Barnmaven

Help for Haiti

If you can give, please donate to one of the relief organizations listed below.  If you are strapped and can't throw cash at the problem please help these wonderful organizations spread the word.  If you have additional links, please add them in comments section.  Thanks!

Mercy Corps

American Red Cross International Response Fund or text "Haiti" to "90999" to donate $10 to the Red Cross (US cell phones only)

Oxfam America Haiti campaign

Text "Yele" to "501501" to donate to Yele-Haiti, a foundation created by Wyclef Jean to permanently improve lives in Haiti

Partners in Health

Charity:water

Catholic Relief Services

Also, if any of the above links are broken send me an email to mperet (at) charter (dot) net and I will fix them.

Part Deux

So, where was I?  Oh, yes, the whole walking away from religion thing.  Yeah.

One of my particular challenges in my younger years (and, ok, maybe sometimes even now.  Yes, I know.  Shut up.  This is my blog and I get to say what I want) is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  As I have aged my tendency toward black and white thinking has softened - maybe that's because my brain turned to mush after having babies - but even 10 or 15 years ago I was a large gap in between GOOD and BAD with nothing in the middle.  When I got the (symbolically speaking, of course) middle finger from God's sheeple, I walked.  Do not pass Go.  I was hurt and angry.  Like anyone human, I have always wanted to be loved just the way I am, not have to be someone's idea of perfect to be accepted.  I took the reaction of those people, and I ascribed it all the way up to God as well, and said "That's it, I wash my hands of You."

Imagine that.

Next, I married an atheist.  Not a quiet, laid-back able-to-discuss-it-politely-with-people athest.  No, of course not.  An angry, in-your-face, shout-it-loud atheist.  You know, the kind that bypasses the Darwin fish entirely and puts a silver flame-spawning fish that says "Satan" on his car.  The kind that wears tee-shirts that say "So many Christians, so few lions."   Because there should be no half-measures taken when trying to piss off the Christian Right.  Yes, that kind of atheist.  In other words, a former Catholic altar boy.  The altar boy, I might add, voted "most likely to become a priest" by his peers.  And apparently I took no half-measures in letting God know JUST HOW PISSED OFF AT HIM I was.

Things went fine along that route for a number of years.  J didn't believe in God at all, I was pissed off at Him, so as a couple we were pretty much aligned in our religious views.  Sort of.  Because if you really think about it, being mad at God isn't really the same as believing He doesn't exist.  And eventually, just like with people, you get over being mad.  I don't know if there even is such a progression for unbelief.

It took me more than ten years.  To get over being mad.  I don't think I've been that mad at anyone for that long in my whole life.  Well, except my mom for the time she woudln't let me wear my new Keds to school and made me wear the ugly brown saddle shoes instead.  Maybe that time.  But ten years is a long progression.

First there was my mother-in-law.  She is capital-C Catholic.  Never misses mass, even when traveling.  Seriously, when they came to visit us after we moved to WA, almost the first thing she did was ask me for the yellow pages so she could find the nearest church to go to mass.  The cool thing about my mother-in-law is that she is one of those people who can discuss her beliefs and accept your differing opinions without taking offense.  Over the years we had many, many conversations about faith.  She struggled with her son's atheism, I struggled with understanding why this woman I so respected could so blindly follow a religion.  Eventually, I realized what it was with her, and it wasn't religion.  It was FAITH.  She doesn't believe in the church, she believes in GOD.  And not only believes in Him, she LOVES Him.  Going to church was - and is - for her not something she does because the church demands it, she goes because she wants to show respect and love for the God she believes in.

So that was one crack in the plaster of my anger.

Except I still had a problem with conservative Christianity.  I cannot abide narrow-mindedness.  I can understand making choices to live your own life a certain way, but not insisting that others accept YOUR way as the ONLY way.  I continued to equate the Christian church with homophobic Republicans who send support checks to militant homophobes and racists and to the anti-Darwin people that try to get evolution thrown out of the public school curriculum.

