Thinking about Lent

Because I’ve never been involved in a church where Lent was a really big deal, I’d never really thought about it. I mean I really like pancakes, I notice people giving up things, and I always look forward to Easter eggs, but I’ve never really delved into the point of it (Easter  and the forty day corresponding to Jesus forty days in the desert I understand but I never really understood the connection between lent and Easter)

It seems that Lent is a time of waiting, reflecting, anticipation, and repentance. It’s a time of thinking on the sacrifice of Easter and a time of trying to become more aligned with God. This seems like a solid article on both the history and purpose of lent.

A lot of people give up things for Lent to help them be better people. I don't think that's the point of Lent, I think it’s a side effect of the point. Like the more aligned with God we become the more we become better people? And sometimes there are things in our lives that stop us being aligned with God as we could be and those things need to be given, up, given away, put down.

I thought about the usual things that people give up for lent but they are either irrelevant to me or don't seem like big issues as barriers between me and God. So I thought what is the one thing I could change in my life that would help me both know God better and become more aligned with him. And I think the answer to that is to stop wasting time.

I waste a lot of time, I watch trash TV, I play too many hours of computer games, I mooch around the house doing nothing. I am the world's best procrastinator.  And I know a lot of the time I am doing these things as avoidance tactics, to avoid things I should be doing (In case I am not good enough at them, in case they bring up negative emotions, in case they are harder work than I anticipated, because I feel guilty doing things that I like, that benefit me, and partly because I’m just lazy) I could use that time that I fritter away to learn more about God, to be more with God, which isn't just prayer and bible reading but about more fully engaging in life in ways that are healthy for myself and others

And the thing is this endeavor will involve me being scrupulously, savagely honest with myself. Because of my mental and physical health issues I need a lot of down time, more than a lot of people and from the outside, downtime looks a lot like wasting time I think. Which means I am the only person that can tell if I’m recuperating or wasting time so I’m going to have to hold myself to account, be really honest with myself on which I am doing and which I need to be doing. (And also exploring if there are more downtime activities that are more nurturing and good for me than I am currently engaging in)

With some of the time i save I will do more overtly obviously Christian things. I'm going to double up my Bible reading so I'm reading two Psalms and Two chapters of the gospels each day. I will spend more time in prayer (which I am kind of getting the hang of and getting more comfortable with) I also bought myself a lent devotional, Let Me Go There by Paula Gooder. I heard an interview with her and really liked what she was saying so I thought I'd really like this book

But as well as these things I want to use the time I'm not wasting to do things that maybe aren't seen as overtly christian but are still intimately tied up with my relationship with God: writing, gardening, crafting,cooking, volunteering, exercising, dealing with my emotional stuff. I think all of these things can be ways of engaging with God for me, and ways of learning more about both God and myself.

I know I'm going to fail at this endevour a lot of the time and I know I'm going to find it incredibly frustrating, both when I fail at it and when I succeed but I still think its something that is really worth doing.

What if I loved myself the way Jesus expects me to?

(I’ve been stalling on writing this because I know once I've thought about it and written it I’ll have to stop feeling sorry for myself and overthinking stuff and actually get stuff done. and not for example hypothetically be writing this at four in the morning while drinking coffee because I don't want to do the trauma processing that will enable me to go to sleep at night on my own)

When I was growing up, I learned, mostly from my parents, that it was not okay for me to love myself, for me to ever think about my own needs, for me to ever seek comfort, and I had to be thinking about other people's needs all the time, that everybody was worth more than me and that putting myself first ever was sinful and evil

I unlearned some of this, but not as much as I should have done, I care about myself enough to keep my mental health as stable as possible, but even then I begrudge the things I do for that because I often don't think I’m worth it and I feel really guilty thinking about myself

I was loved when I was growing up, not by the people who were supposed to love me, but I can look back and see that I was loved and nurtured by various people, but I never felt loved. The first time I ever felt deep secure rock steady love was at 19 when I met the man who is now my husband. He is the only person I have ever met who can turn off the white noise in my head, It was only when I met him that I realised that the tension and pain that I carried in my back and my shoulders wasn't supposed to be there because he was the first person I ever felt really safe enough to relax with.

