Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Preventing Grace

Home
Evangelical
7 Takes to Reality

7 Takes to Reality

Last updated on: April 7, 2017 at 9:56 am by Anne Kennedy

7 Takes to Reality 2017-04-07T09:56:48-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Friday. Therefore Takes.

One
It’s snowing! And it looks like we bombed Syria during the night! Fun!
Ok, so this is why I’m developing an allergy to the word ‘we’. As social discourse fractures and we have to every day choke down the ever ripening fruit of the philosophical presuppositions of secular humanism, progressivism, man’s ever upward journey to utopia, and the glorious idol of the last century, ‘the individual’, the word ‘we’ is tripping me up every. single. time. Even when I use it myself.

It’s meant to be inclusive, of course. It’s meant to bridge the distance between two individual selves over the ghastly turgid waters of Otherness. ‘We’ joined by this single inoffensive word can be united together around something–an idea, a hope, a group of letters in a sentence.

But, because language was busily fractured au meme temps as all the rest of everything, words like ‘we’ aren’t really strong enough to bear the weight of all our collective brokenness. ‘We’ isn’t robust enough to bear the burdens we keep piling on it. It collapses under scrutiny. Like ‘we bombed Syria.’ Who is the we? I mean, I really hope I’m not somehow morally implicated in the choices of the government. Except that, I know I must be because God never bought into our modern philosophical presuppositions, which is a deep pity.

Still, some linguistic distance is becoming a lot more comfortable for me a lot of the time. ‘The Trump Administration bombed Syria during the night.’ ‘God is making it snow.’ I am lying in bed and have nothing to do with any of that.

Two
So Sunday is Palm Sunday…which signals the beginning of Holy Week.

I really don’t know how to wrap my mind around this terrible reality. Lent seriously passed over me this year in a cloud of unknowing. My Favorite Season of the year just poof, gone while I wandered around trying to figure out who I am and how healthy I was going to be from day to day.

And now Holy Week, which is even more my favorite. And I don’t even know where to put my hand to find a list, a list that doesn’t even really exist.

Three
Yesterday I posted at 6am and today it’s going to be sometime after 9. That’s because yesterday I had to go spend the morning in the hospital for one of those unpleasant times where you both bless and curse modern medicine. As I said to Matt, ‘if we didn’t have all these great pain management things (that’s a technical medical word), and all the knowledge about germs and stuff, I would just be dying of hysteria in the comfort of my own bed, sucking down whiskey in my teacup, or in some sanitarium somewhere. They wouldn’t Know why my insides look like. Whoever they are.’ He looked up from his cell phone and asked if I’d said something, to which I replied, ‘no never mind.’

The thing I had going on yesterday is not officially related to my thyroid, although, of course, I wonder quietly to myself if all the various unrelated issues don’t share some common unknown cause, if they haven’t all joined hands across the daisy fields of my insides to sing kumbaya and drink Coke, or is it Pepsi (that’s just a little joke).

Anyway, I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m all puffy and sore and I might not be getting out of bed today. So sue me. I’m not a young spring chicken. I can’t just go waltzing in for a ‘procedure’ one day and then get up and dance around the living room the next. I have to lie back and read more of the Internet.

Four
Although, I will be quietly freaking out on the Inside (because of Holy Week) which will manifest itself in irritation with the children for being slobs. Speaking of which, I had a revelation this week.

When I’m, how shall I say it, ‘yelling’ at the children to clean up, it’s not because I’m really mad at them…well, most of the time. It’s because I’m mad at myself. In my mind we are all living in a Mrs. Piggle Wiggle golden dream where the children happily go to school, Mr. Kennedy goes cheerfully off to work, I smile happily at the spring weather, sit down, pour myself another cup of coffee and consider what I will do with the day. Tidy up, perhaps? Bake gingerbread for the children to munch when they come home from school?

Never mind that literally Nothing of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle really exists in my life. First of all, the children don’t leave. Second of all, neither does Mr. Kennedy. Not from 9-5. He has the freedom to organize his own hours which actually means he probably works twice as much as in my golden dream. Third, I don’t drink coffee. Fourth, I don’t have the time or energy to ‘make gingerbread.’ And there is no Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to call when the children develop monstrously annoying habits.

Although, for the first time in years, I do have a land line telephone, so if I wanted to I could put on a skirt and heels and stand by the phone, talking to someone. Someone who would yell at me for not texting first to say I was calling.

Five
It really all comes down to expectation. What do you really think is going to happen? So much disappointment in life can be distilled down to this simple problem, and, indeed, the gospel itself. If you think you’re living in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, but you’re really living in Syria, you’re not going to enjoy yourself. If you think the problem with the world is Other People, but it’s actually the sinful inclinations of every single human heart, you’re not going to be impressed with Jesus.

Holy Week, if it is anything at all, is an awfully good time to align the inside imaginations of your heart and mind with reality, to accept, for a few moments, the Way Things Are. How are things really? Who are you really? Who is God? Is there anywhere a true We? Us?

In the face of a fractured, broken, atomized, individualized world, to look at the single One, the Other who would be strong enough to bear the weight of each and every single particular individualized sin, to take it and carry it away as far as the east is from the west, so that there might really be a We, an Us–I and Thou–is so extraordinary. Human words fail me every time I try to look at it and express what a great, what a true, what a Real Thing this is. (That’s a technical theological word.)

Six
Two little girls come in screaming.
Marigold, screeching: I SAY ITS RAINING. BUT EGGLANTINE SAYS ITS SNOWING.
Me: It’s doing both.
Marigold: Oh.

Seven
And now go check out more and better takes. And may God do something about Syria, but also all the troubles here too.

In conversation with children

Life Going On

Work and the Christian

Anglicanism

Binghamton

Jen's 7 quick takes

Previous Post

April 6, 2017

In Which I Tone Police

Next Post

April 8, 2017 Book Notes: A Wodehouse Diagnostic Quiz

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In 2 Timothy, what did Paul leave with Carpus at Troas?

Select your answer to see how you score.

His cloak and scrolls His money His letters His tent-making tools

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »