Lighting my own flame

I pre-ordered my friend's book, even though I didn't want to read it. I pre-ordered it right in the middle of losing my own faith, her book about losing her faith...and finding it again. Faith has long since ceased to be a cultural acoutrement of habit, tradition, stand up-sit down formalities. It survived thousands of years that way, by being necessary to people. Necessary because they couldn't read for themselves perhaps, necessary because whole nations grasped desperately at religion as a form of collective salvation from unknowns both here and in eternity. In the performance-driven, every man a minister evangelical movement, we are no longer silent participants in a army of anonymous believers who join us for that hour and stare forward. Then you could hear the rumble of hundreds of hands dropping hundreds of kneelers, the scratch of a thousand shoes tucking under pews, the awe of the silence when every head bowed in confession.

Norms shift and traditions change. We have always lived in a society where questions were welcomed. You get to choose, the Pilgrims said. We have never been Catholic or Protestant solely based on geography here in the new land. Everyone seemed to politely ignore that we are still born into faith, held there by the glue of family and social pressure. Many of us silently protested, our shoes slow to scrape under the pew. Our heads the last to bow.

Evangelicals pull you out of your seat and demand your participation. I suppose that's how I, perpetual doubting Thomas, got brought into the fold finally in my 20s. I had held church and especially church people at a distance since I was raped by one at 7 years old. My acceptance came grudgingly, and really I only laced my fingers into the church's embrace because I wanted to support my beloved little brother.

I lobbed fireballs of religion along with the rest of the church crowd. I did so out of fear. I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want life on earth to be the end. I didn't want to be barred from some place of joy just because I was stubborn and unconvinced.

Does it count to believe if you hold part of your heart back, as afraid of faith as you were of not having it?

Yes, I was on fire once. I turned off parts of my mind and my heart and I jumped right into the flames on purpose. It was my last-ditch attempt to belong. I got 10 years. A decade of wearing the right clothes, keeping a daily prayer list, reading through the Bible according to this plan and that. Wearing the pages out in my search for answers. I walked the walk, I talked the talk. I didn't know what to say to the pain in the eyes of my friends, so I leaned hard on phrases like, "Let go and let God," "Be still and know," "We'll have all the answers in heaven." My girls wore dresses. I wore my hair longer. I tried to smile more. We spanked. We "trained them up in the way they should go" with no regard for who they were, the children gifted into our marriage. I wasn't a steward. I was a matriarch standing proud on the promises. Part of being on fire is knowing the right answers, being so sure of yourself (because it's God telling you how to be) that no one outside the church can question any of it.

Through cancer, grad school, my daughter's brushes with death, losing a son in the midst of the worst of it - the flame of faith stayed lit. It was my only hope in those days. I was clinging with desperation. I consumed whole books of the Bible on sleepless nights praying to get the WHOLE answer, not just little crumbs of it from this passage or that. Some of the tissue-thin pages ripped where tears landed over and over again.

I remember the subtle soul shift that happened the night I was diagnosed with cancer at 28. I was in excruciating pain that God apparently didn't care to relieve. I had begged - everyone I knew was praying, in fact - that it wouldn't be cancer. This couldn't happen to me. But it did...and after I wrestled myself down back into the dark bottle sealed up at my center, I opened my hands and said I accepted it.

I thought trials would be the stepping stones on the way to the top of the mountain. I was numb to the erosion that was happening every time bad news rained down on us. Like a movie-set town in the 1950's, the sets were slowly collapsing in the bad weather. I pushed on them delicately at first, picking parts of my life I hoped I could change on the down-low, without the church noticing.

I quit wearing dresses. I started letting my kids decide what to wear. I started grad school and talked about becoming a nursing professor. For a while I stood still in the stream. Then, I took one brave step against the current.

As I've walked back up the stream, back to where I started when I was just me, the fire slowly went out. There are many reasons. Some of which could be temporary. I'm not a promise-maker at 34. I know how little I know. I am okay with only having answers for today and letting tomorrow arrive, come what may.

There is a little flame flickering again. It's different. It's not blowing over me like wildfire in California and I dry tinder in it's path. That's religion. To say I've lost faith because I ran away from the wildfire is to say I've lost an element of the human experience entirely. I still have faith. I just believe in something other than the church.

I believe every person is beautiful just the way they are.

I believe violence is the product of our blindness to someone else's value and beauty.

