An Outward and Visible Sign

I hate wearing a mask. I hate having to stay at least 6 feet away from everyone. I hate that plans to travel to visit family or to gather with dear ones have had to be cancelled. I hate the overwhelming uncertainty we have been plunged into since March of this year.

Sometimes I get so angry at our current reality that my entire body clenches tight - my teeth grind, my muscles flex to the point of hurting, my lungs almost burst - and for a moment afterward, I wonder if I've finally woken up from what has seemed like a never ending nightmare, if finally Covid19 and masks and social distancing and self quarantine and school closures and climbing death rates and astronomical unemployment rates have all disappeared. As if I can just hate this reality away and usher in a new - or, perhaps old? - one.

My anger, fear, frustration, and hate do not, however, change or improve anything.

So, I still practice social distancing. I still limit how frequently I go into town or how much time I spend in public spaces. And I still don a mask.

I have started to think of my masks as sacraments - as "outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace."

Indeed, wearing a mask - or not - and doing anything - or not - to take any precautions against contracting or spreading Covid19 have become outward and visible signs of one's politics, of one's belief system and world view.

My masks have come to mean more to me than what I believe civic duty demands, more than believing and supporting Dr. Fauci and the CDC. I'd like to wonder with you, if wearing masks might be an opportunity to practice something more than virtue signaling or the following of best practices as outlined by practical health guidelines.


First, I must acknowledge that my desire to "go back" to the time before March 2020, when things were predictable, stable, and easy for me stems from my white privilege. I wear my mask and allow the unease, the lack of safety, I feel when I am in public to be a reminder that many, many people in this nation have felt uneasy and unsafe in almost all places at almost all times for as long as - longer, even - we have been the United States of America. My mask becomes a lament - a lament not only for the feelings of unsafety people of color and LGBTQ people experience everyday, but for the reality of the unsafety they experience all the time. I wear my mask and I pray. For forgiveness. For grace. For courage. For knowledge. For strength. For guidance. For change - in myself and in the world.

Second, I put my mask in place and it covers half my face. It is a literal barrier between me and other people. It is a dehumanizing, painful reminder that we must be intentionally separate right now, from people and communities we love. But our separateness goes much, much deeper than this and is doing much more harm. I put my mask on and I think about the strained relationships in this country, in my family, in churches and schools and neighborhoods. Relationships strained over the decision whether or not to wear a mask. Relationships strained over the decision to or not to protest the murders of people of color by our police. Relationships strained by how we vote, pray, live, and love. I wear my mask and I pray. For wisdom. For patience. For love. For compassion. For clarity. For healing. For change - in myself and in the world.


I talk less when I wear a mask. I feel like I have to shout to be heard, like the whole world is muffled. So, I find myself spending the little time I am around people being quieter, more focused on completing the task at hand than making eye contact or small talk. Instead of tuning everything and everyone out, I am going to try to use the time in my mask to give thanks for my health, for the essential workers who make grocery shopping and doctor visits and filling up gas tanks possible.

I also breathe more slowly in a mask. My face gets hot and sweaty. Depending on the style my ears might start to get irritated by the elastic straps, my nose might start to feel smashed. I almost immediately look forward to getting back into my car or my home where I can take my mask off as soon as I am done with my errands. Instead of focusing on rushing through to the end, I am going to try to slow down, to breathe with intention, to pay attention to the people around me, to feel the sun or breeze on my skin as I return my cart, and to give thanks for the present moment.


My mask is like the cross of ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, reminding me that I am human, but also that I am holy, that life is precious. That to care for the health and wellbeing of others is a gift and an honor. That the world, that life, is full of lament and burden, grace and hope.

My mask is an outward and visible sign that I am connected to others, that all people are my neighbors, that my wellbeing and freedom depends on theirs, and theirs depends on mine. My mask serves as a reminder that "no one is an island." That we must work together, care together, to get through this to a place that is more compassionate, safe, equal, than the one we live in today.

God is Good?

Yesterday, St. Dorothy's Rest announced that we will not be holding summer camp this year in response to the Covid19 pandemic. It feels like the last two months have been a series of disappointments and griefs all leading up to this decision. I know that I am not alone in feeling the deep, deep loss of camp and the community it offers to so many, myself included.

