Cara Gilger's Blog, page 8

Book Review: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

I have always loved historical fiction for the way it transports a reader into a time and place, making what you read about in school seem real and tangible. However, over the last year or two my historical fiction reading habits have changed. While I used to love WWII fiction, I am less likely to pick up these stories, not just because the market is saturated and you can accidentally read an average story, but as I do my own anti-racism work, I have noticed that many of these books work to create white heroes in the midst of the most devastating and coordinated efforts of white supremacy. The bulk of the genre is white authors grappling with white evil and building an argument that “not all white people” were a part of the elimination of Jewish wealth and lives. 

 

Instead I have been gravitating towards historical fiction written by authors of color and set in parts of the world that I remain largely ignorant of due to the way Western culture writes the history we are taught in school. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a sweeping family story about Korean migrants living in Japan during the tumultuous time from the end of the Great Depression through the late eighties. Sunja is the only child of a poor farmer’s daughter and a crippled boarding house manager and fisherman. Her innocence, youth and naivete draw the attention and affection of a wealthy Korean businessman. Sunja finds herself pregnant, her future and family reputation destroyed until a missionary on his way to Japan marries her and takes her to live as a migrant in Japan. Spanning four generations and three countries, Lee tells the story of what it was like to be a Korean migrant in a hostile country, where the Japanese refused citizenship to even Japanese born Koreans, all while longing for a country divided and destroyed by multiple wars and left to be ruled by greed, corruption and idealist. 

 

I didn’t have a historical understanding of the way Korea was devastated by WWII and then the Korean War. Particularly the way the country was split into North and South by powers of competing interests, average people left to be tossed about on the waves created by the conflicts of powerful men. I also didn’t know that the Japanese were so prejudiced towards Koreans–calling them loud, unpolished, deceptive and untrustworthy. Many employers refused to hire Koreans and even if they did the Koreans they hired faced terrible prejudices. Landlords wouldn’t rent to Koreans even into the late 1980’s. In the midst of all this tumult, Lee tells the story of Korean resilience and ingenuity in the midst of hardship that is equal parts brutal and hopeful. 

 

Another theme that ran throughout the book was the oppressive nature of family honor. Each of the characters wrestles with how their choices and secrets bring about disgrace or pride to their family.  The women in Pachinko are faced with difficult decisions to protect and provide for their family, while being bound to the propriety politics of what women could and couldn’t do to earn money and provide a life for their family. At the same time the men are trapped by the social pressure to provide with dignity and avoid the pitfalls and danger of the work and life they are forced to live in Japan. 

 

I loved the themes of gender and how women make a life within the limitation of cultural expectation and rules. Sunja and her sister-in-law build a business, manage the money with a shrewdness and oversee the nurture and education of Sunja’s two sons with a deftness that is inspiring and creative. Despite being told that women could not work, for the way it would disgrace the men in the family, they found a tenuous balance that speaks to the persistent creativity of women throughout time, history and social upheaval. 

 

The length of the book is quite substantial, clocking in at over 490 pages but the pacing is strong for the first half of the book and only drags a bit in the late middle. But mostly the length wasn’t an issue as the story is engrossing and the characters were engaging in their struggle to build a life, their worry about parenting the next generation well and their push against restrictive conventions.

 

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Deep Listening in a Culture That Wants Fast Fixes

My first call in ordained ministry was to a congregation that was planning on going multisite a few months after my arrival. Part of my portfolio  was to create, implement, and evaluate a small group ministry from the ground up. To create a ministry where one previously didn’t exist was both a dream and a challenge. I researched every single small group ministry model available at the time; reading books, calling other pastors, doing site visits, and cruising blogs. Every model seemed to have some value and some drawbacks. Since the church was entrepreneurial and permission giving I tried them all. Much to the chagrin of probably every successor who has inherited that hodgepodge of dozens of small groups in every formation possible, I learned and tweaked and adjusted to try and meet the needs of the people God had sent us. I learned which models worked well and which ones needed more tweaking than the others. I learned what model gave the best support to leaders and what model formed groups that stuck longest. And I learned that no model is perfect. I learned that the right one for your community is the one you create from who you are and who God is calling you to be. In other words, there is no right model. 

