June 21, 1967. Yeller Pride Lakes, Perry National Forest. Named for the great “Yeller” pines. Drive north of Perry to the end of the road. Park. Hike 1.5 miles to Muse Lake. Base camp. Four mile hike to Prides. Boy, 8 days from my 9th birthday. Four foot three inches tall, 78 pounds. Hiking between lakes at 2:30 in the afternoon he gets lost, starts calling out for the various adults of the party. Stumbling through the woods he encounters Mike Davis, son of one of the adults and a member of the camping party. Mike is urinating and smoking. Mike is 6 feet 4 inches tall, two hundred and twenty five pounds, star football player, dating the prettiest girl in town. Recently turned loose from high school, he has been drunk much of the time since and even more belligerent than usual. Mike says, "Lost Kid? Come over here and lick this off for me and I might help ya out." No response. "Ah, come on Kid, I won't hurt ya, you know me, always joking around." No response. I had been in this situation before and I knew what he wanted to do and I knew he would be able to do it. He was extremely fast and strong and knew this territory well. I did not respond. "You're not really lost are ya? You followed me out here didn't ya? You want to suck my big ten inch don't ya? You probably want me to bust your ass don't ya?" He steps closer with that smile on his face. "You see..." He grabs my hair and pushes his erect penis in my mouth, "... I heard about you from the boys at ARE (a road construction company that many of my previous abusers had worked for). They said you were the best lay they ever had, said you liked it too." I began my well-practiced fellatio. "Damn, you are good." He stopped talking. He came more than anyone I could remember. Sometimes they passed out for a second when they came that much. I saw that as my only chance. He did so but he did not release my hair. Struggling always made it worse, a lot worse. There are a million ways a kid can get banged up in these woods, he would have been my rescuer. "OK, Kid, I'm gonna help you out here. I'm gonna lead ya back to the campground and you're gonna do me a little favor. Don't try runnin' or I'll splatter ya all over a tree. And I think you know what happens if you tell anyone. People die, your sisters get raped. Not that they wouldn't like it, you understand, but you wouldn't want that to happen now, would ya?" I shake my head no. "Ok, now, let's get movin' Kid, Now! Walk in front, I'll tell you where to go." It wasn't much of a hike, we were there in a few minutes.
There was little clear, level ground in this remote site so the tents were pretty widely scattered with the the adult camp in the largest flat spot with most of the others in two smaller spots and a few scattered around. His wasn't visible from the rest. It was what passes for a four man tent but really only fit two comfortably.
"I don't have to tell you to be quiet now do I? Thats what the boys said, you learned right quick to be really quiet..." I nodded. I went in and started taking my clothes off. "Alright!" He said in a hard whisper, "Can't wait can you?" No response. He slowly stripped in relative silence while I stood there naked. A few grunts and groans and a slight alcoholic stumble. "You know what to do, Kid, get comfortable. Yes you are a fine figure of a girl, aren't you?" He was huge. To my great shame and anger and loathing of myself, I felt my penis getting hard. I quickly hid it and prayed he wouldn't notice, that always made it worse. Maybe I do like it, I thought. What I didn't know was a boy of my age wasn't necessarily supposed to have an erection. I now know it is a conditioned response to sexual stimulation in one so young, mostly related to my female abusers who could be relatively pleasant and painless compared to the men, they didn't penetrate me. Penetration is always extremely painful when one is so small, no matter how many times it is done.
He knocked me over and jumped down hard on top of me and started running his hands all over me me and kissing me hard, savagely actually. He did notice my erection. "Ahh, yes you do love it!" he hissed. He gleefully slapped me hard several times and squeezed my penis really hard. It was strangely numb. "Fucking little white trash whore." He swung a backhand that drew blood on my cheek. "Oops," he said, laughing quietly, "Tripped over a root and fell on the path didn't ya? I'll have to rub a little dirt in that." He jumped back on top of me and put our penises side by side and clamped his legs around me and rolled over in a strangely feminine way. He groaned and said ride me little cowboy. No response, oops. He hit me hard in the chest with his huge fist while holding my arm with his other hand. "Ride me!" he says in a hoarse whisper. I couldn't breath but I rode him. I knew exactly what he wanted, a gently accelerating motion with my legs clamped around his penis and a hard drive at the end. "Oh, you are so good." He came and held me almost gently for a few moments. He came out of it and once again gleefully knocked me about. He used his open hand and gauged his blows so they wouldn't leave obvious marks. I knew about this part, too. He wasn't done. This was the easy part. He hit me hard in the chest again and then scratched the place with his finger nails. "There we go. 'So what happened, Marky'", he whined. "'I was lost and I got scared and ran and tripped over a root and fell on the trail. And... Mike came along and...' And made Marky all better, right?" I nodded. "Ya see? I am a good guy." He was laying down across the tent. "Walk around the tent a little boy, yeah, you are fine figure of a child." Pointing at his penis he said come on down here child and do me another good turn. His penis was only slightly erect at first but almost immediately became fully erect. I knew what was coming. He knocked me aside and stood up. "Assume the position boy, on this." He throws me a dirty beach towel. "I'll get the KY (referring KY jelly, a sexual lubricant). What he got was actually Sterno, a grease that slowly burns and is used for camp cooking. The position was on my knees on the towel, legs slightly separated with my head resting on the ground, my parted butt cheeks in the air toward him. "Dan, can we not do this part? I know a lot of other stuff we could do." I meant it. "What? Skip the coo dee grass? No way, Son. You deserve it, you've been downright neighborly up to now. Me, too, savin' ya like I did. You just stay right there whilst I lube ya up here." He slathers Sterno on my anus, sticking his sterno-filled fingers in and spreading them around. I winced only a little though it hurt bad. This prelude was actually somewhat merciful. Others had just let my blood lubricate. Now is when I close my eyes tight and try to go somewhere else. 'Okay boy, this isn't gonna hurt a bit, honest," he says almost gently. Liar. I hear him behind me as my hearing becomes more acute, his breathing explodes in my ear, his rustling feet and knees grate my nerves. "I'm getting there." As his hands spread my buttocks, I feel the warmth spread through my body and the sounds fade like when descending a steep slope in a car. Everything becomes farther away, not that it didn't still hurt, perhaps it hurt more as my senses were still acute, I was just able to separate a bit and handle it without screaming. Given more time I may have been able to separate better but it takes longer when you're older, and you have to work at it. When you can separate you just kind of float away and it just burns and aches and presses on your organs. When I was little sometimes it only hurt a little. He enters me and the first thing I feel is a nauseating slither and sharp, excruciating pain as my anus tears, worse than that, at the same moment, is a sensation that is hard to explain. Its more like an intense pressure, it feels like something the size of a tennis ball is forced through my anus and then expands, causing pain not only in that area but in my hips and and intestines and genitals. I don't really feel the penis in me, per se, except near the entry point. What I feel is that expanding pressure like my lower abdomen is being blown up like a hard beach ball. It is a sensation I knew well and would know well all my life. It would awaken me at night throughout my life and I would go sit on the toilet, thinking it must be some kind of awful bowel movement without gas or feces. I thought that everyone felt from time to time. I was nearly forty when I found this wasn't true. "You know, when it feels like a tennis ball is exploding in your ass" Blank stare.
When he came there was even more pressure and then he quickly when flaccid and slid out of me with another familiar sound that haunts me. He collapsed and I quickly got up, the familiar pain still intense but manageable. The bleeding quickly stopped and I cleaned myself up with the towel and tossed it beside him where he lay in the semi-darkness and started to leave. "Boy, remember: People will die, namely you, your women will be raped. That little sister of yours, she must be four now, prime meat." He knew what to say. He was both gentler and very more much dangerous than any of the others. He seemed to care little what people thought of him, he cared nothing for me. The others had jealously guarded their reputations and wanted to preserve me for the future. I believed him. "Tomorrow, same time, same place. You know what to tell anybody who cares?" I nodded. "Great, thanks for stoppin by. To bad about fallin down." I stepped out into a beautiful spring mountain day. Hell to heaven in one step. Now I could cry. Crying was another thing that made it worse. I started running. I saw the rock in the trail but something made me trip over it anyway. I got up and looked at myself. Alibi secured, "He always was a very clumsy boy." Right.
The walk to the the adult camp was short now. I knew at least some of the women would be there. Sheila, Mike's Mom was there, a really nice lady who really liked me. Everybody's Mom liked me. She predictably fawned over me and cleaned me up. "I got lost and started running and I fell. Mike found me and brought me back." His mom looked at me a bit quizzically. She knew he was an asshole. She shrugged and said, "Why don't you just stay here and lie down in your mom's tent?" I knew I'd catch hell from the older boys if I did that. "No, I want to go fishing but I lost my pole." "Take mine, maybe you'll find yours on the way. I'll ask Mike to help you if you can't find it." No thanks. "How do I get there?" She looked at me with that sad, pitiful, self conscious look that mothers get. "Stay on this trail that runs through the camp until you get to the fork, stay left and you'll see the the lake through the trees before you go too far. Just walk toward the lake. You'll probably see the men out there still." It was about three thirty.
I saw the glitter of the lake through the trees just like she said. If I'd known that none of this would have happened. I back tracked to the fork looking for my pole and realized I probably dropped where I sucked off Mike. I didn't want to go back there but a fisherman who lost his pole would catch hell around camp for it. This looked like a friendly group but they seemed to notice everything and let nothing go by without a "friendly" barb. Life is like that for those who live on the edge of poverty, going wherever the work goes like we did. You never relax, you always have your armor on and have to make sure others do, too. I took a deep breath and walked fast and almost tripped over my pole. It was sticking out into the trail only about ten yards from the fork. I grabbed it and ran, a pole in each hand as I started crying as hard as I ever had. There was no tripping now even though I could barely see. I just followed the glitter of the lake. Something told me to stop. I took two more steps and burst out into the sunlight. The lake was crystal clear and beautiful. I stood on a big log that jutted into the lake and looked around. It was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. I stashed Sheila's pole in the bushes and climbed back up on the log. The log was a really big tree that had fallen into the lake. I could see its wavering image until it buried itself in the bottom. I'd like to do that. But every one could still see my feet and that would be a mess. I wished I could just disappear. That would be messy too, though. I needed to stick around and protect my sisters and my little brother, the rest of them could go to hell. I looked again at the water. I saw a large fish gently swaying near the burial point of the tree. I cast my wormless hook out near it. It flinched but didn't run away. I sat down and cried softly for what seemed like a few minutes. I heard the men and older boys coming noisily down the lakeside trail. They must have quit early, a fisherman with fishing to do was quiet as not to scare the fish. I looked up and saw the sun had dropped to the mountain tops. About two and a half hours had gone by. They were going back for dinner then. Most would come back out for twilight fishing, a beautiful experience. Mike was with them. They all had big, hard grins on their faces. "Get lost again, Mark? (My older brother-Go to hell Dave)." I just shook my head. Dave looked in the water and looked at Mike and shook his head. They all laughed and filed by grinning. Mike had told his story. Nothing else was said. Funny thing, for all the barbs exchanged, when there was something that I thought needed to be said, like "Are you all right?," or "Sorry I didn't tell you how to get here," or "Stay away from Mike," it was never said. In fact, nothing important was ever talked about in my family, those were the things that were avoided. Just a lot of petty bullshit. This could be a blessing at times but usually a curse.
There was one thing about this incident that was mentioned and became a community joke. It seems some of the group had passed by me during the time I was on the tree, not breaking the code of silence, but noticing how long I was there and seeing I had lost my worm. Sheila had gotten out the commonly-held 8mm camera and filmed me on the tree a couple of times as she filmed the others she could see without breaking code. When the film was viewed in our cramped living room a few weeks later, my part came up and everyone started to snicker. The snickering became louder with each successive time she viewed me. Barely controlling himself, my Dad says, "Did you ever catch that fish Mark?" I shook my head as the room exploded in laughter. Thanks, Dad. "Did ya ever think about puttin' a worm on your hook?" More laughter, no response. This sequence played out countless times over the next eight years, reminding me what happened the first several times but eventually I forgot and could laugh with them. What was it, two hours you sat on that damn log trying to catch that one fish? Two and a half, it was a big fish.. Laugh. It was funny.
After they had gone I got up and grabbed Sheila's pole and walked with my head down, scuffing my feet in the dirt. I had planned to sneak Sheila's pole back to her tent but I arrived in camp before I realized it and they all looked at me and laughed again. I don't remember that night except for lying awake listening to the stillness and paradoxical loudness of the forest at night.
My date with Mike the next day was mostly a repeat of the previous day. He was more careful with his blows which can actually be more savage. What I remember most was after the last act he rolled up in a corner of the tent and started crying. I stared at him. Nobody had ever done that before. He sobbed he was sorry. Yeah, right, ya big wimp, sorry for yourself. I quietly said, "Go to hell Mike," and left. I went to the adult camp looking for what I wasn't sure. Strangely there was no one around. Whatever it was I didn't find it in my parent's tent. With guilt and shame in my mind I went into Sheila and Peter's tent (Mike's parents) and there it was. Sheila's one-piece bathing suit, a pretty blue with heavy duty, reinforced cups for the large-breasted woman. I slipped into it and immediately felt warm and vibrant though it was cold and damp. This is it, this is what I was looking for: safety, freedom, love. Oh, to be a woman, protected, placid, soft, sweet, beautiful. All the things I could never be in the hard, cruel world of men. Besides, if I was a woman, when men had sex with me it wouldn't be as sinful or as painful. I would later learn that the very vulnerability I craved made the world of women much more painful.
Someone was coming, coming to this tent! I jumped out of it and threw it down where it was an instant before Peter poked his head into the tent. Before he could say anything I lied, "I wanted to make sure Sheila got her pole back." "Its probably out here on the rack with the rest of them," he says in his rough bewildered voice. I knew very well that a fisherman didn't store his pole in the tent when out in the wilderness, it was too easy for it to get snagged on something. He made a rack out side the tent, out of the way so as not to be tripped over or stepped on, made it out of sticks and twine. If you were a real fisherman, like almost all the males but me, you had different poles for different kinds of fishing but rarely took out more than one at a time so there were always poles on the rack. I never knew why he had been in camp that time of day and I never asked and he never mentioned me being in there. I was sure at the time that he knew what I had done, but looking back now, my tenderfoot image and my reputation for being painfully honest probably had him believing me. Abuse and crossdressing were the only things I could bring myself to lie about, no matter what the consequences. That I had put on his wife's swimming suit would never occur to him.
That night around the late campfire, Peter got out his guitar and sang songs for us for hours. Some of them he handed out the words for and we sang along. Many of the party knew the words by heart. This is one of my most cherished memories of my childhood. It was such a romantic image, a roaring campfire in the mountain night that was so very, very black but yet the stars were so bright it hurt your eyes to look at them. With most of the members of three large families huddled 'round in the high altitude chill, singing along with a real trubador. Hell in the afternoon, heaven in the evening. There was Bill Davis, one of Mike's older brothers who would die in a construction accident in his late twenties. There was Barry Walden who would die of MS in his thirties. There was Ellen, Barry's mom. One day when I was in high school I would enter our living room where many of the clan were sitting around talking. Ellen would make room for me on the couch and take my hand, pulling me down close to her. For the next ten minutes she would sob quietly will patting my leg and holding my hand. I eventually became uncomfortable and excused myself. She had never done any such thing before or since, never even touched me that I can remember. My mother, Althea, a pretty, dark-haired, blue-eyed woman who refused to give me more than barely minimal care until my father forced her to when I was about seven. She tried hard later and we became quite close but there was always an unspoken resentment between us. My Dad, Jim Sr., whom I still respect more than any person I've ever met. He was absent for the most critical years of my childhood, working away from home much of the time and not emotionally there when he was home. He made up for it later but I can't quite forgive him for not being there, for not protecting me. I don't think he can forgive himself, either. My parents were civil but to say they never got along would be a great understatement. I often wondered why they had so many kids. There was Sheila, a pretty, kind woman who was sometimes beaten by her husband though I was certain he deeply loved her. Peter was a gruff man who could be both very kind and very cruel. He looked and sounded a bit like Johnny Cash and claimed he had "Pulled out the git fiddle" and sang for his supper more than once, grinning mischievously at his wife. I believed him. My Mom pulled out hers as well but but she was no match for Peter. She would stumble along, singing in her sweet but off-key voice. I could almost forgive her. She had taken lessons when we were quite young and bought a nice Spanish Classical guitar with the idea she would teach her children. This, like so many of my Mom's ideas of that time, never came to fruition. Of course there was Mike, sitting there, barely containing his grin. To my knowledge he was the only criminal in this group of about eighteen people.
