April 1, 2007
Dear
Mom:
I wanted to write and tell you that I went to church
today. Really, it’s not an April
Fool’s Day thing. I know you and
Dad really have wanted me to go, since you all got religion, and sent me the
Bible and all. There is a big old
church near where I moved to here in the city. For a long time, I thought it was an attraction or a
museum, because there are all these tour buses that pull up and people go in,
to see where Ben Franklin died, or something like that.
The church has bells that go off at 10:30 on Sundays
and wake me up. So, I checked it
out today, and and it turns out they still have services.
I don’t know much about church, having never gone
when I was growing up. I know you
go to one of those new churches with the electric guitars and jumbotron. This church near me is different. It’s ancient. It’s 300 years old.
It started weird. I arrived at the door, and I was given a branch, that I
learned was a palm frond, though you could’ve fooled me, and I was told to wait
outside. Turns out today is Palm Sunday, and when I looked in the leaflet they gave me that
had all the readings and prayers, it looked like I was in for a long haul, so I
thought about sneaking out, but then a guy showed up wearing what looked like a
dress (he was the preacher), and told the huddled masses holding onto their
acrid coffee to start waving the palm thingy and shouting about the king
coming. I figured out that the king
that we were shouting to was Jesus, but there was no Jesus to be found, but we
walked around outside anyway and then in the church like we were following
Jesus, which was strange, but cool, too.
Turns out, this is all in the Bible. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the people in
the streets go wild, like a frat party.
But I guess you know all this, with how much you and Dad are reading the
Bible these days.
Here’s a cool synchronicity moment. I was watching the show Rome on HBO
on Demand last week. You shouldn’t watch it because it’s got
too much sex and violence. It’s
about Caesar, and how bad he was, and how he always made the Romans worship him
after he won a war, even if they hated him. In the show, the plebes wave big palm branches in front of
Caesar when he reenters the city of Rome after a big war victory. It was a way the common dude could show
how much he loved and appreciated Caesar as he rode by on his big white horse.
Jesus is no Caesar, or so this preacher said. The preacher said the poor people of
the streets just tore the branches from the trees in joy and love because
Jesus, who had healed and loved them, was one of them. That kind of got to me, I don’t know
why. They didn’t do it because
they had to; they did it because they wanted to. And then, I realized from the bible verse they read that
Jesus wasn’t on a big horse, but a gnarly donkey. He wasn’t trying to be like Caesar. He was the anti-Caesar. The people in the streets weren’t
scared of Jesus like they might be scared of Caesar.
If I’m honest, Mom, the stuff you’ve been sending me
about Jesus really scares me.
Today, I didn’t feel so scared of him. I sort of felt like him.
When I pictured Jesus on that donkey, he seemed
humble, and he seemed like an outcast among outcasts. I liked it when the preacher said that Jesus was leading the
“marginalized back from the margins.”
You know that I feel like I live on the margins of our family, and
unlike my big brother, who makes you all so happy living near home, I feel like
an outcast. I know, I moved down
here in the city because I wanted to, but it was because I wanted to be
somewhere that didn’t make me feel so different. That hasn’t worked out so well, but somehow, I felt okay
about it today when I realized Jesus must have felt different all the time,
too.
So this
church service got really strange.
They had this drama right in the middle of their service. All these different people from the
congregation pretending to be the people in the Bible. The play started in the garden where
Jesus was praying about the cup of destiny passing from him, and the disciples
are sleeping while he agonizes.
So, they were doing this play, and, Mom, don’t be too shocked by this,
the person playing Jesus was a woman!
I am not April Fooling you.
Somebody should tell that DaVinci Code guy to put that in his next book, no one will
believe it.
But I’ve been thinking about it. I realize it doesn’t matter that Jesus
was a woman. What I can’t stop
thinking about is how human Jesus was.
