Mad Spirituality

Yeller Prides (unedited)

2008-12-09T00:13:00.000-08:00

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.

Madness Rising (work in progress)

2008-12-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Serenity/Necessity

2008-12-08T23:35:00.000-08:00

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…?”

Corpus Christi House (Homeless Day Shelter)

2008-12-08T23:26:00.000-08:00

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

Boy 1 1/2

2008-11-03T01:29:00.000-08:00

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

the honorable man

2008-10-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Anxiety Itself

2008-09-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Misunderstood ll

2008-09-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

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.

Misunderstood

2008-09-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

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?

treatise? or madness?

2008-08-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Look At Him

2008-08-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

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.

"My" Life

2008-08-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

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.

The Place (from Whispers)

2008-07-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

The Place

I was still five years old
and I lay there in the dark
still and quiet, wanting to be somewhere else.
And I went to a place I’d never been.
A place clear and cool yet warm and still and in motion too.
And white,
not just white on the surface but white clear through
and it felt good to look at it
and good to be there.
It seemed like a cave,
with high white walls melding into the ceiling of solid white air,
like a mist made of rock, translucent.
I raised my hand to touch it,
knowing it was out of reach,
yet feeling it was near at hand.
I was standing on a rock ledge and I started to cry.
‘cause I was safe,
but where I was I didn’t know.
I just knew it was a good place,
a safe place to cry.
God was here, everywhere.
This place was made of God,
I could almost see him moving in the mist rock.
I laid down and waited until I stopped crying
and my heart stopped pounding
and I could breathe without sobbing.
Too soon I knew it was time to go.
And then my leg was warm and shaking and a voice called my name
and I smelled the dust of the old church
and felt a hand on my leg and I was back.
But I would visit the cool clear, warm white place in my dreams
knowing peace was there
and God.

Angel (She flew)

2008-07-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Her name was Grace
or maybe that was just what she was.
Grace with the golden hair.
And she flew.
Everything about her was motion and flight,
and joy and love
and she came to me,
just me, nobody else.
To talk to me,
to play with me,
To tell me what a good boy I was,
how strong and good and loved.
She came to tell me it wasn’t my fault.
I hadn’t done anything wrong,
and one day soon I would go home
and not come back here ever again.
Those people down there wouldn’t do this to me anymore.
She told me I would soon go to a place
where no bad people would come to me ever again.
A place with cows and horses and lots of space
for little boys to play all alone and be safe.
And she flew and I think that she took me there
to see the cows and horses and stuff.
I remember looking down on them
from the night high above.
I maybe imagined that
when she told me all about the grass
and the fields and the animals and all the fun things to do,
in my new place, after the bad place I’d been.
And she flew, all the time,
but she made me feel all still and quiet and happy deep inside
not just on the outside.
She was Grace
and she was woman and mother
and I closed my eyes and melted in her arms
I hugged her and she felt like silk
and smelled like my mom
and she was all round and soft and solid
and I loved her, and maybe she never really went away,
‘cause I don’t remember missing her.
And now, when that wonderful stillness comes on me
I wonder if its her, telling me I’m OK.
That I’m still a good boy, strong and good.
And loved.
And it wasn’t my fault.

Marquesa Corpus (excerpts) of Too Close to Heaven

2008-05-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

The following are several selections (actually only three, but "Whores" has several parts) from a large body of work I wrote between the summer of '96 and @autumn"99. They are examples of what may or may not be False Memory Syndrome. These are "recovered" memories, memories I had no idea of until they appeared when I was 38 years old. My case does not fit the typical False Memory Syndrome model. I started "remembering" these things long before I ever went into therapy where child abuse was a topic. Victims of False Memory Syndrome are generally led into their corpus of "memories" by a well meaning but zealous therapist. I had symptoms of child abuse, "body memories" unexplainable rectal and chest pain since childhood. I was available, in my large family I was often lost and unsupervised during my preteen years. In the summer, I would eat breakfast early in the morning, play in the fields and barns of the countryside or ride my bike into town (A small western town, 2500 people) and wander around all day. I would eat candy bought with change I swiped from my Mom's stash of tips (she worked as a waitress and/or cook for much of her life) I would appear at supper time, always the last one to the table, but for some reason my chair was in the corner so I would have to climb under through the legs of everyone else and pop into my seat. Little or no conversation. Repeat. I would be ravenous. All leftovers were simply put in my reach and I would dispose of them. In '98, when I was doing research on SRA, I found that my state had enacted a little known law specifically banning acts identical to or very similar to the content of my "memories" precisely at the time these events were supposedly occurring. I might possibly have picked this up somehow as a child, but we had no TV , I did not read the paper or listen to the radio. My family, in their silence on the subject, flatly denies any possibility of these events occurring. I'm am not saying these stories are true, I am just saying it is what I remember. I feel certain I was the victim of some kind of violent, transgender sexual abuse but I am unsure of any details. Most of these "memories" are of SRA, Satanic Ritual Abuse, often the content of False Memory Syndrome. I refer you to the work of Elizabeth Loftus, who has made a career of debunking SRA and virtually coined the term False Memory Syndrome.

Suzzane

I met Suzzane when I was four and a half.
After Pastor Greg sexed me
he left me in the room.
She came in and held me to her chest.
She had little tiny boobs for a big woman.
She was pretty and plump and smelled perfect
and looked perfect and smiled at me so beautiful,
I felt better.
She never sexed me.
She would just hold me and talk to me and tell me it wasn’t my fault.
She said if I could just hold on I could have a good life.
She said she was just like me once,
all alone and scared.
She just held on tight and didn’t ever give up
and now she had a wonderful life, almost.
Well, at least she was alive and had lots of nice things.
Hold on, Mark, hold on to whatever you know is true
and good and right.
They want you to hate yourself,
to hate God.
Don’t let them change you that much.
They can do whatever they want to your body
but they can’t touch your heart if you don’t let them.
What do you believe is true, Mark?
Jesus loves me.
Alright then. You hang on tight to that every second.
Don’t ever let go of it,
no matter what happens to you, OK?
Every time they did me that year
she would be there afterwards and hold me
and tell me to hang on to my truth.
Whats your truth, Mark?
Jesus loves me.
Alright then, hang on, Honey, hang on.
She taught me all about girls clothes.
How fun they were,
how soft and silky and cool.
How they had their own little world I could hide in
when it all got to be too much.
One day they took me out in the country,
to a big barn out in the sun,
tied me up to a rock
where there were lots of dead birds and horses and sheep.
She came out in a white dress,
her head was down and she was crying a little.
She looked up and put her hair back from her face
and asked me,
What’s true, Mark?
I couldn’t talk, I just nodded my head.
They killed her,
on top of me like the others,
cut off her little breasts and her little weiner
and put them on me.
She bled and got cold and they sang
and I floated
like the other times.
Only she was the first.
They cut her into little pieces,
put her in wooden boxes,
and carried us to a truck.
We went a long ways.
It was really bumpy and loud and slow.
Don yelled that he liked it better when they did it on horses.
We went down a long bumpy hill until I could hear the river.
They took us out and we went down some steps.
They stopped and put rocks in the boxes.
We went out a ways in a boat
and they threw her over and dropped me into the water
on the end of a rope
that was tied to her.
The rope broke and they pulled me in.
I knew it, Greg said.
He’s the one.

When I dress up I take her name.
She was so good to me.
She saved my life
with what she taught me.
They tried to make me just like them.
Instead I stayed mostly like me
and a lot like her.
My truth became so much a part of me
I didn’t even know it was there,
I just knew it clear through to my soul
and the bones of my soul.
She was right,
as long as I held on to it they couldn’t touch me, not really.

Pastor Greg told me that if I just loved him and cooperated all the time,
the Cadre would take care of me for the rest of my life.
I could have all of the clothes I wanted and jewelry and toys.
I just had to stick with them and they’d see to it I always had nice things
and plenty to eat.
Two or three times a week I would stay
after bible school or come by after school
and we would play his games.
Sometimes there would be lots of people there
and they would all play a little.
I think I was the only little girl at these partys.
Sometimes he would be drunk and we would play
and then he would knock me down and spit on me.
I would want to go to my room and put on my pretty clothes and pretend
Suzzanne was still there.
He would laugh and yell and pee on me as I crawled across the floor.
I would remember what she said, though.
I don’t remember much about how I felt
when all this stuff happened.
I just know I cried a lot when no one was around
and I always felt like I was just watching everything from a long ways away.
After Suzzanne I always felt lonely
and sad.
Always.

Whores

Maria

She was my lover from the first moment I saw her.
A whore like me.
She wore white and lace.
A pretty white dress in the sun on the lawn by a tree.
Her skin a light olive and her eyes
were large dark ovals rimmed in black.
And her hair the shiniest, blackest black.
It fell just short of her shoulders, shimmering.
We were singing and I sang loud.
She joked the way her people do,
“Were you singing John,
I couldn’t hear because Mark sang so loud?”
She came to me later.
She touched her finger to my lips
and said come to me little boy,
I’ll be waiting.
She was Amy’s sister, she said.
Come to me.
I stood there in the back yard of her house
two hours later.
I tryed to stay away
but the call of the whore was too strong.
I stood there waiting,
knowing she was nearby.
She rose up out of her garden to my left and behind me.
Dressed in white again,
her blouse smudged with dirt,
her breasts older, more ample than Amy,
but with the same call.
She said nothing I could hear but moved toward me,
hands still gloved,
dirt smudged on her face,
legs and arms.
Her eyes never left me as she pulled of her gloves.
I backed up onto the steps and into the back porch.
Without a word she stripped me bare and I tasted the garden dirt
on her skin and felt it grind into my back.
Every day at three o clock for the rest of the summer.
Often on the porch, sometimes in her room,
always a bath after.
Until her husband came home one day and caught us.
He nearly killed her.
Me he just beat with his belt and stared at.
He was trying to understand.
Then she said,”He is the priest of Jude, the special one”
He unfolded his arms and cried out ,
“Praise the master, he has come to me!”
I was evil, he said and nothing but evil will come of this.
He was right.
He was glad.
He was leader of the cadre.
Six months later she was dead.

Me
I was a whore.
I was a female whore.
I had a voluptuous body and long dark hair.
I did not imagine this.
It was as true for me as the air I breathed.
I had all the sensations, emotions, and experiences of a whore.
I was six years old and a thousand year old whore at the same time.
I was to have been sacrificed at the equinox that year.
Maria died instead.
I killed her.
I made her cut her own throat and die.
I lay there under her
Choking on her blood.
And I loved her so much
I wanted it to be me.
But I had to live so I could tell the story.
She chose this way.
Someday people would hear me.
They would never have believed her.

The Sons Of judas
My brother Dan was intended to be their sacrifice.
They knew him from Amy’s talk of my “sexy little brother”
He was four.
They wanted an innocent.
I was not.
They came for him one afternoon
when Amy was in bed with me.
They walked by our room and the heat and the dirt and the dark of them
woke me up.
He was sleeping in the next room and I got up.
They gathered around him in their dark clothes and flashed their eyes down at him,
they reached for him and I shouted “Stop!”
I told them they could have me instead.
Take me, I’m all you need.
They needed a boy right away,
“One dirty little trailer house urchin is as good as the next”
They grabbed me by my arm and shot a needle in it.
They took my knife
and stuffed it inside my pants.
In front of my penis.
They drove me to a barn on the south end.
They told me I was the One.
I said “Go to hell”
Gregory said, “Thank you”
and hit me in the back of my head.
They put a robe of black clothe on me.
Then they dragged me to the alter.
After much shit-smearing and gutteral chanting
in my direction they tied me to their cross.
The whore was alive in me now
and she loved me.
She was braver than me and she stood up to them.
She took me in her body and held me quietly through the horror of the sacrfices.
Animals of all kinds til the floor was slick with blood.
The whore whispered in my ear.
“I have seen it a thousand times.
This time will be different.
We shall live.”
She said.
“You will free me
And I will save you”
When it came to my murder,
they raised me on their cross
at the end of their bloody alter
and chanted out love of evil.
Maria came out from their midst,
Naked but for a blakstrap around
her shoulders,neck, waist and crotch,
carrying a bloody sword by her side.
She quickly and quietly mounted the alter
and tore open their robe and pulled off my pants.
My knife clattered to the alter.
She laughed and picked it up with her other hand.
She turned and gave the sword to the Second,
took my knife and carefully circumcised me.
My hood she took and chewed for a moment
then cried out like some kind of wild dog
and placed my little penis in her mouth.
And sucked my blood til I got dizzy.
She took the knife and cut her breasts
so they dripped blood from the nipples.
Slowly and carefully they lowered me to the alter.
The Second who stood behind her gave her
the jewels of the Cadre
and she placed them on my chest.
“You shall be the whore of the temple
of Jude and Prince of the Cadre,”
she said.
The cadre grew tense and she raised my knife.
The Whore raised up from the slab through Maria’s
dripping blood.
She reached out to Maria and touched her lips and said,
“You are mine.
Awaken the true love you have for this child.”
Maria smiled her big beautiful smile
and swung the knife in a wide arc
around and around and down
toward me and up above her head.
She whispered to me
“For the love of God”
With both hands she struck a blow
that missed me by the width of my hair.
Her face was close to me now.
I said,”You can kill me if you want,
its OK. She reached for the knife,
pulled it out of the wood,
smiling the old Maria smile from before.
She turned around and yelled something at the guy
who still stood behind her with her sword.
She stood up and looked toward him
and stood there staring at him.
She yelled again and he swung.
Her head bounced off my chest
and fell to the floor on my left.
Her headless body jerked and sqirted blood
then slowly and softly slumped on top of me.
I just lay there beneath her,
not sobbing but
tears running red down my face.
The cadre fell silent for what seemed like hours.
They suddenly began chanting as one
They were both ecstatic and fearful.
They said I would be their Prince.
The whore stood up and told them I would be their ruin.
They wouldn’t look at me but couldn’t leave me alone.
They all touched me and ate her drying blood.
I remember the whore kissed me and softly
placed her hand on my cheek.
“I love you little boy child”
She said.
And entered into my heart.
And the other one came.
The pretty blonde one.
Not Amy but Grace.
She’s not a whore.
She’s an angel.
I like her a lot.
She lets me be.
And when they come to me
she carries me up into the sky
and we sing and play and dance.
They cannot touch me.
The whore is below
and I am above,
dancing with an angel.

