Reflection: Gaza

I’ve had this church song in my head for awhile. It’s a psalm, and the refrain goes, “Come, let us go rejoicing, to the house of the Lord.”

I ignore it until I can’t anymore, this war in Gaza. I let it drift around with the song until I get to the third verse: “Peace in Jerusalem, peace in our homes, and peace within us forever.”

So I look, at the pictures and the articles. The thing that splits me to the core—it’s not the images of broken bodies. To those I react, suddenly covering the picture with my hand, but the horror keeps my center frozen.

I watch a video of anti-war protesters in Israel, and the counter-protesters are chanting “Traitor” at the peaceniks, and they’re thrusting their hands out in front of them in this way, out in front high up near their faces—

Before I’ve finished seeing, I’m making a noise of awful grief, a high noise, without tears really, and my hand covers my face. I don’t want to see this, these young Jewish men, looking like Nazis.

Please understand. I’m not saying this horror is on the level of the Holocaust. But what I see is a circle of hate, and I see it closing, spinning on itself.

This war is unjust, and the lives it tears may stretch or be pulled, to add to the circle, to enclose us all further.

I pray for peace in the world. I pray for the courage that engenders peace, in Jerusalem, our homes, within us—the courage to fear each other less, even when the threat is real.

Without this grace, we will always be ready to cause harm, and the trap will close. With this grace… well, let us try it, and see.

Photo from: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/gaza_strip_may_2005.jpg

Rebecca Fullan has faith, seeks understanding. And sometimes vice versa.

A Mass of Contradictions: God With Us

I searched four stores before I found them. I sifted through piles of white and red before my fingers curled around purple and pink. Finally, a full compliment of Advent candles to round out my wreath.

The first person I told was my girlfriend, Charlotte. We now have a double dose of candle-prayer rituals, which is perhaps unexpected, given that Charlotte once asked me if she should check atheist or agnostic on a survey. But it was her idea to buy one of the glass-encased religious candles they sell at our grocery store.

"You can find the right prayer for us," she said. We were weary with job-searching. We chose a rainbow candle.

This began a nightly ritual of lighting the candle, breathing out the day, and speaking aloud. We take turns choosing readings, from the Bible, from poetry, from the writings of physicist Richard Feynman. They have in common a cord of beauty that binds them, a blaze of hope in full view of evil and despair.

When Advent started I got out my wreath and taught Charlotte "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." I haven't been to Mass since Advent began—tricky schedules and ambivalent desires—but something in me craves and leaps to these rituals.

On the subway recently, there was this preacher. He spoke of renewal, of Christ, of powerful love, and I quietly assented. He spoke then of evil. He spoke of men marrying men and women marrying women. I stood straight-backed. My face was still. My inside changed.

"What's Emmanuel mean?" Charlotte asked me when I'd finished singing.
"God with us," I replied.

I am taking Charlotte home for Christmas and we'll attend my home church. I will probably not introduce her as my girlfriend—it seems disruptive and risky in this public and casual context—but a day is coming when keeping the bits of myself separate will bleed me dry.

You see, the only God I know is Emmanuel. Sometimes I hate God for it, and sometimes I doubt that a real God would be present in the mirrors of angry, frightened, hungering faces and not, to me at any rate, in blinding visions and streaming glories.

Nonetheless.

And so, I cannot hold myself too carefully, lest the queerness, in whatever sense, be revealed. Because when I have sex with my girlfriend, I am praising and wrestling God, and when I speak prayers before flame, I am sharing with Charlotte. When I walk down the street and quiet overtakes me—it is my Emmanuel I seek.

I am full of confusion. Should be one thing or the other? A bisexual liberal or a mystical Catholic? But something lifts my head and hands. I'll read this to Charlotte tonight. Our lights will stay lit, and we will breathe together to blow the candles out.

Rebecca Fullan wants you to know that the intercessory candle did the trick and now she has four jobs. She is hoping to find the candle for a less exhausting schedule next time, but is also deeply grateful for work.

Double or Nothing

This week’s readings are weird, starting with the first. I don’t feel much related to this praiseworthy woman. It sounds pretty—I want to say hey, thanks, cool that you got around to talking about us ladies—but as you can see I’m feeling cranky.

And what about the second reading? My only encounter with apocalypse occurred one day in high school when people said the world was going to end and everyone grew giddy and stuck a sign over the mural in the chorus room, so “The Music of Our Lives” was now “The End of Our Lives.” We kept living.

