God as Perfect Parent

There's a thing that I can't get off my mind. It came to me on 9/11, at Mass in Maine, near my hometown. It's not exactly 9/11 related, but I got to thinking when the priest, during the homily, asked "where was God that day?"
You know, too, that this has been a year full of bad news, for people that I know and love. It's been the kind of year that makes a person wrestle with her faith. I never did lose faith but all along, since almost exactly a year ago, I have had a vague understanding that I was coming to know God in a whole new way.
Anyway, I was in Mass that day, thinking about how God works, and this is what came to me:

I am not a parent but I have seen this happen, so maybe you have too. Picture a young child, a toddler, who's pinched his finger. When little kids pinch their fingers, they cry like their heart is permanently broken. Their pain is REAL! I know, because I've had my finger pinched too. This child's mother responds by holding her child and soothing him. She knows that the child's pain is real, because she's experienced it too. She doesn't do much to fix the pain though, and she doesn't remove every possible pinching thing from her child's existence. She has the perspective of many years. She has a whole lifetime of experience to know that, although the pain is real, it's temporary. Seen in terms of a lifetime, that pain is practically nothing!

Here's another thing I've seen. Teenagers get their hearts broken, and feel like it's the end of the world. I remember so many teenage girls over my years in ministry, who were absolutely crushed by some rejection, some hurtful thing that a boy did. I know that their pain is REAL, because I've experienced that pain myself. There is nothing you can do for a heart-broken teenage girl but listen to her and love her through it. I know things will get better and that the world is not better because I have the perspective of time. I almost wouldn't even want a teenage girl to go through her teenage years without having this experience, however truly painful it is.

So, it occurred to me, if the experience of a lifetime helps me have perspective about the pain that we all feel in youth, then how must the experience of ETERNITY give God perspective about the pain we all feel in life? Maybe this explains, in a way, why God doesn't intervene the way we would want Him to, when we're in trouble. Like the toddler, or the teenager, we turn to our parent and beg them to take the pain away and never let us be hurt again. But the parent, even if He could, doesn't. He knows that however real our pain is, it's temporary. Not just temporary, but God knows that in terms of a eternity, our life-time pain is practically nothing.
We can't believe it because the pain is so REAL. It's hard to imagine in the moment, or the lifetime, that this amount of pure and real pain will ever be dwarfed by anything.

God knows our pain is real, because God has experienced pain. And God knows that we can't see beyond our very real pain enough to say "aw heck, this pain is really insignificant, compared to eternity!" It's not our job to have that perspective, but it is God's.

So if this is true, then I know it has implications for my prayer life, and my relationship with God. I can stop asking God to fix things because I know God doesn't do that. It's not a question of whether God could fix things, and whether God won't fix things, but that God doesn't have to fix things for me, any more than a parent would splint a pinched finger or home-school their teenager so as to avoid her having any romantic relationships. God simply loves me through my very real pain and knows that I'll figure it out when I have more perspective.

How, then, do I pray? I think... we can look at our young people again. The toddler runs to his mother and cries, accepts her comforting. The teenage girl does a lot of crying too, and turns to someone who will love her through it (this is where Youth Ministers earn their stars!). When we are hurt in this lifetime, we run to the arms of our God, who almost wouldn't even want us not to have this experience... who knows that in terms of eternity, this is so temporary... who loves us through.

(I'm not totally settled on this new theology, I'm still mulling it over. But it's giving me a new way of thinking about God that I'm kind of liking. It's probably heresy. I dunno. Don't call the pope just yet, let's work this through a little more.)

Oh look, it's Friday, and I can do this legitimately!

I just saw Scott off to a bachelor party-camping trip, and now it's thundering out there to beat the band. This week has been a roller-coaster of emotions, so you might as well come along for the ride, in 7 stops.

1) First, on a happy note, I celebrated my 43rd birthday (holy cow, 43? I haven't given that much thought but it does seem old, now that I'm typing it... or at least, really adult!). I am so blessed with such great friends- we went on a sushi crawl, four places (two of which begged us to stay, promising better sushi than any other place). We went to one place for apps and drinks, then two more places for their specialty rolls, and then pulled up to the 4th place which was to be the top of the list- but it was closed. How disappointing! But we did all right, ate a lot and had a TON of fun. I smiled all the way home, glad and grateful for such friends and my sweet husband, who dressed up to be the chauffeur and even changed his tie for each new restaurant.

2) I know I've mentioned here that this has been a year of bad news, and just in the last week we've gotten a couple more gut-punches. I've been wondering lately if this is what happens: you know how at some point, in a couple of year's span, everyone you know gets married? Then, a couple years later, everyone starts having kids? Well I've been wondering if in the same way, over a span of a year or two, all the shit starts hitting all the fans? 4 or 5 of my friends have lost a parent this year, or experienced some sort of parental trauma. I see now that as we're all getting older our parents have hit this stage of need at the same time too.

