#MeToo

#MeToo was trending on social media the other day and I, like many other individuals, spent a lot of time sitting in front of a screen with a pounding heart and chilled fingers, periodically typing out the letters and then deleting them, writing paragraphs and then deleting them. I don't like to waste my words. It's nobody's business, really. It's not like I'm going to save anybody by speaking now or forever holding my peace.

Ok, fine. Me too. Of course me, too. What woman hasn't been harassed in some way - received an unwanted picture via text, been scared into walking on the other side of the street, been cat-called, had some rude comment hurled at her from behind the screen of an open window? Why, just a few weeks ago my daughter happened upon a drunken man chasing a head-covered woman and her daughters down the street, calling them whores and sluts. In broad daylight.

One of the unexpected perks of being almost 50 is the invisibility factor - sexual harassment virtually never happens to me any more. Now it happens to my daughters - my daughters get unsolicited messages from men named Fernando.

The first time I was assaulted, I knew for certain that I had been assaulted. It got a little blurry in the years after that, but that first time I was very sure. I was about six years old, playing hide-and-seek with some neighbourhood kids, hiding under a bush with a teenage boy and his girlfriend. He put his hand out, grabbed my crotch, and laughed. His girlfriend said something scolding. She's just a kid. I don't remember what I was wearing.

Not long after that, a mop-haired boy about my age tried unsuccessfully to paw me. My memory of him is 40 years old, but I can still conjure it - him walking up to the front door of his house, sobbing. His dad standing in the doorway, no shirt, cigarette in hand, asking his son, What's wrong? The boy pointing at me, scrunched up face like I'd stolen his toy, I just want to sleep with her! The dad shaking his head, his hand tousling the boys hair, him looking at me and laughing. I know, I know, he said sympathetically. One day.

In second grade kids played a game at recess, called 'kiss tag', in which the boys would chase a girl, pin her to the ground and one (or more) would kiss her. Once, when I was pinned to the ground screaming, a laughing boy named Graham came and tossed a rock in my mouth. That's right - I'm naming names.

By this point I was realizing that there was a sort of selection process at play - not just every girl got chased squealing around the playground. Maybe it was as primitive as just being one of the ones who ran. Being chosen didn't exactly connote status, but I was definitely getting the message that all of this center of attention/assault stuff was supposed to be flattering.

In sixth grade I came home from school with a giant chalkboard eraser mark across the backside of my jeans where a loud boy named Darryl had whacked me as I was taking a drink from the water fountain. I tried to kidsplain to my angry mother that it was a good thing - that he had just been playing, that he had been laughing when he smacked me, that a lot of boys did it, that it meant I was pretty.

In seventh grade, standing in line at the pencil sharpener, a beautiful, mole-faced boy named Jim took the freshly sharpened lead of his pencil and poked it hard into my nipple. I stood wincing back tears as he laughed and walked back to his desk.

Seriously, why always with the laughing? Always, always there was laughing.

Years later the young emergency room doctor who treated me, without any amusement at all in his eyes, consoled me with the words, It happens a lot.

It does happen a lot. It's barely worth the words to mention the time my friend's stepfather tried to get into the bathroom while I was using it, or the time a man stopped his car while I was waiting at the bus stop to ask me if I wanted a ride, or the time some men yelled 'Show us your tits!' while I was walking down the street after a concert, or the time a man called in the middle of the night to ask how big my c**t was, or the time a man on the subway threatened to make me sorry because I wouldn't tell him where I lived.

I haven't said anything at all about things that I have seen and heard happen to other children and women. Like that time my friend's mom was sitting across the kitchen table from her own friend, and they were smoking cigarettes and crying and talking about how the friend's husband had gotten drunk and had raped her so violently that she had lost her baby. These things happen.

So, sure. I'll say #MeToo. For whatever it's worth, me, too.

But know that the other side of my one #MeToo - on the other side of every single #MeToo - is an #EtTu,Brute. Maybe that actually matters more. If we honestly want to change things, maybe it really matters a whole lot more that we start calling out the brutes and betrayers among us, that we take them seriously, that we believe them when they tell us who they are and the things that they have done.

If nothing else, please stop laughing.

