here

I love the idea that death doesn’t have the final say.  That sometimes our biggest losses end up part of some tremendous gain.  I’m no militant optimist, and I won’t try to smooth over pain by saying it’s all for some greater good, all part of a bigger plan—for us or anyone else.  Sometimes pain is just pain, I think.  But I can speak to my experience.

I can talk about the darkest, darkest night that was my early twenties.  About wanting to be dead. 

About having no more tears to cry, and then crying more.  No sense of self, and then watching more unravel.

I can talk about a longing that goes so deep there isn’t any bottom to it.  Fear of every kind.

Death.  That’s what my winter felt like.  Or maybe worse than death, because death seems a lot more kind. 

I’m not in winter now, though.  Seasons changed, and the death in my life is being undone.  And I almost hate saying it because I wouldn’t wish death on a single soul, but I swear the joy I feel in this season has a lot to do with the depth of my suffering in the last.  Andrea posted a Gibran quote the other day that says this so eloquently:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Sorrow is the greater." But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your head board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. So you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced."

I don’t know whether Jesus rose from the dead.  What I do know is the story’s true.  The meaning of it.  Death and awfulness are real to the very core.  Past that, even, beyond what anyone anywhere should ever have to endure.  And resurrection happens.  Hope won’t stay dead.  Sometimes it’s broader than a single life, but I think it’s deeply true. 

I think it’s true that those who suffer have a great, great capacity for joy.

Last week I wrote about a meditation I’ve been doing lately. This week I discovered a much shorter version that’s become possible now that the images from the first one are in my muscle memory (soul memory? psyche memory?). It’s just a deep breath. As I breathe in, my breath itself is what I visualize collecting all those parts of me that get spread so far away. As I breathe out, I visualize my breath creating an invisible skin that keeps me all here, all present in this moment.

As I write this, and even as I physically do the meditation, I’m aware that this kind of centering isn’t original to me at all. I’m aware that people of many religions and/or lacks thereof do these sorts of things, and that there are books written and lectures given and CDs recorded and workshops offered and meditation centers founded all around them. They aren’t new.

Somewhere along the way, though, I became tired of trying to find God and find peace and find community and ways of waking all the parts of me up by studying what everyone else does toward such ends. My studies became a way of saying to myself over and over again, you’re not enough, you can’t begin until you have some coherent thing figured out from all the pieces, you need something more. Something someone else has. I’m all for apprenticeship, and think there’s Life to be found in many forms of imitation, but at this point I need a healthy dose of trying things out “on my own.” I put that in quotes because what I really mean is playing with what’s already gone into me (and I’ve poured in quite a lot) and coming up with practices that feel honest, and make some sort of sense to me, even if only to my gut. Things that say to me and whoever else is listening: this is who I am, and these are things that make me feel thankful or peaceful or connected to something bigger. And all of it’s enough.

The day that I get certain voices out of my head, voices of people I love, but who have strong opinions about what the “right” way to be spiritual is, the right way to do religion, is the day I will rise up from this earth of nettles and legs made lame from thick constraints and feel my wings go soaring. Feel wind beneath them, and like Spirit is the one blowing it, and hear her singing while she blows, “Fly, dear soul! Become the woman you were meant to be!”

Lately I haven’t been in a blogging mood.  And I think I understand why.

About a week and a half ago I had a really great conversation with N, in which both of us discovered how sick we are of feeling the weight of trying to become superstars.  It sounds silly saying it outright like that, but that’s the burden I’ve borne for who knows how long—the burden that it’s my responsibility, indeed, my obligation to become some kind of star.  Writer, speaker, counselor, pastor-type, doesn’t really matter what.  Just be really fantabulous at something and you’ve succeeded.  That’s what my inner voices say.

