Rejoicing

Friends, rejoice for me. I have had such an experience of God. I am so spoiled by God. The minute I laid down my straining after a God I could address as "Thee", a personal God that could communicate, He rushed in to fill my soul. There are many things that came together to give me this experience as it has unfolded over the last five days, but the crowning glory was Kelly's Testament of Devotion which my Friend Bryan lent to me this First Day. I suddenly know, beyond any doubt that there is a real, personal, experiential God. I had lost that sense so drastically. More recently I had rediscovered an intellectual and even spiritual understanding of God, and a hunger for more, but just could not experience God/Christ as a person.

No matter how I tried, I felt like I was lying to myself, trying to talk myself into believing something I "knew" was untrue. Whenever I felt the presence of God, I told myself it was my imagination and religious hysteria - I realize now those are my ex-husband's words, not mine. I thought I was being rigorous in my search for the truth by rejecting the movements of my heart towards God, but really I was just being scared. I didn't want to open myself to God again because I feared that tragic loss. It's funny how some people have a fear of intimacy with other people after a traumatic break-up...well, I had a fear of intimacy with God.

Whatever God intends for me, I feel so much peace and such a desire for obedience. I know that if I am faithful in this way, there will be no rushing, and much discernment, and God will not allow me to fall or to make another terrible mistake. All this time, I've been so afraid because I know I cannot trust myself, with all my faults and old injuries, not to make a mess of things. Finally being able to hand everything over to God in holy obedience, begging him to take all control from me, leaves me with so much peace. It is shocking how I can feel so sure in my love and faith but so unconcerned with what comes of it, because I know that the power of God is over all.

I finally feel like my old self who could throw herself in the arms of God, but a grown-up version of her, ready to step off into the void of God in a way I was still too afraid to do when I was 18.

From Testament of Devotion...

You who read these words already know this inner Life and Light. For by this very Light within you is your recognition given. In this humanistic age we suppose we are the initiators and God is the responder. But the Living Christ within us is the initiator, and we are the responders. God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and darkness presses within us. "Behold I stand at the door and knock." And all our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us. The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening. The secret places of the heart cease to be our noisy workshop. They become a holy sanctuary of adoration and of self-oblation, where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life. And in brief intervals of overpowering visitation we are able to carry the sanctuary frame of mind out into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness, and in a hyperesthesia of the soul, we see all humankind tinged with deeper shadows and touched with Galilean glories. Powerfully are the springs of our will moved to an abandon of singing love toward God; powerfully are we moved to a new and over coming love toward time-blinded human beings and all creation. In this Center of Creation all things are ours, and we are Christ's and Christ is God's. We are owned beings, ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not faint.

But the light fades, the will weakens, the humdrum returns. Can we stay this fading? No; nor should we try, for we must learn the disciplines of His will.

The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere doctrine, belonging peculiarly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted or rejected as a mere belief. It is the living Center of Reference for all Christian souls and Christian groups - yes, and of non-Christian groups as well - who seriously mean to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. He is the center and source of action, not the endpoint of thought. He is the locus of commitment, not a problem for debate. Practice comes first in religion, not theory or dogma. And Christian practice is not exhausted in outward deeds. These are the fruits, not the roots. A practicing Christian must above all be one who practices the perpetual return of the soul into the inner sanctuary, who brings the world into its Light and rejudges it, who brings the Light into the world with all its turmoil and its fitfulness and re-creates it.

First Day Meeting

First Day Meeting

Behold,
how plain brown wood
touched suddenly with sun,
is gold.

~Edith Heilman

This poem was brought to me as a gift from a darling friend and Friend, Barbara, who is a regular at my coffee house. She is over seventy, and so full of life and light. This poem was written by her mother, who died when Barbara was eleven.

Isn't that poem just brimming?

This weekend

Psalm 30

I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice over me.

O LORD my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.

O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.

Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved.
LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.

I cried to thee, O LORD; and unto the LORD I made supplication.

What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth?

Hear, O LORD, and have mercy upon me: LORD, be thou my helper.

Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;
To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.

Quaker Jane

A very sweet lady I know from a Yahoo discussion group is putting together a lovely website...see the wonderful beginnings here...Quaker Jane

Love and estrangement

This may be the day of 1000 posts.


Those friends of mine who were very close. The ones with whom I prayed, shared, prophesied, spoke in tongues and oohed over Bible passages with. The ones with whom I shared very deeply, laughed with and cried with. Those friends who now know very little about where my faith journey has gone because I am too afraid to tell them, and perhaps they are a little too afraid to listen. Those friends who like to call me and say they've been praying for me, and tell me that they're sure Jesus won't give up on me and one day I'll come back.

While I love them, it is difficult to have a friendship when your friend is convinced you're straying away from the righteous path and fervently praying for your return whilst giving you the latest update on what the Lord has been telling them. Sometimes I feel like an awkward stranger when I am with them - no longer able to share myself and no longer able to understand so much of what they say and do. I have experienced such transformation over the last few years, that they no longer seem to know who I am. Or maybe its just that all the doubts, questions and secrets I kept buried for so long are now springing forth and its hard for them to understand. I wonder, can love overcome this? Can love re-unite us as friends and restore the intimacy and connection there once was?

This is from my friend Ruthie-Annie's blog, which I somehow had missed despite seeing her every week at 15th Street. I am really touched by this post. I'm struggling with this in a big way with my family, who I know aches everyday to think they have lost their firstborn - they used to talk in hushed tones about the adult children of friends who were "fallen away", and I know they pray to St. Monica, patron saint of dissapointing children...

Eternal and merciful Father, I give You thanks for the gift of Your Divine Son Who suffered, died and rose for all mankind. I thank You also for my Catholic Faith and ask Your help that I may grow in fidelity by prayer, by works of charity and penance, by reflection on Your Word, and by regular participation in the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist.

You gave Saint Monica a spirit of selfless love manifested in her constant prayer for the conversion of her son Augustine. Inspired by boundless confidence in Your power to move hearts, and by the success of her prayer. I ask the grace to imitate her constancy in my prayer for Amanda who no longer shares in the intimate life of Your Catholic family. Grant through my prayer and witness that she may be open to the promptings of Your Holy Spirit, and return to loving union with Your Church. Grant also that my prayer be ever hopeful and that I may never judge another, for You alone can read hearts. I ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.



I often field e-mails from my mom saying she misses me, she wishes we could talk the way we used to, about God, about important things, that we have nothing in common, that it seems our converations are on superficial level. Lately things have been eased slightly, but it is still a tension that makes me very sad.

*glow*

I am dancing on air after having read the first few exquisitely sensitive, insightful posts on a brand new "Urban Quaker" blog (are we witnessing the birth of a genre?), Consider the Lilies by a Boston friend, Rob.
He is a tremendously gifted writer, and I can't wait to see what he's going to write next. Go read his blog. Now.

Puppy Love

Well, there's a lot for this post, since I've been putting it off in favor of doing, as my UK aquaitances say 'f*ck-all'.

(You know, I have found my swearing ability diminishing drastically since going plain. I know it is a good thing overall, but it hurts my macho.)

First thing - my internal clock must stil be some analog dinosaur. Example. My alarm fails to go off. I am supposed to be at work at 8. My internal clock takes over.

Do I:

a.) Wake up at 7:30?
b.) Wake up at 8:30?
c.) Not wake up at all?
d.) Wake up exactly to the minute on the dot precicely the moment without a shade of doubt at 8:00?


The answer is d.) ladies and gentlemen. I don't know why this is so infuriating. I don't know why it pisses me off more to be so perfectly calibrated and have the result be so perfectly useless. Poo.

So there I was, scrambling for my clothes at 8:01 am, cursing wonderfully (I hadn't put on the plain clothes, you see) when I remembered I'm going to see Phantom of the Opera tonight. I don't have any "good" plain clothes yet (they are on their way) and I have a thing about people who go to the theatre looking crummy. So I got out one of my last remaining vintage dresses - a little 1960's number which is actually pretty conservative, knee length, wool. It makes me feel a bit like Minnie Mouse. Suffice to say, it's hardly that sexy, but I was walking knock-kneed all the way to the subway. It is shocking to me how quickly I got used to the amount of coverage that more or less traditional plain dress offers. I'm still pretty comfy in a pair of jeans, but even a slightly short skirt makes me feel absolutely exposed. I don't know what to think of that. Also, my whole vanity and body image reasons for taking up plain dress were justified. I was staring into every reflective surface, trying to see if my exposed calves looked fat. Jeeze. I am also wearing my last pair of heels because nothing else looks right with the dress. I'm 6 feet tall in heels.

