Midtone Blue is back, and if you haven’t ever read him, you must go take a look! His writing is unintended poetry. His wisdom is deep. His archives are full of warmth and wonder and all that makes life good. I’m so glad you’re back, Blue.
You know how when kids are left with babysitters, or at daycare, and maybe they aren’t so used to being away from their folks, so it takes a lot and lot of energy for them to keep it together ’til their parents come back?–maybe energy to cry on and off through that time, in between seeming like they’re doing alright? They end the day playing tearlessly, if not a little more quietly than usual, so when their parents come back, the parents are delighted that the children have done so well. They rush to give them a hug, expecting them to be filled up completely with gladness, but the second the child sees them, they totally lose it. They cry and cry and just collapse in the parent’s arms that way, maybe shaking a little bit, hoping they’ll be held like that forever?
That’s how certain music makes me feel. People, too, but music far more often. Like that child, I mean. Like I’m finally safe and exhausted from all the work of keeping myself together and also sad at what I thought I’d totally lost and a little bit hurt that I had to think I lost it at all, but just glad to be here, too, no matter what’s been done, no matter who did it, melting into this hug.
N’s birthday is today (happy birthday, love!), and among the gifts he opened this weekend was a Wailin Jennys CD called Fourty Days. We’ve listened to most of it, and I swear, these voices have this effect on me. It’s folk music, a Canadian trio, and the clarity of their voices, their pitch-perfect harmonies–it’s like angels and mamas and sisters and fairies and moonlight and the very sweetest kind of nectar all rolled into one.
One song in particular (of those I’ve heard so far…) actually puts words to this feeling I’m poorly describing–words to the kinds of things I like to think and write about here, too, and the kinds of things involved in growing trust, like I wrote about last time. Growing trust and healing, I think, are synonymous. The song is called Beautiful Dawn:
Take me to the breaking of a beautiful dawn
Take me to the place where we come from
Take me to the end so I can see the start
There’s only one way to mend a broken heart
Take me to the place where I don’t feel so small
Take me where I don’t need to stand so tall
Take me to the edge so I can fall apart
There’s only one way to mend a broken heart
Take me where love isn’t up for sale
Take me where our hearts are not so frail
Take me where the fire still owns its spark
There’s only one way to mend a broken heart
Teach me how to see when I close my eyes
Teach me to forgive and to apologize
Show me how to love in the darkest dark
There’s only one way to mend a broken heart
Take me where the angels are close at hand
Take me where the ocean meets the sky and the land
Show me to the wisdom of the evening star
There’s only one way to mend a broken heart
Take me to the place where I feel no shame
Take me where the courage doesn’t need a name
Learning how to cry is the hardest part
There’s only one way to mend a broken heart
You can listen to clips of their latest CD by clicking on the icon of it on left side of their website, and of course iTunes has a clip of Beautiful Dawn and the rest of 40 Days in their collection as well. Go listen. Go buy.
Heather asked about my mention of fear in the last post, about how the undoing of it is one of the things I’m giving my life to. So I’ll try and explain more of what I mean by that.
I think fear is at the heart of our world’s problems. How’s that for a bold statement?? I think it’s at the heart of our individual problems, and at the heart of our collective problems, and the reason why it’s such an uphill thing, at least much of the time, to work well (or at all) together toward good.
Pushed far enough, maybe the core of our fear is fear of death, but I don’t think that’s what most of us are conscious of. I think most of us are conscious of fears like that of loneliness, joblessness, lack of clear or appealing identity, debt, getting dumped, getting raped, getting robbed, being ugly, being fat or thin in all the wrong places, losing health, losing respect, losing popularity, losing our minds.
