Brethren, those of you who have been following my blog must have discerned that I am going through a rough period of my life. I just got divorced after the man I loved literally went crazy — off his needed medication, and became menacing. I’m old enough that I thought by now I would have the white picket fence American dream — you know, the Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving with patriarch at head of table, the children, the lovely home. When I was married, I lived in a suburban, lovely home. I now live on Coney Island, back in bohemia, writing my poetry in a (very nice part of the) ghetto. Have you seen the movie He Got Game? Spike Lee filmed that in my neighborhood. As a white woman, as a woman with a job that pays above poverty level, I’m in the minority here.

For those white (or otherwise Rockwell-cliched) people reading this entry, there is an expression that is used in the ghetto — one that I like but that I fear — “ghetto superstar.” The ghetto superstar is the person who plays ball better than half the people in the NBA but who never gets through enough school for the scouts to notice him, it is the singer at the local church who is better than Mary J. Blige but never gets the recording contract. Jefferson’s ideal of a meritocracy is belied by the very existence of ghettoes — don’t believe for a minute that the race is always to the swiftest in our society, not yet. There are people who are known locally in any ghetto for their talents, but the system, and sometimes their own personal weaknesses — drugs, general unreliability, shut them out from real success. I never want to be a ghetto superstar, not in poetry, not in any field.

So here is the scripture on which I am hanging this homily:

Hebrews 12:1 — “ Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us…”

This passage of Hebrews comes right after the “faith superstar” chapter — we get the list of people in the Old testament who hung on to faith despite adversity — then it says “wherefore.” Think “therefore,” “since they did all of this and are watching us.”

A few weeks ago, I gave a reading in Manhattan with a brilliant collection of women for WSQ, the premiere academic women’s studies journal. I was VERY honored to be included in their current issue. I was included with some other poets, among whom is a woman whose name sounded vaguely familiar to me, but when I saw her face, I knew exactly who she was.

Here is her beautiful face:

Nicole Cooley and I met in high school during a summer writing workshop at Bennington College in Vermont. She changed my life. I had never met anyone who was my age and took writing as seriously as she did. I was a little punk rocker at the time, at least the suburban version of one, and everything was ironic. I was not so much an artist as a misunderstood teenager with a variety of radical fashion statements and a real interest in poetry.

Nicole had already finished the manuscript of a novel. She was brilliant, intense, quiet, conservative. I was much the woman in the previous blog entry, dancing with bare-chested men painted green. Nicole’s choices were much more conservative than mine. My poetry was wild and loose. Hers was tight and clean. This is still true.

Today, Nicole has many things I wish I had, at least things that I wish I had my own version of — she is happily married to a like-minded man. She has kids. She is the new chair of a new writing program at a local college. She wholly deserves this distinction at her comparatively young age because she remains as she has always been — a phenomenal talent. She has published novels, poetry collections, and her latest book, soon to be published by Louisiana State University Press, entitled (I believe) Resurrection, is going to be the definitive book on the recovery of New Orleans (where Nicole is from originally) from Hurricane Katrina. I have heard one of the poems from this collection, and it is a brilliant work of art, one that borrows cues from Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda alike. In short, Nicole is amazing and deserves absolutely every wonderful thing she has.

Have you ever been to your high school reunion and met someone who you used to hang out with, and you find she is still as pretty as she was on graduation day, rich now, with kids on the honor roll? Have you ever then looked at your own double chin in the mirror, reflected on your own bank account, reflected on your own kids, in trouble with the vice principal’s office again?

Oddly, or so I thought it was, I met Nicole in such a way and yet felt not the slightest bit jealous. Really! I mean it! Stop looking at me that way! It’s true. I am genuinely happy for Nicole. Praise God for what He has done in her life. I could not have met her at a time of greater self-doubt than where I am now, and yet I looked at her with everything she’s got, despite all my sweat and travail that I don’t have, and yet I felt blessed, profoundly blessed, that Nicole is not a ghetto superstar — she’s in the NBA, she’s got the Motown contract — and I’m okay, glad, thrilled.