Our relationship trajectory has been complicated and we haven't been together for large chunks of the last twenty years, and we  have been off having relationships with other people for some of that time, but he was always there, always a calming influence when I needed it, always accepting me as I was. He was the first person who ever made me feel consciously that maybe caring about myself was ok. That maybe I was a person worth loving. But even still I haven't been very good at it over the years (Though I've definitely been getting much  better at it in the last two years, since I got my wheelchair.)

As I've been working stuff through recently I’ve been thinking a lot about Matthew  22:37- 40

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments

There just seems to be an expectation there that people will love themselves, it’s not even formulated as a commandment but a comparison because it’s so expected, and I think the way its written means they will love themselves first before their neighbours, not that they will love themselves more but that it’s perfectly okay to meet ones own needs before those of your neighbour?

(I know he said neighbour and he kind of meant everybody but lets start on a small scale and work outwards),

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a perfect friend, I can be harsh, sharp, judgmental, demanding, needy, moody and all those things are things that need work. But I am also fiercely loyal, generous, protective, compassionate, encouraging, thoughtful, honest, so if this is how I love my friends why isn't this how I love me?

What If I actually did what Jesus expects of me and loved myself the way I love my friends? (While simultaneously working on being a better friend and neighbour)

I’m under no illusions that this will be easy, sometimes Gods concept of love has sharper edges than we are used to, sometimes loving myself will be about keeping warm, having long hot baths, curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a poetry book, all those things are good and I should let myself do more of them.  But it will sometimes be about learning the self discipline not to self sabotage, to do my trauma processing, to use my talents and aptitudes more often than I do, to feed myself properly every day rather than eating trash that I know is bad for me in someway, to talk back constantly to the voices in my head telling me I am worthless and useless and going to hell until they shut up and go away or at least soften. And then to forgive myself when I fail at all these things. And then start all over again

Just what if I did an experiment in that until Easter I wake up every morning and promised to try and love myself the way Jesus expects me to?

Queer Church!

I live in a small town and go to a small town church, it's the same church I went to before I walked away from Christianity the second time, and even when I wasn't going to that church I still supported it and kept my friendships with the people there. I love my church, I love the people and I know that enough of them love me. But it's very straight and gender normative, and I am usually the youngest person in the congregation by a very long way

Its pretty liberal, especially for the average age of the congregation and the small townness of it but I have still had people talk in front of me of how same sex relationships are depraved, and have  been judged on my lack of being a girlness. I am out as bisexual to some of my church friends and those people also seem to understand my genderqueerness. But I still have to weigh up in that space what I'm talking about, how I talk about my history, my volunteer work, my social activities, my friends, and I know if I say too much to the wrong person I will be really harshly judged

The church I grew up in had a total bug up its nose about same sex attraction. It was the WORSE THING EVER and made you not worthy to be a christian. My mother was even worse about it, she said I couldn't wear a red ribbon to school on world AIDs day because most people who got AIDs deserved it, and whenever there were lesbians on the television she always felt the need to say how disgusting she thought they were. (She also got incredibly angry with me once for being attracted to a very femme male singer  because "he looks like a girl!")

I knew I liked girls from when I was eleven and didn't talk about it, ever, to anybody, till I was seventeen, and I didn't tell Best Friend till I was twenty one because I was so afraid she wouldn't want to be my friend anymore.

I also got definite messages about acceptable levels of femininity, and it was definitely a  balance, if you were too feminine you were leading men into temptation, and if you weren't feminine enough you were rejecting your God given gender role.

