weldable cookies

Room at the inn?

2011-12-11T15:30:00.002-05:00

I preached this morning. Hit it out of the park, I think. Noticing that the more exhausted I am after church, the better -- generally speaking -- the whole thing was. I think it goes to the Hokey Pokey principle. You know, "you put your whole self in..." Yeah. Like that. Whole self in = whole-hearted worship. Works for me.

Is there room in the inn?
Dawn Fortune
Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, Mass
11 December 2011

They arrived at the drop-in center downstairs after a week on the road. I’m not sure when they last showered. Apparently not all shelters and hostels have safe or functioning showers between Texas and here. They both hear voices. Maria says several members of her family hear voices. She says they are the voices of angels sometimes, and sometimes God. A doctor once gave her some medicine, but she can’t afford the prescription and doesn’t like the way it makes her feel, so she stopped taking it. Besides, she doesn’t mind the voices. They tell her she’s special. Jose refused to talk to us about his auditory hallucinations.

This couple triggered a lot of judgments that come naturaly for many of us. She’s young – 16 or 17, and he’s my age – mid 40s. She’s pregnant, he’s not the dad, but they’re devoted to each other and determined to stay together. They’ve been on the road for a week, taking Greyhound bus trips by day and sleeping in hostels and shelters each night, travelling from east Texas, where Jose has work in construction. He’s from this area, originally, and through some kind of nightmare of government bureaucracy, he was required to show up in person to pay some kind of fee and retrieve his identity paperwork. He’s a citizen, but there was some kind of screw-up with his license after his wallet got stolen, so he had to come back in person to handle it. Maria can’t sleep on the moving bus, so they’ve had to ride during the day and find a shelter at night. Her feet and ankles are swollen from the pregnancy, which appears close to the end of its duration, and from the long hours sitting in a cramped bus seat. They’ve been staying with friends in Texas, saving for their own place, so when Jose had to come east to handle things, Maria did not feel comfortable staying in Texas without him.

We took their information, such as it was, and tried to get them hooked up with services while they’re here. Jose knows the area a little, but moved when he was pretty young and no longer has contacts that could help them find a place to stay. They don’t have money to afford a hotel room for the night. Not if they want to be able to get back home to Texas when Jose’s business is concluded.

The area shelters are all full, particularly at this time of year. We called all over, trying to find a place for them, but nothing panned out. Some shelters wouldn’t accept Maria because she is not yet 18, even though she is emancipated from her parents. The other shelters did not have any beds. A shelter for women who have been abused had a bed, but Maria didn’t qualify, was too young, and that would have left Jose out in the cold. We tried everything. Nada. Perhaps on Monday they might be able to get general assistance at the municipal office to get a cheap motel room, but there’s no guarantee, and by then they’re due to be headed south again.

I talked to the drop in center staff on the phone Friday. Someone in the drop in center let the couple stay in a defunct minivan. It doesn’t run, but it doesn’t leak either. It’s not heated, but they’ve got some blankets and each other, so they’re ok.

Baby Jesus was born last night in the back of the minivan.

OK, so that’s not exactly true. In fact, the details of this story have been stitched together from the stories of the dozens of people I have met in the three months I’ve been working at the drop-in center. There is no Maria and Jose, at least not in the exact way I have described them to you today. But the situation I described is not exceptional. People are transient and/or homeless or nearly so every night, right here, in this city. Their circumstances are rarely dignified, and rarely simple. Life is complicated and messy, and life on the edges of society is all that raised to a debilitating degree.

The story I just told you is thousands of years old. It is my 21^st-century adaptation of the story told in the Gospel of Luke of Joseph and Mary traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census. Mary is pregnant and they’re travelling by donkey, which can’t be comfortable in the 39^th week of pregnancy. But then again neither is walking, and those were the options, so what should have been a four-day journey lasted them at least a week. They arrived tired and dirty to a town that was already full up. Resources were low and the only place they could find to sleep was in a barn with the cows and donkeys.

If that story were to take place today, the players and circumstances might look a lot like I described them. Would any of us recognize them? And more to the point, would any of us let them sleep in our spare room?

I’ve been spending one morning a week at the center since I started in September, and I have to tell you, it is both eye-opening and intensely gratifying work. The drop-in center serves anywhere from 40 to 150 people in a day. Some people come for a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal and leave, while others stay from the moment the doors open at 8 a.m. until they close at noon. All manner of people come through that humble space. Gifted artists, construction workers, parents, grandparents, young adults struggling to make a life, all finding themselves somehow in need of a safe place to be in the morning.

Some of the clients have homes but need a place to be. Some have been staying at one of the area shelters for extended periods of time – I can think of one client who has been at the shelter for over three years.

Many are hamstrung by forces beyond their control. Many are struggling with mental illness, others are battling addiction, some are overwhelmed by the all too often deadly combination of both. Some have criminal records that make it difficult to get housing or employment, some have invisible disabilities that go undiagnosed and untreated and that prevent them from getting the services that would help. Once hooked into the social services network, things can go along relatively smoothly, provided one has some pretty humble expectations around housing, electricity and grocery needs. Addiction and mental illness compound the problems when they affect the behavior and decision-making of clients who are free and independent agents. People refuse assistance sometimes. People accept help, but then reject it later, only to later request it again. There is no point – nor should there be – when a person is simply cut off from assistance programs for such behavior. It just makes it frustrating for the staff who really want to help.

Pat Dennehey is the director of the drop-in center. A formidable woman, she manages miniscule resources and stretches every donation until it squeaks from the stress. She knows every client, their story, their history, their family situation, their drug, their drink, their diagnoses and their chances. She provides advocacy and resource referrals and management. Some clients have asked her to manage their funds, so she is their “payee” and she pays their rent and bills and disburses their money (usually from a disability check) so that they don’t run out before the end of the month. She supervises a small staff of paid workers, volunteers, and two students. She doles out groceries, frozen chickens, tooth brushes and bars of soap. She does what she can to counsel clients to lay off the booze, to put down the crack pipe, to stop buying scratch tickets, and she does so with an amount of grace that leaves none of them humiliated when it’s done. Sometimes she can help people, and sometimes she can’t. And while she’d probably deny it in public, the little victories and moments of tenderness can reduce her to tears. Pat and I get along just fine.

This is the time of year when we talk a lot about sharing what we have, about opening our hearts and our checkbooks to help those less fortunate than ourselves, and I think it is worth asking how open we actually are.

Knowing our boundaries and limitations is valuable. Priorities vary among us. A parent’s first job is to provide for and protect their children. A pastor’s job is to serve and lead their church. Like the flight attendants say, when the cabin pressure drops and the oxygen masks drop out of the ceiling, put yours on your own face before you help your neighbor.

Not everyone has what it takes to bring Jose and Maria into their homes to sleep in the spare room, or even the garage. I get that.

But what might we be doing that we’re not already doing? What could we be giving that might make a difference? Do we give just that portion of our resources that does not really make an impact on our comfort, or do we share things that make us wince just a bit? Do we clean our closets of old clothes we no longer want and donate those, or do we go out and pick up some new things to donate so someone will have a shirt that’s never been worn by anybody else? Giving our trash to someone hardly counts as virtue in my book, save perhaps its relative value as an effort to recycle. But like Hosea Ballou said about intention – if our desires are not pure, our hearts are not pure and we cannot claim virtue from good behavior done for disingenuous or self-serving reasons.

So I challenge us this week to examine our giving habits. Without crossing into the realm of codependent self-abuse, are we giving all that we could? Are we sharing as much of ourselves as we can? Is there room in the inn of our hearts for those less fortunate than us? Can we make welcome those who are difficult to welcome – the unwashed, the mumbling, stumbling masses?

In 1883, New York poet Emma Lazarus composed a sonnet called The New Colossus, inspired by America’s acceptance of immigrants from around the world. The words will be familiar to some, and new to others.

The New Colossus

Not the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Those words were inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty when it was dedicated and unveiled in 1886. This is what the world thought of America then – that we were able to welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We, as Americans, often pride ourselves on our generosity. So now I challenge each of us. In this season of holidays and holy days, let us push ourselves to give as much of ourselves as we can, and to see how it makes us feel, about ourselves and the world around us.

Blessed be and amen.

surrender, god, and letting go

2011-11-07T09:06:00.002-05:00

I am back from my workshop weekend and faced again with theology, or rather theological writing, here in this space. I can get a handle on step two as I discussed Friday - I came to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I believe that. I believe that nature can balance me, that nature, or the universe, or whatever it is out there that makes gravity work and the tides do their thing is certainly more powerful than me and can restore me to balance (sanity). I'm good with that.

Step three is a bigger, scarier step. "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood god."

That's not exactly how it reads in conference-approved literature, but I think it'll be ok. Conference-approved literature capitalizes "God" and uses the male pronoun "Him" at the end of the sentence. My gut is the conference folks who oversee this stuff won't mind if I change the language to reflect my theology and gender issues.

The biggest issue here is made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood god, not idiosyncratic language. Can I do that? Can I turn my will and my life over to the care of god as I understand god? It's a big, scary step. And actually, it does not require me to do the turning over, but merely make a mindful decision to do so. 'Made a decision to turn..." does NOT say "turned our wills and lives..."

So now the question is: can I make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of my higher power, however I envision that higher power to be? In the course of this workshop weekend, I found myself a couple of times in a position to choose a partner or join/form a group for one exercise or another. Sometimes I was purposeful and pro-active in the selecting process, and sometimes I was more passive, allowing myself to be open (while still at choice to refuse) to what opportunities might present themselves. When I was open to what might present itself to me, I found that the experience provided me with surprising richness of experience, and when I chose, with some agenda in mind, or some idea of what I might or could or should learn from a particular grouping, it never went quite as well. Now this might all be coincidence, and it may be Monday morning hindsight/quarterbacking, but it seems to be true now as I look back at my experience and assess how it all went.

I am faced now with a decision. Can I make the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of my higher power? Can I turn my will and my life over to something so nebulous? Can I trust that great force of energy and love that has no name, no face, no form? Can I even address it with a request for help? This is where Unitarian Universalists are said to run onto problems when we pray. "To whom it may concern: There are some things in my life here that would benefit from your attention..." How do I do that? And can I do it every day?

The idea, I think, is to try to stop running things, to let go of the ego and step into the mystery and trust that the world will keep spinning without my supervision. I don't know how successful I am at such a letting go, or even at making a decision to do so. I guess maybe I can decide to give it my best shot. I can decide to do my best to turn my will and my life over to the care of god as I understand god. I can decide to trust the universe. I'm ok with that. Not sure about the whole letting go thing right now -- that's still pretty scary -- but I think I can lean back into the mystery of things and trust that the universe won't drop me.

Today I make the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of god as I understand god. The details of what that letting go will look like will become apparent as I move through the next steps. This is a decision step. The following steps are how that decision becomes action and reality. Today I can make that decision. I can decide to turn my will and my life over. I can do that. Today, I decide. Yes. Tomorrow, I may have to decide again, but that's ok. I'll get there as I get there. Today I set the intention. Yes.

came to believe

2011-11-04T09:29:00.003-04:00

I am discussing the divine, how I understand god and how it fits with my 12-step recovery and spirituality program. In recent months, my theology has developed to a place where I do not believe in God as a person, a guy, an entity with human personal traits like wants, desires, an agenda, arms, etc. I see god as that divine that lives in the relationship of beings, the hope in a hopeless situation, the kindness in hell. That to me is god. So how does that work in my steps? I'm not sure.

Step two says "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

Now the funny part is that I had the words mixed a little in my memory, and when I checked my book for accuracy, I found that there is nothing here that requires me to have a god that is a person or that looks like one. When I got sober, I had a pretty firm belief in God. Now, almost three decades later, my beliefs are not so sure or so simple. But the bottom line question here is this: do I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity? And my answer to that is a qualified yes. Yes, I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I believe that nature seeks balance and balance to me represents the sanity I seek, the place where I feel personally, emotionally, spiritually secure, where I am able to approach my day from a place of abundance seeking to share instead of from a place of scarcity where I feel the need to get my share and a little extra just in case.

I need to be mindful here not to get ahead of myself. This is step two, not any other step. There is no call for submission or action, merely coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I can do that.

Now I am heading off for a weekend. One of those HAI things again. I am looking forward to it enormously. I will post again come Monday, hopefully about step 3 at that time. See you then.

getting personal

2011-11-03T07:24:00.002-04:00

For the past week or better, I have been doing some theological reflection about how I understand the divine. I came to the conclusion that I don't seem to have a god that has a personality or personhood. That seemed fine until Friday night when I was lying on the deliciously cool tile floor of my bathroom, wishing I had a god I could pray to who would ease my suffering. When the realization struck me, I did giggle. But only briefly, cause it hurt.

Now in my 12-step program, there is a very clear concept of a higher power, and that higher power is very much a person-type entity. God is someone to be prayed to who can and will relieve our suffering. So how does this new theology of mine mesh with that concept? In conversations with some folks this week, it came to me to explore that notion here, and in particular to go through the steps as a way to do it. So let's start at step one. I'll do the others in order as we go.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

Sounds easy enough. No mention of god, the divine or anything holy there. There is surrender, but it is surrender to a reality, to an understanding, more than to a deity. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol. Some people get tweaked about the powerless part. I don't have much trouble with it these days. I didn't like it much when I first came into meetings, but after clearing my head a bit and taking a look at my behavior when I was drinking ... well, let's just say it's not a point I am willing to argue any more. I am powerless over alcohol. And my life is unmanageable, or at least it was when I was drinking. I planned things that never happened. I vowed not to do things that I always ended up doing, screw-ups followed me around. It was rough. And messy.

Today my life is far more manageable, but I notice that the less time and effort I put into managing things -- to trying to orchestrate the grand symphony of my life -- the easier my days are and the less stressful they are. But that's another discussion.

So I am powerless. I can do that. The first step does not require me to have a god or a higher power, just to admit that I'm NOT one. I'm good with that. I am powerless. Over alcohol and lots of stuff. I am powerless over how people act and feel and what they say and how they behave. I can respond or react, and I am responsible for my part in that stuff, but I am powerless over how someone else behaves. I am powerless over alcohol and drugs and what they do to others as well. I am powerless over addiction and how it beats people up. I don't like it, but I am powerless over that. I get it.

OK, now I'm going to end with something I don't often do, which is a prayer. Oh, I can pray in a group, I can lead a prayer and I can participate in a prayer, but I don't seem to spend a lot of time on my own devoted to prayer. This is the simple version of the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Power to change the things I can; and Wisdom to know the difference.

God, whatever that might be, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. That means all the people, places and things in my life that might not be running the way I like them, that I think might go better if I were in charge; those people who ought to do this or that in order to be healthy and meet a standard of life and health that I deem appropriate. God grant me the serenity to accept the world as it is, and my place in it, for today. Tomorrow I can charge the castle with pitchforks, but for this morning, I'd like to accept things as being where they are supposed to be for this moment.

God grant me the strength to change the things I can, which mostly means me: my thoughts, my behaviors, my feelings, my words. God, please make my words tender and gentle and without sharp edges, so that if I have to eat them later it won't hurt so badly. Grant me the strength to work for justice without working for my own greater glory and good. Help me to take baby steps instead of trying to find a cure for cancer before I've had breakfast. Help me to change the things I can.

And please, god, who ever or what ever form you might take, guide me to the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I cannot. Grant me the wisdom to know where I can be helpful and where I'm more likely to get in the way of actual progress and healing. Help me to stay right-sized. Blessed be. Amen.

November and more on the divine

2011-11-01T07:44:00.003-04:00

It is November 1, beginning of that NaBloPoMo thing I've done in the past. I have not signed up to do it this year, but I have signed up to do this thing every morning, examining what I know of god and the divine and my relationship with it all and it's relationship with me. They tell me that's theology. I don't know what I call it yet.

What I mentioned only as a post script yesterday was that I spent more than 8 hours of quality time Saturday in the emergency room with some kind of gastric upset thing. I was in some pretty harsh pain on Friday afternoon/evening and it wasn't all that better by noon Saturday, so a friend took me and sat shiva while I was poked, prodded, x-rayed, scanned, drained from various places and otherwise examined. Turns out I had some kind of thing they're not sure about. It may well have been the world's most expensive nap.

This goes in with some of the discussion we've been having in my Systematic Theology course on the purpose of suffering and evil. Why does it exist? Who thought it would be a good idea for us and what kind of twisted logic came up with that notion? There are some who say that evil is not god's doing at all, but that of a bad element - Satan or the devil, and god doesn't have much to do with it. Others say it comes from human's abuse of the freedoms that the divine has given us, and others still say it serves some kind of useful purpose, either as an educational tool, or as I heard when I was growing up "it builds character."

I'm not so sure I need any more character, and I am disinclined to think there is a bad guy with horns and a pointy tail running around causing havoc in the world, nor am I inclined to think that Saturday's exploration in pain was offered to me as an educational opportunity -- a spiritual field trip, if you will. Nor am I inclined to think that it is a result of my failure to pray appropriately or recycle my tin cans. It might have something to do with my gall bladder and diet, which can be seen as an outgrowth of an abuse of freedom, I suppose, but still. All of these things speak to a god that is punitive and cruel. I can't buy that. I can accept that bad stuff happens as a part of nature and that life is unfair, but I don't see suffering as a cosmic morality tale visited upon my GI tract to impart some kind of lesson about my place in the universe and relationship to the divine.

The trip to the hospital did offer me some time to observe how people come into such a place and how they behave while there. I got to sit in my own little curtained room and hear the comings and goings of nurses and technicians and patients and loved ones. I got to hear some kind of suturing being done on a not terribly pleased person across the way, and then a cast was put on. I got to hear a guy get treated for what was probably the clap, a young woman was treated for a sprained ankle after she fell down some stairs the night before ("I was sober, really!") and a woman came in with her husband and was seeking drugs and attention. It was a microcosm cross-section of society at its most vulnerable. All walks of life come through Beth Israel's ER, and I got to listen to them all. I also got a clear idea that I am not ready for chaplaincy yet. I think I'll try for that next fall as opposed to over the summer. I am not even ready to try for this summer yet, and the application process is already underway.

So, why suffering, then? I'm not sure. When I am hale and healthy, I tend to offer a smart remark like "pain is what lets you know you're alive," but that's more bullshit than anything else. What purpose pain? What can possibly be gained by the suffering of an infant born diseased and dying in a place wracked by famine and AIDS? What purpose does that serve? To offer some kind of morality lesson to the mother? To the infant? What kind of sick fuck would set up that with a purpose? That can't be god. It can't be. But what, then? And where is god in that? Where is the divine in that situation? I am inclined to think that the doings of this earth are the doings of this earth and that suffering and what we call "evil" are the normal diseases and infections that any organism has and fights in the course of its lifespan.

It's a lame explanation, but it's what I have this morning. Perhaps more on it tomorrow.

the veil is thinnest today

2011-10-31T08:35:00.002-04:00

This is all Hallows Eve, All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead and Samhain, the Celtic festival of the dead. It is the time of the year when the veil between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead is the thinnest it ever gets. Pagan traditions tell us that today is when we can call the names of our beloveds and they can hear us, that if we gaze at the mist in just the right way we might be able to see those who are gone from us. It is a time to say goodbye, to remember and to let go.

At church yesterday, we did a bunch of stuff about remembrance and loss and mourning and saying goodbye. We lit a lot of candles and we spoke many names into the darkness of the sanctuary. (The power and heat were out at the church because of the snowstorm that hit overnight, so the candles were necessary and welcome for a variety of reasons.)

Rituals such as this are for the living, I understand that. They are so we can have something to do that allows us to let got of loss and pain that we've been carrying around. I was in a weird place, though. My father died in June. The pain is still accessible should I think about it all too much, but Sunday is not the place for me to do that. At least that's not my understanding. It is the time for clergy to lead worship, not necessarily speak the name of our own departed and lost. Although my supervising minister spoke some names. I heard him do it. I don't know what to do with that. I will ask him this week. The service on Sunday is about me serving the divine and the congregation, not about me getting my own spiritual needs for healing met. I wonder if maybe I was more healed from this loss if I would have been better able to speak my father's name and let it go than I am now. Now I think I would have cried still. There's a lot of healing I have left to do.

The day of the dead thing does not exactly fit with my theology. I don't believe that we can see from the realm of the living into the realm of the dead, nor that anyone there can hear if we call out their name to say goodbye. I understand that it is a ritual through which we get healing, but I don't see it as literally true. I think the imagery is good and helpful as a meditative guide to the emotional release, but theologically, I am still a tad confused. Where is god in this? Where is the divine? I think god is in the healing, in the release, in the lifting of the burden of mourning and sadness. I think god is in the ritual where we stand together and hold space for each other's pain and support each other as we let it go. Is god a thing that we can pray to in this moment to relieve suffering? I suppose. But I am not inclined to believe that the divine works like that. I tend to think that the divine exists in the love and compassion we share with each other. Still thinking. More tomorrow.

Post Script:

I ended up in the Emergency Room at Beth Israel in Boston Saturday afternoon. I spent 8+ quality hours there getting poked and prodded and scanned and x-rayed only to be told that nobody's exactly sure what happened, but I seemed better so go home and get some rest. Even with my new insurance from school, I may have just spent a full day accomplishing what amounts to a $30,000 nap. We'll see what's covered and what's not and I'll let you know. Making an appointment with a regular doc today to follow up.

suffering and god

2011-10-29T10:08:00.002-04:00

Thursday in my systematic theology class we talked about evil in the world and what it means (or meant) to folks developing an understanding of the divine. Some say that evil is the work of another (Satan) and not god's fault or business, some say it comes from an abuse of the freedoms that god has granted us humans, some say it has educational value (I suggested that nuns might fit this model and got a nice round of laughs) and there were a couple other ways to explain the existence of evil and suffering in a world supposedly created and ruled (to some extent) by god.

There's a thing called theodocy that is the name for the dilemma created when three "truths" are offered:

1. God is omnipotent.

2. God is benevolent.

3. Evil (suffering) exists.

This is where people get tangled.

If the divine is omnipotent, then it seems to reason that god could eradicate evil. The fact that evil exists seems to indicate that god allows it to happen and therefore is not benevolent.

If the divine is benevolent, that would mean that god does not want us to suffer. The fact that we do suffer would indicate that maybe god cannot stop suffering and therefore is not omnipotent.

This is all very nice if one has a god that is a person, or has a personality, or is a being of some sort that can be prayed to and communicated with like we communicate with one another. That's not really how I understand god, so I can look at it all from a safely detached and curious stance.

Until last night.

About an hour into my afternoon class, I began to feel uncomfortable. Like maybe I'd eaten something that did not agree with me. I'd had a cheeseburger and a salad for lunch, so that didn't seem right, but by the time class was over, I was alternately sweating and shivering and my stomach felt like it was going to explode. I came back to my place, got into some sweat pants and curled up on the couch for a while. For the next eight hours I alternately felt like I would throw up, pass out or explode from the lower regions of my intestines. I was miserable. And I am not sure but it might have been worse that I did none of those things, because I have a hunch that any of them might have offered relief once I got to the other side.

So, when one is lying on the bathroom floor -- deliciously cool! -- one has some time to make some observations about life. First, there are a lot of cobwebs under the radiator. Second, where is god in this? What purpose does this level of pain serve in my world? On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have put my pain level at probably a 6. It was really pretty bad. Not so bad that I was convulsing or violently throwing up, but bad enough that I could barely walk around my little apartment and when the pain came in waves, I took lots of little shallow breaths to get myself through them. I've never had a broken bone or had a baby, so I don't have those to compare it with. This was an ache that got acute and sharp in waves. It was miserable, though.

Perhaps the most difficult thing I faced yesterday was the desire to pray to a god who could and would relieve my suffering but realizing that I did not believe in that kind of entity/personality-god. Well, hell. That's gonna screw up my step work. Hmmm. I may have to re-think this.

I finally climbed into bed at around 11 p.m., when I had confidence that laying horizontal would not make me need/want to vomit, and slept until 10 this morning. My stomach still feels like hell, but not as bad as it did last night. I'm not hungry, so I'm sipping my orange juice and taking my vitamins and wondering what has happened to me and what this means for how I understand the divine.

Today I hope to get some work done on an exam that was handed out yesterday. It's due next Friday. I don't see myself moving far or fast today, so a day of books and writing sounds just about right. Be well.

this god thing

2011-10-28T07:45:00.003-04:00

So not unlike that time I signed up to do NaBloPoMo, I have recently signed up to blog on a regular basis for the last half of my semester. This is for a class called "Spiritual Practices for Healing and Wholeness"and the thing is kicking my butt. I am learning a lot academically, but damn, it is beating up my heart quite a bit as well. I get triggered now and then in class, and when we meet each week we start with an hour of yoga. Now, the body stores all kinds of things in muscles and joints, including trauma and abuse, so after an hour of bending and stretching and loosening up all kinds of memories buried who knows where, it gets rough when we start talking in class about some stuff. The prof is really cool in that she has made adjustments for me so that I can still participate without getting triggered so much, but still. It's hard work.

So here I am, up earlier than I want to be, writing about god. Again. I know that anyone who started reading here all those years ago never expected this to be a theological blog, but hey, here i am. I write what I am doing, and right now, that's theology. Maybe I'll get back to writing about sex or politics or cooking or building things in a while. for now, I need to work out whatever it is that's jamming me up. I appreciate your patience.

I've been thinking about what it means to have faith in a god that is not described in terms of a person or personality. Most of what I have read in school this far describes god as wanting this, loving that, hating this other thing, feeling joy and sadness, rooting for the Red Sox and otherwise being a ... guy.

And that's where I get stuck. That just smacks of us hanging human identifiers on the divine, and that does not make sense to me. We are limited in our expression by our language and our inability to think or imagine beyond our own experiences. Thus, we think of the most fantastic outer limit version of what we know and decide that this thing we call god is maybe an inch or two beyond that. I can't believe that. It does not ring true for me, and it's beyond what I can take on faith. For me to believe in something that I cannot see or experience physically, it needs to make sense to my intellect. I can't believe a creator god gave me a smart brain and then wants me not to use it. So, some stuff has got to pass my internal "well that makes sense, I guess" test or it won't fly.

Is this bad? I don't know. Is it wrong to need to understand something that is inherently incomprehensible? Or am I splitting hairs with this, demanding to know what I think I can and should know and conveniently accepting the things that do not challenge me as much that might be impossible for me to know and thus knock down my house of cards? Hard telling. The good thing here is that I am in a process of discovery and discernment. There is value in the process of learning and clarifying and distilling what it is that I know about god, and it is not a process that can -- or should -- be rushed. Here I am, learning, questioning, exploring, seeking. I trust that an honest effort at seeking will reveal things to me that I seek, and probably some I did not seek. But that's OK. It's the seeking that's important, not whatever answer I find at the end.

More tomorrow.

trust, love and the divine.

2011-10-14T10:48:00.003-04:00

This god stuff has kept me pretty busy of late. I'm in seminary, after all. It feels like I should have something more than a passing idea of what I understand the divine to be. It also seems like it might be a good idea to develop an understanding of the divine that I can trust, so I can build a relationship with that entity that feels trusting and not likely to betray me.

You know that trust issues are big for me. I know that too, and I know that sometimes I trust too completely and when I get disappointed, I feel that the trust has been broken, betrayed, and the disappointment is crushing and complete. Most folks can look at an incident like this and say "damn. this person let me down. that sucks." whereas for me, it is often emotionally devastating. I know that I can train myself to not throw my heart so completely into situations that are destined to disappoint eventually, but that takes some time. I can also train myself to be compassionate with myself and the person or institution that disappoints me. I cannot entrust anyone or anything with responsibility for my happiness and fulfillment and safety.

It's easy to say that on paper. Or keyboard. Or whatever. It's another thing entirely to do it.

And then there is the opposite side of that coin, which is the idea that I should be able to rely on the divine in that kind of complete and total way. I mean that's the whole idea of having a god, right? So that you can rely on that god completely? Only this is where I get jammed up.

Life is life and the universe is bound to disappoint and hurt us. To rely upon a god seems only to set myself up for inevitable pain when life intercedes and my heart gets broken. But it occurred to me this week that what I have been expecting or hoping to get from god is like what Marlin promises Nemo in that fabulous Pixar movie: "I promised that nothing bad would ever happen." That image of a champion, a superpower infused protector parent is what I wanted in a god.

But it's not really what I understand the divine to be. In conversation this week, I found language for the evolving concept that I understand god to be. I understand the divine as love. God is love. It sounds oversimplified in those three words, but that's about where I am in my understanding. I know that it is often unnatural to consider the needs and well-being of someone else. It is counter intuitive to care about someone else before one's own needs are met. Yet we do it. Humans are kind to one another. We care for one another, and we do it even after we've been hurt. And that makes no sense, but it is truth. Granted there are some unhealthy levels of caring that reach into the realm of codependency, but those unhealthy "Giving Tree" moments aside, I think it is the divine at work when we give to others, when we care for others, when we go out of our way to see to the needs of another. That is god. That verb, that action, that is what god is to me.

So back up a paragraph or two, I think I have been looking for an identity for god that is a person as opposed to a concept or an entity that is a force. I wanted a person. What I got was love.

