Engendered - Exploration

I think gender and sexuality are hard to discuss. The first because it is everywhere. It is the expectations given to you at your birth. The second is a mystery to be unfolded later based on the understanding of the first. You are told and shown implicitly what to do with gender. 

Sexuality is discovered through exposure. But gender? Ah gender, gender is clothing. Gender is armor. Gender is presentation, and culture. Gender is what you wear and how you act. It is how you navigate and understand the world through a lens of assumptions. And yet it is fig leaves, it is a sign of brokenness and a fallen world. To uncover gender is to be exposed in a different way.

It is awkward to talk about. Because gender roles can be a performance and talking about it feels as clunky as reading stage directions for your character motivations, and then discover you are working with different versions of scripts with your fellow actors. These are people with whom you've had relationships for years, and it is foreign and awkward to realize you may not be on the same page. And you can get notes in real time by people whose opinions you respect. You think the areas in which you didn't practice will be cast and filled by others who trained to play opposite you. To be complimented and augmented where you did not focus your preparation.

My understanding of gender can inform the choices I make. It can be comforting to have a binary not only in character traits, such as, I hold to this and therefore I reject this as my character. Identity is defined by limitations, being Romeo means not being Juilet. But society is flipping the script to Twelfth Night, and people are not sure how to feel about it when they had prepped for Romeo & Juilet being tragic and true. But R&J and 12th Night are both predicated on misinformation that the audience witnesses and that omnipotence could smooth out the difficulties of the plots.

I think gender is awkward to discuss because it is talking about what can be understood without discussion. And it is embarrassing to get "wrong", like you have been training for this role your whole life and yet others may disagree with the set of rules you have as ones they are not using? 

It is inviting a HGTV show into your bedroom to critique how you function. And yeah, some aspects of your personality have been treated like it is a load bearing gender wall to everyone who shared your sex characteristic, it might be inconvenient to navigate, but hey, it is there for a reason? Otherwise the house might fall down around me. And it can be upsetting to be told by a professional: "Um no, that could have been taken out long ago. You could have been living in an open concept." But you have grown accustomed to the familiar boundary of that wall being there, and all that open space is terrifying to consider. Like. Where are the limits then? Where are the key foundational points to being me?

My awareness of how I view my experience of gender has led me to weigh what motivating factors I have to other areas of my identity. Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie's early collaborative graphic novel project "Rue Britainica" explored this question of rooted identity through the lens of British Indie Pop scene being a key element of a magical realism underworld. I liked this creative team and had wanted to explore their early work, but it took me reading it three times to really internalize some of that theme of identity and not letting things go, because the past version of you at a stage can anchor who you are, but also be a drag to growing over time and maturing alongside others.

When someone makes a major lifestyle shift, it is kinda like that scene in "Inside Out" where the pillar of an interest in hockey begins to crumble and the personified emotions freak out within their control center that things are falling apart. And it can feel like when people do a heavy renovation on their exterior of their house, repainting or reshaping it into a much different direction or facade. And that is what you will now have to adjust to witnessing in your day to day life. It affects your experience in navigating your familiar neighborhoods. It affects how you see the person. But if you had the trust built with that person to tour the inside of their house, their interior life might reveal more as to why they would make such a choice which would appear radical without some greater context or details. Renovations can become expensive, costly, and time consuming. People test pilot in miniature before making major decisions. And yet miniature versions do not catch the eye as much, and you have to be paying attention and be engaged in that person's life to see how certain designs have grace on a small scale that are exposed on a larger stage or project. And on that scale, a lot more eyes are on it to check if there are any imperfections for how it can be incorporated into the status quo surrounding that reenvisioning. 

Sometimes people even put flags out to attract their people to have solidarity with an aspect of their life that they find important as a rallying point. Whether crosses or rainbows, significant dates in history or stars & stripes with lines colored in. And often those signals get intercepted by an audience who has a problem with how you present because their history with that symbol has triggered fight or flight. It might have nothing to do directly with you, but you are the lightning rod and they are seeking to be grounded in a foundational concept of identity.

