For Tatterdemalion - Part 2

So. 

Two years ago I found myself in Bainbridge, NY teaching students of all varieties, beautiful each one (even when they tried my patience to the breaking point). My job? Elementary special education teacher. 

I'm going to skip over a ridiculous amount of living here out of sheer necessity. There is no way I can capture it all. Suffice it to say, it is impossible to work with children who have backgrounds oftentimes full of more darkness than light day after day without being changed. It is impossible to continue arranging the world around yourself when you see brokenness and need. It is impossible not to seek God's truth when you're part of a system with glaring flaws that stare you in the face when you go to work each day.

I cannot describe all of my kids, all my little lovely ones. They've made me smile and cry and pray and bite my tongue and ask forgiveness when I don't bite it soon enough. They've made me laugh from my belly with their quirks, their questions, their odd little mannerisms. They've made me ache. 

As I was learning how to reorient myself around all the years-old souls in my classroom, I was changing in other ways, as well. I found myself alone, completely, for the first time in my life. Growing up in a beautifully large and crazy family gives one a taste for familial chaos. As the youngest, I'd grown accustomed to the empty feeling that twisted me up inside each time one of my siblings left the nest. We were all Growing Up. Now I was the one leaving. The only difference was that I was the only sister to live on my own. It was new. It was lonely, and it was hard. 

I'm finding more and more that my soul needs hard things. It's only recently that I've begun to have a bittersweet longing for them, too. Christ comes awfully close in the hard things when I have the sense to feel Him. 

While I was getting used to the rhythm of teaching and coming home to an apartment thick with quiet, growing all too familiar with my friend, Five O'Clock In the Morning, and learning to turn the radio on while I ate my solitary suppers, I was also meeting new friends at a new church. 

Church has been on odd creature in my life. I grew up in a Plymouth Brethren church. Admittedly it is a subculture, defined in completely disparate ways depending on who you ask. Ask a member, and they will tell you they are the little flock following the narrow way (what they might leave unsaid is their belief that said narrow way has been utterly missed by...well, by pretty much Everyone Else...they don't have Darby, you see). I'm being too harsh. It wasn't all bad, but it certainly gave me an exorbitant amount of food for thought. Ask a friend of the brethren, and they will tell you that they are seeking to follow truth without compromise. Ask someone from the outside, and they will tell you it's a cult (I've heard it before). Ask an enemy of the brethren, and they will tell you that it's a sectarian, dogmatic group too full of themselves and not full enough of Christ. 

That was my first experience of church. My family was a bit of a wild card in the group, the black sheep of the church, if you prefer. We females wore pants at home... (after giving a horseback riding lesson to his be-skirted sister, I was once asked by a sanctimonious 7-year old, "Do you love the Lord? Then why do you wear pants?!" Funny thing is, now that 10 years or so have passed his sister wears pants, too). Only two of my siblings asked to take communion (something akin to membership in the Brethren); the rest of us loved the Lord but not the Brethren and didn't come forward. None of my siblings married into the Brethren. We went to Christian school where our Brethren doctrines could be perverted (rather than the accepted route of going to public school, where Brethren doctrines could...well, I never quite figured that one out...). Add up all the preceding, and what do you get? A Family Who Does Not Measure Up. 

I always felt that, the not measuring up. 

To roll many years of living into a few brief sentences, as I grew up I watched my siblings take different paths as they found places to worship. Two Baptists, one proselytizing Roman Catholic who sneakily brought the number up to two, one Reformed Presbyterian, one "Mere Christianity-ite," and me. I just want to be like Jesus. Call me what you like. My fiercely Protestant parents who sent us to a fiercely Protestant Christian school had an awful time of it when my first brother converted to Catholicism. We all did. But looking back, I believe God used it to save my disillusioned, intellectual, tradition-hungry brother from agnosticism. Yes. I believe that many of my Catholic brothers and sisters and I are kin, even though we harbor some pretty deep doctrinal differences. But that is another story for another time. 

So. Back to Bainbridge. With this ridiculously checkered theological background (in addition to which I went to a Wesleyan college and met all sorts of what-have-you's who follow Christ...I'm growing weary of labels...), I found myself in a place I never could have even conceived of. 

