HELLO PIGEONS,
I am at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio, which turns out to be a great little convention city with lots of restaurants and good accommodations and a really wonderful market right across from the convention center that sells PIEROGIS, because this is a big city for Polish food. So I feel like my Baba is here feeding me, and that’s comforting.
What else is comforting is being around ministers who, when they say, “How have you been” I can say, “Crummy and depressed, actually” because we don’t have to do small talk. Being able to say that I have been depressed has been an excellent way to realize that I HAVE, in fact, been very depressed. I am quite slow on the up-take sometimes. I have fabulous intuitive witchy powers and intellectual clarity about things way before I know how I’m feeling. I am a slow feelings processor. Isn’t it helpful to have language for these things about ourselves? Such nice ways to say, “I’m a mess!”
Many of us are sponges for the pain of the world and I’m just one of them, and I have been forgetting to let Jesus and God and angels and saints and mostly God run the world and help me deal with the fiery hot waves of rage and despair that come over me too regularly, and it wouldn’t hurt if I didn’t obsessively follow every story of racist injustice and persecution of GLBTQ people and objectification, harassment, rape and murder of women every night, with a side of being objectified and harassed by idiot men on dating sites.
But I am getting my heart back here, surrounded by colleagues and doing good work with other liberal religious people who are in similar pain. At a Communion service last night, we started with a litany of lamentation and I started to have an actual feeling, which was good because I’ve been quite numb since the Orlando massacre.
It occurs to me that my advice about not filling your schedule with too many tasks is more urgent than ever: kids, we need the internal capacity to respond to all the trauma in the world, which seems to be far more constant than ever before in my memory. So make sure you leave space for whatever you need to do inside your heart and soul to keep up with these aggressive, violent, divisive times in our broken little world. Good God, waking up and learning that Britain voted to leave the EU was a massive shock. It’s a collective blow. British colleagues, please check in.
So here I am, feeding off of the energy of the convention, getting bad news in community and therefore bearing it better, and (because life is life) having fun with some purple lipstick that has been kind of fun. It’s Mac liner and lipstick in Heroine, topped with Nyx Liquid Suede Cream Lipstick (stays forevah) in Sway. I have had such joy in meeting more of you and laughing with you, and all the hugs have also been most welcome. I’ll be part of a panel this afternoon at 4:45 as one of the speakers for “Harnessing Wisdom: Bla Bla Bla Universalism” today, stepping in for the Rev. Parisa Parsa who couldn’t make it.
See you soon, on here or there or somewhere, but meanwhile, kiss of peace in purple lippy. MWAH!
Wish I was there!
No, not really. I need to be here this year. But I miss everybody. I saw your purple lippy in a picture on Twitter and thought, wow, that’s an amazing color.
(I need to be here because I’m finishing an extended CPE unit, which has turned out to be AMAZING in ways that are both good and hard, and conveniently (?!) that means I did not have to change plans to accommodate a family emergency. And I am officiating my first memorial service soon. I would be nervous about this, but I have no nerves left, and thanks to the BTFM archives I have a pretty good idea of what in my closet is suitable to wear. THANK YOU for being you and doing the thing you do!)
Thank you for thanking me! And holler if you need any other kind of support for the funeral. xoox – PB
Thank you for this. I am starting to feel as though I should just set up a sermon template which starts with the line “It’s been a difficult week.” The massacre in Orlando, the murder of Jo Cox, the EU referendum result and it’s aftermath. The numbness that you describe seems to have seeped into my bones and it will take time to seep back out again, time to assimilate my reactions. At the same time, I need to be – doing all the stuff, you know, the vigil and the prayer and the leading and the responding and the holding and the preaching.
So thank you. Thank you for expressing my feelings and also thank you for the purple lippy kiss of peace. Because if anyone was destined to wear ‘Heroine’ and ‘Sway’ it would be you!
anne
British colleague checking in…
The June worship theme at my church is “Sabbath,” and it has turned out to be incredibly timely, with all the sadness, loss, anger we feel. I missed being with our UU folks at GA, and I appreciate your on-line ministry so much. Hope you get some time away this summer.
I think my best comment it that there will always be enough bad news to fill the newspaper. I am a big fan of reading newspapers but I have to remember that those things are far from my real life. My real life is lived in my town with my friends and acquaintances. The things that are arms length from me should matter more to me than what is going on in another state or country.