Now, I can rely on love. I can rely on the idea that even after people are hurt, they will still give. Even after we feel loss, we will reach out again to offer comfort. That is love. And that is god. So what is my relationship now with god as I understand god? Can I rely that love will happen, even in the worst of times? yes. Can I rely that compassion will happen even when it makes no sense? yes. Can I believe that people will reach out to offer each other comfort even when they are hurting? Yes. Must I believe that everyone will always behave this way? Of course not. I can believe that some will, though, and that love -- and thus my understanding of god -- will prevail. I can rely on that. I can trust that. It's a start.

on meditation and such

2011-10-11T06:35:00.003-04:00

Last year I took a course in Buddhism. One of the requirements for class was that we meditate for 20 minutes a day. It turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Around the same time I started the class, I also started doing some pretty heavy childhood trauma recovery therapy, so when I would sit and let things get quiet in my mind, the thoughts that would rush in were very painful and not the kinds of things I could simple "notice and let flow past like leaves upon the surface of a stream." Yeah, not so much.

This term I have a class called "Spiritual Practices for Healing and Wholeness" and it is kicking my emotional butt. The meditation practice we are supposed to be doing relies deeply on a trusting relationship with the divine, and that's something I don't seem to have. In fact, two weeks ago in class, we talked about how in infancy babies learn trust and that trust is the foundation for all relationships in a person's life, with people and with the divine. Well then. In my infancy? I didn't have lessons of trust. When I was abandoned at 8 months old, with my five older half-siblings, I was not able to sit up on my own and had pretty much stopped crying.

Not all babies learn trust in that first year. Some of us learn something else. And those of us who do not learn trust in infancy spend a lifetime dealing with the after effects of what we did learn.

This week's reading was on centering prayer, an exercise that I view with some suspicion. It sounds a lot like a gentler version of some kind of unworthiness exercise. It is about emptying the self in order to reach a higher kind of spiritual awareness. I struggle with the letting go. Letting go seems to indicate that what I have is not worth holding, that it is an impediment to healing and wholeness. On the other hand, what I've got in my personhood is largely a result of what I have built up over the years. This assignment is nothing short of terrifying for me. Let go? Of the stuff that has kept me together for so long? I don't know if I can do that.

But then I read the wrong chapter. We were assigned chapters 1-8 and then 11-14. Not paying attention and trying to get the assignment done, I plowed right through chapter 8 into 9 and all of a sudden the thing was speaking my language. The book talked about how this practice fits with the 12-step recovery model, and how it works in that context, and suddenly things got a little brighter. Chapter 10 is the author's concern about some gaps in the method as done through the recovery model, but really, chapter 9 may have saved this whole experience for me. I think I can do this now. Centering prayer might not be as dangerous as I had feared.

To be honest, the chapter describes a method and results that are potentially as awkward and painful as any work I have done, but in the context of a recovery plan. When you peel back some layers of crap, there is ugly stuff that comes to the surface and demands attention. Rather than view that surfacing stuff as an imperfection in the meditation model, this version views it as a natural result of the practice, allows for whatever method of dealing with it that I might need, and then, when I am ready again, to proceed on. This is very much like step work. Do a step, all kinds of shit comes up. Deal with it, process it, and let it go. Do another step, repeat the process. And when you're done, going back and starting over might not be a bad plan.

This is the first time in a long while where the thought of meditation does not create instant tightness in my chest. I can do this. It is about healing ancient wounds. Class still triggers me substantially, but I have coping mechanisms for that. This practice can trigger me now too, and I have a way to handle it. I cannot tell you what a relief that is. I hope to report more as I learn.

Later all.

more on god

2011-10-06T06:52:00.004-04:00

What do I know of the divine?

I have been reading a lot of stuff for my systematic theology course, and learning that the machinations I am going through now and have done in the past did not happen in a vacuum. It seems that other people have had similar thoughts, and arranged them in far more orderly fashion than I have done here. They have written books and papers for journals and gotten their doctorate degrees based on the work. Me? I'm just trying to figure out if there is an image of god that I can carry around with me that does not offend my person or my intelligence and still feels safe.

I heard a friend talk about a guy who was grappling with the notion that god could be either all-loving or all powerful, but not both. For a god that punishes people and sends floods and plagues of locusts and all that hellfire and brimstone stuff could not be the all-loving god who forgives all offenses. Turns out the guy opted for the all-powerful version of god instead of the all-loving. It worked better for him. I don't know that I can do that.

Like my Universalist forbears, I need a god that can forgive when I screw up. I need a god that is capable of loving me beyond my own limitations, even when I cannot love myself.

In a conversation yesterday with my supervising pastor, I remembered that my therapist had said that our mental image of god is that of our father when we were two or three years old.

Well no wonder I have not been able to feel safe enough to submit to this understanding of god. When I was two or three, my father was an angry and unpredictable presence in the fringes of my life, present only occasionally at suppertime where he tried to exert parental control but I was deferring to my aunt and grandmother, with whom I spent all of my days. I did not recognize his authority then and he resented it, and was angry and I got scared when he shouted. Hell, we all got scared when he shouted.

Yesterday afternoon I met with one of my professors to see about finding some alternative readings for me for this class of meditation and prayer. The biblical stuff is often too much like that old church stuff I left to be useful in meditation. Imagine reading and repeating and writing about texts that focus on our own inherent unworthiness as humans. That is not healthy for me, so we dug around and found some that are more affirming. We settled on one by Rumi and one by Maya Angelou for my lectio divina practice.

Lectio divina is a way of reading and meditating and praying on and around a chunk of text to see what message might be revealed within it. Like sifting sand looking for gold, it takes patience and practice to calm one's mind to the point where it is open to the musings of the inner being (or god). What we learn in that quiet meditative space can be quite profound. Provided we can get to that quiet, meditative space. For me that's still a challenge.

Here's the Rumi one:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi ~

(The Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)

And here's the Maya Angelou one:

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

Sitting with text is not as hard for me as sitting with silence. My brain does not want to rest and let the quiet flood in. That's still really scary, and I'm not sure why.

I need to find a therapist that is local here. Skyping with my one from Maine is not ideal. The technology is not great and it's not the same as sitting in a room with a breathing person. I am exhausted thinking about what it will take to get a new counselor up to speed on this thing that is my life. Urf.

So anyway, this thing about god. What do I know of god? I don't know. Much of what I come up with seems to be what is called negative theology, meaning that I am defining god by explaining what god is not. I say that god is beyond words to describe because words are limited and human experience is limited. Our words cannot describe something that is beyond our experience or beyond our imagination. Our words are finite, and as such cannot begin to describe an infinite god. Well great, that explains something about me and my situation, but not much about god or how I understand the divine.

What do I need god to be I guess might be a better question. I need god to be loving and forgiving and nurturing and kind. I need god to be strong when I need support and patient when I try to do things my own way under my own power. Damn. What I need is a parent. But not like the ones I had. Well hells bells. That's not where I expected this to go. OK, my instinct right now is to shut down and stop writing. I look at the clock and can see that there are things that I ought to be getting to, but truthfully, nothing is urgent. Except my need to get away from this realization and the words I write. I need god to be the parent I never had. The one who is there when I cry, the one who holds me when I am scared, the one who loves me even when I fuck up.

Healing is tough work. The little girl survived the trauma; the grown woman will survive the healing. But damn. It hurts. I guess it's ok to mourn this stuff. I think that's what I am doing. I don't like to think that I am simply revisiting old traumas for purely recreational reasons. No, I need to see clearly where I came from and what I survived and what I lost and what I never had, feel it all fully, let it burn and scream with the pain, and then let it ebb away, having done its worst, so that I can begin to reassemble the pieces of my heart. This is hard fucking work. I'd be a little less freaked out if everyone I talked to didn't keep asking if I've got a therapist to work through this stuff with. That lets me know that I'm in pretty deep when they do that. It also lets me know that what I'm talking about that is my life is beyond the skills of those folks to handle -- also a thing that gives me pause. I deal with a lot of ministers and stuff. I suppose it's good, though, that they recognize their own limitations and don't try to give me advice they're not qualified to hand out.

And there. I have successfully navigated away from the uncomfortable truth that I have uncovered this morning. I need a god who is a parent who loves me unconditionally, and I have no experience to know what that feels like. This is not "the magic Santa god" that Kate Braestrup talks about in her books, the one we pray to for a new job, new lover, new car, or any other of our "needs" here on earth. No, I need a god that just loves me, full-on, no questions, unconditionally. Like I love Quinn, maybe? Is that something I can get my brain around? I am sort of a parent for her. I love her no matter what she does. I would do everything under the sun to protect her and keep her safe. I am happiest when she is curled up in in my lap and we are snuggled together while I read. Is that the kind of love I want from a god? Hell, I'd take it, that's for sure. And maybe, it is just the thing I am describing. I don't know. This will take some more days to parse out, I think. We'll see where it goes. Enough for this morning, though. Later.

thinking of god

2011-10-04T08:01:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about god again.

In school, it makes sense. That's why I'm here. Sort of.

Not all Unitarian Universalists believe in god, but I think I do.

I mean, I believe in a power greater than myself to which I can turn and that helps me.

Only I don't have a clear understanding of what god looks like. I mean for me. Other people I know can describe god with sure voices and clear terms and what I end up talking about is some "power of the universe that runs things and is a force for good." It sounds like the description of a cartoon character.

My god? I'm not sure what my god looks like. I think the instant we try to put human, finite words on the divine we start to try to put clouds in a box. It's interesting to contemplate and sort of fanciful to try, but really? My understanding of the divine is that god is beyond our own words to describe god. By virtue of the fact that we are limited in our language and thoughts to those of the human species, I think by definition that renders us incapable of defining god. It's like the colors on the spectrum beyond infrared and ultraviolet. I know they're there, but I lack the eyes to let me see them, therefore I cannot begin to describe them. Besides, when was the last time you tried to describe the color blue? Every try to do that? Yeah, it's a fun exercise to illustrate how limited language can be.

So I'm trying to get my brain around my understanding of god. I described god earlier as outside myself and an entity I could turn to for help. But that doesn't really fit either. I think the divine lives in each of us, that there is some spark of pure joy, pure love, pure selflessness and generosity that exists in all of us. Some are in touch with it and can access it and some cannot. Buddhists bow to one another in a ritual that roughly translated means "The divine that lives in me acknowledges the divine that lives in you." I like that idea a lot. I like the idea that we all have something of god inside us.

This does not make us god, or gods, or all powerful in any way, but I think it allows us to do good things in a way that maybe we might not consider on our own. Then again, this might be my liberal, white, privileged understanding of things. I can't tell.

So the tricky thing I'm facing these days is getting in touch with my own woundedness and still managing to believe that I am healthy enough and will be healed enough to do ministry.

One of the first assignments in one of my classes was to consider and reflect upon where I am wounded, where I am broken, and in what way that prevents me from being intimate with god.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Last week in that same class, the prof talked about how infants in the first year of life learn trust and how that trust is an absolute base requirement for building relationships, with people and with god. She's right, of course. Only I didn't get that lesson in the first year of life. I learned distrust. So now, 45 years later, can I learn it? Not in the way an infant does, with their still pliable and forming brain, developing synaptic patterns and all. No, it's going to take I don't know what for me to learn trust so that I can function in relationships. And I may walk with a psychic limp for the rest of my life as a result of that break in my infancy. I can't tell. I know that I will have empathy for people in ways that others cannot, but it comes at a high price.

More thoughts tomorrow, I hope.

many miles have been traveled

2011-10-02T22:03:00.003-04:00

since last we spoke.

I'm in Massachusetts now, staying in a dormitory apartment on campus at Andover Newton Theological School. I'm a full-time student. Quinn is living with me as a service dog, and well, it's been a long road.

But what I wanted to share today is that I preached my first sermon as a student minister. It was in the Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, Massachusetts, where I am doing my field education placement for the year. Field education means I spend 15 hours or so at the church or doing church things each week, I preach some, I do ministerial stuff, I learn how it goes. It's a lot like a practicum if you've ever trained to be a teacher. I'm really tired right now, so I'm just going to say that the people at this church are really pretty awesome. They even applauded when we finished the service today. I am so pleased and blessed to have found this congregation. Here's what I preached. I'll wrote more later.

What are we called to do?
Dawn Fortune

In seminary, I am surrounded by people who have been called to ministry in a variety of ways. I have friends who are in training to be ministers in a number of faith traditions, from evangelical Christians to Reformed Judaism, and from the pulpit to the classroom.

It is not surprising then, that we seem to spend a lot of time talking about this thing called “call.” What’s yours? When did you get it? What does it look like to you? I have heard as many stories about call as I have met people, and each is as unique as the individual describing it. Some describe their call to ministry as a slow-moving awakening of purpose, a gradual understanding of what they are meant to do with their lives. Others describe a transformative spiritual experience, being touched by the divine. I’ll tell you about my call experience in a moment.

But first some background. In order to know why my call experience was what it was, I need to let you know a little bit about me first. I was born just down the river in Newburyport, at the Anna Jacques Hospital, in the summer of 1965. I was baptized at Saint Louis DeGonzague Catholic Church in the south end, where I also made my first communion.

I received that sacrament in the requisite white frilly dress, clutching the pink plastic beaded rosary (the boys got blue), and thinking holy thoughts about the sacrament and unholy thoughts about the itchy white tights and uncomfortable patent-leather shoes. My grandmother was the guardian of my soul, making sure that I received all of the necessary sacraments before I graduated high school.

I believed the tenets of my Roman Catholic faith until I got into college and began to face some of the serious, scary questions that I had been privileged to not have to answer earlier. Suddenly issues about reproductive choice became important, as did questions about sex and relationships, and when I came out as a lesbian, it was at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the fiercest animosity between the church and the queer community. I knew where I was not welcome, and once I left, I found it much easier to look with a critical eye – indeed, a very critical eye – upon many of the tenets that I had accepted as a matter of faith before.

Years later, I was taking a humanities class that required as a homework assignment that I attend a church that was not of my faith tradition. I had heard things about those Unitarian Universalist folks, that they were liberal and all, so I took a deep breath and went inside to check it out. The UU church in Waterville, Maine is a white clapboard affair with a clock and bell tower and a stained glass window with a picture of Jesus and some sheep. It looked frighteningly traditional to me, and I was braced for the worst as I sat in the hard wooden pew.

Imagine my surprise when I flipped through the hymnal. Readings by Lao-Tse? Marge Piercy? A hymn by Holly Near?! My mind reeled. This could NOT be church, I thought. It made no sense. I don’t remember what the sermon was about that day, but I remember going home and crying. It was all too much. I had never been in church and heard the message that I was OK. I had never been in a church that affirmed me as a human being, as a woman, as a queer person, as a person with left-of-left-of-even-more-left-than-that-leaning politics. It was more than a month before I could go back. And then another month. And then a couple weeks. And then it was summer and you all did what?! Really? You close for the summer? This was the craziest church I’d ever seen. In September, I came back with everyone else, and stayed.

But that’s not about my call. That’s just how I got in the building.

Many years later, I started preaching. Mostly I was raising money for a political campaign, but what I was doing was preaching. I told stories to an assembled crowd of people who were interested in the topic, I made them laugh, I made them cry, and I did my best to make them write big checks. I had some success, and when the campaign headquarters got a call looking for someone to come preach on marriage equality at a UU church, well, a few fingers pointed at me.

Now keep in mind, that although I was a UU, I considered myself a mostly-lapsed UU. I wasn’t attending a church, and was living in a very secular world, where I polished and treasured a moderately scandalous reputation. The thought of me in a pulpit was, and remains, to a number of my friends, more than a little amusing. But I went and I preached and I did a fair job. I was beating a political drum. I signed up the volunteers I needed, and I went home.

People started suggesting that I might make a good minister or preacher over the course of the campaign, but I brushed off such ideas as ridiculous. I was a radical sex educator, a political hack and a writer with strong opinions and a big mouth. I could not see myself in a ministerial role, working with boards and committees, being polite to people I thought really needed a sound thumping, verbal or otherwise. It just didn’t seem reality-based. I was not, as we say in seminary, “a non-anxious presence.”

A month or two later, I did join a church, and in a perfect storm of life experiences over the course of a couple weeks, I became single, started some deep spiritual reflection, joined the church and got a job after more than a year of unemployment. One Sunday morning during this time, I was sitting in my new church home. In the pulpit was our new Director of Religious Education and Lifespan Curriculum, a man of Irish Catholic extraction from eastern Massachusetts. He told us the story that morning of how he came to enter ministry, how he ended up in seminary, and how he experienced his call to serve in our church.

As he spoke, the most amazing thing happened. The sun moved gradually across the sanctuary to where I was sitting. It enveloped me in light and warmth, I felt something I can only describe to this day as a physical presence pressing down on me, but not in an unpleasant way, and words came to my mind unbidden. I hope you will forgive my language, but the words that came to me were “well shit. I’m going to be a minister. I have to go to seminary.” I figure the profanity was the divine’s way of letting me know that this message was specifically for my blue-collar self and not the polite young man to my right. Unable to move, I sat and cried through the rest of the service.

Now I know that this kind of experience is not typical of what we expect in Unitarian Universalist churches, but there it is. It is what happened to me. To tell the story in any other words would be inauthentic to my experience and dishonest to you.

What I have learned about my call is that it is the thing that takes over. My call is the thing that will rearrange my priorities. Studying is my priority now.

Call is the thing that I describe as a seed knowing which way to grow when planted in the dark earth. My call is like that – all else is becoming less and less relevant, as I know that what I am supposed to do is push skyward, somehow trusting that the color and shape of the blossom will make itself known when I have grown enough.

Historically, we have understood call to be something similar to my experience – a lightning bolt from out of the sky. The risen Jesus appears to Saul on the road to Damascus and knocks him blind from his horse; Jesus tells the brothers Simon Peter and Andrew to “come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” We tend to think of call as involving hair shirts, suffering, sacrifice, and discomfort.

I think it is dangerous thinking to believe that a call must mean some sort of brilliant, vaguely unbalanced passion for a thing that causes a person to give up all their earthly belongings and take off into the wilderness to pursue it. That version leaves a lot of us out of the running. Saint Francis of Assisi heard a call from god, renounced his title and wealth, took off all his clothes and walked into the wilderness naked to live on grains and honey that nature provided. Not all of us can do that. Some would argue that not all of us should even try. But I think we are all called to do the work of the divine.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to action in a unique way. We are called to uphold our principles, based upon their own moral value. In our non-creedal, non-doctrinal faith, we do not have the threat of eternal damnation as a motivator. As Universalists, we do not have to worry about being separated from the love of the divine. By definition, we believe in universal salvation. There is no threat of punishment to compel us to right behavior and right relations with the world around us.

We draw our living tradition from Jewish and Christian teachings, but we do not respond well to demands for strict adherence to edicts from long ago. Our Humanist sensitivities require us to pass things through a lens of reason to see if they are relevant and appropriate in our present world. Tradition is good, but it had better have some science to back it up or we resist it. We believe in transcendence and the power of the divine, but we believe in reason, too. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “trust, but verify.”

Our Unitarian Universalist Principles call on us to do lots of things: To affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all people, to act with justice and compassion in human relations, to accept one another and encourage spiritual growth, to search for truth and meaning, to use the democratic process, to work for peace and liberty and justice and to respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

That’s no small order. Christians and Jews have the Ten Commandments. You’d think seven principles would not be as challenging as something as very authoritative as The Ten Commandments, but I think our principles call on us to be as vigorous in our moral behavior as those edicts from the Hebrew Bible.

It is not easy to uphold all of our principles every day. We live in a world that makes it singularly inconvenient to practice these principles on a daily basis. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence is jeopardized every time we get coffee at the drive-though, either by the Styrofoam cup with distinctive pink and orange letters or by the mere fact that we’re sitting in our idling automobile, spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

My adherence to the first principle is sorely treated when I see some of the recent political debates and the things people there have said. Inherent worth and dignity of all people? Really? Yes, really. All of them.

This is not a religion for the faint of heart or conviction. There is nothing wishy-washy about believing that there is inherent worth and dignity in people who behave in hurtful ways.

Let me phrase it this way: What is it we do that serves love, justice, grace, and peace?

When we serve on a committee that helps raise money for a shelter for victims of domestic violence, are we not doing god’s work? When we volunteer to help with a church committee, are we not doing the work of the divine? When we speak up when someone tells a racist or sexist or homophobic joke, are we not doing the work of the divine? All of these things are examples of things we do that are part of living in right relationship with each other and the world around us. Is that not what our principles call us to do? To live in right relationship with each other and the world? Is this not where, as Rumi said, we “return to the root of the root” of our own selves?

Sometimes I think we don’t give ourselves enough credit. I think we do what we can, wish we could do more, get frustrated that we are not perfect, and treat ourselves badly as a result. I think it would do us no harm to be as compassionate with ourselves as we are inclined to be with each other. We are called to justice, and freedom, and peace, yes. But we are called to compassion, too. And humanity. And we are human.

I want to challenge you this week. I want us to be mindful of our behavior. What we do, what we say, how we act. Let us notice what of our behavior and words serves what we are called to do. Let us be mindful of the good in ourselves and in others. Let us think, too, directly and with consideration, about what our personal calling might be. How do our personal calls mesh with what the covenants of our faith call us to do and be?

We are all called. In one way or another, we all have a call. To service, to justice, to compassion, to peace, to love, to each other, to ourselves. Let us each answer that call as we are able.

Blessed be. Amen.

Washington: it's time to shoot the hostage

2011-07-26T08:01:00.005-04:00

OK, I know it's been a zillion years since I have posted here. Sorry about that. I'll explain later, probably, but right now there's something going on that's frying my ass.

There is a hostage situation in Washington, D.C.

Republican Congressmen (and yes, I believe all the freshman teabaggers are in fact MEN) are steadfastly refusing to either raise the debt ceiling or roll back the tax cuts put into place by Dubya to coddle his uber-wealthy friends.

This bone-headed move risks putting the US in default on its loans, which, having done battle with the student loan police in my past, I can assure you is a very bad thing.

It also risks shutting down huge chunks of government services, things we liberals cannot bear to consider cutting off - Medicare Medicaid, Social Security, SS Disability Insurance, Food Stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), all that stuff.

The Republicans are using our nation's most vulnerable people as human shields as they run from the bank they have just robbed (the US Treasury) to the waiting plane to take them to the tax-free haven of an offshore island. They are using disabled children and 80-year-old veterans as their cover.

They know that the Dems won't pull the trigger and hurt those folks. It is against our nature.

My nature is gradually shifting. I'm about ready to shoot the hostage. Remember in the movie "Speed" when the two cops are talking about what to do in a hostage situation that presents itself as impossible to resolve? One of them says "shoot the hostage." The other is horrified at the notion and figures his partner is just spouting some smart-ass answer until later when he is held hostage and his partner does, in fact, shoot him.

The fact of the matter is: it changed the hostage situation instantly and expedited the resolution of the standoff. With no human shield any longer, the hostage-taker had three choices: flee, stand there and get shot, or surrender. I don't remember what he did, but since it was a Hollywood movie, I am inclined to think he probably shot it out with the cop and died. Maybe after a brief chase.

The thing is, Democrats do not seem to have what it takes to win an actual war. And make no doubt about it, according to the teabaggers, this conflict is nothing short of a holy war for the soul of America. Democrats are unable to order people into battle, knowing that some will not come back. We are unable to calculate and decide what acceptable losses are in terms of human suffering.

The Republicans seem to have no such qualms. They will order the their members out to the front lines. Some will survive, some won't, but they'll throw a new body into that empty space in the line and keep marching. When we lose someone? We scamper in circles like Piglet, shouting "Heff heff, a hellable horrilump! Help help! A horrible heffalump!"

So in this situation, the Rs are holding hostage every vulnerable person in America, and the Ds are freaking out about it. Instead of growing a spine and confronting the Rs in the street at high noon, the Ds fuss and fret and scamper about, trying to find a way that will do the least harm to the people we (meaning ALL Americans, not just the Ds, mind you) are supposed to serve and protect. Well, the minute we do that, we have become complicit in the Rs crime against the weak.

We are finding a way to pad the weak from the punches of the Rs, not finding a way to get the Rs to stop punching.

I remember a Star Trek episode from a bazillion years ago. Classic Trek. Kirk and Spock and Bones. They visited a planet that was at war. Only there was no actual war. No bombs fell, no shots were fired. Instead, computers on each planet were linked to one another, a program ran that produced virtual battles, with virtual bombs and damage done, but no actual physical damage to the planet or its infrastructure. Only the people had to die. Like a draft lottery, the computer produced a list of casualties with each wave of the war, and the people whose numbers were called lined up and walked into the machine to be obliterated. The leaders of the planet were very pleased with their machine - wars happen, they said, and people die, but this saves us having to rebuild our cities every couple of years from the bombs, and farmers can produce crops without fear of being strafed. If one has to be at war, this was certainly an orderly, sterile way to get it done.

It was the stuff that makes one's jaw drop with the horror of it. At the end of the program, Kirk and somebody (Spock? Ensign Smith? I don't remember) destroy the computer, forcing the people to either start having war that is messy and painful and uses real bombs and causes real injuries with real blood and broken bones, or to work for peace and figure it out in a hurry. (Prime directive, what?)

So now I am inclined to blow up the computer that is the current process. Yeah, go ahead and have war now, fellas. Please, go ahead. Do damage to people you actually have to see and hear. Let them hold you accountable when they have no food and they have no medicine and you can't hide behind the "well government is a very complicated process" bullshit. No.

Do it. Hurt the vulnerable, you arrogant fucks.

Do what you really want to do -- form a government and a society that caters only to the rich, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, conservative, Christian men and their subservient wives. Go ahead. Put on your white sheet and march down Main Street, assholes.

And Dems? It's time for you to stand up, step up and claim your place as well. You can either slouch along behind the Grand Wizard over there, holding the hem of his robe out of the dirt or you can pin on your badge and step out into the street and say "Stop! You won't do this on my watch!" and commence to blow up the war computer.

We need to stop finding less painful ways for Rs to beat up on our vulnerable people and call them out for being bullies. If that means we have to take one or two punches in the kisser to illustrate the point, we may have to do that. They want to strangle us. Make them do it in public. Make them show themselves as they really are.

Shoot the hostage. Blow up the war computer.

Drop your polite pretenses and get real.

tired, but hopeful

2011-01-04T19:19:00.002-05:00

I suppose all of this work that I have been doing is what has me exhausted. It is really demanding stuff, and after an hour with my therapist today, I was spent. I came home, made supper and am now trying to figure out how to finish that paper so I can go to bed.

I have shared some rough stuff here in the past. What I failed to mention here recently are some of the real milestones that have happened in the past month.

I am setting boundaries. And I am doing pretty well at not feeling guilty about it.

I have stopped my aunt in mid-sentence when it feels like she is invalidating what I am saying about how I am feeling. I know that it is her default setting to deny unpleasant things, I know that. But lately I have been able to say "stop. I know you'd really like for me to be enjoying school and having a marvelous time, but right now what I am feeling is scared, overwhelmed, terrified and trapped, and that is not fun, it is not a good time and I am not going to tell you that it is because that is what you'd like to believe. I know you love me and want me to be happy and have fun, but right now, it's not happening that way, so please stop telling me that I am not feeling what I feel."

Holy shit.

That's a lot.

And for the most part, she's handling it pretty well.

The other night we were talking about my father and my childhood, and she said what I always have heard: "well, I think you've come to the place where you can say he did the best he could."

I stopped her immediately. Yes, he did the best he could, but that does not make it ok. He did the best he could, but it was not enough. He did the best he could, but it was still wrong that he beat me with a strap. It was still wrong that he berated me and humiliated me and terrorized me. That was abuse and it was wrong and saying it was the best he could do does not make it right or excuse it. It was wrong. Period."

We both took a deep breath.

And she agreed.

Holy shit.

Something has shifted in the universe in the past eight weeks, I swear.

The week before Christmas, I came down with a cold. Not just a 48-hour sniffle to cough and be done kind of thing, but a full three days of no sleep, sneezing, constant runny nose, stuffy head, made for a cold medicine commercial kind of thing. I was hurting. So you know what I did?

I cancelled Christmas.

Well, I postponed it. I refused to travel while that sick. I refused to spread those germs to anyone I cared about. But mostly, I took care of myself. I stayed home, in my pajamas, drank tea and kept in touch with friends via the internet and telephone. Then some friends came over and did some nurturing for my soul (and my kitchen, thank heavens!) and I went to bed content.

No travel. No stress. No drama. No family baggage. Tea. Friends. Silly lopsided reindeer antlers. Rest. Care. It was a great Christmas. My aunt took care of herself and visited people in her town and it was good. Neither of us felt neglected or lonely for any length of time and it all was pretty great.

Three days later, I was on the phone with my aunt. We were talking about a family that was close to ours way back when I was little. She had dinner the night before with the matriarch of the family, now in her 80s and growing feeble, and one of the sons, now in his 50s. He told stories of abuse and horrors that happened in his childhood that my aunt had never imagined. The guy's father broke the fingers on his left hand with a two-by-four so the kid would learn to write with his right hand like "normal kids." The father broke the kid's elbow with his new baseball bat when he misbehaved. The man's father was a cop back then, and later a big shot in the PD. Who could they turn to? Nobody. My aunt was shook by the revelation, and moved with compassion for the matriarch, who was first generation Irish-American and told to obey her husband and not protest and certainly not to leave him. For her, it was an impossible place to be.

As I listened to my aunt relate the stories, I thought back to my own childhood. It was rotten. Nobody ever broke my fingers, but my father threatened to break my bones often. He threatened to beat me to within an inch of my life, not that I knew what that was, but I knew it wasn't good and I certainly didn't want it. Sometimes he did beat me. Sometimes he didn't. Psychologists will tell you that random reinforcement is the most effective at creating compulsive behavior. That's why slot machines are regulated. They hit every so many pulls of the handle.

So we talked a little then about my childhood. How I didn't get beaten as bad or as often as other kids, but certainly more than others still. How it didn't matter how often or how badly I was beaten, because it was sufficient to keep me terrified every waking moment for my adolescence. I lived in a fairly constant state of terror.

