Your Blood is My Fountain

“Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is my blood which was poured out for you.”
You stand there Jesus, and Your hands are reaching up towards Your Father who is in Heaven. I don’t understand it, why You would take the cup for me. We both know its contents… those flakes of gold from the calf idol Moses ground into powder still swirl about in this deadly swill. You have turned the water into blood, rather than wine, because it is the fluid of life: but one sip of this cup, and perhaps all the life will flee out of me. Why would You do it, Jesus? You are not compelled to death by hemlock through any sins You have done, any offenses You have committed… because there are none to be found under Your name. Yet, You are still reaching into Heaven, and I think You are holding a chalice.

Or maybe it’s a star; the holy grail? Something bright and shining beyond the tolerance of my eyes half emerges out of Heaven: it’s alive and burning in Your hands. I think I have stepped back into time for a few moments… because are You whispering something, are Your hands burning around that cup, are those tears in Your eyes and blood on Your brow? You bid the Father to take this cup from You, but not Your will, of course not, You voluntarily submit Yourself to my painful torment. Isaiah couldn’t bear a burning coal on his tongue without it consuming obvious sins. Jesus, You had none to consume, You were Holy in man nature… were You still burned or did it consume You?

I think I see, now, whats really in that cup: not dust or water, wine or blood, but words, a fountain of words—angry and sad, disappointed, just, Holy… words of the wrath of the Lord: this is that scared vessel which will be divided into seven bowls and poured over the earth in its final days. And here You stand, Jesus my Savior, holding up this burning cup within Your hands. Its awful to watch, I don’t understand how such a man as You could take my rightful cup and love me still. Jesus, put it down, don’t drink from it, I am not worthy. You hear the cry of my heart… You see my distress and unsurity. My sin offering, Jesus, I love You, why are You doing this for me? How can You love me too, like this?

I see You standing now, You’re glowing like the grail… did my tears blind my eyes, did I miss something? There are still words within the cup, but they are dissolving into the blood that You poured in. Blood, blood, so much blood from Your hands, feet, side, and head. Your wounds are fresh and open still… how long has it been, 3 days? But no more life must flow out of You, no more blood is there to be spilt. You wounded Yourself for my transgression and iniquity; the wounds which perfected Your soul and made You immortal brought me peace. So why do I languish under torment? Why is there no peace or rest within my soul? Jesus, You are offering the cup back to me… wrath, Jesus, didn’t You bear all the wrath?

Your smile reassures me, I pray I am not deceived. It’s a bitter cup I drink from…I can find no sweetness in it. You continue to smile, there’s more still. I cannot drink such a full cup, I must stop for some time… Jesus, help me drink of You… for You are the fountain of life… must I too die to taste Your sweetness?

 

Response to: The Risks of Repeating Ourselves: Reading Feminist, Womanist Figures of Jesus. By Karen Timble Alliaume

Response to: The Risks of Repeating Ourselves: Reading Feminist, Womanist Figures of Jesus. By Karen Timble Alliaume

Over the past year and a half of my final time studying for my undergraduate degree, I have begun to question more specifically God’s use of women in occupational roles/positions. We have in the past gender-specified certain occupations, tasks, etc… and with the occupation I find myself identifying seems to fall into that predominantly male category of collegiate teaching, and in the even more forbidden territory of religious education. I want to teach theology and philosophy on a collegiate level, and involving God in that already-bold ambition of teaching young men has been questioned. What would I give up to teach? The conservative feminine ideal: husband and family (at least for now) because of an almost fanatical, over-ambitious drive at teaching. Probably far too intense, but I love the stuff I study… I converse with authors far too regularly, and am learning how to integrate what I learn into life. Jesus and I have a simple relationship that grows more complex as I experience more… as Jesus matures me into a woman He has married rather than a little girl He may be fond of. He wants me to be able to love Him back just as much as He loves me… and I struggle with that, because somewhere in the picture, that means being like my Jesus. Be like You, Jesus? But You are not a woman, I am not a man, how can I fully live like You? Thus I explore the feminist concepts of Jesus to see how far I can push into “men’s world” and remain a true woman in Your image.

Because these women are feminists that I am reading to obtain one polar perspective on women and Jesus, I have to keep in mind that part of their fundamental belief system defies patriarchal anything; any system that is organized with a man as head of a woman. Feminists in their true form, I think, dwell far too much in the past, assigning blame to men for the suppression of women. And of course, there is plenty of blame to be had there, in the past… but the more I read, the more I am think the feminists are playing the Eden game again… tag, men are “it” for the blame! The more I read, the more I am inspired and my imagination runs wild… but I think feminism need to realize the fundamental stupidity of women. “Maleness” has a bad taste in the mouths of feminists who see manhood as the cause of female oppression, omitting the female sin tendency to over-submit. “Your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3.16) evidences an innate female sin tendency to voluntarily subject herself to the whims and desires of others.

I think feminism denies something inherently female in our nature.. the sin tendencies: it acknowledges difference between make and female, but those difference remain unclear as feminists try to achieve “equality” for women. But equality of value does not necessarily imply same/like position, which feminism wants to attain: same roles and value. I think we women often forget our own nature, and do look to male nature as the “norm” for how we should be… though even in reality, we cannot make our natures anymore male than they can make theirs female. We are incapable, most of us, of performing “male-ly” in most given tasks because not only are my not built as men physiologically, we are not metaphysically built as men either.

This I find myself identifying with Alliaume,“McLaughlin’s own yearning for the answer to her question ‘How can I a woman, find myself, see myself as made in the image of a male God, a God whose human face is seen in the man Jesus?’ (140)” But the more preposterous solution cannot be so simple as McLaughlin proposes: “to ‘re-dress’ the problem of Jesus’ maleness by reading him as a transvestite, as one who shatters the opposed duality of male/female.” Jesus really did more than dress-up in flesh, though… He took on human nature (hypostatic union theology?). This proposition seems to have been given in response to Jesus’ apparently unmasculine behavior: “Jesus’ behavior is anxiety-provoking; he behaves in a manner inconsistent with our expectations of him as a man.” When did we ever assign gender to behavior? I guess Jesus’ avoidance of a gender-stereotype label makes Him frustrating to identify with. Why can we not just accept Jesus for who He tells us He is? Who He demonstrates to us He is? Why must we identify what He is to identify ourselves with Him? I think Jesus tried to picture humanity rather than a gender.

I guess we “dress” Jesus with gender-specific qualities so as to know how to emotionally engage Him. Do I want to emotionally engage Jesus like Alliaume? Is it a choice I have or something I just do, especially as a woman? Emotionally identify with Jesus? Jesus, do you feel as I feel, are you broken like me? Do I not engage emotions, distance myself from them because I don’t see You in them? All of me to all of You Jesus, please.  Alliaume points out an interesting confliction in how we view Jesus: “Christians believe in a Jesus ‘dressed’ in flesh, that most female of symbols, and they believe in a God in man-flesh who behaves like a woman.” I wondered at first how flesh was a female symbol, but if it is thought of in terms of Greek thought… separating us from the forms, true stuff, spirit, then flesh is evil, which would further explain to me that imputation of sin/guilt of all humanity onto women. (I tangent in my thought to make note to try and find the origin of existential guilt, since its presence is undeniable) We cannot make Jesus into a woman… but can we make a woman into Jesus? Can one be done but not the other? This “transvestite Jesus” is McLaughlin’s christologically playful attempt to shock her congregation, is seems.

“McLaughlin’s yearning, and mine (so speaks Alliaume), to see ourselves made in the image of a male God is a yearning to be recognized, as women, as capable of representing divinity; a recognition that is not made available to us in the conventional manner.” I need to find a way to convince/persuade women that they need to do this. That we women need to identify with Jesus, our living sacrifice, we need an emotional connection, to realize Jesus in all parts of our lives, including those emotions, which are beyond my comprehension. Since women are typically considered very emotional human beings, what if one does not engage her emotions or even find them within herself as typically defined femininity prescribes? Is she then any less a woman in the same way that feminists want to consider Jesus not really masculine because of His behavior? Again, who dictates the standard of gender-specific behavior? Society, surely. Yet we live in society, and so must work within the socially acceptable definitions of male and female in pursuit of a more Jesus-like life.

For Alliaume, this Jesus-like life and identification require an understanding of Jesus as a man being different, fundamentally speaking, from women. Alliaume does not delve into the differences of nature and personhood based on gender, which I acknowledge, but at least begins with anatomical differences. Alliaume desires to picture what Jesus would look like in the person of a woman, something she terms as “citing” Jesus: “To ‘cite’ Jesus with one’s body refers to what appears to be a preexistent relationship on congruity between Jesus and a woman, a relationship that is actually created in that citation.” So with this whole identification through citation or picturing (the world sacrament as living picture comes to mind)… does it deepen an existing relationship, create a whole new form of relationship? Unimaginable? Why bother trying to “cite” Jesus as a woman if men do not do so as well? There is a need for men to “cite” Jesus, because the typical man illegitimately represents Jesus in his definition of maleness (why do we more often call Him the Christ then Jesus… sounds so distant, so masculine, identifying my Jesus by what He’s done. He’s more than that though) similarly to “illegitimate congruencies of women’s bodies and practice with Jesus’ body and practice.”

