Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

For months, I've been trying to write a tribute to my mentor Jim Gremmels. I still don't think I have it right, but I think it's closer than it has ever been so far, and I think I'll send this version to his wife Ruth. I think part of the reason I am having trouble writing it is not only because there are so many memories, but also because he himself was such a great writer, so clear and to the point, and so poignant and funny. I can't ever hope to write as well as he did, so nothing I could write would ever be an adequate tribute. Still, here is what I have. A Tribute to Gremmels The first time I had a meal with Jim Gremmels, I was interviewing for the first of many versions of the job I have now at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He claimed to be retiring, and told me over cafeteria pizza that if I got the job, I would also get his office. By this point, he had asked me two questions, and two questions only: did I think I could live in this town, and did I re...

December is always like this; it's just that everything is compounded by several factors: I'm leaving for Greece and trying to have a real Christmas here and trying to get all my work done--which is to say, mine and several other people's who haven't been doing theirs. On top of this, there has been so much loss and tragedy and grief in my life lately, mostly other people's, but I have been holding them up and advocating for and caring about them--which is both energizing and exhausting. There are things to mourn--a student who has passed away, her death rippling across time and space for so many of my favorite students; the teenager from our town stabbed to death by her boyfriend; and, on a smaller scale, the people I care for are retiring or leaving, and I'm discovering how disconnected I feel from some people I used to love, and how connected I feel to others who won't be here much longer. So, basically, I'm more swamped and overwhelmed and sad than I...

When I arrived at the school to pick up S after her play rehearsal, she bounded into the car, practically shouting, "Guess what happened today?" "What?" "A motivational speaker came to our school. He was SO cool. And he's going to talk again tonight at 7:30. Can we go, mom, PLEASE?" Admittedly, the second I heard the words "motivational speaker," I was immediately suspicious. Plus, there was a Halloween party I wanted to attend, and a university cultural event--but I'd missed my chance to get tickets to the second, and I didn't have much energy to pick out a costume for the first. Maybe it's meant to be, I thought. Plus, S is very vulnerable to misinterpreting messages, and tends to get confused about the main idea--maybe, I thought, it would be a good idea for me to go hear this guy so we could talk about him. "Tell me more," I said. "What did you like about him?" "He tore a phone book IN HALF on stage. A...

Finally, 10 years after Matthew Shepherd's murder, the federal hate crimes bill is signed into law by Obama. It's hard to believe. So hard, actually, that I found myself watching the footage over and over--I couldn't get enough of it. There are other signs that things are getting better: there's hope that the Defense of Marriage Act will be repealed, that Don't Ask, Don't Tell will be repealed. And yet, I can't help but reflect on the fact that in the last two weeks, two GLBT students at the college where I teach have dropped out of school, both of them dealing with fallout related to coming out. When we lose queer students--and it happens every year, without fail (and those are just the ones I can count, not including any who silently slip away, in pain and in the closet)--all of the faces of the kids I tried to "save" come back to me. Last night, I dreamed them all, marching in a parade for justice, waving the rainbow flag. At the end was the man...

In the beginning, I wanted to tell you I couldn’t stand the sight of you, the thighs fluctuating from fat to thin, or the bony-kneed, arm-laced-with-knife-marks, pale-skinned bodies. I hated, too, how you wore your not-wanting as a badge of honor, flimsy as the size three dresses you wrapped around hips like cloaks, thick as the cheese you rolled into your napkin, carefully shrouded, to throw away. I didn’t want to understand. To understand would mean facing everything you wanted, everything we all wanted: a home-place where our shame could evaporate, wisp by wisp, into thin air, like the dry ice in the kettle we’d stir every Halloween in our front yard to draw the trick-or-treaters. We liked to dress up. I was always a witch, armed with magic wand, magic broom—I could sweep clean the yellow-brick-road of your memories, turn your days from black and white to color, stir the concoction until it tasted right, even to you. But I can’t go on like this, hating and loving you at the same ti...

