What it's like

There is something to it
Isn't there;
Something simple and kind
In the putting together of words?
Even in its complication
The puzzle is forgiving.

Who says you have to read them anyway?
This could always be a secret affair,
Just the words and I
Hunkered up in a cheap hotel
Mid afternoon...

No, no that makes it sound tawdry.
Ours is more of a bed and breakfast
Type relationship
High in the mountains like...
Surrounded by antique furniture.
A Chippendale desk
With a fold down top
Inlaid with wooden filigree,
Built in slots to hold
Forbidden correspondences

The Damask curtains
Pinched to the side by golden tassel
Unveiling an English Moore
Or perhaps a Tuscan vineyard at dusk.

Hmmm This didn't start out a dirty poem...

The truth is,
It is more of a friendship.
Kindred spirits on a stroll in Springtime.
Cherry blossoms filling the trees
A flute song whistling on the wind.
There is light
So much light
And all the brooks are babbling.
There is a man fishing,
Not just fishing...
Fly fishing!
The women are all in bustles
While we settle in for a picnic
Pouring over a wicker basket.

Yeah...
It's more like that.

I Am Restless

Of late, my mind is on an endless loop playing over and over my thoughts on life. Raising up and beating down my faith again and again. Even this is an overstatement. The raising up has been less affirmation of faith as the inner battle of doubting my doubts. And not for the sake of God, but rooted simply in insecurity.

When all I can see is darkness, and all I can feel is nothing, they tell me that I can't focus on my sin, because then I can't see grace. I can't focus on my doubt, because then I can't see God. And I wonder why we are so afraid to touch reality. How often we lean on our preferred side of a paradoxical faith.

I suppose, my hope in writing this, is less for encouragement, and affirmation in my faith. It is not to church bash, or to definitively say that God doesn't exist. It is simply to tell how I feel. For the sake of openness. Because maybe other people might feel this way too sometimes, but are afraid to say it. Because the truth is, more often than not, when I am sitting in church and I look around, I think to myself, 'do these people really believe all this? Is everybody faking it? Have we all longed for something more so much that we have delusioned ourselves into an endless charade?' Dismal thoughts I know, but they are there.

And the reason they are there is because I have felt all of those things in myself. I feel them now. On March 26th I am scheduled to give my testimony during the service and then become a member of the Mennonite faith. And I am in the moment wondering why I said that I wanted this? I know why I wanted it. Because I love these people. And I love the way that they attempt to live out their faith. It seems more in step with scripture than most practical implementation of faith than I have seen in other spaces. Because I see the beauty in how diversity colors a church and how different gifts and talents illuminate a dull white washed community with brilliance. But I am wondering if these reasons are enough.

If I'm honest a lot of brain power these days goes into simply trying to cling to my faith. Most of the time I feel unsuccessful. I have a hard time believing that God exists let alone that he loves me as a member of the LGBT community. It may not even be fair to bring the topic of the LGBT community into this equation. Were I to be straight would I feel any more lovable? I can't say that I would. I don't know. Having had the majority of my faith experience as a celibate gay woman, God's love was no more palpable then than it is now. Or was it? Even my memory is fickle. On some days I seem to remember significant moments of belief as mere imagination and longing. While other days I wonder why I was able to believe before so passionately and now struggle so fundamentally.

And with this fickle and transient heart I walk. And I wonder if this heart longing for authenticity will ever find it. In truth I have longed to believe far more than I have ever been near enough to claim it as my own. This understanding of my own heart and mind is what lead me to bible college in pursuit of student ministry. Because in my longing for Christ I pursued Christian culture and it has never satisfied that thirst. And I believe there are a lot of people like me in the church. Longing for intimacy with Jesus to no avail. And I wanted to minister to the lost within our congregations. Much in the same way that those with mental diagnosis pursue counseling degrees, because they know the need.

I suppose it is this longing for Jesus that has kept me within church walls. Not necessarily the fulfillment of that longing, but the longing itself. And because of this longing it doesn't seem true to myself to disengage completely or label myself something other than Christian. C.S. Lewis reasons that if humanity has such a deep longing for other than what is in this world, it may very well be because we were not created for this world. And while this may be circular reasoning...that longing in me tells me that maybe he is on to something. So I persist.