I think there’s another whole layer of fear, though, that we’re not so conscious of, and that may be far more toxic than the rest. I think it has to do with who we are in a very deep and vulnerable place, and the kinds of questions we ask from there. Are we loveable?, is a big one. Are we okay? Is the world an inherently hostile place? Will the people I love abandon me? Will they get taken away? Will I have to suffer more than I can bear? Does God exist? Is God as critical as it seems sometimes? Are you going to hurt me? You? How ’bout you? Are you going to make me feel small? Will you take advantage of my weakness if I show it…or can’t hide it like I’d wish?
At heart, and of course to varying levels, I think we’re all afraid, and that every one of the “stupid” things we do collectively or individually can be traced to this. I think they can be traced to trying to protect ourselves, or keep from gaining or losing the things we’re afraid we’ll gain or lose. Traced to making sure that whatever hurt us before won’t ever hurt us again.
Surely many of our fears are well-founded. They make sense, and they’re there for good reason. But I think far more often than not, they’re bigger than they need to be, and when acted upon, only perpetuate the need that we and those around us have to be afraid. If I get defensive, for example, because I’m afraid you’ll trump my view, then my defensiveness will cause your voice to raise, and your defensiveness along with it. The two (three?) will escalate until we’re saying and doing things we never thought we would, given how we felt only five minutes ago. We will be fanning the flames of distrust for future interactions. We will be fanning flames of shame for having overreacted, if indeed we see that’s what we’ve done. We will be shrinking the bold, expansive, playful, curious, eager, trusting parts of ourselves that can’t come out when fear is at the helm, and nurturing an inner tightness, a vigilence, self-consciousness, clenched fists. We won’t be able to think about the common good, but be consumed with shoring up what we personally (as individuals, groups, nations) haven’t yet lost. At the farthest, most gruesome extreme, we will start wars.
I think versions of this process happen constantly, at every level, around us. It’s a web of fear and subsequent violence…and subsequent woundings, and the needs that follow our wounds to be afraid and protect ourselves…that we all get born into.
So. I want to be about the undoing of fear. I want to be about the shrinking of it, where it’s grown too big. I think the opposite of fear is trust, so I want to be on expeditions everywhere to unveil reasons for fear to actually turn into trust: trust that life can be good, that we’re okay–all the way to our core, that healing can happen, that no critical God exists apart from the ones we’ve grown inside ourselves, that our vulnerable selves can actually find safe places to be seen, and loved, and nurtured on toward Life, in the very best sense of that word.
I’m a writer, so written words are what I use most toward this end. But I think the shrinking of fear and the growth of trust can happen by many other means. I’m experiencing it through Qigong. I’ve felt it in Tai Chi, and the belly dance classes I’ve taken. In therapy. In laughter at no one’s expense. In sex and hugs and friends’ and mentors’ presence. Through music and visual arts. Through the work of raising my son. I see it happening as people love their pets, and as the motley crew of us gathers daily at the neighborhood park to talk and watch our kids play.
As far as I can tell, fear feeds on judgment and criticism and threats and looks of disapproval, so none of these, despite our best efforts at using them on ourselves or others well (said partly in jest, but partly with all seriousness), can lead to the alchemy I’m talking about, I don’t think. Trust is allergic to them. I think trust is allergic to many of the concepts of God that we work hard to feel loved by.
So this–this work of undoing fear and cultivating trust–is what I’m giving my life to. It’s the wind that fills up my sails and urges me on to write.
I’m still making my way slowly through Sam Harris’s End of Faith. I just finished a pair of chapters that details the brutish histories of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The second of the pair is on Islam, and by the end of it I found myself more afraid of Muslims than I care to admit–more afraid of their God, their customs, their worldview. And seeing “them” as something unified, too–something all, or at least mostly, alike.
I think Harris is scared, too. His whole book is about how religion, and Islam to the greatest degree, will either have to die, or be the death of us all, given the kinds of mass destruction that modern warfare-combined-with-religion is capable of. But here’s the most robust irony: he is actually giving himself more, and increasingly legitimate, reason to be afraid. By means of his book, he is creating more division, more distrust, more fear of the “other”, and therefore more layers of violence, than would otherwise exist had the book not been written.