So I carried a lot of shame for a long time about both liking women and failing at being one, and I have mostly worked that through now and am mostly surrounded by people who love me as is

But I've kind of felt since I came back to Christianity that there are some wounds around this that can only be healed in a space were everyone is 100% supportive and affirming of LGBT+ people, and that I need to explore my  faith with other LGBT+ people

I was pondering this and then one of my friends told me that a church in the nearest big town has a Sunday evening service that is run by and for LGBT+ people and people who are 100% ok with LGBT+ people being Christians, and having all the same rights as straight cis people.

I was a bit anxious I wouldn't be able to go as I don't drive and local public transport links don't really believe in Sundays, but it turns out there's a guy from even further away than me goes and can give me a lift.

So I went on Sunday, and I liked it a lot. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, without being weirdly overwhelming as some churches are sometimes. It was really relaxed, someone made me an awesome cup of coffee before the service, I wasn't the butchest woman in the room which I almost always am in church spaces, and anyway even if I had been nobody would have cared. A really big bonus that I hadn't thought about is also that most of the people there are much closer to my age than in my home church, I don't mind at all worshiping with people older than me but its also nice to be with people who know what it's like to be my age now. It was just really nice to be in a group where I knew none of the other Christians were judging me for my orientation and gender stuff.

We had prayers, and singing and interactive discussions in small groups, which was a bit awkward to begin with but isn't it always?

And this sounds like a really small thing, but I loved that they had contemporary worship music, I really like that kind of music but I never thought I'd get to sing it in a group again because mostly the kind of churches that use it tend to be the conservative kind that I don't feel comfortable in and that don't want people like me anyway. It was just the nicest thing to be able to worship with other people in that way.

                                                   

"Find me on my knees with my soul laid bare"

 

I live with sorrow, with sadness, with darkness, with emptiness,  and I have for a very long time. It's not that i'm never happy, sometimes I'm really happy, i'm incredibly lucky, my life is awesome, I have people in my life who love and support me, I have a house full of books and music, I can make beautiful things with my hands. I get a lot of enjoyment out of life but depression circles me always like a big dark bird waiting for the chance if I'm not vigilant, or I just get unlucky, to block out the sunlight.


When it hits sometimes I am langugeless, sometimes I feel like there is a thick pane of frosted glass between me and the things and people that matter to me.Time slows down so I feel like I'm moving through treacle. Sometimes it lasts minutes and sometimes it  lasts months. But I'm old enough now and have lived with it long enough to know that it will go away, eventually, it might come back, in fact it always does come back, but it also always, always goes away.


I have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping it at bay, do enough exercise, get enough sunlight, watch what I eat, use my lightbox, make sure I read and write enough poetry, get the right amount of sleep, keep my social life in the right exact balance so i'm not too sensory overloaded or too isolated. I have to be aware all the time of the slide, of the taste of metal in my mouth, of my limbs getting heavier, of my brain slowing down, I have to wake up everyday and do a depression check "where am I on the slide today and what can I do about it?"


When I first started getting depressed in my early teens,  my parents would tell me that I had nothing to be depressed about, that I just wasn't grateful enough for what i had, and that I wasn't really depressed I was just feeling sorry for myself, all of which pushed me further into sadness, into darkness, and the church I belonged to was very heavy on the idea that if you were really saved your life would be awesome and if you had enough faith god would heal everything, and if he didn't heal it that was your fault for not having enough faith. Both of these things made me feel incredibly guilty, and added to my feelings of worthlessnes and being a bad christian.

But there were times even then where I would break through all the sludge and lies and feel Gods comfort. And when I was sixteen I heard this song performed live (Like seriously I'm so cool, I remember Delirious? when they were Cutting Edge, and by "cool" I clearly mean "old")




And since then I have always, always, listened to this song, first on cassette, then on CD, and then on youtube, even all the years when me and God weren't on speaking terms I listened to it in the darkest points of my depression  because it always gave me a kind of comfort i can't even explain

I've learnt in the years between that depression is not feeling sorry for myself or not being grateful enough,  and I learnt that this is part of the me-ness of me, living with this has so profoundly shaped who I am and how I live that it can't be taken away even if that was an option. its not about having enough faith or not, that if God wants all of me, as I am, he has to take the depression as well