What is worse is that my participation in the church feeds a desperate need for affirmation, and my interests and skillsets have the capability of benefiting the church. But the more that I am praised and appreciated in this regard, the more my ego is stroked. So I'm left with the question, is it right to serve, and offer my gifts when my heart is so out of tune with the message? Do I not continue to pursue service when I am struggling because all believers struggle, but that doesn't mean we stop moving and practicing our faith? But is it my faith? And if affirmation is what is keeping me in the church, do I stop serving to rid myself of the white noise?

Some would credit such doubt with my grief. And in truth my grief has lead me to this doorstep full of question. Not just because I wonder where is my brother. I do. I long for God partially because I long for Stephen's life more abundantly lived in the 'on.' But his death did not create the questions, merely brought them back into focus. For they were there just as much in the celebration of life's joys as they are now in its pain.

In "A Grief Observed" Lewis talks about his faith as being a house of cards.

"Is this last note a sign that I'm incurable, that when reality smashes my dreams to bits, I mope and snarl while the first shock lasts, and then patiently, idiotically, start putting it together again? And so always? However often the house of cards falls, shall I set about rebuilding it? Is that what I am doing now?"

This is what I have been doing, is it not? And not absentmindedly, but painstakingly. Pursuing, digging, crawling to cling to even a hair of this God of the Bible. It is painstaking if it is done with any true acknowledgment of the whole of scripture. God does not paint himself an easy deity. And we can follow each character of him down until it bleeds with some maddening question. How does a good God create evil? Why does an all powerful being create for himself an adversary? We cannot say that evil is the absence of God, because God introduces the serpent into being. Some may say, but I don't believe in the devil! But then what is your basis for believing in God as revealed in the Bible? Are they not from the same book? Can you so willingly embrace Heaven and easily dismiss Hell?

Death surely has nothing to do with that particular question, though my anger in the wake of death draws me more readily to grapple with it. Death more has numbed me. It is easier now than ever to believe in the chaos of everything, in a lack of meaning. That the darkness of the world never resolves, and that the future is an endless dissonance, which is followed by nothing.

The modern world tells me to shed the bindings of youth and all that an oppressive church culture forces on me. "Be yourself!" But who is myself? I feel as confident in a life without Christ as I do in a life in pursuit of him. Who then am I? Why do I cling to this man? And why do I fear to let him go? Am I so caught up in my identity within the church culture that I am afraid to break free of it even though we do not know how to fully embrace one another? I am restless.

I am the sea on a moonless night,
Calling, falling, slipping tides
I am the leaky, dripping pipes
The endless aching drops of light
I am the raindrop falling down,
Always longing for the deeper ground
I am the broken, breaking seas
Even my blood finds ways to bleed

Even the rivers ways to run
Even the rain to reach the sun
Even my thirsty streams,
Even in my dreams

I am restless, I am restless
I am restless, looking for you
I am restless, I run like the ocean to find your shore
I’m looking for you

I am the thorn stuck in your side,
I am the one that you left behind,
I am the dried up doubting eyes
Looking for the well that won’t run dry

Running hard for the other side
The world that I’ve always been denied
Running hard for the infinite
With the tears of the saints and hypocrites

Oh blood of black and white and gray
Death and life and night and day
One by one by one
We let our rivers run

I am restless, I am restless
I am restless, looking for you
I am restless, I run like the ocean to find your shore
Looking for you

I can hear you breathing,
I can hear you leading
More than just a feeling
More than just a feeling
I can feel you reaching
Pushing through the ceiling
'til the final healing
I'm looking for you

Until the sea of glass we meet
At last completed and complete
The tide of tear and pain subside
Laughter drinks them dry

I’ll be waiting
Anticipating
All that I aim for
What I was made for
With every heartbeat
All of my blood bleeds
Running inside me
Looking for you

I am restless, I am restless
I am restless, looking for you
I am restless, I run like the ocean to find your shore
I'm looking for you