All in all I feel like a nudist monster-truck rally.

All that aside, I spent Monday and Tuesday night at the Westminster Dog show. It was bar none, the best Valentine's day I ever had. It was awesome. Thrillingly boring, like a cuddly, fuzzy high-stakes golf tournament. I felt like we should also be playing cricket or croquet and eating scones and crumpets or something. The reality of course was that the audience was nearly %100 white middle America Today-Show-watching cutesy-sweatshirt wearing, big-bellied-and-bummed moms. The effortless blending of high and low really was spectacular. Guys with plastic trays of plastic glasses of expensive bad champagne also sold bags of cracker-jacks. I occasioned a fiscal and gastronomic catastrophe when I ordered a $6 hotdog. I believe hell froze over at that very instant.

I have a big touchy-feely spiritual post coming too, but now I've cracked myself up and can't concentrate.

Nudist monster truck rally.

Tragedy!

I murdered my laptop last night. I thought I'd go up to my bed and do some serious writing, all nice and comfortable. I put the laptop up ahead of me, and as I followed it, it slid off the pillow I'd so thoughtfully placed it on (for its comfort) and crashed to the floor.

It was an accident, so maybe I should say I manslaughtered it.

Or laptopslaughtered it. Either way, poo.

So if anyone hears a bit less from me, I am not dead.

My laptop is.

:(

Food.

Okay, time to be shallow as I possibly can, but I ADORE THE IRON CHEF!!!! I have never seen this before, because I seem to have a mandatory pop-culture waiting period before I can notice anything. This mandatory waiting period ensures that everyone else in the universe is over the particular item in question, just at the very moment I decide that I must hold forth on the subject immediately and lengthily.

But the voiceovers are so bad! So wonderfully bad! The soap-opera camera angles! The pot-bellied Jackie Chan impersonator! The bathrobes! The Japanese "Italian chef" dressed in an Italian flag! This is part olympic sporting event, part kung-fu movie, part talk show, part anime, part Westminster dog show.

Here is some actual transcription...

Announcer, introducing a judge: "Here is a man who also is loading up on chocolate and bananas!"
Judge, in hurt tone: "Why are you being faecitious about that!?"

Weird Random Announcer commentary on the subject of Valentine's day food....


"This jagged chocolate, it's not prickly in my mouth at all, or sharp, it only melts around."

"I was in Thailand the other day and I saw them doing this, and it looked so fun I just wanted to have an excuse to try it myself"

"Bananas it does not belong with alongside garlic!"

"Hey, I didn't really know that, bananas not eaten in Italy, I guess he's really going to have a big job up against him here..

"If you get it from a person you love, taste doesn't really matter, I guess..."

"He's not called the prince of pasta for nothing!!"


Ooooooh, the iron cheff is going to be completely smoked. That's okay, I was cheering for the challenger.


Yes, this posting has been 100% Quaker-free. I am catsitting, and have access to cable. All I do is sit and stare. And it may be a testament to the overall lameness of my social life, or some fundamental personality flaw, but I am sitting and staring at THE FOOD NETWORK and snickering at how innocently the most inane and awkward translations from Japanese grow exponentially to be unbearably suggestive.

Oh, thank God I don't have a TV.

PS. Also, I had his pots but I'd never seen the man...how the hell is Emeril famous? The man cannot talk and stir a batter at the same time. Yet...I guess if pushed I can begin to understand, on an intellectual level, his Robert DeNiro weds Martha Stewart in the back room of a filthy Coney Island video arcade charm. But still.

Three observances on and reactions to skirt-making

Observance 1.) Sewing a zipper in by hand, if you are very, very careful, is tremendously rewarding.

Reaction 1.) "Look what I can do! Hey friend! Look at this zipper! It opens, it closes! I did it myself! By hand! Hey boss, look what I can do! Look at this zipper! It opens, it closes! I did it myself! By hand! Hey, customer, look what I can do! Look at this zipper! It opens, it closes! I did it myself! By hand! Hey, Postman, look what I can do! Look at this zipper! It opens, it closes! I did it myself! By hand! Hey, stranger! look what I can do! Look at this zipper! It opens, it closes! I did it myself! By hand!"


Observance 2.) Seam allowances are not friendly guidelines. They are Laws of Nature. Do not add a 1/4 inch when you cut out the pattern, "just to be safe". Do not then sew a 1/4 seam allowance instead of the specified 5/8 of an inch seam allowance. I can't do the math, but it adds up to having an extra twoish inches of waist opening, which will not then fit the waistband pattern piece.

Reaction 2.) "Merde!" Pin, repin, eighteen times to make sure you're right about how wrong you are. Pin! Pin! Pin! "Merde!" It's still wrong, even though You've checked it eighteen times! Baste, baste, baste, check 18 times to make sure you've corrected the mistake. Rip! Rip! Rip! Get struck with a chilling thought that because you sewed in the beautiful zipper, and cannot possibly bear to take it out, you're going to have to make the correction a whole inch on one seam instead of half an inch on each seam, (or whatever it is) and this is a circle skirt, you may be completely throwing off the symmetrey of the thing.


Observance 3.) No matter how careful you may be in your stiches, sometimes you're still going to make a stupid mistake.

Reaction 3.) Maybe if you'd paid attention in geometry, you'd have a better idea of how serious this might be. Wait a minute...serious? This is a skirt, not an open-heart surgery. Chill. Yep. Chill.

A prayer

We had our first YAF group meeting last night. Though there were only three of us, it was quite amazing. The time was incredibly gathered and full. After we worshiped we chatted about plans and adventures we'd like to have in the future.

I had a very humbling moment in worship. I was trying to centre down, trying to pray, and I was just being faced back with this great emptiness. I was sad and frustrated, wanting to say "Speak, Lord, thy servant listens!" but I felt I was just bellowing it into blackness. I tweaked the prayer, and asked "Who is calling me? What is calling me?" Again and again I asked it, getting angrier and lonelier and finally, an answer came, but it felt like it was only an echo..."Who is calling you? What is calling you?"

Once I sat with that a minute, I realized it was the same crashing lesson that I can't seem to learn. I'm still asking for knowledge of a seperate God, floating somewhere in the ether, ready to come down and explain the universe to me if I just dash my brains out finding the secret code that will unlock heaven. I was told last night, not in sweet comforting terms, either, that what I have of God right now is what is right in front of me...the tasks, the people, the situations. I'd always said that to myself in sort of a singsongy, "Ain't I lucky! Lookit all the Gawd around me hereabouts!" sort of way. I think though, that was always in the context of expectation, that there was more immediately on its way. This time however, I was given to understand unequivocally that I am to stop looking for more at the expense of what I already have. My response was "That's all? That's all there is to God? Just people? Just the world? Just the universe?"

I immediately thought of the movie Neverland. J.M. Barrie, played by Depp, is putting on a circus in the park for some children, using only his imagination and the services of his big sheepdog, who he claims is a fierce performing bear. A little boy named Peter interrupts the performance, calling out "This is absurd. He's just a dog."

Barrie strides up, puts his reproachful face right into the boy's and cries "Just...What a horrible candle-snuffing word! That's like saying...that's not a diamond, it's just a rock. Just." and turns away to continue the makebelieve he was performing for the other boys, while Peter sits it out because of his heartbreak and doubt, missing all the magic.

I've been told, "This is all the God you're getting for now, until you figure out how use it." and "Finish what's on your plate before you look for another serving, or something else."

On the usefulness of doubt...

A girl on one of the few message boards I frequent these days offered these quotes on doubt, which I wanted to share...

"If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt.
But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently,
we may end in certainty."
Francis Bacon

"The faithfulness of doubt is often assumed by the
judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a
prerequisite for a living faith"
Madeleine L'Engle

Here are a couple more that speak to me...

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking."
Alfred Korzybski

"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heh heh heh.

I was sitting outside our coffee shop, and a very pretty girl came walking past. She stopped, and gave me that "ohmigod, I haven't seen you forever!!" look. Then she stared, and tried to speak two or three times. I said "Hello!"

"I'm sorry, but you look extraordinarily familiar..."

"..."

"Except you're dressed like an Amish..."

"...Quaker."

"Whatever, it's still extraordinarily weird..."

The she turned around and almost ran away.

It was...extraordinary.


Just one last word on my last post...I wanted to put two oft-quoted passages that cannot be quoted often enough...

"Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, so there is one true and perfect religion, but it becomes many religions as it passes through the human medium. The one Religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men and women put it into such language as they can command and their words are interpreted by others equally imperfectly. Hence the necessity of tolerance, which does not mean indifference to one's own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it. True knowledge of religion breaks down barriers between faith and faith."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"The humble , meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the masks, they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here make them strangers."

