November 2015 - Kate Rae Davis

November 24, 2015June 8, 2019

Thanksgiving Presence

My friend Jen was recently lamenting that she had accepted an invitation to Thanksgiving before having received Nancy’s invitation. “Maybe if you keep the party going until 8 or 9, I could join you then!” she half-exclaimed an implied question.

“No.” The inquiry had actually been directed at Nancy, but it was my voice that responded with firm immediacy. I took in Jen’s raised eyebrows and was about to sheepishly backpedal when Nancy burst out laughing, saving my shame by declaring how glad she was to have friends who think just like her, but out loud.

Fortunately, my stance on party hopping wasn’t a secret to either of my friends. A few years ago, I wrote a post on the practice of Thanksgiving hopping. Ok, it was more of a rant than a post, but I still stand by what I wrote (even though it has resulted in a couple of under-attended Thanksgivings).

Our culture seems to believe that everything is a consumable commodity. The logic seems to be that the more we consume of something, the more we will have of what it offers, which seems to be true at first glance. More skin product use means more youthful appearance. More guns means more safety and security. More books means more knowledge.

By this logic, more Thanksgivings (more servings of more dishes, more people, more places, more events) could mean more of the promise of Thanksgiving – joy and gratitude. And party hopping may fulfill that promise, I suppose; my experience and observation is that it often doesn’t.

I wonder if the striving for more joy is the very thing that prevents joy from deepening. I wonder if the attempt to gain a deeper feeling of gratitude keeps gratitude from wholly forming. I wonder if rushing to achieve the next thing is what keeps us from noticing God’s activity right where we are. I wonder if celebrating Thanksgivings-in-the-plural blocks the experience of truly feeling thankful.

An achievement-orientation demands that we always strive for more, but joy and gratitude and love seem to have no concern for achievement. They seem more willing to flourish when we let go of needing anything beyond what’s immediately available to us, more present when events and busyness slow down, more deeply experienced when we deeply notice what is already presently in our midst.

So if slowness isn’t part of your regular practice, I’d encourage you to consider trying it. Even for just one day – and Thanksgiving seems like a pretty appropriate day for a slowness experiment. Many of us spend most days of the year rushing from event to event, meeting to meeting, party to party. Perhaps we could dedicate one day to slowing down, to noticing where we are, to being with our loved ones, to considering the goodness that is already happening in our midst.

May you trust that you need not go anywhere for goodness to manifest. May you seek the goodness that is present right where you already are.

*All names changed.

November 17, 2015January 9, 2016

The Anti-Apocalypse

Reflections on Mark 13:1-8, delivered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Episcopal Church.

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There seems to be something hard-wired into humans that makes us want to know what the future holds. We wonder about the future in ways that are small and individual, and in ways that are large, global, and cosmic . Perhaps this morning you wondered if you should bring a raincoat; perhaps you worried if the mountains will regain their snow pack. Perhaps you wonder if you’ll be healed of physical ailment, even if it’s just wondering when you’ll get over a cold. Perhaps you wonder if you’ll get a callback for a job you applied for. Perhaps you worry how the presidential race will end.

In our gospel passage this morning, Jesus addresses the most major of our concerns about the future: Will the world end? What meaning are we to derive from the abundance of wars and violence, such as this week’s attacks in Beirut and Paris? Do hurricanes and climate changes and earthquakes like the recent one in Japan point to the end of the world?

Jesus seems to understand that we’ll take these complex problems and painful catastrophes to be signs of the worst thing possible, signs of the literal end of the world. And Jesus is firm in his answer to our wonderings if these happenings are the end. Jesus says: No. No, wars are not the end; they are the result of earthly rulers, not the will of the Divine Creator of the Universe. No, natural disasters are not a sign of God’s punishment. No, famines are never God’s desire. No, this is not the end of the story.

Rather, Jesus tells us that these problems are early birth pains — the sign of new life; the sign that something new to that is struggling to be born; the sign of the Nation of God struggling to become reality. And perhaps we are to respond to these early birth pains in the same way we would respond to a woman entering labor: by offering comfort and assistance, to the best of our abilities, while anticipating the new life that is to come.

Our presence may not end wars, but we will faithfully witness the suffering as we actively work for peace. Our faith may not end natural disasters, but it will prompt us to respond in tangible ways for those in need. Our hope may not eradicate all famines, but it could feed the empty stomach of the hungry in our midst.