And then she said the most remarkable thing.

"I'm sorry we didn't do more to protect you."

And for a moment, I couldn't breathe.

The air just stopped.

It couldn't go in, it couldn't go out. It just stopped. As though any motion or noise would make the miracle I had just heard evaporate in the air.

There was no couching phrase, no justification, no "we didn't know it was that bad," no "but we were afraid he'd never let us see you again," none of that. Just "I'm sorry."

I thanked her.

I explained how much it meant to have her say that. I cried. Not enough to freak her out, but enough so that she knew it made an impact. The real sobbing came after we hung up the phone and I was able to absorb the enormity.

Someone had validated that I needed protecting. For the first time ever, someone acknowledged that I should have been protected from my father's abuse. It was huge. More huge than I can explain in words here.

Something has shifted in the universe. Energy is aligned in a way that is making things happen. I don't understand it, and I won't pretend to know what's going on. I just know that I have not had this much growth in my life in a long time.

Now, on to finish that paper. I have a date with a hot chick and a bunch of needles tomorrow, and I don't want to miss it. I'll post pictures when it's done.

discouraged

2011-01-02T21:32:00.003-05:00

I am allegedly working on a paper for my Buddhism course. It's not going well.

In the course of my learning this semester, I have uncovered a lot of things, both in the classroom and on the therapist's couch (I sit on the couch, it's not old-school analysis). And I have begun to realize some things on my own as a result of this other learning.

Like I was probably not nurtured much -- if at all -- in the first eight months of my life.

At eight months of age, I was abandoned.

And things got better. Mostly. Temporarily. For six or seven years.

When they got bad again.

The childhood stuff from about age four on, I remember that. It's the stuff before that which is causing me concern right now.

I have read the studies done on chimp infants who were not held or cuddled as infants. They grew up to be needy, psychotic freaks, unable to function in chimp culture.

I know what happens to children who are not nurtured or held as infants. It's not always much different from what happens to the chimps.

Now I know that I am not (most days) a needy psychotic freak like those poor chimps in that study, but I do know that I tend toward needy, that I crave approval and attention, and that I often do not feel like I function well in society.

I have grown a great deal in the past five or six years, but still, I wonder how much I can really expect to accomplish with such a deep primal wound. The literature on the subject is not encouraging.

Yesterday I read "Healing the Child Within," by Charles L. Whitefield, M.D. The book is subtitled "Discovery and recovery for adult children of dysfunctional families" and what is says about my particular situation is pretty grim.

The childhood stuff I endured has left me with a legitimate case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, which means I spend a lot of time fearing abandonment, betrayal and/or attack. From everyone, not just family members, but from colleagues, friends, they guy at the garage where I get my car serviced, everywhere.

Here's what he says about my situation:

The PTSD is said to be more damaging and difficult to treat it: (1) the traumas occur over a prolonged period of time, e.g., longer than six months; and especially if (2) the traumas are of human origin; and if (3) those around the affected person tend to deny the existence of the stressor or the stress.

We expect soldiers to have PTSD after combat deployment. Truly, it makes a ton of sense. But we don't expect children to have, or to get, PTSD. But looking at what kids go through, it makes as much sense, reading Whitefield's analysis of the trauma. I cannot help but think that the trauma in my life that happened before I was verbal and before I was able to think cognitively, must have left some pretty amazing trauma to my psyche.

So now I am torn. I am relieved a little bit, to understand why the Buddhist practice I tried this semester didn't seem to work for me. "As soon as you recognize a thought or feeling, let it go just as quickly" were the instructions. Really? Really? I've been digging around in my childhood and coming up with some very disturbing memories, feelings and understandings. To "let them go as soon as you recognize them" is absurd.

Let go? Let go of primal abandonment? Let go of the realization that I was neglected, abused and abandoned? Just like that?

Poof! All better!

Yeah, no.

These are old wounds, newly uncovered. They are serious, debilitating injuries that need more than a kiss and a wave bye-bye to be gone. These wounds need treatment, they need to have the old, dead scabs scrubbed off, the gravel cleaned out of the raw flesh, salve and ointment applied, and they need to be bandaged and nurtured anew, cared for in a way that never happened the first time around.

Then.

Then and only then, can that anger, that betrayal, that hurt, that rejection, be let go. And my gut tells me that this is going to be a repetitive process for the next couple of years: digging, scraping, cleaning, bandaging, healing. This is going to be a long process. It will take time, it is going to hurt sometimes, and it will not be pretty. My feelings and emotions may come out sideways and when the shit hits the fan, it's likely to splatter and be messy.

The only way I know to get to the other side of this mess is wade through it. And for now, standard Buddhist practices are not going to work. Not on this stuff. I can meditate, and learn to be mindful and other things, but hurts need to be healed before I can let them go.

Thus ends today's lesson. Tomorrow, I hope to get the paper done.

happy new year?

2011-01-01T18:42:00.002-05:00

So it's 2011.

This is the year I hope to stop beginning sentences with the word "so."

I am working on the last paper of the semester. It is due on Friday. I set myself a due date on it by this weekend, which has now been extended to Monday sometime, because I am taking an intensive course in religious ethics in January and it begins on Friday the 7th. And I have to have 1/3 of the reading done for the whole course before I step into the classroom, so I am going to need some time to prepare, namely next week.

Which means I need to get this damned paper done. Only it is really resisting my efforts to get it to write itself. Damned thing.

What's troubling me is how much of myself I should put into the paper. For 12, 13 weeks, we have been reading and writing and meditating and writing, and I have worked through a lot of stuff. (The paper is on Anger and Buddhism, by the way.) I have delved deep into myself, working through some childhood trauma, naming my experiences as abuse, and acknowledging that it sucked bad enough to cause problems now. In my reflection papers and in class, I have talked about the anger I carry and how it is rooted in pain and fear and how that pain and fear is rooted in trauma and how I am working to heal that trauma, all these years later. Buddhism, and how we learned about it through experiences this semester, has been a very intense, very personal, and often painful growth process.

I am just unsure how much of that is appropriate for me to include in my final paper. Do I stay true to what I have been doing so far? Do I detach and treat anger a a purely academic construct to be examined through cold, theoretical language? The former threatens to be inappropriate and the latter seems dishonest and unhealthy, as though none of what I have felt and learned and internalized this semester has affected me in any significant way.

I think I am going to write what comes and see where it takes me. Whatever is stuck is personal, so I guess the personal stuff will come out first, maybe kicking loose whatever needs kicking so that I can get to the academic requirements of the paper. I'll let you know how it works out. Stay tuned.

art

2010-11-17T08:42:00.009-05:00

I spent some time recently having some work done on my body. I've been doing a lot of work on my internal stuff, so it seemed time to decorate my outside. Here's what my arm looked like early last Friday afternoon:

I had booked an appointment with Jennifer Moore at Sanctuary Tattoo in Portland, Maine back in July? August? It was months ago, I know that much. The economy is in the toilet, but she's booked solid for months ahead. Go figure. I made a second appointment at the same time, knowing that we'd need more than one visit for the work I wanted done.

Regular readers here know that I am attending seminary with designs on becoming a minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. Luckily, it's a rather non-traditional tradition. The symbol of the UU faith tradition is a chalice with a flame. There are lots of versions of it out there, some official, some not, some ornate, some simple. I found one that was made in the style of a Celtic knot and decided I wanted it on the inside of my right arm. Like so:

The placement of this tattoo is purposeful. It is for me to see, not necessarily for me to show the world. I want to be reminded, always, that every time I reach out my hand, I am a representative of my faith tradition. I am that UU that someone might remember, and I want to be mindful of that in my interactions with people. How do I want them to remember that UU minister? Yeah. So that's there for me. The picture above shows the original transfer of the design. Jennifer and I wanted it to be taller, but to do that would have meant the wings of the chalice would have wrapped much too far around, so she free-hand drew longer flames. Here is what it looked like by the time she got done inking in the outline:

See the longer flame? It ended up being more trinity-ish than I had intended, but that's ok. I am not as fearful of the Trinity as some. Christianity is part of our tradition, even if the Unitarians rejected the notion of a god with three parts, the Universalists had less issue with it. I like to grumble on occasion that UUs will celebrate the holidays of every god but three. We'll do solstice, we'll do Hanukkah, we'll do Kwanzaa, hell, we'll do things that one member might remember from childhood in the old country even though none of the rest of us have ever heard of it, but look out! Don't we freak out a bit when someone mentions baby Jesus on December 24. Look, I know that the UU church is a faith tradition of many refugees who have been treated badly by other churches, and that many of those other churches were Christian. But I won't give the guy called Jesus a hard time. He was a man after my own heart: loud-mouthed, opinionated, prone to pissing off those in charge, a champion of the oppressed. There is a fair amount of mythology built around his life and teachings, including the belief that he was the son of god, the second arm of the Trinity. I find that idea no more or less ridiculous than believing in tree spirits or the gods of water and air. It works for some. Good for them. It doesn't work for others. Good for them, too. But no hitting, kids. There is value in all faiths. Sort out the bullshit that mankind has built up around each faith and you're likely to find very similar things inside. And that's good. End of sermon for today. I have a trinity flame on my wrist. I like it there. And here is what it looks like shaded in:

The heart is important in a lot of ways and for a lot of reasons. A Celtic knot of interwoven hearts is a beautiful thing. I liked this design:

Minus, of course, the rosary beads. But really, that's the image I liked best. Jennifer did amazing things to that design, stretching it here and there, squeezing it in other places, to make it so it would translate well on a three-dimensional irregular cone that is my forearm. Oh, and one that moves and will twist in interesting ways. Here is what it looked like in process:

We decided that the spaces in the knot would be black, so Jennifer set about filling them in. It was a long process, and when we took a break and she snapped this next picture, we'd been at the actual tattooing stuff for about 5 hours:

Yeah, I was tired. For the record, five hours is about when the endorphins just completely run out. The last hour was brutal. But here's what it looked like when the voids were filled:

and here is what the chalice looks like overlapping the edges of the heart knot:

You can see at the bottom of the chalice where we left the two ends of the knot open. Jennifer is going to connect them with some custom thing she'll draw for our next appointment. I was done after this session. I was exhausted, and I am sure she was too. She smeared me with gooey salve stuff, wrapped my whole arm thrice in plastic wrap, taped the edges and sent me off into the night with aftercare instructions and a hug.

The tattoo is healing well. It was really sore for a couple days, but now it is at that awful itchy stage where all I want to do is take at it with a green pot scrubbie. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh. I won't do it, but DAMN it itches.

I will go back next month to get all the colors done, plus to fill in a couple gaps and to finish that knot across the underside of the chalice. I expect that date will hurt as much as this one did. Oof. Still, it's going to be very, very, VERY cool when it's done.

fear, redux

2010-11-11T18:30:00.003-05:00

Day 11 truth: today I am feeling inadequate. I am having a hard time focusing. I feel hopelessly behind in my reading for school, but I cannot seem to sit and read. The words swim before me on the page and I cannot tell you on page three what was on page two. I try to calm down, to focus, to relax, and I start again and it gets as bad. Then I find myself seeking diversions, things to do that aren't schoolwork, but that there is an urgent need to get done immediately. Urk. OK, going to make supper and try again. I have GOT to get caught up.

oh dear. I'm a bass.

2010-11-10T00:00:00.002-05:00

ok. so I am not doing so well at this NaBloPoMo thing. that's two days I have missed in 9. oops.

I am not going to beat myself up about it, but will continue as best I can with truths.

Day 10 truth: I am a bass.

I fish. You know that. I fish for trout mostly, and bass later in the summer when the trout slow down. First a few words about their personalities.

Trout are persnickety fish. Temperamental. Fussy. Uncooperative.

For example, if the water temperature is too cold, they won't bite. If the water is too warm, they won't bite.

If the water level is high from a rain, they won't bite. If the water is low from lack of rain, they won't bite.

If they want a fly and you offer a worm, they won't bite. If they want a worm and you offer one, but don't put it in exactly the right place and make it move in precisely the right way, they won't bite.

If the moon is full, they won't bite. If they are within a few miles of the coast and the tides are astronomically high, they won't bite. Even safely in their freshwater lakes.

Pain in the ass fish, trout.

Bass.

Bass are larger, bulkier fish. They have hard scales unlike the silky tiny things on a trout's skin. Bass are territorial, staking out a place they like and defending it from intruders. They will eat when there is food available, even if they are not hungry.

You throw something out there that makes a splash, sparkles, wiggles a little bit and maybe makes a little noise, and that bass is going to hit it.

every.

damned.

time.

Which is why, when someone wants me do do something, to volunteer for this or that, they'll have the pretty woman with the flirty charms call and cajole me into it. Because they know I'll strike at it. Every. damned. time.

This weekend, I shared this philosophy with some friends. Most of the guys sided with me on the bass end of the scale. Most of the women agreed that we were bass. And most of them appeared to be trout. Even the ones that sparkle and wiggle just right.

Sigh.

It's not easy being a bass.

made it! (Not quite)

2010-11-07T00:00:00.002-04:00

It is just past midnight and I missed the deadline for NaBloPoMo for Saturday.

But you know what? I wouldn't trade this Saturday for the world.

Bonus is that this post now counts for Sunday. I'm going to try to keep the rest of November honest and post every day. Tired now. Will write more on Monday.

weekend at home with some friends

2010-11-05T17:55:00.003-04:00

Day 5 truth: I am in a happy place right now.

It's the truth. Not Disneyland, but happy just the same. And having been to Disneyland as a child, I'd hazard a guess that this retreat/workshop weekend is wholly less weird and creepy than 7-foot tall "dwarves" with heads the size of Barcaloungers. Just saying.

Where I am: I am at a conference center in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with something like 70 of my closest friends. I walked in the door and got hugs and greetings from a dozen people and it was marvelous. These people are serious about hugs. Black belt huggers, I think would be an appropriate description. These are not those silly cheek-to-cheek-kiss-the-air-in-your-general-vicinity kinds of hugs, oh no. These are full-frontal, heart-to-heart, warm, loving hugs that can last a minute or more. It is heavenly.

I had a massage this week from a Reiki Master, ordained minister in the church of the Feminine Divine who also happens to be a psychiatric RN and has a bunch of other impressive initials after her name. She was referred to me by my therapist, and she does lots of work with people healing from childhood trauma. It was the first nurturing touch I have experienced in a while, and it was overwhelming. I expect this weekend will be overwhelming as well. I'm looking forward to it. So much so that I'm not going to freak out too hard if I don't make Saturday's NaBloPoMo entry. Oh, I'll pledge now to try, but I am not going to give myself a hernia to make it happen, especially if there is wonderfullness here that I would rather partake of instead.

Be well.

digging deep

2010-11-04T11:06:00.001-04:00

Day 4 truth: what happens to an infant matters later in life.

When a baby is born, there are some pretty basic things it needs: one end kept full, the other end kept empty, warmth, no loud noises, and being held and cuddled and cooed over.

When I was born, I was the sixth child of a single mother 23 years old. I was the only one sired by my father, the first three having one father, the next two another, and then me. No high school education, no job skills, and the year was 1965. Birth control was illegal in Massachusetts back then. A woman in my mother's situation didn't have a lot of choices about how she could support herself. Chances are good she hooked up with men who could take care of her and her kids. My parents never married. Indeed, they split up early in my life. I did not get a lot of regular attention as far as I can tell. What probably happened was I woke up yelling, was changed, given a bottle and stuck in a playpen. When I yelled, chances are the pattern was repeated, but not always, and not regularly.

When I came to live with my father's sister and parents, I was eight months old and could not sit up on my own. I thrived on the love and attention I got there, but some pretty basic lessons had already been learned. Life was not secure. Sometimes I got hungry and nobody fed me. Sometimes my diaper needed changing and nobody did it for a long time. And sometimes I was left alone in my playpen, with no stimulation for a very long time. I was not held or cuddled or nurtured much at all, I bet.

Psychologists tell us that the first year of a baby's life is when she learns that she is loved and safe and that people care for her and keep her warm and fed and dry. I didn't get that until I was 8 months old. Irreparable damage was already done. Much as I absorbed the love and affection and nurturing heaped upon me by my aunt and grandparents, there was an underlying desperation that made me want to crawl inside their skins to be with them and be held and loved. It is only now that I am able to identify and name that need.

I remember when I was little, after my father married and took me away from my aunt and grandmother, how I longed to go back for visits, how I loved to be held and cuddled and hugged when I went! My father and stepmother did not hide their disdain for my need for physical affection, and instructed me not to hug my aunt and grandmother (my grandfather had died by then) like I wanted (needed) to. I was scolded and punished if I was too affectionate with them.

The pattern was set. My source for love and affection and physical touch for my formative years was going to be my aunt and grandmother, and my father controlled when I got to see them and get my need for love met. I don't know whether it was fortunate or not, but my grandmother loved me very much and would insist that I come visit during school vacations. That set things up for me to be used as a pawn. My father extracted all kinds of things from his mother in order for him to bring me to her. He needed money to fix the truck. He couldn't afford my braces, so she paid, and countless other things I heard discussed in tense tones over the telephone in the kitchen as I lay in my bed praying that I please, please, please God, be allowed to go to visit over the holidays.

Thus, love became a bargaining chip, a thing that was withheld as punishment, a thing that could be denied if I misbehaved, or if my grandmother did not pay up. It was never guaranteed. It was always something I didn't dare hope for, for fear of having my hopes dashed. But my heart hoped anyway, and often it was broken. Often I was denied.

I remember wanting my father to love me. God, but I just wanted him to be happy with me, to be proud of me, to tell me he loved me for no reason but I was his daughter and he was glad of it. But it didn't happen.

I still want it.

Inside, I am still a very hurt child who wants her father to love me, to show affection, to hold me just because and to tell me he's proud of me.

As far as I can tell, he has never been capable of that. The truth of the matter is, he probably will never be capable of showing me the kind of love I needed from a father.

And now I have an opportunity to go see him on his birthday. He will be 69 years old. He has Alzheimer's. He's never going to be better than he is now. And what he is now is not great.

This will take some more thinking.

Day 3 truth: trepidation

2010-11-03T23:31:00.004-04:00

Today I am tired.

I was up very late last night reading about Christians in Africa, and getting more and more disgusted with the human race and western missionaries in particular. Good grief.

Learned a lot, wrote a little, and then learned some more in class tonight with a really cool guy who just happens to be a Christian from Africa. Only he's a native African. Waaaaaaayyyyyy different perspective. Very, very cool session.

I won't go into the political situation out country and my state is in after yesterday's elections. I have bigger fish to fry.

You all know my story of infant abandonment, I have probably outlined some of the bullying and abuse that my father visited upon me as a child and the manipulation and passive-aggressive behavior instilled by everyone else.

And you may remember that my father has been diagnosed in the past year or two with Alzheimer's.

My sister told me yesterday that he has asked that I be invited to celebrate his birthday this year in early December.

I am unsure what to do, beyond checking with my therapist and thinking hard about such a decision. It could be an opportunity for closure. It could be an opportunity for healing and forgiveness. It could be an ambush.

I am concerned, and with reason. I am learning now in therapy just what lessons about safety, security and love I learned from this guy. I am sure he did not intend to screw me up forever, but he could not give what he did not have, and I came from a rough place to start. Whatever the case, I learned some pretty screwed up things at the time in my life when I should have been learning security and love. I'll write more about them tomorrow. Tonight I am just trying to get enough written to post before midnight and not feel embarrassed about a pathetic effort.

And I think this just barely makes it.

trust and betrayal

2010-11-02T08:01:00.003-04:00

Day Two truth: I don't trust people much.

This is about betrayal of trust and vulnerability today. I am beginning (on day two) to sense a theme in these posts on personal truths...

I am unabashedly liberal.

OK, not that THAT particular nugget of information is going to shock or surprise anyone, but today, election day, it matters. I am frustrated with the party that claims to represent me. Every time the Democrats get control, they work very hard to do the right thing, to reach across the aisle, to build bridges, and the Republicans burn those bridges down. So, fearful of getting punished at the ballot box, the left inches to the right in the mid-term elections and progressive causes (and largely Democratic candidates) lose big.

What ever happened to real liberal, progressive candidates, people who are apologetically progressive, people who are unashamed to say things like "health care is a right, not a luxury to be enjoyed only by the wealthy. Single payer is the way to go."

Where are the people who say "we can build schools now or prisons later, let's choose schools. Let's support the people who are going to teach our children how to read and learn."

Where are the people who will say "you know, it is the job of the government to serve and protect its most vulnerable citizens - children, elderly, people with disabilities. Telling a family that services for their autistic kid are being cut is neither humane nor responsible government."

Telling people with developmental disabilities to buck up and get off welfare is not going to work without education, training and skills classes. You know what? Not everyone is able to provide for themselves and their families. People have mental illness, people have physical illnesses, people sometimes just lack the capability to handle their own affairs and they need help. Putting them on a bus out of state is not the answer. In fact, it is cruel and evil, like putting grandma out in a storm to die of starvation because the family's tired of caring for her.

I am not supporting a welfare state for all who want to just sit with their feet up watching game shows all day, but recognition that not everyone is able to care for him/her self.

Paula Poundstone has a great routine about her mother telling her how she learned to swim as a child. "We didn't have swim lessons at the Y, my parents took me out in a boat in the middle of a lake and threw me into the water. I learned to swim."

To which Paula responded, "they weren't trying to teach you to swim, Mom."

Oh jeez. Yeah.

Not everybody, when tossed into the deep end of life, is going to be able to swim, even enough to get back to the boat. Who's job is it to watch out for those folks? Family? Perhaps, if they are skilled enough to understand what the problem is. Sometimes Families go on like this for generations. Neighbors? Maybe. But there are limits to how much interference anyone will take from their neighbor. The churches? Again, perhaps. It seems to me that education is the job of the state, even education about basic things like life skills - how to shop for groceries, how to pay the bills, how to feed your kids healthy meals.

I don't know. I guess this morning I am just frustrated. It is election day. My candidate for governor is getting beaten about the head and shoulders by conservative whackjobs and those who identify themselves as "moderate progressives." Moderate progressives right now feel to me like guilty conservatives, enlightened bigots, perhaps the most dangerous group to actual progressives. Because they want to support progressive ideals, but they don't want to pay the price to do it. They've got a little bit of wealth, and they don't want to share it with the poor. They are the generation that was raised by solid blue-collar, union members of the progressive left who grew up, went to college, maybe even business school, went out and got a job in an office and started to vote to cut the kind of aid that made it possible for them to be where they are: Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, government funded student financial aid, affordable state universities.

I guess what this all boils down to is a feeling of betrayal. I suppose it should not surprise me, considering what I am learning in therapy about my earliest lessons in trust, that THIS is the issue that is foremost in my mind. It is about betrayal. I thought you were on my side. I thought I could depend on you. I thought you'd keep me safe. I thought you would do what you promised to do. I trusted you. And you betrayed me.

And I know that the political operatives who are doing their thing today trying to get elected, or trying to get their candidate elected/ballot issue passed are not behaving in a way specifically designed to let me down and betray my trust, but every time someone changes a position to get more voters, or says one thing and does another, it adds another block to the wall of my distrust. It works to keep me feeling hurt and betrayed.

I cannot rely on outside forces to supply me with security and self-worth. I get that. But really, I do wish people would not be such assholes sometimes. This begs the question then: is it reasonable to get mad when I feel betrayed? I suppose. But on the other hand, am I putting unreasonable expectations on people to do what they say and be reliable? Am I holding them to a standard of perfection that I could not meet? I don't expect a breakfast cereal to make me tall and thin and blonde and a tennis star, but I would like people to do what they promise to do.

I guess it all comes back to my own damaged perception of trust and security. I suppose if I had learned trust and security as an infant, I would be better able to handle thin spots in it as an adult. But I never did. So now I am trying to learn that. And it's very hard work. Stay tuned.

Day 1 truth: I fear

2010-11-01T00:40:00.001-04:00

It's November 1. I might as well give it a shot.

NaBloPoMo.

It's like the old 30-day pledge a priest would get a drunk to make to stay off the sauce for a month. Only now I make it to post something new every day for the month of November. Between school and conferences and wild hedonism, I don't see how I'll have time, but I'll give it a shot. Maybe I'll have to cut out the hedonism, though, to make it work.

Theme for the month credit goes to dolphyngyrl out there at the Verbosery in sunny California. She's doing something about truth and honesty, so I thought that maybe one personal truth about me per day for a month would be a good thing to do.

A month of "If you really knew me..." What could possibly be easier than that?

So day one personal truth: I am scared.

No, really.

A lot of the time I am scared. Mostly I am scared of rejection. Scared of not being loved or liked. Scared of being discarded. Scared of being hurt.

And not just the normal kind of human insecurity scared, but the debilitating, behavior-twisting, really-going-to-be-a-problem-in-ministry-if-I-don't-work-on-it-now kind of way.

My fear if often buried deep where I think people can't see it. My fear is based in what I call original rejection. Like the concept of original sin, in which Christians believe that all infants carry the shame of Adam and Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden, I carry original rejection. At 8 months old, I was abandoned by my birth mother.

There are prettier, less harsh words to put around the events of that time, but the fact of the matter is, when I should have been learning primal trust, I learned something else. That security was fleeting and not real. That I could not trust my mother to be there, and that the world was a pretty big and scary place.

Yes, I landed well. Better than the rest of my half-siblings as it turned out, but developmentally, it left a scar that I am only now beginning to examine and heal by rubbing with emotional salve. I was abandoned. When I should have learned love, trust and security I learned abandonment, rejection and insecurity. Those are key things for babies in the first year.

I fear. I fear abandonment, rejection and hurt. In order to protect myself from those things, I project a facade of bravado, swagger and confidence. I protect myself by keeping the world at arm's length, by not letting anyone get close enough to hurt me. Because when people get close, they do hurt me. When I trust people, they let me down. When I get vulnerable, someone invariably pokes me with something sharp. Maybe not on purpose, but when your heart is bleeding, the motives of the one with the lance are really immaterial.

I keep people at bay with anger and sarcasm and humor. Sometimes it works in that they don't get close enough to hurt me. Sometimes it doesn't work quite like I had planned and they reject me as an angry, sarcastic asshole. And sometimes it really doesn't work and they see through it all and name it for the bullshit smoke screen that it is. I can assure you that no emperor likes to be told that she is wearing no clothes, and I am no different than any other. How they handle it when they reach in and touch me determines whether I can handle them in my lives. Some will be loud and call my bluff in a crowd. Those don't last. But the ones who say something quietly, where no one else can hear, letting me know that they know my secret? They have proven that they can see through it, yes, but more importantly they have proven that they can be trusted not to hurt me, even knowing my vulnerability.

That's convoluted, I know, but it's after midnight, and I haven't done this in a while.

I fear. I'm really a big coward. Scared shitless most days. All that noise and bluster is just noise and bluster, covering up a frightened child who has been hurt deeply. I want to learn to trust. I want to learn to stand up for myself and not give a damn what others think. I want to believe in myself and my worth. I'm in therapy now, working through some of this stuff, trying to learn and grow and heal. It's going to be a long journey. I expect it will be a rough one too. This pain and hurt comes out sideways sometimes, and I lash out at people and situations that really are not the problem. Bear with me world. Buckle up.

breathing

2010-10-17T14:18:00.003-04:00

In the cold light of morning, things often look differently than they did the night before.

After a night's sleep, some morning coffee, a gently prodding yet compassionate note from a friend, I was able to regain the focus that had been so skewed last night. On the ride to church, I was able to do some thinking, and I came to some pretty profound realizations.

First, what happened last night was I got triggered. My past stuff got brought right to the surface in a very uncomfortable way. Once again I was a scared kid in the schoolyard, pushed and shoved by kids who fit in and laughed at by everyone, with no one to step in and protect me. Once again I was being bullied at home, humiliated and shamed, screamed at and threatened, and nobody -- no other parent, no grandparent, no aunt, no cop, no neighbor -- came to my aid. I would go outside afterward, knowing that the neighborhood had heard me scream and cry and be ashamed that I was bad and had been punished and they all knew. If I could hear their dinner table conversations in a summer evening from my bedroom, I knew they could hear me screaming and begging from inside my house.

The time I speak of, I was 11. It sucked.

So I was triggered by the idea of an adult who, in my mind, could do something to stop a kid from being bullied, but who did not.

And then there is the other side of that coin.

I am not a huge fan of the concept of sin, but I will use it in this instance.

The sins that weigh heaviest on my soul are the instances in which I could have stepped in to stop a bully but I did not, for whatever reason. I think I have told the story here about a young kid who wanted to wear an outrageous t-shirt to a political march, and some adults took him aside and pressured him to change his shirt so as not to offend anyone. They used their positions of authority as adults to bully this kid into conforming to what they thought he should be. I didn't intercede on his behalf, and it has eaten at me ever since.

So what I've got is a basic case of Freudian reaction-formation: what I cannot abide in myself, I shall loathe in others. I will hold others to a standard that I fail to meet. Ouch.

Oh dear. So it seems that my rage and self-righteous indignation last night are really all about my own shit. Well, ain't that a grand Sunday morning kind of revelation? Hmph.

The question that faces me now, as I begin my path as a minister who must be concerned with people's hearts and not an activist concerned with the often heartless world of politics, has to do with compassion and not judgement. The former will be my job. The latter will not. Nor, for the record, is it now.

How, then, do I arrive at a place of compassion without first wanting to smack someone soundly in the chops? How do I get to a place where I can meet a person where they are and lead them gently to where they can be?

Yes, kids are dying. Yes, this is urgent. But urgency on my part is not necessarily enough to overcome a lifetime of shame and fear in someone else's present.

