Jesus Wouldn't Sing These Songs Either

     There's a downside to taking piano lessons. At least there is if you're a Church Girl. Once anyone knows you can play the keys with any sort of accuracy in notes and rhythm, you're drafted, dragged up onto stage and plopped in front of a keyboard which you silently and worshipfully pray will contain at least 62 working notes. If you're an introvert, you spend the pre-songtime moments bowing your head and attempting to look like you’re deep in prayer for the missionaries to Outer Patagonia. This technique is also known as Avoiding Eye Contact At All Costs. Maybe this week you won't have to be up in front of the world playing shouted-out requests like some sort of Piano Man. Although a tip jar would have been a nice touch.

     Since this technique rarely works, I've been playing for choirs and worship groups and youth groups and any sort of church group since I turned 11. Back then, I had well-rehearsed hymns with pre-determined grand flourishes and embellishments and YOU HAD BETTER WAIT UNTIL I FINISH THOSE BECAUSE THIS IS HOW WE ARE SINGING THEM, PRAISE JESUS. I was delightful. I've played "Come, Now Is The Time To Worship" so many times that I have a physical reaction to it, and not one of any pleasant variety. I've played in rock-style bands or in uber-conservative churches. I've played alongside electric guitars and next to people who were sure that electric guitars were Satan's tools for evil. I can’t lie. An electric guitar player is a pretty attractive thing. Not that I’ve noticed, since I’ve been busy praying for the Outer Patagonians. Along my worship music sojourns, I have had moments where God's presence felt thick and real and hovered over the crowd like a tangible cloud. I've been moved to tears, as music can do to a person. But I've also cringed with embarrassment. Not because I missed a note or three (and there have been plenty of those, bless my piano teacher's noticing heart), but because I could not relate to the lyrics, although church folks call them “stanzas.” Everybody knows that “lyrics” mean love songs, and love songs mean that at any moment the teenagers in the congregation (never say audience..that implies people are watching you, you prideful sinner) might spontaneously combust into a cloud of lust and pre-marital handholding.

     I digress. Some of these lyrics (rebel that I am) made me squirm with the awkwardness of it all. For instance, one song described me leaning against Jesus’s chest and feeling his heartbeat. First of all, that doesn’t sound like anybody’s idea of a good time. I don’t even want to do that with my dog, and she’d let me if treats were involved.  Second of all, are we sure Jesus has a heartbeat? Because I’m no expert on the whole glorified body theology, but if he is all around us, that’s going to get all Tell-Tale Heart creepy and also if I had already asked him to come into my heart, this whole thing does not sound cardiologist-approved. Besides, we’re giving those aforementioned lust-drenched teens some very mixed messages.

     Another song we sing tells Jesus we want to touch him. Ummm…I have questions. Of course, I won’t ask them because I don’t want to be added to the Wednesday night prayer list. Or how about the myriad of worship tunes detailing being consumed by him and how we can’t get enough of him and how we should run away to our secret place? When the worship leader sings through all 56 repetitive choruses of these and then fills in the empty spaces with ooohs and moans, that, my friends, is why so many worshippers close their eyes during these songs. It has little to do with worship and mostly 112% to do with the fact that making eye contact with anyone else would cause uncontrollable, nervous guffawing. And as Tom Hanks famously said, there’s no laughing in worship time.

     Some folks say we could avoid all of this nonsense if we just went back to the good old hymnals. To them I say, if you believe that a group of fourth graders is going to overlook the fact that eight tenths of the hymns in that book are written by a woman named Fanny, then you are a person of greater faith than the rest of your snickering pew-mates. Also, hymns are not guiltless. Take the one about coming to the garden alone while the roses are all dewy. That sounds like the start of every stalker-murder mystery I’ve ever read, and those never end well for the garden-goers.

     The thing is, fellow Jesus people, we have to laugh at our absurdity. I’d like to honorably mention in this category the fact that worship pastors are wearing skinnier jeans than I am these days. Someone speak a word of truth to these guys and tell them that it’s not a look. Say it in love. Of course. With some skinny-jean scripture to back it up. But if we can’t muster up the courage to do that, at least we can poke a little fun at ourselves. And write some better songs, where Jesus is more of a savior and less of a sex symbol. I mean, that's what the electric guitar players are for.  In the meantime, I’ll be the one behind the keyboard with her eyes closed. Don’t you dare look at me.

Holding Hands

We ran down the cobblestoned road, my friend and I, music and footsteps falling in rhythm.

It mirrored a thousand other jogs, a thousand other mornings, a thousand other songs played on the loop like a spinning, worn tire.

Until the rusty pickup truck rushed past, and the hand reached out and smacked me hard. Shockingly hard. My steps stopped, and the musical drumbeats were replaced by the harsh cacophony of men’s laughter. My heartbeat began to thump its alarm in my chest , as the stinging began across my backside, a one-two rhythm of a hurt and a handprint where it had no right to be.

Adrenaline turned into anger and then, as another hand, this time the touch of my friend, reached out in gentle comfort, anger turned into a sob.

