Dry Bones Dance

I've moved over to Typepad, so go here if you want to read the new and improved version of Dry Bones Dance, with a brand spanking new post for your reading entertainment. I got tired of my blog not looking very spiffy, and decided that my plan of learning HTML was about as likely as my delusion that I will ever finish a novel in Spanish. So, the new blog is still a bit of a work in progress, so feel free to give feedback. I will be tweaking it a bit as I have time, and I think it's possible to export my blogger archives to Typepad, although the instructions they gave me appear a bit confusing. If you have a comment about a post here, leave it at the new blog, as I won't be checking my comments section here. Hope to see you in my new home!

This quote annoyed me when I ran across it the other day on this post at Waving or Drowning. (I’ve met Mike and found him to be a lovely person, so this is not meant to imply that Mike annoys me.)
"Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces. God hath many sharp-cutting instruments, and rough files for the polishing of His jewels; and those He especially loves, and means to make the most resplendent, He hath oftenest His tools upon." --Archbishop Leighton

I don’t know this archbishop from anybody, but I don’t like explanations from up top that don’t actually explain anything at all. We can talk about how God wants us to have free will and the consequences of sin and how suffering brings us closer to God, but after we’ve stopped yammering, we still haven’t explained a thing. Granted, pain does bring some people closer to God, but do we really think that “extraordinary afflictions” are generally a sign of God’s special love? I recently had a conversation with one of my students who had watched a video on children in war that affected her deeply. To recap the documentary, war is a very bad thing and sometimes children suffer the most. One of the children in the video survived the genocide in Rwanda. She has long scars running down her scalp because she was left for dead after watching her entire family get hacked to death by men with machetes. You can tell her that God must especially love her if you like. I don’t think I have the nerve.

Grace is great, except it seems to visit some people more than others, and bad things do not bring everybody closer to God. Affliction turns some people bitter, and some into monsters who turn around and make other people suffer, so if the point of all the badness is to point us to God, it doesn’t seem like a very good system. Some people seem to walk around damaged forever. The easy explanation is to stop believing in God.

I can’t seem to manage that, so let’s look to the Bible for answers, shall we? Let’s take a look at Job, the Bible’s main treatise on suffering. Here is a godly man who lost everything, and then had his friends tell him that he must have been a very bad boy indeed, so he needed to repent so God would like him again. Job rejected that, and proceeded to ask God what the hell was going on.

This is the only answer he got: ”It’s not your fault. I am God and Creator. You are not.” That may not seem too comforting but consider the alternative answer: “Well, the devil and I, we had ourselves a little chit chat, and we both agreed that you’re a God-fearing type of guy. Satan thought a little pain would change your theological opinions, so I told him that he could mess with you. Guess what, buddy? You won that bet for me. Thanks for hanging tough.” I mean, think about it – God gave the devil permission to kill Job’s kids – all of them. Job’s wife has gotten some bad press over the years, but try to remember this – she went through everything Job did, minus the boils. If we’re being honest, I think most of us would have to admit that in the same situation, we’d look up to heaven and use every bad word we knew. It is stories like Job’s that make people decide that if God’s like that, they would just as soon reject the divine entirely. Granted, God gave Job some more kids and replaced his stuff, but God still comes off looking capricious and cruel.

I have gone round and round and upside down with trying to reconcile an all-powerful, good God and the terrible pain and suffering in the world. I still can’t figure it out, so I remain uncomfortable. I do know this: I believe in a God who came down, spread wide, and suffered in a “do unto yourself as has been done to others” scenario, a God who was resurrected and promises us that same resurrection and an unpredictable grace. I’ve seen too many people transformed to believe that God and grace and salvation do not exist. I’ve seen too many people get broken and stay broken to ever think I have an explanation.

