Promises

I think what Mr. T was trying to say was that I was entitled to whine. I bet (although Mr. T wouldn't, and that's another story). He's fine at communicating, but I'm perhaps not always good at listening. And he's probably not wrong. But I think I'm too good at whining as it is.

I whined a lot this weekend. About how my back hurt, a headache, how I was doing something for others and no one was doing anything for me. I whined about what we didn't get done, I whined about a meeting, I just whined. Nothing was good.

I whined about everything but what I don't want to whine about.

What's the point? Really. Whining is not going to change anything. It won't make any difference. What is, is. And perhaps more than that, it hurts to poke that area. It hurts that I keep losing what I want so much. It hurts that other women get pregnant and stay pregnant. It hurts that babies are born addicted to drugs. It's hard to find God in this place. He just doesn't seem to be here.

He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.

I'll save you the trouble, I've looked it up in about 15 different translations. They all more or less say the same thing. Psalm 113, verse 9 says that God is going to make me the happy mother of children. (I'm the mother of a child, but I'm not exactly happy about how that turned out.)

Now, I know I've read that psalm before. I've read it a lot, I suspect. I've read the psalms a lot in the last 2 or so years. Somehow, I've never seen that verse. I read it, caught my breath, read it again, and marked it. For the next few weeks, I kept finding myself returning to it. For someone as terrible at remembering the chapter and verse of well, anything, I remember it.

And for a little bit, I thought I understood the meaning. And then, all at once, I was back to walking by faith, and not by sight. This is hard. For every woman who waited for her baby, I can find another who waited, and never did get her child. I can hold up women who waited and lost, or waited and never did get a child. For every Sarah, for every Rachel, there is another woman, who 'chose' to live without children. I am not so foolish as to blindly believe that eventually a baby will turn up in the midst of the tomato patch (Mrs. Spit really hates cabbage). I know that some stories don't ever have a happy ending.

I'll read the verse again tonight, tomorrow night, other nights. And I'll hold it up. I want to believe it. I really do. I want to believe that somehow, in all this mess, this blood, this fear and hurt and anger, somehow another baby will find its way not just to my uterus, but home in our arms as well.

And I half-way do. Half of the time I totally believe it, and half of the time I do not believe it at all. And maybe that's ok. There's a verse for that too.
************

And thank you for reaching out. Thanks for telling me that you were with me. In the end, the bleeding has mostly stopped, I am feeling better, if a bit sad and a bit angry and a bit confused. I will manage for a while, and then I will thrive.

Object Lesson

Mr. Spit and I were driving home from work last night, and on the radio news, we heard a pastor, commenting about a member of his flock killed tragically in North Dakota yesterday. The week before, the congregation had prayed over the family asking for safe travel. The pastor took a deep breath, and remarked that he would have to preach this Sunday about when God doesn't answer our prayers.

And Mr. Spit and I looked at each other. That's a hard question. That's a hard sermon. That's a hard sell.
*****
I was reading a story in Christianity Today, about a man that lost his job. As the sole breadwinner in the family, this was bit of a crisis. And the wife talked about running out of church when the pastor prayed for those looking for work. Suddenly she was the victim. She wasn't the strong, capable one, she needed prayer. And she wasn't ok with this. She wasn't ok with being broken.

Tragedy is the great equalizer. Oh, you can say it's getting sick or losing your job, or death, but no. Actually, it's tragedy. What makes those other events awful is their tragic nature. A lack of independence, a life cut short, financial worries and woes. A loss of identity.

And tragedy is a funny thing. Because, really, sooner or later, it comes to all of us. It's part of the human experience. My tragedy is visible, and visibly not with me. Don't think that Mr. Spit and I don't see the pitying looks, almost 2 years after Gabe's death, when I have no swelling stomach. Don't think we don't see how people hide from us on Mother's Day and Father's day, and don't think we haven't had a conversation with someone who was patently pregnant and refused to mention it. Gabriel is my tragedy, and an inability to have another child, the reality that a dead child looks to be our only child, well, that's obvious. You can point to it, and pity us, if you are so inclined. We are, visibly, broken.

But tragedy that open and acknowledged, tragedy, when we stare it in the face, and proclaim that it is undeserved, the effects of evil, that is tragedy that loses its power. Bringing things into light removes some of their pain, removes the isolation and in removing the isolation, removes some of the sorrow. And as a church, we seem to be spectacularly poor at making tragedy visible. I've had many a conversation with Julia, and I think she's hit at least part of the issue on the head. We Christians have the Resurrection. And the Resurrection is the most profound part of us. In my darkest hours, I have recited the words of Job.

And as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God. I will
see him for myself, yes I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed with
the thought. (Job 19:25,26)

I don't think there is a more commanding description of the power of the resurrection in the Bible. Without reducing that power, I assure you when you are crushed by pain, the Resurrection isn't the answer. We Christians rush in to pet hands and tell people of the Resurrection, the cornerstone of our faith. And we assume, because the dead aren't truly dead, because death has been defeated, that there is no more tragedy. We insist there is no problem that Christ has not already overcome. Even unto death, and we pound our pulpits. And yet. Merely because something is true does not mean it is the answer. The Resurrection isn't the answer to the pain of tragedy. In fact, it's not even the question. The Resurrection is the future, and as David so eloquently points out, the pain is now. David frames the question the right way:

O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart
every day? Turn and answer me, Oh Lord my God! Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will surely die. (Psalm 13: 1-3)

And we wonder why the broken are silent and hidden in our churches. Because we are giving the wrong answer to the wrong question. We wonder why our churches are declining. No one attends. Churches aren't relevant, the world around us proclaims. And when we give the wrong answer to the wrong question, they are right, we aren't relevant.

