McCarty Musings

What Paul Might Have Written

So.
I really love Jesus.
But...there are still a few problems that I struggle with, even with the Carpenter. A few years ago, I decided to read through the New Testament in the Message version. I got half-way through Matthew and put it down. I told Micah, “Jesus seems mean in this version. Angry and short-tempered. Like a housewife with too many children.” I guess he did have twelve of them, after all.

Also, what about the time he told the disciples to “cast not their pearls before swine”? I'm not sure I like Jesus comparing humans to swine, especially on the days I find the metaphor apropos. I really want to attribute that statement to Paul. Doesn’t that sound exactly like something Paul would say? (Except if Paul said it, the swine would equal women instead of people who don’t care to listen. I’m kicking Paul’s ass when I get to heaven. Just once. And then I’ll be good.) It also sounds like something I might say at the end of a long day. But I don’t want Jesus to say it! Jesus is supposed to be more long-suffering than I am, right? Right??

And then, the whole “Dogs get the crumbs from my table” story. I feel like a dog most days, and I think what I get most of the time is crumbs, which is more than I deserve, so perhaps that is how I should read the story, but still find it disturbing. Is this the same Christ who spent time with the woman at the well in Samaria? I wonder if the disciples ever took some artistic liberties?

"With all those books upon your shelves
there is no need for certainty..."
-Beat Radio

"With all the sand that gets into this world
we should all be mfkin' pearls."
-Antje Duvekot

Please Stop Talking

There's a woman at work whose voice makes me feel constipated.

(Voices have always affected me strongly. I have a friend whose speaking voice is musical, which is lovely. But by the end of the day, I am so thankful for my twenty minute ride home with nothing but Silence. It gives my ears a chance to let all the little annoying sounds and words to trickle out and get blown away on the breeze, so that by the time I get home, they are clear enough to hear my favorite voices: Micah's and Harper's.)

Wherein My Unbelief Gets A Small Help

It's Monday night. Long day, for everyone, everywhere. I was telling a friend today that nurses are largely a group of unhappy people. Way over half the people I work with every day are unhappy...every day. It's strange and difficult to be working around that many unhappy people, and the challenge is to still find ways to reach out when I'm not all that happy myself.

Tonight Harper had another freak-out night terror. I tried for thirty minutes to get her to calm down, and I used all the tricks in my mommy bag. No go. Thirty minutes later she's still screaming and now screaming for Daddy. Sigh. Fine, Micah, let's see what you've got.

Ten minutes later the house is an oasis of calm. So quiet you could feel the Xanax kicking in and hear the angels faintly humming. "Okay- what did you do?" Micah tells me that he did all the same things I did. Sigh. But then he says, "Sometimes when she's having a really bad night...I pray with her."
What?
What?!

Okay- so I have a difficult time with prayer. But so does Micah. Lately we approach the christian faith in a more practical, social way. We work for the Kingdom. We care for the poor and the earth, forgive enemies, blah blah blah. So I was mystified to hear that he had been praying with our child behind my back. ;)

"For how long? What do you say when you pray with her? Does she like it? What have you told her about God? How much do you think she understands?"

She's only two. I didn't know we'd started! Having not wanted to tell her that God is a Big Man in the Sky, and after Christmas and playing with "baby Jesus" figurines, I haven't said much. Micah tells me that Harper likes to pray, that he prays all the same things I would, that she probably doesn't understand it but it seems to soothe her, that she loves to say "amen", and that for now, she thinks Jesus lives at church.

Then I'm all teary-eyed, thinking about him praying in there with her, and not telling me because he didn't want to seem overly spiritual or braggy. Then I'm all, "You've got to fill me in on this stuff! I want to watch you do the spiritual formation stuff, even though I have no idea how!"

Then he's all back-tracking, "Oh, I don't know about prayer. But, hey, it's calming. I don't know what's really happening there. Maybe it's just the neurological effect of meditation on the brain..."

Whatever, you big goofy prayer warrior. I don't buy the cynical act, not tonight. You're a big prayer softie, and I'm on to you.

So Micah wins the parent award again, but at least I get to watch him work.

The Jungle vs. The Grapes

A few weeks ago we had our pigs “processed”. Micah picked an independent, family-owned and operated place in Chickasha and took Harp with him to drop off the pigs. (Traumatic for Harp: “Hug pigs! No bacon!”) A week later, Micah asked me to go pick the meat up. As I pulled up to the plant, a smell assaulted my nostrils that can only be described as liquid death. I opened the car door and passed out. When I regained consciousness down in the gravel of the parking lot, I swore that I would become vegan. But I still needed to carry out my farm-wifely duties, so I entered Garcia Processing Plant, blank check in hand, fighting back nausea.

Here’s what I saw: a clean cinder-block building, sheet-rocked walls not covered in paint, several workers who spoke a hybrid Spanglish, a huge American flag stretched across the wall, and a glimpse of a very clean and frigid killing room filled with gloved people of many races who were wrapping cuts of meat into pristine white paper packages. While they boxed my order and washed their hands, I began to look around more closely. One wall featured many grade-school hand-drawn pictures. The artist had clearly been indoctrinated already, evidenced by the “Just Say No to Smoking” propaganda (sample caption: “Stop Smoking or Go to Jail!”). But what caught my heart were two penciled pictures, taped up side by side. A little girl cries in the first picture, which reads, “Before Garcia Processing Plant Came Into Our Lives.” An identical girl grins in the next picture, which reads, “After Garcia Processing Plant Came Into Our Lives”.

