Chronicles of a (Formerly Christian) Heretic

Still in the Blogosphere

2012-01-31T10:41:00.000-08:00

Haven't been posting much, or at all, for the last several months as my health issues became so acute and I couldn't concentrate long enough to write a whole blog post. I have kept up with my Facebook Page, though, so please do follow me there. The Christian Heretic is a public page so you don't have to have an account with Facebook to see my posts (I think) and it should be find-able with google. Or click on the Facebook thingy at the top of this page.

I am, in fact, doing much better in just about every measure of health possible and hope to get back to regular posting soon. (Of course, I always hope to get back to writing soon and never seem to actually do it...hmm, maybe some work to be done there.)

The virgin birth, a rejected book, and the courage to be Jesus

2011-12-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

A book so heretical the publisher tore up the author's contract! Help him self-publish. The world needs more encouraging heretics.

The virgin birth, a rejected book, and the courage to be Jesus

First Meal I Made All By Myself (well, in several months, anyway!)

2011-12-01T12:54:00.001-08:00

Tortilla Soup

Makes about 1 gallon, I’m guessing? Eight to ten big bowls of it.

I started with four frozen, boneless, skinless chickenbreasts arranged in a large soup pot over a couple tablespoons of oliveoil. As the frozen chicken thawed andcooked in the covered pot, it created it’s own poaching/steaming liquid. On top of the chicken pieces, I liberallysprinkled the following:

The contents of two bags of YOGI Aztec Sweet Chili Tea

3 pinches of chipotle pepper shreds (Archer Farms, fromTarget)

Dash of dried oregano

½ teaspoon whole black peppercorn, very coarsely crushed

Several pinches crushed red pepper flakes (Archer Farms)

Pinch of dry onion powder (homemade from Just Dried Onions)

Pinch of roasted garlic powder (homemade from Just DriedRoasted Garlic)

Zest of a small lemon

Juice of the lemon

Dusting of cinnamon

¼ cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes (the julienned ones fromCostco)

2 tablespoons of the liquid from the thawed roasted Hatch chiliesa neighbor brought me from Albuquerque

Sea salt

When the chicken was cooked through and shreddable, Iremoved it to cutting board and added to the pot:

1 carrot, peeled and sliced into rounds

2 ribs of celery, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped coarsely

1 medium onion, diced

1 tomatillo, diced

1 zucchini, peeled and diced

One 15-ounce can of diced, fire-roasted tomatoes (Muir Glen)

Cover and simmer together until tender but not mushy. Shred the chicken. Return the chicken to the pot and add 2quarts of chicken stock (Pacific organic, free-range Chicken Broth). Heat through and serve. Or bring to boil, turn off the heat withoutuncovering pot, and let sit for 30 minutes to several hours to let the flavorsreally meld without overcooking (this option not recommended for theptomaine-phobic, but I swear I’ve never given anyone food poisoning).

Garnish at the table with:

Chopped cilantro

Diced avocado

Sour cream

Roasted corn

Mashed roasted Hatch chilies

Corn tortilla strips, fried in oil

Or add it all into the soup pot before serving if everyonecan/will eat them!

God: You've Misunderstood the Criteria for Getting In

2011-11-29T11:01:00.001-08:00

It is that you dared to live.

How End Times Teachings Is Terrorism and Child Abuse

2011-11-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

Link to part two--I don't know why it won't embed!

Big Lies I Believe

2011-11-13T11:41:00.001-08:00

Fundamental beliefs (aka Big Lies) held in common by peoplewho suffer from chronic illness:

1. Ihave to be strong. (Strong enough tohandle anything, regardless of whether the weight is unbearable by anyone.)

2. Itis not right for me to be angry. (I haveno right to anger, my anger is not justified, or even that anger is a sin akinto murder.)

3. IfI’m angry, I will not be loveable. (Loveand acceptance are earned by our character or our behaviors—which areinseparable.)

4. I’mresponsible for the whole world. (Leadingto hyper-controlling behaviors, being the Fixer, a compulsion to “save theworld.”)

5. Ican handle anything. (It is easier justto do it myself than get other people to do it, if you want it done “right” youhave to do it yourself, needing to be perfectly competent in all areas of life—perfectmom, perfectly decorated and kept house, perfect garden, perfect on the job, inthe bedroom, in the ministry—being good enough is never acceptable inanything.)

6. I’mnot wanted—I’m not lovable. (Regardlessof others’ intentions, I perceive that I am unwanted/unloved.)

7. Idon’t exist unless I do something. Imust justify my existence. (My only worth lies in my utility. I cannot fathom being valuable simple forBeing.)

8. Ihave to be very ill to deserve being taken care of. (Ishould be able to buck up, mind-over-matter, just get on with things, no mattewhat.)

A major contributor to the genesis of many diseases… is anoverload of stress induced by unconscious beliefs. If we would heal, it is essential to being thepainfully incremental task of reversing the biology of belief we adopted veryearly in life. Whatever externaltreatment is administered, the healing agent lies within. The internal milieu must be changed. To find health, and to know it fully, necessitatesa quest, a journey to the center of our own biology of belief. That means rethinking and recognizing—re-cognizing:literally, to “know again”—in our lives.

…The key to healing is the individual’s active, free andinformed choice. … Liberation fromoppressive and stressful external circumstances is essential, but that is onlypossible if we first liberate ourselves from the tyranny of our ingrainedbiology of belief.

From When the BodySays No by Gabor Mate, MD (the parenthetical remarks are my own)

Forgiveness

2011-11-10T11:01:00.001-08:00

Yesterday's procedure went as well as could be expected, I guess. They didn't find anything immediately scary and the biopsy won't have results for two weeks. I feel like a tiny little angry Mack truck ran up my insides and caromed wildly around in there. So, another day of lying in bed, popping pain remedies.

An interesting thing happened during the test. I expected pain, and it hurt a lot, but I totally didn't expect to feel like some hidden emotional trauma had been triggered in the poking around in my body. Maybe you know that emotional memories are held in every cell in our bodies: the more pathological the cell tissue, the more intense the emotional charge of the memory. From the first moment the tools of the test entered my body, before the current physical pain even registered, I was bawling. I was obviously (to me, anyway) being reminded of emotions that were hidden away in my body. I was overwhelmed with a grievous rage.

A couple new cysts were found of a type that mind-body experts associate with constantly replaying old "movies" of hurts one can't let go of. As if there were, say, some insults that I am hideously angry about, can't let go of, and can barely admit even to myself. Perhaps the deeply mired issues represented by the fact that none of my family responded with so much as an "I'm glad you're not dead" to my several messages about my health crises and my Halloween trip to the ER. Both of my siblings and their spouses roundly ignored my emails but betook themselves to comment on some of my frivolous Facebook posts. I wrote to them to ask why they bothered to FB with me if they were going to ignore the big scary stuff. My brother hasn't answered; my sister said in response to my questioning whether she had even received the emails, "oh, yeah, I got those," without a single explanation of why she had ignored them. I am so deeply offended, I can't even articulate it.

Clearly, I have some deep psycho-spiritual work to do--undoubtedly around this same as-yet-unforgivable collection of bitter and angry baggage about my family. It is more than a little depressing to realize. I have done sooo much work distentangling my psyche from my past yet my body is telling me I have so much more to do.

Dear Anonymous

2011-11-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

…what would it be likefor myself or my immediate family to become sick or involved in an accident orsomething-- how would I approach it being that all the stuff I used to believehas changed and I no longer do all the stuff I use to do as a result of that.In the past, of course, I knew every scripture to quote and "standon" and, of course, there would be church and all the pray lists of thesaints and intercessors. But now what would I do especially since pretty muchthe only thing I can honestly say that I do believe at this point is that Godis, sigh. I am interested to know how you are dealing with this from thatstance.

Dear Anonymous,

My family and the churches we participated in had no overttheology on illness or misfortune—like, it was a test from God, or punishment,or caused by our own lack of faith. Nordid we particularly have a theology of healing—like, "stand on thepromises of God" (as the old hymn says) and you will be guaranteed health,wealth, healing.

Covertly, of course, I picked up a lot of thoseideas—especially as we moved from denomination to denomination, and later as Iwandered even farther afield in college (strong Calvinism from my college but"name it and claim it" from the church I attended). But I never had a clearly articulateddoctrine for myself. We had a lot ofhealth problems in my family and, though we prayed for restoration of health,we didn't seem too spiritually distraught when that didn't happen. I mean, we grieved and were personallydistressed by death and major illness but didn't feel we'd been cheated by Godnor that we were guilty of something.

Actually, I developed a rather rigid doctrine of personalresponsibility for health after Ileft religion and became a fundamentalist alternative healing nut. I felt obligated to have a successfulhomebirth as a proof to the unbelievers—those who still went to hospitals forbirths. Every cough or sniffle my kidsgot was a personal affront to me—that somehow I wasn't feeding them the propernutrition and that if they didn't respond immediately to my dosing them thatI'd be despised by my fellow-crunchy granoloids and the conventional medicosboth.

As I have faced chronic illness these last four years, Ihave had to confront my beliefs that physical/mental health is indistinguishablefrom psychological/spiritual health AND that therefore I have control overit. I still believe that health of bodymind and soul are all of a piece but I am slowly coming to accept that much ofit is outside our individual capacity to regulate. Medical doctors and alternative therapistsboth have done a lot of victim-blaming toward me over the years, if not for theoriginal dysfunction (assuming they didn’t imply I was conjuring it up to beginwith) then for the lack of healing—that I didn’t have the proper strength ofwill to sustain the healing protocols prescribed, that I cheated on diets, orjust plain “wanted to be sick” because it provided me more psychologicalbenefit than not be ill. In religion, Ireceived this kind of condescension over attitudes and behaviors but neverhealth issues.

If this post didn't address your question directly enough, please comment again and ask more questions, because I will be glad to write more specifically to your concerns.

Day of the Dead

2011-11-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Partied down with the ER docs last night. I went as amiddle-aged woman with dysfunctional bleeding. It was a heart-pounding,dizzying experience. My costume rocked! Risque cutaways at the bust and booty,super realistic-looking blood on everything. I got some drugs and spent a lotof time on my back with my feet in the air while men toyed with my ladyparts. Ieven got to bring home pictures. Best Halloween party I ever went to but thismorning after kinda sucks!

Ha! The backstoryis that I’ve been spotting or bleeding for nearly six weeks. While each burst of actual bleeding wasaccompanied by extreme anxiety, I knew that I wasn’t bleeding anything like ahemorrhage so I tried to breathe deeply. Compounding the panic was the memoryof my mom’s odyssey with cancer that started with exactly the same symptoms atexactly my age. She was dead two yearslater.

I tried some of my own healing arts but found that Icouldn’t concentrate through the anxiety. Not surprisingly, my efforts were ineffective. Last week I started a round of visits toconventional medical professionals—I posted some of that story on my FacebookPage. None of the medicos wantedresponsibility for my long term care: the GP sent me to a gynecologist, afterordering a raft of blood tests and radiology; the gynecologist insisted that Ineeded to follow up with the GP, after ordering more tests, because they “onlydo vaginas and babies here” and clearly I had bigger issues going on.

