scratches and sketches

I like writing and art.

[kylermartyn]

My church didn't believe in baptising infants You needed to be old enough to know what it meant To know the crucifixion of Christ To know a broken body buried beneath the ground To be doused in the water and know you deserved to die there To know it was your fault To be raised to life To use your voice to claim the responsibility. So they baptised me when I was four. I stood in front of them on Sunday And said I knew what I was doing And though they never believed me any other time I said that This one, they did. In front of Christ And the whole church In a little white dress. I couldn't quite reach the bottom Even on tiptoe And I floated and bobbed a bit And the church laughed And that's the part I remember, Because when adults laughed It meant I was being charming And that I was safe, And I remember not the death or the crucifixion But the part where I felt safe. When I was thirteen Some of my friends began to get baptised. I asked my parents to do it again. I may have asked more than once. They always said no That once was all that was needed As long as I knew the crucifixion of Christ And knew it was my fault And had been raised to life. And, they assured me, I knew. I worried it wasn't enough. Sometimes at the pool I would wait until no one was watching And whisper a prayer, Put a hand on my own head And dunk myself underwater In hopes of feeling safe. Last Sunday my daughter wanted to stand on tiptoe, Put her hands on my head And brush my hair. She knows nothing of broken bodies or crucifixion And she knows that she deserves to live As loudly as she can, Because she is four. And she knows that she is safe And she knows what she is doing As she takes water in her hands and mimics the care that she has felt in mine And, in front of no one, douses my head and Baptises me.

[kylermartyn]

The thing that snapped my faith in half was covid on the wind, not out of fear or grieving but because of how you sinned.

The thing that broke what faith remained was covid in the air, when they said “Love your neighbor” and you showed you didn’t care. *** I roll my window down each day as I approach the gate and hold out my ID so that the guy can scan me in. A hundred cars. A thousand cars, all lined up down the street of this small village. They stopped wearing masks a week ago.

I spend my time behind a thousand cars thinking about the air inside my lungs, the window rolled to let it out, and multiplied by every car sitting in front of me, and breathing on the twentysomething guy who’s at the gate.

When they said we could stop with masks, when they said we were “free”, when all the posters switched to say “Unvaccinated only Need wear a mask,” I sat inside my car before each stop and held it in my hand—and thought about the kids at work—

and kids that I go home to. And the way it’s been a year, and half a year, and how, back then, I thought it would be weeks. I just thought weeks. I just thought we would band together strong, the way everyone told me that we did back in ’01,

a patriotic myth told to a six-year-old each year. I thought a public tragedy would unfold much the same. I thought the folks I loved who clung to God and taught me how would hear him speak through medicine the way that I have now.

And maybe how I ache about the church started before March of last year; and maybe how I redefine my faith has been more years in making; all the roots that I was taught are growing into something different than I ever thought;

and maybe I still start a “praise and worship” song each day only for my first car drive, that takes me from home to work. It’s the last shred of trappings that I have held in my hand. The rest of them have fallen through, so many grains of sand

I once thought my foundation. Now I don’t know where I stand.

I think about a boy halfway across the world from me. I joined a website years ago to sponsor him each month. My feelings on the website now are complicated, but what isn’t is the boy or the way he deserves the world.

His country cannot shake the grasp of virulent disease, the way ours can’t, the way the country that I moved to can’t, the way nobody can because this should have brought us close, the way nobody knows who will get sick or who will die,

the way we all are subject to the shifting whims of wind, the way all we can do is think about the boy next door, or halfway ‘round the world, or even standing at the gate to look at my ID and then to let me go to work.

The way they all are Jesus. The way that every one in prison or in poverty is my God’s only Son. He called himself the least of these. The least: the ones the world looks smallest on. The only piece that turned out not to be

a piece of sand that washed away with tides that rose and fell, made up of whose life mattered, politicians’ ugly words that echoed lies somebody told me when I was too small to know the world was different, to know it could even be.

It’s just a tiny shred because the shreds are all I have, as I keep trying every day to piece them into love. I love you, and that’s all I know. I love you when they say “Unvaccinated only have to wear a mask”, and still

I put mine on, because I just don’t know. I love you when they take the order back. I love you when the world is scared and also when it’s scary. I love you when it feels like some teacher punished all the class because two people would

just not stop talking, just would not stop ruining it all for everyone, just would not care about the group, just would watch everybody else in pain and seem to go about whatever they were doing just without the least concern.