The rest of the camp out was uneventful or else I just don't remember. I rarely saw Mike after that though he lived in his parent's trailor which was next to ours for probably another year. He eventually married his high school girl friend when she graduated three years after that spring. A curious event occurred about ten years later that brought him back to mind. I was at a local discotheque when I saw Melanie, Mike's wife. She was the second in a family of four very beautiful daughters in our small town (I had dated one of her younger sisters). I had not known Melanie well as she was several years older than me but I had liked and admired her. She was surrounded by a group of girlfriends and seemed uncomfortable and out of place. I was fairly certain she wouldn't recognize me as I had grown a beard and put on quite a bit of weight since I'd seen her last. As I walked up she seemed slightly pleased at the attention, but as I did the typical small talk of such situations: "Hi, you probably don't remember me, but my name's Mark Williams, we went to the same high school, you knew my older brother... " All she could do was stare at me with wide eyes and dropped chin. I could tell there was something very odd happening but still I asked her if she would like to dance. She was so incredibly beautiful. She finally just nodded and said shakily, "Yes, but I just can't," trying hard to smile, she started crying and turned away. I walked away thinking she was probably somehow separated from Mike (he would never have allowed such a thing) and her girl friends had dragged her out. I turned around in time to see her being ushered out by them, sobbing heavily. The real significance of this was lost to me at the time, even when I later learned that they had indeed divorced. I thought maybe she had reacted so because I looked a little like him, big and dark and I soon forgot the incident. When I was near forty and my memories returned with a vengeance I saw that look on her face and her sobbing, escaping figure. She knew, somehow she knew. When I was forty three I heard that Mike had indeed been accused of child abuse though I never learned any details.
This incident of abuse, though not as horrific as some of the previous incidents, was perhaps the most damaging of all. It occurred when I had successfully submerged the earlier events and I was feeling relatively safe and secure. I am naturally extroverted, outgoing, loquacious, expressive. I had been forced into a shell by the events that occurred between ages five and seven but I was still at a very resilient stage and those events were rendered surreal by my very youth. There was an unreal quality about them as I was better able to dissociate and forget. In the two years that passed between abuse events I had begun to work my way out of my shell. By age nine I was more mature, less able to dissociate and, feeling safe, I was caught off guard. Not that I wasn't when I was five, it was just different. I had never liked Mike, I was even a little afraid of him, but he had been around as long as I could remember. Though I knew he could be verbally mean, I never expected what he did. In a sense I trusted him, as children must. I was brutally aware of the incident, every sensation, nuance, there was no escape. It broke me. I retreated into the shell I had just begun to escape and made it thicker. It is with me still. I have to escape it occasionally but it takes great effort. I have shaken free from time to time in my life but most people know me as quiet and reserved though I know that persona to be one that I have built to my own detriment. I cry out for expression but can so very seldom break loose from this prison.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Madness Rising (work in progress)
Madness Rising
People prizing
Self, power, money, sex.
Madness Rising
Men despising
Humble, meek, poor, chaste.
Madness Rising
Media advertising
Half-truths, pornography, violence, greed
Madness Rising
Politicians disguising
Corruption, discrimination, motivation and torture
Madness Rising
Children dieing
Malnutrition, exploitation,
Deacon Blue jeans in the world,
Linen washed white in the soul.
People prizing
Self, power, money, sex.
Madness Rising
Men despising
Humble, meek, poor, chaste.
Madness Rising
Media advertising
Half-truths, pornography, violence, greed
Madness Rising
Politicians disguising
Corruption, discrimination, motivation and torture
Madness Rising
Children dieing
Malnutrition, exploitation,
Deacon Blue jeans in the world,
Linen washed white in the soul.
Serenity/Necessity
Serenity, Necessity
Reinhold Niebuhr is the author of the well-known Serenity prayer. Less known is the entire text of the prayer:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.
Meister Eckhart speaks in a similar vein:
It is permissible to take life’s blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly. This applies to food, friends and kindred, to anything God gives and takes away… As long as God is satisfied do thou rest content. If he is pleased to want something else of thee, still rest content.
Amen
I have had trouble accepting this illness I have (bipolar disorder, among other… issues), not just its crippling symptoms, but its very existence and the seeming injustice of it. I am, for the most part, innocent, why am I suffering? Am I being punished for some unspeakable crime I know not the nature of? I felt that way for a long time, I would see any kind of police officer and feel guilty, a thought would cross my mind, “Hey, you’re not doing your job, come arrest me, I’m guilty.” I must be guilty, I am being punished. After considerable therapy, involving dealing with repressed anger and misplaced responsibility, I began to ask, ”Why me?” I took a step toward a healthier attitude and acceptance when another question came to me: ”Why not me?” In this world of suffering who am I that suffering should pass me by?
Life is filled with suffering, the acceptance of this reality, this fact of life, is a step toward healing. One of the great gifts of Greek culture, of the Greek Spirit was the nobility of facing alone and with perseverance, with courage, with ingenuity, with spirit and, yes, serenity, what has been deemed “Necessity.” Simply put, what IS, “The things I cannot change.” Thereby transforming tragedy into heroism and, eventually, into spirituality. Necessity is not spiritual, not a god, it is simply what is. It includes but is not limited to the laws of nature, it is not Fate, Fate implies at least irony, perhaps justice, often judgment, always some kind of larger meaning. Necessity, is, once again, simply what is. It is devoid of spirituality or morality. Part of Necessity, unfortunately, is that people suffer, people die, people, at least sometimes, fail. But people also live, are probably, at least sometimes, happy, and are sometimes victorious. As Necessity includes entropy, therefore there is about it a “downward pull”, that man must always struggle against, from whence comes heroism, victories, but in the end, Necessity is the great leveler, one rises above it through, courage, endurance, ingenuity, spirit and eventually must accept what comes, hence serenity. However; people, Man, does not always respond to necessity with heroism, it is often merely endured, but in some, Necessity’s downward pull is used opportunistically, for personal gain, sport, passing pleasure, power, all at the expense of other Men, in a word, evil. The seeming “success” of such misuse of Necessity leads to rampant evil among so very many, but as Necessity levels all, the evil are also brought low.
The Greek gods were blithely immune to Necessity; they merely tinkered in the affairs of mortals. The Greek Spirit was the spirit of Man rising above Necessity to the heroic (courage) and wise (ingenuity). But it is the one who perseveres who wins, at least while he perseveres. Then he dies, and a whole other subject begins. Afterlife, a subject treated in some way, at some time, by all known societies. Not part of Necessity but of mythology, the beginnings of Spirituality (not Spirit).
Enter monotheism, perhaps beginning as early as 4000 BC among the Zoroastrians. Developed by the Abrahamic religions, the…Jews, lets call them. The Greeks would encounter the Jews for centuries. The law of Moses, the Torah and all its developments produce a name for the negative responses to Necessity: sin, evil behavior and thinking. And an all powerful creator God, both judgmental and wrathful, punishing sin, to teach of its negative effects. But by turns loving and merciful.
In Christianity we have a loving, personal, all-powerful creator, God, who loves his creation so much He enters into it (The Incarnate Word of God, Jesus by name, a man yet still God) as part of His eternal plan to reveal Himself and His Love to His creatures. Yet there is still Necessity, and all it entails. It is now part of God’s mysterious plan, the part hard to reconcile with such a loving God. This God, as a part of His eternal plan subjects himself to all the worst vagaries of Necessity and what it brings out in people, Jews as well as Greeks, sin. He dies from it with courage, perseverance, wisdom, and Spirit. Were God Greek, He would be rendered to the netherworld forever. But God resurrects Himself, triumphs over Necessity at its worst, and sends the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God Himself to inspire and teach Man how to do the same. What of sin? It remains, but this loving God teaches through His Incarnation, Jesus, now The Christ, and His spirit that sin can be forgiven and conquered, and that love is more powerful than sin, evil and even Necessity.
Three gods say the Greeks, No, one God, three natures or persons say the Christians. The Greeks, now called Romans, see courage, wisdom, perseverance and Spirit in this Jesus, this Christ, they are curious and attracted. They have grown weary of their capricious gods. Christianity grows, conquers the Romans and the Mother Church is born.
As to suffering, He suffered greatly, perhaps still suffers, suffering with and for us still. So in prayer we might ask, “Why not me, in Your stead, for a moment…?”
Reinhold Niebuhr is the author of the well-known Serenity prayer. Less known is the entire text of the prayer:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.
Meister Eckhart speaks in a similar vein:
It is permissible to take life’s blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly. This applies to food, friends and kindred, to anything God gives and takes away… As long as God is satisfied do thou rest content. If he is pleased to want something else of thee, still rest content.
Amen
I have had trouble accepting this illness I have (bipolar disorder, among other… issues), not just its crippling symptoms, but its very existence and the seeming injustice of it. I am, for the most part, innocent, why am I suffering? Am I being punished for some unspeakable crime I know not the nature of? I felt that way for a long time, I would see any kind of police officer and feel guilty, a thought would cross my mind, “Hey, you’re not doing your job, come arrest me, I’m guilty.” I must be guilty, I am being punished. After considerable therapy, involving dealing with repressed anger and misplaced responsibility, I began to ask, ”Why me?” I took a step toward a healthier attitude and acceptance when another question came to me: ”Why not me?” In this world of suffering who am I that suffering should pass me by?
Life is filled with suffering, the acceptance of this reality, this fact of life, is a step toward healing. One of the great gifts of Greek culture, of the Greek Spirit was the nobility of facing alone and with perseverance, with courage, with ingenuity, with spirit and, yes, serenity, what has been deemed “Necessity.” Simply put, what IS, “The things I cannot change.” Thereby transforming tragedy into heroism and, eventually, into spirituality. Necessity is not spiritual, not a god, it is simply what is. It includes but is not limited to the laws of nature, it is not Fate, Fate implies at least irony, perhaps justice, often judgment, always some kind of larger meaning. Necessity, is, once again, simply what is. It is devoid of spirituality or morality. Part of Necessity, unfortunately, is that people suffer, people die, people, at least sometimes, fail. But people also live, are probably, at least sometimes, happy, and are sometimes victorious. As Necessity includes entropy, therefore there is about it a “downward pull”, that man must always struggle against, from whence comes heroism, victories, but in the end, Necessity is the great leveler, one rises above it through, courage, endurance, ingenuity, spirit and eventually must accept what comes, hence serenity. However; people, Man, does not always respond to necessity with heroism, it is often merely endured, but in some, Necessity’s downward pull is used opportunistically, for personal gain, sport, passing pleasure, power, all at the expense of other Men, in a word, evil. The seeming “success” of such misuse of Necessity leads to rampant evil among so very many, but as Necessity levels all, the evil are also brought low.
The Greek gods were blithely immune to Necessity; they merely tinkered in the affairs of mortals. The Greek Spirit was the spirit of Man rising above Necessity to the heroic (courage) and wise (ingenuity). But it is the one who perseveres who wins, at least while he perseveres. Then he dies, and a whole other subject begins. Afterlife, a subject treated in some way, at some time, by all known societies. Not part of Necessity but of mythology, the beginnings of Spirituality (not Spirit).
Enter monotheism, perhaps beginning as early as 4000 BC among the Zoroastrians. Developed by the Abrahamic religions, the…Jews, lets call them. The Greeks would encounter the Jews for centuries. The law of Moses, the Torah and all its developments produce a name for the negative responses to Necessity: sin, evil behavior and thinking. And an all powerful creator God, both judgmental and wrathful, punishing sin, to teach of its negative effects. But by turns loving and merciful.
In Christianity we have a loving, personal, all-powerful creator, God, who loves his creation so much He enters into it (The Incarnate Word of God, Jesus by name, a man yet still God) as part of His eternal plan to reveal Himself and His Love to His creatures. Yet there is still Necessity, and all it entails. It is now part of God’s mysterious plan, the part hard to reconcile with such a loving God. This God, as a part of His eternal plan subjects himself to all the worst vagaries of Necessity and what it brings out in people, Jews as well as Greeks, sin. He dies from it with courage, perseverance, wisdom, and Spirit. Were God Greek, He would be rendered to the netherworld forever. But God resurrects Himself, triumphs over Necessity at its worst, and sends the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God Himself to inspire and teach Man how to do the same. What of sin? It remains, but this loving God teaches through His Incarnation, Jesus, now The Christ, and His spirit that sin can be forgiven and conquered, and that love is more powerful than sin, evil and even Necessity.
Three gods say the Greeks, No, one God, three natures or persons say the Christians. The Greeks, now called Romans, see courage, wisdom, perseverance and Spirit in this Jesus, this Christ, they are curious and attracted. They have grown weary of their capricious gods. Christianity grows, conquers the Romans and the Mother Church is born.
As to suffering, He suffered greatly, perhaps still suffers, suffering with and for us still. So in prayer we might ask, “Why not me, in Your stead, for a moment…?”
Corpus Christi House (Homeless Day Shelter)
Corpus Christi House
Sounds like this Kristy is dead or somethin’
Blasphemy.
Life.
Real life.
No illusions
At least not the kind that the u classes have.
Those kind need to disappear by the third night out
Or you might not make it.
The kind that SUV’s and mortgages and insurance and refrigerators and neighborhood watch give you.
I know illusions that would terrify the masses
But they won’t kill me.
But dependin’ on The Man or the Fam to pull me out,
That might.
We are the Body of Christ.
Christ is all in all.
The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. The Absolute Center of all time and space and heaven, dwelt among us, and now dwells in us. All of us.
The community is not just those who live or work in Houses.
We are the community, every one of us, made in the image and likeness of God. I am broken, drunk, ugly, smelly, incoherent, even abusive. Yet I am a member of Christ, Christ dwells in me as in every one, perhaps more so, for I am the one He came to heal in person, when he wasn’t trying to teach those arrogant, self righteous, perfumed ones in the temple what they were supposed to know already.
Yes, I am a leper, for the leper was the worst thing you could be back then, now I am.
And He came here, He had no place to lay His head either.
He passed through the streets, the public houses, the brothels, the temple whore houses,
And looked deep into our eyes as no one ever had, tears standing in His,
As He lifted us up and said come to me, brother, sister, You are worthy,
More worthy than those in whitewashed homes who turn away from you, My Children.
He healed us of all we were willing to let go of, gave his disciples charge over us,
For we were the first communities.
Come down among me, among us, like He did, for we are your neighbor, friend, brother, sister,
And He said to help me, not only that, but, if you need some motivation, He said you might just go to Hell if you don’t help me.
You will find Faith in all of us, for we could not survive without it.
You may not see it, detect it, we are not showy, we are not hypocrites, that wouldn’t be real
We know the ones who preach it out here are usually doing it wrong, those who talk too much out here have a lot to learn.
Yeah, I know it’s the Body of Christ in Latin.
I know you think I’m stupid.
Why else would I be here, right?
Well mister, I know you ain’t gonna get it when I tell you u just don’t get it, but mister you just don’t get it.
In my gentler, more Socratic moments, I feel sorry for you, cause I get you, U are my folks, and I was almost you,
Not so very long ago.
Your illusions keep you safe
But they are killing me.
But you never been the me I am now and u never will be
‘cause you got the Golden Key
In your freshly mowed front lawn and you cry about the cost of living
As you swipe your gold card for a big dime of groceries,
(Would you like to donate a dollar today?
No, I did when I picked up the deli tray and mixers for the bridge club.)
While I skin you tins and droppings out of your garbage cans.
An u leave bread out for the birds but you lock the dumpster so I can’t freak you out
When I climb out with the good stuff
And…naaah, u just don’t get it.
‘cause you will take what nobody will eat,
And feel good about driving down here
And droppin it off for me.
Don’t forget your receipt.
Yeah, I must be stupid.
Well mister, I got damn near the big 4.0
My first two years in college.
Yeah. Core curriculum, don’t get ya shit but educated
And then the Fed cuts back on work study and grants
And my folks won’t
Go for the loans and I’m over eighteen so they moved
Without tellin’ me the new address.
You can only camp the dorms for so long till they bounce you.
Student insurance ran out in May
But that was ok, the SS turned out to be a better deal anyway.
And No, Damnit, I do not do drugs,
I take psychotropic meds,
Mix my stuff with coke or crack and I’d be dead man.
Who can afford that shit anyway.
Out here you get that fucked up, you either get popped by da Man or you get stupid and die.
And No I do not get locked up for the comforts, man.
If that’s what you think then you just don’t get it.
Dis ain’t Bonanza man! Da lock up is hell from da pop to the drop, you just don’t get it.