Because God never misses a moment to show me he likes irony as much as I did as a punk rock teenager, here is one of my poems I read that evening in Manhattan, which appeared originally (I am obliged to say legally, as they have first North American serial rights to it) in Red Rock Review:

SONG OF ENVY by Anne Babson

The God of the triple-process blonde is in a heaven where black is never worn, where cream cheese is eaten by triple-process blonde angels, just like in that commercial. The God of the triple-process blonde is in heaven, and there are songs of praise to be sung in a Texas two-step lilt, and there are blonde babies to be pig-tailed and pressed into new dresses. It is Sunday, and the God of the triple-process blonde hovers in a heaven filled with snowflakes over the church converted from the bowling alley, while the triple-process blonde sings songs.

This is a song of envy. This is a song sung in absinthe-green nail polish in an empty night club where crushed cigarette butts line the morning floor, the stench of beer wafting from the broken boards. This is a song of envy. This is a song sung in the bitterness of tea without sugar drunk hungover. This is a song of envy to the triple-process blonde who voted to close this place down last election.

This, Blondie, is my confession — think of it as a prayer before bedtime — even though it is Sunday seven a. m. my head has not touched pillow since high noon Saturday — well, his front seat headrest tilted down wasn’t a pillow, and we weren’t sleeping. This, Blondie, is my confession, my confession to you — your church doesn’t abide Latin or popery (unless you spell it pot pourri), but my confession is this — mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa – I stink of sweaty cowboy, sweaty nightclub, and Sweaty longneck beer, of sweaty sin, of sweaty desperation. This is my battle hymn, a song of envy.

This is a song of envy. This is a song sung in absinthe-green nail polish chipping in my metal bathtub, in frothy water drawn to scrape the glitter off my tattooed back, the stink of cigarettes and “Yeah, baby!” From my single-process head of spiked-up devil-red hair. You — Triple-process: that’s bleach, bleach and Bleach again — you are the object. You are the object of this song of envy.

My God is a jealous God, Blondie. He is a loner. He sulks often. He is enigmatic. He’s like any one of my dates this year — promising to call, but never dialing my number again. Even the answers He provides are in the form of a question, just like on Jeopardy — “What is children going hungry?” “Who is an underachiever?” “What is surviving bitter pestilence?” “What is war, what is it good for?” The holy book I read is filled with more riddle than rhyme, Blondie, and I’ve dog-eared the pages looking For where I get your pristine life, where I stop flirting with losers, where the deus is ex machina, where.

This is a song of envy. This is an epistle from my church — a bathtub for baptism, a beat-up pick-up truck For the lectern, two pair of jeans stiff with paint and cow patties crossed to form crucifix — to your church — The one in the old bowling alley, still boxed-in coffin-like with faux wood paneling, the one where I see Only whitest whites, the one where everyone flosses daily, the one where your God answers everything Before it is asked and whose voice is as clear as the voice-over selling cream cheese, the God of my envy.

Don’t think, Blondie, that my skepticism is chosen. I know a world where you have never walked. I have seen the blisters on my mother’s hands. I have seen my father’s nakedness uncovered. I have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He has trampled on the vineyards where the grapes of Wrath are stored — that would be in my uncle’s gun rack, where my cousin picked the lock and exploded his brains on the Naugahyde sofa set. Yes, Blondie, I have smelled burned brains and vinyl, so point me to your Jesus who heals this. I dare him to clean the ring from my bathtub, the scum from my veins.

This is a song of envy, a battle hymn to battle Him. I envy your shingled roof. I envy your fresh-baked Lingonberry pie. I envy your porcelain skin. I envy your pressed dress. I envy your diamond-heavy hand. I envy you your cream cheese heaven and your interceding savior. I envy your ignorance of people like me, who have stared into eternity downward and see their own mascara-murky faces staring back at Them from Darwin’s pond, who see the darkness of “In the beginning” — before your God moved over The face of the Earth, before anyone saw that it was good, before I saw anything but envy.

I mean for this poem to be an exhortation to the Body of Christ who would evangelize women like the speaker, a woman like so many non-believers, who has made choices that were the best she knew how to make, and who feels condemnation from church folks who seem to have it better than she does. We need to tread compassionately with such people, for they are more like us than they let on at first, and they are hungry for blessing and love.

Reading the poem that I wrote years ago on the evening of my brief reunion with Nicole Cooley, however, legitimate superstar, made me test my own spirit for signs of envy. The truth is — I told you to stop looking at me like that — I’m not. So why not?