Problem is, I haven’t remotely succeeded at that.  In fact, it’s that very pressure to succeed, I think, that keeps me blocked from doing it.  It’s like there are two kinds of fuel inside of me, pushing me forward.  On the one hand there are my interests, the things I love to do, the things I’m consistently drawn toward.  Writing, music, soul care, healing work, art.  On the other, there are these voices:  be a superstar, or you’ve failed.  Now I can’t go trying to be a star at things I hate to do, so I go ahead and plug away at the things I like.  But those damned voices really get in the way.  They taint my efforts.  They freeze me up, sometimes, and make me sick of doing what I do at others.  They make me ask questions like Why aren’t you better at this by now? and If you love this so much, why do only ten people know it?  They chastise me for not having more published, for example, and inject me with fear that I’m hopelessly behind at accomplishing anything worthwhile.  And as if that isn’t bad enough, they add a final blow:  You’re the one who loves doing these things.  We’re only saying all of this because you’ve said you love to do them.  Aaaagh!  As Pirsig might say, these voices are the worst gumption trap ever.

So what I realized about a week and a half ago is that I’m just sick of feeling like I need to be (or be on my way to becoming) a superstar to be worth anything.  I literally visualized taking that burden off my shoulders and testing out what it feels like to use only the other stuff—the things I genuinely love to do—for fuel.  Yow!  What a difference!

I’m discovering, among other things, far less need for others to know my thoughts.  I love to write, and I plan to continue doing it here, but I’ve realized that part of my motivation to blog has been a need for people to know that I’m thinking and doing worthwhile things.  There’s nothing at all wrong with that motivation, it’s just that it happened to shrink when I took that be-amazing burden off my back.  For me, the two were connected.

So here I find myself feeling like I’m experiencing life anew.  Again.  Is it Sue Monk Kidd who talks about life being a perpetual waking up?  Just when I feel like my eyes and limbs have adjusted to a new view, everything shifts again, and I feel like a baby, or a newborn fawn.  Or maybe only one tiny thing shifts, and I realize just how connected all of it, all of my life, actually is to that thing, and that in effect, that one tiny thing is as good as enormous.

Anyway.  I won’t presume to have my burden permanently gone, but for a really nice week, here, I’ve felt what it’s like to be content with who I am and this little life that I’m living.  I’ve begun to think my thoughts and go about my business with a lot less need to be acknowledged for it.  To let the trajectory of listening to and following my soul unfold as it will, without so much worry over whether or not it’s enough.

In my last post I promised a show and tell.  I’ve been working the last few days on a collage, first just in my mind, trying to imagine how to respond to The Eye that wants me not to try anything too risky.  I decided I wanted to treat it as a scared child who needs to be held and reassured.  I considered fighting it, like a warrior, but concluded that would only keep it kicking.  Violence and rejection are the very things she’s afraid of, so giving her a dose of them would only mean her fears coming true, and her drive to try to protect me from them needing to intensify.  The gentle approach won out. 

I thought of depicting hands holding her, and the hands being made up of all the things I can do to reassure her—self-care things, like journaling, dream work, therapy when needed, conversations and connections with helpful others.  Attentiveness to what’s inside.  In the end I took a picture of my own hands.  When I see it, I think of all of those ways I can protect my inner self.  It’s a commitment I’m making to The Eye:  I’m going to take care of us.  You don’t have to do it any more.  Rest.  Relax.  Be held.

My next task was to imagine what it might look like to risk—how in the world I might live if not bound by fear.  Jumping off a cliff.  That’s what that felt like.  How could I make such a leap?  Here’s what I came up with:  1. If I trust that what I’m leaping toward is worth it, and 2. If I trust that there’s a safety net, able to catch me if a fall is too long or hard, or the thing I’m jumping toward is further off than I expect it to be.  Again I saw hands as I imagined this, this time much bigger than mine alone, ready to catch me and hold me—even clap or cheer when that’s needed.  I pictured them made up of all of the people in my life who love me and believe in me, people I know, and have yet to know.  I pictured faith, which is really what taking that leap requires.  I pictured G-d, and the pulse of the universe, and all of the lessons that nature surrounds me with, buoys me with.  And the pulse of my own soul, which has been since the beginning, and which, despite all set-backs, tenaciously keeps on living, calling, speaking, prodding, pulling…thriving.  I can trust these things.  They hold me up.  They won’t let me fall.  Or fall to my death, rather.  And, though sometimes surprising me, they’re often as familiar and known—mundane, even—as my own two hands.  That’s how I depicted them.