Explanations are overrated anyway. I can’t even explain why I believe – not really. Lord knows there have been days when I have tried not to. I met up with an old friend of mine a while back who was in town. He had been my drinking buddy during a few months that I spent in England a few years back. It was a very dark period of my life and not a high point in his either, and we both teetered on the edge of unbelief in a pub in the evenings over Guinness and cider. The last time we caught up over coffee, he was working construction and studying philosophy. He asked me where I was spiritually. I told him, and then asked him the same question. He told me that he’d had a revelation while writing a paper for a class. He had read all the early Christian big boys and their arguments for the existence of God – ontological, cosmological, teleological and what have you. He read and explained and read and explained some more. When he finished his paper, he realized that he had been trying to convince himself that he still believed. It didn’t work.

There wasn’t anything I could say to convince him otherwise, and I didn’t even try. He felt the hole his loss of faith left, but wasn’t willing to pretend that he still believed in God when he didn’t. I’m fairly certain that I am not a better or smarter person than my friend, and I don’t know why we ended up where we did. Faced with a Kierkegaardian chasm, I leaped and he didn’t. Neither of us really knows why.

So if I can’t fully explain something as basic as why I believe in God, I don’t know why I would be delusional enough to think that I could come up with a Powerpoint presentation on the reasons for all the ways the world’s not fair. I think we try to explain everything so that we won’t have to feel uncomfortable. We want to write it down in such a way that we can leave it on the page and walk away. We want to tie it up in packages that will fit in the corner of the room in someone else’s house. Part of pain is the fact that there ARE no explanations, at least not any that matter all that much when we’re in the middle of it. Maybe we should spend less time and energy explaining pain and work on just staying in the room when it’s around. We might have to cry and feel inadequate. We might have to be speechless and overwhelmed and in over our heads and stay there anyway. If we’ll stop running away from all the ways the world hurts, we may find healing and miracles and grace. We won’t be able to explain that either.

(If you don’t like my take on the subject of pain, check out Jen’s. Of course, you might not like hers either.)

Normally, my comments section is just a little lovefest where no one disagrees with me, but Rick asked a great question and quoted Solzhenitsyn, so I decided to reward his willingness to question me in a thoughtful and reasonable manner by pasting his comments here and giving my reply.

You had some cogent things to say Christy, and I applaud the way you said them...

However... (and you had to know a however was coming)...

You seem to be disappointed in what Bush has done, or the way he has done them, or his inability to clarify, in your mind, whether or not he's made mistakes...Yes, yes, and yes.

I simply wonder what you would do differently. Great question – see below

I read Andre Seu today. Are you familiar with her? If not, I hope you'll acquaint yourself with her. Specifically her April 10th column in World magazine where she quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He being the gulag survivor who had one or two interesting things to say about Christianity. I'll post what he had to say about how to deal with terrorists (of any persuasion) in my next comment (soas to overcome your 1000 word limit):
The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure.... [Woe to national leaders'] self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.... When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights.... Who should now renounce [material well-being], why and for the sake of what should one risk one's precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one's nation must be defended in an as yet distant land? ... Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?" - I am familiar with Andrea Seu, although I’m not a regular reader of World (surprising, I know). I tried to look up her column online, but couldn’t find it, so I can’t comment on her thoughts on the matter, nor do I know the context of Solzhenitsyn’s quote, although he is certainly someone who has earned the right to speak on the subject. All that to say, tell me where to find that column, and I will be happy to read it.

I think, Christy, that Bush is exhibiting courage. And that the masses, at least those who might see your words and agree with them, are unaccustomed to seeing that attribute in our leaders, and so are put off by it. I thank God for Bush's courage, his leadership, despite that which you identify as his failings. - I agree with you that we are not accustomed to seeing courage in our leaders. I just question whether we are seeing it now. If you are worried that my eloquence might sway the nation to large scale anti-war protests, don't. Trust me - while I love my little blog, 40 to 60 hits a day does not exactly make me a cultural touchstone.

