Zika, Love, Motherhood and Injustice: A Letter to Kalissandra de Olivera

The World Health Organization predicts that more than 2,500 babies will be born in Brazil with microcephaly if current trends continue in the Zika virus outbreak. Zika is spread by mosquito bites and sexual contact. It is not preventable by medications or vaccines. Women who contract Zika in their first trimester of pregnancy are up to 13 percent likely to pass on microcephaly to their growing babies. Microcephaly usually means incomplete brain development and can lead to intellectual disability as well as hearing or vision loss. Therapy is needed from birth to help affected babies develop. Photos and name information for this blog taken from the Los Angeles Times special report: Living with Zika, by Alexandra Zavis and Katie Falkenberg. Read the story here.

Dear Kalissandra,

I woke up last night at 4:30 a.m. because my son was crying. His name is Joshua. He's about the same age as Nicolas, and just as loved.

I was tired, though, at 4:30. I walked from my king-sized memory foam mattress in my bedroom into his bedroom and lifted him out of his wooden crib. He was lying on a mattress in a muslin sleepsack. He was a little hungry. He wasn't sweaty because we had our air conditioning running. I went back to sleep a half hour later.

I thought about you because at 4:30 you were already awake for at least an hour. Did you even go to sleep at all? The van came at 3:45 a.m. It was dark and sometimes Nicolas slept and sometimes he cried. When he sleeps he looks like an angel. I saw you holding him as you both slept, exhausted, at Pedro I Municipal Hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil. You were so tired. I don't know if you have other children at home. I don't know if you are married or if Nicolas' dad takes him sometimes on the van to the hospital.

Nicolas' story is your story. The story of our children is always written on mamas' foreheads. When I saw you in this photo, your forehead was peaceful. Nicolas looks like you.

You're so tired and scared. You've barely healed from your pregnancy. Sometimes you are hopeful and sometimes you are afraid you're not doing good enough. Just like me.

Nicolas has microcephaly.

I don't know when you had Zika, if you knew it was Zika. The mosquitoes are everywhere. It was only a bite, maybe a rash. There was nothing you could have done.

Diseases don't read but they understand social contracts. They kill and maim the poorest among us, the weakest among us - first: pregnant women, people without air conditioning, people who have to store water outside in case of shortages: places where mosquitoes breed and grow and bite and viruses swarm the placenta and maim a growing baby's brain.

Where I live moms worry a lot. I guess moms worry a lot everywhere. But I didn't have to worry about Zika. It wasn't allowed into my neighborhood. Affluence and privilege blocked it, like they did with cholera and starvation and polio and measles, though we're willfully testing our immunity because we are so privileged we think we're smarter than we are.

We have other diseases here. Anxiety and depression and meanness and isolation. Not that you don't have those too, but maybe ours grow because we're so isolated from you and from each other. From our sister moms across the world who remind us the sacred trust between a mother and her baby; who remind us to trust ourselves and trust our love more than the Internet.

We call each other lazy or overprotective. We judge silently. We try our best. We keep track of silly things, like preschool tests or Pinterest snacks or percentiles.

You watch your percentiles, too. Each time they wrap the measuring tape around Nicolas' head he screams. Somewhere he knows. His numbers aren't about 30th or 70th percentile, about "red-shirting" kindergarten or jumping ahead. His numbers aren't on the doctors' chart. His numbers are the answer to an equation stacked against him before he was conceived.

Still he is a fighter. Like you.

You hold your head up with your hand on one exercise ball. You heard once these were good for sit-ups. Sometimes we use them to help Josh fall asleep.

Nicolas is rolling on his exercise ball with his therapist. His eyes are wiser than they're supposed to be for his age, for his Zika-ravaged brain. He's wearing a polo shirt with two buttons. Did you pack it in his bag? Did you dress him in it at 3 in the morning before the van came to pick you up and take you to the hospital?

I didn't see your diaper bag. How did you have time to pack it? How do you do it?

He looks perfect. He reminds me of Josh.

Maybe you're like me and you hate when moms use the word perfect because no one is perfect. Nicolas has microcephaly.

Seconds later Nicolas is screaming. He's tired. He's hungry. He's all the things babies are and he's not even 6 months old and he's doing physical therapy. It's not fair. Maybe he wants you. They always do.

The appointment is over and then it's the long wait and the long van ride back. Sometimes for my doctor appointments with Josh we have to wait 45 minutes. You wait hours. A day. I'm embarrassed of my complaining, my entitlement.

And still we are all, especially Nicolas, more complicated than we first appear.

There is no certainty with Zika, with microcephaly, with motherhood, with life. Maybe Nicolas will go to college. Maybe he'll need help his whole life to walk or feed himself.

Maybe well-off American moms think we should pity you. Your waiting, your lack of air-conditioning, the social circumstances of your environment that predisposed you to Zika, Nicolas to microcephaly.

The motherhood we experience is so different.

In this waiting room at Pedro I municipal hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil, this small room filled with fake flowers, coffee, cake and broken scanners - mamas are laughing.

In a few weeks, or a month or two, maybe Nicolas will laugh, too. You'll hear it and forget everything else. You are a mom. Perversely, perhaps, the waiting room is a sanctuary - a place where motherhood is what it was meant to be. Women supporting each other. Babies crying and laughing and living. Imperfectly.

Your laughter, your support for each other, your refusal to quit in the face of fear, of Zika, of microcephaly, of despair: it is a revolutionary act. Mighty warriors have fallen down before in the face of much less.

Your laughter won't cure microcephaly.
It won't cure hatred or injustice or the various geopolitical alignments, the cheating, the offshore accounts, the excesses, that left you vulnerable to Zika.

But God is watching you. The God who created Nicolas is the God who loves Nicolas is the God who transformed death on the cross into everlasting life.

The evil in the world, the Zika the microcephaly the injustice the violence the fear they are all still there.

But God is transforming them. See I thought your story was about Zika but it wasn't about Zika at all.
It was about love, and the courage and faith that turns death into life.

