Superly Natural and the Supernatural

Today I made a box maze.  This is year three actually.  Life, though seemingly lost in the 21^st century abyss, is a rhythm. I do, what seems new and great, as I have every year.  Time marches on, and nothing is played the same twice, and yet, always to the same four seasons sheet music.  Tomorrow is Halloween which means today, I made a maze.

It’s all so cut and dry (pardon the pun).  Boxes arrive from a member of the congregation who owns a motorcycle dealership. Mike, Tony&Di + a million little kids, and a few others come to the church.  Chairs are stacked, boxes brought in, and we begin.  My fingers grow sore from pulling zip-ties, stabbing with a box cutter, and ordering around the little kids running through the maze holding duck-tape and more zip-ties.  FINALLY the walls are up and half the group gives up leaving me and a few strong others to finish the roof.  In the end I’m the last standing…literally in the middle of the maze.  I begin the crawl through.  This year was impressive, I made it out without hitting a dead end but impressive all the same.  Everything looks different from inside, slightly claustrophobic, but to be honest my rug burned knees keep the hysteria to a minimum. 

I can’t decide what’s better, to be the maze maker, or to be the kids the maze was made for.  It seems it’s something everyone revels in too.  We love the imperfect, and yet to value is to lift up.  When we look at a hero from some fantastic story he is either a saint, or she is the lowliest of humans, a simple non-individual or a demigod.  But to look at either we still raise them up, “look upon this one for—” their normality or superiority.

Ever thought we probably do the same to God?

            Today Gold dust was swirling on the ceilings of bethel. 

Today I worked all morning, took a nap, caught up on some computer stuff, and made a maze.

This is where I’m supposed to be emergent and tell you about true spirituality

 and how I did the same by my actions

and how God loves me because I’m so

compelled to justify my normal moral behavior

and lump it into time with God *in order to* kill two birds

with one stone the same way my iphone does.

I don’t have an iphone and, sorry Mr. Smith…

So I stood a moment in the family room, watching Redding California’s Christian-Costco, Crazytown, swirling in gold dust.  I saw the worship of hundreds singing in acapella and I knew.  If God were anywhere he’d be there.  I became ACUTELY aware that I simply was not there, that I was here, 2,000 miles away.  It’s easy to forget that on a little screen but for some reason that moment was clear, Bethel’s service was going on right then and there, and I was not there at all.

This is the point at which a charismatic is supposed

to tell you that they turned on their

Jason Upton and suddenly beamed into the service,

or said Shaba and then God appeared—or

an angel and it was better than any old service. 

But instead I kept watching Mad Men, because while I knew God was there, I knew He was also here.  I was here with Him. I’m not sure which one is better.

I used to feel left out with stuff like that.  How my ridiculous record for never being in the right place to see crazy signs of God haunt me.  They still do.  (I’m still pissed about it, by the way God…) But the difference simply came when God’s presents became separate from the amazing.  God was not in the fire/wind/earthquake, but he certainly caused it.  I can’t decide what’s more wonderful.  That God was swirling crazy weird gold dust at church OR he was sitting with me at the foot of my bed watching TV.  I can’t decide whether to revel in this human Christ or the Glorious God.  It is both the incredibly normal life that hosts the presents of God, and the God who is touching down in to normal life.  But I guess He’s in both.

Something happened to Christianity.

It’s funny how this came about.  Driving around with my mom.  The term ‘Emergent’ happens.  I mean it happens because it seems to be a creature all its own, with thoughts and feelings and behavior all its own.  It’s an ambiguous term for preachers who wear cool clothes and write blogs, and, best of all, make a stir on these blogs.  They film their bible study devotionals with cool music and camera effects.  Don’t get me started on the cool thick rimmed glasses either!  BUT most of all emergent pastors write ‘scary’ books.

Something happen to Christianity when we became scared of a book, much less mad about it.  Why? Because half the time pastors are dragging their congregation by the ear to make them read something and suddenly they’re reading—the WRONG things!  After decades of watching the value of the written word drop, a book is written; and it scares us.

It’s the “watered down” gospel

It’s “catering to nonbelievers

SELLING OUT!

How dare those tax collectors like Jesus?

I mean, they spend their whole lives following selfish pursuits

there’s no way they would like Jesus!

We don’t believe in any benefits to Christianity!