The ob-gyn did prescribe some Provera (syntheticprogesterone, the hormone that down-regulates menstrual bleeding among otherthings) to shut of the faucet, as it were. Being the crunchy granola, nuts and berries kinda gal I am, I asked fornatural progesterone but she never studied the natural stuff and didn’t knowwhat it would do. I agreed to take theProvera after a two-day trial of over-the-counter progesterone, though I wouldrather have taken a prescription compound that was regulated for potency, ifthe progesterone didn’t do the trick.

It did seem to work fairly well—if I didn’t eat oringest anything that inflamed the ongoing allergic cough I’ve had for weeks, ordo too much (since hubby was out of town, as usual, it was hard not tooverdo)—until Saturday, when it didn’t. So I trotted off to the pharmacy only to discover that the script neverarrived! Argh! I called the doc yesterday morning to have itcalled in again but couldn’t pick it up until evening. I planned to start it this morning after thehormone cream I’d been using all day had worn off.

Just before five in the afternoon, I heard from theGP’s office that my bloodwork, ultrasound, and x-ray had all come back normal;everything seemed fine (!?!) But about nine o’clock last night, the bleedingswitch turned on overdrive and I started to bleed quite heavily. By ten-thirty, I was checking into theEmergency Hospital. They were so quickand efficient, I didn’t even have time to make the necessary Momarrangements. I ended up phoning andtexting my daughter at her party, my husband in Indiana, and other moms to pickup my slack, all while lying on the gurney with my feet in stirrups or beingbriskly wheeled around the halls (wow, talk about dizzying!)

Of course, the ER ran their own blood workup andultrasound but their results agreed with the GP. Nothing obvious to be causing thebleed—which, while heavy, was becoming clear was not nearly the dangerous stateI feared. So they watched me take theProvera that the ob-gyn had prescribed and sent me home. Within a couple hours, the drug did its thingand dried everything pretty much right up.

Now that major polyps,tumors, giant fibroids, etc, have all been ruled out, I have a couple moretests scheduled: still to come, endometrial biopsy for cancer and somethinglong and painful for fibroids not otherwise visible on ultrasound. Butit is looking like a hormonal disruption consistent with incipientmenopause—also consistent with the autonomic nervous system dysfunction that Ican’t get anyone to notice.

Meanwhile, on this the Day of the Dead, I feelhung-over, exhausted, and used up. Ifeel beat up on the inside, weak and helpless on the outside. Getting out of bed to use the toilet seemed moreeffort than it was worth. In the lastcouple hours, though, I have been able to scramble some eggs, shower off myHalloween party residue, and crash back into bed. Had enough energy to write this post but Ifeel a nap coming on now!

What If Women Had a Voice at Nicea?

2011-09-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

What if women had been given a voice at Nicea? What if the Apostle Junia had written an epistle that survived, even if only in references by ancient critics? What if the cult of Jesus had not won the economic and political turf war against the mystic gnostics? What if the Acts of Paul and Thecla had made the canon? What if we still believed Jesus really was a totally flesh-and-blood, sweaty, sexy man?

Would women have not become second-class citizens of the Kingdom? Would we have quit making excuses for ignoring "male and female, created He them" and "in Christ there is no slave nor free, male or female"? Would women be respected in the Christian community as whole, complex people instead of wombs with legs?

What if we had taken Jesus seriously when he honored the whore, the women disciples, the adulteress, the mother, the rich patroness, rather than only following his example as the destroyer of the temple?

Who would we think God is? Who would we think we are?

In Memoriam

2011-09-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Matishayahu "One Day"

It’s not about win or lose because we all lose when we feed on the souls of the innocent.

Diana Butler Bass, "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent"

There is, however, a difference between memory—the snapshots that stay in our minds always—and RE-membering. Remembering means to “put back together” the pieces of the past, to rearrange the pictures of memory in order to make meaning, to heal, to forgive, or to inspire.

Brilliant at Breakfast. "Ten Years On and What Have We Learned"

Today is not for politicians fighting the culture wars. It is not for religious leaders to try to score converts or demonize those who believe differently. It is not for posturing for the 2012 election. Today is for those who were there, for those who made it home, and for the families of those who didn't. It's for heroes and victims alike, and the people they left behind. Today is THEIR day.

Halaina Hovitz, Salon.com, "The 9/11 Stories We've Never Told Anyone"

But "living in the shadow of 9/11" means something very different to at least 16 children who grew up in Lower Manhattan. It means being engulfed in the "shadow" of the dust cloud, then watching it hover over your home for months (if your home wasn't destroyed). It means standing in the "shadow" of your apartment building whose entire north side had been burned off, allowing you to look directly into people's apartments. It means living in the "shadow" of your health that's been compromised from breathing toxic fumes. It means living in the "shadow" of the person you could have been, which was more than just interrupted.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky, Common Dreams, "America the Amnesiac"

For ten years after 9/11, the Arab Spring is here, reminding us that the future need not look anything like the past. Yet the past hasn't gone anywhere. It still demands its day of reckoning. But first, let us say Kaddish for the dead.

Michael Spencer, internetMONK, "iMonk Classic: Michael Spencer's Early Response to 9/11"

Our innocence is over, and if we try to protect our children or the flying public or the nation in general, we are going to see the beginning of a new dark ages.

Scott Morizot, Faith and Food "Reflections from September 11, 2001"

From my perspective, sadly, we did allow the terrorists to win. I don’t think in their wildest dreams they ever though they could provoke such drastic and lasting change in our nation from a single attack. They successfully instilled fear in our nation and acting under the impetus of that fear, we changed in ways that would have been inconceivable before that attack.

Rainer Maria Rilke, A Year With Rilke, "Dear Darkening Ground"

in that hour of inconceivable terror

when you take back your name

from all things.

A Counterfeit Spirit

2011-09-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

As I have become more comfortable in my own heretical skin this last year, embracing all of who and what I am as wholly Holy, I had begun to doubt how seriously I would have been spiritually annihilated as a child if I had come out of the mystical closet. I castigated myself for hiding in that closet for 40 years. I reprimanded my self with “See? It hasn’t been that bad coming out! What were you so afraid of?”

Well, … this: http://solasisters.blogspot.com/2009/12/mysticism-counterfeit-holy-spirit.html

The writing of someone who had embraced everything that I have spent a lifetime struggling to integrate before she threw it away on a limited, exclusionary, superstitious Christianity. Her words are echoes, resounding gongs, screeching nails on the blackboard of my memory, of the teachings I heard over and over in my childhood. Everything I was trying to convince myself was overblown, childish hyperbole is right there calmly damning me from my computer screen.

Even the calmly logical, condescendingly simple explanations of how Satan takes over the mind and will of the unsuspecting mystic who uses prayer beads, walks a labyrinth, prays with imagination, or meets with a spiritual mentor sounds like the patronizing, self-righteous, religious know-it-alls of my childhood. Did I risk a verbal, emotional, if not literally physical, stoning as a witch, a dupe of Satan, evil incarnate, if I had freely shared my psychic knowledge, my awareness of mystical union with God?

Hell, yes.

Come to Church This Weekend

2011-09-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

Wanna experience something like never before? Tonight at 7 at Two Rivers. I think you will be shocked to NOT find what you expect. Come and see. Yes, it’s prayer and praise night at church, but I don’t think you’ve ever experienced such a “church” like this. You love to stretch your mind regarding religion?

Dear G_____,

Thank you for the invitation to your praise and worship service tonight. I don’t think we will be coming.

I could tell you that I have been too busy for what my Hysterical Illness lets me do (have I told you about that?) or that this is our first free At-Home Day in three weeks (we usually try to keep one a week as a kind of Sabbath) or that with Thom out of town for the weekend we are going to keep everything very slow and low-key—and all those things are true. But they really would only be excuses.

Although I have been doing a lot of work this last year reconciling my spiritual understanding of the Divine with the Christian God and figuring out who Jesus is for me, I still have enormous and unhealthy prejudices against anything that even sounds like Evangelical Christianity. The thought of attending a Praise and Worship service make me a little sick to my stomach.

Your particular church may be none of the things I identify with evangelical church but I’m not in a place spiritually or psychologically where I am ready to risk it. Not long ago I wrote a couple of blog posts about how I am keen to continue working to resolve my knee-jerk revulsion to Evangelicalism but that it is not something I can even attempt at this time. I wrote about needing to step back from all my inner work of the last year and just rest alone with my God for another long while.

Even the fact that I feel compelled to write this very long explanation for declining your invitation instead of a simple “no, thank you” is indication that there are still huge issues for me to address. But I can’t do it just now. It may be months or years before I can face those particular demons. I haven’t set foot inside a Protestant church in almost ten years. It has only been this summer that I found I could read a Bible without physiological unpleasantness (after nearly two decades of being outside Christianity).

I do want you to know that I appreciate the invitation and the friendship that inspired the offer. It is nothing personal to you, your family, or even your particular church that keeps me from accepting. It’s not you; it’s me (weak chuckle). Please try again in a few months. Who knows the timing of God? I may be able to consider such invitations sooner than I think.

Thanks for understanding,

Sandra the Heretic

Homeschooling on a Shoestring

2011-09-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

I don’t usually write about homeschooling on this blog (and it is an irony that I write now as half my student body has started public school this year) but I have been hearing a lot this month from my homeschooling connections about their plans for the year—what curriculum, what programs, what co-ops, what books/classes/materials, and oh how expensive it all is! And I get a bit more than irked. Homeschooling certainly can be expensive but it doesn’t have to be expensive at all. To imply, or believe, that homeschooling is of necessity an expensive endeavor is also to imply that homeschooling is an elitist activity—“look how much we spend on what we value! We must be better than all you who can’t, don’t, or won’t do the same!”

I’ve been facilitating my daughters’ education for ten years and it was the rare year indeed that I spent as much on homeschooling as I have just spent to send my oldest daughter to public high school. Dedicated gym shoes, gym uniforms, two sports physicals (because the school lost the first one), notary fees for band and swim contracts, band uniform fittings and cleanings, swim team suits and caps, two backpacks (because they don’t give the kids hall lockers or athletic lockers anymore), required binders, folders and notebooks of the correct size and color, USB sticks, fees for swim team/band/lab class, activity passes and a yearbook—all above and beyond the pens, pencils, notebook computer, special foods and practice suits for swim, and other supplies we would have bought her anyway. I estimate (because actually adding up the costs would be too depressing) that I’ve forked out over $600 directly related to her attendance at public school.

When I homeschooled both my girls, the most I ever paid was the year we started first grade and I bought an all-inclusive boxed curriculum for $500 (really cheap as boxed curricula go, I’ve seen some that are $500 per subject and not reusable!). Another year more recently, I felt the need to use textbooks and workbooks and spent $300 at Amazon on books that rarely even got their spines cracked. This year, I might spring for a subscription to BrainPOP for another hundred bucks. Other than that, our expenses have been almost entirely what we would pay for regardless of where the girls were educated—satellite television (my first daughter taught herself to read from the closed captioning), high speed internet, Netflix, quality art and craft supplies, music and dance lessons, swim club, and related gear. And, of course, boxes and boxes of books that I slog home from the used bookstore where I buy primarily on book credit.

