My grandmother has the softest skin

We are visiting my grandmother. It's hot in her apartment, and crowded, with her, my godparents and my own family of five. There isn't much space between her furniture that once lived in her big country home and the walls of her subsidised rent apartment. Liam my seven year old, is cuddled up next to her, holding her hand and commenting on her softness.

It's true she has the softest skin of any grownup I've known, it rivals my own babies when they were brand new. I'm sitting beside her on the other side, just like my son, feeling her soft skin caress mine. This is the first visit I see she is getting really old. She is stunning and always has been, her amber brown eyes the same colour as my Raine's still sparkle, and her clothes fashionable for her age, but her walk is unsteady, we've only been here an hour and I can see the fatigue already setting in; she is too thin.

I love my grandmother with a blind passion. Perhaps it's because she is fiercely loyal and unbelievably strong. It's obvious she is from a different generation, she holds a quiet, almost regal determination and confidence that is rarely seen anymore. She has been through tragedies more than enough for several lifetimes. Her stories are the kind that are worth telling and worth hearing. Her stories are the kind that break your soul with one breath and heal it with the next. She radiates joy, she loves God and her faith. She has taught me much and only rarely did she need to use words. She is a wise woman.

I long to tell many of her stories. Her stories could fill a book.

Today I'm telling a rather simple story from this hot summer day. This day, when Liam was on her one side and I was on the other. When we were soaking her in, not knowing when we would see her next. And she was talking about God, because of course she was. A psalm was coming from her mouth, I wish I could remember which one. But it was a lament and she was speaking of comfort. She was speaking of how many laments there are in the psalms. Then she changed her topic and my life abruptly by saying 'But look at King David and all the terrible things he did. Yet God loved him. Sometimes I think Leah, all those terrible things people did are in the bible, not because God wanted them to but because God will stop at nothing to show us that he loves us even though we do terrible things.'

How could she know her granddaughter's faith was broken, waiting to be either discarded or made new? How could she know I needed to hear confirmation of a loving God and how parts of the bible were not confirming that for me? How could she know she had just given me a priceless gift, one that meant so much coming from her, who loves her traditional theology, yet harbored endless grace in her words. This is a woman whose soft skin reflects her callous free heart.

My grandmother, one of my spiritual matriarchs, she helped birthed newness in me through the gift of her wisdom that day.

Linking up with Sarah Bessey for a Syncroblog on Spiritual Midwives and Patron Saints (and I'm humbly adding my own title of Spiritual Matriarchs) for International Women's Day. And while I have many women in my life who deserve recognition this day, for just this year I am choosing to honour my grandmother and her small but fiercely loyal ways and how they have impacted. Perhaps because she is so traditional and does not call out to be noticed, but loves in the small, faithful ways. I'm celebrating the gift of seeing pure grace, strength and wisdom. All found in someone with the softest skin.

Privilege and Relationship

There has been much written about privilege on the internet this week if you read Christian blogs. As I understand it the triggering event was an emergent leader, Phyllis Tickle, making statements as a part of a closing remarks at a conference that were viewed by some as anti-feminist. (If you want to read a few blogs that stood out to me there are these by Julie Clawson, Suzannah Paul, Rachel Held Evans, and Kathy Escobar.) So here I am, as a Christian, a woman, reading about privilege and living as a part of the church.  I try to follow Jesus and sometimes even remember to pray that I don't suck at it, and am thankful these conversations are happening.

The discussion of privilege is one the church needs to have. We need to keep on having it. We shouldn't stop having it. We have come a way, but we still have a long way still to go in terms of equality. Not only for women, but for children, for the elderly, for single parents, for those who have mental illness, for people of different races and cultures, for people who live in different counties that we may never meet, for people of different economic standing than our own, for people of different sexual orientations, for people of different faiths, for people who have been abused, for people who have physical disabilities, for those I am overlooking including on this list due to my own privilege and bias. I still have a long way to go.

