...and I'm so excited. I am playing housewife today, catching up all the laundry, getting rid of the dust weasles (not bunnies, mind you), folding and drying and ironing and putting away, and planning a really nifty dinner. I love to really cook...the kind of cooking where you need to make a list and go out on a quest for ingredients. The first few times you do this, it's easy to feel a little overwhelmed at having to get whole bottles and jars and bags of things you need only a teaspoon of this time. But then it occurs to you that you're not just preparing for this meal, you're preparing for any number of future, as-yet-unimagined meals, and when the time comes to make them, your pantry will be well-stocked and sufficient unto itself, until you come across this one esoteric ingredient you're missing, and only need a teaspoon of -- this time.
Perhaps it's all very banal, but I find this thought very familiar, warm, and comforting today. Off to track down some rare and precious chutney...
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
Friday, July 29, 2005
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
" We must love one another or die." - W.H. Auden
I have to thank all of you for your love, warmth and upholding in this time. I am muddling through, with the huge support of my friends. I got all of my health insurance paperwork in, all the while aware of the huge privilege I've been given in having that resource. Though I still feel that there is some "soul-sickness" for me to minister to, I will not turn my nose up at doctors and what they might offer me. If a pill could help place me back on the plane where I can experience things unfiltered by the weaker parts of my neurophysiology, then I'll take it with thanks. I’ve had the feeling that I can’t attend to the deeper parts of my “soul-sickness” until I have some of the symptoms under control.
One of the good things about having "all stripped away"...(worship is dry, prayer is dry, spiritual reading is dry)...is that I find the one well that never goes dry is Love.
Duh. I know, there is a part of me that squirms, too. But it's true. When everything else burns away, I am left with Love. It is the one thing that can reach me, it is the one thing I am still motivated to communicate, it is the one thing that I don’t ever doubt the existence of. When I am fussed about the existence of God with a capital “G” and a personality and a will, and the ability to “love me personally” or whatever, I suddenly realize that if it turned out that there was no God but Love, and even if that Love existed only in our ability to Love one another, things would still come out okay in the balance.
Of course this Love is indefinable, but that worries me, as there are so many lesser and harmful things masquerading around under that august title. There was a time when I thought that "all I needed was love" and then things would come out right, but it turned out, dreadfully, that I had no idea what I meant when I uttered the word. Or, what I meant was not what I needed to make it all come out right. And things most certainly did not come out alright.
Pilate can have his question. These days, I am not so concerned with "what is truth." Nowadays I think maybe I have a better idea myself, but I want to know, from the experience of my (f)Friends..."What is love?"
Kate asked in a comment for more clarification of what I was looking for. I began to write this in a comment but decided to ammend my post.
------------
I don't know if I am looking for a definition of Love - once a friend set me the OED entry for Love, and it was overwhelming. I know there is more than one sort of love, all informed, to some extent or another, by the underlying fountain of Love.
So maybe not a definition, but a discussion.
I want to go father than a pat "God is Love" and far beyond the cliches and cuddly bits of "the world's love. A big theme of my life has been misinterpreting "Love Hurts" and "Love is Hard Work" and "Love Bears all Things". Perhaps, ironically, I've been too much of a puritain about love.
How do you love without counting the cost, without being destroyed? How do you love "a selfish object" unselfishly, without harming your soul? I know so many people who struggle with this in their family, in friends, in dealing with the dysfunctional and harmful, who inspite of their dysfunction, must be loved.
Do you cling on, and sing "As long as he needs me..." and trust that God will give you the strength to go on in the friendship or relationship, that if you do your loving part, God will make up the remainder? That's what I thought at one point. Eventually, I had to let go. And though the fruits have shown me that I made a good choice, my mind often teases me with the question "did I just lose faith?" When I read about how God is "well able to perfect all things concerning us", and I look at the disasterous parts of my life that I managed to leave behind with my last shreds of self-preservation, I wonder if a Saint could have stayed and watched God mend the tatters. Then I think about the way God helps those who help themselves. When I have left destructive friendships and relationships, I didn't feel it was a vote of no-confidence in God's ability to heal...it was because I knew that I myself was in physical, emotional, and/or spiritual danger, and that I did not have the ability to withstand it, and even if God could have helped me, I had not been given the ability to recieve that help.
So anyway. I want to hear what other people have to say about this crucial subject, so I'll go back into some silence. I want us to dig deeply, and get beyond "common knowledge". I am beginning to feel that these questions of Love are the most important ones we can ask. It is our greatest commandment: "Love one another as I have loved you." and some say He loved us right to the Cross. There is that in me that does not feel unfaithful because I was unwilling to be crucified for a "selfish object". And yet, in truth, I myself am a "selfish object". This is weighing on me very, very heavily. Thomas Kelley said "We are not called to die on every cross, nor are we expected to".
