amy loves books

heros

My friend jane lee alerted me to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

Please pray for Dr. Jennifer and Dr. Scott Myhre and Scott Will.

jesus loves lesbians

This is a song written by a local college student/friend of my husband. It's quite lovely, and you should buy it. Click the iTunes button to listen:



jesus loves lesbians
and terrorists
and pat robertson
jesus loves soccer moms
and immigrants
and hillary clinton

and if you don't love them too
then the love of God is not in you

jesus loves the homeless man
and he loves the fire and brimstone preachers that will never understand
jesus loves the liar, the cynic, the doubter, the hypocrite
and jesus loves me too

and if you don't love them too
then the love of God is not in you

jesus loves lesbians
and athiests
and republicans
jesus loves everyone
even southern baptists
even jesse jackson

and if you don't love them too
then the love of God is not in you

a wedding story

From the time I was old enough to question, I have had questions about the church. I have been a denomonation-hopper. I have been a Lutheran, an Episcopalian, and a charismatic. I have also been a nothing - rejecting the church completely. It was never about God, it was never about Jesus, it was the fucked up church. You have seen the bumper sticker:God save me from your followers. My father did his best to reassure me. Jesus called himself the great physician - meaning the church was a hospital full of sick people. Whatever. It was a small comfort because what I saw was hypocrites and phonies. Agendas. Selfishness.

Eventually, I made a hesitant peace with the church, but it still makes me angry. I am like the churchgoer in The Screwtape Letters; I am always focusing on the out-of-tune singing. When I happen across a televised church service from one of the big, prestigious downtown churches, I have found myself literally yelling at the television. The people are singing their hymns and they look dead. Nobody smiles. They sing: “Praise to whom all blessings flow” and they look like they are bored to death. I start to yell at them. “How much did your watch cost? How much was your Lexus?” I actually do this. I yell at the TV. I am pissed off. Standing in church, looking dead. “Where are you going and why are you in that hand basket?”, I ask the television. And I want to dump ashes on my head and stand in their midst. They are the church. And I am repulsed by them.

Which is why I do not have such a big problem with the whole Biblical concept that wives should submit to and respect their husbands. After fifteen years of marriage, I have learned the wisdom of this. Respect. I am called to respect my husband and to submit to him. Women complain about this all the time. I can not even count the women’s Bible studies and banquets and retreats I have been to that tried to deal with this command in a way that made it palatable. But while it is not easy, the command itself is not that problematic for me. What I have a hard time with is that the Bible goes on to say that I am like the church. I am like the church and my husband has to love me the way Christ loved the church. Strange that men never complain about this considering the way that women get so upset over submission. It seems so unfair. I have to submit to and respect him and in return he has to love me like Christ loved the church. The really, really fucked up church. The selfish, agenda driven, worshipping-everything-but-Jesus-lets-just-be-slappy-happy-clappy people and Shine Jesus Shine! church. The church I don’t even want to be associated with alot of the time. The church with its tendency to turn people off of genuine faith and love. That is what I am. In marriage, my husband is like Christ and I am the like the dysfunctional church.

I don’t want to admit this. I do not want this to be true. But then, I remember my wedding.

On the day of my wedding, nobody told me not to lock my knees. I had never heard that locking your knees could make you pass out. Evidently, they explain this to soldiers in basic training; they instruct them to stand with their knees slightly open so that they do not fall over in the heat and dust of duty. But I, not being a soldier of any kind, had never heard of such a thing. This is why, in the middle of my wedding, when I noticed that my knees were hurting from standing so still for the photographs and witnesses, my thought was not that I needed to unlock my knees. My thought was that I had better not fidget. So I stood even straighter, even taller. And slowly, I began to pass out.

I had never passed out before. It always seemed to me that fainting happened quickly. One minute you were standing there feeling fine - and the next you were waking up with smelling salts waved under your nose.

This is not how it happens.

The first thing I noticed was that everything started to get sparkly looking. The lights were sparkly - like streetlights through the car window in the rain. Then, the edges began to fade. Everything did not go dark at once, it faded in from the edges. My vision narrowed until I could only see a tiny pinpoint, a perfect circle. Then, everything went black.

And I, in the middle of my wedding, was not yet unconscious. I was still able to process this and wonder what was happening. What I thought, was that I had been struck blind. Incomprehensibly, in the middle of my wedding, I had gone blind. I wondered what I should do. I wondered if I should tell someone about going blind. I wondered if I should stop the wedding.

