Souls First

Yesterday at St. James, our rector, Judith, reminded us that we are souls first and it got me wondering. What would happen to us, to our relationships, to our culture, to our society, if we really believed that?

Imagine the impact on:

-the cosmetics industry

-the cosmetic plastic surgery industry

-the fashion industry

-the diet industry

Imagine the impact on prejudice and racial profiling and viewing people as the “other.”

Imagine how we would view our own accomplishments and those of others.

What would happen if all those things that we think make us who we are, make us impressive, popular, wanted, valuable…what if all those things were taken away?

In her TED talk “You Are Not Your Body,” former champion cross country skier Janine Shepherd describes life in the spinal ward after a devastating and life-altering bike accident. The patients were flat on their backs, unable to see one another. Their lives forever changed. They were there together, souls sharing their deepest thoughts and feelings, with one another. One day a nurse brought in straws and had the patients work the straws together, end on end, into a string. That nurse then formed a circle with the straws and each patient held on. Souls connected by tragedy and plastic straws.

What would happen if the playing field was leveled and all we had was each other, without all the things that we believe give us an advantage in life? What if all we are is a collection of souls, connected to one another by a circle of straws?

How would we treat each other then? How would we value each other? How would we value ourselves when we aren’t clambering to the top of the social ladder, seeking approval, proving our significance, or failing in comparison?

We’ve been sold a lie. We have bought into the idea that that which is visible is that which is valuable.

Some of us need to be reminded, perhaps others of us need to be told for the first time, that we are souls first.

That weird kid in algebra class is a soul first. That the homeless person standing at the bottom of the exit ramp, begging for food or money or a job, is a soul first. That the tired looking disheveled woman wandering the aisles of Walmart in her pajama bottoms, looking like she could use a good night’s sleep, some personal discipline, and a fitness plan, is a soul first.

The gay neighbor is a soul first. The gender fluid kid behind the counter is a soul first. The immigrant suffering in an ICE facility is a soul first. The old guy with a MAGA hat is a soul first.

That person who doesn’t look like you, act like you, vote like you, or value the same things you do, is a soul first.

And you, when you look in the mirror, stand on the scale, try on the dress that doesn’t fit, peek at your bank account, count up your professional successes or failures, assess your storehouse of knowledge or your stockpile of skills…you must, must remember that you are a soul first.

This morning my granddaughter started her first day of eighth grade. She was as dolled up as I have ever seen her, having told me that her goal for today was to look good. I want so badly to let her know, to get through to her hormone rattled, developmentally restructuring teen brain and her tender heart that, as beautiful as she is, she is and always will be, a soul first. 

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When Preferences Become Mandates

 Anybody who is part of the evangelical church or a conservative congregation of other

stripes knows that it is relatively common to encounter someone who has decided that

doing things a certain way is the "biblical" way to do it. Whether it's how you parent, how you

run your family (and who's in it), how you teach your kids, what kind of church you attend

and how that church goes about worship and engaging with the community, all the way to

how you dress or who you vote for or whether you vote. It is not hard to find someone who

has a certain opinion or has made a specific choice and then spells out the case that that is

THE biblical way, and they can often expertly lob diced up chunks of Bible at anybody within

throwing distance just to prove their point.

Years ago there were the Worship Wars, wherein people would sit around and debate,

whether in person or on the interwebs, the value of hymns vs praise songs, traditional

worship vs contemporary. And each side had their talking points, all effectively ignoring

Ephesians 5:19, which mentions "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs," so it's all included.

But people were very opinionated about these things. They could get testy.

Then there’s schooling. Home school vs Christian school vs public school. There was some

bizarre pecking order to it all, as if this was an intensely spiritual choice (though some had

no choice at all). This issue could ruin friendships and split churches and crush the spirits

of many an overwhelmed mother.

I've done it, too. I've had convictions, or maybe just preferences but I called them

convictions, and decided I was doing something the way God wanted. And then I changed

or grew or something happened to force me out of my bubble or to see things differently or,

at times, I was left with no choice in the matter, and realized that what I really wanted was a

biblical rationalization for what was my preference. I wanted someone to back me up so I

wouldn’t have to fight so hard for what I really wanted.

Because it wasn’t ok to just want something and then go for it.

Maybe it is because people, especially in the more authoritarian churches, families, and

cultures, aren't ever given the freedom to have their own opinions and preferences to begin

with. We learn to do and say as we are told. So what do we do? Our only way to rationalize

our preferences is to say that this is God's preference, no, God's mandate, to do it this way.

When wants are not ok and when children are taught obedience above all else, they don’t get to

develop a sense of agency. Because when parents’ choices and dictates matter most, and

matter above all else, and come with the authority of God, a child doesn’t get to be her own

person with her own wants and desires. When everything is spiritual, then our wants have to be

spiritual, too. Our preferences have to have the spiritual stamp of approval.

So what if all of this pontificating really is just a way of getting validation for a preference

you don't feel you have a right to have outside of some divine ordinance?

What if we gave kids, women, and people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders, the agency

to make decisions and like and not like things and use their gifts and or make use of other

people's gifts in the ways that they best see fit without having to wrap everything in spiritual

packaging?

What if we were able to see someone else's choices as just that, choices made based on

their situation and the factors that play in their lives, and not some spiritual failing.

Maybe we should back off with the Divine Mandate Heavy Hammer and let people be

people. Not right. Not wrong. Just people being people, doing things people do.