Street Crud is for the U babies.
You spend your Fed check on street crap and you got nothing but the shits,
An if dey find out, you got no Fed.
You just don’t get it.
I know you think I’m stupid.
‘cause I don’t risk it all
To get what you got.
But, Dude, I got my Honor
And I know u won’t get that
Mr. J., he knows about honor,
And If you really got Him,
Then you would truly,
Honestly
Get me.
I am just like you,
I just lost the Gold Key
And once you lose it,
People think you don’t deserve it
And sooner or later it pisses you off so bad something in you doesn’t want it anymore,
Whether you know it or not.
At least out here
Everything is real
Even if no one sees or hears it but my schizophrenic self.
At least my crosswired brain doesn’t look the other way
When it sees evil.
Out here you see evil and you got to deal with it or somebody dies.
Somebody dies out here and it rips through us all like
A ragged knife through the gut,
‘Cause you KNOW for Absolute Certain
NO PIOUS BS, no illusions, honest to God you know
“There but for the grace of God go I.”
And it hurts so bad…….
And U say the same thing to yourselves when you look at me.
U see, when u talk about surviving, it’s maintaining your status quo,
When we talk about survival, we’re talking about remaining alive.
And, Damnit, I am really just like you,
But you, somehow you think you are…
Naaaah…U just won’t get it.
And no, I wasn’t born, I was made
Bruised and battered by bitter Circumstance
And I’ve ALWAYS been out here
And that scares the Hell out of you
Whether you know it or not.
Thanks for the food, thanks for the clean, open bathroom, thanks for the roof over my head, even if its not always available, thanks for caring, thanks for trying to understand, trying not to judge, thanks for the God stuff, Thanks for knowing that its all too little, and wondering what else you could possibly do. Thanks for everything you do, I am not ungrateful. But, please, I am not “them”, I am you.
Streets of Philadelphia
Bruce Springsteen
I was bruised and battered and I couldn’t tell
What I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window I didn’t know
My own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me
Wastin´away
On the streets of …………..
I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could hear the blood in my veins
Black and whispering as the rain
On the streets of ……………
Ain’t no angel gonna greet me
It’s just you and I my friend
My clothes dont fit me no more
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip the skin
The night has fallen, I’m lyin’ awake
I can feel myself fading away
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of philadelphia
Sounds like this Kristy is dead or somethin’
Blasphemy.
Life.
Real life.
No illusions
At least not the kind that the u classes have.
Those kind need to disappear by the third night out
Or you might not make it.
The kind that SUV’s and mortgages and insurance and refrigerators and neighborhood watch give you.
I know illusions that would terrify the masses
But they won’t kill me.
But dependin’ on The Man or the Fam to pull me out,
That might.
We are the Body of Christ.
Christ is all in all.
The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. The Absolute Center of all time and space and heaven, dwelt among us, and now dwells in us. All of us.
The community is not just those who live or work in Houses.
We are the community, every one of us, made in the image and likeness of God. I am broken, drunk, ugly, smelly, incoherent, even abusive. Yet I am a member of Christ, Christ dwells in me as in every one, perhaps more so, for I am the one He came to heal in person, when he wasn’t trying to teach those arrogant, self righteous, perfumed ones in the temple what they were supposed to know already.
Yes, I am a leper, for the leper was the worst thing you could be back then, now I am.
And He came here, He had no place to lay His head either.
He passed through the streets, the public houses, the brothels, the temple whore houses,
And looked deep into our eyes as no one ever had, tears standing in His,
As He lifted us up and said come to me, brother, sister, You are worthy,
More worthy than those in whitewashed homes who turn away from you, My Children.
He healed us of all we were willing to let go of, gave his disciples charge over us,
For we were the first communities.
Come down among me, among us, like He did, for we are your neighbor, friend, brother, sister,
And He said to help me, not only that, but, if you need some motivation, He said you might just go to Hell if you don’t help me.
You will find Faith in all of us, for we could not survive without it.
You may not see it, detect it, we are not showy, we are not hypocrites, that wouldn’t be real
We know the ones who preach it out here are usually doing it wrong, those who talk too much out here have a lot to learn.
Yeah, I know it’s the Body of Christ in Latin.
I know you think I’m stupid.
Why else would I be here, right?
Well mister, I know you ain’t gonna get it when I tell you u just don’t get it, but mister you just don’t get it.
In my gentler, more Socratic moments, I feel sorry for you, cause I get you, U are my folks, and I was almost you,
Not so very long ago.
Your illusions keep you safe
But they are killing me.
But you never been the me I am now and u never will be
‘cause you got the Golden Key
In your freshly mowed front lawn and you cry about the cost of living
As you swipe your gold card for a big dime of groceries,
(Would you like to donate a dollar today?
No, I did when I picked up the deli tray and mixers for the bridge club.)
While I skin you tins and droppings out of your garbage cans.
An u leave bread out for the birds but you lock the dumpster so I can’t freak you out
When I climb out with the good stuff
And…naaah, u just don’t get it.
‘cause you will take what nobody will eat,
And feel good about driving down here
And droppin it off for me.
Don’t forget your receipt.
Yeah, I must be stupid.
Well mister, I got damn near the big 4.0
My first two years in college.
Yeah. Core curriculum, don’t get ya shit but educated
And then the Fed cuts back on work study and grants
And my folks won’t
Go for the loans and I’m over eighteen so they moved
Without tellin’ me the new address.
You can only camp the dorms for so long till they bounce you.
Student insurance ran out in May
But that was ok, the SS turned out to be a better deal anyway.
And No, Damnit, I do not do drugs,
I take psychotropic meds,
Mix my stuff with coke or crack and I’d be dead man.
Who can afford that shit anyway.
Out here you get that fucked up, you either get popped by da Man or you get stupid and die.
And No I do not get locked up for the comforts, man.
If that’s what you think then you just don’t get it.
Dis ain’t Bonanza man! Da lock up is hell from da pop to the drop, you just don’t get it.
Street Crud is for the U babies.
You spend your Fed check on street crap and you got nothing but the shits,
An if dey find out, you got no Fed.
You just don’t get it.
I know you think I’m stupid.
‘cause I don’t risk it all
To get what you got.
But, Dude, I got my Honor
And I know u won’t get that
Mr. J., he knows about honor,
And If you really got Him,
Then you would truly,
Honestly
Get me.
I am just like you,
I just lost the Gold Key
And once you lose it,
People think you don’t deserve it
And sooner or later it pisses you off so bad something in you doesn’t want it anymore,
Whether you know it or not.
At least out here
Everything is real
Even if no one sees or hears it but my schizophrenic self.
At least my crosswired brain doesn’t look the other way
When it sees evil.
Out here you see evil and you got to deal with it or somebody dies.
Somebody dies out here and it rips through us all like
A ragged knife through the gut,
‘Cause you KNOW for Absolute Certain
NO PIOUS BS, no illusions, honest to God you know
“There but for the grace of God go I.”
And it hurts so bad…….
And U say the same thing to yourselves when you look at me.
U see, when u talk about surviving, it’s maintaining your status quo,
When we talk about survival, we’re talking about remaining alive.
And, Damnit, I am really just like you,
But you, somehow you think you are…
Naaaah…U just won’t get it.
And no, I wasn’t born, I was made
Bruised and battered by bitter Circumstance
And I’ve ALWAYS been out here
And that scares the Hell out of you
Whether you know it or not.
Thanks for the food, thanks for the clean, open bathroom, thanks for the roof over my head, even if its not always available, thanks for caring, thanks for trying to understand, trying not to judge, thanks for the God stuff, Thanks for knowing that its all too little, and wondering what else you could possibly do. Thanks for everything you do, I am not ungrateful. But, please, I am not “them”, I am you.
Streets of Philadelphia
Bruce Springsteen
I was bruised and battered and I couldn’t tell
What I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window I didn’t know
My own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me
Wastin´away
On the streets of …………..
I walked the avenue till my legs felt like stone
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone
At night I could hear the blood in my veins
Black and whispering as the rain
On the streets of ……………
Ain’t no angel gonna greet me
It’s just you and I my friend
My clothes dont fit me no more
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip the skin
The night has fallen, I’m lyin’ awake
I can feel myself fading away
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of philadelphia
Monday, November 3, 2008
Boy 1 1/2
His every movement is tender joy
his every sound light and new
his entire body is round,soft love.
The little boy was here again today
with his jelly toast face and big blue eyes
and curly little blond head.
He stood at the end of the hallway,
his eighteen-month-old body bent slightly at the waist
and turned towards me with a ten-toothed grin
that crinkled up those incredibly open eyes.
His little arm came up, the forearm vertical,
his perfect little hand waving a profile of a wave,
only the flawless miniature fingers moving.
Quietly he turns away, still grinning.
He walks, then trots on his sturdy, little perfect legs,
tottering a little but oh, so confident,
to his oh, so pregnant mom down the hall.
He grins up at her, his magic key to the world.
She sighs, immune to his charm in her state,
ands turns back to the laundry.
He helps her, of course,
until she looks at him and sighs out his name.
He turns with a giggle and trots back down the hall.
Head up, arms flying, knees pumping,
‘til he rumbles to a stop in front of my spot on the couch.
He pauses for a moment, assessing the situation.
The perfect little arm comes up again into wave position
and his fingers move, deliberately, individually, up and down,
the smile lights up and he’s off again, silently.
He disappears ‘round the rocking chair and into the kitchen.
I listen carefully for a few moments then call out his name.
Soon I see the little blonde head
moving slowly ‘round the rocking chair.
His steps are small, casual, but searching for intent,
ready to go in any interesting direction.
His eyes search the room,
calm but filled with anticipation
of finding something fun to do.
He spots his coat lying on the rocker ottoman.
The eyes light up a little and he grabs it,
purposefully with both hands,
turns carefully and trots away.
I hear the loud little footsteps
cross the kitchen floor then stop.
I imagine him carefully feeling with his foot
the little step up from linoleum to dining room carpet
where he tripped and fell many weeks ago
when he was not so very accomplished at walking.
I waited for a minute or two, I knew what he was doing,
our outside boy.
I got up and walked across the living room floor,
around the rocker to where I could see him,
standing there with his coat in one hand,
dragging the floor, and his other hand
pressed to the edge of the door
where it opens up to the outside world.
“Going outside by yourself there, Boy?”
He turns, grins, then turns serious
as he quickly raises his arm in an arc just above his shoulder,
one of those fingers extended, pointing at the door, at the outside.
“Unk!” He says emphatically and quickly drops his arm.
“Unk”is his only word.
It usually means “doggie”
but sometimes means “outside where the doggie lives”
The “unk” barks on cue
and the boy again points, “Unk!!”
He grabs his coat with both hands
and brings it up over his head,
as far as his short-armed,
little boy torso would allow,
and pulled it down across his head and shoulders,
poking one arm in the air as he did so.
He looked down at it a little puzzled.
“Need a little help there Buddy?”
I took his coat from him, turned it ‘round,
and held it out so he could get into it.
He turned and shuffled sideways
in tiny little careful steps with his arm held out,
staring intently at the arm hole.
I move the coat just a little
and pulled it on.
He turned his head to try and look over his shoulder
as his arm curled back and those fingers moved
in the direction of the other arm.
With just a little help the coat was on
and our out side boy turned once again toward the door
but not before he flashed a big, excited grin.
I could see those loose blonde curls
on the back of his perfectly shaped head.
“So, you want to go outside Andrew?”
He turned his face toward me,
very serious, and then back to the door
with his hand pressing at the edge,
the little fingers working,
his tiny fingernails scratching the surface.
I repeated my question and waited.
He stubbornly, quietly persisted.
The dog barked.
“Unk!!!”
Those incredible eyes sparkled upon me,
Entranced, I opened the door
his every sound light and new
his entire body is round,soft love.
The little boy was here again today
with his jelly toast face and big blue eyes
and curly little blond head.
He stood at the end of the hallway,
his eighteen-month-old body bent slightly at the waist
and turned towards me with a ten-toothed grin
that crinkled up those incredibly open eyes.
His little arm came up, the forearm vertical,
his perfect little hand waving a profile of a wave,
only the flawless miniature fingers moving.
Quietly he turns away, still grinning.
He walks, then trots on his sturdy, little perfect legs,
tottering a little but oh, so confident,
to his oh, so pregnant mom down the hall.
He grins up at her, his magic key to the world.
She sighs, immune to his charm in her state,
ands turns back to the laundry.
He helps her, of course,
until she looks at him and sighs out his name.
He turns with a giggle and trots back down the hall.
Head up, arms flying, knees pumping,
‘til he rumbles to a stop in front of my spot on the couch.
He pauses for a moment, assessing the situation.
The perfect little arm comes up again into wave position
and his fingers move, deliberately, individually, up and down,
the smile lights up and he’s off again, silently.
He disappears ‘round the rocking chair and into the kitchen.
I listen carefully for a few moments then call out his name.
Soon I see the little blonde head
moving slowly ‘round the rocking chair.
His steps are small, casual, but searching for intent,
ready to go in any interesting direction.
His eyes search the room,
calm but filled with anticipation
of finding something fun to do.
He spots his coat lying on the rocker ottoman.
The eyes light up a little and he grabs it,
purposefully with both hands,
turns carefully and trots away.
I hear the loud little footsteps
cross the kitchen floor then stop.
I imagine him carefully feeling with his foot
the little step up from linoleum to dining room carpet
where he tripped and fell many weeks ago
when he was not so very accomplished at walking.
I waited for a minute or two, I knew what he was doing,
our outside boy.
I got up and walked across the living room floor,
around the rocker to where I could see him,
standing there with his coat in one hand,
dragging the floor, and his other hand
pressed to the edge of the door
where it opens up to the outside world.
“Going outside by yourself there, Boy?”
He turns, grins, then turns serious
as he quickly raises his arm in an arc just above his shoulder,
one of those fingers extended, pointing at the door, at the outside.
“Unk!” He says emphatically and quickly drops his arm.
“Unk”is his only word.
It usually means “doggie”
but sometimes means “outside where the doggie lives”
The “unk” barks on cue
and the boy again points, “Unk!!”
He grabs his coat with both hands
and brings it up over his head,
as far as his short-armed,
little boy torso would allow,
and pulled it down across his head and shoulders,
poking one arm in the air as he did so.
He looked down at it a little puzzled.
“Need a little help there Buddy?”
I took his coat from him, turned it ‘round,
and held it out so he could get into it.
He turned and shuffled sideways
in tiny little careful steps with his arm held out,
staring intently at the arm hole.
I move the coat just a little
and pulled it on.
He turned his head to try and look over his shoulder
as his arm curled back and those fingers moved
in the direction of the other arm.
With just a little help the coat was on
and our out side boy turned once again toward the door
but not before he flashed a big, excited grin.
I could see those loose blonde curls
on the back of his perfectly shaped head.
“So, you want to go outside Andrew?”
He turned his face toward me,
very serious, and then back to the door
with his hand pressing at the edge,
the little fingers working,
his tiny fingernails scratching the surface.
I repeated my question and waited.
He stubbornly, quietly persisted.
The dog barked.
“Unk!!!”
Those incredible eyes sparkled upon me,
Entranced, I opened the door
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
the honorable man
He listens closely to children
The simple things of life are theirs
He speaks clearly and directly to children
With a smile on his face
For the evils of this world
Are his, and the children
Must learn
To face them
Without fear.
He carefully speaks the truth
To merest children.
Excuses himself with patient smile
And a ruffle of the hair.
He walks quietly to his room
Closes the door
And quietly, gently,
Falls apart
Repeat.
The simple things of life are theirs
He speaks clearly and directly to children
With a smile on his face
For the evils of this world
Are his, and the children
Must learn
To face them
Without fear.
He carefully speaks the truth
To merest children.
Excuses himself with patient smile
And a ruffle of the hair.
He walks quietly to his room
Closes the door
And quietly, gently,
Falls apart
Repeat.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Anxiety Itself
Anxiety Itself
What is it I am Afraid of?
Anxiety itself.
Failure, stress itself, being unable to do what is asked of me,
Of being uncertain what to do.
“OK, I have help somewhere in this world,
And even if I never find them
I can just focus on the task at hand.”
“But I hate ‘the task at hand’,
“The task at hand” is what makes me so afraid.
I have been beaten and bloodied and literally left for dead,
By “The Task at Hand”.
I gather all my conscious strength,
Attack the “Task at Hand”,
It bites me back.
My sublimated fear and anger and that ever present Anxiety
Rise up and overcome my conscious will.
Anxiety Itself controls my hands,
And I am blooded.