And I believe now, or I'm starting to believe now, that he will do that, that he will take my sadness, and not take it away, but support me with it, through it, even if I feel like he too is on the other side of that thick frosted glass, I am learning to trust that he, like the other people who love me are still there and still supporting me even when I can't feel it

Still Afraid

So Best Friend* told me that she thought I was strong and brave for writing this blog. I don't feel strong and brave, mostly I feel bruised and fragile and a bit lost and I've realize I'm really really scared, I'm avoiding prayer because what if I go to God and he doesn't like me?

What if all the bad things I learnt about myself and God while growing up are actually true? What if god is disgusted by me, what if he does think i'm a terrible, horrible, selfish, manipulative person?  what if he does think I just deserve to go straight to hell, that I am totally unlovable. What if I deserved all the screaming, and viciousness and rejection? What if he thinks what my father did to me is my fault because I'm a bad girl who tempted him? What if hes ashamed and angry with me   because I've done nothing with my life except survive it?

And I hate feeling like this, I just want to walk away from it. I thought I was done processing this particular bit of crap, but I'd never worked through the spiritual aspect of it before

It would be so easy to pack everything back up and pretend it isn't there, sew my rib cage back together pretend that me and God still aren't on speaking terms, pretend that I still don't want to be on speaking terms with God, pretend that all the  bruising that I didn't realize was still there isn't actually there.

But that wouldn't fix anything because you can't put stuff back in the box, once you get to a certain layer of trauma that needs processing you have to process it or you just get sick. And I really want a relationship with God, I want to have him in my life, I want to feel safe enough to pray to him, to talk to him about everything, to shape my life in a way he thinks is good for me


One of my most awesome friends who I discuss a lot of the deep stuff of my life with sent me a message the other day saying:

I've been thinking about your worry that you're not good enough for God. It strikes me that you've suffered neglect and violence and pain and hardship, much of which was at the hands of people who professed to love Him, and they drove you away from Him. Yet you came back to God of your own accord, lovingly, even though you were scared. From my (admittedly limited) understanding of Christianity, that's like... The fucking pinnacle of what constitutes good enough

And the other Christians in my life keep telling me it will be okay, that God isn't disgusted by me, that he does love me, but it's so hard to believe. And it's so easy to have my parents voices and all the things they told me going round and round my head without interrupting or challenging them. It's so easy to dwell on these messages and memories that make me feel worthless and not good enough for God, rather than other messages and even memories that make me realize maybe I am ok, maybe God does want a relationship with me. Maybe I need to concentrate on those rather than the negative stuff, or even talk back to the negative stuff telling it its wrong. And that's all going to take time and work, and it's going to take longer than I want it to.

But what if I went to him now anyway?  Even on the days I'm terrified. Isn't that what faith is?Trusting that it will be okay even if you are not really feeling it? Trusting that all the things God promised are real and true, trusting that God loves me in all the good ways people tell me he does.

 

*which is clearly not her actual name, but I need this blog to be somewhat anonymous, so people are going to get lables or nicknames

Devoting time to God:Prayer

So I was going to write a long thing on what I thought prayer was, what it's for, what we get out of it, what God gets out of it and so on and so forth but like I don't actually really know? And that's not really something I can work out or teach myself in an afternoon. So I'm going back to that thing we teach kids. That prayer "is talking to God" which to be honest seems to be both the simplest and most all encapsulating definition.

Now I have all the same problems with setting aside prayer time that I wrote about in the post about setting aside bible reading time but a thing I learnt in my journey in to paganism is that I do contemplative devotion better when i'm using my body in some way, when I have something to focus on, when I bring my whole self and not just my brain to the prayer.

