PSALM 23: A PERSONAL READING

Cynthia Hizer

You are my shepherd, I am content[1]

Content? I am relieved to have a shepherd! But I wasn’t at first. There I was, minding my own business, meditating in the shrine room on Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion. Yeah, just give me some of that nice bland no-thing meditation; I’m done with Gods with personality. But Kuan Yin kept shape shifting into Jesus. And Jesus looked like a shepherd. He had a lamb under his arm that kept shape shifting into me. I looked around the shrine room. “Am I dreaming?” I wondered. Then, “Hope none of my Buddhist friends can read my mind right now; this Jesus thing wouldn’t look so good.” I thought. I resisted. I was done with Christianity. It’s a sham. Where was God when I needed Him? But that shepherd Jesus and his lamb wouldn’t go away. Everywhere I went, Jesus would show up; going around a corner, there he was. In my dreams, there he was. He wouldn’t let me go and He wouldn’t give up.

I finally realized Kuan Yin was Jesus. And I realized that I need both, either, need their compassionate love and tender mercy in response to the cries of my heart. I need to be shepherded, and that bland no-thingness, the very emptiness of it, has led me back to God. I feel like a contented cow that has jumped over the moon and landed, bruised, but with no permanent injuries.

You lead me to rest in the sweet grasses

To lie down by the quiet waters

And I am refreshed

It’s almost time to harvest the rye grass on the farm. I plan to cut it down for hay to feed the horses this winter. Maybe Joseph will want to help when he gets home from college. I walk out to examine it on this sunny, yellow day, and instead, I lie down. It’s fat and golden, swaying in the breeze, giving off that odor of plant life, of fecund seed ready to explode, like a woman ready for birth, like me. I lie down in the stand of rye, three feet tall now. It’s a good place to hide, in this womb, in this mother of grass. I can eat the grass; it will feed me in my hiding. Twelve years ago I didn’t have a farm. I didn’t have a stand of rye. The only place I had to hide was in the kitchen of my house, huddled with my secret and my shame. A Buckhead misfit; no where to go, no one to confide in. I was an impersonation of someone I didn’t even know. I looked in my closets and wondered who these clothes belonged to. Life felt endless and lifeless.

While I am hiding here, lying here, I spread my arms and legs to make a grass angel. I rest here, in my angel form, with the womb of grass punching against my arms and back and legs and the earth – pungent and moist -- cradling me. In fact, as I am cradled and resting in this womb of punching and pungency, I fall asleep until the sunny yellow day turns to late afternoon gold and the air turns to cool.

I sit up and look over the rye grass to the pond. Eve’s Pond we call it. Eve: the first woman, the first gutsy woman who faced serpents and ate apples and knew wisdom. Thank God I finally got some wisdom. Thank God I found Margaret, my water sign. Water always heals; it restores, it births. Thank God I have this water now, on this farm of my birthing and my healing.

You lead me down the right path

The path that unwinds in the pattern of your name

At first, it was hard to follow to You. I am still learning. I thought I had to figure everything out on my own, be my own boss, my own imagination, create my own happiness. I thought I was alone in all this. I am learning how beautiful it feels to be contained, disciplined, contoured to a path. I thought paths were for horses and backpackers. Now I realize that horses usually have someone on the other end of the harness and backpackers have a map. I didn’t have either. I thought a path was a labyrinth or a maze, a mess. Your lead rope feels good, like a slow-release cough medicine that gently takes effect. It tastes sweeter and sweeter all the time. Your path and Your lead rope are liberating this labyrinth.

And even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I’m not walking, I’m crawling. I didn’t know it would hurt this much. I thought the worst had come when the judge slammed down his gavel and gave away my custody of Evan. I didn’t really believe that lesbians could lose rights to their children. I thought I couldn’t live through it. But then, the worst did come. That February night when Frank pushed me out the door. I had nothing but the clothes on my back. Joseph, age nine, was crying in the background. It was snowing and cold and dark. I was senseless. I stumbled to my truck, the tears freezing on my face. Where to go? How to begin? I want to be married. I want to be part of the universal thing that societies do – kinship lines, passing down culture. I am now outside of that social role. And how to live without my little boy? I am screaming and terrified.

I wanted to be a mother more than anything in the world. Joseph was God’s gift to me. At age thirty three, God opened my womb. A perfect pregnancy, a perfect delivery, an idyllic life. I was a stay-at-home mom, Frank went off to the office every day, and Joseph and I made mud pies and grew sweet corn. My dream life, as long as I didn’t think.

But then, something shifted. Joe started school. I had time on my hands to think. My life spiraled out of control, when I came face to face with my reality. I was a lesbian. I couldn’t say it for a long time. I baked more bread, cooked fabulous dinners, wrote more stories, wrote some books. Immersed myself in Joe’s science projects and softball practice. We still went to church every week. That was on the outside. On the inside, I no longer believed it. God wasn’t anywhere near me. God wasn’t. The most desolate I’ve ever been.

