really, I’m fine.

In case ya’ll are worried or something after my “cryptic” (E.Z.’s word) posting, here’s the thing: I had a job interview the other day that I didn’t feel too great about. My current job does not know that I’m seeking employ elsewhere (So keep your traps shut! You never know who you’re talking to.) The situation is analagous to (Ev, pay attention) the feeling I get when I break a plate: it is as if every plate (glass, bowl, casserole) I have ever broken is breaking at the same time. It brings sharply into focus all reasons why the plate was broken, all preventative measures that should’ve been taken, all the whys and hows of it, all the deep personal flaws that brought me to this point, all the money that I’ve spent replacing dishes and glasses. It pours lime juice into paper cuts. It’s about the interview, but it’s also about the fact that I’m even here. Read on: it’s my e-mail response to E.Z. about the thing.

###

Yeah. Eh. I think I might’ve bombed. I was late for one thing…I called and stuff, because I messed up my route and then got lost, and was able to anticipate the fact that I was going to be late and let them know well ahead of time, but STILL. That’s yo INTERVIEW, GURRRL. You bet’ take a CAB. (This is my inner life coach. She is African-American, for some reason.)

Then the interview itself seemed sorta lackluster…like they were antsy, or not really focusing…I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…maybe it was because it was the last interview of the day, maybe they were tired, maybe they are shy and hate doing interviews, OR maybe they were mad that I was late and/or they knew in the first two minutes of talking to me that I was the wrong person for the job, and so they just had to go through the motions. I TOTALLY feel like I vibe with their way of doing things, being there made me ache for this job even more…[new realization: I also want everyone to be in love with me. Everyone. I mean, not really a new realization, but new as it pertains to this situation...]

Not just for this job, but for a change. For the next step…there is a new step in my life that is about to be born, and I’m just so fucking antsy for it to get going already. Something! It could be going abroad, but that’s going to take so long to get going…maybe I should focus more energy on that–God knows that’s going to be a shitload of work–and infusing myself into the writing community in Chicago while I’m here. Then just apply for jobs when I can, and then if I don’t find something new, maybe it won’t feel like my life is spinning its wheels so much. Ay, Eric, yo no se. I just know I need to move on SOMETHING. Step out on a limb a li’l bit. Step out on faith.

prayer

Okay, so the internet is a wild and wondrous place. I wrote this a couple days ago, and somehow accidentally navigated away from the page, and, with a little high-pitched animal sound, realized I had lost it. Looked around, tried to get it back, to no avail. Gone. Gone gone.

So, today, one minute ago, actually, I go to update my journal, and what should appear but the journal I wrote a couple days ago…but not in the form I left it. It was a feedback loop of my journal ten times or so, messed up as hell, as well as a first draft of the same journal (much longer and more clichéd and self-aggrandizing) long since deleted. Weird, dudes. So here it is.

###

I’m having a hard time even asking for what I need. I’m not even sure what I’m asking for, really. It takes so much time to wade through the guilts, like different-colored wires, to wind them up secure them with velcro tapes and sort them in their proper boxes. I’m having a hard time even asking.

I guess the main thing is that I feel trapped, which is the worst lie, and that I feel like I can never go anywhere else, and I’m starting to even feel that if I stay that my welcome and my ruse will quickly wear out.

I don’t know where to begin. I’m so tired of feeling bad for not being happy where I’m at. It’s a damn sinking ship, and I’m tired of hanging on.

I know what you’re doing. I just don’t know what it looks like, and I’m so scared, I can’t even tell you, and there’s one of those guilts again.

Okay, I’m going to try and ask, and I’m going to try and not feel bad while I do it, and I’m going to try and do it without crying:
will you help me? Will you help me build a life where I can write a little and do some community work a little and not feel so trapped? Will you bring me people to help me? Will you help me to be braver? Will you show me the path? Will you give me the strength to work, to write my best and work my best regardless, and to take my paths when I see them?

I think feel a little better now. Thanks.