- William Penn

and, gosh, it's nice whenever we don't have to wait until death for a few masks to come down.

I am so touched...

There are some (I think) Hassidic young men who come to the place I work every Friday to give sabbath candles to the owner, who is a non-practicing Jew. They seem to be a part of some outreach program to bring strays back to the fold. They are always exceedingly kind and sweet. Because of my plain dress, and because it is often different young men each week, they approach me nearly every time and ask me if I am Jewish. I always say no, and for some reason, I always feel a little wistful about it. Today, finally, they came up to me shyly and gave me some candles, and a little card, and said "This is for you. Shabbat Shalom!" I looked at the card, and it said, "The path of the righteous gentile...the seven Noahide Laws." I went to the website on the card, www.moshiach.com, and was delighted to find some amazing, uplifiting articles. If you do not take absolutely everything literally, they are so fully of Light and hope. Many are even Quakerly. Some are written in no-nonsense prose, others with a more friendly, almost childlike plainness. For example, this except:

However, you don’t have to be Jewish to eat bagels and lox, and neither need you be Jewish for Moshiach to touch your life. For when Moshiach comes, the world will rise to perfection. Moshiach is not the relocation of Jews from many places to one place; Moshiach is not the eternal domination of one people and the eternal damnation of all others: Moshiach is the concept to end all concepts. Moshiach is Utopia. Moshiach is the answer to “Why are we here?” Moshiach will not just redeem the Jewish people from exile—he will redeem mankind from meaninglessness, and teach the purpose of life to the universe. No more school shootings, no more pain, no more war, no more rat race.

1. The Messiah within

Some things never change: animals, vegetables, minerals. But people do. Change is part of life. People change. Countries change. Societies change. The world changes. Why? Because people reject the status quo. People try to change themselves, things, life. Why? Because people want a better world—don’t you? If we knew there was nothing we could do about this mad world, we couldn’t get up in the morning. But something drives us on. This trait, this will, is the belief in Moshiach—the belief that the world will be better one day. Ultimately, the belief in Moshiach is the belief in ourselves, and in the eternal triumph of good.

2. What can/should I do to help bring Moshiach?

Good is like water collecting in a cup—drop by drop, deed by deed. When the cup is full, it overflows its sides. When we fill this world with enough good, G-d sends Moshiach. G-d gave mankind tools for good—the Torah for Jews, and the Noahide Code for non-Jews. Whatever your spiritual configuration, G-d is waiting for your move—our move. Let’s work together to bring Moshiach, now. Let’s do good.

I know this would be unacceptable to those who view Jesus as the literal, final Messiah, but for me, this actually comes much closer to my "spiritual configuration".

There is also an absolutely beautiful little article, which spoke immediately to my condition, on
The difference between destructive and constructive sadness.

Here is a taste...

There is nothing as whole as a broken heart. —Chassidic saying

Depression is not a sin; but what depression does, no sin can do. — Chassidic saying

There is another article on Tolerance that is pretty much the most thoughtful thing I have ever read on the subject, though from a profoundly Jewish perspective.

Of course, some of the stuff is just over my head, and some of it looks weird and bizzare to my alien eyes. But all in all, I feel so warmed and blessed by this little happening, I can't say.

Of making many books there is no end...

I am lost in wonder at Ecclesiastes. For all the mad raven's crowing in it, for all the misanthropy and misogyny, for all the great, thrilling, literary despair, I love the thing.

"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Do not be quick with your mouth,
do not be hasty in your heart
to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven
and you are on earth,
so let your words be few.
As a dream comes when there are many cares,
so the speech of a fool when there are many words.

When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, "My vow was a mistake." Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands? Much dreaming and many words are meaningless."

Though I know I am forgiven for my hasty, false vows in many things, I am struck to the heart by this, in a clean, razor-sharp lighting bolt.

There is something in the unrelenting doom of Koheleth that is both deeply convicting and deeply uplifting. "Meaninglessness! Vanity! Withering into dust! All men forgotten! Chasing after wind!" and yet he cared deeply enough to write a document that has remained and existed for thousands of years. There is a bone-deep humour in it, and yet I am neither laughing at him, nor with him. It's not satire, he's not being subversive, he is deeply in earnest, absolutely stone-dead straight-faced, and yet for some reason, reading the truth about ourselves is not the horrifying experience it is supposed to be. There is more meaning, and life, and breath, and drive in this poem to futility than in almost any other piece of writing I have found. Mortality, calamity, unfairness, misery, all are true, all are part of our existence, all are inescapable. I don't know how he does it, but somehow, knowing that in the end all things come to dust does not take away the thirst for living, and gives a sense of wholeness and peace rather than a compulsion to hysterical consumption.

Funny, innit?

"In the diminishment of the ego comes the expansion of the consiousness. This is the sublime."
-Joseph Campbell

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

I've been given to understand before that this was a bit over-exposed in the hippie generation, and abused by tacky self-helper types, but it touched me so deeply when I first read it, and finding it suddenly again, it strikes me as so very Quaker.

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
but let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune, but do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here, and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Meditating on detachment again, today.

I don't mean to get in the habit of recycling old posts, but as I rescue bits and pieces of my old blog, I find writing that is so relevant to my current condition that it's really centering to know I've been here before, and will likely return again. So here's a post from July 22nd of last year. Keep in mind I was going through an astrology phase. Still, I think the main lesson in Astrology is that it reminds us to slow down, look around, look inside, and see how the outer reality ("the stars" being only a convinient shorthand) corresponds to the inner reality.
------------------------------------------------

So after my sadness and freak out last night about how tenuous and fragile human relationships are, thinking of the dozens of people I've cared about that I may never see again, I sat down to meditate, and learned a lot about myself. My horoscope today is true in the long-term, not just for these 24 hours.

Tonight you may display great sensitivity and feeling in front of or when dealing with others. Or you may allow your thinking to be entirely overcome by personal and subjective considerations so that no one can communicate with you or understand you. This influence can go either way. On the positive side, it enables you to feel out the mood of a group of people so that you can appeal to their deepest emotional concerns. But on the negative side, this influence may make you shy away from groups or from people in general. The same energy that enables you to feel out moods also makes you feel vulnerable and exposed with others. Thinking and decision- making are not favored by this quality of time, because your mind is dominated by petty personal motives that cannot go beyond your immediate psychological necessities.

It's very true. This is a fundamental aspect of my personality in general. As I was meditating last night, the old St. Francis Prayer floated up.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.


I've always been able to pray the first part with no reservations. I want so badly to be all of those things. But last night, my mind faltered on the second bit. Why do I want to be all these things? And the answer came - because I want to be loved. I think my heart is far from pure in this respect, and always has been - my "mind is dominated by petty personal motives that cannot go beyond your immediate psychological necessities." My need to be loved is over-arching. I was reading No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton again a few weeks ago, and as I meditated, the first chaper on love came back to me. He says:

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy. . . .

There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be...Selfish love often appears to be unselfish, because it is willing to make any concession to the beloved in order to keep him prisoner...

A love, therefore, that is selfless, that honestly seeks the truth, does not make unlimited concession to the beloved. Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love. . . ."

The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received. This feels like a Koan. I try to ask myself honestly, in meditation, and in many situations in my day-to-day life "Am I seeking to love, or seeking to be loved?" The Koan is that the two are not really separable, but it's a hard thing to get your mind around. It is in giving that we recieve, but we must not give with the intention of recieving, or our love is not pure, and we're not really giving, at all, and so we won't recieve.

Sometimes I wonder if I should bother to question my motives or just not worry about whether my intentions are pure, and live moment to moment, doing what seems best and noblest in the moment. But without self-awareness in this respect, I may not know my level of detachment.

I can feel that I am growing in this area, being stretched a lot. I don't want to be slack with myself, because it is so easy to fall back into an unaware dream state when it comes to love. When it's going right, you stop thinking about it and checking yourself...but all things are impermanent. People die, move away, lose interest, lose their health...everything passes away. If you don't cultivate a pure love, devoid of self-interest, and instead, try to cling (even only internally) the experience will bring pain.

It's hard to imagine not needing to be loved. Isn't that biologically programmed into primates? We're social creatures, after all. And claiming to have no needs at all is prideful and dishonest. Can you make yourself not need anything? When I was more religious this question made me miserable. If I really believed in God, why would I need anything else? It made me doubt myself that I still needed so much human affirmation in my life, that I still got lonely, that I still wanted so badly to be loved by my fellow fallen creatures, when I had the perfected God in front of me. Now that I no longer believe in this God, I wonder, what's supposed to fill these holes we have inside ourselves?

