I walked up to the horse farm and back listening to Martin Shaw’s I Set my Mind on the City. It was the first walk back after the bitter cold kept my walks short. And underneath his words quiet, the fields themselves quiet after the work of the big machines planting and harvesting, the work of cranes laying a new natural gas pipeline, the noise of gorgeous pickup trucks running back and forth, the men inside nodding as they pass. The Peterson’s house is quiet now too, with both Chuck and Donna gone on to the Lord. They knew to stop in and visit, a habit, that’s gone missing in the younger farmers.
Dr. Martin Shaw in his Sunday The House of Beasts and Vines has begun telling the Genesis stories in his own voice and imagination. The sentence that grabbed me in his retelling of the Cain and Abel story, I Set My Mind on the City was:
“It’s a creative act in a terrible kind of way, to kill someone. I say if you live or die, not just Maker. We slaughter parts of ourselves, suffocate or deny to extinction. And yet Maker still seeks us--” words to think on here. 1
What parts have we suffocated? Letting them breathe, can be a work of courage and intimacy with the Presence. The Psalms give voice to letting those parts breathe with heart cries that range from “Save me O God! For the waters have come up to my neck” to “More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause” to “Let their eyes be darkened so they cannot see” to “Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger over take them” to “I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving” all in one Psalm2.
Blessing someone, and those parts of ourselves we’ve denied, that often show up in the people who make us itch, is a sure way to healing. Maybe it’s why Jesus urged us to bless our enemies, because that blessing unhooks us from the attachment that hurt and anger brings.
It’s the things we hate in others, the gift from our enemies that points us back to ourselves. If I have a strong reaction, even to a political leader, if I see him or her as a fascist, an authoritarian, maybe I might want to look at how I am an authoritarian, how I want to take control of others’ lives.
The authoritarian in me has shown up as gossip—I’ve caught myself telling Bruce this is how she should live her life. When I was a young woman, I was free with voicing my perceptions until I realized that I was playing God. Back then we called it venting, blowing off the pressure that rises with difficult, human relationships. As a young woman I vented often, not necessarily with people who kept my confidence. I knew my stories flew through them to others, but I felt I was going to burn up if I didn’t talk. I was grateful for the listening. It took years but I quieted. My life quieted. And my gossip partners wandered away. I found it was better for Bruce and I, not to talk about him except to God, and God has gotten an earful at times.
My priest friend hesitated to tell me a story about a person who hurt him. He pressed his finger on his lips and crossed them. That cross marking his lips has cautioned me to hold still when I offer judgements about others, even to Bruce.
What parts have I suffocated?
The part that blurts out how I see the truth. The part that sets boundaries, that feels, “You know I don’t want to talk with you now” but my desire to serve, to be available overrides how I might be tapped out or feeling used or just don’t want to hear it.
What parts have I suffocated? The part that speaks like a prophet, the truth people don’t want to hear. The part that simply stands up for herself.
For several years I worked on making peace with the lion in me—the lioness carrying her kitten, fierce in protecting the weak, the roaring lion, with a flowing mane, regal with authority. How do I let the mother in me, carry her little ones? How do I claim the authority we have sitting hidden at the right hand of God, and still be humble?
The woman with tusks for teeth, a dog’s snout, ears like a bear and braided eyebrows, bristles down her back and tall, the strange woman, Cundrie, a woman of the forest, of the outskirts, rode into the Arthurian feast and told Parzival he failed to heal the wounded Fisher King, she’s the one I identify with—out of all the characters in Shaw’s retelling of the Parzival story, she’s the one, a fierce woman riding in on a warhorse, a woolen cloak thrown over her head. She hurls words at Parzival, the young knight who visited the Grail castle.
And you. You who were in the presence of the angler and you failed to free him from his sighs! He carried his grief on clear display and still your heart remained closed. You feathered hook. Viper’s tongue. He even presented you with a sword you had not earned. Did a word escape those glorious lips of yours? Nothing. You saw the Grail, the bleeding lance, mystery on mystery and still you kept silent?3
Youthful Parzival had been told not to ask so many questions, so when he sat down to the feast, in the Fisher King’s castle, he remained silent. He was in the presence of the Holy Grail, an object that sparked many knights’ quests. He did not ask the simple question: “What ails you?” Seems like these days, we’ve stopped asking the simple question: “How are you?” And if it is asked, it can be too painful to answer. Often a person has no room to hear or hold the answer. It’s easier to talk about the weather.