But I also refer to 1 Corinthians 3 and 2 Corinthians 4-6. Additionally, I am pondering Matthew 15:1-28 on the difference between traditions and what God calls of me in my life to speak rightly and justly rather than evil and damnation. And the desperation and humility of those who hunger for redemption and healing even when they recognize that it is not naturally given to them as an inheritance. And Matthew 19 for how to address the tendency that the vulnerable are abandoned for the opportunity of the rich and educated to be leveraged for the Kingdom's purposes. Jesus challenges that through his care for the vulnerable and overlooked. Even in John 4 with the Woman at the well who was disgraced and alone, lacking community, support, acknowledgement as someone to be valued. Ephesians 5-6 calls us to conduct and to love as Christ does and that we are not to lose sight of our wrestling with things beyond this realm of flesh and blood.

 

Complete - Collision

It was all clarified today. I was hungry and went on a walk to pick up a sandwich ordered online. On my return to my office, a sense of peace and rightness hit me in just the way that a public bus disregarding a red light on the turn signal didn't.

Incomplete - S g u e

 I enter this space "all or nothing."

And lately, I might be dealing with withdrawal? Hard to confirm for sure. But I am trying to confront how much of my life is consumption and stimulus on a service basis. I get twitchy and want distraction to kickstart my mind and attention. And I am trying to break that impulse. So that might be some of it. But I am tensing in anticipation of something, and I haven't figured out whether I know when and what that release will be. So I am curious to see whether the next few days will bring that resolution. In the meantime, I am trying to fill that time with good things and rhythms. Today, I had focus on a goal, but had to set it aside to honor some other commitment. It is difficult to dislodge my mind from a task when I am finally in the stage of executing my vision. An interrupt command is jarring and discordant.

So when I was able to resume after that pause, I craved a familiar counterrhythm to reengage in that groove. Therefore, I sought out Capital Lights' album "This is an Outrage." If a band ever had my full mind and heart, it is this one. Ever since I heard their track "Out of Control" on a sampler, I knew it was my exact jam. All energy and unusual synth, lyrics weaving both clever and pointed. The band released two albums under the Tooth and Nail label to fulfill their contract, and peaced out to live their lives away from the scene. And yet, there is not a track that the band released that I don't enjoy. The shortened catalogue did not permit a dulling or dilution of their stay through repetition of theme. There was no fall out and it feels complete and perfect to me.

I remember how much I love this album and hold it dear. So today, I am grateful for that being a soundtrack to help me find my rhythm and focus. My week is not over, and neither is my task list. I am uncertain that the completion of that list will solve this feeling of waiting for something. In the meantime, I have conceptualized it as "Divine Discontent", a title of a Sixpence None the Richer album that has stuck in my mind more than the individual songs on it. I will pray and seek the guidance of my Savior, as this longing is currently beyond my reach to comprehend or resolve.

Love - Dream

 Love, that greatest of things, a dream within a dream.

I woke up from a dream in which I was telling a person about love. How people thought it was like ice cream, an almost universally agreed upon good experience except by the lactose intolerant. And even they might want it sometimes. But love can also be like cigarettes or alcohol, in that it leaves its mark on you through your continued exposure, it comes in intense small packages, and you have to choose it often as a habit. Love becomes a part of you, as Rex Harrison talk sings about in My Fair Lady's "I've grown accustomed to her face."

Love is famously encapsulated in 1 Corinthians 13. It is endlessly sung about and defined, including people yelling that they want to know what love is, more that they need to to be shown to them. In the musical Hairspray, the absence of it is described with great vigor, a song which is highly beloved of my sisters at karaoke.

And while many have attempted to get it down on paper, the world painted with new discoveries of what it means to people. You learn things about yourself and others and call it out as being through the lens of love. Love is paying attention to minor details, it is taking care of major details, it is responsibility for wrongs done. Love is showing up. Love is listening and knowing when and how to respond to what is said and what goes without saying. Love is enduring pain and hardship for the sake of a commitment or greater purpose found in it. Love is in doing foolish things that bring laughter and delight to the object of your affection. Love is supportive, which requires contact and sometimes a push in a direction of growth or opportunity. And sometimes love is resistance against a familiar pressure, a small seed of self dying to fertilize a greater future growth in a different area.

