Please Scream Inside Your Hearts

Some fragmented thoughts on YouTube videos, theme-park exhortations, beans, red currants, and a poem about traveling with a tomato seedling

The 38th Day after Coronatide*
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Hello, friend.

I’m really good at wasting time on YouTube. At risk of decimating what remaining public dignity I might still have, I admit to having a soft spot for clips of tearjerker auditions from shows like The X Factor; Kristen Chenoweth concerts in which she sings “For Good” with audience members; and the classic, ridiculous Celine Dion episode of James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke.” (I just watched that again while putting this newsletter together.)

The other day, I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about rules at theme parks in Japan that are reopening post-COVID. (Yeah, random.) It mentioned a YouTube video of two buttoned-up Japanese amusement-park execs riding a rollercoaster, which obviously I had to go watch. I found it strangely entrancing, especially when one of the men, in suit and tie and mask, fixes his hair midway through the ride. My favorite thing about the video is the admonition at the end, which is in Japanese, but the WSJ article helpfully translated it: “Please scream inside your hearts.”

Please scream inside your hearts.

At first it just made me laugh. But then I realized: If that isn’t a word for 2020, I don’t know what is.

Please scream inside your hearts.

As I contemplated that line, I began to wonder whether some version of it might serve as wise counsel for us today. I’m not much of a screamer, inside or outside. But maybe I should be.

Please scream inside your hearts.

In the churches of my childhood, I was told that the heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). This vexed me. Was everything I ever wanted selfish or bad? Sure, as I was coveting my neighbor’s Nintendo—my parents wouldn’t let us have one, and I still blame them for my pathetic video-game skills—my heart wasn’t in a super-great place. But what about when I wanted to go visit my grandma? Was my heart deceitful then?

In the churches of my childhood, I never heard Psalm 33, which reminds us that God “fashions the hearts of all” and that “our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.” Nor do I remember any preacher mentioning I Samuel 16:7. That’s where God says to the Prophet Samuel, who is trying to discern who will be the next king: “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” If that’s true, and we’re talking about the heart of David—faithful yet flawed David, valiant yet temptation-prone David, blessed yet murderous David—well, that seems to complicate things a bit.

Please scream inside your hearts.

My heart couldn’t be trusted, and emotion was treated as something to be tamed or, better yet, ignored. Dastardly feelings! “Think!” my dad might yell. The brain—that seat of reason, that bastion of logic? Now there was an organ to be trusted.

Except in ancient times, in the culture from which Jeremiah and the psalms sprang, it wasn’t the brain that was the source of thought; it was the heart. Feeling, thought, reason—it all originated in the same place.

Please scream inside your hearts.

What if there isn’t a heart/brain binary? What if it isn’t an either/or but a both/and, such that we viewed things in a holistic way? What if we’ve gotten it wrong, and we’ve misunderstood our spiritual physiology, and silence has a profound cost—but so might screaming on, say, Twitter?

Please scream inside your hearts. 

Perhaps in the context of our broader lives, this could be interpreted as something other than a restriction. What if this were a holy invitation? 

Please scream inside your hearts.

For whatever reason, many of us have not felt permission to scream, whether inside or outside our hearts. Or maybe I should just speak for myself, before I get myself into too much trouble. I know that I’ve rejected that catharsis—that cleansing. Instead, I’ve pretended that if I bury or stifle my emotions, they’ll just go away, replaced by more helpful, intellectual insights. What magical thinking! (Spoiler: It hasn’t worked.)

I wonder whether a scream inside my heart—that catharsis, that cleansing, that purging of all that otherwise festers—might make more room to hear the voices of others. I wonder whether a scream inside my heart, preferably before I scream on social media, might make me a better neighbor. I wonder whether a scream inside my heart might make room for a whisper to be heard—from the Spirit, perhaps. 

As a person of faith, I don’t believe the screams of our hearts go unheard either. One under-utilized discipline of the Christian faith, which is rooted in Jewish practice, is lament. What is lament if not a biblical scream of the heart? When we lament, we cry out to God, sometimes beyond our intelligibility. Yet somehow, we are promised, lament transforms a screaming into the void into an act of trust, into a prayer. What might otherwise be an end thus becomes a beginning—a beginning of openness, a beginning of processing, a beginning of filtering, a beginning to more listening, a beginning of necessary grief and helpful mourning, a beginning of growth in understanding myself, my relationship with my neighbors, and the world we inhabit.