I can feel you breathing
I can feel you leading
More than just a feeling
More than just a feeling
I can feel you reaching
Pushing through the ceiling
'til the final healing
I'm looking for you
I'm looking for you

-Switchfoot

The Tribe Song

All over the world
People are spinning
Heartache into poetry.
They paint murals and sing songs,
Sweeping the dust of the breakage into a pile.
They melt it down until its luscious liquid
And they mold it into something.
They play melodies on melancholy.
There is clapping.
There is so much clapping.
Our breakups become our anthems.
We play them on drums.
The base beats loudly a message to the world
That we are still alive without you,
We strive without you,
Hell we even thrive without you.
The pain filled paint spills
Dance in fire rings on our canvases
Reminding the world that beneath the surface we are all
One tribe.
One angry tribe
Raging against the ransacking of our hearts.

To Stephen, I was "the runt." His mini me. In me, Stephen saw an opportunity to replicate himself. And truth be told he could not have picked a more willing victim. Growing up I idolized him. I thought he was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

He'd come up to me and say, "hey Elisa, do you want to play video games with me? Okay well, I just got to take the trash out. You want to help me and then we can play sooner." Trash, dishes, yard work. It didn't matter. I was the perfect sucker. If it meant I got to hang out with him, I did it.

Everything he was into, I found profoundly brilliant. Star Wars, Wrestling, Jackie Chan movies, Comic Books. I even remember him teaching me to play dungeons and dragons when I was tiny. Playing the part of an enchanted elf, casting magical spells and fighting bad guys.

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized, these things were not actually considered cool by normal standards. Stepping into the reality of high school meant stepping into the reality that Stephen was by all measures a total geek. And not in the era of Big Bang Theory where geekdom is celebrated and valued. Stephen was a nerd through and through.

Though he would want me to take a moment and make sure you all knew that though he was a nerd, he was no treky. Even at the bottom of the food chain, he still had standards.

Quite possibly it was Stephen's shameless geekhood that made him into the man he was meant to be. Anyone who knew Stephen knows that he was neither humble, nor bashful. Stephen always said exactly what he was thinking, when he was thinking it. The man lacked a filter. It was his worst and best quality. It's what made him so unbearably annoying, and so incredibly inspiring.

He never missed an opportunity to make a group laugh at someone else's expense. Whether it was pointing out when mom dribbled food on her blouse, or telling any embarrassing stories about the rest of the family that he could muster up. Growing up at Woodland Church in Drexel Hill, Stephen became quite fond of the George sisters. A group of sisters who were all very tiny in stature. When Stephen got tall, he would stand very close by Ester George's side with a big stupid grin on his face because he knew his height accentuated her shortness.

He was that type of guy. He loved pulling people up short. And he loved proving people wrong. He had a passion for argument. If Stephen could feel himself loosing, he would simply make up statistics to support his stance. And what determined his stance on most subjects was simply that it went against popular opinion. He loved to play Devils advocate. This was absolutely infuriating growing up because Stephen and I shared many flaws, one of which being that we both always felt that we had to have the last word. Often, Stephen would get me riled up, and we would be arguing and mom or dad would tell us to stop. He would always sneak in one more jab under his breath so they couldn't hear it, and I retaliated every time. My dad would yell and me and Stephen would sit there at the end of the table leaning back in his chair and looking irritatingly smug. It made me want to scream!

Along with winning arguments, Stephen had an annoying ability for winning games. He had a tremendous nack for puzzles and a very strategic mind. He was insufferable in trivia. Even if he had to guess, he always seemed to guess right. He could upset the balance of our home when challenging our parents to a game of Settlers of Catan. I'm sure if you asked mom, she could tell you their running tally of how many Catan games she has won against him. A true mark of victory. He loved board games. It is important to note that before he passed, Geoffrey beat Stephen once at Blockus. It is MORE important to note that I beat him twice at Miniature Golf. These are no small feats.

In fact Stephen wouldn't hesitate to identify himself as a competitive mini golfer. Stephen honed his game of put put much in the way that grown men master the game of actual golf. During his last vacation with Geoffrey, Stephen played incredibly well. After tallying up the score, Stephen confidently asked a staff member if there happened to be a course record. Geoffrey was pleased when she informed him that the record was a good 10 swings below Stephen's score.