And then, what about the believers that read these books?  What happens when all that is read are a bunch of questions with a few “view points” thrown in?  What’s a 'view point' anyway?  What if the 'view point' that’s believed is wrong?

--Something wrong is here.  Whether it happened or it simply flares up when a Luther is about, something is really wrong.

We’ve become Believers, we stopped being Followers.

This is not the part in the blog,

Where I tell you to get off your butt and save people

This is not the point where I hand you a

Shane Claborn book and a

“be poor” mantra

We are so scared

of believing the wrong things.

We are no longer following this

Rediculously kind God

who popped up on earth and said

Follow me.

We just have to believe he said that.

But what if we’re wrong?

Augustine said, “Pray as though everything depended on God.

Work as thought everything depended on you.”

But we don’t think that way anymore. 

We are so scared.

So very scared.

And we should be.

Because we’re Believers, and what we believe depends on what we choose

and what we choose, chooses our salvation.

We have become Believers we sure as hell, yes, sure as Hell, better get it right.

But I don’t think Jesus wanted Believers.

He said, follow me.

You can follow someone and be wrong. 

You can also not follow someone and be right.

In fact, you can not follow someone and be wrong too!

               

Peter,

            Beelzebub

                                    Pharisees

They were all “Believers.”

But Peter was a really, really wrong follower. 

He didn’t even know what he believed sometimes,

which, as you know, is the 8^th deadly sin of ‘emergentism.’

Followers are friends.

Believers are slaves. 

They are happy to know the facts about God and stick to them.

But I want to know His thoughts

            because,

                        I want to know truth.

So I’m going to follow.  Because Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life’….” John 6:68

Are we really?

Are we merely mechanics,

Learning

Theorizing

Agonizing

Over what?

Absurdity

Are we groaning

Aching

Hoping

And alas dashed to nothing

Forgoing facts

Yet sure in our observation

Renouncing faith

Yet fully embracing our despair

We are so so sure there is nothing.

Are we mere scientists to see our thesis and conclusion,

To create our net-like theories and statistics

We have made our bed

But nobody is in a hurry to lie in it.

No instead is a groan of despair

For we are now reduced to being observers

We are passive and sure

While we once hailed the death of certainty

We have made our bed

And we are lying in it in death.

We have hailed the end of systems

We have hurled reason into chaos

Given voice to mad men

And are sure of our futile cycle.

Once we were called to dream.

To see as though from above, to see the world

in all its complexities below, a bustling city of queer patterns

and predicable anomalies.

Or overwhelmed with the passion of the experience. 

Standing in the center of it all and seeing into the deeper recesses.  Gloriously.

In awe or blissful experience we once stood.
But in front of the pattern now we stand,

as children after the fair—

or watching puppet show
 from the wrong side of the stage. 

Our worse fears have come true. 

The paint is not as bright,

the lights only shine on the outside,

and the set is all too flat and grim.

 Our pinnacle of philosophy is merely to “understand” the system.  The ridiculous revel in knowing what’s wrong; because, so much is wrong.

But what mechanic only knows the problem?

A philosopher is now nothing but a blinking, whining, repetitive, oil light.

We are crying out like a child who fully believes,

he fully knows,

that everything is wrong.

Philosophy died not when she crucified reason, or proclaimed even God was dead,

She was no more when she decided, that nothing could ever be said.

Bitches and Earthquakes

I’ve been thinking.  Then I hit a road block and I look for more ideas to mix in.  Then I realize it’s not a road block it’s the great wall of china, or perhaps the actual edge of the world. I have theories too.

The problem is marriage.  Or rather, marital submission.  Secular feminism vs. traditional views are totally irrelevant with this one.  This boxing match has a well built ring.  The bible, tradition, other writings, practicality, we’re not talking about some abstract.  We have verse taken as holding truth.  We have our eternal purpose at steak as we decide what to think on the God’s opinion of our existence.  With that let’s take egalitarianism out of the fight.  Why? Because as it is there seems to be no egalitarian thought which also holds to marital submission.  What’s being fought here is complementarianism --A hierarchy of God > Man/Men > Woman/Women >Children > animals.  (The animal part was my addition…)  For the most part this is agreed upon as complementarianism.  It’s pretty straight forwards.  Everyone works together in a heavenly bureaucracy of love and higher-ups.  However there seems to be a deviation in the philosophy when talking about women.  I always find that when men preach on this topic they do such a nice job with talking about what a Man is, then they move to part two and I find myself hugging my knees and running my hands through my hair.  But alas here are the two deviations.