I will Remember you LORD,
You leading me,
You beside me,
You helping me.
You will be my constant companion,
I will leave “The Task at Hand”
So that Anxiety Itself may not destroy me.
You tell me you would rather I lived.
You say you would rather
I be a task of the heart.
Thy will be done, not mine,
And not the will of those who
Say they know me,
But have far, far, far… less than the least idea what I am about,
I understate.
Those who love me live in a place farrrrrrrrrrrr below Wishwood,
For they torture me with intent to kill,
Rather than just kill.
What is it I am Afraid of?
Anxiety itself.
Failure, stress itself, being unable to do what is asked of me,
Of being uncertain what to do.
“OK, I have help somewhere in this world,
And even if I never find them
I can just focus on the task at hand.”
“But I hate ‘the task at hand’,
“The task at hand” is what makes me so afraid.
I have been beaten and bloodied and literally left for dead,
By “The Task at Hand”.
I gather all my conscious strength,
Attack the “Task at Hand”,
It bites me back.
My sublimated fear and anger and that ever present Anxiety
Rise up and overcome my conscious will.
Anxiety Itself controls my hands,
And I am blooded.
I will Remember you LORD,
You leading me,
You beside me,
You helping me.
You will be my constant companion,
I will leave “The Task at Hand”
So that Anxiety Itself may not destroy me.
You tell me you would rather I lived.
You say you would rather
I be a task of the heart.
Thy will be done, not mine,
And not the will of those who
Say they know me,
But have far, far, far… less than the least idea what I am about,
I understate.
Those who love me live in a place farrrrrrrrrrrr below Wishwood,
For they torture me with intent to kill,
Rather than just kill.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Misunderstood ll
Misunderstood
“I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life but what they’re sayin, girl, just cuts like a knife… ‘The boy’s no good.’”
Neil Diamond
Lazy, irresponsible, self-centered, manipulative…
Yeah, that was me, thirty years ago, late teens, early twenties. Not good, but not so unusual for guy that age. At twenty one I married, under threat of her suicide (this threat would hang over our relationship for the duration), a slightly older woman who was all these things and so very much more, so much worse and deeply so. I “grew up” quickly in the fiery crucible that was our relationship. I became the opposite of all her evil qualities, as she viciously attacked in me all the things she hated about herself. She demanded absolute honesty and fidelity, down to the flicker of an eyelid as she compulsively lied and had numerous affairs with persons of both sexes. She was totally self-centered; I became giving, forgiving and so empathetic as to be lost in the other. Patience, responsibility, accountability, courage, endurance, the list goes on; all taught by intense, minute, daily faultfinding, as I came to call it. Were I found to be at all imperfect, which I, of course, always was, she would unleash hours, days, of vitriol. Outside the crucible, in the real world I became a model employee and citizen, always well respected, though too perfectionistic, and always excelled at any job I took. Unfortunately, I “grew up” out of site of my family as my wife and I had fled my hometown leaving financial, emotional, and moral devastation behind. For the next twelve years or so I saw very little of my family. In our typical, though gender reversed, abusive relationship, my wife cut me off from all but her approved circle, which constantly changed. It was often just the two of us as she focused all her considerable energy on making my life quite literally a living hell. The only contact I usually had with family was when she had somehow depleted all my hard-earned money, (she worked only sporadically) meddled in my workplace so much I got fired, laid off, or she made it so unbearable with her maniacal manipulation and jealousy that I quit (I quit spontaneously only once, early on); or she would have to move on, claiming wanderlust but probably in some sort of trouble. She would force me to give notice and we would pack up, move and land someplace new, with little or no cash. I would then be forced to call my father and ask for money. This would be the only contact I had with him for months at a time, so it is understandable that his already low opinion of me would be perpetuated. Repeat scenario once, twice, three times a year for over a decade until she literally drove me mad. Psychotic, twice in one year, eventual diagnosis: schizoaffective disorder. We had landed near her hometown, she found another foe, and she simply let me go. I quickly blossomed. To make a long story a bit shorter, I thrived for nearly a decade, remarried, a very good woman, but my illness (delusions, depression, anxiety, and most importantly voices; which more or less controlled my life for about sixteen years) gradually worsened under the stress of “recovered memories” of childhood sexual abuse. “Memories” of horrific SRA, by a group working for the same national road construction company my father worked for at the time. I wrote a letter about it to all my immediate family and, typically, met with a wall of silence; with the exception of my older brother’s wife, a surgical nurse practitioner and matriarch in training (I actually like and respect her very much, she simply does not know me well yet has very strong opinions about who I am, a surprisingly common phenomena in my life) who, though she did not meet my brother until approximately fifteen years after the supposed events, categorically denied they could have happened. During this period my wife began communicating quite a bit with my family. [I now doubt the bulk of the “memories but am certain I was sexually abused at least several times as a child.] My marriage deteriorated, we separated, then reconciled but with no real resolution of issues. The marriage was shattered when I had an affair my voices guided me into. (I must accept complicity to a point, but I was living removed from reality by then.) The separation and divorce and guilt drove me mad again but this time a sustained hypo manic state, which lasted over a year. The credibility with my family I built over my brief “stable” period, shaken by the “memories”, was shattered by my behavior post divorce. To them it was the same old me, lazy, irresponsible, etc. And I must admit, to anyone who did not know me well, like my family, this could be a realistic view.
Interestingly, this idea was reinforced by my then relatively new psychiatric provider, a nurse practitioner working for the state and my counselor, a burned out MSW also working for the state. This counselor had early on in our relationship admitted to me that the state was “getting out of the mental health business”. Cutting back services, staff and forcing clientele to seek private services. This nurse practitioner changed my diagnosis from schizoaffective disorder to a personality disorder (exactly which one was never made clear to me). Which meant I required only minimal medication, I just needed to get my act together. Such had never, to my knowledge, even been considered before (seventeen years), and was scoffed at by the psychiatrist I saw when I left the state system, which anyone in town who could, did (mission accomplished?). She reduced my medications during this incredibly stressful period (right after the separation) and I promptly became even more delusional, the voices multiplied and became stronger. I became unable to work. I began writing long, rambling emails and letters to my mother and father. I asked for and got well over ten thousand dollars during this period from my mother. It was all spent on bills and necessities, contrary to anyone’s opinion. Where I got in trouble was the money ran out but I believed I had a nearly unlimited supply. The checks started bouncing and rebouncing everywhere, I ran out of credit and food and finally wrote a mostly coherent letter to my mother describing my situation. A “family meeting” (first of its kind) was called, releases of info signed and mailed. This “family meeting”, which only half of my immediate family attended, was convened in the state offices in the city I then lived in with my counselor present. One issue was a very bizarre request I won’t go into here, it is discussed elsewhere in my writings; which was flatly denied and rightly so. But for me this meeting was a disaster on myriad different levels, my dignity, my point of view, my veracity, my very life story was discounted by all. They professed love but refused any respect or trust. Once again, my much respected and loved sister in law did much of the talking, being the resident authority (she did have some experience and education in mental health, how much I don’t know), and disrespected me on several levels. My counselor felt it was a great success. There were promises of support and communication. Neither materialized, with the exception of my mother. My relationship with my counselor, which had never been very good, deteriorated. He had always been cynical and sarcastic, he became more so. He seemed to lose all respect and trust and offered no real council. I stopped seeing him recently as well.
Were my family to speak with anyone who knew me, anyone who worked with me or for me over the last twenty-nine years (the time since I permanently left our hometown) in a half dozen cities scattered over three states, anyone in my church of nearly twenty years, they would find I am very much respected, trusted and liked. Even in the city where I currently live, where my condition and much of my behavior is well known. My reputation before this debacle and subsequent integrity have overcome the stain of my recent disintegration. I have spoken openly about my illness and mental health in general in various forums, before university classes, a government inquiry, a mental health publication. I once had the privilege of being misquoted on the front page of the local newspaper, an article about a disabilities seminar in which I was a panelist/speaker.
I have received perhaps a dozen phone calls from my family in the two years since the meeting, with the exception of my mother. I have made numerous calls, many to voice mail, most not returned, I have been mysteriously hung up on at my older brother’s home several times. This brother has called me, sporadically, at least made an effort. Some members of my family have been in town and not contacted me. On my recent fiftieth birthday I received no calls, no cards, no letters, nothing from anyone in my family of origin or their families. My mother called and left a message the next day. A week later, a CD of photos from a recent family reunion was given to my by my older sister’s youngest daughter who is going to college here. We seldom speak. She is very busy. Over the years I have seldom acknowledged their birthdays either. But then I was not the one who pledged love and support so recently. My recent ex and her family had me over for BBQ and cake. They BBQ often on summer Sunday evenings as this was.
I have not been a good brother, a good son. But, contrary to what my family believes, I have been a person of uncommon integrity, a good person.
The preceding grew out of my need to explore a repressed anger I didn’t understand.
So, I am now stuck. My income is rigidly capped. I resort often to the pity of my mother for money to get through. I do not misspend my money. I often buy things for my grandsons, which they need, but their very limited, often irresponsible parents do not give them. Their grandmother, is overworked, and has lately become disgruntled, and resentful and thus sometimes disinterested with their daily needs.
Debt collectors hound me; I have no way to pay any more than I am now doing. If I show any more income than I currently do, not only will my SSD be cut off, but my wages will be attached. I will be unable to return to college in my present financial state. Nor will I be able to enter religious life, which remains a question before God, though I have been invited to join Ascension Priory near Jerome.
I could provide my family with several dozen references to support what I say. I give only two…
This “life” which I am stuck in is intolerable. Were I to declare bankruptcy part of my financial situation would be resolved. I have been asked, nearly begged, to take a weekend position doing maintenance and covering days off for the owner/managers (a longtime friend and his family who own a local restaurant also) of a restaurant in Issaquah, the nearest suburb of Seattle. I cannot take this job with my present vehicle in its present state, it would simply not hold up under the weekly 600-mile trek. This job is possible because I can work only 4 days a week at my present job, which I am committed to indefinitely for the sake of my former wife’s grandchildren, no blood or legal relationship. The Issaquah job can be paid in such a way as to not show up on my income.
Yes, I said intolerable. Without hope of relief. My situation is not the result of laziness, irresponsibility or an other character flaw, it is the result of delusion, and of voices I thought to be divine. I do not wish “to be taken care of”, one of the many degrading comments made during the “family” meeting. I had no such illusions, even in my delusion. On the contrary, as a male, I could at this moment got to at least two women here in … and be “taken care of” in grand style if I so chose. One is merely upper middle class, the other the wealthiest woman in town by her personal fortune, by her family fortune, which she is heir to; she is one of the wealthiest people in this state of wealthy people. She also happens to be very attractive, but married. I have had many such offers in my lifetime, none of which I took advantage of.
I request from my entire family $5500 to facilitate bankruptcy, cover bills about town bankruptcy will not include, and to upgrade my vehicle. I can supply receipts for all purchases and commercial payments upon request. Some debts are very personal and I will not request a receipt. I request this for the sake of my future, my sanity, my … family…at the very least.
Should my family be unwilling to do so. I shall no longer consider them my family and cut all ties. Including my Mother. Which would not be so different from the way it is now. With the exception of my Mother. But there is something important which she is not telling me. Perhaps nothing truly specific and concrete, but something. I sense it only in her, perhaps others also know something, some things I do not.
If, as has been so in the past, there is no response to this email, which I am sending to my mother only, for her distribution to the rest of my family, if there is no response or a negative response by Tuesday of next week, my family will no longer hear from me and may not know where I am.
Yes, this is drastic. I am stable at this time; this is not the product of delusion but of desperation and frustration and indignation and disability and, most of all, necessity. I have thoroughly exhausted all other appropriate avenues of attaining these funds. And I believe this to be the sort of thing families do. It shall be repaid in payments of approximately $100 a month, beginning when bankruptcy is resolved.
Mark
Note: my entire family, with the exception of myself, is at the very least, solidly upper middle class, a position which they have reached, in large part… by exploiting me.
I have, contrary to my empty “threat” contacted my family. I have received, so far, a net of $246.00. Less than I was receiving by begging my mother to help me. I have received, since reestablishing contact, received absolutely nothing, with the above noted exception. My entire family of origin has literally all my contact information, which has not changed in nearly 4 years. I can no longer afford any form of psychological counseling, with the possible exception of my former, sadistic, burned out, but beloved, state funded counselor. I am doing OK. I am now bombarded by near constant voices and grandiose delusions. I hold a position of responsibility at a social services corporation located in my present town of residence, where I have now lived for twenty years. I am paid $8.00 per hour for my services, my hours vary widely, my employer is well aware of my mental health history, and federal income cap. My finances are now entirely handled by a state appointed entity. I am unaware of how much money I actually receive for either wages or SSD benefits. I receive a weekly allowance of $125.00 (I have requested slightly more and received a net cut), with a $100.00 per month allowance for car insurance. My primary responsibility is behavior modification of my ex wife’s family residing here. My ex wife is a highly respected PhD psychologist with her own apparently thriving firm. In 1998 she requested and received some sort of legal control over the care of her two locally residing grandchildren whom I now provide services for. She seems to have largely removed herself from their care. She cares for them from @8:00 pm on Friday evenings until whenever her grandchildren call me the next day to pick them up. She has not spoken to me for several weeks, despite my efforts to contact her, both in person and by phone. She too has all my contact information. Recently, (less than two weeks ago) I was contacted by her grandchildren, from a public phone at the local outdoor swimming pool on the last day it was open to the general public. As I pulled into the parking lot the boy’s grandmother exited the parking lot rather quickly with her cell phone to her ear. The boys were unable to tell me just what was going on. They had no dry towels, nothing to eat or drink. There was a definite wind chill factor. The pool facility was nearly empty of patrons, I located only two other occupants of the pool, both roughly my charges’ age @11 (=/- 1.5 years) and two adolescents seemed to be wandering from the pool to the dressing room. The pool staff, all seemingly less than @ 25 years of age, were at their stations. I assisted my former wife’s grandchildren and the two children in hypothermia relief. We left within a half hour, shaking hands with the entrance/exit staff and thanking them for a job well done.
{Spell Check is at times illogical and not user friendly}
PS: During a State Health and Welfare investigation of her son’s home a few weekends ago (the two aforementioned grandchildren’s father and his wife (clinically depressed), all four developmentally delayed, all four with unspecified personality disorders, the older child with ADHD and the younger bipolar, perhaps antisocial) my ex wife could not be reached, though I called her personally and left an urgent message. Her son contacted me via his cell phone; which I provide for him on my plan, without charging him, and alerted me that a State Health and Welfare person had interviewed his wife earlier in the day with only the children present and another would soon be arriving. I do not know where he was but he generally works weekends and evenings maintaining lawns and is employed full time at the same firm where I work, @ 2.5 years my senior (his sons’ tell me he has recently been promoted and is now in some sort of supervisory capacity which I see little or no evidence of. They also tell me he is now “my boss”. He recently purchased, on his own credit (according to him), a new 2008 Dodge 1500 quad cab pickup, V8, PW, PD, CC, AC, CD, light weight towing package. I do not recall precisely when or where he contacted me, only that it was Saturday afternoon and I was quite busy, perhaps assisting a friend in a nearby town with renovation of his recently fire gutted home ($10.00/hr +meals. I have 25 years experience as a carpenter, 24.5 years journeyman level) I left carpentry @ 6 months ago to take my present position). I left whatever I was doing, calling my ex wife on the way (I admit my message was less than cordial), I stopped along the way to buy groceries for their refrigerator, (with my own funds, which were not claimed or reimbursed) which I knew to be usually quite empty by Friday. They receive allowance checks from the same state appointed entity as I do, I receive mine on Saturdays, I do not know when they receive theirs, I assumed Saturdays also. When I arrived a 30ish woman was already there, questioning my former stepson’s wife on the front porch, clipboard in hand, with the two children standing nearby, also on the porch. Neither my ex wife nor her son were present. I walked up with a ready-to-eat barbecued chicken in a plastic grocery bag in my hand. When I arrived on the porch, Rachel was crying, but the boys were smiling. The young woman was very polite and professional. She was an on call social worker for State Health and Welfare Child and Family services. Though I became rather emotional at one point, the visit went well. There were no adverse outcomes to my knowledge. My ex wife did not contact me, I called her after the meeting on the porch, apologized for my rudeness on the prior message, and told her the meeting went well. Her son arrived home @15 minutes after the social worker left. I believe this incident to be prior to the pool incidence. During the meeting I recommended Rachel be re evaluated for clinical depression, among several other suggestions, including a supervised (by the social worker) intervention with Rachel about her care of the home. To my knowledge I was in no way reimbursed for time or mileage.
