Funking Out
I’m not sure how much of how I feel today can be pinned on hormones, and how much is just bona fide funk, but I’m not doing so well. Last night at a writing class I got teared up a few times listening to classmates talk about the real-life stuff they’ve written into their fiction – physical abuse, sexual abuse, the trauma of immigrating and trying to learn a new culture while simultaneously being discriminated against. The already-published stories we were assigned were equally tragic. Actually all the ones I’ve read since this class began have been so.
I came home last night and just cried. Cried and cried and cried. We’re all such dear, dear people, plopped into this world by no choice of our own. Who deserves being beaten up – learning to feel like it’s their own fault? – learning to stutter, to hide, to be ashamed? Who deserves being violated in any way? Who should go hungry, or be hated for having dark skin, for speaking with an accent, for not having the luxury of learning a new language at all?
I don’t know who God is right now, but if I could imagine a God aware of all that happens on our planet, in addition to that God being delighted by the glory of it all, I would definitely imagine him or her crying. Just crying and crying and crying over all of us. The ways we perpetuate the junk are so largely just ways of coping with the junk that got heaped on us in the first place. Dear souls! Dear people, trying to live and survive.
There are times when I wish I had a teddy bear God again, against whom I could cuddle up and feel safe and warm and protected. A God I could believe would make everything right somehow, someday. But I can’t find that God anymore. At least not in any conscious way. And when made aware of so much darkness – well, the void feels dark indeed.
I need to find a way to reconnect with the light that I know exists alongside all this darkness. I need to listen to voices of hope and joy and healing and overcoming. If any of you are so inspired, I would gladly welcome prayers or vibes like these being sent in my direction.
February 17th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
After reading your Funking Out, I went back the your introduction of yourself, where you describe the torturous ordeals experienced by the 13 years olds becoming men. That ritualized suffering is in one sense voluntary, but given cultural expectations, it really is forced upon them. The saving grace of that experience is the entitlement it gives them in the community afterward. I’m thinking that maybe the “reconnect with the light” for the persons whose stories you have recently been listening to could come from being subsequently entitled to speak to and with the community, as apparently they are. I know that isn’t the whole answer, and it leaves out many who can’t (yet) speak. But maybe it is a start.
February 18th, 2005 at 11:41 am
I pray that you can feel the light of the Father shine brightly on you.
February 18th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
I will be keeping you in my prayers. I feel God is there, and he’s leading you to that light you seek.
There are many forms of His light.