“Some Christian feminist theologians, finding orthodox figurations of Jesus’ significance irredeemably harmful to women, determine Christianity itself irredeemable for women” (maybe the male/typical Christianity?) How does the person of Jesus pose an oppressive figure? I look at my Jesus in the Bible and I cannot imagine how He could be oppressive even as a slave master. Feminism , I think, identifies “maleness” by the male sin tendencies, which historically have been asserted through oppression, domineering over sinful women who tend to want to over submit themselves. Feminism seeks to balance these natures of men and women, but we will never be on a level playing field, and Jesus cannot be thought of as oppressive simply because of historical male sin tendencies. I wonder how much a passive man would be judged as oppressive by the very maleness within him? “We have trouble with Jesus’ maleness because the Christian ‘convention’ of Jesus becoming human in a male body has not seemed to ‘cover’ women, has not seemed to fulfill the Athanasian adage that ‘what is not taken up is not redeemed.’”

If one accepts male headship, then of course Jesus covers women, because somehow Paul thought we needed that. What does feminism think of male headship? Probably that male sin tendency has disabled it and it is no longer desirable. So I am going to play in feminist thought for a little bit, imagine according to experience that all I knew of male nature was the indulged sin tendencies it has, then of course a male Jesus would seem bad and unredemptive; I would join Alliaume in stating, “The figure of Jesus has not ‘worked for us because the continual citations of him as Lord, king, Son have not figured in Jesus that we recognize as redemptive.” Beyond that cry of feminism for relief from a male presence which cannot be so bad as they allow (I almost want to assert that we women tend to let ourselves be taken advantage of in the initial naïveté of our natures, and our tendencies to assume guilt for sins that are not ours. We are easy, willing scapegoats, are we not?). As a woman, though, if I am told to live like Jesus that is what I want to do, fully in my womanly nature and self. Thus I concur, “the ‘reality’ of Jesus lies in the extent to which figurations and stories of Jesus constitute us and our lives.”

McLaughlin’s “transvestite Jesus” is an attempt to figure Jesus into a person acceptable to the feminist who over generalizes maleness in regards to women as being full of those terrifying sin tendencies. The “transvestite Jesus” utilizes unconventional actions of women, which did not depict typical acceptance of femininity. These are “gender-bending actions by female martyrs and saints, and looks forward to further reformulations and inhabitations of a cross-dressing Christic body.” Feminists have far too much a problem with Jesus’ maleness as an inhibiting factor to their identification with Him (though I have like concerns at times), and pose two solutions to this problem of maleness: a post-Christian abandonment of the name of Jesus, retaining only the example of His life, or those who are committed to Jesus as the most promising figure, but can’t accept Him as they first encountered Him (in His male nature, seemingly oppressive), and so attempt to reinvent His example. So how does this Jesus, who came as a man, undeniably and unmistakable, save women?

I wonder what we women want in a savior? I suppose we need some sort of identification to say our sins died with Him… we need someone that feminine spirit of ours can align ourselves to, someone to mimic even our gender-specific behavior after. After all, what do we do with those distinctly female awkward functions? There must be some identification for even our physiological/anatomical differences within Jesus. I have attempted at least one that used to be a separation factor with God, which rendered us as women physically weaker than men, but gave us a great value as the bearers of life: we lose blood differently than men. Jesus gave life through the losing of His blood, and I suppose in a way, we women do also. Can we any more deny our femininity positionally in our striving after traditionally “male” occupations and roles than we can those differences in anatomy that separate us? And yet somehow in our very difference from men, we find value through the complementing aspects of our female personhood. So how is Jesus, who came as a man, redemptive for a woman? “Jesus’ redemptive power lies ultimately in this ideal humanity, not in his maleness, nor in a spurious identification of him with the transcendent Greek Logos. His maleness is significant insofar as he renounces the privileges that accompany it.” What sort of privilege did Jesus set aside to be redemptive to the whole community, men and women, as well as provide embodiment for the whole community of Himself? I suppose we in our complementary natures need each others’ differing abilities to embody Jesus in our communal interactions.

Rosemary Radford Ruether describes Christ’s redemption as portrayed through the community of Christ who continues to embody Him, extend His identity and ideals. If this is true, “we can now encounter Christ even ‘in the form of our sister’.” If “the prototypical ‘human’ is male, while the female has always been seen as lesser than or other to full male humanity,” then the feminine status as “honorary human” must be harder to redeem than that of the typical male. Jesus came as a male, yet McLaughlin says He divested Himself of the male privilege that accompanied His gender, for she “figured Jesus’ maleness in terms if its absence.” What is the privilege exactly that Jesus forfeits? Jesus made Himself nothing, Philippians 2 tells us, taking on the nature of a servant: this reminds me of what Hopkins noted about the evolution of the ministerial position of ministers. In ancient patriarchal society, the servile positions were given to women, and now ministers are being expected to hold such positions, rendering ministers today more feminine, according to Hopkins. Again, I question how we assigned behaviors to genders. I completely agree that Jesus emptied Himself of His Godness and associated privileges in becoming human, but did He divest His humanity of anything? Isaiah 53-like description rings through the mind, for Jesus was despised and rejected; He did take on the lowest form of humanity… that of a slave or a servant… is this the way we try and see Jesus as “womanly”?

Its interesting that Jesus on a one-on-one level seemed very egalitarian but He was not revolting against the patriarchal community on that sort of a level, but in relationship. Alliaume quotes Sojourner Truth, one of those strong women who defies gender stereotypes, thus figuring Jesus, “Jesus was made by God and a women; man had nothing to do with Him.” Such seems an attempt to define Jesus by too exclusively feminine overtones—there needs to be room in Jesus for male identification too, and often I feel that feminist Christology in extreme forms attempts to exclude Jesus to women. One must wonder, if Jesus was made without the presence of a man, thus somehow without that fatherly passing on of something to do with sin (one might be able to argue about sin nature here, but that can be dealt with at a later point), did Jesus’ solely human maternity and divine paternity affect His bio-chemical make-up? The crucified, suffering Jesus obviously is too passive for men, but is He too much for women too?

Alliaume thinks that “Haraway is right that Jesus as incarnation of the ‘suffering servant’ is too easily subsumed back into the Christian patriarchal narrative of supersessionism, and I would add, the valorization of feminine sacrifice.” Thus the crucified Jesus has been deemed by feminist Christology as an unfit role model for women, and the men have already rejected Him. What are we looking for in our Jesus, then? What sort of sign or wonder would the Jesus Christianity exalts in theology have to perform in order to provide a life fit for modeling if neither gender will assume Him as a role model? Yet I have met women who have been told that in order to be obedient to God, they must assume the role of Christ as the silent, suffering servant… in obedience to the man/husband who assumes the role of God. I too at different points of my life submitted willingly when perhaps the more Jesus-like thing to do would not be submission. We cannot allow for abuse between man/wife in the assumption of roles; man cannot play the part of God over Jesus in the crucifixion, though the human unity of man and wife is supposed to picture the oneness of the Father and Son—albeit, marriage continues to pose and incomplete picture. Indeed, God’s abuse is different from man’s (if we want to use that terminology), for we cannot “abuse well” (morbid joke); human abuse is always selfish. And yet we women continue to try and love and subject ourselves to such enablement because we don’t know how else to love Jesus. We think we’re supposed to… and so until we can no longer tolerate such an understanding of Jesus, perhaps our overly trusting senses and desire to belong, be needed cause us to submit ourselves to abuse. Do we understand our Jesus through such abuse? Maybe the Father out of love for us abused Jesus, but human abuse cannot be from anything but selfishness.

So in order to prevent women from succumbing to the masochistically seductive temptation for women to voluntarily subject themselves to abuse, which is pictured as Christ-like, Alliaume attempts to find another model of behavior. Sojourner Truth is looked at as “a paradoxical figure for ‘humanity’” because of her strength of personhood in spite of being not only a woman, who were considered honorary humans, but also a black woman who was considered nothing at all. Of course it is obvious that Truth is a woman, but somehow she is significant beyond the bounds of womanhood itself, and into the area of humanity in general. Haraway uses the figure of Truth to evidence that gender and race matter in identification with Jesus, because they constrain humanity. Of course to Jesus, race is insignificant, as is gender, but we sinful, selfish humans limit the work of His grace socially between gender and ethnicity. Haraway, along with fellow feminist Fiorenza, attempt to identify “certain ‘Jesus stereotypes,’ to figure theoretical/ theological subject positions for women that do not rehearse the dangerously worn-out conventions of ‘humanity,’ but instead seek to honor differences among men and women in different social locations.” Feminist theologians are tired of righting womanly abuse of the crucifixion, and are searching for a new identity in Jesus. He was resurrected, right? Perhaps feminist christologies tend to miss the further purposes of Jesus’ life and death: to bring us to life (1 Peter 3.18).