He was riding the donkey, and everyone piled their hopes on him, and
that meant that “The Man” who needs the control was going to get rid of him,
and then Jesus had to go and decide whether he was willing to die for what he
believed in, and his friends couldn’t deal with it, so they went to sleep on
him. I can relate.
What I realized in church today is that Jesus had
been living his life in secret until he rode into Jerusalem, and all of a
sudden, he wasn’t a secret any more.
He was a threat.
When I was living my life in secret, I threatened no
one, but then when you all learned about me I became a threat. So I moved down here to the city. But, I don’t know, seeing in my
imagination Jesus on that donkey, and the fear of certain people in power that he
was going to take power away from them, and how they wanted to kill him, and
how Jesus struggled with whether or not he was going to sneak out and save his
life or face them and probably die, well, I decided right then that I wasn’t
going to live my life in secret any more.
So, then, whoa.
All of sudden, everyone was shouting “Crucify Him.” I am not kidding. I looked down, and I was supposed to
shout it, too. So I did. It sort of freaked me out. I am not sure why.
What I don’t get is why they have you shout all these
good things to Jesus at the beginning, and then they have you shout to kill him
later. It’s too schizo. The preacher tried to explain it, but I
didn’t get it. “Palm Sunday is all
about contradiction,” he said, like that helps.
So, in this Bible play, Jesus gets crucified, which
involves nailing him up on wood.
Pretty gory when you think about it, like HBO.
The dude preaching was really into what Jesus said
when they nailed him up. I
remember this part. Jesus prayed
to God, “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
That’s pretty radical. They drive nails through him, and Jesus asks for mercy on
them. The preacher said that on
Easter, when they celebrate that Jesus was raised from the dead (about which I
have serious questions), he goes looking for the people who shouted “Crucify
him” not to get revenge, but to forgive them.
So here’s another thing I remember from the
sermon. When you picture Jesus on
the cross, with his arms opened and hands outstretched, he looks as if he wants
to embrace you. The preacher said
something like, Jesus crucified on the cross is God embracing us with
forgiveness. Even if we shout,
“kill,” God will forgive.
He said that there is nothing in me that God is
unwilling to forgive. I seriously
doubt this, but he said it. He
said, God just wants me within that embrace.
So here’s my question: Jesus said, “Forgive them, for they don’t know what they are
doing.” I can live with that. But would Jesus forgive them if they
really had known what they were doing?
That seems like the more important question. Because, I do know what I am doing. I am proud of who I am. I won’t change. But you Christians think I’m
damned. So, if I know what I am
doing, am I forgiven, or damned?
It’s a false choice, I think, which is why nobody I hang with goes to
church.
Wow, I’ve written a lot more than I thought. Mom, what I realized today is that you
always did forgive me even if I knew what I was doing. You always did hug me. I didn’t know until today that God is
the same.
I only wish it were so for Dad.
So, you probably want to know if I am going to go
back next week, on Easter. I’m not
sure. If I am honest, I am not so
sure about God. They said at
church today that Jesus is God in human skin. I like that.
They said that Jesus was like God pitching a tent in our camp and living
with us a while. I get that. But, God forgiving me? I don’t know about that.
One more thing.
They have this thing in church called “passing the peace.” I don’t know if your church has
it. During it, a man asked me if I
was visiting. I said yes. He could see who I was, you know,
different with my clothes, and piercings.
He was wearing a suit and tie.
Kind of like Dad, I always feel judged by these types.
All of a sudden, he spread out his arms, like he was
going to hug me, which would’ve freaked me out. Even though I didn’t want him to hug me, that he was willing
to embrace me meant everything to me.
It reminded me of home. Of
love. It was a feeling of peace.
I don’t know about all of that stuff they do down
there, but I may go back for that peace.
Mom, I will say this about church. I haven’t been home once since I
left. Today, for the first time,
something came over me, and I thought I might like to come home to see you, if
that would be okay.
April
8, 2007
Dear
Mom.
Happy Easter!
