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  1. But what IS therapy? Part IV: Could you just say that?

    May 18, 2012 by Christine

    Jack and I sometimes joke that the only line I need as a therapist is, “Well, could you just say that?”

    I don’t know how to talk to my best friend anymore, we’ve grown so distant (“Could you tell her you feel distant?”). I want some space from my wife, but I don’t know how to say that to her (How about “I want some space?”). Or, one from my personal history, I don’t know how to tell Jack that I’m ambivalent about the prospect of having kids.

    This might be a left-field suggestion, but, could you tell him that?

    I try to use this line sparingly, because it really teeters on the edge of where helpful meets pedantic.  A therapist’s advice is like vinegar—a small amount might help make therapy palatable, but too much makes you want to barf.

    I have used Could you say that? a few times with clients, and so far no one has responded with, “Why yes, I can! Thank you! Here’s a check for ninety dollars.” More often, when you challenge people to voice their truth, they give you reasons why they can’t. And that’s where the therapy begins, because then you’re dealing with core beliefs. It’s not okay to be angry. It’s not okay to be real. It’s not safe to disagree. I’m not allowed to be powerful. Whether the client goes out and speaks his truth to others is secondary; Therapy gives him a chance to first wonder how his truth came to be so unacceptable.

    And, Could you just say that? puts the client in a bind. Because if you’ve said it in therapy, you’ve said it. And I personally think that truth cannot be unnamed. People have a really hard time going back into any form of pretense or pleasantry once they accurately name their own experience. Therapy is often a process of holding the dialectic of I can’t with I just did. Which usually sounds more like, Oh fucking shit, I just did!

    So what is therapy? It’s speaking the unspeakable. It’s asking what is so fucking awful about your own truth. It’s naming your reality, first to your therapist, and then maybe thinking about possibly considering bringing it into the rest of the world. Whenever you feel ready.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment

  2. But what IS therapy? Part III: Defenses.

    May 17, 2012 by Christine

    “You’re so defensive.”  This is never meant as a compliment.

    I would also hope that it’s not something therapists say to their clients, but that’s probably not true. Therapists do a lot of shitty things. I fully believe that some therapist somewhere has gotten so tired of a client’s defenses that he or she acted out in some unprofessional way. I’m trying to help you, but dammit, you’re so defensive! Maybe it’ll even happen to me some day.

    But before those words ever pass my lips, I hope to thoroughly train myself and my clients to see defenses as good. A defense, after all, helps us not feel emotional or psychic pain. And not feeling pain is a good thing.

    I was shocked when I first learned that defenses are named and categorized, not just a vague idea of someone acting impossible. Defenses fall into at least two categories, sometimes up to four, depending on the theorist. I’ll stick with three: “Primitive,” “Secondary,” and “Mature.” Primitive defenses are most commonly used in childhood, and they tend to lack any nuance. Splitting—seeing things in simple opposing categories like black and white, good and bad—is a primitive defense. So is denial, acting out, and fantasy.

    An adult might use primitive defenses under duress (or, a person with a history of trauma might use them more frequently), but for the most part adults rely on secondary defenses. This category includes intellectualization (focusing only on intellectual aspects of a situation, not emotional ones), displacement (directing a strong emotion at the wrong person because the actual target is too threatening. Like getting angry at your husband after your intimidating boss demotes you), and reaction formation (the defense that I find most fascinating—turning a threatening emotion into its opposite. Deciding that you passionately love the person you actually hate. Deciding that same-sex attractions are vile and disgusting, and not acknowledging your own).

    The last category, “mature” defenses, are often the things we like about ourselves and each other. Humor and Altruism are mature defenses.

    The problem, of course, is that when you use a defense to keep pain out, you often keep good things out, too. Your lover has a capacity to both love and hurt you. You can’t filter in only the love; If you want the love, you must be open to the hurt as well, and even the possibility that the hurt isn’t worth the love. When we don’t let the good things in, we tend to feel more pain, which requires more defenses. And despite the benefits, defending yourself is hard work, and it can get exhausting.

    So people come to therapy in pain and exhausted. Sometimes they expect to be told to get rid of their defenses. But therapy is not a process of forced change, it’s one of discernment. In therapy, you begin to articulate why you have needed your defenses. At what point in your life did they protect you when you needed protecting? What are you defending against now, and might it be more beneficial to tolerate the pain rather than keep it out? The decisions around defenses—when and how to use them—are all in the hands of the person in therapy, with the therapist as facilitator and witness. It’s empowering.

    So what is therapy? It’s making friends with the defenses that live within you, inviting them to surround you when you need their protection, but sending them gently back inside when you don’t.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment

  3. But what IS Therapy? Part II: Yes, No, and Toddler-selves

    May 13, 2012 by Christine

    “If no one else blesses your toddlerhood, I bless it now,” I told the girl-twin that I nanny, as she arched her back, screamed, and bit me.