I bought a few math manipulatives early on but found that the girls learned more quickly with cheap bulk candy, or craft supplies we already owned, than with the base-10 blocks or Cuisenaire rods. The same with phonics activities and dyslexia-remediation materials—free and cheap stuff worked so much better than the pricy specialty stuff (although even then, I bought quite inexpensively compared to what I see available for math or LD instruction). I have no qualms at all about declaring that a library card and an internet connection can provide a quality education that rivals an expensive prep school. Co-ops, special classes, and boxed curricula can add frosting to the cake but are not necessary.

I buy a $35 annual museum membership to a museum in Alabama that gets us into museums all over the world for free (or very cheaply) and for years I paid for a zoo membership that reciprocated all over the country. We have paid for Junior Achievement programs a couple years when some homeschoolers got a group together, maybe $10/student/year. I get an educator discount at all the bookstores (although Amazon is usually still cheaper), the office supply stores, crafting stores, and of course the education supply stores. We get a few magazines—National Geographic, Science, and American Girl—but hardly the thousands of dollars that some homeschool families spend on Cricket subscriptions. I know families whose magazine budget for a single year exceeds my entire expenses for the lifetime of our homeschooling!

The only caveat I might add to my “homeschooling is really cheap” declaration is that I have always lived in urban areas with access to decent (if not outstanding) museums and large free library systems. When I found out that some public library districts make you pay annual fees, sometimes even if you live in-district, I was shocked. I have free cards to five different library systems plus access to several university and college libraries should I want them. If we lived where library-access was limited or there were a dearth of museums and zoos, I might have had to spend more money than I do. If we lived really out in the boonies where there weren’t Costcos or Wal-Marts, I might have spent more on some supplies. And I’d really be hurting if I were somewhere without high-speed internet access.

I am also fortunate to have always lived in towns or cities with a university so there have always been cheap art supply stores, student-rates, and lots of fine arts productions. Because there are so many homeschoolers here (and in the other places I’ve lived), there are always groups who organize field trips and other projects for low or no cost. On the other hand, my children have no idea what it is like to be in a community that lives close to the land and interdependent on neighbors. Those communities have opportunities that my family doesn’t have to learn lessons that I struggle to teach here in the suburbs. Real people doing real work make better teachers than any field trip or manufactured lesson.

What follows, in no particular order, are some of the great free online resources we use:

Free Rice http://www.freerice.com/index.php

Brain Pop Games http://www.brainpop.com/games/

Cool Math http://www.coolmath.com/

National Geographic for Kids http://www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/

Scholastic http://scholastic.com/

How Stuff Works http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Smithsonian Institution http://www.si.edu/

Incredible @rt Department http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/for-kids.htm

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (visual math manipulations for preschool through high school) http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

Time 4 Learning (subscription site for math, language, science and social studies for K-6grade) http://www.time4learning.com/

Steve Spangler Science (videos of experiments to do at home) http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiments

Beginning Latin for Homeschoolers (follows the book Getting Started with Latin) http://www.gettingstartedwithlatin.com/

http://www.exsedda.org/quizzes/

Minimus the Mouse (Latin) http://www.minimus-etc.co.uk/index.shtml

First 1000 Words in French (follows book) http://www.usborne-quicklinks.com/usa/usa_entity_pages/usa_select_page.asp?lvl=1&id=1210

CNN Student News (middle to high school) http://www.cnn.com/studentnews/

Science News for Kids http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/

Khan Academy (mostly math from basic addition to college math) http://www.khanacademy.org/

NOVA http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/

Discovery Channel Education (subscription but lots of free teacher resources) http://www.discoveryeducation.com/

LD Online (learning disabilities) http://www.ldonline.org/index.php

iTunes U (free podcasts from world class universities and museums) http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/whats-on.html

History Channel Classroom http://www.history.com/shows/classroom

http://www.history.com/images/media/pdf/Idea-Book-SignUp.pdf

Howard Be Thy Name

2011-08-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

The other day at dinner we were discussing the saying of a grace. When my husband is home, he always says the prayer. It is nearly always the same but I still can't recite it even after the nearly 14 years he's been offering it. When he is out of town, I am usually the grace-sayer. I've gone through the campy "Good food, good meat, good Lord, let's eat" and the more socially conscious prayers for "hands that made the food, the hands that grew it, and the hands that drove it to the store where we bought it". More recently, I've begun saying The Lord's Prayer in all it's King James glory. When I complained to my husband that I can't remember his prayer, he asked what I said instead. When I told him, he nodded and said, "Ah, Howard."

Today a reader sent me the following excerpt, which is much funnier and thoughtful than our dinnertime discussion:

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Fulghum?” (The journalist interviewing me has shifted scale suddenly from the details of dailiness to the definition of the Divine.)

“No, but I do believe in Howard.”

“Howard? You believe in Howard?”

“It all has to do with my mother’s maiden name.”

“Your mother’s maiden name . . .”

“Was Howard. She came from a big Memphis clan that was pretty close and was referred to as the Howard Family. As a small child, I thought of myself as a member of the Howard Family because it was often an item of conversation as in ‘The Howard Family is getting together,” and ‘The Howard Family thinks people should write letters to their grandmother.’ The matriarch, my grandmother, was referred to as Mother Howard.”

“And you thought . . . she . . . was . . . God?”

“No, no. I just wanted you to first know how it was that Howard was a name that was important to me from early on in my life.

What happened was that I got packed off to Sunday School at around age four and the first thing I learned was the Lord’s Prayer, which begins ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.’ And what I heard was, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, HOWARD be Thy name.’ And since little kids tend to mutter prayers anyhow, nobody realized what I was saying, so I went right on believing that God’s name was Howard. And believing I was a member of His family—the Howards. Since I was told that my grandfather had died and gone to heaven, God and my grandfather got all mixed up in my mind as one and the same. Which meant that I had a pretty comfy notion about God. When I knelt beside my bed each night and prayed, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, Howard be Thy name,’ I thought about my grandfather and what a big shot he was because, of course, the prayer ends with ‘For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.’ I went to bed feeling pretty well connected to the universe for a long, long time. It was a Howard Family Enterprise.”

“You’re not putting me on, are you?”

“Not at all. All human images of the ultimate ground of being are metaphors, and as metaphors go, this is a pretty homey one. And I thought it for so long that even when I passed through all those growing-up stages of skepticism, disbelief, revision, and confusion—somewhere in my mind I still believed in Howard. Because at the heart of that childhood image there is no alienation. I belonged to the whole big scheme of things, I lived and worked and had my being in the family store.”

“So. Do you still believe in . . . Howard?”

“I’ll give you what may seem to be an enigmatic evasion, but it’s truly the only answer I have to your question. It’s a line from the writings of a thirteen-century Christian mystic. Meister Eckhart. ‘The eye with which I see God is the very same eye with which God sees me.’ That’s what I believe.”

“Does that mean that you are God?”

“Yes and no. It depends. In some cultures if a man says, ‘I am God,’ he will get shunned or even locked up as crazy. In some other cultures if a man says, ‘I am God,’ people will say, ‘What took you so long to find out?’ If you pray and talk to God, we will think of you as religious. If you say God talks to you, we will think of you as loony.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Consider it this way. It makes a big difference if you think of God as transcendent or immanent; as up there somewhere or present here.”

“Yes.”

“Howard is a transcendent image of God. The God of childhood. The man in the long white beard on the throne in heaven—up there, somewhere else, separate from us. . . transcendent. On the other hand, if God is immanent, then there is no place God is not, and I am not separate from God. Hence, ‘The eye with which I see God is the very same eye with which God sees me.’ No boundaries between God and me.”

There was a long silence between us. The journalist smiled. I smiled. She changed the subject. None of this discussion about Howard appeared in her article. I understand. Some things are hard to write about . . . hard to think about . . . hard to sort out. Maybe when she asked the first question, I should have just said, “Yes.” As a favor to her. But the truth is I haven’t finished thinking about God, and the God of my childhood and the God of my middle age are mixed in with the God of the wisdom that may yet come to me in my later years. Howard would understand.

* * *

On a long flight from Melbourne to Athens, an Australian carpenter, an Indian college professor in hydrology, and I had a memorable late-night theological discussion. The three of us were seated in one row, and the subject of God came up because our meals were accompanied by a little card on which was printed a short prayer of thanksgiving.

The professor made some remarks about not being thankful to any of the gods for this particular food. The carpenter composed a prayer of complaint. And the discussion was off and running.

The carpenter declared his theology had a lot to do with fleas and a dog.

Arguing whether of not a God exists is like fleas arguing whether or not the dog exists. Arguing over the correct name of God is like fleas arguing over the name of the dog. And arguing over whose notion of God is correct is like fleas arguing over who owns the dog.

We three ate our meal in silence for a while—digesting the godforsaken meal and the Australian version of theological Truth.

* * *

Later on, the Indian professor and I stood in the forward alcove of the 747 where the galley and rest rooms are, comparing the route map with what we could see out the porthole in the door.

Across Australia, Indonesia, to Singapore; across Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and into Athens. Much of what we crossed was ocean.

Theology again. The Indian professor of hydrology this time. Hydrology is “the scientific study of the properties, distribution, and effects of water in the atmosphere, on earth’s surface, and in soil and rocks.” He had this printed on his business card since he always had to explain about hydrology. In sum, a water expert.

He noted that we had just left a country where people worshiped the sun—on the beach with most or all of their clothes removed. And we were flying over countries whose people believed it was the will of Allah that women should be completely covered, even on beaches. The name of God varied from country to country; the holy book was not the same; the rituals and dogmas and routes to heaven were not the same. And so certain were the followers of the different religions of their rectitude, they would gladly war with one another—kill each other—to have their beliefs and metaphors prevail. Yet in this same plane, flying peacefully along, are these same people.

Clearly this troubled the professor—grieved him.

He shook his head and asked why this must be so.

Why? Why?

The professor pointed out the Indian Ocean beneath us at the moment.

He spoke of water, his specialty.

“Water is everywhere and in all living things—we cannot be separated from water. No water, no life. Period. Water comes in many forms—liquid, vapor, ice, snow, fog, rain, hail. But no matter the form, it’s still water.

“Human beings give this stuff many names in many languages, in all its forms. It’s crazy to argue over what its true name is. Call it what you will, there is no difference to the water. It is what it is.

“Human beings drink water from many vessels—cups, glasses, jugs, skins, their own hands, whatever. To argue about which container is proper for the water is crazy. The container doesn’t change the water.

“Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it ices, some fizzy, some with stuff mixed in with it—alcohol, coffee, whatever. No matter. It does not change the nature of the water.

“Never mind the name or the cup or the mix. These are not important.

“What we have in common is thirst. Thirst!

“Thirst for the water of Life!”

As it is with water, so is it with God.

“I don’t know much about God,” said the professor of hydrology. “All I know is water. And that we are momentary waves in some great everlasting ocean, and the waves and the water are one.”

He poured us each a paper cup full of water and we drank.