Rest well, Kalissandra. Rest well, Nicolas. Rise and bear witness.

Where, O Zika, is thy sting?

Photos and name information taken from the Los Angeles Times special report: Living with Zika, by Alexandra Zavis and Katie Falkenberg. Read the story here.

Our Better Angels: An Appeal to American Christians in a Time of Trump

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861

Today I spoke at a gathering all too rare in America today: a non-compulsory meeting of Republicans and Democrats who are not related.

It was all the more rare because this multi-partisan gathering happened in a church, among the most stratified of American institutions.

It was a fragile peace: the progressives and the conservatives coexisting uneasily, guiltily wondering if their political leaders would be angry at them for fraternizing with "the enemy," even in a church.

We've forgotten how to be both partisans and friends; to be Christians first and Republicans or Democrats second.

One-hundred-fifty-five years ago, President Abraham Lincoln uttered these words at his First Inaugural Address, while seven Southern states had already seceded from the union.

We are not enemies, but friends.

His appeal, while beautiful, went unheard for four long years of Civil War: brother fought brother and blood split the nation, destroying a generation and crippling the South for generations to come.

Lincoln was not a religious man, and yet even he appealed to our "better angels." It is an appeal American Christians would do well to hear again this week, as Republicans and Democrats jockey for position in the 2016 Presidential Race.

"Our better angels" in America have always believed in the impossible: hope instead of fear, unity instead of division, justice instead of favor, life instead of death. We have clung to "our better angels" when faced with Ellis Island, segregation, women's voting rights, gay marriage. There have always been fearful and angry voices: jealous, bitter men and women who cannot imagine what it is to be free, but "our better angels" have always prevailed.

We want to be a people of hope and not of anger, don't we?

We have always been a country of hope. Where the rest of the world toiled and scraped, America was a shining beacon of Hollywood and hot dogs. You could make it here. You could be free here. We always had room for one more.

Until we didn't. 

The first time I saw Donald Trump debate I liked him in spite of myself. He was confident, bold; he said the things I sometimes thought: when I was afraid, when I was mean, when I was cornered.

Trump kept talking. He pushed further. I didn't like him anymore but the polls kept going up. The more protesters he shoved and scorned; the more minority groups he destined for deportation; the more hatred he spewed ... our better angels' wings were clipped. We could no longer fly. The Dream and the Dreamers woke up in a nightmare.

He said he'd make us great again but what he'd made us was ashamed at night when we admitted what we liked about him after all. He brought us back, not forward. We saw his money and his bravado and wanted it for ourselves; he promised us the world if we'd only sell America's soul.

He said Muslims and Mexicans and women - though some of them were his dear friends - these are not America's friends. He spoke of everyone else as "the other" and in the darkness of our homes on cold January nights, our better angels' white light went out and the blue glow of the TV screen lit sterile living rooms. We didn't know our neighbors. They weren't our friends. We became afraid and we got up and locked the door to our house and the door to our heart.

Into the void, which was left unfilled by Bernie's turn to Scandinavia, or Hillary's pledge to make rational plans, or a chorus of Republican wannabes too self-centered to come together for good - a still small voice whispered Lincoln's words as a blizzard shut down D.C.:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Will it take four years this time - for our better angels to remind us that we are not enemies but friends?

Or will American assert itself once more as a Christian nation?

We may not have been founded as such. We may be populated by people of all religions, and it may be our pride that religious freedom is assured in the Constitution.

No, it has always been our hope and not our policies that has made America Christian: a belief that we are not enemies but friends. That Republicans and Democrats play for the same team: an American team with black and white faces, that speaks Spanish and English where it once spoke German and English, a team that invites in the Muslim refugee to stand on the same shores that welcomed the Mayflower.

We were a Christian nation because we had faith that good would beat evil with good; that to win did not mean losing our goodness.

A nation who trusts in a Savior who died and rose again cannot be fooled by a would-be savior whose only prayer is a people without resurrection hope.

Christians who seek a Christ-centered government would do well to look elsewhere. 

A preening parody of faux-strength does not impress a Risen Lord who told us the meek will inherit the earth.

Our better angels remind us that we are not enemies but friends. The enemy is the one who tells us otherwise.

What I Learned on My Maternity Leave

This is intention No. 952 to write this blog since my second son, Joshua, was born eight weeks ago. For the first four weeks, even walking up to turn on the computer seemed an insurmountable task in the midst of feeding, pumping, changing, washing and the interminable newborn screaming that made it impossible to think straight.

A few days ago I turned on the computer, opened a page, and I started typing - only to have Josh wake up three minutes later.

I may not finish again today. But it seems essential and important to record these learnings.

See while the world continued on its way ... while Paris burned and San Bernardino wept ... while Donald Trump spewed inanity and Americans cowered and wondered, holding tightly to handguns and maybe one another -- I wiped a newborn butt, to the tune of 20 diapers per day. I waited for him to fart and looked up techniques for releasing newborn gas. I may have purchased a device called "The Windi."

I wondered: did he weigh enough? Too much?

I drank supplemental "milkmaid" tea. I iced my chest. I put a heating pad on my chest.

I took antibiotics for a breast infection. I applied cream for thrush. I got strep throat and took antibiotics again.

I took a probiotic to get rid of all those antibiotics.

I wondered what I was eating that was making him cry.
I wondered what I was eating that was making me cry.

I stopped eating dairy, caffeine and chocolate. I drank my first beer since becoming pregnant and then gave that up in case that, too, was giving him gas.

My Google search history was dominated by searches about boobs and poops. My 3-year-old wondered what had happened to our special bond. My husband wondered where his dynamic, successful wife had gone - replaced by a quivering, anxious, insecure new mom.

We thought this time we had it down - that we'd learned and now, the second time around, we were pros.

Except each new child throws you back again. The same emotions, fears, joys and thrills - tempered perhaps this time but there nonetheless.