I tried going to the Unitarian church in our town.  Especially after my daughter was diagnosed.  Our family therapist suggested finding a church as a way of getting some family support.  We didn't have any family living near us at that time, and it was good advice.  Except getting my atheist husband on board wasn't so easy.  We compromised by going Unitarian.  As a family we went to a few services, eventually he lost interest.  I did too.  A, its hard for me to conceptualize a "church" that doesn't really believe in anything concrete.  But the biggest kicker was the day I had to take the kids by myself because J didn't want to go, and they both had a tantrum at the same time.  NOT ONE single person in that church lifted a FINGER to help a frustrated mom deal with two screaming, tantruming children.  They just stood there and looked at me like I had three heads, like I was some kind of shitty parent.  I hung up the gloves and called it a day.  This wasn't support.

The next thing that happened was the 2008 presidential campaign.  We were glued to the primary races and then to the presidential race.  Sarah Palin represented everything that was loathesome about Christianity to me.  She was ignorant, she tolerated racist comments in her town hall meetings, she gleefully said the phrase "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" about eleventy billion times.  It boggled me how a lot of really smart women I know went just apeshit for her when all I could see looking at her was the end of real feminism.  But something else happened, something that counteracted the effect she had on me.  I started paying attention to some of the groups that were supporting Obama, listening to people tell their stories.  I joined the phone campaign, made some calls, caucused, and started interacting with other campaign supporters.  And there were CHRISTIANS there!  Imagine that.  Christians.  Supporting OBAMA.  What?  Liberals who identify themselves as Christians?  When did THIS happen?  How did I miss this?  No way.  My heart might have cracked open a little bit more.  As I had understood the rules, back in my cult church days, you weren't ALLOWED to be a Christian and vote for a Democrat.  Unthinkable.  Oh, but they also said Catholics aren't real Christians.  And that's bullshit too.

And still, I hung stubbornly on equating God with a set of rules and intolerance, failing miserably to get the point.  Stuck in my anger, I continued to equate him with the narrow mindedness that I could not stomach.

I love differences.  I love tattoos, crazy hair, tie dye, whatever floats your boat. I support gay marriage,  And the public health option.  Legalizing marijuana.  World Peace.   Even when I was younger, I was the champion of the underdog and the defender of the picked-on.  I love sinners.  Sinners are fun, and they cuss.  I like to cuss.  Let's be real honest, shall we?  I LOVE to cuss.  Finding a grammatically dramatic use of the word "fuck" is the literary equivalent of a chocolate donut to me. Not really a good match for what I had thought of as "Christianity."  And I was a divorced woman on top of it.    And I thought for so LONG that those things, those things about me that I can't/won't change, those things disqualified me from being a Christian.  Funny, though, I never did quit praying.  A lot.  Well, maybe not 'praying' exactly, but I would have these long rambling conversations with God where I would tell Him about all the stuff I didnt' understand, ask Him "Why?" a lot and let Him have a piece of my mind on the stuff I thought was really unjust or unfair.  I've asked him so many times why He doesn't just pull off some big miracle to show us that He's real that I imagine every time I ask it again He groans and sticks His fingers in His ears.  I bet He's really tired of THAT one, and its probably not just from me.

I can't tell you when I finally figured it out.  A lot of stuff happened, good stuff, hard and terrible stuff.  Over a year or three I read a couple of books that made me really think about the way I was thinking about Him.  Two of those books were Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What by  Donald Miller.  A proponent of the Emerging Church, he wrote about things that I had been struggling with.  He helped me to view God separately from churches and people, and I began to understand that my faith with God was something alive and separate from my relationship with other people.  He helped me to put God back where He belonged, on a higher and different place from churches and denominations.  I also read a book called The Shack that gave me a different perspective on where God is when devastation enters our lives.  It wasn't immediately upon reading these books that a change came in my life, but over a period of of time, eventually I realized something I had either never really understood or had somehow totally forgotten.

