2020.08.02 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History, Part Eight. Mattering.

It was THE SIXTIES. I was 21. Who decided I was an adult at 21?  I certainly didn’t feel of age inside. I felt unready for the world. I should, I thought, be doing something activist about Civil Rights. I should march or protest or demonstrate. Shouldn’t I? Perhaps, but—first I should go to Spain. I had been awarded a Danforth Fellowship—money for graduate education, an investment in my future as a teacher of Spanish. I needed more than classroom Spanish. I should be with people who spoke real Spanish, like it was their first language. I found two families—one in Madrid and one in Santander—willing to house a college graduate at reasonable rates over six weeks in the summer. I stuffed a huge suitcase with my whole wardrobe—or at least everything my mother told me would make me both “presentable,” her favorite word, and sexy, my favorite word.  Who knew what I’d need? Who I’d meet? Off I went—terrified.

In one way I was escaping into the world of cultural expansion that my scholarship demanded, and in another way I was pursuing something else. What? 

Chapter XXI.  Job

On the long flight I read a little, stared out the tiny window, ate my snacks, and slept—sort of.  When nervous I often would try to think of a biblical character who felt like I did. How did they fare? What mattered most? What did God want?

The ancient tale of Job popped in and out of my mental musings. Annoyed, I tried to push Job away. I wanted something soothing, and sweet, and loaded with certainty. Job, plagued by loss, illness and trauma, ceaselessly badgered God, and all his friends and family, about his righteousness rights. He’d been good, so did he not deserve a life free of suffering? Didn’t God, being divine and all, have a duty to explain divine policy?  Job’s wife suggested he curse God and die—not such a bad option, I thought. All Job’s friends and experts of the day offered justifications for traditional righteousness theology: Job must have done something bad to deserve his suffering. But Job would have none of it.

All this was very far from my own experience—but not far from my emotional state. I’d been faithful and tried to follow the traditional and expected ways of my day, yet I felt torn. I had no great sufferings like Job, but like Job, I wanted God to show me the absolute right way. Honestly, it felt again like wanting my birthday party and wanting Carol Lee to be there—both. I could not have both. Both mattered equally.

I mentally marked all the details of Job’s protest, so I could return to them. But right now the plane was preparing to land. They announced the time. It was early morning. I set my watch. I rehearsed in my mind how I would, in flawless Spanish, ask directions for a taxi to take me to my Madrid address.

I closed my eyes and suddenly laughed inside: God did listen to Job’s kvetching, did not solve Job’s moral dilemma, but did  show up to parade Job all through the Creation—a huge panorama of  wonders, all living things, even a leviathan. I didn’t know what that was, but it was big. 

A grand vision like that satisfies religious types—like me and Job. Apparently Job himself mattered more to God than all Job’s woes.

Donde está la linea de pasajeros por  . . .   Right this way, Miss.
    

Chapter  XXII  Qué hay?   

What’s up? That was my favorite expression in colloquial Spanish. What’s up? It covered a multitude of not-knowing-what-to-say moments, such as an invitation from a married man to join him in bed.  Qué hay? I said, feigning ignorance. I added in broken Spanish that in las USA we did not do such things—a giant falsehood and myself a prude, but it worked. The man receded.

In Spain I encountered ‘those Catholics’ on steroids. Everyone was named some version of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, or all three. I spent more time kneeling on unpadded wooden kneelers than I wished. I learned traditional prayers in Spanish.

In Madrid, my host home wasn’t ready for me when I arrived so I stayed at a daughter’s house. Her overweight husband sweated profusely hauling my huge suitcase up two flights of stairs in their apartment. I felt uncomfortably American. I made it to my host home in a couple of days where the Señora welcomed me with abrazos. There I encountered a Smithie, another daughter in the family who adopted me, and a son named Paco, a nickname for Francisco, who dragged me to a bull fight.

Madrid is a beautiful city. Like most European cities it has large plazas where people gather for chats and drinks. In las USA we squish every ounce of concrete sidewalk together—no public space for social time. I learned to order cerveza (beer) and Cuba libre (rum and coke).

In Madrid, I gained weight. I didn’t realize that the main meal, which was as late as 10 p.m., consisted of three courses. The chicas or chachas (young girl maid-servants) kept removing plates from each place at the table, and moving other plates in, salad last. I loved it all and ate it all. When I went home I was almost the size of my bloated suitcase. I had, as my mother instructed, bought a mantilla in case I got married, and planned a strict diet.

In Santander (a town in northern Spain, and now the name of my bank), the Señora (there was no Señor) clapped loudly to summon everyone to the table for prayers. I learned to pray to Mary which felt strangely liberating. She was taking on flesh. I still say the Hail Mary every day in Spanish in my own prayers. God wasn’t constrained by gender, or at least, the spiritual energy generated for Mary was as much or more than the energy generated for the He-God.