* * *

Emily, six, has become a grace fanatic. Or, in her own terms, “a great amener.”

Though her family is not particularly religious and has not previously had a tradition of prayer before meals, Emily is now committed to the custom. Her father, my friend Willy, isn’t sure where she got the idea, but the family doesn’t want to squash rectitude in their youngest child. So they dutifully hold hands and bow heads at dinnertime while Emily, the high priestess of her own sacred mystery cult, holds forth in prayer;

“Hello. This is Emily. I’m fine, how are you?

Thanks for the sky and birds and stuff.

Actually, I’m having a pretty good week.

And thanks for the mashed potatoes, but not for

the lima beans.

I thank you really much for the meatloaf.

And thanks for the chairs, and the tables, and the walls and the roof and the bed and the bathroom and the towels and the grass and the clouds and the street and . . .”

(By now her eight-year old brother, who says his prayers in private, is beginning to grit his teeth and roll his eyes into the back of his head as he endures what he thinks is a shameless shuck on Emily’s part—and Emily knows she’d better shut up now or she will suffer later, so she ends.)

“Take care. Amen, from Emily.”

Her parents think of this daily vesper as the Emily Report. She’s found a way to get her family to sit still and listen to her—something that doesn’t happen too much during the daily traffic of family life.

As she prays, her father peeks at his six-year-old. He wants to be sure he sees her. He wants to remember his youngest child like this—as she heads out the door of innocence into the world-as-it-is. He wants to be there as she makes her announcement of self to the mystery of existence.

These times of quiet grace calm his spirit. Unlike Emily’s brother, her father is in no hurry to have the prayer end. These times go by once and all too quickly.

“Hello. This is Emily. It’s a good day here, after all.

I’m really sorry for what I did and I won’t ever do it again.

Please help Poppy. Thanks for dogs and cats.

Thanks again for the mashed potatoes.

Please try to do something about lima beans.

I really want to thank you especially for my birthday which is coming soon.

Thanks for friends. But not for people who are jerks [looking at her brother].

Take care and keep in touch. Amen. From Emily.”

Sometime soon I should tell Emily about Howard. Howard is Emily’s kind of guy. And vice versa.

* * *

In my childhood I was told that God was all-powerful and lived far, far away. And that I could not see Him until after I died. When I asked why, if God was so powerful, there were children starving in Mexico, I was told it was the will of God and that I should not worry about it. Instead, I should be concerned about making sure I didn’t attend the upcoming high school prom, because dancing was a sin and I should try not to sin.

Now I am older. And I know that God is everywhere and in all things. There is nowhere that God is not, even in me. I also know that starving comes from not having enough food, and that is a human problem about which something can be done.

I know now that dancing comes from having much joy.

And when everyone has enough to eat, everyone will dance, especially Howard.

Excerpt from UH-OH

~Robert Fulghum

(Thanks, Carol, for sending me this choice selection of wisdom.)

My Body a Sanctuary Shining with Gems

2011-08-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

The Sinning Soul

Who am I? A pilgrim wandering in death’s shadow. What path am I on? The wrong one. What comfort can I get? That given to pilgrims.

I know what I should have become. My body was designed as a sacred temple, a sanctuary shining with gems brighter than the sun and stars, because they radiate God’s magnificence. The roof and the walls should have all been made of gems. The stairs would have been crystal, and the streets gold. I was made to be friends with the angels, because I’m a living breath God place in mud. I was supposed to experience God. But, no! When I saw I cold focus on anything I wanted, my inmost self turned its attention to the sinister North [deceptive distractions].

I regret that so much now! For I was captured, robbed, blinded, and violated. My garment was torn. I was dragged to a gruesome place and subjected to the worst kind of slavery. My captors hit me and made me eat with pigs. They put me on the rack and tortured me. They threw me outside and stung me with scorpions.

Then they shouted at me, laughing, “Where’s your honor now?”

The Soul’s Repentance

I was afraid, and in great pain. Where am I? How’d I get here? Who’ll come to console me in my captivity? How can I escape? Can anyone stand to look at my wounds? Who’d want to be around me when I stink like this? What hands world dare doctor my injuries? Oh! Who’ll look on me with compassion? My mother left me when I abandoned the narrow path of salvation. Who but God can help me now? What have I gotten myself into? Mother Zion, what’s going to happen to me? I miss your mothering. I’ve missed you. You were so kind to me as a child. I miss the wonderful music I heard when I was with you. I must try really hard to escape by God’s way.

After I’d said this, I went down the narrow path and hid from the eyes of the North. I went into a tiny cave and wept because I’d lost my Mother Zion. I wept, too, for all my wounds. I wept for my sadness. I wept and wept. I cried so many tears, they absorbed my pain and bruises. Then I smelled something very sweet. It reminded me of my mother’s soft breath on my cheek. That small comfort made me cry some more. I was so full of joy that I cried until it shook the mountain of my cave.

But my enemies heard me crying. They tracked me down and began shouting, “Where are you? You’re our captive. We’ll do with you as we like! Listen! She’s praying to those living in heaven. We must do everything we can to keep her with us or she’ll escape. We must get her to follow us again.”

Then I sneaked out of the cave and climbed high to a place where I thought they couldn’t see me. They still came after me. When I saw a mountain looming in the distance, I despaired again—it looked so hard to climb: I’m such a failure! What should I do? I miss my mother’s sweetness, but she abandoned me. I can’t return to the North’s painful captivity. Where can I turn?

The memory of that sweet fragrance sustained me, however. It strengthened me and helped me keep going on that narrow path, heading East [toward spiritual renewal]. But it was hard, because the path got narrower, and on each side, bushes of thorns and prickly thistles made my every step hard.

Then I saw poisonous snakes, scorpions, and other hideous reptiles slithering towards me. The snakes were hissing. I screamed, “Mother! Where are you?! Help me!”

I heard my mother say, “Run, daughter! The Omnipotent, Unconquerable Provider has given you wings. Fly! Fly over these things blocking your path!” And I did.

The Soul Recognizing the Body Sacred

Then I came to the sanctuary. It was built of durable steel. I went in and did good deeds. These bright works were totally unlike my former dark deeds. My enemies still attacked me with arrows, but I didn’t notice until the gates of my bodily sanctuary were covering in sharp arrows. I had been that focused on making works of light. These arrows couldn’t breach the building I was in. They couldn’t hurt me.

So it was my turn to mock my enemies. I shouted at them: “the Builder who made this temple was much wiser than you, and stronger, too. Your arrows can’t injure me anymore. At great cost to myself, I’ve fought you. You tried to kill me, but couldn’t. The best armor and the keenest swords protect me. Retreat! You can’t have me any longer.”

--Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias

Cast All Your Votes for Dancing

2011-07-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

I know the voice of depression

Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life

Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now

And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way

And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From your prayers and work and music

And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved

And, my dear,

From the most insignificant movements

Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins

That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,

But then drag you for days

Like a broken man

Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.

Learn what actions of yours delight Him.

What actions of your bring freedom

And Love.

Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,

My ears wish my head was missing

So they could finally kiss each other

And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From your prayers and work and music

And from your companions’ beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements

Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,

Be wise.

Cast all your votes for Dancing!

--Hafiz

30 Days

2011-07-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

Thirty days ago ... I took to my bed. I only got dressed when going out of the house was imperative. I didn't often venture even so far as the couch. I only cooked when I felt like it and didn't shop at all; everyone had to fend for herself (I did share my meals when I made them but more often they shared with me). I watched cartoons and cooking shows, carried on conversations with people from across town, across the continent, and around the world. I read theology and Sufi poetry, WebMD and personal stories of chronic illness. I meditated and prayed, sought solace and slept. I skipped swim meets and music lessons, parties and family holidays.

A couple weeks into my sabbatical, when my body had rested enough that my mind started to come back online, I began to notice how little I was enjoying myself. I was finally able to do what I've said for two years that I needed to do to get a hold on recovery yet all I really was doing with myself was to lay here and fret: I castigated myself with shoulds and oughts and you reallys and why don't yous. My scourges were my assumptions of other people’s expectations. I compared myself to superwomen and saints and stories that I really didn't know the half of (you know that dark side that no one writes in their blogs). Look what they've done... see what you ought... a real woman/writer/healer/mother wouldn’t be so lazy/forgetful/emotional/incompetent.... And I thought, "goddammit! I can't even be sick without beating myself with the guilt-stick?"

I felt stomach-churning, muscle-aching, joint-burning, head-bursting pain every time one of these self-flagellating thoughts burst into my mind. Usually long before they ever became conscious thoughts, my body was punishing me on behalf of this guilt. Eventually I began to associate the pain with the punishing guilt and I could do a little in-the-moment therapy to relieve the worst of the symptoms. But I couldn't prevent those demon-voices from sermonizing again and again.

About the same time as I was making this pain-guilt connection, I went to lunch at a friend's. She is an astrologer and for an early birthday gift, she read my chart. As she listed for me the planets and their positions in my zodiacal houses (and interpreted that all into English because I am fairly illiterate in astrology), I was struck by the fact that the same things I beat myself up over are the very things that she proclaimed "my gift to offer the world". All the lazy, selfish navel-gazing, she called an ability to see deeply into myself and present it (myself) as a teaching story. The fact that I am neither a great scholar nor an outstanding psychic, leading me to feel incompetent in both fields, is, according to my chart, a stunning ability to synthesize nearly indigestible quantities of almost irreconcilable information from academic and intuitive sources into approachable and understandable ideas. (Who knew?)

Everything about myself that Christian fundamentalism and my family told me was evil, conceived in wickedness, rebellious, bossy, an over-active imagination, too analytical, thinks too hard, lazy, crazy, or wrong was, in fact, divinely created uniquely to be me. A gift from God, through me, to the whole rest of his creation.

That shakes the very foundations of my soul. I hope it breaks them into tiny little dust-mote fragments, suitable for rebuilding into the belief of my own beauty and worth. That may take a little more lying around on the bed to accomplish, though; I hope my family continues to have patience and tolerance….

Thank You

2011-07-13T15:31:00.000-07:00

Thank you all so much for the outpouring of love and support I have received both here on the blog and in my inbox. It is an enormous relief just to be heard! Some of you gave me some great suggestions to look into for healing, which is great (really!) but the best result of posting my last entry was that so many of you said “we hear your struggle and want to support you the best we can”. That was so fabulous; I just heave a big sigh of pleasure and relief every time I read an email.

Since I posted, life has conspired to give me some rest. Partly because I went to bed and refused to get up for two weekends in a row, partly because the weather cooled down (relatively, it is still 95F/34C – 106F/41C) and the summer storms started coming in—I always feel better after a storm has blown through, even the monster Dirt Wall that overtook us last week, though it kicked up my sinus crud like crazy—and largely because my husband’s work schedule changed so that he was actually home for most of the last three weeks. He was able to marshal the girls better than I can and amongst the three of them, cleaned up the excesses of the indoor dust and pet hair and accumulated clutter. And, best of all, he took over a large part of the driving and cooking so I could basically do nothing but lay around with my feet up. He still can’t believe I can feel better by not leaving the house, or even changing out of my jammies for three days or more but he is at least coming to a place where he accepts it without making me feel his no-longer-spoken blame.

