I hate cliches.
"God is good all the time. All the time, God is good."
"When God closes a door, he opens a window."
"Don't worry, God's got something better for you."
"It's all right, he (or she) is in a better place now."
"At least he (or she) isn't suffering anymore."
"God is going to turn this for good."
"It's a God thing."
"God's going to show up."
Oh, and "God will never give you more than you can handle."
The list could go on. You get the point. I hate cliches.
But why? Why do I hate them so? Why, especially, considering that some of them are rock-solid scriptural truths? Sure, it's debatable that if God closes a door he opens a window. I'm not sure that Sound of Music is a terribly reliable source of sound theology. And it's an outright lie that God never gives us more than we can handle. He does so all the time; that's why we need him. But let's face it; many of the cliches we Christians love to throw out are straight from Scripture. They're true. After all, God is good all the time. He will turn all things in my life for good. All of life is a God thing, and he doesn't just show up, he is always there. So why do they grate so?
I think partly it is because cliches lack nuance. You aren't willing to wrestle with me the nuances of a life where what is better is not always nicer or more comfortable, where God is always there but sometimes feels hidden, where what I want is not always what I get, and I am called to trust most when my eyes see the least. When I ask God for ice cream, and he gives me Brussels sprouts, I get
that he's giving me something better. Brussels sprouts have more
nutrition. They are cruciferous (loosely translated to mean, packed full
of good things, but tasting kinda bad). Brussels sprouts will make me
healthy and strong. Ice cream will just make me fat. I get it. God is giving me something "better". But
the fact is, I don't want Brussels sprouts. They taste bad. They smell
bad when they're cooking. I have to choke them down, one painful green
ball at a time. Ice cream would slip down so smoothly. But when you slam
me with the cliche, you fail to acknowledge all that nuance. You say,
"God's got something better for you," and I hear, "You asked God for ice
cream, and he's going to give you cheesecake instead. Or an ice cream
sundae with a cherry on top." And I am left to choke down the Brussels
sprouts alone.
But I mostly hate cliches because they lack empathy and compassion. It's not the words themselves that sting so fiercely, but the timing and the manner in which they are spoken. They may well be truth, but they are truth that I am not ready to hear in this moment that my heart is broken. You have not taken the time to hear my heart. You have not sat in silence with me in the pain. You have not cried with me. You just spout to me a cliche that feels like a slap across the cheek to snap me out of what you think is hysteria. What you say is, "God is going to turn this for good," but because you have not taken any time to hear me cry, what I hear is, "Your tears are not legitimate. You shouldn't feel that way." Closer to the truth, I think you are saying, "Your tears make me uncomfortable, so I'm going to say something to make you stop crying so I don't have to feel so awkward." You cannot stand to face my pain with me, so you give me cold comfort and walk away, and I am left to cry my tears alone.
That's mostly, I think, why I hate cliches.
I will never forget one of the worst days of my life. I ended up talking with someone with whom I had no intention to do so. I had been so beaten up with cliches that I had learned that it was best to keep my mouth shut and walk alone. But that day, for some reason which remains elusive still, I talked. For the first time in my life, I experienced something different. He listened. He cared. He had tears in his eyes. He sat in the darkness with me. He sat there in the misery and did not try to change it. And then he said, "Marianne, I don't know what to say. I don't have any words to make you feel better. I don't know why things like this happen. But what I do know is this: somehow, in some way, in ways we don't understand, God is still good, and all that comes from his hand is goodness."
And it wasn't a cliche. It wasn't a cliche because he had sat in the pain with me. It was stated after the silence, after the tears, after the acknowledgement that the circumstances were terrible and heart-shattering and worthy of lament. What he gave me that day was a rock-solid truth I could anchor my life on. It helped me see that, as dark as my life looked, there was still light and goodness that I could count on. There was nuance, and empathy, and care, and because of that, what might have been just another cliche became a hope to which I have clung with white knuckles through dark, dark days and nights.
I hate cliches. I hate them, not because they are not true (because many of them are) but because they are a brush-off so you don't have to deal with my messiness and hurt. I know the truth. I know the answers. I even know that I'm messy and mixed-up and miserable. What I need is someone who is willing to walk through the mire and messiness with me.
And when you do that, your words stop being cliche and become for me life. And truth.
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
Monday, 9 March 2015
Goodbye, Spock
If you know me at all, you know that I do not keep up on celebrity anything. I really couldn't care any less about the size of Kim's bottom or the colour of her hair, or who won the Oscars or who is dating whomever.