I did go back to that church near my apartment here
in the city for Easter Sunday, the one I told you about last week. I forgot to tell you last week, it’s
built right in the middle of a graveyard.
There are tombstones everywhere, but this morning when I walked in,
there were a bunch of daffodils growing right out of a tombstone in their
garden. And it was snowing!
In graveyards, I always get scared that some dead
hand is going to reach out and get me, like in a horror movie. One of the
reasons I don’t like it when you tell me about what is going to happen to me
when I die if I am not saved, or, as you like to say, “washed in the blood of
Jesus” (which, if I am honest, Mom, is a lot scarier than a horror movie), was
that it just scared me. No one
seems scared at this church. They
all seem to be happy right in the graveyard. Right before the service began, they had an Easter Egg hunt,
and, I know this is going to be hard to believe, but they hid the eggs right in
with the graves, and the kids had to climb over them to get the eggs, and they
didn’t care. It made me cry, I am
sorry to admit, because I thought of when I was a kid, and we were at the
cemetery for Nana’s funeral, and when I jumped on Poppy’s headstone so I could
see, you yelled at me. I have been
scared of cemeteries since, but I think I got over that today.
They even have graves right in the church, which at
first creeped me out, because you have to walk on them to get to your seat,
unless you sit in the back, but those seats are always taken by the time I get
there. Today, it didn’t seem to
matter, though, the old church was full of flowers, and they made the sweetest
smell, it didn’t seem so musky, and everyone was looking so good, and they have
this big organ that finally played a song I knew, and they had trumpets
blaring, it didn’t seem like it was a funeral in a graveyard, but more like a
wedding in a garden.
Which played right into what the preacher talked
about. He does drone on, but this
is what I remember. He pointed out
that when Jesus was killed, they buried him in a garden. So, on that first Easter morning, when
the woman goes to see the tomb, she
is going to a garden. So this is
why the church looks like a garden.
Okay, I got it this far.
So, the woman who goes to this garden is Mary
Magdalene, which caught my ear, since she’s the holy grail, I think, and last
month I remember they found her bones on the Titanic, or something like
that. I do know there is some
heavy gossip about her and Jesus, but the preacher didn’t shed any light on
this topic. He wanted to talk
about why she was crying.
So you probably heard in your church today that this
Mary is in the garden, standing at the grave of Jesus, and she is weeping
because he isn’t there. I didn’t
get this at first. I thought the
point was to be happy that he wasn’t there. But the preacher said that she just couldn’t see what was in
front of her. She was too grief
stricken. He must have said “grief
stricken” about a hundred times. I
got his point, that when we are filled with grief, we only see death, and we
can’t imagine anything different.
This morning, I remembered that last, awful fight I
had with Dad, right before I left, and moved down here. Do you remember what he said when I
told him I had to leave? “Over my
dead body,” he screamed. I thought
he was going to hit me. I still
feel bad about what I said, “Well, go ahead and hurry up and die, so I can
go.” It got quiet, and I just
remember you crying. And then Dad
said, “you’re dead to me. And I
said, “I’m glad.”
In church, the whole time I was remembering this, I
had to keep my head down, and I sort of zoned out on what the preacher was
saying. When I started listening
again, he said that when Jesus spoke her name, Mary’s name, she was given new
vision. With this new vision, she
could see life, not just death.
With her old vision, all she could see was what was wrong, and dying,
and broken, and dead. The preacher
said “she could only see the inevitability of death, not the unlimited
possibility of life.” This
preacher talks like that. With her
old vision, she could only see reasons to despair, and when Jesus called her by
name, she was given the vision to hope.
With her new vision, the preacher said, again about a
hundred times, Mary Magdalene could see that life is stronger than death, love
stronger than fear, and hope stronger than despair.
If that is really true, I can see why they hide the
eggs among the graves, and the daffodils grow right out of the headstones.
Mom, I know you want me to believe in God, which is
tough enough for me, and you worry about my soul and all. And at this church, they clearly want me
to believe that a dead Jesus was resurrected and lived again, which I think is
harder to believe in than God in general.