Oh glory would be the day when as a church that the church would be a consistent leader in recognizing our own privilege and working to end dehumanization in the world. Instead of the more common dragging our feet that we do treat people equally or even worse, arguing that we don't have to treat people equally. Glory would be the day that the church would instead be a leader in seeking forgiveness and reconciliation for the past and current wrongs. I pray that day comes.

Because as a Christian I follow a God who came to live with us. Who associated with everyone he wasn't supposed to associate with. Who taught women (unheard of), touched the untouchable (dangerous for personal and community health), redefined who one's neighbour is (politically destabilizing) and then told his followers to go out and love them too. Then he pushes further by saying anyone can love their friend, but if you know me and my grace I'm calling you to love not only your friend but your enemy too. He loved people in such a radical way that the privileged people who upheld the status quo in his culture wanted him killed. I pray these truths never grow stale.

Now theology is important because it frames how people live out their faith, it shapes how we do this thing Christians call the gospel. Jesus talked about theology, if you describe talking about theology as mostly telling stories. Personally, I don't have many theological answers these days besides love God and love my neighbour. But I do know this. Jesus is a God of presence, of relationship. He lived among us in part to show this, to show us that relationship matters. To show us that presence is a gift in and of itself. To show us that serving with thought and respect is mutually beneficial.

Jesus doesn't call us to these things for some way of earning anything, no everything he has given us is free, there is nothing there for us to earn. What I would love is for the church as a whole to see is that this calling us out into loving relationship with others is a part of the gift Jesus is holding out to us, ready to bless if we will only take it.

Jesus shows us that there is beauty waiting for us in going beyond our comfort zone and entering into relationship by loving others who have differences from ourselves, loving those who are marginalized, whose needs are different from our own, who perhaps are even our enemy. The kingdom is there, waiting for us to partake in and it is wide open with room for everyone. No cover charge. It is a place where forgiveness flows, hearts are opened and souls are healed.

Here's how I know: it's what I get from Jesus.

So I've started to follow him into relationships with people different from myself. (Of course it turns out - surprise! that we have similarities too.) Being in relationship makes it harder to hold on to my prejudices. It becomes harder to look past how a group of people you aren't a part of is marginalized, ignored, forgotten. It can illuminate how I am contributing to their dehumanization. It can lead to understanding that cannot be achieved through argument or debate.

Through relationship with people, my own sin is exposed and it's hard to avoid conviction. I have to lean into God for forgiveness and grace. I have to pray that I want to work with God to bring about the beauty of the all-encompassing kingdom, while living in the tension that I still often choose my own selfish desires. Although I wouldn't have guessed it to be so, this too is a gift.

So I imagine and hope and pray that one day we will not think if we are man or woman or anything else, but simply judge how we are treating others as a follower of Jesus. (It seems this is an area of slow growth for Christ's bride as Paul wrote something along these lines many, many years ago now.)

Imagine if this ragamuffin bunch of sinner/ saints who make up the church and love Jesus, imagine if we keep asking ourselves, do we really know people who are different from ourselves? Do we regularly go to a group where we are the minority and approach being a part of it with humility? Are we out there in relationship with the people the establishment says aren't worth bothering with? The people who it would be easy to avoid sharing life with? The people who we don't understand? Are we loving them like they are beloved by God? Are we choosing to partake in this gift of relationship?

What if we asked ourselves, do we know them well enough and have we listened long enough that we understand their perspective? Do we care enough that we would stand up for their issues, things that don't affect us but are important to them? Do we feel enough connection to use our resources to meet their needs?

Do we love enough that we would bend down and write a message that brings forth peace and forgiveness in the dirt if they were surrounded by an angry mob welding rocks? Do we love enough that we would carry their cross? Lay down our life? Not for our issues but for theirs?

(Because no, not me either, not that last part, or for very many people outside the walls of my own home, not all the way. It's hard for me yet to see that part as gift, not sacrifice, but my heart tells me it is, if I would be brave enough to face it.)

But Jesus did. He thinks humans are worth it. He is present and in relationship with us because that's how he loves. And somehow, by the grace of God, through the sacrifice of Jesus and by joining in the dance of the holy spirit, we can join in bringing a bit more of that wholeness down to earth. Let it be so.