But is the cross of love universal? Can you sacrifice yourself, your life, your happiness, and your sanity, to Love? I don't feel that God calls us to love to the point of our own mutilation. To pain, perhaps, but not disfigurment. And how do you know the difference?
This is an exercise I can't escape: Think of the most foul human, historical or living, that you can, and know that in their core, they carry the seed of God in them, and for that seed, MUST be loved, ("love one another or die.") if the world is to be healed. Think of them as a 2 month old baby, smiling for the first time, unblemished, and know that this is the truth about them. And know that you are called to love them unto death. And then, think of the people in your life whose presence and actions harm you deeply.
I do this, and I see the image of my baby sister..(just a few posts below). I would die for her. If every human is as precious as this (and they are), why am I not willing to be "deeply harmed" for someone, let alone dive under a truck for them? Why does it feel wrong to allow myself to be "deeply harmed" by someone for love of them, when it is supposedly the greatest love to "give your life"?
It keeps me up at night.
I should add that at this moment, by the grace of God, I'm not in a position where I need to make this choice. I am surrounded by loving and healthy people. But I have been in that situation, several times in the past, and have never come out feeling right. And I know people right now who are struggling with facets of the same issue. It seems so important.
One of the good things about having "all stripped away"...(worship is dry, prayer is dry, spiritual reading is dry)...is that I find the one well that never goes dry is Love.
Duh. I know, there is a part of me that squirms, too. But it's true. When everything else burns away, I am left with Love. It is the one thing that can reach me, it is the one thing I am still motivated to communicate, it is the one thing that I don’t ever doubt the existence of. When I am fussed about the existence of God with a capital “G” and a personality and a will, and the ability to “love me personally” or whatever, I suddenly realize that if it turned out that there was no God but Love, and even if that Love existed only in our ability to Love one another, things would still come out okay in the balance.
Of course this Love is indefinable, but that worries me, as there are so many lesser and harmful things masquerading around under that august title. There was a time when I thought that "all I needed was love" and then things would come out right, but it turned out, dreadfully, that I had no idea what I meant when I uttered the word. Or, what I meant was not what I needed to make it all come out right. And things most certainly did not come out alright.
Pilate can have his question. These days, I am not so concerned with "what is truth." Nowadays I think maybe I have a better idea myself, but I want to know, from the experience of my (f)Friends..."What is love?"
Kate asked in a comment for more clarification of what I was looking for. I began to write this in a comment but decided to ammend my post.
------------
I don't know if I am looking for a definition of Love - once a friend set me the OED entry for Love, and it was overwhelming. I know there is more than one sort of love, all informed, to some extent or another, by the underlying fountain of Love.
So maybe not a definition, but a discussion.
I want to go father than a pat "God is Love" and far beyond the cliches and cuddly bits of "the world's love. A big theme of my life has been misinterpreting "Love Hurts" and "Love is Hard Work" and "Love Bears all Things". Perhaps, ironically, I've been too much of a puritain about love.
How do you love without counting the cost, without being destroyed? How do you love "a selfish object" unselfishly, without harming your soul? I know so many people who struggle with this in their family, in friends, in dealing with the dysfunctional and harmful, who inspite of their dysfunction, must be loved.
Do you cling on, and sing "As long as he needs me..." and trust that God will give you the strength to go on in the friendship or relationship, that if you do your loving part, God will make up the remainder? That's what I thought at one point. Eventually, I had to let go. And though the fruits have shown me that I made a good choice, my mind often teases me with the question "did I just lose faith?" When I read about how God is "well able to perfect all things concerning us", and I look at the disasterous parts of my life that I managed to leave behind with my last shreds of self-preservation, I wonder if a Saint could have stayed and watched God mend the tatters. Then I think about the way God helps those who help themselves. When I have left destructive friendships and relationships, I didn't feel it was a vote of no-confidence in God's ability to heal...it was because I knew that I myself was in physical, emotional, and/or spiritual danger, and that I did not have the ability to withstand it, and even if God could have helped me, I had not been given the ability to recieve that help.
So anyway. I want to hear what other people have to say about this crucial subject, so I'll go back into some silence. I want us to dig deeply, and get beyond "common knowledge". I am beginning to feel that these questions of Love are the most important ones we can ask. It is our greatest commandment: "Love one another as I have loved you." and some say He loved us right to the Cross. There is that in me that does not feel unfaithful because I was unwilling to be crucified for a "selfish object". And yet, in truth, I myself am a "selfish object". This is weighing on me very, very heavily. Thomas Kelley said "We are not called to die on every cross, nor are we expected to".