10 years later, I have been consulting with congregations and church leaders for a little over two years now. This unexpected ministry has given me deep joy. I have journeyed alongside traditional churches in established neighborhoods and historic buildings, scrappy new church starts in rental spaces and a hunch that they were entering a new season, and big steeple churches experiencing a transition in leadership and vision. Each of them I have grown to love dearly and pray for fiercely long after our formal agreements end. To butcher ee cummings I carry them in my heart. 

What I love, beside the relationship I build with each of these communities, is that not one challenge or one congregation is the same. Each of them are uniquely gifted, called and challenged to bring the good news of God’s love to their specific community. So I don’t practice a “one size fits all” or a specific approach out of a specific school of thought when I work with congregations. For me, the heart of consulting is a sense of deep listening, not fixing. 

Listening, instead of fixing as the loci for doing the work of community building, runs counter to a culture that wants fast fixes and certainty of a future we cannot possibly know. 

Sometimes it is hard to listen. My own experiences and expertises bang around in my head loudly demanding attention or judgement. The challenges and potential solutions a congregation faces are so obvious (except to the congregation itself) that its standing in the room practically shouting. And then there is the distraction factor because very often the problem present is not the problem at all–it is a cheap preoccupation to keep an organization distracted from the much deeper issue. All of these impulses need to be silenced–my ego and presuppositions, the communal challenges both presented and perceived–to practice listening that is Spirit led. People want things done quickly, with ease. The Spirit wants things done with care and time. 

So, I listen to church leaders describe their challenges and questions. I listen to their space. Where they meet, worship, their physical and digital spaces reflect the values and energy of their hearts. I listen to staff members and church leaders that are not in the meetings with leadership. I do this because Jesus said that often wisdom lies on the fringe of community, not its center. Paul describes God’s treasure hidden in earthen vessels. So, I listen for what beautiful thing God has buried in these leaders and communities treasures they are looking for or have found but don’t know how to handle just yet.  And then I pray. I pray for the congregation and its leaders. I pray for the pastors. And I pray for knowledge and insight to be composted into holy wisdom.

Then I listen.

I listen to what God is saying in this space and to these people. I listen for what God wants me to say, which if I am honest is always an exercise in humility and patience I do not want to practice. But I listen anyway.

Consulting and the life of faith in general is about listening not just to what is going on and what God is doing, but listening to the timing, the kairos. Kairos as our Biblical ancestors understood it referred not to chronological time (chronos) but the right timing, discerning the most opportune time or season. Sometimes churches determine the chronos for change is right, the liturgical timing may line up for a change or there’s a new pastor being called. On the calendar it looks good. On paper things add up. But the kairos, the timing of the Spirit isn’t there. The wisdom and knowledge of leadership comes when we listen to God and discern what wisdom is made for this season of ministry and what wisdom is made for another time. Just like all the small group models don’t work and all the good ideas aren’t actually good, some wisdom is wiser in another time or moment. 

This season that the church finds itself in is harried with new models, trial, error and quick fixes. But it is also a time to practice deep listening to this season of church life. God is calling us to be attentive listeners as well as practical doers, rooted in prayer as we tend to the changes taking place in our communities and take a deep breath that comes from handing our timelines over to the work and wisdom of the Spirit. 

Book Review: This Tender Land

I don’t know if it’s a remnant of being a voracious reader as a child consuming Rold Dahl books about children cast away by adults to creatively discover who they are or The Boxcar Children camping and foraging in a railyard but I love an epic “clever kids on a heist” story. This book delivered that in spades and will likely be one of my favorite books of the year. This Tender Land is set in the Midwest during the Great Depression as four orphans after a terrible act of violence set out on the river in a canoe one summer in search of family and freedom from the cruelties they’ve faced at a Indian boarding school in Minnesota. 

 

Not only does it have that epic adventure vibe of a Mark Twain novel with a strange and interesting cast of characters along the way from grieving farmers to thieves to native Americans living off the land that was once their ancestors to Hooverville residents and faith healers. Add to that four kids who came to the Indian school each under different circumstances and this book captured not just the tumultuous nature of the Midwest landscape or the Great Depression but of each of the characters. Despite the wide cast of characters the children encounter on the river, the story never feels muddled or like there were too many threads woven into the story. 

 

One of the great themes of this book was the theological question of “who is God and what part does God play in all this suffering?” Odie our narrator spends much of the book wrestling with whether God played a part in the many destructions of his childhood. And if not, what sort of God was left to believe in? Many of the characters they encounter have their perspective, and yet, there’s not one simple conclusion drawn. What I did love is that in Odie’s questioning there  is a deep sense of curiosity and hope, despite all that he has suffered so young. 

