Our Odyssey
Earlier this month, I referred to a "new chapter" for us, with the live-in arrangement with Tara at an end. It might seem odd that I talk this way about it, when she was only here for a month, but one should keep in mind that a) we had originally intended it to last considerably longer, perhaps a year, and b) it was a very intense month, which changed us.
I think we were moving in this direction already, with Angela going to her counselor every week, me going to mine, and both of us going together to CCEF every other week (we went weekly for the first three weeks of March, to devote extra time to dealing with fallout from the time with Tara, but we've dropped back to every other week again) , but our experience with Tara seems to have focused our minds and crystallized a certain consensus between us regarding our priorities as a couple. Namely, that we need to focus inwardly and ever more intentionally on our own "work" of recovery, and of organizing our lives, as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.
Don't we often find broken people taking refuge with other broken people? There can be a two-way bond here: the party providing the refuge has a deep sympathy for the one seeking refuge, and the one seeking refuge may trust the other more, out of a sense that they "understand". This may be a reckless leap, but I wonder if this dynamic isn't a big part of what makes poverty such an intractable problem.
As best as I can make out, the up-close experience of Tara's anxiety, confusion, bitterness and isolation shook our sense of our own identity. I feel the need to emphasize that Angela spent far more time cooped up in the house with Tara than I did, and she accordingly was the more shaken. What seems to have emerged from our three separate streams of counseling work is that our identities (hers and mine) must be much more bound up with the day-to-day work of keeping house and raising Abigail.
I don't feel that I'm breaking confidence excessively to mention that Angela's counselor recently reflected back to her that she may suffer from an interesting form of "survivor's guilt", vis a vis her status as a somewhat affluent black woman in America. Her mother struggled mightily, with no husband to help at any point, to raise her in a wealthy suburb of L.A., and in that she succeeded. Angela got an Ivy League degree and now lives relatively comfortably in one of the better public school districts in the United States. What about all those black women that don't "make it" like she did? Who don't find an adequate mate, who struggle raising kids alone, more often than not in poverty? What about all those girls, worth no less as human beings than she, languishing in the cities and the poor countryside? She is aware of them-- so what is her responsibility? As a Christian? As a Christian black woman?
Her responsibility is first and foremost toward her daughter and her aging mother and her husband. You'd be surprised how little that message comes through in the Christian scriptures. What I mean by that is that except for a few scattered reminders that women should "submit" to their husbands, and that they will be "saved through childbearing", there is only one passage that I can think of that holds up caring for your family as a universal (i.e. cross-gender) value, and that is mostly a negative exhortation (to paraphrase: "Anyone who does not care for his family is worse than an unbeliever.") The Hebrew scriptures are not much help either, in my opinion, since most of what we read there mainly tends to underscore how vastly different the ancient cultures were from our own, in many respects.
If I do say so, I feel that it is even harder to find guidance in this area as a man. The one, single, solitary place that is of help is I Timothy 3:4,5: "[A bishop] must manage his household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way-- for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church?" And it obviously is not much help, since the only way specified that this man is supposed to "manage" his household is by keeping his kids in line, basically. But there is a shred here, at least, for someone like me, who has in fact held church office. To me, that shred is: "You doofus! Why are you out there trying to keep a church afloat? Tend to your own family's problems first!"
Other than these two things in the Christian scriptures, any instruction to tend to your family would have to remain implicit, and really I don't think that you can make much of a case that raising a family can be a worthy "mission from God" is a distinctive of Christianity. (Although I've heard that raising families is an enormously important value to Mormons.) Anyway, this is the consensus that has been emerging between me and Angela-- our only clear "mission", at this time, is to grow stronger as a family.
A somewhat unexpected result of this has been a decision to leave Christ Liberation Fellowship. It is a small, five year old, predominantly African American "church plant" of the Philadelphia Presbytery of the PCA (the largest of a number of relatively small conservative Presbyterian denominations in the U.S.). It is struggling somewhat; as the pastor expressed to us on Sunday when we informed him of our departure, "We're too big to disband, but too small to grow without difficulty." I have struggled a bit at CLF because I have an ongoing struggle with conservative Evangelical Christianity on a number of levels, and my original rosy view that "this church is different, it has a real mission to the poor" has largely faded. Angela has been struggling with the situation of CLF's location in a virtually comatose host church which is only able to keep its doors open by renting space to four other churches (of which CLF is one). It's a chaotic arrangement and aspects of the building's dilapidation-- in particular, a portion of the roof over the fellowship hall that looks like it could fall in-- have been really getting under Angela's skin in recent months. And then there was that little incident in mid-January where Abigail almost lost the tips of two of her fingers...
I grow verbose. In plain English, attending CLF has been stressing us out. We're going to look at churches whose continued existence is in less doubt, who inhabit less precarious digs, who have a music ministry (read: choir) we could participate in with relative passivity, who have a more stable programs for children, yadda yadda yadda. It looks like we'll visit United Presbyterian Church of Manoa this Sunday.