Remember what I said at the start. Tragedy is the great equalizer. Because it comes to all of us. We all experience it. My tragedy, our tragedy is Gabriel, and infertility. My neighbour's husband died suddenly - a widow at 37. My other neighbour has been away from his home country and family, for 40 years. He cannot go back to North Korea.

The church is made for the broken. The scriptures don't just tell us to be mindful of the broken, they tell us, over and over we are broken. We are broken before we are born, and it is only through God that we will ever know any healing. But, and this is a big but, knowing God doesn't guarantee a tragedy free life. Instead, he exhorts us to be a community that lives amidst tragedy. The Ressurection isn't the answer, the love of God that caused the Resurrection is.

So, on Sunday a pastor will talk about when God doesn't answer our prayers. Really, what he will talk about is tragedy. The great equalizer.

Amen.

Incarnation

Stop for a second, consider the standard manger scene. Consider Mary with blond hair and blue eyes, Joseph, fair with brown hair, the babe pink. Consider how the wise men look. Consider their names - exotic names - not Mary and Joseph, but Gaspar, Melchoir, Balthasar. Consider the gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. Epiphany is fundamentally different from incarnation.

Incarnation - the arrival of Jesus on Christmas Day - is the reminder that God loves us. We have always known this - the Israelites are His children. That baby is God's way of taking what we know, and leaving us changed. Incarnation takes our circumstances, which looked ordinary, and makes them utterly extraordinary. Think, just for a second, of the incongruity of the king of glory, the saviour of the world coming in a cave, filled with muck. The Messiah, born in this way is a surprise. We are caught up the wonder and the glory and the majesty - all in a stable - and we are both surprised that God is so mindful of us, and joyful that he is. Epiphany - the arrival of the wise men with gifts, to celebrate the babe - is the celebration that this incarnation - God among us - is anything but normal.

Christmas was a grind this year, in the truest sense of the word. Everything was hard. Christmas, at it's heart, should be about joy and surprise. I like to tell myself that most around me didn't realize that this was a struggle. That, at least on the surface, I looked happy. That dinner came off without a hitch, my guests enjoyed themselves. But none of it was natural, easy. Every gift purchased, every piece of baking, every decoration, every Christmas card, every stupid holiday commerical, they were a grind. Another thing on a to-do list. None of it enjoyable. Not even the carols. No surprise. Certainly no joy.

I took down the Christmas stuff on Saturday. It was, a relief, a weight off my shoulders. I felt, as I put stuff away, wrapping it in paper, tucking it away for another year, that I was giving myself permission to stop trying so darn hard. The calendar tells me that Christmas happened, but I'm not so sure I felt it in my heart. I'm not so sure my soul rejoiced. I am - like all who grieve at Christmas - more drained, more tired, more spent, there is little magic in my heart right now. I'm not sad to see the season go.

On Saturday, with the ashes of Christmas in boxes around me, wondering where the spirit of the season had gone, I read M's letter to me once more. I looked at the wonderful snow globe she dropped off.

I wept for your loss. I wept for our loss, I wept because it wasn't fair. I wept because I couldn't imagine the pain. I wept because I loved my own son, and knew how unimaginably horrific it would be to lose him. I wept because of the absolute tragedy of it all.

Incarnation is perhaps best described, understood, as a new take on an old thing. In a letter, reminding me that I am loved, and my son is loved. In a sudden moment of clarity, as I watched the snow in a snow globe swirl.

I understand in a way I did not.

Old things are made new. All things will be made perfect. When God came to the earth, that quiet act of devotion and service and love, it changed the face of history.

The Word Made Flesh.

The Light in the Darkness.

Celebration. Joy. Surprise. Wonder.

From the bottom of my heart, thanks M.

The Feast of All Souls

About 16 years ago, a dear friend killed himself. He was young, and somehow, he lost sight of hope. I don't know if he woke up one morning, and it was gone, I don't know if it slowly etched away, I don't know.

I didn't, in fact, know that he had lost hope, I didn't know he was in a dark and horrible place. I, like so many, wish that I had known. That in that terrible place, I could have held his shoulders and his hands. And promised that I would have stayed with him. Found him help. Believed in a brighter tomorrow.

And his life ended one day after school, and suddenly we were all left with more questions than answers, and sorrow, and this was the first time that such sorrow and tragedy had entered our lives. We were just 15.

And I struggled. You will tell me that I was indeed fortunate that death did not cast it's pall over my life until the age of 15, and I will agree. But I will maintain, now and then, that it does not matter at all when that pall touches your life, only that it does, and there is a terrible change before and after.

Some months ago, Tash had a beautiful post about shadow children. And I started reading, thinking that I understood exactly what she was writing about. I didn't. And that's ok.

But when someone refers to shadow children, I shall always think of my experiences after Doug died.

For years, I would think that I saw him. While my brain knew that he was gone, and was past where I could communicate with him, past where I could touch him, be with him, I would think that I saw him. Something in the slope of shoulders, the way someone flipped their hair off their face, a particular laugh, echo's in the appearances of hands.

And I would know, at least in some sense, that time or lighting or distance or fatigue were playing games with my mind. But, another part of my brain, wanted to see what I was seeing. It became a fight in my mind.

4 years after Doug's death, in the year of a friend's death, death on a sunny October day - a death that was a senseless as it was stupefying, a new set of clergy came to my church.

And for the first time, they celebrated the Feast of All Souls.