###

talk

There’s a part of me that says I can’t complain. A part of me that tells me to be grateful for the past six months of such glorious poetry, such wonderful groups, such growing trust, and better staff than we’ve ever had. And I AM. But I can’t ignore the struggle I’m engaged in right now, the nitpicking and mistrust (which seems to get worse with time) I’m getting from my boss, the yuck. I don’t think that she sees it, but I know the rest of the staff is, the staff which assures me that I am indeed competent (“Is she on your case again? What is it this time?”). It’s classic founder syndrome, for those of you who’ve worked with people who’ve started their own companies or organizations. Sometimes there’s a stage where the organization needs to grow beyond the founder’s hands, which still want to be poked into every pie. That’s where we’re at, ladies and gentlemen. Poking and micromanaging, and it’s not a pretty sight, and it’s sucking the joie the vivre right outta me, like so much cherry pie filling.

So, I’m having a hard time, and I’m going to wrap this e-mail up as quickly as possible, so as not to take up more of your day and mine with any more shop talk than is necessary. I have a lot of thoughts going through my head. I have fierce love thoughts of my girls, and their stony little faces when I tell them that I’m leaving, and of course I have to leave SOMEday, but still…I have fearful jello nauseous thoughts of looking for another job, and those lists and lists of things that I don’t want to do, perils and bosses unknown. I have thoughts of applying for an MFA in Creative Writing in a year or two (simultaneous with thoughts of utter inadequacy), I have thoughts of going abroad with B… Oh Glorious. (Do you know that he wants to study abroad for a whole school year and be a bilingual teacher? A bilingual art teacher? And he wants to go to Mexico and learn about weaving? I just found this out myself.) I have thoughts of walking out of my office right now, without a word to anyone, and getting on any plane labeled Somewhere Else. But I think we both know. Yes.

And there’s a tiny core in me, about the size of a chopstick, a toothpick, smaller, smaller, that knows that I’m being moved toward some greater strength, some greater character, that I’m not simply tossed around at the whims of my boss and a free market economy. That I’m going somewhere. That I’m being moved and changed. That I’m being worked through, worked out. I know this and yet I go home and cry my bleeding eyes out, and have the same conversation over and over again. “Lord, I believe! Help me in my unbelief!” I am so that guy. This is the difference between, say, confidence and faith. Between feeling and faith.

Fragments

“Jesus calls us, planks and all, to do some great work.”

*

I already miss you. I already crave the place where we will never be parted. But it brings no comfort to us yet.

*

If you can’t speak it, can you write it? Paint it? Paint me? Can you draw it to me? Can you draw me to it? Please.
Please.

*

“I have to admit, this is my first intercultural worship experience. And I felt at home.”
“I know what you mean!You being here is like, before I was eating some really great chili, and I was like, man, this is some fucking great chili, but now you’re here, and it’s like someone put some cheese on the chili, and now I’m like, SHIT, I’m never eating chili without cheese again!”
“Well, I think you all were pretty cheesy before I got here.”

*

The teakettle whistled. Then the doorbell buzzed. Then the wind blew something over and it smashed. Each time you jumped up to take care of it. As the rest of us talked, I heard you sweeping up shards of glass in the bathroom, and I felt like you were sweeping up shards of me, toenails, snips and balls of hair, peels of skin, broken pieces of me turned to glass, and I thought, My goodness, is it always going to be like this? I wonder when he’s going to get tired of it?

*

Needing to take your own advice. Needing to hear the truth you speak to other people. Are you starting to see it yet? Are you starting to see the beauty growing in you, the beautiful you growing?
He is growing it.
It is being done. He said so; do you believe him?

A heaven worth while.

*

You say you can’t have me missing you.
Who would I be if I didn’t miss you?
Who would I be if I didn’t cry?

*

“Daddy, if I wasn’t me, who would I be?”
“Well, you’d be someone else.”

*

“If I could show you anything,
I would show you what you do for your friends.”

