Wisdom Tree

Love, Gradually

A friend of mine died several years ago, leaving an eight-year-old daughter. Due to the father’s work situation, this girl has lived with my husband and me, off and on, for going on eight years.

I still let God know, every now and then, what I think about this. A girl needs her mom, in fundamental, crucial ways. Moms need to stay around. The wrongness of this loss cannot be expressed without screams and obscenities.

I never tried to be mom to this girl, because I knew I couldn’t come up to the golden standard set by the real mom. I didn’t want this child to think that I thought her mom was replaceable or that I deserved the kind of love and respect her real mom deserved.

Still, even with no mom, mothering needs to happen. So over the years I’ve tried to do everything a real mom would do—from tucking into bed to making rules and enforcing them, from being silly to sharing sadness. It’s been an interesting kind of love. It had to be a love that made few demands for reciprocation. It had to be a hands-off kind of love—and yet it had to be a love that held her securely.

Actually, this is the kind of love that any parent must learn. I knew from the get-go that this daughter did not belong to me. But I hear women all the time speaking about the hard lesson of allowing their children to be their children but not their possessions. A woman gives birth to a child that formed from her own body; yet that child is a person separate from her, one who will develop her own style, likes and dislikes, passions, and priorities. At some point, any good parent understands this and turns loose.

But what happens when the love begins in this posture of turning loose? How effective can hands-off love really be? When must a parent or parent-figure stake a claim and hang on? When is it—if ever—appropriate to make demands?

So far, it has been a dance, sometimes an awkward dance, at least on my part. It seems that there is no one time to turn loose or hold on but a progression that involves both. Some days are hands-off days; other days the door must be breached and direct questions asked and the parent must stand there in the room until the daughter reveals her heart and allows discussion.

I like to call this gradual love, because it’s the real thing but grows over time. It goes its own way and forms its own landscape. Forgive me for saying something so predictable, but this landscape is, for me, holy ground. It is where two people decide, from one moment to the next, how much information to offer, how much emotion to invest, how widely to open their lives to each other.

It’s gradual love, dynamic and unpredictable. But also, intense enough to change your life, sometimes every minute of the day.

 

 

Daring to Desire

As a fundamentalist Christian, I learned quite early to fear my desires. They most certainly would lead to activity that God did not desire for me. We tended to interpret "desire" as anything having to do with sensuality, such as sex. Rarely did desire get linked--in sermons or in conversations--to unhealthy appetites for power or control, certainly not to any forms of corporate evil or injustice. Desire was personal and perilous.

I'm about two decades out of fundamentalism, and I have enjoyed freedom of the senses, sexual or otherwise, for many years. But in truth, I still fear my desires. I fear to know what I really need out of life. I fear to acknowledge what I long for. And although you would think that as we grow older we would get better at contentment, it seems that longing deepens and that the soul's interior cries grow more insistent.

Perhaps it becomes more difficult to admit unhappiness as we grow older and become more established in some aspects. We're engaged in long-term commitments; we're partnered up, and we've given years to a career. If we are indeed unhappy, what can we un-do without destroying a life we have built? Chances are, the unhappiness does not issue from some fleeting, insubstantial thing--out of sheer practice we have learned to tolerate inconvenience, pain, and rerouted plans. We've learned not to allow shallow and short-lived circumstances to influence our happiness. The discontent we now experience comes from matters more settled and over-arching. It's easier to avoid thinking about the discontent than it is to approach the magnitude of it.

But I believe that a person's deepest desires merit attention and respect. Usually our true desires mirror Divine desire, and when we neglect them we not only prevent personal healing but also spiritual progress.

This means that 2012 may be a rocky year. I need to understand what my soul needs, what my life wants, what the most honest me dreams of. Not a safe course at all. Not easy, not without its cost.

For a Friend, upon the Death of Her Mother

In seeking ground for taking hold,

our roots reach down into our mothers’ lives

then through their history to the present—

the very spot where we, ourselves, fill the sky

and wave our leafy branches.

 

This ground gains sustenance from

our mothers’ stories; we grow as

their laughter dapples down like sunbeams,

their tears lavish us like rain of the spring storms.

 

Moments tendril over years, and our roots thicken,

our greens deepen, our dramas intermingle

and flower outward—we, too, become mothers.

Only then do we learn the weight of sunlight

and the joys of weeping.

 

—Vinita H.W.

July 20, 2010

To Other Non-Mothers Out There

This blog got a lot of traffic over the weekend, and I think much of it went directly to a post from last year, "To the Childless Woman on Mother's Day." This topic resonates powerfully from year to year, and I thank the several people who posted their comments.