“Feminists use two strategies, abandonment and unmasking, in resisting the effects of orthodox Christological formulations,” which feminists tend to feel suppress women into a cross beneath the angry, berating of men and male authority. Feminist theology wants to cling to Jesus in Christianity without allowing for the possibility of abuse within His personhood. Jesus doesn’t need to be a third alternative… He can be a male Jesus and provide salvation for women if we want to play around with that whole idea of Jesus denying the stereotypical male privilege. Perhaps Jesus did deny the social benefits afforded to His masculine nature by hanging around with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners, but even more than this, Jesus fundamentally denied and conquered the male domineering sin tendency. I wonder, does this mean Jesus was tempted with male versions of every sin (since He was tempted in all manners as we are), or did He face female temptations as well? Feministis like Fiorenza reconcile the maleness of Jesus with the necessary redemptive covering for womanhood by viewing Him as a paradoxical representation of womanhood in male form, “a figure for a reimagined feminist theological practice” as well as a figure that slyly/deceptively sinks into present christologies, exposing their “hierarchal interests” to reform the identity of Christianity. I guess Jesus needed a face-lift from what we have done with Him; we need to redeem the person of our Redeemer from the

My mind keeps wandering back to these origins of these explorative attempts with Jesus’ gender: We try and make Jesus into what He is not, something more than He is; we want more miraculous signs and wonders that He can cover our gender-particular needs and temptations. Perhaps we are not looking for re-incarnated persons of Jesus, but in the over-the-top feminism movement, we are shamefully stripping the person of Jesus of the nature He assumed, masculine devoid of sin, in order to invent our own signs and wonders: feminine versions of Jesus. Somewhere, we need to understand a line between female configuration of the person and work of Jesus and making Jesus into a woman or an un-man. Jesus did in fact die, and our continual sign and wonder to evoke remembrance of that sacrifice and the life we live because of it is embedded in the Eucharist. Jesus’ last act was to promise us the wonder of the Holy Ghost’s indwelling and commission us upon receipt of it. Somehow we need to remember and revitalize the sign we have been given… reimagine our Jesus or refigure Him so that we don’t forget instead of always looking for a new sign. “In other words, we must re-cite, re-site, our refigurations so that they do not reflect ourselves back to us;” I think this means I should not look at my understanding of Jesus and looking back at myself.

Looking back at myself shows nothing, because I just continue to perceive myself as perfectly or imperfectly as my imagination reveals. To see the truth, I need a mirror, I need to look at Jesus. Can a male Jesus reflect me, a woman accurately? Alliaume continues to want to use the word “covering” to refer to Jesus’ redemptive act, so she asks the question, is Jesus’ blood the sort that can wipe out female sins, female uncleanness? “Since Jesus’ incarnation as a man has not been understood as ‘covering’ women, when we ‘put Him on,’ as McLaughlin suggests, we do so illegitimately.” She does not equate covering, protection from the Father’s wrath, with the husband’s covering for his wife; that would be too much of a stretch for the Jesus sacrifice. A feminist does not want to involve a man in her redemption, in her resulting sanctification, that “putting on” of Jesus. So McLaughlin searches for a legitimized identification in Jesus, because she still finds in congruencies between His actions (from which I refuse to remove the cross sacrifice) –a  refiguration of Jesus that has to be more than a reinstatement of humanity. Perhaps this Jesus question of an identifying point for women as well as men must be prefaced with something Grant notes: “the maleness of Jesus is superseded by the Christness of Jesus.” Jesus’ messiahship holds redemptive qualities for men and women, so says Paul and the other Apostles; Jesus’ death and life affect the community. Alliaume appreciates this communal factor through stating, “what is divine about Jesus is also found in the ‘new humanity’ represented by those around Him.”

Having mentioned Sojourner Truth in her attempts to find a female point of comparison with Jesus-like tendencies, Alliaume turns to a social difference between women in identification with Jesus. The difference in Christology between black women vs. white women is typically more for black women as Jesus suffering with them, while white women are placed in a different sort of social circumstances: they are unable to think of Jesus as a co-sufferer because they are not trodden down to such a low place as the black women have been… they are captured in aristocracy while being quietly abused and exploited behind closed doors. The black women were mistreated in public, and so could identify more closely with the publicness of Jesus’ pain and suffering. “Grant recognizes that, for Christians ‘there is a direct relationship between our perception of Jesus Christ and our perception of ourselves.’” While we cannot see look at our figure of Jesus and just be looking at another picture of us, the Jesus we cling to us one whose social circumstances, ethnicity, maybe even gender offer hope for our specific situations. Such is true for the different races of women that Alliaume choses to become involved with: “After the abolition of slavery, social and economic pressure kept black women in such substitutionary roles of ‘voluntary’ surrogacy as domestics for white families, or heads of their own single-parent families” The female sin tendency of over-submission out of selfishness continues to fascinate me as I watch women manipulate Jesus in order to prevent themselves from sinning, and in the end, only find themselves without means of redemption: if Jesus does not suffer and die in one’s Christology, we miss out on the life He has already lived and have to die unworthily, unable to pay for our own unrighteousness.

Through the biblical Hagar, Alliaume sees a picture of the normal/formative experience shared by all women: submission and survival, submission for survival, and often, ultimate rejection in response for the submission. She refers to this time of Hagar’s life as her “wilderness experience.” For the black woman, Hagar’s God is felt very real-ly… making “’a way out of no way.’” This is not a liberation experience, but rather a new understanding/revelation of resources, which were not previously recognized. Equating Hagar to Jesus, we understand that we women cannot deny suffering, Hagar’s character testifies “to the impossibility of theodicy, offering only a chastened hope that, while God neither prevents nor provokes her suffering, s/he does, compassionately, ‘make a way out of no way.’”Hagar, then, is used to picture the black women of America’s Jesus, for she acknowledges the suffering and absence of new redemptive means—but that Jesus is present in the suffering and renews understanding of situations to reconfigure into redemptive possibility. Sojourner Truth, Alliaume states, is the white woman’s stereotypical figure of identification with Jesus… conquering the hardships of experiences life to achieve an ambiguous state of uncertain equality with men… performing male tasks/roles in a female body.

The Virgin Mary is also used by feminists as “corrective to the maleness-of-Jesus problem” (which really isn’t a problem, just the male sin tendency problem, I think). Somehow the submissive, gentle Mary figure is viewed as “’a model of full womanhood and liberated humanity’ for all Christian Asian women…” potentially because she retains her womanly roles which feminists continue to rebel against. “It is our own formation, whether by oppressive structures or no, that agency paradoxically lies.” Agency in this case refers to the picking up and bearing, I think, of representing…. How we are going to resemble Jesus. Alliaume plays with the difference I the words reassemble and resemble, suggesting that if a woman is going to take on the likeness of Christ, she must first reassemble the image to one into which she can step as a women: female take on male likeness? Jesus will change shape again with each female attempt to reconfigure our life-depiction of Him. We have so much freedom, then, to try and be like Jesus, if we will only let Him be who He is and stop manipulating His sacrifice, our own redemption, to extract for ourselves a life example. Of course we need to reconfigure Christianity, but that includes a realization of Jesus as our mirror, whose death and resurrection are undeniable, and thus we too are called to die to self. Feminist Christology seems to omit the need to lose the self, that female sin tendency by placing oppression’s blame on all the males. We need the promise of a salvation in our Jesus figure who will not only redeem, but continually transform us. If we deny His maleness, which truly was devoid of action in sin tendency, can we do this? How can a woman really be like Jesus?

 

Cruciform: Living Mass Beyond the Worship

They brought me to Him, a little child for Him to touch. Entering into the gates of the church, I crossed myself with the holy water from the living fountain… I am ready to meet my master. He calls me into His presence … before Him is living in the Kingdom of God. Yet today, I have compromised Your kingdom of Heaven. Every word I speak, every motion I make? In the liturgy of communal worship, we move in sync to the intonations of glorification: we are gathered together in mutual agreement that You, O Lord my God King of the Universe who has brought forth life in the body by Your heavenly bread and life in the spirit by Your very breath. Yet do I remember that I am always in Your presence, do I go into that presence with every conversation?