Golden Retriever theory:

When deciding that Women are to Submit to their Husbands one train of thought says that because God ordered man in this way it’s universal throughout culture.  Meaning, women are to submit to all men, married or not.  This is a logical conclusion if you believe that men and women are different to their core.  That their spirits are both man and woman as are their bodies.  This is good.  I don’t think God make a bunch of people spirits and then separated them into team red and team blue then said team blue already wins, sorry suckers in red.  It just isn’t logical.   In the end the woman can understand him better, be wiser or more intuitive, be kinder and in better character.  She may "complete him" or "make him who he is today" (both things you can here from people at a dog park) she is still a dog.  With a leash, and a crate, she's the best thing that happened to him. Yet, she's still of lesser value in her opinion and influence in his decisions.

 (Click it I dare you) http://www.tanmonkey.com/fun/dog-looks-like-owner.php

The problem with that is by that standard no woman is to EVER hold authority over ANY man. Even the times when actual bible characters did... Why? The same reason your dog doesn’t do crafts with your kids on the kitchen table if you don’t let him eat there.  I mean.  Equal is flat bullshit in this opinion.  Men are higher than women.  Dolphins don’t hold swimming lessons no matter how good they are at it because in the end its an animal in a cage, the trainer teaches, the dolphin swims.

Tectonic plate theory:

This one is a little more illogical in the beginning but seems to have a more reasonable outcome. Men and women are equal and serve each other.  They don’t however submit until they are married at which point a woman submits the same way as she did as said above, only, not to anyone else.  This is called my tectonic plate theory because it’s the only way I could think of drawing that graph.  Think of the unaffected parts of the two plates being friends and others, equal, then BLAM! The man is over the woman in this crumpled blip where she’s shoved below the surface or he’s as high as a mountain.  I don’t exactly know why God would do this.  I mean, everyone appears to get along fine as equals and then marriage forces someone to be a leader?  Much more, does he rise up in power or does she shrink in her authority?  Why, if they are totally innately equal does this phenomena take place?  I mean, they were equals, then she put on a ring and he became higher.  It doesn’t really make sense but as long as this theory is in practice a woman has a chance of working outside the home, and having influence even over men, as long as her husband is okay with it.

Even in the mist of this bleak ultimatum I’m unfashionably ashamed to admit that I can’t help but believe that there must be some kind of marital submission of wives to their husbands in marriage.  Why? Probably because I’ve never known a day without that ideal. I can’t see life thought any other lens at present. I just can’t seem to find a logical answer as to why submission must happen.  In most balanced homes both partners seem to work together in a way that solves issues without one needing to be “leader.”  In order to pull the leader card a man has to know he’s severing the relationship, perhaps only momentarily, with his wife.  He’s saying, ‘I get that you think that, but right now my idea is more important and it’s more powerful.’  Perhaps it’s “for her own good,” (like no one has ever abused that phrase,) the point is, he finds his opinion and idea higher than hers.  That’s not equal, it simply isn’t.  It means that while a woman may have the privilege of making decisions with her husband they are merely privileges and can be revoked at any time.  Of course most sensible husbands don’t do that, or at least very often, my point is that he can. 

I’m not really worried about the practice.  Sure both of these options could potentially annihilate some of my hopes and dreams, but really, I’ve always been too optimistic for a future in theological studies anyway.  The point is deeper to me:  that I am something, or could be something, less than what I once thought.  That 50% of the world’s human population is superior to me in a way I can never achieve.  I cannot think like them, or speak like them, or feel like them, sure, but are their thoughts are higher than mine?  I may be smarter as, kind as, wise as, but at the end of the day could they still be unmatched in some invisible quality that God finds it good for them to be more privileged that me?  If this is true, it is more that I must realize I have been severely wrong.  It’s the feeling you get when you find out one you’re your coolest friends was hanging out with you out of pity. The small worthless feeling just about everyone get’s at some point in high school.  Unlike high school, where your mom told you that you were amazing anyway, you aren’t.  Actually, you are innately inferior to a being you have a 50% chance of producing when you get pregnant. In fact, your only real hope in life as far as influence goes is by producing said superior child and molding his young psyche until he grows up to do big things.  If you have daughters, well, too bad.  I guess they get to try what you tried in creating more superior beings.