 

Another theme I connected with was the theme of finding family and building a home for yourself wherever in the world you might be. Each of the children—Albert, Moses, Odie and Emma—are searching for a safe and steady connection to a people and a place, a home. And how they each find that turns out to be different, but moving. I love a story that makes a strong argument for the healing and transformative power of chosen family. 

 

As we strive to be readers that are more mindful of how people of color are represented in literature, especially literature written by white authors, I do have to say that the idea that three of the four protagonists were white children living in an Indian reform school was a strange set up. It was explained and tied up in the end—it all made sense. But it was still strange to locate three white protagonists within the conflict of a Native boarding school. And the story of Moses the sweet, hard working Native American child was handled with thought, research and respect. He wasn’t an accessory or token. I took care to read the Acknowledgments and the author gives credit to the stories and biographies of Native Americans that informed his work and research. While Mose’s story of being Native was handled thoughtfully I kept wondering how differently a Native writer would have written a fiction piece about children escaping the cruelty of such schools. It is something to be aware of—Native American writers don’t get awarded huge publishing contracts at the same rate as white authors, their stories are not being told as often or aren’t as centered in publishing. I am trying to be more mindful of these dynamics, pay closer attention to how people of color are used by authors and make sure that I am an engaged and thoughtful reader. 

 

 

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Why I Am Only Attending Essential Meetings

I joke that in the past month in addition to being a ministry consultant, writer, mother and spouse I am now also the principal, gym coach, cafeteria worker, guidance counselor and two grade level teachers at our new home school set up. But really, it’s no joke. This is taxing work, making hourly and sometimes minute by minute decisions about the household’s thriving around the clock. Part of the brain science behind creating habits and schedules is that habits put certain things on autopilot so that the brain is not taxed by ordinary, daily activities. Many of our habits and rhythms have been thrown out the window and we are creating new ones but figuring what’s best and how to do it take time. Even with an engaged partner it’s exhausting and my single and solo parent friends feel the compression of this weight doubly. 

 

My consulting already required Zoom and conference calls–blessedly not all my ministry partners are local, instead they are spread across time zones. Add to it my local partners that now want to connect over these channels. And now my children not only rely on Zoom for their academic acceleration (which let’s be honest is more like a holding pattern or preventing a slide) but they also rely on it to get much needed social connection with friends. They need this connection to still feel like they are connected and whole people. I get it. I make happy hour with girlfriends a weekly priori

 

All these virtual meetings are a lot to remember, juggle and make happen. It’s why I decided three weeks into this new life that while the whole country was shifting to essential workers only, I was going to shift into essential meetings only. I am not interested in winning the medal for doing the most in quarantine. Each week I ask what meetings are essential to our thriving? Economically, emotionally, spiritually. Those are the meetings we attend–only what is essential to those areas of thriving. Anything else can wait. This is not the time for us to take on new, more, extra. This is essential time. 

 

Our emotions are taxed from the abrupt shift from everything we once knew as normal to a new normal, carved into the small island of our home. Our spirits are taxed from processing all the change, for trying to construct meaning and purpose at a rapid pace. If it is a time for essential workers only, then it’s time for essential work only, essential meetings only. The Christian tradition shapes the year around liturgical season–liturgical time. It insists that the rhythm of our year be shaped by the rhythm of our faith stories and our spirits, that each season demands something different from us as faithful people. Essential time mirrors the same ideas, that this time demands something outside the demands of the secular calendar, an invitation for learning and growth, for shaping our priorities towards what is holy. And not all my Zoom meetings meet this criteria.

 

We are not slackers when we practice discernment and have boundaries. This is acknowledging all the ways in which our systems–biological, mental, social, interpersonal–are taxed and giving ourselves some space. Not just space in the schedule but in our brain, in our spirit. This is utilizing the tools of discernment to listen not just to our schedule but our spirit, creating a schedule that reflects the deep and tender needs of our spirits right now.

Grief Brain and Holy Week

I don’t know about you, but I have some serious grief brain right now. I am forgetful, less productive (that could also be the whole homeschooling two children thing), easily fatigued yet sleeping less, easily overwhelmed when I am generally resilient and anxious. I know the signs, because I have been here before. Maybe you have been here before too and if you have, I am so sorry you are here again my dear one. Or maybe these feelings are new to you and that’s ok too. It took me a year to realize that what I was experiencing was grief–because no one had died. My daughter had been in the pediatric cardiac ICU for fourteen days, but after three surgeries (one of which was planned) we brought her home to recover, return to school and church and playdates and dance. People told us we were “lucky” and that “it was so good everything’s fine now” and how “blessed” we were to have our daughter. 

