Between Two Cities

Lately I have been thinking a lot about duality. We Christians traditionally believe in another realm beyond the one we can see, touch and taste, and that this is where our true home lies. That we are just pilgrims in the world of sensory experience. Augustine, that ardent and tormented saint whose sexuality was a perennial barrier to his communion with God, calls these two realities the City of God and the City of Man. In mainstream America, Augustine's dualistic assessment of humankind is unpopular. Even many Christians, not to mention the agnostics, atheists, Buddhist practitioners and "spiritual-but-not-religious," cringe upon reading:

I classify the human race into two branches: the one consists of those who live by human standards, the other of those who live according to God's will.... By two cities I mean to say two societies of human beings, one of which is predestined to reign with God for all eternity, the other doomed to undergo eternal punishment with the Devil (Ch 5.1).

Many would ask: How can it be fair to separate the human race into two branches, when we are all such a mix of good and evil? When those who do evil have so often been wounded by circumstance? When the very definition of "evil" is relative? When some "evils" seem predicated on maintaining control over others, and some "evils" deny the pleasures our bodies and hearts were designed to experience? Some might insist that they would rather live in the City of Humans if the City of God thunders with such judgment.

But if we examine the qualities that Augustine assigns to the two realms, we might appreciate the freight behind his severe eschatological pronouncement. Some of Augustine's descriptions of the earthly city sound just like fashionable social justice advocates of today: "Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?" (Ch. 4.4). He asserts that those rulers who belong to the heavenly kingdom, in contrast, "are not inflated with pride, but remember that they are but men...more than their earthly kingdom, they love that realm where they do not fear to share the kingship...they grant pardon not to allow impunity to wrong-doing but in hope of amendment of the wrong-doer" (Ch. 5.24). The point is that we must orient ourselves toward a transcendent standard of justice and goodness, rather than letting our own perceptions, desires and goals—short-sighted and destructive as they inevitably will be—guide our lives. Yes, humans often achieve some measure of concrete beauty and fulfillment through their "love of self." Yet Augustine reminds us that even in the in the "grandeur of empire... The only joy to be attained had the fragile brilliance of glass, a joy outweighed by the fear that it may be shattered in a moment" (Ch. 4.3). The Buddhist initiates on their meditation cushions, trying to understand what it means to detach from desire and be present to the moment, could relate.

Augustine recognizes that we cannot hope to distinguish between the two cities during this life; they are inextricably mingled. But I have to wonder, with my much more ambiguous beliefs about salvation and eternity, whether these two realms are also inextricably mixed within each individual. Can the macrocosm contain what the microcosm does not? Perhaps those who seem most damned to perish in the City of Humans are really just pieces of those who seem most heavenly. Then not a single one of us could be excluded from building the City of God; we all depend on each other to realize salvation, whether we are weak or steadfast, pious or reckless.

At an evening church service in the gritty heart of Atlanta, down the street from an outreach center for the homeless, I sit down next to a tall, willow-thin man who just got out of jail three days ago. It is his first time at the church, but he somehow ends up serving communion. For all I could tell, he inadvertently volunteered himself by rushing so eagerly up front after the officiant invited everyone to the table. A five-year-old girl in a wheelchair who also has willow-thin limbs serves me the bread, and the ex-convict serves me the wine. They both blurt out their lines awkwardly—"The body of Christ," "The cup of salvation,"—as if they are not quite sure what they mean. But are any of us sure? After all, communion is by definition a Holy Mystery.

At a sleepy bar on a weeknight in the hipster district of Little Five Points, I watch a girl dance across the empty floor in spandex and sneakers. She moves to the DJ's funk music with striking elegance. Her head is turned down and her shaggy hair hangs in her eyes as her body slithers like a snake and spins effortlessly. She is not trying to impress anyone around her. She seems rather to be dancing for someone invisible and intangible hovering above her. She might be high on drugs. Then, drugs have always been a way people seek transcendent truth, albeit a blind and destructive one as typically used today, outside the containers of ritual and tradition. Whether she realizes it or not, she is trying to dwell in the City of God.

These stories from an everyday city reflect my ambiguous relationship to the two cosmic Cities. I struggle to discern what truly constitutes a spiritual path, and how to know if I am on it. My bouts of apathetic depression, during which I am prone to forget God entirely, sometimes lead me back to humble reliance on the sustenance of spiritual community. Conversely, my proclaimed passion for doing the work of the Lord tends to get tangled up with my childish drive for affirmation from others. I find myself, as ever, caught in the margins. Which city do I live in? Do I have to chose?