Day and night
I have dreams.
And in these dreams
they are now the ones who pray I will wake up.

And I am their ruin still.
I live.
I scatter them night and day by living a decent life.
I am the only one who can defeat me.
And God knows I have tried.
But I’m worn out from that paticular battle and won’t be at it any more.
I’ve turned to loving each and every one,
something I’ve done all along
but now I know it
and it makes it, Oh, so much better.

It seems I’m not as brave as I think
I still don’t like going to bed.
I’m not even so smart,
I can’t figure out my own wife.
I can’t fix anybody
but maybe I can help.

I love the whore.
Marquesa Martinez.
It seems the whore leaves my body sometimes
and resides in my mind.
She works with me now.
The two of us,
we have a strong influence on people and places.
But certain ones seem to be beyond us
and that is a saving grace.
I sometimes fear that I’m missing Jesus.
But he is the lake and I am a minnow.
He tells me he makes himself too subtle to sense
because I had been through so much in his name.
They had made me be him for them
so now he would gently be everything for me.
He so thoroughly imbues me
surrounds me
and supports me that I cannot sense him
unless I should somehow step outside of him
and real life strikes me again.
And so I will be still as I can
and walk,
not knowing where the next step may fall.

Woman

Sometimes
I feel like a woman even now,
now that its all behind me.
but I’m not, I know,
The spirit that made me a woman
is mine now,
she gave herself up freely for me, remember.
I wear the clothes and create the illusion to satisfy the great loss.
A very real person, a part of me,
is gone now.
I miss her terribly.
She saved me from satan and Sandy and myself,
and then she gave up her life.
She gave her Yaqui spirit
to the one Jesus Christ.
For my sake.
She did not completely understand.
She did not need to,
she knew it was right.
She still dwells in my heart
but does not speak
nor will she ever come forward
to take me away again.
I may not ever be whole.

Thank you, woman.
I love you.

As I said, there is a large body of such work on my computer, available at request. I have been experiencing rectal pain from the time I sat down to write.

Just for Today, No Small Gods

2008-04-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

Just for today I will live consciously aware of God in the moment, each moment, by living each moment in the present time and place and situation.

Living in an abusive climate for so long, thirteen years in fact, and seventeen more in my mind has taught me to escape the moment, the present. I no longer need to do so. Led astray by misplaced devotion and a massively overblown sense of responsibility; my momentary madnesses have damaged me. They flung me against the gates of a false heaven, again and again, leaving me in a shattered heap, thinking I had come too close to God. The one, true God, gently, slowly, lifted me, carried me, reassembled me. He let me know, somehow, that He had been with me always, closer than my own skin. He was that quiet place that my mind swirled around, always there but overlooked in my superhuman efforts to save the souls of my Sirens (first wife, my middle age mistress, and nearly every woman I ever “knew”). He asked me to devote myself to Him, I had o’erstepped my bounds. He would deal with them. “What about my second wife, the Innocent?” I asked. She is bulletproof now, as you know, He said, and not quite so innocent as you think. You tried to rescue her, too, and she let you, though she knew very well she needed no rescuing, then she let you down. “I hurt her.” Yes, and you have paid your penance three times over. I forgave you years ago.

God lives in the eternal now, and I will try to do so, so as not to feel separated from him, though "He is not far from any of us." In truth, He dwells within us all and about us all, Father, Son, and Spirit, holy and mysterious Trinity, always and everywhere, infinite and intimate.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”
Show me the Way, Lord Jesus, for you are The Way.
Teach me the Truth, Lord Jesus, for are The Truth.
Grant me your very self, Lord Jesus, for you are The Life.

Christ “is in all and is all.” The center of time and space and life, the Father’s creative Word, made flesh. He lived in a normal human body, “Like us in all things save sin,” yet still God, thereby sanctifying, spiritualizing humanity. This body dwelt on the earth, in creation, was buried in the earth, thereby sanctifying, spiritualizing the earth and all creation. He rose from the dead, His humanity risen and divinified and His divinity humanized. There is none other who has done so, He is the one and only God, second person of the Trinity. The center of creation, He accepts all who accept Him, His Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. All those who know the way, the truth and the life come to the Father. Who on earth can define the limits of Christ, contain the Spirit, know the depths of the Father? All humanity is “made in the image and likeness of God.” Can anyone truly say who Christ accepts and who He rejects? Such distinctions are for earthly institutions to debate, man-made factions with small gods. Christ, risen humanity, human divinity, has been “lifted up” and “will draw all people to” Himself, and through Himself to the Father, to perfect, eternal, love, peace, joy…

Father, Son, Spirit, grant that I may always and everywhere choose You, to follow You, to listen to You, to rely on You, to be in You. Keep me, Lord, from other places, small gods, other things. May I forever live in your will.

Father, please grant me to know your will, I beg of you, let me know your will, for I have no will of my own that I can trust.

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

Boy

2008-04-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

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 verticle,
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 trotts 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 upto 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.

Phil. 4:4-8

2008-04-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! (Yes, rejoice in good times and bad for all things must pass but the Lord remains and He is nearer than your very skin as He dwells within you if you but open your heart. In deepest darkest night, when despair is clutching you, remember this will pass for the Word Made Flesh is incarnate in you and somewhere the sun shines bright and it will soon shine on you. God is with us! God is for us! God loves us!) 5 Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. ("Though He is not far from any of us") 6 Have no anxiety at all ("Be not afraid", "do not worry", the most oft repeated theme of the Bible and one of the cornerstones of Jesus' teachings, God is with us, there is nothing we need fear) but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God (trust completely in Him). 7 Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Peace, divine peace, peace beyond all logic, reason, peace when it cannot be understood how one can be peaceful) 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Think of good friends, kind hearts, noble deeds, autumn sunsets, rainbows, any beloved person place or thing, and think of Jesus Christ. "The word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us" God incarnate is present to us, all things, all people, all creation is infused with the living Son of God and with His Spirit that He has sent to us. Contemplate any good in all creation and you contemplate God. To be alive is good, even in the darkest despair it is an honor to live, to be in the likeness of God. And as sure as the sun has set, it will rise again, so hold on during the dark night, for somewhere hearts are joyous and somewhere, someone is thinking of you.)

John 6 44-59

2008-04-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

JN 44-59

Jesus said to the crowds:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
and I will raise him on the last day.
It is written in the prophets:
“They shall all be taught by God.”
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my Flesh is true food,
and my Blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
These things he said while teaching in the
synagogue in Capernaum.

The Father has given his Son everything.
And He has given his Son to us.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”
Perfect man and perfect God, He brought the kingdom of God to earth, showed and taught man how to live. how to love, showed man the truth about God.
We rejected him because sin had power over us, though we thought we were in power. He came to announce power means nothing, money means nothing, all our knowledge comes to nothing, love means everything and little children are the wisest of us all.
We killed him to hold on to our power, sin killed him, as was God’s plan. Christ received all sin, drew all the power of sin to himself, and died, taking sin with him into death.
God bled, His blood was poured out into the world; forever sanctifying it, His flesh was sealed in the tomb, in the earth, dead. Totally given over to the power of sin and death and men and the world.
But he rose out of the earth by the power of the Godhead. A new Creation, risen Flesh and Blood, risen Word.
“On the night he was betrayed (Catholic liturgy)” and in the synagogue at Capernaum He commanded us to eat his flesh, his body and drink his blood in remembrance, to make ever present the reality of his sacrifice, and we read his Word, we read Him also to make him ever present. To feed us, our hearts, minds souls, spirits and our blessed bodies as well.
He rose to become divinity and risen humanity in one, sanctifying us and all creation, taking away sin, we need only let it go, love Him and we will be like him one day, risen humanity.
He is God personified, incarnated, and man divinified,, risen from the dead and immortal.
He is ALL. All mankind, all creation, all knowledge and all the Father is in Christ. “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
And Christ is the Father’s gift to us, for us, in us,
The perfect gift from the Father, the full revelation and presentation of the Godhead, and the full recreation of humanity, through the risen humanity and personified divinity of Christ, mankind has, by loving Christ, complete and utter communion with God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, though we see as in a glass darkly now, “What we will be is not known, only that we will be like Him.(1John)”
“The bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.” The world. Not just Christians or believers or men; the world, all creation, all life is recreated by the incarnation of Christ. The central point of all time, all space, all creation, is Christ Jesus our Lord, All those made in the image of God are beckoned by the Father to come to Christ.
Yes, that would be you, every last one of you. Let no one exclude you. The Father draws everyone to the Son, in many and various ways, for He is God and nothing is impossible for Him, his ways are not our ways and no one, no denomination, church, religion, culture, nation can contain all the ways of God. No matter what you conceive God to be, He is greater, more loving, more powerful than you believe. It is called infinite.

They thought him mad. They said he had a demon, same thing.
All the war and persecution and hypocricy and games of power and manipulation and murder and greed and every evil thing done in his name, this is madness. The man/God who taught radical love and radical peace and loved children so much, He forgives, but he weeps.

Latchbolt

2008-04-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

Latch Bolt

I’ve never been able,
try as I might,
to give myself completely
to anything
or anyone.
As though I was not all there
to give.
Perhaps I have left part of myself behind
in a box on a shelf
or by the side of a road
or locked in a small room
somewhere
with the latch bolt
on the other side of the door,
too high for me to reach,
even if I
was on the other side.
Too.

I just turned seven and
I’m really scared.
He strode in smiling,
his head jutting forward
and his hand on his belt.
I hear the latch bolt.
I cry before he touches me
and I run.
He’s behind me and I’m really scared.
I can go nowhere
but under the bed.
He drags me out and no one hears me.
I cry.
Hands on the bed.
Is what I’m feeling really real?
Am I just pretending to be so scared?
Does it really hurt so much
or am I just bein’ a wimp?
Why am I praying to die?
Is it really that bad?
This hasn’t happened before, has it?
Am I even still here?
What’s happening down there?
I not still crying, am I?
I’m not alone, there’s somebody here
with me.
Somebody I like.
Somebody wonderful
and familiar.
We look down on me and cry a little
then we float out into the evening sky.
I wake up in a different room.
Someone’s shaking me.
I’m clean, and sore
and I walk home

Once Too

2008-04-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

Once Too
(Butterfly Fields Two)

Once was a Good man
growing up and out of a boy,
but he was different, silly,
dumb, weird.
(or so he was told).
“That’s not good”, he thought
(or heard),
“I must be like everyone else,
‘else they won’t like me”.
So Good left for Like
and Peace went with him
and left unrest and doubt,
and an empty shell of a boy
who once was Good.

And he says: How do I know what they all really want
or like or need anyway?
How do I please them
when I can’t please myself?
I’m empty inside and I can’t get filled up
by all those people out there.
They have little to give
and even their best doesn’t last
and I end up empty again.
Broken promises and butterflies,
regrets and fears and empty spaces
are all I see inside.