The answer is probably that we need to heal these holes, not fill them. This is what Aristotle means when he says "Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient." If we have healed ourselves and are not looking for other people to fill up the empty, broken spaces inside us, our love will be pure and true and unselfish. And if and when it is returned, it will be the glorious side effect, meant to complete our love, not meant to complete us.

Reason #85927 I am a Big Plain Dork

So, back at the very beginning of my plain adventure, I made a skirt. I didn't want an elastic waist, and I didn't know how to do a zipper, and I didn't wait to find a pattern, so the skirt turned out...well...predictably. The worst part was the hem. I hate hemming. I abhore it. I detest, despise, and loathe it. So of course, I did an awful hack job of it.

Right away, I ran off, determined to do it right this time, and bought some amazing, coat-weight wool. I decided I would make an invincible, winter-proof skirt. I couldn't find a pattern I liked, so I decided to just get one of those silly poodle-skirt patterns, which look so easy, and just make the thing out of grey wool instead of red felt, and leave off the poodle. I don't have a sewing machine, but still, the project is a good way to spend time, and good discipline for me, since I'm so flakey.

Well, I chickened out, and the thing sat untouched and uncut in my closet. Finally, yesterday and today, I took it out, and though horribly intimidated by all the squiggles, arrows, and Cantonese commands (well, they weren't English) managed to cut it out with no mistakes. My concience twinged a bit...I had wanted a substantial skirt, but the pattern called for a LOT of material, and seemed a bit wasteful. Still, I thought, I didn't know better when I bought it all, and I'll probably wear the skirt a lot, besides it being a good sewing lesson for me.

I was just congratulating myself as I noticed how short the side seams were, when suddenly I stopped in horror. Of course, the thing is a circle skirt. Of course, using nearly six yards of material, the circumference of the thing is roughly the square footage of my bedroom.

All hem.

I, the hem-phobic, am now doomed to spend the next six years hand-sewing this hem.

Tender

One of my odder theological habits lines up with my rabid love of words. Often, when boggled by a thought or experience, I seize on a central word and etymologize the hell out of it. This seems comparable with some scholars' lust for eighteen million translations of the bible. (I share the inclination but not the drive for that one. Too lazy.)

In the light of my current struggles, I was thinking of how my heart thrilled to the use of the word "tender" in Early Friend's writing. Kwakersaur's comment on this perhaps being the condition of the newly convinced made me think of it again. Bear with me on this, there's something amazing at the end.

Here's the dictionary definition.

ten·der 1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tndr)
adj. ten·der·er, ten·der·est

Easily crushed or bruised; fragile: a tender petal.
Easily chewed or cut: tender beef.
Young and vulnerable: of tender age.
Frail; delicate.
Sensitive to frost or severe cold; not hardy: tender green shoots.

Easily hurt; sensitive: tender skin.
Painful; sore: a tender tooth.

Considerate and protective; solicitous: a tender mother; his tender concern.
Characterized by or expressing gentle emotions; loving: a tender glance; a tender ballad.
Given to sympathy or sentimentality; soft: a tender heart.
Nautical. Likely to heel easily under sail; crank.

----

Okay... now for the fun stuff.

tender (adj.)
"soft, easily injured," c.1225, from O.Fr. tendre "soft, delicate, tender" (11c.), from L. tenerem (nom. tener) "soft, delicate, of tender age," from PIE *ten- "stretch" (see tenet).

-----

Stretch? Oooh, interesting. Let's see tenet, as suggested

-----
"principle," properly "a thing held (to be true)," 1413, from L. tenet "he holds," third person singular present indicative of tenere "to hold, to keep, to maintain" from PIE base *ten- "to stretch" (cf. Skt. tantram "loom," tanoti "stretches, lasts;" Pers. tar "string;" Lith. tankus "compact," i.e. "tightened;" Gk. teinein "to stretch," tasis "a stretching, tension," tenos "sinew," tetanos "stiff, rigid," tonos "string," hence "sound, pitch;" L. tendere "to stretch," tenuis "thin, rare, fine;" O.C.S. tento "cord;" O.E. thynne "thin"). Connection notion between "stretch" and "hold" is "to cause to maintain." The modern sense is probably because tenet was used in M.L. to introduce a statement of doctrine.
-----

There is so much amazing stuff there to be unpacked. If you go even further you can find direct links in translation from this to "created." Being stretched, woven, knit together, made new, reborn, re-created. To be convinced, each moment will mean being made infinitely tender, and then somehow managing to be both infinitely tender and infintely strong. I hate spiders passionately, but I'm siezed with the lessons and metaphors of spider-web silk.

I am One with the Universe, and it Hurts

In response to Jeff's stunning comment on my last post, I am re-posting an entry I wrote last summer on my old blog.

-----------------
It is continually astounding to me, the way books seek me out. I must have some sort of homing signal for important works.

I randomly found a little book called "Daily Afflictions: the agony of being connected to everything in the universe." written by Andrew Boyd.

The book in its entirety is a little dark for me. (The man is a worshipper of Nietzsche.) I am drawn more to the Hafiz brand of spiritual experience - the sheer, unbounded joy of existence - the sense that Reality is so vast and so beautiful, all we can do is dance, gasping for breath. And yet, in the middle of my dance, I remember the suffering, and I stop. My own suffering, I can generally reconcile after a period of pouting or weeping. But the suffering of other people is much harder to understand. This entry from that book was so true to me that I started to cry. This entry speaks of what I think Jesus meant to show us in his passion and death:

"What is to give light must endure burning." - Victor Frankel

Many of us have set out on the path of enlightenment. We long for a release of selfhood in some kind of mystical union with all things. But that moment of epiphany - when we finally see the whole pattern and our sense of place in the cosmic web - can be a crushing experience from which we never fully recover.

Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must come prepared to touch and be touched by each and everything in heaven and hell.

I am One with the Universe, and it hurts.

I am constantly being told by my friends when they see me crushed by the vision of some great misfortune in the world, or the private grief of a friend or a stranger;

"You need filters, you need some armor, you can't just go through life feeling everything, because it will destroy you. You have to choose what you feel."

and yet, from my very youngest years, I can't remember a time when I didn't feel this sense of the entire world, full of pain and heartbreak and grief, rushing into me and shaking me down like the skeleton of an old house not meant to billet an army. I have sensed the impossibility of shutting something so enormous out without disfiguring my self. And I've also always questioned - if I could shut it out, would I want to? I can't shut another person out of my experience without shutting myself out of theirs. Somehow the pain of not sharing the sufferings of another seems a worse pain, to me. The agony of not being connected to everything in the universe seems much darker and more frightening.

I love this little book for the truth it contains, but I think he has not gone far enough. As the Buddha says, we must enter into our perceptions and feelings, positive, negative, and neutral, and seek out their roots. I can feel the blinding pain of another person, but if I allow it to blind me, then there are simply two suffering, blind souls instead of one, which helps nothing. There must be a way to truthfully and genuinely accept suffering without being destroyed by it. The Middle Path.

"Take up your cross and follow me!"

It's in every gospel. Yes, take it up, but take it up with joy. Is this what it means to go rejoicing into the flames, like all of my martyrs, laughing, filled with the deepest peace and contentment?

I think so, and if I can only get my mind around it, how beautiful it will be - to feel the grief of mourning and weeping in this valley of tears, and still dance in the joy and hope of Julian of Norwich that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

At the same time, how refreshing for someone to acknowledge that we're not born in this state of peace, and that even the strong sometimes shudder and lose courage.

------------------

In the end I remember the last verses of Isaiah 40, which seems to strike a reccuring chord in my spiritual life...this is from an amazing Jewish translation:

Youths may grow faint and weary,
And young men stumble and fall;
But they who trust in the Lord shall renew their strength
As eagles grow new plumes:
They shall run and not grow weary,
They shall march and not grow faint.

Generalized Spiritual Anxiety

From the tenor of my recent posts, even I can tell I've been struggling a bit on and off.

Since childhood, I've sometimes had these attacks of a strange, misty, unspecified feeling of guilt and unease. It haunts me through the day, surging up at random moments, and wakes me with a mild sense of dread at night. I can neither banish it nor attach it to any particular source.

I give myself an examination of concience, and try to match up my sins with the feeling, but while many of them have consequences and baggage of their own, they remain seperate from this malaise. It's a really yucky feeling - I try to escape it by centering down, but it seems to exist as a strong barrier against the one thing which could be its cure.

I know it will pass, as it always does, and in the meantime I recommend myself to my Friends' prayers, and abandon myself weakly to God. I am trying to be humble and peaceful in it, rather than taking it and running with it in some orgy of analysis.

