Saturday Living, Part II

In the National Gallery of Art, there is a series of five panels by Benvenuto di Giovanni, showing the events of Holy Week. The fourth depicts Christ in Limbo, that extra place where early Christian philosophers felt it necessary to stick the dead who couldn't reach Heaven but didn't deserve Hell. According to Peter, on Holy Saturday Christ was liberating the dead from the underworld. All the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, all the holy pagans and those faithful who died without seeing the fulfillment of God's Kingdom, lay waiting for Christ to come to their rescue, smash down the gates of Hades, and lead them out into the light of Heaven. So here, di Giovanni shows Christ at the opening of a cavern, the waiting dead crowded up at the entrance, eagerly reaching out to touch their savior. The gates of Limbo have been torn down, and, in a nice touch, Christ is standing atop the gate while a squashed demon lies spread-eagle below it, Looney Tunes-style. Christ is carrying a flag, bringing the dominion of God into the unreachable, hopeless places.

From the National Gallery website

So that's Saturday. Back above ground, the disciples huddle together, abandoned and afraid. Salvation is happening somewhere on Saturday, but it's not yet apparent in the world. On the other side there is rejoicing, the upending of death, the victory of the cross, but for people living in the everyday, death and fear and oppression are still the winners. On Saturday, Caeser still reigns.

I saw this painting on Holy Saturday last year, midway through my pregnancy, confused and lonely. Four blocks from home after leaving the Gallery, I was approached by a women with a preteen daughter. I'm homeless, she said. We need some money for food. Great, I thought, I can buy them lunch, chit-chat, ask them if they've tried to get help through ASPAN, see if there's anyone I can get them in touch with.

Sure, I said; I can take you to one of these restaurants for lunch.

We need money for food, she repeated. We're hungry.

Saturday Living, Part I

This past April, Patrick was out of town during Holy Week for his cousins' Confirmation, and I was in town working on a deadline. Most years, Triduum (the stretch from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday) is a rush of different services as we try to make observances with both of our churches.

But this year was quiet, slow, deliberate. On Holy Saturday, I had nowhere to be. So I went to the National Mall, to the National Gallery of Art, to look at Crucifixion images.

I had moved into the second trimester of my pregnancy. Now was the settling-in, trying to get used to the sudden and dramatic changes to my body, looking ahead to the changes to my life. Asking, "Is that all-- is my life somebody else's story now? Did I never get around to telling my own story?"

A Letter to my Future Pastor

Hello. I'm Ouisi. I've been part of this church for about ten years now--ten years in which this church took me from hard-core nondenominational fundamentalist to gung-ho Baptist. This church has nourished me through its community of friendship, its encouragement of learning, and a lot of Wednesday night dinners. I learned here that it was okay to be female, okay to ask questions, okay to have doubts, and okay to fall a little more on the "head" side of the head/heart axis. Most of the people here are from the wealthier and more educated part of the local population, just like at Grace where I grew up, but they don't ignore the poor, or insist that everyone interpret Scripture through a sacred litany of pop theologians.

When I brought Patrick here, people welcomed him and didn't try to convert him or make him feel like he needed to work at fitting in. They like to ask him questions-- how do the Catholics read this passage of Scripture? How does your parish celebrate this holy day? When Patrick and I got married, it was at the altar of this church. We were blessed and our hands were united by the pastor of this church, and by Patrick's family priest.


Now I'm working on increasing the size of this congregation by one. I don't want my kid to grow up with the same bad expectations of God and of Christians that I once had. So I have some things I want to ask you to do.

Living in Sin

When I was in high school, I remember a Sunday School teacher telling us about life as a Christian.

“It’s simple,” he said, “but it’s not easy.”

Turns out that Christianity is not simple. Turns out that right thinking and right living in a complex world is not simple. Turns out that, coming after two millennia of Christian history, a simple doctrine that fits onto a 3-inch tract can only exist by ignoring the majority of Christian thought and experience.

Early Morning Alarms

So, at three o'clock this morning, my mother's phone rang. It was the hospital. A doctor needed to speak with her, she was told.

My mother fumbled for paper and pen, and sat silently in bed, waiting to hear that something had happened to my brother. After a few minutes, the woman came back on the line. The doctor was checking the charts, she said, and would be on the line shortly. More silence. My mother tried to remember which hospital the woman had said she was calling from. She couldn't remember.

The third time the woman came back, she said,

"Is this Maria Kirkwood?"

No, my mother said, this is Pamela.