I am not the first or the last or the millionth woman to be grabbed and groped, hurt and handled.

I am not the first woman to close a car door knowing that the person watching her leave was not safe.

I am not the first woman whose clothes have been ripped off by a man’s eyes.

I am not the first woman who felt sickening bile rise up like a tide when a man overstepped the bounds of what should have been friendly conversation and used her for a high, a hit, a buzz.

I am not the first woman who has had to hold her daughter’s small hand or her son’s still baby-fat-dimpled fingers and warn of dangers, all the while wishing that she could wrap them in their innocence like a protective, warm cloud.

I am not the first woman who wondered why wanting to look beautiful meant, in others’ estimations, her body held no more boundaries, that a sexy date-night dress turned her into meat hanging on a hook, waiting to be evaluated and assessed and categorized.

I am not the first woman who steered her ship around the debris, always searching for the fog-hidden dock of at last finding something more, something safer, some lifeline of a hiding place.

But I am also not the first woman or man to say no. To stop the hypocrisy that is spread when our tongues curl around the words which proclaim that all are created equal, while our hands or our minds use and own without another’s consent. To stop laughing at the jokes that turn a human being into a drug for our own pleasure, to open our stuck-shut eyes to the truth that we sometimes bear the guilt of being users and sometimes the shame of being used.

If you have been among those of us who’ve lived too long in the land of allowing someone else’s stamp of acceptance to determine our value…

If you have been among those of us who’ve allowed another the power to decide whether we have been found wanting, whether or not we are too little or too much on the scales of worthiness…

If you have been among us who carry the scars of someone’s selfish acts…Today you and I can decide that there is a new “us” to be among.

We are not the first women or men, but we can be the last…the last generation to pretend we don’t see the deeply-rooted standards whose vines wrap deep around us, choking us, carving cracks in the rock-hard roads as they try to hold us back. We can be the last generation to pretend we can’t cut a new path. We can be the last generation to swallow the fable of The Way It’s Always Been.

We can be the last generation to say that these prejudices and injustices don’t exist: Just as other generations stood up, we stand up. And we hold hands to comfort.

And we hold hands to become human barriers.

And we push hard against other hands that would bruise and harm the innocent ones.

And our held hands become a chain, a new tie that binds us to each other and to freedom.

Stay Soft

It came to me in the car, during one of the 26 hours a day I spend taxiing myself or my people the approximate distance of From Here To Eastern Siberia And Back.

Twelve Times.

Squared.

It likely was fueled by a giant mocha that was predestined to spill all over my lap, but the revelation that made its way across my brain was this: I’ve spent the last 44 years waiting for life to just calm down. I’ve put valuable pursuits off while waiting until life settles. Until things stop breaking and people stop being jerks and appliances stop needing repairs and relationships stop needing so much time and attention. Until people stop hurting my feelings and money stops running out and to-dos stop buzzing around my head like pests. What I understand now is that life calming down is nothing more than the fantastic mythical unicorn: It doesn’t exist in the wild, or at least in these parts.

When I walk (or, more accurately, drive) through life waiting for easy things, waiting for an end to inconvenience or to downright hurtful moments, I begin a slow burn toward resentment. I begin to become bitter and angry toward the situations and people in my life who just aren’t making it simpler for me. I begin to be prickly and hard and rage-y, and doesn’t that just sound like the person you want to spill a mocha at Starbucks with? But I don’t like hanging out with that version of myself much either so I am learning to remind myself, over and over again, despite the hardness and toughness of life, to Stay Soft.

All around us, we feel the pressure and the pushing to be hard: to have a hard body, to draw a hard line, to conquer a hard challenge, to take a hard stance.

Stay soft.

Life will hand us challenge after challenge. We can try to protect ourselves, hide ourselves away. But hurt will find us.

Stay soft.

We must not let the painful things make us hard, because in that rigidness, we will fracture and crack and splinter.  And we will cause others to break against our unyieldingness.

Stay soft.

We can be the paradox: That softness is strong, that gentleness is greatness, that giving is gaining, that peacemaking is powerful.

Stay soft.

We can stop letting the fire of life’s agonizing pain burn us down to a hard lump of rock. Instead, we can let that hurt become a match, a light to the fire inside of us. The heartbreak and the injustice we have suffered can burn up and become fuel, not for more destruction but for the battle of fighting more injustice and for the comforting of heartbreak all around us. We can let our own fire become a torch with which we light the lamp of the next person, and the next, and the next.

Stay soft.

It means we will get pummeled again, you and I. But the armor of anger offers no protection anyway; it is more a bludgeon than a shield.

Stay soft.

In a world of cynicism and bitterness and rage, we can be Hope-bringers and Peacemakers and yes, Fighters, too. It won’t be by accident. It won’t be simple. It will only come as we walk into the dark cave of pain with others, sitting with them, learning from them. It will only come as we let ourselves wait in the hurt, not passively, letting hurt do its work of smoothing our rough parts away. But we can’t stay in the dark cave. We must always look for the light…the fire of our fellow torch-lighters, the faint glow of the sky outside, the light that will always lead us home.

Softly.