Truth and Reconciliation: a Beginning

(reprinted with permission) 

 Dear Sandy, 

As I was eating my brunch just now, I couldn’t get your blog post out of my mind. I really didn’t try too hard, realizing that stuffing uncomfortable thoughts, images, memories is one of the things I tend to do.  I decided to reread it, now that I am straight on whose words these are—not some author whose book I’d read and with whom I felt a certain pain, but my daughter … whose pain over this I was not aware of for I don’t ever remember hearing of these events … unless these were among those thought, images, and memories that I stuffed because they were too uncomfortable for me to live with. 

When I first read the post before brunch, I was struck by your description: "Men, however, especially with a liter or two of lager in them, were delighted to ‘talk about love’. And to fondle me, grope my breasts, and press their leering, beery bodies close to mine.” I had felt revolt that these half-drunk slobs would do such things to Rachel.  But as I reread it, knowing this is you talking, I am more than revolted.  I was ready to punch them in their red, inebriated noses!  “That’s my young daughter your treating like less than a human being.  You are just that—less than a human being—to act that way!” 

Then, the thought entered my mind, “And how many times have I thought of such things, without acting on them?” That is all part of the patriarchal culture I was reared in, and which I am having one hell of a time pulling myself out of for it is so engrained in my as an integral part of psyche! 

The patriarchal home in which you were raised was more subtle than those half-drunks, but no less damaging. My therapist and I have talked about the fact that I was abused growing up by my mother—emotional incest—and that has the same lasting effects that sexual abuse does. Surely the attitudes, actions, words, innuendos, double entendres, and the like, that were evident as you were growing up, were equally as damaging to you. 

And when I think that I was as responsible for this part of your abuse as were those intoxicated guys, I more than cringe! I get equally angry. My only excuse: I didn’t know better. I was simply repeating what I had experienced in my home growing up with a father who had wanted to divorce my mother after having more than one affair … even as he actively took part in leading worship of our fundamentalist congregation. 

Obviously all this is well engrained, not something involving just your, mine, and my parents’ generations. It goes back to the beginning of the church, back to its Jewish roots. Women are property … playthings. Oh, I never heard it put so bluntly within the church. 

No wonder you did not talk to anyone about this? The men in leadership would have been more blind than I, and the women had been beaten into submission to men since they themselves were children. That’s the way it was (and still is in many places). Surely this price was not to much to pay so that one of those slobs on the streets of Dusseldorf could find the “joys” that you had found in being a Christian! Did the mission leadership have any idea what was going on out there on the streets? And if they did, were they at all aware of the horrible effect it was having on the young women and teenage girls they were sending into the brothel, as it were, to surrender their bodies and souls for Christ? 

If you had said anything (it is probably just as well you didn’t!), you’d not have been “given a place of safety and refuge in which to recover. There would have been no sense of the fact that you needed “a place of safety and refuge in which to recover.” If you had mentioned it to me—and if you did, I (like the leadership) unconsciously considered it too insignificant to deal with or even remember—I would have had no idea that you needed to be “given a place of safety and refuge in which to recover.” It would have all been off our radar screens; we would have seen you as less than dedicated. (God, did I really just write that about myself?) 

Oh, Sandy! What I’m experiencing as I read and write just now is so eye-opening.  And so horrifying. 

Ah, and when you realized you were being abused, you felt that you were cheating God by not being willing to sacrifice yourself—including sexually—on that so-called Christian altar. How often I’ve felt the same way, though not because I was sexually abused, just because I was not a good witness, I was not willing to die for Jesus.  And oh the shame that has grown within me. 

I have not resolved anything here, but I did not intend to.  I only want you to know that my eyes were opened if just a bit, that I’m willing to see some of your pain, that there is a new awareness of things relative to you, to the church, to patriarchal Christianity, to the homes you and I grew up in. 

All I can say is that I can pray for you as you enter your personal retreat next week, and I can pray with much more awareness than I could have an hour ago.  May the compassionate God meet you during your times of thought, meditation, relaxation, unburdening, and the like; may find healing. 

Sandy, my daughter, forgive me for all I have done, years ago and much more recently, out of utter ignorance and blindness. I love you.  I cry with you. 

Dad

"Will You Live for Jesus Today?"