And I probably will do some nerdy research on the point of prayer but for now I'm going to spend  the next couple of months exploring practical creative ways of praying. Probably I will write about that once a week or once a fortnight, about how its going, whether its working or not, and what I'm learning from it about both myself and God

Repentance: not what I thought it was

So, I thought repentance meant being aware of your sinfulness/worthlessness at all times, that ever feeling like you were good for or at anything, having any self worth or self confidence was a sin and meant you were not repenting properly

 One of the reasons I ditched Christianity was that I couldn't reconcile this with the fact I didn't start healing from a lot of my trauma till I started feeling like I was worth something, till I started feeling like I was a good person and wasn't worthless all the time. Having some sense of self worth, some sense of pride in myself (however shaky it may be sometimes) is a vital component in keeping me as mentally healthy and stable as possible, and I couldn’t reconcile that with a Christianity that said pride was a sin worthy of hell, and that thinking I was anything other than worthless made me a bad christian. (Like seriously, when I was a kid whenever i was pleased with anything Id done it would ensure screaming from my mother about how dare I be proud of anything, I had nothing to be proud of, whatever it was I had done was rubbish anyway, and feeling like that about myself meant I was going to hell)

But I was reading my Gospel chapter today and it was Matthew 3.(The one about John the baptist baptizing Jesus) And it starts

  In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

 I have an NRSV study bible with notes in it and the notes for verse 2 say  that in this context repent means “to change one's mind for the better” I looked around elsewhere and all the various interpretations of repentance, are about turning around, turning towards god, realigning oneself more fully with god. Maybe all the times the bible tells us to repent, maybe that is God saying “leave that behind, this is better”  not God saying “you are terrible and you need to remember that all the time or I won't forgive you”

There's a quote by Maya Angelou that is used a  lot  in secular social justice circles which is  “when you know better, do better”

 Maybe be that's the heart of repentance, learning and acknowledging that something you are doing is not good for you or not good for other people, and  trying to do things that are good for you and other people, turning away from the damaging things and towards the healing things


Maybe  repentance is coming to God and saying “Hey God I kind of failed at being a person there, how can I do it better next time?” and then honestly trying to do it better next time, not because if you don’t it means you will be eternally punished but because it will help you be the best person you can be and will help you be more fully aligned with God

Devoting Time to God: Scripture

The church I grew up in, and pretty much every church I've ever spent any time in always suggested that setting aside part of every day for bible reading and prayer would be good for your spiritual life. I think this is an excellent idea, how else do you get to know some one other than spending time with them? The only thing is I am amazingly, unfailingly, phenomenally, bad at it.

Secretly I think most people are somewhat bad at it, we live in a culture that increasingly values busyness signaling, and doesn't really value taking time out of your day for quite spiritual practice. But I think because I am an emotionally and cognitively chaotic person I am extra bad at it.  I'm really bad at building and sticking to new habits. I have the impulse control of a drunk puppy, I get bored and impatient with things that don't have immediate results or trade offs. I get distracted by other shiny things and ideas, I always have great ideas for doing stuff that lasts about three days and then I jump around onto the next great idea, which is like totally going to change my life! and make my brain work properly! and make me happy! and organised! and not crazy!

I also have an obsessive streak so I have a habit of wanting to know All The Things!!! Right Now!, which often just leads to burn out and tying myself in knots

In the last year and a half though I have grown up and calmed down a lot and have managed to make sustainable changes and build habits that make my life work better than it did before so I think I can bring what I've learned from them to my devotional life.

There's still a lot of confusion and anxiety and fear and grief and  stumbling about in the dark with God, but I think the only way to work through all this is to give it time and patience, and know I can't know or understand everything now, or even ever, that I wont be a bad christian if i don't ever have all the answers.