My first son was born when I was just 27 years old - living in a 1BR apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and finishing up my seminary degree to become a Lutheran pastor. I had no maternity leave and no break from classes, but I also had no job for the first 11 months of his life.

Now I had a new congregation who depended on me, a fellow pastor awaiting my return, and a 3-year-old who had already moved across the country just months before this new little brother had shaken up his reality once again.

I told myself that this time I wasn't going to gain the 70-some odd pounds I had the first, but despite eating healthier and exercising more -- it happened again. A cashier at Costco asked me, two weeks after Josh's birth, if I was pregnant again already -- despite the newborn in my arms. I comforted myself by thinking: at least I still look pregnant and not merely massively overweight.

I told myself this time I'd give birth naturally, and I ended up with my water breaking almost a week late - failure to progress - failed epidural - and eventually, an emergency C-section that all but guaranteed that this would be my last child. With the C-section came the ugly abdominal reminder of womanly failure, the slow progress and retightening of stomach muscles and skin that had been stretched beyond what seemed possible.

There were pads for everything, everything leaked. I felt homely and ashamed and yet at the same time filled, remarkably, with love and wonder and amazement. I begged Joshua to sleep and then when he did I awaited his reawakening eagerly, rushing to his side: "I missed you!"

It's no wonder my husband thought I was crazy. The hormones, the sleep deprivation, the loss and reintegrating of identity -- it was crazy.

I read the news each day as I nursed Josh: Syed Farook, Paris, Cruz, Rubio, Clinton, Trump, China -- a big world was out there and my world had become so small. I forgot my accomplishments, as a writer, as a speaker and a preacher - and my sole worth became tied to the size of two stomachs: was Josh's big enough, and was mine small enough.

Around 7 weeks old, back from a trip to the in-laws for Thanksgiving and just about over a familial bout with strep throat, my husband Ben and I seemed to stop merely surviving and be able to take stock of our lives. We worked on a morning routine with our 3-year-old and started a loose schedule with our newborn. We took family photos on the beach and I tried not to cringe at the size of my butt. I started to breathe purposefully, occasionally. I would be returning to work in one week, and I knew once there I would miss this time - even if I had spent a good part of it wishing it away.

Maybe you've been on maternity leave, or home with a newborn, and you can relate to this. Maybe you're wondering about the alien who has replaced your wife after the birth of your newborn. Maybe you're pregnant and wondering what to expect ...

I know your experiences won't be mine. But I can at least be honest and share the lightness and darkness of an incomparable time in a woman's life. Because when all you read is: "I am panicking about going back to work, I can't bear to leave my baby -- and your baby has been screaming for 3 hours straight and you are missing your professional setting and the vocation God has given you -- maybe it's time for a balanced approach, full of love, admiration, and maybe even some humor.

Here's what I learned on my maternity leave:

1. It's not fair. The very fact that MAternity leave is guaranteed and PAternity leave is mostly a pipe dream shows the unbalanced approach we Americans, and most of the world, have to parenting. After a major abdominal surgery, most men would be laid up - waited on for six weeks with Netflix and healthy meals and physical therapy appointments. They certainly would not be tasked with the care of a newborn, who would rip at their nipples until they bled, and refuse to allow more than 37 minutes of sleep at one time. These men would also not be expected to "enjoy every minute" of this "recovery" time. My husband is a wonderful, loving, devoted man and father. He also will never understand what it's like to give birth, and then stay home alone with a newborn five days a week while he returned to work. I've often thought what would really be great is if men could nurse while women recover from childbirth - but God decided to give us gals all the fun.

2. It's intense. Josh was entirely dependent on me, for everything - just as he was in the womb, except now he was out of it, and he was loud! I had no idea what he wanted. I lived in a perpetual state of anxiety for several weeks, especially after he lost more than 2 pounds after birth due to my milk's late arrival. I'll never forget that initial piercing cry, as he was desperate for food. Even after now chunking up nicely and becoming a regular chowhound just like his brother, he seems to never forget that urgency to eat: immediately.

3. It's as boring as it is intense. Work is often intense, but it comes with rewards and validation. Complete this task - write this sermon, plan this service -- and then celebrate as the Holy Spirit comes and people are filled with the message of Jesus Christ. On maternity leave, no one says as they walk away: "Hey GREAT diaper change! You really nailed that one. It hit me."

"Wow, AWESOME breastfeeding. So inspiring."

Instead Josh would often respond to my AWESOME nursing or diaper changes with sheer screams. He was, like his brother, a vocal child. I initially thought he was always hungry (see No. 2) which resulted in overeating and tons of tiny poops and farts.

But even though I was doing something immensely important, the day-to-day moments were boring. I didn't have anyone to talk to. I relished preschool drop-off so that I could say hello to an adult. Once Jake's preschool teacher hugged me and I felt tears roll down my face as I breathed heavily. It was pathetic and poignant all at once. I tried to plan one major outing a day. Trader Joes and Target never felt so wild and crazy.

4. It's lonely. I don't know why we Americans tend to do this, and maybe I contribute to this by isolating myself, but we tend to isolate our new moms. It's almost as if moms give birth, spend a couple of weeks with visitors and family -- and then in those crazy weeks from 2 to about 6-12 -- we leave them alone, waiting for them to emerge with shiny hair and flat stomachs, and children who survived the first three months without society's interference, or help.

I felt immense pressure to "look good" and to immediately slim down after giving birth. It consumed me nearly as much as the pressure to feed Josh enough and also somehow keep the house and my 3-year-old functioning. I'd done it once before - without another son - and I'd seen my friends do the same. You even see it on Social Media. Watch a new mom's Facebook page. There's the hospital photos, the one and two-week photos - and then things usually go dark for a month or two, perhaps with the occasional selfie or post to a mommy's group. The mom reemerges in month 3: thinner, heading back to work, with a child who now somewhat sleeps and eats in a regular fashion. All is well, except you didn't see the battle she endured to come out the other side.