Nobody says #MeToo because of one man, or for one life-derailing sexual assault. I'm just an average white woman living in one of the most decent, egalitarian countries on Earth - for me, #MeToo is because of dozens of years, and dozens of smirking, grinning and chuckling boys and men who have casually humiliated me, embarrassed me, frightened me, wounded me, abused me, damaged me, and have all together participated in shaping my experience of the world. I'm sure they didn't mean anything by it.

Personally, I don't have a need to be believed. I don't need anybody else to validate my story. I am at complete peace with myself, with my life, with all that has gone before. There is scarcely a person alive who has not lived something that they deeply regret.

I hope you're somewhere prayin', prayin'

I hope your soul is changin', changin'

I hope you find your peace

Falling on your knees, prayin'.

- Kesha

Swabbing the Deck

One might not immediately recognize the correlation between floor maintenance and the practice of religion. Well, maybe one would, depending on where that one was raised. Some people might think floor maintenance and the pursuit of holiness were quite obviously naturally and closely related, but it's not always been obvious to me.

I once heard tell of a great woman-of-God who had two long strips of carpet running up the middle of her garage for the car tires to rest on, that were vacuumed as part of her morning liturgy. I never met her personally thankyoujesus but the man who relayed this story to me said that she lived by the old adage, cleanliness is next to godliness.

I asked him, Why spend your energy trying to be next to godly, when you could just spend it trying to be godly?

...crickets...

Dear Reader, as you have probably already guessed (or heard), I am a very terrible housekeeper. I compensate for this shortcoming by being really loving and warm and disarmingly charming, playing with words and thinking about stuff, and just generally tidying and scrubbing and organizing the corners of my mind. I also play a lot of Pet Rescue, which I think is kind of like helping the poor and needy – or at least it sure feels a lot that way. This is called being spiritually minded.

Not surprisingly, I'm also a bit of a wash in the religion department. I think maybe I have a form of Oppositional Defiance Disorder – like, I have ODD but I'm in defiance of it. If you tell me that I can't, then I will – but you, knowing that I have ODD, would expect me to be defiant and so now I won't be. However. I, knowing that you recognize that I have ODD, must certainly realize that you would expect me to be defiant and not defy you, and so clearly I can't not be defiant and therefore absolutely must do the thing you said I could not do. Also, that works in vice-versa.

I know, right?

I'm trying hard to get religion, but honestly, it's a lot of work – and there isn't much time left for wondering, which is one of my favourite things in the whole world. Just wandering and wondering, and wondering as I'm wandering...

So far, the thing that religion and floor care appear to have in common is that they are both very much about preventative maintenance. Footprints in the sand? So lovely. I know that Jesus carried you some but now, tell the truth – you know you walked a little bit of that by yourself, didn't you? Yes, you know you did. Please wipe the sand off on that mat over there by the door. No, the other mat. The outside mat. No, that's the “Welcome” mat – the other outside mat. Look, this isn't helpful. You realize, of course, that whole beach thing was just supposed to be a metaphor.

It's hard for me. Since I have started cleaning my floors religiously – besides realizing that I need some waaay bigger mats – I've really started to notice how other people around here play pretty fast and loose with the snow and the sandy footprints and the trails of icing sugar. So, rage is another thing. Like, if you've got any latent rage, religiously obsessing about your floors will really boil that stuff up to the surface. I think this is why silence is important if you are seeking the spiritual, and music is so, so important if you want to perform any exercises religiously.

I can be me and you can be you. Doo, doo, doowa choo, doowa choo doo. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doowa choo doo, doowa choo doo, doowa choo doo.

I printed off a new devotional booklet today entitled, The 2017 Declutter Calender. Yesterday's religious exercise involved self-flagellation in the form of decluttering under my bed – which just so happens to be one of the places I keep mementos from dead people I have loved. So, I was taking a little break from my meditations to do some important internetting about swabbing the deck, and this is what I discovered via Frosty_Seafire at reddit AskHistorians:

“In terms of the cultural impact of mopping on ships, I do not feel qualified to comment, however there were several practical reasons for regularly swabbing decks. During the Age of Sail and usage of Ships of the Line, loose powder on gun-decks was a significant fire hazard and danger. Therefore swabbing decks to keep them moist dampened any powder that fell to the floor and reduced the risk of fire. Loose powder would also need to be cleaned up after the guns were used. Regular cleaning of wooden decks slowed down decomposition and was also an import part of discipline, giving a sailor a task to achieve instead of succumbing to boredom or idleness.”