There is much for me to learn.

Blessed be.

trembling with rage

2010-10-16T18:42:00.008-04:00

I am home early from an event. A political fundraiser. Cheap, over-cooked spaghetti dinner and silent auction of items I didn't want and didn't bid on. Seated with a group of people from my old church - the one I left last spring, we talked politics and disagreed immediately. Let's just say we have very different understandings of what "liberal" means. I mean "liberal." They mean "centrist."

Then Mr. Political Big Shot walks into the room.

Mr. REALLY BADLY CLOSETED Political Big Shot. The one who votes for glbt people all the time, but who never has come out himself. Only I remember his early days, back before he was as big of a big shot as he is now, when he was casual about his gayness, when it was nobody's BIG SHAMEFUL SECRET and when I kinda respected him.

But then he got to be a kind of big shot in local stuff, and he ducked into the closet a little. Then he ran for bigger offices, and kept going further and further back into the closet until now, when NOBODY will talk about the BIG SECRET.

He's gay.

And that's great. I am too. Whoopee.

I am glad when people are happy with their orientations and identities and all. I am happy when people adjust and change their expressions as they grow and evolve, and I do my best to be supportive of all types of those expressions. Even if I don't get it, so long as nobody's being hurt and everybody's consenting, I won't much squawk.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, and just plain different kids are being bullied to the point where they think the only way to get out of that kind of horrific pain and loneliness is to kill themselves.

Kids are dying. Children as young as 12 and 13. Young adults of 19 and 20.

They are dying of SHAME.

That shame is something they are taught by us adults. We, as society, tell them that sex -- particularly non-straight sex -- is shameful and should be hidden. We tell them that being gay is not OK when we lie about who we are and whom we love.

To remain closeted in this time, when kids are dying, is to put one's own comfort, one's own personal motives -- whatever they may be -- over the lives of our kids. KIDS. CHILDREN.

We are grown-ups. IT IS OUR JOB TO LEAD. It is our job to SET A GOOD EXAMPLE. Not to reinforce all those shameful messages the kids are getting from too many other sources.

Dante said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, stand idly by and DO NOTHING.

This is about protecting our children. I remember what it was like to be bullied and have nobody step up to protect me. At school it happened, and at home it happened.

And nobody spoke for me. It is a wonder I lived. It is a wonder I am as high-functioning as I am. I am lucky.

I won't out him. But I'll be damned if I'll shake his hand, either, or stay in a room where he is.

And you know what? I won't vote for his opponent, but I sure as hell won't vote for him, either.

Kids are dying. It's time to get over yourself. Come out! Kids are dying.

The next dead kid is on your hands, Mister Big Shot.

Fire hose

2010-10-03T06:57:00.003-04:00

I am not sure how it happened, but it is October already. I received a gentle reminder from a friend that there are people who are interested in how the school thing is going and an update might be well received. I am blessed this week with kindness and love in many forms. More about that later.

School is amazing. It is challenging and invigorating and overwhelming and exhausting. It is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose. There is so much information to absorb and it seems to be coming from all directions at once. I find that every waking moment not involved in cooking or eating meals or personal hygiene seems to be take up with reading. I have never experienced this volume of work before in my life. There is no time for work work. I am reading and writing between 50 and 60 hours each week. Student loans will keep me afloat this year.

For classes, I am taking: Introduction to Buddhism, Introduction to the New Testament (part 1 of 2), Introduction to Islam, and History of the Church in the Global South. I drive to school three days a week, for classes, most of which are in the evenings. Books were moderately expensive, and there are dozens of them. I have papers to write every week, meditations to practice, and it seems like the more I learn the less I know. It's an amazing process.

Of the eight incoming new students I was a part of at orientation in September, all are women and half identify as queer in some way. I am the only Unitarian Universalist student presently enrolled at the Bangor campus, which makes me something of a curiosity in many of my classes. I had expected to struggle with sexism and/or homophobia from my colleagues and professors, but the thing that seems to set me apart from them more than any other is the fact that I am not Christian.

I tell you, at a Christian seminary, it's a conversation-stopper.

Colleague: You're not Christian?

Dawn: Nope.

C: Really?

D: Really.

C: And you're what faith tradition again?

D: Unitarian Universalist.

C: D: And that's not Christian?

No. Not since 1960 when US Unitarians and Universalists merged.

C: Really?

D: Yes.

C: So you don't believe in Jesus?

D: Oh, I believe in him. I just don't believe he was god or the son of god. I don't believe in the trinity. Or the virgin birth. Or the resurrection.

C: *head tilt* So, do you believe in God?

D: Well, not like most religions describe god.

C: *head tilts in the other direction*

D: I'm not a strict monotheist. I tend to believe that there is a force (or forces) for good and love in the universe. I don't tend to think that it is out there, removed from us up in heaven or far away, but that it exists in all of us. I think god is too big to fit into any one description or faith. And that it probably wouldn't do us any harm to be nice to each other.

C: Uh-huh.

D: Yeah.

~pause~

C: So how are these classes going for you?

D: Complete foreign culture immersion.

C: I bet.

And that's the truth of it. Seminary is like complete foreign culture immersion for me. I am learning a new language (that of Bible study, not Greek or Hebrew) a new history, a new way of thinking.

Growing up Catholic, I was given a bible and told to put it on a shelf, that the priests would tell me what I needed to know of its contents on Sunday mornings. So that's what I did. Later, I became a Unitarian Universalist, and we don't refer to the bible often at all.

So now I am in class with people who not only read the bible regularly, but with people who have multiple versions and translations in their homes. And they believe what is contained in the pages.

Multiple versions? Really? Yeah. Really.

I knew there were four gospels, but not much else about the New Testament. I am learning a lot. Mostly what I seem to be learning is how little I actually know. It is a humbling experience.

The cost of this adventure is as daunting as the amount of work it involves. School leaves me no time for work that would bring in money, so this term I am relying on financial aid and student loans. Looking long term, though, I can't afford to do that every year. Graduating with $75,000 in student loan debt is crazy. There is no ministry job on the planet that I could get that would make those student loan payments.

So this week I spoke with a friend of mine that I know from meetings. She's got some family money of the very, very old variety, and I know she does a far bit of philanthropy. She supported a series of 11th step retreats for women that I coordinated a few years ago and really liked them, so I am a known entity to her. I told her that I'd like to ask for her help, and she said to call her on Saturday. So call her I did, and she wasn't home so I left a message. Last night after I got home from doing errands, she returned my call.

We chatted about school, about how seminary is graduate school, so the classes are seminars and the work is intense, and about what classes I have to take and what my faith requires of me in addition, and about the Bible and the gospels and the men who wrote them, and AA and ministry and a little bit about my hopes.

Then she asked how much I needed.

I had no idea what to say. I need a lot in order to not graduate with a ton of debt. I told her that I did not know what or how much to ask for. It was honest.

So she threw out a figure.

I can give you X a year. Will that work?

Her figure had one more zero on it than I had dreamed of asking for.

I gulped and stammered and sputtered and very nearly cried.

She laughed and told me to thank God, not her. She's glad to do it.

I sputtered some more.

I heard her get out a pencil and a piece of paper.

"I'll send it to you," she said. "Now, hon, what's your last name?"

Yeah.

What's your last name?

She knows me from meetings. We don't use last names there.

But she was willing to write me a check with what I consider a lot of zeros on it, without ever knowing my last name.

It's the kind of thing to make me sing praises to Jesus and Yahweh, and the Buddha and Krishna and Gamesh and the Prophet Mohammad and all their saints. No kidding. I am blessed.

Now my job is to do well in school. I don't have to worry like I did about how I will pay the electric bill or buy heating oil this year. I'm OK. I've got some breathing room. And I am going to be OK next year and the year after, too. She's offered to write that same check each year that I am in school.

I am blessed. And humbled. And honored.

And I have reading to do.

I'll post back again when I can. Please be patient.

I am truly, truly blessed.

Auntie duty

2010-09-05T07:59:00.007-04:00

I took this picture with my phone last evening on the cliffs near Thunder Hole. The surf was pretty spectacular as high tide approached, and the crowd was pretty good about obeying rangers' warnings to stay off the rocks where the waves were crashing. Last year a little girl and her father were swept off the rocks and into the sea while they were watching the waves after a hurricane. Emergency personnel were able to rescue the father, but the little girl perished. We found out later that the crowd on that day did not heed rangers' warnings, surging back out onto the rocks after officials repeatedly asked them to move back. The story of that day traveled up and down the crowd of people at the path's edge yesterday, and when rangers said to move back, the people did.

I am providing ... I'm not sure what - recreational opportunity? educational adventure? weekend away from UN-cool parents? A couple of days' respite for the 15-year-old daughter of a friend. Kid came out as bi a couple years ago and mom is doing her best to make sure her daughter has all of the role models/resources/non-parental supports a queer kid could want or need growing up. Somehow, the kid likes me, and I seem to get along pretty well with her, so she's here. Why this all is, I have no idea. She's a geeky semi-goth girl in skinny jeans with long hair and a decidedly feminine style. What I might have to offer her is a mystery to me, but she was excited to come for a visit, so here we are.

I taught her how to make sushi rolls Friday night (her request) and Saturday we had planned a day of adventure at the Blue Hill Fair, but when we awoke to a torrential downpour, I nixed that idea in favor of a drive around Acadia to see the surf and the stupid people who want to go stand in it.

After noon, the rain stopped and the sun came out and we had a marvelous day puttering around the island. The summit of Cadillac was mobbed with three motor coaches filled with Japanese tourists, but we were able to walk the paths around the summit area and see the white surf pounding the windward sides of EVERYTHING as far as the eye could see. We had lunch at a table in the sunshine on the lawn at the the Jordan Pond House and then toured some of the shops in downtown Bar Harbor before going back to Thunder Hole for the incoming tide (high tide was at approximately 8 pm) as it was pretty but not magnificent when we visited the first time at around noon.

We returned home tired and dusted with salt from the spray, and I made some seafood newburg with eggs from some hens kept by friends. Hand-raised, corn-fed chickens produce the YELLOWEST yolks of any eggs I have ever seen in my life. The newburg was like something from a box of crayons. It was YELLOW. Like school bus yellow. Yikes. My young charge had never had newburg before, so she was unaware of the nature of its alarming appearance and just ate it and liked it. I am still disturbed by the color of the stuff now stored in plastic tubs in my refrigerator.

This morning our plan is to attend church where a friend is preaching and then go to the fair in Blue Hill. The women's frying pan toss is at 4 pm and is the highlight of the afternoon's offerings. No, really. The grandstand is packed well in advance of the first pitch and the crowd cheers heartily for each woman in all of the age groups. The occasional wild toss (straight in the air, landing behind the thrower, or careening near the grandstand) will bring howls of alarm and delight from the crowd. It is a good time for everyone. While we are at the fair, her mother will meet up with us, we shall watch my young friend and her sister go on some of the rides, and she will travel home with her family. I expect to come home and collapse.

I have a new respect for parents, particularly single parents. This kid is pretty much self-contained and self-propelled. She has her own laptop, her own cell phone and her own money. She looks to me only for "this is ok, right?" kind of approval, not "may I please have an ice cream cone?" kind. I cannot imagine the work involved with supervising little ones. Holy crap.

This morning I got up and made banana nut bread with chocolate chips. It is still baking and the house is beginning to smell heavenly. I just woke the kid so she could see four huge, full-grown turkeys that were in the yard, gobbling and poking among the tall grass looking for their breakfast. Now we are up and each on our computers in companionable silence, me at the kitchen table with my coffee, she sitting cross-legged on the fold-out couch, flanked by a small dog and a large cat.

I think it's been a pretty good couple of days. I am exhausted, but she seems to have limitless energy. I am looking forward to the fair this afternoon, although not so much church this morning. This is the church that I used to attend and that I quit back in June. The internal dysfunction and drama were too much, they managed to run the minister out and that really pissed me off, and well, right now, I need a minister. I need to go to a church that has a minister, even a long-term sub while they find a regular one. So I plan to attend at a church about 45 minutes from here. But this morning, because my friend is preaching, I will go back into the church building I left. I will sit in the sanctuary and I will participate in the service, and when it is over, I will leave and probably be sad. I'll ride that out when I get there.

For now, I am going to drink my coffee, have a slice of banana nut bread with chocolate chips while the chips are still all ooey-gooey melty and wonderful, then a shower and we'll see what the day brings.

Stay tuned.

new beginnings

2010-09-02T05:52:00.004-04:00

I have had a good few days in a row. It has been brutally hot here, but my emotional well-being seems to be in pretty good shape.

Tuesday brought a phalanx of plumbers and engineers to the site, and a new batch of adjustments to be made to the project, not the least of which is that we're stopping work for a few weeks for the clients to regroup. The cost of the thing has gone way beyond what they had planned (dead raccoons and rotted sills will do that to a project) so now they're taking a breather and figuring out what they want to do next. I should know if I will have work for the fall by the end of September.

It's scary, but I have a sense of peace and faith that I will be OK. I have student loans that should come through in the next week or two. I have enough cash on hand to pay the rent and the electric bill. My car and insurance payments are taken care of, and I even have money to pay the herbalist I'll see on Monday and the therapist I will see on Tuesday. I will only need groceries and gas for the rest of September, and my larder is pretty well stocked right now, so I'm not as freaked as I might be otherwise. Which is not to say I am not nervous, I am. Just not flat-out panicked like I could be.

I can't tell if the hormones are finally working, if the cohosh and DHEA are working, if the moon has passed through whatever phase it was in that played hell with me or if this is just the normal cycle of my hormones, but I have been feeling better. I can feel tweaks during the day when I get a piece of bad news or when I get worried about this or that, but they do not lay me low with a hammer blow like they have been doing. I can't tell if that is me refusing to feel the pain, anxiety, insecurity or fear, or if it just is not hitting me like it did. This is uncharted territory. I have no point of reference, so I can't tell what is me, what is normal hormone stuff, what is pharmaceutical hormone stuff, what might be diet, or the moon. I just ride with it. Whee.

Or something.

So anyway, today is a big day for me. I am up early - 5:30 a.m. is when I rolled out of bed - and watching the sun brighten the yard as it rises over the wild meadow at the end of my road. It was dark when I woke, so I looked out and thought perhaps the clouds from Hurricane Earl had arrived early, but no, it was just not light out yet. Oops. I feel kinda like a slacker for not knowing that it's still dark at 5:30 a.m. on September 2.

Right. Big Day. Very Big.

Today I go to the seminary for my student orientation. Or, as I have heard people here in Maine say it, "I'm goin' to get orientated."

In preparation for this orientation party, I went yesterday to the little spa area in my local Hell-mart and got a haircut (1/4 inch long in the back, all bristly and soft prickles back there now) and a pedicure with a shade of red that can only be described as "that party'll cost you $800, mister."

I daresay Mary Magdalene would blush at this color. It is utterly delightful.

And didn't the facebookies have fun with it! Seems I surprised more than one with my behavior. Oh well.

I could go into the motives for getting my toes painted cheap hooker red, and I suppose there is a graduate-level thesis somewhere in there. But really? I do it because it tweaks people's preconceived notions around gender roles and gender presentation and what they might assume or think appropriate for a big, bad, butch lesbian to do. I also do it so that I don 't take my big, bad, butch lesbian self quite so seriously. I mean, I can still verbally lay someone out to whaleshit if I need to, insulting their misogynism all the way down, but it goes better if I'm gentler about it, and I am more inclined to be gentle if the world can see my bright red toenails. Because otherwise they might giggle, and that would be bad.

So, armed with a new back-to-school haircut and a pedicure, I truly think I am as ready for this seminary experience as I am likely to be. Pray for me today. I'm more than a little nervous.

(And here's a pic of the piggies in question.)

the upswing... and a near miss

2010-08-27T21:19:00.003-04:00

Today I am beginning to feel legitimately better. Emotionally, if in no other way, but hey, I'll take it.

I was able to make an inappropriate advance before my second cup of coffee and was able to keep the flirty mood up for most of the day. That is HUGE progress. A week ago, I couldn't give a damn about feeling sexy. Bleh.

So I am still very, VERY tired. My muscles still ache - weird ones, too. Bicep, triceps, pecs, abs (cleverly hidden under a protective layer of fat) back, shoulders and quadriceps. They all hurt. Gluts, hamstrings, and calves are all fine. I can't figure out a rhyme or reason to it, just taking note. And my balance has gone wonky. What's up with that?! Any readers out there (among the six of you) been through this menopause thing and experience vertigo? Very strange stuff. And problematic. I work on ladders and scaffold and such. standing near a high open edge today, I got lightheaded and grabbed hold - in as nonchalant a way as I could manage - of a big stack of gypsum board to steady myself. A couple of times I noticed I just felt dizzy, and I can't figure out why. It is worrisome.

So, I had a good day. My emotions are back up, I got a little work done, I've got a plan for doing things next week, I got paid, I tucked a little money away to pay for some serious ink I have been contemplating for a while, and I had a decent supper.

I find that an upswing can be easily derailed, though.

An offhand remark by a friend can plant a seed of doubt, and the waves of insecurity can start rushing back. I did my best to let it go, to not dwell, but it still lingered.

I went to soak in the landlord's hot tub and relax my muscles. The doubts still swirled. I am not out of the woods yet.

On my way out of the screened gazebo that houses the hot tub, the landlord's cat greeted me. His master is away on vacation, and the cat has access to the house, but apparently he lacks company. I petted him and he purred. I scooped him up to bring into the house and he was not as happy about that as I had hoped. There was no hissing or scratching, but he seemed grateful when I dropped him at the cat door and he darted inside.

I stood in the driveway, lit only by the just past full moon and thought, "I do hope Wayne has a black cat."

I walked toward the path behind the school that leads to my place, and turned to look at the moon. She was beautiful tonight. Almost full, waning just a bit, in a sky clear and midnight blue and dotted with a million stars. It took my breath away. Instinctively, I faced the moon, put my hands together and murmured "let us be in the spirit of worship."

And it was.

For the first time in months, I worshipped.

I did not pray specifically to the moon, but to the mother spirit of the universe. I prayed for strength and patience to get through whatever this is, and I thanked her for reminding me that there will be balance in the world, and in me.

I stood in the driveway, lit as though in daylight by the bright shining moon, miles from anything that most people would recognize as civilization, and I let the moon's rays wash over me. My robe hung open and I did not care. The moon lit my pale skin and it glowed. There will be balance. What I am going through will even out. The boat must rock a bit before it settles again.

The peace that came over me was amazing.

I squatted on the ground, not quite kneeling, but still with hands clasped in prayer formation, and allowed myself to submit to the power of nature, the power of the yin and the yan, the balance that spins the planet at just the right speed to keep us all from flying off, the force that runs the tides and makes them come and go and cleanse our shores. It was wonderful.

Filled with peace and wonder, I stood to turn and go home.

And the moonlit yard swirled around me.

I dropped back to my crouch, hands on the ground in front of me.

Dizzy. Swirling, nauseatingly, world-spinning-like-a-ride-at-the-fair-dizzy.

I exhaled.

OK, better. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

This is NOT where and how I want to pass out, thank you. In the driveway, half naked in a bathrobe and crocks with a towel over my shoulder and a cat that may or may not belong to my landlord as my only witness. Wouldn't that be something for the catsitter guy to find in the morning! Um, no.

Slowly, and mindful of the lesson I had just learned, I gradually raised myself from my crouched position to a full stand. Breathe in and out a couple more times just to make sure I had the hang of it, and OK.

Thank you, mother moon spirit, for the blessing and the lessons. Thank you auntie cat for your supervision of this evening's worship.

I turned and walked into the darkness of the path and back to my own yard.

I have some ideas for self-care for tomorrow. I need to go to bed now so that I can get up and do them. Good night.

Interesting thought

2010-08-27T08:12:00.002-04:00

Yesterday and today I was/am exhausted. Today I can kind of see it, as I worked hard yesterday. But being tired yesterday baffled me. I had not done lots of hard work on the day before. Really, I had done some errands and washed the cat. OK, so that was traumatic for both of us, but still.

A guy I am working with had an interesting take on what I am going through. As far as he can tell, menopause seems to be like puberty, but in reverse. OK, that makes sense.

And as such, the chemical changes going on in my body are pretty profound. Again, that makes sense.

Those changes can demand an enormous amount of energy that might otherwise be used for doing everyday things. Remember what it was like when you were 16, he asked? You could sleep 10, 12, even 14 hours at a whack? Of course. That's what teenagers do. Right. Because their bodies need it. They need that kind of rest to recuperate from the rigors of daily life on TOP of some pretty profound hormonal/chemical changes.

Oh.

Gotcha.

So this makes sense, after a fashion. I don't remember puberty having such violent mood swings, but I do remember it (me) being pretty dramatic. Hmm. He's pretty smart about girls stuff for a guy who's never actually had his own set of ovaries and the plumbing/hormones that come with them. Huh.

Tired again this morning. Glad I will be able to sleep in if I need tomorrow. Got some things to do to prepare for school, but I can get a bunch of them done over the weekend. That feels good. The pile of textbooks for this semester is growing daily. Oh, and it looks like I will be the only person in the classroom with the professor for one of my classes. The other four students will be participating via closed circuit television in Portland, around 100 miles away. In the parlance of my younger friends, FML. No slacking in that class. Crap. Not that I look for ways to slack, but being front and center does seem to add some pressure to actually know what is going on all the time. Yeesh.

More later. Stay tuned.

not all better, but better. Except for the cat.

2010-08-25T19:15:00.003-04:00

hmm. woke up without an alarm this morning (I forgot to set it last night). That was nice. I was hungry, so I ate breakfast and then had an upset stomach. Phooey.

My muscles are still kind of sore, but not as bad as they were yesterday.

The weather has shifted, so that might play a part, too.

But in other adventures today...

Kitten had an appointment at the vet.

He has had this rash/itchy stuff/sores on his neck and down his back to the base of his tail. It's been nasty, and I wanted to get it looked at before I get busy with school, so I made an appointment.

My cat does not like traveling.

He does not like motor vehicles, as far as I can tell, and he mightily resents his car carrier.

I brought it in from the shed and left it in the living room. Cat and dog both ignored it, as did I.

Kitten seemed particularly oblivious, lying near me in the kitchen as I worked on the computer, easily within reach should I suddenly decide to scoop him up and put him in the box.

Which, of course, I did.

That fucking cat grows extra arms and legs the minute he sees that travel case, I swear. Trying to stuff him into that thing is like trying to arm-wrestle an octopus. get his hind legs in and he's got a hold of the handle with his front claws. Detach his front claws from the lid, and his backside is out of the case again and making moves toward freedom. All the while he is whining piteously.

Eventually, I manage to stuff all of his arms and legs and one tail into the box and find my jacket. He begins to yowl.

And I don't mean little meows. No. He howls.

ROOOOOWWWWWWWWRRRR

YOOOOWWWWWWWWLLLLLL.

YEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLLLL.

I watch to see that he does, in fact, inhale between the yowls.

I carry him out through the pouring rain to the car, where he settles in for some serious noise.

I call friends so they can share in my misery. To a person, they laugh. One friend actually hands her phone around the room so her family can hear my cat's complaints.

When I suggest to another that he might need a harmonica and a tin cup to bang on the bars, she says "I really don't think he needs a harmonica. No, not at all."

The volume of noise that can come out of a 13 year old, 15 pound cat is impressive. He is a formidable performer.

I grumble that if I ever find the person who taught him to yodel, there's gonna be hell to pay.

At the vet's office, still securely in his cage, he pees.

And not just an "ooh! the sniffing dog startled me!" kind of pee, but a "I am miserable and I am going to squeeze every drop out of my bladder that I can because then the humans (who are obviously to blame for this humiliating ordeal) will have to clean it up" kind.

Oh, he's a bastard.

So he dripped pee all over the exam table, the vet techs had to hose out his carrier and put in newspapers for the trip home, because now his fur was all soaked with urine (ew). The vet gave him a shot, stuffed him back in the cage -- with no more ease than I had managed earlier, it was gratifying to note -- I paid the woman at the front desk and we headed home.

Yowling.

Still yowling.

Only now he was noisy and smelly. Ew.

I stopped at the grocery store for a couple things and to give genius cat a chance to bathe while I was inside. Came out and he's still yodeling at volume 20. Sigh.

Groceries in the trunk, and off we go home, cat screaming all the way.

By the time we get home, I have devised a plan.

I put the groceries away, leaving Kitten in his prison. He is silent, now. concerned about his future.

He had good reason.

I brought his carrier down the hall and into the bathroom. I grabbed a couple towels from the closet and stripped down. I turned on the water to let it warm up. I shut the bathroom door.

I opened the pet carrier and Kitten stepped out. I picked him up, opened the shower stall door, and he grew those extra legs and arms again. Holding him in a most undignified way, I got us both into the shower and shut the door.

He looked up at me and gave the most ear-splitting howl I've heard in ages.

I grinned.

I took the shower head spray gizmo, set it for a concentrated spray, and soaked him down.

He tried mightily to open the glass door. While he was reaching for the handle, I hosed down his tummy area.

He stepped on my foot to get a better purchase, I think. He sunk his claws purposefully into the flesh of my instep and reached as high as he could for the door handle.

Working hard not to scream, I reached down and carefully removed his foot from mine. The pain was intense. My world went white.

I realized I still had my glasses on.

he got lathered up with pet shampoo, then rinsed off and we got out. I toweled him dry for as long as he would tolerate it and freed him to the rest of the house. My foot throbbed for an hour.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sulking at different ends of the house.

Now I am going to soak in the hot tub, and head to bed early. I may sleep with one eye open so the cat does not rip out my throat in the night.

backlash

2010-08-24T18:59:00.002-04:00

Today was better than yesterday. I still felt emotions coming through in waves, but not the debilitating kind I endured yesterday.

What surprised me today was the level of physical fatigue I felt. All of my large muscle groups were sore today - biceps, triceps, quadriceps, all over my back and neck, and just after lunch I got flat-out exhausted. My head was never really entirely engaged today, so I played it low and didn't attempt any high-wire aerobics (or ladder work). I bumbled through the day, glad to have a competent helper who was both patient and understanding. Together we got some stuff done, and I think I might have even helped some.

I am trying to track how I feel from day to day, and it gets difficult when things are good. I don't want to write anything down, because, well, there's nothing to complain about. But then I have a spate of days like this last few and I remember again that I need to write it ALL down so that I can follow what happens and see if I can figure out why.

I am exhausted today. I am making supper and going to hit the hot tub for a little while to soak my sore muscles, then I am going to bed at a decent hour. Sorry this is a dull report. But honestly? I'd rather have this kind of dull than the fireworks I had yesterday. Oof. Thanks for your patience. Clever and witty commentary will resume once things level out a bit.

like grasping sand

2010-08-23T21:07:00.004-04:00

The hormones - and with them either sadness or anger - seem to come in waves. A friend likens depression to cramps in the same kind of way - it comes in waves. Take some Advil, breathe carefully, ride out the bad parts and keep moving when you can.

This morning, I wrote at the depth of the wave. Or the height. Whichever. I was deep underwater, as deep as it gets.

Later this evening, after a day of encouraging and caring calls and notes from people in my real life world and here in bloggyland, I was feeling better.

It was like in high school physics class. Mrs. Davis would explain the formulas, explain how the calculations worked, draw them out on the board, and we'd all dutifully write them down in our loose-leaf notebooks. I could do the problem in class. I concentrated, to be sure, but Lisa Doherty and Bonnie Colby and me and someone else ... Mary Manley, maybe? Holly Light? but anyway, our team would figure it out, work the calculations and come up with the answer we were supposed to get. Something to do with the coefficient of friction or something. The little wooden block car with wheels traveling down an incline at X rate of speed and Y rate of acceleration maybe.

The bell would ring, we'd pack up our gear and head off to lunch or literature or whatever, assignments carefully noted for the evening's labors at the kitchen table.

Where it all disappeared.

All of it.

The numbers, the formulas, the coefficient of friction, the methods, the reasons, all of it evaporated as soon as I walked out of Mrs. Davis' class and was long cold dust by the time I opened by notebook six hours and many miles later.

I would sit and look at my notes. They were foreign to me. I had scribbled arrows and notes in margins that had something to do with inverting fractions or multiplying something with an exponent or something, and now it was all gone.

That's what the sadness and depression is like.

I can remember nothing of the competence and happiness and security I feel when I am not in it. Like day six of a bad cold, I can no longer remember what it feels like to be healthy. Only this has been happening a dozen times a day or more.

So tonight, while I understand what is going on, I am writing it down. Hopefully, the act of writing will put the knowledge into my long-term memory where the clouds of sadness will not obscure it completely.

A friend today suggested that I ride out the wave, to dance it out in a chaos rhythm. I like that idea. Sort of a participatory Zen approach. Let it flow, ride with it, let the madness spin me round round like a record and leave me gasping but unharmed at the end of the dance. It is not a bad image to contemplate.

I do not know how I will approach the next wave of sadness when it hits. I'd like to hope that I can remember what I have written here and that I can just ride it out, relax and let it flow around me like water around a stone in a stream (that's the Zen part).

Whatever happens, I have made progress today. I have done no harm to any human being, including myself, and I have received some solid and useful advice for the next tide. I have cared for myself, fed myself, set a couple goals and achieve one (washed the dog - she smelled foul!). I have nurtured myself with a soak in the landlord's hot tub and am now heading to bed at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow I will give this thing another shot. Stay tuned. And thanks for your patience.

changing the rules?

2010-08-23T08:50:00.003-04:00

I don't know if this is changing the rules in mid-stream or not. One friend says it is, so she might be right.