With my first son I was able to join a new moms group through the hospital at 6 weeks, but this time nothing like that was offered and I couldn't really find much online. I went to one group, but only three of us came, and it was loosely organized. I called friends back home, called my mom way too often, and spent tons of time on Internet groups filled with new moms like me, obsessing over questions to which there was no possible answer except the passage of time.

I knew this intellectually, but I still bought the $20 gripe water in hopes it would help.

5. You always think your child is the only one who ... but he or she is probably normal.

I was convinced I was cursed with overly fussy, alert, wild, difficult children. Now I think perhaps I'm just overly honest and other people lie. And I'm impatient and overly Type A.

My pediatrician didn't help matters one day when I brought Josh in. He examined him, checked him out in the midst of a crying fit and said: "He's fine. He's just a REALLY fussy kid."

The dr went on to say that some kids will just sit and be content. But Josh was tense, super alert, super strong, and intolerant of much manipulation from outsiders. Perhaps it's no coincidence this description also fits me, my husband, and our older son.

You can't escape your genes when you have (biological) children. I'm sure even adoptive parents notice their traits rubbing off in ways they may not expect. But despite each baby's quirks, usually - things are normal. That incessant crying: normal, and will be outgrown. Just when you try just about every remedy possible, you realize - they've outgrown it and now something else is wrong.

6. There is no one way to be a good mom.

Right now it seems "attachment parenting" is en vogue. Babywearing, breastfeeding constantly, no schedules, cosleeping -- all are on the rise. This isn't really my nature. I like my space when I sleep at night, and in general. I also enjoy my identity as a working parent, and "attachment parenting" doesn't fit with my role as a full-time pastor.

So often I felt "less than." I bought the baby wraps -- and actually liked them. And this time I did decide keep breastfeeding, though it was mostly because I thought I'd lose weight - and only became manageable when I instituted a schedule and stopped feeding on-demand at 7 weeks.

There are also the CrossFit moms. The "glamourous" moms. The "Pinterest" moms. Whole ways of being. I saw it all at preschool drop off and lamented my own schlubby, disorganized, store-bought snack self.

But my boys love me, and I love them SO MUCH. As my leave ends this week, that's what I know most of all. That despite the lack of sleep, the identity crisis, the raging hormones -- having a baby INCREASED the love in my life. My capacity to love has expanded yet again and for that, in spite of Donald Trump and ISIS and the hatred that surrounds our world today, I am grateful.

I looked again today at those Christmas photos we took when Josh was 7 weeks old. This time I looked past my expanded waistline, that wide butt, the double chin -- and I looked at the expression on my face in the photo I took just with my husband.

It was recognizable. The same exact expression I had five years ago when we took our engagement photos in Minnesota: unencumbered by parenthood, marriage, "adult" concerns. We still looked at each other the same way. Love had endured, except now - I looked not only at him, but at our two little boys in that same exact way. Whatever size I was post-pregnancy, I looked the same because I was filled with unremitting love.

It reminded me that I was the same person I always had been, just swelled with life and with love.
I was exactly the kind of mom God intended me to be.

I was enough, and so was God's grace.

Mommy, Don't let the sun go down on your anger

Jake and I were driving to preschool/church earlier this week and he said the funniest thing.

He's almost 3 years old, so he says lots of funny things - but this one made me stop with wonder.

"Mommy," he said. "Why's it get dark?"

"It gets dark at night, when the sun goes down."

"Mommy ... " he said, almost sheepishly, taking a deep breath ...

"Mommy, don't let the sun go down on your anger."

***

Even for a pastor's kid, this was a new one. Where in the world did he get it? I originally thought he was quoting Proverbs. Maybe he'd been watching too many episodes of Veggie Tales.  Maybe when he sat in church watching cartoons on Daddy's iPhone, he was actually listening ...

"Mommy, don't let the sun go down on your anger."

***

Wherever it came from, it was astute. I'd been angry that week, even at one point particularly angry, or at least frustrated - with him. He was such a great kid, so smart, but he had a knack for potty accidents at exactly the worst times.

It had been nearly a month with no accidents whatsoever - even exiting the pool to go potty, which for some adults remains a major accomplishment (see: Las Vegas' Wet Republic at the MGM).

Then Monday afternoon I got the call from the preschool: "Jacob pooped his pants." He's supposed to be fully potty trained in order to be enrolled, so this was bad news.

I had about 5 minutes to get down there, help him change, and make it to my 32-week OB appointment for Baby Boy No. 2. When we tried to slip out of his shorts and get changed, he inevitably stepped his shoe right into the brown mess, creating a bigger problem and further increasing my frustration.

"Mommy, are you not happy?"

Not the right question to ask at the moment.

***

We made it to the doctor appointment a few minutes late, ate dinner with dad, and I honestly don't even remember the rest of the night. I think I took a bath while Daddy did bedtime duty, and I think Jake asked me again a few times: "Mommy, are you not happy?"

The accident alone wasn't a big deal. Then it was the ever-present laundry, the car who cut me off, the empty toilet paper roll, adjusting to a cross-country move, the aches and pains of third-trimester pregnancy, the way my once-huge maternity jeans now nearly cut off circulation to my legs ...

At one point, I think it was on the way to the doctor appointment when the light turned red in front of us, and I said again: "No pooping in your pants!"

Jake responded: "Mommy, you are not happy?"

Tears started to come to his eyes: "I want you to be happy. You have to be happy."

***

It was a beautiful, innocent wish - and ultimately unattainable, perhaps especially during the third trimester of pregnancy. No one, not even mommies, are happy all the time. Sometimes, we are angry. Sometimes there is one thing that rationally makes us angry: righteously angry. Maybe it's unjust murders and civil wars halfway across the world or in our own hometown. Maybe it's racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, bullying. The way the female body, pregnant or not, is always fair game for comments of desire or derision. The way women can be relegated to one role or another: the saintly mother, the beautiful wife, the promiscuous harlot, the bossy career woman - defining us so narrowly that to occupy multiple roles seems to consist of walking a daily tightrope: skirt not too short but not too long; hair not too curly but not too straight; voice not too high but not too low.