The Feast of All Souls is simply this - a reminder, that there are those here on earth, and there are the faithful departed. There are Christ's sheep on earth, and the lambs of the flock that we ask Him to recognize as His, and they are in heaven. And that heaven is merely a breath away for all of us. And when you think about it, it seems a strange thing. A feast is a celebration, and we are celebrating the dearly departed.

And in that year, with this feast, I could begin to make some sense of death. I could begin to bound and describe death. The sting was a bit removed. Not the pain of grief and loss, but the senselessness of it. I will never say that Doug or Matt died for any good reason. I will never say there is a point to their death, a point to any death. I will say that I was finally able to put death in some sort of perspective, incorporate it into a larger narrative. Death was no longer an end, but perhaps merely a stop. Death became a form of birth, a way of transfiguration. An entry into the communion souls, more powerful and enduring than the exit from this world.

I think of All Souls more deeply, some years. In some years, it passes without a thought. In this year I shall remember my son, who is within the communion of saints. And this knowledge will not take away any of the pain. It will not make me miss him any less, it will not make my heart rest any easier, as I question why he had to die at all.

I will say this, if he had to be anywhere, the Communion of Saints is where I would most like him to be. Amidst friends and family, amidst those who have made me laugh, and cry while on earth. Amidst those who have taught me some of life's most profound lessons. And if I cannot be my son's teacher, I should like them to be. Amidst those who have known me deeply, amidst solid and pure love. There is, if not meaning, then solace in this.

MOST merciful Father, who hast been pleased to take unto thyself our brethren departed: Grant to us who are still in our pilgrimage, and who walk as yet by faith, that having served thee faithfully in this world, we may, with all faithful Christian souls, be joined hereafter to the company of thy blessed Saints in glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

Remembering especially wee Callum and his Mum C. today.

In that place where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

Wishing you were here.

When the Saints go Marching In

My thoughts began with Julia's eloquent post. I have been thinking for 3 months, while this post has resided in my drafts folder. It came up again today as I spoke to a friend. These are not the sum total of answers. This isn't theology. If you are looking for a neat package, I'd suggest that you consult Aquinas and Anselm. But, a few weeks ago, Becky declared the need for honesty. And I have been asking why babies die. So, with those provisos. . . . .

God did not save my son.

God, who raised Lazarus, who raised Jarius' daughter, who saved his Son, did not spare mine. I believe he could have. I believe in miracles. Then, and now. I cannot conceive of a God who used to raise people from the dead, and then suddenly, arbitrarily stopped. And if God could have stretched out his hand, if he could have and did not - what answer can I possibly have, other than to say God killed my son. Not murder, no. But I bet I could make a good case for negligent homicide.

I've spoken of it before: as I was in a tiny room, learning that my son would die, as Mr. Spit was hearing that I might die, there was a woman in the next bed.

She was 34 weeks pregnant, or around that, the perinatologist thought. She wasn't actually sure when she got pregnant. Given that she had no pre-natal care, no pre-natal vitamins, it was hard to tell. She was arguing with the nurse - she wanted to stop the NST so that she could go have a cigarette. She'd had a couple of beers the night before. She wasn't married, she had 4 children already, by four different fathers. She was on social assistance. She wasn't going to breast feed, and couldn't they just section her now? She was tired of being pregnant.

Contrast

Mr. Spit and I. University educated. Good jobs. Own a house and a car. Financially stable. Regular church attendees. Educated about pregnancy and child birth. We pay our taxes. More than our share probably. We volunteer, in our community, in the inner city. We donate of our own blood. We are caring. Good friends. Bake casseroles for those in need. We show compassion and mercy. We would have raised our child in the church. We are good people. We do our best. Our child would have wanted for nothing. Braces, soccer, ballet, tutoring, enrichment, university, we would have been able to afford it. There would have been presents under the tree at Christmas. Discipline, love, prayers, stories read and hugs given. We are not monsters, we would have cherished this child we waited 5 years for. He would have been the joy of our lives, the apple of our eye. Loved beyond all comprehension.

She went home with a baby, and I, in the horrific way of tragedies, went home with empty arms.
We seek for answers when tragedy strikes. Why her, and not me? We look for nice and simple packages. An explanation. A thing that says: this - this is why tragedy happened. And perhaps, I think, if we decide we know why, we think we have regained a little bit of control over our world. Tragedy is tragedy because it turns what we know, what we believe, the bedrock of our life, inside out and upside down.

I think of the prayers offered for us. The hundreds of people who prayed. At church, in our lives. Friends who do not pray, who offered up their fervent desire that we would escape this tragedy. I think of a friend who told me of kneeling by her bed. Past any sense of decorum, propriety. Sobbing. Begging, imploring, pleading.

I think of my own prayers on Sunday night. Of sobbing, wailing. Cries to let God know my heart was rent in two. Cries that were not coherent words, thoughts. Cries that bartered. If God would save my son, I would do anything he asked of me. Anything. There was nothing he could not take from me, nothing he could do to me, nothing I would not bear, only please, I begged, from the bottom of a life-carriers heart, please, spare my son.

24 hours later, my tiny, frail son, was born. With an Apgar of 1. An apgar he received because he was breathing, in flimsy, feeble gasps. One every minute or so. Then every five minutes. And then he was gone. Life that Mr. Spit and I had bred into his body joyfully, exuberantly, with promises and celebration. Life that didn't even open his eyes, to see his mother's tears. Life that was gone.

I think of those prayers, and I think of a room filled to the brim with sorrow and gall. And I know, from the bottom of my heart, I did not receive what I deserved. For my son, I will stand up and say that he deserved life. Even if I was so terrible that I could not be permitted to bear a child, the soul that was Gabriel, he deserved life.