Jesus lists some of the worst possible things that could happen — and is certain that they are not the end of the story. Jesus is certain they are the beginning of a new reality. So keep going. Keep engaging. Keep advocating and interfering and helping and anticipating and responding. When it feels like the end of the world, remember: there is hope.

November 10, 2015January 12, 2016

Room (2015), Transitions, Gratitude, and Forgiveness

Room (2015) Review: Transitions, Gratitude, and Forgiveness - post on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

I went in to the screening of Room in a sold out theatre. I had never met the man next to me, but by the end we felt like friends, largely because we had spent most of the last two hours crying next to one another.

I can’t speak to what particular images impacted my neighbor so deeply. Yet, considering that Room is a film about an abducted woman and her child who are kept in a shed for years (a circumstance that very few viewers of this film are likely to have experienced), there is something extremely connecting about it. Its themes are universal: the difficulty with transitions, the importance of gratitude, the difficulty and necessity of forgiveness.

Since everything I’m going to reveal is pretty easily discernible from both the trailer and the movie poster, I’m not sure anything counts as a real spoiler, but just in case: here’s your alert.

The first portion of the film takes place in the shed that our protagonists call simply Room. Room is the whole universe; outside of Room is outer space — or at least this is the story that Joy (Brie Larson) told her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in order to normalize his childhood and to cope with her reality. Jack treats every item as though it has its own personality; characters created by his mother to ease the loneliness. “Good morning, Lamp,” he starts the day. “Good morning, Chair.”

Joy is in Room against her will and everything there is a reminder of her captivity; every item is necessary and conserved because her captor is not generous; every new addition to the space must be politely requested as though her abuser is her benefactor. It is an understatement to say she cannot wait to get out of Room and into another space. She’s willing to risk everything — her son’s life, her own life — in order to get somewhere else.

And then, miraculously (and it does feel like a miracle, full of more hope than my heart is accustomed to bearing), she gets out. We see her in the clean, well-lit hospital, happy to shed the clothing that her abductor had given her, delighted that someone else has prepared her a meal (and we realize this is likely the first time this has happened in seven years). We see her in the comfort of her childhood bedroom and the spaciousness of her household — we can’t help but notice how many rooms there are here.

It’s in her childhood home that there’s a moment when Joy lands on the couch and bursts into tears. From behind her hands she says to her mom “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m supposed to be happy.”

I lost it.

I feel the same way about my own life transitions, the most recent of which is from seminary to post-graduate life. I had looked forward to being done with classes, had looked forward to being able to do work in the world, had looked forward to being able to write my own pieces instead of what was assigned — and now that I’m here, and I’m not as happy as I thought I would be, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

It strikes me that the power of this scene is that it applies to anyone who has ever transitioned; the universal experience of transition is manifested in its essence in this particular transition. We, like Joy, were in a place that we did not want to be; we anticipated escape. And then we’re out of where we were and in a different space, but it’s not what we imagined. We’re supposed to be happy, but we aren’t. And as long as we keep trying to live into what we’re “supposed to be” feeling, we can’t name how conflicted and ambivalent we really are. We would never dare admit that on some level we miss the routine and familiarity of the place we once were captive. We’re unable to integrate the blessings and curses of our captivity into our present life, and to the extent that we cannot bear that complexity, we are held captive by it. Until we are able to bless the complexity our experiences, we’re held captive by them.

We’ve all been Joy on the couch, wondering why we aren’t happy. We’ve all been wandering in the desert, wondering why we ever left Egypt.

In the end, it’s Jack who is able to name what he needs, who is able to ease the transition. He asks to go back to Room, to visit; we get the sense that Joy would never have done this otherwise. While Joy lingers right outside the Room, Jack enters into its familiar corners. He notices that it’s smaller; he’s able to see it with new eyes, a clear sign that his transition is well underway and that there is no going back. When it’s time to go, he gently touches everything as he leaves it, with the tiniest benediction: “Goodbye, Chair. Goodbye, Wardrobe. Goodbye, Room.”

Jack knows he can’t stay in the nostalgia and safety and familiarity of Room. He knows it’s time to go, and I believe he actively desires to go — to play with his friend, to run with dogs, to explore the world that is now open to him. And yet, the leaving does not diminish his gratitude and affection for what he leaves behind. He is able to bless what his life was even as he moves forward into what his life is.

Perhaps, he must bless what his life was in order to move into what his life could be.

Through Jack’s eyes, Joy is able to see Room with tenderness. Yes, it was a prison, it was the site of countless rapes, it was the site of the death of her firstborn. And, it was in that prison that she bore her son, that she taught him to read and to bake, that she breastfed him and bathed with him with an intimacy that the world was not present to scrutinize, that they shared good and beautiful moments of play and tenderness.

When Joy, at her son’s urging, finally says goodbye to Room, we know that she has begun to receive the blessings that it offered her. She has begun to bear the complexity of the place. It’s the same moment that she begins, perhaps for the first time, to truly cease to be its captive.

November 5, 2015January 9, 2016

Living in the Tomb

Reflections on John 11:32-44, delivered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Episcopal Church.

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I would have stayed in the tomb.

In the Middle East, it’s hot. Which means decomposition sets in quick, and the stench of that rotting process is heavy in the air. So if I had been four days in a tomb, in the heat — essentially the tomb becomes a warmed oven — I think I would have been too ashamed to come out.

And on top of that, there’s the problem of the bindings. The text describes how “his hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.” In the burial customs of the time, strips of cloth were tightly wound around the body — they bound the jaw closed, the feet together, and the hands to the side of the body. Which means that even after the shock of finding himself alive in his tomb, Lazarus is faced with the problem of exiting the tomb. He cannot walk with his feet bound together. He cannot even crawl with his hands tied to his side. The text doesn’t describe what must have been Lazarus’s struggling exit from the tomb; we can only imagine the movements of rolling and shuffling and squirming that must have taken him from the darkness to the light.

I would have stayed in the tomb. It would be less painful to stay dead than to suffer the humiliation of exiting on my belly and the shame of exposing the community to the stench of my death.

And that’s not to mention life after the tomb. In a culture where the dead are considered unclean, untouchable — where does an undead person go? what does he do? who will be near him, eat with him, care for him?

In commanding “Lazarus, come out!” — rather than going in, gathering up Lazarus in his arms, and carrying him out like a fireman making a rescue — in commanding Lazarus to come out, Jesus is asking a lot of his beloved friend. Jesus asks for Lazarus’s struggle and his exposure. Jesus asks for him to risk living with social stigma. Jesus asks for his full participation.

I would have stayed in the tomb.

Unless, perhaps, it becomes too painful to stay in the tomb any longer. I think we all reach this point, in different ways, at various moments of our life.

Perhaps it’s physical — our body is in pain or we suffer an addiction, and we know we can no longer keep living the way we have been, that our lifestyle habits have become a kind of tomb that we must leave in order to have real life.

Perhaps it’s relational — something about the person I become when I’m with this other person has turned my home into a kind of tomb, has bound me up in some way that I no longer feel like I have agency, and I need to crawl to someone who can unbind me.

Perhaps it’s societal, living in a system that bends toward injustice and it even though it will be really difficult to get out, staying in the tomb, staying with the way things are, is just no longer an option.

Jesus did not prevent his friend from dying. Mary and the Jews have a point: If Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died. So it seems that Jesus did not come to rescue us from going through difficulties.

And on the other side of death, at the tomb, at this scene: Jesus does does not rush into the tomb to deliver Lazarus out like a fireman rushing into a building burning. Rather, Jesus invites Lazarus to participate in his own salvation. Having done what he could do in raising Lazarus to life, Jesus expects Lazarus to do what he could do by making his way out of the tomb.

It’s when each of us is in a place of death — of pain and suffering and stench and shame — it’s when we feel trapped and bound and unable to act — it’s in death that Jesus offers the possibility of new life. Jesus calls to us. He calls to us: Come out! He invites us: Come out! He offers us hope that there is new life waiting to be had. Come out!

Jesus looks at something dead and see it as full of potential for life. Jesus looks at a corpse in a dark tomb and invites a living body into the light. Jesus looks at his beloved one and shows that death does not have to be the end of the story.

Having done what he can do in inviting us to new life, Jesus expects us to do what we can do to in our own movement and struggle out of our tombs.

Come out! Come out!