(My response to "Why I Don't Witness to People on Airplanes" by Rachel Held Evans)

I abhor "evangelism", "witnessing", and whatever else people call proselytizing for Christianity. Now, in my late 40s, I am much more confident striking up conversations with strangers than I ever was growing up in Evangelicalism, but I'm also much less inclined than ever to sell someone an ideology they likely don't need and definitely weren't looking for before I crossed their path. I had my fill of the guilt trips for being a preacher's daughter who'd never "brought a soul to Jesus" and who couldn't work The Four Spiritual Laws into my conversational gambits. I'd had my fill of the guilt and subsequent doubting of my own worthiness and salvations long before I actually gave up the practice, though. Peer pressure, I guess.

But the real reason I stopped trying to "advance the Gospel" directly was my experiences as a summer missionary working the local beer fests for the annual evangelism push of a church in Dusseldorf.

Given no training or advice beyond a pick-up line ('Can I talk to you about love?") and a stack of church literature, I was sent out to the streets during the day and into the festivals in the evening. Not surprisingly, women didn't want to have anything to do with someone pushing religious literature at them and turned away before I could even get my line out.

Men, however, especially with a liter or two of lager in them, were delighted to "talk about love". And to fondle me, grope my breasts, and press their leering, beery bodies close to mine. The conditions of love they suggested didn't involve attending church the next Sunday.

Given my upbringing in the church, I was sure that there was something I was doing to entice them, that I led those men into thinking I was offering something besides Jesus. I was also trained that no price was too high, no insult too much, not when it was the Gospel. So I continued my duties, night after night at the fairgrounds, feeling ever more like I'd totally failed God.

Finally I broke down at a street theater evangelism at the end of the week. I walked away from my assigned task of working the gathered crowd. I sat down on a bench across the plaza, sure that I was cheating God--despite the fact that I was shaking, my teeth were chattering in my effort to hold myself together, and I could barely stand anymore I was so weak from the strain. I let myself cry for about five minutes, wrote in my journal about how unsuited I was for the Lord's Work, and worried that someone from the church would "catch me playing hooky."

It wasn't until two decades later that I realized how traumatized I was by the sexual assaults to which I'd been subjected, that what I'd experienced had been sexual assault. Twenty years until I got pissed off that any young woman (or girl, we had teens on our team) should be sent out alone into partying crowds, that women are taught that we have to accept such insult, that it is our fault when men act disrespectfully. Twenty years before I realized that it had never even occurred to me, nor to my fellow team members (male or female), to inform the evangelism organizers of my experiences; much less to expect that I be given a place of safety and refuge in which to recover.

But after that summer, I never again felt guilty about not "living for Jesus today".

10 Things on Thursday

I am planning a solitary DIY retreat for the last week in April.  Here are ten things for my portable altar:

1.  An alter cloth (that will double as a head scarf when I am out in the sun)

2.  A few tea light candles

3.  A lighter

4.  A small abalone shell to hold the candle

5.  A found shell that reminds me of half a wing as a meditative focus

6.  A bag of Dead Sea salts

7.  A flask of whiskey (yeah, not really this one)

8.  Heretic Anointing Oil (my own blend that a local store makes up for me)

9.  A collection of prayers

10. A rose petal/white sage smudge bundle

The Weaker Vessel

I see myself

Repugnant

In the sight of men.

Men who exploited

My innocence,

My obedience,

My female body,

To gratify their own lusting.

To assuage the bursting ache of their own grasping for control, they used me.

Then,

Because of their use,

They despised me.

I am a

Walking manifestation of the

Evil they have been

And cannot acknowledge.

I must bear their shame:

It must be I who

Am too alluring

With my developing sexual body.

I who

In my very vulnerability

Should be protecting myself

And them

From their own over-reaching desires.

I am the one in the wrong place, in the wrong clothes, too weak, too alone, too silent.

I wear the mark

Of their transgressions

In my wounded eyes. 

I fear

The evil I must be

To have tempted those

In whose care I am

To violate their sacred responsibility.

The weight of their (my) shame weighs heavy on my soul.

Living in the And

Lent has traditionally been understood as a preparatory time before Easter to participate in the sacrifices of Christ by making some difficult sacrifices of your own--usually involving some kind of fasting (no meat, no fats/oils, no sweets, hence the over the top revels of Fat Tuesday to mark the end of Mardi Gras--literally Fat Tuesday--with the sweet and fatty foods) as well as something unique to the penitent that is given up. By entering into the sacrificial postures, it is supposed to make you more aware of how much more Christ gave up to descend to humanity and be killed on your behalf.