And I am left with a sense of bewilderment. How could God not hear our prayers? There were thousands. Hundreds of thousands. I imagine that many prayers bombarding God. A series of phones that do not stop ringing. Emails, faxes, telegrams, carrier pigeons. Was God not looking during all that space? Was He busy? Playing chess? Caught up in the human rights abuses in China? Was He too busy answering prayers for parking stalls in Christmas-crowded parking lots? What happened that He was too pressed to spend the millisecond it would have taken to save Gabriel.

And I wonder, who prayed for the baby of the woman next to me? Anyone? I did. I prayed that in the midst of my sorrow, that baby would arrive safely. Not out of spirit of love and compassion, but selfishness. I could not bear for another baby to die. How could it be that my voice was the only one beseeching for this child to live, and that God would hear my single prayer, offered for selfish reasons, but not hear the bounty of prayers for Gabriel?

This reflection does not answer any question, much less the terrible, awful, heart rending question. How could God deal so brutally, so unfairly with his children. How could he strip the life we created from us, when He, created us? How in the face of horrible tragedy, could I, could anyone maintain that God is intimately involved in the world?

Tragedy, entered into, grappled with, as we struggle to understand it, changes how we understand ourselves and how we understand God. The process is messy, full of pain and raw human emotion. Tragedy, grappled with, leaves us different people. We are no longer Jacob, we become Israel, with a different set of questions, and a hip that reminds us of the power of God.

I have only a moment of clarity. Of walking out of a downtown office tower, into a warm summer day. I can see a bright blue prairie sky, a blue so impossibly blue it takes your breath away. I can smell lilacs. And I can hear a singer, on the street corner. Playing a saxophone. When the Saints Go Marching In. And he is dancing around. He is playing with pure distilled joy.

Thou only art immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and unto earth shall we return. For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.. All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant Gabriel. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light.

Holy Hot Water

I come from a long line of Altar Guild women. I remain fully convinced that 5 minutes after Henry VIII created the church of England, one of my distant ancestors began tormenting a parish priest because he dripped wine. I suppose it was, ultimately, my destiny. But destiny failed me, and did not equip me with an innate knowledge of what to do with linens. There's a book. I didn't get the book. (You knew there would be a book, didn't you?)

I'm still not entirely sure how I came to join the Altar Guild. These were the women I both mocked, and I confess, was terrified of. Truly, I tell you, any sane person should be scared of these women. It is simply not normal that anyone could be that distressed over candle wax on a linen table cloth. It's frightening when it's your mother, foaming at the mouth.

And when you are the youth pastor, and you are caught between a young man who is terrified and traumatized and refusing to come to church, and a foaming mother; honestly about all you can think of to say is "Back away. Don't make eye contact."

For those that have managed to remain blissfully unaware, the Altar Guild is responsible for the care and maintenance of the church. Specifically the bit with the altar in it. They get a room, called the sacristy. They take care of the linens used on the altar(!), set out communion, arrange the flowers, change the hangings so they are the right colour at the right time (which changes more often than is entirely reasonable), and generally strike fear and terror into the lives of young men and women who are unfortunate enough to become altar assistants - the nemesis of any woman on Altar Guild. And when they come to see you, in full sail, you run. Or shove your husband in front of them.

And somehow, because these women have a club name, and they have their own room, you just knew they would have their own language. I have to take a purificator and a veil (and supposedly corporals too, but I'm getting ahead of myself.) and I have to, well, wash them and fold them. And of course if they have their own room and their own language, and everyone is scared of them, you know that we aren't talking putting them in the wash with your light-coloured load and folding them in half and calling it done.

I did what any sensible Anglican daughter does. I took a deep breath, and called the Anglican mother. Who became very distressed that I had the holy linens in the holy linen bag on my stove. I was told to put them in a plastic container with mild soap, and not to throw the water out.

I found a juice jug. And I put the holy linens, still in the holy linen bag into my orange juice jug. Where they sat until Wednesday night.

The Anglican mother arrived, under full sail, thrilled to be able to educate her 30 year old daughter. Somehow the basics of cooking and cleaning and mending escaped her, but by golly (or possibly by corporal), she was going to show me what to do with the holy linens.

We both experienced a let down, when she pulled out the holy linens, which were still in the holy bag out of the now holy juice jug (as it turns out the bag isn't holy, it's just a bag). That was the first time she called me by all three of my first names.

And then we had to wash them. Which means rinsing them three times. Apparently there is a trinity of laundry. Who knew? And when you have holy linens and a not-so holy bag, and a holy juice jug, you get holy water. I was dispatched to water the mum's on the front porch with the holy water. I guess I have holy mum's now too.

I came back in to a question. All three full names and my maiden name. It probably didn't help that I looked at her blankly. After all, there are the thingies that go over the chalice, and the whatchamacallit that goes over the reserve sacrament, and there is the cardboard covered in linen bit, which is called a pall, but is not to be confused by the large cloth that goes over the casket, which is also called a pall. And there is the coloured stuff that drives me crazy and strikes fear in my heart when I realize I have to change colours. There's a lot of coloured stuff, and it is all over the church. But she wanted to know where the corporals were? And there should be three? (Surprise, I know). And I didn't know what a corporal was?

She described it. We hit all five names, three given, one maiden, and one married, when I told her that those were still clean, so I popped them (reverently, honest, I swear, really) back in the cupboard of the scary room err, sacristy. Apparently my attempts at preserving the (not-so) holy bag and the creation of a holy juice jug were not enough to save me from not. washing. something. that. had. been. used. on. the. ALTAR.