    I write that snippet not to brag about what a good nanny I am (though I am), but because every time I see a baby transition to toddler I’m forced into the decision of whether to bless or scorn my own toddler self. You know, the self that wants everything right this goddamn minute, the self that will KILL your ass if you even think about touching my face with that wet washcloth. You have one too, a toddler-self, and actual toddlers force you to reckon with him or her.

    I’m waiting for that first “No!” from the twins. The boy-twin has started babbling, “no-no-no-no-no,” not knowing what it means, which distresses his mom (“Do I say it to him that often?!”). They haven’t gotten the word yet, but if the teeth marks on my hand are any indication, I think they’re getting the concept.

    We think of toddlerhood as defined by “No,” but the “Yes” is just as strong. We don’t notice the Yes because it doesn’t rile us as much, but oh, a toddler’s Yes is a force to be reckoned with. The girl-twin has started asking for the Broadway Lion King soundtrack, which I play most days that I’m over there. She points to the iPod dock, looks at me, and starts clapping. Then when the music starts, she hyperventilates a little bit. If I pick her up, she lunges for the iPod, bursting into tears when she can’t reach it. I don’t know how to explain to her the heartbreaking fact that music is a mystery that can’t be touched. Unlike the fuzz that comes off the carpet, you can’t put those songs in your mouth and taste them, honey. Oh, but I see that you want to, so, so badly.

    Yes and No: Simple words that represent complex psychological theories of development of the self, internalized objects, relational matrices. Last week I spent a good ten minutes telling my therapist that I thought our de-railed session from the previous week was probably her fault, and it just might have something to do with her being a bad therapist. She listened patiently until I found my old familiar theme: I had wanted to tell her “no,” but I hadn’t, then I was angry at her for not hearing my silent No.

    Oh little girl, how I envy your “No,” so confident and clear. I bless it because I want it so, so badly.

    So what is therapy? It’s finding your “Yes” and your “No,” wondering where they got lost along the way, and blessing their return.

    Category nannying, psychotherapy | Tags: | 3 Comments

  4. But what IS therapy? Part I (of a series of undetermined length)

    May 12, 2012 by Christine

    Last week I started my supervision hour by announcing, “I don’t understand what therapy is. I don’t know what I’m doing with my clients. So I wanted to ask, uh, I guess… what do we therapists do again?”

    Can you imagine any other profession where this is an acceptable way to start a meeting with your boss? “Before we get to the numbers from last quarter, can you just remind me real quick what I do here?”

    My supervisor smiled. “It is a weird profession,” she admitted. “We see people for an hour, we talk to them, we form incredible intimacy with them, then they go off and live their lives for a week, and we generally don’t hear from them. Then at the same time and place next week, we have another long, intimate conversation with them about their problems. You’re right on, it’s a very strange job.”

    I didn’t expect to be validated in my feeling of utter incompetence, but it’s fitting with what seems to be a theme in this profession, that often what feels like chaos and uncertainty proves to be the source of healing and change. Case in point, an hour after my supervision I began my day of seeing clients, trusting that there’s nothing to fear in the confusion of the moment. The uncertainty IS part of the work, for the person in either chair. And I had one of the best therapy afternoons of my short career.

    I’ve been so unsure about whether I’m “doing this right” because nothing in my graduate program prepared me for my clients. I read a lot of vignettes about other people’s clients, and a lot of material on how to work with various symptoms and disorders. But now I have MY CLIENTS, none of whom have been written about. And if they had been written about, the story would have been about work they had already done, so it’d be irrelevant to my work with them. So, I walk into every therapy hour completely uneducated and unprepared.

    A few professors in my graduate program warned me that graduate school won’t really prepare you for your clients, and my reaction was something like, Are you FUCKING kidding me? Because I’m going $50,000 in debt to prepare myself for seeing clients. So how about you change your marketing material. I’d like to know before I matriculate that what I’m about to study will not prepare me for the work.

    But all those vignettes and case studies and DSM reports and office hours where professor Dan Allender tells you you’re triangulated with one or both parents (usually in some dark erotic way— Seattle School friends, take it with a grain of salt. That man would tell a dead slug he was erotically triangulated with his mother)— all that stuff kinda did help me prepare. I’m stunned at how often I hear the words of a former professor or textbook pass my lips. And how frequently I feel my face contort into an expression I see my own therapist wear. But most importantly, I learned in graduate school to trust uncertainty, a skill that came not with textbooks, but with other human beings.

    I often tell clients that we learn most of what we know before age 2, then we learn to speak. This means that the truths we hold most deep within us cannot be accessed through language… an ironic belief for a talk therapist. And so my clients hire me to help painstakingly build the bridge between knowledge and language. And where the bridge cannot be built because the banks are too far apart or the cliff face too precarious to begin construction, we just sit, and we trust. What is therapy? Sometimes it’s asking another to quietly sit on the edge of your terror, confusion, uncertainty, with you.

    Category psychotherapy | Tags: | 2 Comments

  5. Being Born Again, and Dying to Self

    May 8, 2012 by Christine

    My favorite comeback to use on my parents when I was around 7 was, “I didn’t ask to be born!” It never left them as speechless as I’d hoped, but to me, it was the ironclad excuse for everything, from not unloading the dishwasher to being allowed say something “sucked.”