As a mom of two boys I recognize I will bear much of the responsibility for defining womanhood to them. They will put me on an unfair pedestal, make fun of me with future romantic partners, and - I pray - always love me as dearly and as deeply as I will love them.

As their mom, I have the opportunity and the prerogative to teach them about anger. So that they might give permission to the women in their lives to feel it fully, and not let it consume them.

***

This is - I think - the deeper meaning to Jake's hilariously wise words spoken the other morning in the car. He had changed his tune. No longer: "Mommy, you have to be happy ... " - now it was - "Mommy, don't let the sun go down on your anger."

This is a Biblical phrase. It comes not from the Old Testament but from the New Testament letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 4, verse 26:

Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

God seems to have spoken through my 3-year-old, who spoke through the Apostle and letter-writer to the Ephesians. 

Be angry.

Have you ever met a kind, charitable church-going woman who always seems right on the verge of anger? She volunteers for all the potlucks. She cleans the church, puts away the folding chairs, leads the choir, helps with Sunday School. She can always be counted on to do what needs to be done, and she loves Jesus.

She is Jesus' disciple, but perhaps all her life - she's been told: "Don't be angry. Be happy." She's never been given the permission of Ephesians 4: to experience anger and frustration and even express it. So she does what so many of us do: in bathroom stalls, driving cars, at home with our families, in the privacy of a quiet room - we stuff our anger until it explodes in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to the wrong person. 

We think it's wrong for a woman, much less a mother, to be angry and so when anger inevitably, righteously, hits us - with its cousin fatigue and its brother frustration - we don't know what to do except to bury it beneath a smile that gets thinner and weaker as the day winds on.

All women cope with our anger differently. Some kickbox or Zumba, some mow down a surreptitious box of Dunkin Donuts after dropoff at school. Some drink glasses of wine or pour vodka in water bottles. Some spread nasty, secretive rumors. Some take it out on those who we love most.

We all get angry, though. It is a function of being human and I daresay without anger we would never have won the American Revolution, the Civil War, the women's right to vote, school desegregation or any other host of advances that came about when people got righteously angry and unleashed the power of justice and the Holy Spirit.

God got angry and created the Flood, which became the opportunity for renewal.

Jesus got angry and destroyed the Temple, driving out the moneychangers and those who denigrated religious practice.

Their anger was a means to a righteous end, just as ours may be.

So Be Angry when you are angry and do not be ashamed to say, in the moment: "This is not right. I'm angry."

Let yourself Be Angry. The Bible Says.

Then the Bible says this:

... Do not let the sun go down on your anger

If your anger and frustration has been bubbling today, rising up and threatening to spill over - let it spill. Let it out, however that works for you - and don't be afraid to say: "I'm angry." You're merely doing what the Bible says.

But then, as my 3-year-old so wisely reminded me ... Don't let the anger consume you. When it's out, when it's expressed, when you've allowed yourself to feel this most natural of human emotions - anger loses its power. You feel it draining from you. God - and those around you - have heard it and felt it, and it no longer weighs only on you but now it is shared and as Jesus reminds us, a shared yoke with him is easy - and his burden is light.

Anger is powerful but only as a tool. I believe what the letter writer wanted the people of Ephesus to know was that we damage ourselves and those around us when we allow a relationship - or a day - to end on our anger. Anger must be walked through, but it is a landmark on the journey - not the final destination. It's a means to an end: an end of reconciliation, an end of forgiveness, an end of resurrection.

Be angry ... Do not let the sun go down on your anger

Feel your anger. Accept it. Don't apologize for a feeling. Men have been using anger to get things done for centuries. Let anger's energy empower you for justice and righteousness. 

Think of Rosa Parks. Of Malala Yousafzai.

And then when you've expressed it and felt your anger, let it melt away. Allow yourself to smile - not at anyone else, necessarily - because your smile is not for them but for you and for God. Look in the mirror at yourself and smile, wryly perhaps.

I was angry, and I am not sorry, but there is more to me than anger. I am woman. I am mommy. Hear me roar. And then give your child or your spouse or your parent or your friend or yourself a hug, because: 

"I Love You, and even when I'm not happy - even when I'm angry, or sad, or especially when I'm angry or sad but not ashamed - Love will win in the end."

Pruning Withered Petals and Facing Death in July 2015

July is the cruelest month, with apologies to T.S. Eliot.

July is when grass and people die, when flowers wither in the afternoon heat and parents secretly count down the days until school begins and the screaming frenzy stops.

When sweat beads burn in the late afternoon sun, and air conditioners fry, and desert mouths thirst for water.

July has always seemed to me to be the longest month, though February in Chicago seemed to last 10 years.

The July days stretch into oblivion, and like the lizard darting across the scorched sidewalk in front of my path, I seek refuge in the shade and air conditioning.

In July 2015 Sandra Bland died in police custody in Waller County, Texas, and six days later Samuel Dubose was shot by a University of Cincinnati police officer during a nonviolent traffic stop.

Seven days later Bobbi Kristina Brown died, after six months in hospice care since being found face down in a bathtub, unresponsive, on Jan. 31, in much the same condition her mother Whitney Houston was found dead three years earlier.

A movement has arisen in the past year, to protest police brutality and the unjust killing of African Americans - an uncomfortable realization that the dream of Civil Rights has gone unrealized in a still-racist America. It's called Black Lives Matter, but in the summer of 2015 - life seems cheap.

White supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine black Bible Study participants at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., on June 15.

As of July 30, the city of Chicago has experienced 276 homicides in 2015 - with 55 in July alone. The average age of the dead: 28. Seventy-seven percent of victims were black.

A deadly summer is not only an American problem. Almost 12,000 people have died in Syria since the beginning of 2015, including 20,000 children since the conflict there began. Fifty-nine people died under torture in Syria in June 2015, almost two a day.

Countless migrants risked their lives for new life and died in the process: the Rohingya people of Myanmar in Southeast Asia were left to perish on rickety boats; Africans and Middle Easterners rushed the English Channel tunnel and a man was crushed to death by a truck on July 29. Central Americans and Mexicans died while riding atop La Bestia, while others crossed the Rio Grande only to languish in crowded Family Detention Centers in New Mexico and Texas.

Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, and went on to lead the 16 candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Lives - all lives, but especially those with black or brown skin, or born as refugees, or even the unborn - seemed cheap in July 2015, and yet all around the country Americans continued to blithely deny death, drinking our protein shakes and taking our vitamins.

***

My Grandpa John - my dad's dad - died when I was in third grade. He lived nearby, and he enjoyed dropping by unannounced on Saturday mornings or Thursday evenings. I remember three things about him distinctly: the lingering smell of cologne, and cigarettes, that lasted on his leather gloves my dad wore well into my high school years; the sound and smell of the disgusting cherry throat spray he had to use every few minutes in the months before he died, while throat and lung cancer ravaged his ability to eat and to speak; and finally the ritual he performed every spring and summer Saturday morning when he came to visit our house.

He'd park in the street, walk up the driveway, and pause in the rocks in the front lawn - stooping down carefully to observe the battered flowers my mom and dad planted each Minnesota spring in anticipation of the return of life to the winter tundra outdoors.

I'm not even sure how tall he was - to me he seemed a giant - and yet when he kneeled down, he was at eye level with the violets and marigolds and perennial flowers in front of him - in tones of lavender and orange and gold and whatever had been on special at the neighborhood nursery weeks before.

His knees and ankles and thighs and calves had to hurt when he did it, but he kneeled nonetheless, bending carefully to remove each withered petal from the plants below. Picking carefully, he gathered them into his hands, pruning gently, making space for petals to push through.

Recently I've found myself paying homage to his memory. I buy the $3 Trader Joes flowers on Monday afternoons for home and the office, and the rest of the week I carefully care for the blossoms - each day removing wilted petals, trimming stems, replacing dirty water. 

Sometimes it seems a romantic waste of time, an inutility at a time when every moment counts - when work and church and child and spouse and friends could use my time more than these pitiful petals and yet each time I do it I think of Grandpa John.

He was a man well-acquainted with death. Just a day after reporting to the Pacific front - Okinawa, to be precise - of World War II, he was near-fatally shot in the stomach and airlifted to Guam, and then Australia, where he barely clung to life for the next several months. My Grandma Millie, his recent sweetheart and later-to-be bride, sustained herself on infrequent letters and rosary beads from the Catholic Church down the street where later, their seven children would be baptized and confirmed.

John survived his grisly injury on that ill-fated island, but in a WWII military hospital, death was all around him. He'd watched men die on the battlefield and he regarded their agony in the starched white sheets of an unfamiliar Paradise Lost.

John returned home in one piece, physically, but he was never the same. The shooting had left him with some nasty wartime habits: GI cigarettes, an affinity toward pain medication and morphine, and an ever-present addiction to alcohol.

A young Minnesota father in the '50s and '60s, sometimes his four boys would have to accompany him to the bar or back home; though it was rare for him to accompany them to Sunday mass. They relied more on their strong, stalwart German mother, and when he first met my mom, my dad said he "hated" his dad.

Around then, though, John had started going to Alcoholics Anonymous, and before it was too late he won his sobriety. I never knew him as anything but sober as a grandpa - and my mom grew to love him dearly, embracing his frequent visits and his deep love of his grandchildren.

It was the smoking, perhaps, that led to the throat and lung cancer and congestive heart failure that eventually killed him in 1993, and I carried with me those three deep memories: the scent on my dad's leather gloves, his cherry throat spray, and the way he pruned our dead petals.

At his funeral our family was overwhelmed by a crowd of strangers, who said they knew John from AA. For many he was a sponsor, someone to call in the middle of the night when addiction roared and danger loomed. They said he helped them get sober, that he was the mentor and leader they needed, and John's own sons and daughters felt a strange mix of pride and sadness.

On this day as they mourned his death and remembered his life, it seemed that he'd shouldered as best he could this nearness to death: from his early years as a poor German Catholic in rural Minnesota, to the killing fields of the South Pacific, to the triage of hospital beds in Guam and Australia, to men drinking themselves to death in the bars and pubs of the 1950s, to a cancer patient, AA sponsor, and Grandpa who died too young - but not before he learned to live amidst death.

***

As I prune my own Trader Joes petals far from Minnesota in Southern California in 2015, I do so I think honoring this memory of my Grandpa John. I believe he did this pruning act in an almost unconscious knowledge that to embrace life and live life anew one must prune and confront death: the death of wilted petals, the death of wounded soldiers, of refugees and victims of racism, the innocent victims of careless concern for life, the death of ones we've loved and lost.

His act was a quiet one, a subtle one - but it was nonetheless an act of resistance against a culture that blithely ignores or sublimates the reality of death until it's too late and death crushes us under its weight. 

He himself had looked death in the eyes and attempted to ignore its power by drinking, by denying, for too many years and then - he confronted it and pruned it, choosing instead to live. 

It was for him, a lifelong Catholic who memorized the Latin mass, a deeply faithful act. In pruning he acknowledged the power of the Cross and the hope for resurrection - that by Jesus' death new life would come; that by God's facing death on the Cross eternal life was won for us all.

For all of us who would call ourselves Christians and followers of Jesus in 2015, we too cannot continue to ignore the death all around us, wiping aside the wilted petals and wounded hearts - from Maddy Middleton, murdered in Santa Cruz, to Samuel Dubose dying of a traffic stop in Cincinnati, to hundreds of children perishing on the open seas and trash-strewn refugee roads, their parents risking it all to give them a chance at real life - and those who never had a chance at all.

We must confront the death that faces our environment, that faces our families, that faces our relationships and our heavy hearts, carrying deep burdens we don't bear to share: addictions and anxieties and worries and financial fears. 