The least concern. The least of these. That’s all that I have left. I love you if this took us weeks, I love you when it’s years. I put the mask over my face before I reach the gate so the guy who scans my card might be one inch safer today,

one millimeter even, what’s the measure of one deed? of one attempt to beat against a flood of fear and grief? It sounds like this: the last lines of a song about a God I still believe in, playing in a car at eight o’clock,

the minimum of organized religion, just a scrap, a grain of sand I love, a grain of faith, a mustard seed, and my voice singing as a rainbow mask slips on my face, a quarter mile before I reach the guy and entrance gate,

one muffled hallelujah. That’s the theme of covid praise, though covering my mouth has never once reduced my faith. I love you and this is the only way that I know how. I’ve always worn it on my sleeve—on my face, too, for now.

[kylermartyn]

I’m watching you get mad at a toy because you had this idea: what if you took a car and put it through that hole? It turns out the hole isn’t big enough for that car.

I’m watching you scream at a toy in despair and frustration, grab my hand and lead me to the toy; rage when I, too, can’t make it fit.

You are twenty-two months old.

I understand the humor in smiling at the little reasons that children cry. These components—car, toy, hole— these are small things.

But the abstractions are so large:

I’m watching you get mad at the world because you had this idea: what if you took control of something you imagined and made it happen for real? It turns out the dream didn’t work.

I’m watching you scream in despair and frustration, seek help from your most trusted loved one; rage when I, too, can’t make it fit.

I remember the screams that came from my own throat when my dream didn’t work.

(what if I took control of something I imagined and made it happen for real?)

I dreamed about the child I’d love for eight years before trying.

…and made it happen for real? It turns out the control wasn’t in my hands, nor the hands of anyone I loved or trusted.

Despair and frustration.

Again and again, little one, I dream things too big for this world, I imagine the ideal way that they will happen, everything falling into place— even I can’t make it fit.

We share the same heart.

I will hold you when it doesn’t work the way you dreamed. Someday you will understand that I was always on your team, that you would keep dreaming and failing and crying and screaming and dreaming and trying, that you make the world a little more ideal just for being in it.

Twenty-two months since you fell into place; twenty-two months since our family finally fit.

I hear your rage, honor it, remember it. Some days everything you imagine will happen the way you dream. It will be beautiful.

You are so beautiful.

[kylermartyn]

Be amazing. Be

everything you imagine.

Everything that enters your mind

to be.

You can be President.

You can be Wakandan. You can be

Spider-Man. You can soar.

You can lead countries.

You can be 

Colin Kaepernick:

be courageous for the things you believe in.

Terry Crews:

take up the mantle of masculinity

and redefine it. Be vulnerable. Keep your whole heart.

Bryan Stevenson:

know what Justice is and defend it.

Jakhil Jackson:

don’t let them look down on you because 

you are young.

2017 is a good year to be born in. You have

so many voices; this love letter could become a list,

scrolling on and on.

Be Black.

Be so Black,

so beautiful,

so bold.

Your skin is not chocolate or coffee;

it is Black skin,

and you are not a poem

but a powerful, courageous, incredible, Black boy.

You can be

half of your mother

and half of your father

and part of your siblings

and all of our child.

You can be all she hoped when she chose 

us for you.

Be unapologetic. Take up space. Be

a beacon. A change.

Be everything.

Be anything.

Be a voice, a face, a light,

a magic,

a joy,

little boy,

little boy. 

[kylermartyn]

content warning: me too. why I didn’t report. sexual harassment and assault. 

it’s okay to scroll by. I guess I’m just writing this for my own self.

I didn’t tell anyone. 

At least not at the time. I didn’t think it was anyone’s business. And I didn’t think it was anything unusual. And I thought it was a little my fault. I was fourteen. I was fifteen. I was sixteen. 

And I believed him when he said “the other guys in the locker room say that since I won’t get anything out of you, then I should rape you.” And I thanked him for telling me, and for not listening to them. 

And I believed him when he said “I wish I could stop watching porn but I can’t because you won’t have sex with me so it’s the only thing I can do to keep from raping you.” 

And I believed him when he said “I do want to wait for marriage, too. It’s just harder for guys.”

So I ignored it when he said “I could rape you if I wanted to, you know. I’m bigger and stronger than you. I could put you in my car and take you somewhere and rape you and then take your clothes and your phone so you’d have to walk home.”