    Regardless of the ineffectiveness of my words, I’m glad that I could articulate my experience. Kids don’t ask to be born, they don’t pick their parents or siblings. They—we—just have to adjust to whatever world we encounter outside the womb. We don’t choose our births, but we do eventually grow to choose our lives.

    We don’t ask to be physically born. Do we ask for our own spiritual birth? Is being “born again” (I know that’s a scary phrase, stay with me) a decision that we have any part in?

    In her book Sensual Orthodoxy, Debbie Blue examines Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus from John 3, where Jesus mentions this whole Born Again business. She writes: “Perhaps my awareness, because I’m a woman who has given birth, is a little more on the side of the birther, but how did we ever take this metaphor and make it all about something the one being born does? I mean who does the most work to get something born?”

    Do you hear it? Our re-birth is something God does, not something we do. It’s not even something we ask for. And the birthing process is certainly not painless or pleasant for either party, as Blue reminds us later in that same fantastic essay.

    At some point in those same three years that Christ advised Nicodemus to go ahead and get born again (How? Oh, you know, like the wind blows), he also spoke of death. He warned his friends, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

    I suppose it is God’s prerogative to give and take life, to labor us into birth and then ask us to die, on either a physical or spiritual level. But it seems… inconsistent. And confusing. Which self is born and which one dies? Are we allowing a False Self to die while a True Self is born? If so, which comes first, the birth or the death, or are they simultaneous processes? How do I reconcile this birth-and-death with what I know to be psychologically true: We cannot avoid having a self, and merging consciousness with another (even God) is an infantile fantasy, not a real possibility?

    When this “Take up your cross” passage is preached on, there’s usually not much more than one breath between the reading of the scripture and the interpretation of it, which goes something like, “God wants ALL OF YOU.  Are you ready to sacrifice your agenda, your desires, to follow Christ?”

    Jesus, no wonder I’ve had diarrhea in church so often.

    Recently my token white male pastor friend asked me how I view those Scriptures on self-denial and death, and more broadly, how feminist theologians read them. That feels THE question, since my whole internal world shifted once I started looking more critically at these words.

    Most feminist theologians read Scripture with a “hermeneutic of suspicion.”  This means that the first questions we bring to the Text are, “Who was this written by, Who was this written for, and Who is left out of both authorship and readership?”  When it comes to the Bible, the answer of “Women” is almost always absent in the first two questions and very present in the last.  So the next question is, if women are not implied in this scripture, how can we enter it? How can we participate in this religion that, frankly, excluded us from the beginning? What do we do with a message (die to yourself) and an interpretation of that message (sacrifice your wishes) that continues to harm us and our daughters?

    We can start by articulating why this scripture, or at least the most common interpretation of it, does not work for us.

    I’m going to pause here, because this invitation—-to speak honestly about one’s own experience—-is terrifying for anyone raised in the evangelical tradition. We are taught to believe so many things above our own hearts: Scripture, our pastoral leadership, our husbands and fathers (explicitly or implicitly). This is our first attempt at killing ourselves off: We refuse to give voice to the aspects of Christian Life that drive us fucking crazy.

    So I’ll just speak for myself. Deny Yourself and Take Up Your Cross does not work for me for several reasons. For one, it’s way too easy to be the gospel. Self-denial happens for women, at least for me, pretty immediately. When my token white male pastor friend asked for my views on this scripture, my first reaction was to panic. I spent a day wondering whether I’m a bad Christian, or not a Christian. My mind flooded with reproaches about leading people astray, the blind leading the blind, wolves in sheep’s clothing. I wondered how I might justify my rebellion against these words, how to delicately put the fact that I hate them, and that I disagree with Jesus on this one. Even though my pastor friend was open and kind and genuinely curious, my first instinct was still to deny my reality, to ignore the harm these words have caused in my life, and to believe that the problem is in me, not the interpretation or (god forbid) the message itself.

    Self-denial and self-sacrifice (including to the point of death) is usually the easier choice for women, the one that gets approval instead of raised eyebrows. Putting aside one’s wishes and agenda for the sake of the other is the norm for women of every time and culture. It’s not a radical message, it’s not news, let alone good news. It’s just old and tired.

    Dying-to-self IS a radical message for those in positions of power, who are accustomed to using others (usually women) to fill their own agenda. To those types, a relationship of actual mutuality can feel like death. So, “Who was this text written for?” Not for women, who historically have existed “on the margins of significance,” but for those who seek fulfillment at the expense of the powerless. Sometimes I read “Take up your cross” the same way I read, “I do not permit a woman to speak”— Localized to time, place, and culture, ineffective for us, and potentially dangerous to women’s well-being.

    (But, as an American who holds wealth and power at the expense of people in other nations, I do need to die to myself in some ways. That’s another post, another day.)

    So, that’s my always-in-process feminist answer.

