Fog can be amazing. If you didn't know any better, nothing else exists beyond the dense white cloud surrounding your immediate environment. Of course you know your world is out there, the usual streets and stop signs, the corner Shell station and the Starbucks two blocks away. You generally know where the landmarks are, so you navigate by memory and fairly solid faith.
But if you're in a strange place and trying to navigate in fog, it's not so easy. It's like crossing the Mexican border after dark and not speaking Spanish. If you've ever visited Nuevo Laredo at night, and know zero Spanish, you're in trouble. Life moves with lightening speed, traffic and people. There are street lights, headlights, everywhere lights and movement, flashes of what you know to be humans and cars but you can't compute the images, or understand the street signs. You're completely and utterly lost.
It's like a speeding carousel within a cotton thick pyrotechnical fog.
I've read that when a woman has PMS, she literally has "water on the brain". It's more difficult to think. She feels dense, foggy. This can be terrifying and frustrating (hence the handgun). We can't find the words we're looking for, or leap from one thought to the next, because we can't see through the mental fog.
I'm hearing that menopause feels about the same way. Goodie.
Back in 1980 there was a horror film, The Fog. The plot was basically that sea zombies, the vengeful ghosts of mariners who were killed in a shipwreck 100 years earlier, traveled within a supernaturally glowing fog that rolled across a Californian coastal town and killed the living. They ship's crew had perished because they'd followed a false beacon, a fire lit by conspirators, which caused the ship to crash into rocks.
Residents of the small coastal town knew the zombies were coming when machinery began turning on by itself, or payphones rang simultaneously, and then they would see the glowing fog, moving eerily over hills and streets, until finally closing in on a home or place of work. But they were in acute trouble once the creepy white fog rolled beneath their doors. That meant "adios".
It was an okay movie, but a little stupid, like when the driftwood sends messages to the buxom Adrienne Barbeau then bursts into flames. But looking back, I see that the horror aspect of the movie was fueled by fears similar to fog-camouflaged sea zombies. These fears are about anything believed to be dangerous that we can't see clearly, can't understand. We deeply fear the monsters under the bed, in the closet, around the dark street corner. It's anything we can't control or make sense of, spray dead with a can of Raid.
Fog can be old age, dementia, disability. It's anything that slows or shuts us down, blinds us, holds us back or cuts us off forever. Little deaths are still deaths.
Woody Allen's psychiatrist once told his little brother, an agoraphobic radiologist I used to work with, that all fears are related to the fear of death. Death is the big grandaddy fear, the ultimate ending. Beyond death is essentially a blind spot. All we know for sure is that death means inevitable loss, darkness, physical and emotional pain. And we want none of that.
If your Uncle Niles from Bardstown, Kentucky wrote back from the afterlife to gripe about the food, weather or sleeping arrangements, we'd feel better about dying. Anything like normal, like life as we know it, even a less than ideal version of it, is comforting. It's what we know. But as things are, we can't see what's on the other side of this life. We know something happens, that energy cannot be created or destroyed. We become one thing or another, maybe scattered, or we go back to square one and start over again as an amoeba or paramecium. We just can't know, not with sufficient incontrovertible detail. And for our own sanity, we have to navigate this not knowing, rein in this fear with some kind of explanation or story to tell ourselves, because we're gonna think about death, and we need to know how to think about it.
So for now, just move slowly through the fog of not knowing, and try to avoid violent collisions with immovable solids. Go ahead and trust that your familiar world is out there, or some not too disorienting version of it. And do your best to remember where the curbs are, the ditches, guardrails, cliffs and rocks -- especially the rocks. Don't be deceived by false beacons (and um, good luck with that one).
The other option is not to risk wondering or wandering through the fog. Just stay home, binge on '80s movies or shop endlessly on Amazon, and pretend you don't see the glowing supernatural cloud. Just ignore your television turning on and off by itself. What's that annoying ringtone? You'd better answer your phone.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Hands
I remember my mother's hands, the olive skin moisturized with Vaseline Intensive Care, her long piano fingers, the nicotine stains on her right index finger. The veins were large and spongy, swollen green anatomy snaking along the backs of the hands that caressed me, held me when I was afraid, held me when I was hurt, held me for no reason.
The veins were large, as if trying to escape, or maybe her skin was just very thin. Way too thin.
Her nails were always painted. I never saw them otherwise, or any color but a light honey frost to match her full lips. Maybe she kept her nails painted because they had yellowed. She smoked all her life, from age sixteen to forty-four. Her autopsy report would state that her lungs showed signs of early emphysema. Already, at age forty-four.
Her hands were shaking the night she came home after a three day absence. I'd been praying in our yellow bathroom, picking out shapes in the peeling paint. I promised God that I would never ask for anything else as long as I lived if he would just bring her home.
Moments later our heavy front door swung open, hitting the wall hard. She lurched forward, her blouse half-buttoned. She stumbled into the kitchen. I tiptoed behind her, trying to avoid the areas of the floor that creaked. I found her swaying at the kitchen counter, holding a lit match to the nozzle of a Dristan bottle to make its opening larger. Her hands were shaking, causing the yellow light of the match to tremble.
Those three days she'd been sitting in a grassy field, she told us later. She wasn't sure how long she was there, but remembered trying to decide whether and how to kill herself.
Her hands fed and dressed three children. Her hands kept a clean house. Her hands shook a tambourine at an old Baptist church, underlined what mattered to her most in the books she read. Her hands played an upright piano we kept in the dining room, wrote poetry and songs about God, heaven and hell. Her hands lit cigarettes, opened beer cans, pill bottles. Several times these thin-skinned hands were cupped full of pills, pills swallowed all at once.
I remember her hands softly scratching my arm, a comfort we both loved. We took turns caressing the arm of the other, lightly raking the skin's surface with thin trimmed nails. I'd snuggle up close wherever she was sitting, our legs drawn up beneath us, then one of us would take the arm of the other and begin the ritual.
The veins were large, as if trying to escape, or maybe her skin was just very thin. Way too thin.
Her nails were always painted. I never saw them otherwise, or any color but a light honey frost to match her full lips. Maybe she kept her nails painted because they had yellowed. She smoked all her life, from age sixteen to forty-four. Her autopsy report would state that her lungs showed signs of early emphysema. Already, at age forty-four.
Her hands were shaking the night she came home after a three day absence. I'd been praying in our yellow bathroom, picking out shapes in the peeling paint. I promised God that I would never ask for anything else as long as I lived if he would just bring her home.