I climbed under my covers one night and prayed for God to illuminate the meaning of the two cities in my life. What I got was a story about a karaoke bar and a church service. I was attending an epic talent show and fundraiser at a church. I was laden with a sense of responsibility for the event, though my role seemed to be nothing more than walking around from person to person and looking busy. My extended family was all there, and lots of shiny-faced church members.

But I really wanted to be in a bar across from the church where a good friend of mine was hosting karaoke. He was a dedicated Christian who greatly outpaced me in his passion to serve the marginalized; he was also a prolific smoker, drinker, reveler and self-absorbed navel-gazer. I had decided that I was in love with him. I was willing to stay up scandalously late so that I could go over to his karaoke night after the church event ended. He had said he wanted my support. And I wanted to impress him with my own self-absorbed charms as I belted out smoky Aretha Franklin songs.

The church event dragged on as if it were its own revelrous party. As 2:00 AM came and went, I was texting back and forth with my friend—texting on a cell phone! A sure sign that I had let go of all my moral principles!—and apologizing that I wasn't there yet. Could I stay up until 3:00? 3:30? Would this be a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? The talent show finally finished and I hurried across the courtyard outside. Inside the bar, they were already taking down the speakers and the rest of the karaoke equipment. My friend was nowhere in sight. But what kind of bar was this? It had pews and a big stage just like in a church. My family members and shiny-faced church members were there as well. Balding men in polo shirts were carrying the sound system and smiling their fatherly Christian smiles. Even the smallest children didn't seem worried about going to sleep at an ungodly hour.

"Where did the karaoke host go?" I asked someone.

"Oh, he hasn't left yet," they assured me. "He's just changing in the bedrooms."

The bedrooms, of course. I lived in this bar with my family. We slept in the bedrooms in back. Somehow it had become impossible to separate wholesome havens of family values from seedy karaoke bars, or to disentangle working like a bee in the Body of Christ from falling in love with charismatic bastards. The darkness around us is thick and rich, and we may have to learn to make something out of it rather than trying to float above it. We are just pilgrims here, but we are also trying to come on up to the house. We are trying to make a real home for ourselves out of our fragmented insights into the heavenly city. If we do not practice home-making in this life, how will we recognize our home in the next?

The Awkward God-Bearer

On Sunday I visited the Episcopalians. The high liturgy mixed with a sleepy small church atmosphere was immensely comforting to me. The people were only vaguely welcoming, as if daydreaming about lunch. The service provided ample opportunities for kneeling, bowing, turning, and crossing ourselves. We chanted the Psalm, which always makes me feel like I am wrenching an epic lament from the depths of my soul, even when the words are something as historically contextual as: "You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Mannessah."

But my favorite part was the woman who preached. She was a retired priest, a round-faced and ruddy-cheeked woman with absolutely no sense of decorum. Her meandering, train-of-thought sermon started with going to the Hubble 3D movie at Imax with her grandson and applying Jesus' command to "Keep awake" to intergalactic discovery, and ended with embracing our imperfections and recognizing that God gave us all something beautiful to share in the world. She made out-of-place jokes that no one laughed at, but clearly she thought they were funny. She launched into the Eucharist by saying, "OK everybody, I'm gonna try and sing this thing." She proceeded to butcher the traditional musical setting of the Eucharist with an ear-splitting lack of tune. I have rarely seen someone so transparently flawed, and so at peace with it.

I left with my poised little walk, my gracious smile, my scarf wrapped loosely—my clumsy attempts to seem like I've figured out how to live life—and I thought, "Praise the Lord. If I ever learn how to stop trying so hard to be a certain way, maybe I will make space in my life to get to know God."

During my first semester at seminary, I have lost many of my illusions of control over how people view me. My intellectual prowess and my artistic talents seem to have abandoned me. My social graces are not faring so well either. Some people make me nervous because I think they don't like me. Other people make me nervous because I like them too much.

Maybe God is trying to empty me of all my former gifts so that I can receive something new. The Spirit seems to move easiest in hollowed-out bodies. I suppose it is appropriate that this Advent season, I am left with nothing more than to wait for God to become incarnate in me.

Yesterday I played Mary in a liturgical drama at chapel. The birth of Jesus was foretold by a homeless, impatient angel Gabriel holding a cardboard sign on the street, and Mary was a stressed-out young professional in the throes of wedding planning. I assumed it would just come across as a funny, light-hearted piece. People didn't laugh as much as I thought they would, and I shrugged and figured it was due to my poor acting skills, along with everything else I'm bad at. I have little experience with acting. I could do nothing more than make Mary awkward, uncertain and girlish, like me.