    But here’s another thought that doesn’t really have anything to do with feminism, but has everything to do with re-birth. It strikes me that Christ’s original listeners, and those who chose to record his words a generation later, did have to be willing to die, even thought GODDAMMIT they were just born. In relationship with the divine Christ, followers were birthed into their full, true selves (however that works, theologically), but the cost was that that full, true self would probably be persecuted and put to death. At that point in Christian history, the cost of Self was Self. Jesus knew this, and he must have asked his friends to carry their crosses with a grieved heart and a splotchy, tear-stained face. And his friends agreed to the terms.

    And that makes sense to me, because I see it every week in therapy: When a person begins to know and claim her true self, she will sacrifice anything to keep it—romantic relationships, family, community, and probably her life itself (though I have never had a client in that bind, thank God). People fall deeply and madly in love with their selves, and facilitating that love is the holiest AND most fun part of my job.

    Maybe the original followers of Christ understood that the cost of finally having their true self, their God-reborn self, would be death; But they knew that having their Self in God is worth any price.

    Category Bible, birth, church, death, feminist theology, psychotherapy, theology | Tags: | 4 Comments

  6. Afraid to Love God More: A pastoral and therapeutic response

    April 24, 2012 by Christine

    This secret appeared on Postsecret.com about a month ago:

    When I saw it, I started imagining how I would hope to work with this client, if she came into a first therapy session, sat down in the IKEA Poang Chair opposite mine, and began our work with this line.  This, of course, would never happen… For one, people are not usually so existentially aware, and for two, this is not the type of dilemma people usually come in to therapy to explore. A church pastor is much more likely to hear these words.

    Half of my graduate classes I spent with pastors-in-training. My school believed that clergy and counselors make good teammates. So, I emailed my new pastor friend David (who I introduced in my last post), and asked if he would write a response from a pastoral perspective: How would he respond to this woman if she walked into his office and said she was afraid to love God more?

    We both super duper love feedback. I’m especially curious about where you see conflict between this pastor and this therapist, and what you might do with that conflict if you were the person in the middle (ie, the woman consulting both of us). Ahem, blog lurkers who never comment.

    Pastoral Response, by David Young:

    When someone walks into my office seeking pastoral counsel, especially regarding a concern as deeply existential and theological as this one, my first task is to listen.  My second task is to ask questions and then listen some more.  `What is going on in your life that is causing you to wrestle with this question now?  What do you think God is going to ask you to do?  Has God (or someone who claimed to be speaking for God) told you to do something before that you now regret?  What have other “loving” relationships in your life been like?  And have they often been characterized by the other person in the relationship telling you what to do?  What do you think it means to love?  To love God?`

    I probably wouldn’t ask the questions in just this way and the answers given to these would in turn give rise to a whole host of other unforeseeable questions.  This is simply the unpredictable nature of counseling.  It is the messy, chaotic, irreducible mystery that is personhood.  Nevertheless, these are the kinds of questions which would shed first light into the great unknown that is the person sitting across from me.  But really this light is not so much for me as for the person herself.  In fact, my goal in asking such questions is not to keep mining until I finally unearth the answer to all her problems.  It is simply to focus the light in places she might not have considered looking in order to find the answer to her own question.  The real challenge for any counselor isn’t so much providing the right answers as it is asking good questions.

    Since postcards are notoriously stubborn in their refusal to answer such questions, the best I can do here is provide a basic outline of how my own theological convictions would inform my response to this woman and her self-proclaimed fear to love God more.  Or perhaps in more humble terms, what I am really doing is making a confession.  Without knowing any more of this woman’s story, what I am really left to do is confess my own story, my own biases, and the life experiences out of which I have little choice but to respond.

    The first element of this confession must be that I have personally known this woman’s fear.  It was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school when I first felt that God was calling me to do things I did not want to do and go places I did not want to go.  It was then that I first sensed that God was calling me to be a pastor.  I can’t recount that whole story here but the fact that I would not accept this call on my life for another year and a half should suffice to show that it wasn’t something I was initially giddy about.

    Even the picture on this postcard reminds me of my own story.  I’m quite certain that the city outlined in the background of this picture is not Boston.  Nevertheless, that view of the city skyline across the water reminds me of the view from Wollaston Beach which included the outline of Boston across Quincy Bay, just a few blocks from where I went to college, the place where just a month after arriving I would accept God’s call on my life.  The acceptance of this call would eventually lead me half way across the country, tearing my wife away from her family and putting twenty hours of driving between them where there had previously been only one.  Next, it would take us to a small town in the Midwest, culturally unlike any place I had ever lived.  It is an understatement to say that I have done things I never would have chosen to do and gone places I never intended to go because of my love for God.

    So some of the words this postcard evokes from me are “Good!  At least you recognize the costs!”  It is a prevalent myth of our culture that love shouldn’t cost us anything; that it should be easy, natural, pure, un-interrupted orgasmic bliss and if whatever we have stops being those things then we can be sure that it isn’t love.  But nothing could be farther from the truth.  Real love can be frightening because it demands that we be vulnerable and trusting if we are to enter its realm.  Loving God isn’t so different.