*

I went to bed and burrowed into you, and you folded over me, and I pushed deeper into your warm spice like I was looking for something, like I could hide myself in you, like the onion-layers of heaven.

familiar routes

Drove home to Detroit this weekend, separate from benjyman (he drove the truck, and I drove the car, so that we could leave the truck in Michigan with my dad to get sold, where trucks are better loved and not ticketed and taxed more for just existing). The sun dropped amazingly fast. I took my secret route, LSD past all the museums, down to 41, all the way down to Indiana before I got onto the 90. I know I just posted an entry asking for new music suggestions, but fall (fall, fotw, fall) is a time when I cycle through the few things I know by heart, and just let them go back to track 1. “Left and Leaving” by The Weakerthans. Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I just found this in-between spot in my voice, kind of an undiscovered vocal cord, where I can yell real high where I couldn’t before like Karen O in that one song, “Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick time you take IT!”

I listened to “Seven’s Travels” by Atmosphere because I thought it would wake me up, and when it didn’t–it never does–I called E instead, deciding that talking on the phone was slightly less dangerous than the risk of falling asleep on the road. And talking is the best way to keep me awake. He was at the LAN center killin’ Nazis, but laid down arms for a li’l bit to talk to me. Being on the road, I ended up talking about getting out of Dodge, about these weird flashes of fantasy I get sometimes of getting in the car, buying a ticket and vanishing, and how in certain moments that idea is so overpoweringly seductive. And how hard I find it to explain that it has nothing to do with wanting to leave B, you see. It’s an impulse that I get from time to time for a split second, and I can’t explain it. It’s just that sometimes a picture flashes in my mind of myself in a foreign marketplace, in some landscape, and that thought liberates and excites me so deeply, and my next thought (like the moment when a dream becomes a nightmare), is noticing that I am alone in that place.

E pointed out to me that the only time I’ve traveled abroad was when I was alone, when I was single. Now I have benjyman, now is the time to make a new picture, a new memory. And he’s right, and I do; I want to see everything, I want to do everything, and I want to do it with B. I have a hard time not feeling guilty for panicking sometimes, for the solitude I crave and call by other names. I felt a lot better. I laughed so much, I laughed so much.

I passed Kalamazoo and wondered if it would feel like it did. It did.

We hung up, and I started to get sleepy again almost immediately. I called C, and silently thanked God that I can talk to Memphis or Chicago or fucking whomever I want while I’m blazing down I-94 in the dark. Can’t wait until B has a phone. He was out at a show. We talked about the entry where I wrote about Jesus and someone like me talking on a back porch. He said he’d wanted to comment, but felt it would have trivialized the subject matter, something like, “I think it’s really cool that Jesus says, ‘dude.’” I told him that would have been the perfect comment, and that that interchange was the seed of the whole piece, and that I realized that I was trying to get at the humanity of Jesus, that Jesus got tired, Jesus got thirsty, Jesus needed time to himself. The part of him that crouched on the beach and cooked fish for his disciples (with nail-scars on his hands) who were pulling their boat up on the shore bewildered and frightened, who didn’t know what to expect after his death, and now here he was alive, and then they sat around the fire and ate together, and that was the first thing they did. The man who was also God, the expressed word of God, this eternal force, who had just been killed and resurrected from the dead, saw eating a meal together with his friends as a priority. This might be my favorite scene ever. If I could be present for any event, it might be this one.

I also told him that the voice and personality of Jesus in this poem was maybe 40% inspired by him, and conversations we’d had during his last visit. He responded, “I saw that, but I didn’t want to presume.”

There was pumpkin pie in the fridge when I got in. When B arrived, I put a bite of pie in his mouth and me in his arms. This man. This man.

Late at night

“God put us on this earth to look at his light, R, not at our own shadows.”

“Did you just think of that? Just now?”

“Ye-ep. I just pulled that one right out of my ass.”