—

What I’m Growing: I was talking to a lady who tends a plot a few down from mine the other day (she initiated, not me—I’m still getting used to this small-talk thing that happens in Michigan), and she asked how my beans are doing. Apparently, everyone in the garden has struggled with beans this season, and nobody knows why. I told her it was interesting that she asked, because I planted several rows of French climbing bean but just one plant made it. But my Potawatomi pole bean and rattlesnake pole bean are doing pretty well. And elsewhere in my weed-ridden plot, I’m finding signs of promise.

What I’m Cooking: We go to the farmers’ market every Saturday. There are a few stands I always stop at—one to get blue eggs (only $3 a dozen, which seems absurd to me, because I’m still thinking of NYC prices), one for mushrooms, two others for whatever greens are in season. Then we like to see what else is on offer. Some stands are all fancy, with hipster-magnetic typefaces and design. Which I appreciate! But I also have deep affection for the old farmers with no time or energy for any of that. One man clearly believes his produce is his best marketing. He just hand-writes his signs in Sharpie on raggedy pieces of cardboard, in a typeface that I’ve decided to call Bob. (I don’t know if he’s really named Bob; he just looks like he could be a Bob, and those cardboard signs have that IDGAF-about-fancy-displays air worthy of a curmudgeonly old Bob.) This week, “Bob” had red currants, so I bought red currants, even though it has probably been 15 years, when I was living in England, since I last cooked red currants. I shouldn’t have waited so long, because they’re delicious. For Sunday dinner, I made a pork tenderloin (my usual way—seared whole in a cast-iron pan on all sides, then finished in the oven, wrapped tightly in foil with half a stick of butter, plenty of minced garlic, and chopped-up herbs from the garden). I served it with carrots roasted until caramelized, sautéed spinach, and that sweet-tart red-currant sauce—1 c red currants, 1/4 c cane sugar, 1/4 c brown sugar, a couple teaspoons of apple-cider vinegar, simmered down until slightly thickened. Tristan gave me a look when I said, “It’s like Ikea’s lingonberry sauce!” But honestly, I love that lingonberry sauce. No shame.

Thanks to all who offered reminiscences of jam in response to last week’s newsletter. It was a delight to read your stories. Congratulations to NAMETK and NAMETK! I’ll be sending them each a jar of strawberry jam, as promised in last week’s newsletter. 

What I’m Reading: This story in the New York Times about gleaning made me angry (because of the American food system’s inequities) and hopeful (who knew people still gleaned? But thank God they do!).

What I’m Listening To: I could have put this under “What I’m Reading,” but it’s better to listen to it. Ross Gay’s poem “Tomato on Board” is about the poet traveling with a tomato seedling. It’s delightful, which seems apt, given that it comes from a collection of poetry called The Book of Delights.

And here’s a song called “Stained Glass,” by the North Carolina singer-songwriter John Lucas—and featuring my friend Amanda Held Opelt on banjo and vocals.

From the Department of Self-Promotion: I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times last week about my ordination process. It explains why I’ve stayed in my denomination despite its de-facto non-affirming stance. Believe me when I say that I have screamed inside my heart many times over the past four years. I want to reiterate here, as I have elsewhere, that I’m not telling anyone else to stay in their church or denomination. I’m just sharing a sliver of my story, in the hopes that it might be helpful to someone else. For some, it would absolutely be the wrong thing to do to stay; for others, though, staying might be your difficult but necessary call. 

From the Department of Self-Promotion, Part 2: This week’s episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast features my talk from the 2018 Evolving Faith gathering as well as my co-host and dear friend Sarah Bessey’s utter delight at making me uncomfortable. The talk is about the theology of the compost pile. Some people call it a sermon. I guess I don’t see it that way, because, for me, a sermon sits amidst worship. Instead, I’d rather you thought of this as me just telling you a story and sharing some observations about trying to find glimmers of God’s goodness in this complicated world. 

Thanks for reading. I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write more soon.

Jeff

*My governor, Gretchen Whitmer, began lifting our stay-at-home order on Monday, June 1. Earlier this week, she said that the rise in cases in Michigan might mean the tightening of restrictions again. Why are we like this, America? Wear a mask! For the love of God and the sake of our neighbors, may we continue to #StaySafe.