I’ve heard that peace of mind is hard to find
and it doesn’t seem to come
from anywhere I’ve ever looked
or from anyone I’ve known.
I’ve heard it comes from deep inside
but when I look there all I find
are broken promises to myself
and a field of butterflies.

Butterfly Fields

2008-01-24T22:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve looked for myself in the eyes of the street,
Seeking to fill the emptiness
I seem to have always known
With a glance, a smile and a nod
From someone I’ve never known.
I look for some reflection
Of the me I hope they see.
I reach out with my eyes
To touch someone,
Ask them to touch me.
And once in a while the mirror
Is bright and shines myself back
To me.

Most often though,
The faces just go
On by.
And I wonder what it is about me
That no one wants to see.
Perhaps I really am different,
Odd as I’ve always thought.
Perhaps it shows in my face,
This worthlessness I feel.
Empty, odd, worthless, lonely.
Nothing I do, no one I use,
Nowhere I go seems to satisfy me.
I look deep inside and all I can find
Is a big black hole,
And fields of butterflies.
Perhaps this fluttering emptiness can’t be filled
by anything out there.

It’s a deep, black hole,
Never quite mending,
Always demanding to be filled.
Never satisfied,
It changes it’s shape
From hunger to sadness to euphoria
To anger to anxiety to arrogance
To madness.
I’ve sought to feed the Hole
With any thing I could.
My friends, my family,
My youth, my future,
My heart.
I sacrificed everything to fill it
And seemed to only feed the emptiness.
And the fields of butterflys.
Now I’m sure this fluttering emptiness can’t be filled
By anything out there.

So tomorrow I’ll walk down the street
and remain inside myself.
Perhaps someone might wonder
what’s up with me for a change.
I’ll not look around
For I know what I need can’t be found
Out there.
For what I thought was a hole
That needed to be filled
Is actually a place,
Where God has lived all along.
All my demons I projected upon him
Odd, worthless, angy, mad demons,
And he has received all this stuff
And somehow turned it to good.
What I took for emptiness
Was stillness and peace,
Things I couldn’t abide.
Now when I look deep inside all I see
Are these beautiful butterflies.

Log, summer 1996

2008-01-24T02:13:00.000-08:00

Log

Lord, give me strength, give me love for myself. Peace of miind and heart. Help me love myself, trust myself, give myself some credit, some slack. “For Goodness sake be gentle with yourself!” I do my best. I am lucky to be alive, to be free, to have a ƒamily. Love, freedom, joy, I have so much more than I see, than I need. And I have you.
May 20, 1996

I’m standing there, thigh-deep in the only slightly frigid water of the Bradley Park swim area, watching my wife swim, when the voice of a small girl says, “Go after your dreams!” as she launches herself past me into the, for her, chest-deep water. She paddles fearlessly, resolutely, in a semicircle and back to where she started. She sees me standing there open-mouthed, staring at her and she adds, “Thats what my mom always says”, her confident, thoughtful grin bubbling up to her eyes and lifting her head a little higher. “I’m the only one in my family who can frog paddle,” she says as she plunges out again and then, under her breathe, “Or dog stroke or whatever...” I took her for a prophet but I couldn’t say just what she meant to me. My dreams are much too far away. Either too long ago or somewhere in a distant, undefined future. Even those I bring near to hand are unformed, fearful of being identified as something real. I wish I knew her mother.
I don’t even have dreams at night much anymore, not that I remember anyway. Do our dreams die a natural death or are they murdered by life? Should we try to resurrect old ones or move on to new ones? What do I do with my new awareness of the “death” of my dreams? Are they truly dead or only sleeping? Some dreams are murdered. Slain by abuse. Tell me Lord what are my dreams? I don’t know anymore. The only one I know for sure I have right now is to write. Does it have to be occupational to be a ”real” dream? I need to write, whether I do it or not, I need it.
May 21, 1996

What now my love? Now that I’m freer? Now that I’m not so compelled to do what’s “right”? Now I do and be and speak and see the truth more readily. About myself, about my family, about my life. It makes things harder sometimes. Things aren’t so black and white. I used to think , no matter what, this is a great life . Anything is better than what I had before, but it’s not necessarily the greatest. It is a “wonderful life”, I won’t be jumping off any bridges soon (there’s an angel to dissuade me), but unlike Jimmy Stewart, I’m not seeing affirmation pouring in at the happy ending right now. Oh they’re there alright but rather difficult to spot. Like a straight board in the wood pile these days. Anyway, things aren’t as great as I thought. My wife was so gracious as to point that out to me last night. “There is a lot of stress in your life right now”, another way of saying “Things are pretty tough”. Oh, well, its better to see it as it is and deal with it than live and die denial. And die you may or wish you could when reality doesn’t match up with the story you’ve sold yourself.
I sold myself a bill of goods starting when I was five years old. I buried the most significant events of my childhood and spent the rest of my life reacting to them. I always wondered why my inner life did not match my outer one. Always out of sinc, always hiding especially when there seemed nothing to hide. Always on the outside looking in at my life unable to reach in and touch it or ,seemingly, to do anything about what was going on. “Hey, look out ... , no don’t do that..., ahh ,not again you dummy”. It all seemed to happen without my consent. Without my knowing just what was going on.
So now I’m learning how to live with a new awareness, a different point of view.
I have come to realize I have choices. I no longer feel I need to be subservient to survive and perhaps I’ll be OK if someone doesn’t like me or if I don’t like them. This new awareness means I don’t have to lie to myself about how I feel. Whatever I feel is OK, what can I do about it after all? It doesn’t mean I act on everything I feel but it does mean its OK to feel ,whatever... I am emotionally free for the first time in my life and I am scared. There are more choices than I knew. One thing about being compulsive, you usually know what you’re going to do. When you’re dominated by an unremembered past you feel strangely justified in what you do, after all, you’re not responsible. You feel you have no choice. With freedom comes responsibility. Scary, but I’ll take it and not because “anything is better... “ rather, because its what I want.
Later, 1996

Dear God, how am I to go on when I’m feel overwhelmed by getting up in the morning, anxious about puting on my clothes, fearful of going to work. How can I be a “man” in this world when I’m afraid to shovel snow. Fear of life, fear of death, loss of hope, strike me sometimes when I ‘m watching a movie, brushing my teeth, getting out of bed. Less often a love of life strikes me unawares, in the middle of cleaning a laundry room, driving home, shoveling snow. So perhaps it evens out a little but why the fear, the anxiety, the fear shaking me down to the bottom of my stomach, an almost constant gnawing at my soul. Help me lord to find hope and peace.
What now my LORD? AM I TOO WEARY OF LIFE TO BE STRONG? Is my heart too worn from a life lived in fear, subconcious or concious? Why can I not have hope?
Deep down, is my faith only a comfort and not my base? Lord, help me to know the person of Jesus. Help me to get beyond my fear and whatever else keeps me from him.
Fear of all. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of commitment, fear of loss. Fear of responsibility, fear of mistrust, fear of closeness, fear of being alone. Fear of giving up, fear of getting stuck, fear of too long a time, fear of too short. Perhaps what I need is Now.
Even later, 1996

So what now? Now that I’ve changed? Reba wants a boom box, Darrell needs a truck, so does Bill. The boys need toys and clothes and so does Lila. What does Cathy need? Her old husband back. Well, she can’t have him. He’s gone. I can only barely remember him and that’s not enough for you or me. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone to bring him back. I wouldn’t do it if it was. Sorry. Get used to it. Give the new me a chance. I think you’ll like him once he grows into himself.
Too late, 1996

Therapeutic late night ramblings 12/20-21 Please ignor

2008-01-21T02:26:00.000-08:00

Therapeutic late night ramblings.....

Dreams lay strewn about my life
like the wreckage of a vandalized home.
I live like the dispirited tenant,
heartbroken and violated,
sad and shattered.
More than a bit confused,
overwhelmed by the task
of putting his home back together again.

“Nobody understands that some people expend a tremendous amount of energy just to be normal.”
--Camus

The necessities he borrowed or bought at the now familiar pawnshop and placed in a small, windowless, colorless room, previously unused, thus left undamaged by the vandal. The bed, the birthplace of dreams, is not his own. His was totally devastated by the interloper, savagely slashed, shredded, its stuffing bled randomly about the entire house, had to be swept up hauled away. Remnants he found in odd places long after the disaster. This one, a loaner, is pressed into a corner, unlike the former, which had stood in the middle of the large bedroom downstairs where it had been always just the right temperature, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, the walls a beautiful, pale blue. Savage, vulgar graffiti now desecrates the sky blue walls, the golden carpet that always felt so good on his feet, now slashed as well and urinated upon. It is much smaller, emptier, than the bed he once had, ill fitted by the much too large, once carefully chosen, now stained, bedclothes of the other.
The small night table had been in his art studio/gallery downtown he had run during his off hours, acting as the only once used cash drawer (a friend had bought his best abstract). Soon after he opened it he had gotten sick, a bad reaction to a new anti-psychotic, so the free advertising he got from the nice little article in the paper had went to waste as the shop was not open for the two weeks following the soon forgotten press. Not being one to collect fond memories, he had no copy of the paper, a teaser picture in the upper left corner of the front page and a half page article in the business section. He closed up shop after the disaster, calling his seven artists to pick up their freely hung work. His were stored but then auctioned off by the storage place when he couldn’t pay his rent.
On it sits an $8.99 clock radio, single alarm, randomly set, the radio never used, it might be too comforting to go to sleep with an old song in his ear, to wake to something less jarring than the staccato beep beep of the buzzer. Next to it sits a $34.99 “home stereo system.” A little green light always on, it collects dust while his collection of vintage rock and pop sits in a black binder somewhere amid the clutter as it had been in his car (which had been in the shop, the bill for which he had to make payments on to get back, which promptly broke down to an unrepairable status, soon after his truck was stolen, leaving him on foot until his church gave him a wrecked but drivable, donated car four months later) that fateful day. He had learned the lyrics of many of those classic tunes and bought a guitar he fancied he could play without lessons, but that dirty look from a coffee house patron, and the uncomfortable silence the night he played and sang sent the guitar to the pawn shop and the tunes from his memory. The vandal had found the empty jewel cases and seemed to delight in smashing them one by one in the middle of the living room, leaving the jackets still readable, in order: James Taylor, Van Morrison, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Neil Young, (a very ironic vandal), Carol King, Bob Dillon, Bad Finger (yes, Straight Up), Simon and Garfunkle, CCR…
Across the room is a old wood file cabinet, donated by a friend, it is largely empty, the delinquent bills sent to an as yet unpaid lawyer for the as yet unfiled bankruptcy, while new bills pile up on the desk on the other wall. He hopes the soon to be filed for income tax return will be enough to pay the lawyer and the credit counseling service who had told him the best thing to do until the bankruptcy was to not make enough money to have his wages garnished. The bankruptcy should improve his credit.
The vandal had stolen his pick up and all his brand new tools, which were in the custom-made (by him) truck bed tool box (Insurance? Self employed carpenters don’t have insurance!). He lost $5000 dollars on the job he had to pay someone else to finish. Gone was the collection of classic country, given him by his mistress, he had in the cab of his truck, along with the thousand dollar stereo system. The vandal had left the little satellite radio receiver unit, with six more months subscription already paid, sitting in the driveway. His livelihood stolen, he went into winter with only his disability income.
In the file cabinet are his two college diplomas, BS Psychology, BS Philosophy. He had made the mistake of graduating after being turned down for the Masters Counseling program (He had made no secret of his madness, thought it an advantage. He had, after all, completed a tough double major. They claimed he needed to improve his communication skills), but the university had kept the diplomas for unpaid pharmacy bills, hence they were not in the house to be trashed. They kept them for three years while he struggled along, too honest in his resume to get a psychology job with just a BS and no experience. He received them only because he had gotten a job as a carpenter with his former university, not long after the disaster, and they had taken the unpaid bills out of his wages. Not one to bolster his self esteem, reward himself or show any semblance of self-love or pride, the diplomas lay stashed away.
The job had been full time but after six months of being terrified to go to work, anxiety ridden all day, depressed all night, under medicated by his reactionary nurse practitioner (She had decided, after being treated for seventeen years for schizoaffective disorder and half a dozen psychotic or manic episodes, he merely had a personality disorder and did not need medication.) yet producing volumes of exemplary work, he took a part time position before he lost his disability permanently and his mind, again, or his wages got garnished, or he lost his disability deferment on his $48,000 worth of student loans. Yes, it appears he could have been gold bricking, if it weren’t for the fact that he was truly about to lose it, again, that he truly was suffering terribly and that he has had a voice in his head telling him to do all sorts of odd, irresponsible things as well as feeding him a near constant stream of surrealistic stories about himself for the past twenty years.