Moments later our heavy front door swung open, hitting the wall hard. She lurched forward, her blouse half-buttoned. She stumbled into the kitchen. I tiptoed behind her, trying to avoid the areas of the floor that creaked. I found her swaying at the kitchen counter, holding a lit match to the nozzle of a Dristan bottle to make its opening larger. Her hands were shaking, causing the yellow light of the match to tremble.
Those three days she'd been sitting in a grassy field, she told us later. She wasn't sure how long she was there, but remembered trying to decide whether and how to kill herself.
Her hands fed and dressed three children. Her hands kept a clean house. Her hands shook a tambourine at an old Baptist church, underlined what mattered to her most in the books she read. Her hands played an upright piano we kept in the dining room, wrote poetry and songs about God, heaven and hell. Her hands lit cigarettes, opened beer cans, pill bottles. Several times these thin-skinned hands were cupped full of pills, pills swallowed all at once.
I remember her hands softly scratching my arm, a comfort we both loved. We took turns caressing the arm of the other, lightly raking the skin's surface with thin trimmed nails. I'd snuggle up close wherever she was sitting, our legs drawn up beneath us, then one of us would take the arm of the other and begin the ritual.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Rapers & Rape Guards
Whatever his name is, he's still out there, raping 1 in 4 women living in Sweden. It's 1 in 5 in the US. And get this, about 35% of women raped as minors will be raped again as adults. So yeah, you can get struck by lightening and raped twice, more often in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Why are rapers called rapists? Rapist sounds like specialist, gynecologist, psychologist, psychiatrist. Raper is nothing special, but you'll need at least one specialist when Raper gets through with you.
I recently read an article in the New York Times about rape kits sitting for years on shelves, untested. Law enforcement's excuse was that the testing was just too expensive (meanwhile, they're polishing their new shiny semiautomatic weapons). I bet they wouldn't say that if more men were raped.
Men do get raped (1 in 71), which isn't far from their breast cancer odds (1 in 100).
Women are also more likely to be raped (1 in 6) than get breast cancer (1 in 8).
My own rape kit, which is an assortment of hairs and body fluids collected in the emergency room, sits on a shelf in Houston, Texas. It's covered with thirty years of dust, never tested. Raper is 30 years older than he was the morning he broke into my apartment. If the fact that he raped someone else one week before me is any indication of his usual frequency, I don't want to do the math to determine how many more victims he assaulted these past 30 years. Even if he were caught, only 3% of Rapers ever see the inside of a jail cell.
Quail Walk Apartments let me out of my lease after the rape. It was simple. I walked into the leasing office the next day, sat in a chair across from Lisa-the-apartment-lady and said, "I can't live here anymore. I was raped." That last word got tangled in my mouth for a minute, just like it did when I called the police the morning before.
"I'm afraid," I'd told Lisa-the-apartment-lady, but I stopped there. The rest of it was too weird, that I was afraid Raper could still get into my apartment through the tiny air vents, that no matter how many times I checked the door and window locks, I feared Raper could unlock them somehow, perhaps with telekinesis. The apartment just wasn't safe anymore, especially since many Rapers return to the scene. Plus, everywhere was a memory, the kitchen where he searched for a knife, the bedroom where I fought him, the floor where he bound my hands and mouth with electrical tape, the bathroom where the rape occurred, or the end of it anyway. Worst of all was the living room I crossed to unlock the front door when my boyfriend, a policeman, called to say he was on his way.
The boyfriend was late. He had another girlfriend, I would later find out. He gave Raper his opportunity, he and I, the ditz who unlocked the door.
Raper raped another girl down the street, in a local park beside a recreation center. There were no Rape Guards on duty. They should have been stationed as frequently as fire hydrants and flagpoles, churches and Starbucks.
A Rape Guard should have been alerted had the girl pressed a little button implanted somewhere on her body, a place Raper would never find it, perhaps under her right clavicle or beneath her bellybutton. Maybe hers was a dental implant, a lever she could flip with her tongue and bite down. Silently, the nearest Rape Guard would have been notified, could locate this latest victim by the signal of her rape prevention implant (RPI).
But Rape Guards didn't exist back in 1984. Oh yeah, they don't exist now either. One can't even Google "rape guard" and see it appear as one word, like "lifeguard." There's a RakeGuard.com website which is, ironically, a poker tournament site.
She hugged her Raper, that other girl. She hugged Raper, maybe to save her life or miraculously, out of compassion and empathy. I remember being shocked by this. She mentioned it nonchalantly as she and I sat with a sketch artist working with the police. We were there to describe the 5'9" white male with frizzy blondish hair. He had a tan. He smelled almost sweet, like exertion sweat, not nervous sweat. He wasn't nervous at all. Just determined.
He's still out there, probably forever, but let's at least get his name right. Raper makes rape sound more common, more everywhere, like a bad rash, like it is. Raper sounds more like dangers waiting to pounce, like they are. It sounds like both acting alone or in a group, one big party or a genocidal war game -- Let the rapes begin... It's bride kidnappings, honor killings, bride burnings, acid attacks, female genital mutilation, human trafficking, ritual servitude (sex slaves). It's all rape.
Raper is what we call him now, like driver or baker, shooter or taker; loser, hater, killer. Raper is ancient, patient, and nowhere near retirement. He can't tell you why he rapes, why women, especially, have it coming. We won't forget his name, but he'll never know ours, the 1 in 4, the 1 in 5, the too many to count because not all want their names on kits collecting dust, collecting stigma and shame. Why the shame? There's a lot in a name.
What was the name of that other girl in the park? Oh yeah, same as mine. Nobody.
Why are rapers called rapists? Rapist sounds like specialist, gynecologist, psychologist, psychiatrist. Raper is nothing special, but you'll need at least one specialist when Raper gets through with you.
I recently read an article in the New York Times about rape kits sitting for years on shelves, untested. Law enforcement's excuse was that the testing was just too expensive (meanwhile, they're polishing their new shiny semiautomatic weapons). I bet they wouldn't say that if more men were raped.
Men do get raped (1 in 71), which isn't far from their breast cancer odds (1 in 100).
Women are also more likely to be raped (1 in 6) than get breast cancer (1 in 8).
My own rape kit, which is an assortment of hairs and body fluids collected in the emergency room, sits on a shelf in Houston, Texas. It's covered with thirty years of dust, never tested. Raper is 30 years older than he was the morning he broke into my apartment. If the fact that he raped someone else one week before me is any indication of his usual frequency, I don't want to do the math to determine how many more victims he assaulted these past 30 years. Even if he were caught, only 3% of Rapers ever see the inside of a jail cell.