But is the cross of love universal? Can you sacrifice yourself, your life, your happiness, and your sanity, to Love? I don't feel that God calls us to love to the point of our own mutilation. To pain, perhaps, but not disfigurment. And how do you know the difference?
This is an exercise I can't escape: Think of the most foul human, historical or living, that you can, and know that in their core, they carry the seed of God in them, and for that seed, MUST be loved, ("love one another or die.") if the world is to be healed. Think of them as a 2 month old baby, smiling for the first time, unblemished, and know that this is the truth about them. And know that you are called to love them unto death. And then, think of the people in your life whose presence and actions harm you deeply.
I do this, and I see the image of my baby sister..(just a few posts below). I would die for her. If every human is as precious as this (and they are), why am I not willing to be "deeply harmed" for someone, let alone dive under a truck for them? Why does it feel wrong to allow myself to be "deeply harmed" by someone for love of them, when it is supposedly the greatest love to "give your life"?
It keeps me up at night.
I should add that at this moment, by the grace of God, I'm not in a position where I need to make this choice. I am surrounded by loving and healthy people. But I have been in that situation, several times in the past, and have never come out feeling right. And I know people right now who are struggling with facets of the same issue. It seems so important.
Monday, July 18, 2005
The Girl Ain't Right
Well, it's been a while, and I haven't had FGC or anything like that for an excuse. Not sure what I am going to write about tonight. I've had a number of possible posts floating around but haven't felt led to write until this spectacularly un-programmed evening.
It has been an intense little while here in Somerville, with both the literal and emotional climate raging back and forth from cold and stormy to steamy and stifling. Stepping out of a training session this morning, wherein I was oriented within an inch of my life, I walked into a wall of heat and breathed in the thick mixture of mud and honey that was passing for air. The torpor of the atmosphere this weekend has been mirrored, not entirely negatively, in my spiritual life. I feel an enforced stillness, as if I've been swaddled tightly in cotton wool. As I said, this isn’t all bad.
My first week in MA, I was paralyzed in a very different, and much more painful way. The transition of the move and new job hit me unexpectedly, exposing weak spots I’d effectively camouflaged with the tons of concrete and company available to me in NYC. Catastrophic depression and anxiety, which had marked my life pre-New York, returned for the first time in two years. I had come to the conclusion that this pain was all situational, entirely caused and sustained by destructive relationships and unhealthy emotional environments. It was deeply disturbing to move into what promised to be the healthiest, most stable, and comfortable position of my life to date, only to be ambushed by old enemies I’d left for dead months and months before. Even while battling the old bad feelings, I was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal. How dare this happen to me now? Did this mean I would never be safe?
It brought up an old and miserable worry about the difference or connection between one’s soul and one’s psyche. Since Job, it’s been instinctual to connect suffering and sin. Though we’ve been slowly and surely moving away from equating physical suffering and privation with moral depravity, it’s much more difficult once you move into psychological waters. Even to the sufferer, it is easy to “see” that an emotional disturbance must be caused by an imbalance on the spiritual plane. I’m not sure anybody has ever resolved this – I certainly haven’t. Far from being a patient martyr, when my mental health wavers, my faith shudders and stumbles. I’d like to think if I broke a leg or came down with a serious illness I could find a way to use my pain to bring me closer to God. (I almost met Him once while raving with a Chicken Pox fever). But when dealing with psychological pain, and worst of all, the corresponding sense of being out of control of my own emotional responses, it’s a lot harder. How can you be virtuous if you feel as though your free will is gone? When you fight and fight against impulses towards thoughts and actions that must be unholy by their self-destructiveness, but lose, despite your most valiant willpower? Very often I won’t be good, but paradoxically, I’ve never felt more damned than I do in those times where I really, honestly, and truly can’t “be good”.
I’d hope that this frightening loss of control would teach me something about surrender, but in these cases it’s hard to think of it as a matter of trust. It is not God that has control of me at these times, but something that once upon a time we might have cast into a bunch of pigs. You don’t need to believe in a sentient devil-being to have experience of demons. I can't imagine that you are supposed to just lie still and give yourself over to them - they can and will and do destroy people all the time. That doesn’t seem like trust or holy submission. But at the same time, you can't seem to fight them off. What do you do? How are you supposed to react? What is happening?
