Ziggy Finnegan’s Birth Story

 (As much as I can manage at one week postpartum with the accompanying exhaustion levels - I still feel I have more to write about later). 

We are so thrilled to have this baby in our lives. Ziggy is a beautiful baby, a miracle, a gift. Getting this 9lb-9oz baby from the inside to the outside of me was the most intense experience of my life. Fair warning, these photos are censored for nudity but not for agony. This was a terribly difficult birth, and nothing like I expected. 

In our birth preparation classes they taught us that labor seldom goes like in the movies, with a dramatic moment of water breaking and a rush to the hospital. They prepared us for long, slow, frustrating labor, and to get through with deep, meditative, relaxing breaths. But I did not get to use any of that preparation; my labor started fast and furious... and ended slow and furious with not a moment of meditation in the middle. 

I did have a day of prelabor, asking myself about once an hour if that *might* have been a contraction I had... three times I thought yes, but about twenty times were “probably not.” 

My sister Zoey had prepared to take a week off work and drive up from LA to be our doula. When my due date passed and baby was still comfortable on the inside, she let me know that she’d like to come up on Thursday, to maximize her days off. Her plan was to come up Thursday evening, but in the wee hours of Thursday I started having bad cramps every hour or two and couldn’t sleep well. Shortly before dawn on Thursday, I sat at the kitchen table doing what our midwives had suggested for early labor: drinking chamomile tea and a glass of wine, to put me back to sleep and improve my chances of starting labor well-rested. I also ate all the leftover pancakes from the fridge. I’d left Michael sleeping, knowing that he couldn’t do anything about an occasional cramp and that he would need the rest as much as I would. But I texted Zoey and when she woke up at 5 AM (early bird!!) she got on the road. We slept late and Michael made me breakfast in bed... but during the daytime the cramps seemed less like possible contractions and more like digestive issues, so by the time Zoey arrived I felt a little sheepish, as if I had sounded the alarm too loud, too early. We had a fine day, though: fixing the irrigation system in the garden, making some homemade pizza, dancing with friends. 

On Thursday, after pizza night, I got ready for bed, lay down, and felt what was unmistakably a contraction, followed by a “pop” and a splash of fluid. And we were off to the races. Michael called the midwives, who heard me roaring in pain in the background and said “come right in.” I had four contractions on the ten-minute drive to the birth center, and another one as I went in the door. 

Once settled at the birth center I used every tool available for positioning; the slings, the bathtub, birth ball and stool, as well as nitrous oxide for temporary pain relief. It was hard to use the gentle groaning and mooing sounds we had been taught in birth class; I roared, yelled, prayed and cursed at the top of my lungs. 

We had been there only two hours when they gave me the all-clear to push with all my might. The midwife who shows up just for birth was already there. But I then proceeded to push for three and a half hours and made very little progress despite them telling me at every push that I was doing a great job. For reference, one to two hours of pushing is considered normal. Increasingly exhausted, I made my way to the bed and finally was pushing while lying on my back; the least efficient way to labor, but the only one available anymore. My hips started killing me with pains that did not subside when the contractions did, and the nitrous wasn’t enough pain relief anymore. 

Y

 more. 

We decided to transfer to Alta Bates hospital, just four blocks away. There was no way I could get in the car, though, so we called an ambulance. This was the most miserable part of the whole experience. The nitrous had left my system, leaving me with no pain relief; and though I tried to breathe through the contractions my body couldn’t help but push — a fruitless push in the awkwardest of positions on the gurney, but still terribly painful. I was in pain at every bump in the road and the sidewalk. They wheeled me through the hospital corridors screaming in pain (just like in the movies!). The first half hour was chaos, as we’d arrived exactly at shift change time. We had people all over me poking IVs in and fixing monitors on, and for some reason nobody had time to slap an ice pack on my excruciating hip pain. 

There’s an old gospel song, “Surely God is able,” that says God is “a doctor in the sickroom.” I came face to face with God that day... in this case not an MD but a certified nurse-midwife. This photo, I believe, captures the exact moment when she knelt by my bed, touching me gently and looking at me with so much love in her gorgeous eyes, and said “let me get you an epidural.” Later she would reach deep into me and turn the baby’s body 45 degrees for better alignment. At the end her hands would haul the baby out with so much force Michael feared his head would snap off. She was fearless and tender, skilled and kind, and I will always think of her when I sing that line. 