Quail Walk Apartments let me out of my lease after the rape. It was simple. I walked into the leasing office the next day, sat in a chair across from Lisa-the-apartment-lady and said, "I can't live here anymore. I was raped." That last word got tangled in my mouth for a minute, just like it did when I called the police the morning before.
"I'm afraid," I'd told Lisa-the-apartment-lady, but I stopped there. The rest of it was too weird, that I was afraid Raper could still get into my apartment through the tiny air vents, that no matter how many times I checked the door and window locks, I feared Raper could unlock them somehow, perhaps with telekinesis. The apartment just wasn't safe anymore, especially since many Rapers return to the scene. Plus, everywhere was a memory, the kitchen where he searched for a knife, the bedroom where I fought him, the floor where he bound my hands and mouth with electrical tape, the bathroom where the rape occurred, or the end of it anyway. Worst of all was the living room I crossed to unlock the front door when my boyfriend, a policeman, called to say he was on his way.
The boyfriend was late. He had another girlfriend, I would later find out. He gave Raper his opportunity, he and I, the ditz who unlocked the door.
Raper raped another girl down the street, in a local park beside a recreation center. There were no Rape Guards on duty. They should have been stationed as frequently as fire hydrants and flagpoles, churches and Starbucks.
A Rape Guard should have been alerted had the girl pressed a little button implanted somewhere on her body, a place Raper would never find it, perhaps under her right clavicle or beneath her bellybutton. Maybe hers was a dental implant, a lever she could flip with her tongue and bite down. Silently, the nearest Rape Guard would have been notified, could locate this latest victim by the signal of her rape prevention implant (RPI).
But Rape Guards didn't exist back in 1984. Oh yeah, they don't exist now either. One can't even Google "rape guard" and see it appear as one word, like "lifeguard." There's a RakeGuard.com website which is, ironically, a poker tournament site.
She hugged her Raper, that other girl. She hugged Raper, maybe to save her life or miraculously, out of compassion and empathy. I remember being shocked by this. She mentioned it nonchalantly as she and I sat with a sketch artist working with the police. We were there to describe the 5'9" white male with frizzy blondish hair. He had a tan. He smelled almost sweet, like exertion sweat, not nervous sweat. He wasn't nervous at all. Just determined.
He's still out there, probably forever, but let's at least get his name right. Raper makes rape sound more common, more everywhere, like a bad rash, like it is. Raper sounds more like dangers waiting to pounce, like they are. It sounds like both acting alone or in a group, one big party or a genocidal war game -- Let the rapes begin... It's bride kidnappings, honor killings, bride burnings, acid attacks, female genital mutilation, human trafficking, ritual servitude (sex slaves). It's all rape.
Raper is what we call him now, like driver or baker, shooter or taker; loser, hater, killer. Raper is ancient, patient, and nowhere near retirement. He can't tell you why he rapes, why women, especially, have it coming. We won't forget his name, but he'll never know ours, the 1 in 4, the 1 in 5, the too many to count because not all want their names on kits collecting dust, collecting stigma and shame. Why the shame? There's a lot in a name.
What was the name of that other girl in the park? Oh yeah, same as mine. Nobody.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Belief-O-Matic
In eighth grade my aptitude test results came with a warning: Interest patterns too varied.
There was a little bit of this and that, and the only professions even close to my interests were: TV/Film director, teacher, social worker, nurse, writer.
Today I took a test on a website called Belief-O-Matic. It's a place to test your religious personality and beliefs, to match you up with the perfect religion. It's like Match.com, only it hooks you up with the right god(s).
I scored the highest (100%) with the Unitarian Universalism religion. If you visit their "What We Believe" website, there are a lot of "diverse beliefs" and "it depends" and "many believe it's unimportant or irrelevant." The beliefs are all over the place, just organized confusion. Like me.
My lowest score was 11%, Roman Catholic, which is -- cough -- technically what I am. Next to Roman Catholicism, also in the bottom 11%, was Orthodox Judaism. Which means I'd more likely be a Muslim (20%), or a Scientologist (53%), than a Catholic.
I wanted my #1 religion to be Theravada Buddhism, because it sounds cool, or maybe Transcendentalism, because either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson chose that one. The latter didn't even make the list. Atheism wasn't on there either.
Aside from Unitarian Universalism, my top five religions (out of the 27 listed) were:
1. Liberal Quaker (84%)
2. Secular Humanism (79%)
3. Taoism (78%)
4. New Age (66%)
5. Theravada Buddhism (61%)
So I'm essentially screwed. I'm going to hell, or I'll be reincarnated as a leech or leper, and I'll be thoroughly confused every step away from Nirvana. I'll never find inner peace, a savior, or ultimate enlightenment. Screwed.
I guess the simplest way to deal with ambiguity is to break things down to their smallest parts. What exactly am I looking for?
1. I need a belief system (or do I?).
2. There are many, too many to choose from without definite guidance from a superior expert, those being Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Ron Hubbard, etc. But they're all dead, and God won't answer the phone.
3. All I know for sure is that it's important to do no harm in life, to be kind, treat others as I want to be treated, tell the truth (when it does no harm)... There's a little bit of good in almost every religion, and I think I'm enough of a grownup to choose the buffet and make the right choices.
4. I don't really believe in life after death, in the sense that consciousness is involved. I might be a dust mote or a water bear, stardust or ash. Whatever it is, it won't be me, so I would only be good for goodness's sake, not to get into anyone's idea of Heaven or Happy Hunting Ground. I think Heaven and Hell are states of mind, perhaps estates of mind, if there's any truth to cumulative Karma, which there might be in some weird cosmic butterfly effect sense. It's just best to be good, what good means to me, which is doing no harm.
5. I need to be an example to my children. Can I be this good example without a religion? Or can I call myself a Catholic to keep the peace in my family, to keep my husband from violently erupting in fear for my soul, and just quietly walk my own walk?
6. Do I believe in a higher power? Yes. But this power has no name, and there is no appropriate pronoun, certainly not "he" or "it." This power doesn't care to have a name, isn't built to care, doesn't have a language that involves "care." Math doesn't "care." Math just does what it does, quite well too, and Math doesn't ask for any praise.