Me and Jesus

Me and Jesus were sitting on my back porch the other night
until real late.
Ben had already gone to bed.
I told him that I would be in soon, but I wasn’t.

“Sometimes,” I told him,
“I just want to be free of this world.”
“I do. I do know.”
I put my forehead down on his knee.
He put his hand on the back of my neck
and held it there, firmly.
I cried a little bit
but I’d already cried so much that night
that my eyes just burned.

“I just get so tired sometimes,”
“Oh, baby,” I looked up, and was surprised,
his eyes were full and fixed on mine. “Oh, honey. I know you do.”

“I’m not suicidal,” I said.
He laughed silently.
“Peace.
Be still.”

“Do you really have to leave tomorrow?”
“‘Love makes no sense of space and time,’ remember.”
“Fuck. I love that song so fucking much…what’s the rest of that line…’Space and time will disappear’…I can’t wait until that happens.”

“I would go with you, you know.
I would leave with you now if you asked me to,” I told him.
“I know you would. We made that bargain long ago, remember?”
“What song is that from?”
“Les fucking Miserables, dude. Jean Veljean says it
before he turns himself in.
My point is that it’s already being done,
it’s already done, in a sense.
Rachel, I wish you could see it,
the way your thread weaves in and out of this life.
It’s so fucking majestic.
I can’t wait to show you.”

I shrugged and slumped against the railing,
looking out at the moon.
My eyes hooded,
a muscle in one beat with fatigue, like a heart.

He suddenly took my face in his hands, soft, but said with fierceness,
“Silly. Don’t you know how I need you here?
Don’t you know just a little
how indispensable you are?”

I found a new well of tears and tumbled into it.

I began to speak in a small voice that didn’t seem to come from my body,
“They don’t know…no…I don’t know…I’m not sure…”

“I know. I know.” he said, almost angry.
He let go of my face.
“And besides, you’re wrong.”
He looked at me and shook his head.
He wiped my face with his scarf.
I shuddered a little, although I didn’t really feel cold
and he pulled in me close with one thick arm, my ear into his chest.
hearing his hot blood, warming me. He smelled
like fall leaves and wood smoke.
I felt a little drunk again.

“It’s not going to happen, you know.”
My eyes shot up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,
you’re not going to fuck this up.
He’s not ever going to leave you.”
I sobbed out loud.
“And you’re not going to leave him either. You’re not going to drive him away
or any bullshit like that, so you need to just put that out of your mind.”

“Jesus?
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“Sh. None of that.”
“But-”
“We’ve been over this.
Peace,” he said.
“Peace.
Be still.”

“Jesus?”
“Hm.”
“I kind of want everyone to be in love with me.
That’s kind of nuts, isn’t it.”
He started nodding his head before I finished. “No dude.
I totally know what you mean.”

A whole lot of fish

“When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”

LUKE 5:4-11

Simon was a man who, days before, had seen Jesus speak in synagogues with a power and authority that was totally new. He’d watched Jesus heal crowds of people, including his own mother-in-law. He had watched Jesus throw out demons with a word. Miracles he’d seen. But this is the one that that overwhelmed him. A net overflowing with fish is the miracle that brought Simon to his knees. It’s hilarious! It makes me think of all the fishermen I’ve known, all the fish I’ve ever caught.

But it’s Simon’s response that really kills me. This is like your spouse giving you a gift that’s so rich and wonderful that you immediately divorce them out of pure shame. As I.B. said, he was afraid that Jesus was making a mistake. I remember feeling that way when I first fell in love with B, that such a man deserved someone so much stronger and more together than I was. Like, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you see how crazy I am? And he’d just look at me, and smile, “Rachel…”

Then E really nailed it. Not that I can do any justice to what he said, let alone remember it well enough to quote, but he said that Simon had an idea of who he was: a sinner, and his response was to tell Jesus that that’s who he is, he can’t be anyone else, he can’t change his path and live up to this gift he’s been given. He was afraid. He felt he could never deserve it (E, please comment with what you actually said. My paraphrase is not nearly as good.).