Well, time to go to bed, its 12:01, I’ve got the day off tomorrow, but have plans to get up rather early, read the daily scriptures, pray for protection from evil spirits (that’s another story), visit a friend, entertain my (former, step) grandkids and clean up the mess of broken dreams around this place (there are lots more I haven’t mentioned yet). If you haven’t guessed, the vandal is poetic license, a metaphor for the illness, a device to move things along a little smoother, without the complex, rather surreal, real details.

Matthew

2008-01-19T19:20:00.000-08:00

Matthew

He is perfect.
His hair floats in baby fine soft warm curls above his head.
Love is in every move.
The hollows and the fullness of his body
are in perfect symmetry.
He is a wonder to see.
Even with his dirty face and runny nose
he is still not short of perfect.
His movements, however measured or unsure,
are perfectly honest and always inspired.
His smile already has a dozen different shapes.
From wide, wide open
to the barely parted lips of awestruck wonder.
But most of all it is the spark which moves him,
the soul that shines out through his eyes
and enlivens his limbs,
that is a sight to behold.
A little god unfolding before our very eyes.

Andrew in the Trees

2008-01-19T19:13:00.000-08:00

ANDREW IN THE TREES

Andrew loves trees.
I’ve never known anything as wonderful
as Andrew in the trees.
Perfect tiny hand grasping hairy calloused finger.
Stepping through ankle deep grass
he notices his shoes
won’t let his toes touch the grass.
He pulls me to a stop
and plops on his bottom on the ground
and tries to pull them off.
He grins that grin up at me
and points to the ground for me.
Knowing my place,
I plop down, too
I pull off both shoes and socks,
revealing his marvelous toes.
He lies back quietly and looking up and back,
notices the trees above him.
With a sharp intake of breath, hahh!,
he quickly points over his head
then looks at me in surprise and amazement.
Yeah, Andrew, trees.
He rolls over on his belly
and points again.
He tumbles his way up
and points to his feet giggling
before he runs toward the nearest tree.
He spys a gnarled root and follows it to the tree
looks up the bark to the branches.
At last he sees the leaves hanging over his head.
He points with that quick intake of breath that lifts him to his toes.
Ahahh!
He trots the few steps back to me
with his arms reaching up
and barely audibly says, “Hup”
I lift him to the low-hanging branches
and his tiny little fingers play with the leaves,
awe-struck, Ooooh, aahhhhh.
And an occaisional surprised Ahahh!
until my arms could do it no more.
I put him down and he giggles softly
as his feet touch the grass.
We totter back to his shoes.
Perfect little hand clutching callused hairy finger.
Forever, I could do this forever.

My Lord

2008-01-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

My Lord, my God, my King,
Your will oh Lord, is my command.
“Let it be done to me according to your word”
Let me know your word.
If I could but know with certainty your will,
Nothing could sway me from doing it.
But I see in a glass darkly.
Your will seems a mystery
I must unravel.
Speak plainly to me.
Open my mind and heart to your Spirit.
What is my purpose? How am I to achieve it?
For the journey is as important as the destination.
The way as important as the guiding truth,
The resultant life.
You are the Way, the Truth and the Life,
My Jesus, my love, my God.

Poems to My Mistress, My Sin, My Undoing

2008-01-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

I Can’t Remember

Have I loved you forever or just these past few days?
It seems a bit confusing you see
Because it’s so fresh and so new,
But it I seem to remember you
Back in those tender adolescent times
And not just in these too wise middle aged years.
But then you were always too wise,
You and your startlingly dreamy, too sexy eyes.
You terrified me then, I remember now,
It was all I could to just smile.
You’re a little scary now, still
But that just serves to fascinate me more,
If such is at all possible.

Have we been together or apart all these years in between?
Pardon me if it slips my mind.
We fit together so well it feels like we could have been partners always,
But it comes back to me now,
The years I wasted away from you.
Time that should have been spent with you naked beside me,
And beneath me and above me and dieing for more
Yet having all we could ever want.
Yes, I seem to recall aching for you in pubescent agony
And adolescent angst.
Mesmerizingly close but excruciatingly far,
You teased me unmercifully without even knowing it.
And now I hear that you felt quite the same.
An impenetrable barrier of mere inches
Seems to have grown into thirty-odd years.
I don’t seem to be able to recall
Just how this could possibly have happened.
Such inexhaustible passion
Passing lethally close and then what?
Ahh, it comes back to me now,
We were merely fools,
Playing a mysterious game.
We didn’t know the rules and by the time we learned…
Well it doesn’t matter now,
I remember I loved you,
Then as now
Truly, madly, deeply,
Passionately.

Foolish

Comes the night.
And you slip from the side of my mind
Where you whisper in my ear
All day
To the front,
Where I can hear nothing but you,
See nothing but you,
Think,
Of nothing but you.
And, I will admit,
Worry a bit.
Where are you?
Are you happy?
Are you thinking of me?
Are you too busy
For your lost little boy across the miles?
I have no reason to doubt you,
You are the most dependable of lovers,
But still I have my moments.
You are always there
In some way
Reaching out
Considering me,
Yet I still fear losing you in some way.
Something I said was not quite right,
Something I wrote was all wrong,
I must have sent you away somehow.
I am not the perfect lover.
But then you are there,
And my voice smiles or my fingers dance.
She loves me after all,
How amazing is this woman.
How constant, how true.
And me a half crazed, ex carpenter
She somehow holds dear.
How blessed am I, how lucky.
And how foolish.
You have said you will love me forever,
I believe you, Dear.
I am just a foolish man.
Can you forgive me?

Dreaming

I am not lucky enough to remember my nighttime dreams,
They flee my mind as soon as I wake.
But I am quite expert at daydreams,
and my daydreams are of you.
Yes I dream of you,
of holding your hand
and walking intimately down a western street.
pausing for a tender kiss
whenever love overwhelms us.
I dream of your kisses then,
your lips, your tongue, your whole body
in them.

I dream of holding you in bed,
my arms and legs wrapped 'round you,
cupping your breast in my hand,
my lips on your head and
breathing you in.
I dream of drinking in your green brown eyes,
as much as you'll let me.
And sitting next to you in a restaurant,
sharing food and love and looks and kisses.
I dream of being with you.
I know not what I dream of at night,
but if it is anything like my daydreaming,
then I am a lucky man indeed.

Not A Day Goes By...

Got a picture of you I carry in my heart
Close my eyes to see it when the world gets dark
Got a memory of you I carry in my soul
I wrap it close around me when the nights get cold
If you asked me how I'm doin', I'd say just fine
But the truth is baby, if you could read my mind

Not a day goes by that I don't think of you
After all this time you’re still with me it's true
Somehow you remain locked so deep inside,
Baby, not a day goes by…

I still wait for the phone in the middle of the night
Thinkin' you might call me if your dreams don't turn out right
And it still amazes me that I lie here in the dark
Wishin' you were next to me, with your head against my heart
If you asked me how I'm doing I'd say just fine
But the truth is baby, if you could read my mind

Not a day goes by that I don't think of you
After all this time you’re still with me it's true
Somehow you remain locked so deep inside.
Baby, not a day goes by…

Minutes turn to hours, and the hours to days
Seems it's been forever that I've felt this way
There may have been a million years in between
But Baby you’re still the best I’ve ever seen
If you asked me how I’m doing I’d say just fine
But the truth is baby, if you could read my mind

Not a day goes by that I don't think of you
After all this time you’re still with me it's true
Somehow you remain locked so deep inside,
Baby, not a day goes by…
That I don't think of you.
That I don’t regret all the time we lost.
And I try not to think of what it cost
For us to be so long apart
It must have hardened your heart
‘Cause you’re not with me now
And I always thought we’d be together somehow

Ordinary things

I am finding I long to do ordinary things
with you.
Take a walk in a park.
Hold hands.
Go out to lunch.
Rub your leg.
Sit in someone's living room and talk.
I think we have been extraordinary for too long.
Extraordinary remembrances,
Extraordinary sharing.
Extraordinary passion,
Extraordinary pain.
It all seems too much,
I am worn away, exhausted.
Perhaps we just need to do some things together
that only require love,
and not a lot effort,
or risk.
Easy, comfortable things,
things where we can pretend its always like this.
Perhaps we need to build up
a reservoir of everyday memories,
something to fall back on when we are apart.
Because we are apart too much.

Borderline

2008-01-07T23:35:00.001-08:00

Follow me down to the waterline, come on out to the edge, come on up to the ridge, to the place where two worlds meet. To the place where I’m not bound to one or the other, where at last I feel complete. Follow me now to the place that I go to escape the grasping life. For I am not of this world nor the other, I live in the place where they come together. I cannot stand to be bound by the constraints of any one existence. I cannot trust the limits of any one world, I need the freedom of the borderline. To be identified, to be pegged, is the death of hope to me. The smooth, wet sand at the waterline, the vacant field at the edge of town, the ridge line where mount and sky meet, carry such possibility, such hope, such desire, such freedom. Past and future come together and exist in harmony. History and potential hovering harmlessly in one peaceful space. Not clamoring for attention nor constantly pressing forward, but waiting, patiently, for me. No unrealistic expectations, no never-ending guilt. Just a comfortable place to look forward and back with the breeze blowing in my face.

Whispers (Excerpt)

2008-01-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

I was still five years old when it was the worst
and I lay there in the dark afterward,
still and quiet, wanting to be somewhere else.
And I went to a place I’d never been.
A place clear and cool yet warm and still and in motion too.
And white,
not just white on the surface but white clear through
and it felt good to look at it
and good to be there.
It seemed like a cave,
with high white walls melding into the ceiling of solid white air,
like a mist made of rock, translucent.
I raised my hand to touch it,
knowing it was out of reach,
yet feeling it was near at hand.
I was standing on a rock ledge and I started to cry.
‘cause I was safe, I knew, he couldn’t get me here
but where I was I didn’t know.
I just knew it was a good place,
a safe place to cry.
God was here, everywhere.
This place was made of God,
I could almost see him moving in the mist rock.
I laid down and waited until I stopped crying
and my heart stopped pounding
and I could breathe without sobbing.
Too soon I knew it was time to go.
And then my leg was warm and shaking and a voice called my name
and I smelled the dust of the old church
and felt a hand on my leg and I was back.
I was back and someone told me to go home
and I never saw the old man again.
But his voice would play in the back of my mind for many years to come,
and I would visit the cool, clear, warm white place in my dreams knowing peace was there
and God.

Slip of Vision

2008-01-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

A slip of vision and the world changes.
Heaven and hell on earth can be in the same place.
It’s all about learning to look at things
with the eyes you were born with
not the ones the world gave you.
Or is it me, or you.
I know I don’t see me the way that you do.
If you see me at all when we look at each other.
We see through the veil of our experiences.
Our minds have made up most of what we see
before we ever see it.
Perhaps my slip of vision is a way of getting to the truth.
Beyond self-imposed illusion,
beneath the mask of sanity,
perhaps lies something more real than what we see.
Our minds build up webs of logic
around what our senses give them.
Miracles are made into the stuff of the ordinary.
Abominations are turned into the commonplace.
Are you too beautiful for me to understand?
Is that why you seem so plain
and feel so extraordinary?
Is that why it’s the light in your eyes
that takes my breath away and not your body?

A slip of vision.
I’ve known demons
who looked like the people next door
most of the time.
‘Cause they were.
I saw them with their masks down, too
and they didn’t look the same.
I’ve seen angels that looked like the girl next door,
bouncy blonde hair and movie star smile,
and then with a wink of her eye
she’s gone.
Miracles and abominations
wrapped in the stuff of now

True Light

2008-01-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

True Light

A light once came into the world,
created by the Father through the True Light.
This created light was beautiful and pure
and shone brightly for a time.
This light then met the darkness and the darkness overcame it
and the children of this light were in darkness for a long time.
The True Light then came into the world,
“the True Light which enlightens everyone”.
When the True Light met the darkness,
the darkness did not overcome it.
The True Light chose life
and earned freedom for the children of the light.
And those who came to Him
were able to return to the Father because of Him
“And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.”

