Recovery
On the early writings of my faith deconstruction, and how I found my own voice in metaphor
Looks like y’all won’t be getting a summary about what’s emerging for me in seminary til the end of the semester…so back to poems and commentary (though next week will be different—sharing my favorite Christmas music!!)
This is the only poem I am sharing from my first year of college. A lot of the rest of them are still written from a very evangelical lens, even when some demonstrate really good craft—there’s this pantoum I wrote called “The Love of the Father” which is perfectly in form but uh, also includes sooo much male language for God. And there’s an elegy I wrote about Jesus called Elegy for a Risen King that has beautiful language and rhyme but it exudes penal substitutionary atonement theology. I wrote several poems about faith that arose from the early stages of my faith crisis: “Jesus Wasn’t White” (maybe I’ll post that, with the caveat that I think some things I say in it are problematic despite my antiracist intentions), “Love’s Definition,” “The Cage” (where I imply that depression is a lie that satan puts in the hearts of believers???? That “Satan controls this world and that he controlled us??? Gross), “Wedding Vows” (where I explore my complicated feelings about the divisions and diversity in the Body/Bride of Christ). I also wrote a lot of poems about depression, including “I Forgot” where I tried to explore the particular feeling of being in denial about relapse and how relapse was like remembering something I had long forgotten. And I wrote “Me,” where I talked about how I perceived myself versus how God might perceive me as something more beautiful.
I think all of this writing and thinking culminated at the end of my first year in the following poem, “Recovery.” The prompt was to write a definition poem, so I chose that word to define, exploring through figurative language all that I had gone through in the past year. Except for once I wasn’t just clinging to evangelical language and frameworks, I found my own; I don’t even mention God in this poem, but I think God is definitely there. Also: I think the way I use the word “blind” in this poem is ableist because it is right beside the words “you step through darkness” also connected to the language about stumbling earlier, and that probably is not how a blind person would describe their everyday reality.
Recovery: (n) 1. A return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength. Stepping, stepping, one foot forward one step back. You realize that, even if things aren’t perfect now, they are going to be ok. Some days are hard and everything hits you at once; the darkness multiplies upon itself. But you take another step because that’s what leads to light outside this closed tunnel. No light that you can yet see; but there is a door. When you reach the end, having taken your steps, you will pound on your door, scream out your frozen breath and step into freedom. In this tunnel you sometimes s t u m b l e , but always get back up. And why do you get back up? Because you know life is more than this. You paint on your rugged feet and walk, creating a painting. Blood you bleed in beating the ground becomes living ink, red that tells a story. Don’t be afraid to look back at that path. You made that. It shows how far you’ve come. 2. A process of regaining something lost. Body bruised, skin scarred, some of your soul ripped out, some of your mind. You step through darkness, blind but reaching out, hands open, palms blooming like pink peonies procuring their portion of hope, life. You touch the tunnel’s dry, dark earth and step, manage to pull out your defiant diamonds, old opals, quiet quartz, and graceful garnet. You brush dust from your arms, jamming gems into your sorrowed skin, renewing your body to what it is meant to be. 3. Having the hope to keep on stepping. You open the door, crimson-stained, unashamed, you have escaped your cage. Your body is paint and uncut stones. You are a mess, you are beautiful, you are free.
I formatted it like this to visually match the metaphor of step-by-step, space by space, going forward across the page. Did I go overboard on the alliteration? Maybe, but I was a first-year creative writing student, so what else would you expect?
I see depression as a tunnel. I know “tunnel vision” is a common phrase but it’s not just about the narrow view but the darkness and this long scary walk in the unknown with no end in sight. And I see the process of recovery from depression as being made whole, and I express that in the poem by being made into a work of fine art. You also get a hint of the nature metaphors that would become prominent in my work going forward—pink peony, palms blooming. And you get “living ink” which was in nearly half of the poems I wrote that year, a concept that came from the idea of taking my “blood”/hardships in my life and using them to create art, to write words that “speak love and hope, that do something.” Lots of blood imagery because you know, Jesus and sacrifice, still a little evangelical theology in there. But the closest language I get to actually talking about God is “meant to be.”
I also think it’s so interesting that this poem is so rooted in the body. I see in this poem the recovery of my own voice and recovery of my relationship with my body, seeing her as beautiful inside and out. In this poem, I hold the tension of the beautiful mess of my emotional landscape, and I show how I am seeking out healing. I love all the gems and paint and color and sense of transformation.
In the fall of sophomore year I would get feedback from a student in one of my classes that if I wanted to write about faith to a wider audience, I needed to break out of using evangelical churchy language. I remember feeling like that suggestion was so challenging, but I was already doing it here. I was finding metaphors that resonated with me, or unearthing Bible metaphors ignored by evangelical churches.
I’m kind of still in a food coma right now (had a Friendsgiving today), so I don’t think I have any other thoughts to share. I think although part of me cringes at all the poetry I wrote in my first year of college, I have to remember the good parts too, and see the threads of future writings that were already emerging. That poem is part of how I got to my work-in-progress memoir and how I got to seminary (a step, if you will). I’m grateful that I, to quote Hamilton, “wrote my way out” of religious fundamentalism and wrote my way through my emotional turmoil and I found my voice. I wrote my way into a new way of meaning-making and being a Christian.
Do you cringe at the writings (or other creative endeavors) of your younger self? How might you have compassion for your younger self (especially if she was going through a faith deconstruction!)? How have your creative endeavors shaped your faith journey?
Seminary life update: I got an A- on that paper I stressed over!! Now to face the projects of the last three weeks. I’ve decided I’m doing my presentation for Service and Sustainability on Pauli Murray, since there is a lot of information about her/him/them (there is discourse about what pronouns to use) online/on the library database, and of course I’m also just fascinated by Pauli’s life of activism and Episcopal priesthood. I had a good week off of classes getting to mostly relax but I probably should have done more reading….
Recovery
Congrats on the paper! And I think your poem is great.
Oh yes, I have plenty of cringy writing. In my computer, in the boxes of journals under my bed. I like to think of it as a mark on my timeline. Doesn’t mean it will ever see the light of day, though!