You woke me late this morning, I think You wanted me to rest more. You overpower me, showing me more and more that time is in Your hands. The morning went slowly , and You were there somehow. I have not told You how much I love You lately… You have seen Jesus how easily my heart is caught and turned to some new idea or facet of change that I see to make… Jesus, forgive me for forsaking Your hand when I walk into moments all by myself.  Sometimes today I have forsake n why I was here in Your world, for You made this world and everything in it… and so somewhere in You there has to be found meaning for my existence here. It is a sobering thought to go through the moments of life and try to savor each of them, but know they are building towards a final hope.

Here I am with You now, Jesus, shy as a child and timid to approach and touch Your hand with still bears my wounds. You take me in Your arms, and I am no longer a child, my hand is resting on Yours. Right hand, left hand, I imitate Your crucifixion… I diminish myself in the cruciform. But how shall I, not a martyr, not a desert mystic… not an ordained priest or even a scholar, live in the pattern of my crucified Jesus, who made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. You emptied yourself … and I asked You to empty me too, and to fill me with You. I think we’ve been working on this emptying part for sometime… I have to become that bread that You take between Your hands and break… Your body, my body… I have to let my blood spill out as that wine You poured… Your blood, my blood… I must become that living sacrifice.

You tell me Jesus that…
You have no body but my mine…
no hands these, my hands,
no feet but for my own,
Mine are Your eyes through which the Spirit looks out
Expressing Your compassion to the world;
Mine are the feet on which You must travel
doing all your good;
Mine are the hands which minister Your blessing now.
(recreation of Theresa of Avila’s “Christ Has No Body”)

So I have become the person of Christ to the world… I am a member of His body. Maybe I am a foot, I think I would like to be Jesus’ foot, as a part of His body. So in a way, I am just Jesus’ foot, needful of the whole, but as an individual, I am also wholly responsible for being in my Jesus and He is me. So how shall I now live, I am closer to You than married, Jesus.  I have sunk into Your presence, been absorbed by Your personhood, and somehow You have taken on me in the same way.

Thus I am compelled to follow You, my dearly Beloved, I have compelled myself to follow: I am tied to You in the very depths of my soul… we are one, becoming more one.  I think to myself, if I am His body, if we are His body, how would His body act? He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities… the punishment that brought me, that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds I am healed. And so in me, He has more wounds, for my body is His temple, His dwelling place, and I too am struck down and crushed, because I have chosen to share in His death, to give His Spirit life in me by my spirit and body. I can consider myself dead to sin, dead to self… alive in Christ… in His life, do I share in His death?

At least my spirit is in Your hands, my Jesus, that bread being pierced, scorched, broken, torn… and passed among those with whom I fellowship. But let me be a living host so that when they taste me in our conversation, it is You, not me, who is consumed and brought into fuller being within them… a greater picture of You? And the blood… here is mine wrung out… that life You have given my spirit by Yours. So it is Yours to spend and Yours to use up… pour me out and share Your life by my own though my body as a vessel. So Jesus, here I am, becoming Your bread and wine of the fellowship feast here in heaven among earth.

 

Jesus and I Quest for Each Moment

Wow, must You really destroy everything I have configured into my own state of bliss in order to give me Yours? I think, Jesus, it would be really lovely to have that rosary in my hand right now. Yet there is no rosary, those beautiful beads were wrenched apart (but fixable) by Your hands. Was I focusing to much on the figure supposed to be depicting You? How ironic, Jesus, that one of my friends was just warning me about making an idol out of my tools of remembrance earlier in the day. In trying to be nonviolent that day, I was most violent as I tried to remember You. So I lost that fight, Jesus, but out of it erupted good conversation. Jesus, I am trying to learn what it means to have Your peace, what it means to enter into Heaven… I have been so mistaken Jesus. I have been trying to remember You and take up what You are extending out to me through those bleeding hands.

Jesus, I was looking at this morning as I woke up, later than I thought I would, and I just was flooded with something which I think must have been peace from You, even though there is always something in my heart longing for more of You. I woke up and I think I said something to You: the sun was not yet up, and my run was no longer an option, maybe later this evening. So much to do in so little time, I planned the morning out to a T and I think even talking to You about it, I left You out of most every planned situation. Jesus, I set out on a quest for the most meaning and purpose of each moment, and I did not ask You to accompany me in every step. My holy Lover, You cannot be denied the places of my heart into which I have invited You and covenanted with You that You may have… yet I constantly deny You myself, asking why You should want me.

It really has nothing to do with me, the love does not stop to just one person. Your love, my Jesus, is some sort of continuum, and I have no idea to what extent it may extend. You came to usher in Your Kingdom in my life, You put seeds in me to plant in the lives of others… yet You made me the unconscious dispenser of Yourself: I cannot discern the difference between me and You sometimes.. .all too obviously at times does self roar up in my face… at other times it merely deceives me. Sweet and holy Jesus, I was deceived by myself because I was not open enough with You. Jesus, I asked You to pierce me and break through whatever it was that I was sensing continued to part us, because my soul was longing, it was fainting to reach out and touch You… because I can see You so clearly in my heart, Your name is there, inscribed. So if Your name and word is alive in me, help me use the word to build up Your kingdom.

I neglected Your word this morning… and I as I have been learning, the word can never be alone or it will die, the word You have put in me that sometimes I neglect, sometimes I am unconscious of, sometimes I really just can’t feel. Jesus, I am trying to be thoughtful before You, because I don’t want my words to be the cause of sin or speaking my sin into another’s life. I admit I am fearful, often I do not trust You in me to guide my words. I refuse to look at You because Your gaze, Your words pierce my soul, just as I have asked You to make them, but I do not want to let go of the difference between me and You. Jesus, You are always getting more excellent, drawing me up closer to You. I see where I am in life, Jesus, and it is often unconscious of what You really are doing.

My faith may be child-like… people say that’s good, but it also clouds my understanding. I do not often see with discernment, circumspectness… I cannot perceive things that I have learned by now must be there. Jesus, You have blessed me I guess with a certain blindness… and that allows me to see past some things, not recognize others, and just take in the person who is before me. You have disarmed me of my aggression, dear Jesus, not my passion… so I can fervently just be so wrong. I get myself alone when something really disturbs me… I cut off the community affect of You… because I am afraid of how people will react, I am afraid of people misunderstanding and giving me more bad advice. But these people You have put in my life, Jesus, they are You, aren’t they? I have felt Your love in some, been able to give Your love to others.

So I am talking to You about something I am trying and probably should not be doing too much of alone, because I know I can deceive myself so easily… this mind of mine overworks everything: I am trying to feel You and live You. Yet You did most of Your living among people… I am trying to limit my existence to Your desert experiences… but those seem to have come at the weakest moments, when I am at the end of myself. I have felt those. But I create deserts in a land which is already dry and weary… because people are dying of thirst all around me and Your life-giving river of love has cut a channel through my being. So the Kingdom of Heaven cannot have begun by myself with You, Jesus, I need others. Ecclesiastes 4.12… the two or more passage… and You come in when there are two or more of us present. I think I am begging to understand now why I need community.

Yet my soul is mystical, I love to be alone with You, as dangerous as that may be… I have learned how to be alone with you my Jesus. But I know how too much to be alone with You, I need to learn how to share You. Be in me, Jesus, as I try and run with You into everything from here on out today: You were in the morning already though I didn’t ask You to be there: You disrupted my world with Heather’s burn, with conversation, with thoughts. My heart is too easily moved, Jesus… be my guard, please, sweet Savior. My unbelief is unintentional, I promise, I just get carried too far away from You with this rapture sort of thing: show me the place for my bliss with You and help me apply it into all of my life interactions. So I am going to experiment with You, Jesus, and bring our intimacy into the presence of others… soon if not today. Help me, gracious and tender Lover, be unashamed of You… I just blush too easily. But I love You, I love You, I need You just so desperately… so be with and in me here and now from this time through the end of today… capture each moment in my life without my realization as I try and allow this journey to be a blessing to You, to others, to my own soul. Love you so much.

 

Risking a Cut By His Spirit with Mine

I decided that today that I was going to look for Jesus in every waking moment, because I just needed Him this morning. Yesterday night, I stayed up until 2.30am just enjoying some conversation with Jesus over Brueggemann’s Praying the Psalms… engaging my mind in the quest wondering where speaking becomes actuality… how language moves a person from one state to another by verbalization. How does speaking free my soul so much that the imagination I pour into my words evidences itself in the formation of new experience? I think I am going to find out pretty soon, because I am finding that there is something in my soul that is caught, just out of recognition. Working to the reoriented state of freeing this lack of realization into the state of being has been pushing me to explore the capacity of language as a dissecting knowledge which opens up my spirit and reveals a deeper layer which I have never before released into being.

