pay attention
this is a picture of a note I wrote to myself when I was 8, I've been trying to remember it lately
Note: once again I drafted a substack post and then let it sit for like three weeks, so it’s no longer exactly evergreen, but still feels relevant. Hope all are well.
I gave a sermon this weekend and it was not particularly good, not because I didn’t believe (most) of what I said, but because it had no real roots in integrity. I wrote it because I wanted it to be right, as though truth would arrive simply as a product of earnestness; I wanted to be wise, I wanted to be discerning, I wanted to be biting and informed and correct but alas. Couldn’t cut it. Unfortunate. Open arms doesn’t mean you’re gonna catch something.
There are good and bad places to fail from; pulpits can be nice because congregations are generally fairly forgiving people. There are so many bad sermons that no one particularly cares if you join their numbers as long as you are not wildly offensive. It can also be a tricky place to fail from because, by virtue of your placement (above the congregation, often literally) your words are given a contextual authority and you never know who will abuse them. I have heard many bad sermons in my time and, regardless of content, I confess that a small part of me still secretly believes some of their precepts, even though I no longer practice them.
That said, it’s one sermon. C’est la vie. The world still turns. A small congregation in Brooklyn still gathers. The man across the street still lays out the clothes he finds for his stoop sale every Sunday. Sometimes I wonder if he is a more honest institution than the church. The rhythm of his exchanges seems more straightforward. His customers arrive with practical needs, and he satisfies them. Everything takes place on an even field. I bought a bandana t-shirt from him once after service for $5, and I love wearing it. Money. Shirt. Simple. Very little politics, very little of the difficulty of creating and sustaining relationship.
Chris of Christine and the Queens, says: “A note for a shag - how surprisingly soothing this can be! The power ratio runs clear, like water in your hands; it becomes a pure gesture of love, of ultimate consent.”
I don’t know what a clear, pure church looks like. A church of ultimate consent. The Quakers, maybe? No ministers, or everyone’s a minister, depending on who you ask. Just a room of people gathered trying to listen to the spirit, and if you feel you’ve heard the spirit, you stand. But the one Quaker service I went to felt stilted; everyone who spoke felt like they did this every week, like they were just there waiting for the right moment to make their pre-planned pronouncement. Which felt even worse than usual church because the whole point of the Quakers is that nothing is planned, it’s all out in the open, on an even field.
The only exceptions were one newcomer, who announced that they “were grateful to be there” and one other person who cautiously stumbled through a series of words that she was clearly very nervous about.
I don’t remember any of what she said, only that, when she said it, I was grateful that at last, someone was speaking who had not expected to be. Who knows if it was the spirit speaking but at least it wasn’t the ego.
Idk man.
Who does? And anyways, what’s the thing Paul says? “The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.”
This is a cynical blog post. I didn’t mean for it to go this way. I wanted to write about paying attention during times of transition. I wanted to write about how I am packing up my apartment, after almost two years here. I wanted to write about terror of change, the joy of change, and the awkward, simmering discontent I feel in transition.
A week ago, I was in Cleveland, and this week, I’m in Brooklyn, writing this surrounded by two years worth of possessions that are half packed in bins and half sprawled around me; it’s 80 degrees indoors even though it’s at least 70 outside. For lunch and for dinner, I ate sandwiches on the floor of my apartment that my partner had made for a beach trip that did not happen because I was too stressed with writing a sermon and packing my life into bins and trying to string the last two years into a narrative arc that made sense.
You know the only constant, they quipped as I folded my underwear and they paired socks. And I said nothing. And they said: change!
They’re right and I hate that they’re right. Change feels like death to me. I love momentum but I hate change. Hate the loss of the what is. Hate letting things go. I like abundance, or the illusion of abundance. I’m very bad at impermanence.
But this is the year of change. Little changes, big changes. It feels like a variety of tiny pieces suddenly falling into place, or falling out of the picture, for better or for worse. Jobs and people and chances, jumbling around in this odd little snow globe of a life.
It’s a year for fragments. I read books of essays. Poems. Watch episodes, not movies. Make playlists, listen to only a few albums. Morsels, not meals. Many pans on the stove. Not much in the oven.
Probably part of why the sermon felt off; hard to feel grounded when your life feels like an exercise in dabbling. Hard to create something with roots when you feel like you yourself don’t have any. Hard to pay attention when you’d rather float.
Anyways, in line with the “only reading short things” year, I’ve been reading a lot of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I read a very good poem of hers about death (“the empty rocking chair that rocks on after you leave???”) and then I found out she wrote it in college and felt cheated. She gestures at the unexperienced and still manages to articulate it; I can’t even write a sermon.
There’s a poem where she talks about being in a death march at the end of the world, led by god, a kind of horrifying march through the ashes of the earth to the glories of heaven, and she’s devastated because she loves earth. So she thinks about god as hard as she can so that god won’t notice that she’s leaving the death march (a lot can be said about this particular piece but moving on!) and then she sneaks off to say one last goodbye to earth and finds a single blue flag, rising above the ashes of the earth, and she saves it and convinces god to let her take it to heaven with her.
And not to read too much into Edna but maybe this is the challenge of this frenzied era here in Brooklyn. March forward; save what you can; not everything can be excellent. Sermons and moves and love; no choice but to go forward imperfectly and try to choose what you want most along the way, and give that your attention, and your care, and your time.
Anyways. The move is done. Finishing this blog post from a new (temporary) home, before I leave for Tahoe in two weeks for the summer. To quote Frida, everything changes! everything moves! everything revolves! everything flies and goes away.
ending with Mary Ruefle because, yeah Mary. Correct.
Updates
Just finished teaching an Apartheid-Free group at PSUMC, I’m not an expert and this video cuts off the part where I disclaim that, but if you wanna hear me talk about Christian Zionism you can do that here:
New York pals, I’m in a reading raising funds for the Queens Archives next week, you can get tickets here, if you don’t come for me come for the $20 unlimited wine: Queering the Archives
Midwest pals, the last first Friday to see “maundy, baby” in Cleveland is this Friday, June 21st. link here: "maundy, baby" first friday
and that’s everything, happy solstice, see you soon.