This evening I attended a lecture given by Reza Aslan, a scholar of world religions, and expert on Islam. He’s written a book called “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” and lectured tonight on what he’s calling the Islamic Reformation. According to him, Islam is in an extreme state of flux right now, with authority shifting increasingly away from its clerics/scholars and into the hands of everyone (think Martin Luther, sola fide, sola scriptura). Groups are popping up across the globe of people reading Koranic texts differently, newly, outside of mosques, in the equivalent of home churches. And like in any decentralized institution, groups are forming along the whole spectrum of liberal to conservative, feminist to misogynist, violent to peaceful.
Aslan’s excitement to be alive in this season of change is palpable, and too his eagerness to present a more accurate picture of today’s Islam than any unified story can tell.
I know little of Islam (and plan to read Aslan’s book). But I know lots about Christianity, and can’t imagine, now that Aslan has popped the fear-bubble Harris created for me, that Islam is any more immune to the forces of peace and of violence than Christianity has been. While I plan on finishing Harris’s book (and to explore here some of the good points I think he makes), I’m eager to get a broader picture of Islam in my brain, in my bones, so that I can more fully participate in this project I’m giving my life to, this work of undoing fear.
Last night I went to my fifth Wild Goose Qigong class (pronounced chee-gong). Qigong is an ancient Chinese healing art, and looks a lot like the fluid, choreographed moves of Tai Chi, like you see people doing on magnificent hilltops and sunlit oceansides in the movies. I do it at night, in old sweats, in the dance studio of a junior high school down the street. But still.
For the most part, I love it. I love the slow, underwater-like movements. I love that our instructor says almost 15 times a night that you should only do what’s comfortable, that this art is not about pushing or straining or forcing, but learning to listen to your body and flow gently where it wants to flow. I love it that I showed up last week with the worst devil’s grip in my neck that I’ve ever had in my life–so bad I had gone to the doctor that afternoon thinking surely I’d have to have surgery to put something back into place, thinking how in the world will I ever make it through another day of lifting and bathing and changing and playing with a toddler when every movement hurts so bad–and left Qigong without an ounce of pain left in my neck. The prescriptions with which my doctor had sent me home were for super-charged anti-inflamatories and muscle relaxers, which she said I’d likely need to take for 2 weeks, and to this day they sit in the bucket at Walgreens, not picked up.
So I love Qigong. It’s been good to me.
Last night I showed up more tired than usual, though. I even debated not going, and stayed flopped on the couch until I knew I’d only barely make it for the first instruction after warm-up. When I showed up, as a kind of unplanned punishment, I had to traipse across the middle of the circle of classmates to get to an open spot, classmates who were all silently watching while swaying like sea kelp. I almost felt like I should walk in slow motion like them, and wave my arms back and forth at them, but that would have only made me laugh and ruin the mood.
So there I finally was, so tired that even the wood planks below me looked soft. I needed to see what they felt like on my belly, my arms, the left side of my face.
But I stayed standing.
But here’s the thing: the whole rest of the classtime, rather than flowing like kelp, or wild geese for that matter, rather than listening to the movements of my body, I had this running commentary going on in my mind.
“Oh God, she’s going to repeat that part again. She is. She is, I can tell. Oh God.
“Are you kidding me? FIVE MORE TIMES???
“Why does that guy keep getting in my way? I can’t see through you, dude. Yeah, you. Okay fine. Yes, this is me moving so I can see.
“Was that my sternum popping? Has that ever happened to me before?
“Let’s see…when I get home, I’m going to have cereal. No, fruit. No, cereal. Fruit and cereal. With yogurt. But water first. I’m so THIRSTY.”
And on and on. And the worst part was people kept farting all around me, too. That actually happens every week. There must be something about Qigong that gets the air flowing, if you know what I mean, and it is only by sheer will power that I save mine for later.
But most of the time this is fine. I actually feel about it like I feel about Elijah ripping off: great! Good for you! It seems natural, somehow, and not annoying.