A higher power caring would mean the power is human-like, which isn't what humans want, or is it? We at least want better than us, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. We want a power that isn't petty, moody, unstable, weak. I prefer something like "The Force" in Star Wars. There was no pronoun to grapple with, which was quite nice. It was an equal opportunity power. No consciousness involved. It's like a power source, magic soul fuel, and some kick-ass levitation.
We're asked in Catholicism to "denounce Satan." For me, Satan is right up there with ghosts and aliens. I guess I get stuck on the fact that God was supposed to have created everything, including Satan (formerly Lucifer). Therefore, if humans were made in the likeness of God, so was Satan. So Satan is God/God is Satan. Heads/Tails. Am I the only one who sees this?
Henry Miller once said something to the effect that the only way to peace is to accept that God and Satan are two sides of the same coin. Just like The Force and The Dark Side. There are two ways to go. Why do they need names? Be good. Do Good. Show good. Follow Good. How hard is that? Why do we need a gazillion religions to follow? Powers with names. Powers with egos that need praise, names, arbitrary rules and complicated rituals?
Keep it simple, and sane.
I apologize if I've offended anyone. I've spent at least forty years thinking/fretting about all this, trying to sort it out, but every truth I think I've found crashes eventually, splits on impact, like mercury. There's no solid, no constant like Pi. Except maybe Love, beautiful crazy Love. It isn't particularly constant either, but that doesn't seem to matter, does it.
May The Force be with us all (and no, there's no need to capitalize it).... In fact, The Force could be represented by a symbol only, something like the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince uses. Then again, we'd probably argue over what that symbol would be.
May the <\+/> be with you.
There was a little bit of this and that, and the only professions even close to my interests were: TV/Film director, teacher, social worker, nurse, writer.
Today I took a test on a website called Belief-O-Matic. It's a place to test your religious personality and beliefs, to match you up with the perfect religion. It's like Match.com, only it hooks you up with the right god(s).
I scored the highest (100%) with the Unitarian Universalism religion. If you visit their "What We Believe" website, there are a lot of "diverse beliefs" and "it depends" and "many believe it's unimportant or irrelevant." The beliefs are all over the place, just organized confusion. Like me.
My lowest score was 11%, Roman Catholic, which is -- cough -- technically what I am. Next to Roman Catholicism, also in the bottom 11%, was Orthodox Judaism. Which means I'd more likely be a Muslim (20%), or a Scientologist (53%), than a Catholic.
I wanted my #1 religion to be Theravada Buddhism, because it sounds cool, or maybe Transcendentalism, because either Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson chose that one. The latter didn't even make the list. Atheism wasn't on there either.
Aside from Unitarian Universalism, my top five religions (out of the 27 listed) were:
1. Liberal Quaker (84%)
2. Secular Humanism (79%)
3. Taoism (78%)
4. New Age (66%)
5. Theravada Buddhism (61%)
So I'm essentially screwed. I'm going to hell, or I'll be reincarnated as a leech or leper, and I'll be thoroughly confused every step away from Nirvana. I'll never find inner peace, a savior, or ultimate enlightenment. Screwed.
I guess the simplest way to deal with ambiguity is to break things down to their smallest parts. What exactly am I looking for?
1. I need a belief system (or do I?).
2. There are many, too many to choose from without definite guidance from a superior expert, those being Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Ron Hubbard, etc. But they're all dead, and God won't answer the phone.
3. All I know for sure is that it's important to do no harm in life, to be kind, treat others as I want to be treated, tell the truth (when it does no harm)... There's a little bit of good in almost every religion, and I think I'm enough of a grownup to choose the buffet and make the right choices.
4. I don't really believe in life after death, in the sense that consciousness is involved. I might be a dust mote or a water bear, stardust or ash. Whatever it is, it won't be me, so I would only be good for goodness's sake, not to get into anyone's idea of Heaven or Happy Hunting Ground. I think Heaven and Hell are states of mind, perhaps estates of mind, if there's any truth to cumulative Karma, which there might be in some weird cosmic butterfly effect sense. It's just best to be good, what good means to me, which is doing no harm.
5. I need to be an example to my children. Can I be this good example without a religion? Or can I call myself a Catholic to keep the peace in my family, to keep my husband from violently erupting in fear for my soul, and just quietly walk my own walk?
6. Do I believe in a higher power? Yes. But this power has no name, and there is no appropriate pronoun, certainly not "he" or "it." This power doesn't care to have a name, isn't built to care, doesn't have a language that involves "care." Math doesn't "care." Math just does what it does, quite well too, and Math doesn't ask for any praise.
A higher power caring would mean the power is human-like, which isn't what humans want, or is it? We at least want better than us, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. We want a power that isn't petty, moody, unstable, weak. I prefer something like "The Force" in Star Wars. There was no pronoun to grapple with, which was quite nice. It was an equal opportunity power. No consciousness involved. It's like a power source, magic soul fuel, and some kick-ass levitation.
We're asked in Catholicism to "denounce Satan." For me, Satan is right up there with ghosts and aliens. I guess I get stuck on the fact that God was supposed to have created everything, including Satan (formerly Lucifer). Therefore, if humans were made in the likeness of God, so was Satan. So Satan is God/God is Satan. Heads/Tails. Am I the only one who sees this?
Henry Miller once said something to the effect that the only way to peace is to accept that God and Satan are two sides of the same coin. Just like The Force and The Dark Side. There are two ways to go. Why do they need names? Be good. Do Good. Show good. Follow Good. How hard is that? Why do we need a gazillion religions to follow? Powers with names. Powers with egos that need praise, names, arbitrary rules and complicated rituals?
Keep it simple, and sane.
I apologize if I've offended anyone. I've spent at least forty years thinking/fretting about all this, trying to sort it out, but every truth I think I've found crashes eventually, splits on impact, like mercury. There's no solid, no constant like Pi. Except maybe Love, beautiful crazy Love. It isn't particularly constant either, but that doesn't seem to matter, does it.
May The Force be with us all (and no, there's no need to capitalize it).... In fact, The Force could be represented by a symbol only, something like the-artist-formerly-known-as-Prince uses. Then again, we'd probably argue over what that symbol would be.
May the <\+/> be with you.
Monday, June 30, 2014
The Kiss
I watched the little boy and his family during mass this evening. I know his mother. The boy is her third child, the first and only boy, probably a boy longed for by the father who held him during the entire service, who kissed the boy's soft cheeks with aching tenderness.
The child has Down Syndrome. The kisses were saying: I love you. I love you in spite of, because of, no matter what. I love you for the world to see. They were the perfect kisses, whole, real, infinite.