I am not a substitutionary atonement adherent and don't observe Lent with those purposes. I see the death and resurrection of Christ as just another variation of the many springtime renewal stories. Every tradition has something that honors the Life Cycle springing forth at this time of year. Whether it is a Pagan celebration of Earth Day, Chinese New Year, Passover/Easter, everyone has some ritual of honoring that which died in order to generate the new life that sustains us through the coming year.

For me, personally, I am looking at the death of who I was (more accurately, who I thought I was) and the rebirth of myself into who I am becoming. It is a time every year when I consciously try to let go of habits of thought and pre-conceived ideas about who I am, of what I think the world is, of How Things Are. The Lenten period marks a space between the worlds, a gestation as it were between What Was and What Is. Yogis talk often about the Space Between the Breaths. a little death in the middle of the breathing that sustains us. Enlightenment, they say, is to be found in the Space Between, in the And of in-and-out. 

For me, Lent is a conscious Space Between last year and next year. It is living in the And. Recognizing a space between Ending what came before and Beginning the rest of my life.Therefore I take up practices for the Lenten season that will provoke my thinking into that death-and-resurrection, rest-and-renewal, sort of focus. Usually some form of meditation, some form of giving-up, some form of service, or all three.This year I'm attempting all three: a fairly rigorous dietary restriction for the purpose of clearing my mind and entering the hidden depths of repressed memories and emotions, a meditation on my old journals and (unexpectedly) the New Testament book of James, and a creative service by participating in the Religion-Free Bible Project and (hopefully) getting my Heretic blogging back up and running.

It is a hefty undertaking. More than I have attempted before. Given my health ups-and-downs (mostly downs) I don't know how much of my To-Do list will get done. But the honor is in the attempt, in the being willing to place myself in the space, to submit to the process, rather than the perfect execution of the tasks.

A Parable of Forgiveness

Once there was a very old man who lived next door to me.  He'd lived there forever; I'd grown up with his children, and his wife was my confidant.  Long after I grew up,  I moved back into the old house to raise my own children.  He was still next door.

After living some years as friendly neighbors, sharing rakes and shovels and plates of Christmas cookies, I discovered that he had taken something from my garage.  Something that had been there from my own childhood, just some old junk of my grandma's, probably only worth ten bucks at a garage sale. It's value to me was mostly that it had belonged to my family for three generation. But still, he'd just come over and taken it.

I confronted the old man.  He sorrowfully professed his apologies but said the item had since broken and he'd thrown it out; there was no returning it.  I was vastly annoyed and wanted little to do with him after that, though still being close with his wife, I had to swallow my irritation and make nice.

Another while passed and my children began watching one of those antiques shows on television where people sell their attic-finds for pennies or fortunes.  They discovered that the item the old man had stolen was not worth the mere ten dollars I'd imagined but was being bought by collectors for a thousand dollars.  I began to doubt that grandma's junk had so conveniently broken as the old man had claimed.

My anger and resentment of the old man grew.  Bitterness galled in my belly when I saw him in his yard.  My relationship with his wife withered.  I realized that I had to forgive him for my own sake, if not for his.  I told myself that I hadn't lost anymore than when I was unaware of the actual monetary value of grandma's piece.  It was simply a bit of family history and I still had my memories of grandma, after all.  It took a long time of inhaling So and exhaling Hum, of praying for peace and seeking to see the divine in the old man.  But finally, I could smile at him and actually mean it.

Eventually, the old man's wife became ill and died.  My family and I went over to help him sort out his belongings and close up his house before he moved in with his daughter.  I found a note addressed to me in his wife's handwriting, wavering and spotty, clearly written just before her death.

The note revealed that in her last days, the old man had confessed to her.  For decades he had been breaking into my house and systematically stealing my grandmother's treasures.  After emptying the storage boxes in the garage, he decimated the long neglected attic.  He'd even brought in knock-offs to replace the valuable antiques he stole from the main house.  My beloved family heirlooms, the tangible bits of long ago memories, the irreplaceable things I'd so adored because I thought they held the imprint of my grandma's touch were all cheap fakes.  The dead woman guessed that the old man had sold my belongings for hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least a half a million, probably more.  She'd thought he'd been fortunate at his online trading, when in fact, his trades had been disastrous and it was the sale of my own goods that had kept the two of them out of financial disaster many times.

I was shocked into immobility while my mind raced.  What good had been all the work I'd put into forgiving him for the one theft I'd known about?  Had his apology that I'd struggled so to accept had any value at all? Could he possibly have had any repentance for the one when he still continued with the other?  Was my hard-won forgiveness worth anything at all in the face of this deeper and infinitely more personal violation?