As we worked to share this decision publicly - prepping for a zoom call with our 2020 camp staff, crafting various e-mails, social media posts, and website updates - I have been crying on and off for what feels like a week. Grief comes in waves and sometimes it catches me off guard, takes my breath away, drags me under.

St. Dorothy's Rest decided to start cancelling our spring retreats on Mach 13. We have been holding our breaths, waiting, wondering, and hoping. Our facilities have sat empty and quiet as the days and weeks have ticked by. In March, things were changing so rapidly that it seemed as if every morning I would wake up to new information, regulations, and restrictions. Yesterday's news quickly became old and irrelevant. At the time, hope was alive and present for me. If we could just hold out, practice social distancing, wash our hands regularly, and flatten the curve, by June things would settle enough for us to wrap our minds around safely offering camp.

Sure, maybe we'd have to adjust the schedule, shorten our season, shrink the sessions, and certainly institute new safety and hygiene protocols. But, campers and staff would be here. This place would be filled with songs and laughter. We'd find our purpose again, and get to do what we love so dearly.

It did not take long for that hope to wane and then all but disappear. All too soon, it was no longer a matter of if we would have to cancel but when.

This week, the decision not to have camp this summer became real and concrete and eventually public. I have wondered a lot about what hope looks like in this time. Does it even make sense to try and hope? What should I, or can I, hope for right now?

I'd much rather wallow in the sticky, uncomfortable waters of "everything is terrible."

Hope has felt too risky recently. Hope requires vulnerability, an opening oneself up to disappointment and grief. If "everything is terrible" is my end point, then I can't be surprised or hurt when it proves true. "See? I knew it. Everything is terrible!"

My problem is, I don't think I'm hard wired to stay in that space. In many ways, my default is hope.

So, I am finding myself floundering a bit as I grapple with a new kind, a new understanding, of hope. Perhaps even a more mature hope.

I have often practiced a hope tied to a specific outcome. I hope for things I want. It is a hope that has an end goal, that is clear and concrete. It is a hope with a check-box next to it that can eventually be marked as "finished" or "achieved."

Today, I cannot hope like that. Certainly, I hope that we will be able to successfully flatten the curve, that we will safely be able to ease restrictions on public spaces and local businesses. I hope that those protesting ongoing shelter-in-place orders stay healthy, safe, and peaceful - even as they show up to gather armed. I hope that we will be able to offer meaningful opportunities for community and connection this summer, even if we can't physically be together at St. Dorothy's Rest.

More, though, I am leaning into the hope of the Risen Christ - how odd to remember that we are in the season of Easter! I am turning to the hope that God is Love, that I am loved. I find myself running through the very camp-y refrain "God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good." Things do not feel good right now. Instead, things are scary, uncertain, confusing. What does it mean, then, to claim as truth "God is good?"

Honestly, I do not know. I am still wrestling with that. My uncertainty about what that means, though, does not change my belief that it is true.

God is good. For now, I will rest in that knowledge.

We may be going through hell right now. We may not know when this will end or what things will be like when it finally does. I do not believe God caused this or willed this, but I do believe God is present in it and that God will remain after.

On Mandy-Thursday this year many worshipped from home, washing our own feet if we live alone. It was weird, a little lonely, and incredibly moving. I remembered all the times I have sat while a fellow parishioner knelt in front of me and washed my feet. I never loved this moment, thoroughly uncomfortable. What I do love is taking my turn to wash another's feet. Not because I love kneeling on a stone floor, not because I love to touch feet, not because that kind of intimacy comes easily to me. But because it feels like my "rightful" place. I do not quite believe myself deserving to be served, to be treated so lavishly. But I will readily seize the opportunity to make sure others know they are worthy.

It does not escape me that this practice of washing one another's feet is an invitation to both be Jesus to others and to allow others to be Jesus to us. So, washing my own feet meant that I had to allow myself to be Jesus, to see Jesus in me, for me.

And perhaps, right now, this is where my hope lies. In the invitation to be Jesus to ourselves and to others in this hurting, grieving world. My hope, today, is to truly know myself as loved by the One who is Love and to turn around and love myself and others the way I believe God loves us all. To find new, creative, and bold ways to be extravagantly kind and generous to myself and to others. And to allow myself the risk and vulnerability to explore new opportunities and ways of being in this changing world.