The space and time and acceptance to just Be without guilt for what I can’t Do have been refreshing. I have been able to think more clearly, more logically, more than just “what’s in front of me” than I have since the end of May. I have begun to be able to evaluate my activities, attitudes, and expectations less reactively, more proactively. As I look toward the fall (not the actual climate or calendric season, but according to our activity schedule—so August 8 when high school starts), I am able to weight my own needs more appropriately. At least, I can take baby-steps in that direction. We have even scheduled a week’s vacation around my birthday in which I have stated that I am not going to do anything but lounge at the hotel; they can all go out to as many activities as they want but I’m sitting poolside. We even picked a boring old town to go to just so there’d be fewer tempting excursions for me.

It has helped astronomically that my husband’s mid-life crisis (a nearly three-year-old event, running nearly concomitantly with my illness. Hmmm…) seems to have turned a corner. He is willing to consider contracting out for housekeeping and lawn help, willing to think about financial budgeting more effectively, and putting his foot down about the unreasonable demands of his job—even if that means looking at stepping out from the security of corporate employment and becoming his own boss. Finally, we are beginning to feel like partners working toward a common goal again instead of … well, whatever unpleasant thing it was we felt like.

And I have stopped feeling like swallowing pills or taking remedies was some kind of admission of failing to be all I can be. I don’t really know where that belief came from—it wasn’t part of our religious dogma like it is for some fundy families. We were readily given medicines for all our ills (except mental/emotional diseases, which this hysterical illness has largely be perceived as, so….) Between the much-needed rest and the willingness to take more pills, I have even had moments of feeling an extraordinary sense of well-being. So unusual for me!

Some of the email conversations I’ve had regarding my last post have initiated some interesting lines of thought that I hope to write about in coming days as I try to give my writing a higher priority on my daily to-do list. The simple (or sometimes not-so simple) act of writing has been the catalyst for the most healing I have experienced but I have not allowed myself to put ME high enough on my list to effect as much change as I could. Giving myself permission to write everyday, making the space in my daily life to write without interruption is my number one goal as I put together our fall schedule. And then, as objective number one in attaining that goal is going to have to be staying off the social media during Writing Time. Okay, baby steps. Still have nearly a month before this plan all goes into action.

Reluctant Mystic

2011-06-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

(driving to yet another lesson, practice, class, one of my children’s activities, someone made a comment about my hysterical illness, to which I made the following reply. While I sat waiting for said kids to be done with their activities, I continued my rant to myself.)

I don't think you have any idea how much energy it takes to live in my body.

I drive around town with the AC on max. My right side is so cold that the bones in my shoulder and behind my ear ache but my left side is still red, rashy, and burnt from what sun and heat come through my tinted windows. The stark summer glare through my windshield gives me a migraine in about fifteen minutes. If I make more than three in-and-outs of my car (into a store, a meeting, an errand, the house) even using my special SPF clothing and a sun-umbrella, I will be queasy and I can't bear to be touched. Tomorrow my muscles will ache as if I'd worked out too hard. The hotter the weather, the quicker I reach my limit. Today was 115F/46C.

My good days feel like I had the flu last week; most days feel like I had the flu yesterday; bad days feel like I have the flu now. Everyday I over-react to minor variations in heat and cold, drafts like the air conditioner exacerbate the over-reaction but being too hot makes me claustrophobic in my own body.

My ankles swell and feel like overstuffed sausages. The joints in my toes ache. My elbows feel like live electrical wires run through them. My knees crack and pop and feel like dull pins are stabbing from the inside out. Water burns my stomach but I am so thirsty. My face itches from the inside. My eyeballs feel like they are filled with heavy, too-dense jelly.

When I try to do just a little more, maybe pick up some dinner between picking up kids, I exhaust my body and my mind begins to suffer. I inadvertently cut people off in traffic. I miss my freeway exit or drive past my turn. I constantly have to check my calendar because I can't remember what the next stop in my day is—even though I've looked a dozen times already. I can't remember what is planned for tomorrow or if what we did was last week or the week before or last month. I forget between the car and the grocery store what it was I came to get, even if it was only one item.

When I'm tired, which is everyday from the moment I arise to the moment I pass out, I cry too easily. A commercial for allergy medicine chokes me up. A casual criticism from a self-absorbed teen or distracted husband can make me cry so hard I ought to pull out of traffic.

I read a book, listen to a lecture, watch a documentary and often can't put more than the main theme into words. I have a thought, draw some correlation between the new subject and something I've known but before I can pull up my phone or a notepad or my laptop, the connection fades leaving a weird twilight in my mind, a sense of brilliance remembered, the comfort of darkness unreached.

I have moments of clarity after I've crashed on my bed with my feet up and my head supported. I litter my friend's Facebook threads with wit and thought that I can't sustain in a blog post or even an email. I owe so many people responses but can't wrap my brain around what I wanted to tell them.

And then I feel guilty. Because I haven't cooked a meal in so long I don't know when it was. Because my house is overrun by small animals that spring to life from the accumulated dog hair, cat hair, and dust. Because I flinch when someone wants to hug me. Because I can be cogent occasionally for other people but pick fights and speak rudely to my family.

And I am angry that this is as good as I get. That it costs me hundreds of dollars a month in pills and drops and remedies to maintain more-or-less this state of unwellness but medical professionals look at my blood-work and say nothing is wrong, maybe a shrink? That people who agree that I'm unwell tell me it is my fault:

“Just suck it up, get on with things”

“Mind over matter”

“Have more willpower, just do it”

“Exercise more”

“Eat less”

“Follow this diet”

“Read less on the Internet”

“Take this curative I'm pushing”

“Quit thinking so hard, just let it go”

“If there weren't some payoff for you, you'd be well”

“Pray more, confess sin, give it to Jesus”

Okay. the last one hasn't been said to me personally but it has been the fix suggested in get-well articles I've read online.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. But I'm really tired of all the ways I am blamed for my state. We are not entitled to exuberance and vigor. Bigger, faster, louder, brighter is not our birthright. Sometimes abundant life is deep and still and quiet and slow. And often it hurts. A lot. In our New-York-minute, fax-it-yesterday, multi-tasking, texting-while-driving culture, maybe this condition is my divine gift to remember the timeless, the wordless, the boundless. The weaker my body, the more incoherent my nervous system, the more surely I meet God. My visions come easier. My healings are stronger. My assurance of divine reality is more certain.

Why do I continue to fight against this thorn in my flesh? God wrote this destiny into my Being. Why can't I embrace the gift without counting the cost? Why do I disregard the gift to bemoan the price? Why do I listen to the chatter and static instead of God's holy descant in my soul? I long to be one with the Presence yet I fight it with everything I have. Was there ever a more reluctant mystic than I?

Sent from my iPhone

Confessions of a Book Junkie

2011-06-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

(the following is a series of posts on my Facebook Wall today. Oh, the truth in humor! And how the truth hurts.)

The Heretic: Today's finds at the used bookstore.

The Heretic: What am I thinking, buying more books? I haven't yet read all of the last several book hauls, or listened to the podcasts and iTunesU courses. So many ideas, so little time.

The Heretic: Especially with these black holes in my brain that eat my thoughts, memories, connections, and executive function. And apparently my impulse control.

My cogent and comedic friend: Hello, my name is John and I'm a bookaholic.

1. We admitted we were powerless over books—that our lives, bookshelves, and end tables had become unmanageable.

2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision to turn our Kindles, iPods, and Nooks over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. We made a searching and fearless inventory of our homes looking for that one book we hid away for a rainy day.

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to our blog readers the exact nature of the books we had already read.

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these titles and sell them on eBay.

7. We humbly asked Him to remove our books, both hardcover and paperback.

8. We made a list of all persons we had ignored while reading, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would require putting a book down in the middle of a chapter.

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we bought new books promptly read them.

11. We sought through bargain hunting and coupon clipping to improve our relationship with Barnes and Noble and Amazon as we understood them, asking only for knowledge of new releases and the time to read them all.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to bookaholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Progress Report

2011-06-04T17:58:00.000-07:00

Finally the twelve weeks of May are over! I know May has the same 4.3 weeks as every other month of the year but I swear that December and May must be longer than the rest of the months because they are just so jam-packed busy for us. May ends the school year around which most of our activities run and always includes a band concert, a talent show, a school musical, a full-scale theater production, a dance recital, and water-days at the enrichment center. This year also included two long-weekend swim meets, an extra audition, two parties, and a trip to the BodyWorlds exhibition. And a partner who was only in town for 12 of the 31 days. Of course, this schedule is all on top of the usual 3 days of classes, 15 hours of swim practice, 4 hours of volunteering, 3 hours of music and dance lessons every week to which the girls need transportation. And our homeschooling… well, that really did fall through the cracks.

But I realized a couple days ago that I made it through the whole of May this year without a single nap or crashing on the bed—shivering and incoherent from exhaustion—or even any of the Pajama Days I try to give myself. I was still really tired and some nights never made it to dinner, just straight to bed after finishing the last run of the Mom Bus. But I didn’t burst into tears from fatigue, though I did have a couple hysterical meltdowns from uncalled for behavior from outside sources. I didn’t have any insomnia due to over-stressing my nervous system. I didn’t even take my Pretty Pink Pain Pills (yes, I speak of them in capitals) most of the month. In fact, the last two weeks, I haven’t been on any of my remedies or supplements at all due to some lab work I had done Thursday. I’m glad to be back on them but managed to stay more than functional even while off them.

When I go back a year in The Chronicles archives or remember two years ago (with some substantial help from my calendar), I notice that while I was significantly busier this year than I have been since I got sick, the month took much less of a toll on me. All the psycho-spiritual work of my last year, and some kick-ass remedies, has paid off enormously, if not as quickly as I would have liked. I went in for some lab work a couple days ago and the doc found nothing in my results even to indicate cause for concern. I can read between the lines a little better than she could because she only looked at the numbers in front of her and I know more anecdotal evidence that those numbers don’t reflect so I know there is still loads of room for improvement but I rejoice to announce than I am healthier now than at any time since the inception of my hysterical illness.

Huzzah!

The End of the World Is at Hand

2011-05-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

My very secular almost-13 and 14 year-old daughters were talking about why we said "two thousand-and-two" for 2002 but "twenty-ten" for 2010.

The 13yo: "saying the thousand makes it more duh-duh-duh…you know creepy-like…which sounds more dramatic: 'the world will end in twenty-twelve' or 'the world will end in the year two-thousand-and-twelve?'" (all the while speaking with the creepy voice).

I interrupted to remind them "2012? Nah, next weekend! May 21st" and the 14yo got a little freaked: "I don't like it when people start to talk about the End of the World."

The 13yo reassured her: "It's all right. The giant Jesus statue in Brazil will come to life and collect up all the good people and take them away somewhere cold so they'll be safe."

(for more info on this upcoming Rapture date: an overview, and right from the horse's mouth... er... horse's something)

It's That Time of the Month

2011-05-07T08:40:00.000-07:00

Another first Saturday blog carnival at Elizabeth Esther's. Check out friends' entries, read some new blogs, find a great weekend's worth of reading all in one fine place.