Now for your question, Rick. It is, after all, always easier to criticize someone else’s actions than it is to act ourselves. So, what would I do differently? I think there are two parts to that answer: what I think we should do now, and the broader question of our foreign policy and war on terrorism. In case you’re new here, here are the basics of how I see the world: I’m a political independent who skews heavily Green. I’m a pacifist, “seamless garment” type pro-lifer, with a strong respect for grassroots action and a community’s right to self-determination. I believe power corrupts, or at least gives corruption the space to move around, so I believe that it is our responsibility as citizens of a democratic society to hold the politically, economically, and religiously powerful accountable for their actions and policies. I’m an ecumenically-minded evangelical who believes that all of us are created in the image of God, and our policies and methods of governance should respect the dignity innate in all of us. Just to clarify, I was not being sarcastic when I said that I genuinely hope I am wrong about my opinion of Bush’s actions in Iraq. If I were to hope for more death and bloodshed just so I could gloat over the downfalls of a President who I don’t like very much, then I should hand in my pacifist credentials immediately.

So, in answer to part I, I don’t believe that we should immediately pull out of Iraq and bring all of our troops home. Given the current instability, lack of infrastructure, and presence of Islamic fundamentalist elements, an immediate pull-out is a recipe for chaos and/or an extremist Islamic state. We started this whole war thing, and now we’re stuck until Iraq is stabilized. I’m not happy about that, but we have to deal with the current reality. I am glad that Bush seems more open to U.N. involvement than he has been, and I think we should make every effort to place the reconstruction and security effort in the hands of the U.N. as soon as possible. This is not because the U.N. is a perfect agency. It is, however, the only entity available to take over. I think that would help defuse a little bit of anti-American sentiment, although by no means all of it. I would like to see Bush lay out a specific exit strategy – “When A,B, and C happens, then we’re out of here.” - rather than leaving it open-ended.

I would very much like Bush to admit that he was wrong about the whole weapons of mass destruction thing, and apologize. I think that admitting mistakes is a truer sign of courage and leadership than ignoring them. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Bush’s purported reason for going to war was the presence of weapons of mass destruction and the imminent threat those weapons posed to the U.S. He made statements that, knowingly or unknowingly, were not true. That was either incompetence or deceit. I don’t know which is worse.

As for our broader foreign policy, here’s my first suggestion: Stop talking about state-sponsored terrorism. Terrorists don’t need official government sanction to operate, and regime change as a way of stopping terrorism will be a very ineffective strategy. I don’t think Osama ran his plans by Saddam for approval. We will have to admit that we have to work together with other countries to find and arrest terrorist cells, and to cut off the money that funds them. (We should also stop training terrorists at the School of the Americas. I know it's been re-named - new letterhead, same thing.) I support arresting and convicting people who engage in terrorist acts, although I do not support the death penalty. I do think that there should be some sort of evidence first. It is tempting to think that the ends justify the means when it comes to stopping terrorists. I think we should bear in mind the following fact: Israel has highly trained and effective military and intelligence, and permits the use of torture when interrogating terrorist suspects, in addition to assassinating Hamas leaders. I don’t think that’s working out too well for anybody, Palestinian or Israeli.

Secondly, there is a certain lack of nuance in this particular administration’s foreign policy that concerns me. The whole idea of a pre-emptive war disturbs me deeply, and I think it is a policy with dangerous and potentially far-reaching unintended consequences. What if all countries adopted that policy? How would Bush react to another country waging a pre-emptive war? Bush appears to have little understanding of the reasons why other countries might resent us, of our missteps after the first Gulf War, or of just how deeply many Iraqis and others in the Middle East resent our presence there. He also appears to view America as some shining beacon of freedom and justice with the right to be the moral arbiter of the world. Don’t get me wrong – I love my country, and I deeply appreciate the freedom and privilege that I have as an American. However, given our history of slavery, genocide, racism, and sometimes destructive interference with other nations’ sovereignty, I would like to see us approach the rest of the globe with a little more humility. I would urge Mr. Bush to listen to a wider variety of voices than he has thus far.

Finally, I would like Bush to make the connection between economics and terrorism. Poverty is an excellent breeding ground for hopelessness and extremism, and I would like to see us devote more attention and money to examining the ways that we can reduce the number of people living in abject poverty. Obviously, individual nations have a responsibility to govern well and reduce corruption, but we cannot pretend that our actions as the most powerful country in the world do not have a profound effect.

