Trying in 2014—The Hand of God

When I couldn’t sleep over the past year, I sometimes said this prayer: “God, please hold me in the palm of your hand.”

And I had a vision of a particular hand. A thick, soft, warm hand. With pillow-y finger tips and pads at the base near the wrist. A hand like my father’s hands. But a giant, 10-foot long version. Its fingers would curl slightly to make a kind of hammock, in which I lay safe and comforted. 

With that plea and that image I would try to let go of the worry gripping my mind, the thought loops around the aftermath of my mother’s death, my wife’s cancer, financial insecurity and other troubles. I would try to put things in God’s hands for a while.

And this spiritual sleep-aid gets at the way faith is the final piece in the puzzle for how my family and I got through a tough year. 

Thank God for the help. But that’s not to say my relationship with God has been a simple, purely positive one. And spirituality for my wife Rowena and kids Julius and Skyla likewise is complicated.

I was raised a Catholic, by a mother who had a lifelong career in Catholic education and a father whose family had a building named after it at the local Jesuit high school. There is a lot I cherish about growing up Catholic and going to Christ the King church every Sunday. God loved me and all people. And I loved God back, especially through singing.

One of my earliest memories is standing on the blond wooden church pews of Christ the King’s lower, less formal chapel. Standing so I could see the front of the church better, and singing with joy. Folk songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and contemporary religious tunes like “On Eagle’s Wings.” That song gave me the image of being held in God's hand:

And he will raise you up, on eagle's wings
Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
And hold you in the palm of his hand

Part of what I loved about singing that song and others in church was harmonizing. Finding notes above or below the melody that somehow fit with it. There has always been something mystical, something sacred, about harmony to me. About two or more notes that are distinct but belong together. Maybe it captures something about the human condition, of us being social yet separate creatures. Or about our relationship with the divine—familiar yet apart.

So Catholicism enriched me with spirituality. But it also took away some of my sense of self. Limited me with the weight of its martyr message. The Jesus-sacrificing-himself-for-us story was something I took deeply to heart. So did my mother. I learned only after my mom died that she spent much of her adult life eating pizza with our family even though she disliked cheese! As she got older, my mom got better at setting boundaries and getting what she wanted. But with her as a role model, and Catholicism as a guiding philosophy, I had trouble as a young person knowing my own mind and acting accordingly.

In the years after college, for example, I applied to and got into law school as well as PhD programs in history and education. I ended up deciding not to go to any of them. And while I grew in vital ways through my first marriage, the fact that it ended in divorce had something to do with that same self-sacrificing impulse—of putting other people’s interests above my own.

Fortunately, I found a counter-weight to Catholicism in the spiritual traditions of the East. This started by distancing myself from Catholicism. Beginning in college, I grew critical of the sexism and hierarchy of the church, and of the intolerance of other religions by much of Christianity. I also was drawn to the notion that I could wrestle with God and find my own version of the sacred. Inspired by the Gnostics of early Christianity, I came to believe I had an important divine spark and could determine the God I wanted to respect and serve rather than just accept the deity that came with my upbringing.

And then I came to choose elements of Buddhism and Hinduism, largely through the yoga classes I began taking in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. On some level, I see the chanting during yoga and calls for inner peace during the final, shavasana, pose as superficial. But over the course of some 20 years of yoga, those religious, New Age-y overlays have worked for me. Especially from some of the wiser teachers, the spiritual commentaries have stretched, relaxed and elevated my spirit as much as the poses have done these things for my body.

Over the past several years, I have found a way to bridge this West Coast, Eastern spirituality with my childhood Western, Midwest faith. A foundation of the bridge is Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Old First and its Pastor, Maggi Henderson, reconnected Rowena and me to the Christian tradition. And over the past, difficult year, Maggi’s sermons and the church community have strengthened our spirits and provided welcome practical help.

I like to say Maggi’s “got the spirit”—not only an abiding faith in a loving God but an ability to exude that soulfulness in ways that comfort and inspire and provoke. Without smothering, losing touch with reality or getting “preachy.”

I especially like the way she makes the Holy Spirit feel nearly tangible. This third leg of the Christian trinity has long appealed to me—I have grafted onto it the “Goddess” that is found in many pagan spiritual traditions. Maggi doesn’t typically talk about the Holy Spirit as a “She,” but she portrays it as a constant, caring, nearly maternal presence. She often ends Sunday morning services at Old First by charging us to go “knowing that you are not alone—the Holy Spirit goes with you always and may lead you to places you never expected.”

One place I never expected to make a holy sanctuary is my bathroom. But given the lack of privacy in our one-room apartment, that is where I practice a morning mix of meditation, Christian prayer and Eastern chanting. Toward the end of it,

I say this: “Ommm-men”

It’s a blend of Ommm and Amen, my attempt to stitch together East and West in a word.