The preacher said in the sermon that Jesus called me by name, and that
this new vision to see life instead of death is a gift to me if I can just
accept that God does love me, and accept me.
But, I don’t suppose I can ever believe that God
loves me if I know my own father doesn’t, just because of who I am, and who I
want to be.
So here’s the thing. I don’t know if it has to do with being in this church, but
today, I have decided to come home, at least for a visit. I will come next weekend. Tell Dad I am coming, just so he knows,
so if he doesn’t want to be there, he can clear out.
When I ring the doorbell, that will be the scariest moment
of my life. Who will open that
door? I am trying to use this new
vision the that preacher talked about.
With that vision, I can see Dad opening the door. But it is hard not to have the
old vision, and when I have that, I just see the door not opening.
I don’t know if I buy this Easter vision the preacher
was talking about, but, whatever it is, I hope it lasts longer than the
daffodils do.
April
15, 2007
Dear
Dad:
I am on the train home, making the trip back to
Philadelphia, thinking about the day we’ve spent together. It is still raining, and I will get to
bed long after midnight. But I
feel some comfort, typing here on my laptop, remembering.
As I wrote to Mom in my emails, the most difficult
thing I’ve think I’ve ever done was to get on the train early this
morning. I took the train so I
couldn’t turn around. For two hours, I cursed myself for setting myself up to
get hurt again, or rejected again.
I didn’t want to feel the pain again of when I left home, and hear the
words you called me and I called you when I left a year ago. I was so afraid because we hadn’t
spoken.
For the entire trip, I practiced what I was going to
say to you when I saw you at home.
I figured that you would be down in the basement, turning table legs on
the lathe, with its belt squealing so loud you couldn’t hear me come down the
stairs. I thought I would have to
shout “Dad” until you finally heard me and turned it off. I figured you would just lift your head
and stare at that gas station calendar from 1969 with August 16th
circled. Joey and I would always
try to figure out why, when there was a fight, you’d go down to the basement to
turn table legs and stare at that calendar until you calmed that legendary
temper down. Just so you know, I
finally figured it out, and Joey too.
Anyway, on the entire train ride out, I practiced
what I was going to say to you. I
was willing to say that I was sorry for things I said and did when I left. I was wrong about some things, and I
was willing to say so. I didn’t
want to apologize too much, or grovel.
I am not the only person in the wrong here, I said to myself, and I
would need to hear something from you like an apology or I was going to turn
around and head back to the Harrisburg train station.
I still can’t believe you were waiting for me at the
train station. You didn’t even
know what train I was on. Mom told
me you had been waiting all morning, checking each train that came in.
I almost thought I was being mugged when you hugged
me. I didn’t see you coming at
first, but then you called me by name, and I knew it was you.
Dad, you’ve never hugged me like you did today at the
train station. I don’t know if you
know this, but when you used to hug me, you would always pat me on the back,
sometimes pat me pretty hard, like more of a slap. And you would always let go quick. But today, you just pulled me closer and closer, drawing me
in. I was one who kept trying to
let go, so I could back up and say what I had to say, but you wouldn’t let go.
It’s funny, now, thinking back on it, that you held
on to me so long, I forgot what I wanted to say. I remembered later, when we were at home, eating that great
breakfast, and drinking those mimosas.
Wow, Dad, when did you start drinking champagne on Sunday morning? I wish Joey could’ve been there to see
it.
It meant a lot to me that you took me down to the
shop to see the new lathe, and the new way your turning the legs and all. I am sorry I didn’t take to that work,
and I am glad Joey is going to take over soon, but this was the first time I
didn’t feel like you were disappointed that I didn’t want to do it. And, whoa, Dad, you got rid of the old
calendar.
Dad, I know that today didn’t make everything all
right between us I know you still
don’t understand why I have to live in Philadelphia, and I know you don’t
understand why I have to live this way, and why I am who I am. I know there are still a lot of things
I don’t know about you, or understand.