Storm - Laundry

 I am reminded of the nautical term "Becalmed." Of when sailing ships had no wind in their sails - powerless to harness their great bulk and potential to their destinations. How they must wait and pray for a change in momentum. 

It must be terrifying to be a sailor. We talk of the "ocean of stars" in space, but the ocean on earth is already so vast to comprehend. I have flown in planes and seen the earth far below in perspective through clouds. But such a marvel is even at such speed as to fold time and space into a manageable package. Flying feels like man has conquered limitations and broken barriers. But it is not always so. Storms are called Acts of God, and can shatter that feeling and remind me of how frail my idea of control actually is.

But this absence of a storm. A quiet. Where there is a forced rest. You know what you want your heading to be, but can't pursue it. Or being in the eye of the storm, knowing that if I stray too far, I will be at the mercy of a whirlwind pacing. I get tired, overwhelmed, and distraught at the notion of potential. 

My mother had a mantra in the past that haunts my mind occasionally. "What is the point/purpose behind what you are doing?" And for years, this mindset acted as a prod to my system, the idea that I could always be doing more, pulling knots tight so that my sails maximized the effect of the breezes around me. But I got exhausted and emptied, sometimes not feeling like I had the mental and physical energy to maintain that level of focus and perception of needs. I realize, as a mother, you are ever alert to the needs and nurturing expected of you to train and direct your child's development. And she meant well to direct me to push myself and overcome mental blocks to try to grow my strengths and fortify my weaknesses.

But I have an anxious temperament at times and can work myself into a frenzy obsessing over a minor imperfection to figure out how to solve or work around it. I love fiction because it is contained and orderly, the author being a small god of a world and having to tie a narrative together that makes sense and has a purpose. But that is a luxury few can afford in daily life. It is a comforting illusion that the world will have a greater logic and sense. I have had to learn to hold looser to my idea of how the world needs to make sense to me. So although my mother's question is a noble view of the world, it assumes that the world always has a purpose. And to my idealistic mind, that would be attractive and tantalizing. But like the Greek myths of Narcissus and Tantalus teach, the things you want most are often just out of reach and leave you to waste away with the wanting. So I have had to accept that my mother is not always right in this expectation. And that I shouldn't feel guilty at not always having a greater purpose in small actions. There is a joy to letting go and relaxing control. If I hold onto the string of a balloon, I won't get to have the glorious experience of watching it climb to the heavens. Even in loss there is the reminder of things higher than yourself claiming their dominion and setting your terrestrial existence into perspective.

To return to the point of the world being pointless in its consequences and circumstances at times: I mean, you can point back to the Fall of Man and how the world is suffered imperfection from its natural state. But more than that, I am arrogant to consider that the world should be understandable and comprehensive to my finite mind. Douglas Adams jested in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series about a theory that if the universe was ever comprehensible to a being, the universe would sense this and immediately transform into another iteration that was even more inexplicable, and that some other people had suspected that this second part has already been triggered before.

The law of entropy is believed to be a constant. That the universe is actively decaying into disorder, but there is a strong instinct in life and it's experiences that "order" is the intended state of things. G.K. Chesterton wrote about the "white fence post needing to be repainted and maintained to remain a white post." And control of our environments, both external and internal, is a strong impulse. We feel as if things "should be a certain way." C.S. Lewis leans on this strange instinct in his book "The Problem of Pain" which has proven to be a comforting resource for when I feel overwhelmed by sorting out this feeling, knowing that at least one other person thought about this feeling of responsibility.

