Comments on: Killing a fourteen-year-old

By: fun jesus trivia

fun jesus trivia — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:07:20 +0000

fun jesus trivia…

Sounds interesting but not for every one….

By: chutney

chutney — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:21:59 +0000

Things have taken a serious turn for the better recently. :-D

By: h sofia

h sofia — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:55:18 +0000

Don’t know if I was reading your blog back when you posted this, but came across it in the UUpdates Blog Awards. It is very difficult to change direction – and then it can feel as though your life depended on it. Hope the months since you wrote this have been good to you!

By: mandy

mandy — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 05:33:13 +0000

Wow Chance,
Rachel put a link to this entry on her blog and I can see why – this is really powerful. I know we’re really only aquaintances from OCU, but I’ve always had a lot of respect for you and have a little more after this piece. As someone who is not getting ordained in the church, I constantly question why I’m in seminary and what I think I’m being called to do. I think we all continue to make the best decisions we know how, regardless of how old we are. Sometimes those decisions lead to happy places and sometimes they don’t – but it’s not about good or bad, just the journey of life and faith. You’ve made a big decision here and it takes courage to acknowledge that you haven’t been in a happy place and have some power to change that. Good luck with the rest of the journey.

By: Annette

Annette — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:16:21 +0000

Wow!!! I got directed to this blog from a friend’s blog. How articulate and real. Having been a pastor’s kid–and being a pastor’s wife–I can relate. How often we think we know what the calling is–we define the calling, and, oh, how we really mess it up. I’ve really reached a point to believe that calls to ministry are not necessarily anything to do with the church—but about living our lives to impact others–working secular jobs–going to secular places–being normal–to make a bigger impact on our community–our world. I applaud you for being grounded enough/grown enough to step into the real world–and impact it from a real place. Congrats and best wishes.

By: fouralarmfire

fouralarmfire — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 02:44:01 +0000

that’s the point of a first draft, chutney. you figure out what you meant to write all along, but your brain couldn’t sort it all out ahead of time.

and, i might add, that you have all the good skills that a liberal arts major needs: critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, writing.

the web stuff is icing on the cake.

i hope against hope that you don’t lose all of the fourteen-year-old. not because he got your “calling” right, but because our adolescent selves harness passion and justice and righteousness in a way no adult can muster on his own. you’ve got it. flaunt it, baby. ;)

xox,
r

By: chutney

chutney — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:17:25 +0000

Thank you to everyone for your gracious comments. I’m overwhelmed.

It occurs to me that the piece reads as though I knew why I quit my job all along. Heh. Far from it. If I had not quit, I would never had outed that fourteen-year-old pulling my levers from behind the curtain.

And, Cindy, you are right about being gentle to the fourteen-year-old. It is his influence and insistence, his vetoes and demands that I wish to kill. He’s had a rough go of it himself, trying to direct an adult’s life. You echo what my therapist tells me: I’ve made the best mistakes I could have made at the time, certainly the best mistakes that fourteen-year-old could have made.

By: happycindy

happycindy — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:04:28 +0000

Hey Chutney,

this makes me simultaneously glad and sad. i applaud you for figuring out what was right for you, and taking steps toward what’s right and away from what was wrong. It took me so long to leave conservative/fundamentalist christianity — I was never a full blooded preacher, just the super-prosyltizing summer missionary — and it was a painful journey. Trying on different understandings of bible scholarship and theology and trinity and deciding what was right for me and what church and seminary or not and then ministry or not … ugh. …. i’m glad you’re coming full circle out of that journey.

it was also sad to read this. I found myself wanting to stay your hand – to ask you to spare that fourteen year old self. I fear you’re trying him as an adult. when really, he was making the best decisions that made the most sense that he could.

i invite him to hang out with my 16 year old self who preached up and down Grand Manan Island, NB, CA, telling people they were going to hell w/o jesus because they said curse words or had an occasional glass of wine, or attended the Baptist church instead of the Wesleyan one. She was a judgemental biatch who had herself testifying tourettes. But her preaching and committment kept her from hating and hurting herself when her life sucked.

i can’t kill her, because who she was was passionate, committed, and caring. she was also wrong about the content of what she preached, believed, and committed her life to, but how many 16 year olds aren’t wrong about that sort of thing?
So i keep her around, along with my 12 year old self who believed fiercely that if Jesus was her only friend then she’d be Jesus’ best friend even if it meant getting kicked out of school for putting Jesus stickers all over the Jr. High lockers and Re-elect Richard Nixon bumper stickers on the cars in the teacher’s parking lot;
and the 18 year old self who thought that she wasn’t lesbian, she just loved Carolyn. It wasn’t like being a lesbian, which, to my eternal shame, she accused others of.

I have spent tremendous time and energy being furious at the people who prodded me to go in that direction, the people who told me that God’s Call in my life was evident, those who prodded me to step out of church into the secular world to change and shape it in ways they couldn’t or wouldn’t. But I’ve had to re-embrace my old selves, and i think I’m better for it.

One of my favorite people is a woman named Edie. She has severe mental retardation, and doesn’t have the words to say what hurts when she’s sick or injured. All she can do to try to stop the pain is to hit herself, over and over, at the location of the injury. It was when spending time with her over the course of several years, and saying over and over, “be gentle to your body, it’s a good body” and watching her start to learn that she could pat her injury and say “gentle hurts” that i started realizing that I needed to be gentle to my own body — to the people/selves I have been in my life, because all of those people were being the best people they could under the circumstances.

Maybe i’m overreacting to the idea of your killing your 14 year old self. Maybe it’s because i think my teenager might have had a crush on your teenager.
But please, be gentle to him. He’s a good boy. Maybe he can come over to my house some time and we’ll play bible trivia and see who is really the champion.

By: duane

duane — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:00:43 +0000

this is one of the best blog posts I have read in a long time. Chance, I am right there with you… I just need to make the next move. I need to take myself to counseling, and get back on track; I am tired of coasting. I am tired of drowning… I hope I have the courage to do what you did.

I am applauding right now.

By: Kel Vick

Kel Vick — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 20:00:50 +0000

That was simply beautiful. Frankly you are blessed to have made these discoveries so young—many pastors are well into their forties before they relinquish their own (and well meaning others’) drive and simply rest. Within that rest much healing and new direction will come in due season. Take your time; don’t force or assume anything. I am just now pecking at the inside of the cocoon of my own creation, that has wrapped me for well over a year of deconstruction. You are right where you are supposed to be. I love you man…