And I ignored it when he wrote me an explicit story about us having sex, emailed it to me, and said “I need you to read this and then delete it. It won’t help me if you don’t read it first, but I don’t want anyone else to know I wrote this.”

And I ignored it when he held me down and groped me and started to force himself on me. I hit him and I yelled no, and he was startled and stopped, and he asked if I was going to break up with him, and I said no. He thanked me and said that made me a good girlfriend, and he held me for the rest of the movie. And I told him let’s forget about the whole thing.

He made me afraid. He detailed vulgar things that he said my classmates said about me behind my back. He broke things on my doorstep and ran away from home for hours when my parents wouldn’t let me see him. He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to harm himself. He said he was the only one who respected me and wouldn’t force me to have sex with him. He told me I didn’t know how the real world worked.

I didn’t tell anyone. I thought it was normal. I thought, “This is how boys talk in locker rooms.” 

I am angry that in 2010 I could have possibly believed such a thing.

I am angry that in 2018 countless girls are hearing precisely such a thing. 

I am angry that I never said anything.

I am angry that if I were to say anything, some people wouldn’t believe me.

I am angry that this conversation keeps cycling, again and again.

I am angry that I’m not brave enough to post this where anyone will read it.

I’m mad that I believed him. I’m mad that I ignored it. I’m mad that I am angry.

He told me these things were jokes. Or warnings, about other people. Or just the way things were.

This is not the way things have to be. I do not believe it. I refuse to believe it.

[kylermartyn]

They didn’t teach me how to transfer in OT school.

They tried to teach me. They paired us up in lab and taught us about gait belts and had us lift one another. They tried to coach us how to mimic minimum, moderate, and maximal assistance with our own bodies when we had never worked with anyone who needed any of those levels of assistance. They told us not to use our legs to help our classmates out. We all used our legs, of course. We didn’t even know what we were pretending to do. The professor—with more acting experience drawn from her more practice experience—let a couple of students transfer her, but didn’t have time to do it for everyone. There’s only one professor and 32 of us.

They taught us transfers with an end goal. Move your classmate’s butt from point A to point B three times with a sliding board, a walker, and a stand-pivot and let the professor check you off. Get into a wheelchair, on a bed, and on the toilet. Our partner was able-bodied and did not ever get stuck at point A-and-a-half. Even when we were taught to mimic buckling knees, there was still room for error, nervous laughter.

They couldn’t teach me how to transfer in my fieldwork. My fieldwork instructor tried to show me proper body mechanics. The one-hour crash course that she ran me through was fine, but then as she stood over my shoulder, nitpicking my technique with patients, criticizing me more and more frequently as the weeks went by, I lost all my confidence. Transfers became a mad rush to get the patient where they needed to go so she could tell me how I did it all wrong, I could swallow my tears, and we could move on with our day.

I was so anxious, walking into this job. I had the technical knowledge, but my practical knowledge was fifty percent mimicry and fifty percent micromanaged.

And then I learned—in weeks, in days, in minutes—that it was all backward anyway.

I learned that it’s not even about the end point so much as it’s about getting there. I could pick up a small enough elderly lady and put her in her wheelchair but she gains nothing from the experience. And I could throw all my muscles out trying to hoist a patient any bigger and obviously neither of us would gain anything from that experience. 

But I can stand and steady a patient who’s been malnourished for God-only-knows-how-long, wasting away because she’s lost her appetite from sickness and hospitalization and aging and decline, as she realizes that her feet are still strong enough to hold her, her legs are still straight enough to carry her, and if they’re not and she’s not then I am there to keep her safe until she can find her footing again.

I can balance a patient who is anxious and depressed and feels like he has lost all his dignity from a hospital stay, and needing help with the toilet, and female aides washing him in the shower, and to add insult to injury they’ve told him he can’t be transferred without the help of two people—or a mechanical lift—to lift his weight. I can use my body to counterbalance his and to help him lean forward enough to realize that when his head is over his feet, he’s on balance again, and he hasn’t lost everything after all, he’s not helpless and confined to his recliner for all his days here, he just needs the time to move a little more slowly, he just needs someone to block his knee if it buckles.

We can stand and then sit right back down, if that’s what he needs, if that’s what she needs. We can use a sliding board to get her into the wheelchair for the first time since she lost her leg. We can use a walker to hold, to steady, the first step toward becoming mobile again. We can use a commode, the small human dignity of not having to use the place they sleep as the place they toilet. 