But it didn’t feel lucky or fine and it certainly didn’t feel like a blessing and it took us a year to figure out what it felt like was grief. 

We grieved the life that had been so neatly cut in two–before and after. We grieved that our daughter, now fully dependent on a pacemaker, would never be allowed to play soccer or try gymnastics because the risk of impact could break her pacemaker and possibly end her life. Small dreams were suddenly gone, replaced with different expectations that we had to adopt as our new dreams. 

When I talk about my research and writing around the intersections between parenting, pediatric medical trauma and grief I usually reactions that range from perplexed looks, to dismissive personal acknowledgements like “that must have been hard for you.” The implication being of course, that our experience must be contained to us not for our peace of mind but for the person for whom thinking about medical trauma, grief and parenthood is too much. I totally get it. No one wants to think about their baby being hooked up to a half dozen machines, sleeping long and endless nights in a chair in the pediatric ICU. But now, more than ever we need a conversation on how we care for one another in the face of medical trauma and grief. How do we wrestle with mortality? And what does trauma do to the brain? How might we grieve healthily and with grace for ourselves and one another. How do we bless and release the dreams we have lost or deferred and embrace a new reality? 

My faith has been complicated by all these questions because often my own tradition, influenced by poor theology, American exceptionalism and optimism offer weak answers to these urgent questions about life and death and living a meaningful life. And yet, at the same time my faith tradition has deep wells of wisdom on what it means to be alive in the world in all its brokenness and beauty. The Psalmists wrestled in scripture with the joy and grief of life and so did the apostle Paul. The mystics and poets of the Christian faith (and other faith traditions) are able to give new words to ancient questions. And this week, Holy Week, if we are brave enough to depart from the simplistic substitutionary atonement, there is a wealth of complex and nuanced insights about God’s presence in suffering, death, grief and healing. There is comfort in a God that suffers with us, that wants life to triumph over the death dealing ways of the systems of power in our world, that comes to us in our grief so that we are not alone. 

So my dear ones, I suppose all of this is to say, you are not alone. In the simpleness of your daily grief–of missing your old life, predictable and steady, of the grief of wondering how this will change us and if it will be for the better. It will change us, you and me and all of us. And our faith can shape that change in beautiful ways. 

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To Find a Steady Center: Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance

of

dark, cold

caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

-When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou from The Complete Poetry

In the early days of shelter in place my parents did not follow guidelines. It was upsetting and as I checked in with friends, I realized I was not alone in my fear-born frustration. I love my parents and I am not ready to know a life that does not have them in it. While I decry some of the choices and mistakes of my elders when it comes to their worship of capitalism and their destruction of the environment, I covet their wisdom. 

We exist because of the greatness, care and mistakes of earlier generations. Angelou reminds us that we can be and be better because our ancestors existed. We can respect their dreams while choosing to dream different, bolder dreams. We can name their sins and examine the ways we learned to sin from them. Grief is not only for the dying, it is also for the living. It is for grieving that we cannot live as our beloved ancestors once lived, we cannot participate in this world and creation the way that they did. Grief is for the living and it is like all things an invitation. To reflect, to repent, to dream and to listen to what God might be up to in this long string of people that stretched before us and will stretch after us. 

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: Denise Levertov

In this dark I rest,

unready for the light which dawns

day after day,

eager to be shared.

Black silk, shelter me.

I need

more of the night before I open

eyes and heart

to illumination. I must still

grow in the dark like a root

not ready, not ready at all.

-Eye Mask by Denise Levertov from A Book of Luminous Things 

There are two kinds of weeds–one grows a root that shoots straight down and are easy to pluck and don’t grow back. The second kind of weed grows a root system that connects to all the other roots, a whole underground world of support, so that when it is pulled at the surface, it grows back. 

Levertov’s poem about waiting in the dark, like a root doing its unseen work, reminds me that the roots that we grow matter. What is growing beneath the surface of our lives, beneath the activity, accomplishments and performance matters. The roots of any plant give it a steady and firm foundation against wind, drought, animals and other adversity. 