When you get an epidural you can almost ignore your contractions, but you get really cold. We took a short break until the epidural was fully on board, and then we were back to pushing. 

After 10 hours of labor and more than 6 hours of pushing, I asked for a ten minute nap break. They consulted, watched the monitors, and decided to give me a whole hour. The midwife sternly steered Michael to the couch and insisted he nap as well. We played Arvo Part’s “Spiegel im Spiegel” on the iPad on repeat, and my nurse put sugar in my IV so I’d wake up a little more energized. 

The final push (or, final half hour of pushing). We were rested and ready. My sister climbed on the back of the bed and held my shoulders so I wouldn’t waste any pushing energy sliding around in the bed. She pushed so hard she had to take her feet off the floor and put them on the wall... good thing she has a gymnastics background. 

Michael was at my side the whole time, holding my legs up off the stirrups so I could push, telling me what he could see — there was a mirror but I was too exhausted to even open my eyes and see the baby’s head coming out. 

Ziggy was born and everyone was telling me to open my eyes, to reach out my hands, to look at him and touch him. He looked as awful as any fresh newborn, with a long cone head and all kinds of mottled colors on him, but he could breathe — he started to cry and so did we. Michael cut the cord; in our fantasies of a gentle birth he was imagining that he would actually catch the baby himself, but in the absence of that possibility he did what he could. 

Ziggy breastfeeds like a champ. He has a little tongue tie but that isn’t stopping him so far - we will see if it stretches out. 

Ziggy was awake and alert for a few hours, then fell into a good long sleep punctuated only by feedings. 

If you had told me I could push a 9lb9oz baby out the old-fashioned way I would not have believed you. But thanks be to God for epidurals and fentanyl and catheters and stirrups and nitrous oxide and all the things I thought I didn’t want in my dream of what birth would be like. They were tools of empowerment that made it possible for me to birth this baby. 

We stayed in the hospital for 48 hours. The Alta Bates people were incredible, all around. What a team! 

Now we’re home... trying to adjust to life in babyland, and waiting for Z to learn about the difference between nighttime and daytime. I have a lot to recover from — my body was quite frankly trashed by the 7+ hours of pushing I did — but slowly but surely we are getting there. 

Doulas for Justice

 Oof, it's been a while. Well, we've been locked down and quarantined. Doubly quarantined, now, because it's early fire season already and we are not going out into the poisonous Northern California air. I was unable to travel to be at my sister's birth because of covid. Instead I wrote her songs and sent them to be with her. She requested two verses that she wanted to meditate on as she got ready to give birth:

Romans 8:19-23: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 

Amos 5:24: Let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Her child was safely born, to the sound of these songs: Stella Justice. She is named for the justice we all yearn for, as this earth groans under the weight of a global pandemic, and the centuries of oppression and exploitation which make this disease disproportionately devastating in developing countries and communities of color. 

The verse from Romans was also chosen by my Presbytery as a touchstone verse for our anti-racism work. At the end of a recent zoom call we all committed to the labor and work ahead of us and someone called out "yeah! We're like doulas for justice!"

I share the songs here for anyone who would like to use them-- in physical labor, or in societal labor. Sheet music is linked below.
And PS you've got to read my sister's birth story.

 

 

New Song for Advent

Hey folks, here's a hymn text I wrote. I wanted an easily-accessible advent hymn, that would make sense to children, and it's amazing how many complex metaphors you find in the traditional advent hymns. Also, I wanted another chance to sing a hymn tune that is not sung NEARLY enough.

Enjoy! Share, use, etc.

PDF file for printing

We’re on the road to Bethlehem, that long and winding way
Preparing for the savior who comes on Christmas Day
As, hearts aglow with gladness, we wait and hope and pray:
O get ready, for God is on the way, coming to stay, O get ready for God is on the way.

With Mary and with Joseph, the baby coming soon,
We see them knock on every door, but people say “no room.”
The angels, over Bethlehem, are practicing their tune:
O get ready, for God is on the way, coming to stay, O get ready for God is on the way.

 The shepherds, watching in the fields, may close their sleepy eyes,
But soon the host of heaven will wake them by surprise.
The magi start to follow the star in the skies.
O get ready, for God is on the way, coming to stay, O get ready for God is on the way.