God gives us the freedom to do that.

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Seeing Color

 When George Floyd was so tragically murdered in May 2020 at the hands of his local law enforcement, turning the spotlight yet again on the hideous history of racism in our country, I heard over and over the phrase, “But I don’t see color.”

It is, in many ways, a hopeful sentiment and, on some level, one to be respected. Of course we are to afford one another equal treatment, regardless of color of one’s skin. Isn’t that what Martin Luther King, Jr. longed for? That one day his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.

But the problem is that when we say, “I don’t see color,” what we are really saying is, “I don’t see YOU.”

We cannot divorce a person’s color(or gender or ethnic identity) from the experiences that have formed them. It is naive, at best.

When I say that I don’t see color, then I say that I don’t see that you are Black. And if I say I don’t see that you are Black, then I am free to dismiss your life experience, your culture, your world. I can live in my vacuum, seeing things only from my perspective, without ever having to step into your shoes and see through your eyes.

Which got me thinking about DEI...

This is one of the reasons that embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is so important.

What if…what if DEI is less about giving someone an opportunity and more about recognizing that that person brings something valuable to the table that we don’t have.

When we think of DEI we think of us doing them a favor, with us being the dominant demographic. The one with the power. In our country with our culture and our history, "us" has been the white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied person.

We think that we are being nice and lowering the bar so that those who don’t fit the mold can have a chance. And I’m sure that perhaps that has happened in some instances because sometimes somebody does need a more gradual entrance ramp, sometimes literally.

But I have also heard that DEI hires have to work harder. And I can certainly see this being the case what with perceptions and all. (I certainly know how hard it can be for a woman to be heard and taken seriously in a space dominated by men.)

But, what if….what if there’s more to DEI. What if the real point of DEI has less to do with giving the marginalized a chance and more to do with welcoming and embracing and even needing what they bring to the table.

You may see yourself as a hero for opening the job to a minority, but without the viewpoint of that particular person, your team might be handicapped.

If every employee within a workplace, be it military or civilian, is of the same demographic…white, straight, male…it is likely that each employee is bringing a very similar life experience to the table. One that may be shared by other straight, white men but one very foreign to the rest of the population.

A home inspector once told me about a situation where he and a pest inspector were in a very tight crawlspace under a house. They were both looking for signs of pest damage, mold, or anything else of particular concern. Because the space was so tight, they could look ahead at the floor joists in front of you, but couldn’t look behind them to see the other side of the joists. So the inspector crawled through the space clockwise and the pest inspector crawled counterclockwise and that way they were able to inspect both sides of the floor joists.

We need people who have seen life from a different perspective. We need people who have experienced life crawling counterclockwise, if you will.

If you think about it, the whole anti-DEI thing is pretty arrogant. You are saying, “I don’t need that perspective.”

Yes, you do. We all do. We all need the perspective of someone not like us. And that starts with seeing that they are not like us (seeing their color) and valuing that.

Wendell Berry said, “You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours.”

What better way to do that than to give them a seat at the table.

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Room to Breathe

A while back, I’m not sure how much of a while back, whether it was before or after Helene, but a while back my husband came home from the grocery store with food and milk and something else: a plant.

It was a small plant in a small plastic pot. I set it in the window where it sat over the winter, surviving frigid blasts through our poorly insulated windows and stretches of drought from my own negligence. It sat and it grew, a little, but not much.

Last month I decided to move it outside. I pulled out a large, clay pot that already had old soil in it and plunked the plant down in the crumbly dirt. Within a couple of weeks it had grown three times in size. I was stunned. Not that it grew, but that it grew so much.

Who knew that a little plastic pot could be so limiting?

Maybe I did.

I know what it’s like to be in an environment, a system, that supports me and holds me up but also holds me back and doesn’t allow me to grow.

Some people like rigid rules and structure that tells them what to do and when to do it, what to believe and just when your belief has slid off the edge into unacceptable (if not heresy). They like a world filled with black and white, yes and no, good and bad. Where there is a right and there is a wrong and it is up to you to tow the right line. It is a life of calculus, an engineer’s dream. Fit inside the formula and it works. Get one digit off and the whole house of cards comes down.

But while bridges and skyscrapers and rockets to the moon rely on precision in both calculation and application, plants are different. And people are different. Well, at least, I’m different.

Throw a formula at me and I panic. Expect precision, perfection, and performance out of me and I crumble. Stifle me with a strident set of “shoulds” and I wither and die.

A few years ago, after decades within the conservative evangelical church, I articulated this: that I think I might actually do better somewhere with looser rules and expectations and beliefs, where I am free to add the structure I need to my relationship with God without the suffocating blanket of somebody else’s definition of “right” and without the expectation that I can and should have all the answers.

For the past two years I have been in that place of freedom. I got here the hard way but perhaps, for me, the only way. I got here through pain. Then again, not many of us leave faith communities for the sheer fun of it.

But it has been good. So good. God is no longer The Great ‘You Must’ in the sky. He’s bigger and wider and broader and totally capable of handling me with all my questions and pathologies and doubts and insecurities and quirky ideas and maybe even turn all those things into something good, something useful, maybe even something beautiful.

I finally have the space to grow at my own pace and into my own person.

I have room to breathe.

Here's hoping that my growth can be as fruitful as that of my little plant who just needed a bigger pot to thrive.

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