A relative of LisaSERVICE OF ORDINATION 2020
I wish you knew
What it’s like
How it feels
To watch your kitchen table tyrant
wrapped in a red cloak of victory Read more
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Rev. Merianna HarrelsonThe air feels crisper this morning.
The sunlight shines at a different angle.
Change is in the air.
We feel the change not only on our skin,
But in our souls.
Something is shifting.
I’m not praying for you.
“I am not praying for you,” poem copied in walnut ink.
I’m not praying for you.
I’m not praying for you.
As if your tears don’t carry the weight of your hurt,
and God is somewhere else
waiting to be paged by the righteous.
As if the mother alone in her room-
partner gone and babies asleep-
crashed into the mattress and eyes closed before she offers her thanks
is ungrateful.
As if the someone in the mass grave is any less loved
than the one with the power who put them there.
I am not praying for you.
As if my words are more connected, holier, or more well-received.
As if the right sentence- a seance of spirits or those who have “the gift”-
will unlock salvation.
Like those who have spent time in the book, in the books- wrote them.
Or the posture matters.
You will not find that heavier words
Sink in faster.
This is a poem based on Matthew 28:4, 11-15, reminding us that if the resurrection is for real, we have to #believewomen.
You didn’t see what you saw.
You think anyone is gonna believe you stayed on your feet when the big strong men didn’t?
You think anyone is gonna believe you saw a dead man alive again?
Everyone knows women start crying and lose their minds.
Everyone knows women make stuff up.
We can pay the soldiers to tell a lie and everyone will believe them:
Dead men stay dead.
It was all in that pretty little head of yours.
So sit down, shut up, don’t make waves.
You know what happened to Jesus.
And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus….Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her…“For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
(Luke 1:28-40, selections)
Luke does not record
what the neighbors say
but the comments are there,
crouching behind the text.
When the messenger says, “Favored One!”
we can almost hear the echoing
“You?”
Luke does not
mention it,
but, guaranteed: Mary knows
it’s there. She knows
when it’s known
that she’s been known,
the greetings will change.
The power of God will not stop
the side-eye. Yet, perhaps
when this babe
opens a tiny mouth
with a vast hunger
and she is able to fill it,
for the time being, a grace
so consuming, a provision
so merciful will bear her
through pain and recoil, this gift
that she agrees to give Read more
Slats Toole, author of Queering Lent
When I began to write about God, I was 20 years old, reeling from the end of a four-and-a-half-year relationship, and still struggling to piece together my faith two years after returning to Christianity after a long period of agnosticism. There was very little that made sense to me that summer as I ached for the future I’d lost and searched for glimpses of the God I had once cut all ties with. It was out of the longing and the hurt and the confusion that I found words.
As I worked to intentionally reconnect with God, as I faced the reality of no longer being part of a pair, I strung together poems that were (I didn’t realize then) defining my lived theology. I discovered a God who was infinite and terrifying, playful and beautiful, and I worshipped this God in my words.
I kept these poems hidden. I’d compiled them into a document that I’ve only ever sent to those I felt a particularly close relationship with. I can count on my hands the number of people who have seen them in the decade or so since. There was something so intimate about the idea of letting people see this part of me, so I knew these poems had to be guarded and protected.
Eight years later, I graduated from seminary. While I am grateful for many things I learned and people I met while at seminary, there was a lot about the experience that was draining. My seminary had no real queer theological presence on campus—I’d slipped out of the closet as non-binary towards the end of my first year there, and I spent the rest of my time educating administration and pushing for gender-neutral restrooms and housing.
Another part of myself that I felt slipping away was the part of me that became curious about seminary in the first place—the poetic part of me that wanted to get to know all it could about the mysterious, glorious, confusing and incredible God I had met one summer in the mountains years before. Instead, I found myself picking up the beliefs that so often come with seminary and have nothing to do with God. The belief that my value came from exam scores. The need to have a ministry-related job that could be easily understood in a few words upon graduation. The sickening feeling that I had to compete, win, and be the best.
So, as I looked towards my Lenten discipline for the year after I graduated seminary, I knew I had to reconnect with the parts of myself that I’d neglected while in school. I needed to nurture both my queerness and the part of my faith that could not be expressed in a clean exegesis paper. The discipline I landed on was simple: write one poem, connected in some way to God, every day. The twist for me was my accountability check: I would post the poems on Facebook. Read more
My body is heavy this Advent.
Mary of Nazareth’s body was heavy
too, or so we imagine in Advent.
She is often shown so
young and beautiful, demure and obedient,
glowing
though that may be the halo more than the pregnancy.
If we have ever met a real live pregnant woman, we might more realistically imagine
the lumbered steps,
swollen ankles,
short fuses
In the spring, this is how I imagined my Advent: the glowing, the beauty,
and too
the weight,
the exhaustion.
but with my hand to my belly
I feel no movement, no kicking or dancing or shifting
I am empty
not empty like the tired tropes of Mary the empty vessel waiting to be filled by God
I am empty of life
so empty of the baby that was due this month but
was lost
early
still I am heavy,
and instead of a
baby,
the grief kicks at me
All around me parishioners and family go get Christmas trees, listen to Christmas music
A few lone voices cry out for waiting, for settling into Advent,
slowing down.
