A cacophany of circumstances, and a candle failure

Things that have happened since the last post here:

-brought home a Book of Common Prayer, because I was getting tired of guesswork
-wrote a letter to someone who I have not spoken to in months, painfully
-realized that I really need to step my game up in school
-wrestled with the concept of God
-wrestled with the concept of love
-wondered if we are not all deceived, and all of this meaningless
-listened to a sermon about how love is the force that animates the universe, even if we don't understand anything about the afterlife, or even this life, that is a thing that remains true
-realized I don't have to understand love to believe in it
-made it most of the way through Bishop Spong's Wrestling the Bible from the Fundamentalists, which definitely deserves a post of its own -was informed that I'm spending approximately 250% more time in the newsroom than my position warrants, and this probably has to do with the school problems
-subsequently found more time to do schoolwork and more time to pray and attend Scripture study
-was asked to help lead a Celtic Prayer Service, with two other kids
-proceeded to, with the two other leaders, make a complete hash of the service, including an eternal awkward two minutes in which every match failed to light the first candle, and the lighter I offered the attempting leader only sent up sparks and burned his fingers, until our rector finally took pity on us (or realized that we were simply not going to make it) and retrieved a working lighter from his office... and then we forgot the meditative silences (which, to be fair, were not outlined in the bulletin)

...like I said, we made a hash of it. I am not sure why this has not caused me to have the deep abiding urge to curl up into a ball of shame and die, besides that either the "oh my God we fucked up" instinct is, indeed, a 'we' and not an 'I' or possibly, the church has been established in my subconscious as a safe and loving place, and I no longer believe on some deep level that making a mistake is going to make everyone turn on me like angry wolves. Probably a little of both.

Anyway, I've go to sleep. The missing element on that list up there is "found a cheap monitor for my laptop, so it's actually usable again," so there's that. I can type up entries now, but I'll probably continue to write them first. That seems to work better for the brain.

Counting blessings, I think.

Personal Background Time. For six years, I worked in fairly close quarters with a friend, who was also my supervisor. (It was a small store, and I did love the job. But I don't recommend friendships between authority levels at work, for the record.) He never quite understood that I didn't mind having an ambiguous gender identity - in fact, our gender identity discussions usually ended badly both in and out of work. To that end, for the full six years that I knew him, he would comment, frequently, on my appearance, and how I could better feminize it. Sometimes it was teasing jokes about how my clothes/hair made me look like a boy, and if I would just try, I could probably look so much more like a girl! How if I would wear my hair long, or wear earrings, or wear makeup, and honestly could I really blame customers for getting it wrong? (No, I didn't mind so much, since my gender was quite ambiguous intentionally. But that was hard to communicate.)

After a while, it actually got to kind of hurt. I'd wear eyeliner because I had a meeting, or for whatever reason, and get SHOCK, or wear earrings and get teased, or wear feminine clothes and get backhanded compliments on how that was cool, if only I did it more often, and it just... hurt. When I got my hair cut, there would often be several minutes of teasing about how nice it looked, Young Man, and sometimes a "No, but it really does look good. More feminine."

So, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal that the response to the haircut I got last Friday was positive. And there's no way to non-awkwardly thank people, sincerely and completely, for their words... because I don't think I can adequately say how grateful I am to be around people whose comment is "I do like your haircut. It's very... you." Or that, despite the teasing, my individual style, without makeup or fashion-directional things, is cool, is mine, works for me.

When you've had your identity constantly under barrages of snide comments for much of your life, it is incredibly awesome to have people who not only don't take potshots at your gender identity and appearance, but genuinely affirm it. I guess that's just not something I ever thought of as being part of life, but my God, I am accepted for who I am here, not only in the workplace but at church. Which is something I never expected at all.

I am so utterly blessed in this life.

Psalms and prayers and the like

Ah, damn. I had this post written up about the Psalms, but I left it in the notebook in my dorm room. Basically, the one for All Saints Day was really quite disturbing. Not having been to Scripture Study in ages, singing it on Sunday was the first time I'd seen it.

149:5 Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches.
Yeah, okay, with you so far...
:6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands,
...okay, I guess?
:7 to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples,
--wait, what?
:8 to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron,
whoa whoa whoa, what the hell are we singing?!
:9 to execute on them the judgment decreed.
NOPE.
This is glory for all his faithful ones. Praise the LORD!"
THIS IS ONE "HONOR" I COULD DO WITHOUT KTHX

No, seriously though, Psalmist what are you even doing. There's something terribly surreal about hearing a congregation sing words like that in unison, accompanied by organ, without pause. Like... guys? Guys? Anyway. I'm rather glad to, at this point in my life, have the understanding that these were written by a fairly large number of people over a long period of time, and are not the inerrant word of God directly inspired and literally true in every particular. I sent an email back the the awesome dude who runs Scripture Study asking how we're supposed to get past that kind of discordance, if there's some sensible and reasonable Episcopal explanation, or we just sort of... continue to delight in the paradox of faith. He indicated the latter.