    But the other words this postcard evokes from me are “Now that you recognize what loving God costs you, consider what loving you costs God.”  This is what sets loving God apart from every other relationship.  Whereas we never know to what extent our vulnerability and trust will be reciprocated in most relationships, God is the one who has shown us that the real nature of love is trust and vulnerability.  God became vulnerable in Jesus Christ; vulnerable to the point of death.  God remains vulnerable every time the Spirit invites us into greater intimacy with the Father.

    I don’t take back anything I said above.  It has been 13 years since I first wondered if God was calling me into ordained ministry and there have been some trying times.  There continue to be times even now where I have some fear about where God might be leading my family and I.  The costs of real love can indeed be frightening.  But I also know that God’s leading can always be denied.  It has always been my choice to follow because God’s calling is always just that; a beckoning and nothing more.  It is not pulling or shoving; not so much telling as asking. It is never a show of force;  always a passionate but resistible and therefore vulnerable invitation to more intimacy and trust.  So the second element of my confession is that God is a patient and gentle lover.

    As I look back over the course of my life I marvel at where God has brought me.  I see a wife whose affection I could never possibly deserve, two brilliant and beautiful children, a house that has become our home, and a church family whose care for us can only be described as extraordinary.  I look at myself and see a once shy and socially awkward kid who now makes a living by welcoming strangers, visiting the hurting, and speaking publicly.  I often wonder what I could have done to deserve all this.  The answer is, of course, nothing.  I know that the path that brought me here has more to do with trust than it does hard work or good decisions.

    It is for this reason that, even as I want to fully acknowledge all the reality and pain of this woman’s fear, I am also filled with hope for her.  I am hopeful because she has already been brave and bold enough to name a fear that many would not.  I am hopeful because despite her fear she has not given up on speaking of God.  I am hopeful because she has experienced at least enough of God to recognize that God loves her too much to simply let her be.   But most of all I am hopeful because I know personally what God can do with someone as honest and bold as her.

    Therapeutic Response, by Christine Marietta:

    Tell me your stories. Tell me about that other time someone forced, or compelled, or sweet-talked, or scolded you into doing something that you didn’t want to do.

    “What you fear most has already happened,” writes Annie Rogers.  Your fear that God will compel you to cross your own boundaries— no, not God, but that your love for God would make you to say “Yes” when you mean “No,” must have a history. This dreadful, nauseating violation of yourself has already happened in your past. Maybe you loved your parents, or uncles or aunts, teachers, or friends who ultimately required you to choose between your love and your self. In order to make sense of your fear of loving God, we must look at what your Love of others has brought you in the past.

    Even as I ask you to tell me these stories in which your “No,” has been brushed aside, I’m aware that you might say “No” to me.  I have not yet earned the honor of your stories, so even as I ask for them, I hope you will say no. In our first meeting, you’ve already put me in a bind— I can easily compel you to violate yourself.  I wonder if this is how God might feel in relationship with you—- maybe God wants to ask, but God knows that God can’t trust your “Yes.”  Maybe God, like me, prefers your “No.” I can work with my own disappointment at your refusal, but I can’t stomach watching you violate yourself in my presence. And so I am afraid to ask, even though, as your therapist, I want to ask.

    The gospel message, as it’s (mis)represented from many pulpits, fits with the cultural mandate that women ignore their intuition, that we swallow our “no” as if we are trying to hold down vomit. We are told to “die to our self,” to “follow God,” and “say yes to God.” When we do manage to speak our “No,” we usually learn that this “No” falls under the category of sin, and it is to be assaulted and fixed rather than heeded.

    Here’s the thing about our therapeutic relationship, which is true of all relationship: Your “yes” means nothing if you can’t have a “no.”  Your willingness to divulge your heart to me might be a good and beautiful thing, but only if that “yes” comes from your heart, your stomach, your solar plexus, if it vibrates through your body, if you have a physical sense of wanting to move towards me. You will know when your yes means Yes.

    As I ask for your stories, you may be caught somewhere between yes and no. You may wish you could trust me more, but you don’t yet. You may sense that I am kind and safe and fierce, but maybe in your past harm has worn a mask of kindness, so you don’t trust kindness. Yes and No often exist together, it’s what we call ambivalence.

    I want your ambivalence. I want both the Yes and the No. I do not want you to dive into answering my question, hoping your “Yes” sustains you enough to ignore your churning stomach. I want the No, too. I want all of you in the room with me.

    “Let your Yes be Yes, and your No be No,” says our Lord. I think he wasn’t kidding. God may ask, but God has also made it clear that, like your therapist, God wants both your honest yes and your honest no. In the end, Love may stir a resounding Yes within you, but Love cannot grow until you bring your full self— the Yes and the No— into God’s presence. But if you can’t do that with God yet, perhaps you can start here with me.

    Category pastoral counseling, psychotherapy, something new | Tags: | 2 Comments

  7. A New Internet-Friend

    April 21, 2012 by Christine

    Sometimes I would like to know what a white male evangelical pastor in the American midwest thinks about things.