I Asked

2008-01-06T22:07:00.000-08:00

I asked
Is there love?
I have dreamed of love
For a very long time.
Reached out for it
And it slipped away.
Yet I went on dreaming.
Have I dreamed of you
Just these past few days
Or was it you I have been dreaming of
All my life?
How is it you have stepped
Into my life
And in a heartbeat filled me up?
How is it I seem to know you
Like no other
Without ever holding your hand?
Like you were a dream.
Did you appear out of nowhere
To capture my heart and soul,
Or have you been with me forever?
Excuse me if I seem confused,
You heart fits so neatly next to mine,
Our thoughts so often one,
It seems I must have known you
All my life.
But then I wouldn’t have been so lonely.
Was it you I looked for when
I was alone in the crowd?
Was it you I waited up for
All those nights I couldn’t sleep?
No matter, you are here now
And I am happy.
Whatever dreams you come from,
You are now very real
And there is love.

Me an' Reb's Jesus

2008-01-06T20:59:00.000-08:00

Me ‘n Reb’s Jesus

They told me Rebel was half thoroughbred
but all I ever saw in him was quarter horse
and he was walking
that quarter horse walk now.
Clomping along, neck out,
head down, just like me,
neck out, head down,
we were quite a pair that day.
We were riding the ditch rider’s road
which didn’t really go nowhere
which was good
because that’s where we were going.
I could here the trickle of the little ditch
we were riding
and if it had been blue
instead of muddy brown things would have been perfect.
Because Rebel and me were blue.
You see Rebel and me had lost our best childhood friend today
and even though we hadn’t seen him
for going on four years we were still as blue as blue could be.
He’d changed a lot. He’d grew his hair and dropped out
and punched them damn needles in his arm until this morning
when they say he screamed Jesus! and his heart gave out
he was so high.
I have a feeling it wasn’t the same Jesus me and Reb talk to.
I heard a familiar sound and Rebel clomped to a stop
and I looked around at a place that should have been familiar.
But it wasn’t at first but then I remembered that hollow sound
I’d just heard and the weeds
that were a lot taller then
or so it seemed and yes,
this was the bridge over the canal on that last day
that we were best friends that last wonderful,
stupid day, four years ago.
Reb was four and I was thirteen
and Daniel said he was fourteen
but everybody knew he was fifteen
on account of getting kicked out of fourth grade
and having to repeat.
He was smallish, compact and solid and lithe
and there was not anything he could not do.
He was to prove that this day.
We were just messing around in the canal with Reb,
riding bareback in the three and a half foot deep water
and diving off his back and riding
up the side and sliding down his back
into the water when Daniel
got this gleam in his eye and looked at the bridge.
“You wait here,” he said
in a voice that was already half way
to completing some glorious stunt.
He took Rebel and disappeared for a minute
and then I heard Reb’s only smooth gait,
a ground-gobbling canter
that I loved in the evening
when the cool breeze caught my face.
As the pair topped the rise,
Daniel was just steadying himself on two feet
standing just ahead of Reb’s hind quarters
as he neared the bridge and with a slightly muffled,
“Geronimo!” he did a perfect cannonball
into the center of the pool on the
down stream side of the bridge.
A few feet to either side and
he’s dead meat on boulders,
too far out and he’s strained through gravel.
He pops up with a whoop and I nonchalantly say,
“Yeah, but can you catch the horse?”
“You know as well as I do, Marco Polo,
that that horse is too dumb to run away,”
and he just looked me in the eye grinning
and God knows I tried to keep a straight face
and I tried to stay cool but, but,...
I broke down. “Damn!” I finally exploded.
“That has got to be the bitchinest thing
I have ever seen in my life! I can’t believe it, it was perfect, and the Geronimo thing...Perfect!” “Ain’t it though! Damn that was good” Just then Rebel came up and nudged my elbow, “and you, you looked like Trigger or Traveler or Silver or something. Its like I hardly know my two best friends all of a sudden.” This was a bit of a faux paux in my social circle as one never actually admitted to having a best friend, it was too intimate a term. We blushed past the moment and then he said, “Your turn.”
I looked him straight in the eye and said “I wouldn’t do that on a tricycle, let alone a horse. You’ve got me on this one.” The rest of the day past mostly in awed reflection on the jump. He seemed to stay there all day, too, never come down.
He finally looked at me and said, “You’re never gonna make that jump, are you?”
“ I didn’t say that, matter of fact I probably will but I’m gonna practice the ride up first and work out the jump timing, you gotta remember, I’m younger, things come a little slower to me.”
“Its not that I’ve got some great power you don’t or that you’re afraid, is it?”
“I’d say mostly no on both though I am a little scared and you are a little awesome, man.”
“It was like, from the second I decided to do it, no from the second I thought of it, I knew it would be perfect, its like sometimes I get this power and its like, I can do anything.”
“I know, I see it in your eyes sometimes, usually its something crazy.”
“No, its something real, its something that I feel with my whole body and soul, like I’m on fire man.”
“Look, Daniel, this jump was really cool, and like, I’m gonna try it myself but its not like its some kind of religious experience, man. Its just an adrenaline rush, you’re a good athlete, high on adrenaline, its not some higher calling to be like Super Stunt man or a crash test dummy or something. Besides, you scare me, a few feet either way and you’d be jellyfish, man.”
“You just don’t understand!”
“ No, I think its you who don’t understand! You’re gonna mess around and get yourself killed and I’m gonna be stuck in this stinking town without you!”
Those were the last words we spoke as friends.
All there was after that were Howdy’s and ’cuse me’s.
I don’t think he ever cut his hair again
or bathed for that matter.
School was only an occasional pastime
and the drugs took over
when the adrenaline couldn’t do it any more.
I thought it my fault for a long time.
All of it, the broken friendship, the drugs, the diein’...
I looked up and saw that Rebel
Had again taken me where I needed to go.
The old woman’s house not far from the canal.
She had watched sixty years worth
of boys grow up from her laced windows,
though not many stopped and talked as I did.
The cookies were out and the ice tea in the glass
as I let myself in the back door.
She’d long since told me just to knock
and wait a few and come as she didn’t get about
like she used to.
Its my fault, you know, all of it.
ever since the jump in the pool.
It seems you are suddenly a very powerful person
especially for one so young.
No child, he made his own choices.
He was headed down that road anyway
It was you kept him off it for a long time
and offered him a better way to go
that he very well could have taken,
had he had the courage.
No it wasn’t your fault,
I knew his father and his father’s father
and wasn’t a fine bone in their bodies
and this one was looking the same until he met you.
Oh he was still wild but he wasn’t bad
and he wasn’t cruel and stayed away from the bottle.
For three full years I saw that boy grow
and I thunk just maybe he’d make it.
But when I saw you alone for so many days
I knew he had found a way
to excuse himself from your influence.
No child, Its not your fault he’s dead
matter of fact, you damn near saved him,
and maybe, just maybe you did.
Maybe it was you and Reb’s Jesus
he was screaming for this morning,
when his heart gave out.

Obssession

2008-01-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

Somehow I gotta make it ok,
some way.
If I can just think it out,
figure a way
I can do it and make it work out.
So I don’t have to lie,
don’t have to steal,
don’t have to hide
myself.
How can I do it without the guilt,
the shame?
Without hurting anybody.
I can plan it, manage it,
make a place in my life for it.
A nice, neat compartment
I can walk right into,
do it,
and walk right out.
But it won’t fit and neither will I.
It gets ugly and spills out
into my world
and gets on my shoe
and in my face
and into my world
and I can’t keep it in any more.
Help.
I’m walkin’, runnin’, drivin’ around,
bursting at the seams.
No satisfaction, no pride, no peace.
I love it, I hate it.
It smiles at me
but inside it hates me, too.
‘Cause it hurts me when I do what it says.
It says this will feel good, you’ll love it.
And it does and I do.
Oh Lord, but then it’s over.
Satisfaction is short
disgust is brief
but guilt and shame last forever.
It follows me out the door
and all over town
whispering in my ear-
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha again.
Lord, why? Why does it feel so good
and treat me so bad.
It feels like it’s always been there.
It seems I dreamed about it when I was little.
Sometimes I kid myself you gave it to me.
A gift, something to get me through.
Why else can’t I help it?
Why else would it come bustin’ out of me
when I don’t give it no attention?
“It’s good to do it, express it.
It’s part of my inmost being”
Yeah, Right.
But damn, why does it feel so good?
For that little while
and why do I want to go back to it
when it only drags me down
and lets loose all my demons?
Every shameful thing
buried in my mind cellar flys out.
I told it not to let that stuff out.
All I want is it.
But noooo.
All this other shit comes flappin’ out, too.
Now, I just got to do it right.
Do it clean, do it gentle,
do it sweet, do it middle class lovely
and heart to heart.
And all the bad stuff will stay away
and I ‘ll have it all to my self.
and nobody will get hurt.
But somehow somebody always does,
or thats what they tell me.
Funny, that the one thing
that seems to make the hurt go away for a while
is the one thing that everybody says I shouldn’t do.
Frankly, I’m not entirely convinced it hurts me,
but I’m now fully aware it hurts those who love me,
and bothers the hell out of everyone else.
Directly or indirectly, eventually someone gets hurt.
That makes it my responsibility to do damage control,
which means I just don’t do it.
Because my God says quite simply,
do not do things that hurt other people.
There is no way out of this one.
You do it, someone gets hurt,
so you don’t do it.
Even if you think its your destiny,
or a blessing in disguise
even if its the only thing you seem to live for sometimes,
the only thing that makes that ache in your heart go away,
you don’t do it
because it hurts other people.
and if you are really gonna be honest,
you know it hurts you, too
and the reason you say it doesn’t is
you just don’t give a damn if it hurts you,
but let me clue you, you are someone, too.
There are at least two someones getting hurt,
You, and the someone who cares about you.
And don’t give me that, “Nobody loves me” bullshit.
Nobody is so special that they have no one that cares,
everyone gets hung with somebody who cares, its a fact of life.
Now, this caring may or may not be real apparent or useful but
I guarantee there will be someone hurting if you fall.
And fall you will, unless you accept love, accept help,
forget about luck and fate and count on love and God.
Somebody is gonna love you whether you accept it or not,
might as well enjoy it.
And you know I don’t mean sex.
Two human beings caring for each other,
whatever gender they may be.
So close the closet door on your obsession,
lock it in and don’t look back.
Look for help instead,
station someone at the closet door to turn you away
when you come looking for sorrow to ease your pain.
Keep company with hardy folk,
or at least those who know you well enough,
to turn you round when needed.
Perhaps keep in mind how often you’ve failed.
so you won’t get yourself in too deep.
Safety is not always found in numbers,
our peers are sometimes incredibly dangerous,
and one is not always a lonely number.
Always have one phone number you can call
to get help when you’re in a jam.
And remember, if it hurts someone,
don’t do it.

Air

2008-01-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

The following is a poem I wrote to my ex wife, about six years before she was my ex, when things first started going bad, when my condition first started effecting our marriage. I took her to a nice little spot we both liked and gave it to her to read. She was untouched, just said, “Yeah, you haven’t talked much lately.” She is very concrete, was looking for more than just words on a page, she wanted to see actions, results. I was crushed, and discouraged, seeing that we were so far apart, that this labor of love of mine was the best I could do, and it wasn’t enough. I was already doing the best I could. I would say the most important thing in a marriage is to truly listen, be present with your whole self, and respond. In a word, Therese, compassion.

AIR

Tender lays me down on the mountainside.
Takes me kindly and well in the trees.
Loves me lightly and holds me quietly by the waters edge.

Let me dream of you and me far from here
in a world of water and wood and sky.
I’ll light a quick and noisy little fire
In the crisp and brittle morning air
so clean it rings with clarity
like a newly struck bell.
Gentle, fresh and strikingly new each morning.
This mountain morning air,
the breathe of God,
so clear its almost not there
yet is everywhere, present at all times
in clean and startlingly gentle power.
It is defined as much by what it is not
as by what it is.
Not heavy, not close, not stifling damp.
Not pressing with intent
nor crowded with memories.
So clear it is not there.
It doesn’t fill you too full,
too soon when you breathe,
nor does it leave you empty.
This mountain morning air,
sometimes so cold and crisp
it hurts going in,
then makes a strange warmth in your chest
as you draw on its healing power,
then let go in that moist, lingering cloud.
It invites you to draw deeply and often
and leaves you feeling new.

I have loved you long but not too well.
and you have been there patient, tolerant, true.
Let me begin fresh.
Let me draw deep and long
of His breath and hold Him within me
and let go of all the rest in a cloud.
And I shall be clean and clear,
not full, not pressing,
not chased or bent by memory.
Present at all times
yet so light and true and aware
that I shall hardly seem to be there at all
when presence is not what we need.
Let me be rid of the pain,
and the weight,
and the voices.
May I find focus
and discipline
and peace.