3) This year when a friend of ours was diagnosed with something serious, I was gutted. I spoke to a mutual friend and told her the bad news, for which I got in some minor trouble. I know my friend must have felt that I'd gone over her head with the news, but when I told, it wasn't because I wanted to tell her story- it was because it was now my story. The news I shared with this friend was about my sadness, my worry, my concern. I was a mess and needed to talk about it- I never even thought that I was betraying a confidence. I wonder how much people in crisis know that their stories become part of the stories of the people who loved them. This year, my story is having chapters added with some regularity. In a way I'm grateful to be able to be part of the lives of these good people, and honored to be invited to share even in the bad news.

4) My parents seem poised to move out of their house; they now have keys-in-hand for their new place, and my siblings and I are anxious to get them moved. I know this will be emotional time, and stressful, and a lot of hard work. I think we are all looking forward to having it over with, and ready to move on to the next phase of this journey. Still, I'm pre-emptively tired and wondering if there's some way I can't just make it all go smoothly for everyone, while they're off a lunch or something. For now, though, I have an urge to hunker down and take cover while I can. With the place to myself this weekend I'll get lots of reading and some chores done and spend some time in silence, gathering strength for whatever comes next.

5) My brother is getting married, and I'm so thrilled for him and for his bride. They seem like a perfect fit, and so happy- it's thrilling to watch, even from afar! I keep thinking about our wedding, I guess that's natural- I mean, when I think of romance, I think US! But overall I can't wait to celebrate with my family, this exciting and happy occasion. This week on a random trip through a nearby town, Scott spotted this sign, with my brother's and future-sister-in-law's names. Hurray for coincidences!

















6) I'm almost at the end of my studies for my Master's, and I'm stunned to realize that my theology has gone through some twists and turns through it all, and has surprisingly ended up with LOVE. People in my generation are mocked for having been given sloppy CCD in the 70's, with the insufficient message of "God is LOVE" as the main idea. Of course, it was a tumultuous time, just post- Vatican II. There was confusion, I reckon, on what to teach- but there was still one dependable truth, that of God being Love. Older people found this to be rubbish, and despair at the fact that the people of our generation don't know much Catholic vocab, and can't answer the questions in the Baltimore Catechism. But I have a feeling that it was just that God-being-love stuff that might have helped people like me hang in there in this Church, even through some pretty awful times. And little did our parents know how radical a message this Love business was. Only now, in my last year of grad studies in theology, I'm starting to grasp the hugeness, and the radical-ity of it, myself.

7) which makes me feel like the people of my generation are people who could save this Church from falling further apart. We have seen how our parents' 1950's faith stories are turning out, we looked the scandal square in the face, we made decisions to stay or to go. We have been given the Good News that God is Love, and we have the capacity to understand how life- and world-changing that Good News is. We have a unique perspective, very different from our parents' or our children's. We, I think, more than any other current generation, will come to know what will have to be done.

Wow, this is not where I expected these quick takes to take me, thanks for bumping along with me on this one. Read more at Jen's Conversion Diary blog, and may you have a decidedly un-interesting week!

Max/Maxine

When I was in college, one of my professors was a former nun. She was of the angry subgroup of former nuns, and that was fairly obvious in her teaching. She insisted that God is a woman- and not only is God a woman but we should all believe that God is a woman. She showed evidence of the fact, research and scholarly writings and such.
One day in class I got on her bad side- I said "I don't know, I think it's like when you were young and got a Teddy Bear Hamster. When a kid gets a TBH, they give it a name, according to what they want- that is, if they want a girl hamster, they name it with a girly name. If they want a boy hamster, they give it a boy name. From then on, that hamster is a boy, or girl to their owner (Until little Max has babies and becomes Maxine). I posited that God was like that for us- if we need a female to relate to, God IS female. If we need a Father God, God IS male. And fatherly. If we need a hazy floaty disembodied image like the ghosts in that Ghostbusters movie, then I think God can fill that too.
Of course she did not like this answer and moved on rather quickly to change the subject.
To me, God is definitely male, and definitely fatherly. My Spiritual Director helped me identify the other day how closely linked my prayer style is, to my communication with my Dad. Dad is indeed a great father and great man. I've often marvelled at how much he enjoys each of us, his 5 kids, making us all, I'm sure, feel like we are unequivocally his favorite. (In my case, of course, this is true, I am obviously his fave.) He's not a chatty guy, and doesn't call for whoever he's with to be wicked chatty either- he's happy to talk, but also happy to ride in the car in silence. Our communication is mostly light stuff- I don't go to my parents with much pain anymore, mostly good news and stories- but it is clear he likes talking with me, and being around me.
SD pointed out how my image of God is one where he is laughing at (with) me and rolling his eyes, and loving me. Rings a bell.
But hey, if there wasn't Dad, I think my next best image of God would be a big old dog. So there you go. So, you just never know. I think God is big enough and God-enough to be who/what we need...Him...to be.