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.