But it was just too much last night. I simultaneously felt like laughing and glaring and saying, “Can everyone just tighten up a little bit??”
At one point someone asked about a move we were learning, and the instructor explained the way the movement helps energy flow up your back side, over your head, and down your front side, repeating like that in a circle. The classmate said, “Would it be a good idea to visualize that as we do the move? Would that help the energy flow better?”
The instructor paused for a second, and then said this: “The beauty of Qigong is in the way the movements themselves cause the flow of energy, and the way your body, over time, can learn to help that flow just by repeating the movements. In Western culture we tend to spend so much time in our heads that we can actually hinder the positive flow of energy by trying to force it this way or that way, or by analyzing it too much. It’s fine for you to understand why we do these movements, but probably better, when you do them, not to get stuck in your head. Just let your body move. Focus on breathing and moving with it.”
As I was just finishing deciding which book to read when I got home, I felt a little bit sheepish. And also thirsty.
But I came to this conclusion: Flowing with life–with the movements of our bodies or minds or souls–is good. Getting stuck too much in any parts of ourselves–whether focussing on our bodies all the time, or our spiritual or intellectual sides–probably means a dam is being constructed there, and the energy that wants to do it’s natural cycle is turning stagnant, getting stalled up. But–and this was the real crux of the lesson for me–flowing with anything, in a healthy way, is a lot easier to do when you’ve had enough sleep.
Qigong = good. Qigong while sleep deprived = annoying.
Maybe this formula applies to everything there is, and the first way any of us can start making the world a better place is to get to bed early tonight.
You think?
Bob from The Corner has invited anyone who is interested to participate in a gridblog inspired by Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead). He writes (and invites to be shared around):
I am emailing you to ask if you would consider joining a gridblog to share your own experiences with the loss of a loved one – a gridblog entitled THE MARIGOLD PATH that would be across the Internet on Nov. 1 & Nov. 2. This gridblog is inspired by the experience of Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead)…with the gridblog name inspired by the practice of children carrying yellow marigolds as they follow the procession to the cemetery.
I thought of Trish, who has been thinking and writing and composing in honor of women who are dying or have died, and of others I know who are grieving the deaths of people, and also the deaths of dreams. If any of you are interested in joining this blogwalk of reflection and remembrance, whether for a person who has died, or for some other thing in your life that has passed, go here for more details.
I’m in.
I got tagged by Christy for this meme: Five Things Feminism has Done for Me. Let’s see…
1. I grew up believing that when I grew up, I could do whatever I wanted to do. Vocationally, I mean. :) I didn’t think that because I was a girl, I was automatically excluded from anything. I had no idea that the Christian denomination I was a part of would not ordain women or allow them to be lead pastors of churches. I assumed that women were just not choosing to do these things, like being president, and that if I wanted to do them, they were open to me. I’m guessing this latter assumption had a lot to do with my parents’ views on men’s and women’s roles, and a little to do with my churches not being particularly vocal about the limitations that women had in them. Or maybe I was oblivious to the vocalizations there were? In any case, feminism helped make vocation an open field in my childhood mind.
2. Leading up to and throughout the ten years of our marriage, N and I have worked hard to be conscious of power imbalances between us, and to do whatever we can to lessen them. This has been the hardest long-term project that either of us has ever worked at. The hardest, but the most rewarding.
3. I’m a writer, giving a significant number of prime time hours (after 8am and before 6pm) to writing each week. This while also being parent to a one-year-old. And having no money for childcare. N is in school, so we’re in a unique situation in that he has a schedule that can flex for shared kid-duty. But I think feminism has made this set-up conceivable at all by helping both of us see my writing, which at this point has no dollar signs attached to it, as a real vocation, and my pursuit of it as equally important as N’s pursuit of his. (The fact that there will be dollar signs attached to his in a few years, and that his is what will enable us to pay our bills (and loans!) and eat food that we actually buy at stores makes us give a lot more hours of work-beyond-home time to him each week. But that’s a pragmatic more than philosophic choice.) The task of coordinating work-at-home time and work-away-from-home time for both of us, and being as present to Elijah and each other as we want to be, is probably the second hardest long-term project that either of us has worked at. And of course, also totally worth it.