My literary wanderings often shoot me off into strange inter-disciplinary alleys (that’s how I ended up stumbling into God again, for one thing) Once, peeking into psychology, I came upon the “Theory of Positive Disintegration, by the Polish Psychologist Kazimierz Debrowski. When I first ran into it, I’d been following a quote from Aeschylus, which continues to find me, over and over again:
"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God"
It’s hard to find an overview of this theory that doesn’t dissolve into hopeless jargon, but the basic idea is that the person moves through different levels in the development of their personality, from the base, which is determined largely through hereditary and social factors, through the second, where they first begin to realize that “life can be higher”, that there is a disconnect (both in the world and in themselves) between “what is” and what “could be”, and construct an idealized self, and finally to a third, “actualized” stage, where the personality is autonomous, no longer controlled by outside forces, operating in harmony with the "self-aware, self-chosen, self-affirmed, and self-determined unity of essential individual psychic qualities". (Think: in the world, but not of it) Transition through the second level into the third is marked by a crisis involving the breakdown of the former, lower, personality. The disconnect between the newly developed "idealized self" and the reality of the present self causes deep psychic pain, which spurs the individual to change and creates the necessary conditions for the transformation. Dabrowski argued that breakdown, depression and psychoneurosis were not illnesses to be treated, but rather, crucial doors through which the individual must pass in order to develop both psychologically and morally. In the good doctor’s own words:
" "The propensity for changing one's internal environment and the ability to influence positively the external environment indicate the capacity of the individual to develop. Almost as a rule, these factors are related to increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety, inhibitions, and ambivalences - all symptoms which the psychiatrist tends to label psychoneurotic. Given a definition of mental health as the development of the personality, we can say that all individuals who present active development in the direction of a higher level of personality (including most psychoneurotic patients) are mentally healthy" (Dabrowski, 1964, p. 112).
"Intense psychoneurotic processes are especially characteristic of accelerated development in its course towards the formation of personality. According to our theory accelerated psychic development is actually impossible without transition through processes of nervousness and psychoneuroses, without external and internal conflicts, without maladjustment to actual conditions in order to achieve adjustment to a higher level of values (to what 'ought to be'), and without conflicts with lower level realities as a result of spontaneous or deliberate choice to strengthen the bond with reality of higher level" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 220).
"...This is a process in which the individual himself becomes an active agent in his disintegration, and even breakdown. Thus the person finds a 'cure' for himself, not in the sense of a rehabilitation but rather in the sense of reaching a higher level than the one at which he was prior to disintegration. This occurs through a process of an education of oneself and of an inner psychic transformation. One of the main mechanisms of this process is a continual sense of looking into oneself as if from outside, followed by a conscious affirmation or negation of conditions and values in both the internal and external environments. Through the constant creation of himself, though the development of the inner psychic milieu and development of discriminating power with respect to both the inner and outer milieus - an individual goes through ever higher levels of 'neuroses' and at the same time through ever higher levels of universal development of his personality" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 4).
Honestly, this is the most hopeful thing I’ve ever read in relation to “mental illness”. In a way it is a secularization of the old “Dark Night of the Soul”. Honestly, when you feel really, really bad, a clinical description of your suffering can be more reassuring than a mystical promise. And is that wrong? Many of us are scarred by the fetishizing of suffering as an end in itself by misapplications and mischaracterizations of the crucifixion, and it’s hard to understand suffering as redemptive outside of this context. Removing it from the trappings of Western religion and the associated concepts of punishment, payment, and penance, maybe we can come to an understanding of redemptive suffering (or at least, a realization that maybe suffering is not senseless)that is deeply healing, cleansing, and constructive.
In this last painful period, I certainly wasn’t “good” or “holy” or “patient”. I was not behaving myself emotionally or spiritually. I didn’t feel like I was developing emotionally or spiritually. I can’t claim any virtue in this past week. The only thing I can say is that a few times, when I was feeling blackest, I made a weak application of those parts of my soul I could locate, to God, who at that moment I didn’t really believe in at all. What helped most was the love, acceptance and comfort of my dearest friend, even when I had a hard time believing in him, too.
Right now, I certainly don’t feel “good”, but I do feel stilled. Centering came this past First Day with more sureness and ease than ever before, and though prayer did not follow in any recognizable way, I did feel the Presence.
”Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.
He answerth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me. And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him: and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.
And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire; and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.
But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.
Mark 9:17 - 27
It has been an intense little while here in Somerville, with both the literal and emotional climate raging back and forth from cold and stormy to steamy and stifling. Stepping out of a training session this morning, wherein I was oriented within an inch of my life, I walked into a wall of heat and breathed in the thick mixture of mud and honey that was passing for air. The torpor of the atmosphere this weekend has been mirrored, not entirely negatively, in my spiritual life. I feel an enforced stillness, as if I've been swaddled tightly in cotton wool. As I said, this isn’t all bad.
My first week in MA, I was paralyzed in a very different, and much more painful way. The transition of the move and new job hit me unexpectedly, exposing weak spots I’d effectively camouflaged with the tons of concrete and company available to me in NYC. Catastrophic depression and anxiety, which had marked my life pre-New York, returned for the first time in two years. I had come to the conclusion that this pain was all situational, entirely caused and sustained by destructive relationships and unhealthy emotional environments. It was deeply disturbing to move into what promised to be the healthiest, most stable, and comfortable position of my life to date, only to be ambushed by old enemies I’d left for dead months and months before. Even while battling the old bad feelings, I was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal. How dare this happen to me now? Did this mean I would never be safe?
It brought up an old and miserable worry about the difference or connection between one’s soul and one’s psyche. Since Job, it’s been instinctual to connect suffering and sin. Though we’ve been slowly and surely moving away from equating physical suffering and privation with moral depravity, it’s much more difficult once you move into psychological waters. Even to the sufferer, it is easy to “see” that an emotional disturbance must be caused by an imbalance on the spiritual plane. I’m not sure anybody has ever resolved this – I certainly haven’t. Far from being a patient martyr, when my mental health wavers, my faith shudders and stumbles. I’d like to think if I broke a leg or came down with a serious illness I could find a way to use my pain to bring me closer to God. (I almost met Him once while raving with a Chicken Pox fever). But when dealing with psychological pain, and worst of all, the corresponding sense of being out of control of my own emotional responses, it’s a lot harder. How can you be virtuous if you feel as though your free will is gone? When you fight and fight against impulses towards thoughts and actions that must be unholy by their self-destructiveness, but lose, despite your most valiant willpower? Very often I won’t be good, but paradoxically, I’ve never felt more damned than I do in those times where I really, honestly, and truly can’t “be good”.
I’d hope that this frightening loss of control would teach me something about surrender, but in these cases it’s hard to think of it as a matter of trust. It is not God that has control of me at these times, but something that once upon a time we might have cast into a bunch of pigs. You don’t need to believe in a sentient devil-being to have experience of demons. I can't imagine that you are supposed to just lie still and give yourself over to them - they can and will and do destroy people all the time. That doesn’t seem like trust or holy submission. But at the same time, you can't seem to fight them off. What do you do? How are you supposed to react? What is happening?
My literary wanderings often shoot me off into strange inter-disciplinary alleys (that’s how I ended up stumbling into God again, for one thing) Once, peeking into psychology, I came upon the “Theory of Positive Disintegration, by the Polish Psychologist Kazimierz Debrowski. When I first ran into it, I’d been following a quote from Aeschylus, which continues to find me, over and over again:
"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God"
It’s hard to find an overview of this theory that doesn’t dissolve into hopeless jargon, but the basic idea is that the person moves through different levels in the development of their personality, from the base, which is determined largely through hereditary and social factors, through the second, where they first begin to realize that “life can be higher”, that there is a disconnect (both in the world and in themselves) between “what is” and what “could be”, and construct an idealized self, and finally to a third, “actualized” stage, where the personality is autonomous, no longer controlled by outside forces, operating in harmony with the "self-aware, self-chosen, self-affirmed, and self-determined unity of essential individual psychic qualities". (Think: in the world, but not of it) Transition through the second level into the third is marked by a crisis involving the breakdown of the former, lower, personality. The disconnect between the newly developed "idealized self" and the reality of the present self causes deep psychic pain, which spurs the individual to change and creates the necessary conditions for the transformation. Dabrowski argued that breakdown, depression and psychoneurosis were not illnesses to be treated, but rather, crucial doors through which the individual must pass in order to develop both psychologically and morally. In the good doctor’s own words:
" "The propensity for changing one's internal environment and the ability to influence positively the external environment indicate the capacity of the individual to develop. Almost as a rule, these factors are related to increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety, inhibitions, and ambivalences - all symptoms which the psychiatrist tends to label psychoneurotic. Given a definition of mental health as the development of the personality, we can say that all individuals who present active development in the direction of a higher level of personality (including most psychoneurotic patients) are mentally healthy" (Dabrowski, 1964, p. 112).
"Intense psychoneurotic processes are especially characteristic of accelerated development in its course towards the formation of personality. According to our theory accelerated psychic development is actually impossible without transition through processes of nervousness and psychoneuroses, without external and internal conflicts, without maladjustment to actual conditions in order to achieve adjustment to a higher level of values (to what 'ought to be'), and without conflicts with lower level realities as a result of spontaneous or deliberate choice to strengthen the bond with reality of higher level" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 220).