They didn’t teach me how to transfer in OT school, I thought today as I stood with a patient, as she confessed to me that she was embarrassed about how multiple aides would have to come move her every time, as she confessed to me that she was worried she would be too much for me, too heavy for me, that she was taking up too much space, that she was a burden. As I showed her that we could do it with no more help—just me and her. As we problem solved, finding that she could step to her left if not her right, and I could reposition the wheelchair to let her do that. As we stood slowly, and moved slowly, and took literal baby steps, and took all the time she needed to get into her wheelchair. As she clung to my elbows and placed her bowed head against my chest to take deep breaths before she could take another step, I thought, they didn’t teach me that a transfer was a hug.

[kylermartyn]

Skilled nursing facilities aren’t the top of anyone’s list for creative interventions, or vast personal improvement, or challenging work dynamics, or interesting patient cases...they’re really the leftovers of the profession, because they’re the leftovers of rehab. The patients who were too elderly, too debilitated, or too slow-progressing to stay in inpatient rehab. Too sick to get better in acute care. Too weak or too lacking in local support to live at home with home health services. They’re often lonely, and dull, and repetitive.

None of that means that people don’t get better. They aren’t useless. People make great gains. People sometimes just need time, and time is something that there’s a lot of in a SNF. And while it’s not where I want to be forever, it’s perfect for right now. And every time I go in to work I find myself looking for new creative challenges...pushing myself to be better...seeking a challenge...loving the patients that I have.

If people in a skilled nursing facility aren’t “the least of these”, then I don’t know who is. I am loving my people, my Jesus, every day.

Today Jesus was an elderly Latina woman with gnarled hands, virtually no vision left, mild dementia, general debility. She had only been in the facility for a matter of hours. She was frightened and alone—her family had to go home for the night, and she had forgotten why they left her. She was writing herself unintelligible notes on a napkin. She wrote my name when I told it to her. I brought her some paper so she could keep writing notes if she wanted to.

Today Jesus wanted to take a shower. She hadn’t been allowed to at the hospital. She had various lines in her veins for various medications. She had difficulty with mobility and couldn’t get herself into the shower. I told her we had all the time in the world. We inched our way into the shower. We painstakingly managed to get her undressed. I taped plastic bags over all the tubing and lines. I found her some nice shampoo and conditioner instead of the hospital-grade 3-in-1 soap pump installed on the wall. The warm water was too hot for her skin and she asked me to turn it down. 

Patients who’ve been there for days, weeks, they’re used to aides—aides who have to shower dozens of patients, who have strict time limits to adhere to. I am a therapist. I answer to myself; my lateness only inconveniences me, not the other patients. She didn’t know that most of my patients think they need to scrub themselves down in a matter of 5 minutes. I didn’t have to coax her into taking her time. 

She luxuriated in lukewarm water for nearly an hour. I didn’t mind. I mopped up the water she was spraying on the floor because she couldn’t see where it was going. I didn’t mind.

She asked me for help.

I washed her feet.

I washed Jesus’ feet today in the dingy beige shower of the skilled nursing facility where I just took a job because we need to save money as fast as we can, and I thought, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

[talesofolds]

True story: as I was talking to my husband about drawing this comic, my son (the baby in this comic) chimed in with a perfectly-timed “AH”.

I originally drew this for an audience who already knew me, and therefore, already knew that Sherlock and Pixel are my two cats. Since you don’t know me, you now get the pleasure of meeting Sherlock and Pixel, my two cats! 

Keep reading

[kylermartyn]

It’s been quite some time since I posted here about my son! But he’s a recurring character in the comics I’ve been drawing of our goofy little family...

And yes, he is wearing a shirt in that picture that says “World’s Best Brother”, because here in about 3 months, we are adopting his biological sibling when he/she is born! 

(Hopefully by then we’ll have “Mama” down. Or at least “Dada”. Can you give me something, kid???)

[talesofolds]

We should all agree, as humans, to use the word “sneezehole” more often.

Keep reading

[kylermartyn]

Ever since this conversation took place, we have more or less exclusively referred to it as a sneezehole. I’m trying to talk Josh into letting me teach our baby son that that’s what a nose is called. ;) 

[talesofolds]

With apologies to any realtors who read this comic.