But this past week, Spock died. And I was a little taken aback at how much it bothered me. To borrow his phrase, it was . . . illogical. And fascinating. Because I know that Spock is a fictitious character in a hopelessly outdated and cheesy series that lived only three years, and was finished before I was even born. Still, it is so. I felt downright melancholy.
I discovered Star Trek in the reruns of the reruns. I was in my late teens. We had our very first ever TV. It was actually an Apple computer monitor which my brothers and I hooked up to bunny ears. Then we strung wires from the bunny ears and wove the wires through the wire mesh of the screen in my bedroom window. I don't know if there's any possibility that it made the picture clearer, but we thought it did. And then we would crowd into my bedroom and watch this cool show about Kirk and McCoy and Spock, exploring strange new worlds, going bravely where no man had gone before. We kept the volume down. We thought we'd get into trouble. We didn't want my mom to discover that we'd figured out a way to turn the monitor into a TV, let alone that we were watching this space show.
She discovered us one day. She stuck her head in, and stood and watched for about thirty seconds, and said, "Oh, Star Trek." And walked out. We stared at each other in outright astonishment. Mom knew about Star Trek? And she was ok with us watching it? No way! (I still don't know how that happened.) After that, we watched it openly. We still strung the wires up. It seemed we got the best reception from that upstairs bedroom facing Toronto.
Eventually, the monitor-comme-TV moved downstairs onto the dining room table. We got a real TV. We set up a tower antenna and could get more channels. When I moved out, I got cable. Now I could watch The Next Generation. It wasn't as good. Because Data wasn't Spock.
I haven't watched Star Trek in years. I haven't even thought about Star Trek in years. But when I read in the paper that Leonard Nimoy had died, I was shocked. Spock was dead. For good this time. There would be no Star Trek III to bring him back to life. He was gone. And I realised how much Spock had meant to me.
I was an awkward, angry, out-of-place kid at that time. I loved learning, especially about things I wanted to learn about. I read voraciously. I was known by first name at the public library, and signed out armloads of books at once. I would spend hours in the library, reading encyclopedias about whatever struck my interest at that time. These were the days before Google. I would hook onto a topic and learn as much as I could about it. While all the other girls my age were off studying how to put on make-up and fancy clothes, and how to flirt with boys, I was reading about the Monitor and the Merrimack, about the real mutiny on the Bounty, and about Grey Owl.
I was an introvert in a house full of extroverts. I wanted to be in my bedroom, reading, naturally. That made me anti-social and a loner. The younger me sat in the school playground, back against a wall, nose in a book. I was always being told to put my books away and play with the other kids. My desire, even my need, to be alone caused all kinds of problems. I didn't know about introversion or extroversion. I just knew that normal people liked being with other people, and people who wanted or needed to be alone were weird, anti-social misfits.
I loved fixing things. I didn't really see the point in crying about something if I could fix it. I made decisions logically, based on what was practical, pragmatic, or the right thing to do. In a large, extended family that "discussed" issues at top volume and heated passion, I quickly learned that logic and sense don't necessarily rule the day; passion and volume did.
I learned to blend in. I learned to be loud and passionate. I learned to put on a great extroverted face, which I could maintain for a while. I could never stifle my love for learning, but I did learn to not talk about it. I emotionally hung around on the fringes, talking sort of sensibly about the things that everyone else was talking about, but never talking about the things that really interested me. But the real me, the inside me, the me that longed for silence and solitude, conversations about big ideas, and the quiet and sensible solution to problems was dying behind my mask.
And then I met Spock.
He was brilliant. And a loner. And logical. And dispassionate in crisis. He still managed to care. I could see it. It showed in his actions. He was loyal to death. "I am, and always will be, your friend." Bones thought he was a freak. But anyone with half a brain could see that he was the anchor who held the Enterprise together. He didn't quite fit in, but he didn't care. He just was who he was, and when Bones went off, he cocked an eyebrow and carried on. He never changed who he was to placate the irrational and emotional doctor.
I didn't realise, all those years ago when I was watching Spock on TV, what I realised the moment I read the headline that Leonard Nimoy had died: the man from Vulcan was my first glimmer that the inside me was ok. It was ok to be an introvert. It was ok to love reading and research, and to have a headful of random facts, none of which involved makeup or fashion or interior design. It was ok to think through a decision rather than to feel through it. I was ok. It took many more years and a whole lot of real, live, flesh-and-red-blood people who love me and cheer me on for me to be comfortable with that, but Mr Spock opened my eyes to the idea that I could be ok. I think that if God can use a donkey to talk to someone, maybe he could use even a fictitious half-alien to reach one of his lost children who needed a glimmer of hope.