Worse than the loss of the material goods he'd stolen was the sense that his theft had been from my soul.  He'd stolen forgiveness from me with his fraudulent apology, capitalizing on my own inner belief in turning the other cheek.  I wished I'd never wasted any effort at all on the struggle to forgive him for his now-petty crime.  I wished I'd built up the wall between our houses, cut off relations with his wife, guarded myself from his thievery.  He'd manipulated my goodness and his wife's to serve his own greed.  He'd exploited my trust to cover his poor judgement in stocks.  His rape of my innocence tainted even the memories his false heirlooms once inspired. I couldn't even think of my grandma without being ripped off by him all over again.

I doubted that all the novenas, all the so hums, all the praying in the world could ever give me the grace to forgive the old man again.

Into the Labyrinth

Myth, according to scholar Karen Armstrong, looks at events not as one-time historical happenings, but instead as something that happens all the time. In myth, there is No Time or perhaps, All Time. Mythological events happen again and again, or constantly, in thematic or psychological metaphor. The same event seen historically happened only at one time and in one place.

In a historical sense, I walked into a labyrinth a month ago and walked back out an hour later. In a mythical sense, I walked into the labyrinth and I am still there. In the center of the figure, where the grace happens, in the midst of transformation. Historical truth is that the fear that I walked in with is now the peace that I hold. Mythological truth is that the demon is still shape-shifting into its angelic form.

I walked into the labyrinth a month ago, still trailing wisps of smoke from the smudging of handmade incense that my walking partner had brought. She stepped in ahead of me, crossing herself. I made my own gesture of reverence at the opening, acknowledging the sacred intention we had come to manifest. Step by step, through the gentle curves and hairpin turns that comprised this labyrinth, I placed my foot as on holy ground, knowing that it is I, actually, who am the holy ground.

Along the winding path, I held the posture of fear, a permanent flinch. It is a mental posture that I have maintained for decades but that has become a physical necessity in my pain of the last few years. The fear has kept me a literal captive in my own body as the muscles and joints pinch and ache. But walking into the path, I held the posture deliberately, gazing with the mind's eye straight at the fear, regarding it, admitting that both fear and flinch had served a holy purpose: survival of soul and mind.

I met my partner in the center. She planted her candle in the ground, among the rocks and pebbles of the tiny altar that grows there from the offerings of the pilgrims. Contrary to custom, I had brought nothing to leave in the labyrinth. This ritual was, for me, not about leaving something behind but about transforming something within. So instead of a tangible offering, I made a prayer of my body, with my body. Through a series of mudras, yoga-like gestures of the hands, speaking from that soul-place beyond words, I offered the pain and fear and flinching and utter terror to that sacred space. I submitted humbly to the spiritual path upon which I have been set, asking that I find authority over the demon fear, that it would be a companion on the journey rather than a jailer in my prison. I acknowledged the holiness of all things, even the demons, who still act according to a higher plan.

Then I bowed to show respect to the power of grace that sanctified the space. And I walked back out of the labyrinth. Or did I? The change in perspective that I sought in the center of the labyrinth is not complete, my body and mind do not yet fully believe that the demon Grace is under my control.

After the walk, my partner and I entered a tiny, spiral-shaped chapel, steeped in the prayers of the many supplicants before us. In the center of the chapel was a small sunken space that drew me in. I left my partner on the wall-bench that circled the chapel and sat on the floor in the very center of the spiral. Why had I been pulled to this place?

The work of Peter Levine, one of the foremost names in the field of trauma and trauma recovery, demonstrates that the natural response of an animal (or human) to a perceived life-threatening situation, after the fight-flight-or-freeze condition has ended, is to release the enormous quantities of fear-induced hormones like adrenaline through a period of shaking or trembling. In his work with recovery, he found that people who have been allowed to have this period of trembling rarely if ever have post-traumatic reactions. Similarly, people with PTSD who can call up in their bodies the memory of the trauma (whether the memory is conscious or not) will nearly always experience some kind of shaking, however small or large, as part of their release.

Cross-legged on the chapel floor, I sat with my hands resting on my knees, awaiting whatever had called me into this space. The tiny trigger point in my shoulder, where pain so often grabs me, tensed and a powerful electrical impulse shot down my arms. Both my hands twitched and clenched. My left hand started to shiver, then shake, and finally to flail. The muscles in my wrist and my forearm spasmed, the nerves firing completely without my conscious control. The intensity of the shaking was enough to hurt, the muscles were contracting so hard. Faster and faster, harder and wilder, my arm danced with the demon. I wondered if my whole body would be pulled into this last dance of fear, the birth spasms of freedom.