This is bleak.  I don’t care.  If God made it, and God is good, (I’m still convinced) then I should at some point find joy in this existence.  I mean a dog might have his dreams as a math teacher dashed, it doesn’t mean he won’t like bringing in the paper.  But all I want is to know why.  Why God would find me not good enough and yet keep me smart enough to care.  I just want to know why.  It's not that I don't trust God, it's not that I'm even angry or doubtful.  I just want to know why.

Men’s Rights

If you think I’m taking a break from the feminist thing, I am. Don’t wanna talk about it. That’s obviously why I’m writing this.  So I’m not.

I’ve been watching this show called Man Men. Why? Because I’m an escapist and after an entire day of serving people I need something to take me off my feet and put some ice on my mind….perhaps the other way around… After endless tasks of napkins, puppy care, dishwashers and dish washing, it's a strange comfort to watch a show which subtly reminds you that life in the rat race is meaning less.  Really, it is.  Perhaps it's something like angsty teens listening to screaming-thrashing rock-n-roll.  The first few episodes you don't think it's all that dark, then a comedy, then you pretty much just feel sorry for them.

 Here’s the Netflix description:

Set in 1960s New York City, this AMC series takes a peek inside an ad agency during an era when the cutthroat business had a glamorous lure. When the cigarette smoke clears and the martinis are set down, at the center of it all is ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Meanwhile, his marriage suffers as his wife, Betty (January Jones), recoils from his womanizing ways. Garnering numerous awards, the show also stars John Slattery and Elisabeth Moss.

That is laughable.  Here’s my description and why I watch this show.  Donald Draper is Mr. Man.  He is everything the man of his era would have wanted, and he’s miserable.  It’s not that he doesn’t want what he has, he’s just miserable with or without what he wants.  In one season he’s had two affairs, both women end up leaving him. 

Men’s rights.  It’s funny that this miserable man’s “womanizing ways” seem pulled in two directions. Either he is evil or he’s a victim, he is ruining other people’s lives or he is in ruins. He longs for love and upon finding that he is unloved seeks it somewhere else. It’s ironic to me how “frowned upon” this personality is in society when if he were a woman she would be sympathized with.

His wife “doesn’t understand him,” but unlike her he has the job and the car.  He has the means so he should buy his happiness more responsibly? It’s amazing to me how social status actually matters today.  It’s so couth in our stick-it-to-the-man republic.  With “cool” being defined as over-educated poor hipsters working for peanuts. We like to believe that status doesn’t matter, that everyone is equal.  But honestly the only equal things in life seem to be hopeful at the starting gate and indiscriminant at the finish line.  But in between?

I don’t think men’s rights have anything to do with getting more established.  Perhaps less attacked in their establishments but more so men need to fight for their feelings.  With a divine kick of irony no one is questioning a man’s equal pay, or capabilities, we question their ability to fail.  We are disgusted with male moral failure because of his responsibility not because of his motives.  We are angry for the victims, without question of the perpetrator’s story. 

In the end Don Draper, partner of a huge advertizing company sits alone on his the stairs in his great big house, great big empty house. Miserable.

“Where O’ Israel are you lovers?”

A dream.

I see something more.  

So different, invaluable.  

So incompatible it's a necessity.

Why does a house benefit best with a Father and Mother? What is out of balance when one is gone?  

Why are we so scared of needing each other?  

We want to change the system but instead we're only editing the binary.  Perhaps "when the two shall become one," that one wasn't ever meant to divide from 9 to 5?  So much of marriage is the eternal commitment not to go through life alone.  What God has brought together let none other put asunder, not even the vocation of ministry?

In Jewish culture women cover their hair as submission to their husbands but it is also a symbol of the Spirit of God resting on them.  The "helper" holds the symbol in the house of the Helper Spirit of God.

What if that word"`ezer"  

Strong's H5828, 

עֵזֶר,

--what if it wasn't used as some sort of accident for woman?  If we're all made in the image of God--made in a way that shows some sort of characteristic of our creator.  Could this mean more for the "humble helper" on earth?


What if it really wasn't good for Adam to subdue the earth alone?
                   What if together they were actually better at what they did

together?


Because they're different,
            They are so, so different,
                        and yet there are two of them.
                                    Why wasn't the best of both worlds created?

But maybe they're halves of a whole, 
or whole but combined even more,
maybe that's the mystery.

1+1=1

Because they're great a lone,
and together they raise up a bunch of little mini-people.
--and God saw that it was Good.