I will not fear,

For you are with me

Comforting me with your rod and your staff

Showing me each step

The main thing I feared in those years, was myself. And I feared plenty, those years of hell. Practically living on the streets. An outcast of society, dirty, sordid, unredeemable and shamed; a roach running for cover in the light.

And I feared You. God was scary, hateful and hated me. No wonder I thought a little neutral meditation would fill the God hole. I was being prodded and poked, pushed back into a line I couldn’t be in, I had tried, tried for years to step in that line, be in that line dance. I didn’t realize it was actually You that could show me my own dance step! Finally, slowly, You did.

How? Where? What happened between the last line and this one? Is it like in Psalm 22, when, between lines 22 and 23, compassion crept in and changed everything? Did I tack? Or did You? I think I finally surrendered to Jesus the shepherd and his lamb. I finally believed that You loved me. For the first time in many years I looked to You for direction. Finally, I tacked, away from my own self-direction. I fell on my face on the ground and renewed our covenant. That’s all I did. I said Yes to You. I know you want me to be all that I am. A professor once told me that our personal theology begins when we start to tell our own truth. I think mine has begun. My truth has begun.

Now I am striding through rye grass and pine groves, taking dance steps with my partner, a dance I could have never imagined possible. I’m dancing for my very life now. It’s still scary; I’m still shy. I still feel guilt and shame. But I’m dancing.

You prepare a table for me

In the midst of my adversity

And moisten my head with oil

My most memorable table was New Year’s Eve the year before I left. We had a party.

I served fresh Pacific Coast Dungeness crab, flown in that day. Twelve of us sat at the dining room table, cracking, picking, sucking, crab, drinking lovely wine in the flicker of candlelight, Wyndham Hill playing in the background, all the little kids playing in the basement, snow outside. My secret was still in a dark chamber. We were happy then.

I keep setting tables: 5 AM every Saturday morning, I’m up, ready to prepare the table at the farmers market to sell our vegetables and soaps. More tables for soap and herb demonstrations, the ping pong table we call our “shipping department.” Each week I help set the altar table at church with rich linens and brocade, and of course, with Bread, the Bread of Presence, with You.

And the tables in the seminary library. The one with the lamp where I always sit and study. That one makes them laugh the most. The biggest sinner of them all is going to seminary? What is the world coming to? Who are they going to let in next?

Somehow, through the headwinds of criticism and despair, I survived. I keep trudging on. I have a happy life now, a wonderful partner. Some days are harder than others, and the sorrow of my lost family and lost life still hover over many of my brightest days. Sometimes I feel cheated. But I have gotten better, much better. And I find food on my table, food in my fields, somehow it just shows up. People, strangers, phone to order soap. How do they find us? We don’t know. God has provided. So many poverties, and yet, now, so much food. Soul food that lessens my inner poverties. The barn is full of oil: olive oil, frankincense oil, myrrh, sandalwood, lavender and rose. The barn is perfumed, lavished with lovely oil. You have anointed Hazelbrand with Your love. We have made it through the storm. You have honored our covenant. And so have I. Thank you for being patient with me.

Surely my cup is overflowing

And goodness and kindness will follow me

Joseph is in my life, that’s the best part. I am a mother, all I ever wanted to be. Frank and I are friends, finally. In a weird way, we love each other more than ever. The truth is, I love Frank almost in a desperate way, fed with our shared sorrow. He would laugh to hear that. Or maybe cry. So much reconciliation, so much forgiveness.

A monk once told me that the smaller the cup, the faster it overflows. My cup is overflowing so fast now I can’t even see the cup, can’t even hold it in my hand. When this first started happening, I asked God why? Why are You being so good to me, such a sinner as I am? Seminary? Scholarship? And the cup overflowed even more. I realized that You was trying to tell me that I was made up of essential goodness, not essential badness. You were trying to tell me how much You love me. Will I please just accept it and keep dancing?

All the days of my life

And in the long days beyond

I will always live within your house

You are Shepherd. You are Rod and Staff. You are Path. You are Contentedness and Comfort. You are Water and Grass and Rest and Nectar and Neutral Ground and Play and Dance. I long to enter Your Courts, an airy place where I can sit and work things out. A place to go into the temple together, You and me. Your house.

It’s Christmas Day. My old house, my old furniture. My old family plus a new one. Frank, Joseph, Melissa, the twins, Margaret, Muddy our dog, and me. We’re carving the turkey, stoking the fire. Proclaiming a toast. A shared holiday, a shared family, kinship lines, the passing down of culture. A strange family, but a good one. And we’re growing! Frank and Melissa and the twin babies. Joseph, the big brother is beaming -- the siblings he always longed for. He got them, just not the way he expected -- we never quite know how God is going to answer our prayers. We celebrate all our holidays together now, this big funny family. And we celebrate at my old house, the house I got pushed out of, the house I ran away from. It’s become the family house. Our house. It feels weird and comfortable and ironic and perfect. I keep coming home.

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[1] Norman Fischer. “Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms.” New York: Penguin Compass Press.2003. p 35.