The Lost Dispensation

dis-pən-'sā-shən
1 a : a general state or ordering of things; specifically : a system of revealed commands and promises regulating human affairs b : a particular arrangement or provision especially of providence or nature (from Merriam-Webster)

I was a freshman and in Bible college and something happened that we didn’t have a name for, but it was there nonetheless. It was glorious. Everything collapsed. Just that, like a mountain avalanche. Better, like the woodblock game people play where the whole stack crashes across the table and the floor when an important piece is removed and everyone gasps! But it doesn’t so much matter because then it starts again. Like that.

We had classes and schedules and lived in the dorms on our downtown Chicago campus. Christian doctrine went out the door when we walked in because we did not need doctrine. We saw God. We weren’t the same as we used to be, certainly not like the way we were in vacation Bible school. Not like Sunday morning service or even Wednesday night youth group. We had new leaders: student group presidents and resident assistants, peers who were regarded as saints. We couldn’t talk to them, at least not in the same way as we may have before. We couldn’t even talk to the seniors, or date them. We were to be devoted and we were to study and worship God. They read their Bibles and prayed all the time. There were conferences and chapel sessions and there were worship hours. Oh, there was worship in Bible school!

We wanted to know how it worked. We wanted to know it was real, and we thought that was the purpose of school. Only at Bible college, school wasn’t school; everything was backward. If you had a question, there was evidence of doubt. The economy of this Christianity was to capitalize on faith, not doubt. There wasn’t really a place for it at all. We didn’t ask and we figured most things would be that way, unquestionable, swallow it down. We never said anything about anything. We weren’t unbelievers.

Joey and I solved Bible college in a year. We’d leave campus, hop a train or bus, head to smoke-filled coffee shops in disreputable parts of town, the places no first year Bible student should go. So we went. It was our hermitage where we acted freely of the restrictions of others’ perceptions. The people around us could be anyone. So could we. We became saturated with the cigarette smoke of sinners, were glutted with the foul language of carnal men, and filled our heads with an abundance of thoughts expressed in brazen conversation. We carved our initials in the bathroom walls.

We used dirty words and spoke forthright about Christian taboos. We stirred every doubt, laughed at blasphemous jokes, ragged on our professors and plotted to infuriate the Dean. It felt good and we couldn’t explain why. It just felt good and for the first time in our lives there was no one to tell us we couldn’t. So we did.

When I had been a child we moved away, my family and I. We moved away a lot after the first time, too. We went to the mission field, see. It was disjointed and foreign then at first, especially for my parents, because everything new is like that until you get used to it. My brothers and I got used to it pretty fast. I was three when we moved out there. We lived everywhere else, too, until I left for Bible college. But Christianity was in every place. It was everywhere I grew up: in my living room, in my bed, in my home school textbooks. And the world was never mine, for it was blemished with iniquity, stretching across the ever-shrinking globe from my family’s perch on the Pacific Rim in Japan.

Joey had moved around quite a bit, too. He had found that Christianity was useful for an unpopular kid. At church he could acquire social status and friends. His mom was a children’s pastor, devoted to Christian missions. Though his dad was a tough case, and had left the family for several years before Joey came to Bible college, Christian heritage was deeply rooted in him. Joey and I each had so many models for a good, Christian life. But we got the talk instead. Oh, Christians can talk!

One Thursday after chapel Joey and I skipped class as we often did to smoke cloves and complain about roommates and the chapel speaker’s failure to provide scriptural support for his exposition. That day we found, in our usual spot in the alleyway between the high-rises, a quarter of marijuana. We knew about it. When knew it could be dangerous. Possession of it was illegal. We got really excited. We knew it was just great.

We knew we had to decide what to do with it. And we knew, because of a lot of things, that we couldn’t just share our little happiness with just anybody. This discovery, this best thing, would probably incite a witch trial. That’s how it works with Bible students, like with any questionable thing we had ever said or done. They would tell us, “Get a Biblical life!” Simple.

So we came up with an answer. We dug a hole in the soft, grey soil next to our slab of alley cement and buried it. We marked it by carving a cross with Joey’s car key on the wall by where we hid it. But when we went back a few days later and looked to see if we could find it again, we couldn’t. We pillaged the soil along the whole alleyway, scavenged for the cross, but we couldn’t find it. We tried.