I think this is probably the truest value to be found in most religious exercises – sit, stand, sing, sit, sand, swab, rinse, repeat, rest – the slowing down of decomposition, the discipline that aims to avert our souls from boredom or idleness, the dampening of the residue left behind after we set all our guns blazing at once.

I don't know how you feel about it, but all things considered I think I'm off to a pretty good start, religiously speaking. I mean - just look at that floor. Is that shiny, or what?

Blue Genie

Speaking of scuffed soul floors, I'm just going to clean up some skid marks.

This will kind of probably offend you, but ohhh welllll. ~ Jenn Johnson

I feel ya, Jenn.

God is.... who you want Him to be. God is... heaven to the lonely. Show me... what you want Him to do. God is what I've got for yooooou...

Sing along if you know it.

Doctrine is rapidly going the way of all things – things like vows and decency, the love of the truth, grammar and spelling and sentence structure. These are guidelines, really. Does doctrine really matter any more? Does anything really matter any more? I mean, does anything really matter any more? Does anything really matter any more? What, if anything, matters any more? Any matter does more anything, really.

Huh?

What I'm saying is, isn't the Holy Spirit just whoever you say the Holy Spirit is? That's not in the Bible, but maybe it is, who knows? It's a mystery. If you Google “what is the holy spirit”, it's there. Also you could just take my word for it, because – revelation. I'm not saying I had a revelation. I'm just saying – revelation. You can go ahead and read what wikipedia says about the Holy Spirit, just don't cite it anywhere because wikipedia is not a reliable source. But pretty much everything else on Google is reliable. Also, you know what else is reliable? You are. What great truth does Google hold, that you don't already know somewhere deep within yourself? Like I said, this is all subjective anyway.

If you say the Holy Spirit is a genie in a bottle, well then, who am I to say otherwise? Everybody loves a genie. Who doesn't love a genie? You just rub them the right way, and BAM! Power from on high. Beeteedubs, you know who else is a genie in a bottle and likes to be rubbed the right way? Christina Aguilera. But I digress.

I hear that Holy Spirit genie likes to be rubbed on the Internets, 24/7, with magic chanting words like,

Go ahead God and do what you do, do what you do, do what you do. Go ahead God and do what you do, do what you do, do what you do. Open up the heavens and do what you do, do what you do, do what you do. Release the Kraken!

Oh sorry, wrong movie.

Come Holy Spirit where you can be you, where you can be you, where you can be you.

We release you, Holy Spirit.

You can be yourself here.

Beeeeee yourself.

Infinite power. Itty bitty living space.

I'm kinda probably offending you... Ohhh wellllll.

Honestly, at this point to argue for anything otherwise would be a bit like throwing a dictionary at an immigrant and yelling, learn the language! First of all, rudeness. But also, language, like doctrine, is built on so, so much more than words – it's 80's song references, and it's idioms and infinitives and punctuation.

How do I begin to explain all that is wrong with vain imaginings of the Holy Spirit as the genie from Aladdin? I. Can't. Even.

You said 'wrong'.

       Yes. I also punctuated in. The. Middle. Of a sentence.

Oh my gosh, you can't just tell someone that they're wrong.

       WRONG.

Donald Trump. Bringing wrong back since 2016.

Somebody put that on a t-shirt, that's a million dollars right there. Again, I digress.

This is 2017. You can't tell people what they should or should not believe.

The Purpose Driven Life is the best book I have ever read!

     Ok! I support your right to believe that!

The earth is flat!

     Flat is the new round! Love the shape you're on!

My Holy Spirit is a blue genie!

     My Holy Spirit is orange with fuzzy fur!

          I think I have the Holy Spirit in a box in my parents' basement!

Forget about repentance – it's all about reinventance! I just made that word up. It's a word now – you can use it. As in:

Hey, you know that really fantastic movie that everybody loved that was just great the way it was?

     Yes.

Let's reinventance it!

     Yes!

Save the gramma fer ur mamma. As in:

I heard you were sick yesterday.

     Nah bruh.I b sick erry day

Your grammar is atrocious.