I have no idea how long I sat there with my arm shaking, at least five minutes, probably less than than fifteen. What I do know is that the trembling waxed and waned three times before the wave passed off me.

By the time I got home, I was completely wrung out. For the next several days, I was incapable of much more than brushing my teeth. I had the classic detoxification symptoms--weakness, flu-like digestion, headache, general aches and pains.

During the rest of the month, the shaking and spasming of my left arm would come over me many times, fortunately without the flailing, since it often came while I was driving or laying in bed at night next to my husband. Each time, it left me tired and drained. But somehow also liberated.

Preparation for a Prayer

Last spring, as I approached a particular NAET treatment (for eggs, the second of the standard protocol), I became inexplicably anxious. I looked for ways to procrastinate, postponing appointments, finding other things that just needed to be treated first, forgetting to do the necessary preparatory work. The morning of the treatment, I awoke from a dream that my father had had sex with me. It was repulsive: his casual use of me. I went into my healer's room shaking with a fear I couldn't explain.

During the treatment, I had a conversation with my dead mother that, by midnight that night, revealed to me the depravity of the sexual abuse of my childhood and adolescence. I began to think I had repressed memories far beyond the incidents that I could recall. It was all a realization that tipped the axis of my identity sideways.

The apprehension with which I'd gone in for the treatment began to make sense.

In the morning, at the height of the full moon eclipse, and some conjunction of Venus and Pluto that my astrologer assures me is auspicious, I will perform a purification and initiation ritual. My intention is to strip away the denial and repression that keeps me from realizing my spiritual potential, to purify my vision, and to commit myself to my life's calling more deeply, though I will not know really what that is until the blinders fall away from my inner sight. It is a step of faith, fidelity to the path, because I know that the rigors of vocation will be more than I can imagine at this point.

The trepidation that wavered into total terror, then rushed headlong into stunned horror, that accompanied last spring's NAET treatment also finds me now as I prepare for this coming ritual. What knowledge am I about to face? To what life am I committing myself?

The ceremony itself is little more than minor theater with fire and salt, psychological smoke and mirrors. But psychologist-priest that I am, I know the power of theater to give life to the soul. It is a powerful statement of faith, of my willingness to follow a calling I've denied my whole life.

It is that commitment I fear. What if it is too hard? What will it cost me? It will, of course, cost me everything I have. That is what callings are. They demand your life, one way or another.

This ritual is a declaration that I am willing to meet that price. I will follow the truth that is yet to be revealed, lead where it will, cost what it may.

I shake with reverent fear, holy terror, and determination. The demon in my head, who is not yet convinced that this is grace, screams in pain. A door is opening into new depths and the migrainous screeching of its hinges alerts me to the potential horrors lurking within. Do I really want to enter? How can I not and hope to live with myself?

Would that this cup should pass from me. But be it not my will, but Thine.

Eat Like a Heretic: Election Edition

I am camped on my bed with my girls, watching election pundits, and playing games on electronic toys. The night seemed to call for a party of some kind. So I made some South of Beale popcorn, sliced some fruit and cheese, and poured a tall boozy drink

The popcorn is my version of this Memphis restaurant's treat. I saw the chef assemble the spice mix on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. In fact, I backed it up and watched about six times, estimating the measurements, and what follows is my best guess. Well, and my own tweak.


SOB Popcorn Spice

1/4 cup coconut sugar (original: brown sugar dehydrated and ground)
1/4 cup sea salt (original: kosher salt)
1/4 cup paprika

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon granulated garlic

Place all ingredients in a small coffee grinder (I keep one just for non-coffee purposes) and grind into powder.

The restaurant showed the popcorn air popped, though I wondered whether they really popped enough with that dorm room popper to supply the whole restaurant! I popped mine in a large aluminum pot with a blend of coconut oil and grapeseed oil.

My election-survival drink tonight is an autumn-themed cider base, not too strong (I'm a lightweight and want to make it all the way to the official announcements tonight).

20 ounces apple cider
4 ounces Jameson's whiskey
A splash of Bittershots butterscotch schnapps

Pour over ice and sip all evening.  And now, to tune in to Live Election Coverage on Comedy Central.

A Haunting

Halloween. The veil between the worlds of spirit and body wavers and thins.  Knowledge and fear of knowledge, consciousness of The Unknown, are close at hand.  Ghosts walk, demons dance, all the skeletons in the closet rattle.  I am tense with horror at what I am about to call up, at my own deadly courage in facing the shade that hovers.   

