No, you don't have to take it anymore

October is Domestic Violence (DV) Awareness month - sometimes called Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) to cover those relationships where the abused and abuser are not living together but are involved in an intimate relationship. It's a difficult topic and one the Church has a checkered history in addressing.

For too long the Church's leadership, dominated by men, often took the stance that violence in a marriage was because the woman was failing as a wife. She was often counseled to go back to her abuser and, in some way, be a "better" spouse. Of course that never worked. Deferring to the abuser just kept the cycle of abuse alive and well - no matter how deferential or demur the wife tried to be to please her husband.

Just in the past 30 years, with the rising number of ordained women in many denominations, the Church has begun to address this problem for what it is - an abuse of power by one spouse over the other. Yes, we also acknowledge that women can be abusers and men are much less likely to report due to culture norms about masculinity. We also know that DV/IPV can occur in same sex couples just as easily as in heterosexual ones.

Several of my Facebook postings this month have addressed abuse and violence. Too many people have misconceptions about how Christianity addresses DV/IPV. Admittedly, there are still corners where the pastor will uphold the position I previously described ... but this is not representative of all Christians! There are plenty of churches trying to address this issue and an excellent book on the subject is Breaking the Silence: The Church Responds to Domestic Violence by The Rev. Anne O. Weatherholt, Episcopal priest (and one of my mentors). She wrote the very first tract for Forward Publications on the issue of DV back in the early 1980's.

One area of serious confusion is over forgiveness and reconciliation when it comes to being abused. Often people think because Christ calls us to forgive those who abuse us (just as he did from the cross) and we are taught to follow St. Paul's instructions to "be reconciled with one another" it means that we must continue to remain in abusive relationships to be "good Christians." This is a misunderstanding and twisting of what forgiveness and reconciliation are about.

Forgiving your abuser is releasing the rancor, hurt and bitterness over what they have done. Ideally, you can do this face to face; however, this isn't always possible because of their abusive treatment of you. Forgiving doesn't require you to subject yourself to more violence. And forgiveness isn't really forgiveness when it comes with threats of more violence. When one is in an abusive relationship, the time to forgive is not while you are still involved with your abuser and still suffering attacks! True forgiveness can only come when the violence ends - whether due to your abuser getting help or you leaving the relationship.

In his book Forgive And Get Your Life Back, The Rev. Dennis Maynard explains that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation or restoration - they are three distinct steps. Jesus taught us to forgive so we can let go of the anger, bitterness and resentment which hold us back. Reconciliation is the next step after forgiveness but due to our sinful nature it may never happen. Reconciliation can only happen when both parties turn away from the abusive cycle and seek to amend their lives and make the radical changes necessary to stop the abuse. For the abuser, this means counseling - deep therapeutic work to seek the self-understanding necessary to put a stop to their violent behavior. For the abused, it also involves deep therapeutic work to heal and to strengthen their sense of self-worth so that they do not seek out the same kind of abusive relationships again. If alcoholism or drug addiction are playing a role in the violence, seeking treatment for these conditions is also crucial as without it, the abuse will continue! Without substantive change on the part of both the abuser and the abused, there can be no meaningful reconciliation between them.

Reconciliation in the Church is a powerful sacrament which can be a means of grace to offer a way forward for one or both parties providing they are doing the necessary healing work to stop the abusive cycle. However, sacramental reconciliation does not promise that both parties will be reconciled to each other! It may be years after leaving an abusive relationship when one or both of the parties will seek the sacrament for healing and moving forward into the future. The sacrament isn't just about confession of sin and contrition over it. The sacrament calls us to change - to repentance and amendment of life because Christ calls us to be transformed people. Christ is always ready to meet us where we are but he is not content to leave us there!

Jesus suffered the abuse of the world when he died on the cross for you and me. He died on that cross at the hands of his abusers so that we would not have to. He came to bring us life. Abusive relationships are not life giving - they are death dealing. There is nothing in our Christian faith which condones abuse or violence at the hands of anyone.

... from thence he shall come

Thirteen years ago, our nation experienced an horrific act of violence when men who claimed to act on behalf of God hijacked planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The intersection of religious zealotry, politics, and the nihilism of a Middle Eastern underclass conspired to destroy and kill on 9/11/2001.

I was the mother of two young daughters that day. I watched the events unfold live on television in a surreal nightmare of waking time. Everything would change ... but what that meant was not clear. My immediate thoughts were how to explain the unexplainable to a three-year old and a seven-year old. Hell, I didn't even know how to explain this to myself! There are no words to make sense of senselessness. I grieved that two little girls were exposed to such a horror as this and dreaded what it would mean for the world they would know.

Thirteen years have passed. My little girls are not little anymore: one is in college and the other a junior in high school. They have only known of their country at war and yet a war largely ignored and hidden from their eyes. The body counts and images of Vietnam I grew up with on television are replaced by the denial of "reality TV." Pictures of the caskets of our war dead taken when they arrived at Dover AFB ... suppressed in the media. War is a unreal reality for them and they do not know its cost.

