Dry Bones Dance

The hardest thing we will ever give up is our suffering

“The hardest thing we will ever give up is our suffering.”

I’m reading Chasing Elephants: Healing Psychologically with Buddhist Wisdom by Diane Shainberg, and I’ve been thinking about that sentence since I read it a couple of days ago. A year ago, I would have yelled at this book, “Damn, honey, I’ve been trying to give up my suffering for years. I just can’t find anyone to take it.” Now though, in many ways, I think it’s true.

Things happen in this world – bad things, sometimes bad beyond believing. Loved ones die, sometimes hard and slow. Loved ones kill us, sometimes hard and slow. What with war and racism and inequality and all our interpersonal violence, it seems absurd to think that we are hoarding suffering as if we might run out. And yet, we do. (and by we, I mean me.) All the what ifs, the scripts other people wrote for us that we keep following, the voices in our heads, our constructions of How Things Are Supposed to Be (but Aren’t) – that’s the shit that makes us crazy. That’s the stuff that makes us hear, “You’re a bad person, unloved and unlovable.” every time we hear a criticism, the stuff that makes us go into anxiety overdrive every time things don’t go according to plan, the stuff that makes us beat ourselves up over and over again for being fallible and human. Much of my up and down right now is dictated by events that are long over and the ways I still let that define me. I want some sort of acknowledgment from the Universe that Bad Things Happened, and I’m finding it extraordinarily hard to pry my fingers away from things that cause me pain, but feel like part of my identity.

Obama's speech and lying to get a paycheck

Because there’s not enough discussion of Obama’s recent speech and Jeremiah Wright, I thought I’d jump in. I’ve read the entire text three times, and it is, without question, one of the best speeches I’ve heard a politician give in my lifetime, and far and away the best political speech I’ve ever heard about race in America. It wasn’t that the speech was profoundly brilliant – he just told the truth and didn’t pander. Sadly, that is so incredibly rare, that the speech stands out.

For many people, especially those of the paler variety, discussing race in America – no matter how you do it or what you say – is so emotional and fraught with land mines, that this speech might lose him the election. (That pro-Obama media bias Clinton was so worried about has sure turned around in a hurry, no?) But you know what? I want him to win, but I would almost rather he make this speech and lose, then win by doing what the spin doctors dictate.

I won’t analyze the speech, but I will say this about Jeremiah Wright: Here’s a selection of Christy quotes from the past six weeks:

Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: My arms are tired

I think I’ve run out of ammunition for the moment – although I reserve the right to lob more explosives if the mood should take me. When I started this little series, I wasn’t sure where I was going with it or what difference it would make. So, boys and girls, what have we learned from this?

I don’t know what you think, but I have not been struck by lightning. I will take that as a sign that it’s okay to let go of Jesus. I’ve been feeling stuck for months, and I’m tired of fighting through all of this. I need to de-Jesus my life a bit more, and do more spiritual exploring. Whoever Jesus is or isn’t, s/he will still be there whenever I’m ready to hang out again.

Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: No one's going to save you here

There’s a Lutheran-turned-Buddhist monk who I’ve mentioned here before. While talking to me and a group of students once, he summed up the core difference between Christianity and Buddhism in one sentence: “No one’s going to save you here.” The more I’ve mulled that over, the more I think he got it exactly right – change the locus of salvation from Christ to karma and you have a very different thing entirely. I think the core of all this for me is not whether or not I’m going to get to heaven, or what such a place might entail, but if there is anything or anyone out there to save me.

The short answer is “I don’t know.”

If Jesus saves, he doesn’t seem to do so in any way that I can count on. Some people he doesn’t save at all, and I could use some saving still. It’s better and I’m better, but still – there are days that the volume on the nasty soundtrack in my head goes so loud, I can’t hear anything else. There are days I can still see the abyss, and I’m afraid of what will happen if I do not watch my step. Sometimes the world still gets tinged with despair, and I would love to know that someone – anyone – was on the job to make that go away.

Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: Jesus is Magic

Who cares? Different religions. I guess the only time it's an issue I suppose would be if you're having a baby, you have to figure out how you want to raise your baby or whatever, which still would not be an issue for us. Because you know, we'd just be honest, and say "Mommy is one of the chosen people, and Daddy believes that Jesus is magic. - Sarah Silverman

I think I might be starting to run out of hand grenades – maybe because part of me wishes I could believe in this particular Jesus. Sometimes I still do a little bit, and it’s bad for me. There’s a strain of wish fulfillment in modern Christianity – a conception of a Savior coming out of the sky with hope and healing and the reassurance that things will be all right, that if we just pray hard enough and trust enough, Jesus won’t let us down. We pray for healing and jobs and parking spaces, and expect Jesus to come through, to make it all okay. We “turn it over to Jesus,” “depend on Jesus”, “trust Jesus” and “wait on the Lord” who is always “right on time.” We want our Messiah to be the man of steel, just in the nick of time to keep the bad guys from their dastardly deeds. There have been times that I halfway expected someone to look up to the heavens and say, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s….The Lord!”

Or there’s also Jesus as the great Therapist In the Sky who will make us feel better. He feels our pain and fixes it. He fills our emptiness and tells us we are loved. Knowing Him gives our lives meaning, and heals depression and bad marriages and the common cold. If we go to our deepest points of pain, we will find Jesus there and that will make it better. Jesus fixes things. Jesus is the answer, Jesus is my friend, and if I just pray hard enough and trust enough, it’s all going to work out somehow.

Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: The old rugged cross

First, I want to say that, though it may not appear so to the naked eye, throwing hand grenades at Jesus is a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.

There’s a hymn that’s been running through my head the past few days (and if there are Baptists in the room, feel free to sing along)

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
a wondrous beauty I see,
for 'twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
to pardon and sanctify me…

(Refrain)
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross,
till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross
and exchange it some day for a crown

…On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
the emblem of suffering and shame;
and I love that old cross where the dearest and best
for a world of lost sinners was slain…

I can't get it out of my head, so why should you be exempt?

Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: The prodigal son's evil twin

I ran across a discussion about the Parable of the Prodigal Son and it sparked a train of thought for me about forgiveness, both Divine and otherwise, that may be only tangentially related to the story in Luke. This is one of Jesus’ more well-known parables, and it is frequently cited as a picture of God the Father’s extravagant forgiveness toward repentant sinners.

I’ve gone round and round and upside down with forgiveness, and it’s a complicated and difficult concept, and an even more difficult experience. On the one had, I am captivated by the idea of forgiveness, but on the other hand you have predators and power mongers and lots of the just plain crazy. Some things cut so deep that you bleed for a very long time. Real forgiveness is this long, winding, hard journey, and I may never completely arrive. Some days I’m full of forgiveness, and some days the best I can say is that I didn’t shoot anybody.

Too often Christians use “forgiveness” to distance themselves from pain, mess, and sadness, so any God I could possibly be interested in would have only compassion on how damn difficult it is to let go of hate and anger, and how long it takes. I will freely admit that I don’t always know what forgiveness looks like in real life or if I have forgiven, but I do embrace forgiveness as a good idea.

And yet, even with my belief in forgiveness, I’ll just say this straight: I don’t know if I want Jesus to forgive me.