My hope is strong today. I hadn't thought of Spock in years. But I'm glad he was there when I was 16.
Goodbye, Spock.
But this past week, Spock died. And I was a little taken aback at how much it bothered me. To borrow his phrase, it was . . . illogical. And fascinating. Because I know that Spock is a fictitious character in a hopelessly outdated and cheesy series that lived only three years, and was finished before I was even born. Still, it is so. I felt downright melancholy.
I discovered Star Trek in the reruns of the reruns. I was in my late teens. We had our very first ever TV. It was actually an Apple computer monitor which my brothers and I hooked up to bunny ears. Then we strung wires from the bunny ears and wove the wires through the wire mesh of the screen in my bedroom window. I don't know if there's any possibility that it made the picture clearer, but we thought it did. And then we would crowd into my bedroom and watch this cool show about Kirk and McCoy and Spock, exploring strange new worlds, going bravely where no man had gone before. We kept the volume down. We thought we'd get into trouble. We didn't want my mom to discover that we'd figured out a way to turn the monitor into a TV, let alone that we were watching this space show.
She discovered us one day. She stuck her head in, and stood and watched for about thirty seconds, and said, "Oh, Star Trek." And walked out. We stared at each other in outright astonishment. Mom knew about Star Trek? And she was ok with us watching it? No way! (I still don't know how that happened.) After that, we watched it openly. We still strung the wires up. It seemed we got the best reception from that upstairs bedroom facing Toronto.
Eventually, the monitor-comme-TV moved downstairs onto the dining room table. We got a real TV. We set up a tower antenna and could get more channels. When I moved out, I got cable. Now I could watch The Next Generation. It wasn't as good. Because Data wasn't Spock.
I haven't watched Star Trek in years. I haven't even thought about Star Trek in years. But when I read in the paper that Leonard Nimoy had died, I was shocked. Spock was dead. For good this time. There would be no Star Trek III to bring him back to life. He was gone. And I realised how much Spock had meant to me.
I was an awkward, angry, out-of-place kid at that time. I loved learning, especially about things I wanted to learn about. I read voraciously. I was known by first name at the public library, and signed out armloads of books at once. I would spend hours in the library, reading encyclopedias about whatever struck my interest at that time. These were the days before Google. I would hook onto a topic and learn as much as I could about it. While all the other girls my age were off studying how to put on make-up and fancy clothes, and how to flirt with boys, I was reading about the Monitor and the Merrimack, about the real mutiny on the Bounty, and about Grey Owl.
I was an introvert in a house full of extroverts. I wanted to be in my bedroom, reading, naturally. That made me anti-social and a loner. The younger me sat in the school playground, back against a wall, nose in a book. I was always being told to put my books away and play with the other kids. My desire, even my need, to be alone caused all kinds of problems. I didn't know about introversion or extroversion. I just knew that normal people liked being with other people, and people who wanted or needed to be alone were weird, anti-social misfits.
I loved fixing things. I didn't really see the point in crying about something if I could fix it. I made decisions logically, based on what was practical, pragmatic, or the right thing to do. In a large, extended family that "discussed" issues at top volume and heated passion, I quickly learned that logic and sense don't necessarily rule the day; passion and volume did.
I learned to blend in. I learned to be loud and passionate. I learned to put on a great extroverted face, which I could maintain for a while. I could never stifle my love for learning, but I did learn to not talk about it. I emotionally hung around on the fringes, talking sort of sensibly about the things that everyone else was talking about, but never talking about the things that really interested me. But the real me, the inside me, the me that longed for silence and solitude, conversations about big ideas, and the quiet and sensible solution to problems was dying behind my mask.
And then I met Spock.
He was brilliant. And a loner. And logical. And dispassionate in crisis. He still managed to care. I could see it. It showed in his actions. He was loyal to death. "I am, and always will be, your friend." Bones thought he was a freak. But anyone with half a brain could see that he was the anchor who held the Enterprise together. He didn't quite fit in, but he didn't care. He just was who he was, and when Bones went off, he cocked an eyebrow and carried on. He never changed who he was to placate the irrational and emotional doctor.