We’re on the road to Bethlehem, we’re all making our way
To find the King of Kings lying humble in the hay;
The prophets called us long ago, we hear them still today:
O get ready, for God is on the way, coming to stay, O get ready for God is on the way.

Afraid of my mission to Monterey

I’m about to depart for a youth group mission trip, and I have some fears on my mind. I’m not so afraid, this time, of the stress or the travel. It’s only to Monterey, so we can’t get too lost and we don’t need to pass through any TSA checkpoints. In previous mission trips we’ve had worries (and actualities) ranging from major thunderstorms to 100+ degree weather to running out of insulin. This year those particular risks don’t threaten. Perhaps we may get sunburned, or tip over in our canoes on ElkHorn Slough, but we’ll have our life vests on. 

No, this year my fears aren’t logistics or weather or transportation; my fears are a little deeper and harder to address. 

I’m afraid, you see, that I’ll fall in love. 

I’m afraid I’ll fall in love with something fragile and vulnerable, something in mortal peril — that is, I’m afraid to fall in love with the the ocean and its creatures. We’re going on an ecological mission trip, and ecological work is a difficult undertaking in this age of climate change where species extinctions loom on every side. It’s more important than ever, but it runs the sharp risk of heartbreak as you stand there on the shore, throwing starfish after countless starfish back into a warming ocean. I’m afraid my heart might break open with compassion for the plight of some struggling sea creatures, and that it’ll be too painful to bear. 

I remember feeling this way as a college student in Europe. I was studying abroad in the Czech Republic, which is a lovely jumping-off spot from which a couple of college students might visit many other countries, but midway through the semester I started dreading our weekend adventures. The weight of nostalgia was pulling me down — I already missed the town I’d visited last weekend — and my photo album was thick with photographic adoration of cities and castles and gardens. How could I go on another trip? How could I add another place to love? 

And I remember feeling this way the night before my first date with Michael. Could I really open my heart to one more human being? I had already loved and lost - my ex-boyfriend had died in a work accident - and I didn’t trust the sentimentalists who rhymingly assured me ‘twas better to have loved and lost. Was it really? Grief hurts. Sometimes it incapacitates. It changes you. Did I really have the strength to open up again? 

My nephew - age 4 - said tearfully after a trip to see old friends in another state “sometimes I feel like there are so many people in the world that I love, and I wish we could all live together in one big house.” That’s the pain I’m talking about here. I don’t want to go to Monterey and meet some endangered herons or something. I already had my moment - with Great Blue Herons as a camp counselor in West Virginia fifteen years ago - and they still hold a heavy nostalgic weight in my heart. I can’t fit another creature in, especially not an endangered one. 

Opening up to ecological work is like deciding to fall in love with a person who might (or might not) be terminally ill. It’s like deciding to walk into a hurricane: you wouldn’t do it on purpose. Well, I’m going anyway (when you read this: I’m already there) and so I’ll have to pray my way around this block in my heart.

 Here’s what I’m working on: 

God is love 

Love is of God 

God created us fragile, perishable 

God created the world fragile and perishable too 

God loves the world

God loves fragile and perishable things 

God is vulnerable 

Vulnerability is part of love 

This pain, then, that I feel, is God’s spirit in me 

God aches for and loves the creatures in their peril 

It is our holy work to care for the fragile creatures and ecosystems that God so loves 

It is a holy thing to love what death can touch 

By the time you receive this, who knows what may have developed? The pastor hosting us may have spoken to my fears. The ocean herself may have soothed my worries. I'll share more...

Holy Envy

This weekend I was out for a beer with some friends, half of whom were Jewish, and somehow our meandering conversation struck on the topic of keeping kosher. Not just the avoidance of pork and other such options, but the cleaning of dishes and the care of the kitchen, and about how some friends had gotten married and set up a kosher household, though they had been living in non-kosher households through college and early adulthood. As I listened, I was struck with a case of what theologians call “holy envy” — that feeling one gets when someone else’s religion offers something lacking. In some cases, of course, holy envy is the precipitating factor that leads people to convert, to change religions. But in more situations, holy envy can be that inner spur that makes you dig deeper into your own religion, to look for resources that can strengthen your own practice. Barbara Brown Taylor writes beautifully about it here:  https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/my-holy-envy-other-faith-traditions

