Praying with Flannery and Angela

Angela Alaimo O'Donnell and I have been in the same room a few times, at a writer's festival that I haven't been to in a few years. It is through Facebook, however, that I feel like I've gotten to know her. It is also through Facebook that I learned that she's published a book called The Province of Joy: Praying with Flannery O'Connor. 

I think it's fair to say that just about any Christian who is interested in literature likes Flannery O'Connor. She was a writer that seemed to engage a religious imagination while also engaging the world around us. That is, she didn't sentimentalize the faith, she put it in the grit and pleasure of real life. If a Christian writer isn't at least a little bit envious (or even covetous) of O'Connor's powers in fiction, they're probably not paying attention.

So I was intrigued by Angela's book. I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't really know what I was ordering when I ordered it.

What I found was a week's worth of devotions. The book is set up for two prayer times, morning prayer and evening prayer, with scripture readings and the innovation of readings from Flannery O'Connor's books, The Habit of Being and Mystery and Manners. After the actual prayer liturgies are completed, there is then a reflection on one of O'Connor's stories.

Last week, coincidentally the last week of the Easter season but I hadn't planned it that way, I set about the task of starting with Sunday morning and praying with Flannery (and Angela) for the whole week. The devotions are seasoned with the Roman Catholic faith of both authors, but not so much that this Protestant found it distracting. Each day had a theme and each day had repeated readings, mostly the scripture readings, for both morning and evening prayers.

I made a point of doing all the readings, repeated or not. I did my best to give into the rhythm of the prayers Angela arranged for us, and accepted the repetition as the gift that it often is. When I felt myself growing impatient with something I'd read that morning (or just a very familiar piece of scripture), I tried to slow myself down and read the text anyway, taking it all in as intentionally as I could.

What do I have to say about the experience? One, it did make me realize how much I miss the regular liturgies of prayer that I experienced in seminary, many years ago. Two, I found it a lovely thing to have a writer who was not writing scripture, not writing liturgies enter into the liturgy. I was struck by how much O'Connor wrote homilies, how she could have been a preacher.

And I found inspiration beyond the sort a reader of devotional material might look for. If I were to target an audience for this book, it would be the creative person of faith. As a writer and performer, I found what O'Connor had to say to be particularly worth pondering. I'm sure that people who don't write or otherwise engage in a creative endeavor will find much to engage their heart and mind in these pages, but from this point on, I'll be recommending this book to writers and artists of faith.

I realized late last week that I was "praying with Flannery" during the last days of Easter and that this was a fine transition into Pentecost. There were bits that felt renewing to my commitment to my creative endeavors, a stirring of the Spirit. But that's just an idiosyncratic experience. I wouldn't recommend that you wait a year until you pick up this volume. Far from it. In fact, I need to put on my calendar when I'll next spend a week with this book. It'll be well before next Easter season.

Mortality IV: Onward

It's been a month and two days since a very nice man cut into my abdomen and took out a big, heavy---but benign!---cyst.

I was not prepared for this. Maybe there was no way for me to prepare for this. I've not had anything like this before, and while I have been in the place of being around people who have and I hope I was kind, patient, and encouraging in those situations, I'm here to report that it's different when it's you, your own self, going through it. Empathy, compassion, only goes so far, it seems.

I guess that's one lesson to keep close to the surface.

Things I was not prepared for:

I didn't know how the brain gets discombobulated by anesthesia. I had this fantasy of laying up in the hospital and reading and writing. It's what I do otherwise, and if I was going to be laid up in the hospital, I was going catch up on those two activities. Except my brain couldn't process words so well. I tried a couple of entries in my journal while in the hospital, but putting pen to paper was nearly overwhelming. It wasn't even frustrating, it was just a fact. I couldn't read and write. And I guess it was more concentration than ability---I could certainly look at words and get meaning from them, I could certainly write a few words. It was just too much. A friend even brought me a couple of Archie comics (comfort food for the soul) and I couldn't quite manage that.