From my first Sunday in Bainbridge until now, I've been seeking Christ with other members of His body in a conservative Mennonite church. Well--they'd say they're just followers of Christ. Which is good. But they're followers who wear head coverings and homemade floor-length dresses, they're followers who have large gardens, large families, and grind their own wheat. They're followers who homeschool as a matter of course.

So for simplicity's sake, they're conservative Mennonites. 

More to come in the Spiritual Adventures of Debbie in Installment 3! 

The best is yet to come.

For Tatterdemalion - Part 1

Words are slippery things, and my fingers feel clumsy tonight. But I'll give it a go and see what comes of it. I'm not especially good at sharing the deepest parts of myself. I tend towards one of two extremes: speaking through the lens of rationality or veiling things in symbols. That way the soft, hidden parts of me remain invulnerable. But tonight? Tonight perhaps I'll let just a little bit more slip. Tonight perhaps it's important.

So. The highlights, because there are not enough hours this night to write a book. I'm leaving out an awful lot, but the most important parts are here.

Spring of 2011. I had just graduated from college and was in a job-hunting, application-filling, interview-preparing frenzy. My senior year had been a good one, filled with the honey of friendships turned rich by 4 years of searching each other out. It was also a year when I began to feel the tuggings of Christ a bit more persistently. I'd always felt them.

It started when I was young, a 4-year old whose simplicity found Christ good. I said yes to what I knew of Him. It continued on the bus on the way to Christian school when I had no qualms about putting words to this Jesus, telling stories in which He was the hero to whoever happened to be sitting near me on the bus. He compelled my tongue. When I was 8, 9, 10 years old things became more complicated. My mind started getting in the way of my faith even then. Tear-streaked in the dark, I would pad to my parents' room night after night to wake up my mom, desperate for the assurance that I was heaven-bound. Mom would give me comfort, tell me that I wouldn't even be worried about this if I wasn't saved. Somehow that didn't make sense to me. Plenty of heathen felt the worry and chalked it up to something other than God. Or they felt it and stuffed it into the cobwebbiest part of their minds where it could only sneak out at night. Maybe I was a heathen...

In high school the doubts began in earnest. All the classic questions assailed me: is God real? Am I truly convinced of it, or is His reality somehow bound up in the persons of my parents? Would He still be real without them? Do my prayers float up, bump the ceiling, and fall limp to the floor? Is praying just thinking good thoughts about the people I love? What about the sincere Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists who are just as fervent--or more so--than me? Are they all wrong? How can I be right and not them? Am I just a product of where I was born? I was a true creature of my time, full of questions and void of answers. And so it went. Day after day. Night after night. Afraid to talk to my parents. I didn't want to hurt them. Afraid to talk to anyone. Good Christians had no doubts. They just believed. I was desperate for that! There must be something wrong with me...

I attempted, time and time again, to begin reading my Bible and praying in earnest, certain that the broken parts of me would be fixed. But that was all it was: attempts. I would compulsively fulfill this obligation of daily devotions for two weeks, three, four. And then it would dwindle. I would go long stretches without touching the Bible or breathing a prayer, and it left me guilt-ridden. Doubting the efficacy of what I trying to do.

Do you know what the problem was?

All those questions I was asking--they always had different answers. Some days I would believe God was the firmest thing in the universe. Other days I would be tortured by my fear that I didn't think He was real after all. Nothing was solid. I never doubted that there was absolute truth; I merely doubted that I would ever know what it was. One of my deepest worries was that all the Christians who seemed so confident in their faith were merely masquerading. That the Church was all one big facade, that if I knocked it would ring hollow. Perhaps if I had known different Christians, gone to a different church these fears wouldn't have stuck with me. But God planted me in the place He wanted me, near the people He wanted to be part of my life.

Above all, I was disillusioned. My taste of 21st century American church was rancid from long stagnation. I don't mean to make a sweeping generalization. I can only speak for the bit I experienced. But what I experienced was apathy. Lifelessness. A faith that required nothing but my body in a building. And I didn't like it.