Well as I sat there talking and drinking I realized I had a case of holy envy. I asked myself how I felt about the fact that my religion didn’t affect my eating and drinking. And for a hot second I wanted to convert to Judaism, but I talked myself down, using the mountain metaphor I love. The mountain metaphor initially claims that all religions are just different paths up the same mountain, but to this we answer that the religions are actually paths up different peaks in the same mountain range. The view is similar but each one unique; and if you try to climb them all at once you will end up just hiking around the foothills and never getting to the stunning views of the heights. So instead of starting me on a new path, holy envy pushes me to find out what my religion does teach me about eating and drinking. And when I look into that, I don’t find much about what we should eat and drink – and much more about how we should eat and drink.

Jesus was known for eating and drinking with the wrong people – with sinners. He was known for eating and drinking with hungry people — particularly, sharing food with them. And a generation later, Paul condemned the church in Corinth, not for eating and drinking the wrong things, but for eating and drinking unequally. (1 Cor 11:17+) When you get together for a meal, he wrote, one of you remains hungry while another drinks to excess. Our best research into the situation on Paul’s hands suggests that the Corinthian meals were a kind of potluck – or, more exactly, a potluck only shared in small table groups, not shared equally for all. Paul wrote to persuade them that they needed to share fairly around the community, even if some were rich and some were poor – when they gathered as a church, they ought to have those distinctions erased.

I’m a vegetarian and have been for a long time, with a mix of motives, from health to climate care to respect for the lives of animals. You may not know that there is a short passage in Paul’s letter to Corinth about vegetarianism as well (1 Cor 8:1+) The issue at stake is that most meat, in Roman-occupied cities, was available at the pagan temples where it had been slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods. Paul himself believed it was fine to eat meat sacrificed to idols — because idols don’t really exist, he wrote — but at the same time he said, “if my eating meat causes scandal or a crisis of belief for a brother or sister who believes eating such meat is unchristian, then I’ll happily eat vegetables for the rest of my life, rather than cause them to stumble in the faith.”

I’ve never found myself in a situation just like this, but I think of this principle when I choose locally grown food for the sake of the farmer who is my neighbor. I also think of this when I practice “flexitarianism.” For example, one Christmas in Uganda, my host family gave me a huge plate of chicken and I, thoroughly lacking the language or the cultural skills to turn it down gracefully, did my best to eat it. I had a stomachache later, but the love and fellowship they offered was preserved — and that, I think, is what really mattered.

So, if I ask myself what my religion teaches about eating and drinking, I actually do hear a clear message: honor all people, even if they believe differently from you; make choices that do not cause others to suffer; share food with the hungry; and share table fellowship with all. This may not help me answer those questions about washing dishes or choosing a menu, but it helps me integrate my faith into my daily life in practical ways, which is, I think, what the holy envy was about in the first place.

we need a village

A few weeks ago Michael and I had our youngest niece and nephew stay over for nearly a week while my sister (the kids’ mother) flew to New York to visit our mother as she continues to recover from all her treatments. The kids are number 8 and 9 in the roster of my nieces and nephews, and I’ve been changing family members’ diapers since my teen years, but this is the first time I’ve done anything nearly so ambitious as to offer full-time childcare for a whole week. I’m still sneezing from the germs they gave me, and there are still stray cheerios turning up under the couch cushions, but it was a wonderful experience.

It takes a village. How well-worn these words are, and how true. In our (especially white) society where families are typically isolated into nuclear units, we need more villages. White Americans have not yet escaped the myth of settler-colonialism, where a “family” is just a man and a woman and their kids setting off to create their own little kingdom on stolen land. This is a terribly dysfunctional model that robs us of the richness of multigenerational relationships and the beauty of a wide web of support. It also bankrupts parents who have to strive to meet all their children’s needs themselves – not just financially (a huge burden in this competitive economy) but also emotionally, as they suffer isolation, worry, and stress.