No one was ready to face this adversity. No one was ready for the financial and social upheaval. We are never ready to test the roots we’ve grown, to see if the unseen connections and strength we have grown will weather the adversity that lays before us.

Today I am saying a prayer of gratitude for the roots that ground me and I am reflecting on the ways that I might strengthen them for the future. 

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

To Find a Steady Center: Osip Mandelstam

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,

Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree.

It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering

power,

And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?

What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,

All hover and hammer,

Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.

It is now. It is not.

–And I Was Alive by Osip Mandelstam fromStolen Air 

I have a love of trees. Since we moved to our small home nine years ago I have planted eleven trees and I love each of them dearly. I tend to each of them carefully, from the lace leaf red Japanese Maple, to the blue atlas cedars each tree adds unique joy to my yard. This time of year is particularly special because it’s the two week window in which my weeping peach tree bursts into full bloom with big, fluffy fuchsia bud that drip down the weeping limbs. 

This year is particularly special because last year on the day my beloved tree bloomed we had a terrible hail storm. Within hours of blooming every bloom has been beaten to the ground in a wet, pink mess. In essence I have waited two years for this sweet, brief week to arrive. 

On week three of quarantine we have discovered the joy of a new rhythm. But how long the short term will stretch feels like forever. Time is far more elastic than we realize when we stop and take the time to appreciate it, rather allowing ourselves to ride the waves of hustle, ambition and habit. How will I use this time which is precious and sacred? And how will I use the time that comes after which is also holy? 

Be kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing. 

My 2020 #the100dayproject

Last year I participated in #the100dayproject a challenge for makers and creatives to create for 100 days straight, encouraging exploring new media, honing skills and techniques and building that creative muscle and discipline. You can read about some of my tips and tricks if you like but what I loved the most about it is how my creativity in all aspects shot up in the midst of this project. Painting gave me time to ruminate on writing pieces, my writing became steadier, my current manuscript took shape at the end of #the100dayproject and I am certain that’s a direct benefit of painting a writing for 100 days straight. The discipline of my writing shaped in those 100 days I have been able to maintain a year later. With #the100dayproject having such a positive impact on my creativity and work I decided that I would participate again this year. 

Little did I know a few months ago when I decided to take on #the100dayproject again that this year I would be stuck at home, gratefully running a small business, conducting a research grant, writing a book, homeschooling my kids and managing the morale and food supply chain of a household. I was tempted to pass this year, because I have more than enough on my plate. Most days I am doing well to keep all the plates spinning. 

Then I remember that art and creativity are made for times such as these. 

When things seem uncertain, when our brains and spirits are unsettled, our creativity can carve out space to process, make meaning and heal. 

Just like last year, I get to decide what I do, the pace I go and the scale of my project for the 100 days I participate. So this year I have decided that I am going to hand paint 100 bookmarks to mail to friends and family and giveaway on my Instagram. The project is bookish like me, will give me the chance to spread some joy and not take up too much time as I juggle all the other opportunities and responsibilities I have right now. It also does require spending any money or acquiring any new materials–I have paint and cardstock at home. That’s a win win in my book. 

If you are participating I would love to know what you have planned. Or if you are thinking about it I would love to talk about the different possibilities. 

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To Find a Steady Center: Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

-The Thing Is by Ellen Bass from 

Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems

My research and writing project right now is on medical trauma and grief, a project that up until a few weeks ago seemed strange and niche to most people I talked to about it. But as we experience a global pandemic the likes of which many people have never seen in their lifetime, I feel the sense that we are all experiencing different levels of grief and trauma from being uprooted so suddenly from our lives, to lose financial stability long fought for and precariously maintained, to be socially isolated from friends and family out of a deep love for their well-being. Not to mention the friends and family who have loved ones ill from the virus and those who are sick and isolated at home or in the hospital. 

In my research I came across the grief specialist Julia Sammuels, who talks about how the death of a child forces you across a line of knowing that you can never uncross. It fundamentally changes how you relate to your living children, how you parent and how you relate to other parents. It is this idea that connects me to Bass’s poem–grief is a heavy, thick thing that fundamentally changes the one who grieves. 

But grief is also an invitation. As Bass’s poem reminds me it is an invitation to love well, knowing first hand what is at stake. So this week I will grieve. I will grieve what I have personally lost and what we have collectively lost so that I can be ready to love whatever new world we shape after.

Be Kind,

Cara

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely and who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing.