chocolate prayer

our Chocolate,
who art in boxes,
hallowed be your label.
Your melting come,
Your dipping be done;
on fondue as it is in Hershey.
Give us today our daily truffles,
and forgive us our calories,
as we forgive those who...
don't know the difference between white and dark.
Lead us not into cocoa butter
but deliver us from sugar free.
For yours is the syrup,
and the kisses
and the fudge forever.
Amen.

Pharisee easy

Hi, my name is Amber, and I wrestle with the idea I'm not really pro-gay enough to self-identify as a straight ally.

A while back, I wrote about maybe being an evangelical. Or that I was trying to be one, by my own definition. Recently, though, while talking about how societal expectations rubs against faith and how all of us crave some sort of ceremony in our lives, a friend pointed out the logical limits of my love, my graciousness towards others.

The first person who came out to be me as a friend was Taylor. Two years after high school graduation, back when no one talked about things like preference or being different, Taylor came out. He backed away from his friends for weeks before. It was hard, confusing time for all of us, fueled by fear, hormones and wrestling with who we, as this group of friends, were away from our parents and safe suburbs.

Taylor was impressively brave. He asked to attend church with me a bit before coming out; my only friend to ever do so. My youth pastor at the time sensed an otherness about Taylor, and told me I could only be friends with Taylor. Or with the youth group.

It made the choice easy. I left the church.

When Taylor needed a job not too long later, I told him about an opportunity where I was working. After that, every company I worked with, I researched their stance on human rights first. If Taylor and his boyfriend weren't treated like my partner and I would be, it wasn't a company worth my work ethic.

Taylor and I drifted, but remain FB friends. And somewhere between college and 30, Taylor stopped being the face of human rights for me.

Human rights issues broke into smaller pieces - gay marriage, women's rights, universal health care. And those pieces became ideas with little to any actual relevance to my intimates or me. Careers mattered, deadlines, mundane things like bills and car maintenance. My friends found partners, some mourned the loss of partners. Friends started having babies. Priorities shifted, and college, with its idealism and bright eyes, faded.

Issues with no direct relevance to my life became interesting dinner conversation, something to entertain with cocktails and not a lot more.

During a heated conversation with a friend recently, I actually made the statement: marriages happen in church.

And I didn't realize the words coming out of my mouth.

The silence after my statement deafened. I meant to say weddings happen in church, but that doesn't alter the truth I spoke. My friend, currently processing a divorce, responded with what we in the South call “righteous anger.”

And he had a point.

Because civil ceremonies fulfill some of the legal standards of a wedding, the assumption implied is they are the same; only the location of the ritual differs. And I bought that. I even argued the difference between marriages and civil ceremonies are an issue of faith, and for me, faith trumps everything else.

Except faith requires more. Being a person of faith requires following teaching – and not blindly. It means wrestling with fear – what I don’t want to be true – and pride – what I think should be true just because I think it should be so.

It’s that last one which pricks. I realized if I saw all gay and lesbian couples like Taylor and his partner, they would have the right to stand before God and community if they wished to, and express their commitment however they felt truest. It wouldn't be a discussion or debate. I’d’ve at already been at the wedding (if Taylor had any say).

Instead I saw gay marriage, the concept, wanted by gays and lesbians, a faceless group of people. I saw my faith tradition challenged by a group of outsiders, my fear painting an image of a world where faith had no relevance, and the church had no power.

I was no ally. I was a Pharisee.

And now, I wrestle with the idea I’m not as authentically invested in the agenda of the LGBT community to self-identify as a straight ally.

But I’ve acknowledged my fear. And my pride.

And that’s a good first step towards being a better friend to the stranger and the outsider. 

critical thinking and dragon scales

Flipping through the movie options recently, looking for something not Christmas, I found Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Sea serpents, wizards, and a painting run amok definitely rank as not Yuletide-y, so I watched, mesmerized as a ship of sea salty sailors and misfits rowed, sailed and fought their way to an island-sized heart of darkness.

Before they could get there, though, a selfish, fear-saturated, vitriol-spewing boy had to steal from a dragon. And become one. His name was Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and in one of the best introductions in literature, C.S. Lewis says, he almost deserved the name.

I do, I have, I will always hold Eustace in a special place. I loved him as a brat (and Dear Lord. Was he. Miley Cyrus could take lessons.) I loved him as he journaled his selcouth experiences through cynical, cowardly glasses. He was charming and perfectly logical to me when he talked to a seagull. I loved him on a boat, swatting a bad guy with an oar into the moat (by accident) and hoping he hadn't just knocked the British Consul into the drink.

I empathized with him as a dragon, breaking the mast of the ship with clumsy, powerful claws. 

But here's a secret: I couldn't understand why no one else liked Eustace.

He plays pivotal roles in two Narnian books (Treader and The Silver Chair), and is more than mere background in the grand finale/rebirth-of-all-things, The Last Battle. He speaks his mind, no matter what others think, and he knows how to react to keep himself safe in a battle (even if it is just to run away like something small and woodland).  Even later, being open and vulnerable, Edmund, his cousin tells him, "you were only an ass, but I was a traitor."

What did it matter when he changed or why? Why did it matter, given the story was written and it was all going to work out anyway, that he change at all?

Yeah. Looking back, even my own arrogance and apathy (which reads worse than ignorance and apathy) is, well, blinding.

If Eustace never changed as a character, he wouldn't have seen Aslan's country, made friends with Jill Pole, or been at the grand, epic, world-ending battle (which everyone knows is the entire point of any story).

His story, instead, would have wrapped with an unfinished boy rambling around the space of a dragon's body, claws lashing harshly; tears falling, drowning out the wisdom of a noble mouse offering comfort during his dark night of the soul.

He would have been background. Spending the word count he existed, looking through beauty to see flaw, things weighed, measured, and found wanting. Things would break around him, he would wonder why, not knowing how to fix them. And eventually, he'd convince himself it doesn't matter anyway.

Worse, maybe, after grace returned him back to a body which fit, he'd've clung to the ideas of a dragon. Blustering, blowing fiery criticism and spewing bitterness, he may have continued just as he had before, allowing arrogance to bind his ability to speak good into any situation.

Toying with this idea brought me back to reality - to songs about elves, ads for chocolate, and jingling bells on my dog's ruffled, furred red & green collar. And the hope a baby born to an unwed mother in a barn on the opposite side of the world thousands of years ago could save my soul.

Eustace and I are dragons of the same flight. Things like the P in psychology and the truth in theology bother us. We prefer the order of things, rather than the way of things. But such a structured existence disallows the power of wonder and whimsy. Such a life leads to winter, but never Christmas.

So although there's a certain, familiar protection in dragon skin, it must be scraped away. And in those scratches may be found glimmers of hope, of a far, greater country. And I want to meet Eustace there.

somewhere differently unexpected

i thought i'd be farther along
maybe on a different road
with more lights, fewer forks

i'd be a princess or
an astronaut
with kids and a prince charming
minding the horses and castle

life was supposed to be something else
you see, not something that
happened to me

but here i am again
caught between
vocation and avocation
and all the things inbetween

astride a restless horse or
gunning the engine of
a cranky old coupe

waiting for the light to
change
so i can pick a road
a street or highway
and end up

somewhere differently
unexpected