'kay, then.

17:3 If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress.
17:4 As for what others do, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent.

That's from this week's. I cringe for entirely different reasons. Yeah... my mouth transgresses, alright. If you test me, you will find all manner of wickedness and folly and transgression. I may have avoided the ways of the violent, but I have not walked in the paths of the righteous, either. I think maybe some of the psalms are more honest and emotional than others - but that's songwriting for you.

The post I had written concluded with a few verses from one of the ones I particularly liked, and the prayer that's been floating around my head for a couple weeks now, but I don't remember the former. Lord, let my mind be strong to see the truth, and my hand quick to record it; let my heart see what is right, and my voice reveal it. ...Oh God, please don't let me fuck this up.

Prayer, and scenery, and youth groups.

I never noticed how beautiful the view from the Northwest side of the library is - I'm on the second floor. Three sets of big windows. In the foreground of the left, the yellow branches of a willow, with green scattered throughout; farther back and in the further right-hand part of the window, a dull orange tree in a rounded triangle. Along the bottom frame of the windows, dark pines and orange hardwoods rise a few inches up into bluish dusty pine-covered hills, halfway up the window comprising, as usual, the horizon. The next window-set starts with a bright, glossy scarlet tree throwing a few branches out towards the center. It's not the blood-red of a sugar maple, but the pinkish-deep red of a Japanese maple. There's another of the tall dull orange trees, and a yellow-orange willow fading into a more vivid orange tree of some kind or other, all in the background - the Psychology building, unfortunately, is the background for that one, all harsh concrete and sharp vertical windows, rather than gentle desert-pine hills. The last set of windows is a cacophony of color, just trees jumbled together against the background of wires rising over the stadium, which manages to be pretty and symmetrical, rather than harsh and discordant.

Last night, I attended the student Methodist group. It was interesting. Er. I don't know if I can fully express how incredibly uncomfortable "contemporary Christian music" makes me. There's just something that seems so hollow about them, the 'modern' hymns, and so your brain is free to fill in its own background meaning, and I suppose it will come as no big surprise that most of my past associations with Christian youth groups are overwhelmingly* negative. A circle of kids about my own age in a room with modern contemporary lyrics on a slideshow accompanied by an electric keyboard feels almost as unsafe as, comparatively, a stone floor and a group of people standing to sing the Doxology, does safe. It's fellowship, but it doesn't fit. It feels - not wrong, but shallow. I didn't bolt and run. But a not-insignificant part of me wanted to. I'm torn between thinking it's important to challenge that part of me - to accept that everyone has a different path and there's nothing wrong with youth groups and contemporary hymns have meaning for a lot of people and that's not a bad thing... but at the same time, I think it is okay to accept that that's a legitimate path for some people, but I am not going to force myself to feel the same way.

Relatedly, the Methodist p... priest? pastor? preacher? Oh God I don't know any terminology - anyway, she gave us some background on prayer beads and some interesting thoughts on them and the evening's activity was making a small set. I didn't know Anglicans had a prayer bead tradition. Er, a recent one, I guess. 'S interesting.

And unrelatedly, I have a somewhat massive and looming article to get in this weekend, if I can get the information together, and it's just news-big enough that I really, really don't want to put it off for another week. I've sorta been praying for guidance on this, which is... new. Normally "prayers for guidance" are a lot more general, and tend to consist of things like "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong. HELP PLZ." Specifically asking for help and understanding and strength in the face of an individual task seems weird. Like I'm going back to the way we were Supposed to pray when I was a kid. Think I'm okay with that, though.

*I don't just mean individually, though I've got plenty of bad experiences of my own. I cannot think of a single anecdote in my entire lexicon that involves youth groups and portrays them in a positive light. Not one. Probably sample bias, though.

Aftermath (Or: Sausages and the Canonical Laws)

"So, what did you think?" said about everyone who I'd talked to at all this weekend. Our rector had a somewhat different question. "How has this changed the way you think about religion?" (Paraphrased. I don't remember his exact wording.)

I'm trying, still, to sort that out. While listening to a presentation about - some international relief fund, anyway - I found an answer to a question surfacing. The question, never quite verbalized, but lurking semi-permanently under the mental surface for several hours, went something like: "But what is the point of all this administrative stuff?"