I cite the passage from Hebrews I quoted earlier for the reason. I don’t know how much or in what Nicole believes, but I do know what I believe. The race that is set before ME is different than the race set before another, and the prize is not a book contract, although, Jesus, that’s one of the desires of my heart. The prize is not family. The prize is not even brilliance. I’m competing in a much more important prize. I’m running the race of faith. I have a stadium filled with onlookers — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rahab, Hannah, and the rest. Praise God, and to Him be the glory, I have set aside the weights — divorce, childlessness, every brick in nearby housing projects, disappointments, getting older — and the sin that does so easily beset us — covetousness comes to mind here, and I truly don’t covet, just continue to hope for my own — and I am running the race that is set before ME with PATIENCE, just like Paul told me to.

Trust me. I’m not that holy. I didn’t make my heart any special way here out of my own volition. I’m surprised I’m not jealous. It’s not my own goodness at work. That’s why you can stop looking at me doubtfully. I’ve done only one thing right, it seems to me. I have surrendered my heart and my real belief and confidence to God’s promises. I believe I will have a husband, or I’ll have peace about not having one. I believe I’ll raise children, or I’ll have peace about not raising any. I believe my writing will be published on yet higher levels, that my career will explode, or I’ll have peace about where it goes. I don’t write for a press. I write for the one who gave me His Word. And my poems are what He fashioned them to be. He may have given Nicole a violin and me a trombone. It’s His orchestra, and I am playing the notes He gave me on the page. I hear the music in my head, and it sounds beautiful to me. If that’s all that ever happens, to Him the Composer be all Honor of it. Amen.

I am beautiful — I am not skinny.

I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favor. — Song of Solomon 8:10

Let’s just say there was this woman. Let’s not say it was me. Let’s not even say it was anyone I know.

This woman lived in Manhattan. She went to an old neighborhood where she had not been in a long time. She laughed when she saw that the dive bar where she had gone before she got saved had become a pretentious hot spot — velvet rope-ringed, bouncer-guarded — when the cops were scared to go there before. She laughed to herself at the way the city changes overnight from one thing to another, ever new.

As the woman rounded a corner, a man her age locked eyes with her, almost sharing the existential joke she was laughing at. He gasped. He saw her, in a way that people rarely see each other in the city, whole, full of mirth, light shining from Heaven down on them to show them radiant. The man couldn’t help himself — it had been so long since he had seen a woman like this — confident, playful, and free. He let out of his throat before he could think about it a hoarse exclamation — “My God! You’re so beautiful!”

Like all men in the city, he was on his way somewhere else. She was on her way home. He phoned his appontment with a friend, canceled, said, “I’ve met a fantastic woman. See you another time.”

She broke the rules of the city, this laughing woman, perhaps out of sentimental feelings for her misspent youth. She agreed to have a cup of coffee with this man, let him talk her into getting to know him.

He was of a certain age. So was she. They both had places to go. They both had responsibilities, regrets, false starts, hopes for better things. They talked until it was dark. He held her hand. She let him hold her hand. Over and over again, he told her she was beautiful. She was beautiful. She had always known it, but sometimes, it felt hidden in this city, where there were people who made their livings at being beautiful — size zero models, whose hanger-bodies flaunted couture, actresses, women who make a living pretending to be something they are not, usually by pretending to be happy and sexy.

But this woman, this woman having coffee in the gentrified neighborhood, she was happy. She was happy to see things starting again, including this man moon-eyed across from her, sure he said over and over again that he must see her henceforth, over and over again. She was sexy, not sexy like the women who sell themselves to the camera, sexy like the Song of Solomon, a yet-unclaimed prize for a righteous groom, sexier and hotter than the sex for sale on the streets, the sex for free in the chat rooms.

The man said he was a Christian. He seemed moved by her talking about charity work. He worked in advertising, a place that sells everything to everyone, and everything is marketed with the cheapness of things that she didn’t even seem conscious of. He told her things he seemed to have never even thought before, but things he knew must be true — secrets about himself, his fears, his ambitions, his masculinity. She squeezed his hand tighter and encouraged him.

“God! You’re so beautiful!” He whispered again.

