the crescendo

i tell you the truth: the kingdom of God is like the woman on 1st and bell.

the sun had yet to really rise - to make herself known and her burning heat felt. The woman on the corner of first and bell sang and danced. you could hear her nonsensical voice for blocks as you might hear a siren. her large dancing and bouncing motion drew the city-dweller’s eyes all the way from battery street. she wore white gloves on her hands so that she could avoid the touch of another person - so no one touched her. and no one sang with her. and no one danced. and no one paused.

i rushed to a class called “theology and the artistic impulse.”  un-captured and un-dead, like a scribe who has never known the smell of dirt or of roses, i stepped around her, crossed the street and continued toward elliott and wall.

i arrived at class on time with a tall soy chai to create the facade of being awake.  i saw slides of art work miles away.  i saw slides of art work miles away.  i began to wonder about the art i had missed.

yet her voiced trailed on. like any good artist, her art outlived her presence. and her gloves could not contain her touch.

and in that touch i am captured and resurrected.

when i was young, i didn’t want to go to heaven.  i thought it was going to be an eternity of singing to God - and to be honest, i really didn’t want to do that.  i mean, singing is fun, but an eternity?

obviously, this is not what eternity with God actually is…but what if it was?

the beat begins.  it is slow.  i tap my foot gently on the cheap painted concrete floor of the dirty, rustic venue as the residue of millions of hipster cigarettes from before the two-year-old smoking ban still flood my nose, as though the standard grey cloud of nocitine bi-product still hung just above the crowd.  i almost miss the cloud.  it seemed appropriate - the grey skies of seattle unresponsive to the barriers of concrete walls followed us into the building and took up carsonogetic residence.  but, it’s still there in scent and in spirit.

the band continues to play as my mind drifts to the not-so-absent cloud.  unattentive to the music, i begin to look around me at all the hipsters.  i used to be one.  i used to be at every show.  i used to spend 50% of my income on all the right clothes - and the other 50% on being at all the right shows.  as i look down at myself, i realize i have neither the energy nor the funds for that life any longer.  i become ambivilant - self-conscious yet glad to be free of the constant pressure to be cool.

still somewhat disinterested in the band, and wondering why i left a meeting early and spent $12 to be there, i examine the poster-clad walls.  years and layers and stories and lifetimes of stories are afixed to the walls through the medium of show posters.  i remember when slick shoes came - when i actually liked them.  i remember taking some youth to a show and having to leave early and sit in a car with an asthmatic girl who didn’t treasure the grey cloud so much as i did.  i remember pedro the lion, and minus the bear, old friends, my first 21 and over show, my first drink at a show, standing outside in line waiting for the doors to open when pedro played their first show here in months.  my life seems to be laid out infront of me, as though in some near death experience, through these out-dated concert advertisements.

the rhythm continues and i realize it is a waltz.  i wonder if i am danceing - 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 - in a circle - 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 - going nowhere, but lost in the music - and i wonder if this is good enough.

then, the music begins to build.  i find my wandering eyes and thoughts returning to the band.  it grows more and more intense and suddenly the music that even the band seemed disintersted in captures everyone.  toes that tapped lightly become whole body movements, heads nodding as though in agreement with the growing volume and intensity.  Those that know the words sing along.

1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 this waltz is no longer going in a circle.  it is growing and going somewhere.  one band member falls to his knees, nearly destroying his guitar as string after string breaks under the pressure of his intense strumming.  he lifts it to the microphone to squeeze out every ounce of volume because his amp goes to eleven and even that is not enough.

in the matter of a glorious minute, the audience has gone from apathetic to anticipating every beat and feeling their hearts and blood pulsing with the beat.

and this is crescendo.  this is the kingdom.  are you enraptured?  are you tapping your feet?  are your eyes wandering the walls?  are you waltzing in circles?  is it building?  can you feel it pulsing through your veins?

oh to be lost in it.  oh to strain to make it as loud and as intense at it could be - and to let it still be a dance, a song, a work of art and a playful joy.

gracious lord let it be so and let me be forever lost in the eternally growing crescendo - let me sing and never, ever stop singing.

johnhe sat next to me - one chair removed; you know, that perfect space between strangers who might chat but reserve the right to retreat to their own personal seat with one seat between. maybe this is why i hate churches with pews.

his purse and shamingly perfect finger nails gave him away before his voice and mannerisms could - but he freely - or testingly - gave up the information on his own: he was a gay man sitting next to me at church. and i was a tired tossed woman, worn by my ventures for the kingdom and too broken and tired to tread my way through the moment. i detached as we bantered. he mentioned something about moving to seattle to be with his boyfriend - who once went to city church - who once was married - whose ex-wife still doesn’t know he is gay - whose triangulated children do - an keep the secret like a child ought to keep his favorite lego set that he worked hours to purchase and even more hours to build - and his sister wants to take it apart and use the little lego men for a tea party. from my seat, across the tiny deviding wall of a cheap mis-matched folding chair, i watched us talk. i watched myself say all the things it is good to say the the homosexual man visiting your church - all the non-descript though seemingly compassionate responses.

after church, we talked more. he told me of his days in the assemblies of god - of when he was a pastor and a missionary - when he was accused of being a homosexual and locked in a room for 35 hours while people attempted to cast out his demons. my heart broke. i felt connected. i still didn’t know what to do with the moment and with the image of God before me in this man - who still loves God who is still committed to the church - an organism that so badly beat him.
i felt overwhelmed by the worlds i inhabit.

saul

earlier that day, i made the trek deep into the suburbs - to a conservative church where i would not be welcomed if they knew my calling as a woman. men and women with mullets and equally as unsightly and out of date world-views passed the hours with me. they made comments that caused me to cringe and mentally ball up into the fetal position - not only from the trauma of it but from the familiarity of my formation - of the christian womb that nurtured and formed me - and that i eventually grew to big for and left for a wide, brighter, more real world where air and food came to me not through a filtered chord but through the movement of my own lungs and mouth. one man dawned a t-shirt indicating that he, unlike others, would not be burning eterenally in a lake of fire and torture. when i found out he and his cheesely, offensive safari hat would be joining me in rwanda, i began to wonder if i was going to be burning in that torturous lake for those three long, long, loooooonnnnng weeks.

i was a snob. i was judgmental. when i heard a man who was publically abusive to his daughter talk about good times at the race track, my judgment swarmed like the pack of gnats that recently found my roommates rotting bananas. and yet, these people were there to help me raise funds to go to rwanda - to seek the kingdom - to see the world change before my wounded, cynical eyes.

jake and mike

the next day we walked to the game: me, my brother, and my dad. incidentally, it was the day of the gay pride parade. my dad complained - the gay pride was in our way on our way to the game. i felt the same way - not put out - just overwhelmed with the passing images and juxtaposed colliding worlds. we pressed through the crowds so that we could make it to the stadium in time for the national anthem that i hate for a nation i wish i was not a part of. we were there to celebrate father’s day - a day that woud not apply to my father any longer if he had had his way some years ago.

meanwhile, jake talked loudly about why he hopes the episcopal church will split - so that good bible believing people can continue believing the bible when others don’t - ie on the issue of homosexual ordination. but we made it to the game on time.

we had a good time. it was a great game. i shut down the voices of ambivilence to see griffey catch a near double and hit two home runs.

and the point…

i don’t understand this kingdom - this already and not yet - this unity in diversity. i know something happened in, to, and for me those two strange days - but i don’t know what. i don’t know where or how to find myself. i don’t know. for all my knowledge and proposed brilliance - i simply don’t know.