But then I had another thought. I would like to say that this was not really “me”, but was the lack of oxygen in my brain, that I was just disoriented and woozy. But I am afraid that the truth is that this moment is one that defines me as a wife. What I thought was that if I told everyone that I had gone blind that they would stop the wedding. If they stopped the wedding, my future-husband might rethink his willingness to marry a blind girl. On the other hand, if I just faked it till the end and kept my blindness a secret - he would be stuck married to me. In sickness and in health. That was what he was about to promise.

My decision to fake it is caught on film. I turn to hand my bouquet to the flower girl and you can see me sort of grope the air to find her. Trying to play it cool. Trying to impersonate a girl that can see. Shortly after that moment, I actually hit the floor and was laid out on a church pew until I regained consciousness.

I am not proud of this about myself. I am not proud of the fact that I was willing to force my husband unknowingly into marriage with a blind girl. That I considered my options and made a premeditated choice to deceive him. I am even less proud of the fact that, in many ways, my husband did unknowingly marry a blind girl. My literal sight returned after a few moments of unconsciousness, but the spiritual blindness that would cause me to make such a selfish decision and try to fake my way through the wedding stays with me.

I know that I am like the church. That he is like Christ. That I demand to be taken care of, to be tended to. My husband calls me “Princess”. It humbles me. I tell him that I do not understand why he gives so much when all I give in return is just the “glory of my wondrous presence”. He tells me that that is enough. I think back on all the years he worked so I could stay home and be with the children. I think of all the nights that he woke up and took care of the baby even though he was the one who would get up and go to work in the morning. I think of all the times he came home and found me still in my pajamas and how I was always sure that my life was the hard life.

I think of the Bible. I think of me being the church. I think of every moment that I am selfish and think of myself instead of thinking of Jesus. I think of my blindness. And I think that He still loves me. He still loves us. Ugly as we are, He still loves us.

After the wedding was over, I confessed to my husband that I had thought I was going blind. I expected him to be angry. He just laughed and said he only wished I had held on until after he kissed me to faint. That fainting after he kissed me would have been great.

And I think of myself, as the Bride of Christ. As I think of us as the Bride of Christ. Of the fact that He still loves us.

Knowing our selfishness. Knowing we are faking. Knowing our hearts.

He still loves us.

As we sing our psalms like dead people, as we let the collection plate pass us by.

He still loves us.

And He is waiting. He is hoping that we will hold on until His kiss.

No Country For Old Men

Warning: This Post Contains Book And Movie Spoilers

Okay - SERIOUSLY - BOOK AND MOVIE SPOILERS ARE BELOW!!!!!!

John 1: 1, 4-5 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

I did not like Child of God, the first Cormac McCarthy novel that I read, while I was reading it. It was too dark for me. Not too violent, but too bleak - two adjectives that are being used quite a bit in the discussion of Joel and Ethan Coen's film adaptation of McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.

I believe now that I was wrong to classify McCarthy as bleak. I also think that to call the film bleak or to focus on it as a meditation on violence/evil/loss of morality is to deny one of the most interesting questions of both the film and the novel: not of the nature of evil - but of the nature of God.

McCarthy's narrative follows three main characters: Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran who happens across the aftermath of a failed drug deal and decides to steal millions of dollars; Anton Chigurh, a complex killer who is pursuing Llewelyn; and Sherriff Bell, a man trying to make sense of what he percieves as an evil he is unprepared to deal with.

Chigurh is a man that appears to operate almost outside human boundaries, as an agent or representation of a wrathful and vengeful God who has randomly predestined those he encounters to life or death. His first murder, the only that he is shown committing with his hands, results in an expression of rapture on his otherwise largely stoic face. His weapon of choice is a cattle gun, and the murders with this weapon visually suggest a religious annointing of the foreheads of his victims. He flips a coin to decide whether or not people are killed, asking one man, "What's the most you ever saw lost in a coin toss?" For Cirgurh, salvation and death are preordained and he is merely an agent of the inevitable. There is no choice, no free will; there is only fate.