There are so many things we can do to make society friendlier for parents and especially mothers – from paid parental leave to affordable daycare and sensible healthcare reforms. Many of them need to go to City Hall – or to Sacramento or to Washington – but some of them can happen at your local church, and I see them happening. I saw three family units fold together for fellowship after church on Mother’s Day, a day that can be particularly difficult emotionally if your unit doesn’t match the settler-colonial-Hallmark model. I saw the youth of our youth group embrace and include the littlest kids. The youth of our church practically fought over the children who came on our last retreat, putting them right in the center of the community where they belong. At Sunday Celebration, by welcoming children into the service and not insisting they stay in the nursery, we all do our best to follow the call of Jesus. We remember that Jesus put a little child in the center of the crowd and said, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Caring for children is at the heart of the gospel, and this call is laid upon us all, no matter whether your “family unit” includes children or not. If your unit doesn’t include children, I’d like to challenge you to expand your unit. Think bigger. Include your neighbors; include nieces and nephews and niblings of any gender; include your church family. Extend some support to them, whether that be a game of tag, a tea party, or a favor done for their parents, or advocating for better parental support on a local or national level if you prefer the political approach. Whatever you choose to do, choose it as plain good sense; or as an act of resistance against the white-settler-colonial myth; or as an act of devotion in following Christ’s call.

Good News to the Creatures

 You might wanna listen to this one so you can hear me howl: https://mpcfamily.org/sermons/good-news-to-the-creatures/
Easter meets Earth Day 

Maundy Thursday sermon (channeling the Rev. Mister Rogers for my intergenerational - young- congregation)

Preached to an intergenerational congregation, about ¼ of whom were under the age of 8. We all sat around the communion table in the chancel. You know they're listening when they interrupt and the interruption is on point =) 

Have you ever played inside a tree?

Now I don’t mean the big trees like the redwoods where you can get all the way inside the trunk. And I don’t mean climbing a tree.

Holy Week for the earth

Spring is springing up all around us and the Lenten days are lengthening as we approach a late Easter. This year Easter falls on Earth Day, a lovely coincidence for ecotheologians, and so as we approach Palm Sunday and the pathos of Holy Week, I’d like to invite you to mourn with the earth.
As we walk with Jesus along his road of betrayal, suffering, and death, let us also be present this year to the suffering of Earth and her creatures.

Just as Jesus was betrayed by his community and his friend, and ultimately cried out in anguish that even God had forsaken him, so the creatures of our planet have known betrayal at the hands of the human community. Like a lamb led to the slaughter, like an elephant taken for ivory, like a whale choked by the plastic littering the ocean, if we take time to remember, we know that our suffering is shared in a deep way that encompasses “all flesh” – from our human frailties to the vulnerability of the creatures entrusted to our care. We who walk with Christ on this fragile ledge of life, balancing between life and death, know what it is to fear, to hope, and to suffer pain in our hour of need. The creatures can remind us in wordless ways what that really feels like, at the same time as the plants – especially the flowers, bursting out this time of year – remind us how life still springs from death.

The good news of Holy Week is that we do not walk this narrow way alone. In Christ Jesus we know that God is with us. We do not suffer alone, fear alone, pour out tearful prayers alone, or die alone. Like him we may pray for this cup of suffering to be taken from us. But like him, we also rise. We rise from the ground, from the hospital bed, and even from the grave, where life is breathed again into the dust of death. These powerful metaphors hold us and sustain us through our darkness, and they will carry us into the spring of new life. Join in the lament and the joy of all creation, the songs of mourning and of new rising, sung by all — from lambs and cattle to the creatures of the deep. Walk this road with us, from the noise of Palm Sunday, through the silence of Holy Week, and on into the joyful celebration of Easter.

Presbytery, my happy place

Yesterday I spent a lot of time at a Presbytery meeting along with other people from our congregation and the congregations of the SF bay area. While there, I got to share the good news that we have 29 people registered to go to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium this year. My congregation is sending  seven people, to join with people from eight other congregations to make up our presbytery‘s delegation, to join with sooooo many other delegations getting together in Indiana. I am so excited to get to be a part of this.

I know that presbytery meetings aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Some introverts can get quickly overwhelmed by the number of people bustling about making small talk with one another, and some people find the slow committee-based process to be incredibly taxing on their patience. There are some people who aren’t interested in going to Triennium for much the same reasons. But presbytery is my happy place, and although it will be my first time going to Triennium, I feel pretty confident that that will be a very happy place for me too. I’m glad to serve the presbytery through my role in being Triennium registrar, and I feel really hopeful and positive about how the trip will go. There is something wonderful about having a chance to meet together with other Presbyterians who have something in common with you, even though their congregational contexts may be very different from yours – whether locally (in our presbytery), or nationally (at Triennium). There is something wonderful about singing hymns with a large group of people who really know to how to sing, whether that be 100 people (at presbytery) or 5,000 (at Triennium!!). There is something wonderful about hearing a sermon preached in Spanish, with English translation for those of us who need it, and knowing at a deep level that we English-speakers are not the center of this church, because this church doesn’t have a center, other than our shared faith and commitment to follow Jesus together. There are no popes, bosses, or bishops, other than the gathered community together seeking the mind of Christ. We are all small pieces of one great body that can do far more than we can do individually – or even more than we can do in our individual congregations.