(Remember, this is Simon PETER. As in the apostle Peter, the rock of the church. The first Pope, if you go that way.)

At the end of our meeting I talked about the groups I had yesterday. I told them that when girls connect as strongly as this, I doubt just as much as when they don’t. I told them that I was afraid to face these girls again.

What the hell am I doing here? Holy fucking shit. Why do I have this job? Maybe someone else should have it. This is too much. I’ve opened them and I don’t know how to sew them back up. I have empty hands, I have nothing to offer. I’ve got a lot of chutzpah, white liberal guilty suburban that I am…

And I.B. said, “Kind of like catching a whole lot of fish?”

That’s it, right there. I’m so afraid of letting them down. I’m so afraid that I don’t deserve the trust they’ve given me.

No, it’s more than that. I’m afraid that I will fail in my gifts. That God’s talking to the wrong girl.

I have such high hopes

for this meeting we’re having tonight. I see it as a refuge for people who love Jesus, or are at least interested in Jesus, but hate going to church, or are afraid to, or just can’t seem to wake up on time. So far, most of us fit that bill.

I also see this as a place to invite people that is less intimidating and more friendly than church, somewhere they don’t have to think about what they’re going to wear. Or bite their tongues. (Consider that your invitation, friends. I promise you we won’t baptise you in the bathtub or assume anything.)

I mean, I go to church. I shuffle in the door every month or so, although I always intend to make it more often. I’ve been out of town on weekends a lot (here come the excuses) and it’s just so BIG and ORGANIZED. It’s a great place, though. I actually really love it. The man who’s likely to be the new pastor is brilliant, absolutely a gift. His teaching cuts right to my heart. But there’s all this other stuff involved.

The other day, there was a Congregational Meeting to start deciding on a PROCESS to decide who the new head pastor would be, because the old head pastor is stepping down. I was standing outside with a group of AWESOME girls from this church, who are all painters and, oddly enough, about exactly my age, all of them. I said, “Aren’t you all going to the meeting?” They said, “Oh, no, we’re not members.” I laughed and said, “Me, neither! But I thought for sure you all were.” There’s a process for that too.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing ridiculous. You either go to a couple classes, or you attend the church for a while, and when you feel like being a member, you meet with a pastor. There’s some stuff you agree to; I can’t remember what it is.

This is boring me already.

—

The other night, I apologized to ER for calling him out about waffling about going to church the next day. I was actually mad at BJ, and it kinda spilled on ER a bit, so I called to apologize. He said, no need. He said he looks for that in a friend; someone who’s willing to call him out when needed.

—

My mom told me breathlessly on the phone, “Oh, I wish I could just be a fly on the wall at that meeting!” She thinks my friends are really cool, and she knows my difficulties with this kind of thing.

I see this meeting as a lot of things, when in reality, it’s nothing yet. It’s just an appointment. I-am-trying-not-to-get-my-hopes-up. Because I tried to do this in San Diego and it flopped. Like a big dead smelly fish. We had one meeting that was magical, where we prayed together and it was like music, and it was like Romans 8:26 happening in front of us (here are two different translations):

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”
-New Living translation

“…we do not know how to pray worthily as sons of God, but his Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words. And God who knows the heart’s secrets understands, of course, the Spirit’s intention as he prays for those who love God.”
-JB Philips translation

But then it just fizzled. I don’t think that’s going to happen this time, I really don’t, based on the people involved, and the ways that I’ve grown since then, and the rightness of this moment.

I used to have a really traditional, transactional way of looking at reading the Bible with a group of people. I used to think that there had to be a teacher, a wise man, a scholar. And how could I ever be that? I couldn’t, but I tried, and so I reckon I undermined the group in some ways. Now, my profession is to get groups of difficult people to talk about what they’ve read and relate it to their lives, and to sidestep the traditional relationship between adult:group of teenagers. It applies. Surprise, surprise.