Joey and I talked about the pot or whatever it was when we couldn’t find it. We used good, clean words. What we were saying was how much the bag was like our coffee shop revelries and our smoke breaks between classes. We didn’t tell anybody about those things, and we didn’t understand what that might mean about us. We had never given a thought to what we could call how we felt about it. We didn’t give it a name or label it in any way. It just felt good. It was perfect in the way it was our coffee shop or our alleyway. It was our quarter of marijuana. But once we buried it, it was gone forever.

The bag was gone, like our feelings that caused us to flee campus to hide, like the first time we bought cloves in Belmont; it was gone like everything else that had been taken away even though we tried to salvage this one thing. It was not the first time we had learned this. Christianity seemed to keep pushing us around one way or the other, teaching us the same thing wherever we ended up. It’s tough that way, always teaching us stuff.

Then every other week or so Joey and I would find ourselves sickened with secrets. We never could predict when the feeling would come. So sometimes we had fun and sometimes we didn’t. We found a thousand ways to explain our depression. Homework was difficult, roommates didn’t understand us, no one prayed for us, ministry was lonely, worship was empty. We came back to the dorms smelling like smoke. We lied.

We stopped going to the alley after the bag. I smoked at the bus stop a block from school. I smoked on the rooftop of the dorm with Val in the middle of the night. We watched Donnie Darko in her dorm room. I went to the movie theater and I made out with a senior. I had sex. We all started having sex that summer. We decided to leave Bible college. It was an adventure to find an apartment near Belmont. We could take the bus to Milwaukee Avenue. We still had our friends. We had studied about ministry and we had grown up in the church. We weren’t dumb. The Dean or some senior may have argued with us, insisting that we stay or change or not leave. We rolled our eyes at each other about that.

We had no more patience for that stuff. We took our Bibles with us and moved all of our things. We said our brief goodbye and left.

We got to live it up. We worked jobs and made new friends. We still went to church sometimes. We tried to tell our story, but we still weren’t sure what to say about it. People said they understood or that they cared. Who knows what they meant. Our life became what we thought it would be. Perfect. It was freedom. Freedom was full, unlike anything else in the world. It wasn’t heavy or anything like that because we had known heaviness and this wasn’t it. This was perfect, lots of things to experience. We went to everything laughing, laughing, laughing together.

We learned about art. We made art. Life was beautiful. We were throwing a party, celebrating something we called freedom in Christ and forgiveness. We raised our bottles and cheered. Aha! We had found them out! This was right. At last it was right.

There was a scream and some commotion sounded from the master bathroom. I went running. I had heard about this but I’d never seen anything like it. One of the girls was on the floor passed out, bleeding from her wrists. Joey sat between her and the tub mumbling. Was it being taken away from us again? Freedom. Gone. Happiness. We grew up a little bit and couldn’t go back. We learned. No one had ever told us about responsibility like this. They had told us about freedom, about happiness. And it went away. We got smacked with growing up instead.

Then we smoked pot in the apartment, counseled each other and our friends when we were depressed. We learned about great music and supported local artists. We worked at coffee shops, rode bicycles, told our therapists about our vivid dreams. We had known something of freedom, but when we buried that first bag we knew what would really happen. The truth is, we didn’t look so hard for it. We didn’t look so hard for that cross. We were Bible students and we weren’t stupid. Things get taken away.

Joey and I parted ways after the lease was up. We kept in touch. We have tried to have fun as best we can.

We buried faith because it was hard, sure as any foundation, but same as the stones thrown to bruise us. We buried hope because it was whole, because it didn’t belong to us and so that it wouldn’t get taken away. Like children we buried it, marked it with a cross. We buried love because it was perfect. We didn’t tell anyone, but together it was all we talked about, until we forgot. It was the dispensation.

How Sharon Got Her Shuffle

Sharon shuffles and Sharon can shake it.