So, there you have it – Christy’s plan for a better world. This brings us to our current domestic policies, but that’s another post…

Feeling a little down about the President and life and the state of things in general? Check out Sojourners Easter issue, full of nothing but good news. It might lift your spirits. Don't miss the Rose Marie Berger article about the stations of the resurrection - the flip side of the stations of the cross.

Dear Mr. President:

I listened to your press conference yesterday. You certainly stayed on message. Your answers did betray a definite lack of soul searching, but then, you were not elected for your qualities of introspection. You are not the most eloquent speaker in the world either, but public speaking isn’t everything. I learned this during my eight years in Chicago under Mayor Daley, a man prone both to redfaced spluttering and entertainingly incoherent outbursts. Those who bumped up against Mayor Daley soon discovered that bad sentence structure should not be confused with a lack of power or ability to get things done.

You appear to believe that you are doing the right thing. I’m choosing not to question your motives and assume that your “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” posture really stems from your wholehearted conviction that the war and subsequent occupation of Iraq is the only way to bring freedom and democracy to an area where those things have been in sadly short supply.

Let me first say this: I hope that you are right. I really really do. I would rather see a country where people do not live in fear and can express their opinions without fear of retaliation, where no one has to be afraid that they or their loved ones will be disappeared because someone said the wrong thing at the wrong time. So while I completely disagree with your methods of doing what you are doing, I hope that I am wrong. I would rather see a democratic, self-governing Iraq that respects human rights than the vindication of my political opinions, and I’m willing to celebrate a good end, if not the means.

I have some admiration for people like you who are willing to stay the course, even when things get difficult. Not governing by polls is a good policy, but I do hope that you remember that falling approval ratings are not at all the same thing as taking a bullet or watching someone die. I must confess to a certain lack of respect for people who supported the war and are now all up in arms because they just discovered that in a war people, like, die and stuff. Really, people, what did you think was going to happen when we went over there? Did you really think that our soldiers would be greeted with nothing but flowers and happy dances and that everyone everywhere would defuse their bombs and start auditioning for American Idol?

As for the 9/11 commission, I think that they will discover that the CIA and FBI were prone to inefficiency and territorial pissing contests rather than productive, open communication. I think they will also find that these failures in intelligence go way back and did not originate with your administration, although it is possible that you could have done more to reform these agencies. Still, it is highly unlikely that your administration could have prevented the attacks, anymore than Spain could have prevented the bombings in Madrid or Israel can intercept suicide bombers.

So you see, I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. I really am, but you said you couldn’t think of a mistake that you had made. Really? So where are those weapons of mass destruction then? Not to harp on the subject, but I don’t think you have fully realized that lying about the reasons for going to war is a very big deal, certainly a much bigger deal than having sex with an intern. (That was a colossally stupid thing to do, though. Bill, we knew that you were a philandering weasel, but how did you miss Sexual Harassment Training 101? Don’t have sex with subordinates – ever. You should have found a supermodel and avoided legal issues – they’ll date ugly rockstars, so I’m sure one of them would have hooked up with the leader of the world’s only superpower. You’d still be a weasel, but one who wouldn’t have to discuss his sex life in congressional hearings.)

Back to you, Mr. Bush - As for turning over control of Iraq to the Iraqis on June 30th like you said, are you aware that date is only about 10 weeks away? Given that we will probably be sending more troops to Iraq, that you were disappointed with the performance of some of the Iraqi troops, and that we will still be in the country for purposes of reconstruction and security, I have some reservations about how real that transfer of power will be. I think that many Iraqis share my reservations, given that when a reporter asked you how long we would be in Iraq you said, “As long as it takes.” That’s not much of an exit strategy, is it? While I’m glad that you are now at least giving lip service to increased international involvement, I think you overestimate the enthusiasm of NATO and the U.N. for your project. Spain is already on the brink of pulling their troops in June, and the Japanese aren’t feeling terribly happy about their contribution at the moment either. You’ve still got Tony Blair and Italy, but the rest of your Coalition of the Willing looks a little shaky.

As for the funding of this little endeavor, I really do hope that those oil fields produce as much as you said they would, and that every penny of that money goes for reconstruction and to the people of Iraq, rather than to Halliburton et al and Dick Cheney. Unfortunately, I trust Cheney about as far as I can throw him – and he’s a substantial man.

Maybe you have thoughtful answers for all these questions. How unfortunate that you didn’t give them yesterday.

I was going to write something about Bush's press conference today, but my head isn't organized enough for that today. Plus, it's been a while since I've posted anything amusing, so here are a list of recent search terms that led curious individuals to the world of Dry Bones Dance:
Drive-in intermission commercials - Have I ever mentioned drive-ins?
Be the horsie - Your guess is as good as mine
Cathedral made of skull and bones - That would make for a cheerful Sunday mass.
Agent Blue in Vietnam
Male chests tortured - I find this one a little bit disturbing
Bowling for Columbine evaluation
Breakdancing lessons on video - Trust me, I'm not a good source for new dance moves.
African butt wedgies clean pictures - I don't think my "Wedgies for Jesus" post was what this person was looking for.

All-righty then - I've unpacked now. I did my taxes and discovered that the tax cut doesn't do a whole lot for those of us who spent 3 months of 2003 unemployed and another 3 months working low-level temp jobs. I sent off a birthday present to the thunder munchkin who is four now and still unreasonably cute. Having gotten all that out of the way, I spent some time surfing the blogosphere for the first time in a week and a half and found that Hugo has been having quite a week. Check out this post on Heather's compromise, romantics and male responsibility. Feel free to scroll down and check out the previous posts and comments on body image among women and the growing trend of plastic surgery and reality TV shows.

It's very thought-provoking stuff, and I'm still mulling over the ideas it sparked in my head. If those ideas ever organize themselves, maybe I'll try to write them down.

Spring is Texas’ best season. Come summer, it will be so hot that the air shimmers and everything living is scorched brown, but in April, the grass and trees are green, and in between thunder storms, it is sunny and warm. Driving down I-35 between Waxahachie and Corsicana, the roadside is scattered with wildflowers and Baptist churches with a big blue open sky that goes on forever and a road where you can drive 95 and hardly notice. I always think that I’m glad to have left Oklahoma and Texas behind, but when I visit I remember how much I miss that sense of space, a few good friends, and cherry limeades from Braum’s.

This weekend I held an old friend’s two week old baby. We all talked about how tiny he was while she kept kissing him on the top of his head. She was only in labor for two hours, little Noah is already sleeping for six hours at a stretch sometimes, and her husband does the 3 am feeding, so she is blessed among women indeed. Yesterday, I sat out on a porch in the Texas country with one of my dearest friends and a woman I’ve always admired. We drank coffee and ate doughnuts from Shipley’s - where they open at 6 am and close when the doughnuts are gone - as I listened to tales of resurrection and holy Saturday from two women who know just how long that second day can be. An old dog named Roxanne listened too, and we sat out there until a storm blew in and dropped the temperature twenty degrees in an hour. Later, we watched a movie and listened to thunder, wind and the sound of the rain in the trees.

This morning I went to church, where I cried during the cheesy movie clips that were supposed to illustrate God’s relentless love for us, and struggled to stay awake during the sermon despite two cups of coffee. I think Easter is like that – it doesn’t always lend itself to explanation. It springs up like wildflowers by the highway and thunderstorms and newborn babies and those days when we realize that we’re not who we used to be after we’d given up hope of anything ever changing.

I went to hear a friend play at a coffee house while I was in Chicago. They played Mark Heard, who is one of the reasons that I still believe in God, and a song my friend wrote years ago soon after he got clean, a time when he could see the world again for the first time in years. All of a sudden, he could really see what was around him, instead of living the same drug-addled half hour over and over again. I think our resurrections look a little like that – the world looks new again with sights and sounds we’ve been missing for years.

So my Easter prayer is this: that we would be able to hear the resurrection stories in our own lives and all around us, that God would show up when we least expect it, and we would be able to see it when God does.

On the day of the dawning of the terminal rest
of our disappointed lives, we went to spread
perfume on what would soon be maggot food.

Instead we found a wrenched out rock and an
illuminated vision who told us not to look here for
the living, for what was once the sign of our surrender
is now a birthing room.

The words started off a rumor that there might be
more than dying, more than guilty garden sleeping
and religion's frigid cell, more than all the pain of
all our history and a future full of fear.

We were witness to the truth of this: a man
of average size standing on a crossbeam, who set off
something bigger than an earthquake and deeper
than our demons, wider than this bloodbath and
longer than the end of things.

We are holding just the shroud of
what we used to be.

Now the world is just a graveyard.

When they were wrapping round your winding sheet,
I wished that they would wrap me too.

I really thought that you would save me, but now
it doesn't matter if I'm stumbling round this
earth or six feet underground, the lights went out in
paradise, and I - I cannot find a hole that's deep and
dark enough to hide.

We are doomed to always hear the shrieking
of that last caterwauling cry from a corpse
now decomposing with a stench that will remind us

Holy Saturday is forever.

So I saw you come down small and squalling
and scream naked on a board and in
screaming-meemie kill-me pain say
Daddy please forgive them.
They don't know what they do.

I don't know myself. I only know that I am
my own Judas, standing in this field of blood,
and you looked at me and said
Friend, do what you have come for. I will do the same.

So starting from the drops of blood puddled on the ground,
shot up through the racked and gasping muscles of your body,
burst from out your back that no longer had its skin,
wrenched from in between your shoulder blades sprung from out their sockets,
there echoed out an utter howl of loneliness that
ripped the light right out of the sky and the
swallow right out of my throat,

because I am just a robber saying Sweet Jesus
don't you leave me, or if you do, don't you forget me.
Don't you know that I am spiked and hanging here on my
criminal conviction and I have nowhere else to go?

I only heard you cry that it was over, as you discovered
what it means to be forsaken.

I have no idea what's going on the world right now, and it's been lovely. I haven't read a newspaper, watched the news, or done any blog-surfing since I got to Chicago and both the world and the blogosphere seem to have been getting along quite nicely without me.

Being back in my beloved Chicago has reminded me that I love and miss my fabulous friends here and that I still hate the weather. (Chicago doesn't do spring - it goes straight from winter to summer sometime in May.) This place is as home for me as anywhere, and I've had moments of sadness that I don't live here anymore and that I'm no longer a daily part of my friends' lives - but I've eaten a lot and talked a lot and gone to my favorite places and watched The West Wing and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for the first time, so Darlene has been lulled into taking a nap this week.

I got to re-connect with several of my kids from my youth pastor days. Of course, these young women aren't exactly kids anymore, since they're in the 18 - 22 range, but I guess it's hard for me to grant adulthood status to women I've known since they were 13. One of them is now almost running the after-school program I used to run, and there was a certain amount of poetic justice in listening to her complain about parents' unrealistic expectations and immature junior highers. When I told her that now she understands my life so much better, she said "But I was never THAT bad,was I?" Hmmm....well, I do still remember the time that she cussed out another girl at the top of her lungs and then punched her in the face right in front of the visiting gentlemen who were representatives of the foundation that funded our program, leading to a brouhaha of mythic proportions that kids talked about for years, but I decided to just smile and nod. I'm just glad that she's become a lovely person that I can chat with over tacos and horchata.

Seeing how well some of my kids are doing helps me regain perspective. Two of my girls are in college - one of them on a full scholarship, thank you very much. One is a senior this year, made an A in biochemistry last semester and wants to be a doctor. One got married and is going to have her first child in a few months, which freaks me out a little bit and makes me feel old. One wants to go into the navy as soon as she gets her green card. Out of a group of 6 girls that I spent the most time with, all 6 graduated from high school, which I think is pretty good in a neighborhood with a 50% dropout rate. Most of them are radically different people than they were a few years ago and they have all been through some intensely painful stuff. I don't always know how God works, but seeing some grace and transformation in the midst of a difficult world reminds me that there might be hope for me. I'm trying to remember resurrection and Easter these days.

Anyway, I'm off to Dallas in about 20 minutes, so I will have to write more later.