I didn't realise, all those years ago when I was watching Spock on TV, what I realised the moment I read the headline that Leonard Nimoy had died: the man from Vulcan was my first glimmer that the inside me was ok. It was ok to be an introvert. It was ok to love reading and research, and to have a headful of random facts, none of which involved makeup or fashion or interior design. It was ok to think through a decision rather than to feel through it. I was ok. It took many more years and a whole lot of real, live, flesh-and-red-blood people who love me and cheer me on for me to be comfortable with that, but Mr Spock opened my eyes to the idea that I could be ok. I think that if God can use a donkey to talk to someone, maybe he could use even a fictitious half-alien to reach one of his lost children who needed a glimmer of hope.
My hope is strong today. I hadn't thought of Spock in years. But I'm glad he was there when I was 16.
Goodbye, Spock.
Thursday, 5 February 2015
Privacy Issues
I saw something on Facebook the other day that shocked me.
I have seen an awful lot on Facebook. I have seen photos that verge on pornographic. Ok, they don't just verge on it. They are. I have seen people endorse movies and TV shows that I can't believe they can watch in good conscience. I have seen language that would blister paint. I have seen warnings for false computer viruses, poisoned food, and vaccines that cause your fingers and toes to rot off, ads for dogs who have been lost since 1991, and miracle foods that promise to allow me to live forever. I am cynical and suspicious. I don't believe much. And I'm not shocked by much.
But I was shocked.
I saw pictures by a professional photographer who had been hired to capture images of a child's birth. Oh, they were tastefully done, I suppose. Black and white, so no one had to be disturbed by the reality of blood and amniotic fluid and afterbirth. Photoshopped, I'm sure, to make it look like Mom had just been out for an afternoon stroll, rather than having just pushed out a baby. (Did she put on make-up before this photo op?) But I was shocked. And saddened.
Is nothing sacred anymore? Is nothing private?
I know what you ate for supper. I've seen your 600 wedding photos, your "after sex" photos, your ultrasound photos, your pregnancy belly photos. Now I'm seeing you with your bare legs spread open, giving birth, with what looks like the entire extended family looking on.
I get it. It's a precious moment. It's a miracle. It's wonderful. I might even understand why you would want to capture the moment on film (although the idea of hiring a professional photographer to do so is a little weird to me). I kind of might get why you'd want to have such photos. For yourself.
But you just completely cheapened it by sharing it with the entire world (well over 500 million people, to be exact.) You took something precious and miraculous and private, and you made it public. You invited us all in.
I wonder, would you willingly give birth in front of a stadium full of strangers? Even if you set your photo settings to just your friends, you invited around 150 people to watch you give birth. Would you ever do that in real life? Because you just did. I wonder, how will your child feel about this when he or she is old enough to realise what you did? And I wonder, What if something had gone terribly wrong? It happens, you know. In a matter of seconds, a moment of joy is turned to horrible tragedy, even in our modern Western world. It didn't happen this time. But it could have. It happens more than you'd think. And there would have been a professional photographer there to capture every tragic moment.
We whine and complain and post endless stupid posts about how to protect our privacy from Facebook (which, if the posts are to be believed, can read my mind). Have we not shown "them" over and again that we really don't care about our privacy? Why, then, are we surprised and indignant when "they" believe us? I can just hear Mark Zuckerburg: "Look, they post for the world to see their 600 wedding photos, their after-sex pictures, pictures of their (practically) naked bodies, pictures of their completely exposed pregnancy bellies, pictures of their in utero children, and pictures of themselves giving birth. Trust me, guys, they don't care if we track every single thing they look at on the Internet. Why would they? It's nothing compared to what they've volunteered to show us."
I just shake my head. Why do we do this? Are we so sickeningly narcissistic that we really think the whole world needs to share in our most sacred, most precious, most private moments? Are we really that selfish, that self-centred? It makes me sad. You know what? If you want all those pictures, great. No problem. I might even understand that - sort of. But keep them for yourself.
It says in Luke 1:24, "Zechariah's wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion.“The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” She stayed in seclusion for 5 months. Because she was ashamed of her pregnancy? No, she knew this was a gift from God, a miracle, a sign of his favour. She stayed secluded for five months because she was NO LONGER ashamed. God had taken away her disgrace. She stayed secluded for five months to savour that truth. Some things are just too precious to share.