When I first met Colorado native, Kansas resident Sharon Rose Gray in October 2007, Sharon needed knee replacements. She worked 4 days a week as the evening cook for Pleasant View Home in Inman, KS where I had just been employed to be the evening cook’s souse chef of sorts. After years as a farmer’s wife in Colorado and Kansas and some time working as a teacher’s aide in Hutchinson, KS and at the egg factory in Buhler, KS. Sharon had come to the nursing home where her husband, Al Gray, was receiving care. Even after Al was moved to a smaller facility in McPherson, KS, Sharon continued to work as a member of the Dietary staff at PVH. Sharon was recovering from surgery during the winter months of 2007 and 2008 that I passed working overtime hours.

There is a long-standing joke with the evening kitchen crew at PVH that one of the young men who works as an evening dishwasher is Sharon’s boyfriend. Like many young dishwashers who occasionally forget important tasks, Justin might have missed filling some water glasses before supper or he may have poked holes in the cookies so they would fit in the smaller tulip bowls, but Sharon could not be bothered by these few mistakes. Instead, Justin was given the role of the firstborn son, admired and appreciated, and not without due cause.

Sharon, Justin and I all have late winter birthdays, and so it was that in March 2008 as we were celebrating that Sharon returned to PVH after her recovery. There were many evenings that month where the three of us worked together, finishing early most days, and passed the last fifteen minutes of our shift talking. This was when I got to hear some of the stories that revealed how Sharon got her shuffle.

Al Gray was not only a farmer, but also a commercial interior decorator. Sharon’s bathroom at their home in Colorado Springs where all five of their children were born was drab until Al knocked out some ceiling for a sky-light and hung a fern to catch the sun’s rays. The border he used was velvet, cut-outs of carriages, gentlemen and ladies with parasols. Sharon’s fireplace was set in a wall of moss-covered volcanic rock, which she watered to keep green, that stood between the living and dining rooms. The other walls were painted green and her curtains were banana yellow. They moved when Al was commissioned to redecorate the dining area of the hospital in Garden City, KS.

After a few moves in Kansas for Al’s work, the Gray family settled on a farm six miles east of Buhler. They came with two U-Hauls, one packed with their belongings and the other set up like Noah’s Ark: goats, cows, chickens and cats carefully transported across state to their new home.

All five kids grew up and moved out; grandchildren popped into the family; precious farm animals and pets came and went with the years. Sharon and Al grew older together, knees and joints weakening, smiles wrinkling the corners of their eyes deeper, their work on the farm more limited.

Organ failure is a daunting medical concern. When Al experienced trouble with his liver and pancreas after he and Sharon had moved into town, giving up the farm, the cause remained hidden for quite some time. Al began to have mysterious attacks. While under observation at the Kansas University Medical Center, doctors labored to discover the underlying threat. Finally a rare condition, perhaps caused by the initial failure of Al’s pancreas, was revealed as the source of Al’s attacks.

Sharon continued to work and was quickly transformed into Al’s full-time caretaker. The Grays moved into a more accessible home, a duplex on the west side of Buhler, where Al could function in a wheelchair. Eventually Sharon decided to seek care for Al outside of her home so that she could work.

After Sharon recovered from her knee-replacement surgeries and returned to the kitchen in Inman, there were plenty of difficult afternoons. The aches and pains do not fade out completely. Rehabilitation is a time-consuming process, time that is not usually able to be spared. But that did not stop Sharon from shaking it.

Sharon and I would get a tune in our brains and go with it, releasing all of our pent-up energy in nonsensical lyrics and silly, offbeat grooves. The chicken pot pie always came out better on the nights we let loose. Some evenings Sharon would go to visit Al in McPherson after finishing work. Nearly every day she had off she was there, too.

Sharon told me Al was having eye surgery one Monday in August to see about removing some cataracts. Most of Al’s motor-functioning had shut down, and he had been without vision for two years. When the surgery was successful and Al was able to see Sharon for the first time in two years, one of his first requests was for a dance.

That week Al was able to see his grandchildren he had never seen because he had lost his sight before they had been born. One of the greatest delights was to see his only son with his new wife, whom he had married the year before when he had no vision.

Sharon shuffles, but Sharon can really shake it. I am sure Al would agree.

Sharon continues to live in Buhler, next door to one of her daughters and three of her grandchildren, and work in Inman, preparing the evening meal for 125 rest home residents at least four nights a week. Her beloved Al passed away in the fall of 2008. Sharon now travels to Hutchinson to line dance on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Elmdale Recreation Center.