I don't believe in predicting the future.

I believe my value and my importance are inherent in my humanity and displayed when I love others. I believe the same thing about every one.

I believe in equality. Freedom to be just who we are.

I can't make myself believe in an entire cosmos unseen, a benevolent creator who is all-powerful, ever-present, interested in each of us to such an extent that we receive daily punishment or grace from this god.

The fire that lights me now is tended by my own two hands. It is my own fire. I built it. Nothing is consuming me from the outside. No more wildfires. Because I am on fire for something new, humane. And fire can't pass over the same ground twice.

Visit my friend Addie's website to view more synchroblog entries

Hello, Goodbye?

I find myself pondering it ever more frequently: is it time to stop blogging? After all, what started as a cancer blog has reached it's natural boundary as I celebrate surviving 5 years since my cancer was discovered. Now it has morphed into a sometime mommy/philosopher/theology/mental health blog. It feels a bit awkward, and I'm never sure if it's because God is pushing me past my comfort zone, or if I am pushing myself way past the comfort zone God intended for me?

Have you ever considered concluding your blog? Why or why not?

Would you please consider answering this question either by emailing me using the contact form at the bottom of the blog, or posting a comment with your answer here?

Should I keep blogging or call it quits? Why? What do you like most/least about the blog? What kinds of topics would you like to see me do more of?

I quit talking when I lost hope of Utopia

I used to be a soapbox grassroots political passionate, from days spent longing for my 18th birthday as I watched a Presidential election pass me by in 1996 to fighting unionization in my 20's at my place of employment. I've always been an "issues" voter: worried more about the morality of government than anything else, I had a short list of issues that determined which candidate got my support. Through the years, those issues remained almost unchanged: women's rights; abortion; and issues of personal freedom and choice such as those defined by the Constitution and it's amendments. When I was 18, I was for the death penalty. Now I'm opposed to it. At 18, I would have voted against gay rights, raised in a Bible-banging fundamentalist cult and still a talking head for what I'd been taught in my formative years. Now I'm much less sure of myself: I'll vote for the rights of gay spouses in healthcare every time, and I don't know how I'd vote on gay marriage.

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But this political season has me silenced. I think mostly because I still desperately dream, somewhat delusionally, of a political arena that encourages balanced, although passionate, debate. Discord? Certainly. But with chivalry, respect, and a chance for everyone to get a word in edge-wise. I've never voted for a candidate I agreed with 100%, nor have I voted against a candidate I disagreed with 100%. Isn't it that way for every voter? Because there is no duplicate of the unique and wonderful YOU in the universe?

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It seems like politics are more polarized than ever this year. Maybe it's that I've never been through a Presidential election on Facebook. Maybe it's that I've finally made enough friends who disagree with me that I'm bombarded with more and more ideas very much other than my own. When we're not facing a major political decision, I love the back-and-forth that is now part of my daily conversations: many of these friends have gently and respectfully helped me expand my horizons and have even helped me work out whether or not my ideas are based on Scripture or just the pipe-dream pulpit-banging of a mouthy pastor.

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag: I won't be voting Democrat this election. But I won't be happy about voting Republican either. Because I am not a party-line voter. I no longer consider myself a "Republican", history in the Young Republicans notwithstanding. What I really believe in is freedom. Personal responsibility. Reaching down to help someone else rise up. Grassroots aid coming from the very communities needy people live in. I don't want to live in a socialist nation. I want to live in a free nation.

There's a big reason I feel this way: my faith. Not only am I commanded to love my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:31), I am told that "religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows" - and perhaps the uninsured? - "in their distress." (James 1:27) Call me a passivist hippie commune love-glazed freak, but what a country we would live in if we could somehow encapsulate Galatians 3:23-28 in a government!

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I can't make that kind of change happen no matter how I vote in 2012. Maybe that's why I sigh every time I think of the election. Unfortunately, the main issue I'll be voting on this Presidential election will be economics. Our country is in serious money trouble. Someone has to find a way out of it. Our current administration has proven that it doesn't have an answer to balancing the budget, plugging the holes that money is leaking out of, and still accomplishing what the Federal government needs to do. One major reason? It has kept adding to the ever-longer laundry list of what the Federal government "needs" to do. What needs to happen - hopefully before we become the next Spain, Portugal, or Greece - is a long, hard look at that list, and some serious prioritization and budgeting. We've got to quit borrowing to accomplish our goals. We have to make our goals fit into our budget, somehow.