"Oh. This is the wrong person." Click.

So then my mother called my brother. It was only one o'clock in the morning where he is, stationed on the border in Arizona. He assured her that he was fine, and then the two of them wondered-- could it be Ouisi? She might have been so badly injured that her brain was damaged and when she tried to say "Mela Kirkwood" it came out something like Maria. Ouisi could be lying alone in an ICU somewhere with a lethal brain injury. So my brothercalled my phone, and when I picked up he said, in his steady, it's-all-under-control-but-still-darned-serious voice,

"Ouisi, nothing is wrong here, but we got a call from a hospital that didn't make sense and wanted to check and see if you were okay."

Well, actually, what he said was, "Ouisi, nothing is--" and I said,

"ARRRGHWHATAREYOUDOINGIT'STHREEO'CLOCKINTHEMORNING! WHATISWRONGWITHYOUARRRRGH."

So we all went back to sleep. And nobody was dead, and I did a web search today, and there are no Maria Kirkwoods within five hundred miles of my mother. And the next time that somebody calls me at three o'clock in the morning, I'll try to remember that there are good reasons to call people at that hour, and to not open the conversation with a gutteral cry of rage.

Sunday Frump

Source

I work in an office, a tall, shiny glass building filled with desks and ergonomic chairs. In the morning, I assemble my slacks, blazer, knee-highs and camisole. I pack my work shoes in a bag and walk to the Metro in my sneakers. On the train, I stand amid people who are also wearing this morning uniform, sort of a clothing mullet: business on the top, party on the feet.

The Desert: Looking for a Map

I'm not in a good place. I feel frustrated. Let down. Lied to and strung along and abandoned in the middle of a wasteland.

It doesn't feel like depression. Being depressed walls you off from the bright, busy world and shuts you up in a dark and empty place. You want to get out there, where life is good, but you can't. This is different. Here, I'm not separated from the world. I'm just sick of it. I don't want to write, because there's nothing worth saying. I'm usually a chatterbox, but now I don't want to speak a single word. I don't want to read, or spend time with people, or listen to music, or knit, or do anything, because everything seems pointless-- a way of crowding out the silence and the anger inside.

That crazy dash to cover up the God-shaped hole? I see Christians doing it more than anyone else. I sit through a worship service and yawn at the syrupy music. I wince when a pastor brags about the souls that God gave to him to save. I read a religious text, and wonder how anyone could believe the smug, hateful garbage that we as Christians keep putting out. Here's a concept I thought I understood: the Church gets it wrong sometimes, but God is faithful. Turns out that when the Church is really getting on my nerves, I have trouble believing in God's faithfulness.

Into the Desert

I was taught that Christians are the only people who understand what the point of reality is. I was taught that everyone has a God-shaped hole inside, and that people who don't know Jesus spend their lives in a mad chase after temporary, fleshly passions, trying to ignore the God they think they don't need and trying to fill the void with things that don't fit. But Christians, we lived life with full satisfaction in each day, because God was with us. I was pretty content that I knew everything that really mattered, and so this made sense.

Then I left Rhea County and found that I was taking a different shape. For one thing, I learned some new synonyms. What we called bleeding-heart liberalism was called compassion by my new church. What we called the reign of secularism was called social justice by the Roman Catholics. What we called being ashamed of the Gospel was called humility by the saints. My brain stretched out to accommodate these new ideas, and I found that the God I'd brought with me from Rhea County was starting to rattle around loose. As I learned more about Jesus, that void got bigger, not smaller. And God didn't fill it any more.

Watering the Seeds of Doubt

I found the following on my old blog. It's an excerpt from a paper I wrote for a theodicy class four years ago.

These are the premises set out for us by both orthodox and popular Christianity:

-Our god is omnipotent, a god of infinite and perfect power, reigning over the natural world and the spiritual realm

-Our god is benevolent, a god of infinite and perfect goodness, caring for us as a parent cares for a child

-Humanity experiences suffering, existing in a fallen state of pain, disease, and violence

This is where the questions begin. If our god is so good, why are we allowed to suffer? Does God not have the power to stop our suffering? Or, if God can prevent human suffering, then is God cruel and uncaring, choosing not to rescue us from pain? 

My First Job, or, Integrity Isn't Worth My Thumb

I was eighteen and ready to spend the summer sleeping in and watching TV. Just a few weeks after I finished 12th grade, though, my mother screwed up the agenda by insisting that I get a job. Way to cramp my style, Mom.