Obstacles

Yesterday I took a walk by the river.  It was beautiful. Serene.  I climbed over rocks, walked on sandy shores and contemplated my life and which direction it was flowing to.  As I walked, I noticed the sounds of the river changing, getting louder, making more noise, creating more friction.  I kept walking and the river got quiet, still flowing, still moving in the right direction, just more smoothly and without all the racket.

It was the obstacles that created the noise.  The river didn't change, it kept flowing in the direction it was created to flow in, it just got noisy and rough when there were obstacles in its path. Rocks. Branches. Debris.  These things caused all the noise and turbulence in the river.  In many ways these obstacles make the river more beautiful, more fun, more daring.  In some ways, they change the direction of the flow for a bit, but eventually the river continues to flow in the direction it is intended to flow. Never departing from its natural course.

My life is like that river.  It gets noisy and disturbed when there are obstacles blocking my path.  Sometimes those obstacles make it beautiful, daring, more fun to ride for a while.  Eventually, those obstacles and distractions have to get out of the way so that I can get on with my natural flow and head in the direction I was intended to go.

Recognizing obstacles for what they are, moving around them, continuing to flow and reach my destination is one of the great challenges of life.  Realizing those obstacles are not ME...they are just there to rough up the river for a while and as life goes on, those obstacles change and disappear.  

Don't get stuck in those rough spots...Ride them out and just keep flowing.

Mortar and Gold

Years ago I fell apart into a million little pieces.  I picked up the pieces, put them in a box and put the box on a shelf. Oregon. Washington. Mexico. Louisiana. California. Alaska. I travelled and or lived in all these places lugging the box of pieces with me, but never opening the lid to look inside.  It’s the pieces of me I couldn’t be.

It’s years later. I’ve sat still for a bit, took the box off the shelf, opened the lid and looked at the pieces of who I used to be and wonder how to put myself back together. When you open a puzzle box there’s a picture on the cover to guide you and the pieces are cut to fit together just so.  This box doesn’t have a picture and the pieces aren’t cut to fit together just so. There are big pieces. Small pieces. Some with extremely sharp edges. Some shattered but not broken. Some shattered into such small pieces they’re barely visible.

If there’s no picture and the pieces don’t fit just so, how do I put the pieces back together? How do I become whole again? Masons use mortar. A workable paste used to bind building blocks together. Used to fill in all the irregular gaps and sometimes used to add decoration. In Japan they practice Kintsugi- the art of precious scars. Broken pottery is repaired with gold making the brokeness a thing of beauty.

I found the courage to take this box of broken pieces off the shelf. I took the lid off and I’m looking at the pieces of me. I’m holding the brokenness with forgiveness and compassion. Now how do I put the pieces back together? What’s the mortar used to hold my pieces in place and fill in irregular gaps? What do I use for gold to fill in the cracks and make my brokenness a thing of beauty?

Pieces

Your voice
Your touch
Your eyes
That look
The challenge
The joy
My rudder
My future
I look for you everywhere
      in everyone
There is no you in them
You set the standard
       became the standard
I gave you pieces of me
        I can’t get back
Pieces that left holes
         no one else can fill
Pieces - rearranged - into a
          different kind of whole

Impossible Cravings

Why is that we want things that we intellectually know are bad for us? Too much food - or the wrong food.  Too much alcohol.  The wrong boyfriend or girlfriend. When we know it's going to hurt us, when we have already been hurt, when we know the outcome is never going to change, why do we still have these impossible cravings?

My hands shake, my heart races, my stomach knots up...and I want him so badly that I can't focus on what's in front of me.  Just look at the menu, just order your dinner...don't look at the picture that just popped up, don't re-read the last text for the millionth time, don't order another glass of wine in an effort to ease this...just order dinner and get out of here.

Why does this still happen? How long do we have these complicated, impossible cravings for things that hurt us?

Jodi Picoult: "What we all want, really, is to be loved. That craving drives our worst behavior".

Why is that? Why does a craving to be loved, desired, appreciated drive us to act like our worse selves?  Perhaps because rejection is one of the worst feelings in the world...even when the person rejecting us is nowhere near worthy of our affections.