Some time ago my employer’s representative called me on my cell phone and said, “The family doesn’t want you working with the boys anymore.”
Since that call my life has gone spinning out or control, I said I quit, gave a wee bit of advice as to how to revamp their system to comply with regulations and properly serve their clientele, and hung up I have heard from neither my former employer nor my sweet little boys since.
“I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life but what they’re sayin, girl, just cuts like a knife… ‘The boy’s no good.’”
Neil Diamond
Lazy, irresponsible, self-centered, manipulative…
Yeah, that was me, thirty years ago, late teens, early twenties. Not good, but not so unusual for guy that age. At twenty one I married, under threat of her suicide (this threat would hang over our relationship for the duration), a slightly older woman who was all these things and so very much more, so much worse and deeply so. I “grew up” quickly in the fiery crucible that was our relationship. I became the opposite of all her evil qualities, as she viciously attacked in me all the things she hated about herself. She demanded absolute honesty and fidelity, down to the flicker of an eyelid as she compulsively lied and had numerous affairs with persons of both sexes. She was totally self-centered; I became giving, forgiving and so empathetic as to be lost in the other. Patience, responsibility, accountability, courage, endurance, the list goes on; all taught by intense, minute, daily faultfinding, as I came to call it. Were I found to be at all imperfect, which I, of course, always was, she would unleash hours, days, of vitriol. Outside the crucible, in the real world I became a model employee and citizen, always well respected, though too perfectionistic, and always excelled at any job I took. Unfortunately, I “grew up” out of site of my family as my wife and I had fled my hometown leaving financial, emotional, and moral devastation behind. For the next twelve years or so I saw very little of my family. In our typical, though gender reversed, abusive relationship, my wife cut me off from all but her approved circle, which constantly changed. It was often just the two of us as she focused all her considerable energy on making my life quite literally a living hell. The only contact I usually had with family was when she had somehow depleted all my hard-earned money, (she worked only sporadically) meddled in my workplace so much I got fired, laid off, or she made it so unbearable with her maniacal manipulation and jealousy that I quit (I quit spontaneously only once, early on); or she would have to move on, claiming wanderlust but probably in some sort of trouble. She would force me to give notice and we would pack up, move and land someplace new, with little or no cash. I would then be forced to call my father and ask for money. This would be the only contact I had with him for months at a time, so it is understandable that his already low opinion of me would be perpetuated. Repeat scenario once, twice, three times a year for over a decade until she literally drove me mad. Psychotic, twice in one year, eventual diagnosis: schizoaffective disorder. We had landed near her hometown, she found another foe, and she simply let me go. I quickly blossomed. To make a long story a bit shorter, I thrived for nearly a decade, remarried, a very good woman, but my illness (delusions, depression, anxiety, and most importantly voices; which more or less controlled my life for about sixteen years) gradually worsened under the stress of “recovered memories” of childhood sexual abuse. “Memories” of horrific SRA, by a group working for the same national road construction company my father worked for at the time. I wrote a letter about it to all my immediate family and, typically, met with a wall of silence; with the exception of my older brother’s wife, a surgical nurse practitioner and matriarch in training (I actually like and respect her very much, she simply does not know me well yet has very strong opinions about who I am, a surprisingly common phenomena in my life) who, though she did not meet my brother until approximately fifteen years after the supposed events, categorically denied they could have happened. During this period my wife began communicating quite a bit with my family. [I now doubt the bulk of the “memories but am certain I was sexually abused at least several times as a child.] My marriage deteriorated, we separated, then reconciled but with no real resolution of issues. The marriage was shattered when I had an affair my voices guided me into. (I must accept complicity to a point, but I was living removed from reality by then.) The separation and divorce and guilt drove me mad again but this time a sustained hypo manic state, which lasted over a year. The credibility with my family I built over my brief “stable” period, shaken by the “memories”, was shattered by my behavior post divorce. To them it was the same old me, lazy, irresponsible, etc. And I must admit, to anyone who did not know me well, like my family, this could be a realistic view.
Interestingly, this idea was reinforced by my then relatively new psychiatric provider, a nurse practitioner working for the state and my counselor, a burned out MSW also working for the state. This counselor had early on in our relationship admitted to me that the state was “getting out of the mental health business”. Cutting back services, staff and forcing clientele to seek private services. This nurse practitioner changed my diagnosis from schizoaffective disorder to a personality disorder (exactly which one was never made clear to me). Which meant I required only minimal medication, I just needed to get my act together. Such had never, to my knowledge, even been considered before (seventeen years), and was scoffed at by the psychiatrist I saw when I left the state system, which anyone in town who could, did (mission accomplished?). She reduced my medications during this incredibly stressful period (right after the separation) and I promptly became even more delusional, the voices multiplied and became stronger. I became unable to work. I began writing long, rambling emails and letters to my mother and father. I asked for and got well over ten thousand dollars during this period from my mother. It was all spent on bills and necessities, contrary to anyone’s opinion. Where I got in trouble was the money ran out but I believed I had a nearly unlimited supply. The checks started bouncing and rebouncing everywhere, I ran out of credit and food and finally wrote a mostly coherent letter to my mother describing my situation. A “family meeting” (first of its kind) was called, releases of info signed and mailed. This “family meeting”, which only half of my immediate family attended, was convened in the state offices in the city I then lived in with my counselor present. One issue was a very bizarre request I won’t go into here, it is discussed elsewhere in my writings; which was flatly denied and rightly so. But for me this meeting was a disaster on myriad different levels, my dignity, my point of view, my veracity, my very life story was discounted by all. They professed love but refused any respect or trust. Once again, my much respected and loved sister in law did much of the talking, being the resident authority (she did have some experience and education in mental health, how much I don’t know), and disrespected me on several levels. My counselor felt it was a great success. There were promises of support and communication. Neither materialized, with the exception of my mother. My relationship with my counselor, which had never been very good, deteriorated. He had always been cynical and sarcastic, he became more so. He seemed to lose all respect and trust and offered no real council. I stopped seeing him recently as well.
Were my family to speak with anyone who knew me, anyone who worked with me or for me over the last twenty-nine years (the time since I permanently left our hometown) in a half dozen cities scattered over three states, anyone in my church of nearly twenty years, they would find I am very much respected, trusted and liked. Even in the city where I currently live, where my condition and much of my behavior is well known. My reputation before this debacle and subsequent integrity have overcome the stain of my recent disintegration. I have spoken openly about my illness and mental health in general in various forums, before university classes, a government inquiry, a mental health publication. I once had the privilege of being misquoted on the front page of the local newspaper, an article about a disabilities seminar in which I was a panelist/speaker.
I have received perhaps a dozen phone calls from my family in the two years since the meeting, with the exception of my mother. I have made numerous calls, many to voice mail, most not returned, I have been mysteriously hung up on at my older brother’s home several times. This brother has called me, sporadically, at least made an effort. Some members of my family have been in town and not contacted me. On my recent fiftieth birthday I received no calls, no cards, no letters, nothing from anyone in my family of origin or their families. My mother called and left a message the next day. A week later, a CD of photos from a recent family reunion was given to my by my older sister’s youngest daughter who is going to college here. We seldom speak. She is very busy. Over the years I have seldom acknowledged their birthdays either. But then I was not the one who pledged love and support so recently. My recent ex and her family had me over for BBQ and cake. They BBQ often on summer Sunday evenings as this was.
I have not been a good brother, a good son. But, contrary to what my family believes, I have been a person of uncommon integrity, a good person.
The preceding grew out of my need to explore a repressed anger I didn’t understand.
So, I am now stuck. My income is rigidly capped. I resort often to the pity of my mother for money to get through. I do not misspend my money. I often buy things for my grandsons, which they need, but their very limited, often irresponsible parents do not give them. Their grandmother, is overworked, and has lately become disgruntled, and resentful and thus sometimes disinterested with their daily needs.
Debt collectors hound me; I have no way to pay any more than I am now doing. If I show any more income than I currently do, not only will my SSD be cut off, but my wages will be attached. I will be unable to return to college in my present financial state. Nor will I be able to enter religious life, which remains a question before God, though I have been invited to join Ascension Priory near Jerome.
I could provide my family with several dozen references to support what I say. I give only two…
This “life” which I am stuck in is intolerable. Were I to declare bankruptcy part of my financial situation would be resolved. I have been asked, nearly begged, to take a weekend position doing maintenance and covering days off for the owner/managers (a longtime friend and his family who own a local restaurant also) of a restaurant in Issaquah, the nearest suburb of Seattle. I cannot take this job with my present vehicle in its present state, it would simply not hold up under the weekly 600-mile trek. This job is possible because I can work only 4 days a week at my present job, which I am committed to indefinitely for the sake of my former wife’s grandchildren, no blood or legal relationship. The Issaquah job can be paid in such a way as to not show up on my income.
Yes, I said intolerable. Without hope of relief. My situation is not the result of laziness, irresponsibility or an other character flaw, it is the result of delusion, and of voices I thought to be divine. I do not wish “to be taken care of”, one of the many degrading comments made during the “family” meeting. I had no such illusions, even in my delusion. On the contrary, as a male, I could at this moment got to at least two women here in … and be “taken care of” in grand style if I so chose. One is merely upper middle class, the other the wealthiest woman in town by her personal fortune, by her family fortune, which she is heir to; she is one of the wealthiest people in this state of wealthy people. She also happens to be very attractive, but married. I have had many such offers in my lifetime, none of which I took advantage of.
I request from my entire family $5500 to facilitate bankruptcy, cover bills about town bankruptcy will not include, and to upgrade my vehicle. I can supply receipts for all purchases and commercial payments upon request. Some debts are very personal and I will not request a receipt. I request this for the sake of my future, my sanity, my … family…at the very least.
Should my family be unwilling to do so. I shall no longer consider them my family and cut all ties. Including my Mother. Which would not be so different from the way it is now. With the exception of my Mother. But there is something important which she is not telling me. Perhaps nothing truly specific and concrete, but something. I sense it only in her, perhaps others also know something, some things I do not.
If, as has been so in the past, there is no response to this email, which I am sending to my mother only, for her distribution to the rest of my family, if there is no response or a negative response by Tuesday of next week, my family will no longer hear from me and may not know where I am.
Yes, this is drastic. I am stable at this time; this is not the product of delusion but of desperation and frustration and indignation and disability and, most of all, necessity. I have thoroughly exhausted all other appropriate avenues of attaining these funds. And I believe this to be the sort of thing families do. It shall be repaid in payments of approximately $100 a month, beginning when bankruptcy is resolved.
Mark
Note: my entire family, with the exception of myself, is at the very least, solidly upper middle class, a position which they have reached, in large part… by exploiting me.
I have, contrary to my empty “threat” contacted my family. I have received, so far, a net of $246.00. Less than I was receiving by begging my mother to help me. I have received, since reestablishing contact, received absolutely nothing, with the above noted exception. My entire family of origin has literally all my contact information, which has not changed in nearly 4 years. I can no longer afford any form of psychological counseling, with the possible exception of my former, sadistic, burned out, but beloved, state funded counselor. I am doing OK. I am now bombarded by near constant voices and grandiose delusions. I hold a position of responsibility at a social services corporation located in my present town of residence, where I have now lived for twenty years. I am paid $8.00 per hour for my services, my hours vary widely, my employer is well aware of my mental health history, and federal income cap. My finances are now entirely handled by a state appointed entity. I am unaware of how much money I actually receive for either wages or SSD benefits. I receive a weekly allowance of $125.00 (I have requested slightly more and received a net cut), with a $100.00 per month allowance for car insurance. My primary responsibility is behavior modification of my ex wife’s family residing here. My ex wife is a highly respected PhD psychologist with her own apparently thriving firm. In 1998 she requested and received some sort of legal control over the care of her two locally residing grandchildren whom I now provide services for. She seems to have largely removed herself from their care. She cares for them from @8:00 pm on Friday evenings until whenever her grandchildren call me the next day to pick them up. She has not spoken to me for several weeks, despite my efforts to contact her, both in person and by phone. She too has all my contact information. Recently, (less than two weeks ago) I was contacted by her grandchildren, from a public phone at the local outdoor swimming pool on the last day it was open to the general public. As I pulled into the parking lot the boy’s grandmother exited the parking lot rather quickly with her cell phone to her ear. The boys were unable to tell me just what was going on. They had no dry towels, nothing to eat or drink. There was a definite wind chill factor. The pool facility was nearly empty of patrons, I located only two other occupants of the pool, both roughly my charges’ age @11 (=/- 1.5 years) and two adolescents seemed to be wandering from the pool to the dressing room. The pool staff, all seemingly less than @ 25 years of age, were at their stations. I assisted my former wife’s grandchildren and the two children in hypothermia relief. We left within a half hour, shaking hands with the entrance/exit staff and thanking them for a job well done.
{Spell Check is at times illogical and not user friendly}
PS: During a State Health and Welfare investigation of her son’s home a few weekends ago (the two aforementioned grandchildren’s father and his wife (clinically depressed), all four developmentally delayed, all four with unspecified personality disorders, the older child with ADHD and the younger bipolar, perhaps antisocial) my ex wife could not be reached, though I called her personally and left an urgent message. Her son contacted me via his cell phone; which I provide for him on my plan, without charging him, and alerted me that a State Health and Welfare person had interviewed his wife earlier in the day with only the children present and another would soon be arriving. I do not know where he was but he generally works weekends and evenings maintaining lawns and is employed full time at the same firm where I work, @ 2.5 years my senior (his sons’ tell me he has recently been promoted and is now in some sort of supervisory capacity which I see little or no evidence of. They also tell me he is now “my boss”. He recently purchased, on his own credit (according to him), a new 2008 Dodge 1500 quad cab pickup, V8, PW, PD, CC, AC, CD, light weight towing package. I do not recall precisely when or where he contacted me, only that it was Saturday afternoon and I was quite busy, perhaps assisting a friend in a nearby town with renovation of his recently fire gutted home ($10.00/hr +meals. I have 25 years experience as a carpenter, 24.5 years journeyman level) I left carpentry @ 6 months ago to take my present position). I left whatever I was doing, calling my ex wife on the way (I admit my message was less than cordial), I stopped along the way to buy groceries for their refrigerator, (with my own funds, which were not claimed or reimbursed) which I knew to be usually quite empty by Friday. They receive allowance checks from the same state appointed entity as I do, I receive mine on Saturdays, I do not know when they receive theirs, I assumed Saturdays also. When I arrived a 30ish woman was already there, questioning my former stepson’s wife on the front porch, clipboard in hand, with the two children standing nearby, also on the porch. Neither my ex wife nor her son were present. I walked up with a ready-to-eat barbecued chicken in a plastic grocery bag in my hand. When I arrived on the porch, Rachel was crying, but the boys were smiling. The young woman was very polite and professional. She was an on call social worker for State Health and Welfare Child and Family services. Though I became rather emotional at one point, the visit went well. There were no adverse outcomes to my knowledge. My ex wife did not contact me, I called her after the meeting on the porch, apologized for my rudeness on the prior message, and told her the meeting went well. Her son arrived home @15 minutes after the social worker left. I believe this incident to be prior to the pool incidence. During the meeting I recommended Rachel be re evaluated for clinical depression, among several other suggestions, including a supervised (by the social worker) intervention with Rachel about her care of the home. To my knowledge I was in no way reimbursed for time or mileage.
Some time ago my employer’s representative called me on my cell phone and said, “The family doesn’t want you working with the boys anymore.”
Since that call my life has gone spinning out or control, I said I quit, gave a wee bit of advice as to how to revamp their system to comply with regulations and properly serve their clientele, and hung up I have heard from neither my former employer nor my sweet little boys since.
Misunderstood
Going through the ER, involuntarily, is not only the most traumatic of experiences a mental health patient can experience, it has the most far reaching of consequences, and is the most expensive. I believe there should be special protocals to gently bring a person in a mental health crisis to a mental health facility. If this proves impossible, then mental health professionals should be willing and able to go to the patients home and offer treatment which will enable the patient to either safely remain at home or safely, without mental or physical trauma, to go to a mental health facility. ER's can often be the most traumatic of places. Even if the local ER is a safe place, a person in mental crisis will most likely perceive going to the ER to be an extreme and fearful experience. Calling 911 ordinarily brings policemen, not mental health professionals, into the already unstable person's home, generally causing them to panic. Is it somehow Illegal to be in a mental health crisis? Then why are there cops every where? This person has probably done nothing illegal. How traumatic for him/her!