I Say a Little Prayer

Recently, I have felt a bit like a spool of thread being unraveled. Everything I read and hear in the new seems to fill me with a sense of dread and an anger so sharp I can almost taste it. I can feel my thread loosening and escaping so that I can’t sense the end anymore and I’m not quite in control. It’s blowing in the wind, it catches on a corner, it pulls me in different directions.

When I try and re-spool it all, it doesn’t quite all fit back the way it was. It’s lumpy and a little uncomfortable, never as neat and as even as it started. Always quicker and easier to start coming undone.

A few things help manage this feeling.

One is simply acknowledging it and taking deep breaths.

Another is writing about what is troubling me.

Another is prayer.

Specifically praying for that which has brought up this uncertainty and fear in me. Or, more accurately, the person or persons, linked with the dark and scary things.

It has become so easy to savor my anger, to let it morph into disdain, to allow it to dehumanize those with whom I am angry.

So, I pray.

Below is an illustration of some of my prayer recently.

I’ll use the person who stole the “Black Lives Matter” sign from the front of my house as my subject. This seems like both a sufficiently concrete and yet vague example.

I start by praying for the person (it could have been more than one person for all I know but for my purposes I have been imagining an individual) who took the sign.

“God, be with them. As the rains start in Camp Meeker, keep them warm. Let them know they are loved. Bring them joy.”

Sometimes I choke a bit at the beginning because often, what I want to say is “Show that jerk what a jerk they are! Make their jerk selves know how petty and racist and jerky they are and make them stop being such bullies!”

The thing is, all that particular kind of prayer does for me is fuel my own self-righteous indignation. In the end, I am not more loving or compassionate.

So, I try hard not to go there. At least not all the time.

Next, “I assume they took the sign because it was so offensive to them they couldn’t even have it displayed in their neighborhood. And, perhaps, they were hoping to communicate to me how backwards they think I am. Soften their heart, God. Bring a new understanding to them. One of compassion, and generosity.”

This is all fine and good and safe.

I’ve tried to be respectful and nonjudgmental – even though, who am I kidding? God’s probably rolling God’s big, all knowing eyes at me.

So yeah, maybe what I really want to pray is something more like, “God, could you please just show them how wrong they are? Send them back to my house to apologize for being so wrong and for being such a jerk. Then I can be all forgiving AND right, which is really just the BEST!”

Friends, all of this is practice. I am trying. I am learning.

The last part is by far the hardest.

Finally, in my mind’s meekest voice, “God, be with me. Help me to know that I am loved. Help me to be more joyful. Make me more loving, more compassionate. Help me to see you in the people I disagree with, to respect and care for their humanity. Make me more generous towards them. Forgive me for being quick to judge and to dismiss, for basking in anger and fear. Take the burden – and the satisfaction – of this anger and fear from me.”

This is the hardest because it makes me vulnerable. It asks that I be changed, that I be made better. It is humbling when I would prefer to be righteous, it forces my hands and heart to be open when I would prefer to stay closed and guarded. It acknowledges my humanity and that of my “enemy” when I would rather just keep seeing them as other and less than.

This. This is what begins to smooth my edges, what puts me back together when I am frayed and knotted.

It’s not that our differences do not matter. They do. Very much. It’s that they do not matter to the point of not seeing one another’s dignity, of not seeing the Divine reflected in them.

In the Tall Grass

My mind has been racing all day as I work to sort out my thoughts and feelings about the news and people’s reactions – and non-reactions – to it. It seems that every day we learn about a different man in power, of one kind or another, having abused women and/or children. It has been hard for me, in part, because it hasn’t really been surprising. I know this problem is vast. I am part of the #met00 masses. Virtually every woman I know is.

What has also been hard is to watch some stay silent – so obviously wanting to hold on to power, for their political party to stay in power. Republicans, who like to think of themselves as the “moral majority” and the “pro-life” party, have not always simply stayed silent as accusations against Roy Moore have rolled in, some have actually rallied around him, rushing to his defense.

This disgusts me.