Rumi:

I choose to love you in silence
For in silence I find no rejection

I choose to love you in loneliness
For in loneliness no one owns you but me

I choose to adore you from a distance
For distance will shield me from pain

I choose to kiss you in the wind
For the wind is gentler than my lips

I choose to hold you in my dreams
For in my dreams, you have no end

Spiritual Autobiography

      How does one begin an autobiography about spirituality?  What I think of writing is a “religion” autobiography, but is that really spirituality? My search for spirituality continues, so the autobiography is quite incomplete.   In many ways, my spirituality does in fact begin with my early religious experiences.

           My family was one steeped in fundamentalist christianity and white supremacy, which in my mind still go hand in hand.  Not the same white privilege that all white people enjoy through no accomplishment of their own, but the inherent belief that white people are supreme.  Superior to all others and possess the manifest destiny to not only conquer the world, but to save it as well.

           The church I was born into and attended until beyond my marriage was called the Church of the Nazarene.  So named I suppose after Christ of Nazareth, the original Nazarene.  The church was one of legalism, based completely on performance.  The belief system was one founded on “original sin.”  Everyone was born wicked, wrong, and sinful and in order to gain redemption, Jesus Christ was the way, the truth, and the life.  No one came to God other than through Christ.  Salvation was full and free, but must be asked for and once found could also be lost.

           Salvation was not guaranteed and if you sinned, than you must ask again for salvation.  At some point (a point I never reached) one could arrive at “sanctification.”  To my understanding, this kind of meant the second level of salvation; that once this has occurred, the person no longer sinned.  (I may have this understanding wrong.  By the time I reached the age that this was part of my thinking, I had begun to think the entire process was a crock of shit.)  My church believed in baptism has an outward sign that one had died and been reborn through the resurrected Christ.

           From a very early age I attempted to “be” a good girl.  To behave accordingly and not sin.  For a female, this behavior included submission to my parents, the church elders, and any other adult simply because they were an adult. Age automatically made them wiser. My father was the church treasurer and sat on the board, my mother was the pastor’s secretary and cleaned the church on Saturdays.  We attended church twice on Sundays and again for mid-week prayer meeting on Wednesdays.  Annually there was a week-long revival, which we attended nightly.  What exactly we were being revived from is still unclear.

           The sermons were geared toward making people feel like failures.  Feeling as if you were not good enough.  That just being you with all your human foibles was somehow wrong.  Every Sunday the pastor led an alter call for anyone who wanted to get saved.  Without fail, the song we sang was “Just As I Am.”  “Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.”  I can still hear the haunting tune in my head.   Several times as a child and young adult, I was “saved.”  It never stuck.  I lived my entire life as a backslidden christian. 

           After several failed attempts at redemption, being voted out of church membership for having divorced, and re-thinking a lot of teaching, I left the church with a pretty big chip on my shoulder and a sizeable contempt for God.  Many times throughout my life I have lain awake in the dark and screamed out to god for proof of his existence.  (In my world, God and all related to him were white males.)  Equally as many times I have cried out in the dark about how much I hated god.  Actually said “Fuck You” and told him to stay away.  Even more times I’ve blamed myself fully for the wrong turns my life has taken for having said those words. Deep in my soul, it is hard to let go of the belief that I told God to fuck off one too many times and he has truly turned his back on me, rejecting me beyond hearing my cries for help or the need for proof of his existence.

           Do I actually believe this?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I would like to say I don’t, but sitting here now writing these words, I feel sadness in my soul.  Some belief, some regret, some thing still lingers there. I want to know a connection with a source of peace and power greater than myself or something I can name. I want to trust in something that I cannot see – have faith.  Trusting in things I can see, feel, and smell is difficult for me.  Trusting in humans who give me their word is something I struggle with on a daily basis. How then do I trust in something that is not tangible? 

           The search continues for the ability to trust something outside myself, and at times to even trust myself.  Early teachings haunt me, leading me to question myself and my ability to reason. Fear enters my being at the mention of “women’s religion.”  This means wikka to mean, which means an attachment to satan.  Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. I’m afraid to explore.