Bonus panel after the jump…

Keep reading

[kylermartyn]

So I started a really goofy webcomic about the dumb things my husband and I say to each other, and I really, really love it. (Also, my husband is probably my biggest fan—he’s seen all 20 queued comics so far and cracks up at all of them.)

Updating every Tuesday/Thursday! Also features our son and our cats in some upcoming comics!

[kylermartyn]

I don’t know why I started thinking about this today. There are other things (see: autoethnography) that I’m supposed to be writing. But here I am. Thinking about this instead.

I’m thinking about how I haven’t really read the Bible in two years. And I can already hear echoes of the Christians who think I’ve lost my Christianity because I’ve become invested in social justice, and I’m ignoring them.

It’s not entirely accurate to say I haven’t read the Bible in two years; perhaps a more accurate statement is that I haven’t sat down with a Bible and read it in about two years. I’ve tried a couple of times, for a couple of days at a time.

I bought a new Bible, the Jesus-Centered Bible, that was supposed to be a revolutionary way of reading. It highlighted throughout the Old Testament passages that would point toward Jesus. I thought maybe that would help.

But then, like two days into reading it, the commentary on the story of Deborah talked about how she was only chosen to be a judge because there were no good men around, and suddenly I wasn’t super interested in reading a Bible annotated by these people anymore.

I grew up with enough of that. I don’t want it anymore.

That’s the real reason I stopped. Because I’ve been reading the Bible, in some shape or form, extremely regularly since I was thirteen—or younger. Thirteen is just as far back as I can remember having a specific daily “project”. When I was thirteen I started recording myself reading 1 chapter of the Bible out loud, every day. I completed an entire recording. I made an entire audio Bible over the course of a few years.

Next, I began writing a paraphrase of three chapters per day. Again, I wrote an entire paraphrased Bible. It’s super bad, written with all the Biblical authority and maturity of a sixteen-year-old who only knows the Bible in English—but I wrote it. Then I set out to just straight up copy the entire Bible by hand, like a monk. It forces me to slow down and read the words. I didn’t get through the entire thing, but I did complete a huge swath of it.

Then…

I don’t know. I stopped.

It probably started around when we lost Arrow. But even then, I was reading and writing commentary on every story in the Bible about child loss, and reading new versions of the Bible (The Passion Translation) to try and see things in a new light. I was doing what I could.

But then I stopped, for real.

It started feeling like every time I opened it, I was just reading the same things I’d been taught my whole life. And to be honest, by the end of 2016, I was pretty much over Christians. I’m not over Christianity. I haven’t lost my faith. I don’t blame God for any of this—in fact, I cling to him all the harder; I feel his call on me all the stronger.

But man, if I’m not so over his “people”.

I use quotes for a reason.

My whole life I have felt very strongly about verses like Matthew 7:21-23 that imply that there will be people in Heaven who believe themselves to be Christians, who God says, “I never knew you”. My whole life, I felt afraid of that for myself. I felt like, how could I ever be sure that I wasn’t one of them?

Now I feel like I understand what it means. Now I feel like I see churches and Christians and even Christian leaders who are a facade, who are using my faith for their own personal gain.

I’m so over it.

And when I opened the Bible, even though I knew it was the words of God, I only heard the words of everyone who ever taught me the Bible. And I don’t necessarily trust their interpretation anymore.

So in its place, I read copious amounts of books. I read Just Mercy and Disunity in Christ and Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and Interrupted and 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess and Fight: The Christian Case for Nonviolence and Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times and Malestrom and Half the Church and even Conversations With God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans.

I read anything I could find that was preaching a Jesus that I don’t feel like anyone told me about growing up, yet somehow fits more truly with the one they did introduce me to. And I listened to sermons by pastors I trusted. And I tried to find any pastors I trusted. I trust Josh most of all, and his fire feeds my fire, and we sharpen each other.

But everyone else?

I have never been so angry, so sad, so disappointed in people I thought believed in the same Jesus as me. I have honestly gone through the entire grieving process.

I’m so over it all.

And yet—I can’t be.

I am the pastor’s wife. I am acutely aware of my own voice, all the time. I am intense and passionate and outraged precisely because I am not over it.

And yet—

And yet—this has echoes in my own life. By the time I graduated high school, I was so over them. I went to a small private Christian school. We would sit together in Bible class and could recite all the answers and then my classmates would laugh about sex and partying and everything stupid teenagers are usually into, except we weren’t supposed to be stupid teenagers, we were set up to be so much more than that, we were given so much more than that. I was sexually harassed and assaulted and mocked and bullied and my overriding emotion was…

…disappointment.

because we could’ve been better—

because we should’ve been better.