Chigurh's motive for the violent pursuit of Llewelyn is ambiguous because Chigurh never seems to be fueled by greed or interested in the money for his own personal use - but neither does he seem to be working for hire. All you really know is that Llewelyn stole it, and for whatever reason, Chigurh is attempting to recover it. (In the novel, Chigurh is a free agent who returns the money to its rightful (albeit drug dealing) owner and claims that he went after the money to show that he is "someone completely reliable and completely honest") He is not an amoral killer; on the contrary, he operates with the calculated confidence of someone motivated by vengeful righteousness.

Throughout the film, Anton Chigurh seems to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Visually, he is filmed as a towering figure. His violence is astonishing, and regardless of how Chigurh views himself, it's very easy for those that view the aftermath of such shocking and prolific violence to label him as the personification of evil.

Sherrif Bell is struggling to comprehend the force that could be to blame for the violent aftermath he encounters and investigates. Where Chigurh is omipotent, Bell is impotent. The idea that some people could have no possibility of redemption is deeply haunting, and Bell is hesitant to confront a reality that might lead him to conclude that the universe is in the hands of an uninvolved (or even worse, an angry and destructive) God. In spite of his earnest intentions, Sherriff Bell unwittingly finds himself buying into the mythology of Chigurh as a physical manifestation of a God of judgement and vengance.

At the beginning of both film and novel, Bell recalls the only criminal that he ever sent to the gas chamber: a boy who claimed to be predestined to kill. "He'd killed a fourteen year old girl...The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He'd been datin this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he was goin to hell. Told me it right out of his own mouth. I don't know what to make of that. I surely dont."

Although Bell is faced with what he percieves to be a increasingly violent world, where killers torture people for their social security checks, drug dealers massacre each other, and mothers put babies in garbage disposals; he can't reconcile this with his worldview that there is a possibility for putting mistakes behind you, starting over, and finding redemption. He wants to believe that his own mistakes are not beyond redeption. He wants to believe that God is the kind of sherriff that he idealizes - the sort of sherriff that did not carry a gun. He wants to believe that Llewelyn is just a "good boy" that got mixed up, and that there is a chance he'll be saved.

To Bell, Chigurh exists as a "ghost" - undeniable proof that unredeemable evil exists or proof that the world is at the merciless hands of a vengeful God of destruction. In the novel, Bell says "It has brought me to a place in my life I would not of thought I'd come to. Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work." He explains his decision to not confront Bell as a decision "not to put his soul at hazard".

The irony in both film and novel is that both Chigurh and Bell are given an opportunity to accept or receive Grace, and both fail to comprehend it. After building up a mythology of Chigurh as a "living prophet of destruction" - a view that Bell, Chigurh, and, I believe, the audience come to accept, the final three scenes deconstruct this mythology and, as a result, are emotionally devastating.

Believing that he is acting as an agent of fate, Chigurh waits in the dark to kill Llewelyn's widow. As she sits in the light (with a cross reflected in the mirror behind her) he instructs her to choose a side before he flips a coin - thus reaffirming his role as an agent of predestination. Carla Jean refuses to call the coin, forcing Chigurh to accept culpability for her murder. "You dont have to do this", she tells him. (In the novel, she does call the coin, but not before asserting that she rejects Chigurh as an agent of God. Chigurh apologizes before killing her.)

Immediately after the murder of Carla Jean (the first one that Chigurh commits with an awareness of his free will), and in a moment like a shocking Deus Ex Machina, Chigurh's car is broadsided by another car at a crossroads. He emerges from the car broken and bloodied - a far cry from the intimidating, towering figure that dominated previous scenes. Two young boys look down at him from their bicycles. Chigurh asks one of the boys to sell him his shirt so that he can make a sling for the exposed bone that juts from his broken arm. "I'll give you my shirt", the boy says - but Chigurh refuses the possibility of Grace. He hands the boy a bloodied hundred-dollar bill, and wanders away broken and alone.

Anton Chigurh was not doomed to remain in the dark - but he could not comprend the light. It is a man - not a monster, not a prophet, and not an angel of destruction that limps away. If Sherriff Bell had not given up, he would have found simply a wounded human being when he found Chigurh - but in the end, Bell failed. Because of his fear and doubt, he was unable to claim the assurance of Grace - and could only frame the hope of light in terms of a "dream" he had but lost.

The final scene of the film is of a defeated Sherriff Bell telling his wife about two dreams he had about his father. "I dont remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somehwere out there in all that dark and in all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up."