You always kept yourself a secret to me. But when you hugged me at the train, and then we had that
great brunch, and you gave me granddad’s old class ring, and even your old Navy
jacket you wore in Vietnam, I felt like I had a home again. Dad, I just can’t live there, but I
know my home is there, and that means a lot to me as I come back to this city
that I am trying to find my way in.
I’m sorry that I didn’t see Joey. I thought I heard his voice at some
point, but I guess not.
Anyway, I don’t know if Mom told you, but I got the
notion to make this trip home a couple of Sundays ago when I went to this old
church near my apartment that has the bells that wake me on Sundays. They were ringing this morning when I
ran to the subway through the rain.
I ducked in and picked up the service program they have each week, even
though I couldn’t stay for the sermon.
I’ve been looking at the Bible reading
on the train ride home.
Dad, I don’t want you to think that I am going to
start going to this church, or reading the Bible that you and Mom sent me, or
anything, but it has been interesting being in this church the last two
weeks. I don’t pretend to
understand it, or the Bible readings, especially the one they had today.
I am sure you know it, but it’s the one were after Jesus
has been raised (if you can believe such a thing) and then he walked through a
wall into a room where his friends and followers were hiding. I guess they are hiding from Jesus,
because they are scared that he is mad they let him down, let him get killed,
and didn’t stick up for him. Now
he’s walking around, and they figure he’s going to get revenge, so they’re
hiding.
So, the first thing Jesus says, is “Peace.” Like, it’s okay, forget about it, I
want to be with you again. I felt
that between us today, too, Dad. I
will say this about the Bible readings, there is always something in them that
is like my own life.
Anyway, there is this one disciple, Thomas, who
wasn’t there hiding in this room, and I can relate, because I always feel like
I missed the meeting, or am the one out of the loop. So, he refuses to believe that Jesus did this showing up
thing, and telling them everything is okay, which I can relate to, because I am
a skeptic too, and I know you want me to believe it, but I don’t mind it as a
story. So this Thomas dude tells
his buds, “prove it.”
Well, then, like a movie, Jesus walks through the
wall again and looks right at this Thomas. But Thomas doesn’t seem to bite. So, Jesus makes Thomas stick his fingers in his wounds,
which sounds pretty creepy, but when Thomas does this, he can finally see Jesus
for who he is.
So, Dad, I’ve been thinking about this. Thomas couldn’t see Jesus until he
could see that he still had his wounds.
Even when he was made alive again, his wounds were still there. They didn’t go away. Thomas could only relate to this Jesus
through his wounds. After all,
this Thomas is a human, so he probably has all the standard issue wounds, and
added on those, he betrayed his best friend, the one who loved him.
I know this sounds strange, but I think you and I
really wounded each other. I am
sorry I wounded you Dad with what I did and said. I know who I am wounds you too, and that I won’t change
keeps that wound open. Today, I
felt like that was okay. I felt
like you knew how wounded I was by what happened when I left. Like Jesus and Thomas, we related to
each other through our wounds.
I don’t know if this relates to the Bible story, but
if Jesus wounds didn’t close, and Thomas could still relate to him, maybe it
means that you and I can keep our wounds, and still relate to each other. I guess the wounds don’t go away, and
that’s okay.
It’s interesting that Jesus in this story doesn’t
lose his wounds when he is walking around. If he’s God, why does he still have wounds?
Anyway, now that you have a calendar on the basement
wall that allows you to look into the future, maybe you and Mom can find a
Sunday to come down here to Philly.
I would like that.
The train is pulling in, so I have to stop
typing. I’ll send this on the
Wi-Fi in the station. It looks
like the rain has stopped, and maybe it will finally be sunny tomorrow.
Dad, I don’t know why couldn’t say it when I
left. I guess I was so shocked
when you said it. It’s been so
long since we’ve said it. I’ll
just say it now.
I love you, too, Dad.