And we washed, and then I got the holy? iron, and the holy? ironing board. And I learned to iron and fold. There is, in case you were interested, trinity of ironing too (You're surprised, right?). We iron one side. Flip to iron the other. At this point the holy linens have approached the texture of holy cardboard, and the holy iron is making holy flatulent sounds. The sound of the iron made my mother use all my names, again. I may be getting another iron for my birthday, which is great, except that I'm not sure what I do with the old holy? iron. . .

I have the holy linens, folded in three(!) and ironed for a third time and they are straight (I hauled out the blocking yardstick to make sure - thanks Kuri!) the not-so holy bag (also ironed, just in case?), the holy juice jug(can I de-consecrate this, do you think?) the holy mums, the holy iron, the holy ironing board, and a holy Safeway bag I put the holy linens in.

I'm just not so sure I'm cut out for this level of holiness.

Praise (6x6 Meme)

Give thanks to the Lord
For He is good
His love endures forever.

Give thanks to the Lord
Yes, it's my bound duty. It's my obligation. It's what the created does to the creator. I have learned, in these vast and long and pain filled 9 months to give thanks in all circumstances. And it is not always hard. It is not hard to see His great mercy, His loving kindness and give thanks.

For His love endures forever
"What is man that you are mindful of him. The son of man that you care for him?" Psalm 8:4.
Yes, long before I was in this world, God was. Long after I leave it, He will still be here. He is larger than I am. He is mindful of me.

Oh, yes. I missed one.
For He is good.


My mind was racing, my heart was breaking, tears and sobbing through the music - I missed my Gabriel particularly on Sunday. There were oh so many children, and I missed my son.

I was thinking of the nature of gratitude and joy. The Assistant Parish Priest sat in front of me. Except that she's not the parish priest, she's on parental leave for the next 32 weeks. And the twins were sitting in front of me too. Sweet, wonderful (and totally overwhelmed!) little boys. Which got me thinking about how God changes, in response to our situations. Or, perhaps more accurately, how we may change our view of God, in response to the situation.

I thought of the joy of heaven. And I thought of immense joy I have known. Joy that made me understand the notion of Luke 6 - when it talks about abundance - measures pressed down and still spilling out. And I thought about sorrow - the feeling that all joy had been taken from the world. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. (Psalm 6:8) And I thought of how we are not good at mingling joy and sorrow.

We are a backwards, slow thinking people. Or at least I am. Perhaps all of you are more with it. I can only hold one idea of God in my mind, at one time. Either He is kind and merciful and loving and gracious, or He is wild and unpredictable and cunning, or He is judging and stern and distant and perfect.

Shortly after Gabriel's death, I started re-reading the Old Testament. In the midst of being lost and broken - life in the foxhole - I decided to pick up the pieces of my life, at the beginning. Which really is a dreadful place to begin reading about God. Let me tell you: the not dirty - but uncomfortable - secret of Christianity. The God of the Old Testament, He appears vastly unpredictable. Wildly irrational. He seems absolutely arbitrary. He is a level of arbitrary that would make the world's dictators blush. He makes no sense. None. Even knowing how the story of the Old Testament will "end", so to speak, I still can't make heads or tails of this God. Intervening sometimes, seeming to hide His face others. He's certainly not a God that I am comfortable with. This OT Jehovah, this Yaweh, who says his name is "I AM", I am not ok with Him. He's not cozy. I'm not quite sure how He works.

Now, the wise among you will notice that there is still a sentence outstanding. For He is good. For my faith to be true, for it to be real, for it to have survived, I must be able to say this: In all things, in spite of all things, all seeming evidence to the contrary, I must be able to hold up my head, and proclaim that God is still good. Which seems a hard thing, in light of the whole dead baby thing.

I am learning this. That God is not good. Or, perhaps more accurately, God is not merely good. He is God. And that means that His actions, His ways, His thoughts, they are not the same as mine. And He is not comfortable. He's wild and unpredictable. The Old Testament, with a God who is distant, withdrawn, arbitrary, He is different than the God of the New Testament. Jehovah is the same Abba, even if I perceive him differently.

My faith is wider, deeper, broader. It has known joy, and it has know sorrow, and it has known them in the same moments. The Lord of joy and the Lord of sorrow, the Lord of dance, the Lord of the dirge, the Lord I thanked for my pregnancy, the Lord I baptised my son to, the Lord I asked to acknowledge a sheep of his own flock, a sinner of His own redeeming at my son's funeral. The Lord who heard the agony filled whimpers calling out that it hurts, He is the same Lord. I just never knew him in all those faces. I never knew he could look so many ways.

I can say that God is good. But it seems paltry and small to leave it at that.

Abide

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

September 1, 1939
WH Auden
From "Another Time"
Published by Random House, 1940

Thou art Replete with Very Thou

There are, I imagine, women, who faced with the death of their baby, that scream. Who do not care who hears them. Who can fathom no other reaction to such horror and grief than primordial and honest screams and moans. And I admire them. They possess an openness and a vulnerability that I lack.

I can imagine these women, but I am not one of them. My tears, by in large, are silent, hidden, held to myself. Expressed in the bathroom at work or at church, in a chair in my kitchen late at night, over my keyboard. I do not cry in public. My silent tears at my son's funeral were likely the last that many saw on my face. I do not cry in public. I have not screamed or wailed.

And I was thinking of these women, as I cried last night. I am thinking of their sounds, of sounds of grief that do not need words. Of sounds that slice through world hardened layers of cynicism, through pride and callousness. With only the dogs to hear me, I wondered if our friends know about my tears. Perhaps if they saw tears, they would be more moved to compassion. They would understand fear and pain and sorrow and longing a bit better. Perhaps then, they would leave themselves behind, and their falseness, and simply abide with us.