Dust

For me,
It happened after the soft bud
Dried and cracked.
There was disorientation first
And an aching for real hunger.
All I knew was spring
With its promise, fame and renown.
All I knew was tastes.

I saw a face.
Its eyes were rapt like mirrors,
Its lips wet and thin.
There were thoughts of bread
So I ate them.
There were pictures of wholeness there.
I copied them, wrote on them,
Painted them over with hopes.

It was my father's voice in the thoughts,
My mother's image in the pictures.
I had never seen nor heard
Until that face came into me.


For me,
It was like a dry flower that breaks.
The face was a lie for the sake of truth,
The lie you have to thank
When you learn it saves you,
When you learn it makes you.
It is the lie that you are beautiful when you are not,
Which is forgiveness.

The face becomes a god,
Letting it show:
The flower is dead.
It was always dead.
This is important to remember.
When you forget,
It takes everything from you.

We want to celebrate what we have known,
But what we have known is slavery.


For me,
It has to be told again and again.
I might say I am not,
But I am beautiful.
The bud is crushed,
But cannot be restored by slavery.

In freedom
One begins to hear the lies
Which are everywhere.
I have been pulling my brain
Out my ears.
There is bleeding.
There is agony.

If this dry, perfect dust can be valued,
Then existence has done it
With flowers,
With skin.

For me
There is one day that matters,
One face and one voice.
I am the mirror
To tell you the lie
That can save you.

Reset

Then I am up from the pillows,
Draping the bed with
The steam off my skin.
It irrigates the dust
Circling above the sheets
I threw from my nakedness;
My smooth, taut skin,
Now smeared with dark sweat,
Is emaciated by tiny blades
And rough breath.

Here comes the burrowing mole
Sinking his wet nose
Through my memory of secret slavery.

My right hand with purpose again,
Dreaming of his violence.
I am always wanting
His fulcrum
For the breaking of my body.

This is how ankles cry.
This is how a chest floods.

Enchiladas & Inclinations

Slivered onions cook in smoking olive oil just before I shake in some minced garlic, just enough for a pleasing aroma. I have chosen to use the 10-inch skillet, but I am just realizing it may be too small once I add my other ingredients. Still, it pleases me to use my cherry red cookware, a wedding gift from my new mother-in-law.

The recipe for "Quick Turkey Enchiladas" was hand-picked by my husband David to be the first meal I cook as a newlywed. It will be the first of 15 that I will cook before the end of summer, September 22, at 16:18 CDT. We were married on June 18, but I haven't started cooking meals in the kitchen until tonight, July 30.

Already I am substituting, a trademark I have been destined to establish since childhood. I cook intuitively and without urgency. For these enchiladas, I use diced chicken instead of ground turkey and green chilies instead of jalapenos. I add fresh diced tomatoes.

From my experience in the food service industry, I am acquainted with food-handling procedure. I clean my raw chicken in the sink before dicing it on my cutting board for raw meat only. Immediately I wash the cutting board and knife after transferring the chicken to the skillet.

My chef's knife is my favored asset, an extension of my self. I delight in mincing, chopping and the like. I take the handle in my right hand, my index finger pointed, resting against the blunt edge. The tips of the fingers of my left hand press against that same edge, close to the tip of the knife. With a rocking motion I move the knife across a pile of fresh cilantro, releasing the pristine scent to mix with the aroma of onion and garlic, soon to complement the redolence of enchilada sauce and grilled chicken.

The filling for the tortillas I have warmed in the microwave is complete once I have stirred in shredded Monterey Jack cheese. I wrap 1/2 cup of filling in each of ten 8-inch tortillas and place them seam-side down in my greased 9- by 13-inch glass dish. Once they are topped with enchilada sauce and more cheese, I cover the dish with foil and place them in our oven, heated to 400 degrees. Only fifteen minutes later we are ready to eat.

