Who Gives a Rip?

I'm sorry, but I do.

Individualism and independence poison the soul. At least, they poison mine. Or is it something other than individualism? I feel like there's something profoundly amiss in the way we modern Western people view ourselves in relation to others that prevents me from being who I am, and I hate it.

I think I am programmed, driven, created, whatever, to take care of people. I don't want to help; I need to help. I need to dive into suffering, sadness, sickness, loneliness, vacancy, thirst, and be there, being and doing what is needed. Don't get me wrong: I'm not the barefoot-and-pregnant type who lives to cook dinner. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I love, love, love to prepare a nourishing meal and share it with friends. But I'd like to think it's deeper, a spirit-hunger to make tea and to comfort, to nurse and to listen, to help with homework and bandage wounds, and to sit with someone in the quiet reverie of melancholy, being deeply present in a way that words would spoil. In this culture, I doubt very much that I will ever be sated.

Why is interdependence so foreign and noisome? Sometimes when I decide to be present, I'm called "cute" and "sweet" and "oh, so thoughtful." "Oh honey, don't worry. It's not your problem. I'm my family's responsibility; they'll be here for me. You go back to being happy and carefree now, buh-bye." But that's not it. It's not cute or sweet or thoughtful. I'm not happy and carefree. I don't want a head-pat and a thank-you. I'm tired of being patronized for love.

I once was told by a spiritual mentor, and I believed her, that this drive indicates that I have The Spiritual Gift of Intercessory Prayer (she even gave me a test to prove it), and that, when I want to be with someone, what I should do is pray and trust God, and it will be well with my soul and theirs. And if it's not, then I'm clinging to my own strength and not trusting God, and I'm being prideful and self-absorbed and I'm sinning and I need to repent and read my Bible more and leave people in God's hands because it's none of my business to reach out to his people. He loves them more than I do, so if I really loved them, I'd leave them in his love instead of offering a scant, valueless substitute from my own evil heart. Let me tell you: this hurts. It really hurts. My love and concern and desire to connect are sinful and I need to repent? Intellectually, I don't buy this. But I also can't wrap my heart around the falseness of it. I feel like I don't have the right to love people the way I love them, and it feels . . . well, dirty when I do. It feels dirty to love people. Ahhhhh! Why the hell does everything have to be so screwed up all the time?!

Am I really so alone in my hunger? There have to be other people out there who want to take care of each other. There just have to. But then, maybe it is just my problem. Someone once told me that I feel this way because I can't participate in my biological family in the "normal" way. Because caring for my family, in the few ways that it is possible, entails codependency. So I just need to have babies, and it'll "go away." My love and concern and desire to connect will go away? They need to go away? There's something wrong with them? Sigh. If there is, then I guess there's something wrong with me.

Many a painful rejection has proved to me that functioning in this ridiculous culture requires that I learn to ignore, suppress, and invalidate my longings. I tell myself "Self, you just have a mutant compassion gene. Must've been all that milk mom drank when she was pregnant. So give it up." In the words of a friend, "You're just weird." That's it! I'm just weird. And all I need to do is learn to be normal, like other people who take care of "their own" and don't worry about anyone else. Right. Good.

But . . .

please . . . if . . .

if I ever offer to make you some tea, or to pick up your groceries, or to drive an hour in the dark and rain just to give you a hug and cry with you a little, and if you really do want it and need it . . .

could you do me a small favor?

Don't say no.

Alone Together

This weekend, the majority of my church family (for lack of a better term; the portion of the church with whom I spend most Sundays) camped in the back yard of our building, from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. The grounds were crawling (both literally and figuratively) with children by the dozens. The elder members sat on lawn chairs and chatted with the younger members. We shared meals that were cooked on shared camp fires. We slept elbow-to-elbow in tents (well, the tents were elbow-to-elbow anyway). We canoed and swam and rode around in the country in a wagon full of straw. A man baptized his son and four grandchildren in the lake. Children played tee-ball with their daddies. Teenagers played soccer and capture-the-flag until the wee hours. Older folk played cards. Everyone played corn hole. After dark, old episodes of The Lone Ranger were projected on the side of the building. People prayed together and sang together and laughed together and helped each other and hugged each other.

I've been thinking so much lately about prayer and the church and the kingdom of God.

In the last week, I've had three conversations with different people about the attractiveness of communal living among Christians, caring for each other and cultivating the land. We want to return to the Garden, to be naked together and unashamed. So many people are so isolated, and they long to be together. But longing is the end. No one comes together, except for the fleeting and rare times that create the longing. We forget each other and we forget our forebears; we're just alone, in space and in time. But isn't the kingdom of God supposed to be at hand? I think we're called to a better way.

It occurs to me that one way to enter communion with the church of ages past is through prayer. To recite the words of psalmists and sages that have been recited by Christians over centuries is to join a chorus of crying out to God. When I pray, I usually don't speak; I simply open my heart and mind to God and invite him to read what is there. How do I speak to the Divine One who already knows? My words are inadequate and rehearsed. And what is within me that has not at some time been within someone else? Yet perhaps the someone-elses were far more eloquent that I and have left to me the words and the invitation to enter the song that God eternally hears. Maybe praying the prayers of the ancients can begin to relieve the present seclusion.

Lord, make me an instrument of your shalom;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.