    You guys think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I totally have a white male evangelical pastor friend—- well, internet-friend, anyway. Recently Anne Lamott has been tweeting, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans.”  I’m not sure who I planned to be friends with on this feminist internet journey, but I wouldn’t have guessed pastor David of Illinois would have held my attention for long.

    David emailed me a few months ago, admitting that he had followed my blog for a while, and inviting me to listen online to his recent sermon on sex. (Technically it was a sermon on 1Corinthians… so obviously it was about sex). I listened to it, and it was… good. Non-shaming. Inviting. He used the word “re-imagine” about six times, a word that I hadn’t thought to apply to sexuality, but I liked it.

    We’ve exchanged a few dozen emails since then, and I still haven’t quite placed him. He acknowledges that the denomination he has chosen to pastor is on the conservative end, and yet he reads my blog. His passions revolve around study and interpretation of The Bible, but he believes that careful attention to scripture might lead us to opposite conclusions of what Scripture professes. He’s never had a sip of alcohol in his life, and his explanation of this jaw-dropping phenomenon was, “My denomination doesn’t drink. It’s never really been a big deal to me.”

    As with all good friendships, I’m slowly letting go of the need to figure which categories David belongs in. Even though I have a running joke inside my own head that he’s my “token white male pastor friend,” I ask his opinions because I appreciate his thinking, not because I need more white male pastor voices in my life. God no.

    I’m introducing David here for two reasons: One, because I think he’s worth knowing, and Two, because I’ve asked him to join me in a short writing project that will appear on this blog sometime this week. We are going to offer two responses to a recent Postsecret postcard– a pastoral and a therapeutic one. Stay tuned, and in the mean time, have fun poking around David’s website.

    Category something new | Tags: | 1 Comment

  8. Coming out Feminist (or anything)

    April 14, 2012 by Christine

    So you’ve realized you’re a feminist. Or maybe you’re not quite a feminist, but you don’t think the Bible is inerrant, or even infallible. Or maybe you’ve admitted to yourself that you’re actually quite liberal, or conservative, or you’ve changed religions or become an atheist or hell, maybe you’re gay. Point is, you’ve got some information about yourself that others don’t know yet, but you’ve grown tired of pretending to be not-yourself, so you’re ready to let people know who you actually, really are.

    From my experience, you can expect people to react in one of three ways:

    The first group will be scared of you, but they won’t admit it. They’ll blanket their fear in logic and reason and arguments about God, or Evolutionary Psychology, or The Bible, or just The Way Things Are. But they’ll avoid talking about “You” and “I.” Your email exchange or Facebook comment thread (or, if you’re over the age of 35, your phone calls) will become long and unwieldy. Neither of you will ever be satisfied because you’re not actually talking about the most real things: Their terror of being wrong about the way the world works, and your fear of having your truest self rejected.

    For the people in this category that you want to keep, you have the option of being vulnerable and naming your own fear of rejection, inviting them to name what is deeply true for them. You will probably only be motivated to do this for really, really important people, and even then not for long.

    You will likely have to end most of these relationships.  Grieve the loss, and be kind to yourself.

    The second category of people will celebrate you. They will welcome you… YOU!  The real you! The feminist you or the Christian you or the conservative, liberal, transgender, whatever you. They will say they see you more clearly now, they will admit that they want YOU more than any simplified or well-behaved version of you. Many of these people will be inspired by your courage, and they will begin to speak to their own experiences and identities. Often they will confide in you about THEM, the real THEM, the gay or feminist or whatever THEM.

    Allow these people to invite you into the celebration. Write their words down and read them often. Let them help you be kind to yourself.

    The third category is tricky.

    Some people combine categories 1 and 2. They try to talk you out of yourself, but they also admit their own vulnerabilities. They say they “can’t support your decision,” but in the same breath they say they love you and wish they could support you.

    You may find a way to be in a more limited relationship with people from this group. You might agree together that you don’t broach certain topics, or that you can still speak to your own experiences without trying to change the other. There is still loss here (they are not, at least not at this point, in your camp). You will still need to grieve the wish for them to love you unconditionally. You still must be kind to yourself.

    Here’s the good news: This season where suddenly all your relationships are on the line, where every couple of days you get a random email from your pastor back home or your mom’s best friend, eventually ends. When you keep speaking out of your own true experience, even your enemies eventually learn that you can’t be argued or persuaded or bullied away from yourself. They begin to intuit that they’ll never break the alliance that you have with you, the bond of you with your self, so they stop trying.

    If you can weather this initial storm, all that remains is your community of people who adore you and cheer you on.  (And the occasional internet troll who reminds you, SORRY BABE, GOD IS MALE. But you know he’s got a long road to travel, so you have compassion, even while you edit his comment to include the word “penis”).

    Category feminism | Tags: | 9 Comments

  9. “Playing the Victim” Part II: Now I’m Just Confused.