           Hell has a hold on me.  I fear eternal damnation more than I fear that there may be no god.  Like almost all things christian, this is not rational.  Intellectually I know that, but emotionally I cannot escape the feelings of fear.  Every once in a while the thought that today may be the day of the rapture and I’m going to be left behind, enters my head and I wonder what the world will be.  All these earthquakes happening recently are signs of the end times.  And then, I think that’s why George Bush is president again because christians have an irrational fear based on irrational beliefs and elected an irrational president to carry out an irrational system based on manifest destiny.  And we wind up back at white supremacy where this all started.  A vicious circle of fear and irrationality that keeps my mind anything from quiet, my spirit far from content, and my intellect saying fuck you to the entire system of belief outside myself.

Goodbye Has Never Been My Strong Suit

I rarely say goodbye...I've rarely been in a position to say goodbye...My belief system allows for second, third, fourth...as many as needed...chances to get things right.  A great deal of my life has been dedicated to people (including myself) who have made wrong turns, countless mistakes and repeated bad choices.  Much of my income has been earned helping those people embrace who they are and not beat themselves up for what they did, or didn't, do and to subsequently choose a new path, or perhaps just a less harmful path.  Goodbye and endings have never been my strong suit.

Talking, listening, showing, forgiving, waiting, working, trying new strategies, calling for help, seeking advice...basically staying in some sort of action has always been the better choice.  One thing I rarely do, is give up.  Endings are not my strong suit.

My sister said goodbye...I said goodbye to my sister.  Perhaps people think it strange that it's been more than 2 years and there is still a huge, hollow, aloneness that follows me.  I've tried, worked, strategized, called for help, sought advice, taken all the actions that I know in order to navigate this new territory.  Saying goodbye has never been my strong suit.

The past eight months have been spent learning the process of letting go.  I sought advice.  I talked. I cried. I waited.  I questioned.  I waited some more.  I looked for new paths.  I attempted to embrace everyone involved with compassion and understanding.

My belief system does not allow for holding grudges.  Which adds to my inability to say goodbye...there's always a chance.  There's always a chance that things will improve.  There's always a possibility that something will change.  My belief system looks for the good in what's happening rather than in what's wrong.  I look for the lesson rather than focus on blaming someone else for how I feel or behave.  I thank the Universe for sending the person to teach me what I need to know and learn.

One of the reasons my sister died was her inability to say goodbye...to put an end to things that were killing her.  Maybe holding on at her own expense was her stubborn pride in thinking she was strong enough to overcome, strong enough to manage, strong enough to not let that which was killing her...kill her.  Maybe learning to let go and say goodbye is something she and I both have not been good at.

Goodbye has never been my strong suit....Killing myself to hold on isn't a good idea either.

There Are No Words

I’ve never known a feeling so full or a place so perfect.  I want to write, but it’s indescribable.  Wordless.  There are not adequate words to describe what happens when his lips touch mine, when his hands touch my skin…when he’s inside me. No one does anything to earn this feeling…nor does anyone do anything to conjure it up.  It just happens. Unexpectedly and without effort.

It starts the moment I open the door and my heart stops.  For just the briefest of seconds, the world stands still.  It sounds so cliché…a 1950’s movie in black and white.  Then, my heart beats, my eyes smile and he is in my space.  It doesn’t matter where that space is when he’s in it…a table, a car, a couch, a lake, a tent, a rock…as long as he’s in my space.

Shared time and space.  Doesn’t cost a thing and is worth more than any treasure.

I want to find words to  write what it feels like to sleep with him…but there are no words. It is the most peaceful, restful, perfect sleep.  The feeling of my head on his chest, or in his neck, feeling his warmth, his heart beat, his gentle snore...the length of his body completely against mine, his arm wrapped around me, his hand resting on my waist…there is no safer place, no more perfect place.  I sleep soundly and instantly.  It is perfection…free from any flaws and defects.  Whatever else may be right or wrong in our lives, this moment, right here, wrapped up with him is pure perfection.

His  hands are the stabilizing force for my shattered heart.  His mouth quenches an unspoken hunger for connection.  His body is a comforter for my fear.  Where he is, is where I want to be.  I crave him in a way that is extreme.  Thoughts of him consume me in my sleep and distract me in my days.  He is my first thought every morning and my last thought every night.

There are no words to convey how much space he takes up in my head and my heart.  I never thought this was real…that there was one person who could change everything I ever thought about love.  It is at once completely satisfying while creating an unquenchable desire. A feeling so big there are no words to define it.