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The Constitution states that we shouldn't overthrow Government lightly, lest we all suffer even greater than we currently do. Yet when a "long train of abuses" and "Despotism" are evident in our Federal system, it is our "right...duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (from the Declaration of Independence, signed by 56 supporters of Freedom on July 4, 1776)

If we are to continue to exist as a free nation, we cannot print money like it is mere paper. We cannot borrow what we cannot repay. We cannot vote individual mandates into law, as we did with the Healthcare Reform Act, penalizing people for inactivity, which is unconstitutional. We cannot be ruled by fear and propaganda, such as the misinformation regarding the uninsured population statistics - which did not take into account illegal aliens and other non-citizens nor those who choose to live without insurance due to youthful ignorance, stupidity, or lifestyle - used to push the Healthcare Reform Act through the House and Congress in 2012.

We have been, historically, a creative breed. We've worn our "melting pot" brand proudly. We've been known to work together enormously successfully on occasion - think World Wars and the Great Depression. We've survived horrible rifts such as the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Civil Rights Movement. Great changes have been effected by large groups of people - women and children, minorities, religious groups, and even political organizations. We've transformed our nation over and over again. Today we look nothing like we did in 1776. If we survive another 200+ years, I imagine it will be a totally different patchwork quilt of people and ideas. Will there be more harmony? The pessimist in me doubts it. But I want to believe it is possible. 

I am more than willing to reach a hand across the aisle and grasp yours in brotherhood. I promise not to be a bad sport if my side loses. I won't quit speaking up for what I think is right - because that is what makes our nation great. But I love you just the same. I love atheists, lesbians, Muslims, liberals, humanists, drug addicts, commune-living hippies, researchers who wear hideous business suits. All kinds of people who don't look anything like me.

Democrats & Republicans hug in Hawaii's House after invocation, April 2012 (image credit) 

Whatever your political stripes, I encourage you to remember that the world will not end on November 6, 2012. We must maintain our relationships as we struggle through these great debates that are coming in the next few months. Because when the dust settles, and a new or returning President claims victory late that night, WE will be what's left of this nation. WE will determine which senators and congressmen get elected in the wake of the Presidential election. We will vote our opinions over and over again. We will spend our money on what we value. We will speak freely as long as we are able. We will build the bridges and come up with the solutions and make amazing suggestions that politicians will grab from Twitter and Facebook and your blog and mine and call their own.

Don't stop talking. But for heaven's sake, don't stop loving either! Perhaps our founding fathers said it best, as they concluded the Declaration of Independence: And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Part of the Faith and Politics synchroblog hosted by Andi Cumbo

More "wait"??

The world is kind of gray today and I woke up in a haze emotionally. We live in a an either-or world. There isn't an ambivalent middle ground, because even the ambivalent middle ground has been earmarked as a political stance in and of itself. I always feel out of sorts and pensive when I wake up gray. Give me fear, anxiety, anything! But I got nothin', walking in to this appointment. Five minutes for a doctor to explain the next 4 years of your life.

So her I am in the ambivalent moment. My doctor reads off the latest test results: minimal uptake in the neck region, some in the salivary glands, update elsewhere within normal limits. No evidence of recurrent metastatic disease. Okay. That is good. There are no pictures of tumors anywhere in my body. Now come the lab results. Last December, my tumor marker was at 3.5. Well, good news is that they are down to 0.9, which is still positive but not horribly so. Unfortunately, my goal is less than 0.1. I have a small amount of tumor antibodies, which developed over the summer and persist now.

For people who don't read thyroid cancer medicaleze: My scan was clear. My labs are still positive for cancer, but less so than last time. I don't need any more treatment at the moment. I will have another scan in November or December 2011, and will also have lab tests through the year to determine how I'm reacting to the current treatment.

I feel like lying in the white snow bank out my window for hours. Let the cold seep in deep, and the flakes slides silently across my face. Co-exist with the grayness. Forget everything for a long time and just sleep in a bed of nothingness.

I am in the same reality today as I've been every other year. My body isn't any different. It looks like it won't be until 2013 or 2014 that I'll hear that I'm "cancer free".

I pray to God, and He is supposed to answer one of three ways: Yes. No. Or Wait. I am so tired of waiting. Pretending I'm not waiting. Pretending I'm going on. I've been stalled out here for too long.