I fell in love with a young man named Pépe, a nickname for José. He wanted me to stay. I thought my Spanish wasn’t good enough—a lie to protect my self-uncertainty. I cried all the way home on the plane.

In Spain I grew. There in this Catholic country I felt the immense capacity of God to imbue every wooden pew, every precious prayer, with I didn’t know what. But I was pretty sure that God did not create a one-size-fits-all universe. Who was I to decide that someone didn’t fit, including myself?  My image of God stretched beyond race, gender, and nationality.

While I was in Spain my mother wrote me letters about what a nice boy Bill Brakeman was. She took him out to lunch. She was plotting my future. It was impossibly controlling, but I was leaning this way myself. I wanted the kind of intimacy that only a family of one’s own can give. Besides, Bill Brakeman was an Episcopalian and my type, and Job, in the end, got a new wife and kids. 

When I came home my mother asked me what Spaniards were like. I thought for a minute and said: "People are people, Mom, the same the world over." It was a bit naive but nonetheless true.

2016.0508 Sweet Mothering Energy of God and Prayer

I open my eyes each day to images of my children. I murmur: “Dear God, fill me with your love and grace and bless my children, (I name each one) with grace, power, faith, love, and peace. I consecrate myself to thee for their sake they they too may be consecrated in truth—thy word is truth.”

I lifted some words out of Jesus’s farewell prayer in John 17. I don’t pray them so my kids will go to church, although that’s not a bad idea. I pray them that they may know deeply the sweet mothering energy of God in their lives. My children are the soul of my heart.

From the New Testament writings of the Johannine community, I know that the divine mothering energy of God is not restricted to women or biological mothers. Jesus prayed for his “children." They remembered that he prayed for them, and for all of us: I in you and you in me and we in them and all are one—an unbreakable net of en-wombing love—sweet mothering energy of God.

I confess I find our Sunday intercessions to be flat. One person recites and, for the most part, no one prays, or has time to collect their prayers. Perhaps we should simply paraphrase Jesus’s great intercessory plea that we all be one, because we all are in God, say it, then leave a long contemplative silence to let it sink in.

When I kneel at my home altar, I focus on an icon of Mary with Jesus her child. To me it is beautiful, though it’s not. It’s an aging, faded print in a scratched plastic frame which has lost all capacity to stand erect on its own. I pray to Mary: “Sweet mothering energy of God come into the world with wisdom, encouragement and nurture.” These three: wisdom from the mother-root, not just advice, encouragement from its Latin root meaning“heart,” and nurture—feeding, cherishing.  Occasionally these three come together in one moment, and everything changes.

My son John recently told me of such a time for him. He was a young man lying in a hospital gravely ill and awaiting surgery. He said he heard me and another woman reciting Psalm 23 at his bedside. He suddenly felt sure he would live, wanted to live. I have no recollection of such an incident.

Everyone has the capacity to mother and all of us have mothered. Everyone knows what a hard job it is to mother: to slither back and forth between the strong desire to hold close, protect and save and the strong desire to let the beloved be free to grow and go forth to find their own way—or at least get outta your hair.

I learned a lot about divine mothering love and prayer from Mary. Mothering Jesus had to be hell. He was always in trouble, much of it dire and all of it serving God, not his family. Mary doesn’t play a big role in biblical story. I bet that’s because she was all the time in prayer for Jesus.  I bet she taught him to pray, and I bet her prayers made it into his heart, bringing wisdom, courage and nurture.

I first met Mary in Spain where I spent time in the early 1960s with two families, one in Madrid and the other in Santander—then a smallish fishing town in northern Spain…..now my bank. In Spain, Mary was more popular than Jesus. I spent much time kneeling on concrete-hard kneelers praying to María. I internalized the popular piety. It filled some emptiness in my religious soul.

I realized what a loss many Protestant churches have suffered by cleansing their worship, sanctuaries, and prayers of Mary. It is a loss to the full image of divine love.

The Santander Señora was a small woman, a dynamo of religious faith and a fiercely loving madre. Nightly, she’d clap her hands, tiny shofars summoning the family to prayers. We all jumped to attention and hurried to the dining table where we stood around as she prayed aloud—the evening dose of wisdom, encouragement and nurture. All the children were named some version of  María: Mari Pilar (after the Virgen de Pilar) whom we called Pili, Marisuca, and a son, Josemari, a twofer combination of José and María (Joseph and Mary.) Suca  was the nun-designate, quiet, pious and impish.  Pili was wild and free and destined for multiple motherhood. I think Josemari was destined for the care of Mama—till death would them part. All our prayers were to Mary.

In Spain I fell in love with Mary. I came to know her as a primary mediator of the sweet mothering energy of God. From Mary/María, I learned, too, how hard mothering love can be—how hard it is for God. Sometimes you have to stand by and watch your beloved suffer.