It may be the Spirit's way of drawing me nearer by reminding me of my helplessness...not in a self-scourging way, but by lighting up the differences between cleverness and wisdom.

Trust in the Lord with all thy heart; and lean not to thy
own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy
paths...

...despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be
weary of his correction:
For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father
the son in whom he delighteth...

...The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding
hath he established the heavens.
By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds
drop down the dew.
My son, let not them depart from thy eyes: keep sound
wisdom and discretion:
So shall they be life to thy soul, and grace to thy neck.
Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall
not stumble.
When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: but thou
shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of
the wicked, when it cometh.
For the Lord will be thy confidence, and will keep thy foot
from being taken.

Silence

"I know of no other way, in these deeper depths, of trusting in the name of the Lord, and staying upon God, than sinking in to silence and nothingness before Him... So long as the enemy can keep us reasoning he can buffet us to and fro; but into the true solemn silence of the soul before God he cannot follow us."
- Quaker Faith & Practice (Britain Yearly Meeting) from John Bellows in 1895

There is a really great discussion going on in the comments of a Kwakersaur post about the reluctance of many Quakers to use "Jesus Language" - a sort of deliberate vaugeness of language about a definition of God, or relationships with God, and a commenter offered this quote, which really spoke to my condition. I was recently in an online discussion (which turned into more of a debate than I like) where we were talking about creeds - the use, value, shortcomings, and pitfalls thereof, and I find this quote applicable there, too.

I understand Friends' concern that this vaugeness and lack of definitive language can be more a sign of lukewarmness and cowardice than of thoughtfulness. It's an argument I try to stay out of, but one that I think about a lot.

The fact is, I share a deep craving for depth and reality, for real-world applications and consequences in the journey - I'm not here to skip stones. But my concern for truth rather than abstraction and the accompanying reluctace to seize on a proper noun for God is actually deeply at one with my horror of lukewarmness.

I want to be bold, I want to be sure, I want to go to a mountaintop and proclaim that "Yes, I believe in _________!!!!!!!!" I don't want to go soft and inoffensive around the edges, and yet I feel such a vulnerability, such a new, strong call to meekness, humility, and owning up to my ignorance, that for once in my life I am struck absolutely dumb. I cannot honestly lay claim to a Jesus, or a Christ, and only barely, some days, to a God. If a vauger word comes nearer to expressing the larger truth, it is a mortification to me, but I cannot in honesty deny it.

It does seem to me that the one article of faith that I cling to is that one can go from being a seeker to a finder - or rather, that there is something to be found. I have found Truth, or at least, encountered it. To say I've found in in partiality or in totality is actually a bit meaningless...by definition Truth (God) is complete, always, regardless of what I know or do not know of it, can or cannot say of it. To quote again from Hedwig, "There is nothing you can find that cannot be found." I have found something, I know. I can't say why I find my ignorance to be so huge in the face of this Truth. I can't really express how the fact that I have been a Finder makes me so absolutely sure that I remain a Seeker.

I am strongly convicted by this verse from 1 Peter:

"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

I am in the odd position of strongly having that hope within me, but not yet having an articulable answer, or even worse, wondering if there is one. In such a time it is so absolutely sweet to have recourse to the silence. There I am reassured, strengthened, reminded, and doctored with that hope, which I cannot deny, even as I fail to define it.

Peace

I have recently begun reading a truly remarkable book... Einstein on Peace. I’m finding it deeply moving, because it speaks so specifically to an issue that is plauging me: the realization that it is very difficult for the life of one who works for peace to be peaceful.

This quote from Einstein betrays the deep sadness and sense of brokenness that a person of sensitivity inevitably feels when trying to take stock of the world:

"The international catastrophe has imposed a heavy burden upon me as an internationalist. In living through this 'great epoch,' it is difficult to reconcile oneself to the fact that one belongs to that idiotic, rotten species which boasts of its freedom of will. How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will! In such a place even I should be an ardent patriot."

It's one of the obnoxious facts of life that there is no such place...no "Garden Enclosed", and that there is no "opting out" of the human race, and the world as it is, at least not without doing violence to your sense of perception. I'm thinking of two quotes, both of which I have found at times to be contradictorily true.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.”
- Anatole France

And:

"There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

This brings me to the crux of a problem that’s boggled me since my first faint inklings of heaven and hell. How can I be happy while there is suffering? The Buddhist answer of detachment didn’t satisfy me, I couldn’t grasp it, how to achieve it in this life. The question was, and remains, since there is no such island, how to you remain fully engaged in the reality of life, and in the struggle to better the world we’re in, without simply dissolving under the weight of sadness and suffering, and worse, selfishness and disaffectation that surrounds us?

Thinking about this in the new light I’ve received, the partial answer, at least, is one I find disturbing in its banality: moderation. Blah! It becomes a matter of not outrunning the spirit, not trying to make use of gifts we might not yet possess to change problems that are beyond the reach of our ability to affect.

I’m a natural-born heroine, and like all of my kind, believe I’m here to fix the world. No one can deny it needs fixing, and fast. I have always taken my identity largely from this grandiose bit of drama. I’m the passionate one with big dreams and plans, enthusastic, extravagant, foolhardy, brave, brilliant, dauntless, all but annointed the saviour of humanity. If not humanity, my country. If not my country, my meeting. If not my meeting, my family. Coming to terms with the fact that just getting up and facing the petty responsiblities of the day can take all the courage and generosity I posess, or maybe more, is pretty humbling. Also a bit scary. Also a bit sad. But I’m realizing that maybe living my life in a fever of Miss America dreams for a single-handed Change the World campaign is actually a bit selfish, completely inefficient, and in the end, leaves me anything but a heroine. In fact, it generally leaves me pouting and snivelling all over this blog.

There are several things that make it hard to come down to any sort of realism. For one, if I aim for the moon and miss, nobody’s going to blame me. They’ll probably pat me on the back and buy me flowers for trying. But what if I’m just aiming for a humble, simple, honest daily life where I try and fulfil the responsibilities in front of me? What if I miss that? What then?

There is also the very real fear that “coming down to earth” will make a pedestrian, mindless zombie of complacency of me. I don’t want to go through life “just doin’ my bit” and thinking my responsibilities go no farther, never challenging myself, or attempting something big and difficult. That cow-like contentment, just going through the motions, never rocking the boat – that sort of false security will never work for me. I find myself pondering how thin the lines might be between consideration and cowardice, discernment and denial.

There is a Peter Pan in me that thinks “accepting limits” is for losers. That growing up means giving up. Isn't there supposed to something noble and adorable about that sweet courageous fool who keeps attempting the impossible and getting beaten down? So what if tilting at windmills leaves you dead in the end?

If I say that I cannot fix the world, and use it as an excuse to withdraw, well then, yes, that’s worse than my current floundering bombast. But my current pattern of expecting the impossible is threatening to make me worse than useless. Is there a realism that doesn’t smack of defeatism?

I think of Ionesco, again…

“Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.”

I know I need to find a way to unite my dreams and visions of what my family, meeting, country, and world can be to a calm, reasoned, responsible routine of faithfulness. There must be a way to focus my efforts without reducing my drive. I can’t deny my nature, but what makes me think I can save the world when I can’t even pay my phone bill on time, or keep my temper? What is really driving all my indignation and raving about the state of the Society? If I was coming from a humble, quiet place, would I be upset, or would I respond with the love and wisdom that I’d fostered by just getting up and making my bed every day? How much energy am I wasting on emotionalism and dramatic thrashings about and wailings over the state of things?

These are certainly not new or novel thoughts, as can be seen by the fact that I am at no loss for quotes on the subject. (I’m never at a loss for quotes, see, here’s a quote defending my persistant use of quotes…Emerson said “The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more." Ha.) But they are revolutionary, applied to my life. The challenge of living quietly, of becoming less dependent on expressing myself in Important Capitalizations and italics at all times, of becoming (barf!) slow and steady, seems somehow more daunting that foaming at the mouth over the last miserable thing Anne Coulter said, or crying myself to sleep about Tsunami victims, or staying up all night worrying about how the last Business meeting went. It would mean changing at a deep and maybe painful level. It would be a conversion of huge dimensions. It would mean going beyond soarings of the spirit and wallowings in the depths of despair. It would mean growing up, for real.

On God and Being Lonely

I was reading an interview with Douglas Coupland today, and he had something very interesting to say about being in your 20s these days, especially living in a big city.