And maybe we’ll talk.
and maybe it will matter
that I worked so hard
and things will be better.
I’m just so wore out all the time.
There’s so much going on in my head,
a plump, pubescent boy
who wants more than anything to be a girl
and a skinny, angry teenager
who wants more than anything
to strike out and self destruct
and it seems almost impossible
to talk to you about it.
I’m always afraid of the way
you’ll respond to what I say.
I don’t know if you believe me sometimes
I feel angry a lot these days.
Not buried deep like it used to be
but right near the surface.
I know i’ve been a jerk sometimes.
It takes energy for me to be a good husband,
a good person, and I don’t have much energy right now.

I can’t tell you
just what’s wrong,
I can’t seem to see it or feel it
Perhaps it is like the air,
in me around me,
part of me.
Maybe I carry it with me all the time
and can go nowhere without it.
I seem to have gone nowhere with it, so far.

And I will lightly lay you down
in earshot of the creek,
in newly sprouted eel grass,
in the sand beyond the brush.
On a blanket smelling strongly of grandchildren.
I will kiss your lips so tenderly
you might reach out with yours.
And will touch you once again
with fluid passion fearlessly.
And I will be there gently
clean, clear, true and cool.
And you will be there deeply true,
gentle as always,
clean, clear, true, and warm.
and I will be there...
and I will be there...
and I will be there.

As you might suspect I am an insecure, self centered person desparate for praise and validation. A frustrated, undisciplined writer, unable to focus enough to put it all to gether. I am often ruled by my dysfunction and beat myself up often. by turns arrogant and self abusive. But I am at times peaceful these days because I have found that God truly does love me and if I really work at being mindful of him, I function and feel so much better. It is not in asking him to be with me, for he always is (yet I still beg him to be) it is in my removing the barriers I place between He and I. Arrogance and self centeredness destroyed my marriage more than my wife's not understanding or apreciating me. I would say to all looking for a way to make a better marriage, lay out your heart to your mate, risk being rejected, you will probably be wonderfully surprised at what happens, Be subordinate to one another, which is what Paul really says (Ephesians), serve one another, which is what Jesus says. Out do one another in showing honor (Paul, Romans), and "over all these, put on love, the bond of perfection."
(Col 3:14, truly Pauline), and 1 Coronthians 13 is still a beautiful hymn to love,no matter its psychological origins, and to say "do as I say, not as I do", is an archaic understanding of the church, pre Vatican II, not at all in keeping with the church I have come to know and love in the past 20 years. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests...It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. How can this be wrong? Love is of God. the love Paul trys to desribe, be it based on his faults or not, it is love. Is it not what we all seek? Sadly, unconditional love is only possible for God, for the trinity, we seem always to screw it up, sooner or later, but the kind of love Paul describes understands this, and still loves. Be nice to one another, Isn't that the first thing we are taught when we step out into the world, play nice?

A Single Night

2007-11-30T23:44:00.000-08:00

@ Fall, '96

I lay there awake, about 2:30 AM. When I went to bed It was beginning to come together, the years of voices saying unspeakably awful things in my mind, the images of molesting hands that plagued me, made me hate myself, made me crazy more than once, the years of looking inside and seeing myself as filthy and disgusting. These all began to make sense to me. Fear and despair and hatred had always overcome me whenever I faced these “thoughts”, but this time was different... this time I wasn’t afraid. This time I knew it was happening out of love. And this time these “thoughts” took shape as memories., I had been molested. It wasn’t me saying all those incredibly awful things, someone had said those things to me. It wasn’t that I was shit inside, someone had made me feel that way.
I lay there next to Beth, knowing I couldn’t tell her just yet. I had to let it congeal a bit more in my mind, let it become more real. Once, two years before, I had suggested to her that maybe I had been molested as a child, the idea had come up in a 12 step session that day. She said It was possible (she always says that when she thinks something is really off-the-wall) but unlikely since nothing had come out before now. I rarely thought of it again. Until now.
I don’t know how I fell asleep again. I’d been having trouble sleeping as I was in a manic phase; however difficult that was to admit. It was similar to others I’d had over the last seven years: spiritual euphoria, a feeling of prescience, difficulty in completing tasks, irritability among other things. This time was different somehow. For one thing I was in perhaps the best “place” of my adult life: more secure, more loved, more productive. And throughout this ”phase”, even before I recognized it as such, I had told myself I would do nothing out of fear but everything out of love. This did not mean I didn’t screw up,it just meant no one got hurt. I was able to work, quite effectively I thought; though, truly others noticed something wrong before I did.
I’d been increasingly unable to focus on specific repair projects. I worked for a rental maintenance contractor. What drew me was organizing and assigning people, putting the right person on the right job at the right time. We were growing at the time, or so I thought, and I threw myself into it, knowing they only wanted to pay me for the repair and all I cared about was the people. My current hotline to divine guidance stood me in good stead for this task and I used my prescient capabilities to the fullest. It wasn’t my fault management wouldn’t cooperate, they just didn’t realize I had my fingers on all the buttons, everything was going great. I could handle all of it and everybody, the guys all loved me and thats what counted. Those little things that kept falling through the cracks didn’t matter, trust me, I’ve got it all handled. By the time I realized I was in overdrive I’d probably laid the groundwork for getting eased out of my job later on.
All my guys were happy, though. Working conditions were the best they’d ever been and people were as productive as they could be considering they’re talent and temperment. When I started they couldn’t keep people, now they couldn’t get rid of them. Guys told me I was the best boss they’d ever had. But those cracks that things kept falling through seemed to be getting bigger. My short term memory got ridiculously short and then shorter and my already brief attention span became
fleeting.
It was the middle of a week in June when I admitted I was in trouble. When I told Beth I was manic she said, “Oh, really”, or words to that effect. she’d spotted some symptoms even though I’d tried to hide them from her even more than from myself. I slowed down at work and coasted into the weekend feeling shaky, conscious now of what was going on. In the past these episodes had been all about fear and ego. This time I had been concentrating on the will of God, trying to keep my manic ego out of it, and on love, love of others and myself. It seemed to make all the difference.
I’d been hospitalized three times in the past eight years for “psychotic episodes” related to these disturbing “thoughts”. The one thing that was common to all three was fear. Overwhelming bouts of fear of a malevolent natural and supernatural world caving in on me. A world I should be able to control, hold together, create, but since I was shit I couldn’t and it all came crashing down. My fault. The world came apart, people got hurt and it was all my fault.
But this time the fear wasn’t there. Somehow I had found the key and I wasn’t afraid. In the absence of the fear I was able to really look at my “thoughts”. Seeing them without fear for the first time brought me to a certainty often shaken and questioned but never broken: I was abused as a child.
The next day we went up to a lake cabin I had been working on and it was there that I told her what I now knew to be true. She looked at me as though the final piece in a puzzle had fell into place. She hugged me and cried and later told me that in a workshop she had attended recently (she is a counselor) the subject of child abuse came up often. Suddenly a thought, like a message flashed across her mind: “Mark was abused as a child”. Why this hadn’t happened before, all I can say is we weren’t ready. The workshop was taught by counseling psychologist who was eventualy to become my therapist.
The rest of the weekend went like a second honeymoon for us. Our relationship had been very strained recently. I’d been unable to open up or reach out. I’d been irritable and distant. For some unknown reason I had taken to keeping a knife with me often. Looking back, probably as protection from the abuser who was almost literally coming back to get me. Another manifestation of my abuse that had been expressing it self recently was the desire to crossdress. I’d struggled guiltily alone with this since early childhood, since my first abuse, and it was coming back strongly now. All this seemed to melt away for a time. We were at peace and close to each other for the first time in months and with the new revelation there was a part of me I was able to share for the first time.
I of course got absolutely no work done. Try as I might, I couldn’t pick up a saw, I was so totally drained. I would wander out to my sawhorses, look at things, fiddle around with my tape measure, laugh and shuffle back into the cabin. The owners, our doctor and his wife who were also “friends” from church, were on a tight schedule and were counting on me to get certain things done. I didn’t. We figured they’d understand since we had been declared “family” by the wife, he was my doctor, she was a counselor who had been abused as a child herself, we shared our faith , and had known them for so many years. They didn’t understand. They were livid. Or rather she was livid and Dr. Wimp just smiled weakly and went along with her. This was a great contribution to my recovery, I must say, and a great burden on my wife as she had to work in the same suite of offices with this woman and actually had try to explain the whole thing rationally to this irrational person.
The cabin eventually came off on schedule. I was able to offer just enough help and a lot of advice to get it done in time for their high profile guests, who are such nice people I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded a little unfinished work anyway. We were never invited back. I spent nearly every spare moment for a year on that place. Heart and soul, man. If I’d had insulin shock and the flu or a broken arm and a strained knee it would have been OK. But I had the temerity to have a mental illness and an emotional crisis so I was deemed irresponsible. And by “professionals”, “friends”, “spiritual family”. I have some anger invested in this still, I think.
As I said earlier, I was eased out of my job . After the weekend at the cabin I took some time off and some limited duty days when I stayed in the office or talked to people by phone from home. I was still manic so I was doing great things... or not. The rental management people we contracted with didn’t understand what was going on and I wasn’t about to tell them. They weren’t the type of people you trust with intimate secrets. I had told Brad, my boss and a couple of the guys I worked with directly and that was enough. Management lost confidence in me, decided I didn’t like my job and, worst of all, decided I was too expensive. They started giving Brad hell whenever he used me. At one point he said, “It looks like it’s either you or me Mark”. It was me. It took a while, we made it through the busy summer and the August-September rush on the edge of our teeth but then things started to wind down. Brad would give me special assignments here and there and ask me if I had a lot of projects of my own. I did not. I decided to go after it in ernest, though; and for a little while it looked like it might work but the jobs didn’t come fast enough or big enough. Soon I was looking for a job, again.

Meditation: Ephesians 3:14-21

2007-11-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

The following passage from the Bible has helped me immensely; I read it daily for months, intensely, letting the words burn into my mind and heart until I knew it by heart. I now pray it often meditating on it.

Ephesians 3:14-21

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.

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father…”
Because he is Creator Father, infinite, magnificent and powerful beyond all imagination. Holding the universe, all universes, in existence by his mere thought. Yet he is Abba, Father, our intimate, loving, Daddy, Papa loving with the tender love of Dada for his little child, knowing ever fiber, every hair of our head, every tear, every laugh. And by whose loving plan, set out before the foundation of the world, sent his only Son to teach, to serve, to love, to heal us all, and to take away our sin and guilt.

“…from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,…”
He created and named and knows every family, every person. We are all his children, not only by creation, but by adoption through his Son, Jesus Christ, the first born from the dead. If we die to sin and death through baptism, even baptism of desire, we rise again as brothers and sisters of Christ, children of God and in the body of Christ.

“…that according to the riches of His glory he may grant you to strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man,…”
Rich in glory, and love is his greatest glory, love of his creation, mankind and because he is glorious he wants us to be rich in glory, too. He strengthens us. he sends his Spirit to any who ask, seek, knock, and gives them gifts to make them strong, to show his glory and his glorious love.

“…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;…”
And God’s greatest gift, from his own heart, his Son, the image and revelation of God. Faith in his Son is a gift he gives us by his great love, and if we accept it, Jesus Christ will come and live in us, love in us, with and through his Holy Spirit.

“…that you, being rooted and grounded in love,…”
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” God is love, the ground of the universe, of being, let us ground ourselves in his love and love for others.

“…may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth…”
If we ground ourselves in this love, our Father and his Son send the Spirit to empower us, to teach us. In his great love, he wants to reveal himself to us, he wants us to know him intimately as we are known.

“…and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge…”
Yet knowing the love of Christ, in our hearts, our minds, our souls, is beyond anything else we can know or imagine, he is in all and is all. All I need to know is that Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, gave up everything for me, and lives to love me, care for me, help me, I need only love him in return, try to put him first in my life.

“…that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Jesus is the fullness of God. Let him dwell in you. I may feel I can’t go on but Jesus in me can. ‘I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me.’ (Gal 2:20a)

“Now to him, who by the power at work within us, is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think,…”
The gentle, loving power of God is working in all. Ask, seek, knock, he knows what you need, but he wants you to turn to him and ask, and receive with loving thanks.