What have we learned in thirteen years? I still do not know exactly. We've learned to be more polarized - "us" versus "them." We do it in our politics and in how we view foreigners. We've learned that our soldiers and their families pay a horrible price for being sent to fight when we don't always have a clear understanding of who the enemy is. We've learned that many of the factions we once sided with are now against us. We've internalized more violence and seen it spill into how we treat each other as we watch professional athletes beat their intimate partners or shoot them in bathrooms as they cower in fear or see those charged to protect us shooting unarmed youth. We are an anxious, fearful nation - a collective raw nerve.

I have no answers ... only grief and lament. Not only for the dead on 9/11 and for all who have died on both sides of wars that seem not to end, but also for the death of the world I once knew.

I cannot shake the old wording of the Apostle's Creed that I learned as a small child. Concerning our belief in Jesus Christ, we said he was:

... conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I doubt the existence of hell or heaven as places, per se. Rather, I believe they are states of existence in which we live - and it is much of our own making. We either live in the presence and awareness of God (heaven) or we reject and estrange ourselves from the presence of God (hell). But regardless of my own understanding ... I still pray that from the "heavenly thence" Christ will come to judge the quick and the dead and I long for the day when that which seems irreparably broken will be healed and set right.

When words fail

Dr. Wil Gafney just posted a blog entry on this Summer of Horror. It struck me because she's touched on something I have experienced - the magnitude of suffering and violence we are experiencing right now.

We have watched the Middle East explode in violence. ISIS in Iraq is slaughtering Christians. Our brother in Christ The Rev. Andrew White, the Anglican Vicar of Baghdad, is continuing to minister to the few Christians left and is desperately giving voice to the horror in his midst.

We have watched the violence erupt between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. Given the support of the United States, Israel's ability to annihilate the Palestinians is very real. The relationships between Israel and the Palestinians is complicated, to be sure yet neither side is innocent. Just because Israel gives the Palestinians in Gaza 24 hour notice that their neighborhood will be bombed into oblivion doesn't mean they are somehow more "humane" than Hamas. The 29 disabled children and 9 elderly women being cared for at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Zeitun could not evacuate prior to the planned bombing. Regardless of whether the church was hit or not, this was an act of war and terror against the powerless and vulnerable. My government and tax dollars are complicit in this war.

This week, we have watched Ferguson Missouri explode in racial violence. Regardless of who started what, another unarmed black teen is dead. On the heels of this, police in riot gear escalating the protest into violence ... shooting rubber bullets at a female pastor praying - unarmed, hands up and invoking the name of Jesus.

There is horror and helplessness sitting side by side for me today. The problems bigger than anything I can do. I am outraged and pained to witness such suffering ... and standing without the power, influence or expertise to do anything but cry out to God. Lament is all there is left and we do not do this well in our culture.

Habakkuk, who prophesied to the Israelites before the Babylonian exile, opens his oracle with these words:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

How long, O Lord? Indeed ... how long ...

Head lice

I've heard it said that God has a purpose for all things. Really? So what's up with head lice? You may wonder why this is on my mind. Well, technically it isn't on my mind as much as it is on our hair (and scalp too).

Actually, we've been on the front lines of battling head lice in our family. Youngest daughter came home with them a month ago (right after the first really cold weather when all their coats, hats and scarves come out and get hung up in the communal coat closet at the elementary school she attends). We tried the OTC shampoos which doused her in chemicals and didn't do anything to the lice. We went for the good old olive oil treatment and daily combing for 21 days. It worked and we checked everyone else and washed everything we could in hot, hot water (and into a hot, hot dryer), froze what we couldn't wash in hot and vacuumed everything.

Good to go, right? Nope. Eldest daughter came down with a full blown case yesterday. Of course, as soon as I play the "good parent" and report it to the middle school she attends, they report back to the elementary school the youngest attends ... and the 18 year old "health tech" swears our youngest daughter has nits in her hair! More olive oil, more combing ... only to find our youngest just has a wicked case of dandruff and the tech didn't know what she was looking at. Oy! I'm convinced our oldest caught this from another classmate at her school since her sister was free and clear (of course, they are now both on the 21 day oil and comb regiment). I can't wait to see my water bill this month with all the washing of linens! Ugh. The only really foolproof way to make sure you don't get them is to shave your head and neither of my daughters are going to go for the Vin Diesel look anytime soon.

So what in the world was God thinking when he created head lice? I honestly don't have a clue. Perhaps it was to remind us that we are part of the whole food web in a less dramatic (and less deadly) way than getting eaten by a great white shark or a grizzly bear. Maybe it's a humility thing. Maybe not. Things don't always make sense.

But as frustrating as head lice are, I am thankful that our girls are healthy overall. Even more so, I'm thankful they are here. Not everyone is that fortunate. There was a terrible case of domestic violence in the community near our congregation this weekend. A man killed his estranged wife, his three children, and himself on Thanksgiving in Damascus MD. The wife was a coworker of one of the folks who worships with us on Sundays. It was senseless and heartbreaking. I'm convinced that God does not cause this nor does God want us to live in fear and violence. God does allow us the free will to make decisions, at times with tragic results. I believe God grieves when such violence happens. It still doesn't completely make sense.