Although the "nuclear family" is going strong, and although certain communities try to keep alive the idea that the father-mother-children model is THE ideal according to the Bible, reality shows us that family can mean a lot of things. And the worldview according to Jesus has few boundaries when it comes to the definition of family.

The fact is, quite a few women these days do not give birth to children, for any number of reasons. The fact is, a great percentage of families are now blended and therefore not "ideal." The fact is, if we paid attention to the care of orphans, widows, and other marginalized people, none of us would have a mere nuclear family anymore. Every Christian home would be a hodge-podge of people needing and finding love.

The fact is, many people are prevented from providing loving homes to children because they do not fit someone's idea of a good parent--because of income level or sexual orientation. We have defined the family so narrowly that we would rather children be left in foster care or orphanages rather than in a stable and permanent environment that does not meet our more particular standards.

I'll probably get some mail for this, but I'm quite weary of the American Christian obsession over "the family." God's family is large and rowdy. Jesus' family always raises eyebrows because it's full of characters. It's no surprise to me that a prophet once said that the barren woman would become a mother to many; that's just the way God does things. If we open our hearts, someone will walk in. As long as we don't demand to have control over who walks in, when or how they walk in, we will nurture many of God's children, in God's way.

Wisdom Fruit: Spiritual Wanderings

During Lent, Christians recall—liturgically and ritually—the journey of Jesus from ministry to execution. For us it is a familiar story and a well-worn path. But we make this too easy on ourselves. In fact, we make it much too easy on Jesus.

 

We love the part about Jesus being divine. We read the stories of his travels and encounters; after so many years of sermons and readings we have practically memorized the steps of his life. And in “knowing” what happened, we make the assumption that he knew all along the course his life would take. That would make Jesus pretty magical. But that would not describe truthfully the life Jesus had to live.

 

I once took a college course on the American Civil War. We would look at maps describing the battles—all those neat arrows indicating the movement of troops from one phase to the other. Our professor pointed out to us, however, that the military folks doing all the moving had no such maps. Anyone who has been a soldier on a battlefield will tell you that it’s confusing and disorienting, pretty much from beginning to end of engagement. Even the people shouting commands are going on their best guesses and on raw instinct.

 

Jesus had no Gospel stories. There were no maps. He had the ancient stories of Judaism—about exodus, prophecy, salvation, and covenant. He had the Psalms, which were likely the backbone of his prayer life. But his journey materialized as he prayed and listened and made daily decisions and put his feet on this road or on that one.

 

We make the destiny of Jesus too easy if we do not allow for hours—perhaps days—of silence and the clashing of possibilities that had to navigate. He spent time in prayer because he needed it. Out of the near-constant noise of people’s needs and fears, the strident voices of tradition and politics, and the alarmed questions of both friends and family, Jesus had to identify the one Voice that would ring true and give direction.

 

Just because Jesus moved with purpose does not mean he did not wander.

 

Just because Jesus walked in faith does not mean he did not wonder what came next.

 

I, too, am a spiritual wanderer, straining to hear God’s voice in a culture shrieking dissonance. I am a spiritual wanderer, searching for God’s footprints in a world trampled and muddy. Like Jesus, I trust that, despite my own level of success, God will always find me.

 

And because I trust that God will always find me, I am free to wander—but as a pilgrim with a future.

 

Copyright © 2010 V. H. Wright

Wisdom Fruit: Willing to Stay

The church my grandmother attended was assigned a new pastor every few years—the common procedure for that denomination. They went through more than one pastor who was not the best suited for the job. In fact, I believe there were at least two in a row who presented some real challenges to that church community. Grandmother kept going to church faithfully and continued serving in several capacities. She was not one to start a campaign against a pastor or badmouth him/her in a public way, but in more personal conversations with people she would make her opinions known.

 

During one such conversation, a friend asked her, “Well, if you don’t like the pastor, why don’t you just leave—go to another church?”

 

Grandmother’s reply: “I was here long before this pastor came, and I’ll be here long after he’s gone. It’s my church—why should I be the one to leave?”

 

I’m not far from the age Grandmother was when she said that, and I have belonged to more than one church because I’ve lived in more than one place. Also, my theology has changed. But I hang on to that wisdom about “staying put” in a faith community. It’s something like staying put in a marriage or in any other commitment. Sometimes the deepest joys, lessons, and transformations happen only after we’ve been willing to stay through the hurtful, confusing, maddening times.

 

Am I willing to stay? Do I dare say, “This is my community. This is my family. This is my home.”? Grandmother grew a lot of flowers. She understood that you had to care for the roots, allow them to reach down and take hold.

 

I know that sometimes commitments must be broken—for the sake of everyone’s welfare. But more often commitments are meant to shape and strengthen us, to enhance our identity and give us a long and colorful story.