 I’m glad that my church's Triennium participants, who are all white, will join in a delegation from our presbytery that includes people of African-, Mexican-, Japanese-, Korean-, and Chinese-American descent; people whose families have immigrated more recently and those who have lived here their whole lives; people from conservative churches and liberal churches; and communities all the way from up in Richmond down to Portola Valley. I hope that the youth and adults who travel with our delegation will get the same glimpse of the beauty of the church that I got last night at our Presbytery meeting: a vibrant and living community of equals where we all take turns serving. And I hope that all of us will have our faith in God and our commitment to God’s work in the world strengthened, by taking our places as small parts of a greater whole. Thank you for being a part of this greater whole!

PS check out the video if you’re curious about Triennium: https://vimeo.com/273568850

Happy New Year, extinction

Happy New Year! I hope that your celebrations were joyful. On New Year’s Eve my family and I changed all the clocks in the house so we could count down to “midnight” on some vaguely Nova Scotian time, and bade good riddance to 2018 early. We are hopeful for 2019, we have found out that our mother’s cancer is responding to chemo the way it should, and we were all happy to have that time together.

A piece of news which may not have made major headlines, but was a sad and poignant way to start the year, was the death of the last surviving Hawaiian land snail of its species. Hawaii is “the extinction capital of the world” in ecological terms, and while scientists do their best to identify and preserve rare species, the fact is that our world still sees many species going extinct.
It’s a heavy load to bear spiritually: the knowledge that life as we know it is being irreversibly changed, and that not all species will survive. One source of strength that is particularly helpful to me in shouldering this spiritual weight is the work of some eco-feminist theologians, notably Elizabeth Johnson, who write on the plight of the back-up pelican chick. For thirty million years, the White Pelican species has survived by employing the cruelest of evolutionary tricks. Each breeding season a pair will lay two eggs, a few days apart. Ordinarily the chick who hatches first gets most of the parent’s attention and nearly all of the food, and as soon as it is strong enough, pushes its younger sibling out of the nest to die of neglect. This is a winning evolutionary strategy because the parents will always have “an heir and a spare:” if the older chick fails to thrive, they will shift attention to the younger. In extraordinary circumstances both chicks may survive, but the important thing is that the pelican couple is rarely left childless. That puts a grim light on “mother nature,” doesn’t it?

Johnson reminds us in several ways that Christ’s death and resurrection is not only good news for humans, for Christ incarnated as “flesh” – this mortal bodily material shared by all creatures, from snails to birds and humans too. When Christ died on the cross, the pelican chick did not die alone. All the species suffering extinction will not be forgotten, for their death is shared by Christ himself, and all are united in the mystery of his resurrection. The Gospel has therefore been preached “to every creature under heaven” (Col. 1:23) in terms a creature can understand: the groan of suffering, the silence of death, and a loving and accompanying Presence within and beyond these experiences.
It is a challenge for me to make my faith stretch this far, to grow deep and wide enough to encompass without despair even the tide of death threatening the species of our world. Presbyterians don’t often stare at the body of Christ on the cross (we prefer him alive), which is why Johnson’s theology of Christ’s suffering with us, rooted in her Catholic faith, can be so powerful for us to borrow and share. Through my mother’s cancer experience she has found great solace in the solidarity of others praying with and for her. In all that we experience – from personal suffering to climate collapse – we must “hold on to what is good.” May we do so with and for one another, humans and creatures alike, keeping faith in this New Year.

PS For a version of Elizabeth Johnson’s theology that is readable and not very long, check out https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/sites/default/files/JohnsonGoodNewsTranscript.pdf and for George the snail, read  https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682908544/george-reclusive-hawaiian-snail-and-last-of-his-kind-dies-at-14