It's really hard, as an individual, to have a good answer to "What have you done, today, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners, comfort the sick, the lonely, the widows and poor..." As a body, we have a far much better... a... well, we have the avenues to answer that question, anyway. I don't know that it's ever "enough." But it's a hell of a lot better than trying, and failing, to do it alone.

At the same time, though... a lot of talk about organization, development, and mammon, and not so much talk about Love? I'm torn. On the one hand, "feed the hungry" is pretty damn important. Yes, I think, more important than "make sure the hungry also convert to Episcopalians." Or even Christians. That's a - a thing a lot of more hard-line evangelicals do that drives me crazy. "We'll feed them, but only if they agree with our doctrines [out loud]."

But... there's a weird undercurrent in some of the conversations about "bringing in the Sstrangers" that seems to go back to the same flipping numbers game! Bring people in, get them into the church, and add them to the tally - even if they don't actually agree with or understand or care about what's going on in the service. Presto! Better numbers - look, the church isn't dying, isn't struggling, attendance is up! Bah.

So I guess I'm with our rector on that one. Social justice is awesome. It's necessary. It's something we absolutely should be doing. But it cannot be empty of the gospel. We should still be looking for Love in that effort. Love must be the center of our missions, of our outreach, of our works, or what the hell is the point? Likewise, sitting around staring at our navels and contemplating theoretical love without ever doing anything about it isn't much better. Gah, I don't know. Like everything else, it's a paradox and a balance and the Episcopal Church seems to be looking, always, for that balance, rather than just shrugging and letting it go. Which is the important part.

And I'm sitting up [or I was last night, when I wrote this out], having gotten out of the newsroom at a reasonable hour, turning this over on paper with the hope that ink will make it make sense, as neurons tend not to. I do know that this doesn't change my belief that I am in the right place here, at the Episcopal Church. Solidifies it, to some extent. Yes, it's an organization that is made up of flawed, broken humans, and therefore--
but maybe that's why we have so many prayers asking God to look favorably on the Church, and the church.

And I am coming to believe that schism really is a greater sin than heresy. That it is far, far better to stand in the company of a people willing to strive for love together, in all our broken flawed selves, than to seek love alone-- how can we see God if we do not look with and in each other?

Environmental influences, Reflector

For the past day or so, Arcade Fire's Reflektor has been rattling around in my head - alternately loud echoes of the refrain and quiet demands to be played again. The guys in the newsroom have rather more diverse (and, I have to admit, just plain better) taste in music than I do. I've learned a lot of stuff and started listening to bands I'd forgotten existed.

Yesterday morning, we finished layout on the paper over an hour early, so when the .pdfs had been sent, I headed down to Scripture Study, for the first time on time (or really at all) since the quarter started. It was... I shy away from the word 'edifying' as a general rule for various reasons, but... yeah. Spiritually fulfilling? God, I love these people. (Things to work on: loving the world outside the people I know. That's about a million times harder, I can't help but notice.)

It's strange how we can take solace, soul-nourishing fellowship, from such completely different settings. Sitting in a polygon circle talking about Jacob's blessing and arguing with God and the nature of pain with the church study group is an atmosphere that, on its surface, could not be more different from leaning against the brick wall outside of the newsroom, late at night or very, very early in the morning, talking through wreaths of smoke before we go back in to finish the week's edits. But there's something in my soul that craves both.

The Diocesan convention is this weekend. Our rector is having some minor (we hope) health issues. I'm trying to redirect static nervous energy into prayer instead of worrying... but worrying is a lot easier, comes more naturally, than prayer. Apparently no one bothered to inform humanity while it was evolving that worrying is a completely useless impulse. (Seriously though, what kind of an evolutionary advantage could anxiety possibly have? Bah.)

This was originally written longhand, and typed up over three different devices - two borrowed from school, and the last a two-inch touchscreen. I do humbly beg pardon for any loss of coherency. There was another paragraph written, about call-and-response, but I'll think leave it off for now and poke at that idea later.

Unrelatedly, layout housekeeping:

...more recently, it was pointed out to our class at large that light text on dark background is very, very difficult to read. I think I knew that on some level, but had forgotten. (I'm running a news blog for class, in theory. In practice, it hasn't really got any content yet. I doubt I'll ever link the two, but it's cool to be picking up the knowledge.)

So I'll be tinkering a bit with the layout here. I like it where it is now, but might fool around with it further. I hope it's a bit easier on the eyes with this background and such.