Today sometimes I think I allowed myself lighter conversation with You Jesus… I failed to bring things into captivity to the depth at which I long to probe with You, which I need to probe with You right now. There’s this thing You have that I want, and I think its called rest. And I think, Jesus, You and I have walked through enough of life for me to realize that Your law really is perfect, life-promoting, life-sustaining… and yet, oh silly me, I think back on my life, see how much I don’t remember and tell my God that He can’t change my past condition, my discarding of the rest then. So those times I didn’t live by Your law, they have contributed to forming who I am with You now. And I have been challenged to probe back into those things I remember and the things I don’t, because maybe uncovering forgotten memories is what my Jesus’ spirit is in the business of. I don’t think this surgical dissection is going to feel very natural, because reading through Hebrews 4, my chapter on spiritual surgery, I note in verse that I am to direct my life by the Spirit of my Jesus, which runs against my natural inclination.

Natural inclination, that’s the problem… we people each have different natural inclinations, and as we follow them, we hope they are leading us to the rest of God. Personal convictions, that sort of thing. I like to imagine a perfect state of heaven, and blessed be my Jesus, He allows me to step into it from time to time and actually experience heaven with others. Perfect heaven to me either sounds like a time when all of us will be brought to the same place in our convictions or custom-fitted for all our various beliefs and preferences to fit together in a complimentary order. Maybe my natural inclinations are perfectly good before God, but before community, something cannot exist. No man is an island; no matter how much I try and keep to myself and I affect anyone with whom I interact by them. So if misunderstanding occurs by me lawfully living out my faith, my love for Jesus to the point where it defrauds another (by their choice), I am preventing them from entering the rest of God be being myself, and therefore will not enter God’s rest because of the weight on my conscience.

How can I bare my soul honestly, then? How can we exist in heaven as much as our interactions allow? Somehow, something more needs to be cut out of me, some intimate dimension of my heart that craves approval from the Spirit’s judgment on my hidden thoughts and emotions. And perhaps these thoughts and emotions are hidden even from myself. He sees more clearly than I myself; to the Spirit of Jesus, nothing is a mystery, and I am fully known—more fully than I know myself. What are the deepest desires that stir me to action? Am I still so fearful, so hesitant to trust You, my Jesus, with my newfound freedom? It’s so funny to think of how fragile I think Your creation is sometime… there is no way I can annihilate Your handiwork from the face of the planet, so why have I allowed myself the fleeting imagination that somehow the new creation You have coaxed out of the persistent ashes of failed endeavors will blow away like dust in the wind? My Jesus, I know that You endure forever, and since my formation, I too will be forever… since You love me, I will be with You forever, and there is need to fear abandonment by You. Is this another problem of self, not having opened myself up enough for Your work and touch… somewhere, irrationally fearful? I confess I have considered myself fragile, and yes, my situation is delicate, You have much left to cut out of my heart, to pull back in order to further create me in Your image as You desire me. Where’s Your knife, Jesus, I don’t know where to make the first cut. Guide me as we further discuss… at least I have entered the operating room… and am willing to engage in the procedure. Here’s my heart, cut away, because I know You love me.

 

One Night Dancing With the King

Last night I really had this incredible urge to go out and dance with Jesus. Trying to focus on some work, I found myself absolutely useless because my heart kept leaping within me. Coming back from break, I had quite the time trying to reapply my brain cells to some serious work. There have been exams and projects filling my time, but there is an over-arching sense a feeling which flits in and out, like a ray of sunlight on a temperamental day… except this little ray of sunlight has been especially temperamental. Three weeks ago, my life was somewhat pulled out of my hands by what my Jesus was saying to me… things I realized that I had forgotten about Himself through my life situations. Looking all around me each day, I am flooded with excitement that a year ago I could never have drempt of being possible in this life… I thought that pure bliss was only reserved for Heaven. And maybe it is, but I am pretty confident that Heaven can be caught here now… and continually chased down when it flits out of our grasp.

At the beginning of Global Ministries week so many weeks ago, I began to lose track of time, it now runs out of my hands like sand… particles (time particles were a fun topic in philosophy) slipping rapidly, fluidly… my life feels like a great hour glass, pouring away the contents of my life with each moment. To connect the idea of chasing Heaven to that of chasing time, I find myself wholly unable to fully catch a hold of either. But I do want to savor each moment as it passes me by, hold onto Heaven for as long as possible… for eternity right now if I could, but the tree of life is no longer accessible to man in this life… I cannot last forever in my body of dust. And yet, while time may never slow down for me, I am determined to try and capture Heaven each moment at a time as I find myself caught up in the endless dance of life.

While time may not necessarily require the presence of and interaction with others to be gotten hold of and savored, Heaven cannot be had without the beauty of fellowship (I am convinced of this); and I think I have begun to see Heaven realized in my life. What a contrast to last spring, when time could not pass fast enough, when heaven seemed so far away I would never realize it. If Heaven is wherever Jesus is in community (He said where two or three are gathered that He would show up)… then my time with the Spirit of Jesus must be different… freer in imagination, but probably far less substantial. Imagine what it would be like if communal relationship with Jesus could be as imaginative as my personal intimacy with Jesus. Communal intimacy with Jesus? Now this sounds like a concept I have rather evaded much of my life… even now I still feel myself pulling back and distancing myself from those who are seeking to enter the gates of Heaven, the presence of Jesus in more than just His Spirit by imagining Him together and allowing honesty of how He has been at work to spill forth… it starts in our very words.

I began realizing really two weeks ago on break that I was pushing Heaven away because I was not allowing the closeness with close people whom I should be eager to share those personal words with. What was keeping me from imagining wildly with them in that relationship which would allow Jesus so much freedom to work in the both of us? I have begun considering the relationships most apt to enter Heaven most frequently are those in which I and the individual I am engaging feel free to imagine in front of one another, to create and form words in front of one another. I have this interesting and rather bipolar unsurety that I am talking with Jesus about right now… one in which I am either too intimidated to verbalize words or too bold in my verbalization. I think I have been calling it a lack of sense from confusion to Jesus. But He understands my heart, what I am trying to say to Him, and gives the gift of creative language as long as I allow the raw honesty of reality to soak up my fears… or maybe the paralysis of imagination comes from confusion.

Last year, I found myself beginning to see that the small, removed voice which was incomprehensible to my logic, defied by my sense of right, and overwhelmed by a myriad of other voices within my own heart, that this still little voice was really the one of Jesus calling me after Him, outstretched arms ready to embrace me and walk me alone the path He had before me. Somewhere out of the dark of my childhood, where I only knew a presence and didn’t hear a voice, a myriad of voices broke through and encouraged me in a thousand different directions. All of them seemed equally as strong, equally as right and good… and I tried to follow each one of them in turn, until I found that these were others’ dreams and imaginations, not my own. This caused me so much confusion, and I realized that Heaven was not confused. It may be uncertain to me, but it is not confused. But then, last spring, I was just beginning to taste real community… and it terrified me, to be honest.

Even yesterday, I found myself tasting of more real fellowship, and I found myself backing away from it. But Jesus caught me in my steps as inside I had back against a wall… bumping into Jesus: Hannah, there’s nothing to be afraid of. My fears are no longer confusion, they are not irrational or just that I don’t want my trembling language to be shown, because my imagination still exceeds my language. But with community, Jesus is giving me more words for the imagination. Because I guess I can’t be Jesus to myself, and I need Him and the Spirit… so I need others to be Jesus to me, and I need to be Jesus to them. Communal intimacy? It is no different than me having an honest conversation and seeing the words become real with one or more persons. Jesus elated my soul yesterday evening, because I realized how much the heaven I imagined was becoming more and more real through the honest words. Words into life, those have an elegant mystery hanging about them… I am all lost in wonder at the power of God’s speech… as I speak His words myself, with others… they embed themselves in me… more Jesus. And so He and I danced yesterday evening… it was a combination of words and motions… I lost myself, I don’t even know what happened, but I was breathless afterwards… from speaking and moving. It was a beautiful, heavenly moment.

 

I, Hannah, continue my Pursuit of Feeling my Jesus in life

I, Hannah, have been engaging life and forgetful of You, my Jesus. Thus I do not truly engage, because You are all that life really is. I have been thinking quite a bit lately about my Jesus and how I can allow Him to be fully present within my life and how I can grow closer to His heart. I have a desperate urge that I am always struggling with to try and feel my Jesus, even to try and picture Him in every part of my life. I am so terribly distractible, though, and every person I come in contact with, converse with, even see at times takes up the place in my mind that I want You to occupy, Jesus, the focus of my attention. Jesus, I need Your help to learn how to love people through You. Right now, as I am sitting in the café, I see You in the eye of my heart, and I am confidant that You have control of my life directions, my thoughts as I submit them each to You, my words before they escape my lips… but right now I am being quiet. Soon, I shall embark on another phase of life, a different one, in which my focus will be continually crossed by others, those with whom I am conversing: it is so much simpler to be before You, to be whole, all alone.