Across the top of the page I wrote Safe to risk living Bigger, imagining bigger to mean all things opposite of fearful, apologetic, ashamed, controlled, predictable.  Things that could make people depend on me.  Things that could make me well-known.  Things that would involve voicing my opinions and convictions publicly.  Heck—things that might involve a lot of hard work to actually get good at.  Living bigger means letting loose the tight control I’ve tried to have over everything and just seeing what’s possible.  The flowers and their surrounding brightness are this beauty and bigness I’m leaping toward.

Yay!  I stare at this picture with joy.  I feel fear, too, but it’s those hands that make that be okay.  Safe to risk.  Safe to risk living bigger.  Yeah.  That’s what I think I am.

This has been a really important week for me.  I started the Artist’s Way this week, which is a kind of workbook/recovery book for people whose artist-selves have gotten thwarted along life’s way.  I’m pretty sure the author would say the book is for all of us.

With the help of some guided meditation questions, I’ve been identifying some really important stuff that’s kept me living small most of my life—living with a lot of fear, holding me back from thriving in all my glory (that sounds so pretentious, doesn’t it?—all my glory?  It does unless you think everyone has it.  Which I do.).  I’m feeling so hopeful and energized.  Something new is underway inside.  Something really good.

One thing I’ve noticed this week, and which only adds to my conviction that important things are happening, is this weird…Thing has woken up.  It happens nearly every time I have a break-through in inner-work-type stuff—every time I feel that zing of fear going away and the accompanying magic of knowing, even for a moment, what it’s like to confidently pursue my dreams.  Or to have dreams.  I’ll have a day or two, maybe three, of a natural sort of high, and then as that starts to level off, I’ll feel like I’m being watched.  Quite literally.  I’ll find myself looking to see if someone’s in the room.  No one is there, of course, but It is.  I’m pretty sure It is a projected persona from inside myself whose job it is to keep me from doing anything risky.  Anything at all.  When I start to imagine doing such things, it shows up.  A nebulous threat.  An Eye, making sure I know I’m being watched, sure I know I better not do anything great or fantastic or free, or I’ll be sorry.

My pattern has mostly been to try to ignore The Eye (think Tolkein’s depiction of it), to try to keep doing what I set out to do.  But would you believe that within a day or two of it being set on me, all the fears and insecurities and reasons to get depressed and deflated about life I’ve ever known have been set on me as well, and I have a minor melt down.  I recover from it, but as I do, it sets me gently back into the smallness of life I was originally so happy about leaving.  Mission accomplished.

Yuck.

So anyway, that whole cycle happened again this week.  But here’s what’s really great:  In the midst of my minor meltdown last night, my husband got mad.  He got mad.  Not in some stereotypical male way, but in the "I’m on your team and I hate this cycle right along with you" way.  He said he was tired of me coming up against freedom and then backing down.  He said I’ve got to fight.  I’ve got to face that demon, that Eye, and push through to the other side.  I need to do it.  He (my husband) needs me to do it.  Our son—our whole family system needs it.  “You’ve got to do something to stand up to it!” he said.

At first I was just annoyed.  I don’t like being told what to do.  And frankly, I don’t like having to stand up to this Thing.  It’s really scary.

But you know, I think my husband’s right.  And I sure as hell would rather be told what to do in this instance, by him, than be told to live small every day of my life.

So here’s what I’m aiming to do.  I’m going to make a collage.  I’m going to make a collage that depicts, somehow, me standing up to this Thing and proceeding to thrive.  Some signpost of what I want to do and what, with any kind of luck (read help from God/Spirit/Universe/husband/friends/inner muse), I will do.  I needed to write this post to make public this commitment.  I’ll show you what I come up with when it’s done.

I’m now officially well. Thanks so much for all your kind words, here and by phone and email. Here are some of the reasons why all that yuck, for me, was worth it:

The intense pain I experienced this last week has me thinking on the topic of suffering.  I’m wondering, do you think suffering can be quantified? 

When I’m not thinking, I don’t.  I mean, when I’m just feeling my own suffering, I’m not comparing it with anything.  I’m just…suffering.  I’m crying out.  I’m feeling angry.  Afraid.  Helpless.  Wanting it to end.  Now.

But when I am thinking, when I do get some perspective and look at the world beyond my body or set of circumstances, I often feel ashamed.  Ashamed of the way I experience my suffering because when compared with so many other peoples’, it looks so small.  Like a splinter or a boil.  I feel embarrassed for complaining and like I’ve disrespected all whose suffering is greater than mine by acting like mine is enormous.