My entry this month is He Is Risen on what the Resurrection can mean to a (formerly Christian) Heretic

And Dawns the Morning After

2011-05-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
(The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare)

The assassination of bin Laden is the kind of event that ought to make one pause for philosophical thought. Perhaps now that the first blood-drunk frenzy is exhausting itself, the spiritual hangover will promote reflection (or self-indulgent ranting and whining for those who don’t want to do the harder work). Such a moment forces the deeper questions to the forefront of the mind.

What is vengeance? How does it differ from justice? Is justice punitive or redemptive? What is mercy? Is it different than justice? Which of the three—vengeance, justice, mercy—are compatible and which mutually exclusive? What are the immediate reflexive answers to these questions and do those answers change after reflection?

What does love do to the equation? Does compassion for one person or group necessitate a lack of compassion for an opposing person or group? Do mercy and justice look different when considered by an individual versus a state or a social system? What about whether the object of compassion is an individual versus a state or social system? Does that change the outcome of the discussion?

Ought a state to have a conscience? Is the moral compass of a state a mere reflection of the individuals in positions of power or is there some external collective natural morality to which states ought to adhere? What would it be?

Is justice blind? Should it be? Can it be?

Is mercy ever strained to the breaking point?

The Death of a Man, the Death of a Myth

2011-05-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have no pleasure in the death (execution? assassination? can we call a spade a spade?) of bin Laden but I am immensely grateful that he is no longer able to provoke the ruination of lives, families, social systems and countries. I still have hope that he can find the redemption of God, however that happens.

I feel a wary relief in the face of ongoing political realities. But, also I feel a clean, fierce joy for the resolution of a chapter of grief for those who lives were destroyed by bin Laden's megalomania. I regret that it was required of us (us in the collective humanity sense, not the political entity of the US) to kill him to protect, respect, and accept the people he threatened. But sometimes that is necessary—we cannot honor the holiness of humanity in the one at the expense of the holiness of humanity in the many.

I can have no room to gloat—that is as irresponsible for me as letting an abuser continue abusing, it makes me as spiritually abusive as the dead one—but neither will I feel guilt for my terrible gladness nor condone guilt for those unable to separate gloating from a deep-seated satisfaction at a horrible job finally accomplished.   

Someone pointed out the contrast between these two verses:    Proverbs 11:10 (New King James Version) “When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices; And when the wicked perish, there is jubilation” and   Prov. 24:17 "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles lest the LORD see it and be displeased." I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction here. There can be jubilation at the cessation of the wicked one's evil machinations that is not a rejoicing in the degradation and humiliation of the enemy. Too often, I agree, the two are combined in one long, vicious scree of sadistic joy, but it is not inevitable.

I’m frustrated with both those who glory in the death of bin Laden, gloating at his assumed eternal torture in hell, and those who heap guilt on anyone not saddened and burdened by the death. Those who gloat demonstrate that the line between good and evil runs right through each of us and that sometimes the good and the evil masquerade as the other. Those who heap guilt make no distinction between gloaters and those who take grim satisfaction in a necessary gory responsibility to take life in order to preserve life. When we preach about the sanctity of life of perpetrators of this magnitude (those who will not be socially redeemed by lesser means than death) and claim that it is not our place but God’s to order their death, we denigrate the sanctity of the lives he destroys. When abusers are protected more than his victims, something is seriously wrong.

When, as is sometimes the case as it was here in bin Laden's, it is necessary to end a life in order to preserve, protect and cherish other lives, I am willing to accept responsibility for that killing—whether it requires my personal participation or my spiritual ownership. But along with that acceptance of responsibility—and no little satisfaction at its accomplishment—comes the responsibility to be creating a world where bin Ladens are universally unacceptable and unable to flourish and where the victims of bin Ladens (which all of humanity has been to some degree or another) are given the resources to grieve, to heal, to love.   

May this event be not only, as I heard someone report on National Public Radio, “the punctuation at the end of an old story”, the last gasping of a lust for reactionary radicalism, but also the end of an era marked by tribalism and parochial terror. May we all channel our passions into compassion, love and service.

He Is Risen

2011-04-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

Jesus Christ is risen indeed
Alleluia!

Today, as my Facebook page is rife with joyous exclamations of resurrection and hope, it seems appropriate to contemplate the meaning of Christ Resurrected. I have no issues with Jesus crucified. I’ve studied enough to be satisfied that, as best we can know, a man named Jesus existed in first century Palestine and quite likely was crucified by the Romans (though no actual first-, or even second-, hand evidence exists). But to accept a literal resurrection with as much confidence as I’ve accepted a literal crucifixion requires a whole different order of questions and criticism. I’m not one of those scientism-thinkers who relegates any story of the miraculous to the fairy tale pile. Just because miracles aren’t likely and aren’t explicable when they do, doesn’t mean they are impossible—that’s kinda the definition of miracle, after all. So I leave open the possibility that this guy Jesus did not only literally die but also bodily resurrect. I think, however, that it is highly improbable and take the line of least resistance—I will only accept a literal miracle when more likely explanations don’t exist.

Many people take the CS Lewis approach to Jesus and say he must be exactly who we’ve decided he said he was (a substitutionally atoning deity, sacrificed on our behalf) because otherwise he was either a liar or insane—as if those are the only options. Since we can’t believe that Jesus would either lie or be insane (just think what that would do to our doctrines!), we must therefore accept that he is the dead and resurrected God-Man. Um, yeah, the dead and resurrected God-Man. Just like the dead and resurrected God-Man of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Celts, the Hindu, the…. Yeah, dead and resurrected god-men were quite popular in the thousand years before and after Jesus. Even non-deities like Roman emperors and Greek heroes were talked about as resurrected and coming back in glory. So, thinking of Jesus’s death and resurrection as somehow different, more literal, than all those is pretty crazy to me.

Which all leaves me with the question—who was this Jesus, then? What was his purpose? My working hypothesis has been that he was a singularly human teacher who preached a wholly loving God that didn’t need sacrifice or legalism for atonement. A teacher whose primary and perhaps only message was an overwhelming and transformative experience of this God found through and resulting in the love and service to one’s fellowman.

What a comedown from a resurrected deity! So commonplace! Why, Jesus would be no different than Buddha or Lao-tse or even Mohammed. And not significantly different than the later Jewish prophets of his own tradition. The shock of the idea pointedly illustrates the elitism and entitlement tendencies of Christianity as surely as the fervor with which Christians insist that Jesus is a dead and resurrected God-Man wholly different than all the others.

And all of the clamor of “my god is better than yours” distracts completely from the radical, transformative, salvific Truth taught by every single one of those prophets and resurrected god-men: recognizing one’s divine worth as wholly loved cannot help but lead one to love others with that same radical grace. When you know you are loved, you cannot do anything else but love. In our denominational tribalism, we fight tooth and nail for the doctrinal correctness of our particular formulation of that Truth to the extent that we ignore the Truth itself.

We are loved. We are wholly, completely, totally, unequivocally, inalterably LOVED by the Very Being who creates the universe. We need do, in fact, cannot do anything to be lovable, to be loving, to be loved. We are loved, we are lovable, and to the extent that we understand our loved-ness, we are loving. And that really is amazing, radical, transformative, and capable of bringing peace to all mankind. No matter who teaches a message of Love, under what name, the result is the same. Recognizing the love brings more love to the world.

When the love of God enters the world, Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Sin and Repentance II

2011-04-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

[comment] "Sin" just means an act that separates us from God (usually an immoral act). The concept of sin is theologically sound, even though for psychological reasons, we carry the emotional baggage which is socially implied in the word: rejection by God, by everybody because you are a "sinner". The idea of God being merciful only makes sense when we take into account that we return to Him as a source of unconditional love. Sin exists because of our free will....

Scott Morizot said...

If Christianity is true, then describing "sin" as something that separates us from God has the character of the absurd. As the Psalmist cries, there is nowhere we can go where God is not. As Paul declares in Athens, in God we live and move and have our being. As he writes in Colossians, everything subsists in and is contingent on Jesus.

Nor does sin have the solid character of an independent "act." Missing the mark involves action, of course, but it's more of a failure to reach the goal. How do we fail? Here the NT is abundantly clear. We fail to love. And because God is love, when we do so, we do attempt -- consciously or not -- to distance or separate ourselves from him.

But we can't actually be separated from God in any sense. If we could, we would simply cease to exist. But non-existence -- however much we strive for it -- lies beyond our power. Moreover, it's a struggle to even maintain the illusion of separation. God keeps pursuing and piercing our bubble. Adam (which simply means 'man') hides only to hear God asking him where he is. Jacob grasps for all he can hold only to find himself wrestling with God. Moses flees, but even on the remotest mountain encounters God. Israel is unfaithful, yet like Hosea with Gomer, God remains faithful and ultimately becomes the faithfulness of Israel in Christ.

Man turns from his only source of life and is enslaved by death. And even there, God follows him.

No, if it's possible for a human being to separate themselves from God, then Christianity is not true. And if it's not true, it's a waste of time and lives.

I'm not really trying to pick on anyone, but it seems to me that too many Christians today speak sincerely, but injudiciously.

Sin and Repentance I

2011-04-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

I had the following conversation with Scott Morizot of Faith and Food:

[The Heretic] I’m still struggling with the idea of Sin. I’m still too steeped in the Augustinian idea of Original Sin that condemned me before I was born and the Evangelical idea that sin makes me so disgusting to God that he can’t look at me without the Jesus sunglasses. I don’t accept that those ideas are correct any longer and I am coming to see that there are some other much healthier ways of defining sin (thanks for all your blogging on Orthodoxy) but there is still that knee-jerk self-hatred when I see the word sin or try to request mercy for myself. Sigh.

 [Scott replies] I can empathize. I long struggled trying to grasp what Christianity really meant by that word, though for very different reasons. I did keep hearing explanations like the ones you mentioned, but since I was an adult without any real predisposition to accept them, they mostly got the Spock raised eyebrow reaction from me. (Internally, that is. My life has conditioned me to be able to smile and nod pleasantly even if I believe you’re completely off your rocker.) I also intuitively distrust an approach that basically says that before you can be a Christian, you first have to somehow feel bad about yourself. It can be effective, since most of us have done things over the course of our lives about which we feel badly, but it’s manipulative and paints God in a bad light.  

Almost everyone in any tradition will tell you that the Christian concept of ‘sin’ is most closely tied to the idea of missing the mark. Most people, however, don’t even notice that the statement begs the question: What’s the mark? For Christians, the ‘mark’ is, of course, love of God and others (which is one thing, not two separate things) and union with Christ. So when we miss the mark, we fail to love as human beings should and we try to distance ourselves from God.  

When we repent, then, we keep turning back to God and we keep trying to love. But we’re not good at it and we usually get ourselves and others all twisted up and damaged. So when we pray for mercy, we are asking for help and healing. God offers both in overflowing abundance. He gives us himself (or as much of him as we can bear) to help us.  