It is only when we see the death that we can then seek to prune, to pick, to clear our lives and our world of the wilted petals of the past: of racism and sexism and classism; of hatred and greed - that we will begin to live the lives God has planted for us, blossoming into brilliant colors we could never have imagined.

***

When it came time to plant flowers again after my Grandpa John's death, I noticed that the sprouts again peeked up out of the once-frozen ground. I watched as my dad carefully unwound the hose and watered them gently, and then days later he and my mom knelt down carefully, slowly, eye level with the purple violets and orange marigolds that had made their way toward the sky. They carefully plucked off the wilted petals, pruning as Grandpa John had done, making way after death for the hope of new life.

#CharlestonShooting: What the Black Church has to teach the White Church, and why what Dylann Roof tried to Kill will never Die

What Dylann Roof did in Charleston last week was evil to its core. He attacked black men, women and children. He attacked the Black Church, and in doing so he attacked the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because for many years in America - the Black Church has carried the heart of the Gospel.

I am a white woman. Most of my life, I've attended predominately white churches. Now as a Pastor, I've served predominately white congregations. I love the White Church, but in it alone my faith was incomplete.

It wasn't until I experienced the black church - perhaps the most venerable African American institution - that my faith and understanding of Jesus was made more complete.

Two months ago, I left my congregation in Chicago's whitewashed North Shore suburbs and drove nearly 90 minutes to Riverdale on the Far South Side. We parked in the neighborhood, where people gathered on front porches and leaned under car hoods, and we walked down the block to Shekinah Chapel, an African American Lutheran congregation that was originally organized as a mentoring program for young black men on the Far South Side.

It was 2015, but segregation felt alive in Chicago that morning -- the blackness of the South Side and the whiteness of the North Shore a witness to racial tensions left forever unresolved and justice never served. Shekinah had to advocate for safe drinking water for Riverdale's residents, in an almost bankrupt municipality that served witness to a part of Chicago deserted by investment and infrastructure. Into places of hopelessness and injustice, the Black Church has long filled the void - and Shekinah has done just that.

When Pastor Yeheil Curry first invited me to preach, telling the congregation one December morning that I'd be returning as a preacher for them later that spring, I had to catch my breath. This was a place of fiery revivals, of Amens!, of Gospel stories of changed lives and real political activism. Pastor Curry's wife nearly won a race for alderman that winter. The church was more than a worship service on Sundays, it was a center for community life in a community where death and despair and poverty sought to conquer life and hope.

What could I have to say?

When the Sunday came for me to preach last April, I felt my whiteness viscerally - it seemed to emanate and almost glow out of my pores, making me visible and different. I was no Rachel Dolezal. I was as white as it gets, outfitted in JCrew and blonde highlights. I knew then how an African American family might feel walking into one of my congregations: different, left out, uncomfortable.

And then suddenly I didn't. I was welcomed, embraced, and when we shared the peace I felt included. Accepted. Loved. Comfortable, even.

I walked up behind the altar, noticed a rip in my pants that must have occurred mid-service, and I knew then I had to own it.

"Here I am," I said, pointing out the rip in my pants, and going on to joke about my red-haired husband and son dancing to "You Can't Touch This," the evening before.

Graciously, the congregation laughed. We moved on. Into Acts 2 and Pentecost and Jesus' vision for the Church, and segregation in Chicago, and North Shore and South Side and an elder in the congregation reminded us all of Shekinah's story and I connected it to Pentecost and the Holy Spirit and the ways the Holy Spirit is bringing Spirited Startups in the church today, through Shekinah as a witness to African American Christianity in a historically white, Scandinavian and German denomination.

When it was done I felt both full and empty. Full because I had been loved and Jesus had been present. Empty because it had happened again. Every time I worshipped in African American congregations, I experienced something distinct - different - and something my husband and I discussed each time. Jesus spoke there - God spoke there in the Black Church in a way that changed our faith. Perhaps it is the legacy of slavery and Civil Rights, but in that sanctuary - and at Trinity UCC on the South Side, and in every African American congregation where I've been privileged to worship - the impetus toward justice in the Gospel becomes so much more real. It's felt. It's experienced. Jesus pushes on you, hard, and makes you reconsider everything. There is a real sense of the incredible power of our everlasting God. A Power harnessed for justice and righteousness and mercy -- a power that defeated slavery and segregation and is still at work today to right racial injustice in America.

Somewhere, in his deranged brain filled with white supremacy and KKK and Nazism and anti-semitism and misguided patriarchy, Dylann Roof knew about that power. He knew the Black Church possessed within it an incredible power for righteousness and justice and mercy. He knew that God had given the Black Church its rightful place as leader for righteous change.

Instead of exciting Dylann Roof, this power made him afraid. It twisted within him and, as evil does, the same evil that crucified Jesus on the Cross, the evil in Dylann Roof attempted to kill this Black Christian force for resurrection, new life, and justice. He killed heartlessly, mercilessly, and indiscriminately; his goal to destroy the power of this venerable force for righteous change in the heart of the American South.

As evil does, Dylann failed. What we remember is not his insane rantings or his heart of darkness, but instead we remember that Mother Emanuel has been, is, and will be a continued force for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in America in a way the White Church cannot be. The triumph of Mother Emanuel and the Black Church in general is the triumph of resurrection over death, of perseverance in the face of lynchings, slavery and now a church shooting - a beacon for the truth of the Gospel, that Jesus saves and death will never, ever have the final word.

What I remember most from reading about last Wednesday night is this small sentence Dylann Roof told the police officers who took him into custody the next morning.

"I almost didn't go through with it because they were so nice to me."

He sat with his victims for an hour in Bible Study before he killed them. As Judas Iscariot kissed Jesus before he betrayed him, so Dylann Roof gained intimacy with his victims before pulling out his semiautomatic pistol.

I thought of how nice they'd been to me, at Shekinah, at Trinity, at African American congregations across the Midwest. How Pastor Curry of Shekinah had become one of my dearest friends, closest confidants, and brother-in-Christ. How he - a preacher who could shake the rafters of revivals and stadiums full of thousands - gave up his pulpit one Sunday morning on the South Side to a young white woman who had no business being there at all.