But I’m wondering now whether that kind of shame just isn’t very fair – to me or anyone else.  Now that I’m thinking about my thinking, I’m wondering whether it’s just not fair to any of us to compare how much we hurt.

I’m thick in the stage of infant-care these days, so my mind goes quickly to all the people I know whose suffering is around babies.  I have friends who have been trying to get pregnant forever and still can’t.  I have friends who tried conceiving for a year, joyously became pregnant…and then discovered months later that their dear child has a serious genetic defect.  She was born last week and has already had major heart surgery.  She’s struggling for life in the ICU.  And I have friends who have lost babies.  Our neighbors had a baby the same week we did, and she cries constantly and isn’t gaining weight.  So many stories of suffering.  So many tears and anguished prayers and all the fear and anger and disappointment and depression you could ever not wish for.

So whose suffering is the worst?  Doesn’t the question sound wrong?  But…is it conceivably fair, in light of all of these stories, that I complain about my week of intense pain? – pain that antibiotics and few doctor visits took care of, and that came because I have a baby, a very healthy one, a mild-mannered one, actually, that took all of two months to conceive?

My suffering seems so stupid and small when put into broader perspective. 

And yet…  Couldn’t any of the people in these stories say the same thing of theirs, were they to compare their stories with ones that look more awful?  People slowly starving to death.  People living through decades of civil war.  Long-term, debilitating diseases.  I don’t know – any number of “worse sufferings” come to mind.

I don’t know how to think about this.  Or even feel.  I guess I’m wondering, though, whether the comparison game isn’t worth playing when it comes to this.  That maybe there are indeed varying degrees of suffering, but it’s just not good to try to identify them.  Could suffering just be suffering?  And maybe the way we experience it be just that – not good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, because of who we’re comparing ourselves to?

Thoughts, wisdom, ponderings all welcome.

So I have no idea how prayer and wishing work.  But I have a hunch they sometimes affect the way events unfold.  And there’s been some events in my life of late that I’d so like affected.

Three weeks ago I came down with mastitis (a fancy word to say infection in one of my breasts that started because of a clogged milk duct that would not get fixed despite every best effort toward that end).  A round of antibiotics took care of all the flu-like symptoms within a day, but the pain never went away.  For three weeks.  This last weekend the flu-like symptoms returned with a vengeance, and the pain, which had been about a 7 out of 10 for three weeks, ramped up to, oh, A TEN.  By Monday it was literally bringing me to tears.  I’ve never been in so much physical pain in my life.  I actually got to use the Lamaze techniques that were completely wasted on a scheduled cesarean birth.

Anyway.  I’ve been to the doctor every day this week.  I’m on a stronger antibiotic, and having the wound aspirated daily, and the doctors are crossing their fingers that they won’t have to actually go to surgery to fix the problem, because that would mean stopping breastfeeding for good.

So I am one sick dog.  Low grade fever that spikes every evening, and just weak and tired and achy all over.  And of course I’m up many times day and night to feed the baby, meaning long stretches of rest are not possible.  Thankfully, my dear mom has come for the better part of the week and has been a great help through the daytime hours.  N and I are so grateful for her.

Whether or not this was all way more information than any of you wanted to hear, I am very up for prayers and good wishes heading this direction.  I want so badly to get better, and not to have to give up nursing.  And it would be just out of this world not to have to face that much pain again.

That’s all.  You think it’s worth a shot?

You know that feeling you have when you recover after being sick for a while?  That sense of giddiness at actually being well, at being able to do more than obsess about when you can next crawl into bed, or find a bathroom, or how in the world you’re going to get through the work day?

That’s how I’m feeling these days.  There is definitely a physical component to it – great relief at having my lungs at full capacity again and my stomach unsquished from within and my heart not doing double time.  It’s glorious to do so much with ease!  Tie my shoes, for example.  Stand up.  Roll over.  Walk.  Glorious!

But the feeling is much more than physical.

Those of you who’ve gone to seminary or studied semitic writings probably learned at some point about chiasms – literary devices used to order texts and, in many cases, give emphasis to central themes.  Chiasms are mirror-like arrangements of the pieces of a text or story.