The Jesus Prayer, in particular, simply asks for mercy because, if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t actually know what sort of help we need most of the time. In fact, we sometimes don’t want the help we truly do need. Sometimes we’re afraid of being healed. We are often impatient, but God’s not in a rush. I try to remember that fact.

(reposted from the-jesus-prayer-18-repentance with permission)

A Knock on the Door

2011-04-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple.

The man spoke first: "Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."
Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss his ass?"
John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, he'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, he'll kick the shit out of you."
Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"
John: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do what ever he wants, and what he wants is to give you a million dollars, but he can't until you kiss his ass."
Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."
Mary: "Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"
Me: "Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."
John: "Then come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me: "Do you kiss Hank's ass often?"
Mary: "Oh yes, all the time..."
Me: "And has he given you a million dollars?"
John: "Well no, you don't actually get the money until you leave town."
Me: "So why don't you just leave town now?"
Mary: "You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the money, and he kicks the shit out of you."
Me: "Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ass, left town, and got the million dollars?"
John: "My mother kissed Hank's ass for years. She left town last year, and I'm sure she got the money."
Me: "Haven't you talked to her since then?"
John: "Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."
Me: "So what makes you think he'll actually give you the money if you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"
Mary: "Well, he gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get a raise; maybe you'll win a small lotto; maybe you'll just find a twenty dollar bill on the street."
Me: "What's that got to do with Hank?"
John: "Hank has certain connections."
Me: "I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."
John: "But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And remember, if you don't kiss Hank's ass he'll kick the shit of you."
Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to him, get the details straight from him..."
Mary: "No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."
Me: "Then how do you kiss his ass?"
John: "Sometimes we just blow him a kiss, and think of his ass. Other times we kiss Karl's ass, and he passes it on."
Me: "Who's Karl?"
Mary: "A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing Hank's ass. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few times."
Me: "And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to kiss his ass, and that Hank would reward you?"
John: "Oh no! Karl's got a letter Hank sent him years ago explaining the whole thing. Here's a copy; see for yourself."
John handed me a photocopy of a handwritten memo on "From the desk of Karl" letterhead. There were eleven items listed:

Kiss Hank's ass and he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.
Use alcohol in moderation.
Kick the shit out of people who aren't like you.
Eat right.
Hank dictated this list himself.
The moon is made of green cheese.
Everything Hank says is right.
Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
Don't drink.
Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
Kiss Hank's ass or he'll kick the shit out of you.

Me: "This would appear to be written on Karl's letterhead."
Mary: "Hank didn't have any paper."
Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."
John: "Of course, Hank dictated it."
Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"
Mary: "Not now, but years ago he would talk to some people."
Me: "I thought you said he was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist kicks the shit out of people just because they're different?"
Mary: "It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."
Me: "How do you figure that?"
Mary: "Item 7 says Everything Hanks says is right.' That's good enough for me!"
Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."
John: "No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides, item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' item 4 says 'Eat right,' and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.' Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true, too."
Me: "But #9 says 'Don't Drink,' which doesn't quite go with #2. And #6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just plain wrong."
John: "There's no contradiction between 9 and 2; 9 just clarifies 2. As to 6, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for sure."
Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of rock..."
Mary: "But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from out of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."
Me: "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon came from the Earth has been discounted. Besides, not knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."
John: "Aha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know Hank is always right!"
Me: "We do?"
Mary: "Of course we do, Item 5 says so."
Me: "You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because he says he's right.'"
John: "Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come around to Hank's way of thinking."
Me: "But...oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"
Mary blushes. John says: "Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It's Hank's way. Anything else is wrong."
Me: "What if I don't have a bun?"
John: "No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."
Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"
Mary looks positively stricken. John shouts: "There's no need for such language! Condiments of any kind are wrong!"
Me: "So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it would be out of the question?"
Mary sticks her fingers in her ears: "I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."
John: "That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat that..."
Me: "It's good! I eat it all the time."
Mary faints. John catches her: "Well, if I'd known you where one of those I wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you I'll be there, counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's ass for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."
With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.

(from http://www.paganlibrary.com/humor/knock_on_the_door.php with thanks and many raucous guffaws to Carol who sent me the link.)

It's All in the (Renounced) Name... Or Not

2011-04-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

[comment] I don't know that you'll find as much relief in abandoning the label as you might think. ...[T]here is more than a rejection of a label involved, including yet another schism between you and the community of faith that, imperfect though it may be, has guided seekers for centuries. I just don't like accepting the hegemony of their "Believe this or you're out." I want to respond to them, "No, I'm not out, and you're not out, either. You reject me all you want: I'll not reject you."  Anyway, I'll say to you, "No, you're not out. Call yourself whatever, but you're not out, and Christ isn't done with you yet." :-)

No, I'm not Out but I want to be In in a whole different way. You are a new reader so you probably haven't read enough of my story to know that I've already deconverted entirely about twenty years ago and only this last year and half come back to the Christian name. So I know pretty much exactly what I can expect to find without using the label.

It's not like I've been involved in a local church and been part of a physical faith community that I am now going to abandon. This blog is my faith community and I'm not going to walk away from it. Nothing external is going to change at all, nor is most of the internal stuff—I'm not leaving any of my barely-even-within-yelling-distance-from-the-box views on spiritual matters.

The only thing that changes is the expectation I have perceived (most likely only from myself) that I conform to or rebel against conventional, stereotypical American Evangelicalism. Usually I like to live in that sort of tension—or, if like isn't quite the word, keep finding myself in that tension—but after all the work I've done this last year making peace with my demons, well, that sort of tension is just not something I am capable of thriving with for a while.

I certainly have HUGE issues left with Evangelical Christianity that will need to be addressed if I am to continue growing and not continue dying. I am committed to working through them, eventually. I want to exorcise enough of those old demons that I don't feel like I got kicked in the gut every time I hear my friend say, "Praise Jesus" when anyone else would say, "Oh, that's so great".

Should I have had any illusion about the existence of unexorcised demons, yesterday enlightened me! My daughter's theater company rehearses at a local church campus. We moms hang out in the church coffee shop. A church member came in to solicit our attendance at a yoga class she is starting up during the rehearsal time. I have been missing my yoga classes so I got excited—until she listed as her credential that she was Holy Yoga certified and explained how regular yoga is bad but Holy Yoga is good because there's all in English and with Christian music and prayers. I heard her every word like a fist to the chest. Yeah, I still got issues.

The whole point of the work of my last two years has been to tame the demons enough so that I can heal the schism between me and the two-thousand-year tradition of faith. I have done loads of work finding out just what that ancient tradition is—since it is definitely not merely today’s conventional American Evangelicalism projected backwards in time, as I had been taught—I have spent thousands of hours reading hundreds of thousands of pages about the history of Christianity, theological history and debate, and the development of various streams of Christianity. I probably have a graduate degree worth of education, if only I’d got academic credit!

It is time for a “summer break” to rest and recoup from the work. And as long as I continue to call myself Christian, I can't let go of the immediacy of the struggle. After the hell of my last several years, learning to accommodate my hysterical illness, a need to rest is something I take very seriously.

This rest, different from previous times in my life, is one I can now take knowing that I have found a peace with Jesus and the Christian God that I never had before—as a Christian or as a heathen. This is definitely giving myself a chance to "rest in the Lord" rather than a "shaking the dust off my feet" as it was when I ran howling into heathendom twenty years ago.

[comment] …as I read my comment again I'm afraid it looks like I'm dismissing the urge to step back and give oneself some breathing room, to distance oneself from harmful associations. I understand all that.  But as you said, a lot of our healing can best be done in community, and I do believe that God has people within fallible Christian communities who can support and with whom seekers like ourselves can engage in the Christian mission of helping the hurting, etc. Here's the danger I alluded to: you might well be able to accept them if they're still calling themselves Christians, but ceasing to call yourself one might well sever some relationships or close some opportunities.

Ah, good, I was hoping you weren’t trying to tell me to “stay the course, fight the fight” without recognition of the natural rhythms necessary to success. Because that would have inspired a whole ‘nother kind of sermon right back at ya. Now I can address your larger point: the mutuality of working, living, growing, and healing in community.

I so deeply agree with you that I see your point as one of the rock bottom foundations of my continuing journey with Christianity—with or without taking on the name. I have been deeply scarred, irretrievably bent/shaped/changed by Christianity. Learning to live with those scars, healing the remaining wounds, thriving in my own now-quirky way, is only possible by being in community. In so many ways, deepest healing can only come at the hands of those that hurt—maybe not the exact people but those who represent them for me. I cannot consider myself truly healthy until I can participate with my whole self in that community that taught me to be only part of myself.

Finding myself, stopping the worst of the continuing damage, could only happen by stepping out of the Christian community and embracing heathendom in all its secular, passionate glory. But having found that God is also a heathen, I needed to find that God could also be Christian. That has been the great success of my last two years. I found myself at a heathen as well, and will eventually need to find that I can be a Christian. But that work is for the future.

For today, I have found it ironic—inspiring many a chuckle at myself—that, while I am demanding so insistently that I am relinquishing the name of Christian, I have subscribed to a half dozen new blogs (all overtly and directly Christian), started a new Pandora station on my iPhone (Mahalia Jackson), and also just bought myself a new Bible (that I’m actually reading without undue PTSD). I may not claim the name anymore but I sure haven’t run very far away!

I’m Not a Christian Anymore

2011-04-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

At least, not in any recognizable or meaningful way. According to most people who care about such things, I haven’t been a Christian for a long time anyway and my insistence this last year in using the name Christian has been an offence—even with the Heretic disclaimer prominently attached. I am not changing my doctrinal positions (I had none anyway) or a faith in God (I tried atheism before and that just didn’t work well for a mystic). Nothing about me has changed at all, just the name. I’m still debating whether to rename the blog or not.

I cast myself as a Christian Heretic a little over a year ago as I was working through the process of integrating my religious past with my spiritual present. In that time, I’ve made peace with the Christian God, found a sense of Jesus that suits me, and stared down the darkest and meanest of my inner demons. It’s been a hell of a year. Embracing the Christian name was a big part of my journey. It gave me the ability to work from within my heritage instead of fighting myself as an outsider. I did so much work that I just need to rest. My soul is battered and bruised and needs to spend some significant time in Gilead

There is a balm in Gilead 
To make the wounded whole;  
There is a balm in Gilead 
To heal the sin-sick soul.

And I don’t think I can do that while keeping the name Christian. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of my Christian community is online and remarkably supportive of my heresies, I have nonetheless felt a constant pressure to conform, perform, reform. Simply to stand my ground feels as though it requires a continuous effort to hold against the current of conventional thought. This is not an indictment of any of my readers. You have all been uniformly fabulous, gracious, kind, and loving. More so that I ever expected when I began blogging. In fact, this pressure is probably all in my own head, the result of yet-unresolved issues. But I need to quit holding an identity whose very name triggers these internal pressures.

I need to rest, regroup, recoup, not to continue breaking down old strongholds. That will come someday but, for now, I need a long sleep. So I am stepping outside the Christian identity, back to the place where I meet Grace without any baggage. I long for a time when I can be comfortable being a Christian solely on my own terms, without needing to challenge the paradigm, but that day is not now. Now, I can’t seem to be a Christian without feeling the desire to get all up in the face of conventional institutional religion.