God just is.  I don't have to tell you how to talk to Him and nobody has to tell me how to do so, either.  All I have to do is open my heart to him and be in that relationship, and it doesn't matter WHAT church I attend, what denomination I find.  I can worship God in any church.  I could worship him at a Baptist church or a Mormon church or even at a pagan stone altar in the middle of the woods.  If I'm not focusing on people and the ways that people try to present God through the narrow focus of their own viewing lens, if I understand that He is bigger than religion or dogma or theology or politics, then the WHERE doesn't matter.  Not one little bit.

And then I understood what had been missing in my life.  That hole in me, the one that constantly felt like it was sucking in pain and misery from the vacuum around me, that missing piece?  It was GOD SHAPED.  That's the only way I can describe it and I apologize because I didn't coin that phrase at all, I've borrowed it from other people, but it is spot on, it exactly fits the realization.

I know a lot of Christians who treat their church as their own special club, where they get to go and hang out with THEIR people and all THOSE OTHER PEOPLE who are Not Like Them are not welcome.  And do you know, I could even go to THAT church and still worship God.  Because I finally understood that the venue itself is not the answer.  Those things about me that mark me so apart from conservatives?  They might disqualify me for membership in certain people's idea of churches, but they by no means disqualify me from being loved by and loving God.

So I went back to church, not because I "have to" but because I want to, and you know of all the places I could have ended up, I am back in the church of my childhood years.  I'm Episcopalian again. Not because I think its better than any other church or is more "right" about God than any other church.  I am there because I love the hymns that I grew up singing, I love how the liturgy gives me the ability to think and meditate about God.   I'm even thinking about taking confirmation classes.

My children have been going with me.  Not because I make them. Oh no, I don't make them go.  I ask them if they want to go, and more often than not they say "YES."  And its funny, because this church doesn't have an active youth education program or a youth group or even a regular Sunday school.  Most of the time my kids sit right up in a pew during the regular service and I'm not even there to make sure they are behaving.  I'm up signing in the choir.  They sit out there and listen and wave at me.  And sometimes they misbehave, but unlike that congregation that didn't lend a hand, this congregation embraces my children.  They sit with my children.  If my children get upset and want to wander up in the choir loft and sit with me (or occasionally under my pew, as Little Man has been known to do) they just smile and love them.  For whatever reason (and I think its because there are cookies and juice in the fireside room afterwards and a killer swingset in the playground), they love coming to church with me.  Its the craziest thing.

I found a place where I could worship AND feel at home. 

I'm still broken.  I still cuss.  I still drink.  I still make a crapton of mistakes, every single day.  But something that was missing in my life is no longer missing.  And my God?  He loves all the same people I do and even those I don't.  He loves us all.  And He doesn't care who is president or who gets married or whether your house is big or if you even HAVE a house or any of that stuff.  He just loves us and he doesn't even care if you love Him back or even believe in Him.  And if you believe differently than I do, I don't even care.  I still love you too.  Even if you're a Republican and you like Dick Cheney.  Even you.

Interlude

The pile to the right is the laundry I was going to fold.  It was irresistable as a backrest for the dogs, and the dogs on the bed were irresistable to the kids.  Next thing you know, the laundry needs to be rewashed, but the dogs and the kids?  Happy.  That's how we roll around here.

Seeker

Part 1

I started going to church again.

I grew up Episcopalian.  We were High Church, if you know what that means.  My mother was the director of youth education at our parish, and unless we were out of town, we never missed a Sunday.  My father would also come with us on holidays and the odd Sunday, which should surprise you since he is an avowed atheist.  Nonetheless, Dad devoted lots of time to the church.  He helped repaint the Nave and helped build pews, helped with an altar redesign, worked on upgrades to the Apse and the fireside room, stuff like that.   Mostly I think he did all of it for Mom, but he's also one of those kind of men, the kind who come over to fix stuff for you just because you need it. 

I think that Mom might not have been quite as involved in church if it hadn't been for Father Webb.  Our priest was a very handsome, warm, dynamic presence.  I don't think there was a female in the parish over the age of five that didn't entertain an enormous crush on him. 