"...This is a process in which the individual himself becomes an active agent in his disintegration, and even breakdown. Thus the person finds a 'cure' for himself, not in the sense of a rehabilitation but rather in the sense of reaching a higher level than the one at which he was prior to disintegration. This occurs through a process of an education of oneself and of an inner psychic transformation. One of the main mechanisms of this process is a continual sense of looking into oneself as if from outside, followed by a conscious affirmation or negation of conditions and values in both the internal and external environments. Through the constant creation of himself, though the development of the inner psychic milieu and development of discriminating power with respect to both the inner and outer milieus - an individual goes through ever higher levels of 'neuroses' and at the same time through ever higher levels of universal development of his personality" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 4).
Honestly, this is the most hopeful thing I’ve ever read in relation to “mental illness”. In a way it is a secularization of the old “Dark Night of the Soul”. Honestly, when you feel really, really bad, a clinical description of your suffering can be more reassuring than a mystical promise. And is that wrong? Many of us are scarred by the fetishizing of suffering as an end in itself by misapplications and mischaracterizations of the crucifixion, and it’s hard to understand suffering as redemptive outside of this context. Removing it from the trappings of Western religion and the associated concepts of punishment, payment, and penance, maybe we can come to an understanding of redemptive suffering (or at least, a realization that maybe suffering is not senseless)that is deeply healing, cleansing, and constructive.
In this last painful period, I certainly wasn’t “good” or “holy” or “patient”. I was not behaving myself emotionally or spiritually. I didn’t feel like I was developing emotionally or spiritually. I can’t claim any virtue in this past week. The only thing I can say is that a few times, when I was feeling blackest, I made a weak application of those parts of my soul I could locate, to God, who at that moment I didn’t really believe in at all. What helped most was the love, acceptance and comfort of my dearest friend, even when I had a hard time believing in him, too.
Right now, I certainly don’t feel “good”, but I do feel stilled. Centering came this past First Day with more sureness and ease than ever before, and though prayer did not follow in any recognizable way, I did feel the Presence.
”Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.
He answerth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me. And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him: and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.
And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire; and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.
But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.
Mark 9:17 - 27
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Two comforting thoughts in times of weariness:
"Alleluia! We do not have to be right! We do have to love, to be vulnerable, to accept joy and pain, and to grow through them."
and
"No matter how many eons it takes, He will not rest until all of creation, including Satan, is reconciled to him, until there is no creature who cannot return His look of love with a joyful response of love."
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Many thanks to my mother for inadvertantly reminding me what fresh and cooling water I find in the writing of Madeline L'Engle.
and
"No matter how many eons it takes, He will not rest until all of creation, including Satan, is reconciled to him, until there is no creature who cannot return His look of love with a joyful response of love."
~ Madeleine L'Engle
Many thanks to my mother for inadvertantly reminding me what fresh and cooling water I find in the writing of Madeline L'Engle.
Such great heights...
I have a big post boiling up full of updates and information and thoughts and things like that, but I am so very tired I can't bring myself to write it. I'm worn out. The other night I found a favourite CD I'd been missing for almost a year, by The Postal Service. I put it on and played my favourite song from the album. The next morning, I played my favourite song again as I was dressing. Then I walked into a coffee shop to fix my newly acquired caffeine habit, and it was playing again. I did a double take, smiled, and carried my gigantic coffee away feeling a little bit blessed. I worked a long and difficult day, and when I got home I fell into the couch and turned on the TV. A psychedelic M&Ms commercial was on, playing a slow acoustic version of the same song. These coincidences have no meaning except that they added a humourous string of consistency to what has otherwise been a wrenchingly scattered week for me. (an example of my current state: I was watching Animal Planet, the all-fluffy-animals-all-the-time channel, and began to tear up at a very high-stress moment: would the borzoi beat the SuperDog High Jump world record? Yes?! GOOD - LET'S ALL CRY NOW.)
Here's the song, called Such Great Heights. It really needs the music to make it scan, but it is a beautiful, soothing, and heart-twisting song when you listen to it. I feel as if there are not very many actual love songs being written these days, and this one is the real thing. The MP3 can be legally downloaded here.
I was thinking it's a sign
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images,
and when we kiss, they're perfectly aligned
and I have to speculate
that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes,
like puzzle pieces from the clay
and true, it may seem like a stretch,
but it's thoughts like this that catch
my troubled head when you're away,
when I am missing you to death
when you are out there on the road
for several weeks of shows, and when you scan the radio,
I hope this song will guide you home
They will see us waving from such great heights,
"Come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"Come down now," but we'll stay...