To my surprise, several people came and told me afterwards how deeply my portrayal of Mary had touched them. One fellow student told me that it had brought tears to her eyes when I said, "I am the servant of the Lord." I had said it like a question rather than a statement. I realized then that I really had been playing myself, in a way. I identify more with Mary than I ever have this Advent. She was just a young girl, given an enormous and illogical task from God. To have a baby when she was a virgin. To bear God in her womb.

How on earth does one do such a thing? Certainly not of her own initiative. That is why God has brought down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. Only God can fill me with the good things that I need to do the beautiful. Only God can empty me out enough that I recognize my need. So that I can become bumbling, inadequate, and unapologetically authentic.

When the chuño blooms

Today I thank God for vivid dreams that re-enchant my life with resonances to the mythological narrative that has been unfolding in my soul all along.

After the Thanksgiving dinner at Candler School of Theology, I sit down outside the festivities with a jar of Bolivian chuño to share with my childhood best friend. She gets up to leave and I remain alone. But then at just right the moment, the person who makes my heart speed up walks past and smiles at me. I offer to let him try some of my chuño.

"Thanks," he says. "What is this made out of?"

I jump up and walk along beside him to tell him the story of chuño. We walk outside of the Candler building and into the yard of the farm where I was born.

"After the potato harvest in the cold months of the altiplano," I tell him, "they pick out all the potatoes that won't sell at the market—if they have bad spots, say, or they are too small—and then they spread them out on the bare ground and let them freeze overnight."

He gestures to the old metal swing set by the chicken coop and suggests we sit down to swing and eat our chuño there.

I don't make it to the part about how the hot altiplano sun cuts through the icy potatoes each morning, and they stomp on them in their bare feet for several days in a row until they get all the moisture out. I become distracted, because I have never tasted chuño so delicious. It is salty, meaty and dense, but it melts in my mouth.

Instead I explain to him the magical properties of chuño. "It's worth eating this right now, even though we are full, because it's like this compact morsel of energy and nutrition. It absorbs all these vitamins and minerals from the dirt as they stomp it. It's as good as eating a peice of steak, and it fills you with all this energy and inspiration."

"Yes, I think I can feel it!" he says. Then he asks me if I've read any Reinhold Niebuhr. He always has some theologian to recommend. He pontificates for awhile on the relevance of Niebuhr's work to our lives, but I am not listening. I am looking over at the black walnut tree by the sandbox and remembering how we used to climb it as children.

When my attention returns, he has finished his discourse and I have nothing to say but, "Yeah, I should read some Niebuhr." I could argue with this person who makes my heart speed up about how sharing the substance of chuño, which connects us to each other and to the feet that stomped it and the earth that enriched it, is a more profound revelation of God's truth in this moment than thousands of years of theological tradition. When we share chuño, we are prophets. But maybe I'll save that argument for waking life.

"We should probably go catch the North DeKalb bus," he says, and hops off his swing.

"Yes, let's go," I agree, and try to stuff my remaining chuño back into the jar. Whenever I take it out, it seems to expand exponentially, like the loaves and fishes multiplying to feed the five thousand. Chuño works its own miracles.

But I do get it back in, and then follow after the person who makes my heart speed up, across the barnyard of my childhood to the shuttle bus stop of Emory University.

When I wake up, I am grateful for longing. I remember my deep longing for Bolivia, where I found a new home for my soul. And I remember this song:

"Don't say that you've forgotten the land where you were born

They say you're returning / You will return / As the river flows to the lake

They say you're returning / You will return / When the chuño blooms"

Another new beginning

The title of this blog is the Spanish translation of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” I like the Spanish better, because in my life, grace comes not so often in amazing glory as in sublime, subtle, almost imperceptible movements that I must be paying close attention to catch. These movements are what Mary Oliver described after observing an owl's flight in which "everything trembles and then settles from mere incidence into the lush of meaning." This summer, I moved through a foggy, vague depression in the wake of finishing the Biggest Thing I Ever Done (my 300-page undergraduate thesis). One of the primary themes of this time for me was the nagging suspicion that I am not living my life very consciously. That I have not been doing so for a long time. Yet I also knew that perhaps the only reason I developed this nagging suspicion is that I am, in some small and painful way, starting to become more conscious. My challenge as I begin seminary, then, is to learn to pay attention. To really pay attention to each moment. From this, and only this, will grace emerge.