The hormones are wreaking hell with me right now. The depression is terrifying and the rages are the likes of nothing I have ever experienced. I go back and forth between suicidal depths and blind white rages. It feels not so much like being on an emotional roller coaster as it feels like being dragged behind the roller coaster, over the tracks.

One friend decried the use of the term "mood swings" to describe what happens when a woman hits menopause. "I called them 'mood slams' " she said.

Only now I am in a very rough spot. I am trying not to be angry today. It is not going terribly well. I have realized in the past couple days that nearly all interaction between me and my friends has been as a result of my reaching out to them. Rarely does anyone call me.

Huh.

Hormones in play, remember.

So today I am in a mood to say "fuck it" and put the world to a pop quiz.

And I may or may not tell anyone that they're being tested.

I know. It sounds horribly unfair.

But right now, it feels pretty unfair that if I want to hear the nurturing words of a a friend because I am down and depressed that I have to call them. Screw that.

So here's the plan: I stop calling out. Period.

Anyone wants to get in touch with me, there are many, many ways to do that. I will answer. But reaching out? Not for today.

We'll see after a while who notices that I'm gone. We'll see who bothers to call, write or text. We'll see how important I am to the people who are important to me.

Juvenile? Perhaps. Unfair? Quite possibly.

A reaction to feeling hurt, depressed, unloved and out of control of my emotions? You betcha.

It's where I am today. It's honest. And dear goddess, let us hope it is temporary. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if anyone calls at all.

a break

2010-07-30T06:02:00.002-04:00

WARNING - discussion of girl parts and womanly bodily functions contained within. The squeamish might not want to go beyond the end of this sentence. Just saying. Mel has some gorgeous pictures up over at Cabezalana if you're looking for something less... intimate.

I have been battling hormone-related mood swings of late. To the point where I was really frightened for my own safety and freedom. I made an appointment with a doctor, who looked like he might have been Margaret Chase Smith's doctor when she was young. But he listened, and he didn't order a bunch of stuff I couldn't afford, and he prescribe me some hormones. Not a baby dose to start out like with most people, but a mid-range dose.

The past month has been pretty brutal. Sometime in late June I experienced what I believe to be an ovarian cyst bursting. Holy crap. Pain like none other I have felt in this lifetime. Wow. Like someone was trying to remove my ovary with a grapefruit sectioner and no anesthesia. I have heard that pain compared to the pain of kidney stones or childbirth. Wow. I never never NEVER want kids. I mean I didn't before that, but I sure don't want them now. Yowch. So, after the cyst thing, I got my period like normal, but the mood swings kicked in within a week or two of that. And they got worse. And worse. And then even worse. I became irritable in the extreme, then depressed in the extreme and then angry and filled with rage to the point where I just stayed home rather than go out and possibly do real damage to some poor schmoe who happened to step in front of me in the grocery store.

Then I had the doctor's appointment. My prescription cost me $4 at Hell-Mart, where I also picked up some black cohosh and some DHEA, both supplements that have not been proven to do a damned thing, but that have been recommended to me by women who use them with great success. I asked the doctor about using the supplements, and he looked unimpressed, but said they would do no harm, so I got them and started taking them right away. Then the most amazing thing happened. Less than 24 hours after my doctor's appointment, I got my period. 15 minutes before I took my first dose of estrogen. Within 18 hours of that moment, my mood changed, I was able to sleep (9 blessed hours that first night!) and all kinds of things fell into line. I am no longer depressed or angry -- well, no more than is my baseline disgruntled state -- I am able to work and concentrate at much better levels. I no longer sit and cry when I think about life and what I've got for friends and things going on. Things are better.

So, what made the difference? My guess is that my period made the bulk of it. Pent-up hormones finally broke through, if that is kind of the right term, and things evened out. It could also be the emotional relief of knowing that I finally had medicine to help - often the knowledge of a treatment's eminent start is enough to start the healing. I don't know, and I don't much care. All I know is that I feel a lot closer to human now than I did two weeks ago.

Oh, I'm still grumpy. Things are not all roses and sunshine and unicorns farting sparkly rainbows. I still wonder why Sarah Palin exists, how people can be so stupid as to listen to or believe Faux News and any of the people on it, why nobody has bitch-slapped Pat Buchanan yet, and why Flush Dimbaugh can keep managing to find new women to marry him.

That attitude is not likely to change. But the depression and rage have dissipated, and I am glad. That is all I have to report today. Tomorrow or later on I might tackle politics or cooking or something fun, but for now I need to drink my coffee, make some breakfast and get to work.

Stay tuned.

we did it to ourselves

2010-07-24T13:49:00.004-04:00

I had an interesting exchange with a liberal political hack friend of mine today with regards to a blogger from the left who seems as much of a stark-raving lunatic as many of the teabagger and birther bloggers of the right. My friend winced at what this woman was writing, her unsupported accusations and insinuations, rumors and hints and things written as questions so that they do not actually cross the line into the perilous legal area governed by libel laws.

"So, does X beat his wife? We can't tell, he won't answer our calls so we can ask. Why do you think that might be? What is he hiding?"

That kind of stuff.

Wince-worthy? Sure. Especially since it's being done in the name of liberal politics.

Ouch.

We like to think ourselves above such nastiness. We like to think ourselves beyond the petty crap, the dishonest stuff, the underhanded, illegitimate, not-entirely-legal world of political hijinks named in the 1970s by operatives and practitioners as "ratfuckery."

We don't DO that, we tell people. We are the ethical ones.

For the record, ethical lines got blurred so badly during the heyday of ratfuckery that some boneheads thought it was a legitimate political tactic to break into the headquarters of the opposing political party and tap the phones and steal information.

The break-in was a bad idea to begin with.

The cover-up changed the history of the world.

Think of where we would be today if Richard Nixon had not resigned in disgrace, if people had not been caught and prosecuted and bribes paid and cover-ups attempted and failed, and Gerald Ford took over and pardoned everybody and then Jimmy Carter was elected because he seemed homespun, but then he turned out to be homespun and kind of out of his depth and then we got Reagan. Eeeeeejeebus. See what I mean?

What would have happened if Nixon had finished out his second term? What would have happened? Who the hell knows. Nobody can guess.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had a guy in his administration who was just bonkers. Guy's name was Thomas K. Jones, and he was the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for strategic theater nuclear forces. Jones got everyone riled up when he argued, in front of a reporter with a pen and notebook at the ready, that an attack by nuclear missiles was easily survivable: "Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors, and then throw three feet of dirt on top. Everyone's going to make it if there are enough shovels to go around."

Yaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeeee.

I remember that. Doors and shovels. Yep, way easier (and cheaper!!) than all those bomb shelter kits people bought during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Clearly Jones was a nutter. Nobody really argued that. I mean, nobody locked him up where he could not get out, but really, a lot of smart people paid him no mind.

But a lot of not-so-smart people liked the easy simplicity of his words, they liked that he told them a fairy tale that made them feel safe, and after all, it is easier to go along with a myth that does not challenge us to get off our butts, even if we have an inkling of an idea that it might really be a myth.

And somewhere, a large lesson was learned and a large lesson was missed.

First, the lesson that was learned.

(Actually there were several.)

Surrounding yourself with a variety of people is a good idea. Making sure that at least one of them is fucking nuts (but politically manageable) is brilliant.

Because while everyone flipped their shit about Jones and his doors and shovels, that one comment suddenly made Ronald Reagan's other neo-fascist henchmen look, well, not as bad as that guy.

Ding. Valuable lesson: being around crazy people makes you appear sane in the way being around short people makes you look tall. Doesn't mean you are, just means it appears that way.

The second valuable lesson learned was that vast numbers of people really want to be led like sheep. And sheep are happiest when other people do their thinking for them, just so long as they have grass to eat and someone keeps an eye out for wolves and stuff. And sheep will do things that are actually against their own best interests if they are convinced that there is a threat driving them.

Ding. Valuable lesson: you can get people to do what you want, if you scare them. You can get them to hurt themselves if you tell them it will keep them safe from the imagined threat.

Shortly after those years came the emergence of conservative talk radio, and the charge was led by that dipshit multi-million-dollar-a-year champion of the working man, Flush Dimbaugh.

Lots of people understood that Dimbaugh (I refuse to use his real name and garner the inevitable google hits and trolls) was a circus performer, a barker who riled up the crowd and got people excited. Lots of people understood that he made up great swaths of "information" on his radio program and that, even if it was corrected by smart people who were right, the fact that the lie was out there once was enough to give it a life of its own.

Ding. Valuable lesson: If you say a thing often enough, people will believe it, even if it is patently false.

Conservatives in America were learning these lessons very very well. They encouraged dipshits like Dimbaugh and his ilk to bleat loud and constantly, secure in knowing that a scared populace is easily led, to the point where it will hurt its own members and blame someone else for the actions of its own members.

OK, so we've established that the right is willing to lie and abuse people -- even its own -- to further its agenda.

Let's take a look at what happened in the progressive world during those same years.

At the end of the 1970s, the progressive movement was divided, scattered and unsure what to do with itself. The was in Vietnam was over, Reagan had trumped Carter and the hostages were home from Tehran. The economy was on the upswing, the ERA was dead, the liberals had all split into separate camps and the gay men had begun dying from a mysterious illness without a name. Feminists had ousted the lesbians, who went off to communes and pouted. Progressive men had been branded as sweater-wearing academics and wimps who were run by their wives, except for the Kennedys, who were just run by alcohol and their dicks.

At some point, progressives looked around and decided to get mobilized. By our nature, we like to be inclusive and honor the thoughts and ideas of each person, but somehow, every time one of our fringe elements would speak up, Flush and his crowd would point and laugh and we'd lose ground.

So we started cutting off our fringes. We tossed them overboard. The radical fringes of our political side of the aisle disappeared.Only a few holdouts remained. The Dennis Kuciniches and (pre-sell-out) Howard Deans of our party were (and still are) ridiculed and teased as starry-eyed true believers, pie-in-the-sky idealists and dreamers and fools. Kucinich was referred to by liberal commentators in recent years as "the Democratic Party house elf." LIBERAL commentators called him that. Including me. Paul Wellstone was viewed largely as a kook, a nut with such high ideals and ethics as to render him useless in serious debate.

We decided, for better or for worse, that in order to get votes, we were going to have to act like the popular guys who were presently getting votes. So we started doing things foreign to our natures. Instead of arguing that rehabilitation might be a better path for our corrections system, we "got tough of crime" and supported more prisons and less preventative measures. We buckled under to a lot of what the conservatives were doing, and eventually drew off some of their supporters. But in doing so, we had become them.

So we muzzled our fringes. Progressive commentators hunkered down in print journalism where they could write one or two pieces a week and never have to ad-lib a thing, and they STILL got hammered by the right. Meticulously researched facts and pristine prose have a hard time standing up to a barrage of myths and accusations applied with the four-inch fire hose of talk radio.

Some progressives got out of the game almost entirely, withdrawing to the ivory towers of academia where they got tenure and job security, even if they gave up the adrenaline rush of the political world.

Then, suddenly, in 2010, some of us looked around and said "how is it that we worked so hard to get a majority in both houses and the white house and we still are getting kicked in the gut at every turn?"

Well, a couple of things here. First, we have become our own enemy. We have been so careful to not threaten the dominant paradigm that we have become part and parcel of it. We have become more effective at shutting down our renegades than our opponents ever could have hoped.

And we have become the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm. We are running the farm, overworking our people, and treating them as harshly -- perhaps even more so -- than the humans had before us.

Dissent is not tolerated in the political sphere. Not among progressives. Conservatives handle it better than we do: "well, Flush doesn't speak for everyone, but he's got a right to say what he thinks. First Amendment and all that..."

Us? We drum people out in stupid, ill-advised, politically correct ways (can you say Shirley Sherrod? I knew you could!) then look the fool when someone mentions that the emperor has no clothes.

We had a moment, in the 1980s, when ACT-UP and Queer Nation and the Lesbian Avengers made some noise and made people uncomfortable and raised awareness, but by the time we marched on Washington for glbt rights in 1993, those folks had been ushered first to the back of the bus and then under it. We wanted to be like our oppressors. We wanted to not threaten middle-class white America, so we became middle-class white America, and anyone who did not fit that design was quietly (or not so quietly) told that they were not welcome at the party. Butch dykes in leather? Um, can't you just put on a nice pant suit? Drag queens and high femme boys? Can you at least try not to lisp?! Jeez, we're trying to be taken seriously here.

Our fringes have now gone underground, where it is safe from both the enemy without and the one within our own houses. Our fringes have become bloggers. Our fringes have been largely ignored for a while, but might be making some inroads as Internet access becomes more available.

But the point remains. How pathetic is it that we have done to ourselves what our opponents could never have accomplished? We have assimilated. We have been absorbed. The "progressives" of today are more conservative than Richard Nixon was in his day. Truth. Nixon created OSHA. Nixon went to China. Nixon appointed Supreme Court justices that today represent the most liberal arm (ineffective flipper, perhaps?) of the court. Yes, he was crooked and wrong about a lot of things, but his policies would be viewed as nearly seditious by modern standards.

So, when a liberal blogger rants and rails and raises difficult questions, I say good. We need our fringes. Our diversity is our strength. The diversity of any organization is its strength. Look at what the conservatives have done. Their party chairman is a black man. The governor of Louisiana is an Indian-American rumored to have practiced voodoo healing rituals and the governor of Hawaii is a closet... um, no, can't go there. The governor of Florida is a closet... no. The Senator from Idaho is..., oh, hell. Um, anyway, the Log Cabin Republicans are pretty active.

We NEED our fringes. We need them desperately. We need our version of the guy yelling about doors and shovels. We need our version of Pat Buchanan. I'd say we have it in Rachel Maddow, but she's smarter, more articulate and more accurate than Pat. Not to mention way better looking.

When I was in college, I was a student activist. I got on the news occasionally, and sometimes I made the mainstream queer movement people cringe. What was I trying to do? Undermine all of their hard work? A Maine State Senator came to my defense one day at a meeting of the glb (we had no T in our world back then) political folks. "We need Dawn," she told them (paraphrasing here), "Because she and her very brave friends doing actions in Farmington, like the ACT-UP folks, make is much easier for me to talk to people in the state house. Without her, and without them, I am the radical fringe."

Our diversity is our strength, not a liability. If we are ashamed of our members, how do we expect to gain the respect of anyone else?

I say let us celebrate our fringes. No, they don't speak for all of us, but they've got as much right to the First Amendment as anyone else, and I say let them use it fully. Let us not abandon all of what makes us us in our effort to achieve the same rights and freedoms as the rest of society. Media whores? We need 'em. Political insiders? We need them, too. Gay republicans? Not sure why, but we probably need them as well. Academics? Yes, we need them! Clergy? Absolutely! Big dykes and drag queens and foster moms and accountants and lawyers and Teamsters and poets - we need every bit of us, and we need ALL the input to make us strong. Some will do the political thing. Some will live on the fringes. That's fine. But we need to not eat our own in this battle.

Let us celebrate the liberal version of doors and shovels!

Oh, one last thing. Here is a very cool video that made the rounds on facebook last week. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEZoY-TMG4

familiar, but not great

2010-07-23T19:52:00.003-04:00

OK, the hormones have shifted. My anger is now directed in a more familiar direction: the world.

Holy crap this is a roller coaster ride. I have been frustrated today at lots of things, lots of people, LOTS of traffic, and don't EVEN get me started on what it was like at the grocery store! Aaarrrggghhhhhh!

I can recognize that what is going on is hormone-fueled, but I seem utterly incapable of stopping it from happening. In the past two days I have lashed out at friend and foe alike, gotten downright nasty and snippy with people who care a great deal about me and been outright fucking rude to those who don't give a damn who or how I am but who want my vote. You should see what I wrote to a guy who is running for governor as an independent who had the audacity to send me a friend request on facebook. I bet I'm on a watch list somewhere now. I did not threaten actual violence or anything, just let him know that if my candidate does not win because he split the progressive vote, I'd hold him personally responsible for any kid that dies in an overburdened, understaffed foster care system that the other candidate will further gut in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Was that really harsh? Nah. Well, maybe a little. Request denied, by the way.

So now I need to try to breathe through this stuff like I tried to breathe through the depression. I really should have some kind of 30-minute cooling off period auto-installed on my computer to keep me from doing anything REALLY stupid. Urg.

While the anger is outward-aimed, I think I might have a political rant or two in me. Stay tuned. I'll try and compose something both witty and viscous in the morning, maybe even before coffee. Check back...

chemistry is not for amateurs

2010-07-23T07:31:00.003-04:00

OK, so last week was very likely the worst week of my adult life. I was an emotional wreck, everything seemed disjointed, my feelings and emotions spiraled out of control in a terrifying downward direction. It was bad.

Fortunately, I have wonderful friends who have a multitude of skills and I did not have to spend my birthday (last Friday) in a soft room while wearing a canvas jacket that encourages the wearer to hug herself for hours on end. It was that scary where I was.

Even better, I have friends who were able to recognize and name the symptoms of hormone-related mood swings.

Well, no shit. THAT's what that was. Holy cow.

I remembered, eventually, that a dear friend had told me of her bout with menopausal mood swings. She was sober, healthy, with a loving husband, good job, nice home, secure in every sense, only one day, for no reason that she could see, she spent the whole day in suicidal ideations and the darkest, deepest depressive state of her life. Fortunately, her sponsor recognized what was going on, got her to an ob/gyn the next day and got some hormone replacement therapy to even things out until her body was through that particular fit of age-related adjustments.

That memory and the fact that it explained a lot of what I have been going through helped take some of the pressure off over the weekend, but it did not change the fact that I still was depressed, still was exhausted, still was not sleeping worth a damn and still moved through my days like a zombie. Some friends came over for a birthday party on Sunday and that was fun, but there were times when it felt like the party was going on around me but I was not a part of it. A couple people noticed and asked if I was ok, which was wonderful, but really, I wasn't ok. I was hurting. Only a party is not the place to break down and sob and go all weird, so I soldiered through. Later in the evening, when the crowd thinned out, I could relax enough to cry, and I did.

This week I spent some time arranging an appointment with an ob/gyn (next week) and gathering information and resources. I need to find a therapist, certainly, and I need to find the right combination of supplements and/or hormones to even this stuff out. Sleeping at night would really be nice, but I am not willing to take sleep aids. That stuff is too scary for me. I played with over the counter sleepy stuff as a kid, I dare not dabble with it now.

So, that's where I am chemically.

Emotionally, things are still pretty cattywumpus. My sweetheart did call last week, and she ended up being the person I was able to reach out to when things got darkest, and that means a lot. I realized over the weekend that I had been trying to demand and push and direct and get pushy and that stuff was causing a bunch of friction and none of it helped my head or my heart. Today, I am less inclined to push. I am less inclined to try to run the show. I have some stuff of my own to work on, and that has been made very clear to me. So I must work on it. I will take this relationship as it evolves and roll with it, instead of taking it as I'd like it to be and run with it. Two very different philosophies. Two very different approaches to things. Would I still like to go out to where she is and sweep her off her feet? Absolutely. Am I willing to risk either one of our mental health to do it? Not a chance. This will grow or this will wither as it is supposed to, whether I fuss with it or not. My best bet is to take each day as it comes and not try to force anything. It goes against how I usually operate, but after last week, I'm willing to try. I don't want to be there again. It was awful.

So today I am better than I was. I am still not great. I am still not operating at 100% capacity, but I am better. I have a plan and a map and support and a contingency plan. I am more inclined to do serious self-care these days than I have been, and that's nice. Updates will come as I have them.

expectations

2010-07-15T09:40:00.004-04:00

Let's talk about expectations.

I often say I hold the world and myself to unreasonably high standards. That is true.

It means that I am disappointed often, by both the world and myself. That is also true.

So what do I do?

They say that happiness is an inside job and that a person who has no expectations cannot be disappointed, and I understand that.

But it seems counter-intuitive to me.

I have been doing self-esteem work and self-image work and affirmations for long enough that I know I get to say "I deserve to have my needs met."

Only when I hope that someone or something outside of me is going to do that, I get disappointed.

Always.

So do I rely on myself to meet my needs? How does that translate into my need for intimacy? love? gentle touch? Can I do that?

I don't think I can.

As a human being, I live in a world with other humans. That in itself, seems to be the problem.

I need other humans. I need conversation and connection and contact.

But they are human like I am and have their own frailties and faults and weaknesses.

They let me down.

And right now the disappointment I am feeling is pretty intense.

It's been a rough spell for me in these past nine months. Some shit has gone down, and I have had to deal with a fair amount of loss. Sometimes I think it has been an unfair amount of loss.

It seems that the universe is teaching me not to rely on any people, places or things to bring me happiness. It seems that every source of joy in the past nine months has fucked up in one way or another. Campaigns lost, relationships ended, sources of security and affirmation became sources of pain and betrayal, and joy and hope become anguish and need.

I guess I need to look within for happiness. I get that. But I'd really like to have something on the outside of my skin work out well sometime this year. I'd like something to go the way I'd like it to. I'd like something to work out so that everyone involved is happy and fulfilled. Maybe school will be that thing. I don't know. I am not inclined to believe in it right now.

You know how I like to rant every now and then about wanting nothing more in life than truth in advertising. I'd like things to work the way they are supposed to, for people to do what they say they will, and for the weatherman to be right every now and then.

I fall short of what I would like to be able to do. I suppose I can give the rest of the world some room to wiggle as well.

It is Thursday and already this week has felt very long. I have more to accomplish than I can handle, and something is pressing down on me, making it difficult for me to move. I have things to do today, but I can't seem to get out of my chair. I have coffee, and it is strong and sweet enough to motivate almost anyone, but I can't seem to budge.

My birthday is tomorrow. Maybe this funk is built around that. I will be 45. That means I am very likely more than halfway through my time on this earth. What have I accomplished? I don't know. I have built some things, some better than others. I have loved some people, again, some better than others. I have accumulated a sizeable debt in my pursuit of education, but have yet to have a job that successfully pays those bills. I live hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck, I drive a 15-year-old truck that was given to me when my other one fell apart around me. I have a small dog who loves me and a cat who alternately loves and resents me, but I think that's how those relationships are supposed to go. I am single, after a fashion. I have a sweetheart, but she is on the other side of the planet, and that makes the loneliness ache even more. For reasons beyond my control, I cannot go to her right now. I must wait, and I am not terribly good at waiting. I have a couple of friends with whom I have the occasional date, but that is not what stirs my heart. The dates are fun, but not emotionally fulfilling.

I wonder if what I am feeling is just loneliness. I feel disconnected, like I am somehow apart from the world and people around me. I feel as though I go through my day without touching anyone or anything, at least not deeply. I brush by on the surface, make a ripple, but don't stir any real currents. And I feel like the world does the same to me - like it doesn't notice my presence, like I am invisible, sort of. I walk around and know that there is really nobody here who knows how I feel inside, what my fears are, what my hopes are, what I'd like for lunch, or what I had for breakfast. I feel like I have to shout to be heard or noticed at all, and that's exhausting.

I don't know where all of this is coming from, but I don't like the way it feels. I am sure my hormones are playing a part, but I dare not just write this all off as some kind of menopausal blip that will pass when the moon changes phase. That kind of conversation feels like it minimizes what I am feeling, and I don't like it.

I read somewhere (I can't seem to find the clip now) that Daniel Patrick Moynehan said, while eulogizing Ted Kennedy, "To be Irish is to know that the world, someday, will break your heart."

It is tragic and romantic, to be sure, but true. I wear my heart on the outside. It gets banged up by life. I think it hurts more when that happens. I think it feels joy and love and passion more than others as well. I don't know how to keep it on the inside. And honestly? I'm not sure I want to. I guess what I need is to learn some skills to deal with the highs and lows. Right now I just feel them as they are, raw and real and present. I howl with the pain, and I weep with the joy. Might I learn some other way to be? I don't know. It seems kind of late for that now, like I probably have the patterns now that I am going to keep for life. I am stuck feeling things this intensely.

And somehow, there is contradiction in this post. I feel things deeply, down to my core, almost at the molecular level it seems, and yet I feel as though nothing touches me as I go through my day. Maybe it is just that I don't feel that I touch anything else. I can't tell. What I do know is that it does not look like she is going to call this morning (it is afternoon now) and I must get moving about my day. My heart aches.

new trechnology

2010-06-17T07:14:00.003-04:00

OK, so I am not a big fan of new technology. Some of you knew that, and others I am sure could guess. Last night a friend gave me a new(ish) laptop. It is smaller and more lightweight than the big gray beast that I am typing this on now. It has cool political/sexual outlaw stickers on it. He loaded all kinds of necessary things onto it for me. Got me set up on a new gmail account, switched my email over from the old Outlook Express to gmail, did all the things I am rumored to need done to boldly step into the 21st century, and it was all very exciting.

Only there's a hitch.

Setting things up, he asked "so, what's your password for this account?"

"Password?"

"Yeah. You have a password."

"Oh. (long pause) Are you sure?"

See, my brain is filled with lots of important things, and is unable to remember passwords. For even 60 seconds, it seems.

OK, it wants you to re-enter your password.

I forget it.

What?

I forget it.

But you just made it and typed it in.

I know. But I can't remember what I made it.

~facepalm~

yeah.

You see, my head is filled with other things. Things like studs go 16 inches on center and it is important for things to be plumb and level and square and how to make them those things if they aren't and how to work around it if they refuse, how to measure and cut irregular trapezoids out of sheetrock to fit in a particular space and where the plumbers need to put vent pipes and how many holes the electrician will need to drill in my firewall and song lyrics to every hit record from the 1970s. And 1980s. And a fair number from the 1960s and 1990s, too. And all those little words at the top of the Budweiser label.

That's what's clogging up my brain. And somehow, I cannot dislodge any of it to make enough room to store a few passwords. Like to facebook. And to this blogger account. Oh, it will send my password to my Yahoo! account. Only I don't use my Ya-hell account any more and have no idea -- you guessed it! -- what my password is to get into it.

Sigh.

I have tried all of the normal passwords that I use for such things. I had them all written down on a sticky note once, but have not seen it in ages. I am screwed. I wish I could just plug this computer into that computer and transfer all of the data I want from old to new.

It is a given, of course, that the friend who helped me out with all of this is younger than I. That's fine. But it is frustrating that I am unable to master a thing. I used to be the one to do that stuff. I was the one "old people" asked to hook up stereos and electronics and such. Only with computers, I am out of my league. I am the "old person" now. I have not a clue what happens inside these things. I only know I want to turn it on and go where I want -- much like when I get in a motor vehicle. Turn the key, put it in drive and GO! I do not have to me a mechanic to drive my car. I should not have to be a software engineer to check my damned email or make a new blog post. Grr.

Anyway, that's my grumble for today. I am hoping that I can get this thing figured out, even if it means I have to resort to old-school technology and actually CALL some kind of customer support place to get it straightened around. Wish me luck. And as always, thank you for your patience.

Relationships

2010-06-06T08:12:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a pretty long day. I went to a meeting, saw my sponsor and got a hug, took myself to lunch and then went to Andrew's graduation. It was interminably long, but mostly not terrible. When his name was announced and he got is diploma, a fair number of us cheered and that was nice. Afterwards, friends and advisers were met, dinner reservations made and met, and chat of politics, feminism, unions and music from the 1960s to 1980s was discussed. Andrew was part mortified that I could banter so with his friends and part relieved, I think. I was able to provide a distraction so that he was not 100% of the focus of every one's attention, and I think he was very grateful.

A friend later described me as "a COA parent" and that threw me a bit.

To Andrew, I am one of his "old" friends, which means that I am a friend of his who is old, not that we've known and liked each other a long time.

Certainly, I am old enough to be Andrew's mother, at least chronologically. He is 22. I am 44. Yes, I could have been his parent. Only our friendship does not feel like that kind of parent-offspring relationship, at least not any that I have seen or experienced. I don't think I fit in the "favorite auntie" kind of category, either. Andrew is cool. We hang out. I don't ask anything of him beyond that he eat now and then when I make food, and that he not trash my place and not clean it up. I tell stories about the dark ages (1980s and 90s) of lgbt politics and he looks at me like I am a museum exhibit, and then tells me of queer youth street theater troupes in Boston and Los Angeles. We have very different lives.

He works with autistic children and I build stuff. I think we both look at each other's work and marvel, but we don't get too freaked out about it. He can do stuff I can't. I can do stuff he can't. That's fair.

I guess I play some sort of mentor role, but that seems odd, too. I don't think he really needs a mentor, so I try not to bury him with advice and direction. I offer what I think and know that he can (and will) take it or leave it as he sees fit. I don't get too terribly bent when he ignores my wisdom. Sometimes it's wisdom, after all, and sometimes it's not. And he's a way better judge of that then I tend to be.

So how is it that I felt a kind of parental pride when I heard his name announced and saw him walk across the stage to get his degree? I don't know. Honestly, I have only known Andrew for less than a year. We both worked on the No On 1 campaign, but barely saw each other then. We joined the church together in January. I guess that's when our independent friendship began. I think that was it. I was the 12-step person who wasn't a jerk to him. And the gray-haired person who didn't try to run his world.

True, I watch in exasperation some days as he spins with the drama and angst that I had at that age, but I don't take it personally. I know that it's part of his process and that he'll get through it. He complied, analyzed and presented a crapton of data for his final project. He can do the big things. And he can help an autistic child use the bathroom without getting skeeved out about it. That's pretty amazing.