Or maybe I’m closer to the grief woman who first confronts Parzival after he has returned from the Grail castle. Shaw characterizes Siqune, a woman who grieved her dead husband until his flesh rotted off his bones:
To have accord with Sigune is to make peace with the part of ourselves that is in grief, is private, is ugly to the cosmetic world…We are all grieving something, somewhere, the clearer the passageway to the linden tree, the more distinct the messages. She prefers the terrible truth to the beautiful lie, her steel gaze peering through the platitudes of societies optimisms, cradling the head of her dead lover. Women like Sigune have something stripped and clear within them, truth-tellers.4
It’s a terror to speak truth. This week I dreamed that I was speaking to an audience. I did not hold onto my words because I wanted to go back to sleep, though I think they had to do with sexuality I woke to electric shocks in my feet as if someone slammed them with a cattle prod. It took minutes for my feet to settle.5
How does a person speak truth without playing God? How does a person have the wisdom to speak it, especially with regards to someone else’s life, something you see clear as day, that might help. But I know, I know, I know how painful it is for someone to tell me who I am without my telling them. It’s no fun to hear about blind spots. Boyfriends did this to me, and it felt more like a dominance trick, than insight. I’ve had several encounters with charismatic Christians who weren’t afraid to lay their “prophesies” on me. They were ugly images that offered no footing to walk out. They did not know me. And when I have blurted my perceptions, I’ve paid a price. The person was done. See why the terror?
My answer has been to take those insights to prayer. I tell God what I see, knowing he will sift my words, knowing that underneath the Spirit is groaning, calling us to become like Him. He’ll shape the prayer into what can be heard and answered.
Three times I invited Martin Shaw to visit our raggedy mini-farm during his three-day visit to Chicago as part of his author tour for Liturgies of the Wild. I know from experience how exhausting and disorienting author tours can be, from my own experiences of being on the road with Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their son Frank. I know the quiet that has been laid down on our road and the fields surrounding us. I know the implacable horizon as the sun rises and sets. And my husband Bruce, even with tired eyes, is a master craftsman and so emptied I swear he is a saint.
I imagined what other woman who read those invitations wondered, “Who does she think she is?” I wondered it myself, but something new has birthed in me, the sense that I am as much gift as Shaw is to me, the sense that maybe just maybe I’m being called to being a spiritual mama. Aren’t we all, when we’re called to go and make disciples?
I did not clean or declutter my house except for the standard vacuuming to pick up flakes of hay and shavings. I did not think he’d drive out of Chicago, but I had fun imagining what it must have felt like to be Zaccheaus, who climbed in the Sycamore tree to see Jesus.
Remember the song? “Zaccheaus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he?” He was an outsider, a tax collector, who charged more than the people owed. And like us, they didn’t have extra to give a neighbor who betrayed them. I imagined he might have been mocked for being small. And the Lord saw him, said, “Get down, I’m coming to your house today.” Zaccheaus climbed down and made a feast. He promised to pay back manifold what he stole from people. I bet that change came the minute Jesus looked up at him, said I’m coming over. Jesus said, “Today, salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraha. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”6
Shaw has done that for me, sending The Red Bead Woman book, nodding to my writing, calling me friend. If he’d come to the farm I would have brushed Mrs. Horse’s coat so it blew hair up his nose and caught in his beard. And I would have said see the linden tree, that you said is a powerful presence because it marks change, and shelters our house, a tree that was smuggled here from Berlin as a slip in a woman’s boot. I’d show him the oak, the landmark that I look to, day and night when I walk out. Shaw’s encouraging my writing work has been like an oak that farmers used to aim toward to set their plow lines straight.
References
1 I Set My Mind on the City. Feb 1.
2 Psalm 69: 1, 4, 23,24, 30
3 Snowy Tower. 140
4 Ibid, 122
5 My speaking dream, ending in the terror of electric shocks to my feet makes a kind of sense because the essay collection I’m working on stands up to cultural narratives. A most vulnerable piece about sexual identity was almost published and I trembled because of what it might cost. A writing teacher once said, “Just because you write it doesn’t mean you need to publish it. (I need an editor to stand by, hold the ropes so to speak, and call forth what is there. I wonder if there is an audience for this book, but feel compelled, despite the resistance to work on it.
6 Luke 19: 9
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