It comes down to decency and responsibility to fellows around us. With roommates, there is a loss of total control when committing to forming a community in living space, common resources, and private property. Standards of living differ from person to person. It depends on their perceived level of comfort with how their external perception of how their environment matches their internal metric for "This is how my life should be." When there is a disconnect, it can trigger behavioral changes to correct course. But sometimes, I don't have the winds of motivation or reason behind me. I am forced to pause and reconsider, in the lack of natural solutions, whether I will accept the environment and change my preferences or work against that nature with internal fortitude and sweat to bend it to my design.

And not all battles against nature are worth fighting. I will exhaust myself and wear myself thin of being good company if I insist the world I live in is beholden only to my understanding. I am reminded of Proverbs 3, of having to trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding, in all my ways acknowledge Him and He will direct my paths.

It comes to laundry, trash, and other chores in daily life. It needs to be done one item at a time to progress towards combating entropy into order when I am overwhelmed by the scope of everything that might need to be done. I can't fix the universe of disorder wholly, but I can set smaller things towards rightness, contributing on a small level towards the tribute to the renewing and remaking of all things.

And so, living among others is a reminder that I must strive to emulate the signoff of Paul to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 13, of trying to live at peace with my brethren and be of one mind in knowing Christ and being perfected together. Though my friends may balk at being greeted with a holy kiss.

Prayer - Binding

Lord, give me the grace to know I am loved. And how I may best show your love to others. For I am tired and weary, and not always in the best frame of mind to give and receive as I wish I could.

You are a great and perfect high priest to advocate on my behalf, knowing my needs and advocating them better than I. I listened to Neil Gaiman's short story "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury," and in it there was a smaller anecdote of a man travelling in the woods at night who realizes that he has left his prayer book behind. So as he is laying back to rest, he says, "God, you know these prayers, as you created the words with which they were made. So I will say the alphabet and trust you to be able to take them and shape them into the prayers I cannot remember." Lord, it is a funny story, but an extremely sweet one for me to think about.

I trust your wisdom, but sometimes want things to involve me more directly. I am a child wanting to help his Father in His great work. But my hands are clumsy and overeager. Please take my spirit and channel it to Yours. Not for my greatness, but for Your ends. I want to be useful, and if it involves me being pushed, shaped, or some parts of my identity to be shaved and cast aside, let me not hold too tightly to whatsoever is not true, good, and honest. I am proud of the strangest things, so give me the grace and humility to accept your wisdom and direction.

It is a great gift to be alive, but terrifying when I do not know how to best spend my gift while I have this time. Please grant me discernment and kindness to seek out Your will. To bind up the brokenhearted and discouraged. To grant graces when I feel like my comfort is being challenged or ignored. When others treat me ill and I want to respond sharply, give me gentler words to turn away wrath and anger. When others are in pain, let me have the presence of mind to approach Your throne and advocate for them. I want this world to be better. But I am tired today, so grant me peace and reflection, to not be ashamed of rest, but to accept your example in Creation of the Sabbath day. I want to glory in Your creation.

Thank you for this. This day. Please give us the strength to face the day tomorrow with courage and grace.

Tumbler - Mulling

 My older sister called me a "muller." A person who has to sit and digest an idea for a while. I mull. She often figures out things about me before I do, as she is very intuitive about people and knowing how they express themselves. She an excellent writer and a good proxy "ideal audience" both in my head and in person.

I tailor my messages depending on my audience and how I can figure out how to communicate my message I want to convey. Because I puzzle through things and people to figure them out and unlock a bridge of communication between us. I learning how to talk so someone else can understand me, I gain perspective on how to better understand myself as well.

So I was texting a friend today and was trying to explain this. My mind is like a rock tumbler. It uses internal friction to refine and polish my thoughts. And if I stop it too early, you'll get nasty rock grit and funny looking rocks. Some friends press me on my incomplete opinions,  occasionally I can cobble together a rough draft, but not always, and it can be funny for my friends to see mixed up thoughts. And yet, it would bother me because I FEEL that it isn't ready and the thoughts don't look right. My process got interrupted, so I would need external polishing while they are out, or I would have to wait for my mind to pick them up again and slowly build up steam to start from square one and try again.