So where am I in all this? I have no idea. I guess part of my brain wants to put me in a box, to define who and what I am, and to define this friendship in terms that others will be able to recognize. I think part of me is just still amazed that I know how to have friends. I didn't, for a long time. I did not have the social skills to know how to give and take, to not bully, to not manipulate, to not be passive-aggressive, to allow others the flexibility that I desired. I take up a lot of space in a room. I know that. I am a powerhouse of energy and noise and opinion and sarcasm, and not everyone can handle that or enjoy it. Some of it is the leftover stuff from when I was raised by wolves, but some of it, I must say, is me and probably here to stay, at least to some degree. I know that not everybody will like me, not everybody will be able to handle my energy level, and not everybody gets my sarcasm. I will hurt and insult people unintentionally, and they will leave. I know this and try to temper my words, but sometimes I miss. So, I am pleased when someone either sees past that stuff or else decides it's something they can work with to be my friend.

There was a time break here and I entirely lost my train of thought, so I am going to post this as is and try to be intelligent again tomorrow.

Tired of loss

2010-06-05T07:17:00.003-04:00

It has been a year of loss for me, and I am tired of it.

Last year at this time, we had six weeks of rain. It wrecked my spring earning as a contractor with jobs to do painting houses and fixing outdoor things. Then the campaign for marriage equality took over my life, with its own disappointments and losses along the way, culminating in the Nov. 3 loss at the polls. Then the holidays, which were leaner than any I have experienced in my adult life, then Laura and I split, then my life changed when I got a call to ministry. I moved (another loss of a kind) lost my minister, got sick and behind on bills, and most recently my sponsor learned that she has a particularly nasty form of breast cancer that may abbreviate her time on this earth, I quit my church for the madness it contains, and I didn't get into the divinity program at seminary.

On the up side -- and I have to remember that there is an up side -- I have learned a great deal about myself, I have clarified my sense of purpose, I have developed a truly romantic relationship with a woman who makes my stomach drop in the most remarkable way, I am learning again, or perhaps for the first time, the fine arts of flirting and romance. I am learning how to play and how to be open to pleasure and how to flirt without the heavy strings of obligation attached. It is a remarkable time.

Oh, and I did get accepted into seminary, just not in the program that I wanted. Seems the ten years of on-again-off-again, up-again-down-again grades that it took me to get my B.A. in General Studies did not inspire confidence in the review board that I might be able to handle the rigors of graduate school, so they accepted me in the M.A. program with the recommendation that I reapply for the M.Div. program after I complete 18 credits. Really? That's very fair, even though the rejection (acceptance) letter at first put me in a dead panic. That shit ain't nice to do to someone. Just sayin'.

But the title of this post is "tired of loss" and truly, that's where I am right now. In the past year, I have lost a hard-fought battle, lost my relationship with my partner, lost my home, lost money, work and financial security, lost my minister, lost my church, and am facing the prospect of losing my sponsor. Now, to be fair, I chose to tend my relationship, and I chose to move, and I chose to leave my church, but that only mitigates slightly the impact those events have collectively had on my psyche. It has been a tough year.

I am struggling now to keep out of "victim mentality" that dangerous place where hope is lost and negative thoughts breed negative results and a downward spiral ensues. I have to be mindful and find the positive in each day. Today I am healthy and able to work. Today I will attend the college graduation of a dear friend and maybe take myself out to lunch in Bar Harbor. I have to find an appropriately inappropriate card at the local bookstore and stationer's too. Hopefully something to horrify and make a young man blush. My work is cut out for me.

Last night I did some meditation, or at least I tried. I found that my mind did not want to slow down and relax. I tried to focus on my breathing, but I was distracted every few seconds. This morning it went a little better. At first I tried to concentrate on my breathing, with similar results, then I focused my attention on a single droplet of water clinging to the outside of my kitchen window. That helped focus me for a little while, and then I was able to do steps 1, 2 and 3 and the associated prayers and meditation work that go with them. I did some affirmation work, too, because I find that if I've been away from my spiritual practice for a while, the first words that come to mind are "I am not worthy" and that is not where I want or need to be. I am worthy. I do deserve good things in my life. I am as worthy as any other person. I am as worthy of life and its pleasures as the birds and animals and the grass and trees and the moon and the stars. I am a part of this world, and that's fine. I don't need to grovel in life, and I need to remember that I need not grovel in prayer as well.

So there I am. A mixture of I don't know what. But glad for this day, even though I am tired of loss. The cycle of loss and gain will come around again and I will be showered with blessings to the point of befuddlement. It all evens out. I'll be OK. For today, I will be glad. I have happy events to attend, and I must find my umbrella so that I do not get soaked in the process.

breathing and meditation, take one.

2010-05-17T07:19:00.003-04:00

how to submit to god?

how do I let go? This is kind of what I expect meditation to be about... letting go, clearing my mind, thinking of nothing but the peace and balance that is where I'd like to live every day.

Last night I had an idea of a breathing exercise to help with this.

Breathe in trust, breathe out fear.

I need to breathe in the trust I need and breathe out the fear that does not serve me.

hrrm. got distracted this morning. will try again later. this has promise, though.

meditation, submission, and trust falls

2010-05-14T06:51:00.005-04:00

I am very tired this morning. I would have liked to have slept another couple hours, but the alarm went off and here I am. I also know that deeper stuff tends to come out when I am tired and my defenses are down.

I am trying to get back to that place I was in January when I was doing such marvelous stuff with my spiritual growth. It was hard work, but I remember that it felt really good. I want to get back there, to be again at that place where I was figuring out what I know of god and of worship and of the world.

My desk is in a prime morning worship kind of place. It faces a window, and the window faces south (mostly). My view is of my yard, a nice lawn edge by tall firs and a rail fence at the road. Across the road, majestic pines tower 60 or more feet in the air and they move with the slightest breeze. There is no wind outside this morning and the trees are very very still.

The idea of meditation appeals to me, but rituals make me feel just a little bit silly. I understand that they are important and that they can trigger all kinds of things, but I just feel silly doing them. Perhaps if I understood the purpose of the rituals in different kinds of meditation, I might feel less twitchy about it. I don't know.

I know that physical movement, or physical enforced stillness can be powerful triggers for the human brain. I know that our brains respond chemically to things that the body does physically. Why, then, is it so hard for me to let go and do the things necessary to meditate? This stuff is science. It makes sense. Why do I fight it so?

I know there are ways to slow down brain waves. I think that's part of what meditation does - it slows down the body's rhythms until a person reaches a trance-like state. That's cool. I know how to do that to my body and my mind in other circumstances. Why can't I do that in meditation or prayer?

The thing that just sprang to mind but was nearly quashed was trust. When I am in that trance-like state, it is generally during some pretty intimate and physically demanding sex play. I have to be with someone I trust explicitly in order to feel safe enough to let go and float in the world of subspace.

So is this where I realize that I do not trust god enough to let go and float in that in-between world of consciousness and enchantment? Is that it? That I am afraid to let go and float? I can let go and drop into that marvelous trance easily with the right play partner, and less easily, but still dependably and surely with a partner I know less well. But to let go and submit to god? That seems beyond what I can do.

And I have to say that sounds utterly silly. Sillier than any ritual designed to help the faithful worship in a meaningful way, sillier than any ancient phrases chanted in Latin that people have long forgotten the meaning of, sillier than incense and oil and holy water. I do not have enough faith to submit my will to god the way I can submit my will to a sex partner.

See what happens when I am over-tired and write without the benefit of coffee? Yikes.

I guess the next question is "what must I know of god in order to trust him/it enough to submit my will?"

The first three steps in my 12-step program talk about (1) acknowledging powerlessness; (2) coming to believe in a higher power than can restore balance; and (3) turning will and life over to that higher power.

So now here I am, with a quarter-century of recovery under my belt, and I find myself in a place where I am revisiting step two. Do I really believe that there is a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity? Of course I do. I believe in a god, for lack of some other less cumbersome word, who can restore me to sanity. I have seen it happen in recovery. I have watched people come in all jittery and rough, at the very bottom of what could be called human existence, and I have seen them transformed into clean, healthy, rational, sane, productive members of society because they asked for help from outside themselves.

I know that there is a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity because it has happened. I asked for help, even when I did not believe in a god, or that any god would believe in my, and I was helped. Shit came around. It worked out. And it was not my doing. I believe that there is a higher power. I know this in my bones. It is real. I have seen evidence in my life and with my eyes of what faith can do.

Is it faith, then, that makes all this possible, and maybe not god? Is it the act of faith that makes the powerful and miraculous happen, or the deity itself? Is that where I am? I have always said that a placebo is a powerful thing. If you believe it is a cure, it can cure you. Sometimes.

So, is there some part of my brain, then, that doubts the existence of a god? Is there some part that believes in the ritual but not the object of that worship? Is that what is preventing me from submitting myself to god and letting go enough to get to that marvelous trance state? That I don't trust whatever construct it is that I have of god enough to be vulnerable in that way? Or am I afraid that if I let go that completely that I will be changed in some, huge, permanent way? Do I fear losing myself in this? Do I fear losing the parts of me that I know are unhealthy but which I still enjoy? In terms of step parlance, am I willing to have god remove my defects of character? Am I really, truly, willing? To let go of them all? Hmm. Perhaps there are some that I still cling to.

I would like to have the kind of faith that would allow me to do a meditative kind of trust fall into the metaphysical arms of god, knowing I am safe and that I will be held. I can do it with a lover. I can do it with a less intimate sex partner. But I cannot do it with god? How does that make sense?

This is tough stuff for a tired head so early in the morning.

More to think about today and tomorrow. Stay tuned.

What serves me?

2010-05-13T06:35:00.002-04:00

I need to write.

It is good for me.

It stimulates my brain and my heart and my soul.

I get a clearer picture of my thoughts when I write regularly.

I also have a need to do spiritual exploration and development. And not just because I got that call to ministry back in January. This is work I need to do in order to continue to grow. I think I probably need more meetings, too. Gotta work on that.

I am at my desk in my new place. The desk is new, too. Well, new to me. It was a gift from a friend who is downsizing. My old desk, a length of counter top usually set atop a couple of shelves, is out in the yard. I expect to use it as a buffet table when I have my house-warming party next weekend, then I plan to throw it away. It has served its purpose and it no longer serves me.

I think maybe that's what I need to focus on: what is it in my life that serves me? Not in the "waits on me" serves me kind of way, but what is it in my life that is important to me and helps me do what I want to do? What parts of my life benefit the growth I want to do and what parts are deadwood being dragged along because I cannot let go?

My desk is cluttered already with papers and crap that I can't seem to let go of, but that are not serving me in any useful kind of way. Mostly it is the flotsam and jetsam of this project or that, this idea that got started but not finished, that thought that never came to full fruition, this other thing that just needs to be wrapped up before it can be put away. I come by my clutter naturally. My father and my aunt are both masters at accumulating and maintaining clutter. It is something I would rather deal with than maintain, but somehow the energy to do that seems to escape me when it comes time to address the pie of junk that is my desk.

What is it about this stuff that serves me? I think I shall try to apply that test to my study tonight after work. This is the next part of the house that needs to be put right. This and the bedroom are all that remain as far as large unpacking and organizing tasks are concerned. What is it that serves me? I must consider that. I shall try to report on my progress tomorrow morning.

Back to god

2010-05-12T06:08:00.003-04:00

It is time I get back to god. I did some heavy spiritual stuff back in January, things got a little crazy, and I stopped. I was afraid at what all else might kick loose. Committing to four years of seminary seemed like more than I had planned on when I started that journey. I was not anxious to see what else the cosmos had in store for me.

But lately I am learning again about the limits of my own power. I am learning that I cannot fix things, and that often there is very little I can do to help. I am reminded of the serenity prayer and the breakdown of it that I was taught in my 12-step meetings. Here's the prayer:

God grant met the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

Now the breakdown of that is pretty basic. I had a sponsor once suggest that I hold a mirror up to my nose and look into it. What I can see, she said, was what I could change. Everything on the far side of the mirror? That was stuff beyond my control. Thus, I was given the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I cannot.

Of course I forget sometimes. I reach out and participate in the lives of the people around me, and I begin to think I can do something about their condition. In honesty, I cannot really. I can listen, I can empathize, I can offer my thoughts and opinions, but I cannot change someone else's circumstances. I cannot change that someone got fired. I cannot change that someone was treated badly. I cannot change how they feel about those things. I cannot change much. I can change what goes on internally with me. I can change how I think and feel and respond to the things that go on in my world. But those things? There's not a whole lot I can do to change them.

That said, I am at the very uncomfortable place where I now realize that my only real option is to accept the things I cannot change. If I want any sanity in my life, that is.

Acceptance does not mean approval or endorsement of things that I find abhorrent. It merely means that I accept my own limitations when it comes to what I can change and what I cannot.

I cannot change a friend's depression. I cannot change a friend's discrimination at work. I cannot change the behavior of people I care about, even when what they do makes me want to scream. I cannot make anyone behave in any particular way. I cannot coordinate the world so that people I love don't get hurt. Much as I'd like to, I can't.

So I have to turn the stuff that I can't do over to god and trust that it will be taken care of, even if it is not the way I'd run things.

Now I know this sounds like a jump. From "I can't do x" to "God will take care of x."

It matters not to anyone else that I do this. It is for my sanity alone. There are things that I cannot change/help/fix. Yet they seem to be things that are too important to be left alone to the whims of the fates or the world or whatever. So, in my mind, I turn them over to my higher power for safekeeping. I suppose I could turn them over to Quinn, my small dog, and have the same effect, that being that I am no longer stressed about them, but it seems weird to do that. Some would say that turning things over to god as I understand it is a bit strange, like I am asking my invisible friend to help me out. I suppose it may look like that to many. But this is not about how others feel about this stuff. It is about the fact that my stomach feels like I am drilling holes in it from worrying about the people I love, and knowing that I am powerless to help them. So, I can throw up my hands and say I am powerless and walk away; or I can throw up my hands and say I am powerless, entrust the situation to a being that I have faith in, and step back. Both accomplish the same thing, that my stomach stops trying to dissolve its own lining and I get a little peace.

I know that my faith works for me. I believe in a higher power, a god if you like, that can take care of stuff that I can't. I don't necessarily believe in all of the trappings humans have wrapped around the divine down through the centuries, but I have a quiet faith that there is a higher power and that that higher power can do things that I cannot. Like restore me to sanity. Like alleviate my stress. Like take care of shit.

The people I love know I love them. I tell them regularly. I care about what happens to them. I tell them that, too. I can listen. I can offer ideas. But I cannot remedy things. Not for them. It hurts so much, sometimes. It makes my heart ache and my head ache and my stomach ache and sometimes it feels like my whole body aches in sympathy for what they're going through.

Am I too sensitive? I don't know. I worry that this might be the perfect temperament for burnout in ministry. Or it might be the perfect temperament for effective ministry. I can't tell. I suppose I will learn a great deal about it in school. They must teach you that kind of stuff in ministry school. How not to get eaten alive. How to hold yourself apart from the hurt and pain around you. How to not get your heart broken. I don't know. I've seen plenty of broken hearts lately. And each one hurts me. Each one makes me ache and want to hold the person tight in my arms and rock them and whisper reassuring things into their hair. Some will let me do that. Some will not. So I let it go. I turn it over. I do what I can on my side of the mirror and trust that my higher power will handle what's on the other side.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (people, places and things beyond the limits of my own skin)

Courage to change the things I can (that contained within my own skin)

and wisdom to know the difference (see above.)

Amen. Blessed be.

I'd rather take a beating

2010-05-11T18:02:00.004-04:00

No, this isn't one of those kinds of posts. There's a separate blog for that stuff.

This is about powerlessness.

It seems like I am getting a lesson in what I can do and what I can't, and I really don't like the length or content of the list in the "can't" column.

I hate it when my friends hurt. I hate it. I want to help. If truth be told, I'd like to be able to fix whatever's wrong, but I try now not to be a superhero, so I'd just like to be able to help.

It seems like a dozen or more of my friends are in tough spots right now. Several need jobs, some have kid troubles, some have health issues, a couple are being bullied at work, at least one is being discriminated against because of gender stuff, and more than a few are struggling financially. There is nothing I can do to alleviate any of their suffering. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

I have my own brand of stress in my life, too. I was sick for two weeks, missed a bunch of work and got behind just when I thought I might catch up. Oh, and while I was sick? I had to go to the hospital to see if I might actually die or have the plague or something, and I came home with a bill topping $2,000 from the emergency room where I endured a strep test and a CAT-scan with an IV with funky dye only to be told that I probably had a virus, and to go home, lie down and push fluids. Did I mention that I have no insurance? Yeah. That bill's now in my lap.

But I have been in tough spots before. I know I'll get through. It's watching my friends hurt that gets to me the most.

Honestly, I'd rather take a beating in a biker bar full of strangers than watch my friends hurt the way they're hurting right now. It makes my stomach hurt to see them suffer. It makes my head hurt. I want to help. God, but how I want to help.

And I can't.

There is not much I can do.

I can listen. I can empathize. I can hold them in my heart, if not always my arms.

And I can ache for them.

***

For the record, this is NOT where I want to hear platitudes about taking care of myself first, or letting go or any of that crap. I just want to say aloud that it hurts me when people I love are hurting. I don't need advice, nor do I really want it. I have to feel this, get through it, and turn it over and let it go. I know that. I just needed to say it out loud.

I've been away

2010-04-28T10:34:00.002-04:00

Sorry I have been absent for so long. It's been pretty busy work being me.

Since last I reported in, I have moved to a new home, gone on an intensive three-day workshop retreat thing dealing with sex, love and intimacy, had my church explode, lost my minister, and contracted what feels like the black death.

I can't tell you about the workshop, other than to say it was fabulous and challenging and I am looking forward to completing the next level in November.

The church thing was pretty nasty. The minister ended up resigning, under duress according to some. There are hurt feelings and accusations of underhandedness and betrayal in all directions. It is a nasty, nasty scene. Some people will leave and not come back. Some will return who had left - indeed, there was some gloating at Sunday's service, and it did not go unnoticed by those who were grieving the loss of their minister.

I just moved house and home to the great town of Surry, Maine, population just under 1,500. I moved here to be closer to my church and minister as I begin my four years at seminary. I was planning on being nurtured and mentored by the church and its minister through that journey. To say I am disappointed is an understatement in the extreme. It is being hashed out at church. I don't feel up to hashing it out here, too. Just know that I am mourning and angry and hurt and it will take some time for me to recover.

I also have some sort of pretty nasty virus/cold thing. I am exhausted. I cannot remember being this tired when I had mono in college. This is bad. Everything hurts and everything is tired. My throat was very sore for over a week, and yesterday I awoke with a swollen gland on my left side of my neck. So swollen and tender that I called the health clinic to have it checked out. They had no appointments, so they sent me to the emergency room, where I was swabbed for strep (negative) and then, fearing an abscess near my carotid artery, I was injected with dye and given a CAT scan. That came back negative on the abscess, too. Turns out, the doctor says, I have a virus. Go home and rest and push fluids.

I have no health insurance.

I can hardly wait to get the bill. Holy shit. I am already in touch with the hospital's charity care people to see what can be done to relieve some portion of the coming charges. Holy crap. Yeah. More stress. That's what I need.

So today I slept until after 10 a.m. and got up and have moved slowly ever since. Please accept my apologies for not having much profound to offer in this space today. I'm just not up to it. I have two different women from church coming over with soup later. One is bringing turkey, and the other chicken. I am looking forward to it.

Please bear with me. I'll be better shortly.

Ritual

2010-04-02T21:22:00.006-04:00

Over the Easter weekend, I did something I have not done in years: I went to two Catholic masses -- at the church of my childhood. I wanted to get a sense of what ritual does for the worship experience. And when it comes to ritual, Catholics do it better on Easter weekend than any other group at any other time of the year. At least to my knowledge.

I went to the Good Friday mass and the Easter Vigil (on Saturday evening) at the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Huge brick edifice, flying buttresses and towering stained glass windows, it is a monument to architecture designed to make you feel small and to know that god is BIG. There were probably a couple hundred people there. I figure the sanctuary was about a third filled.

God is dead. Jesus has been betrayed by his friends, turned over the the authorities and crucified. He gave his mother over to the care of one of his disciples, he died and was laid in a tomb and his friends have gone into mourning and hiding.

Catholics have it all over Unitarians when it comes to ritual and visual punch.

The 20-foot tall mural of the crucifixion behind the altar was draped in red fabric. The statues and other images of holy people were not draped as I have seen them in years past, but the visual of that huge red cloth was stark.

Good Friday mass is all about ritual. It is a beautiful thing to see.

It lasts longer than the regular 45-minute mass, but there is such pageantry and solemn ritual that I wanted to see it.

There were lots of readings it seems, including a reading of the passion from Mark. Different people up on the chancel read the different parts. The congregation stood for the duration of the reading. The priest urged us to put away our books and just listen as the passion is played out. It was powerful stuff.

The passion of Mark's gospel is known pretty much to all Christians. I don't know enough yet to say that it is plainer, clearer, simpler, more accessible or anything else, but it seems to be the version with which everyone is familiar.

We stood and listened and then we sat. Other things were going on, but I don't remember the details. After the passion was read, the two priests and two altar servers walked down the side aisle of the church into the back vestibule and emerged a minute later with tall candles lit and the younger of the priests carrying a 10-foot wooden cross. It was made of plain boards, a little thicker than one-bys, notched and fitted together, stained dark brown and varnished well. I could see a handle on the back of the top as the priest carried it to the front of the church.

It looked pretty heavy. I understood why the younger of the priests carried it. I could not imagine how the older priest might have fared if he had been required to perform that duty. He looked pretty frail.

Once the cross was at the front of the church and more hymns were sung, the altar boys held the cross sideways at the edge of the chancel and the congregation formed orderly lines to come up for the veneration. They moved smoothly to the front of the sanctuary and four at a time bent or genuflected and either touched or kissed the cross. Then they rose and circled around to the outside aisles and made their way back to their seats.

The ritual of what they were doing -- the act of kissing the cross that symbolized the sacrifice of their god on their behalf was stark and enormous. My heart swelled and ached at the thought. How great is the love of a person that he would sacrifice himself so that others could be saved. That is the entire premise of Christianity, as I understand things. It is a huge thing. My eyes welled up and I cried silent tears in the third to the back row on the left-hand side.

More hymns were sung, a brief sermon was offered, reminding people that the cross is a good symbol for how we live our lives - a vertical line represents a relationship between god and us, and a horizontal line represents our relationships with others around us - and then mass was over. The altar was stripped of all of the things that normally stay there. The cloth that drapes the altar was removed and folded. The communion chalices and those little gold plates and things that are used for that ritual were removed, the little golden vault where the communion bread is kept between mass was emptied and the door left hanging open. When the priests left the chancel, it was bare. God was dead. It was a time of humble mourning and wonder.

***

Saturday evening's Easter Vigil was packed. Late-arriving families had to split up and find separate seats. I slipped into a pew with an older lady. There was a young goth chick in the pew behind us. Later when a young family with three boisterous boys all under 6 years old settled in beside her, I invited her up to sit with the other lady and me. At first she refused politely, but then accepted with relief. The parents seemed relieved, too, as the boys were able to spread out some. The children sat on the kneelers and used the pew bench as their desk as they colored on papers that mom had brought. Poor guys. It was obvious that they had not been taught how to behave in church, and their parents grew more and more frustrated as they refused to settle down. I cannot imagine the energy it must take to manage that little horde of energy. Bless those parents for trying to bring the kids to church on Easter.

Anyway, the mass on Easter is perhaps the most dramatic theatrical production that there can be in a Catholic Mass, short of the Mass of Christian Burial. The sanctuary starts out in nearly complete darkness. Just a few emergency-type lights were on so people did not trip if they had to move. The priests (there were five at this mass) kindled a flame and lit a single candle, which then lit other candles. The flame was then passed to the congregation (we had been given skinny little tapers when we came into the church) down the center aisle, and the flickering light branched out from there until it filled every corner of the sanctuary. The retired lady got her light from the goth girl, and I got mine from the retired lady. The goth girl turned and lit the candle of the dad in the pew behind us, and he lit the candle his wife held.

One could imagine the word of Jesus' disappearance from the tomb spreading in just such a way on the morning of the third day. Mary Magdalene, along with two other women, had gone to the tomb to check on Jesus' body. They were concerned that he might not have received a proper burial, with the required anointing of oil and herbs. If he had not, they came prepared to do that. Jesus' male disciples were all in shock and hiding. None had come to visit the tomb of their lord. The women came and found the stone rolled back and the body gone. They were greeted by two beings who radiated brilliant light and who told them that Jesus was not there, but had risen and was gone.

Understand what that news must have sounded like to anyone in that age. He rose from the dead and left?! That's craziness! It makes no sense. That simply does not happen. Terrified and confused, they fled the tomb. Later one of the disciples visited and found the tomb open and empty and he, too, fled, fearing that someone had desecrated the body of Jesus.

Now I could go on here about my thoughts regarding the church and women and how it was that women were the only ones concerned enough to show up and make sure Jesus had a decent burial, or that later in the story, Jesus first appeared to women, before he spoke to any of his disciples, and how lame and stupid it is for the church to force women into a subservient role within the church. I could go on about that for a very long time, but this is not the place. My words today are to explore the ritual, what it does and what kind of difference it makes. I am trying to get a feel for what it must have been like to experience the events detailed in the bible stories. Those feelings of wonder and fear are what made the faith work in its early days, and the rituals were built to recreate as much of that wonderment and fear as possible.

We blew out our candles as we were instructed to do after a hymn and a reading, and the mass continued on. Readings and hymns and stand for this and sit for that and kneel for this other thing. It was not the cardio workout that the Good Friday mass was (up and down, kneeling to standing a dozen times in five or six minutes) but it kept the people engaged and involved.

There seemed to be an air of joy among the priests celebrating the mass, but from my vantage point in the left rear of the church, it seemed that most of the people - there had to be six or seven hundred there - seemed bored. I remembered that many people just show up for Easter and Christmas, that this ritual was more of an obligation to be fulfilled, a kind of minimum payment on the credit card account of salvation. They looked bored and tired and eager to be gone into the night.

As part of the mass, several adults were welcomed into the church. Two were baptised and several made their confirmation vows and then all received communion for the first time as members of the Holy Catholic Church. The two who were baptised (water on their heads only, not full body immersion) received white robes to go over their clothes and were instructed to keep themselves clean and pure until they were to present themselves before god when they died. I don't remember hearing that part of the ritual before, but I found it striking. My baptismal robe currently adorns a baby doll perched on the bed in the guest room at my aunt's house. If Jesus expects me to wear that thing in the afterlife, it's gong to need some alterations. I've grown a bit since I last wore it at 8 months old.

But I digress.

My aunt was up front with the people who had just joined the church. She's in charge of making sure they do all the required stuff - from the classes to knowing all the things they need to know, to helping them stand where they are supposed to for a ritual that is enormously important to them and makes them very nervous. Her gentle guidance gets many a nervous initiate through the ceremony with a minimum of embarrassing gaffes.

Eventually, it was over. The mass and all its rituals and ceremonies took a full two hours, and people poured out into the warm night air, marveling at how spring seems to have indeed come early. They headed home to put children to bed and to prepare baskets with plastic grass and chocolate eggs.

I lingered in the sanctuary for a while. I walked up the center aisle to get a feel for it. It is a big space in there, like I said, designed to make people feel small. The mural at the back of the altar was still draped in red cloth (it had been since Palm Sunday, I learned) but there was a banner on it with a picture of a lamb and a sunrise, indicating that the Lamb of God had risen. I greeted some people I knew and meandered over to the parish hall where refreshments were being served at a reception for the new members.

***

On Easter Sunday, I worshipped with the Unitarian Universalists at the church three blocks away from the Catholic one. I'll describe that experience in my next post, and offer some thoughts on ritual and song in church. But right now I need to get to work.

Stay tuned.

thoughts on DADT

2010-04-02T08:19:00.004-04:00

I saw in passing somewhere that a bigshot brass officer guy in the Marine Corps said he would request separate sleeping quarters for queer marines. He said he would not ask a Marine to sleep in a room with a gay soldier.

Let's be honest here. The fear is that a gay soldier will sexually assault a straight soldier. That is the real fear.

If I were a gay soldier, the very last person I would think to sneak up on in the night and fuck would be a trained Marine.

Just sayin'.

fear and loathing in Americka

2010-03-31T06:41:00.002-04:00

It will come as no surprise to many of you that there seems to be a real push-back kind of thing going on with President Obama.

I'd like to delve deeply into the reasons for this push back stuff, and write eloquently about how it affects out country. We are divided. We are polarized. The conservatives have been taken over by the wide-eyed crazy wing of their party, and compromise is out of the question.

On the other hand, I felt a lot like that after 8 years of the shrub. But then that's because he was an idiot and his policies were hateful, stupid, short-sighted and favored the greedy bullies that were his friends.

This guy is smart. He can speak and write in complete sentences. His spelling is probably very good. He's looking at the long-term and trying to find solutions that are not fad diets.

Among the knuckle-draggers, he is very unpopular.

Check out THIS SITE for pictures of these teabaggers and their protest signs. Honestly, it's like a train wreck of language, grammar and spelling.

I think there are a lot of things going on in this phenomenon. For one thing, America is changing.

In the coming decades, white people will become the minority. And that scares the shit out of some of them.

I would argue that anyone who has not behaved as a bully has no reason to fear retribution. If you've been an asshole to those with less power than you and then they get the power you once held, well, I don't think there are a lot of people who would blame the new top dog for kicking you around a little bit. Not for ever, but just for a bit. So you know what it's like to be at the receiving end of your version of the American dream.

