, is knowing how to keep friends in my life as a single person when life is changing for everybody. It turns out that sometimes that means letting go.

Swiping Right

Swiping Right

Online dating comes with inherent risks – I knew that when I waded in five years ago or so now. Anytime you’re meeting someone you don’t know, your expectations for reasonable human behavior can be upended. And anytime you have an intentional space for people to meet prospective romantic partners, you will have people who seek to use that space for their own purposes.

I knew there were risks, and I decided they were worth the potential benefits. I wanted to meet men who were interested in dating, and that wasn’t happening in my everyday life (and hadn’t been for quite a few years).

I approached online dating the way I approached most things in life, with reasonable precautions. It was a big step outside my comfort zone relationally, since I had been raised to completely avoid even a date with someone I didn’t already know to be basically marriage material for me (evangelical Christian with conservative beliefs, never married, committed to sexual purity, etc.). But in other ways, it wasn’t such a stretch. I’d been building friendships online for my entire adult life. I’m a part of online communities and friendships that are ten or twenty years old. I’d met several of those folks in person when we happened to be in the same city, and even transitioned a couple of friendships to regular in person connection.

So I knew to be careful with personal information – name, address, workplace, etc. I always meet new people in a public place, and let a friend know my plans and who I’m meeting. And I take the “trust but verify” stance – take someone at face value and verify what they tell you about themselves with Google.

It’s not easy to hide your life these days, and a person’s “online footprint” can confirm a lot. I’ve learned to check all the avenues where I protect myself to confirm that a man is who he says he is and that the circumstances of his life are what he has portrayed them to be.

And in five years, I’ve never been surprised by what I found. Until now.

After meeting a man for a lunch date, that went extremely well, we made plans for a second date. He’d told me enough about what he does for a living that I could look him up online even without his last name. I found him and quickly discovered that he has a wife and children and a bit of history that is less than savory.

He never outright lied to me – I never asked him directly if he is married or has a family. He gave a very intentionally crafted impression that he is single, and has to be because of a job that requires constant travel. He has carefully cultivated a way to talk about his life that creates a lie out of the truth (the circumstances of the job) and omission (the family he very much has). It’s not that hard for him to live a double life, it appears.

Needless to say, I back peddled out of the second date, but I didn’t call him out. Part of me very much wanted to, but it would almost certainly antagonize someone I don’t know. And the only likely change in his behavior would be to sharpen his hiding skills. The risk is not worth the possible benefits.

It’s a common cautionary tale, and I’ve heard even worse online dating horror stories from other women. I’m very grateful that I haven’t gotten lazy about those online checks.

But here is what I want to remember: this is the first time in five years it’s happened. I’ve easily met fifty men or more, and nearly all of them have been genuine gentlemen. Most men are decent human being who are trying to make life work as best they can.

Dating is not easy, and there are risks far beyond the one I had lunch with. But there are far more benefits out there, and I’ll never have a chance to meet them if I don’t start with swiping right.