A year ago, I was lying here in my bed, weeping again from exhaustion.  It was 7pm, the trick-or-treaters were in full parade.  One daughter was downstairs dispensing candy to the crowds and laughing with the neighbors; the other daughter pacing the floor, waiting for a ride to a party who never showed up. I was so tired, fatigued from my hysterical illness, the six weeks of continuous bleeding, the runaround in the health-care system.  I drove my daughter to her party, shaking like a palsied old woman.  Three hours from now, I was checking into the Emergency Hospital.

A year of doctors and tests that told no story, of healers and pills and therapies that dug new stories out of the depths of lost memory.  I lost forty pounds; it all found me again and brought extra.  I've been to a dozen doctors. I've consulted astrologers, psychics, and charlatans.  I've been hopeful and morose, resigned, and suicidal.  I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in analysis, diagnosis, meditation--scouring my case history for clues, making peace with skeletons in my past, finding skeletons lurking that I never suspected.

Last Christmas I lay in my bed, wishing I were dead.  Lent came around to find me hopeful of a resurrection into new life, a renewed spirit.  I wondered what would grow from my broken body and bruised heart.  Grace had cracked open my life, deeper than I imagined possible.  The self I laid down is dead; the self that rises now, I still don't recognize.

Not two weeks after my Lenten post, I lay on my healer's table, confronting my long-dead mother.  More than one of my sensitive friends told me that I had an attachment, that the ghosts of uneasy souls lay in my spirit.  My mother appeared to me with remorse, anxiety and longing.  Death had given her a new perspective of our lives.  She begged my forgiveness for her sins.  She warned me of demons hiding in my psyche.  She gave me few words but what she said turned everything I remembered of my childhood upside down.

It felt like my memories, and the meanings I attached to them, were a kaleidoscope, a familiar pattern of sights and sounds and feelings.  But Mom came and shifted the lens just a quarter turn.  All those  pieces suddenly fell into a different pattern with all new meaning.  Everything I thought I understood about myself, my childhood, my family was new.  I had stepped into a parallel universe, a Twilight Zone.

But how could these implications of my mother's words be true?  I had no recollection of anything that supported what she suggested that day. I was haunted now as I'd never been when her spirit had lingered.  I'd watched her fade into the light of my healer's window but I was burdened now with a new, terrible truth I couldn't accept.

My lack of confirmation weighed heavy, though the scars of the truth were now clear.  I felt like a physicist who hadn't seen the unknown planet but knew it had to exist because of its effects on nearby space were obvious.  Suddenly, the many questions through the years from psychologists and psychics weren't so absurd.  Perhaps the wounds they suggested had happened.

Then the memories began to leak out.  In dreams.  And flashbacks.  Glimpses of sights and sensations that had no context but I could feel them in my body, gagging me, tearing my most sensitive places, burning my belly, the gall strong.The demon danced always just out of sight, daring me to call him by name.

My body is the battleground of this fight to own my memories.  I was struck with Bell's palsy; I lost part of the vision in one eye, and have been tortured with pain that threatened to blast my brain out through the sutures of my skull bones.  The medicines and therapies prescribed to lessen the pain, served also to weaken my defenses that blocked these memories to begin with.  The more I mediate the pain, the more the demon dances and, by force of long and well-ingrained habit, I try to repress him.  I am about to start my third round of remedy/therapy combinations that will safely exorcise this evil from me.

I long to name this demon with confidence.  Fetch him to dance to my tune.  Tame him to work for me in healing, not destroy me.  As I write, a muscle under my eye is twitching, my whole body aches in a permanent flinch, the frozen trauma caught in the muscle memory I can't yet allow fully into consciousness.  

Tonight I step into the circle, howling my terror, singing my strength, this demon is mine.  Bring to consciousness the fears and the memories that terrify. While the veil to the unconscious is thin and shifting, when the power of those saints who passed before us lingers close, I invoke Grace.  The demon Grace who dances, not to terrify but to save me from what I could not be permitted to see.  Grace, whose blindness now will be sight, I call you to transmute from fear to love, no longer Death but Life.  

Tomorrow, I go to a Franciscan labyrinth to honor All Saints Day/Dia de los Muertes.  I will walk into the path as to the grave, to bury my fears and traumas.  The dreams and knowings I call forth tonight will go with me tomorrow into the labyrinth. I will bring the demon fears with me, but in the holy center space where grace happens, he will be no demon to me. When I come out, it will be wisdom that walks with me.