* A poem about my disdain for the “perfection is expected” church culture and how it isolates people.

Is it ever okay
to not be okay?
Where perfection is expected
as if it was the only selection,
Continually faking smiles,
Hiding, all the while,
Who I am underneath,
Wondering when someone will See
that I’m not who I present myself to be.

Is it ever okay
to not be okay?
I would love to be fully known
instead of feeling all alone,
but ask me how I’m doing
and every time
I’ll casually respond with
“I am fine,”
Knowing that it’s a calculated reply,
a complete and utter lie.
But I still use it every day
because it’s not okay
to not be okay.

Who I am underneath
is the most important thing
about the face that I see
in the mirror looking back at me.
I wish it would reflect
something more than the circumspect;
hope, perhaps, or even love,
or something heavenly from above.
I acknowledge that God still works wonders,
but right now I’m still under
whatever it is I’m dealing with.

I would love to let you in
to help me bear this burden
but during service
we’re always hurrying,
Not allowing space
for each person’s face
to truly reveal
the man behind the curtain
that we’ve so carefully concealed
Because it’s not okay
to not be okay.

It’s not okay
to not be okay.
I’m sick of being another
stained glass masquerade.
Can’t you see
that it’s impossible for me
to go from victory to victory
When I’m the one to blame
for my troubles and my shame,
For the pain and the strife
that I have in my life
and deal with on a daily basis.

But when I look at everyone’s faces
I can’t let them see
that I’m not really free, because
it’s not okay
to not be okay.

When you tell me I did great
Can’t you see, a difference, it doesn’t make
Because the only type of connection
is casual communication;
There’s no deeper relations
because we only deal in faces
and not the deeper longings of the heart…

And so I will continue showing up
wondering when I will catch a break
and finally come across
the things for which my heart aches.
But in the meantime
when I encounter the parade,
Expect me to show up
as a stained glass masquerade,

Because it’s not okay
to not be okay.

His majesty indicated His campaign throne, which stood in the lamplight beneath the pinnacle of the tent.

“Do you see that chair, my friends? No mortal can be lonelier or more isolated than he who sits upon it. You cannot appreciate this, Mardonius. None can who has not sat there.

“Consider: whom can a king trust who comes into his hearing? What man enters before him, but with some secret desire, passion, grievance, or claim, which he employs all his artifice and guile to conceal?

“A man address [the king] either in fear for that which [the king] may seize or in avarice for that which he may bestow. None comes before him but as a suppliant. His heart’s business, the flatterer speaks not aloud, but all he obscures beneath the cloak of dissemblance and dissimulation.

“Each voice vowing allegiance, each heart declaring love, the royal listener must probe and examine as if he were a vendor in a bazaar, seeking the subtle indices of betrayal and deceit. How tiresome this becomes.

“A king’s own wives whisper sweetly to him in the darkness of the royal bedchamber. Do they love him? How can he know, when he perceives their true passion spent in scheming and intriguing for their children’s advantage or their own private gain.

“None speaks the truth whole to a king, not [even the king’s] own brother, not even [his closest advisers, friends, and kinsmen].”

Mardonius hastened to deny this, but [Xerxes] cut him short with a smile.

“Of all those who come before me, only one man, I believe, speaks without desire for private profit. That is this Greek…”

~ Gates of Fire, page 224

Needless to say, I was blown away when I read this.

Indeed, being a king is a tough and lonely walk; no wonder Aragorn ran from his true calling in the LOTR movies…

But it also got me thinking about how Jesus is our King:

So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. Therefore let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

Hebrews 4:14-16

Did you catch that? Paul tells us to come boldly (and yes, I put “boldly” in bold on purpose lol).

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth: you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.”

~ Mark 11:22-24

Not only does Paul entreat us to come boldly, but then Jesus tells us to ask for what we want.

I think this is best seen in Galadriel’s gift to Gimli in Fellowship of the Ring:

“And what gift would a Dwarf ask of the Elves?” said Galadriel, turning to Gimli.

“None, Lady,” answered Gimli. “It is enough for me to have seen the Lady of the Galadhrim, and to have heard her gentle words.”

“Hear, all ye Elves!” she cried to those about her. “Let none say again that Dwarves are grasping and ungracious.

“Yet surely, Gimli son of Glóin, you desire something that I could give. Name it, I bid you! You shall not be the only guest without a gift.”

That she doesn’t offer him one is to acknowledge the discord between Dwarves and Elves; she is not presumptuous to give him something he doesn’t need or hasn’t asked for.

But this one piece — Gimli’s desire — is the lynchpin that brings this whole thing together: if he didn’t have a desire, if he wasn’t passionate about something, then there is no gift…

“There is nothing, Lady Galadriel,” said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. “Nothing unless it might be — unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the Earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I do not ask for such a gift. But you commanded me to name my desire.”

The Elves stirred and murmured with astonishment, and Celeborn gazed at the Dwarf in wonder, but the Lady smiled. “It is said that the skill of the Dwarves is in their hands rather than in their tongues,” she said, “yet that is not true of Gimli. For none have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse, since I commanded him to speak?”

What is left out of this piece of the story is that, long ago, an Elf named Fëanor requested a single strand of the Lady’s hair.

And she denied him, a powerful Elf.

This is no different than what James wrote regarding our own prayers:

You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. (James 4:2-3)

Oh, how that reminds me of Caedmon’s Call’s song, You Created:

But You created nothing
That gives me more pleasure than You
And You won’t give me something
That gives me more pleasure than You

Now, our “scheming” doesn’t usually go so far as killing (though people have certainly done it before, 1 Kings 21:1-16).

But that doesn’t mean that we always ask with pure motives, either.

But here we have Gimli, a Dwarf among Elves. To say that there is animosity between those races is an understatement, and yet he makes the boldest request she has ever heard — and courteously, I might add.

No wonder God was so impressed with Solomon’s utterly selfless request for a wise and discerning heart (1 Kings 3:5-12).

When our requests are selfless — when we are not greedily begging for things — it is then that God will honor our bold-yet-courteous requests.

“But tell me: what would you do with such a gift?”

“Treasure it, Lady,” he answered, “in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I return to the smithies of my home, it shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.”

Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli’s hand.

May your requests be bold and selfless, and may you learn to know the God who answers them…

“Throughout my nun-spooked, Catholic school life, I had heard and digested the urban legend of the Jesuits — the rottweilers of a Catholic boy’s education. The order had a reputation for intellectual ferocity and suffering foots lightly or not at all. They were a warrior caste of the intellect, famous for the rigor of both their training and their teaching… The Jesuits have always prided themselves on their fierce reputation as cunning foot soldiers of the far-ranging, free-thinking Catholic mind.

“My memories of Sacred Heart Academy shine in a pearly light; Gonzaga suggests far harsher tones. A dark sensuality and a celebration of the masculine virtues as tribal rites inhabited each corner and room… The Jesuits possessed a genius at making learning itself seem like a martial art… At Gonzaga, I always felt as if I should be wearing a coat of armor instead of a coat and tie.”

~ My Losing Season by Pat Conroy, pages 59-60