Summer, 1987: the sweet-and-bitter scent of the cigar your father says he doesn’t smoke, the gritty rage in the back of your throat, the sound of his phlegm clearing, tentatively, over and over. Twenty years later, you will realize he waited all day for the chance to stand there, on the porch below your window, until your cousin was gone to her night job and you and your sister were believed to be asleep. You keep the window open because Ohio is muggy and still in August, because you love the sound of crickets and the small, round light over the Boltz’s picnic shelter, lonely now against the backdrop of lake and grass. All summer long, Mrs. Boltz sits on a folding chair in the center of the family’s barn and watches her sons pull down each weathered slab of wood, and twenty years later, you will see there was an easier way, that she chose this laborious un-building. But for now you know only that you like to sit beside her on a hay bale, twist the thick, blond strands in your fingers, ...

In his memoir _Firebird_ about his childhood, marked deeply by his mother's addiction and his father's pain, Mark Doty writes, "To tell a story is to have power over it. Now they--we--are part of a tale, a made thing--a perspective box!...What happened defines us, always; erase the darkness in you at your own peril, since it's inextricable at last from who you are...Surely their actions might be something we'd do ourselves: the hand raised to strike could be your hand, the face that trembles to receive the blow your face. The finger on the trigger yours, afraid; the heard held in the gun sights yours also. And that is close enough to forgiveness, to find that any character in the dream of your life might be you. But you don't know that until you tell the story; caught in the narrative yourself, how could you see from that height?" Those words, when I read them the first time, resonated with me. Now, on the other side of parenthood, as with Lamott's wor...

The last week I spent with my father offered new challenges; he didn’t, after all, qualify for a home care program, so we had to determine a way to pay for his care, using some money he’d hoped to keep in Greece for his eventual move back there. There were other legal and financial challenges that needed to be sorted out. In the end, when we left, my father was sitting on the couch where he’d been spending his days and nights, sobbing. But, he also thanked me—and I am not sure he’s ever done so before. The drive home was bittersweet; the warm, sun evaporated into thick, cool fog before our eyes; we started the drive in shorts and t-shirts and ended it in sweats. But, it was also so lovely to be home; I teared up when we got to the kennel and our dog greeted S with his usual leap into the air, and she almost fell backwards. My last day in Ohio, I got a call that my dear friend G had died. He was in his 80s and still teaching until, a couple weeks earlier, his health had declined to the ...

The day after I got to Ohio, my father was released from the hospital. It was clearly too early, and I suspect that the fact that he owes the hospital a significant amount of money (despite the fact that 80% of his bills are paid by Medicare) may have played a role, though I can't be sure. Maybe it's more mundane than that--there is an urgency to turn beds over as quickly as possible, that care is no longer patient-centered, even in one of the best hospitals in the world. In any case, on the day he was released, he had not yet been able to sit up or go to the bathroom on his own, and he could not climb the five steps he needs to climb in order to get into his apartment. Still, optimistic, we got him into my car, and we dropped my sister off at the airport on the way to his home. He cried as she left--in the two weeks she had been with him, they had gone from intending to celebrate my nephew's fifth birthday at the Cleveland Zoo to spending hours together at the hospital. On...

Last Monday, my sister accompanied my father to an appointment where he was declared, for the moment, anyway, cancer free. "Bone cancer doesn't ever heal, not all the way," the doctor explained, "but right now the real issue is a fracture in the hip." He agreed to surgery, in a month or so, to put a pin in his hip so he would be able to walk more easily, and eventually fulfill his desire to move to Greece. On Friday morning, my sister called to say that he had been airlifted to the hospital for emergency surgery. The radiation had caused a clot in his colon, which was dying. Twenty hours later, he was still waiting for the surgery; now, he is recovering relatively well, though he's confused and paranoid, and his heart is keeping an irregular heartbeat. Next week, S and I will head there for about ten days to help arrange for his care because my sister has to leave. I will have to cancel some 30 work-related meetings; S will miss the second and part of the th...