"We live in an incredibly transient culture. You go from the intense
socialization experience of school, then move to the other side of
town — or to Los Angeles — where you're dumped into this culture where
it takes an incredible amount of money just to live. You're stuck
finding your own way and not quite sure who's good or evil, who's
using you, "Is it me or is it the alcohol?" And in the midst of all
this, you're feeling totally disconnected from a lot of people. Are
you clinically depressed? No! You're just lonely, and no one told you
what it was or how to identify it, the shapes or colors or forms of
it, so you think you're going mental. And because people tend to hang
out with people their own age, everyone around you looks great, like
they all just stepped out of a shampoo commercial or something, so you
think, "They couldn't possibly be experiencing all this crappy shit
that's inside of me." Before you even discuss it with people, you've
already shut yourself down. And that's your twenties!"


Loneliness is something I mused about a great deal in my just-arrived-in-NYC blog.I had more friends than I had ever dreamed of, a full social calendar, and I still found myself occasionally staring in a bathroom mirror asking myself what's wrong?! Why do I feel so lonely? Occasionally, those moments return, even with my refound faith in the One who has promised to never forsake us.

Williamsburg is muffled and deserted tonight...you can stand outside in the snow for ages without seeing or hearing another soul. I went to a friend's house after a solitary Saturday spent staring at old movies and watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a movie I had not seen since another Saturday, this one alone in my apartment for the first time. Erik was away for the weekend, and I took advantage by going to the video store and renting all the movies he never wanted to see. I had a boringly wonderful Jane Austin flick, some new release things that didn't have a good enough arthouse pedigree...and I can't remember what other things, because I didn't end up watching any of them at all. I'd tossed Hedwig into the mess because some of my theatre friends had mentioned it once. I put it in first, and then watched it on repeat the rest of the weekend. I was in an odd state of soul-shock. Melodramatic, yes, but I had somehow found in this queer, campy bombast a perfect depiction of what it felt like to be me at that point. Alone, Godless, a freak, a fraud, a failure, and somehow still trying to find a way (any way)to avoid loneliness. One song in particular gripped me for months afterwards, but I hadn't thought of it in ages, after I'd left that horrible period, that wicked little town in North Carolina. When I watched the film again today, the same song had me by the throat.

It still applies, with the old meaning, and new ones. The "voice" in the song has changed now. The first time, I had no idea who was singing the song, though I knew it was to me. Listening again, I was flooded with thoughts of how far I've come, and how lost you can feel in the process of "finding yourself".

You know, the sun is in your eyes
And hurricanes and rains
And black and cloudy skies

You're running up and down that hill
You turn it on and off at will
There's nothing here to thrill or bring you down
And if you've got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town

Oh Lady Luck has lead you here
And they're so twisted up
They'll twist you up, I fear

The pious, hateful, and devout
You're turning tricks 'til you're turned out
The wind so cold it burns
You're burning out and blowing 'round
And if you've got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town

The fates are vicious and they're cruel
You learn too late you've used
Two wishes
Like a fool

And then you're someone you are not
And Junction City ain't the spot
Remember Mrs. Lot and when she turned around
And if you've got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town...

....when everything starts breaking down
You take the pieces off the ground
And show this wicked town
Something beautiful and new

You think that luck has left you there
But maybe there's nothing
Up in the sky but air

And there's no mystical design
No cosmic lover preassigned
There's nothing you can find
That cannot be found
'cause, with all the changes you've been through
It seems the stranger's always you
Alone again in some new
Wicked little town

So when you've got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town
Oh, it's a wicked little town.

A poem for the day

Stop Being So Religious - Hafiz

What
Do Sad people have in
Common?

It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past

And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.

What is the beginning of
Happiness?

It is to stop being
so religious
Like
That.

Gorilla snow angels

I'd like to thank God, the Universe, and Everything for this snow. This is the first real snow in the city this year. Last year I arrived to a city full of grey snow, tears from wind and other things freezing to my scarf constantly, for months and months.

This year the snow has come like a suspension of some bitter sentence, making me feel about five years old. I just got in, and my cheeks are tingling in a nearly forgotten way. As Scott, Lor and I were walking to the subway from band practice, I snowballed poor Lor in the hat (it was a beaut of a shot, but he has a right to never forgive me) and then, back in Brooklyn, I asked a perfect stranger in the street if it was a captial crime to snowball someone you didn't know. He lowered his head and ran away. I snowballed him but missed on purpose...he never even looked up. In the last three block stretch to home, I saw on the sidewalk an untouched Amanda-sized patch of snow. I couldn't help it - I, yes, I, sophisticated little Miss Amanda of the City laid down in an NYC street and made a snow angel. She was lovely, but the outline of the Big Ugly Parka added a certain, erm, simian touch. Still, the lines were graceful.

I think I will be ninety and love the snow like this.

At this very moment

I am at the crisis of the movie Roman Holiday

Can you believe I've never seen it before?

I just wanted to record that this is the very moment in history that I am breaking my heart over the best movie ever, which I have never seen before but know will have a wonderful ending.

Gregory Peck's resolve is shattering before my very eyes.

Thank you.

*beep*

Sometimes I have this conversation.

Amanda: I don't believe in you, God.

God: Ah. So who are you talking to, then?

Amanda: Oh, f*ck!

I think if God had an answering service, that might be his recording. Not the last bit. The middle bit.

I think I was having this conversation on the way to the subway this morning, but I'm not sure. It's hard to hear anything but unintelligible muffled noises from within this mountain of clothing I have built for myself to live in. It is COLD in NYC, boys and girls. It's about -15 celcius, which is much colder than fahrenheit. I finally had recourse to the Big Ugly Parka, even.

The Big Ugly Parka is a hand-me-down, several times over. It is either some sort of military surplus, or it would like to be. It is big. It is ugly. It is also a parka. I've been trying to give it away for a year, no one would have it. This morning, when I tumbled regretfully from my nest of warm air that is a loft-bed (heat rises) I shrieked with the draft coming through my window and I knew I was going to have to play nice with the parka.

It's about 4 feet long, green on the outside (slightly reflective) orange on the inside (slightly introspective) with a collar/hood of grey fake marmoset fur. If the rest of my wardrobe were skimpier/cooler/more ironic/80's inspired, this coat would likely be my most valuable accessory, matched to, say, a pair of turquoise pumps and hot-pink fishnets. Alas, instead it transforms me into a long green turd-shaped object.

But!

I fell in love with the Big Ugly Parka, ladies and gentlemen.

I was (and am) already remarkably layered. I am wearing, in rough order, a pair of my old thick ballet tights, a pair of "wool thermal boot socks", a pair of long thermal pants, a pair of flannel leggings, a log thermal slip, a thinnish wool skirt, a cotton cardigan, a thinnish wool dress over all of that, a heavy wool sweater, and a wool scarf. And it's still cold, until I put on the Big Ugly Parka. Then, only my face has to deal with the unfortunate choice of breathing or freezing. The rest of me is toasty, oblivious to the outside world. Bad luck, face.

Anyhow, thanks, Big Ugly Parka.

Also, in a bit of extreme oddity, perhaps you have all read this, but newscientist.com is reporting on recently declassified papers about "Really Bad Ideas For Chemical Weapons" (my title) rejected by the pentagon. One of these ideas is a "Gay Bomb" which would apprently turn entire platoons of enemy combatants into raging homosexual monsters. Such a weapon, says the proposal, would strike a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

For the love of God.

Definitions

There are times when I am seized with a great fear that Quakerism is just my newest delusion. One of the greater banes of my life is my seemingly endless facility for fooling myself. If you give me a week and some solitude, I can convince myself of nearly anything. My query for myself this week (at least)is...

What does it mean to be convinced?

I have a good inkling it has nothing to do with convincing myself, but rather having an experinence beyond myself - it's nothing I can talk myself into or out of, which is frustrating. I have a feeling that is is a lot like what is referred to in the Velveteen Rabbit as "becoming real."

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him."

I wonder if this is it - if becoming convinced is less of a St. Paul thrown by his horse moment and more of a continual happening. If I want to get metaphysical about it, maybe it is a happening outside of time. No, screw that, I don't want to be metaphysical about it.

All I know is that for the past year, I have had this line of Aeschelus ringing in my ears...

"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."

In honour of MLK, regarding dreams...

"There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to "realize" myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have "succeeded," this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is "realizable." Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is."

~Eugene Ionesco

Hmm

Well, a bit of silliness, those of you wanting to know what I looked like before I went plain, when I still wore makeup *gulp* click on my profile, and look it that picture full-sized, because I'm not so googly-eyed as the thumbnail. Soon I should have an "after" picture, and we can all have a chuckle. :) I just found this photo-booth shot on a webpage where you can recommend your friendly exes to other girls (I recommended a great one, but he's taken now by a very sweet woman, sorry ladies. What can I say, I'm a natural at sales), and was all "Dude! Who's that chick?!" So I thought I'd share.