“…to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever, amen.”
Every good comes from God, thank him, praise him, not because he needs it but because it is we who need to give thanks and praise, it lifts us up and heals us and it is the natural response to his love. If not for us then for our children and our children’s children…

So Bad, Narrative @2001

2007-11-06T22:52:00.000-08:00

It was the worst the first time. In the desert of southern California where I went mad for the first time. I wasn't necessarily more crazy at first it was just that Helen seemed to, orchestrate it to be so badly handled that I escalated exponentially to be totally psychotic. So that you might understand I will have to go back. From '87 when I was incarcerated for the first time to February of, I think, '85 when the whole California adventure began. I was happily working as a carpenter in Sun Valley, Idaho and mostly ignoring my terribly abusive wife, Helen.
We had had a so called marriage for six years of hellish fighting and frequent separations and reconciliations when she ran out of energy and money or just got kicked out by her boyfriend. I would take her in since I knew she was quite serious when she said she was going to kill herself. My God always told me that’s something that one simply cannot do so I would take her in. It was my job to keep her alive and one would think there might be some gratitude but then you don't know Helen. Immediately she starts in with her noisy, explicit, insistent demands of fidelity down to the merest glance and honesty to last dangling participle. Standards which she herself was of course free of. I didn't care much, I was in a good place and I just fought with her two or three times a day and left. Everything was in walking or biking distance, she could have the car and I stashed my tools on the job sites.
February came and impending layoff and the unemployment wouldn't cut it for Helen's porous fingers so I signed up for a hitch in Palm Desert, California with a local developer who had some land down there he was going to slap some apartments onto and make us all some quick cash. Something pulled me strongly to the job but there was also something else. I was scared to death for the first time in my life. I'd always been a praying kind of person, in a casual, relaxed, kind of way, but now my prayers became fervent and constant; anxiety ridden and deep into the night. Yes, I would go, but nothing would ever be the same and I would be tested. Man, I didn't know the half of it.
I'd been drawing a lot lately, really taking it seriously and having good results, all in pencil. Drawings took me months of careful, agonizingly detailed work. One day a week before I left I picked up a magazine with a bighorn sheep on the cover and the picked up a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen and in two days I had an excellent, detailed drawing of that bighorn completely filling an eight and a half by eleven sheet of drawing paper. I would find out two weeks later at a Palm Desert museum that it was a desert bighorn I had drawn and that the desert bighorn is the symbol of the Palm Desert area, used on all their logos, something I truly had no way of knowing.
And so I went in a carpenter caravan and landed in Palm desert at two AM on a desert winter morning, arriving along with the first valley floor snow in twenty years. Helen stayed back and from her communication her already strange spirituality became stranger by the day, lights flashing, strange dreams and supposed communications from the dead. Work went well but she showed up in a supposedly rented car (I found out later she traded considerable sexual favors for its free use).
Perhaps here a few more words about Helen would help. Most importantly she was not to be trusted, she was cute and sweet and charming and could not tell the truth to save her soul. I especially could not trust her, about anything in any way. The depth and breadth and height of this fault of hers cannot be understated. Not in any of the ways that human beings trust each other could I trust her. She would lie about what she ate for breakfast, if I turned my back she would make a face, she would steal my money and spend it on another man.. Why did I stay? She would have died by her own hand, I could protect myself from her quite well, but at the time her passions ran so deep, she couldn't protect herself from herself. Six years later when her passions had run down a bit and her suicide threats became mere power ploys, I divorced her, having done my job. One of the hallmarks of her life was obtaining money from people by various lies about her needs and health and such. Another was dealing drugs. Both would catch up to her when I was no longer around to keep her in check. Yet another was her penchant for odd spiritualities, this is what came strongly into play now.
She became deeply involved in the then current southern Cal vogue of "New Age" spirituality. In speaking with a group counselor later about all this his eyes would light up and he would say, “I see you are firmly grounded in the New Age." I said, "No, there is no such thing as firm ground in the New Age. I just know what its about." Its not new, it is very very old. It has poked up its head over the years usually as different forms of Gnosticism or solipsism. We make ourselves God and then anything we decide is spirit and truth is spirit and truth and of course the result is chaos and the very real powers that are at work in the world, evil powers, are made stronger and step into the gap left by the exclusion of the real God because that is their greatest and truly only tool, chaos.
So, Helen shows up supposedly needing money for the car and starts channeling spirits while I keep channeling her money. She gets me fired off my buddy’s tract, how, I don't really remember but she was good at getting me fired, did it several times. So I get a job on a golf course housing tract where the front door has a million dollar fountain and a bronze gate and tire spikes so you can't back up. You better know where you're going to get in that way. Me, I went in the back, a straight and narrow dirt road with a security card machine and a speaker that asked your name and job number just to double check. She keeps me up all hours of night battling her spirits while I'm working in multi million dollar tracts on million dollar homes on postage stamp lots in 117 degree heat thirty days a month. To say I was under stress is to understate a bit. When I dragged home she’d be sitting there smoking and say some thing snide like, "Have fun?" This meant, "Have fun looking at all the f______ girls all day?" Yeah, like they were letting all kinds of hot women in the back gate, maybe they were crawling over the broken glass embedded in the top of the twelve foot high brick wall in their bikinis? And that particular battle would play. This was nothing though. In the next act the phone would ring twice and she would answer it and the room would go quiet and chill and she would turn slowly to me and electricity would cross the room and she would have a different complexion and eyes and expression. And in a husky voice she would say something like, "Don't look for her here, she's gone, maybe for good this time," and a powerful, cruel but also sad smile would come. This personality would play cruel mind games with me until I decided I had to do something. The first time I finally just bundled her into the car (So strong a personality, she was strangely physically weak), and went for a drive. Our apartment was on the highway that led up into the San Jacinto Mountains so after just driving around town I headed up the mountain and the closer I got to the second lookout the more she became nervous though nervousness seemed foreign to her personality. As we got closer she suddenly convulsed and cracked her head sharply against the window and Helen was back, asking what we were doing and bitching about putting miles on the car.
This sort of thing continued for I'm not sure how long with various permutations, always hostile to me, sometimes claiming to be male, sometimes literally frothing at the mouth with hatred and loathing, her blazing eyes begging to do something to her I would regret. Sometimes claiming if I only joined them I could travel the country helping people "Highway to Heaven" style. I was pretty sure it was a highway somewhere else. One even claimed to be an angel sent to help me but the ridiculous things she had me do proved she could not be so even if I were inclined to stretch my imagination that far. I say all this from a rather distant perspective, a “spectators view” which I have had since childhood as a result of sexual abuse, but there was also another part of me that was, while not being entirely taken in, was wanting to believe in the good and was being totally shattered and torn by the evil. I'm sorry I can't write it from that perspective, it would not be coherent, but I will eventually try to give you some sense of it. I basically decided an evil spirit was out to get me and was using Helen to do it. Which really wasn't far from wrong, I just didn't realize she was cooperating, that she had to cooperate, or "It" as we called it, could do nothing. Yes, I believe in evil spirits, I'm Catholic, we're supposed to, but that is another story, or another part of this story I may not take the space to tell.
Through all this my work somehow did not suffer. I was now running a roof framing crew, figuring hips and valleys and rafters and trusses and sheeting and tails and supervising half a dozen guys. My perception of reality began to recede from me though. I became more and more of a spectator in my own life, watching, floating through my days and sleepless nights in a spiritual place that was far from my physical world. It may sound kind of nice but it eventually became terrifying, I didn't understand it, everything had spiritual ramifications and consequences, the smallest and meanest things to the most important. Some of Helen's New Age thinking began to confuse me. It felt like I was making my own universe, maybe I was. That was terrifying. I was steadily becoming more and more depressed. Each time I closed my eyes, when I opened them, the world seemed changed, dirtier, meaner, farther from the good. Was I the “Lathe of Heaven”? Did I change the world for the worse as I slept. I looked at Helen. As I became sicker, she seemed cleaner, healthier, purer. The demon had done much of his work so he receded a bit, though the inhabitations still occurred. I seemed to be a dwarf star and she my twin, circling a black hole, inexorably being sucked in. No matter where I went, what I did I could not escape my fate.
The phase of the tract we were working on came to an end and they cut back the crew, certain I was one to be cut I never returned, such was my self esteem. I later learned I'd been chosen to run the roof crew again. I have done such things to myself often. Certain I was out of work, my depression escalated a notch and though I soon found work it didn't last, the job was shut down by financial problems. Out of work again I wandered, I orbited nearer the black hole, drawing Helen with me. Suicide seemed to become an option, I spent days searching in the Santa Anna winds that were really the pull of the black hole for a way to kill my- self but I could find no lethal objects without breaking some law or other or leaving a mess for someone else to clean up. Strangely it never occurred to me to use the tools in my bag, there were many that would have sufficed, but I was out of work and didn't deserve to open it. I realized if I killed myself Helen would probably kill herself. And, paradoxically, I didn't think she would ever allow me to kill myself, perhaps projecting my own values onto her, so the thought occurred to me I would have to kill her first in order to kill myself and I was over come with self-loathing at the thought. How could I even think such a thing? She was so beautiful, so pure, so wonderful, how could I think of harming her? I had chosen this time to forget all the horrific abuse she had put me through. I came home from wandering all day to find her saying she had been worried, take a shower, put on your new clothes, you'll feel better she said.
Most people, one would think, when faced with a spouse in an emotional and spiritual crisis might call a friend to help, or a family member, or a clergyman, or a mental health counselor. Helen called the cops, sure to make my anxiety go up, but then she wasn't trying to help me feel better. In fact, as I was soon to find out, she was sowing seeds sure to make matters worse. As I came out of our bedroom, there they were, in full regalia, night sticks and guns prominent. In my state I was certain they all read my mind, I was afraid I was going to hurt Helen and they were here to protect her. These guys are trained to help you Mark, you can trust them, she says. Soon I was alone in our bedroom with one of them and admitting my awful thoughts. Why not, they already knew, thats why they were here. Red flags were going up for him though he didn't want them to. We had had very positive dealings with these two before, we had started a neighborhood watch program and gotten a child out of a very abusive home and they liked us. (I was to find out later that Helen's involvement in the neighborhood watch was an excellent cover for her drug dealing.) These guys were in a quandary as to what to do until Helen brings up her big lie of the evening, that I was abused by my father and both cops take up the thread like they’d discussed it before and I blew up. My Dad was one of the few men in my life that was not abusive to me as a child and in my heightened emotional state I just couldn't take another lie, and to the cops at that. My paranoia went wild, they could get to him somehow through this, harm him somehow, I couldn't let that happen. I struggled, they cuffed me and I was in the back seat and under involuntary commitment headed for the nearest hospital which just happened to be The Hospital of the Rich and Famous. If you are thinking this is quite possibly the worst way to handle a near psychotic person, you're right, but it gets worse.
So we take the short ride to The Hospital of the Rich and Famous while paranoia and anxiety and all your basic psychoses are swirling in my brain but I'm still remarkably somewhat in control. They then stick me in a stark white safe room with padded walls and a wire mesh window in the door that an ambulance driver keeps playing peek-a-boo-haha-with-the- crazy-guy through the whole time they are debating what to do with me. Of course they don't want me but I'm a danger to myself and others so they have to but I'm too paranoid to sign any admitting papers and Helen is of course nowhere in sight to help out. Probably toasting her great triumph at some bar. So I'm escalating the whole time and after hours of pacing and games with the hilarious ambulance driver I'm strapped into one of the shirts with long arms and onto a cart and into the ambulance for the one hundred and twenty mile ride to County General. Comforting thought, isn't it. The one saving grace was the person who rode with me was a strong, silent man with an easy, gentle manner. I assume Mr. Peek-a-boo was driving. Of course the ambulance was riding the solar wind to the center of the black hole, to the end of the line, to hell, to a place not unlike Dante's Inferno which I had been catching glimpses of in my wanderings. I had found a curious strength in myself, though, I had found that if I only concentrated well enough, perfectly enough, I could break my bonds with my mind and go free, but it had to be the right time. It seemed to come when the ambulance slowed gently to a stop and remained so. Is this it? I asked. I don't know he slowly said. The end of the line? No. My last chance then? A stoplight I think. Maybe now, break my bonds and go out across the desert and hide in the many unfinished homes and find my way north, back to Sun Valley. We began moving again. Oh no. Was that my last chance? I don't now. Silence for miles as my mind floated and flamed into passionate breaking of all bonds of the oppressed and waned into peacefully wandering away into the night to the certainty that I was going to the end of the line, never to emerge again. Lights, many powerful lights and a strong audible click and stop. End of the line, the black hole, the wind had stopped. Hell. And I somehow deserved it.
I was wheeled into a hallway, a cold, dirty white hall, inhabited by the sort of Dantean characters I had been envisioning. Several accident victims in various stages of being repaired, all bleary eyed and bloody. One, in a wheel chair and cast noted my straight jacket and comments, "They must not trust you." Why not? I thought, I have hurt no one. Stumbling 'round the halls seemed to be mental patients as well, shivering and wailing and trembling. Calling out for help. This truly was hell, but as I looked in the eyes of these people I realized there was some mistake, these people were not evil, they were innocents, they were not meant to be here. I must free them, yes I must free them. I was left alone in the hallway, now was the time I would break my bonds and theirs and we could all be free. We can be free if we only will it so. I began to cry out so, be free, you can all be free. I struggled mightily with my bonds and screamed freedom to all. Huge orderlies came and dragged me towards the elevator to the secure rooftop area but had to choke me out to subdue me I was so certain of my mission. I awoke in the elevator in full restraints, arms and legs. One of the huge attendants apologized, saying he hated to choke someone out like that. I thought if only I had had more time, more focus, we would all be free.
In full restraints I was placed on a bed in a small secure room with bars on the windows. I had to call the attendant to pee into a bed pan and slurp soup while still fully restrained. I have no idea how long I was like this, I remember but one night but it may have been many. I awoke from that one night to see Helen and her mother standing over me. I was to be freed to a regular room. Helen claimed if it wasn’t for her they would have never let me out of there. Right, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been in there,but I was still oddly under her spell and couldn’t see that. I remember hearing someone say the ones who come in the worst like that rehab the quickest. But now she was involved again, the one who put me here is here again, but as I said I had not yet put that together, I was glad to see her. The rest of the stay is a bit of a blur. Within a few weeks I was released to a halfway house where I met Gloria whose testimony appears elsewhere in this volume. Within a week I was pulled out by Helen and her mother. "He just needs to get out of that loony bin and get back to work!" Right, in the care of the very person most responsible for my being there. And yes, I went right back to work, unmedicated as I could not afford the thorazine they gave me and it did me no good anyway. A relapse was all but assured. While I was incarcerated Helen had gone back to Sun Valley and gotten out of a lot of bills and other troubles by telling people I had died in a an uninsured construction accident. Several years later there were quite a few people very surprised to find me alive.
The relapse came within six months. There was the same kind of spiritual game playing on her part and lots of job politics going on in my work I didn't need, either. Helen decided to move to Idaho for what reason, I'm not sure other than she had been raised in a town near the one she picked, we'll call it Pike. Somehow she construed it to be my idea. Each time I closed my eyes my depression deepened, my world clicked down a notch, once again meaner, dirtier, nastier with each night or even nap. I could feel the click down of my world, like the click of the ambulance locking into the bay at County General. The black hole started swirling again, the only way out, to kill Helen and then myself. Let me assure you I had never harmed her, though she had grievously harmed me often, the very thought of harming her sent me into paroxysms of guilt. The deeply spiritual cast to everything deepened even more, with spiritual evil ascending and I descending.
With great anxiety and trepidation on my part we set out on our move. Such a stressful thing as moving is another thing one does not want to do with a near psychotic person, but she was not inclined to care for me. We stopped for lunch in a little Utah town in the midst of a minor snow storm, it may have been June, I don't know. I noticed a small hospital, a place of safety for a person in extremis like me. She drove out onto the freeway for several miles. My brain was whirling I can't go on, there is a blizzard up ahead there is death in this pickup and I cannot stand it any more. She would say I tried to strangle her but all I did was turn my hands toward her then open the door at sixty miles an hour and put my foot in the snow and yell at her to stop. I tumbled out at about forty five and brushed myself off and stumbled slowly, zombie-like across the freeway. We'd been going uphill and I remember no traffic in those lanes but as I crossed the median I saw an old white semi coming down the hill. The driver was visible and his "Oh shit" was almost audible as he locked up and almost jackknifed on the snowy road. I continued my zombie-walk unperturbed into the next lane as a brand new shiny black semi crested the hill doing about ninety. There was no "Oh shit" here, no response at all from the driver dressed in black with black mirrored shades. He knew there was no way he could do anything at all to avoid me. He knew it was all up to me. If I had slowed my pace but a fraction I'd not be here today, if I'd taken one less step I'd have been scattered for hundreds of yards down the freeway. I had my choice and I made it, I took that one last step and the semi wind whipped warm exhaust and cold, stinging ice crystals through my thin shirt as I stood watching death fly down the hill doing ninety in the slow lane.
I walked down the hill after him toward the little Utah town and its little hospital where I would get some help and call my mom and dad to maybe come pick me up. They were divorced but they would come together on something like this. I wasn't hitch hiking but a man stopped and picked me up. He was like the guy in the ambulance, strong, but gentle. I asked where he was going, he said anywhere you want to go. I said the hospital he said OK. We got there just fine and I called my mom but who should show up but my lovely wife and three huge state troopers who took me into custody and finger printed me and put me in jail for the night. Thats my Helen, always comes through in a pinch. It wasn't too bad except for when the urinal next to my bed was flushed and wouldn't stop running and I had a river running into the drain under my bed all night. And the anxiety attack I had early that morning that they gave me Haldol for that locked my jaw then the Valium they gave me that helped my jaw but my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth all day. My brother came and got me out the next day and well, something made those troopers change their minds because they were saying "Y'all come back now" and such when I left and Helen was nowhere to be seen.
To make a long story a little shorter I stayed in a psyche ward in the capital for a few weeks and got out and eventually got free of Helen as I said and have had ups and downs with my illness, nothing more so dramatic but some episodes just as severe, they were just handled right and didn't escalate like these two did. I need to make something very clear here, what I blame Helen for, beyond twelve years of abuse, is the extravagant escalation of and the incarcarations during these episodes. I do not and cannot blame her for the presence of my illness. She contributed to the severity of it, but not to its existence. Its existence, I believe, is part heredity, part childhood sexual abuse and part a lifetime of disfunctional thinking and unhealthy handling of stress. I was depressed and experienced anxiety before I ever met Helen. Had we not had a relationship perhaps I would never have gone completely psychotic, though I would have been vulnerable to it, and I still would have been ill. The psychotic breaks I’ve had have left me broken in subtle and not so subtle ways that can never be repaired. Though I have achieved a fairly high level of functioning I have never been the same and right now consider myself to be functioning at about 60% of my capacity. Once your mind has completely failed you , been completely out of your control, you can never completely trust it again. This sets up a fundamental insecurity that subtly underlies your life. I've been hospitalized twice since these two episodes and nearly hospitalized a few more times. I say the illness is king, I just adapt to it and the various medications that I take to battle it. Its always there, never really gets better, sometimes gets worse, and a good day is when I'm not afraid.