This is the same kind of fear I see from some straight men when they are faced with being in close quarters with gay men. When you treat all potential sexual partners as prey to be overcome, and then find yourself in a position of possibly being someone else's prey, well then, that's just scary.

Insecure people often engage in behavior identical to that of their oppressors. It is sad. But it is true.

So now the uneducated, lazy swath of white Americka is faced with the prospect that they might not be the schoolyard bullies any more and it scares the piss right out of them.

I am concerned that I might get painted with that same brush because of my skin color, which is decidedly pink and pale. I tend to have more faith in our friends of color than some white folks.

We have a black president and that freaks a lot of people out. Not only is he black, but he is very, very smart. Very smart. Harvard Law smart. And again, when you operate from a system that understands only power and the balance of it, having an adversary who is smarter than you is a scary thing. The thought of working with that very smart person instead of as an adversary does not come into consideration when your world is small and binary. I remember an old bumper sticker from the Women's Liberation movement years ago: "Men of quality are not threatened by Women's Equality."

And that's the deal. That's the whole business in a nutshell. People are afraid of losing what they've got. They don't understand that knowledge is a thing that grows as it is shared, that education is not to be feared, and that the world won't end of you re-evaluate what you believe and make changes to it. Growth is OK, folks. Or you can stagnate and become a dinosaur. Your choice.

There is so much more to write about this subject. I have not the time nor the brainpower this morning. Let's revisit it later, though.

weekend in the big city

2010-03-29T06:29:00.003-04:00

I went to Portland Saturday for a big fancy awards banquet put on by Equality Maine. It was indeed a big, fancy event. There were some 660 people there, including the honorees. My State Senator, Dennis Damon got the super-duper political award because he was the guy who sponsored the marriage equality bill, and a guy named Jimmy who does AIDS outreach got an award, and the Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality got an award. One of the people who made a speech accepting that award is a faculty member at the seminary where I hope to begin classes. He was very inspiring, even to the non-religious in the room. I think some of my friends got a clearer understanding of why I want to go into ministry now after hearing Marvin Ellison speak.

I got to accept an award on behalf of the volunteers of Hancock County. My friend Kay is still recovering from back surgery and could not make the trip, so I got the honor. I marched up on the stage with about 10 other similar honorees, the executive director said some nice things about each of us and what we'd done, we got a framed award and a hug from Dee and filed off the stage on the other side. The lights were blinding, but it was nice to be recognized for the hard work we did.

It was also nice to be among the politicians and political hacks that make the process of democracy work. There were Congresspeople (both of Maine's reps were there. I refrained from insulting Mike, and thanked Chellie for all her work), state senators and representatives, mayors, city councilors, lobbyists, candidates, and the people who work for and against them all. I got to see some old friends, was introduced to some key people who I will want/need to know in my future in ministry, and generally had a good time. When it was over, the EQME leadership retired to the hotel bar, and I was invited to join them. That was neat. Later I headed down the street to the local gay bar with some friends and we hung around there feeling very, very old until last call, at which point a friend gave me a ride back to my friend's house where I lay myself down on the couch and collapsed.

I remember a time when I could have done that stuff every night of the week. Or every weekend. I woke up feeling like I'd been dragged behind some large piece of equipment along a bumpy road. I was exhausted all day. I drove myself home and crawled into bed. This morning I am not sure if I am recovered. I am up, I am drinking coffee, and I plan to get dressed and go to work, but oof. I have officially reached the status of "old fart" I think. Damn.

Personal Statement

2010-03-26T23:36:00.004-04:00

I mailed out the last part of my application to seminary this week. On Wednesday, I think. I was unaware of the process of applying to graduate school before this started. I have friends who have had to take GREs and LSEs and some other nasty-sounding exams, but apparently divinity school does not require such things. I am glad.

But the application did require a certain amount of hoop-jumping. I had to request a transcript from the state U where I got my undergraduate degree (BA in General Studies with heavy concentrations in Psychology, Writing and Social Studies). I had to ask four people to write letters of recommendation for me to the school, and they had to be four people with specific roles in my life: a teacher or mentor, a minister, an employer or close work associate, and a friend. Oh, and I had to sign a cover letter waiving my right to see what they wrote. That's to encourage them to be as honest and forthright as they want without fear of reprisal or that maybe I'd stalk them or something creepy like that. I had to fill out the standard application kind of form. Address, personal info, employer, etc. And then I had to include a personal statement.

A which?

A "personal statement."

They wanted three to five typed, double-spaced pages about why I want to go to divinity school and/or become a minister.

"Beats the hell out of me" was neither appropriate nor did it last for three pages.

But really. A personal statement? Is this like that lame essay I had to write when I applied to college back during my senior year of high school and I had to write about how I wanted to be a teacher and to change the world? Dear god. It really kind of is like that statement.

A friend suggested that maybe the people at the school want to know how I came to be where I am - applying to seminary. Another suggested that a personal statement would help them to place me with the best advisor to suit my personality and program desires. Both made sense.

So I sat down and wrote a statement. It was pretty good. I considered who would be reading it and what kind of people they might be and what would appeal to them. I want to get in, so I was catering to my audience. I showed it to a handful of friend and got some supportive feedback. Then I showed it to my minister, who read it and proclaimed it lame and limp. Or something like that. "Where are YOU in this thing?" she asked. Oh. Well. Um. Yeah.

I had written what I thought my audience wanted to hear, not what was really going on inside me. I tucked the first version aside, opened up a new document and began typing. I got it to the approximate right number of words, then rearranged some of the paragraphs, and printed it out. This I can be proud of. This speaks in my voice. This is not namby-pamby bullshit. This is me. If they reject me because of this statement, then I would not have fared well at the school. Better to learn that now than after two semesters of hell.

So here is what I sent. I'll let you know what happens with regards to interviews and such. Stay tuned.

Personal Statement

Dawn F

22 March 2010

I want to live life like my dog – at the very end of her leash and straining to reach more. I want to get everything I can out of life, to suck out the marrow, to get at the pith like Thoreau, to reduce it all to its basest elements and dwell there at its roots.

I write and I speak and I preach and I organize and I rouse rabble and motivate people and inspire them to action. On my best days, I can march them in the direction of justice, and together we can accomplish great things. On my worst days they storm the castle with torches and pitchforks.

I am a political activist and organizer. I am driven (some would say pushy) and I like to get things done. I work for justice in the many forms that takes and I expect that whatever ministry presents itself to me will incorporate those things into the work I am to do.

I feel things with intensity that others somehow do not. I crave to understand how things operate and why and I strive to develop methods to make them work better. I was the kid who took apart toys and clocks and machines to see how they worked. I was the one who understood the psychology behind the team mentality in high school sports. And rejected that mentality as flawed.

I am the sixth of my mother’s eight surviving children, born illegitimate in a time and place when that status mattered a great deal to a lot of people. That label framed what I learned and how I felt about myself and the world as I developed. I grew up Catholic and Irish in a small Massachusetts town where everyone knew everyone’s secrets and shame was considered a valid behavior modifier employed by teachers and parents alike. I developed a keen sense of outrage at injustice and hypocrisy early on and as a young adult became involved in activist work that solidified my feelings into deeply held personal philosophies. I have little patience for models and systems that perpetuate oppression – of any kind -- particularly out of duty or habit or tradition. If a philosophy or policy cannot be defended in a rational and humane argument, then it has no moral weight and ought to be abandoned for more useful pursuits.

I approach things head-on. I throw myself whole-heartedly into the things I attempt. I don’t know how to do anything 90 percent. Some people are said to wear their hearts on their sleeves. I wear my heart on my whole outside. I feel every sting and ding and scratch and scuff, but I believe that Nietzsche was correct when he said “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Each hurt adds a layer of strength externally and a layer of empathy internally. I know what it means to be vulnerable, to get hurt, to lose. I also know what it means to survive in spite of hurt, and to sometimes win. I see seminary as a crucible of sorts, a thing that will forge me into a minister and teach me what I need to know, or it will flush me out with the slag.

I do not understand how some cannot care about injustices in the world. I cannot wrap my head around the thought that a person can say “oh well, not my problem” when faced with poverty, hunger, ignorance, suffering, prejudice, hate, and violence. We are each a part of this huge global community. What affects one affects us all. When one is hungry, we all suffer. When one is bound, we are all imprisoned. Is it not the job of ministry to comfort the afflicted? And occasionally to afflict the comfortable?

My heart is in the fringe elements of society. I suspect my ministry will include populations that polite society rejects: queerfolk, glbti folk, poly, trans, kinky, the folks who express their gender and sexuality in ways that make others uncomfortable. I don’t know what shape my ministry will take, but I know it will involve these souls.

I know that my interest in areas of sexuality and ministry might require me to take some courses at another campus and transfer my credits in to my program, and I accept that. I plan to attend General Assembly this year in part to make the necessary connections so that I can do that kind of work and study. I also know that Bangor Theological Seminary will offer me a solid foundation upon which to build a ministry, no matter what shape that ministry might take.

I hold myself and the world to extremely high standards. Both often disappoint. But I would rather aim for perfection and achieve above-average work than aim for above average and achieve mediocrity.

I could be your ideal student or your worst nightmare. Instinct tells me that I will be neither, but somewhere in the middle. Wherever I land, I will give all that I have to this endeavor.

Submitted this 22nd day of March 2010
By Dawn F.

Hey Mike! Grow a pair, will ya?

2010-03-20T21:49:00.005-04:00

I wrote to my congressman Mike Michaud (D) today. About health care. Here's what I said. Wonder if it will do any good.

VOTE TO PASS HEALTH CARE.

NOW.

DO IT NOW.

QUIT WAFFLING. VOTE YES!

I have written to you once before, on the issue of health care. Health care is the single most important issue of our time. VOTE TO REFORM HEALTH CARE!!!

I am a good Democrat. In my lifetime, I have been a member of the United Auto Workers, the Sheet Metal Workers International Association and the Teamsters. I worked on the Obama campaign and helped to elect Democrats to the legislature. So help me, if you don't vote to pass this thing, and the devil himself runs against you in November, I will work to get him elected. I don't have a ton of money to donate to an election campaign, but I have a pen and a talent with letter-writing and I can make a lot of noise in one direction or another. Which direction I aim my words is entirely up to you and how you vote on heath care reform.

Get it done. VOTE TO PASS!

I have heard enough from politicians who are in the pockets of lobbyists. I am your constituent. I am 44 years old. I have family histories of heart disease, diabetes and cancer and I HAVE NO HEALTH INSURANCE.

Pass the damned thing already, will you?

Dawn Fxxxxxx
Otter Creek, ME

I'll let you know if I hear anything back.

New day

2010-03-18T07:06:00.003-04:00

It is a new day. Yesterday was rough. I got through it, but felt beat up by the end. I had good people around me to help ease things along. I am grateful for them.

*** BREAK HERE ***

OK, I wrote a short piece about it being a new day, but I was not honest about just how bad yesterday was. It was OK for the morning. My feelings are always a little raw on St. Patrick's Day, but that's to be expected, I have learned. Lunch at the church was good. Corned beef, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, good Irish bread, it was great stuff. But then the little band got ready to play and I made my escape.

I was sitting at the table closest to the guys with the instruments, so nobody questioned when I said it would be too loud for me. It would have. What I knew somewhere in the back of my head but not anywhere up in the conscious part, was that the music was going to trigger me. I had no idea how or why, but I knew I had to get out of there. I took refuge in the sanctuary where I could sit and cry in peace.

The tears really surprised me. I tried to fight them at first -- I did not understand them, I did not authorize them. They confused and scared me and I didn't want to deal with them. Eventually I was able to understand that I was feeling hurt, that it was old hurt, hurt that I have never fully addressed or felt, and I made the decision to let it be. Go ahead and feel the hurt, I said to myself. It will not kill me. Feelings that are stifled smolder and do unpleasant things over time. So I felt it. I let the hurt wash over me, not trying to understand, not trying to figure it out, just feeling it. It sucked, but only because it hurt, not because I was giving myself a hard time for feeling hurt. Yes, it hurt. But that's a legitimate feeling and I allowed it, and I won't have to feel that exact pain again. Feel it and let it go. That's what I did.

Did I get it all out? Nah. But I released some of that old hurt, that old shame, that old stuff that isn't really mine, but got stuck to me anyway. I released a little bit of the pressure and did a little healing. More healing will come in time. That's OK.

So, when I say I had a rough day, that's what I mean. Not just that I was tired or cranky.

*** Now back to your regular programming ***

Today is a new day. I am awake and still a little tired, but breakfast is cooking and dinner is in the crock pot for when I get home. I am grateful for a lot these days. I am grateful that the worst day I've had recently was about old stuff, not new hurts or issues.

I am grateful that I can cook -- and fairly well -- and that I can feed myself pretty well, even when times are tight. I am grateful that I have this little house of mine and that I can sit and watch the sun come up as I write and eat my breakfast. I think my next place will allow me to do that too, and I am glad for that.

I could blather on for a while to put more words down, but I don't have them this morning. I mean, I could spin some fluff out of nothing, but it would be fluff - that stuff you stuck into papers in high school that needed to be at least five pages long and you only had four. Yeah. So I'm going to stop now and go to work.

Stay tuned.

St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T07:10:00.003-04:00

Today is the day that is marked worldwide with green beer and unnaturally-colored other things in celebration of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. It was not until I was in high school that I realized that Ireland does, indeed, have snakes. That the "snakes" St. Pat drove out of Ireland were the pagans. Oh. And in the times of the middle ages, "drove out" means evicted from traditional homelands or killed. Suddenly this is not such a happy holiday. But there's green beer, right?

St. Patrick taught the pagans about the holy trinity of father, son and holy spirit by using the shamrock's three leaves. I guess it was just dumb luck that the Celts already had the Celtic Cross as part of their symbolism. The Catholic Church simply adapted what was already there and used it to represent their god instead of the four directions of the earth and sky as the pagans had. Talk about appropriation of cultural stuff. You'll hear my lecture on druids and yule trees and the appropriation of those traditions in December.

So this is also the day that I was brought home to live with my family from my birth family. I was 8 months old. It was 1966. My birth mother was living with her six children (two other fathers) and she left to go find a better opportunity and then planned to come back and move the whole crew. I think it was Rhode Island where she went. Anyway, she did not leave us in adequate care, and the child welfare people came in and made ready to scoop the kids all off to foster care. Somebody knew somebody who knew my father's family, a call was made and he came and snatched me away home before the others were seized and split up.

I arrived wearing nothing but the diaper on my bottom and whatever clothes I had on me. My father turned me over to his sister and his parents and went out. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all. There was serious drinking to be done.

So my aunt watched me while Nana and Grandpa went shopping. They got a crib and a high chair, a baby spoon and cup and some bottles and 10 dozen diapers and some clothes and some jars of baby food, and the new washer and dryer arrived from Sears in the morning.

My aunt was in her first year of teaching, maybe. That or her student teaching year. She called her friends to come over and see the surprise she had. "We get to keep her" she told them.

Um, babies don't usually work that way, they cautioned. Well, this one's going to.

And through some minor subterfuge, class warfare and bullying, they did get to keep me. My father's family knew lawyers and were better educated than my mother's family, and were better educated. She did not know what her rights were with regards to me, and when my grandmother stood blocking the entrance to the door and said she needed a court order to see her daughter, my mother believed her and went away. Whatever legal advice she was able to get encouraged her not to fight my (marginally) more affluent, better educated, better connected father's family. My mother did not see me again until I was 29 and I went looking for her.

So St. Pat's is a time of weird emotions for me. There is the long-seated, cultural history of oppression of my Irish forbears by just about everybody who ever marched across that patch of green earth, and there is the clusterfuck that is my own personal history. At 8 months old, I was a pawn, or maybe a treasure, but either way, I was a thing, a possession, a not entirely pleasant (although not entirely unpleasant) bundle of needs. I was the first grandchild, which helped enormously in my new home, but I was the bastard child of the no-good eldest son and a low-class woman of loose morals. She was married, you see, but her husband ran off. Then she had two other children with another man, then he went to jail. Then my father came along and she had me.

In a small town, everyone knew my story, and I am sure it was a source of enormous shame for my grandmother. But I was the first grandchild, so I think I got a pass. Dad, however, did not.

But that is another story.

So today I feel ghosts. Ghosts of Ireland, ghosts of shame, ghosts of families lost, connections severed in infancy that were never able to fully mend in adulthood. I suppose if I think about it enough, it explains a lot of my current mental and emotional stuff as well as the stuff I have worked through in the past couple of decades. I've done a bunch of work, but some hurts leave scars that will only fade, but never disappear. Today is one of those days when those scars ache and burn. I am reminded of what was, what happened, and what a long tough road it has been.

Do not get me wrong. I know others who had longer and tougher roads than mine. I am not interested in pity, from myself or from anyone else. It's sort of like Veteran's day. Every soldier is a veteran. None of their experiences was good, but nobody compares who had it worse. They all just acknowledge each other. This is what today feels like for me. It is the day when I am most aware of the battles I went through.

But. I have much to be grateful for this morning.

The sun is shining, I am awake and almost ready to go to work. I have a truck that will take me there, and a body that will do what needs doing today. There is a corned beef dinner at my church at noontime, and I will go there and be among people who are happy and who care about me, and that is a wonderful feeling. I have been in much worse situations over the years. Where I am here and now is really quite wonderful.

Gratitude, entry two

2010-03-16T06:35:00.002-04:00

I am grateful today.

I am grateful that it is not raining, that it is not snowing and that I have work that pays me well and keeps me challenged all day.

I am grateful that I have kind and healthy people around me each day - smart and decent people to work with who compliment what I know by filling in the bits that I don't know, and who are enthusiastic about the job.

I am grateful that I have a place to live and that I have found another place to live that is going to be more convenient for me in the coming months and years.

I am grateful that I have received a call to ministry, even though it scares the hell out of me. Suddenly a lot of my life makes sense now. All those classes in unrelated things, a lifetime spent acquiring diverse experiences and skills. Now it makes sense.

I am grateful for corned beef hash and poached eggs for breakfast. I am grateful that I have ample food and the skills to prepare it. I am grateful that I have skills and energy to nurture those around me when they need it.

I am grateful for my sobriety and what it means for me. There is nothing in my life that I would have now if I were drinking. I am grateful for the tools I have to do life that I have learned through my 12-step recovery program. How to be a responsible adult. How to own what is mine and let go of what is not. How to have empathy without interfering or trying to rescue.

I am grateful for the robin in my yard this morning and the crocuses I saw at church on Sunday. Spring is coming.

I am grateful for my family, the cobbled-together crew of friends and relations that let me know that I am loved and important. Some members are bigger fans than others, but that's OK.

I am grateful that I have a vehicle that does most of what I need it to do (I'd really like it to get better gas mileage, but I understand that is not likely to happen.)

I am grateful for my pets who are glad to see me when I get home. Their love in unconditional in a way I can only dream of achieving.

I am grateful for this aging laptop computer. It allows me to connect with the world and to lots of people and it allows me to learn so many things.

I am grateful for my Internet friends. There are so many people whom I have met through this space and not in person, but whose lives they share with me as I share with them. We fuss about each other's jobs and families and children and pets and cars and we watch the news and weather in other parts of the country with an eye for the places where our blog buddies live.

I am grateful for the people who visit this blog. I am curious as to how and why they found me and what brings them back. I am curious to know who visits regularly from Helsinki, and who checks in from Australia. How did you find me? What keeps you coming back? If you don't want to leave a comment where others can see it, drop me a note at bbginanp AT roadrunner DOT com. I'd love to hear it.

I am grateful for so much in my life today. It's really not a bad life. It's more exciting than I would like some days, but all things considered, it really ain't that bad.

Thanks for listening this morning. Care to share what you're grateful for?

Gratitude, day one

2010-03-12T05:25:00.003-05:00

I need to start thinking about gratitude. Yesterday's post had a lot of anger in it, and I think that is what happens when I get stuck with writing for a while. Anger has to get out of the way before I can get to the tender bits inside. Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, Newton said. Anger and gratitude cannot coexist.

I started off 2010 with some heavy stuff. I ended a relationship, got a new sponsor, and began some heavy-duty 11th step work within a week. Then, in two weeks, I got a call to ministry that was clearer than anything I have ever experienced. That freaked me out a bit. So I stopped with the spiritual development stuff. If a call to ministry is what I get after two weeks, I don't know if I want what might happen after three or four weeks of that stuff. Know what I mean?

So I have not been doing the serious exploratory work I was doing before, and I feel kinda wonky now. Like I'm not adjusted quite right. Like I need a trip to my spiritual chiropractor. So last night, my sponsor suggested I start with gratitude. Gratitude is always a good place to start when I need to get in touch with spiritual things. Gratitude forces me to set aside the petty crap that can fill a day with aggravation and look at the real important things that make my day worth getting through that petty crap.

I am grateful for a lot of things today. I am grateful for my sobriety and the program that keeps me healthy and mostly sane in that regard. I am grateful for the people around me who love me and care for me and nurture me, even when I don't realize that's what I need or that's what they're doing. I am grateful that I can work, that I have talents and gifts that I can use to be productive and support myself. I am grateful that I have a couple jobs right now that will do that for me. And I am grateful that I have a great place to live and a great place that I am moving to, and that I have a bouncy little dog and a large not so bouncy cat. And now I have to run out the door to work. Blessed be. Stay tuned for further exploration around gratitude.

slumming? and a pending move

2010-03-11T06:13:00.003-05:00

It's that time of the year again: amateur hour. When stupid people put plastic green Derby hats on their heads and drink Guinness or green beer until they stagger around and puke in the street.

Fools.

Real Irish drinkers learn to no throw up and waste the good alcohol. And we have no need for those stupid hats.

I just saw a newspaper article outlining the various options available for people who want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day next Wednesday. Corned Beef and cabbage were high on the list, as were Guinness, green beer and the rest. Also listed were a 5K run and leg wrestling with local roller derby stars.

That's Irish?

Roller Derby?

Leg wrestling?

Huh. Must be a different kind of Irish than where my family came from

This is the time of year when I get frustrated by the appropriation of my culture by idiots who want to use it as an excuse to get drunk and act silly. People put an O' in front of their names and stagger around affecting bad imitations of an Irish brogue. I know from brogues, kids. When I was a wee lass, I was cared for by Gram Bashaw, who came over on the boat from the old country. I probably had a brogue of my own when I went into nursery school. I don't know that I ever knew Gram's real name, but we all called her Gram. She was a formidable woman, accustomed to hard work and raising children and she accepted very little nonsense in her world. Children play and frolic, yes, but no nonsense in the form of whining or complaining. People did not leave the Emerald Isle for America because times there were good there. She didn't see anything here worth complaining about, so just hush, dear. It could be a lot worse.

I get frustrated with the misappropriation of my culture by stupid people who think they can drink like the pros in much the same way I get frustrated when I have to explain yet again that there is a real difference between rural culture and urban culture. I get frustrated when tourists come to my town and call it quaint and say all it needs is a Starbucks. Gah. Our town is not quaint. Our town is our home, not a natural habitat exhibit at the zoo. The people who live here are not creatures to be studied with fascination, we are humans who like where we live thank you, and have no desire to be plugged in in a hundred different ways.

There is a t-shirt I have seen with a pen and ink cartoon drawing of a long, gangly moose relaxing in a hammock. The caption reads: "Maine. Life in the slow lane." And really? That's a lot like what we've got. At least it is here. Lots of people have cell phones, but like me, they resent them at least some of the time. I don't like having an electronic leash that anyone with my number can yank any time they like. I have a computer, and I use it to write here and to correspond with friends and to learn about the world. It is both educator and entertainer in my world. I can't remember the last time I turned the TV on. Yes I do. It was for the overtime period of the Olympic gold medal hockey game. Before that, I think it was back in January. When I move next month, I might think about re-negotiating my cable package. But I digress. This is about culture and respect and slumming.

I remember I had a writing professor in college who had published some short stories or essays about this and that. He wrote about how he grew up in a pretty affluent suburb, how his parents expected him to go to college, and how he managed to convince his guidance counselor at school to let him take four years of wood shop. He loved to work with his hands. He loved the guys in that class, the voc-tech guys, the ones who drank and partied on weekends, but at very different parties than the ones the football stars went to.

He wrote about working in construction all through college, and then working in construction after college, even getting to the point where he had a staff of full-timers that he paid on the books and everything and then he got scared that he might have to do it all his life so he scampered back to graduate school and eventually became a college instructor.

It was a great story.

But it irritated me.

I live among guys who took four years of wood shop in high school, but not because it was fun. They took shop because they were being trained by the system to have a useful trade to use in society. They had been judged not adequate for college prep track, but smart enough for skilled labor, and that's what they were being trained to do. Other kids were not smart enough for that and were simply funneled into the "general" track, hustled through, given a diploma and sent to work at the local paper mill or shoe factory.

These were kids. Kids whose lives had been decided and planned out for them early on. They didn't have any choices. The couldn't take wood shop because it was fun, they took it because it would make them a living for the next 50 years and that was important. Fun was tinkering with the engine of your car. Fun might be sketching on a doodle pad, or going fishing, but it wasn't wood shop. They knew they'd never get to college, and they knew that they'd almost always end up working for someone who did.

See, rural life combined with the poverty that often accompanies it puts limits on us. It forces people to make hard decisions early on. Like which kid is going to go to college and which kid is going to fix cars for a living. This is hard reality for us. It is not quaint. I met a guy yesterday who probably never finished high school. He runs a junk yard and a low-budget car dealership. He buys junkers at auction and fixes them up and resells them for cheap. He's got no teeth, but he knows everybody on this island, and their friends and relations and neighbors and histories. He asked where I lived, then where in that village I lived. I had to explain who my landlords were and he exactly knew the house. And the guy who used to own it, now long since departed. Guy hasn't got a tooth in his head, but he does have an oral history of the community stored in there. Somehow, city folks don't seem to know their neighbors that well. I only gave him my first name, but mentioned a mutual friend/acquaintance who had referred me. If and when he has something I might want to look at, he'll give her husband a yell at the town garage and she'll drop me a note on facebook to go take a look at the junkyard. That's how things work here. He doesn't need my last name. He knows how to get in touch with me.

I grew up in rural Maine. But my DNA was issued in the white-collar(ish) world of northeastern Massachusetts. I can function well enough down there for a while, but not for long. I need to be in the country to be comfortable. I need to be around people who will stop to help when your car is broken down beside the road. I need to be where people know how to raise a vegetable garden and how to keep deer out of the beans and woodchucks out of the rest. Without making a trip to the hardware store to do it. I tread the line between the working poor and middle class. I worry that the working poor might think I am "slumming" like those tourists I so resent. I don't care much what the middle class folks think. Just so long as they don't ask me to give them a tour of my world. Like I said, we're not an exhibit at a zoo. We've got as much dignity as we can muster and we'll keep it, thank you.

This is all going to play a role in my ministry, I think. I have no idea how, but it will factor into the equation. I may end up doing rural outreach. I may end up doing something with glbt people. I may end up doing something with other forms of minorities, or I may end up in a suburban congregation doing ministry there. I can't tell. That unknowing is a little unsettling still. I expect I will learn to flow with it, but for now it still makes me a little seasick when the boat rocks and pitches so.

It is morning. The cat has abandoned his perch on the windowsill since I moved my writing space up against it and has now taken over the dog's bed, which has the benefit of being soft, and in a window in the sun. The dog, sensibly, is still in bed beneath the covers. The sun it up long before me these days and spring approaches. This weekend we put the clocks ahead an hour, so maybe I'll see some more sunrises for a little while before summer arrives.

I have found a new place to live, off island. I will move house and household and cat and dog by May 1 to a tiny little trailer in Surry, Maine. Go look that up on the map if you will. It's smaller than Mount Desert, with a lot less tax base, and it's not on an island. But it IS much closer to the school I hope to attend this fall, and closer to my church and to the job where I am working now.

Please be patient with me as I muddle through this time of additional transition. I have no idea what my writing will do in the new place, but I know I will have a small room just for my study. It has a south-facing window so I can watch the sunrise and the sunset and room for bookshelves and all the things I need in an office. The kitchen and living rooms each have windows suitable for a cat or a dog. I'll let them work out who gets which. The kitchen has counter space that goes on for M-I-L-E-S and a nice new stove and fridge. The colors are rough right now, but the landlord is a friend and he's letting me paint them all whatever colors I'd like. This weekend I plan to go in and prime it all, and then paint the rooms over the course of the next couple weeks. It's close enough to where my job site is that I can bring a load of boxes or what have you to work with me each day and just drop them off. That's going to be nice. I won't have to rent a truck or organize a huge work party. I mean, I can still organize a work party, but it will be less traumatic this way. Anyway. I'll take some pictures and share them as progress is made. Thanks for tagging along on this adventure.

sermon: gifts

2010-03-08T07:30:00.003-05:00

What is a gift?

The first thing many of us thing of when we hear the word is a package, a three-dimensional object, generally decorated in festive wrapping denoting some kind of special occasion.

Our second thought is often of the more nebulous “gift” – a seemingly effortless, natural ability to play the piano, to paint, to nurture those in need. People with these talents are often referred to as being “gifted” or “having a gift.” Wayne has a gift of languages, or instance.

We think about gifts and giving and all that generally in December. March is not known by the folks at Hallmark Cards as a big giving month. Not many people buy St. Patrick’s Day cards. There is no major holiday in March that requires us to purchase presents for our loved ones or our co-workers. It’s just March. That long, desolate place between Valentine’s Day and Easter in the gift-giving calendar.

But I want to talk about the gifts we encounter every day.