Here I Yam

as my little brother (the 5th one) would say.

Well, the rain or something's been sealing my lips, or fingers, I guess, and I've been disinclined to keep up my end of most correspondance or blog or any such thing. The days have been mostly spent murdering time gruesomely and brutally within the four walls of the wee coffee shop where I live, but it didn't go by without a couple of noteworthy happenings.

Noteworthy happening #1... Lor and I recorded a song for a human-rights convention in Calcutta. He'd written the song last year after a little girl named Purnima, held a press conference about her gang-rape and torture. It is epidemic in Bangladesh as well as all over the world. You can read brief accounts and see pictures of women, some as young as 4 years old, who have been victims of this racially-motivated violence at the website of the Bangladesh Awami Leauge. I think the song will be very well recieved. The person who requested the recording was nearly in tears, and he begged us to write a short message to Purnima and autograph it. I wouldn't have dreamed of it - I felt quite ashamed to be seen as a celebrity by a little girl who has been through such horrors and been so brave. But he insisted it would thrill her, so we did it, though I had to go away and cry somewhere afterwards.

#2 We played a benefit for Tsunami victims at the Park South hotel. It went really, really well, though I had the most wretched stage-fright before. All of the music was wonderful, and everyone was very kind. It is a funny thing, performing in plain-dress. It seems in a way quite a bit at odds with itself, but then, my motivations for plain dress are less humilty than truth, and since in truth, I'm a performer, there's no real conflict. More noticiably, it was the first time since moving to NYC that I've gone to a big social event and not been hit on - at all. Everyone was friendly and anxious to speak with me, which was very gratifying, but nobody flirted with me at all. It sounds ridiculous, but it was a little sobering. I've been so used to making a character of myself before I "go out" and attracting all the attention I want whether I really want it or not. Costume and makeup are powerful social tools. I can't say I was upset or even disappointed - I'm so far from the dating mood these days that it was actually a good relief. But it was sobering in that - "Oh gosh, this is actually real and not just in my head anymore" way.

#3...well, no number three. I guess that's it.

Okay....

This is not very Quaker, nor is it very current, nor is it very nice. But wow, it's very funny.


"Notice of Revocation of Independence

To the citizens of the United States of America

In the light of your recent failure to elect a
reasonable President and thus to govern yourselves, we
hereby give notice of the revocation of your
independence, effective today...

...Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume
monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and
other territories. Except Utah, which she does not
fancy. Your new Prime Minister (Tony Blair for the
97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that
there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a
Minister for America without the need for further
elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire will be circulated next year to
determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid to the transition to a British Crown
Dependency, the following rules are introduced with
immediate effect:

1.) You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford
English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check
the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just
how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally,
you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.
Look up "vocabulary". Using the same 27 words
interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and
"you know" is an unacceptable and ineffective form of
communication. Look up "interspersed".

2.) There is no such thing as "US English". We will let
Microsoft know on your behalf.

3.) You should learn to distinguish between English and
Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.

4.) Hollywood will be required to occasionally cast
English actors as the good guys.

5.) You should relearn your original national anthem,
God Save The Queen, but only after carrying out task
one. We would not want you to get confused and give up
half way through.

6.) You will no longer be allowed to play American
football. There is only one kind of football. What you
refer to as "football" is not a very good game. The
2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world
outside your borders may have noticed that no one else
plays American football. Instead you should play
proper football. Initially, it would be best if you
played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those
of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play
rugby (which is similar to American football, but does
not involve stopping for a rest every 20 seconds or
wearing full body armour like nancies).

7.) You should declare war on Quebec and France, using
nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85%
of you who were not aware that there is a world
outside your borders should count yourselves lucky.
The Russians have never been the bad guys. (Merde is
French for "sh*t".)

8.) The fourth of July is no longer a public holiday.
The 3rd of November will be a new national holiday,
but only in Britain. It will be called "Stupidity
Day".

9.) All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap
and it is for your own good. When we show you German
Cars, you will understand what we mean.

10.) Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us
crazy.

Thank you for your co-operation."

Deep calleth unto deep

Psalm 42
(To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.)

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

Ah me.

Well, I took myself out to the movies and saw Spanglish, which had me sniffling or outright weeping the whole way through, when I wasn't laughing hysterically. I loved it. It actually captured some of the most excuciatingly uncomfortable bits of being human and imperfect in such a singluar way. It is sobering to watch Sandler pull a Carrey and actually nail an exceedingly sensitive role - the only slight hints of Sandler-ism comthing through in a scene where he's absolutely hammered. The laughs nearly all come from his wife, who's a complete basket-case in an over the top yet strangely all-too believable way. Also, the two young girls steal the film, I think, especially the one who plays Sandler's daughter. I just fell in love with her and hope I have a kid just like her someday. She slew me. Congratulations, kid, whoever and wherever you are. I'm so pleased, I just expected a silly chick-flick, and this was nothing of the sort.

back to the Shipment O' Plain I got today, here's something I wrote to our Friend Jeff...

"A little something to make thee giggle - I was bored when I got home and triedon the daft apron again. I suddenly realized that I'm supposed to pin the apron, rather than tie it, and it looks much, much better. I think. There are no full length mirrors in our house, since my non-Quaker agnostic roommates are both actually nearly as plain as me (it's such a great reality check) so I've been wandering aound the apartment trying to get a glimpse of my vain plain self in one of the windows. Heh. The cape part of the apron does SUCH a good job with what it's supposed to do, I actually feel extremely sobered when I do get the slightest glance at my shapeless self! Eeenteresting.

I'm still not going to wear it out, except to show a few on my friends who will be amused/intruiged. Blatant misuse of plain garb, I know. Heh."

Someone asked if people treated me differently when they encounter me "plainly"...well, sometimes. To be honest, I think my plain (until I put on the silly apron) is subtle enough that notbody really bats an eyelash. Those that see me everyday raised an eyebrow at the fact that a.) I only seem to have two or three outfits in rotation, b.) that they all consist of longish skirts and a sweater in grey or brown, and c.) my hair is always covered by a bandana, or a crochet skull-cap worn as a snood. If you just saw me and didn't know me, you might assign me to the "hippie" group as much as the "slightly obsessively religious" group.

This is what I thought. Until last night. I wasn't even dressed super-plain, I thought, but I stopped by a pub for a drink with a friend. Some really annoying really drunk dude yelled out "You look like a mennonite!" I smiled and said "I'm not a mennonite, I'm a Quaker." He shook his head and yelled, louder, a few inches from my face..."Welll....you LOOOOOOOK like a MENNONITE!". I replied "Yes! and you look like....an asshole!" but I only whispered it, and he didn't hear.

Which is good.

Yep.

Just noticed...

One of the URLs that pops up when you try to enter a comment is

"http://www.blogger.com/add-comment.do"

It made me smile because I heard it in my head in this beseeching voice, coaxing me to "Add a comment - doooo..."

I dunno why I feel the need to say that except to say, I'm coming to value to comments on this blog more and more - so, add a comment - dooooo...


In other news, my clothes from Plainly Dressed.com arrived today - or rather, I should say I picked them up today. One of the fun things about being poorish and living in an apartment building is that there is no doorman, no office, no butler, no house-robot, no nothing in the building to accept packages, so you have to walk to the post office in the rain and pick them up yourself. Uncivilized! I'm really quite put out about it. :)

They arrived at the post office on Monday, but working 7 am - 7 pm, and the post office being open 9am - 5am, it was hopeless. Today being Saturday, the coffeeshop doesn't open until 10, and I was able to make it.

Still not sure what I think of my dress - I'm so tall and it turned out shorter than I expected it, and it looks a little funny. It makes me look both younger and wider than I really am, which in terms of battling my delusions of elegance is probably good. But I keep looking for a skipping rope to jump - I haven't had this particular mid-calf hemline since oh, grade 3? Whatever, it's beautifully made, and all signs point to it wearing like iron.

The apron I ordered for protecting it at the coffeeshop I rejected out of hand as soon as I half-tried it on. It's not wide enough to be really useful, and it seems more symbolic and decorative than anything else. Plus it makes me look really, really silly.

Like rolling around in a mudpuddle hooting silly.

Like a fish on a bicycle silly.

Like Weird Al "Amish Paradise" music video silly.

That one is going home to the little sisters for them to add to their dress-up costume closet.