My doubts remained my companions as I went off to college. I built deep friendships during my four years. A few of my friendships made no sense; some of my very closest friends had hugely disparate views on a wide variety of issues. But we learned how to listen to one another. We talked about what it means to be human and about what it means to be a Christian. Through these conversations I not only began learning how to listen to--but not be convinced by [my dear friend, if you are reading this you know who you are... and I love you...:)]--"those liberals," but I also began understanding myself a bit better. Half the time in college I felt like my own psychiatrist. But it was good. I learned that yes, I did believe what I was taught growing up. And not merely because my parents told me so anymore.

My senior year of college left me much more convinced of many of my beliefs, but no less hungry for truly knowing Christ, being part of His body in a way that demanded something of me. My mind had gotten in the way of knowing Him, and it was still putting up some resistance at times. But what I really longed for? I longed for Christ to be outside my head. I wanted to know Him in the deep places.

And that brings us back to where we began: spring of 2011, when I had just graduated from college and was in a job-hunting, application-filling, interview-preparing frenzy.

God must have seen all that frenzying and decided I'd keel over if He didn't do something, so He gave me a job. Seriously, though, in His good purposes He knew that the move to a new place, meeting new people, and feeling utterly alone would give Him the space He needed to change me. I do believe I was His before then--starting when I was 4--but I just didn't know what it meant until two years ago.

{Part 2 will be arriving--well, I'm not sure when! If you're still interested, Titi, Part 2 is the encouraging part. It's where things start to get interesting. It's when Jesus starts to come in, all the way in.}

Under the Sun

At first the walls were all I could see. Bare, peeling, grimed by fingers too young to know the trail they left behind. Contained within was my little life. The space was small, but it was Home.

A little thinking, a little stirring in the soul can change things.

The walls grew roots, tangled and labyrinthine. But solid. Immovable.

The walls grew branches, taut and supple. They started to bloom.

I began to hear a sound beneath my feet when I went to bed at night, a slow sound that isn't really a sound at all. It was the sound memories make when they're covered in dust and you start to sweep them off. It was the sound of whispers behind walls and around corners. It was a sound that let me know I was not alone, a reassuring sound.

The first one to come was the robin. Straw by straw, with a strand of yarn and a few threads of hair to give some character, a nest took shape in the crook of two of the lower branches. Not long after I heard the unmistakable cries of young life, hungry for the stuff that helps it grow. Chirps, buzzes, pecks, and chatters began filling my ears during the days. And they all said, "Live. Live, live, live, live..."

______________________________________________

It has been many months since I last posted. I've been too busy living to write. All the words I possessed found their way into journals and into a few close friends' ears. 

But to give the rest of you (all 2 of you) just a taste, life has been shaken out and turned upside down since I last posted. 

I feel at least 15 years older. 

And at least 15 years younger. 

I know only a few people read this blog, and even you have probably given up on me by now. But if you're reading this and you want to know how a few months made years' worth of difference, just let me know. 

Because I want to tell you about being broken and emptied out, about being filled back up, about mysteries, about love and impatience and learning contentment. 

That's been my life for the past few months. Perhaps it sounds pretentious. But I don't mean it so, not one bit. It's just that it's 10:56 at night, and I have students to teach tomorrow. Patience requires sleep. Yes. Yes, it does. 

But, golly.

God is good and real and true, and Christ reaches deep. 

Hallelujah.

Today

It's the
hidden things
that matter

the silences between words
and the water trickling
down a rainspout

the wings beating overhead
and the echoes living
in the walls

the colors at twilight
and the light settling
on the treeline

It's about the steady green things
quietly growing
up through cracks in the pavement.

All The World's a Stage

Have you ever had lived those moments that are perfect right down to their roots? They're the kind of moments that outlive you and float around somewhere after you're gone. They're the kind of moments that make your heart jump and quiver and crack just enough to make space for another human soul to come in.

                           ___________________________________________

She's not hard to love. Just a little thing, shy. Like a fawn unsure of its legs. She dances, but tears pool at the corners when she hears whispers. Her glance is a silent plea for a little house with smoke pouring out the chimney and a tea kettle whistling on the stove. A plea for just a little love.