Our parish was located near the wealthier part of North Seattle.  Sunday was a contest to see who Dressed For God the best.  Black patent leather, cashmere, jewelry, hats, the works.  I think my family was the scandal of the parish, we didn't have much money and my mom made most of my clothes, but even so, we went.

I was admitted to the Holy Communion as a child but we moved before I could go through Confirmation classes.  I grew up believing in God the Father...but I thought of Him as a father like MY father, who could be really mean and scary sometimes and who was the parent primarily charged with administering corporal punishment.  I never had a good sense then of who God really is or had a what one can really term a "relationship" with him, but I believed.

When we moved away, Mom tried the Episcopal church in Port Townsend, but it was a very small church and I don't think she felt as if she fit in there.   My brother and I were older then and eventually we became "Chreasters," only attending services on Christmas and Easter, unless Mom felt compelled to go and guilted one or both of us into going with her.  Eventually she suffered a crisis of faith and stopped attending altogether.

In college I hung out with some modern Christians.  Well, not my freshman year, really, I was more interested that year in beer, boys and tequila than anything else.  It was after my friend Kirsten talked me into trying out for the women's crew team that things changed - mostly for the better.  By the end of sophomore year I was rowing and one of my friends on the team invited me to go to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting.  While for others, the opportunity to deepen their faith might have been the primary impetus for attending, I mainly went because some of the football players and other cute athletes went to these meetings (Bob Rockett, All-American Javelin thrower, Steve Pelleur, by then the Dallas Cowboy's quarterback, but a UW football alum...oooooh, hmmmmm, sigh).  It didn't really stick, though.  How could it?  I was really only in it for the boys.  Now, lest you think those Christian boys don't party, let me set you straight.  I was groped by as many drunk Christian boys as by drunk Frat boys.  In other words, a lot.  Not that I was some hot prospect or anything, but college guys don't really care WHO they grope once they've been saturated with enough alcohol.

After college came what I like to think of as my Wasted Years.  I fiddled around at this job and that, with  my focus on investigating the viability of substance abuse as a career choice.  Church and God were far from my mind, except possibly in the twinge of discomfort I felt driving by a place of worship.  Fear of being struck by lightning makes you drive faster, did you know that?  Eventually, as happens with most twenty-somethings, I eventually matured beyond the dissipation and general wastedness that accompany the magical allure of bars and nightlife.  I grew up a little, started focusing on my life a little more, got a real job, got married (ill-advisedly). 

I had a friend at work I liked to hang out with.  We went to the gym together, got puppies around the same time, eventually became close friends.  She was a very bright, driven, aggressive woman in a good-paying job, and I really looked up to her.  She was also a born-again Christian, and I guess I figured if someone who was that bright and had it all together believed in God and Jesus, maybe this was something I should check out.  She invited me to come to her church.

I will refrain from naming the church, but I can describe it.  They had a large campus, a thriving ministry (two Sunday services that filled a large auditorium and Wednesday night as well), separate Youth and Children's ministries, an actual school building with classrooms for Sunday School and adult education, a bookstore, library and two worship bands.  They were dynamic, mostly young, fervent and shiny like bright new pennies.  I allowed myself to be willingly absorbed into their cult.  Its not that I didn't learn more about God going there - I did.  But I got stuck somewhere in the rigidity of the rule system that I never really got to know Him.  But I was part of a new big clique, one that had its own language.  I started dripping scripture with the best of them, talking about my "blessings" and having my "quiet time."  I sang in the children's ministry worship band, I went to fellowship groups.  I attended the Monday night School of Evangelism classes (because it was STRONGLY ENCOURAGED).  It wasn't exactly a cult, but it acted a lot like one, and I wanted so badly to be accepted.  I went for all the wrong reasons, and unfortunately I was attending the kind of church that expects you to check your brain at the door and rely on their particular rules for living life.  Their God hated all the same people THEY did - gays, pagans, atheists, liberals).  They had altar calls every service, but once you were saved you were expected to toe the line.  The pastor had a couple of published books and a weekly radio show.  He was a STAR, and he acted like one.  He was not accessible to us regular people and he was not particularly warm or friendly.  Oh, he SOUNDED friendly, up there on stage giving out his message every week.  But my impression of him the few times I was ever so privileged as to be spoken to by him was that he was detached, self-absorbed and self-righteous.  Do I believe there were some honest, Godly people in that church?  Of course.  But they were also trying to belong to a community with specific rules, just like I was.