He walks on his toes. He can't sit still. His almond shaped eyes are light blue, hair surfer blond. He is maybe four years old, possibly five. His tennis shoes were decorated with Spider Man.
I compared him to my own son, now seven. My son is handsome, dark hair and Hershey's Kiss eyes. He is funny, affectionate, adorable.
And he is autistic.
He has trouble sitting still, staying on task, understanding language. He has the social skills of a three year old, gets stuck on ideas and movie scripts. He may never live independently, have a job, drive a car, marry or vote.
I kiss him a lot, an inordinate number of times each day. I kiss him in an almost desperate way, breathing in his cookie smell, the sweet of his doughy cheeks. I kiss him to disappear from my world, to enter his. I kiss him to seal the moment, a perfect eternity.
The other mother and I were disappointed when we learned that our sons weren't the sons we'd hoped for, expected. Was it wrong to expect a healthy child? Her third, my fourth. We'd only known success, healthy, the usual. We took these things for granted, believed that nature only screws up other people's kids, not ours. We were special, different, protected. Our lives were lucky, cocooned.
Not so.
Tonight, with my eyes half focusing on the alter and two priests, one with a cane, I saw a glimpse of my future. My son was in his early twenties, strong, maybe a little too strong. I was Medicare age, not so strong, still caring for the son who wasn't the son I'd hoped for, expected.
Some days, this image doesn't scare me. I love him. We'll be okay.
Other times, the image is too terrifying, like tonight. I didn't want to look at it, so I refocused my eyes, stared at the slain Jesus, the priest barely able to walk, his blood red vestment and stole, the white alter approached with reverence where the ordained solemnly bow and kiss the clean white linens.
They have a ritual. I have a ritual. We have days, which begin and end about the same. We wake up, every day, and live. I feed my son, literally and figuratively, walk beside him in a world made for others, not the disabled. He is different. I've heard all the sugary words, the platitudes meant to comfort. Platitudes don't work, except when they're true, on good days, when I believe that his differences make him special, special in a good way, not the ways the world laughs at, points and stares at, and I struggle to stay here, where the good things are true, on the bright side.
I'm a better person, mother, human, because of him. I've made more friends, real friends, living in Autism World. I can write from the bottom of despair, parental despair, write my way from bottom to top. I can make another mother of a disabled child smile, because it's not over, even if it's not the adventure she'd hoped for, expected. I'm right there beside her, and we'll find ways to laugh at the absurd, to squeeze our strange outlier lives into a new Spanks-like normal. We can have normal, just different.
But still, I sometimes feel disappointed when I remember what might have been, when I forget how much I love him, when I compare; when I focus on the cane and not the human, on the white and not the alter, on the cross and not the kiss.
The child has Down Syndrome. The kisses were saying: I love you. I love you in spite of, because of, no matter what. I love you for the world to see. They were the perfect kisses, whole, real, infinite.
He walks on his toes. He can't sit still. His almond shaped eyes are light blue, hair surfer blond. He is maybe four years old, possibly five. His tennis shoes were decorated with Spider Man.
I compared him to my own son, now seven. My son is handsome, dark hair and Hershey's Kiss eyes. He is funny, affectionate, adorable.
And he is autistic.
He has trouble sitting still, staying on task, understanding language. He has the social skills of a three year old, gets stuck on ideas and movie scripts. He may never live independently, have a job, drive a car, marry or vote.
I kiss him a lot, an inordinate number of times each day. I kiss him in an almost desperate way, breathing in his cookie smell, the sweet of his doughy cheeks. I kiss him to disappear from my world, to enter his. I kiss him to seal the moment, a perfect eternity.
The other mother and I were disappointed when we learned that our sons weren't the sons we'd hoped for, expected. Was it wrong to expect a healthy child? Her third, my fourth. We'd only known success, healthy, the usual. We took these things for granted, believed that nature only screws up other people's kids, not ours. We were special, different, protected. Our lives were lucky, cocooned.
Not so.
Tonight, with my eyes half focusing on the alter and two priests, one with a cane, I saw a glimpse of my future. My son was in his early twenties, strong, maybe a little too strong. I was Medicare age, not so strong, still caring for the son who wasn't the son I'd hoped for, expected.
Some days, this image doesn't scare me. I love him. We'll be okay.
Other times, the image is too terrifying, like tonight. I didn't want to look at it, so I refocused my eyes, stared at the slain Jesus, the priest barely able to walk, his blood red vestment and stole, the white alter approached with reverence where the ordained solemnly bow and kiss the clean white linens.
They have a ritual. I have a ritual. We have days, which begin and end about the same. We wake up, every day, and live. I feed my son, literally and figuratively, walk beside him in a world made for others, not the disabled. He is different. I've heard all the sugary words, the platitudes meant to comfort. Platitudes don't work, except when they're true, on good days, when I believe that his differences make him special, special in a good way, not the ways the world laughs at, points and stares at, and I struggle to stay here, where the good things are true, on the bright side.
I'm a better person, mother, human, because of him. I've made more friends, real friends, living in Autism World. I can write from the bottom of despair, parental despair, write my way from bottom to top. I can make another mother of a disabled child smile, because it's not over, even if it's not the adventure she'd hoped for, expected. I'm right there beside her, and we'll find ways to laugh at the absurd, to squeeze our strange outlier lives into a new Spanks-like normal. We can have normal, just different.
But still, I sometimes feel disappointed when I remember what might have been, when I forget how much I love him, when I compare; when I focus on the cane and not the human, on the white and not the alter, on the cross and not the kiss.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Breakfast With Beast, Washing Feet, & Liquid Zoloft
My former father-in-law, an eighty-four year old I often refer to as "Beast" in my journals, came to visit last weekend to attend my eight year old's first communion.
We've gotten along better over the years, but sometimes he still tests me, like he did at breakfast the day I took him to the airport to fly home. He asked me to pray over our pancakes at IHOP. I reached across the Formica table for his hands as I mentally reached for the right words to decline his request.
"I want to hear you," he said, as if this were a job interview, a test of my worthiness, my holiness.
"I don't feel comfortable," I answered. I never have felt comfortable praying aloud. I struggle enough praying on my own these past few years, uncertain where to direct my prayers, worried it's all just a silly waste of time. Besides, I don't like the sound of my voice. The distraction makes it impossible to hear myself think.
So Beast began to pray out loud, something simple, good enough. I could have offered something similar, but it still would have made me uncomfortable. After the "Amen" he said, "I don't have to think about what I'm going to say. It just comes out."