Then we have this church,
and the two who are one become half.
One remains silent while the other speaks,
one serves and the other is glorified.

5 For this reason I left you in ^aCrete, that you would set in order what remains and ^bappoint ^celders in every city as I directed you,

 6 namely, ^aif any man is above reproach, the ^bhusband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of ^cdissipation or^drebellion.

 7 For the ^1aoverseer must be above reproach as ^bGod’s steward, not^cself-willed, not quick-tempered, not ^daddicted to wine, not pugnacious, ^enot fond of sordid gain,

 8 but ^ahospitable, ^bloving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled,

 9 ^aholding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in ^bsound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.

So often we write this verse off.  Or we go down right crazy, forcing families to be perfect for their leader so he looks good to his leaders.  Madness. But what about the eyes of love?  What are the eyes for this passage of a leader of sound doctrine?  Ephesians 5:33b “each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”  What about this marriage?  Why is Paul so concerned with this house being in order?  This is the house of love, can we chose to see it as the ideal Paul sets before his people, and for his leaders in their search for other trustworthy leaders?  What if he is looking for a house at peace, running with both man and woman working together to do their first and for most priority of their family?

Why are we asking people to split in two for a job in the church? 

What if we’ve just gotten so used to half a person in the pulpit we don’t know what to do with one? 

Because it’s apples and oranges. 

Equally incomparable,

better at one thing or another maybe,

but each so valuable. 

Valuable in and of themselves,

but not good to be alone. 

When have we seen really them together in action?

With Fear and Trembling- the place of the Christian Female.

I’m a Christian.  I couldn’t be anything else.  It’s a part of me, the way I tick.  I believe.  That’s enough. I have a problem.  It’s not simple.  It’s not something your mother can solve.  It’s not something kind people can bestow with their respect.

So often in all of this I can’t help but feel I lack a home.  Where am I?  It’s an odd passion for a 14 year old to have but I've wanted to be involved in the church.  Theology, to be specific.  I love a good theory, either something to throw rocks at or hail with praise, there’s nothing like the feeling of wrapping your brain around something.  It feels like cling-film around a globe.  This new amazing thought stretching out all I’ve already thought/feel/believed—stretching it out for me to see this theory in its wholeness, from every angle, while at the same time I uncrumple myself, I see more and more parts of me.  Wrapping myself around it is stretching my own heart out like a canvas.  It burns so good.

You still don’t know me.  There’s something in me that’s between pride and trodden humility, I like serving people.  Really, I do.  I remember my boss warning me that some of his previous employees felt ‘crushed’ by their work in food service.  I laughed but then again I do work at a little hippie coffee shop *hipster points?* But he was serious, “some people feel it’s degrading.” 

I love it.  I love making someone’s morning with the right bagel and a latte with their paper.  You need a knife to eat that? Well, that’s a first, but here’s some napkins—can I watch?  I love helping people with my 10 second interaction that only leads to an hour of bliss at my coffee shop.  I really do like this stuff.  I like doing things that save people time and make their day easier.  I think I can remember 3 times I didn’t do my friend’s dishes last year at Bethel. Realize I basically lived there…  Why? Because someone had to do them, and I didn’t mind that person being me. Someone else benefiting simply seems more valuable to me than a little lost time on my behave.  I’m a strange girl.

So what? I’m evangelical, we’re smart and servant hearted, but for some reason theologically as a woman I can’t help but feel the pull between these two concepts.  I could go to either, I would love them, but I might have to chose. 

How? I mean, the most theological person must serve, and the most humble servant has theology behind their actions.  Yes, but, to put it bluntly I expect to be more.

“Called” is a really lousy piece of terminology these days. “Called” sounds like something from an alien movie, “The Called” or a really scary North  Korean propaganda movie “The Called [One].”  I never saw “called” either way until I grew up and started telling adults what I wanted out of my life.  Then I realized I considered myself, “called.”

I was 14, at the bottom of an alter call so big I couldn’t get back to my seat because of all the bodies.  So I just sat there and kept praying.  Over and over I repeated what I had said before because, I didn’t have anything else.  Literally, I was pretty sure ‘Lord I give you everything,’ meant, everything.  From that day in August I was no longer mine.  I know this sounds, like some crap from that Mandy Moor movie “A Walk to Remember,” *barf* for the record I’m not dying of leukemia…

From then my life drew a drastic conclusion, my life is not my own.  I learned guitar because I felt called into youth ministry.  All the youth pastors around me were a) poor as dirt, b) played their own worship in services because they never had enough help, and c) were basically the church slave.  So I got on the list.  I was leading Sunday school, I was born to stack chairs, I was an interceding-bible-reading machine, and I was awful at it.