I have been thinking about fear a lot this week. I have gone searching through my Bible, and I can find references to fear, and I can find people who felt fear, and I cannot silence this voice in the back of my mind that tells me it is a sin to feel fear. My fear and concern and confusion run as deep as the screams of others. And I do not know what to do with them. They will not be satisfied, my faith will not rest with easy and simple answers. Broken by the cruelty of death and the callousness of others, I want to make sense of it all.

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,

Like to a shell dishabited,

Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,

And say, "this is not dead,"

And fill the with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou

And hast such shrewed activity,

That when He comes He says "this is enow Unto iteslf

- 'twere better let it be,

It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."

Like I always do, I go back to scripture. And there are verses. Lots of verses. Telling me to fear God, and not the works of man. Telling me not to be afraid. But there are also stories. Moses, who did not want to tell Pharaoh to let God's people go. David, on the run. Stories of those who lived in fear. And nowhere do I see what I should do. I read for 3 hours last night, searching for the answer. Searching for the sentence that would tell me what to do, how to cope. What support to expect. How to get through these days.

I search out God. I ask about fear. The Christian duty of care. I ask what to do. I ask how to cope. I pray, not looking for pious platitudes of "take each day as it comes" or "don't think about it", but the big answers. The archetypes. How to live. What heartbreak means. What pain and sorrow and suffering and indifference mean and what they do to us. How to find joy and care and compassion. How to live in the unknowable. How to live in the pain-filled. How to live in a space where the lines between life and death, this world and the next, are so very faint.

And He tells me. Not in His word, not in the silence, no, He tells me in a children's story. About death, and life, about a deep and dazzling darkness.

"Thou art replete with very thou".

And I am not so sure I like this answer.

********
Sir Thomas Browne (1605 - 1682)
Quoted from A Ring of Endless Light, by Madeline L'Engle (1918 - 2007)

Amen

Today is the flip side to yesterday's hopelessness. Fertilizer for the seeds I spoke of. As I battle with fear and sorrow, or rather these two solitudes battle themselves out inside of me: I am learning. When all hope is gone, all sense of normalcy, the expected has disappeared, when all is dark and lost and broken, it only takes a very small spark to illuminate the darkness.

It is easy to demand a promise from God that after loosing Gabriel, we will not have to loose another child. It would seem fair to demand such a promise. We, as Christians, so often like to think of God as some strange Santa Clause. If I endure this much pain, this many miscarriages, if I refuse medical intervention, insist on only watering, cultivating the seeds that most women get, rather than the seeds I have, then God will give me a baby. It is faithfulness, we think, to continue to undergo pain and call it 'waiting on God'.

We confuse what is normal for our world, with what is God's will. We say that if it is normal for women to become easily pregnant, and if it is normal for women to give birth to a living baby with ease, then that must be God's will. Any other way is deviant, is out of order, is not in line with God's will. So, we say that if we drop our head in prayer, and refuse to confront the reality of our specific, different circumstances, God will notice and reward us. Obedience, perseverance, patience, they become a cost benefit equation, designed to trick God into rewarding us.

And I have been searching the Bible as Mr. Spit and I try to decide what to do. Very closely. I read of Sarah, who waited 100 years for her baby. And Issac was a joy to behold. I think of Mary. Who received her baby in an unexpected way, at the worst of all times. I think of another mother, who held a son born to die. I read of other people too. Those who lived lifetimes of pain and sorrow. Whose sorrow was never mitigated. Nothing in their life appeared to be fair. Those who were faithful and patient, and were rewarded with more pain and more sorrow.

I think of Job- who lost it all. Whom God allowed to loose it all, in a bet with Satan. His property, his belongings, his servants, even his children. He was left with a nagging wife and three friends who told him he must have done something wrong. He got it all back, you see. His house, his belongings, but not, his children. Those were gone. Instead, Job was given more children.

I wonder though, did he ever think of that first set? Surely he must have. Surely on birthdays and anniversaries, at weddings and at funerals. At the going down of the sun, and at its rising, he would have remembered those children. But he would have remembered this: In the midst of sorrow and pain, when all was stripped away. As his wife said "curse God and die", he would have remembered his own words:

I know that my Redeemer lives. And that in the end He shall stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him, with my own eyes. I and not another.

A tiny light of hope. Fertilizer for the seeds I spoke of yesterday. I turn these words over in my mind. Glossed over in my Christian life, until I choose them for my son's funeral. I hold on to these words, feeling them come off my tongue. I think of the promises, and of the sorrow. I think of the end for Job, all restored but his first children, who could not be so easily restored to him. It interests me to read that Job's friends restored much of his wealth to him. But no human could give him back his children, and God, who could have, gave him other children instead.

I have learned this about hope about faith, about the Christian life. There is no moral imperative to have another child. There is no verse in the Bible that says "Mr. and Mrs. Spit, have another baby". God does not require us to do this. He does not hand out medals for blind faithfulness in another pregnancy. He does not expect that we will ignore significant risk, frightening statistics and blindly become pregnant. He does not necessarily expect us to plant the seeds that could kill us. He expects us to do the best we can with the circumstances, the seeds, we have. He is the God of all circumstances, not just the normal ones. We won't get extra points for going through the terror and danger of a second pregnancy. Heaven will not be any more or any less assured for us. He does not require us to go through X amount of pain before he blesses us.