Christians joke sometimes that they tend to "eat their own," and believe me it is true.  Things were going just fine for me at that church so long as I was living by their rules.  When I hit a crisis in my life and realized that my marriage was not someplace I could be anymore, I discovered with a rude jolt just how cruel Christians can be.  If I expected to receive love and support from my Christian brethren and sistren, I was sorely mistaken.

I was shamed.  I was shunned.  I was lectured at, I was outcast.  And so, like many people who get their fingers burned on the hot stove of the modern church, I walked away from it all.  I wanted nothing to do with a God who I believed expected his people to act that way.

To be continued...

Mud City

When I moved to the Tri-Cities, one of the big selling points to me was their claim that they average "310 days of sun a year!"  I grew up on the wet side of Washington State, so by birth and raising I qualify as one of the Moss People.  Aging tends to whittle away at one's tolerances for discomfort, though.  I want to be able to ride my horses and I refuse to ride in anything colder than 40F, in anything resembling rain or snow or drizzle.  Of course, we also get blistering heat over here in the desert, and days when "windy" doesn't even come close to describing the gale-force winds doing their best to remove the tin roof from my horse shed.  Even so, I truly believe in my heart that I get more "riding weather" here than I would there, and so don't miss the other side of the Cascades too terribly much. 

There is one aspect in which this part of the state resembles THAT part of the state, and as we have had some unexpectedly warm December and January days (following a two-week cold snap in early December that had my chickens begging to become housepets), we have now entered an extremely early Mud Season.

The desert side of Washington has cold winters and hot summers.  In between each, they have Mud.  And its not that we don't actually get the advertised 310 days of sun a year...its that the 55 days of rain?  Yeah, they fall CONSECUTIVELY.  Or so it seems. Its almost enough to make me miss the constant drizzle in Seattle.  At least you get to experience that rain surrounded by huge evergreen trees and lakes.  Out here?   Oh, the desert has color in the late spring, when the purple sage starts to bloom and the wildflowers come in.  The trees are verdant and the warming spring air makes everyone just a little bit giddy.    But not now.  Now its just shades of brown, and its wet to boot.  Snow I don't mind, nor wind (much anyway), nor heat, nor storms.  But this?  Endless days of murky skies and being ankle-deep in muck everytime I go out to feed the horses?  Someone please take it away.

I only have what, 48 more days of this?  Someone plug in my lightbox and break out the antidepressants, or I might not make it until the sun comes back. 

Perplexing

When I say "I don't understand people," I really mean that I don't understand them.  What goes through people's minds sometimes?  Say, for instance, you were shopping at a department store and you were in the section with the personal care supplies.  And say you or maybe the child you were with were looking at a hand mirror.  And accidentally dropped it.  And the mirror broke, a jagged line in one corner.  What would you do?

Apparently, if you are the people who shop at the store we were at today, you would hang it back up, broken, so that when my daughter saw the crack and reached out to touch it in curiosity she would slice her finger open so much that it took ten minutes to get the bleeding to stop.

Maybe that's what some people do.  And I just don't get it, because its not at all what *I* would do.

(Thanks, though, to the manager and assistant manager and the floor manager and the store security guy and the young lady in the pharmacy at my Walmart, all of whom provided antiseptic, bandages, tissues, liquid band-aid and a lot of concern and sympathy to my child and I.  Mommy doesn't handle the sight of blood very well, I'm sad to say.  At least, not THAT much blood.)

Fresh Start...sort of

C Mommy, look at me. I'm dressed!

Me: Good job, buddy, you did great!

C: I even put on underwear!

Me: Awesome!

C: They're fresh!