Maybe it's more of an "anti-Odyssey", if by Odyssey you mean some kind of wandering journey away from home.
More to report later, I guess.
I think we were moving in this direction already, with Angela going to her counselor every week, me going to mine, and both of us going together to CCEF every other week (we went weekly for the first three weeks of March, to devote extra time to dealing with fallout from the time with Tara, but we've dropped back to every other week again) , but our experience with Tara seems to have focused our minds and crystallized a certain consensus between us regarding our priorities as a couple. Namely, that we need to focus inwardly and ever more intentionally on our own "work" of recovery, and of organizing our lives, as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.
Don't we often find broken people taking refuge with other broken people? There can be a two-way bond here: the party providing the refuge has a deep sympathy for the one seeking refuge, and the one seeking refuge may trust the other more, out of a sense that they "understand". This may be a reckless leap, but I wonder if this dynamic isn't a big part of what makes poverty such an intractable problem.
As best as I can make out, the up-close experience of Tara's anxiety, confusion, bitterness and isolation shook our sense of our own identity. I feel the need to emphasize that Angela spent far more time cooped up in the house with Tara than I did, and she accordingly was the more shaken. What seems to have emerged from our three separate streams of counseling work is that our identities (hers and mine) must be much more bound up with the day-to-day work of keeping house and raising Abigail.
I don't feel that I'm breaking confidence excessively to mention that Angela's counselor recently reflected back to her that she may suffer from an interesting form of "survivor's guilt", vis a vis her status as a somewhat affluent black woman in America. Her mother struggled mightily, with no husband to help at any point, to raise her in a wealthy suburb of L.A., and in that she succeeded. Angela got an Ivy League degree and now lives relatively comfortably in one of the better public school districts in the United States. What about all those black women that don't "make it" like she did? Who don't find an adequate mate, who struggle raising kids alone, more often than not in poverty? What about all those girls, worth no less as human beings than she, languishing in the cities and the poor countryside? She is aware of them-- so what is her responsibility? As a Christian? As a Christian black woman?
Her responsibility is first and foremost toward her daughter and her aging mother and her husband. You'd be surprised how little that message comes through in the Christian scriptures. What I mean by that is that except for a few scattered reminders that women should "submit" to their husbands, and that they will be "saved through childbearing", there is only one passage that I can think of that holds up caring for your family as a universal (i.e. cross-gender) value, and that is mostly a negative exhortation (to paraphrase: "Anyone who does not care for his family is worse than an unbeliever.") The Hebrew scriptures are not much help either, in my opinion, since most of what we read there mainly tends to underscore how vastly different the ancient cultures were from our own, in many respects.
If I do say so, I feel that it is even harder to find guidance in this area as a man. The one, single, solitary place that is of help is I Timothy 3:4,5: "[A bishop] must manage his household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way-- for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church?" And it obviously is not much help, since the only way specified that this man is supposed to "manage" his household is by keeping his kids in line, basically. But there is a shred here, at least, for someone like me, who has in fact held church office. To me, that shred is: "You doofus! Why are you out there trying to keep a church afloat? Tend to your own family's problems first!"
Other than these two things in the Christian scriptures, any instruction to tend to your family would have to remain implicit, and really I don't think that you can make much of a case that raising a family can be a worthy "mission from God" is a distinctive of Christianity. (Although I've heard that raising families is an enormously important value to Mormons.) Anyway, this is the consensus that has been emerging between me and Angela-- our only clear "mission", at this time, is to grow stronger as a family.
A somewhat unexpected result of this has been a decision to leave Christ Liberation Fellowship. It is a small, five year old, predominantly African American "church plant" of the Philadelphia Presbytery of the PCA (the largest of a number of relatively small conservative Presbyterian denominations in the U.S.). It is struggling somewhat; as the pastor expressed to us on Sunday when we informed him of our departure, "We're too big to disband, but too small to grow without difficulty." I have struggled a bit at CLF because I have an ongoing struggle with conservative Evangelical Christianity on a number of levels, and my original rosy view that "this church is different, it has a real mission to the poor" has largely faded. Angela has been struggling with the situation of CLF's location in a virtually comatose host church which is only able to keep its doors open by renting space to four other churches (of which CLF is one). It's a chaotic arrangement and aspects of the building's dilapidation-- in particular, a portion of the roof over the fellowship hall that looks like it could fall in-- have been really getting under Angela's skin in recent months. And then there was that little incident in mid-January where Abigail almost lost the tips of two of her fingers...
I grow verbose. In plain English, attending CLF has been stressing us out. We're going to look at churches whose continued existence is in less doubt, who inhabit less precarious digs, who have a music ministry (read: choir) we could participate in with relative passivity, who have a more stable programs for children, yadda yadda yadda. It looks like we'll visit United Presbyterian Church of Manoa this Sunday.
Maybe it's more of an "anti-Odyssey", if by Odyssey you mean some kind of wandering journey away from home.
More to report later, I guess.
posted by Joel GL at 3:46 PM
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