4. Increasingly I’m able to feel–and this beyond just knowing intellectually–that the entertainment and make-up and clothing and hair-product and skin-product and teeth-product industries are bankrupt in the ways they define feminine beauty and sexuality and life force as narrowly as being 18-25 years old with smooth skin and straight, white teeth and thick, highlighted hair and large, firm breasts and designer clothing and gym memberships and curves here and not there and fingernails that look like they’ve never seen dishwater. I feel the narrowness of these definitions, the way these industries have not stripped women down in their adds to expose our true beauty, but rather stripped beauty itself down to expose the ugliness at the heart of machines that would want all of us–as many as is inhumanly possible–not liking ourselves, wanting bodies that aren’t real, funneling huge portions of our incomes into becoming ever less so.
I feel the evil of this. And I feel the beauty and life force and sexual attractiveness of people–men and women–in things far deeper and broader than any ad will ever convey.
5. Number five is a catch-all drawer: I’m happy most of the time. I don’t feel like the world is only depressing and that an oppressive God exists. I haven’t had an ulcer for a very long time. I feel gentle toward my body. I like wearing feminine clothing and don’t have dreams anymore where I’m trying to pass as a man. I take intuition seriously. I take art seriously. I don’t feel obligated to fit my spirituality or metaphors for God into patriarchical frameworks. I’m a mom, and this by choice.
None of these would be true or possible apart from the feminist thinkers and writers and artists and theologians and mentors and friends who have helped me in my work of healing and self creation/re-creation in recent years.
Okay…I tag Jen, Adam, and Trish. And Adam’s wife, Sarah. :) Okay, and Trish’s husband Richard, too. Jen? Heck…and Jen’s husband Dave!
Hi everyone! Welcome to the new pad…er…press! It is such a joy to invite you into this new space!
I’m still getting used to WordPress (a great big I LOVE YOU out to Typepad for being so user-friendly…or is it just that I’ve had two years to learn it?), but hopefully the transition can nevertheless be smooth.
So…why the new site, you ask?
The new site because my life as a writer has slowly moved beyond infancy, beyond adolescence, even, and the time has come for a ritual to mark this passage into true adulthood. What could be more appropriate than the gauntlet of creating a new website??
To those of you who got used to (un)Veilings and are sad to see the amazing artistry and superb browser compatibility and utterly underlined sidebar links of that space go, all I can say is I’m with you, and that I hope with time we can all get used to such a new look and feel. You’ll see, though, that the soul of (un)Veilings has come along with us (meaning all the content is still here…and I am too!), and that that soul is actually more accessible and surf-able now by means of clearer (and actually-assigned-to-all-the-posts) categories. The search tool in the side bar can also help with that.
A great big THANK YOU out to Adam of cleave*design for turning a mock-up of this site into the real live deal, and navigating the choppy waters of Explorer 6.0 to try to make it look right in that browser. He works magic, I tell you.
So…glasses up, and here’s to many more years of exploring inner and outer landscapes together!
All my love,
Kristin
Everywhere I turn now, I see Fall. Pumpkins and decked-out leaves and cooler air and sweaters. People are buzzing about snow, even, in some parts of the world (I won’t tell you what our highs have been here this week). And alongside all that change, we people just keep changing too. For the better, in so many cases. And sometimes neither for better nor worse, but just becoming happier or sadder, or more reflective, or wishing for less change. Or for far, far more of it.
Here’s to all of us, in every stage of Fall there is.
(and a few photos of a very sweet pumpkin)
Thank you everyone for such a great discussion! I hope those whose perspectives differ from the ones offered so far feel free to join in.