Yet Jesus, You have called me to live with people, live amongst, and love as You love. I think then, this means You have called me to operate as You operate, guided by the same heart principles and thoughts. Jesus, I wish I could know when You flood my mind with Your thoughts, all the time. I suppose I learn Your thoughts and am intentionally conscious of them when I have Your word before me. Jesus, I ask You to invoke Your Spirit in me as I seek out Your will in Your word and open up my heart to it. Please plant Your word within my heart and let it grow, take root, and blossom out of the heart and mind into my life. I am so often forgetful, Jesus, I see You for one moment, and in the next You completely leave me mind. Sweetly broken, wholly surrendered? Hardly, Jesus… not all the time.

So, may we talk please about You, about Heaven now? I am wholly convinced that I am in Your kingdom right now, as much as I can be, with the participation and involvement of others. You have given me this gorgeous gift… something which allows me to see You right now, with the sight of my heart transfigured into the sight of my eyes: I imagine You, Jesus, leaning over me, and Your hand is resting on top of mine… I can almost feel the blood from Your cruel wounds in those strong hands, so tender when touching mine. I feel as though the wounds are becoming my own as I allow Your embrace. Jesus, You’re beautiful, I don’t even have to see Your face to know that… those wounds define Your beauty. There’s Your foot right next to mine… where You stand, I can feel the touch of Your foot near mine.

Jesus, may we go and dance? My heart is beaming with the radiance of a new bride, eternally enchanted by the embrace of her lover. My hands are aching, I think I have put mine into Yours. Let me sink into You… that electrifying touch which thrills the core of my soul. It can almost be a cruel longing to want You Jesus, because in wanting You more, I want to love people. So now I have been learning how we should dance, this intimate choreography of a lovers’ waltz, every move in synch, each word we whisper between us becoming a movement in the dance… word embodying itself in flesh, the motions of that flesh, moving us, indwelling us. And we dance, we step into that wordless silence where my heart is just in awe of You. How I love You, my Jesus.
And so You have taken Your hands from mine as I type on this keyboard… and there You are, stretching them out in front of me. Maybe its time to leave this place for now. But… oh… I hold my open hands up to You, and You placed Yours in them… I can feel it. Heavenly touch… all within me stills and I am told a blush wells up at the thought of Your love. I am wholly enamored and irresistibly compelled… now I will go off and run, for the dance must completed for this evening’s stretch… my whole being aches to dance with Jesus. Conversation changes the soul, this dance will reinvent my imagination of Him. Here we go, Jesus.

“A great lonesome hunger comes over me at this moment for someone who has passed through all the same long, long channels of hope, and aspiration, and despair, and failure, to whom I can talk tonight. And yet– there is no such person. As we grow older all our paths diverge, and in all the world I suppose I could find nobody who could wholly understand me except God– and neither can you! Ah, God, what a new nearness this brings for Thee and me, to realize that Thou alone canst understand me, for Thou alone knowest all! Thou are no longer a stranger, God! Thou art the only being in the universe who is not partly a stranger. I invite others, but they cannot come all the way. Thou art all the way inside with me–here-and every time I forget  and push thee out, Thou art eager to return.” (from ” Letters by a Modern Mystic”)

 

Conversation with Jesus: Accepting the Mercy

Me: Good morning again, my Jesus, it feels like a long time since we were able to catch one another for a real conversation.
Jesus: I know, you have been rushing around since 2 Fridays ago, barely willing to hold still because your heart was so anxious. I’ve just been following you waiting for you to get some time to chat.
Me: Has is really been that long? I was sure we’d talked at least last week…
Jesus: Oh we did, but you really had almost too much on your mind to be as close to me as you try to be at school… you allowed the unexpectedness of the situations shake you a bit. But I was happy that you were trying to be still and feel with the people you love.
Me: Jesus, I’m sorry, I am realizing how much I neglected You when I got frantic, when I felt overwhelmed… I did not take the time to be with You when I needed to most… I am sorry, not trying to make excuses, but I really do find it hardest to go talk with You when I feel those pressures which I realize are our most necessary conversation topics.
Jesus: Hannah, why do you think you’re so hesitant to talk about what you really feel we need to discuss?
Me: Well, the easy answer would be that I don’t want to hear what You’ll say because it will force me to change a behavior I greatly enjoy, give up something which I feel is totally unreasonable/unrelated, or because I am too tired to put forth the effort for more change.
Jesus: Yes, that is the easy answer. You’re still trying to do things again. The first things that come to your mind always involve you and action. Stop trying, Hannah, you’re talking to me now. I have already done all the action part of the trust we’re discussing. You know there is something more than that you don’t want to do, because I think at the root of your self, you really are eager to hear the need to do something, because you don’t deal with love in terms of a gift.
Me: looks down You’re right, I think my life would be so much easier if You handed me a to do list and said to be loved by You, I needed to complete certain tasks. So maybe I need to be humble, admit my own unworthiness, and just take Your gift. As simple as that sounds, I think it must be harder.
Jesus: Maybe it seems harder, but I won’t make it hard for you. I have freed you from the need to focus on yourself—do you remember me telling you that my grace is enough for you , that I will always be strong regardless of how weak you are. You have to let yourself be weak with me, I am safe, regardless of how dangerously I may treat you…. I love you and I would never ask you to suffer anything I haven’t suffered. Including accepting love.
Me: Oh right, that’s comforting. Just accept, just be… pardon me for sounding so bitter Jesus, but I don’t know how to accept love without giving something in return. Whether or not You require it, I feel I have to.
Jesus: Then that feeling needs to change, there’s something deep inside of you that you aren’t letting go of… some part of yourself you are cling to tighter than you are holding onto me.
Me: Jesus, no! I don’t feel that, loving something more than You? How is that even possible now?
Jesus: You’ve spent so much time focusing on how to rid yourself of self that you’ve gotten very unhealthily narcissistic.
Me: Jesus, I don’t love myself, what are You talking about?
Jesus: That’s the problem, Hannah, you don’t see it because it’s painful. You want to be able to earn love, that’s not healthy. You see my blood and you hurt for me over it. Hannah, you can’t allow yourself to want to replace me in that love. Yes, it should have been you, your mind tells you, but you must stop thinking in the potentialities and realize the actuality of our situation: my blood has been wiped right there on that cross, it spanned that space between you and my Father, and look, here I am, with You.
Me: Jesus, my Jesus, I love myself more than you? Wanting to remove the circumstances for someone else isn’t the kind of love You had? You did miracles, You alleviated pain. Why can I not be that way?
Jesus: Because my dear Hannah, you are not me. You are made in my image, you have been made to be a vessel of me, but you cannot do what I can do, you cannot achieve what I have achieved. Allow me to be big in you rather than trying to be big for me.
Me: Jesus, I have seen what a mess I make with Your blessings… You give me a gift and then I go and misuse it, just like that. I convince myself so quickly Jesus that applying how I’ve come to know You as You are… why are You always so good to me? I know I don’t deserve it, I know I have no right to ask.
Jesus: Little one, I have sold my very life to ransom yours… I love you, I cannot imagine a life without you, and I will not stop loving you, so of course I will be good to you. Of course I want you to know me, but trying to be like me and allowing me to work in you are different. You have heard this over and over, yet you still do not understand.
Me: Is it lack of understanding because You are beyond my comprehension , Jesus, or because I don’t want to understand?
Jesus: You will always be wondering at the depth of my love for you… I sold not only my body, but my soul. You will never full understand, but you can come to a place of rest where you are able to just be for me, be used by me, if you are willing… You have sold me your soul by accepting my offer. Yet you are still so timid, you refuse to ask me for what you need.
Me: Jesus, You’re being too sweet, how can I ask You for anything, even to know You better? The taste of You I have been given because of Your love is greater than my own heart can ever process. Of course I know there is more of You…
Jesus: Then why don’t you ask to see me? I will show you myself slowly, and it will always overwhelm you. You can ask because you are made worthy by my love: I have given myself to you just as you have given yourself to me. Of course I am the stronger one in our relationship, but I have made myself weak for you, little Hannah, I laid aside that glory I shared with my Father and came to die a more cursed death than you will ever have to die. Ask of me, I beg you, because I am waiting to be asked of: it is my joy to grant the requests of the heart, to shape your young heart in my hands, to teach you how to desire my love and how to honestly express that love to me by loving others. I gave up so much for you, and you deny me all that I came to achieve in you, with you, by your covering of unworthiness. Hannah, you are no longer unworthy; I am now your covering, I make you able to deserve.
Me: O my Jesus, I have not understood… I thought it was humility to deny myself the very things You offered to me because I wanted to love You so desperately. You are the darling of heaven, the special loved one of God… and He wants to love me the same way? And You suffered for me, o why? Love? I don’t understand this love, Jesus! My crucified Jesus, I still don’t want You to pay for me! Let me be a part, some how?
Jesus: Hannah, your part in my suffering is to accept. So simple at first, so complex behind… and it is the complexity, which causes you to stumble now. Embrace the paradox, do not abandon the simplicity with which you fell in love with me. Somewhere in your heart, you felt the tug for me, even as I was abused and abandoned on the cross. You fell in love with me, child, do you not remember it? You cannot be my father or mother, you must let your self go as my lover. Fall back on the cross, it is not an easy life, but if you really love me, I am challenging you now to give up your trying.
Me: Help me, Jesus… I love You so much it hurts… and I hate how I am my own enemy for loving You. You are so tender with me, yet so cruel at the same time… You will not pry my hands loose of self. I suppose You have given me all the motivation by Your irresistible romance to look at You, and You alone. But teach me what it means to love You, Jesus.
Jesus: I am, my beloved. You realized already that you are different with me than with others. There need be no difference, my Hannah, just look for me in them. Whether or not they are in me, I am there by each one of them. Love me in them, and there you will be loving them. Honor me as if I am right there, serve me as if I am your most cherished lover, your holiest Lord… and let your heart embrace them as me.
Me: Can I really be that way?
Jesus: No, you cannot, because they will hurt you, they will misunderstand your love; You must not speak of it to them Hannah, unless they ask. They will abuse you, you will be confused by the bitterness and anger with which they scorn your love. And then you will know how I feel, and you will think I have abandoned you. And if you did not stand wrapped in my arms and supported by my strength, you would fall. You must be wholly transparent before them and accept the abuse as my teaching love for you, and then you will know me, in the midst of them and in spite of them.
Me: Jesus, it sounds so hard, to see You in them…
Jesus: Hannah, do not let the circumstances blind you. I am with you always. I love you my little one and I will only do what is best for you. So when it hurts most, trust me, my darling.
Me: Jesus, I still do not understand…
Jesus: Then just except my embrace, expect trouble, and risk your soul everyday.
Me: I will just try and love you. No. I do love You.
Jesus: I know you do, and I love you too. I really am always here.
Me: I will do my best to remember, and to try and give faltering voice to my imperfect gratitude… I guess love needs to speak. I just need You to help me find words.