I was not prepared---and I admit this is kinda dumb---for how long an 8" incision on the abdomen, into the body cavity takes to heal. People keep reminding me I had major surgery and it is a bit of a reminder each time they say it. Oh yeah, bits were removed from my body and so this scar down my belly is actually deeper than the average cat scratch. My surgeon says that an incision of this type takes about 6 weeks to get to 90% of the muscles' previous strength. I still have 2 weeks to get there, but I'm annoyed how much this cut dictates how I move.

I didn't expect my appetite and general gastrointestinal system would be affected like it has been. My appetite is still weird. Eating is not fun. I'll save you the details, but I'll just add that the word "irregular" has specific meaning in this context. It's uncomfortable and I grow weary of it.

I could go on. I shan't.

Because, as per my previous posts on the subject, I remain grateful and in awe of my good fortune. This remains, as I may have said before, the happy ending to the story that begins with, "you have a mass on your pancreas."

And I'm surrounded by a good many gifts of people. I'm talking about Celina, who organized a group of people to bring me food the first week I was home, I'm talking about Lura, who came and fed my cat while I was in the hospital. I'm talking about the friends who visited in the hospital and walked with me to my mailbox after I got home. The nice man who brought me the Eucharist one Sunday. I dare not start naming too many, as I'll offend by omission, but my blessings involve more people than I (a bit of a loner introvert by nature) might have predicted or guessed.

This is another lesson I need to keep close.

But those are the people I knew before surgery. There were all the people who took care of me in the hospital. The nurses---can I sing their praises loudly enough? I've sent the 25th floor nurses station a thank you note, but it's inadequate. For example, there was one nurse who was particularly playful. When I was taking my first shower, she had put a rubber glove on my hand, over my IV ports, taped it up to keep water out of it, and said, "Okay, oh gloved one, you're ready." I responded with my best high pitched "ee hee hee" and three steps of a wounded moonwalk. We laughed and it became a running joke the rest of my time in the hospital. How do you thank someone for her willingness to play along? Really, I had a bunch of nurses who made being cut open the most fun it probably could be.

I also have had great luck in my surgeon. My base requirement for a doctor is that he talk to me, that he be present to me, answering questions. I fired a cardiologist over this. I now have a primary care physician who is wonderfully talkative (he has apologized for talking to much, which amuses me) and I appreciate him because he obviously loves being a doctor and making sure his patients understand what they need to do, what's at stake. I feel the same way about my current cardiologist. And I hit the jackpot with my surgeon. I remember one of his visits to my room in the hospital where he was doing his rounds, doing his surgeon things, and fairly business-like, all appropriately so. Then I asked a question and his body language did this remarkable thing. He relaxed into a conversation. It wasn't---or at least didn't read as---a heavy-sigh-great-he-has-questions sort of slump. It felt like a human being who was relaxing into a conversation. In my follow up visits in his office, it's been the same. He doesn't appear rushed, he doesn't appear to have more important things to do. He's there, talking to me.

As I said, I fired a cardiologist for not doing this. I won't have an ongoing relationship with this surgeon. Maybe another year with him? But I'm so thankful for him.

I had a conversation with a friend up in Chicago this week. She and I talked about this health scare, how these things can hit and be scary and change our lives. I think it's true that there is no "return to normal." There is no going back from here. Mortality has been highlighted for the last three months here. So has been grace. I ponder how I escape to much bad stuff, even as what I'm going through might be considered bad stuff.

I think of the hospital neighbor whose pain would not be managed. I think of people who suffer months and years of treatment for cancers. I think of friends with debilitating, degenerative diseases. I think of people without friends to lean on, who suffer illness and misfortune without visits and gifts of meals.

I have the abundant life. Going forward, I can't forget this mystery. Going forward, I have to watch for ways to respond to this mystery. There's no going back to not knowing how blessed I am.

Really, it's a knowledge to knock you to your knees, if not flat on your face.

Amy Grant and Audience and Why/If it Matters

Since I have no "cool factor" to protect, I don't mind admitting that I've long had a soft spot for Amy Grant. Discovering her music (and "contemporary Christian music" in general) as a pious college kid was actually a big part of my development and in some ways, the thoughts, hopes, prayers set to music saved me, maybe more literally than figuratively.

Today, I saw on my Facebook newsfeed a link to an interview with Amy, conducted with a Michigan based LGBT magazine. You can read the interview here.