This is, quite simply, a tragic, traumatic thing to make both family/friends and the confused, and now terrified person to do.
We must stop making it illegal to be mentally ill, as it appears we do. We must stop treating a person with a broken heart/mind like they merely have a broken leg, or like they have done something wrong.
I know whereof I speak. I have been through the ER, been through both voluntary and involuntary commitment, been arrested and put in jail, having harmed neither myself or anyone else when all that is needed are special, gentle, professionally written protocals for handling persons in mental health crises. We now force these poor, confused people to say they want to hurt someone, just to get... what? Thrown in jail, sounds like they're are going to jail or some kind of lockup to me. At the very least could we send plain clothes policeman, the kind without all the guns and clubs,instead of the kind we see beating on people, shooting at people and arresting people, putting them in all kinds of lockups, the kind of "peace" officers we see on every TV in America.
The mentally ill are, generally, the most peaceful of people. The want to stay home and try to relax, or just take a walk, remember to take their pills right, to try to calm the chaos in their heart and soul and mind. And when things get a little scary, what can they do? What if its after Dr.'s hours, or on a weekend?
This is, quite simply, a tragic, traumatic thing to make both family/friends and the confused, and now terrified person to do.
We must stop making it illegal to be mentally ill, as it appears we do. We must stop treating a person with a broken heart/mind like they merely have a broken leg, or like they have done something wrong.
I know whereof I speak. I have been through the ER, been through both voluntary and involuntary commitment, been arrested and put in jail, having harmed neither myself or anyone else when all that is needed are special, gentle, professionally written protocals for handling persons in mental health crises. We now force these poor, confused people to say they want to hurt someone, just to get... what? Thrown in jail, sounds like they're are going to jail or some kind of lockup to me. At the very least could we send plain clothes policeman, the kind without all the guns and clubs,instead of the kind we see beating on people, shooting at people and arresting people, putting them in all kinds of lockups, the kind of "peace" officers we see on every TV in America.
The mentally ill are, generally, the most peaceful of people. The want to stay home and try to relax, or just take a walk, remember to take their pills right, to try to calm the chaos in their heart and soul and mind. And when things get a little scary, what can they do? What if its after Dr.'s hours, or on a weekend?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
treatise? or madness?
i preface the following statements by saying that i am not extraordinary in my abilities.
most people are capable of doing what i do, they are simply not aware of it.
i am, in a sense, not aware of much that i do
it is simply too much for the conscious mind too endure.
my mental health record is proof of that.
with maturity, however; has come a balance in and perspective on my mind.
i accept the fact that i have no control
all i can do is pray that my conscious acts are in tune with the divine that dwells in all of us
i share a common consciousness with everyone
the one thing that makes me different
is that when i am able to cooperate with that divine consciousness
really good things happen.
things that people want or don't want, expect or don't expect, things nobody heard of or hears of.
wonderful things,seen or unseen,
that probably wouldn't happen if i didn't link my conscious will
with the divine will.
all people of good conscience attempt to do this, and succeed up to a point
i am simply more successful because the barriers to my subconscious were long ago torn down.
i stress that i have no control.
should i attempt to do anything outside the divine will,
i take a step toward madness.
this is the necessary paradox.
if i attempt to take control i loose control of my mind.
it loses the tenuous hold it has on reality.
if i give up control i maintain my loosely held grip.
i feel, sense pressure, vibration, temperature, density and waves.
air pressure
sound waves
chemical makeup
I sense brain wave patterns
i read them as speech and emotions
i predict future events by sensing patterns in brain waves
of people involved in situations.
i am@89% accurate in predicting outcome of series of events
where conclusion is less than 40% arbitrary.
I assign values by comparing outcomes over time.
i do not forget.
I choose not to recall what is not relevant in my opinion.
this makes me look dumb but I think clearly.
I read subconscious thought. this often conflicts with conscious thought but generally coincides with behaviour as I see it.
my senses seem to perceive the ”real world” and the souls who occupy it
very differently than anyone I have ever met.
i cannot be certain as I can gain no perspective on this.
I am generally very objective.
my behavior therefore often runs counter to the conscious
and stated expectations of others.
I do, however; mesh very well with the deeper motivations and desires of others.
this is not always consciously appreciated
but is always subconsciously approved of.
this generally surfaces as respect of my position
if not conscious agreement.
i heal minds, hearts and relationships.
i also heal places and things.
this is all due to my ability to consciously and subconsciously
to cooperate with the spirit of God that dwells in all creation but mostly in the subconscious mind of man.
i gained this ability when i was subjected to satanic ritual
abuse as a child.
in order to survive the multi-level trauma,
my mind broke down the barriers between my subconscious mind and my conscious mind.
what once were a series of barriers to protect my conscious mind
is now a continuum that i slide precariously along.
what has saved me has been my Christian faith
and my Yaqui heritage.
the combination is not necessarily compatible but has sufficed.
i live.
cross dressing and dual sexuality is deeply ingrained in the Yaqui tradition going back at least to the aztecs
much of my crossdressing is of a ritual nature these days
involving healing of people, places or things.
or myself
all have spirit ,all need healing sometimes.
this does not conflict with my faith.
Jesus and the apostles drove demons from people, places, and things.
Jesus said those who had faith could do these things and many others.
he also said not to rejoice in such abilities but be happy that God loves you.
The Yaqui way is a facet of the Chistian jewel.
Yaqui give all things to the Maker
Yaqui do not question why
Yaqui accept all things, live in all worlds the same way,
walking with the Maker.
Some have perverted this to "new age"
this new thing is an old way of making a good thing bad.
take a good thing and take the Maker out of it and put man in his place.
then the good thing is bad.
i give all power, responsibility, and credit to the spirit of God.
i make few choices of my own and then only if the Lord makes me.
i turn all of my time, energy, even my body over to the spirit.
i constantly pray and test the spirit to be sure i am not misled.
Fourty five years of practice have made me very wary and expert.
i am not always conscious of the spiritual ramifications of my actions but i no longer doubt them.
a step here, a word there, a dance, a blow to a wall, a whistle, even a smile can all have consequences.
i no longer try to figure any of it out.
when i know i'm on track, i know.
but i know only approximately 8.25% of the time.
the rest of the time is Grace.
my mind records all sensory input
including weather patterns,
chemical breakdowns and thought patterns.
information deficits are self imposed
in order to better function.
i naturally retain too much to process.
it is overwhelming.
i see the consequences of most actions.
it is overwhelming.
at the age of thirteen i attempted to make myself deaf.
i aquired tinitus.i no longer have perfect pitch
i'm glad.
at the age of fifteen i cut off the tips of two fingers,
at the age of twenty seven, the tip of my thumb.
i have also built up heavy calouses on my hands.
i now have 32% less sensory input from my hands.
i'm glad.
i don't see as well as i used to.
17% less useable visual input.
OK
processing is 8% slower
don't care
29.5 pounds over optimum weight
too bad
i can manipulate my metabolism, body chemistry, etc.
by diet, activity level, light exposure, etc.
so what.
i'm pretty much just an average guy
with a terrible gift
that up to now has done him no good.
God willing, things will be different now.
sensory input now equals capacity.
thank God.
most people are capable of doing what i do, they are simply not aware of it.
i am, in a sense, not aware of much that i do
it is simply too much for the conscious mind too endure.
my mental health record is proof of that.
with maturity, however; has come a balance in and perspective on my mind.
i accept the fact that i have no control
all i can do is pray that my conscious acts are in tune with the divine that dwells in all of us
i share a common consciousness with everyone
the one thing that makes me different
is that when i am able to cooperate with that divine consciousness
really good things happen.
things that people want or don't want, expect or don't expect, things nobody heard of or hears of.
wonderful things,seen or unseen,
that probably wouldn't happen if i didn't link my conscious will
with the divine will.
all people of good conscience attempt to do this, and succeed up to a point
i am simply more successful because the barriers to my subconscious were long ago torn down.
i stress that i have no control.
should i attempt to do anything outside the divine will,
i take a step toward madness.
this is the necessary paradox.
if i attempt to take control i loose control of my mind.
it loses the tenuous hold it has on reality.
if i give up control i maintain my loosely held grip.
i feel, sense pressure, vibration, temperature, density and waves.
air pressure
sound waves
chemical makeup
I sense brain wave patterns
i read them as speech and emotions
i predict future events by sensing patterns in brain waves
of people involved in situations.
i am@89% accurate in predicting outcome of series of events
where conclusion is less than 40% arbitrary.
I assign values by comparing outcomes over time.
i do not forget.
I choose not to recall what is not relevant in my opinion.
this makes me look dumb but I think clearly.
I read subconscious thought. this often conflicts with conscious thought but generally coincides with behaviour as I see it.
my senses seem to perceive the ”real world” and the souls who occupy it
very differently than anyone I have ever met.
i cannot be certain as I can gain no perspective on this.
I am generally very objective.
my behavior therefore often runs counter to the conscious
and stated expectations of others.
I do, however; mesh very well with the deeper motivations and desires of others.
this is not always consciously appreciated
but is always subconsciously approved of.
this generally surfaces as respect of my position
if not conscious agreement.
i heal minds, hearts and relationships.
i also heal places and things.
this is all due to my ability to consciously and subconsciously
to cooperate with the spirit of God that dwells in all creation but mostly in the subconscious mind of man.
i gained this ability when i was subjected to satanic ritual
abuse as a child.
in order to survive the multi-level trauma,
my mind broke down the barriers between my subconscious mind and my conscious mind.
what once were a series of barriers to protect my conscious mind
is now a continuum that i slide precariously along.
what has saved me has been my Christian faith
and my Yaqui heritage.
the combination is not necessarily compatible but has sufficed.
i live.
cross dressing and dual sexuality is deeply ingrained in the Yaqui tradition going back at least to the aztecs
much of my crossdressing is of a ritual nature these days
involving healing of people, places or things.
or myself
all have spirit ,all need healing sometimes.
this does not conflict with my faith.
Jesus and the apostles drove demons from people, places, and things.
Jesus said those who had faith could do these things and many others.
he also said not to rejoice in such abilities but be happy that God loves you.
The Yaqui way is a facet of the Chistian jewel.
Yaqui give all things to the Maker
Yaqui do not question why
Yaqui accept all things, live in all worlds the same way,
walking with the Maker.
Some have perverted this to "new age"
this new thing is an old way of making a good thing bad.
take a good thing and take the Maker out of it and put man in his place.
then the good thing is bad.
i give all power, responsibility, and credit to the spirit of God.
i make few choices of my own and then only if the Lord makes me.
i turn all of my time, energy, even my body over to the spirit.
i constantly pray and test the spirit to be sure i am not misled.
Fourty five years of practice have made me very wary and expert.
i am not always conscious of the spiritual ramifications of my actions but i no longer doubt them.
a step here, a word there, a dance, a blow to a wall, a whistle, even a smile can all have consequences.
i no longer try to figure any of it out.
when i know i'm on track, i know.
but i know only approximately 8.25% of the time.
the rest of the time is Grace.
my mind records all sensory input
including weather patterns,
chemical breakdowns and thought patterns.
information deficits are self imposed
in order to better function.
i naturally retain too much to process.
it is overwhelming.
i see the consequences of most actions.
it is overwhelming.
at the age of thirteen i attempted to make myself deaf.
i aquired tinitus.i no longer have perfect pitch
i'm glad.
at the age of fifteen i cut off the tips of two fingers,
at the age of twenty seven, the tip of my thumb.
i have also built up heavy calouses on my hands.
i now have 32% less sensory input from my hands.
i'm glad.
i don't see as well as i used to.
17% less useable visual input.
OK
processing is 8% slower
don't care
29.5 pounds over optimum weight
too bad
i can manipulate my metabolism, body chemistry, etc.
by diet, activity level, light exposure, etc.
so what.
i'm pretty much just an average guy
with a terrible gift
that up to now has done him no good.
God willing, things will be different now.
sensory input now equals capacity.
thank God.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Look At Him
Look at him.
(people have always looked at me)
He has every gift God can give
and he's wasted it all.
And now he expects other people
get him out of the mess
he's made of his life?
Let him dig down deep and
do it himself,
it'll be good for him,
make a man out of him.
Look at him. Walking down the street,
seems distracted, but smiles and stops to say something to a family passing by.
See, there, in the parietal lobe,
a vision of that man He is talking to,
why its the man's penis grown long enough for him to stuff it in His mouth.
And scenes of old women and children being raped.
Doesn't seem to phase him.
Hmmm, he looks OK, placid even, sad, but OK.
Hmmm. look there in the central sulcus,
pain in his rectum and chest, all he is doing is reading.
Whats the book, something about PTSD.
Oh my, doesn't he look good today,
better looking as he ages, I think.
Look there, in the amigdala,
fear, fear of being noticed,
singled out, different, chosen, used
wow, that triggers more fear,
memories from all over, some clear and distinct, some unclear.
"MMMM you have such a great bod" she said.
Sex, she wants sex.
Fear, panic, desire, anxiety, lots of stimulation.
She's looking at me, her hands are everywhere
but she doesn't really see me,
know me, understand me,
Used. Ok, lots of stuff here.
What do you mean, he's going with the flow like a pro.
OK, but there's lots of stuff...
OK, OK, he was doin great, but ED, ED...
Lots of memories, clarity variation,
Holy sh__! He's scooting out the back door
leaving that hot blonde hot and heavy.
Just because I look the way I do,
everyone thinks I'm some sort of stud,
that all I want out of life is sex,
I go with the flow as usual, but...
Look at him,
he's got it all,
made the team as walk on,
he'll be number two behind the senior all conference whip LB,
Get plenty of playing time, get a scholarship
Start next year, or this year if the number one goes down.
And the women...
Uh Oh, look amino acid uptake is critically low
he's clinical,
Ah, c'mon, look at him, he's fine.
No, sleep patterns disturbed,
anxiety depression cycle...
All my life, long as I can remember,
I never let anybody know what was really going on inside,
I got really good at it,
No one can by looking,
and I find I simply can't talk about it coherently,
would mean too much attention.
Momentary consciousness {see blog page},
anxiety, depression.
Evil, everything is evil.
Spirits, demons everywhere.
I sense them, I battle them,
with my spirit, my right parietal lobe.
the rest of my brain goes on as usual...
Look at him, he's fine,
workin' like a champ, been here six weeks
and he's running his own crew.
The wind draws one into a black hole,
unless you have the will to resist the madness.
Then came the voices,
and the interior world
grew to be more real than the exterior.
Constant delusion on a grand scale,
my perceptions, the evidence of my senses is the illusion,
the voice and the world it creates are the reality.
But why don't you ever tell anyone?
The words don't form in my mouth,
I reherse them often in my mind
but they won't come out.
Maybe something about PTSD and apraxia.
Look at him,
what a waste.
And the dreams.
I am back with my first wife, the abuser.
Some bazaar, fantastic scenario,
it becomes wilder, more menacing, more surreal, more complex, more evil...
I am trapped with unbearable evil...until it reaches the point where I simply cannot take it any longer...
and the scenario changes, still just as bazaar and evil,
but somehow the the change makes it bearable and the cycle repeats,
over and over, each scenario somehow worst than the last.
I awake in the very early morning, I feel psychotic,
anxiety, fear, reality is unclear, not to be trusted, unstable.
I stay awake until dawn, then try to sleep.
(people have always looked at me)
He has every gift God can give
and he's wasted it all.
And now he expects other people
get him out of the mess
he's made of his life?
Let him dig down deep and
do it himself,
it'll be good for him,
make a man out of him.
Look at him. Walking down the street,
seems distracted, but smiles and stops to say something to a family passing by.
See, there, in the parietal lobe,
a vision of that man He is talking to,
why its the man's penis grown long enough for him to stuff it in His mouth.
And scenes of old women and children being raped.
Doesn't seem to phase him.
Hmmm, he looks OK, placid even, sad, but OK.
Hmmm. look there in the central sulcus,
pain in his rectum and chest, all he is doing is reading.
Whats the book, something about PTSD.
Oh my, doesn't he look good today,
better looking as he ages, I think.
Look there, in the amigdala,
fear, fear of being noticed,
singled out, different, chosen, used
wow, that triggers more fear,
memories from all over, some clear and distinct, some unclear.
"MMMM you have such a great bod" she said.
Sex, she wants sex.
Fear, panic, desire, anxiety, lots of stimulation.
She's looking at me, her hands are everywhere
but she doesn't really see me,
know me, understand me,
Used. Ok, lots of stuff here.
What do you mean, he's going with the flow like a pro.
OK, but there's lots of stuff...
OK, OK, he was doin great, but ED, ED...
