Dear Ruth, In the Midst of Appreciating My Friends and Also Feeling Lonely
That Week in 2014 When I Was Told I Had to Approve of God's Actions in Genesis Chapter 16 During Bible Camp
Preacher says (on 1 Samuel 1)
Poet says (on 1 Samuel 1)
Preacher says (on Genesis 18)
Poet says (on Genesis 18)
Dear Ruth, In the Midst of Appreciating My Friends and Also Feeling Lonely
Dear Girl's Girl, Dear Unashamed Lover of Women,
you make the impractical choice
to follow your affection
instead of securing a man’s.
You make a woman-shaped life.
The shape of the woman is you,
what and where and who you want.
The shape of the woman is her,
Naomi, the one who birthed
the man you loved and outlasted,
Naomi whose hug met you that night
when you knew he was gone forever.
If only I could get my friends
to agree – that we might shape
our lives around each other;
or if only I could come to agreement
with myself – shake the hold
of men, or one, capable
of inspiring my self-betrayal.
Did you know that hold and find
it loosed by death, or were
you always like this? Always
prioritizing against the grain?
I want your same fire, though produced
(please) by something other than loss.
That Week in 2014 When I Was Told I Had to Approve of God's Actions in Genesis Chapter 16 During Bible Camp
All the recently graduated seniors were on “Genesis track” – meant to find ourselves, through lengthy Bible studies, in the adventures of those who set out from home because God told them to; you know, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, the rest. Already I was tired of evangelicals. Their ways of reading. The questions they seemed to suppress, or allowed the voicing of but only if you eventually came back around to their prescribed point of view.
I couldn’t read Genesis the way that they wanted me to. Couldn’t see God’s side. Not with that request to sacrifice Isaac. Not how he was with Hagar. “Return to your mistress, and submit to her.” Return – to abuse, dysfunction, violence. Accept.
There was still power in the story, of course. God appearing to Hagar. Her naming God in return. But why didn’t God carve a way forward for her to thrive without abusers? Couldn’t he capitalize on her capacity to run, her guts and her gusto?
In Hagar I saw my friend, or ex-friend, and knew what God would’ve said – Keep running, keep running, I know you can. Wouldn’t God have affirmed Hagar? Isn’t God waiting to affirm?
On this, I would not come around. Having failed at impacting the Hagar in my own life, the least I could do was stay stubborn about this, to stay stubborn about the intentions of God. My theology, my hermeneutic, my way of being, all a witness to a story that I couldn’t reverse.
Hannah is the model: prayer that is open, fervent, true. By some standards impolite. Today, let her bless you – you and the brash prayer you have not yet uttered.
So pray like you might be called drunk for it.
Pray whatever opens you up, whatever ask, whatever admission, hefts heart from chest and places it on that divine altar where God might lay a metaphorical hand on it, fingers soft, rising with its beating.
She leans in – God – and whispers Yes, if not to your heart’s desire at least always to your heart.
Hannah prays hard only to give up
what her words and tears have earned.
There is no earning, God reminds,
just grace and my penchant for taking.
I am as aware as Hannah, though
God’s taking comes for me in different
forms: all the loves that never even
approached the chance to know if
I might know Hannah’s grief, my body’s
proclivities left, still, as questions.
Although I prayed with Hannah’s same
fervency, I have never made her promises.
Would not let go of him even for God.
But here’s the shit thing about love:
you can’t account for another’s promises,
the deals they’ve made with God or themselves.
Sometimes it’s like this: hanging out by the tent flap. Straining.
And someone other than you is seemingly having their Moment – their slow dance with God while you are with the masses lining the cafeteria wall, still years from approaching the touch of someone’s hands on your waist –
and you aren’t sure if your Moment of meeting will ever come.
If you are meant to live an outskirts kind of life.
If your soul is meant to be settled and still rather than ruffled or riled – rather than touched. But then the Moment turns into something undeniably yours, though also undeniably unlike what you’d desire it to be.
We can’t always choose when it is that the Presence Realer than Real will be felt, or found.
Or what it might say to us. How it might chide us into truth.
If Sarah was able to welcome that “No,” live her un-ideal but real Moment, she was just as hospitable as Abraham might ever claim to be.
None of us believe
all lies are equal.
How often do I chirp
out “I’m good!” before
actually thinking?
Sarah’s surely lied
more grandiose lies
than this one. To
Abraham, God, herself.
Or maybe I’m projecting.
Is my primary lie
that I’m OK? Or am I
lying when I let myself
think there’s any
other option besides
“All shall be well”?
And who is the victim,
really, of all the lies
forged by my omitted
feelings? I used to love
Pretty Little Liars, where
pretend so often came
back to bite. Another
question then: where’s
the line between lie
and pretend, disguise
and costume? Maybe
Sarah was simply
pretending. This is who
I’d be if unfailingly pious.
Or unfailingly gullible.
Unfailing. This is who I’d be,
if God chose me to disclose
his best kept, close-to-chest
miracles to, ones not yet
unfurled in my body. And God
refused to play with her.
The role of doubter too good
to be forsaken. Think,
God told her, think of
all the generations to come.
Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Western Massachusetts. She is the author of two chapbooks, Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel Micro-Press) and Woman as Communion (Game Over Books), and a forthcoming full-length collection Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems. Connect with her more at meganmcdermottpoet.com or on Twitter @megmcdermott92.