There has already been much made of her careful responses, her skirting any kind of clear affirmation of LGBT folk. She has LGBT friends, she's aware of them in her fan base, and she gives one of the best answers of all time with this observation: "When you don't understand something, you can either default to judgment or you can default to compassion. Those take you down completely different roads."

Yet, LGBT are treated as a political hot potato that is obliquely compared to telling who she voted for in the last presidential election. It's information that is divisive and she says she's more interested in bringing people together. All well and good, I suppose. I can understand it, even. She has pressures from her local church and record label and larger fan base that I'll never have or feel the need to navigate.

But towards the end of the interview she also says, "This is interesting because I have never done an interview where it feels every question is saying, 'Tell me I'm OK.'"

Yes, Amy, that's there. I admit it. I hate that I sometimes look to celebrities I've admired to affirm me, but it's there, it's real and let me see if I can explain why this is a thing.

In so many of the church discussions about LGBT folk, so much emphasis is put on "unity." Let's not let this issue divide us. What so many of us LGBT folk hear is, "We think you're okay-ish, but it's not worth the hassle to say so outright. It's not worth the loss in revenue to say we've reconciled our faith with the fact that there are gay people and they might have some rights to happiness and fulfilling relationship out in the open just like straight people. We welcome you to our worship and/or concerts, but please don't ask us to outright affirm you. It does no one but you any good."

See what we hear? The only people who will benefit by being affirmed by church hierarchy or pop stars are the LGBT folk---and it feels like we're not worth the trouble it'll bring to the hierarchy or career.

There are any number of ways that I've long respected Amy Grant and her attempts to live honestly, the way she conducted herself during her divorce and remarriage seemed like models of restraint and what a gift it must have been to her children that she kept them out of the press as much as possible during those times. And the album, Lead Me On remains a high water mark, in my estimation, of religious music recording.

But yes, sad and unfortunate as it is, I'd still like a more solid word of welcome, affirmation, acceptance.

It shouldn't matter, but yes I'd like to know that Amy Grant thinks I'm okay.

And I'll take her word of wisdom and do my best to meet what I don't understand in her non-answers with compassion more than judgment.

But compassion doesn't preclude pushing back. I hope I push back with love. 

Mortality IV---Home

It's an amazing ride to go into the hospital, let them knock you out and cut into you (it's for your own good!) and start the recovery process.

It's befuddling and beyond ponderable that all this goes well, perhaps best case scenario for the situation at hand. My pain was beautifully managed. A woman next door, not so much. The unequal distribution of that particular blessing sits in my soul and I wonder at my escape from the worst.

I keep saying I have no way to complain. I was in a topnotch hospital in a city known for topnotch hospitals. I have insurance. And if I find the initial business of waking up disorienting and if I don't like the feeling of narcotics in my body (another blessing?) and if the energy put into just sitting up or shifting in my bed feels like some kind of misery---I have nothing to complain about.

Blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace. Friends and doctors and nurses . . . with Mary, I hold these days and ponder them in my heart.

The grisly bits of it are that I had a 10-15 pound mass in my abdomen. On my pancreas, no less. They went in and took it out. It was a little bigger than a baseball. The pathology report on it is all clear. I just have to be careful lifting things for the next month or two, as my abdominal wall heals back up. And figure out how to sleep without a cat kneading my belly for at least a few days.

I'm about to spend my first night back in my own bed, full of gratitude and wonder. But for fun, here's some photographic evidence from the last week. Me on a "breathing treatment" (I referred to it as my hookah) something like the third day after the surgery.

Mortality III: Humor For the Sick

Some less than serious thoughts as I prepare for surgery to have that cyst removed from my pancreas . . . 

Today's gospel reading is the story of Thomas and his questions about the resurrection. On the cover of our bulletin was a painting of modern day disciples looking at Jesus' wounded side with one (presumably a modern day Thomas) touching the scar. It reminded me that a few days ago, my Facebook status was something like: In most pictures of the crucified Christ, the spear wound is pictured on the right side. I will have a scar on my left side. The theological implications trouble me.

I found this much funnier than most of my Facebook friends, as I thought I was making a subtle joke about possibly being the antichrist, but I was merely being obscure. It happens to me a lot.