I tried my best to leave
this all on your machine but the persistent beat
sounded thin upon listening
and that frankly will not fly.
you will hear the shrillest highs
and the lowest lows, with the windows down,
when this is guiding you home.
They will see us waving from such great heights,
"Come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"Come down now," but we'll stay...
Here's the song, called Such Great Heights. It really needs the music to make it scan, but it is a beautiful, soothing, and heart-twisting song when you listen to it. I feel as if there are not very many actual love songs being written these days, and this one is the real thing. The MP3 can be legally downloaded here.
I was thinking it's a sign
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images,
and when we kiss, they're perfectly aligned
and I have to speculate
that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes,
like puzzle pieces from the clay
and true, it may seem like a stretch,
but it's thoughts like this that catch
my troubled head when you're away,
when I am missing you to death
when you are out there on the road
for several weeks of shows, and when you scan the radio,
I hope this song will guide you home
They will see us waving from such great heights,
"Come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"Come down now," but we'll stay...
I tried my best to leave
this all on your machine but the persistent beat
sounded thin upon listening
and that frankly will not fly.
you will hear the shrillest highs
and the lowest lows, with the windows down,
when this is guiding you home.
They will see us waving from such great heights,
"Come down now," they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"Come down now," but we'll stay...
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Woah!
Well, I am here in this gorgeous new habitation of mine. Pictures soon! It's been a crazy few days. Jeff drove a Ford Escape all the way down from Boston to fetch my stuff and I, and then helped me stuff all my stuff into it. It just fit. Seeing as I don't drive, moving would have been a nightmare without him. He turned a big mess into a fun roadtrip. Yay Jeff!
Apparently my mum is now a reader of this blog, and...wait for it...a blogger herself!
Meet my mum at http://mum2twelve.blogspot.com/! More pictures of the gigantic Catholic family which spawned a Quaker creature such as I can be found there, along with stories of the blessed craziness, I'm sure.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Mummy!
Apparently my mum is now a reader of this blog, and...wait for it...a blogger herself!
Meet my mum at http://mum2twelve.blogspot.com/! More pictures of the gigantic Catholic family which spawned a Quaker creature such as I can be found there, along with stories of the blessed craziness, I'm sure.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Mummy!
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Ooh.
This is a hymn that always moved me powerfully as an adolescent. Later, I began to think of it as cheesy, but it is a hymn that comes back to me powerfully, over and over again, and has always done so, in the most barren and empty and dry and lonely parts of my life.
I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin,
My hand will save.
I, who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people's pain.
I have wept for love of them.
They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone,
Give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak my words to them.
Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of wind and flame,
I will tend the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them.
My hand will save.
Finest bread I will provide,
'Til their hearts be satisfied.
I will give my life to them.
Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I will say, for my vindication from all angles, The Vandals covered this song.
I am pretty sure it comes directly from Samuel, a book of the bible that continues to haunt me...
And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child.
Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.
And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.
1 Samuel 3:8-11
I took a cab through the city tonight and cried a lot for a lot of reasons, though I am going on to many wonderful things. But wherever I leave behind and wherever I end up. I hope I always wake up enough to say, "Speak Lord, thy servant listens".
I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin,
My hand will save.
I, who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people's pain.
I have wept for love of them.
They turn away.
I will break their hearts of stone,
Give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak my words to them.
Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I, the Lord of wind and flame,
I will tend the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them.
My hand will save.
Finest bread I will provide,
'Til their hearts be satisfied.
I will give my life to them.
Whom shall I send?
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
I will say, for my vindication from all angles, The Vandals covered this song.
I am pretty sure it comes directly from Samuel, a book of the bible that continues to haunt me...
And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child.
Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.
And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.
1 Samuel 3:8-11
I took a cab through the city tonight and cried a lot for a lot of reasons, though I am going on to many wonderful things. But wherever I leave behind and wherever I end up. I hope I always wake up enough to say, "Speak Lord, thy servant listens".
Friday, July 01, 2005
The Spirit is Movin' (and so am I)
Last day in New York City. I'm here in my apartment alone, with everything packed, and all two pieces of my furniture sold. I was sitting in my empty room earlier and feeling a bit like I was a castaway on the moon. It is so quiet here, it seems as if I must have accidentally packed the whole neighbourhood, not just the books and sweaters and billions of tiny odds and ends, and they've all gone to sleep in my filched FreshDirect boxes. All I can hear is the growl and mutter of the cars on the BQE, and nobody is even honking. My street is never silent, so this is a twilight zone experience.