     Ur grammar smells like elder berries

So what? What's it to you? What's it to you if my Holy Spirit is a silly blue genie and his skin matches my pants, and I'm going to hug him and squeeze him and tickle him and call him Silly, and he's going to give me a pony and tell me secrets and wash his robes in the blood of my enemies... oh, wait, did I say that part out loud? Don't you have some floors you should be washing?

Blasphemy and heresy are antiquated notions, you silly curmudgeon – you relic of the past – you, you, you judger. You know who else is silly? My blue Holy Spirit. He's sneaky and he's errywhere. Er.ry.where. And anyway, I'm swimming out of my depths if I pretend that I'm anything close to either a grammatician or a theologian. And it is 2017 – at least, on my calendar it is 2017. It can be whatevvvver        year      you     think    it is. But you can't start a sentence with the word but or and. Well, you can, as long as you know you're not supposed to. You have to know the rules before you can break them. That's called poetic licence, which is a literary term and should not ever be confused with licentiousness, which is a small matter of doctrine – and is not at all the same, at all, except for sometimes.

Whatevs.

Psalm 139

O Lord, Thou has searched me and known me,

Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up;

Thou dost understand my thoughts from afar,

Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down,

And art intimately acquainted with all my ways,

Even before there is a word on my tongue,

Behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all,

Thou has enclosed me behind and before,

And laid Thy hand upon me,

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

Where can I go from Thy Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Thy presence?

If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there;

If I make my bed in Sheol,

behold Thou art there.

If I take the wings of the dawn,

If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

Even there Thy hand will lead me,

And Thy right hand will lay hold of me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,

And the light around me will be night,”

Even the darkness is not dark to Thee,

And the night is as bright as the day.

Darkness and light are alike to Thee.

For Thou didst form my inward parts;

Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb.

I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made

Wonderful are Thy works,

And my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from Thee,

When I was made in secret,

And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.

Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance;

And in Thy book they were all written,

The days that were ordained for me,

When as yet there was not one of them.

How precious also are Thy thoughts to me, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.

When I awake, I am still with Thee.

O that Thou wouldst slay the wicked, O God;

Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed.

For they speak against Thee wickedly,

And Thine enemies take Thy name in vain.

Do I not hate those who hate Thee, O Lord?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against Thee?

I hate them with the utmost hatred;

They have become my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me and know my anxious thoughts;

And see if there be any hurtful way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way.

I feel ya, David.

If You're Going to Sit at the Feet of Jesus, It Helps to Have Clean Floors: The Year of Living Expectantly

My resolution this year is to wash my floors more often – my literal floors, not the metaphoric floors in my head where dust webs have woven walls and sectioned off rooms. I resolve to take more concern for the washing of my floors – not the spiritual floor boards where I spiritually walk in circles looking for missing metaphors like glasses, phone chargers and remote controls, where I shuffle allegorical baskets of laundry and chairs and half-filled coffee cups, and where I figuratively pick symbolically small pieces of Lego out of swept up piles of metaphoric dust and crumbs. This year I'm not polishing my precious thoughts or words, and I'm not waxing the scuffed soul-floors where I actually desire to sit and listen and ponder the words that Jesus has for me. I'm going to wash my literal floors – a lot. I'm going to wash them religiously.

If I thought I could manage it, I would resolve myself to other meaningful things, like washing and putting away my dishes every day, washing/folding/putting away laundry every day, always having fresh lemons in the house and water in the fridge, and drinking eight glasses of water every day, exercising to Jillian Michaels every day, writing every day, eating less chocolate and more kale every day. You know, normal things that other people do all the time. I can't commit to those things because life is short and I will fail and, as Anne Lamott says, I don't need that kind of negativity in my life. Ashes to ashes, dust we shall have with us always. Something like that.

Washing your floors is the housecleaning equivalent of hair-maintenance (which, while we're at it, I should also spend more time on). If your floors are a mess, it doesn't really matter what else you do to the place. Clean your floors, and miraculously everything else feels sweetly bidding of care.

I want to live in anticipation – that is the goal for this year. I want to live expectantly – ready for Jesus when he shows up with words of wisdom for me. It is the business of religion – this fixating on the external, this arduous, mundane process of securing undistracted devotion to God, this making ready to sit at His feet.

In 2017, I'm finding religion.