For Stephen, life was meant to be lived fully. He was a man of passion. Stephen didn't go about things mildly. He had a real go big or go home mentality. Stephen used to gather with his fellow Eagles fans on a Sunday down at the neighbors house. They would pull the big screen TV out on the deck and grill all manor of fabulous foods. The guys couldn't afford season tickets, but that didn't stop them from tailgating every Sunday, no mater how cold. And when the eagles scored a touchdown, you could hear it all the way up the street. Their antics were so bizarre they landed a TV spot on the local news. A highlight in Stephens life to be sure.

Some lesser known facts about Stephen. He had a gift for drawing. I remember spending many hours  of my youth sitting in his room and sketching comic book characters together. He also had a love of cooking, though was very forthcoming that he required a sue chef to do all the chopping and grunt work. Stephen was a walking encyclopedia of movies. You could point to any actor or actress and say, who's that, and he could name almost ever movie they had been in. And once you recognized a movie and said, oh yeah that's it. He would keep listing movie after movie just to show you how far his knowledge stretched. In 2015 he set out to watch 365 movies he had never seen before within the year. And he did it. But he refused to watch any movie made before 1977, because he was convinced that any movie released before Star Wars A New Hope, was not worth seeing.

Whenever the family settled down to watch a movie, Stephen was insistent on choosing what we watched. We often ended up watching one of his favorites. Jurassic Park, Braveheart, Gladiator, Indiana Jones. Without fail 20 minutes into the movie, Stephen was lying on the floor fast asleep.

Its no secret, Stephen was happiest when he was being aggravating. But Stephen the most aggravating thing you have ever done, was leave us.

Because as annoying as you were, you were also the life of our home. Dad couldn't care less about sports, but if you took him to a game, he'd cheer louder than anyone else in the stadium because he knew how much you loved it. You never hesitated to tell us all that you were mom's favorite, and to your credit, she never argued. We all knew that if we wanted mom to cook something, the best way to get it was to have you ask for it. Because mom couldn't resist making what you liked to eat. You asked for Lasagna at least once a week. You insisted that she make it as an appetizer for Christmas. Still waiting for you to win that battle. And I bet it was wonderful to smell the meatballs and sauce cooking the night before you were gone. Because as usual, you were getting your way.

In our later years, Stephen was always intentional to plan times for us to hang out one on one. It either began with a game of mini golf or a movie, and ended over a good meal at a restaurant of your his choosing. In those one on one moments we would talk about everything. Our hopes, our dreams, our fears, and our faith. If I'm honest, Stephen was never sitting comfortably in his understanding of who God was. There were days that he denied belief completely, and other days where he expressed glimmers of hope in Jesus. As most people do, Stephen struggled to reconcile the reality of God in the midst of unmet aspirations, loneliness, and tragedies around the world. And if we are honest, is that not where many of us stand at times? Stephen had a gift for honesty, and vulnerability in those precious shared moments. He knew how to express himself in the now.

In an interview, the famous author J.K. Rowling was asked if she believed in God. When she responded, she expressed that unintentionally, in writing the story of Harry Potter, she ended up writing an allegory of the story of Christ. She stated,  "I think what I believe comes through in my writing. You asked me if I believe in God. I would have to say, yes. But I struggle with it." That interview comes to mind often in the daily grind of life. It's an honest and vulnerable answer. It is true of me, and honestly, I think that it was true of him. Stephen was a man who loved story, he loved to insert himself in it. Lose himself in a battle of good vs evil. At times, like all of us, he didn't know which side he was on. I mean who doesn't think Darth Vader is cooler than Luke Skywalker? But lets be honest, if Stephen were to identify as any fictional character, it would be Han Solo, a scoundrel with a great capacity to love, who was a fierce and loyal friend.

Stephen we are all here to tell you that we love you. And the best part is we know your response through and through.

Somewhere you are answering back confidently. "I know."

Every Christmas throughout Stephens life, mom read Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol aloud to the family during the Advent season. Upon the Crathets losing their youngest son, the father shares.
"But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim—shall we—or this first parting that there was among us?"