    April 8, 2012 by Christine

    I got a lot of well-deserved push-back for my post on Playing the Victim. One of my pastor-friends gave me examples from his own work of times when it was necessary and appropriate to challenge someone’s claim of victimhood. He’s right… I was so focused on how people who are victimized are often mocked for it, that I totally missed the other half of the picture: Sometimes when people in a position of privilege enter a system of mutuality and fairness, it feels UNfair to them. Their privilege has become so normal that they feel victimized when it’s removed.

    You hear the effects of this faux-victimization when White people talk about “Reverse Racism.”  You hear it when men talk about “Feminazis” and “Men’s Rights.” You hear it when a divorcee talks about how “she took all my money,” even if “she” watched your children and paused her own career for a few years while you were out making that money.

    The bitchy part of privilege is that only those without it are able to see it. It’s invisible to those who have it.  And, it totally does suck to have privilege removed. I’ve felt it myself sometimes, mostly in the category of race, on the rare times I enter a system where my cultural norms are not The Norms. When I walk into a building and don’t see pictures of people of my race everywhere. During the very very rare times of my life when my Whiteness made others suspicious of me (this basically only happens in conversations about race, and the suspicion is that I won’t understand the realities of people of color—which I often don’t). I’m so not used to being without my privilege, that it’s tempting to cry Racism! Unfairness! Victimization! What’s actually happening is that I am seeing what life would be like if I did not have my undeserved privilege.

    Where I get stuck is, when you or someone else feels victimized, how do you know whether you’ve actually been victimized, or whether you’ve just gone from a system of privilege into one of mutuality?  I’ve known many women who, when they begin to advocate for more fairness in their relationships, are decried as “selfish.” A woman can feel a lot of confusion when these protests come, when she’s called selfish, when she’s pressured to return to the old, imbalanced system that requires her silence and compliance. Especially if everyone around her agrees that that system was the “normal” or “fair” one.

    Sometimes I can gain clarity by asking, if Person A and Person B do the same things in the same way, what happens? When I go shopping and put my purchases in my own backpack, nothing happens, but I recently learned that people with black or brown skin are often vigilant about asking for a bag and a receipt so they are not accused of shoplifting.  When my husband Jack furrows his brow and gets loud, he’s taken seriously, but when my amazing co-worker, a woman of short stature and a relatively high voice, does the same thing, she’s at best ignored (at worst, mocked).  If a man refuses to lend money to an untrustworthy friend, he’s discerning, if a woman does the same, she’s uncaring.

    I still advocate for not using the phrase “playing the victim,” simply because it’s not effective.  It’s belittling to those who are actually victimized, and it is likely to further harden the defenses of those with privilege and power. But I have heard your push-back, that it’s not so simple to know when legitimate victimization has taken place.

    So help me out… How do you know whether you or someone else has been victimized, or whether they have simply stepped down from privilege into mutuality?  How do you help yourself and others understand and create mutuality?

    Category feminism, privilege, race/culture, White privilege | Tags: | 3 Comments

  10. “Normal” Theology and The Council of Whitby (Or, Why You Believe What You Believe)

    March 28, 2012 by Christine

    There’s one word that always piques my interest when I’m in a therapy session with someone: “Normal.”  As in, “My childhood? You know, parents were married, two siblings. Pretty normal.” It sounds like a boring, move-along-nothing-to-see-here word, but actually “Normal” sets off all my mental sirens and flashing lights. “Normal” is always concealing a rich, detailed story of how a person came to see the world the way he or she does. What is proclaimed as “normal” is actually unique, nuanced, and very often tragic.

    Sometimes people catch themselves when they use the word “Normal,” and follow-up with something like, “I know, I know, there is no such thing as normal, but you know what I mean.”  Then they get into the details of their life and I respond with things like, “Holy fucking fuck, that was ‘normal’ for you growing up?”  I try not to say “fucking fuck” unless my client has already cussed at least two or three times in front of me, but it doesn’t always happen that way.

    I’ve noticed that this concept of “Normal” also applies to theology, and it usually goes unchallenged. When I first started posting on the internet about feminist theology, I got a lot of responses that were basically “THAT’S NOT NORMAL!” Not in those words, though, they usually sounded more like, “Rosemary Radford Reuther, seriously? I’m not even gonna read your shit if you just quote radical angry feminists all the time.”  Then they’d stormed away from my blog, and the rest of us were left to have our godless lesbian cyber-orgies in peace.

    I never got a good answer for why Augustine and Barth and Aquinas are “Theologians,” but Mary Daly and Sallie McFague are “Feminist Theologians” and James Cone was an “African American Liberation Theologian.” Why not call Barth an “Upper-class Swiss Male Theologian?” Who gets to decide what “Normal” theology is from which the rest of us deviate? While I haven’t exactly been reading my Bible every day, I’m pretty sure Jesus never told us to keep our ears out for powerful male church leaders, for they would have the right theology about God, and oh by the way there will be some Black people talking about Black people, but that’s kind of a side thing.