To further aggravate the issue, our 45^th president wasted no time jumping onto Twitter when allegations against Al Franken came to light. Our president doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to this issue and his own behavior. But I can’t help but balk at the blatant partisanship of his condemning Al Franken and remaining silent about Roy Moore.

How can you defend this, Mr. President?

I read two articles this weekend that have my head buzzing.

First, Democrats messed up big time with Bill Clinton. Powerful democrats ought to have taken the egregious abuse of his power seriously and told him they could no longer support him. Read more about this from Vox here.

Al Gore could have taken over as president and carried out virtually the same political agenda as Bill Clinton. Perhaps after more than a year of him serving as president could have meant a win form him in 2000!

How different would things be now if we’d taken power and abuse so seriously 20 years ago?

But we cannot go back in time. We must deal with our present.

So, second, Democrats must decide how we are going to deal with accusations of abuse against our liberal representatives. Men we seem to so desperately need right now.

This woman puts forth an interesting, compelling, and deeply troubling case for not quite holding liberal leaders accountable for their actions the same way we are for conservative leaders.

I get this argument – perhaps more than I am comfortable with. There is a lot at stake.

I want to lay out my concerns here because I am wrestling with what is right, because I hope you will help me think this through, sort this out, and that together we’ll find a way forward.

I do not think Al Frankin’s actions and Roy Moore’s are equal.

I believe in grace, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation.

I believe that (absolute) power corrupts, but I am not convinced that we necessarily need to finish that sentiment with absolutely.

I know there are good men in this world (Recently, I have actually had to go through a literal list of those good men I know just to calm myself down and find some hope). Men who are not abusers. Men who know women are fully human and treat them as such.

All that being said, what do we do when more egregious allegations come against the democratic male representatives whose voice and vote we are currently counting on?

- Do we insist on establishing a pattern of behavior? If there are not more than two accusers will we let the abuse slide? Do the one or two victims not quite matter enough to us?

- Or, are time and age a factor? If the harassment or abuse happened more than 10 years ago, or 20, is that ok? Sure, I was a misogynist jerk back then but I’m a good guy now. And, remember, 20 years ago we didn’t hold Clinton accountable so how were all the other men to know their behavior was unacceptable or the women to know it was safe to speak out?

            If we go with this particular argument, we need to be prepared to let Roy Moore off the hook as well as Al Franken.

- Perhaps, we need to establish levels of abuse. For instance, taking lude photos of a woman too drunk to give permission for her body to be touched and photographed might not be “ok” but it might not necessitate being removed from office.

After all, several people have pointed out to me today, this problem is ubiquitous and if we start removing every abusive democratic man from every position of power we’ll have so many vacancies in our government, hospitals, businesses, and schools will either not be able to function or will be overrun by Republicans.   

So, instead of holding men to the highest standard, demonstrating to women everywhere, and to the children and youth watching this all unfold and learning from our decisions, that they matter and we will stand with them, let’s figure out what behavior is and is not acceptable.

Forcing your tongue into a woman’s mouth? We can tolerate that.

What about grabbing a woman’s breasts, or her “pussy”? Will we tolerate accusations of that among our democratic politicians?

What about if it turns out a congressman has child pornography on his computer? Surely that is intolerable.

Rape? Will we insist he resigns and is prosecuted when he is accused of rape?

Talking about levels of abuse makes sense to me on one hand and disgusts me on the other.

Talking about acceptable levels of abuse makes me feel less human, makes me feel like a commodity.

I am too important, I have too much value, to accept that some levels of abuse might be ok – all in the name of the greater good, of course.

So, I am left with this whole repentance and reconciliation thing. And this, this is the true sticking point for me.

I am a Christian. I do not know how to get around – frustrating and painful as I sometimes find it – Jesus’ command to love my enemies. There has to be room for grace in this conversation. Right now, I feel like I am blindly stretching out my hands in search of it, though.

It is pivotal to me that Al Franken has expressed remorse and is willing to accept the consequences of an independent review from the Ethics committee.

I’m not sure what to do with that yet. But I do think I’d be able to have a different kind of conversation about Roy Moore if he demonstrated that he understood pursuing and soliciting 14 year olds is WRONG, if he stated regret, if he apologized.