My insistence on using the word Christian to describe my spirituality has become a boxing-in of myself rather than the freeing, whole-self inclusive soul-expansion that it has been. The word itself feels like a weight pulling down from the backside of my chest. It is time to let it go.

On Suffering II

2011-04-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

Permit Your Pain to Become the Pain

Your pain, deep as it is, is connected with specific circumstances. You do not suffer in the abstract. You suffer because someone hurts you at a specific time and in a specific place. Your feelings of rejections, abandonment, and uselessness are rooted in the most concrete events. In this way all suffering is unique. This is eminently true of the suffering of Jesus. His disciples left him, Pilate condemned him, Roman soldiers tortured and crucified him.

Still, as long as you keep pointing to the specifics, you will miss the full meaning of your pain. You will deceive yourself into believing that if the people, the circumstances, and events had been different, your pain would not exist. This might be partly true, but the deeper truth is that the situation which brought about your pain was simply the form in which you came in touch with the human condition of suffering. Your pain is the concrete way in which you participate in the pain of humanity.

Paradoxically, therefore, healing means moving from your pain to the pain. When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclined to do something about the externals of your pain in order to relieve it; this explains why you often seek revenge. But real healing comes from realizing that your own particular pain is a share in humanity’s pain. That realization allows you to forgive your enemies and enter into a truly compassionate life. That is the way of Jesus, who prayed on the cross: “Father forgive them; they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:24). Jesus’ suffering, concrete as it was, was the suffering of all humanity. His pain was the pain.

Every time you can shift your attention away from the external situation that caused your pain and focus on the pain of humanity in which you participate, your suffering becomes easier to bear. It becomes a “light burden” and an “easy yoke” (Matthew 11:30). Once you discover that you are called to live in solidarity with the hungry, the homeless, the prisoners, the refugees, the sick, and the dying, your very personal pain begins to be converted into the pain and you find new strength to live it. Herein lies the hope of all Christians.

(excerpted from The Inner Voice of Love: a Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, Henri Nouwen)

What She Said

2011-04-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

I recently found this blog when its author sent me a friend request on Facebook. As a general rule, I don’t “friend” strangers online (I want to be sure I know who’s reading my statuses when I brag about my kids and their activities) so I rather off-handedly “ignored” her request. I may not even have sent her my usual message explaining my policy. But I did start reading her blog—after all, she thought I was cool enough to friend, I owed her a look-see!

Much of Elizabeth’s story resonated loudly, almost clangingly, with me. Not so much in the specific details but in the thoughts and feelings that her religious experiences generated. And, of course, her desire to understand God without the wrappings and ribbons and bows of the Christian packaging. Then I read this post: “Just to Clarify What I Believe at This Particular Moment.”

Oh. My. I have never read a doctrinal statement in which I found absolutely nothing I couldn’t affirm whole-heartedly. Even in the most brainwashed, sheep-like, fundy years, I had disagreements, doubts, and at the very least nuances that would have raised eyebrows. Even Elizabeth’s nuances could have been posted right here in The Chronicles. Frankly, it is disconcerting to find someone who wrote a doctrinal statement straight out of my own head!

So, please check out Elizabeth’s blog Unravel. Because… what she said!

What is a Samaritan?

2011-04-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

And behold a certain lawyer stood up, tempting him, and saying, Master, what must I do to possess eternal life? But he said to him: What is written in the law? how readest thou?

He answering, said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said to him: Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. But he willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering, said:

So there’s this gay bar on the way into a big town. It’s a popular spot for wild-eyed crazies to lounge in the shadows and prey on the hated sinners as they come out of the bar. One night, there is a man lying beaten and unconscious on the curb in front of the bar.

Jerry Falwell is being driven into town for a conference, sees the scene, and demands that the driver turn around. “Find another way into town; what will people think if they find out I was in this part of town where the gay bars are?”

Rick Warren drives his own fancy rental car past the bar but doesn’t even see the man in the street because his mind is occupied with his upcoming launch of the new reality series “After the Sermon with the Purpose-Driven Preacher.”

Along comes a wealthy Pakistani Muslim with strongly rumored but unconfirmed ties to Al Qaida. He tells his cab driver to stop. He gathers up the unconscious man and directs the cabbie to the nearby Sisters of Mercy Hospital, where the hospital determines that the man has no identification and thus no insurance. The Muslim slaps his Visa card down on the counter, “Insurance is no problem. I will pay his charges. Make sure he has a private room and the best of care.”

Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbour to him that fell among the robbers? But he said: He that shewed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go, and do thou in like manner. (Luke 10:25-37)

Authority of the Word of God II (finally!)

2011-03-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

But what about the authority of Scripture? –or, How do you know Truth?

Your Q on authority of Scripture is one I keep coming back to myself. I don't place any greater value on the Bible as the final arbiter of Truth than anything else--not because God couldn't assure that every version in every language said exactly what he wanted it to say, but because quite clearly He didn't since the various versions, translations, and manuscript copies disagree with each other and with themselves. The argument then usually comes back that only the original manuscripts (or the King James’ Version, which is scholastically absurd) were inerrant. That logic defeats the purpose, I think, of placing any authority in documents. What is the point of having non-existent documents be inerrant when the documents we do have are full of errors (or at least questions and contradictions)? Ultimately, in practice, inerrancy lies then in picking the right interpretations of the Bible and whose interpretation do you choose and how?

Determining a “correct” interpretation comes down to a rational decision, made either personally or by assuming that your religious guru made the decision. Since I don’t like to leave these sorts of things up to anyone else, I study the resources myself and determine what interpretations of Scripture to accept. Then, using the same logic that I apply to choosing a reasonable interpretation of the Bible, I realized that the authority to determine Truth must reside in myself—I have come to know the Divine beyond reason and logic and I hold that visceral knowing as my arbiter of Truth: a doctrine or interpretation of doctrine or Scripture must be for me both intellectually rational and congruent with what I know of God. Or actually the other way around congruent with my mystical knowledge of God and, secondarily, intellectually rational—because there are definitely things I am sure I know that I can't explain.

There are in German (and many other languages) two words that translate into English as "knowing": wissen and kennen. I wish that English had a similar differentiation between rational intellectual knowledge and experiential personal knowledge—the difference between book knowledge and knowing a person.

I kenn God through personal experience therefore I can weis (work out intellectually) doctrine and theology.

It is important to note, however, that kennen, experiential knowledge, is not just some touchy-feely emotional response. It is more like in physics class there are two ways to prove a theory—the least preferred method is to work out a conclusion logically, to derive it mathematically from a previously known law. The most preferred method is to demonstrate a conclusion through replicable experiment. To know experientially is the gold standard of scientific knowledge.

When I know God experientially, it's not a one-off feel-good warm fuzzy in a worship service or a touching sermon; it is a reliably replicable experience of the Divine—my experience replicates the knowledge and it is replicated over and over in the experiences of mystics in every religion from every era.

As a fundy evangelical, I was taught to doubt strenuously my own experience, my own knowledge in favor of "the Word of God", which in practice came down to the interpretations du jour of my dad and/or church. I had to walk away from Christianity entirely (for a very long time) and learn about seeking and weighing Truth from all kinds of secular and heathen sources before I could accept that the same rules applied to spiritual Truth as well. And that they applied universally whether I accepted it honestly or disguised it with doctrines of inerrancy that required the same work in practice.

(Part I of this two-part post can be found here)

A Tech Q

2011-03-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

I notice that my Follow Me on Facebook widget... or gadget (what really is the difference between the two things?)... is not working more often than it works, at least on my MacBook. To those of you who read this on the webpage, how does this page appear? To those of you who subscribe by email, can you take a minute to visit the page (here) and let me know if you can see and interact with the widget?

Does anyone know how to determine where the technology is breaking down? At Facebook? Blogger? Is it my Mac? All Macs? Or should I just remove the widget altogether?

Thanks for helping keep this blog a functional place to meet, converse, and think new thoughts

Moses and the Shepherd

2011-03-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

Moses heard a shepherd on the road praying.

"God, where are you? I want to help you, to fix your shoes

and comb your hair. I want to wash your clothes

and pick the lice off. I want to bring you milk

and kiss your little hands and feet when it's time

for you to go to bed. I want to sweep your room

and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats are yours.

All I can say remembering you is aaayyyyy

and aaahhhhhhhhhhhh."

Moses could stand it no longer.

"Who are you talking to?"

"The one who made us and made

the earth and made the sky."

"Don't talk about shoes

and socks with God! And what's this with your little

hands? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like

you're chatting with your uncles. Only something

that grows needs milk. Only someone with feet

needs shoes. Not God!"

The shepherd repented

and tore his clothes and wandered out into

the desert. A sudden revelation came then to Moses:

You have separated me from one of my own.

Did you come as a prophet to unite or to sever?

I have given each being a separate and unique way

of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right for him.

What is poison to one is honey to someone else.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,

these mean nothing to me. I am apart from all that.

Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better

or worse. Hindus do Hindu things. The Dravidian

Muslims in India do what they do. It's all praise,

and it's all right. I am not glorified in acts

of worship. It's the worshippers! I don't hear

the words they say. I look inside at the humility.

That broken-open lowliness is the reality. Forget

phraseology! I want burning, burning. Be friends

with your burning. Those who pay attention to ways

of behaving and speaking are one sort. Lovers who

burn are another. Don't impose a property tax

on a burned-out village. Don't scold the lover.

The "wrong" way he talks is better than a hundred

"right" ways of others.

Inside the Kaaba

it doesn't matter which way you point

your prayer rug!

The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes!

The love-religion has no code or doctrine.

Only God.

So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!

It doesn't need markings.

God began speaking

deeper mysteries to Moses, vision and words,

which cannot be recorded here. Moses left himself

and came back. He went to eternity and came

back here. Many times this happened.

It's foolish of me

to try and say this. If I did say it,

it would uproot human intelligence.

Moses ran after the shepherd, following the bewildered

footprints,

in one place moving like a castle

across a chessboard. In another, sideways,

like a bishop.

Now surging like a wave cresting,

now sliding down like a fish,

with always his feet

making geomancy symbols in the sand,

recording his

wandering state.

Moses finally caught up with him.

"I was wrong. God has revealed to me that there are

no rules for worship. Say whatever and however

your loving tells you to.

Your sweetest blasphemy

is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world

is freed.

Loosen your tongue and don't worry

what comes out. It's all the light of the spirit."

The shepherd replied, "Moses, Moses,

I've gone beyond even that.

You applied the whip,

and my horse shied and jumped out of itself.

The divine nature and my human nature came together.

Bless your scolding hand.

I can't say what has happened.

What I'm saying now is not my real condition.

It can't be said."

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror, you see yourself,

not the state of the mirror.

The flute player

gives breath into a flute, and who makes the music?

The flute player!

Whenever you speak praise

or thanksgiving to God, it's always like

this dear shepherd's simplicity.

(By Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks)

I AM

2011-03-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

I am, you anxious one.

Don't you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can't you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn't my longing ripened in you
from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting:
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
from for lovers of god everywhere