Bravo. Must be an annointing or something. I'm out of the loop, I guess.
The same weekend Beast came to visit, my husband bought me a CD lecture series, an RCIA course titled, "Welcome Home". It's narrated by Father John Riccardo, a charismatic man, well spoken, intelligent. You might even say he's cool. He's handsome and young for a priest, maybe in his mid-forties. He often does speaking engagements, recruiting new Catholics and urging those who are lapsed to come back "home."
The CD series is long. Seventeen CDs. I'm on #4. I listen as I drive the kids to school every morning, and I catalog the information, wait for satisfying answers, convincing arguments. I'm not buying any of it yet. And this is unfortunate. My life would be so much easier, if only....
But why is it necessary to teach the parts of a faith, step by step, rule by rule, symbol by symbol. Why doesn't it happen naturally? Why so much convincing? Apologetics? Seventeen CDs?
Do we need seventeen CDs to attract us to Love? Do we need props, prayers and formulae? No. We don't.
It all seems very contrived to me. If it requires this much explanation, so many apologetics, there's something inherently wrong. This is way too many steps to God. Too many predetermined steps toward an ultimate and equally impossible goal: divinity. If there's a heaven, we might achieve perfection there, whatever perfection is. I'd have to lose my mind, my self, my power of thought to reach a state of absolute purity. Rendered neutral. Neutered. Hollow. Whatever Adam and Eve were before they ate that damn apple.
When we're hungry, we eat. When we're thirsty, we drink. When we're lonely, we reach. When we're scared, we turn to a complex intellectualized fantasy called religion, a distraction of symbols and "holy" scripture, stories and promises, guides, gates, and a goal of eternity. It's all suspended from a massive scaffolding, a dream we build out of a desperation to live forever, all glued together by some vapor called faith.
Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Seventeen CDs sounds like what Shakespeare was trying to convey in Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." In his day, "protest" meant an attempt to convince.
Add to Beast's prayer test and the long lecture series, a foot washing invitation last week from a church lady. Yes, a foot washing.
Maureen is more of an acquaintance than a friend, someone I've volunteered with at our Catholic church. We're both involved in the social concerns program and have lost a parent to suicide, but the comparison ends there. If she knew me better, she would never have invited me to a "foot washing."
"We will get the experience of both washing each other's feet and getting our feet washed. Come at 8:30 am for coffee and light breakfast, then from 9:00 to 10:00 we'll have the foot washing," she'd written in her invitation email.
Of course, this is supposed to be an exercise in humility and devotion, patterned after Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Jesus with her hair. I get that. But wouldn't it be more pragmatic to deliver blankets and food to the homeless? Or offer babysitting to the exhausted parents of an autistic child? Sitting around having coffee and washing each others' feet sounds self-indulgent, narcissistic. I couldn't even bring myself to respond to the email.
I thought of Maureen though, during my daughter's first communion, when the priest said, "You can tell when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit. They're filled with joy. Their faces light up." Really? Maureen takes about three different types of antidepressants. Without them, her face definitely doesn't light up. Is this her fault? Of course not. Do we blame a lack of the Holy Spirit, or worse, Satan? Do we blame Satan when a baby is born with two heads, when innocent children are casualties of war or die from an atrocious birth defect?
My sister-in-law and her husband were also present at my daughter's first communion. We don't see them often since they live three hours away. To prepare for their visit, I had to find a picture frame for an image of their deceased infant. He was diagnosed with anencephaly during her eighteenth week of pregnancy. Being Catholic, Syliva couldn't opt for abortion, even though the infant would not live beyond a few minutes or hours after birth. The pregnancy was difficult on her already fragile mental state since she already suffered from depression, had had at least one nervous breakdown prior.
When the baby was born, his heart was beating, but he never took a breath. He lived three minutes. She and her husband took pictures. She gave everyone in the family an 8x10 of the lifeless child, airbrushed, his blue eyes glassy and fixed. I couldn't offend her by not displaying the photograph, which I'd put in a closet until I figured out what to do with it. I dug around for a suitable frame, then placed the picture among others of family members, in a prominent place on the fireplace mantel.
Who do we blame for these things? Sister Angelica touched on this during a program on EWTN yesterday (my husband watches frequently). She didn't offer any satisfying answers. People are desperate to know why they suffer so much. God watches. Satan trips us. Bad crap happens. Jesus hasn't returned, two thousand years later, but devout Christians still wait.
Why do they wait? Without the promise of everlasting life, would they still wait? Do they really love God, or are they desperate not to die? Not to be some touched up photo on somebody's mantel?
There are five pill bottles on my kitchen counter. Three are for the dog. He came from a puppy mill. He has allergies, anxiety, and is still recovering from sego palm seed ingestion. So he takes two pills a day, one on an empty stomach in the morning, one with a meal at night, and he gets antibiotic eye drops twice a day.
The other two bottles are for my seven year old son. One is liquid Zoloft. We started him on the antidepressant a week ago Tuesday, to combat the OCD, tics and anxiety that come with his autism. The liquid Zoloft didn't work out. He could taste it in the yogurt, his juice, applesauce. We switched to pills and he took them like a champ. We'll know by Tuesday if it's working, the psychiatrist said. We hope to see that he's no longer repeating lines from Dr. Seuss's Cat In The Hat or Green Eggs & Ham. We hope he's no longer afraid of growing up, that he no longer cries at the prospect of having to drive a car one day, move away from home. The idea of adulthood terrifies him. I can understand that. Adulthood terrifies me sometimes.
Autism drugs, a picture of anencephaly, the price of anxiety, seventeen CDs of apologetics, a morning of washing feet and being asked to pray over pancakes -- this has been my life lately.
My children are watching the movie Frozen as I type. During the movie, the trolls sing a song about being a fixer-upper, and a lyric about making bad choices when we're mad, scared or stressed caught my ear. They were referring to Anna agreeing to marry Hans immediately after they meet. She was desperate. She'd been lonely. No one else was asking. Is this how we choose our religions? Do we simply reach for the one next door? The first one that asks that we seek salvation, divinity? Don't we all want to be saved, in one form or another?
The only time I don't think about these things is when I listen to music from a time when I wasn't worried about anything. When I hear old Earth, Wind & Fire, or America, I feel firmly grounded. Revisiting the past makes us feel better. We know it. We lived it, survived it.
