Unexpected church music and Ann Lamott

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone’s advantage.

My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.

Sometimes I could put the chain on a table, and work it gently, letting the slink work itself out of the knot, but other times I had to use a needle to loosen the worst of it, poking at it lightly with the needle so I wouldn’t break any of the links.

Yesterday, though, I put the chain back in the drawer and went inside to read the paper. This was a big mistake. Our pastor has been trying lately to convince us to act more like Martin Luther King, but I have to say, some days go better than others. I not only hate what the White House does — I hate almost everyone I’ve ever heard of in the White House; except for Laura, and the dogs. Or at any rate, I like the springer spaniel, Spot Bush.

I’ve known for years that resentments don’t hurt the person we resent, but they do hurt us. In some cases, they kill us. You die of hatred for your ex, your parents, for people who have ripped you off, for your leaders. I’ve been asking myself, am I willing to try to give up a tiny bit of this hatred?

Yeah; finally; theoretically. And that’s a start. I used to tell my writing students to start their work anywhere they could, and then to let themselves do it poorly. This is the secret to life, and good writing. I was surprised by how reasonable this sounded. I wondered if I could try to love Bush, like Jesus or Dr. King would, without having to want to sleep with him, or have him for lunch, or a second term. I am sure that Jesus would not make me have lunch with him. Jesus ate with sinners. (Of course, they ended up killing him; so there’s that.) He’d eat with Bush, even if he knew that Bush would probably call the police or Ashcroft on him later for his radical positions. He’d do it, because He is available to everyone. His love and mercy fall equally upon the just and the unjust, upon the quick and the dead.

This is so deeply not me. How could I ever get anywhere near this, and with what? My mind? Yeah, right.

…

 So I sat there in church working this through in my mind, tugging at it, yet hunkered down on the inside to protect myself from having to take it in, and then the pastor said the most stunning thing I’ve ever heard her say: “When someone is acting butt-ugly, God loves them just the same as God loves the innocent. They are still just as loved by God.” I was shocked. I thought, Boy, are you going to get it when Mom finds out. Also, I thought she was talking about the White House, but then she kept on preaching, about Jesus, and Dr. King, and — if you read between the lines — the people in my church. All of us — and there are some exquisitely good people in this church. It was outrageous. She said you don’t have to support people’s political agenda, but you did have to love them, if you want to follow Jesus. She said you could tell if people were following Jesus, instead of following the people who follow Jesus, because they are feeding the poor, sharing their wealth, and making sure everyone has medical insurance. Then I zoned out.

I saw Bush’s face in my head, marching on the aircraft carrier with his little squinched up Yertle the Turtle mouth, like a 5-year-old whose dad owns the ship. But then I saw the photo ops where he’s signing papers, and I stopped there. I didn’t think about his legislation and tax cuts — I just experimented with the idea that Bush is just as loved as the good people in my church, just as loved as my 8-month-old niece, Clara. I stuck with it. And there was the tiniest of all possible spaces in my knot, the lightest breath between stuck links. I saw the face of a boy I used to know, superimposed on Bush’s face, a boy named John who liked the smartest girl in first grade. When she wrote at her desk, she squinched up her face fiercely, intently, and Johnny thought that expression was what helped her be so smart. So he did that, too, for years.

For a few moments, I could imagine Bush in first grade, doing this. Then I imagined him as one of the people in my own family, who failed at school or in life, who got lost or bitchy or drunk, all that innate beauty that had gotten so fucked up. Like mine did.

…

 I have to admit, though, that Day 2 has been a bit of a disappointment.

It began well enough, and ended in beauty: a molten autumn sunrise, a silver moon. But the hours in between did not go nearly as well as I had been hoping. They went quite poorly, actually. I thought at one point I’d isolated the problem, however, the facts kept getting in the way. I was very loving, until I read the morning paper. I realized Veronica would not buy this. But Veronica says God honors the struggle. God is in the struggle with us. I sure hope this is true, or I am doomed. It also occurred to me, on the second day, that loving Bush would be the single most subversive position we could take. Bush and his people love to hear our hatred, because it so weakens us. It’s their only hope.

I got the chain out of the drawer, and gave it another try but I didn’t have any patience for it. It crossed my mind to take a hammer to the miserable gold chain and bust it up into tiny pieces; maybe it was a waste of time even to try to restore it. Still, I am going to try to not hate so much, just for today. And of course, I am also going to continue registering voters, sending money to the ACLU, and a few of the Democratic candidates. I have to believe that if I do this, it will cause change — that there will be more give, and give means there is more light between the links. You never know exactly where the knot is going to release, but usually, if you keep working with it, it will.