By the time I get to the Gospel, I want help. My best friend doesn’t like this parable. My girlfriend thinks the master is just a jerk, until I point out that these masters usually symbolize God. “Oh,” she says. Oh indeed. What is up with Jesus lately? Last week with the whips, this week with the redistribution of wealth in a seriously non-Marxist way.

Cranky? You and me both, Jesus, and now I’m questioning myself. I don’t know my quantity of talents or if I’m investing them wisely. I don’t know if I’m a wakeful child of light, or a worthy woman, and I don’t know if I should be

I’d like to say that the bottom line in these readings is not to live in fear. To respond to God without worry about being pretty enough. To live gracefully without fear of a sudden end. To use what you have, to risk, to increase, not to bury or cower or fear a capricious master.

And it might be. But if it were, couldn’t we leave out the stuff about teeth-gnashing? Couldn’t we skip the thieves in the night? Couldn’t we just say that women helping the poor are awesome and leave out stuff about husbands and flax?

The problem is, the world still feels like a big old cipher, and sometimes scripture is just a cipher on a cipher, and sometimes it seems like a better idea to dig a hole, bury the talents, and walk away.

The problem is, no matter what I believe, there comes the day when I am left alone, with the creepy stories and the good stories running up and down my brain, when I must choose the bottom line myself.

Is that a leap of faith? Am I a faithful person? This plot of ground might have a light underneath. Or it might have a slavering sharp-toothed critter. Jesus might be going crazy, and I just don’t think I’m the kind of girl the Bible people had in mind. I wanted you to know before I ask. Should we dig? Should we invest? It might be serious—even dangerous--nonsense. Wanna play?

Rebecca Fullan is trying to write a novel in a month, and therefore cannot blame all her crankiness on Jesus, who she has to admit she quite likes, even in his moods, and she hopes such sentiments are reciprocated.

What Belongs to God

Dedicated, with thanks, to Father Geoff Farrow, and, with hope, to ourpresidential candidates.

Listening to the presidential debates, I’ve hated the bug-on-water dance that the candidates do around the questions.And here’s Jesus in the Gospel this week , sounding similar. The questionposed to him is salved with praise—but Jesus is savvy. He knows these are razor-edged smiles.

So is Jesus being politic? “Yes, it’s lawful to pay the tax,” and he’s a collaborator, a disloyal Jew. “No, it’s notlawful to pay the tax,” and he’s a trouble-stirring rebel. Maybe Jesus is merely hedging his bets.

But let’s give him the benefit of doubt. It’s the Christian thing to do. Let’s say there can be can’t-catch-mewords that are also life-words (“Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but to God what belongs to God”). I am left with an image, concretely—looking at a coin, I can see the face on it. But I don’t see the face of God stamped on anything, unless we’re counting crucifixes, and I doubt Jesus was gunning for a big pile of crucifixes. I come out of this story knowing what to give to Caesar, but with much less clarity on what to give to God.

Where is God’s image? Where is God’s inscription? In me, I want to say, pointing to Genesis, in us. But what does that mean? I’ll be a bad debater here—I’ll reach out for something of which I can’t guarantee the truth, much less the palatability, and I’ll tell you what I suspect it means.

I must look beyond the easy, stamped-on meanings I have made of myself, and remember that there is a mysterious self-- deeper, stranger, more frightening, and far less politic, and it is the impulses and creativity of this selfthat I owe to God. It is this that shall be taxed, and taxing, not out of punitive greed, but because without it my system will cease to function, its parts ungraced, unfunded.

Do you know that self? It wakes me restless and draws me through the flames of fear. It wrecks my routine, devours easy lies and willful ignorance. In what world is it good citizenship to ignore a crumpled stranger? Not my world, says this self. In what world do you swallow your true words for sugared acceptance from anyone, includingyour church? Not my world, it insists. I want to shrug it off. But this week Jesus tells me that I am accountable, and that I must hunt for the currency with which to pay. The truth is I am rich in this coin, and you are also. I only hope we will have the courage to render it forth.

Rebecca Fullan recently received her Master’s in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is currentlyliving in New York City and searching for employment that will enrich her, she hopes, in both Caesar’s and God’s currencies.

(Photo Credit: Charlotte Rahn-Lee)