I wrote a poem once, I never shared. I saved it in the drafts of this Tumblr.

I would just like to know that maybe in wandering these lonely halls I’ve made some sort of lasting impact on polished and brand-new walls I’ve done some permanent damage to pillars carefully built around I’ve proven to someone somewhere it’s possible to live like no one else and I’m not even sure what I’m saying and I’m not even sure what I want I just don’t want to go on auto-pilot if anyone’s actually listening but if all I’m doing’s shouting to empty rooms then why waste my voice and you say you respect my convictions and at least respect’s a thing and it’s more a thing than I’ve gotten in years past and you say you’re searching for something and I can’t make you live a certain way but I wish I could make you see that I feel the way I’m living is the way you’re looking for and if you really pay any attention to my convictions I feel like you’d see that too I just don’t want to completely tune out if anyone’s hearing the song but if all I’m doing’s singing to barred windows then why shred my throat I just want to know that I’ve made a mark here I’ve left a scratch, a chip, even a tear I’ve somehow left something behind in these wide open spaces but all I see on your face is superfluity and knowing all the right answers doesn’t necessitate you’re right if I’m spending a third of each day between four walls called Legacy I just want to know that I’ve left one and I just don’t want to give up on this place if anyone’s awake inside but if all I’m doing’s pounding on slammed doors then why hurt myself why throw myself up against this place again and again why do I do it why do I do it I keep praying to love you but I think I already must. 

It echoes quietly in my heart sometimes. (why do I do it. why do I do it.)

I keep praying to love you, Church, because I have no trouble loving everybody else, because I have no trouble loving the lost because they’re lost and they don’t know it or they reject it and I just love them. I want to help. I want to love. So many of them have seen a false Christ reflected in our judging faces and judging words and they have the wrong idea about a Jesus I love dearly, and I love them, and I want to apologize, and I want to fall all over myself to make it right but

YOU

You!

You know better!

You ARE the false Christ!

HOW DARE YOU?

HOW DARE YOU?

How dare you mock and belittle the creation of God? How dare you drag his name through the mud? How dare you be a part of the world that will oppress MY SON? HOW DARE YOU?

HOW CAN YOU DO THIS AND CLAIM THE NAME OF CHRIST?

And you read these words in a shout because if we were having this conversation I would be screaming my throat raw as tears stream down my face, because they are right now. 

We could’ve been better!

We should’ve been better!

How could you do this to my son? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to Jesus?

and why

don’t I

just give up

on you?

I keep praying to love you, but I think I already must.

Even God himself wrote poetry, storming the halls of Heaven, raging at Israel for missing the mark. They were set up as a chosen nation to be a light to the world and they never were. They never were. They never were what they were supposed to be, and my God of justice eventually allowed their downfall, and the nation was torn apart. Read any of the prophets. God speaks and all humanity can do is translate it into poetry, raging poetry, angry and fierce and wrathful poetry against his people because how could they do this and then—

reassurance that it’s not forever, it will never be forever. He can’t bear for them to think it might be forever. He can’t bear them being wiped out entirely. He won’t. He won’t.

I write poetry with the heart of God. I keep praying to love you, but I think I already must.

I love you with the heart of a Jesus who ranted—You snakes! You vipers! You hypocrites! How will you escape hell? You are like graves full of death! You neglect justice! You neglect mercy! You neglect faith! You are blind idiots who can’t see what’s in front of your own faces!

—but stopped mid-sentence to grieve. Jerusalem! I wanted to gather you together and you won’t let me! I wanted to hold you close to me and you push me away! Jerusalem! Please!

My Church—my Church, please!

Please?

I love you with the heart of a Jesus who was so furious with the sin of the world that he died to give us another option.

For what is the Cross but the place where outrage and compassion meet?

And if I’m to take up my cross daily—

I’m trying to read the Bible again. I’m ready to hear new words, the way my God said them the first time. I trust myself to hear them and listen for the echo of his voice in my heart instead of the echoes of the voices I’ve heard all my life.

And if I’m to take up my cross daily—

I keep praying to love you, but I think I already must.

[kylermartyn]

On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, you were 193 days old, little boy.

You were as many days old as the first son I loved, on the day I first loved him.