I talked yesterday about my tendency to see life as a series of projects. God is not about projects. He is about process. God does not say "I will promise you that you will have another baby." He does not say "I will tell you how a next pregnancy will turn out." He says "Do you believe I will stand upon the earth? Do you believe that there will be an end, and that I am the master of it? Do you believe that I am larger than your fear, your sorrow, your frailty, your statistics?"

The point is not in knowing the answer. He doesn't want me to know the answer, He wants me to say "amen." It is not in mindlessly suffering pain that we learn about God. We learn about Him when we search Him out. And when we find Him, where we find Him, that's where we say "amen". A word that means, quite literally: so be it Lord, what your will is Lord. The point is in proclaiming that God is still God, in the midst of my sorrow, my pain, my worry, my joy, my delight, my heartache.

Amen came for me, perhaps, when I realized that a second pregnancy was not a requirement, not something that was going to get me extra points. God does not expect me to subject myself to mindless pain, because I think it will buy me what I want - a living baby. Realizing that it was just bad theology to go through mindless pain for the sake of an attempt at buying points from God. When I realized that there was no requirement, I could not buy any points, this was not a project, but a process, I became more free. To think about what I wanted, what Mr. Spit wanted. And we still don't completely know. But we can begin to gather information, make a decision that is informed. And pray for direction. In the interim:

I know that my redeemer lives.

That's the sum total of all I need to know.

In this place, in all places, I am learning to say amen.

Roses

I have been struggling in a world of sorrows and fears as of late. I think you may have noticed.

Perhaps I could use the language of gardening to explain my fears and my sorrows. I have always pictured very pregnant women as a rose on my front rose bush. This particular bush came with the house. I hack it back now and then, but it always blooms again in the spring. I throw water at it occasionally, I might fertilize it once a year, but I look at it this time of year, and I see it loaded with buds.

And suddenly one morning, I will leave the house, and it will be covered with blooms. Huge blooms with multiple petals, in a vibrant shade of pink, with fragrance pouring off. Blooms that are the size of my fist, large and vibrant and full of beauty and promise. And I get these blooms from neglect, this bush seems to thrive on my lack of care for it, thrive on being taken for granted. It requires no special care or tending. It blooms beautifully, as it is meant to do, with no interference from me.

When I look at the pictures of me pregnant, even those right before my delivery, I am nowhere near this place of splendour. I am nowhere near filled to life, almost to the bursting. I am small and compact, not even into my last trimester. A shade plant, creeping along quietly in the corner. "Maybe in August," you think, "Maybe then it will do something spectacular. Something to make up for its paltry presence."

It is not reasonable to expect a birth at home next time, even an 8 pound baby, a healthy, happy pregnancy. It is reasonable that I will birth a baby in a high risk hospital. I will pray for it to be a little bigger than 750 grams. It will be whisked off to NICU. It will stay there for several months. There will be one step forward, and two steps back. When other mothers are working on breast feeding, I will be working on hoping my baby keeps breathing, doesn't have a heart defect. I will be praying life into my child.

I have had to bury every seed I planted: expecting a dream pregnancy, of a happy 9 months, of feeling baby kick and move, of knowing wonder, of being excited at doctor's appointments, of blooming in late pregnancy, of being radiant of birthing at home, surrounded by those who love me, and love our child.

My new garden is not the same. I must plant and tend different seeds. Seeds that make me small, and filled with fear and concern. Seeds that allow me to live each day, one day at a time. Seeds that will allow me to be restricted, confined, frightened. These seeds do not seek out the sunshine, they do not bloom, they will help me lie very still, and pray that the shadow of pre-e does not find me.

I am a project person, in a process life. I look at life, at pregnancy as a project. Something that I can plan for, mitigate risk in, organize, schedule, budget. But life, it is not like this. A rose does not have a project plan, my shady garden plant does not have a risk register. I must stop being a project person, and move into a day to day life. A life where every day spent in the womb means an extra 3% chance of survival. A life filled with prayer and patience. A life in which I do not have the master answers.

I am looking for the seeds that will allow me to survive. To pray that the baby does too. And perhaps, that would be enough.

Store Up Your Treasures in Heaven.

When we sent the email announcing Gabriel's birth, and his death, this verse was at the bottom. It had accompanied me through my labour, through the wracking sobs, through the quiet desperation. I chanted it in accompaniment to the beeps of the blood pressure monitor. I put my hands on Gabriel's legs, as he kicked me during induction, and I recited this verse. Christians often memorize scripture, and all I could say was that out of the bedrock of my faith, the bottom of my hopes, I remembered this verse. And heaven.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy,

and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy,

and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

Someone asked me why this verse was on the email. It's not the typical verse about loss and death and pain. In fact, you might even argue that I'm taking the verse out of context. That the situation with Gabriel isn't what Jesus was talking about when he said this. All I can say was that out of the bedrock of my faith came this promise - that where my greatest treasure was - Gabriel - the greatest gift, the largest miracle of my life - where Gabriel was, there also was my heart. There is an implicit promise in this verse, one that I am just beginning to understand, the greatest gifts, the greatest miracles, we call them treasure. And we attach our heart's to them. And it is only in heaven that our treasure and our hearts are safe.

It is dangerous to have treasure. The bible refers to Satan, to evil, as a thief, as something that creeps around causing things to rot and corrupt and decay. I think of the old superstitions: How it is dangerous to know the name for something. How it is dangerous to admit that you are aware of the true nature of something. It is dangerous to admit something is precious to you. That your heart is connected to something. It is dangerous to admit that we want something. It is dangerous to love too much. Our instinct is to hold on to our treasure. To lock it away, to protect it, to pretend that it isn't treasure. To call it something else.

I am thinking of this today, as we go to see the perinatologist this morning. This last follow up, to review what happened. To understand the course of the disease, to put numbers and lab values and medical protocols to feelings and fear and forgotten moments. To put days of confusion and fear and hope and helplessness in some sort of logical sequence. To try and understand why we had to give him back.

And I must remember, the doctor's they will have no real answers to handle this disease of theories. They will have no guarantees, they will have no promises. Their protocols and their methods, they do the best they can. They make no promises, but they tell me what they will do. They cannot tell me what will be, what is. They cannot tell me why I had to give Gabriel back.

It is a discipline of sorts to remember this verse. Because it reminds me, that Gabriel was never mine, really. He was treasure given to me, from God. And it was my obligation to give him back. To keep him safe in heaven. To remember, my heart belongs in heaven. Which is why my treasure is there too: because our treasure and our heart, they follow one another.

My other treasure, Mr. Spit, is home for a few days. And I am finding it easier to catch my breath.

While I was away

I'm going to start this post with a story about my grandmother.

"But, Mrs. Spit", I can hear you gasp, "You hardly ever talk about your family." Trust me, if you had my family, you wouldn't talk about them either. You've already met my mother. I have a SIL who, well, should be left in a warm sunny corner and watered once a week. I spend a lot of time biting my tongue. (Which I'm not good at, but moving on. . .)

So, part of my maternal families' history is a grandmother who went away for awhile. Seriously. She laid down on the couch one morning in September, fell into a coma for 8 months and woke up on Easter morning. My mother was a junior nurse at the time, and she spent most of her time taking care of her mum, when she wasn't working. It is referred to in my family as "when Nana was away".

She did eventually wake up one day - she sat up and told the student nurses who were bathing her at the time that she needed to visit the necessary. The nurses shrieked and hit the floor saying their rosary. My stern-ish Anglican Nana was not amused with such nonsense. So good had her physio been, that she got up and walked to the washroom. (Apparently discovering the catheter once she arrived).

Mr. Spit's bosses wife is from PEI. She talks about people who are from off island, or who have only lived on island for a mere 25 years as "people from away". She'll talk about how when she goes to visit, she comes back home, from away. And I have always been intrigued by the notion of "away".

Away seemed to speak to me of leaving where your roots were, of leaving what you were comfortable with, the ordinary, and moving to a place that was alien. And staying there for a bit. Maybe even making it home-like. Eventually, to satisfy the definition of away, you must return to the ordinary, to home, so that you can see how far you've come.

In some senses, I have been away for awhile. I'm not quite sure when I should date the away from, though. I sometimes feel like I have been away since I found myself to be pregnant. My body began changing in ways that were foreign to me. Suddenly I was less of a head person, and much more at the mercy of my body. Indeed, my head mattered not a whit to what my body thought. It didn't matter that I was past my first trimester, the nausea didn't go away, and no amount of telling my body otherwise was going to change this. It wasn't that I wasn't pleased as punch to be pregnant, but I wasn't entirely comfortable with pregnancy consuming so much of what I thought of as me.

Equally, I could date the "away" to the time of Gabriel's death. Certainly, if I was only physically present while I was pregnant, I was not mentally present after Gabriel was gone. I remember the days of scattered reflections, hyper focus on a particular thing. I remember being unable to eat, not that I couldn't or wouldn't: but that the entire process of determining I was hungry, then determining what there was to eat, and then determining what I might want to eat, of the available selection, and then to actually prepare the food - this process was beyond me. I was unable to organize myself enough to go through those steps. It was, simply, easier to just not eat. We had family that not only insisted that they eat, but expected Mr. Spit and I to cook. I remember thinking, "don't they know I am not present in this world, I am away?".

And so, I can recognize, using either of those times that I went away, I am not away by those standards any longer. I can see how much more I function. But if I am not away anymore, I am certainly not home. The way I have arrived at this present place was not how I left it, how I got away. I did not take the same boat home as I did when I left. Indeed, I am beginning to wonder if I am at home at all.

It seems, perhaps, that my life long definition of "away" is not quite correct. And when I think, really think, I can imagine that my grandmother would tell me that when she went away, she came back to a place that was not home. It was a place that had been living and moving for 8 months. While she was away, grandchildren were born, children married, life happened.

I am beginning to learn that in the time I am away, it is not the momentous things that have changed, it is the fact that life kept happening. And so, now that I am back from away, I am struggling to catch up. It is as if the world is a merry-go-round and it is spinning and the horses are moving up and down, and they are doing all of this to a song that I have not heard. Everyone else has heard this song for months, they having listened to the radio while I was away, and I am just now catching up. I am left mumbling to those not too busy too listen, "I was away".

Perhaps also, I am seeing things differently now. I was really far away, and now I am here, but still away. Maybe I am only on a different beach on the same island. Maybe I am very close to being home, after being away. I'm not sure. Certainly nothing looks really familiar - and it this unfamiliarness is because I have been from away.

I wonder, maybe I was always wrong. Perhaps there is a home point in our life, and we see it at birth, and we move away from it all our lives. I wonder, if in one sense we were home for only moments at our birth, and we will be "from away" all the rest of our lives. Maybe any time spent looking for "home" while we are alive is truly pointless. Or maybe the reverse is true. Maybe we are born "from away" and we are trying to find our "home" point our entire lives.

What do you think?

Also: Just for Carol, who is the archiving Goddess here at White Guys in Blue Ties, Inc., we are interrupting this blog on Thursday to be a Whinge-For-All Thursday. Save up your grievances, petty and preposterous, and air them all out on Thursday.