 

Jesus, lost the art of living well?

Jesus, I think I have lost what I have begun to think of the art of living, what You showed me was the best path for my feet to fall as I walk after You. Jesus, You’re such a paradox to me, how can You take the very means by which You restored me to life and use it to disrupt me again??? Maybe, maybe it wasn’t You who did the changing of my “redeemer” into my idol. You, Jesus, were the one who restored me to life, and I gave all the credit at first to someone else. My hopelessness in life, the numbness I have been feeling, the inability to feel after having just learned what the art of living contained: that embodied compassion of You, my Jesus, which looks, watches, and feels… it acts in the best of others, learns how to process the beauty of You in the midst of pain. But life has overwhelmed me again. I took what You handed to me out of Your hands.

You never meant for me to do that, did You: Those sweet nail marks were not stretched towards me to be born in my own flesh—You wanted me to place my hands in Yours and remain in You. You handed me abundance beyond belief… and I thought I was set for life that I would never want again. And that is when I withdrew my mouth from the endless stream of living waters: I thought my cup was full, and I was it was running over, but it ceased running over when I withdrew. Jesus, You see me standing here, broken, confused… my cup lies shattered at my feet, and I am drowning in tears rather than the life of Your stream, You endless river. I took my chalice and filled it, and then worshipped the cup, which held the water of life. But the water dies when separated from its source.

I am a part of the source… the river lives on inside of me, but I cannot cut myself off from the source or my well will run dry too. I think I am beginning to understand Jesus, I am still crying out to You that my hope has no place in which to stand: I cannot see the rest of my Savior, I have no harbor for my ship, so I am battered and bruised on the waves of Your chaotic sea. Yet beside me stands the one who can rule the stormy waves. I took your vessel of my redemption, and I named it my redeemer. I took my eyes off You Jesus, from the tumultuous existence I had fought so hard to establish, the faith I had tried to cultivate when all around me was falling to pieces and crashing in around my head. I see that You are my Deliverer, my Jesus. I have seen You pull me out of so much, how can I but testify that my God is mighty to save? Jesus, You are mighty to save, right?

So I am not “cut off” from You, as it were, I know Your presence, but I have no hope for the future. I know that my steps are right in the middle of Your will—I have searched out my heart for guilt, my spirit has been languishing long nights over any possible sin which may be hindering my vision. I know You are near my God, and I know You are moving, my Jesus, but why do I feel like I am stuck, I am wedged between You, my rock, and hard places of life. I feel like I am not moving with You the way we used to move. And I guess it has to be because of me that my hope is lost, because You are my faithful God, You are the strength of my life. So if You are my hope and my inspiration, why do I feel so empty, so hopeless, so uninspired?

Sometimes I feel stuck in a place of stillness, other times endlessly running through the carousel of life: the speed at which I race through the cycles of life, orientation-disorientation-reorientation, terrify me. I am just a pro at ruining what You always intend for my salvation. You, however, will not allow me to perpetually idolize the stuff that You use to bring me back to life. You make goodness out of my failure; You work it even in my midst so that finding a new gift, finding the light at the end of the tunnel has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with You. Let’s stop being so abstract Jesus… here’s my hand with the knife… place Yours over it as I cut in the surgery.

Ok, so I came to You, uncertain, bewildered, empty of language, without hope and a vision… I was a worthless daughter of dust, lower than the beggar who holds out a hand. I was a mute leper in my own heart, I tried to earn love, but I had nothing left to sell except myself. You showed me all that overnight… You ripped the unsure hope out from underneath my feet with one fell swoop and left me falling through the air. I hit the bottom of the pit, and was smashed…. My body was empty of strength… my spirit was tempted to flee and however outside myself while I remained broken. I begged You to come find me, and realized that You were there, the rock I had fallen on. So You began to teach me, gently, slowly, when I looked over and saw You.

You sent me an imperfect vessel to do Your work, it was risky, but You felt our relationship needed the risk, we needed to go deeper. I still didn’t know how to love You: I was still remaining a temple prostitute, trying to solicit the love of my God with my deeds. You did not blame me for this imperfect love, but the more You tried to pry the exchange mentality out of me, the harder I clung. I could not believe that You would just love me because I am Yours and You claimed me. I did not understand the tenderness of Your soul for one like me—one without a concept of the true You I had chosen to love. In all sincerity, my soul has sold itself to gods of humanity to worship You… I didn’t know You intimately. I tiptoed through the life You gave me, seeing every person as a reflection of You, intently searching for You in all. And all my searching got me was a bunch of heartbreak, because I was so sincerely wrong, I so sincerely mistook everything You desired, overcomplicated the gift You were offering.

Jesus, forgive me, I made Your gift a prize to be won… I laid the terms and the stakes, I did not just believe and accept. I put myself in a situation where I could not surrender because I deceived myself into believing that You love was not so free. I thought I could lose You, and that terrified me into obedience. I harmed myself into submission. When human love treated me cruelly, I laid down to it and “obeyed,” though my heart sobbed within me for the life my Jesus, that You promised me. I looked at Your people and was convinced I was only worth to them as much as I could do. So I wore myself out, broke my heart, my body, my soul to try and be worthy of a love I knew I could never achieve. I didn’t know what it meant to live well, because I limited life to my experience. I learned to be capable, because the more capable I was the more I would be loved… but the appreciation didn’t even sink beneath the surface and I remained unknown… I felt unknown by You too.

And then I was given words that told me I mattered not for what I could do, but for who I was. Who I am? Why would anyone care about that? Why would anyone want me to speak, I have nothing to say, I told them. Language stirred within my soul, the first reverberations of healing within me, the first tendrils of heat to a frozen heart. It took the desperation and anguish of breaking to birth the first words I spoke to You. I began communicating because You showed me that was freedom. Your spirit flooded my soul with language and I submitted to You my feeble murmurings. I wept and cried over the words I uttered. Yet You came to me in the form of gentleness and coaxed from my heart speech. You encouraged me to keep trying to tell You, You renewed within me the hope of being understood. I began to come out of the shell I had crammed myself into… and it was crippling at first: I was pale, bedraggled, ugly, stammering and shaking at first, but Your tender wings wrapped me up and helped me struggle. It was a battle for my soul, that battle with my fear for words. But the more I risked, the more You filled me. Soon the old fears were really more of a distant memory.