Calling it "his mission," Dylann Roof killed nine brothers and sisters in Christ last Wednesday at Mother Emanuel.

But Dylann Roof in no way completed "his mission," because no death - no evil - no racism - will ever stop the mission of the Black Church in America because the mission of the Black Church in America is the mission of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Nowhere in this great land has the vision for justice Jesus spoke about in his first public sermon, quoting the prophet Isaiah, "to proclaim release to the captives ... to let the oppressed go free," been clearer than in the hallowed halls of the Black Church: in the years of Civil War, in the marches for Civil Rights, in the protests in 2015 for Black Lives that matter, in the face of police brutality or unjust imprisonment.

Dylann Roof was right that Mother Emanuel is a symbol of this great witness. He was wrong to think he could do anything to diminish that witness, for as Joseph told his scheming brothers, "what you intended for evil, God intended for good."

In the hallowed halls of Mother Emanuel this morning, let freedom ring. Let Jesus speak. And let the lives of those nine rise again: a witness not for the evil Roof intended but the righteousness, kindness and mercy for which they gathered last Wednesday night.

May we all - white and black American Christians - gather together again this Sunday and forevermore in their honor, and in honor of all the martyrs who died so that the Gospel might live.

God Will Provide: Recovering Providence In an Era of Christian Anxiety

Hand wringing among religious folks has never been in short supply, but the doomdayers really had their day a couple of weeks ago, when the Pew Research Center confirmed what conventional wisdom has known now for decades.

We are in an age of post-Christendom - or, American adherents of Christianity continue to decline at a massive rate.

This is a case of statistics catching up with reality. For decades churches have been closing, Sunday Schools have been shrinking, and confirmation classes have been getting smaller. Especially among Catholics and mainline Protestants, the sky has been falling for many years. The Right blames gay rights and liberal theology; the left blames hate speech and an overly doctrinal attitude.

I wonder how we might frame this news in a Biblical manner, beginning first with the Gospel of Jesus Christ - and then ending with us.

Largely absent in most discussions about the surefire demise of the church is the theological concept of providence. Providence, taking its inspiration from Biblical passages like Genesis 50:20 (Joseph says to his brothers, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good ...") and Romans 8:28 ("We know that all things work together for good for those who love God").

Providence, a word connoting divine care; governance and guidance, has become an antiquated concept. The idea that "God will provide" is tough to swallow in an era of recession, 401Ks, joblessness, and rising inequality. When thousands lost their retirement savings a few years ago, Americans were told to become savers, not to trust the market, to hold off on buying or selling real estate, to trust no one but themselves.

Thus today we find ourselves in a situation where the economy has largely recovered, but banks are still slow to offer loans, and many companies have put off hiring.

The loss of providence has impacted the Church as well. Pastors and parishioners are hesitant to risk too much. Congregations turn inward rather than outward, focusing on "saving our church," "maintaining our building," rather than "being the church," and putting mission goals over facility needs.

None of this is particularly attractive to would-be churchgoers, of course. Neither are the myriad of advantage-taking articles offering solutions to what might be ailing the church. Baby boomers have been "leaving the church," physically and psychologically, before most millennials even graduated middle school.

In many American churches today there is a palpable sense of anxiety, rising perhaps in proportion with the growth in anxiety among Americans in general. Many first-time church visitors sense this anxiety in the people and pastors they meet: they feel the pressure for each new member, the fear lingering in the air that one misstep could cause the whole collapse of Western Christianity, not to mention their beloved church that has stood on this very corner since 1924.

This is not exactly a recipe for growth, new life, or the spread of the Gospel - neither is it one to inspire new converts.

Perhaps instead churches across America might do well to read again Jesus' words to Peter in Matthew 16:18, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it."

On this rock I will build my church, says Jesus, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

We the Church are not, as the parable goes, the man who builds his house on sand, but rather our house, our Church, is built on rock - a rock on which Jesus says even the Devil will not prevail against.

Providence reminds Christians who we are and whose we are. This is a lesson many of our brothers and sisters across the world know all too well. In countries where Christians are persecuted, bombed and even killed - a deep abiding in Providence is a necessity. The Early Christian martyrs died believing in God's providence, that the Church and the God for which they died would prevail in the end. They died not for the Church of Corinth or for the Church of Galatia but for the Church of Jesus Christ.

In the absence of persecution; our distance from and denial of death, American Christians have forgotten who and whose we are.

In the words of an old 80s song by Jay Beech:

The Church is not a building

Where people go to pray

It's not made out of sticks and stones

It's not made out of clay

We are the Church - the Body of our Lord

We are all God's children; we have been restored.

You can go to worship

But you cannot go to Church

You can't find a building that's alive

No matter how you search

The Church is not a business, a committee or a board

It's not a corporation

For the business of our Lord

We are the Church - the Body of our Lord

We are all God's children; we have been restored.

The Church is not a survey, of Americans who left long ago. It's not a screen it's not a chant, an altar or a rant. The Church is not denominations, bleeding money and mismanagement. The Church is not seminaries, or clerical collars, or jeans, or kneelers.

The Church is an assembly of believers established by Jesus Himself, empowered by Holy Spirit, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ might be heard and practiced throughout human history.

If anything, American Christians should be more confident in our God and less confident in our institutions. The crumbling of status quo Christianity is a good thing for Jesus, who detested the Pharisees. 

Those of us who remain, not the ones who continue to check Yes on a survey out of tradition, complacency or duty, but rather those of us who are compelled by something altogether otherworldly and eternal, we are called now to dig deep. For a church that has lost its defining characteristics, we must define ourselves again as the house not of humans but the house of God, which stands even as buildings crumble and close. 

Each church council, each pastor, each bishop must surrender his or her own leadership and turn things over to a providential God, a God who conquered death, and a God whose Church will never die.