I am trying to take this weird quiet time to settle my heart and pull nearer to the Spirit. The low-grade good-natured panic of any big change has been tailing me this week, and I feel very tired and tweaky. I know that God is always speaking, and that somewhere in the cardboard and dust piles and goodbye beers there is a message and a lesson. I haven't been hearing it or responding to it on an emotional level - for all my listening and worshipping I have remained moody in the extreme: giddy, insecure, sad, worried, excited, and above all, full of self-doubt. I've been wracked with random fears that I will somehow mess up one or all of the good things that have been so generously heaped upon me. I am trying consciously, as often as I have to, (sometimes 30, 40, 300 times a day), to take my life and place it back in God's hands, up and above the reach of mine.
It seems to me these days, and it is a new discovery, that I don't have to bludgeon my emotions into submission before I'm free to "be good" or "be prayerful". I used to wonder how I could ever begin on my journey towards holiness or wholeness while my emotional life was such a mess. And so I spent much too much time monitoring what was happening in my emotional weather, and couldn't get started.
Today I've decided: let it howl. Let the internal tantrums and gloating and quailing and quaking and shuddering and singing happen. I'm not going to fight them. I'm just going to pray.
I know I am a quote monster, but here are two important readings that have been soothing to me in this struggle:
Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord God, whereby thou wilt receive his strength and power from whence life comes, to allay all tempests, against blusterings and storms. That is it which moulds up into patience, into innocency, into soberness, into stillness, into stayedness, into quietness, up to God, with his power.
~George Fox
How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, towards Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orientation must be established. An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns. It is as simple an art as Brother Lawrence found it, but it may be long before we achieve any steadiness in the process. Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves, utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is within. In secret ejaculations of praise, turn in humble wonder to the Light, faint though it may be. Keep contact with the outer world of sense and meanings. Here is no discipline in absent-mindedness. Walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship. Keep it up throughout the day. Let inward prayer be your last act before you fall asleep and the first act when you awake. And in time you will find, as did Brother Lawrence, that 'those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep'.
~Thomas R Kelly
I am trying to take this weird quiet time to settle my heart and pull nearer to the Spirit. The low-grade good-natured panic of any big change has been tailing me this week, and I feel very tired and tweaky. I know that God is always speaking, and that somewhere in the cardboard and dust piles and goodbye beers there is a message and a lesson. I haven't been hearing it or responding to it on an emotional level - for all my listening and worshipping I have remained moody in the extreme: giddy, insecure, sad, worried, excited, and above all, full of self-doubt. I've been wracked with random fears that I will somehow mess up one or all of the good things that have been so generously heaped upon me. I am trying consciously, as often as I have to, (sometimes 30, 40, 300 times a day), to take my life and place it back in God's hands, up and above the reach of mine.
It seems to me these days, and it is a new discovery, that I don't have to bludgeon my emotions into submission before I'm free to "be good" or "be prayerful". I used to wonder how I could ever begin on my journey towards holiness or wholeness while my emotional life was such a mess. And so I spent much too much time monitoring what was happening in my emotional weather, and couldn't get started.
Today I've decided: let it howl. Let the internal tantrums and gloating and quailing and quaking and shuddering and singing happen. I'm not going to fight them. I'm just going to pray.
I know I am a quote monster, but here are two important readings that have been soothing to me in this struggle:
Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord God, whereby thou wilt receive his strength and power from whence life comes, to allay all tempests, against blusterings and storms. That is it which moulds up into patience, into innocency, into soberness, into stillness, into stayedness, into quietness, up to God, with his power.
~George Fox
How, then, shall we lay hold of that Life and Power, and live the life of prayer without ceasing? By quiet, persistent practice in turning all our being, day and night, in prayer and inward worship and surrender, towards Him who calls in the deeps of our souls. Mental habits of inward orientation must be established. An inner, secret turning to God can be made fairly steady, after weeks and months and years of practice and lapses and failures and returns. It is as simple an art as Brother Lawrence found it, but it may be long before we achieve any steadiness in the process. Begin now, as you read these words, as you sit in your chair, to offer your whole selves, utterly and in joyful abandon, in quiet, glad surrender to Him who is within. In secret ejaculations of praise, turn in humble wonder to the Light, faint though it may be. Keep contact with the outer world of sense and meanings. Here is no discipline in absent-mindedness. Walk and talk and work and laugh with your friends. But behind the scenes keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship. Keep it up throughout the day. Let inward prayer be your last act before you fall asleep and the first act when you awake. And in time you will find, as did Brother Lawrence, that 'those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep'.
~Thomas R Kelly
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