Maybe I became too self-sufficient with the language, but the inspiration ceased because I think I told myself You and I had made it, there was not more work to be done. Where did I stray, Jesus, I am still trying to understand? I know what You had given me somehow became that which tugged me away from You. Maybe my humanity became to consumed with it, maybe it was a natural tension of growing apart in relationship… I have not identified the cause of it all. I wrestled with what I thought I was, submissive, quiet, unopinionated… and I realized that was the deformed self I had been reoriented from. Yet, I felt the draw to go backwards, because that was how I had been known, and I wanted to be unopinionated because then I was alright. I was still struggling with fulfilling an expectation to be loved. But I had to let go of hindering the change because You drew me in closer, and I fell more deeply in love with You. I looked back, and saw all You had done, how could I give that up now?

I removed the option from my thought and allowed myself to fall off the cliff, into Your waiting arms of love. And so I felt a conflict arising in my soul: my I had two forces tugging within me, the dream of becoming who You made me to be, and the old, acceptable self. And then I realized it was truly a new dream from You—You gave me a purpose and future. I knew it so surely, that I could not even allow the voice in my life anymore, because it always managed to pacify the voice crying in my soul that I knew to be You. Yet… I loved to voice, I wanted to have an image to fall back on. I wanted You to let me love both You and the voice, but You are too jealous, and You love me too much to allow me to entertain temptation. Oh tempting, to think I would be known, be cared for… that I wouldn’t walk through life alone. But I remembered how sufficient You were in my loneliness past, and I relented.

My Jesus, can You ever require a sacrifice of the lips and not the heart? Weeping, shaking again, I crawled to Your altar, regretting every foot and hating every moment… and I ripped out the heart beating within me, because Your hand reached with mind and tore it out. Endless tears… and I refused to speak the words I knew I must say, until I had become so numb and empty it didn’t matter anymore: it was dust in the wind, and I felt alone without a heart again. Jesus, You have set me free and given me the joy of Your life, of being genuine. Of loving and being loved by You. So why do I still struggle with You, why do I still have no feeling, no rest? You have conquered me, I have no more excuses to offer You. I am still yelling into a dark tunnel without light to me, ‘move or move me!’ I know I am in Your will, but there is still no rest for my soul, my weary soul, because relationship has broken. Maybe I have a wrong perspective Jesus, but can it really be as simple as letting go? Do You ever let go? I know I am not You… And Jesus, I am not even asking to know the future, I just want to try and know You now. Bring clarity to my heart as I do my best to remain, waiting for You. What am I running from, what still stands in my way?

 

My heart, uncertain harshness?

Jesus, teach me how to speak, how to be gentle with me words, I guess I have such a harsh heart. You know the depth of my insecurities… I am so unsure of so many things, yet You have promised to never leave my side. I think, Jesus, as I am fighting back tears, that I can see You next to me… and I can’t keep the tears back, Jesus, so my hand and lay Your cheek against mine. Maybe the tears flow over Your cheeks too or maybe those are just Yours. Maybe it is truth that stings me that I did not recognize. Jesus, I whisper on Your shoulder, I’m sorry… I didn’t realize I was being so abrasive to You. I have been too defensive again, haven’t I. I am ashamed of myself, Jesus, I forgot I was talking to You… I was too definite, too strong in my words, and I tried to prop myself up with more words when asked questions. You were not attacking me, but I felt myself on that examining table, and You probed those depths of my soul: I felt backed up in a corner, all eyes were on me and I had nothing to hide my nakedness, so what could I do but be broken over my selfishness. Jesus, that’s what it is, this insecurity, the way I hear people speak You words: I am not looking for You in them, and so they cut me like wounds.

How can I be so untrusting? Have I not placed myself in Your hands? Jesus, all the situations of my life are Yours. Why is it so hard at home? No, we still dance around each other, old wounds surface too easily, and maybe they were healed, but things are still fragile. When truth is spoken, it feels too direct for my soul to bear. Jesus, please break me gently, I’m so sorry, I’m broken already. And when I fell to pieces, I was misunderstood, and seeking for misunderstanding, I am met with the same defensiveness. I get back what I put out… Jesus help me stop the charade of strength and surety. That is not what I intend at all: I am trying to show my true self and I am getting in the way, Jesus. I want to share, to explain what I have been finding, and when I open up discussion, I am not having a meek and quiet spirit. And when the conversation is over, I hope both parties have reached more understanding on the subject. Neither of us are open, Jesus, I see that now, and its shutting off You. We have our pet beliefs, all of us, and maybe we are skeptical instead of open to new possibility. I find that in myself now, I see it in others. Jesus, I want to be open to Your teaching.

Show me what I must do to hear You in the conversation. You have broken the wall of self’s defense, and I am sure it is being discussed now. I have “retreated” to work—I came home to spend time with my family in relationship, but life doesn’t stop for me, and I didn’t expect it to. I never thought it mattered, my coming with what we ate and all. I have been trying to engage more, be part of the life, I have not complained to my family about requests made of me. I have no right to, I have been talking with You about joyfully accepting tasks and relationship over the homework I brought with me. There is only so much time in a day, and I need You… and I have to get the work done. Better if I had stayed at school than come home? Jesus, I put so much aside for people this trip, should I throw it all aside and deal with the consequences once at school? I have “scheduled in” my family, I am trying to engage in life more with them, and I am getting more and more hurt because I see what they think of me and my work: it looks like an excuse to them not to engage. Jesus, I am trying to engage, stay disciplined, help.

My soul can’t stop crying Jesus. Sometimes I have been wishing to just go back and not “be burdened” with family obstacles to getting the work done. You changed my heart once before, change me again, Jesus. Help me get the work done in the limits of time I allow myself… I am trying to hard to be available and fit their schedules. I am not used to things here anymore, they have changed from when I lived here. Communication is different, and I am different too. I have grown accustomed to just dealing with my situations and needs, or neglecting myself for the sake of priorities, but here, I suppose I need to make the people I love and have such a hard time communicating that love to my priorities. We speak different languages, they and I… I cannot read their body language. My sensitivities have surfaced and I stand before them, all my heart on my face, I cannot see myself until their words tear apart the mask I had unconsciously donned in my uncertainty of life here… I tread on ice, thin ice of misunderstanding and old hurt… and I have not been trusting You Jesus to keep me walking on water when the ice breaks.

Jesus, I think I just lost myself. My tears are over, You kissed them away, not coddling my ashamedness, but knowing my spirit is broken enough, You encourage me to more honesty, Risk more, be revealed further, recognize the shards of self that remain in the frame of you when the mirror was broken, You bid me. I am just the frame, You are a more liquid and uncertain mirror than any I have ever seen… almost an illusion, I can sense the spirit-ness of You, like the presence of a thin, vaporous membrane, only really most fully there when my mirror is broken. And I try to take form in the likeness of Your mirror, but I am too concrete… and I do not know how to be fluid. So Jesus, I wish You would just be my spirit, but You require me to work…work with Your Spirit to allow You to be the mirror and me just the frame. You hold my frame together.

How do how I live, now, in a world which is no longer my own, the one I grew up in? I hear it confessed to me that my upbringing has not only conditioned how I understand love (with people and God), but has formulated my understanding of love to be one wholly dependent on my behavior. Oh Jesus, I have discarded Your image, haven’t I, by trying to earn Your love? Maybe my sensitivity to response is conditioned as well… I take everything as an “I love you” or “I love you not” from another. Wow, I really am insecure, Jesus. How did You get so close to me then? My whole life and thoughts on love have been redefined since leaving home: suddenly at school, I was not intrinsically “needed” as a member of a family, the definition of love I had propelled me to work, harder and harder to earn love. So selfish, and so overly dependant on humanity in its imperfection—I had unrealistic desires, which were crushed enough times for me to stop looking to people to help me redefine love. But when I turned my eyes up to You, Jesus, You came to me through people and helped me learn that love really has nothing to do with what I do, in the end.

Every time I’ve fallen, I have hidden my face in shame from the ones who love me… it bewilders me to find that they still love me. I understand loving people in spite of themselves, but why would anyone love me? Jesus I still don’t understand, but I know now I cannot make myself loveable to people: I am who I am, by the grace of God, and who I am, I pray, is always changing into more of Jesus, less of me. But as I struggle in that, I find people still love me. I cannot understand yet, Jesus… I am still uncertain and insecure in their love. Maybe that makes me childish, because I am not sure why anyone would love me; hate I understand more, not why, but I accept it as a fact. I just want to be allowed to love people. Can you help me embrace

As I have been, so help me no longer be. I am sorry Jesus. Help me love You and risk the shards of self, the scattering of me, in order to have You rebuilt in me, more fully. I am unconscious of so much, my Jesus, of all that harshness I never knew was in me. Keep flushing me out of myself, even if I have to cry to You, hurt over it, because I really love You and want You to be whole in me. Take my heart, in Your hands and wring out, let it all spill out… so You can fill me with You. Thank You, Jesus… for clearing my self out and using Yours substance of me.