By the time the white woman with no teeth, the black man in falling-apart clothes, and Hispanic gentleman who spoke no English came out with my “puerco”, I was a little teary. I walked in believing myself to be in a Sinclair Lewis novel, I walked out inside The Grapes of Wrath.

As writers (or crazy people) will, I began speculating about this nameless eight year-old artist and how bad things had to be for her family that she would draw pictures about her gratitude for a meat processing plant. I think it’s likely that this Plant gave her father and/or mother jobs, when possibly they had had no jobs before…possibly because of their education level, lack of English language skills, or race.

I called Micah on the way home, my car weighed down with a serious load of puerco, and said, “I don’t know that I ever want to eat meat again, but if you do, the Garcia Processing Plant is the only place we should use from now on. Por favor.”

Good End to a Long Day

When we ask Harper if she knows how much we love her, she spreads out her arms as far as she can and yells, "Toooooooooooo much!" The girl is smart.

Reason #2468 God's Pretty Mad At the World

She's pretty pissed at the overuse of the phrase "the big man upstairs" when referring to Her Holiness.

P.S. Thank You. So Much.

I need to say here that in the midst of this awful craziness, I have the best friends and family in the world. For those of you who have loved me unconditionally (especially you, Micah) I cannot thank you enough. But I will keep trying.
And for those of you whom I have never met (or haven't seen in a long time, beautiful Julie), but have sent me the most incredible encouraging emails- I thank you more than words can express. You are helping me make it through these days when I feel so much pain. Every one of you has made me cry- in a good way. May She bless you for what you have done for my heart and my mind. Thank you.

If I'm Dead in a Few Weeks...

I drove by a church sign in Tuttle, America yesterday that read, I swear by all that is holy:

JESUS IS MY PROZAC

I may take a picture this week and post it so you will believe me, blog world. But until then you are going to have to take my word for it.

This sign was a startling wake-up call for me. I have been severly depressed for the last year- and if I only new that Jesus was Prozac, I could have saved so much time and money. Why haven't any of you told me that Jesus was Prozac? If you knew and didn't tell me, I think Jesus may put you with the goats instead of the sheep when we all get divided up in the end. If I pray the sinner's prayer, does the God-Prozac start working immediately, or do I have to wait 2-4 weeks to experience the full effect? This must mean that I am not a Christian. This must mean that I am not truly leaning in the everlasting arms. This must mean that I do not have the peace that passes understanding down in my heart. Or the beautiful believe that baffles the budhists way down in the depths of my heart. Or that I'm not praying enouugh, tithing enough, repenting enough.

My Lord, maybe I have unconfessed sin in my life.

Thank God for that church sign. I'm getting off my medication immediately. I have been so misguided, looking to the medical establishment for help instead of falling into the loving arms of Christ.

No wonder my sister is an atheist.

Life Rule #1: Have Meaningful Work to Do on a Daily Basis

Today, Micah calls to talk about Normal People Stuff and I interrupt him.

K: Did you know that there is a disease called "Farmer’s Lung"?
M: Yeah, I think I’ve heard of that before.
K: I guess from inhaling all the fertilizer and insecticides and poop-dust?
M: Yeah.
K: But what about "Bird-Fancier’s Lung"? Did you know you can get a lung disease from fancying birds?
M: No.
K: And Cheese-Washer’s Lung? People wash cheese?! And this is bad for your lungs how?
M: Aren’t you at work?
K: Micah, I am a nurse. A nurse. I have to know all about diseases so that I can help people. For instance, people that fancy birds. Or wash cheese. Or that strip maple-bark.
M: What??
K: Maple-Bark Stripper’s Lung. I don’t think that’s a disease for strippers whose stage name is Maple-Bark. I think it’s from working with the actual bark of a tree.
M: Who are you?
K: I’m Kristen. Ooh, listen to this one: Pituitary Snuff-Taker’s Disease. I could not make this stuff up! Detergent Asthma! Cork-Handler’s Disease! Silo-Filler’s Disease! Vanishing Lung!! Now that one is scary. What if you woke up one day and one of your lungs had just vanished??
M: I’m going to call you later.
K: I’m going to make up a story about someone whose lung just vanishes one morning. Or is that too derivative of Kafka?
M: Seriously, I’m going to say goodbye.
K: Seriously, I’m going to learn more about rare pulmonary diseases! I’ll say this- we do not want Harper growing up to wash cheese. Or to be a stripper. Even if her stage name isn’t Maple-Bark, I don’t think we should encourage that career path. You never know- she could get a pulmonary disease named after her.

Here I Am

Here’s what they don’t tell you about having young children. You know those moments you’ve slept late into the morning with the person you love, and you find yourself waking up slowly, gently? The moments pass as your love sleeps, turned away from you, and the sun paints a triangle of gold on their bare shoulder. And you are able to lay there uninterrupted and watch that golden triangle lazily slide across their shoulder and down their back, and you are allowed to think of nothing but their salient worth and goodness.

Well, you don’t get those anymore.

But.

You do get different moments. Moments when a voice calls your name in love and need the way that no one- no one- has ever loved or needed you before. Moments when you are the world and you give the world and you stop the world for one small beating heart. Moments when you, larger than life and smarter than smart, can make the monsters go away.

And when you feel the sweet weight of that small voice on your heart, and sticky, damp hands encircle your neck, you sigh and remember that the quiet mornings full of light will come again and when they do, you’ll then long for the way your name was called in the dark of night, like God calling to Samuel, and you’ll realize that you’ll never be happy, not really, for always wanting whatever gift has gone missing.