There's no such feeling when we imagine tomorrow. Even with religion, there are no guarantees. Even if you're in the best possible position to enter Heaven, you're still gonna have to die to get there. And there are no postcards from your deceased loved ones. No brochures on heaven. No infomercials. Just faith. And a few rules, like not fornicating, masturbating or using birth control. No supporting gay marriage or abortion. No living together out of wedlock. Stuff like that. And you have to memorize a few dozen prayers, receive a few sacraments (after receiving months of classroom instruction). You have to go to confession regularly. And pray. Out loud.
I've been imagining Beast on his deathbed lately, not out of contempt. I can just see our saying goodbye. We've actually learned to get along over the years, have come to some understanding. He's actually expressed to me some of his own doubts about Catholicism and what we can expect after death. I can imagine our final conversation, low whispers as I sit on the edge of his hospital bed, the air around us thick with the smell of plastic and bleach. I would tell him not to be afraid, that he won't be alone, that we'll meet him wherever he's going.
People have been dying for as long as they've existed. We've "survived" death in a sense, have gotten pretty good at it. What's to fear? Aside from the pain that sometimes comes with it, or the idea of no longer being? The thing is, I can't promise Beast or anyone that there's a heaven waiting for them, or that they're loved by God and heaven's angels. I can't understand such a hands off love.
I can only express my own love, hold someone's hand. And if on his deathbed Beast asks me to wash his feet, I will.
We've gotten along better over the years, but sometimes he still tests me, like he did at breakfast the day I took him to the airport to fly home. He asked me to pray over our pancakes at IHOP. I reached across the Formica table for his hands as I mentally reached for the right words to decline his request.
"I want to hear you," he said, as if this were a job interview, a test of my worthiness, my holiness.
"I don't feel comfortable," I answered. I never have felt comfortable praying aloud. I struggle enough praying on my own these past few years, uncertain where to direct my prayers, worried it's all just a silly waste of time. Besides, I don't like the sound of my voice. The distraction makes it impossible to hear myself think.
So Beast began to pray out loud, something simple, good enough. I could have offered something similar, but it still would have made me uncomfortable. After the "Amen" he said, "I don't have to think about what I'm going to say. It just comes out."
Bravo. Must be an annointing or something. I'm out of the loop, I guess.
The same weekend Beast came to visit, my husband bought me a CD lecture series, an RCIA course titled, "Welcome Home". It's narrated by Father John Riccardo, a charismatic man, well spoken, intelligent. You might even say he's cool. He's handsome and young for a priest, maybe in his mid-forties. He often does speaking engagements, recruiting new Catholics and urging those who are lapsed to come back "home."
The CD series is long. Seventeen CDs. I'm on #4. I listen as I drive the kids to school every morning, and I catalog the information, wait for satisfying answers, convincing arguments. I'm not buying any of it yet. And this is unfortunate. My life would be so much easier, if only....
But why is it necessary to teach the parts of a faith, step by step, rule by rule, symbol by symbol. Why doesn't it happen naturally? Why so much convincing? Apologetics? Seventeen CDs?
Do we need seventeen CDs to attract us to Love? Do we need props, prayers and formulae? No. We don't.
It all seems very contrived to me. If it requires this much explanation, so many apologetics, there's something inherently wrong. This is way too many steps to God. Too many predetermined steps toward an ultimate and equally impossible goal: divinity. If there's a heaven, we might achieve perfection there, whatever perfection is. I'd have to lose my mind, my self, my power of thought to reach a state of absolute purity. Rendered neutral. Neutered. Hollow. Whatever Adam and Eve were before they ate that damn apple.
When we're hungry, we eat. When we're thirsty, we drink. When we're lonely, we reach. When we're scared, we turn to a complex intellectualized fantasy called religion, a distraction of symbols and "holy" scripture, stories and promises, guides, gates, and a goal of eternity. It's all suspended from a massive scaffolding, a dream we build out of a desperation to live forever, all glued together by some vapor called faith.
Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Seventeen CDs sounds like what Shakespeare was trying to convey in Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." In his day, "protest" meant an attempt to convince.
Add to Beast's prayer test and the long lecture series, a foot washing invitation last week from a church lady. Yes, a foot washing.
Maureen is more of an acquaintance than a friend, someone I've volunteered with at our Catholic church. We're both involved in the social concerns program and have lost a parent to suicide, but the comparison ends there. If she knew me better, she would never have invited me to a "foot washing."
"We will get the experience of both washing each other's feet and getting our feet washed. Come at 8:30 am for coffee and light breakfast, then from 9:00 to 10:00 we'll have the foot washing," she'd written in her invitation email.
Of course, this is supposed to be an exercise in humility and devotion, patterned after Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Jesus with her hair. I get that. But wouldn't it be more pragmatic to deliver blankets and food to the homeless? Or offer babysitting to the exhausted parents of an autistic child? Sitting around having coffee and washing each others' feet sounds self-indulgent, narcissistic. I couldn't even bring myself to respond to the email.
I thought of Maureen though, during my daughter's first communion, when the priest said, "You can tell when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit. They're filled with joy. Their faces light up." Really? Maureen takes about three different types of antidepressants. Without them, her face definitely doesn't light up. Is this her fault? Of course not. Do we blame a lack of the Holy Spirit, or worse, Satan? Do we blame Satan when a baby is born with two heads, when innocent children are casualties of war or die from an atrocious birth defect?
My sister-in-law and her husband were also present at my daughter's first communion. We don't see them often since they live three hours away. To prepare for their visit, I had to find a picture frame for an image of their deceased infant. He was diagnosed with anencephaly during her eighteenth week of pregnancy. Being Catholic, Syliva couldn't opt for abortion, even though the infant would not live beyond a few minutes or hours after birth. The pregnancy was difficult on her already fragile mental state since she already suffered from depression, had had at least one nervous breakdown prior.
When the baby was born, his heart was beating, but he never took a breath. He lived three minutes. She and her husband took pictures. She gave everyone in the family an 8x10 of the lifeless child, airbrushed, his blue eyes glassy and fixed. I couldn't offend her by not displaying the photograph, which I'd put in a closet until I figured out what to do with it. I dug around for a suitable frame, then placed the picture among others of family members, in a prominent place on the fireplace mantel.
Who do we blame for these things? Sister Angelica touched on this during a program on EWTN yesterday (my husband watches frequently). She didn't offer any satisfying answers. People are desperate to know why they suffer so much. God watches. Satan trips us. Bad crap happens. Jesus hasn't returned, two thousand years later, but devout Christians still wait.
