Bucket List
A friend explained to me yesterday why she, a born-and-bred Catholic, is faithfully attending adult education classes at her UCC church, asking hard questions, giving the pastor blunt answers, and otherwise being a rabble-rouser. “I want to know what I believe before I die,” she said. “I don’t want simply to fall back on what I was taught.” My in-laws call the list of things they want to do before they die their “bucket list.” I admire anyone who thinks through what might bring their life fulfillment and then sets out to achieve those things before they “kick the bucket.” I like the intention of a bucket list, how death helps us put life in perspective and encourages us to manifest dreams, live our values, and seek out significance. The majority of people who hire me as a writing coach give some version of this explanation: “I’m not a writer,…
Changing Church
Ages ago, when I was in the messy middle of coming out bisexual (I felt raw and unformed because I was not the person others had thought me to be; I railed against God for making this world such a difficult place to be honest in) I read a passage my spiritual director Cil Braun had written in a newsletter: “God is not static. God is in constant creation, constantly being created. We are not static, either. We are in constant creation.” Yes, I thought; I am being created. At the time it felt wretched. Looking back I know coming out was gloriously, divinely formative. “Discomfort is the nerve ending of growth,” Jonathan Rowe writes. Kids know this viscerally when growing pains wrench their legs; they know it emotionally when cascading new experiences—getting dressed themselves, suddenly drawing figures—send them scurrying back to babyhood. Sometimes Gwyn crawls into my lap and…
Holy Memory
Five hours into our week-long family vacation, Gwyn said, “I want to go home!” This wasn’t a new refrain. When she’s excessively tired or hungry, she sometimes says it when we’re at home, bustling around the kitchen or getting ready for bed. Emily and I have speculated that “home” is a pre-birth memory for Gwyn, and today received confirmation. “Let’s play I’m home in Nanny’s womb,” Gwyn said to Emily this morning as she crawled under the covers. In short order she was born once more. Nanny is Gwyn’s biological mother. That Gwyn remembers her womb so viscerally, so fondly, feels miraculous. At firs Annie didn’t want a baby inside her although she came to care for it responsibly and with love beyond her years. Perhaps, though, it wasn’t Annie so much as God who made a home for Gwyn before this one, wrapping her in warm water and sending…