He got up to pay the check, and when he came back, he squeezed into the booth next to her and took her face in his hands. He kissed her passionately. She responded.

They kissed in the booth for a few minutes. In New York, this surprises no one — sudden passions, sudden trends, sudden gentrifications — this is a day in the city like any other day. No one even glanced at them.

By now it was dark. They walked through a block of brownstones, and again. he grabbed her and kissed her, tenderly leaning her against the wall. They kissed for three hours, four hours. The streets were busy, and people wandered by. But in his embrace, the woman felt alone with him, as if they were in a private corner.

“God, you’re so beautiful!” He repeated between long caresses and kisses.

He caressed her thigh, her collar bone, grabbed her close, the small of her back. He was a gentleman. They had just met. He promised to see her again. He meant it. He seemed afraid that at any moment she might evaporate, and he held tighter and kissed longer. They seemed alone. The air was heavy around them. There were other bodies under the street lamps, the sound of trailing and nearing footsteps, but none of this penetrated their space somehow, even though they were only feet away. Again, he swore he would see her again, this laughing woman, this intelligent beauty, this good, Christian woman, that he wanted to know everything about her. He caressed her thigh again and told her how sexy she was.

Because he was a gentleman, he pulled away. He was too tempted. This was a city street. He caught his breath. He took a full half hour to catch his breath. When he did, he took her hand and hailed a cab. He would see her home.

The next day, he called and text messaged her. She was still beautiful. He was still determined. She responded in kind. She sent him a picture on her cell phone of herself, one she captioned with the words, “Thinking of you.”

He disappeared. He never called again. He never returned voice mail messages. He never texted back. He was gone, back in the crowd of bobbing heads in mid-town, near that advertising agency where he worked. He never saw her again.

The photo she had sent him — it was a photo of that same woman, the one with the laughing eyes, the same body he caressed, that aroused him terribly — but her photo was not like the photos of women selling toothpaste, floor wax, the other photos in the agency. Her photo was not like the photos of the actresses who showed up for photo shoots. Her photo was nothing like the photos of models who sauntered into the perfume commercial auditions. In her photo, she was ample, full-hipped, fully there, a tummy without a tuck, a substantial thigh, a woman with breasts like towers, a towering woman, a woman who was not pretending not to be there, not even in her body, which could not lie.  In her photo, the man could see her, and she would not do. She simply would not do.

The city renewed itself daily. New meat arrived in the meat-packing district, only the old butchers were gone — now there were high-end fashion boutiques, and everyone was starving herself. The city gentrified, and it left the woman out on the street where she would not be noticed as she walked by again.

We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar. — The Song of Solomon 8:8-9

We live in a sick culture. Let’s not say it was me. Let’s not say it was anyone I knew. Let’s pretend, like skinny actresses, to be someone, something we are not. I am beautiful. Men find me beautiful. I am six feet tall, blonde, and voluptuous. That photo above is mine, the sideways one. I took it in the mirror sideways. However, I am not skinny. I am now who I am now. But we live in a society where some men out of vanity insist that women look a particular way, even while they are aroused by the women who are really in front of them.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, who made us exactly as we are on purpose, who despises gluttony and sloth but not womanly curves, not manly substance, we thank you that we have been given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven with the knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, your Holy One, and that which we bind in His name is bound also in Heaven, and that which we loose in His name is loosed also in Heaven.

Father, in that spirit, we rebuke the demon that plagues women in this culture, particularly in places like Manhattan. Let us name the spirit, for we have with Adam, the right to name lesser creatures, and the devils are under our feet and authority in Jesus’ name — let us name this spirit the fat demon. It is not that he is necessarily fat, but rather, he is a vain spirit who whispers in the ears of those who will listen that a gaunt femininity is the only beautiful one. Fat demon, we bind you in the name of Jesus. We loose you only away from us in hell. We bind you from speaking to any man or woman in this culture. You can deprive us no longer of even the slightest happiness.

We loose, in the name of Jesus, a Godly body consciousness, one that resembles you, where women have real bodies, men admire those bodies, and men and women both are free to live healthy lives in the bodies you have given them. Thank you, Father for backing us up in Heaven as we pray this prayer. Thank you for giving us through Jesus, more abundant lives. AMEN.