Giving Up the Freeze

What Mrs. Gerdes was up to that day, no one can say. The second-floor hallway had four classrooms on the south, two on the north, with bathrooms and the stairwell in-between. The concrete floors got a fresh coat of paint every summer, and the newly commissioned consolidated fifth and sixth grades got the entire floor to themselves. I had been walking that hall since Kindergarten. Before the consolidation, the six classrooms had been—clockwise from the girls’ bathroom—art, kindergarten, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 1st grade. I’d seen the inside of everyone. But things were different now.

My hometown and the neighboring one had combined their resources, and the once K-12 schoolhouse was now modernized to hold 5th-8th. A Middle School. A sign of so many new things to come. 1990 was promised to be a good year.

The newly formed sixth grade combined to form a robust cohort of 33. Half (mine) in the far southwest classroom, half in the adjoining one next door. 1990 was not going as promised for everyone, there was tension in the ranks and Mrs. Gerdes was tired of it. Tired to her bones of having the mantle of combining a class of oils and waters. Tired of this shake-up of school districts that would offer no emulsion.

We sat in a circle after recess. Both sections combined, the acrid mix of early pubescent sweat scenting the air. Mrs. Gerdes had the build of a farm wife, broad-shouldered with muscular forearms that you could have imagined kneading decades of homemade dough. Her arms crossed, brows furrowed, she was not a woman to be trifled with.

“It seems some of you have some issues with the others. We want to give you the space to solve these issues and get your problems out. No one is going to get in trouble, we just want to talk.”

Mrs. Gerdes’ apparent grace conflated with her stern affect, but the words seemed to calm the defenses of at least some of the room. She continued toward what she perceived to be the real issue:

“Specifically, it seems that a group of you have an issue with Nick.”

I don’t recall being aware of this issue until just that moment.

“Chris*, perhaps you’d like to go first?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Chris faltered, “He’s just weird. I don’t know why anyone would be friends with him.”

“Oh, really? Why is that?” She scowled. “He talks like a girl. I don’t like his voice.” My pre-pubescent self remembers nodding and a sense of relief. I remember sitting in stunned silence, a lonely 12-year-old, now feeling quite justified in his loneliness. And from there, the real memories fade to black.

Armor Up

It had never occurred to me that there was something wrong with my voice. A circle of staring six graders—all of them waiting for me to cry, I would guess—was not the venue I wanted to discover such news. Hell, there really was no good venue for discovering such news. What made a seasoned educator decide a public humiliation of one student was the best way to excise the conflict of a whole group is beyond me. What I knew at that moment is that my place in that circle of 33 was going to be a fight, a move-by-move tactical offensive to find my place.

I moved out to the coat hooks in the hall and assembled the best suit of armor I could find. It wasn’t my first suit. I’d been trying on various options since my earliest days. It would take me a couple of decades before a well-managed steel of cynicism, self-seriousness, and the accolades of public success would produce a workable model. I was no Tony Stark.

There’s an unbound book of stories like this that I keep stored away in my memory. A resource library of reasons why others have a natural contribution to give, and why I will always need to be armoring up, making my case. Fighting my way into a conversation where I am not wanted or welcome.

Grace is for the Shaming

I’ve been writing about faith for twenty years. Trying to find a voice, and often—subconscious as it may be—gearing up for a fight. But as my fifth decade rises, maturity offers awareness that Chris or Mrs. Gerdes or the hundred others over the years I’ve waited to invite me to the conversation are never coming. The invitation may never come. Like you and everyone not named Beyonce, the world is not waiting for us, and no one will likely ask for our very best self. We will have to, all of our own, choose to show up.

This is more challenging today for people of faith than at any time in my lifetime. We live in a time where two camps are emerging: those who see their role as a prophetic deconstructor of what American faith has become and those who see their role as circling the wagons and protecting the past. In the middle, are the thousands of people like you and me who have been displaced by the hyper-individualism and commercialism that have taken over the mainstream church.

Today is not the day to rehash how we got here. Only to recognize that church has for many become much like a circle of sweaty sixth graders. Insecurity rampant, ill-fitting egos tried on like masks, a cross-armed diety waiting for us all to clean ourselves up. I’ve spent so many Sundays in church where grace for the shaming. Preachers who’d taken their lessons from Mrs. Gerdes.

I don’t know if we can be better. I don’t know if this is an unwinding or an awakening. I’m often as confused today in the face of how to live a life of faith as I was in that circle in the far southwest classroom. I froze at that moment. A freeze that was all-to-familiar to me, and one that became a foil to overcome for the next 30 years. I’ve justified my freeze with a cynicism that things cannot get better, and there’s something wrong with my voice, so I cannot contribute in any meaningful way.

Cynicism and Lent

I’ve been chewing on this for a few weeks and I’ve made a decision, I’m giving up cynicism for Lent. I’m giving up the freeze. With prayer and surrender and hope and panic and a dream that there’s a place for us, I’m going to believe that kindness, contribution, hope, inspiration, laughter, beauty, art, and generosity still will have a way in these convoluted days.

For the 40 days of Lent this year, I’ll be sending out a brief (I promise) reflection a few times a week focused on ways to awaken to Jesus in the spaces outside of institutional faith. Maybe you go to church, but you are looking for something more. Maybe you keep trying church but it always feels wrong. Maybe you fall into one of a dozen categories that aren’t welcome. There is a special kind of goodness for those of us in the endless in-between. There is a place where voices can make their God-endowed sound.

In faith,

Nick Richtsmeier
Thirtysixwords

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*Chris’s name is changed to protect the generally innocent. Mrs. Gerdes’ name is not. 😉