The thing I was dying for most in this cold winter rain were my boots. I was so nervous about them coming too small I ordered a size too big, and - ta-da! They are a size too big. Well, it's better than too small, and I'll get some thick socks. But they seem watertight, which is a big improvement over the old dying Payless Pleather monsters. They also seem very sturdy. Boots, meet Amanda - Amanda, meet boots. Since this will be my sole footwear for the forseeable future, I figure we should get to know each other well. I'm looking forward to when I've broken them in. They are not too stiff, but still...I also think I'm going to buy some arch supports or something, because they are nearly as flat-footed as I am.

The rib-knit slip I ordered is thinner than I expected, but it makes sense - it's made out of that very thin thermal material, like undershirts and stuff, which magically works like a much thicker fabric. Theoretically it should help keep me warm, but on colder days I still think I'll need a long-sleeved thermal undershirt. I'm feeling kind of chilly as I type this. The flannel things I ordered were medium weight but are very snuggly.

Next time I order I'll see if I can't pay extra for another 3-5 inches on the bottom of the dress. The very strict part of myself scolds, saying this is a perfectly good length, modest, convenient, servicable, I'll never trip on it going up subway stairs, and it saves fabric. But for the love of God, the 4 inches of be-stockinged leg visible between my hem and my boot tops may tempt men into sinful thoughts, and have them cast into hellfire to burn forever more. That, and I keep having that damned urge to skip rope.

Blah blah blah blah...

I'm a little tired this week, though I have no particular reason to be. While my mind and heart have been working overtime sending out letters in a bottle to God, my inclination to speak about them or share them has shrivelled. I trust this is temporary - I think it would require a major tear in the fabric of the universe to shut me up for long.

So, at the risk of closing what is already a smallish circle of bloggers, I really want to encourage everyone to take a look at beppeblog because our Friend is blogging really amazing stuff about the tsunami that is really speaking to me. I'll quote beppe quoting Tom Wright to give you a taste...he includes a link to the rest of the article in his entry:


"...it tells a story about Jesus's own sense of abandonment, and thereby encourages us to embrace the same sense of helpless involvement in the sorrow of the world, as the means by which the world is to be healed. Those who work for justice, reconciliation and peace will know that sense, and perhaps, occasionally, that healing.

This isn't the kind of answer that the Enlightenment wanted. But maybe, as we launch into the deep waters of another new year, it is the kind of vocation we ought to embrace in place of shallow analysis and shrill reaction."

Jumbled.

I'm completely making this entry up as I go along. (Why should this entry be any different?)

I thought I'd set the standard of profundity for this year's blog by discussing the contents of my solitary afternoon in my Brooklyn apartment. I'd like to make the following points...

1. Playing by Heart is an astoundingly bad movie.

2. I cried anyhow.

3. Despite the banality and bathos of the film, Jon Stewart as a romantic lead is a stroke of genius, and why can't they do that more often? *obligatory swoon*

3.1 How can Gillian Anderson score this calibre of leading men, and remain so solidly B-list?

Thank you.

I am currently listening to a CD entitled:

"CD 4 U ♥ TONY"

from one of my stalkers. It is a very good mix CD with a great version of the ballad Matty Groves sung by Joni Mitchell, and also the incongruous, blasphemous, but astonishingly apt "What if God Smoked Cannabis"

...

Oh yes, now for the Quaker content. I went to both early and late meeting this morning. I am feeling so tremendously lazy at the moment I don't even want to start on my reactions and all, but I'll give it a wee go anyhow, because I'm just that dutiful.

The most important thing that hit me, I think, was when I was sitting in meeting thinking about the command we have to love one another. This is something I can get a bit arch about, feeling as if I have an infinite capacity to love. I thought, how long can we dare to ignore this command? Who, I thought, do we think is meant by this command - Osama Bin Ladin, some blue-eyed orphan we see on TV? Then I began thinking about some people I can't stand (well, I'm not ALL sweetness and light) feeling strongly the temptations of hermitism, and remembering that line attributed to Fox: "I love that of God in him, but very little else." and I was thinking...

I say that to myself all the time as if it is a kind of license to be annoyed and disgusted by people. What exactly IS "that of God" in this or that person? I realized that I was visualizing it as some clean, glowing, yellow ball of light floating just over their foreheads. Unthreatening, disembodied, undemanding. Just an abstract little halo that I could say I loved, and leave the rest. I realized that this was hogwash, and my stomach turned over. It's so easy for me to have abstract love for everyone from a newborn baby to an exhumed evil dictator. But a real, bloody, in the flesh heart-love? That I reserve for very few, if any.

I remember having a temper tantrum before God when I was a young teenager, and very lonely, spitting God's disembodied abstract love back at Him. What good are moonbeams like that when all you need are a pair of arms?

I wrote a very sad little poem named Gepetto's daughter when I was 18, a mixture of children's fairy-tales Pinocchio and The Velveteen Rabbit about what it might mean to love a real person for the first time, instead of all the millions of daydreams and fairytales I had loved, and one bit went...

Puppet, we will barter all these
blue light specials
from an old blue fairy,
for you, real boy.

You are a real boy.

Flesh and blood breed fleshly fear
Real brings broken whiskers...

It was a slightly overwrought way of discovering before I understood it what it means to try and love the reality rather than the abstraction, whether it's a life partner, a friend, an enemy, or a God. Every time I come back to it, it is a rude shock. I am dying to raise my face to a celestial idol-God, ask Him to lift me up, take me away....disembody me...and all the time I am learning that often I must stoop down to Him, in the oozy, smelly, weepy primordial muck of us all. Just that sentence can show you how good I am at this.

I do rapture quite well. It is this knowledge that is making me so beastly strict with myself in opening up the religious sensations I may have. I can forfeit a true knowledge of God, what I say I want, by substituting my own glowing halo for the face of flesh He has taken on. All of this is not a matter of "I must do this to be good" but - "I must do this for my own good." As long as I refuse to love the incarnated God here with me, I will never truly experience the spiritual God. My worship will continue to be empty, and I will continue to be disappointed by the emotional idols I build in my imaginations of Him. How many times have I thought in despair "But just last week God was so REAL to me and now I can't feel anything!" and thought I was being abandoned? It always turns out to have been some unsustainable fantasy God that I had cooked up out of enough eye-squinching and soul-straining. If I truly hunger for the Real God, I know where I have to find Him.

When I think of Jesus, that troublemaker, I think, Why? There's a lot of the Gnostic about me - half the time I wish He had stayed Up There, where I could handle Him - then I'd know where He was and I wouldn't have to trouble myself with the sniveling reality that humanity (and I include myself, of course) can be. But when you truly think of it, where would that leave us? If I didn't have to find God in my fellow man - if there were no God buried somewhere in side each of them calling out to me, would I spare them a thought? Would they spare me any love? We'd all be lost in abstraction and that pale moonlit love that I found so unsatisfying as a child.

Even that last bit is off the mark - God is not buried somewhere inside these people I must struggle to love - He's in every cell, gesture and tic, in every phrase that makes me bristle, every expression that makes me wince, in the very things that irritate me into a state of confusion. It is these very things that I must learn to love, or it will go badly for me.

Drat!

The horrifying image of St. Francis scooping the pus from a leper's sores into his mouth in love, because he found God there, still nausiates me, but isn't that what I must do, metaphorically? My worries that trying to love someone I find distasteful will be an exercise in pride are shattered by this idea. In this shocking example there is no pose, no room for pomposity. What kind of transformation of soul would be necessary to reach that level of humility, passion, lunacy of love? St. Francis didn't MAKE himself do that, he was compelled to, by the strength and reality of his passion. I can only pray, because I DO have to force myself - although I define myself first and foremost as a loving person - am very proud of my lovingness, in fact, I have no overwhelming bottomless well of divine love that makes me react that way automatically. How am I to find this capacity for Love?

I have often prayed, "Fill me, O Lord!" and then, later, I realized that I was filled - filled with my own memories, resentments, predjudices, pain, anger, experiences, judgements. And so I prayed, "Empty me, O Lord!" waiting for some divine dumptruck to come and cart it all away, and leave me ready to receive Him - I remember the words from Ezekiel:

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh."

But rereading in context, I see this promise is part of a covenant - in fact, five verses later -

"And you shall remember your wicked ways, and your doings that were not good: and your iniquities, and your wicked deeds shall displease you.

It is not for your sakes that I will do this, saith the Lord God, be it known to you: be confounded, and ashamed at your own ways"

I see it is a long process of repentance on my side...as well as grace on His side. Bit by bit, all of those things filling up my heart must be transformed- because they cannot be taken away without doing violence to reality. My new prayer must be "Transform me, O Lord!"

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.
Pearl S. Buck