Why do they wait? Without the promise of everlasting life, would they still wait? Do they really love God, or are they desperate not to die? Not to be some touched up photo on somebody's mantel?
There are five pill bottles on my kitchen counter. Three are for the dog. He came from a puppy mill. He has allergies, anxiety, and is still recovering from sego palm seed ingestion. So he takes two pills a day, one on an empty stomach in the morning, one with a meal at night, and he gets antibiotic eye drops twice a day.
The other two bottles are for my seven year old son. One is liquid Zoloft. We started him on the antidepressant a week ago Tuesday, to combat the OCD, tics and anxiety that come with his autism. The liquid Zoloft didn't work out. He could taste it in the yogurt, his juice, applesauce. We switched to pills and he took them like a champ. We'll know by Tuesday if it's working, the psychiatrist said. We hope to see that he's no longer repeating lines from Dr. Seuss's Cat In The Hat or Green Eggs & Ham. We hope he's no longer afraid of growing up, that he no longer cries at the prospect of having to drive a car one day, move away from home. The idea of adulthood terrifies him. I can understand that. Adulthood terrifies me sometimes.
Autism drugs, a picture of anencephaly, the price of anxiety, seventeen CDs of apologetics, a morning of washing feet and being asked to pray over pancakes -- this has been my life lately.
My children are watching the movie Frozen as I type. During the movie, the trolls sing a song about being a fixer-upper, and a lyric about making bad choices when we're mad, scared or stressed caught my ear. They were referring to Anna agreeing to marry Hans immediately after they meet. She was desperate. She'd been lonely. No one else was asking. Is this how we choose our religions? Do we simply reach for the one next door? The first one that asks that we seek salvation, divinity? Don't we all want to be saved, in one form or another?
The only time I don't think about these things is when I listen to music from a time when I wasn't worried about anything. When I hear old Earth, Wind & Fire, or America, I feel firmly grounded. Revisiting the past makes us feel better. We know it. We lived it, survived it.
There's no such feeling when we imagine tomorrow. Even with religion, there are no guarantees. Even if you're in the best possible position to enter Heaven, you're still gonna have to die to get there. And there are no postcards from your deceased loved ones. No brochures on heaven. No infomercials. Just faith. And a few rules, like not fornicating, masturbating or using birth control. No supporting gay marriage or abortion. No living together out of wedlock. Stuff like that. And you have to memorize a few dozen prayers, receive a few sacraments (after receiving months of classroom instruction). You have to go to confession regularly. And pray. Out loud.
I've been imagining Beast on his deathbed lately, not out of contempt. I can just see our saying goodbye. We've actually learned to get along over the years, have come to some understanding. He's actually expressed to me some of his own doubts about Catholicism and what we can expect after death. I can imagine our final conversation, low whispers as I sit on the edge of his hospital bed, the air around us thick with the smell of plastic and bleach. I would tell him not to be afraid, that he won't be alone, that we'll meet him wherever he's going.
People have been dying for as long as they've existed. We've "survived" death in a sense, have gotten pretty good at it. What's to fear? Aside from the pain that sometimes comes with it, or the idea of no longer being? The thing is, I can't promise Beast or anyone that there's a heaven waiting for them, or that they're loved by God and heaven's angels. I can't understand such a hands off love.
I can only express my own love, hold someone's hand. And if on his deathbed Beast asks me to wash his feet, I will.
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I faced their autopsy reports. The medical examiner got the color of my mother's eyes wrong. They were green, not brown, but by the time her body was found, and because of all the retching, blood had obscured the true color.
My brother's body was no longer recognizable. There were extruded brain fragments on his t-shirt, almost every bone broken, his once handsome face and muscular body distorted. The human I grew up in the same house with, played cowboys and Indians with, listened to the Beatles' Blue Album with, was reduced to lifeless pulp.
Just like that. We fall off the planet.
It was these autopsy reports in particular that brought my agnosticism into sharp relief. Nothing could be further from the "Jesus Saves" and "God Listens" bumper stickers than the very real and grisly images of my loved ones in death. It was how they died, and when they died, and why they died. Not death itself. Death is part of life, but not torture, murder, or the irony of someone chronically suicidal finally succeeding by accidentally choking on a ham sandwich. God can't possibly be that ironic. Paradoxical, maybe, but not ironic. That's just cruel.
Any confusion about life after death can be summed up in this burning question: Are there Tuesdays in Heaven? I'll come back to this later.
For a instant this morning, everything made sense. I had an epiphany after glancing at a book on my kitchen counter, Hyperbole And A Half. It's a creation of part web comic, part blog, by Allie Brosh. The comic is drawn in Paintbrush and is described as "intentionally artistically crude." It's about everything from intellectually disabled dogs to debilitating depression. The colorful pages are inspiring, and the humor, even when it addresses all that isn't funny, makes one take life less seriously. I mean, what else is humor for?
So I decided right then and there in the kitchen that creation is an infinite explosion of colorful confetti. All this, our lives and what we've put into the world, is an amazing gorgeous blast of paper bits -- every flower, poem, song, star, laugh. We argue over where the confetti originally came from, when it came into being. We war when we can't agree on the answers.
It's everybody's confetti, but that's just not enough for some. And confetti alone doesn't satisfy. We have to paste and glue it, dye it, drown it, own it. We turn it into money, churches, walls and dungeons. That's just how we roll.
We've ruined everything. But that explains a lot.
Jesus saves. Saves us from what? Certainly not ham sandwiches, monstrous murderers and heavy vans that kill best friends (a death I left out). What's that I hear way in the back row? Hell? He saves us from hell? No, I'm afraid not. He might hold your hand, apologize profusely, but there are no surefire hell preventions. The best Christians I know have frequent flyer passes to hell. All they have to do is close their eyes, and there they are.
God listens. Hear that? Hear the warmth of being heard? That's all the warmth you're gonna get, because after God listens you're on your own to deal. He never promised bad things would never happen, that you'd never get cancer, that you'd live a long happy life and end up with a condo next to his.
Here's the hardest thing to face, which I've almost mastered: It's not meant to make sense. Sometimes it seems to, in a wonderful My Little Pony for Christmas kind of way, but other times it's just ugly black confetti everywhere. And it doesn't always clean up well.
Are there Tuesdays in Heaven? No, love. There aren't. There aren't Mondays, Mays, Groundhog Days or s'mores. But here, in a wondrous world that won't last forever, there's confetti, lots and lots of it. Life is intentionally, artistically crude, which is usually a pretty good thing.
Try and celebrate it.