I still have this enormous fear of Not Being Good Enough for God and I don't really understand how to work through that yet except that its probably something I have to chip away at day by day and the only way to do it is to actually do it and it's something i have to work on on both spiritual and psychological levels

One of my other problems with daily devotional stuff is the unfailing naffness of so many devotional resources, I find a lot of them just twee and shallow and they make me roll my eyes in annoyance. But I think I might have found some that make sense to me and that don't annoy me. I will report back on that sometime in the future

In the mean time i am going to try and incorporate my devotional time into my morning schedule. Which is basically: getting up, feeding the dogs, having breakfast, doing my shoulder exercises (I'm supposed to do basic shoulder exercises every morning to strengthen and protect my rotator cuffs because of all the rolling I do in my wheelchair.) Then  the plan is to read one psalm and one chapter of the gospels every day. A psalm because entering the bible through poetry is a safe thing for me, a way of communicating I understand. And a gospel chapter because I want to look at from where I am now, what they really say, what Jesus really did, what he really said

Probably I wont do it every day, probably I will fail at doing it more days than i manage it but I'm going to try it till Easter, and if I miss a day, or two, or even more, I'm just going to pick it back up when I can and see if it changes anything, see what I learn about God, myself, scripture. If it gets to Easter and I don't feel I've got anything from it, well then I'll try something else.

Starting from here

For the longest time I thought the whole point of Christianity was for me to spend my life trying to be good as possible because then if I were lucky I might get into heaven. If God was in a good mood with me he might begrudgingly forgive me for being a terrible evil person and let me in, and that was only if I was lucky. Chances were he would take one look at me and send me to hell anyway, however hard I tried

I learnt this from

1)My adoptive parents who were crazy horrible people who didn't really want me and taught me I was a terrible worthless selfish person and that God was ashamed of me, that nobody really liked me, they just put up  with me and felt sorry for me and  that life was a series of checks and balances and if I didn't empty myself out completely then other people, and especially not God, wouldn't give me the basic things that I needed

2)The church I grew up in. There were some really good things about that church but it had very rigid  often seemingly arbitrary rules on how good Christians behaved, which I failed most of the time, from reading the wrong sort of books (I remember being taught that fantasy fiction was a gateway to demonic spirits)  to being a giant queer.

I think often the way we think  about Gods love is built around the shape of our parents love, or lack of, so not only were my parents telling me that I was a waste of space and not worthy of Gods love they were showing me this through their own actions

And then I grew up, in the most convoluted manner ever, and learnt things along the way about how my parents were wrong about pretty much everything, about how my queerness, the fact I look at and sometimes love other women, the fact that I fail at every aspect of femininity, were okay. I learnt about feminism, about secular social justice, about how my body is okay even though it doesn't work like it’s supposed to. I learnt there are good things about me, that I'm pretty smart and funny, that I’m  generous and loyal, that I write amazing poetry and make delicious soup. I learnt that it's okay to think and even say out loud “yeah actually, I’m a pretty okay person.”  I learnt eventually (and still hesitantly sometimes) that the people that love me really do love me and are not just hanging around because they feel sorry for me, or watching me like a hawk just waiting for me to mess up so they can judge me on how worthless I really am.

But I never really unpicked some of the negative stuff I learned about God. I just kind of put it in a box and taped it up and never looked at it, even when I went back to church I couldn't make it work for me because I hadn't processed all the stuff in the box, unlearned it. I just felt guilty all the time for not being good enough for God. There was still a part of me always thinking that it didn't matter what I did anyway because I was going to hell.

But recently some things clicked together in my head

The first being that actually I think the point of Christianity is not to tie yourself in knots trying to be good enough to get into heaven while knowing that you are actually worthless and useless, but the point of Christianity is to have a relationship with God (What does that mean? I’m still not really sure yet, I guess working that out is a lifelong process and that's partly what i'm doing here.)

The second being that God doesn't love me like my parents “loved” me with a judgmental, abusive, vicious, belittling, waiting for me to fail, kind of "love"  But that God loves me like my best friends parents love her and her sister, only more so, because best friends parents while being awesome are still imperfect humans.

These two realizations pretty much tilted the way I think about, well, everything, and that maybe it is okay to go back to God and say "I don't know what i'm doing, but hey, I'm here, i'm not perfect but i'm not terrible either, can we see where this goes?" So that's pretty much what I'm doing right now.