Lots of memories, clarity variation,
Holy sh__! He's scooting out the back door
leaving that hot blonde hot and heavy.
Just because I look the way I do,
everyone thinks I'm some sort of stud,
that all I want out of life is sex,
I go with the flow as usual, but...
Look at him,
he's got it all,
made the team as walk on,
he'll be number two behind the senior all conference whip LB,
Get plenty of playing time, get a scholarship
Start next year, or this year if the number one goes down.
And the women...
Uh Oh, look amino acid uptake is critically low
he's clinical,
Ah, c'mon, look at him, he's fine.
No, sleep patterns disturbed,
anxiety depression cycle...
All my life, long as I can remember,
I never let anybody know what was really going on inside,
I got really good at it,
No one can by looking,
and I find I simply can't talk about it coherently,
would mean too much attention.
Momentary consciousness {see blog page},
anxiety, depression.
Evil, everything is evil.
Spirits, demons everywhere.
I sense them, I battle them,
with my spirit, my right parietal lobe.
the rest of my brain goes on as usual...
Look at him, he's fine,
workin' like a champ, been here six weeks
and he's running his own crew.
The wind draws one into a black hole,
unless you have the will to resist the madness.
Then came the voices,
and the interior world
grew to be more real than the exterior.
Constant delusion on a grand scale,
my perceptions, the evidence of my senses is the illusion,
the voice and the world it creates are the reality.
But why don't you ever tell anyone?
The words don't form in my mouth,
I reherse them often in my mind
but they won't come out.
Maybe something about PTSD and apraxia.
Look at him,
what a waste.
And the dreams.
I am back with my first wife, the abuser.
Some bazaar, fantastic scenario,
it becomes wilder, more menacing, more surreal, more complex, more evil...
I am trapped with unbearable evil...until it reaches the point where I simply cannot take it any longer...
and the scenario changes, still just as bazaar and evil,
but somehow the the change makes it bearable and the cycle repeats,
over and over, each scenario somehow worst than the last.
I awake in the very early morning, I feel psychotic,
anxiety, fear, reality is unclear, not to be trusted, unstable.
I stay awake until dawn, then try to sleep.
"My" Life
Prayer of Thomas Merton
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
“My” life, it’s not really about me. I, we, are placed here on earth, by God, to love and serve Him. This is my, our, purpose for living. This mostly consists of loving, helping, serving each other and loving and caring for the earth, according to the will of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Simply put, “my” life is about God. Trouble is, we generally get this all screwed up, one way or another. If we’re not taught this purpose (perhaps we skipped class that decade of our life) or we try to ignore this purpose, we search restlessly through our life, trying to fill the vacancy left by our missing purpose. Perhaps we stumble through a messy, empty life, at a loss as to what we’re here for, or perhaps we charge through a “successful” life, only to end up lost and empty. Even if we were paying attention and know loving and serving God is our purpose, we often leave out the part about “the will of God” and “the power of the Holy Spirit.” Then we run off, confusing God’s will with our will and/or the power of the Holy Spirit with our “power”, and either fall flat on our face, wondering why God has forsaken us, or we build a mighty temple of our own power and will (this is the scary part) and draw people to ourselves instead of God. Well, God has this way of making pretty much everything turn out for the better in the end, even if we can’t see it, so these paths and their many variations can all lead to God’s purpose, but we can save ourselves and our loved ones some serious heartaches by getting it right in the first place. I say this at the age of fifty, looking back over what I thought was a largely misspent life, doing everything the hard, wrong way, making mistakes at every turn, I felt like a walking disaster; but my heart was usually in the right place and somehow, this great God, this tender, loving, intimate yet infinite God, somehow He made it good. However, I do not recommend such a path. I am told I should have no regrets, I have thousands. I am told there is no such thing as a mistake, its all spiritual learning. Let me tell you, I did make mistakes, lots of them, that caused myself and others pain, lots of pain. The fact that God is able to turn such a mess into something good, does not turn the original wrong to right, does not justify all the pain. It is a testament to God’s power, God’s love, God’s care that all turns out well, it does not mean it was all good at the time it occurred, at times it was hell and Satan himself seemed to shine his eerie red light through my life and this was wrong. Though I often prayed, God was not the center of my life, I did not seek to do His will but for Him to justify mine, and there was much power thrown about but there was little that was holy in it. We have free will, God’s terrible gift, God’s precious curse. And we misuse it. If “it’s all good”, then pain, that sign something is wrong, that gut-soul wrenching agony that gores and rips and tears and scars the heart and mind, would not exist. Pain comes to us through our own faults, but also the faults of others, and also through faults in this world. This world, made perfect by God, but shattered by the misuse of our free will, our power. All pain, all suffering, is in the beginning and in the end, caused by misused will and power, lack of or misshapen love, which is fear. I believe these not only tear at our hearts and minds and lead us to harm ourselves and others, I believe it tears at the very fabric of reality, misshaping God’s creation, both Man and Nature. In Genesis, Man is given stewardship of the earth and is told to “subdue it”. I believe this gives us an elemental connection to and power over nature Western civilization has denied. Man is responsible for the evil, the hostility of Nature. We are one body, one spirit, mankind is elementally connected, has a communal life. We are individually responsible for our actions yet they have communal consequences. I do believe in evil, but I believe fear to be the source of all evil. There is an old parable, where a certain animal, the one most universally feared by mankind, one, which ancient superstition has it, is at times able to hypnotize its victims, approaches a woman, mysteriously left alone by the man whose responsibility it was to protect her. Would not this archetypal woman be afraid, perhaps, in some sense, come under this “creature’s” power? Fear is known by psychology to distort our perceptions, our judgment, our very sense of self, and to have communal effects (mass hysteria, for only one) as well as have a profound effect on our physiology. Fear has power over Man; Man has some sort of limited power over Nature. I believe we don’t understand the half of it. Perhaps look it all up, in Genesis and elsewhere, and while you’re at it, ask someone who is into the latest in quantum physics about the nature of “reality.” It seems not to be concrete at all, but to be energy and “empty” space, which is not really empty at all, but full of something our science cannot define. Full of the “stuff” (a much used term in metaphysics) of God? And it seems to be malleable.
The “New Age” and the “Prosperity Gospel” have made much of this. But they’ve gotten the purpose, the will and the power all screwed up. I do believe in positive thinking, its called faith, hope and love. “Six degrees of separation”? One body, one Spirit.
What is the purpose we all need: to love and serve God; how do we know what God’s asking of us: relinquish our will, our lives, totally surrender to the will of God; how do we do this: not by our own power, knowledge, effort, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working through us. But, as Merton says, we can rarely, if ever, be certain we are doing God’s will, (I have met very few people who have been certain of God’s will more than once or twice in long lives, myself included) we must trust God, have faith. How is such faith possible? It is perhaps the most simple, yet the most difficult thing we can do, we must live without fear, which is to love, and step out in faith. The most oft repeated theme in scripture, Christian and otherwise, is “be not afraid, have faith,” or some variation thereof. Still I ask, how is this possible? Purpose, Will, Power, it all boils down to faith. Faith without fear. “Perfect love drives out fear;” but Man is incapable of perfect love, as the Old Testament shows. We are only capable of perfect love through faith in God who loves us with perfect love. Still the question: how such faith? Faith. Not the Lutherian come Calvinist come Protestant faith that “saves” you with its formulaic stamp of approval, once and for all; by which the saved may ask of us all with perfect piety, “Are you saved?” Neither is it the archaic Catholic “faith” of keeping the divine score card of sins against penances, where acts of mercy are done not to help others or even to please God but to rack up the score so as to “win” Heaven. Neither is it the vague Eastern mystical faith in a totally transcendent God whom we gain union with by “practice.” These all have their partial truths and therefore merit, but all reduce God to an observer of our efforts. God has given us the gift of such faith by giving us a friend and brother God, one we can know, in the deepest possible sense of knowing. “…that you, being rooted and grounded in love may have power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the length and breadth and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God,” (Eph 3). A love, a knowing beyond all knowledge, beyond all space and time, learning and wisdom (the four dimensions), which brings us faith, by the power of God, in the one man-God, Jesus by his Jewish given name (for all the fullness of God dwells in Him), the promised of ages, the answer to the call of Me-ssiiii-ahhhh…which rings out through all the ages of Man to the very moment. But the words are still inadequate. Jesus is faith, faith is Jesus, by whatever name you may call him, if you have a name for him. The one mankind has searched for and waited for since man could be called Man. The Word has been in us, all the time, that still quiet space we so often ignore. But now he is also one we can talk to as one like ourselves. Faith had a body and mind and heart and soul and spirit, like us, had a life like ours (except sin), which he completely gave up for us, for the Purpose, totally obedient to the Will, through the one Power. His Life, the Incarnation, the Word of God made flesh, brought God Himself, face to face, eyelash to eyelash, hand in hand, breathe by breathe, heart to heart, with not just those thick headed disciples, but every one of us. He died, like we all will, he was brought out of death like we all shall be, he is now and will be for all time, the risen Son of God and Son of Man, risen body, heart, mind, soul, spirit, and infinite, intimate God in one and we will be like his risen self one day, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed except that we will be like Him”(1 John). Faith is a person we can talk to, now, really. Not to say it is easy. He spoke in parables to the crowds, explained them to those irritating disciples in private, and it seemed even so, no one really heard him, understood him, until he had died and was risen. Even then they asked him if he was going to restore Israel, even then, they doubted. It took the coming of the Spirit, Christ’s gift to us, his very own Spirit, the Power, for them to really get it, as it does for us. It is very simple, we simply go as best we can to the still quiet place in our heart, our soul, speak to Jesus there, even if we don’t think there is any one there, or there seems too little stillness, not enough quiet. We can tell Him how we feel, anything on our mind, anything bothering us, stuff we feel bad about (that’s a good one, ‘cause it’s probably something he really wants us to get off our heart so He can heal us and forgive us.). We ask Him to send His Spirit to help us, though it is really the Spirit that has gotten us this far, ‘cause whatever it was that got us to thinking about faith or Jesus or God in the first place; the Spirit was right there. We ask Jesus, or God, or the Spirit, whichever one we feel most comfortable with (‘cause they are all the same God; that Trinity thing) what He wants us to do, and we listen, all still and quiet as possible, for as long as we have time for, thank Him, even if we don’t know for sure what we are thanking Him for. We do this every day; take as much time as we can, as often as we can, being as sincere as we can. When we feel comfortable doing it, He really likes it when we tell Him we love Him ‘cause that means we are feeling the love he has had for us since the beginning of time. That’s pretty much all there is to it. We need to remember we’re probably not going to know for sure what God’s will is, He wants us to have faith (that Word again) and trust Him. As we pray the Spirit will gradually teach us how to surrender to the Will of God, that is, if we are open to it, all the time teaching us about Jesus. There is much made of repentance of sin, but as we turn to God, the Spirit makes us aware of our sins, and in His presence; this awareness naturally brings about repentance, sooner or later. Not that it is easy, it is not, I just said it was simple. And just when we think we have cleaned up all that sin, He points out another boatload. [Some people believe God doesn’t listen to the prayers of sinners, if this were true, God would listen to no one, and (pet peeve coming up) I get real… uncomfortable when folks say what God does or doesn’t do. No one knows the mind of God, when we say God only does this, or doesn’t do that, we put limits on God, put Him in a box and one thing I’m real comfortable saying is He fits in no box we can possibly imagine. Any limitation we put on God excludes something or someone, makes God smaller, less loving. Placing limitations on God is something organized religions are really… good at ‘cause it makes God their own, exclusive, private God. Which is impossible. God is Infinite.]
This process requires that we find that stillness in ourselves where Faith, where Jesus dwells. Not easy, but simple.
I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary that one does this in a physically still, quiet place, though with most people it helps. I think it’s more important that it be a place we are comfortable with and feel connected with, grounded, at peace. This may or may not be a still, quiet place, but it will probably be a place we find peace in, and God. It may or may not be our home, it’s often a place somehow connected to nature (directly or indirectly), often a place we feel love. If we don’t have such a place, the Spirit will help us find or create one. Also, we can pray anytime, anywhere, if the idea to pray strikes, be appropriate to your situation, but just do it, even if it’s just a word or two. God likes to check in with us from time to time, and we will want to check in with Him as we grow in Love, too.
Reading Scripture helps a lot, but I don’t recommend starting at page one and just plowing all the way through it. Lots of people try, few make it. For one thing, the Bible is often not chronological, it’s not a novel, its more a collection of books and essays and letters. Besides, we need to be open to what the Spirit is telling us, not necessarily what page we’re on. It’s generally best to take in relatively small chunks, a chapter a day at most, and meditate, pray, spend time with what we’ve read (yes, spend time getting to know the Word). Subscribing to some sort of daily Scripture reading is good. Some denominations have suggested daily readings and lots of organizations put them out. They will often have an interpretation or meditation that can be helpful, but differing interpretations, attitudes, viewpoints, abound. It’s important to ask the Spirit to guide us to one that resonates with us. So, to satisfy my restless heart, the urge for God that I believe is innate to Man, part of our very will to live, I must turn “my” life over to God. But really, how can I say it is “mine” in the first place? I did not create myself, I cannot even draw a single breathe without relying on this mysterious life force within me. This entity I call my “self” exists within “my” body, but is somehow apart from it, therefore not necessarily connected to “reality.” Is anything really mine? I say it is all gift, a gift from God we truly do not know or understand, much less “own.” Modern science has done a great job of explaining the mechanics of our body and even parts of our mind, but cannot touch the reason or the power that originated and sustains life even at simple levels, let alone Man. Some physicists are now saying the basic nature of “reality”, in micro or in macro, may be beyond our capability to fully comprehend. So seek out all kinds of knowledge and wisdom, but know that our life is not our own. Live the Purpose, submit to the Will, humbly receive the Power.
My words are so inadequate. The Word, the Faith, is everything, is “all in all.”
This I believe.
We Love By His Life
by Jon Walker
“I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NLT)
When Jesus commands us to do something, he knows we cannot do it unless we are empowered by him – and so he joins his life with the Holy Spirit within us. Thus, “Christ lives in me.”
This new life within will take us where thoughts or feelings never will; it will enable us more than information or willpower ever can. We receive the love and life of Jesus, and he says, “Go and do the same.” As awesome and costly and everlasting as the Gospel is, it’s also this simple: We are transformed by the life of Christ released within us, and now we’re to show and tell others how Christ can live in them.
And isn’t it true that for a while this seems to be the easiest and most natural thing we’ve ever done? We get love from Jesus, and then we turn around and give it away to others.
But then, after a while, we find it more and more difficult. Old habits return. Memories come back, and the emotions attached to them emerge in ways that cause us to stumble or feel defeated.
No matter how hard we try, some days sheer willpower isn’t enough to be the new creation that God says we are. And so we try harder, and things just get worse.
But God is relentless in his command to “love each other in the same way that I have loved you” – personal and up-close, meeting needs of undeserving others, not attacking their faults. This is God driving us away from the self-generated, “try harder” love into his love that is freely given. This is where the Spirit of Love - himself - is able to teach us, “Not I, but Christ.”
We begin to see it is no longer “just I” doing the loving – that would be life under the Law. Success would bring self-commendation; failure would produce self-condemnation.
We learn to say in faith: “I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NLT)
What now?
· Personal love – Since God’s love is personal, it must be personalized as us. God’s love becomes personal and meaningful to others when we allow God to touch them through us.
· See the need; don’t criticize it – Oswald Chambers said in My Utmost for His Highest, “God never allows us to see another person at fault so we may criticize them, but only that we might intercede.” Intercessors do not ignore or deny fault or sin; they address the needs behind the faults and the sins. We love one another as God loves us when we come to others not to just take swings, but with prayerful, godly solutions.
[From “The Purpose Driven Life Newsletter, by Jon Walker]
Elder’s Meditation “Hollow bones”
"We are called hollow bones for our people and for anyone else we can help, and we are not supposed to seek power for our personal use and honor."
--Fools Crow, LAKOTA
In order for us to use our power well, we must become a hollow bone. We must prepare ourselves to become a channel. Our channel must be clean before we can use our power well. We must be free of resentments, guilt, shame, anger, self-pity and fear. If these things are in us, we cannot be hollow bones. These things block us from our power. The cleaner we are, the more power we move. We must become a hollow bone so the Creator can use us to do what he wants us to do.
My Creator, remove from me today all resentment, anger, fear, guilt and selfishness. Do not let my weaknesses stand in the way of my usefulness to You. Make me a hollow bone so Your power can flow through me.