He's brooding, alone again. He didn't want to see life's inside seams, the fraying edges. He wanted it brand spankin' new with the tags still on. But that's not how he got it. The years are few and the hopes fewer. The questions haunt the edges of his mind, but if he never looks at anything straight on he can manage to avoid seeing them, hearing them, thinking them. Now is the moment that matters, but even Now doesn't always matter. Sometimes all that matters is having a heart beating warm beneath his cheek, a hand smoothing his hair, a voice whispering that it'll all be okay.

                          ___________________________________________

I watch from the dark behind the heavy folds of curtain, breath caught, chest tight, eyes roving my script in the light of a flashlight. "Bravo!" my heart cries, "Bravo!" The dark wraps itself around, taking me back, far back, to when I was the one in the spotlight. Now I'm on the other side of the curtain arranging bread in baskets, making sure the pitcher has water in it, checking to see whether Man #2 has found the mate to his shoe. I find myself content. Content to be in the dark, content to forget to breathe while I watch it all come to life, content to whisper, "Break a leg." Content to feel my chest stretch with the pride it can't hold inside. Bravo!

                         ___________________________________________

She sees the Boy Who Knows It All, arguing again. She can seeing it coming. In her mind's eye, his legs lengthen, his head shoots up a foot, and his jaw grows dark with stubble. It's coming. She sees it coming.

She sees the Boy Who Knew It All, too. He's sitting in the corner, thinking. Just thinking.

The future is a heavy thing.

                       ___________________________________________

If a heart cracks wide enough, there's space for the whole world to come inside.

Bethlehem

just a cool, cool breath
stirs about the heart

the ice night
pure
is
Light

lighter than day

Swelling
Swelling
Swelling

it breaks the sky

it breaks the soul

the Hope
lies
cries

sighs

dies

just a cool, cool breath
stirs about the heart

Arise

The Standardization of the Soul

Sometimes it's hard to be a teacher.

Oh, I love my kids. I love it when they talk to me about their lives, when they think, when they grapple with a skill or a concept and finally wrestle it into submission, even when they break my heart with the parts of themselves they let slip while I'm watching.

But being entrenched in a system that--as a general rule--cares about the brain and not the soul sometimes drains the life out of me. Sure, all schools are different, and not all teachers fall prey to the whims of a state education department whose solution to all educational ills oftentimes seems to be nothing more than numbers and data and graphs and figures, one more black mark on a sea of white. I try to be one of these renegades, I really do. But sometimes my inability to reach my own expectations for what great teaching looks like couples with my disillusionment at being a cog in a wheel, and I feel utterly helpless.

Right now I'm working on an end-of-the-semester culminating research project for my first Master's class at Binghamton University. My research is predicated on the belief that in order to learn, kids must be engaged. They must be motivated. They must be driven from the inside. In order to be motivated--particularly in the areas of reading and writing--kids need to see that literacy is about communication, about stepping into the madness, the ugly-beauty, that is humanity and becoming a thinking, living, acting part of it. As I read article after article about student motivation, I find myself pronouncing unspoken "Amen's" to much of it. The issue is that as I find myself taking a step back to look at my vocation and to name it Good, Beautiful even, I also catch a glimpse of myself and feel incapable of holding up my end of the bargain. I want to help my students see life writ large, but how? When a student walks through my classroom door and my mind is swirling with his IEP goals and how in the world I can help him pass the subjects he is falling so miserably behind in and when I feel like my 24-hour days need to swell to 48 before I can get everything done, when his mind is swirling with his Grandpa who works until 6 and his increasingly senile Grandma and his mother who--thank God--is no longer incarcerated, and the fact that he can hardly tell which way is up, whether the cloud ever has a silver lining, or why he's even in school... when this is life for both of us, tell me how can I be what I want to be to this boy? How can I help him see what life is in the 35 minutes we have together each day?

At times like this, the only thing I can think to do is love him. Simply love him and hope for the best. Love him as Christ loves him, and trust that somehow life will fill in its own outlines with each of his passing years and that I can--just by being there--help him have the courage to look at it and perhaps one day, if God sees fit, pronounce it worth the living.