I resist
Avoid
except
to set up an outdoor light machine in our living room just to say we decorated.
The world prepares for a baby
the way Mary herself could not on the road to Bethlehem:
scurrying, nesting, cooking, sharing glimpses of new life, celebrating with loved ones.
My baby would be coming this month.
I would be singing her Christmas carols and arguing with my spouse about
if we will teach her about Santa Claus,
but instead I am empty
my baby is dead.
I should have been heavy with something besides grief;
I should have been nesting and celebrating
or maybe binge watching Netflix with my ankles propped up
but instead I am out of touch with time
instead I sit on the floor
crying
these stupid lights playing across my skin
I wonder how I can preach good news on Christmas Eve
how I can treasure words of scripture and ponder them in my heart
when my baby isn’t laying even in some makeshift crib like Jesus did
my baby is dead
and I am so empty
Comfort, oh comfort, my people, says your God.
Every valley shall be lifted up…
I may not spend this Advent or Christmas as Mary did.
I may not be able to gaze into a manger or read of wise men bringing gifts,
But there is
still
still
something in this time of waiting for me still
Hope.
Maybe not hope for a baby.
But hope that God interrupts our pain to speak tenderly to us,
sit on the floor with us without even turning off the outdoor light display that shouldn’t be on indoors
that when God put on flesh,
God felt grief kicking inside, God was weighed down by the heaviness of grief
too
If God is in a body like mine, a failed body,
maybe God is in me too.
The Words
Fall 2017
The blank page.
That they do not come is
a trouble to me,
And that trouble—at times stacked
carelessly among other troubles—
accuses me, like other aspects
of a self-doubting mind,
Of negligence to my vocation, of
insufficient time spent
on any given task.
And yet, I might not hear the
Call, proper, in time at all, but
only in retrospect,
As a song sung back from the end of all things,
to their beginning,
my ears picking up only
a faint melody
in any given moment,
which is, itself, troubling.
When I was laboring to birth a
child, I was permitted
To trust myself, to sink down into
myself long enough
and deeply enough
to get something born.
But, day to day, cries from the
surface dissolve the thoughts
before they are born
onto the page, their
intentions never
ripening, clarifying, or even
declaring themselves fully,
even to me.
“No one knows the hour, not
even the Son of Man.”
Indeed.
The surface, the moment, calls,
and thus is not given
what it needs,
A woman delivered of the words.
Parsonage flowers in May of 2017 next to Port Royal Baptist Church
They will invite you to
live with them, really
live with them. Do, if you can.
You will learn, in time,
a spirituality
with a little give to it.
How else can the people live
between variable sky
and forgiving earth,
and belong to both,
and to one another?
Your salary, which will be
considerably smaller
Than some of your urban
or suburban counterparts,
but measurably larger
than some who pay it,
must go to good. It should
stay, as much as possible
in the community where you work,
Local doctors, local food
from farmers you love,
or will grow to love
as you learn from them
how to taste and see
that the Lord is good,
the place is good, the
hands reaching out to
you are good, and
they mean you well.
Your work, which will not be more,
if you are well-loved,
than what they ask of themselves,
will be seasonal.
And you must learn to trust
the gifts of each season,
and plan for spring, as
your people do. And trust, foremost,
that seasons do and must pass,
that weathering them will
strengthen all the best
in you.
Despair might set in if you let it.
Do not let it.
Determine in your own mind
to go out and find the good
in your people, in your place,
and in your life together.
Trust that it will be together
that you will see the Lord.
Your call, and your fellow workers, and
the culture around you will shock you.
Let it. And yet,
explore each inner scandal in
your heart with love.
Make no quick decisions.
Bless people as they come
and if they should go.
Those who return
and those who fall away
will surprise you.
It will take years, but not
as many as you suppose
before you can be the prophet
dancing, as you must,
along and across and back past
the line that marks outsider
from insider. [Stay years.]
And if you stay, you
will learn to speak the
dialect, and yet
you must introduce
new words, but,
with a little wisdom,
the right ones. Read more
Hashtag my trauma
Publicize my drama
Go ahead, paparazzi me and my mama.
Don’t understand
The supply and demand
For our vulnerable blogs
And sensational vlogs
Voyerism or loneliness?
My addiction to the blue screen
My thumb scrolling fast and mean,
A desire to know and be known
Yet the tandem desire to be left alone
Get one mention in Sunday’s sermon
And his/her/their pain goes viral
Tweeting for a few days
But what’s the homiletical plot?
Does the preaching change the lot?
Did we give an altar call,
eyes closed,
heads bowed,
Alleviate affliction, humble the proud, did we end with the cup and the bread, somehow praying for the sick and remembering our dead?
Did you have a moment of reflection for their rejection,
Did we have a what next, a call to action?
Is anyone on their feet, or is it social media reactions?
Am I the hands and feet? Or the typing fingers of the body,
Will we see each other face to face and meet?
Will we let ego keep us separated and haughty?
Or is the virtual perception, my new reality, our only connection.
Maybe I need the church to help me feel,
Your blog to help me heal,
But maybe and I think you know it, too,
We need to touch and pray like we used to do,
Then go out and serve
Instead of remain
Impotent outside of a web domain
Nothing wrong with the internet
But human contact Just might yet
Be the way we were meant to be
Somewhere inside of the beloved community