Here’s an example:

(a) I got up to feed the baby.

     (b) I noticed baby’s diaper was really heavy.

          (c) I took his diaper off to change it, confident his insides were completely emptied out.

               (*) HE PROCEEDED TO PEE IN MY FACE.

          (C) I realized his insides were only now emptied out.

     (B) I cleaned us both up and put on a clean diaper.

(A) I fed the baby and went back to bed.

It’s the statements or stories in the middle of chiasms that writers are typically trying to emphasize.  To those trained to recognize them, the mirrored elements become arrows, pointing ever at that core.

Anyway, I’m saying all of this because I feel like my life of late is working on a chiasm.  A real-life one.  A chiasm whose final parts are a wellness beyond any physical state.  And I’m newly pondering the lessons planted at its core.

Here’s the basic layout:

(a) Much of my life I lived feeling tremendously responsible for the world around me.  Who knows how much our religious devotion dictates our compulsions, and how much our compulsions dictate the nature of our religious devotion, but pretty early on the two became one inside of me.  My drive to be superstar savior best friend best daughter best girlfriend best wife best leader of this and that club and this and that committee and this and that initiative to solve world suffering completely, forever – well, let’s just say it all got colored by who I thought God was.  By what I thought God wanted from me.  I earnestly, conscientiously tried making God proud.

(b) The more I worked to live out my faith, and the more deeply I sought spiritual understanding, the more my faith’s foundations gave way.  Truth got very wobbly.  I proceeded to enter into spiritual crisis, which turned into identity crisis, which ultimately ripped away my reasons for getting up in the morning.  For doing anything, really.  I was profoundly disillusioned.  Depressed. Nihilistic.  What’s the point of anything?

(*) I pulled almost completely out of the public arena.  I started therapy.  I read widely.  I began to write.  I stopped trying to save anyone but myself.  And peace descended.

(B) So here I am today, at this point in the chiasm.  Here I am feeling newly alive, newly awake…and a new kind of nudge to become more mindful of where I’m at spiritually.  What do I believe?  I’ve had a wonderful break from any need to define this – a necessary break, and one integral to my healing.  But I want to understand this part of me better now.  Or rather, understand this part of me at a more mindful, conscious level (there are more ways of understanding than just these).  Not in a frantic, grasping way like before.  Not because I fear that if I don’t, my world will grind to a terrifying halt. 

No, this is the flip side of that.  It’s about freedom now.  Freedom enough from my demons to be able to imagine a spiritual life that nourishes and heals and affirms what I trust needs affirming.  Freedom to say no to what deadens and silences and sucks away life without my “no” itself sucking me into bitterness and defensiveness and cynicism.  It’s about discovering in these years of dormancy all kinds of nourishment for colorful, fragrant fruit.

And here’s why I want to do this work:  I have a sense that a big part of my personal legend (to use Coelho’s language) – a big part of my place in the world, and the things my soul most aches to be and do – continues to connect deeply with spirituality.  Mindfully understanding my spiritual self, at least in a provisioinal, un-petrified way, feels like an important part of my pursuit of this legend.  It feels like an important step in helping me know what kinds of actions I want to take, and the quality and purpose with which I want to infuse my actions.  For example, in this season, my primary task (apart from being a wife and mother) is novel writing.  But even this can be infused, or not, with a sense of purpose, a mindful knowing of why I’m doing it, and how the task connects with what I sense I’m on this earth to do.

(A) I’ve a hunch that as I do some of this work, this naming of who I am and what I want to be about, the me of my past that was so involved in public life might find herself alive again.  Not in the same way as before, thank heaven.  Not with the same fears and compulsions and drives to please some tyrannical God.  But alive.  Truly.  In the best sense of that word.  I’m itching for her resurrection.

As I write all of this out, two thoughts come to mind.  1) Don’t rush through these last two parts of the pattern.  Done well, they’ll be a wonderful coming home, a spiraling back to old parts of myself, but in new ways, with new health and wholeness.  Rush through them too quickly, and roots from that central core – that piece the chiasm asks me to pay most attention to – won’t have the time they need to burrow sufficiently down and in.  To become the tremendous and foundational source of nourishment they pulse to be.  2) YIPPEE!!!