This personal practice may seem batty or the equivalent of flushing a “real” religion down the toilet. But I’m not alone in having found my own way in the realm of the spiritual. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans calls themselves spiritual but not religious, and Christians have dropped from 78 percent of the U.S. population in 2007 to 71 percent in 2014.

A blend of religious traditions also helped me make it through my mother’s death last July.

At my mom’s funeral, I knew I wanted to deliver a eulogy. One that did her justice and honored her strong Catholic faith while also staying true to my own understanding of what her death meant. I was nervous. Worried I couldn’t pull it off, especially in the company of my extended Catholic family. But I think I did a decent job. I hinted at the Eastern stuff in noting my mom’s recognition of the importance of relaxation and of a positive attitude before those things got such a big mindshare in our society. And while I have at times doubted the Jesus resurrection story, Old First has over time restored my faith in a God that does bring us home. I was able, then, to end with these words:

Martha Frances Frauenheim died in the arms of her beloved husband Ed Frauenheim. At St. Frances hospital. Right at the feast of St. Martha—who prompted Jesus to say “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live a new life.”

My mom used to say—usually over a chocolate chip cookie—“It’s like dying and going to heaven.” Mom, I trust you are there. As your friend Elena White put it, “If Marty isn’t in heaven, the rest of us are big trouble.”

Following my mom’s funeral and into Rowena’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, Old First continued to raise me up. If not on eagle’s wings, on the soaring melodies of the choir, on the reassuring, thoughtful sermons from Maggi, on the lavish generosity of Old First friends. When Rowena’s cancer became known, the church responded with expressions of concern, prayers and practical assistance. Meatballs, soup, a necklace with stones with supposed healing properties for Rowena, they all came our way from Old First folks.

Rowena has plenty of skepticism about religion, including Christianity. She also is drawn to the Gnostic notion of a divine spark in every person. “If I were to define God, it’s that light inside all of us, the collective light.” Neither Rowena or I feel comfortable officially joining Old First because of the creed members have to recite—a creed that feels paternalistic and smacks of intolerance toward other religions.  Still, Rowena attends Old First, well, religiously. She sings traditional Presbyterian hymns to the kids as lullabies. And she wore that necklace like a talisman throughout her cancer treatments.

Old First was a comfort to her this past year, mostly because of the people. “The idea of being prayed for by all those people is powerful,” she says. “Isn’t that what church is? The place to be loved and lifted up? You don’t go the gym to be loved and lifted up. Church is very unique that way.”

Church, or some version of spirituality, also bolstered the kids this past year. Skyla and Rowena have a ritual of singing the nightly prayer--“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Skyla told me she imagines God as a face made of clouds, with a bushy moustache and a goatee.

“I dream about him a lot,” Skyla said. “Once he said his name was George, another time he said his name was Fred. Apparently he doesn’t know his name.”

Vintage Skyla, a sometimes irreverent 10-year old. But she also told me she sometimes takes comfort in thinking of God looking down on her. Skyla also makes earnest, touching art during Sunday school. Like this poster Skyla produced during a lesson on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Julius, meanwhile, got interested in the Daoism he studied this year. He and his classmates wrote a play in which a wise Daoist emperor gives a beggar food and farm land, telling him “Yin and Yang won’t let you starve.” In other words, Julius explained to me, the forces of dark and light in the universe provide a balance, a harmony.

Whether we experienced moments of sacred grace through musical harmonies, sermons or art, spirituality sustained us amid struggles. Faith helped calm our fears.

Looking back at a sad, scary year, I also can say that I made a certain peace with the tension between accepting God’s will and determining my own destiny. Struck a better balance between letting go and not giving up. It had something to do with realizing the distinction between sacrificing one’s self and hearing the call to serve others. For me, that call sometimes took the form of helping out at monthly Old First dinners for local homeless people. It also meant helping Rowena give herself daily immune-boosting shots in the stomach for nearly a month despite my queasiness around needles.

As difficult as that was, my biggest burden over the past year has been helping my dad recover from my mom’s death. As he puts it, he and my mom were more than entwined—they “lived within each other.” Despite his own Catholic faith, my mom’s death left him despondent and struggling to find meaning and some sense of happiness. As the person who probably spoke with him most frequently right after my mom died and for months afterward, it was sometimes hard to help him see any brightness in the present or future.

But my dad himself—his body and his spirit—eased my burden. My dad can be a very affectionate and loving person. He recently told me he almost always held my mother’s hand or was physically in touch with her. I bet she loved that. I know I love holding my dad’s hand. Its warmth and softness make it the most pleasant, comforting, cozy hand I’ve ever held.

A few months ago, I held my dad’s hand. And I told him that I thought of his hand when I thought of God’s hand. He smiled. A bit of comfort back to him.

And for me as well. When I pictured the dad-inspired hand of God holding me during boughts of insomnia, it usually worked. My mind would take a break from worrying, my body would relax and I would fall asleep.