And later, of Mary, Luke tells us, "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." She didn't post them to Facebook. She didn't put them on Instagram. She didn't even talk about them. She treasured them up and pondered them in her heart. Oh, I know. Different times. Different era. But both Mary and Elizabeth could have done the first-century equivalent of posting their news to Facebook. They didn't. They kept their treasures private. Some things are just too precious to share with the world.
I can't stop what people post on Facebook. But I pray, yes, I pray that God gives me wisdom to think and rethink every single thing I post.
Because I really do care about my privacy.
And some things are just too precious to share with the world.
I have seen an awful lot on Facebook. I have seen photos that verge on pornographic. Ok, they don't just verge on it. They are. I have seen people endorse movies and TV shows that I can't believe they can watch in good conscience. I have seen language that would blister paint. I have seen warnings for false computer viruses, poisoned food, and vaccines that cause your fingers and toes to rot off, ads for dogs who have been lost since 1991, and miracle foods that promise to allow me to live forever. I am cynical and suspicious. I don't believe much. And I'm not shocked by much.
But I was shocked.
I saw pictures by a professional photographer who had been hired to capture images of a child's birth. Oh, they were tastefully done, I suppose. Black and white, so no one had to be disturbed by the reality of blood and amniotic fluid and afterbirth. Photoshopped, I'm sure, to make it look like Mom had just been out for an afternoon stroll, rather than having just pushed out a baby. (Did she put on make-up before this photo op?) But I was shocked. And saddened.
Is nothing sacred anymore? Is nothing private?
I know what you ate for supper. I've seen your 600 wedding photos, your "after sex" photos, your ultrasound photos, your pregnancy belly photos. Now I'm seeing you with your bare legs spread open, giving birth, with what looks like the entire extended family looking on.
I get it. It's a precious moment. It's a miracle. It's wonderful. I might even understand why you would want to capture the moment on film (although the idea of hiring a professional photographer to do so is a little weird to me). I kind of might get why you'd want to have such photos. For yourself.
But you just completely cheapened it by sharing it with the entire world (well over 500 million people, to be exact.) You took something precious and miraculous and private, and you made it public. You invited us all in.
I wonder, would you willingly give birth in front of a stadium full of strangers? Even if you set your photo settings to just your friends, you invited around 150 people to watch you give birth. Would you ever do that in real life? Because you just did. I wonder, how will your child feel about this when he or she is old enough to realise what you did? And I wonder, What if something had gone terribly wrong? It happens, you know. In a matter of seconds, a moment of joy is turned to horrible tragedy, even in our modern Western world. It didn't happen this time. But it could have. It happens more than you'd think. And there would have been a professional photographer there to capture every tragic moment.
We whine and complain and post endless stupid posts about how to protect our privacy from Facebook (which, if the posts are to be believed, can read my mind). Have we not shown "them" over and again that we really don't care about our privacy? Why, then, are we surprised and indignant when "they" believe us? I can just hear Mark Zuckerburg: "Look, they post for the world to see their 600 wedding photos, their after-sex pictures, pictures of their (practically) naked bodies, pictures of their completely exposed pregnancy bellies, pictures of their in utero children, and pictures of themselves giving birth. Trust me, guys, they don't care if we track every single thing they look at on the Internet. Why would they? It's nothing compared to what they've volunteered to show us."
I just shake my head. Why do we do this? Are we so sickeningly narcissistic that we really think the whole world needs to share in our most sacred, most precious, most private moments? Are we really that selfish, that self-centred? It makes me sad. You know what? If you want all those pictures, great. No problem. I might even understand that - sort of. But keep them for yourself.
It says in Luke 1:24, "Zechariah's wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion.“The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” She stayed in seclusion for 5 months. Because she was ashamed of her pregnancy? No, she knew this was a gift from God, a miracle, a sign of his favour. She stayed secluded for five months because she was NO LONGER ashamed. God had taken away her disgrace. She stayed secluded for five months to savour that truth. Some things are just too precious to share.
And later, of Mary, Luke tells us, "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." She didn't post them to Facebook. She didn't put them on Instagram. She didn't even talk about them. She treasured them up and pondered them in her heart. Oh, I know. Different times. Different era. But both Mary and Elizabeth could have done the first-century equivalent of posting their news to Facebook. They didn't. They kept their treasures private. Some things are just too precious to share with the world.
I can't stop what people post on Facebook. But I pray, yes, I pray that God gives me wisdom to think and rethink every single thing I post.
Because I really do care about my privacy.
And some things are just too precious to share with the world.
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