    So right, the Council of Whitby. I’m putting off getting to that because I don’t want you all to fall asleep on me. When it comes to historical events like this, I usually tune out by the end of the word “Council,” and if there’s a date after it, such as 664 (which is when the Council of Whitby took place), I’m guaranteed to be fast asleep until the bell rings at the end of class.

    Here’s history as I understand it: Early Christianity permeated Rome, and it also spread Upwards (uh, I mean North), and the Northern people formed a church and a tradition which we now refer to as “Celtic Christianity.” Their main monastery, from which their liturgy and tradition emanated, was on the aisle of Iona, off the coast of Scotland.

    The Council of Whitby was initiated by the Roman church, ostensibly to settle once and for all two questions: 1) When Easter would be officially celebrated (the two churches were on different calendars), and 2) How the monks would style their hair. Seriously, monastic haircuts. That was their issue.

    Of course, Easter and Hair were code for “Who’s really in charge?” As 6th century Christendom became more globalized, it was clear to Rome that the Celtic Christian movement did things very differently than Rome was used to. Celtic Christians worshiped outdoors or in small wattle and daub churches, whereas Roman Christians valued larger and more elaborate stone spaces for worship. Celtic religious communities were non-hierarchical, tribal, and decentralized, whereas Roman churches were highly centralized around the pope and patriarchal leadership. Celtic Christians viewed humanity as interdependent with the natural world; Roman Christians saw wilderness as a force that man had a God-given mandate to subdue and overcome.

    Rome had power and money and the backing of the government. Iona was a little more… well, rag-tag.  Guess what the outcome of the Council of Whitby was? The decision was made to conduct both Easter and monks’ hair according to Roman tradition, which of course meant that all church matters would in fact now be under the rule of Rome. Over the next few centuries, Celtic Christian beliefs and traditions slowly died out, save for a few straggling communities.

    So, back to “Normal.” If Rome had not been such a powerful force, if the Christianity that spread throughout the world had been the Christianity of the Celts, this is what you, as a modern-day American Christian, would probably view as Normal, Orthodox, “Bible-based” beliefs:

    • A doctrine of Original Goodness, not Original Sin. This is the belief that all of creation, including humanity, is good (not sinful) at its core.
    • Mysticism/ Felt Experience of God is equally as valuable as Creed/ Theology.
    • Male and Female leadership. Having only one gender in leadership would feel lopsided and wrong.
    • Belief that evil is an active force in the world, yet one which has already been defeated by Christ.
    • Belief that salvation is available to all, all will be redeemed by Christ in the end.
    • Panentheism; A belief that God is in all things, in all of nature. God is embodied by this world and by the universe.
    • Equal emphasis on the immanence (presence) of God as much as the Transcendence (unknowable-ness).
    • Strong Trinitarian emphasis in prayers and worship (rare to address one member of the trinity, such as “God the Father,” without including the others, especially the Holy Spirit)

     

    As it is, you’re probably more familiar with the Roman values below:

    • Primary emphasis on God the Father and Jesus, de-emphasis of the Holy Spirit (metaphorized to Celts not as a dove, but as a “Wild Goose.” So awesome.)
    • Total Depravity, ie, humans are sinful from birth. “Sin Nature.”
    • Men take primary, if not exclusive, role in leadership
    • Mystical or Felt Experiences of God are not to be trusted; Rational, Systematic Theology is trusted.
    • Ecological view of either domination, or “stewardship” (but not partnership or interdependence).
    • Emphasis on God’s transcendence (unknowable-ness) over immanence (presence).

     

    In other words, the “Normal” Theology of American Evangelical churches is not derived from the Bible, as is often claimed, but from the doctrines held by the church of Rome in the 7th century.

    I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.

    Back to people in therapy. “My family was pretty normal growing up.”  As children, we think that whatever we have been handed by our family of origin is “Normal.” If Dad has a beard, then “normal” dads have beards. If Mom was cold and distant, then that’s what moms are like. If we didn’t share our feelings with each other over dinner, then sharing feelings over dinner is a freak thing to do. The task of adulthood (I cannot be-LIEVE how often I write that phrase) is to begin to articulate what is “normal” to you, and then to realize that it was actually just one of many options for how you might have been raised. As we grow, we begin to understand more how our own parents were influenced by how they grew up– their race, social status, access to resources, their own parents, culture, etc, etc.

    Likewise, our Christian “family” has been handed a certain set of norms, because one of our great great great great grandfathers (Rome) was rich and powerful and mistrustful of difference. And here’s the thing: We do our siblings in Christ (past and present) a disservice when we insist that Grandpa Rome was right (or Normal, Orthodox, Bible-based, whatever your language of choice is). We do ourselves a disservice too. I have found that the liturgy and practice that came from the Celtic tradition draws me towards God and towards my fellow living beings (2 greatest commandments, anyone?) much more than the Roman model ever did. In the end, you may decide that you prefer Rome’s practices. But until you set “Normal” aside in favor of the questions, “How did I get here? And where do I want to go?”, you won’t ever know if you’re choosing freely, or repeating mindlessly the mistakes of generations past.

    Category psychotherapy, theology | Tags: | 5 Comments

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