Elder’s Meditation “Ownership”
Things will come and things will go. Really, I own nothing, the Creator owns all. Too often I label things as mine. I say this belongs to me, but it really belongs to the Creator. He gives me things to take care of. I need to do the best I can with what I have, with what I know at the time. And when the Creator changes things, I need to let go for His planning is the best.
Oh Great Spirit, today let me do the best I can with what I know, with what I have. Let me experience acceptance of Your will.
[From WhiteBison.org Daily Meditations]
“…He notices everything as he walks, the good work that someone, careless or unfortunate, has let fall on the ground… he goes about his work, putting together or putting back together… knowing that when he was young, the bow, the spear, the knife, the pipe, taught him balance, order and control, but that he no longer needs these things…” (Lakota Sioux)
From “Hanta Yo”, by Ruth Beebe Hill
Col 3-8-17
8 But now you must put them all away: anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language out of your mouths. 9 And stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free {no divisions, class structure, discrimination, bigotry, self-centeredness}; but Christ is all and in all. 12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. 14 And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. 15 And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom and insight you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
17 And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Eph3-14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him, who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
“My” life, it’s not really about me. I, we, are placed here on earth, by God, to love and serve Him. This is my, our, purpose for living. This mostly consists of loving, helping, serving each other and loving and caring for the earth, according to the will of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Simply put, “my” life is about God. Trouble is, we generally get this all screwed up, one way or another. If we’re not taught this purpose (perhaps we skipped class that decade of our life) or we try to ignore this purpose, we search restlessly through our life, trying to fill the vacancy left by our missing purpose. Perhaps we stumble through a messy, empty life, at a loss as to what we’re here for, or perhaps we charge through a “successful” life, only to end up lost and empty. Even if we were paying attention and know loving and serving God is our purpose, we often leave out the part about “the will of God” and “the power of the Holy Spirit.” Then we run off, confusing God’s will with our will and/or the power of the Holy Spirit with our “power”, and either fall flat on our face, wondering why God has forsaken us, or we build a mighty temple of our own power and will (this is the scary part) and draw people to ourselves instead of God. Well, God has this way of making pretty much everything turn out for the better in the end, even if we can’t see it, so these paths and their many variations can all lead to God’s purpose, but we can save ourselves and our loved ones some serious heartaches by getting it right in the first place. I say this at the age of fifty, looking back over what I thought was a largely misspent life, doing everything the hard, wrong way, making mistakes at every turn, I felt like a walking disaster; but my heart was usually in the right place and somehow, this great God, this tender, loving, intimate yet infinite God, somehow He made it good. However, I do not recommend such a path. I am told I should have no regrets, I have thousands. I am told there is no such thing as a mistake, its all spiritual learning. Let me tell you, I did make mistakes, lots of them, that caused myself and others pain, lots of pain. The fact that God is able to turn such a mess into something good, does not turn the original wrong to right, does not justify all the pain. It is a testament to God’s power, God’s love, God’s care that all turns out well, it does not mean it was all good at the time it occurred, at times it was hell and Satan himself seemed to shine his eerie red light through my life and this was wrong. Though I often prayed, God was not the center of my life, I did not seek to do His will but for Him to justify mine, and there was much power thrown about but there was little that was holy in it. We have free will, God’s terrible gift, God’s precious curse. And we misuse it. If “it’s all good”, then pain, that sign something is wrong, that gut-soul wrenching agony that gores and rips and tears and scars the heart and mind, would not exist. Pain comes to us through our own faults, but also the faults of others, and also through faults in this world. This world, made perfect by God, but shattered by the misuse of our free will, our power. All pain, all suffering, is in the beginning and in the end, caused by misused will and power, lack of or misshapen love, which is fear. I believe these not only tear at our hearts and minds and lead us to harm ourselves and others, I believe it tears at the very fabric of reality, misshaping God’s creation, both Man and Nature. In Genesis, Man is given stewardship of the earth and is told to “subdue it”. I believe this gives us an elemental connection to and power over nature Western civilization has denied. Man is responsible for the evil, the hostility of Nature. We are one body, one spirit, mankind is elementally connected, has a communal life. We are individually responsible for our actions yet they have communal consequences. I do believe in evil, but I believe fear to be the source of all evil. There is an old parable, where a certain animal, the one most universally feared by mankind, one, which ancient superstition has it, is at times able to hypnotize its victims, approaches a woman, mysteriously left alone by the man whose responsibility it was to protect her. Would not this archetypal woman be afraid, perhaps, in some sense, come under this “creature’s” power? Fear is known by psychology to distort our perceptions, our judgment, our very sense of self, and to have communal effects (mass hysteria, for only one) as well as have a profound effect on our physiology. Fear has power over Man; Man has some sort of limited power over Nature. I believe we don’t understand the half of it. Perhaps look it all up, in Genesis and elsewhere, and while you’re at it, ask someone who is into the latest in quantum physics about the nature of “reality.” It seems not to be concrete at all, but to be energy and “empty” space, which is not really empty at all, but full of something our science cannot define. Full of the “stuff” (a much used term in metaphysics) of God? And it seems to be malleable.
The “New Age” and the “Prosperity Gospel” have made much of this. But they’ve gotten the purpose, the will and the power all screwed up. I do believe in positive thinking, its called faith, hope and love. “Six degrees of separation”? One body, one Spirit.
What is the purpose we all need: to love and serve God; how do we know what God’s asking of us: relinquish our will, our lives, totally surrender to the will of God; how do we do this: not by our own power, knowledge, effort, but by the power of the Holy Spirit working through us. But, as Merton says, we can rarely, if ever, be certain we are doing God’s will, (I have met very few people who have been certain of God’s will more than once or twice in long lives, myself included) we must trust God, have faith. How is such faith possible? It is perhaps the most simple, yet the most difficult thing we can do, we must live without fear, which is to love, and step out in faith. The most oft repeated theme in scripture, Christian and otherwise, is “be not afraid, have faith,” or some variation thereof. Still I ask, how is this possible? Purpose, Will, Power, it all boils down to faith. Faith without fear. “Perfect love drives out fear;” but Man is incapable of perfect love, as the Old Testament shows. We are only capable of perfect love through faith in God who loves us with perfect love. Still the question: how such faith? Faith. Not the Lutherian come Calvinist come Protestant faith that “saves” you with its formulaic stamp of approval, once and for all; by which the saved may ask of us all with perfect piety, “Are you saved?” Neither is it the archaic Catholic “faith” of keeping the divine score card of sins against penances, where acts of mercy are done not to help others or even to please God but to rack up the score so as to “win” Heaven. Neither is it the vague Eastern mystical faith in a totally transcendent God whom we gain union with by “practice.” These all have their partial truths and therefore merit, but all reduce God to an observer of our efforts. God has given us the gift of such faith by giving us a friend and brother God, one we can know, in the deepest possible sense of knowing. “…that you, being rooted and grounded in love may have power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the length and breadth and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God,” (Eph 3). A love, a knowing beyond all knowledge, beyond all space and time, learning and wisdom (the four dimensions), which brings us faith, by the power of God, in the one man-God, Jesus by his Jewish given name (for all the fullness of God dwells in Him), the promised of ages, the answer to the call of Me-ssiiii-ahhhh…which rings out through all the ages of Man to the very moment. But the words are still inadequate. Jesus is faith, faith is Jesus, by whatever name you may call him, if you have a name for him. The one mankind has searched for and waited for since man could be called Man. The Word has been in us, all the time, that still quiet space we so often ignore. But now he is also one we can talk to as one like ourselves. Faith had a body and mind and heart and soul and spirit, like us, had a life like ours (except sin), which he completely gave up for us, for the Purpose, totally obedient to the Will, through the one Power. His Life, the Incarnation, the Word of God made flesh, brought God Himself, face to face, eyelash to eyelash, hand in hand, breathe by breathe, heart to heart, with not just those thick headed disciples, but every one of us. He died, like we all will, he was brought out of death like we all shall be, he is now and will be for all time, the risen Son of God and Son of Man, risen body, heart, mind, soul, spirit, and infinite, intimate God in one and we will be like his risen self one day, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed except that we will be like Him”(1 John). Faith is a person we can talk to, now, really. Not to say it is easy. He spoke in parables to the crowds, explained them to those irritating disciples in private, and it seemed even so, no one really heard him, understood him, until he had died and was risen. Even then they asked him if he was going to restore Israel, even then, they doubted. It took the coming of the Spirit, Christ’s gift to us, his very own Spirit, the Power, for them to really get it, as it does for us. It is very simple, we simply go as best we can to the still quiet place in our heart, our soul, speak to Jesus there, even if we don’t think there is any one there, or there seems too little stillness, not enough quiet. We can tell Him how we feel, anything on our mind, anything bothering us, stuff we feel bad about (that’s a good one, ‘cause it’s probably something he really wants us to get off our heart so He can heal us and forgive us.). We ask Him to send His Spirit to help us, though it is really the Spirit that has gotten us this far, ‘cause whatever it was that got us to thinking about faith or Jesus or God in the first place; the Spirit was right there. We ask Jesus, or God, or the Spirit, whichever one we feel most comfortable with (‘cause they are all the same God; that Trinity thing) what He wants us to do, and we listen, all still and quiet as possible, for as long as we have time for, thank Him, even if we don’t know for sure what we are thanking Him for. We do this every day; take as much time as we can, as often as we can, being as sincere as we can. When we feel comfortable doing it, He really likes it when we tell Him we love Him ‘cause that means we are feeling the love he has had for us since the beginning of time. That’s pretty much all there is to it. We need to remember we’re probably not going to know for sure what God’s will is, He wants us to have faith (that Word again) and trust Him. As we pray the Spirit will gradually teach us how to surrender to the Will of God, that is, if we are open to it, all the time teaching us about Jesus. There is much made of repentance of sin, but as we turn to God, the Spirit makes us aware of our sins, and in His presence; this awareness naturally brings about repentance, sooner or later. Not that it is easy, it is not, I just said it was simple. And just when we think we have cleaned up all that sin, He points out another boatload. [Some people believe God doesn’t listen to the prayers of sinners, if this were true, God would listen to no one, and (pet peeve coming up) I get real… uncomfortable when folks say what God does or doesn’t do. No one knows the mind of God, when we say God only does this, or doesn’t do that, we put limits on God, put Him in a box and one thing I’m real comfortable saying is He fits in no box we can possibly imagine. Any limitation we put on God excludes something or someone, makes God smaller, less loving. Placing limitations on God is something organized religions are really… good at ‘cause it makes God their own, exclusive, private God. Which is impossible. God is Infinite.]
This process requires that we find that stillness in ourselves where Faith, where Jesus dwells. Not easy, but simple.
I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary that one does this in a physically still, quiet place, though with most people it helps. I think it’s more important that it be a place we are comfortable with and feel connected with, grounded, at peace. This may or may not be a still, quiet place, but it will probably be a place we find peace in, and God. It may or may not be our home, it’s often a place somehow connected to nature (directly or indirectly), often a place we feel love. If we don’t have such a place, the Spirit will help us find or create one. Also, we can pray anytime, anywhere, if the idea to pray strikes, be appropriate to your situation, but just do it, even if it’s just a word or two. God likes to check in with us from time to time, and we will want to check in with Him as we grow in Love, too.
Reading Scripture helps a lot, but I don’t recommend starting at page one and just plowing all the way through it. Lots of people try, few make it. For one thing, the Bible is often not chronological, it’s not a novel, its more a collection of books and essays and letters. Besides, we need to be open to what the Spirit is telling us, not necessarily what page we’re on. It’s generally best to take in relatively small chunks, a chapter a day at most, and meditate, pray, spend time with what we’ve read (yes, spend time getting to know the Word). Subscribing to some sort of daily Scripture reading is good. Some denominations have suggested daily readings and lots of organizations put them out. They will often have an interpretation or meditation that can be helpful, but differing interpretations, attitudes, viewpoints, abound. It’s important to ask the Spirit to guide us to one that resonates with us. So, to satisfy my restless heart, the urge for God that I believe is innate to Man, part of our very will to live, I must turn “my” life over to God. But really, how can I say it is “mine” in the first place? I did not create myself, I cannot even draw a single breathe without relying on this mysterious life force within me. This entity I call my “self” exists within “my” body, but is somehow apart from it, therefore not necessarily connected to “reality.” Is anything really mine? I say it is all gift, a gift from God we truly do not know or understand, much less “own.” Modern science has done a great job of explaining the mechanics of our body and even parts of our mind, but cannot touch the reason or the power that originated and sustains life even at simple levels, let alone Man. Some physicists are now saying the basic nature of “reality”, in micro or in macro, may be beyond our capability to fully comprehend. So seek out all kinds of knowledge and wisdom, but know that our life is not our own. Live the Purpose, submit to the Will, humbly receive the Power.
My words are so inadequate. The Word, the Faith, is everything, is “all in all.”
This I believe.
We Love By His Life
by Jon Walker
“I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NLT)
When Jesus commands us to do something, he knows we cannot do it unless we are empowered by him – and so he joins his life with the Holy Spirit within us. Thus, “Christ lives in me.”
This new life within will take us where thoughts or feelings never will; it will enable us more than information or willpower ever can. We receive the love and life of Jesus, and he says, “Go and do the same.” As awesome and costly and everlasting as the Gospel is, it’s also this simple: We are transformed by the life of Christ released within us, and now we’re to show and tell others how Christ can live in them.
And isn’t it true that for a while this seems to be the easiest and most natural thing we’ve ever done? We get love from Jesus, and then we turn around and give it away to others.
But then, after a while, we find it more and more difficult. Old habits return. Memories come back, and the emotions attached to them emerge in ways that cause us to stumble or feel defeated.
No matter how hard we try, some days sheer willpower isn’t enough to be the new creation that God says we are. And so we try harder, and things just get worse.
But God is relentless in his command to “love each other in the same way that I have loved you” – personal and up-close, meeting needs of undeserving others, not attacking their faults. This is God driving us away from the self-generated, “try harder” love into his love that is freely given. This is where the Spirit of Love - himself - is able to teach us, “Not I, but Christ.”
We begin to see it is no longer “just I” doing the loving – that would be life under the Law. Success would bring self-commendation; failure would produce self-condemnation.
We learn to say in faith: “I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NLT)
What now?
· Personal love – Since God’s love is personal, it must be personalized as us. God’s love becomes personal and meaningful to others when we allow God to touch them through us.
· See the need; don’t criticize it – Oswald Chambers said in My Utmost for His Highest, “God never allows us to see another person at fault so we may criticize them, but only that we might intercede.” Intercessors do not ignore or deny fault or sin; they address the needs behind the faults and the sins. We love one another as God loves us when we come to others not to just take swings, but with prayerful, godly solutions.
[From “The Purpose Driven Life Newsletter, by Jon Walker]
Elder’s Meditation “Hollow bones”
"We are called hollow bones for our people and for anyone else we can help, and we are not supposed to seek power for our personal use and honor."
--Fools Crow, LAKOTA
In order for us to use our power well, we must become a hollow bone. We must prepare ourselves to become a channel. Our channel must be clean before we can use our power well. We must be free of resentments, guilt, shame, anger, self-pity and fear. If these things are in us, we cannot be hollow bones. These things block us from our power. The cleaner we are, the more power we move. We must become a hollow bone so the Creator can use us to do what he wants us to do.
My Creator, remove from me today all resentment, anger, fear, guilt and selfishness. Do not let my weaknesses stand in the way of my usefulness to You. Make me a hollow bone so Your power can flow through me.
Elder’s Meditation “Ownership”
Things will come and things will go. Really, I own nothing, the Creator owns all. Too often I label things as mine. I say this belongs to me, but it really belongs to the Creator. He gives me things to take care of. I need to do the best I can with what I have, with what I know at the time. And when the Creator changes things, I need to let go for His planning is the best.
Oh Great Spirit, today let me do the best I can with what I know, with what I have. Let me experience acceptance of Your will.
[From WhiteBison.org Daily Meditations]
“…He notices everything as he walks, the good work that someone, careless or unfortunate, has let fall on the ground… he goes about his work, putting together or putting back together… knowing that when he was young, the bow, the spear, the knife, the pipe, taught him balance, order and control, but that he no longer needs these things…” (Lakota Sioux)
From “Hanta Yo”, by Ruth Beebe Hill
Col 3-8-17
8 But now you must put them all away: anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language out of your mouths. 9 And stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free {no divisions, class structure, discrimination, bigotry, self-centeredness}; but Christ is all and in all. 12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. 14 And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. 15 And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom and insight you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
17 And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Eph3-14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him, who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
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