Here is some of what I’ve heard us saying:
In light of all of this, I’ve been thinking more about that list that began the last post. I’m wondering whether all of it needs to be changed. I have this image in my mind of what it means to differ from another person about some fundamental thing–whether God exists, for example, or what God is actually like, or what in our heart of hearts, we’re like. It’s the image of a chasm, opened wide between you two. I suppose the wideness of the chasm depends on how different your views actually are from each another’s. But still, I think the chasm’s there.
And I think it’s possible to live one’s entire life feeling, and therefore believing, that that chasm defines, entirely, relationship with that other person (or group. I think we often see people as members of groups, rather than as individuals–Jews/non-Jews, Christians/non-Christians, theists/athiests, gays/straights, men/women). Sometimes that chasm is so deep, and so wide, that it’s nearly impossible to ever, even with the best of luck, see anything beyond it.
But this is the other thing I’m becoming convinced of: these chasms aren’t all there is. In any dyad, and a dyad can be two people, or two groups, or one person and a group, whatever–in any dyad I think there are multiple chasms, as well as multiple stretches where the ground between the two parts comes completely together. And I think that even in the case of chasms, there are often also bridges, where abysses can actually be crossed, albeit sometimes only skillfully, and sometimes at great peril…or great cost.
But the terrain is varied, is what I’m saying. Between all of us. Try living with someone–even someone you’re madly in love with–for any length of time, and any dream of only solid, crackless ground will dissipate into all the little and big things that drive you nuts about them (God bless their soul), or, and this may be more pertinent to this conversation, all the ways you realize you don’t see things as similarly as you thought. You’ll realize that for the sake of love, and of peace, and of sane cohabitation, both of you must work to find ways around those chasms. Or through them. Both of you must believe that they aren’t the only thing there is.
I think this is true of relationships across any religious or devotional divide.
So. In the case of that list from last time, maybe people from different sides of religious divides can actually talk honestly about religion–even openly about thinking the other person is wrong–and remain genuinely respectful of one another if, and this is an enormous if, I think–they can also include in their active awareness the knowledge that the terrain between them is varied, and includes long stretches of connection. Long stretches of ground that’s in common, and passed easily between. Sometimes it’s probably even necessary–not optional, but necessary–for the two to explore together where those places of connection are. Not doing so can mean the chasm (or chasms) defining the whole relationship, and consequently coloring completely both party’s feelings about one another. Feelings for people across chasms, at least as far as I can see, aren’t generally pretty.
This "if" is a big one, though, and one that’s hard to find in many circles.
So the question then begs asking: is it really worth finding places of connection and common ground when a) the chasms between two people or two groups are immense, and/or b) one half of the dyad in question isn’t interested in searching for them?
I think in many cases it’s not.
I think there are cases where all this kind of searching does is leave one or both parties constantly scraped and bruised, constantly hopeless and frustrated, constantly yearning for some kind of home, some kind of place to relax and be at ease. I think there are times in certain lives when peace is what’s needed most–needed to heal, needed to discover oneself actually normal, rather than whatever alternate labels keep getting lobbed across those voids.
Maybe there are times for unpeace, too, though. Times for unrest. Times when getting bruised constantly is a kind of gift a person gives to those who come after. Examples paint history, where people of color and homosexuals and women and youth and elderly–where people of all kinds have participated in the very groups that would exclude them and call them evil or less than or stupid. Those who have stayed active in such groups, doggedly proclaiming, even if by their silent presence alone, that chasms aren’t all there is: I could weep in gratitude. Thank you. What a silly, tinny phrase to give to such world-changing work.
I’m thinking that that work isn’t everyone’s though, and that each of us must decide which relationships, or potential relationships, we need to walk away from, and which ones we must navigate the chasms of. Because chasms, it seems to me, mark them all.
What do you think, though? Am I wrong in some of this? And in which cases are the BIGGIES, the canyons that can make the Grand one look small, worth working around for the sake of relationship?