It was May 4, 2015, when my world tilted off its axis, when I saw a picture of him for the first time. Orange shirt. Wild hair. Piercing eyes, warm eyes, loving eyes, sweet eyes. 

He was 193 days old on May 4. He had already been abandoned in an orphanage for 193 days. I loved him instantly. 

We spent thousands. We reshaped our lives around loving him. We gave everything we could.

151 days later, we lost him.

Little son, you are as old as he was when we first loved him.

On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, termination of parental rights became final. You are, legally speaking, nobody’s.

But we know you are ours.

We spent thousands. We reshaped our lives around loving you.

We will give you everything we can.

We forever will.

Our Arrow was nobody’s, and we were never able to make him ours.

You have always been ours. You will never be nobody’s. 

[kylermartyn]

On Sunday, they were frenzied, flooded with adrenaline, rioting in the streets. Yelling treasonous words. Risking their lives against their oppressive regime. The air was heavy with expectation. A hundred prophecies, a hundred deeply held beliefs, a hundred quiet unmet hopes in racing hearts were tearing straight off the pages of the history books and exploding in their streets, on this day, on this donkey, and so they tore leaves from the trees and tore coats from their shoulders and spread them on the ground as they danced and sang and prepared for battle. Prepared to see God crash into their world. Prepared to rush the gates of Herod’s temple. Prepared to participate in regicide and a political coup. Prepared to slaughter their oppressors and glory in their deaths. Prepared to make Jesus their king.

And Jesus got to the Temple and turned around and went back home.

And there was panic, for a week. Anxiety at first, simmering quietly in the streets that had been ringing with words that Rome could easily choose to prosecute, words that could lead to their deaths. They had been so certain — it had been so imminent — it had been worth the risk of death but now it was no longer a distant potential but a very present possibility. They were terrified, at first. They took their children home and hushed their playful echoes of “Hosanna, save us” and snatched the palm branches from their hands and pretended it never happened.

And they simmered.

With disappointment, with years of resentment, with failed revolution after failed revolution, with the slow-burning anger of adrenaline interrupted, they simmered in their homes and in the streets and in the markets as they gradually accepted that their lives were not in immediate danger of swift retribution. They felt embarrassed and awkward, and in light of that, they repressed that shame until it became fury. They simmered with frustration and heartache and pain until they boiled with rage.

Then on Friday, they exploded.

The same crowd that reveled in Christ’s entrance now demanded his most permanent exit. The voices that called for redemption now cried for crucifixion. The prophecies and unmet hopes necessitated an outlet, and indignation felt good and right in the face of a silent, bleeding, surrendering, disappointing Savior.

They were you and me. They knew how to yell, how to fight, how to rage. They knew how to battle. They spoke the language of political power and prestige. They awaited a lion’s roaring and so they could not accurately understand a lamb’s silence.

They screamed “save us”, and they wanted blood. They screamed “crucify him”, and they wanted blood.

They did not understand that the clearest picture of Heaven crashing into Earth was God-as-man before them, living the upside-down Kingdom come of last will be first and first will be last, of love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, of put your sword away and take up your cross.

They did not know that dying to love oppressors was glory in the highest.

[kylermartyn]

Jesus Christ, Light of the World You never did forget me And when I bled in darkness, You held me Still held me When desperate nights I cursed You You loved me, still loved me

“Daylight” by Brave Saint Saturn

[kylermartyn]

America! America! God mend thine every flaw! Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

[kylermartyn]

…the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor… I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God’s image in the other…I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

Shaine Claiborne

[kylermartyn]

…This gets to the definition of ‘sin’, which has been personalized and privatized by so many contemporary churches. Wright says, > The technical term for [failing to reflect God’s image in the world] is ‘sin’, whose primary meaning is not ‘breaking the rules’ but ‘missing the mark’, failing to hit the target of complete, genuine, glorious humanness. Once again, the gospel itself, the very message which announces that Jesus is Lord and calls us to obedience, contains the remedy: forgiveness, unearned and freely given, because of his cross. All we can say is ‘thank you’. Too often, in many of our churches, especially evangelical churches like the one I grew up in, repentance was more related to an acceptance of doctrine than to a change of behavior. Often only internal sins—mostly private and sexual sins—were involved. What was missed is how the biblical texts on repentance focus on both a personal and a public change in attitudes, actions, directions, and purpose.

Jim Wallace