No Country For Old Men is an unsettling film, but it is not nihilistic or void of all hope. I don't believe that either McCarthy or the Coens attempt to portray a world (or a people) fatally doomed to remain in darkness. While the Coens excise most of the overt theological dialogue from the novel, this theme is narratively and visually explored in the film. In one poignant scene, Bell and Chigurh appear to be on both sides of a door. Light shines through a hole in the lock. Neither man, however, walks into that light: Chigurh dissappears into the shadows and Bell in unable to confront Chigurh. But there was light in the darkness, even though the darkness did not comprehend it and could not claim it. The final words of Sherrif Bell allude to the prophecy Zecharias made before the birth of Christ. It offers a glimpse of a merciful God that offers salvation and peace to those that walk in darkness. No Country for Old Men illustrates the moral and emotional devastation of not comprehending this light.

Luke 1: 68, 77-79

68 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,

69 And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;

77 To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

78 Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

79 To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

best friend

In my high school Spanish class, I had to give a speech about my childhood. This is how I began: "Mi amigo mejor era un arbol." My best friend was a tree.

I love trees. Next to my front door, I have a framed blessing that my artist friend Jackie illustrated for me. It is from one of my favorite verses in the Bible: You shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you. There will be shouts of joy and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

I pause before trees. I look upon their strength and patience with wonder. Trees endure; they weather change and storm.

Trees are everything I want to learn to be.

In yoga, my favorite posture is the tree; in order to practice this pose you have to relax and become grounded. If you strain to grasp balance, it eludes you. I always practice this pose meditating on Psalm one. I concentrate on breathing, on getting to the point where I can raise my hands from the closed prayer position and lift them in worship. It is a lesson in learning not to fight, in learning to trust. I imagine trees. I try to feel what they feel, planted by the water of life. They are rooted and silent and in love with Him who bursts them into wild celebratory colors before laying them bare, one season at a time. I sway and struggle in this pose. I stay on it the longest. I lose my balance again and again. Slowly, I let myself need the ground. I feel it under me, I trust it.

In my deepest moments of worship, I become like a tree.

Growing up in north Florida, I was surrounded by beautiful trees. Cypress grew out of the lakes that we were baptized in and the roots of the trees painted sepia-colored mystery into the water. Live oaks spread canopies over two-lane roads. This is my earliest and most vivid memory: being in the back seat with my head tipped upwards - gazing at branches and sky through the rear window. Mimosa trees. Willows. Pecan trees. Wise trees, with heavy branches dripping Spanish moss. They clapped their hands in the wind, praising God.

When I started kindergarten, things did not go well for me. I was an odd child; I was accustomed to being around adults. I did not speak the kid-language that was necessary for playground survival. I was okay during school, because I loved to read and write. I would read book after book; I would crawl under tables to write stories. I was smart. I liked music and art. Teachers approved of me.

Recess was the hour I dreaded, the unstructured time when everyone paired off and I was left alone. I hated it.

One day, I was feeling desperately lonely. I wished I was anywhere but there. I wished for just one friend. I wished I could disappear, like Alice down the rabbit hole. I went to the very edge of the playground and sat with my back up against a tree and I put my head down on my knees. There was a breeze, and I closed my eyes.

I closed my eyes, and I wished, more than anything, that I could be Away.

From the swings and metal spider web bars, I heard the girls practicing their cheers and slappy-hand rhymes. I tried to block it out and find stillness. I began to shift my focus, away from the playground. I heard the quiet. I listened to the breeze in the branches of the tree and in this hidden language of wind and leaves, the tree began to talk to me. In my heart, I heard the tree. Audibly. He told me that his name was Thomasville. I wrapped my arms around his trunk and the scratch of bark was like a father’s unshaved kiss. This tree was my salvation; he loved me, and became my friend. Everyday, we would meet on the playground, me and my tree.

Sometimes, when things got bad, when sides were picked or they played games that left me in the middle of the circle, alone and unchosen; I would look for Thomasville through the window in the classroom door. He always saw me, and his hands would clap in the wind, cheering me on. I could turn then, turn and face the other girls. I knew that I was loved by my tree. My best friend.

I have been thinking about getting a third tattoo. I have settled on the image of my tree. Unlike most childhood things, Thomasville has become more real to me with time. I have become more sure that what I heard in the wind was His voice. I have become more sure that they were not branches, but Hands.

This was meant to be an essay.