Thank You Letter

I am holding a saw in my hands. I need to make a relatively small, rectangular cut, but the details must be perfect. If I miss my measurements, this ten week project will be ruined.

Others have already started, so I plug in to my power source and feel the hum of machinery in my hands. With gentle touch, I carve through this inconsistent material, guarding against sharp fragments left behind by the unforgiving blade. 

I turn the corner, and before long there is smoke: It is the smoke of a bone saw meeting the human sternum. 

This is cadaver lab, week 5. Today we open the chest cavity. Today I am asked to saw open the core of another human. 

We are not allowed to know our cadaver’s name. For the first week, I am not even allowed to see her face. To dare to seek this information is too personal. Surely if they hold back her name…surely if they hide her face, I will not wonder about her story. I will not wonder about her living. 

But from day one, I am helpless. I am too curious.

Who are you, stranger, who is laying before me? Can I really understand the physical human without knowing the story of her life? 

For five weeks now, this stranger is what I see when I close my eyes at night.

The images cannot leave me, when I am the very thing I am asked to slowly destroy. 

No one warns you that as you go deeper into this body, you must take parts of this human and throw them away. This is the most difficult thing for me.

But weakness is not acceptable. Not here. I have been warned – thousands of wait-listed predators are lurking in the shadows, seeking out the struggling first year medical students. I am being hunted. And so I blame my tears on the preservative fumes. I carve on.  

Amidst the smoke I surge through the sternum, completing my rectangle. I lift this mass of cartilage and tissue, being careful to avoid the sharply fractured ribs. 

The image below is very strange. Spongy, purple lungs. And a thin white tissue wrapped around a dark center. 

A few more swift moves of the scalpel, and now I am holding this heart in my two hands. Someone is yelling in the background about marking the openings for pulmonary arteries and other things; what they say is nothing to me. I have given in to the story; I cannot separate my emotional wonder of this anatomy in order to learn it.

Have you said thank you to your heart lately? Do you ever stop, rest, and feel your pulse thundering within you? 60 times this very minute, 100,000 times today, 35 million times this year, every single cell in your heart will courageously do its job, and you will live. 

Can you see what I see? This is the face that launched a thousand ships of poems, of songs, of romance. 

Every second, this bundle of fibers and electricity says yes: yes, I will work as hard as you ask. Yes, I will charge oxygen into even the tip of you hand. Yes, I will quicken at the footsteps of the one you love. And yes, when lightning strikes, I will come back to life for you. 

I hold this heart. I start praying. And I walk out the doors and never return. Let the predators attack, let the world tell me I’ve given up six figures and envious white coats. In the cadaver lab valley of dry bones, I have found life again. 

With liberation comes motivation. It’s time to move.

For I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

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This Sunday, 10/11, marks National Coming Out Day. It seems fitting that it falls on a Sunday this year, as my graduate school, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, is in discussion with Equality for Ohio and Reconciling Works to learn about how this community can be purposefully inclusive. As a seminarian who joined the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus this fall (a mixed group of LGBTQ folks and straight allies), I’ve been having lots of conversation with those who hold both faith and inclusivity as core values of living. 

Many Lutheran churches have gained status as “RIC.” This stands for Reconciling in Christ, a label only given to those communities of faith that have public statements of welcome for those who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, or queer. Columbus features a handful of these communities, yet our own seminary has remained voiceless. 

A few students met together to give speech to this silence a few weeks ago; in a small evening gathering, we each told our story of why this matters. Some seminarians identify themselves in these categories and have tasted the bitter rejection of the church, yet love the mission of God too much to abandon faith communities. Others told stories of their great grief that the Christian church started as perhaps the most inclusive community in history where all people were invited to the table; it was a movement for the vulnerable, to “bring good news to the poor and oppressed.” Instead, now many LGBTQ humans have experienced the church as the oppressor. Still others spoke about the need for a seminary to educate and prepare those who are working with youth and young adults who are in the critical process of understanding their sexual identity, as well as speaking about the need to be educated for communication with parents who are perhaps challenged with this intersection of faith and sexuality in their children or in themselves. 

When there are so many loud voices coming from religion that condemn humans based on sexuality, it is Trinity’s time to step up and make a different statement. I had a strange experience of this contrast of voices at this June’s Pride Parade in Columbus. I joined my Columbus church community in marching for inclusion and warm embrace of all people, but along our parade journey we encountered many other groups who proclaimed messages of hate in the name of Christianity. It was a vocal clash of followers of the same one Jesus; this is tragic, and this is reality. For all the extreme hate I heard that day, I also encountered many people who were shocked to see us, but then would enter the parade route to shake our hands and say thank you. 

Of course, the point is that we love everyone, because it’s God’s love, not ours. But on this National Coming Out Day, when a crowd of seminarians gather at my apartment to watch the film Pride and reflect on the role of church as a partner in the equality movement, I hope we can be examples of this love that is always reaching outward, always inviting, always redeeming—to all humanity and creation.

Lost/Found

 “But they strive for attendance while I starve for transcendence…”

These are lyrics from a song written by a band called Lost and Found. Lutherans are familiar with the wit of long-haired Michael and the energy of piano player George, the two members who make up this traveling pair.

Last weekend, they stopped by Bexley as they move across the US for their farewell tour after twenty-nine years of performing for small churches, mega-sized youth gatherings, and anything in between. Michael and George are not going to win a Grammy. They are not to be found on any radio station, featured in Rolling Stone, or make it to the Cleveland HOF. However, I think they are remarkable. Here’s why.

As a high school junior, I traveled to New Orleans for the ELCA Youth Gathering. I met Lost and Found there and found my way to their nightly concerts in a hotel ballroom. Religion had always been mostly dead rituals and contradictions to me, and I had stayed involved simply because I loved the summer mission trip weeks. That summer trip, Lost and Found caught me off guard. They did two things:

1) Laughed and had tons of fun.  

2) Sang songs with basic vocabulary that sparked wonder for a kid who was trying to figure faith out.

Here’s a few chorus examples –

The song “Kingdom” – ‘The Kingdom’s big enough for you. You were made to be here, too.’ Message – All are welcome.

The song “How Can You” – ‘How can you still want me? I have turned a deafened ear, said what you don’t want to hear, and somehow you still want me.’ Message – Grace is good news. And good news/Gospel always gives life and freedom, and nothing we do can separate us from that.

The song “Be Not Afraid” – ‘Be not afraid, be not alone, I have come to take you home. Be not alone, be not ashamed, I have called you by your name. Be not ashamed, lose not your sight, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Message – We are together, and fear is erased when the love of God whose name is Jesus names us as Precious, Honored, Loved, and Redeemed.

Some L & F songs sting too; there is “Used to Be,” which calls out an apathetic world that is still afraid of accepting love and relationship as the answer. There is “Baby,” which laments how humans must wear masks to hide real pain. There is “Opener,” cited at the beginning of this blog, a plea for waking up to transcendence instead of functioning through an anxiety of church survival.

And so 17-year-old me listened to these songs, and I thought this Lutheran thing maybe had more to it than I initially knew. At that same gathering, I met a representative from Wittenberg University and thought maybe it’s a pretty good idea to go to an ELCA school if I’m so curious about Lutheran identity.

Flash forward six (!) years, and I’m sitting on a blanket with some of my best friends from Witt, my fiancé from Witt, and once again I’m listening to Lost and Found have tons of fun and sing songs rich in simple beauty.

Thanks for Lost and Found for 29 years of music, and for teaching me that you cannot separate joy from faith. Stein auf. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Ee7CrEtwc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VjLZ04DJjI

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrlHhNz8vWw