What makes a thing a gift? Must it be something unexpected? That seems more the definition of “surprise” than gift. I think a gift is a thing that have, or perhaps receive, and we are glad for it. That can mean a gift of a new sweater or an ability to do a particular thing. The term “gift” indicates that he thing carries with it some positive emotion, that we are pleased to have this gift. If we are displeased, then it is a curse and not a gift. The status of “gift” then, is within us.

I am reminded of a story told by my Italian-American godfather. He was a construction worker, a proud member of Local 3, the Laborer’s Union in Boston. And he had been hurt. He lived with chronic and debilitating back pain, and he had to go to court to secure the benefits that were his. The opposing lawyer was casting aspersions about the legitimacy of Carlos’ injury, when my godfather told him “I am gonna give you a gift. I am going to put a hurt on you so that you can know what it is to feel what I feel. I am going to give you that gift of empathy.”

Now, in the true spirit of that exchange, my godfather was not promising that lawyer a gift. He was threatening to beat and cripple him so that he could know what it was to live with chronic and debilitating pain. I am sure the lawyer did not think Carl was offering a gift. The judge did not think that Carl was offering a gift, either, but Carl had couched his language so carefully that he could not be charged with threatening assault on an officer of the court because, technically, what he had promised to do was “give a gift.” He was duly warned by the magistrate not to actually “give that gift” to the opposition’s attorney.

I don’t think that really counts in the world of gift-giving. Nasty or unpleasant things are not generally considered gifts. By the same token, we must be careful about giving gifts and make sure that the person we wish to give to actually wants what we have to offer.
I am told that I give good hugs. Many of us are proud of our hugging skills and would like to share our gift with others. But we cannot simply approach someone whom we think needs a hug and embrace them. That is the kind of thing that requires the consent of the recipient, the hug-ee, if you will. Otherwise, it is being done to meet our own needs and not the needs of the person we purport to give the hug to. Then it is assault, or touch without consent, and not a gift at all.

Not everybody wants the gifts that we have to offer. Sometimes that can be difficult to hear. We are so happy about the gifts we have and want to share them with people we care about, but not everyone is always pleased with our gifts. My family recipe for creamed salt cod comes to mind. For me, it is wonderful food. For some, it is delicious. For others, not so much.

Let me tell you about a job I have been doing recently and some of the gifts that it has involved. Many of you remember David and Bill who first visited us here a couple weeks ago. Nice guys. They’ve bought a house in Ellsworth and have hired me to do some renovations. Well, the house was not lived in for a long time, at least by people, that is. A local population of raccoons did move in and seem to have lived pretty comfortably there for several years. It is quite possible that the raccoons thought the house to be a gift from whatever rodent gods there are – a sheltered, large place to live with relatively easy access and no humans to pester them, good neighborhood, hospital and restaurants nearby, plenty of foraging opportunities -- – truly, what more could a raccoon desire? See? Gifts are what we make of them.

So anyway, when Bill and David bought the house, the raccoons had to find other places to live, and they did. I came in with my tools and saws and a heater and lots of noise and proceeded to tear apart some portions of the house. Codes require certain kinds of construction in apartments, so that’s what I am doing.

When I tore down the ceiling though, in the upstairs apartment, along with the petrified remains of many years’ accumulated litterbox leavings, down came a petrified raccoon. CLUNK. On my head. And then onto the scaffold where I was standing.

The raccoon was petrified and hardened like an oversized rawhide dog chewie. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that he was in fact inside out. His head was on backwards. There was much speculation about how he came to be inside out, and none of it was pleasant. It is still relatively early on Sunday morning. I will spare you the details of that conversation. Suffice it to say, we had one very dead, very inside-out raccoon carcass on our hands.

I looked at Bill.

“This is gonna cost you extra,” I said.

He nodded.

Then I got out my cell phone.

“I know someone who’s gonna want this.”

Bill’s eyes grew wide. “Leave it to the lesbian to know someone who wants a dead raccoon.”

The person I called was not home, so I left a message. We named our new friend Rocky, of course: Rocky Raccoon in tribute to the popular Beatles song – and I protected him from being tossed unceremoniously into the Dumpster by either my employer or my helper.

The next day, my helper found suspicious bits of fur in a pile of litter mouldering behind the chimney. She pulled out a bone. And called for me to come inspect what she had found. Firmly wedged in an impossible spot was what remained of another unfortunate creature. I extracted him from his (to this point) final resting place from below, resulting in my second shower in dead rodent parts in two days. I called Bill and explained that there would be further adjustments in the week’s charges.

This guy had not had the opportunity yet to dry out and become rawhide like his peer. He was still composting. Ahem. I believe the term that most adequately describes the aroma is “cloying.” It is the kind of smell that gets into the sinuses and simply will not leave. Oh, it was bad.

BUT, the skeleton was in tip-top shape. The skull was perfect, the teeth all intact, and there was even enough of the pelt left to show the raccoon’s mask and some whiskers. It just looked like it was attached to a carpet that had been through the Boer War. This lamentable collection of degrading parts was dubbed “Rocky II” in homage to that regrettable series of boxing movies featuring Sylvester Stallone.

Cell phone came out again. This time I called our own Toby Alley Manring. See? I actually know MORE than one person likely to be interested in receiving a dead raccoon. In fact, the more I tell this story, the longer the list becomes of women (indeed – all women) who would like to receive a dead raccoon when next I find one.

So. Toby came and collected the raccoons with much appreciation and delight. I was nearly as happy to be rid of them as she was to receive them. We parted, both feeling as though we had received gifts. Toby got two cool raccoon carcasses that she will render (that’s a poor word here, isn’t it?) at some future date into beautiful art, and I got to get to know Toby just a little bit better, and that was very cool indeed.

We have since discovered Rocky III, and the body count seems to have stopped there. A friend from Portland has speculated that one more could make the Four Raccoons of the Apocalypse, but then I have very odd friends.

So this is where I talk again about how not everyone is going to be excited to receive the gifts we have to offer. Not everyone is going to be thrilled and excited to receive an inside-out raccoon carcass. Go figure. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess.

Emerson spoke of giving of ourselves, and truly that is the best gift we can offer. We can give of something that is inherently ours. We are often unaware of our own gifts, of what we have to offer. I am blessed to have an aunt who reminds me often of how fortunate I am. I can write. I can do a little public speaking. I can do a little organizing, I can rouse some rabble on occasion. I can tell stories. I am generous with my time and energy and my spirit. These are my gifts. They are as much a part of me as my pale Irish skin and my gray hair.

“You have so many gifts,” my aunt says to me “it’s a shame you can’t get someone to pay you to use them.”

It seems I may have found that vocation in ministry. But that is another story for another day.

Today we are talking about sharing our gifts, and I – and many others – would argue that the best gift we can give is that of ourselves. Like the little drummer boy in the children’s Christmas story, we can give of what we have. The kings brought gifts to the Christ child, gifts that were made by others, as Emerson described “ a cold, lifeless business when you go to the goldsmith’s. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolic sin-offering, or a payment of black mail.”

The drummer boy had no material wealth to share, but he had his drum and his hands and the music in his heart, and he shared that, without reservation. Who gave the greater gift in that story? The three men with enormous wealth who went to the equivalent of the Hallmark Store or the Middle Eastern Jewelers? Or the boy who had nothing but himself, which he offered completely?

Our hearts and our love can only grow as we share them. When love flows without interruption or impediment, we can feel the divine in it, in us, and in our works. When we give for the sake of giving, sharing of our hearts for the joy of the sharing and for no other reason, it is the work of the divine and worship in its purest form.

It is a delicate dance that we must do to know how and when to share of ourselves. We have to first recognize our gifts. We need to acknowledge that we have worth and that we are a blessing in our own right. We spend a lot of time fretting about affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every (other) person, but how much time do we spend affirming and promoting our own inherent worth and dignity? I suggest that such an effort would do us no harm. We are as worthy as any we seek to affirm. We each have our gifts. We each have something to offer of ourselves to our fellows.

The trick, of course, is that balance. How to give of ourselves without becoming a doormat? How to share of ourselves without becoming that unfortunate (and I would argue terribly codependent) Giving Tree so lauded by Shel Silverstein. The trick, I think, is to learn to be present with ourselves, and to be open to the opportunities that the world lays before us. To be ready with our drum to play from the heart, as the situation requires.

My gift to you this morning has been my storytelling, and your gift to me was your patience and attentive ear. It is not everywhere, I know, that I can tell a story of dead raccoons and make worship out of it, but this sacred space, and this community of souls makes it possible. This is our gift to each other and to ourselves.

Blessed be. Amen.

CLOSING WORDS:

It is thanks – gratitude – that makes gift-giving and gift-receiving run smoothly. Gratitude is of course, and inside operation. We can choose to be thankful for the things around us and count them as gifts, or we can bewail our circumstances as not being ideal. As we leave here this morning, as we retire to the sumptuous repast that is made up of the many gifts of the many hearts and hands of the people in this room and others who could not join us for whatever reason, let us be grateful for the gift of self that each represents and receive it as the work of the divine in each of us. Let us breathe our own gifts into the air like the a flower offers its sweet smell to any who pass close enough to smell, and to the air when no one is around.

Rocky I, II, and III

2010-03-03T17:18:00.005-05:00

I have a sermon to write for Sunday morning, and I was planning to write about gifts and the giving and receiving thereof, but apparently what I really I need to write about is raccoons. Specifically, dead raccoons. More specifically, dead raccoons that I have found and had to - um - "deal with."

See, I have that sermon to write. And Sunday is looming closer and closer. And I can't seem to get out of my own way. The words of the sermon simply won't come. They're jammed up, stuck, blocked, perhaps. But every time I talk to people, I have to tell the story of the three raccoons I have found/unearthed/discovered/stepped on/in during the past nine days. It seems that the raccoon stuff is in the way of the sermon stuff, so it must be purged before I can write the sermon and have the words work. "Purged" is literary foreshadowing. You have been warned.

(CAUTION: GRUESOME PICTURES.)

I have a friend who starts all of her adventure stories with the words "there I was, at the Renaissance Fair..." or some such thing. So I shall give it a try.

So there I was, up on staging in what will be the master bedroom of a second-floor apartment in a small three-unit house. I was taking down the matched pine boards that used to be the ceiling. The room is built into the top of the house, with walls that come up about six or seven feet before they meet the slope of the inside of the roof, so it has the effect of a very tall room with a ceiling (meaning the bit actually parallel to the floor) that is only about six or seven feet wide by about 12 feet long. The boards I was tearing down were nailed to joists that created a wee little crawlspace at the peak of the roof. There was insulation up there.

And a raccoon.

Well, he once was a raccoon. But he had long ago parted this mortal coil. His petrified remains tumbled down from between the rafters, among approximately 80 pounds of accumulated dried and equally petrified raccoon poop, and shredded insulation. Rocky, as we named him, was flat and dried and hard as a piece of old leather that had been soaked then left in the sun. He was disfigured in a grotesque way. His skull looked weird, his spine was detached from the rest of him, and his pelt looked like that stuff they make dog rawhide chewy bones out of. It was nasty. It was only a day later, or maybe two days later, that I realized that Rocky was inside out. No kidding. Here's the picture:

See? He's inside-out. His head is in the lower right corner, and his jaw is pointed back in toward the rest of him. There was a fair amount of speculation with regards to how he came to be inside out, and the consensus, grim as it was, was that raccoons do not have the emotional attachment to family members that we human have, and well, protein is protein, and if uncle Charlie is going to chew through the wires and short himself out like that, who are we to turn down something already cooked? Yeah. I have some pretty grim (and amusing) friends.

That was on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, my helper was cleaning packed and nasty shreds of fiberglass insulation from around the chimney when she found some tufts of fur. Gentle pulling yielded a bone. And then another. I put on my little LL Bean headlamp and peeked in there. It was tight quarters all around, and there was no good way to get a grip on him, so I went downstairs, got up on a stepladder, reached around behind the chimney, found enough solid stuff to get a handful, and gently pulled. A mass of carcass, insulation, poop and mouldering I-don't-care-to-know-what came down in a shower. On me. Again. Did I mention that Rocky I fell out of the ceiling onto my head? Yeah. Now this guy. Named, obviously, Rocky II.

I sorted through the pile of nastiness that had fallen out of the chimney chase and discovered that this was a far more recent edition of raccoon. Indeed, he was still composting and was quite pungent. I believe the term used in such situations is cloying. Honestly, it was a stench that got into my sinuses and would not leave. I tried to drink coffee, it tasted of that smell. My clothes, my hair, my hands (even though I wore gloves) all smelled of decaying rodent. Ugh.

When I could get past the smell, I noticed that aside from being moth-eaten, Rocky II's face was fairly intact. Indeed, we could still see a mask and even some whiskers. His skull and teeth were nearly perfect.

Here's what he looked like:

My duty was utterly clear. I called a friend from church.

"Hi, T? It's Dawn. From church. Yeah. Hey, I've got a couple very dead raccoons. Their skulls and bones and stuff are in really great shape. You want them? Great. Tomorrow? Afternoon? You know the address? (I gave it to her.) Cool. We'll see you then."

The guy I am working for? The one who's house this is? Very nice gay man. Was ASTOUNDED that I knew within 30 seconds of discovering the carcass a person who would be interested in getting it. When I told him I knew at least two such people, he just shook his head in disbelief.

T is one of our pagan members, and she does cool and funky art. I don't know if her particular brand of pagan might involve some Wicca as well, but in any case, she is thrilled, I tell you, just THRILLED to have a couple of dead raccoons.

She came by the next day with a plastic tote to haul away her treasures. She was astounded to see that Rocky I was indeed inside out, and declared Rocky II to be "quite woofy" ("smelly") but treasures all the same. She said she was going to put them in an organic "cooker" of sorts that would rot away the flesh and fur and other stuff and leave the bones, then she'd bleach the bones and make beautiful things from them. I have no doubt.

I have to tell you that dead raccoons was the topic of conversation at coffee hour after church on Sunday.

And today, when that pile of rotted rags and newspapers in the basement turned out to be Rocky III, my phone was out and dialing while my helper was trying to collect bone shards and teeth and ribs and bits from the litter on the floor. The collection from Rocky III might be done in a paper coffee cup, but T will be thrilled again. She'll be over tomorrow after work. She's a school lunch lady.

No shit. If only the kids knew.

My life is so great. I couldn't make up fiction this good.

Stay tuned.

Assimilation sucks

2010-02-23T06:23:00.004-05:00

This is the week that comes around each month when my hormones rage and my emotions are raw and I fear everything and doubt everything and am pretty sure that everything sucks. I know someone who is transitioning from male to female, and I wonder if nobody every cautioned her about this week. It's hell.

I want to cry. I am scared. All the time.

I went to meet with the seminary people yesterday and it went pretty well. I had done enough homework on my own by the time I got there that the questions I had were not so much about whether I would attend, but more in the lines of how we're going to make that happen.

I came out of there with a sheaf of paperwork to fill out and return. I mentioned before that paperwork and I do not get along. It is true. Paperwork, forms that I have to fill out, cause enormous, unfounded anxiety in me. My chest gets tight, the words on the page all swim in front of my eyes, I get short of breath and I want to run away. This is part of why I am self-employed. Because to work for someone else means I would have to fill out a job application, and I have not been able to do that - honestly - for three or four years now. Even filling out the paperwork at the food pantry was tough. They want all kinds of data that I don't have - things like income stuff, pay stubs, that kind of stuff. To say it causes anxiety is something of an understatement.

But I came home with these papers, and they all had to be filled out. There was even a worksheet for federal financial aid. The form itself is online. Which scares me at a different level. I get frustrated with on-line paperwork at a level more extreme than the paper one.

But someone talked me through it and I came home and filled out what I could and will have the rest done by the end of the week. I'll be OK. I just had to sit down, breathe properly, and look at it one line at a time. Bird by Bird, the book says. That's what I did. Line by line, I got through it.

But then.

I am beginning to get feedback about how my status has changed in the public eye. Since I let people know about my plans to attend seminary, my behavior is now viewed in a different light. Suddenly I have become "a UU I know who's going to seminary" and everything I do will be viewed through that filter.

I did not ask for this mantle, nor do I want it. I want to be me. I want to go to school and to learn the things I need to learn to be an effective minister. I do not want to be a poster child for anything. I'd like to have my life back, please.

They say seminary is a transformative experience, that it will mold and shape me into a new and improved version of me, one better suited to ministry. But how much of myself do I lose in the process? How much of what makes me ME must I muzzle, or censor, or otherwise squelch so that I become palatable to the masses? And now I ask - am I willing to give parts of me up for this? I don't know. I know that the call to ministry I got was loud and clear and I can't ignore it, but I don't remember any part of it that said I had to assimilate into the collective. That was never mentioned, and I'm feeling more than a little ripped off.

I'm a bit of a sexual outlaw. I know that and like it. The people around me know it, and it doesn't seem to bother them. But I get the feeling its going to bother the shit out of a lot of people whom I have yet to meet.

There is a process by which ministers get approved. There is seminary, then ordination, and then fellowship. From what I can tell, fellowship is sort of like tenure. Once you get it, you're pretty much set, unless you do something profoundly stupid/crazy/unethical and get yourself bounced from the ministry. Seminary has a definite beginning and end and is relatively predictable. Ordination is often done by a congregation, and while it is nice, it is not the thing that matters most. Fellowship is the thing that matters most in the world of a professional minister. It is the official stamp of approval from the faith community and its representatives that person X has the training and temperament to be a minister and do good work.

The way I feel right now, I am never going to pass that test.

All my life I have been hot-headed and impulsive. I have great passion for things, and not always the patience and foresight to see how my actions are going to have long-term effects. I know. You're all stunned, I'm sure.

What is this transformative process going to do to me? Am I going to become like some rehab regular, shuffling through my days doing the thorazine shuffle? Am I going to be muted to the point of a bland, beige existence? Bile rises in my throat at the very thought. Honestly, my reactions to these thoughts are both emotional and physically visceral. I feel my eyes narrow, my shoulders drop back and my chin jut out just a bit. I feel my lip begin to curl in a sneer. If that's what I have to go through to be a minister, this is simply not going to work.

How much of what is integral to my person-hood must I sacrifice for this calling? Is not my sexuality and its expression an integral part of me? Is not my political heart and mind an integral part of what makes me uniquely me? Is not my confrontational style an integral part of me? Am I to become the demure lady that my grandmother had so hoped for? Crossing my feet at the ankles and wearing white gloves? Sipping tea with my pinkie extended just so?

I don't fucking think so.

I know my emotions are on high this week. And at my age, they are more prone to go in funky directions for extended periods of time. I am not looking forward to this roller coaster of emotion around the concept of ministry every month. I'd like some reassurance that I am not going to be assimilated and washed out, losing all of what is me to become a minister.

It took me years and years of step work and spiritual growth to get to the point where I can accept and even love myself. And now I step into something that wants to tear it all apart and reassemble it in a shape that is more palatable to others? I spent more than 40 years trying to be what other people wanted me to be to get their approval. I am finally at a place where I don't much give a damn if they approve of me or not. And suddenly my success or failure -- in a calling that had nothing to do with them, mind you -- is dependent upon the approval of a group of people whom I have not met and who have no idea who I am or how long and hard I have worked to get here, never mind where they think I ought to be.

Do I have to say out loud that I think that whole proposition is so much bullshit? I didn't think so.

I am raw. I am reacting. I know this. At least I am getting it out instead of internalizing it and letting the pressure build up until I explode. Although who knows. Perhaps this blog is another thing that needs to be muzzled. Maybe I shouldn't show doubts any more. Maybe I shouldn't put voice to the things I think and feel. Or maybe I should just do it privately. So as not to scare the horses. Or the committee. Or whatever.

Time for coffee and to read my newspapers on line. Then off to work for an incredibly long day.

Stay tuned.

focus, or lack thereof

2010-02-19T06:11:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was a tough day for me. I lacked focus. It felt like I was a kid with ADHD. I would start something, get frustrated or bored, and go find something else. The job was tough, none of the tasks were easy. I started and gave up on no fewer than a half-dozen jobs during the day. My head was in a million places, none of them terribly work-related, and it was just awful to be in my own brain and body.

Some of it felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I read something in a book about the work habits of different kinds of personality types as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I am an ENTP. Big ideas, grand schemes, good at getting people fired up and ready to go, but easy to frustrate when it comes to the mundane bits of a project. Easily frustrated when things don't go 100 percent smoothly.

Oh. That's me. In spades.

It was tough. It was tough to know that stuff and to feel it happening and to have no clear idea how to work around it. Am I doomed to always start things and not finish them? God, but I hope not. But it seems to be a trend in my life, as I look around me at my half-rearranged house, my half-finished projects in the basement or yard.

I did the right thing and called my sponsor to talk. She gave me some good, tangible ideas on how to focus my thoughts and how to compartmentalize some of my life. That was really helpful.

I chatted online with another friend who is an expert in the Meyers-Briggs stuff, and she reassured me that ENTPs get frustrated and unfocused when we get overtired and a little overwhelmed. Ooooohhhhh. That helps too.

So this morning I have a list of things I need to bring to the job site and am working on creating a punch list of things that need to be done while I am there. I am working to focus my thoughts on things I can DO, as opposed to things that I can just think about and fret over, but make no real progress. Those I must let go for now. Poof! Into the air.

I wish it was that easy. But I am making progress on it. I awoke feeling pretty refreshed. Mostly.

I had an anxiety dream early this morning. Classic thing: I came into a classroom as the instructor was handing back exams. I had missed the exam. Completely blown it off. Hadn't been to class in ages. Was sort of surprised to see how many people I knew who were in the class. Lots of people I knew from other places. My peers. I was ashamed. Ashamed for blowing it off. Ashamed for forgetting that there was an exam. Embarrassed that I had failed and that people knew it. Ashamed that the professor looked at me and said "now what's your name again?" Oh, it was awful. As we went over the exam, there was a lot of it that I knew. I probably could have passed it if I had been there. If I had known that there was an exam. But I didn't know, because I hadn't been to class and nobody told me, and why should they, it was my job to attend and all, and it was my own damned fault for fucking up.

It was a grim few minutes in the dark before I realized that I had been dreaming and that the situation, however real it felt, was just an illusion. I know that it makes perfect sense for me to be having anxiety dreams. I am in transition from one part of my life to another.

It seems like everything jolted loose back in January when I ended my relationship with Laura. Spiritual development began in earnest. I got a call to ministry. A job landed in my lap. I joined my church. Got appointed to a committee, started doing some organizing at church, got word that there might be a job in political organizing that would work for me (funding is the current sticking point), went to the fetish fair flea market again this year - as a single person - got some new jewelry and made some new friends.

It feels like my life is suddenly full to bursting with opportunities and activities. It is a strange feeling to know that I am going to have to draw some lines and limit how much of the world I can participate in at the moment. There is only so much of me and so many hours in a day. I think a list of things I am presently committed to is also a good idea. That way I can get a look at the demands on my resources and figure out what can stay and what must wait for another time.

For now, I am easing into this day. The sun has just peaked over the trees at the edge of the field. The sky is blue and cloudless, and the wind has stopped, at least for a little while. The cat thinks I should pet him (constantly) and breakfast and work beckon. The sun is back-lighting the branches of the scrubby little tangle of I'm-not-sure-what at the edge of the stream, making each twig glow in the light. The frost is melting as the sun hits it, making the branches shiny and sparkly in the light.

Even the snow is sparkly this morning. This is old snow, dead, melted, almost gone snow. Snow with long-distorted paw prints in it, snow with dead leaves and bits of bark and dust and dirt sticking out of it. But the sun is hitting it this morning at just the right angle to make it sparkle. It looks like a lunar surface, all pock-marked and jagged like a beach at the end of a long day of footprints back and forth, but it has little sparkles of diamonds in each curve and wrinkle.

The big yellow Tom cat from the feral colony is gingerly making his way across the brook. Apparently the snow is not as firm as I had imagined. It must be at that weird squishy-granular stage from the way he is walking. Oh dear. It is a very undignified thing indeed for a cat to keep poking through the snow crust and getting his paws wet. He does not like it at all, I can tell from the expression on his face and the slant of his whiskers and ears. There! He has reached the eddy at the corner of the house where there is bare ground. A respite! And he is out of my sight now, around the corner. So not only does he have more freedom to walk with dignity, he has no audience to remind him of just how undignified he recently was... poor Tom.

Kitten is on the dog's shelf now, making noises like he'd prefer to be on my desk in the window for his morning worship, but mom is there with the evil computer. I wouldn't mind him being here, but he won't jump up while I am near. I do not understand why, but I understand that it is his habit. So I will go now. It is a good day. My worship this morning is not completely done, but I think I will carry it with me through the day. Perhaps it will help to keep me focused.

This I pray, in all of the names of the divine. Blessed be. Amen.

Spirituality and focus

2010-02-17T08:38:00.005-05:00

so... what IS it worth to me?

I spent a couple of weeks doing some pretty intensive spiritual development work, got a call to ministry that I cannot deny or ignore, and stopped my efforts.

Part of me is afraid of what other things might present themselves to me in similarly undeniable fashion if I am to continue this search. Another part of me wants to relax because hey, divinity school will teach me the rest, right? Um. Hmm. Somehow that doesn't seem entirely right.

So here I am, in a kind of spiritual limbo. I did some work, got a revelation, and haven't done much since then. Granted, I have been distracted by work and travel and a recreational weekend adventure, but still. Is my spiritual development important enough to me to take a place sort of higher up the priority list than it has been of late? Hmm.

To what lengths am I willing to go to grow spiritually?

I have been known to go to what some would call pretty radical lengths to achieve other things - projects, pleasure, campaigns. Am I willing to put that same kind of effort into my spiritual development? I don't know. It seems like I should be willing to do that. But then I know that the word "should" carries with it a lot of blame and shame. It indicates a failure to live up to a goal or standard.

I have several piercings. Some are for decoration (my ears) some are for pleasure (others that you can't generally see). To some people, that is an extreme thing to do to achieve heightened pleasure. I don't happen to think such body modification is that extreme, but I understand the cultural perception that it might be. I also have tattoos, three for decoration, one for political statement. So pain for adornment or for some lasting purpose is not a huge step for me.

But am I willing to sign up for the equivalent kind of pain to achieve a heightened spiritual experience? And what might that look like? What kind of temporary (even fleeting) pain am I willing to endure in order to improve, or accentuate my future spiritual experiences?

Some faith traditions call for painful rituals in a variety of forms. Some require self-flagellation with floggers, some even use scourges, to heighten the spiritual experience. Public displays of self-abuse are sometimes a symbol of the person's devotion to their faith. That's not what I am looking for. I don't need to show others how devoted I am to my spiritual journey. I want to be as devoted to my spiritual growth and the quality of the experience I have as I am to my pursuit of the more secular achievements I seek.

Practitioners in the secretive -- and some would say extreme -- branch of Catholicism called Opus Dei use a variety of methods of self-torture to heighten the spiritual experience. Adherents will wear a spiked belt around their upper thigh for a portion of each day, and some flog themselves. These things are done in private, not to show others how devoted the practitioner is, but to remind the faithful of the suffering of Jesus and their perpetual unworthiness of his sacrifice on their behalf.

So, I think I would like something that focuses my spiritual attention in a way that compares to what the Opus Dei folks use, but without the guilt/shame/original sin baggage that comes with it.

What is it that a Unitarian Universalist can use to do that? We don't do voluntary suffering terribly well. In fact, we tend to work very hard to relieve suffering. I guess maybe suffering is the wrong word for what I want. I want something that will focus my spiritual awareness. Like a piercing focuses a person's sexual awareness. I would not even mind having such a thing bring with it a requirement for some initial discomfort or pain. I understand that. All growth involves some discomfort, and some involves real pain. But the benefits are undeniable. So what is it that i can do to focus my growth? My search? My exploration?

What is it that I can use or achieve or acquire that will do this? I don't know. I wish I did.

Perhaps the search is what it is. Perhaps there is no such thing that can focus me the way I want to be focused. I don't know.

The 11th step work that I want to do is pretty clear: "sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out."

I am seeking. That much I know. Perhaps prayer and meditation are the tools I need to focus me as I want. I don't know.

I seem to be saying "I don't know" a lot. I suppose that's good. It means I have a grasp on where the deficits are, that I know what it is that I need to learn.

Enough for today. Stay tuned.

morning at home

2010-02-16T06:23:00.003-05:00

It is good to be home.

I don't know that I slept well, but I think that had to do with the cat pacing up and down the length of my person, demanding that whatever limb he could find pet him all night long. Poor guy, he's been home alone with only daily visits from some friends to scratch his ears and make sure his kibble was high in his dish. Apparently he missed me. From their behavior so far, I would guess that Quinn missed Kitten, but that Kitten did not much miss Quinn. Just a hunch.

The sun is coming up where it should this morning. A little to my left over by the line of trees at the edge of my neighbor's field. There are some scattered clouds that are in shades of blue and gray, but the sky is the color of the palest blue I have ever seen and getting lighter by the second. The sun will come up fully in just a few minutes.

The driveway is bare gravel. Snow and ice melted while I was away. We're supposed to get a storm this afternoon that will last until tomorrow night. I'll have to fill my buckets and pails with salt and sand today to be ready for tomorrow's shoveling duties.

I cannot describe the joy I feel at being home. This is so wonderful. I have not turned the heat up much really, but even in the chill, this is wonderful. Like Maureen O'Hara told John Wayne, a woman needs her own things around her. True indeed. I am at home here with my familiar things, my chair, my desk, my window looking out, by bed and blanket, my cat, my coffeepot. It is the psychic warmth offered by familiar surroundings. And it feels good.

It is daylight out there now. The sun is not yet up, but I must be going. There is work to be done and there are bills to be paid. The day is upon us. Blessed be.