David has set the table and it is near 6 o’clock. The enchiladas are unveiled and we struggle to get them out of the cooking dish with a ladle. I am not sure why David chose the ladle. A piece of diced chicken falls from one of the enchiladas, a dollop of steaming tomato and gooey cheese on the brown table cloth. David picks it up and pops it in his mouth, and his eyes turn thoughtful and contemplative as he chews slowly with his mouth open, letting the food cool off.

We cut into our meal with our forks. We manage several big bites before we look at each other. The enchilada sauce, medium, is a tad spicy for both of us.

“We’ll get the mild sauce next time,” David suggests. This is good news for me. He wants there to be a next time.

“Maybe the chicken should be shredded instead of diced,” he continues.

“Oh yes. I think so, too,” I reply as I start thinking of how to cook the chicken so I can shred it. I have never eaten enchiladas before, or maybe I have. I cannot remember. I realize I should ask my friend Amy about the quality of what I have made. Amy introduced me to carnitas at a local Mexican restaurant. She had spoken fluent Spanish with the waiters. I considered her fluency in the language and her dating history with Latino men to indicate a palate tuned to the excellence of their cuisine as well. Excited, I call her,

“Amy! I made enchiladas! Have you eaten? I should have thought to invite you sooner, with your expertise.”

“Well, no, I haven’t eaten. I was just thinking about stopping somewhere and getting something. I’ll just come over there, then.” Amy is coming. I set out a plate for her and grab her a cold one when she arrives not 10 minutes later. After grinning wildly and announcing she is about to buy a house, she helps herself and begins to eat. I pepper her for a reaction.

“What do you think? It might be too spicy. Should the chicken be shredded instead of diced? I have never made anything like this before. I don’t even remember ever eating enchiladas before.”

“Well,” Amy is chewing smaller morsels while she speaks. I notice with pride that David has taken seconds. “The truth is I don’t really eat enchiladas. This is pretty spicy, but it’s not too much.”

We finish eating and David helps me carry the dishes into the kitchen, rinsing everything well at my insistence. Of the 10 enchiladas only 2 are left and David claims them for tomorrow’s lunch. After we talk with Amy about her dream house for a while she goes home and I press David,

“So, grade me. What do you think? Did I make an A? A-?”

“Well,” he emphasizes the end of the word. “You can have a B+. I want to give you room to grow.” I am a little disappointed by this. Yet I had asked, had I not? “You know,” he continues, “I don’t like grading you for it. Why can’t we just enjoy it?”

“You’re right,” I smile. My heart exalts in this accomplishment. This is my first kitchen shared with David. It’s on the northwest corner of a rickety two bedroom house on 2nd Avenue, across from the train tracks. The world shakes when trains go by and the kitchen hums and whirs when we run the washer and dryer in the backroom. The kitchen appliances are propped level with folded cardboard pieces because the linoleum floor is at an incline. My cupboards do not stay closed and there is limited counter space. Cooking is certainly a task in which I find I am in my element. Eating, even more so, though our dining room is at a slight incline, too.

Flew In With The Boxcars

I come on
Like a train chasing the sunset’s
Pink and orange scream,
Shadows dancing around me.
I come on
Across the prairies to Kansas,
Past the sick and fat cows
And the flooded plains.
I come on
To where trees
Have been broken
By straight-jackets of ice.

I fly in with the boxcars,
A trail of ash and smoke
Across the middle states,
America like a funeral pyre.
I am reborn with
Wind through the wheat,
From the land.
Remnants of tracks
Become highways
That crack through the seasons.
Roads of gravel
Are washed away and renewed.
North of town
There is a place
Where Earth’s arch splits your mind
Beholding so much edgeless sky,
Up to your chin in gravity.
Nature earns its karma,
With cyclones, wind and warmth
With savage, electric nails
Ravaging trees, homes,
Graveyards.

My babies are torn from me,
Leaving me to
Scrub crayon markings from
Still standing walls,
Washing ten months of dirty dishes.

My love is an arrow
Shaped, strung and shot
With its point
Already embedded in its target.
I struggle in linear time
As I have no faith in it.
This is the only love I have.
I try to explain it.

I keep flying into love
Which illuminates you and consumes me.

I take lives with my love like this-
With stones,
With photographs misplaced,
With electronic messages
I have by now deleted.

I have learned that
With rare exception
The brave have no one to love
But those who are afraid.