My pastor wanted me to teach this awful bible pamphlet stuff which I couldn’t stand, so after doubling the Sunday School I quit. *Rebel?* My voice wasn’t good enough for any worship team with options, but seeing as they often didn’t have options I got a few shots.  I worked hard in school and had a job.  My youth group had little use for someone babbling on about the New Testament-Old Testament paradigm, much less a use for me.  I didn’t make friends.  A lot of it was out of my control. I have still yet to have a friend for more than 2 years who didn’t lose interest in me or move away, and I was strange.  I usually asked questions people didn’t have answers for, I had questions and thoughts about things people didn’t like, and those were the times I could express what I wanted to know.

In the mist of this Christian bubble I clung to a few absolutes: I was God’s not my own, God wanted me in ministry, my life would never be boring (obscure is the grown up word).   I had a purpose yet at the same time I killed any thought of life outside of these principles. Being fully God’s, for some reason meant not even bothering to think about where I would live, what I’d like to do in my free time. Being God’s somehow encompassed every hope for my life. I would go to seminary, I would be a youth pastor. That’s about as far as I thought out. The more and more specialized this “call” for my life grew, the less and less did I think life would exist outside of ministry.

But then I grew up,

And what’s cute for girls

Is a problem for women.

See in Christian circle #1 women are beautiful, strong, kind beings, they are grace in bodied.  They are the picture of servant hearted sacrifice.  They are moms and they are silent as the grave.  They have women’s meeting and women’s socials where they socialize with other silenced beings.  Perhaps that’s why men find those things so scary; the silent house makers suddenly form a complex society with rules and hierarchy—almost too equal for a man to believe.  It’s petty, but women are just as capable of forming a social ladder as men.  That’s scary.

It’s scary to me because it’s beautiful.  It is a Christ-likeness unheard of; a love for family and friends that is backed with the sacrifice of a lifetime.  It is beautiful to watch as each woman becomes the pillar of a house.  They are the encouragement to their husbands, the open arms to their children, and the open door to their neighbors. It’s Jesus. But they are silent.

But I’m not stuck in that circle.  My Father has yet to accept an offering of chickens or cows for my hand.  I’m also free to go to the next train of thought.

So option #2: Everyone is equal.  


See women here aren’t dead weights, they pull their weight—hell, the pull their weight and all the extra weight they feel they need to pull.  In a kinder light they prove that women are mentally capable of theological discussion, they are not inept at leadership and decisions as well as mentorship.  To me it’s lacking.  It’s not that they are trying to be men as much as they don’t know what they are.  They call it womanhood but their “independence” simply drives them to deny their insecurities. “I don’t need to be told that I’m beautiful,” sure, okay.  Where they go a little crazy is, “I don’t need to be beautiful.” They are a graceless machine.  Not the warrior, male, father, types like the good ol’ boys they fight—no they’re something in between. They are neither soft nor strong, they simply are.  They represent the odd third option of simply ceasing to exist within gender.  Dress like a girl, but it’s anyone’s game after that point.

That is lonely, and bitter, hollow; honestly I don’t have the energy for any one of those things.  I was and often am exhausted by the Christian life which for the most part has been totally alone.  I know God of the Last Breath, God of the Inch More, God of the One-Foot-In-Front-Of-The-Other, a hell of a lot better than any Rich King.  He was Hagar’s “God Who Hears” for sure, but He was listening to me crying, and the words I didn’t have anyone else to hear.  But the reality is I don’t know of an option that changes that.

So upon this balancing act I can stand.  Forsake my gender and become a floating soul, reject the comforts of man and woman, or fall back fool heartedly.  I could dive deep in to an obscurity that will surely kill a part of what I have believed a calling towards.  I could forever silence my weary head and humble myself to a silent servant.  I could roar, without love but in loss, as a non-woman, or only smile from the sidelines.  Either I be filled with the goodness of love to say something, or fight for a voice that will have nothing to say when I get a hold of it. Because, as I see it now, I have been really, really, wrong about my “calling” and I freaking want to know which half I’m not supposed to believe in.

And this, breaks my heart.