Still, this is how I generally get through life. I make a joke. Some are better than others. Most are worse than I like to admit. They all make me laugh, because I'm eternally amused by my own self.

Similarly, this afternoon, I posted to Facebook: In today's reading, Jesus invited Thomas to poke his fingers into Jesus' wounded side. I regret to report that I am no the Risen Lord and I shan't be inviting any of you to do likewise later this week. Let the disappointment (and, I presume, un-friending) begin.

I got a "Yuck!" in response to that one.  

Then there was that week or so where all I knew about my condition was that I had a mass on my pancreas and that this was bad news. I hadn't yet had the word that it looks benign, and so I had a few days when I stopped planning too far into the future. Like, my 50th birthday is this year in October. I kind of stopped thinking about that. One day, walking home from my bus stop, I found myself thinking about what might have been my "last" holidays, as in "Maybe last Christmas was my last Christmas."

Now, one of my very least favorite Christmas songs is Wham!'s "Last Christmas." I hate it while admitting that it's catchy. As soon as I thought to myself, "last Christmas," the tune was in my head and for about a block, I was humming a loop of "last Christmas was my last Christmas was my last Christmas was my last Christmas." And then I laughed, knowing that this was much too dark to tell anyone about. (So I post it to the WWW.)

Then there's my friend who wants to do a weeping flash mob, where a large group of people gather together in a public place and just quietly weep together. We think this is hysterically funny. (It's no just me---it's also the people I hang out with.) One night, in Facebook chat, she said she thought the hospital would be a great place for the weeping flash mob."

I immediately lit up and typed back to her, "That would be AWESOME to wake up to!!!"

Because, really, it would. Except I'd laugh and bust a stitch or something. But what they hey, right? I'd already be in the hospital an I'm sure they'd be happy to stitch me right back up.

And now, just a couple of days before the surgery, I'm having an allergy attack (I swear I never had these until a couple of years ago) and they always want to settle into my chest. This morning I woke up sounding like Harvey Fierstein. On Friday, I called my surgeon's nurse and told here that I was having some chest congestion thanks to some angry pollen in the air---would this postpone my surgery or, better yet, did she have any suggestions as to what to take to make it better? She checked with the surgeon and he said that as long as I didn't have a fever or chills, I would be okay for surgery.

Just to be clear, I asked, graphically, "So if I have a coughing fit after surgery, I'm not going to split open and spill my guts all over the place?"

Because I also delight in using hyperbole with medical people. I think they're not quite used to their patients talking like that and it usually takes them aback a second and then they laugh. I like making my medical people laugh, and I don't hold back because I know people in life-or-death situations also tend to have a fairly dark sense of humor. I learned this as a chaplain in seminary.

I share all this to  . . . I don't know, I guess to share how I cope with what I earlier called the strong, brave, weak, scared balancing act. Humor, I believe, is a gift from God, and if no one but me and God are laughing, well that's enough.

I once heard my father say, "You need a little foolishness to get through the day." I don't know that I ever thought of Daddy as having a particularly philosophical bent, but if I ever embraced anything he said, this is it. I do take things seriously---I've also been accused of taking some things too seriously---but, well, to quote the prophet Joni Mitchell, ". . . laughing and crying, you know it's the same release."

I really rather prefer laughing.

Risen 2013

Like lightning dressed in snow, the news struck.

"Do not be afraid . . . "

We've heard this before.

"I know that you are looking for Jesus . . . "

We were followers.

"He is not here . . . "

Death harshly separates us.

" . . . see the place where he lay."

And now we don't even have a grave to visit, to venerate.

" . . . go quickly . . . "

The quick and the dead . . .

". . . Galilee; there you will see him."

Do not raise our hopes!

"Do not be afraid . . . "

Galilee may be closer than you think . . .

Holy 2013

Saturday.  .

We know the story. Behind us is death, in front of us is resurrection .

But today is between time.

We don't know how to look at it, how to observe it.

Between grief and joy.

Between disappointment and hope.

Between losing and gaining.

It's ambiguous time, poorly defined, too often ignored with busy-ness.

We can't think about that now, there are things to do.

We live here more than this one days admits.