I don't know if Stephen would remember that line. For the most part, every year he slept through mom's annual readings.

Birthday Poem

This is the day that it began.
This is her once upon a time,
This is the start to snarky lines,
Words carefully designed,
A heart that's intertwined
With yours.

You knew the sandy streams
That would tumble down her back
And how she would parts those waters
So often at her temple.

You knew the sassy spirit
That pulses her vein,
You gave her tempered lyric
That puts literature to shame
You made her as a fire
That burns to speak your name

In her heart you are building castles
Housing sparrows
Carried by feathers of truth.
She has not set herself of shaky ground.
But rather, light abounds
It flutters around
Inside her turrets.

Her balustrades are built of passion.
And in similar fashion
Her moats are filled with love.
Her eyes are centered on above
And she concentrates thereof
Impatient to see you again.

I don't think she understands
How masterfully you craft.
That you aren't daft
But were perfect in your draft.
So on the day of her beginning
My mind has started spinning
And I think it would be sinning
If I were not to say
That you are the perfect architect
And its evident in her design.

Nothing is Clean

As someone suffering from OCD of the Spirit, seeing dirt in every corner of my soul, unable at times to recognize the righteousness with which Christ has covered me, I was wrecked by Ava’s response to Howard when he looked disturbingly at the sink and asked, “Does that look clean to you?”

Her response is poignant.
“Nothing is clean Howard, but we do our best, right?”

Coming from a "conservative" Presbyterian background, I've developed a clear sense of the depravity of humanity. I felt unclean, I knew the importance of acknowledging the dark capabilities of my own soul. Now attending a "progressive" church in the Anabaptist tradition, I am met with the topic of grace so very often. My experience in these congregations has been a hesitancy toward one another. To emphasize grace and love to an extreme would be to lose a sense of God's sovereignty and our dependence on Him. To emphasize depravity is to lose hope in humanity and see God as judgmental and unloving, unaccepting.

I am beginning to see the beauty of where these schools of thought meet. My acceptance of my uncleanliness magnifies God's unfathomable grace, lavished and poured out in love. I am so often getting stuck, caught up in the dirt, and my view of myself becomes hopeless and crippling. But I can't forget it and miss the magnitude of a need met. Grace.

The old Piper quote, "God is most magnified when I am most satisfied in him." His grace satisfies my need.

I'm questing to find the balance of these truths. The battle within is ongoing. And the struggle to acknowledge my connection to the various interpretations of scripture within the brotherhood of Church is a lifelong endeavor.  To be associated with God is to be associated with Church in all of its beauty and in all of its ugliness, and in all of its variety. The world will not differentiate us. I cannot either. May it be so in my weak heart.

"Nothing is clean Elisa, but we do our best, right?"

A Year In Books

Last New Years I set out to read a book a month. Probably the best resolution I've ever had... a. because I accomplished it. (a first) and b. because books are air. This year, has been in some ways the most important of my life. And these books walked through each season, held my hand, sat in the dark, woke up to the morning breeze.

Each one made me think, made me see, made me feel.

A year in books:

January:
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

February:

“I'm not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you're supposed to think are deep because they're in italics. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about sentences like this:

The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before.

Barf. Forget it. For me personally, things are in no way more meaningful because I got to know Rachel before she died. If anything, things are less meaningful. All right?”
― Jesse Andrews, Me & Earl & the Dying Girl

March:

“...we can choose to reflect the places we see the lack of love in the world, or we could try to be stronger than our weaknesses, and shine a light on something better. We were facing down our own personal Goliaths. I wanted to invite her to stand with me and try the radical act of simply staying put. To tell the truth and trust that whatever comes next is going to be okay.”
― Sara Bareilles, Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song

April:

“When we open ourselves
you yourself to me and I myself to you,
when we submerge
you into me and I into you
when we vanish
into me you and into you I

Then
am I me
and you are you.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

May:

“Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

June:
“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

July:
“They were great men, with huge flaws, and you know what – those flaws almost made them greater.”
― Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two

August:

“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

October:

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

November:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

December:

I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief