Gay Pride and Individuation

OK, this blog was on a site I never got around to maintaining, but I don't want to forget what I've been thinking on it so I'm transfering it here. I've been thinking about the whole gay pride thing. My stepdaughter and I were talking the other day. She laughed at some point in the conversation and said if she took me downtown on gay pride day in my jeans, tank top and bandana that she'd have to fight them off with a stick. I thanked her for the complement but said the whole gay pride deal turned me off. She wanted to know why, and it took me a while to figure out my answer.

In the end I decided it was something akin to teenagers as they individuate. There is a point where teenagers begin to try and figure out who they are and what they stand for. In come the tatoos and piercings, the loud "music", confrontational t-shirts and conversations...all the things that turn off the adults around them. Someday they will have settled into who they are with confidence and will not need to display it out there in your face, but for the time being no one but another teenager can stand to be around them. I think the harder their life growing up the harder they push back. Also the harder childhood was the less they have an internal sense of who they are, thus they seek harder the external validation of the world, while at the same time raging against it in self-protection against rejection and judgement. But to communicate with the rest of society; to be heard; even to find their place, they one day need to stop pushing so hard.

I guess I see in the gay pride movement something akin to the individuating teenager coming out of a hard childhood. The hurts are many and deep, the fear of rejection and judgement great, the internal sense of validation less than needed and so the movement is obnoxiously out there in your face. Someday though I think it needs to step into maturity. That doesn't mean "fitting in and being like everyone else." It means not being obnoxious and angry.

And that maturity will only come with healing. And that healing lies in the love of God actually finally reaching out through the church rather than judgement, condemnation and rejection. Love is the only healer.

All scripture is God breathed

A verse from 2 Timothy has been on my mind this last week. A friend surprisingly made reference to the same verse in a recent email to me, and so I decided to post on what I've been thinking. I've begun to see the possibility of a different meaning to "all scripture is God breathed," beyond the interpretation that all scripture comes literally from the mouth of God as his words/breath.

God breathed into the clay. He breathed into the animals. That breath was spirit and life not literal words. It was truth. All scripture has truth, love, permeating it. I have never believed Gen 1-11 was literal. (part of my evolution/creationism journey...another story). It is beautiful and deep timeless poetry and story.

I think the greatest truths are held and passed down through story. It involves the creative right side of the brain. God is creation. Creation is love. I do not think it was by chance that Jesus taught truth in story. Story is not literal but it is timeless and it is truth. Reading the bible as a literal cookbook recipe robs much of the depth and passion..and breath..I believe God intended.

When we share our testimonies, we share them as stories and they are breathed by the Spirit as much as Paul's words were. I think Paul's words were exactly that...his words. His; but breathed by God. In my testimony some of my life and hurts color my delivery and my understanding at that moment, but it does not take away from the breath of the spirit blowing through the story that God is using to touch and awaken you. So to with the epistles of Paul, Peter, James, John... Only the parables of Christ were without "coloring" and were pure breath, because only Christ was one with his Father while still here on earth. Perhaps some, like the Pharisees who needed the external structure of the law and feared the "freedom" o fthe Spirit, need the external strucutre of the bible as literal because the alternative is uncomfortable.

Center of the Universe

I've made a few new friends lately. Each offers something uniquely themselves, and I'm finding all the discoveries to be exciting and very interesting. One friend and I were talking about our different unattractive qualities. This friend (perhaps in the vein of Dr. Seuss I will call them friend 1 and friend 2...except there are more than 2 and what if friend 2 feels bad that she isn't friend 1??? LOL) mentioned a need to be the center for someone. She needed to be that someone so very special that they are the only one in that particular category. My friend acknowledged that she will not feel fulfilled until she is that center for someone. I just at that moment had the realization that I have always had that need deep in my core. It has almost obsessively driven the nature of my friendships. I will "examine you" till I see the area where you need and will then jump through hoops to show you how I am that person. Then, perhaps you will never leave me. Yet ironically while I have recognized that unattractive quality, I have only just realized that I am exactly that. I am that center for two people, and yet it is not enough. I am not happy or at peace or satisfied. I cannot receive the water that is right there though I am dying of thirst. And I wonder why. I wonder that if I am ever whole as God intended will I realize that I took a cup of water that would have satisfied, and dumped it out in the sand?? God be with me. I need a drink.

Sad Smiles

I miss you today.

Best Friends

I’m lying here staring at the ceiling

Thoughts spinning, centering on you

And wondering what it is I’m feeling

Times before I’ve been alone

Content with myself and silence

Now you’re all my mind and I listen for the phone

My life is no longer a simple world

Of me—then everyone else

Now this craziness reeling inside has unfurled

A need to include just one more

This need is so foreign yet basic

Its sudden presence rocks the core

Of my carefully tended walls

Surrounding for so long feelings

To which a bleeding humanity calls

Cries for love and compassion

Hurled with anger and pain

Forced long ago the need to fashion

A barrier to hold at bay

The multitude of societies debts

I haven’t the strength to repay

Now you’ve come brandishing a key

And lying here within this room

There is no longer only me

This poem was written my freshman year in college for a guy I thought I had fallen in love with. It could just have easily described any of my "best friends." The intensity has often been as equally shattering to my equilibrium. And as equally shattering has been the nose dive those friendships have quickly taken. It's taken me over 35 years to realize that the crash and burn stemmed not so much from the course of the friendship, but from my definitions and expectations starting out.

I have a prayer journal that includes long walks and conversations with God. At times these “conversations have read more like “I want or I need” lists. On one walk, taken just after such a crash and burn and figuring that God was busy and had perhaps forgotten my needs, I helpfully (read frustrated and angry) reminded him, “Lucy had Ethel God. When do I get my best friend?” God knew what my spirit was really crying for even if my soul wasn’t listening, so being the parent that He is, He gave me what I thought I wanted. From that faithfulness on His part (why does faithfulness on His part sometimes feel more like “ouch” on my part?) I have been graced with a truer understanding of intimate friendship.

When as children we receive wounds to our spirit, we can become stuck in the developmental stage we were in. I was stuck for much of my life in the basic trust stage. Like an 18 month-old who thinks mom leaving the room means mom has disappeared, I thought a friend leaving my immediate contact meant my friendship had disappeared. This left me prone to wanting that friendship reassurance daily. I required a phone call, email or time to just hang out, even if in the guise of “doing something for God.” This constant contact then became my definition of a best friend.

I based my biblical justification for this constant “intimacy” (misreading intimacy as amount of contact and not open and honest vulnerability) on friendship models in the Bible. My main model was Jesus, and how He had His intimate circle of three. If Jesus had a group of intimate friends that were always with Him, I reasoned, then we should also have those few best friends. In going through the book, Demolishing Strongholds, with a friend to whom I am accountable in this season, God opened my eyes. The intimate three: Peter, James and John had a relationship with Christ, in which He was the head, or their best friend. We also are to be in intimate relationship with Christ our bridegroom and best friend, and He is to have headship in that relationship. Yet scripture does not teach us that Peter, James and John were in that kind of relationship with each other. The focus is on Christ as the center of the friendship, with the three forming a circle around that center. Undoubtedly, Peter, James and John were intimate friends, but it in no way mirrored or replaced their relationship with Christ (wherein an intimate relationship would become an inordinate relationship). It also did not stop them from going out, each on his own, as they were sent.

In another intimate relationship, Ruth tells Naomi that she will follow her and make her home and her God her own. But again, God used this intimate relationship for a season to bring Ruth into covenant relationship with Boaz, so that the line of David could be furthered. In not clinging to her relationship as it stood when they left Moab, Ruth was in right relationship, with God as the center between her and Naomi.

I wrote recently on desire and whether we will allow that God created need within us to remain open for Christ, or will we fill it with others. Will we seek that best friend here on earth? In seeking to OK my wrong relationships, I had wrongly interpreted some of the friendships God has modeled for us in scripture. For this I have had to repent, but I am deeply thankful of His promise, “And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you” (Phil 3:15b). If I remain teachable and accountable, then He can renew my mind, and He is faithful to do just that.

I now have a different understanding of friends. Jesus is my best friend. Not only are we in an intimate relationship, we are also in constant contact. I check everything with Him first. My husband is as close a best friend as one can have on earth. We are also in an intimate relationship, and we spend at least a portion of every day together. We check things with each other to come into agreement with God’s plan for ourselves and our family. But I also have a few intimate friends. I don’t do things with them constantly; sometimes we can even be apart for months or years. I don’t check everything with them; I don’t even constantly update them on every aspect of my life. What makes them intimate friends is that I trust them with those vulnerable places within me and within my life, while at the same time they trust me in return with their own vulnerabilities. I don’t need to share every deep and intimate thing with any particular one of them. It is simply that what I do share is both safe and reciprocated. Intimate friends are a blessing from God. They give a rich flavor and depth to our lives, but the meal itself is Christ.