@2001

Ger'asene Apologetic

2007-10-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

May, 2006

The Ger’asene Apologetic

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Ger'asenes.
And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
who lived among the tombs; and no one could bind him any more, even with a chain;
for he had often been bound with fetters and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the fetters he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones.
And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him;
and crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
For he had said to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"
And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country.
Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside;
and they begged him, "Send us to the swine, let us enter them."
So he gave them leave. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
The herdsmen fled, and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.
And they came to Jesus, and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
And those who had seen it told what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine.
And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their neighborhood.
And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.
But he refused, and said to him, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."
(Mark 5:1-19, RSV)

My God, My God, what have I done?

May 4, 2006

As I write this the voices are, for the most part, quiet. They make no comments or suggestions as I type. When they do pop up, I ignore them or tell them to shut up. They do not praise me as the consummate writer or tell me I am the Second Coming or encourage me to do something else, something irrational, foolish but oh so compelling. And they don’t tell me lies, lies I used to repeat to people sometimes. I am racked with embarrassment and guilt. Neither do they console me or entreat me to relax. I seem to have escaped their power, and their solace. Some of the events contained herein have been pieced together after the fact as I sometimes have memory lapses, especially when under heavy stress.
When the voices began sometime in 1987, I was under terrific stress in my abusive first marriage. My then wife was into New Age spirituality and was supposedly channeling spirits, mostly very negative and abusive, perhaps evil. This experience opened me up to the reality of the demonic playing a role in human life. I became part of a charismatic prayer group in approximately 1989, which served to reinforce and actually overemphasize this idea. My voices told me I was an exorcist. Such spiritual ideas often accompany madness; there is often a fine line between the madman and the mystic. In the world of the mad, spirits abound, saints and demons, Satans and Christs. Most mentally ill people I have met say that there is a spiritual element to their illness. Mental illness seems to break down barriers between what might be called normal reality and the spiritual realm. It is often overwhelming, resulting in much famously odd behavior and claims. I became a spiritual warrior, battling demons everywhere I went. I regularly if not constantly said prayers of exorcism and protection for others and myself for several years. This fascination made me sometimes physically ill and led to generally benign but irrational behavior at times. I believe such prayers have their place but to be preoccupied or fascinated with the demonic as I was is not healthy or logical and perhaps gives it more power. I still believe there is demonic influence on human life, but living a good life and having an active prayer life is protection enough. The non-spiritual person sometimes seems the safest of all from the demonic. Was I influenced by demons? No way to really know. It’s a possibility. All I know for sure is I have had problems knowing what is “real” for nearly two decades now. I do not recommend charismatic spirituality to any one with psychotic tendencies or any mental illness that features any problems discerning reality. It is simply too stimulating. I do not recommend New Age spirituality to anyone at all; it can be dangerous, especially in its more extreme forms.
The voices no longer seduce me with loving words into their incredible world where I am the center of the universe, where everything is about me and in me and through me. Where I am encouraged, recruited to be the Christ. Christ was and is me and I am female (At the time of this particular delusion I was attempting to live as a woman). I turn down the job but they insist. The Church’s secret is being revealed as they speak, Christ was and is a woman named Marquesa. She, I, wrote the Gospel of Marquesa on a beach in Galilee after the resurrection while the apostles, some women, played volleyball in the sand. Somewhere in the bowels of the Vatican, Cardinals are gathered ‘round an ancient pallet, sealed for nearly two millennia, reading my words, in modern English (It seemed total gibberish in about 300 AD when they sealed it up), written in #2 pencil on canary yellow legal pads 2000 years ago. It was treated as a mysterious and secret religious relic all these centuries, self-preserving and a total mystery. It was locked up in a vault many centuries ago at the birth of the Vatican and all but forgotten. But with all the miracles I performed and the tabloids proclaiming me the Second Coming, and the movies and books and special appearances on MTV, someone looked up the name Marquesa and found it referred to this ancient relic. At the same time they are reading it, I am lying on my bed, listening to them while I am writing an exact narrative of these unfolding events on that 2000 years ago beach, which is exactly what they are reading which is exactly what I am hearing (and writing) and they read their own exact words and are told to have pity on me as I lie there, experiencing all this in my New World bed in a little western town nearly half a world away. Paradox, paradox, there lies madness, there lies madness. But I cut a deal with them, they get to keep their male messiah and I publicly turn down the job of Christ in exchange for them opening up the Church’s vast riches to help the poor and set up a world wide adoption network since they are so against contraception and abortion. I am, too, against abortion I mean, but I see it as a necessary evil, but if they lightened up on contraception and did the adoption thing, and helped the poor like they’re supposed to, they could outlaw abortion without triggering a back alley blood bath. I would make a good Messiah but I still turn down the job. Somehow I know I’m not God. Okay, so how about the Holy Spirit? Same trap, the Trinity thing, you know.
Before that I was Mary, the Mary, and besides that nearly every significant female, known of unknown, before or after Mary. I was the woman behind every great creative man there ever was. The wife, the concubine, the slave, the apprentice. I was DaVinci’s servant girl, but you see, he was just a kindly, half mad eccentric who wrote down my words, and showed his brother my sketches. Mona Lisa was my “Mom”, done from memory since she died when I was quite young. You see, I have forever been the main source of creativity in this world. And the key to God’s will being done in mankind. As I tried to tell Einstein, God does throw dice with the universe, except for me. I always do His will so others can have free will. The constant thrown into the equation to make it work. But at the same time the wild card, the free radical, the warrior princess, forever ready to serve anywhere in any capacity to allow determinism. To be up to this task I was made half angel, half human, born into every generation to serve it.
I was, of course, Eve, (The whole “Fall” thing happened so that people would need each other, if no one was ever afraid, like God says, everything would be fine) and before that all the non-human predecessors back to the primordial puddle where life came into existence. I was there when God dipped His finger into the ooze to give the first sparks of Life. You see I was the cell that would one day become mankind. Before that I was a little girl in Heaven with my Daddy, God and we talked outside of time and together laid out the whole history of the universe. He would propose an idea and I would tell him if I thought it work out. I gave suggestions along the way while I played at His feet, but He did most of the work, just letting me help ‘cause He loved me so much. I’m not sure where my brother, Jesus, was during all this, maybe taking care of Heaven. He wasn’t actually my brother, but that’s what I called Him. I was never anything like God; really, I was just the human archetype, with angel added in to make me immortal. I was never reincarnated, I just lived forever. When I “died” I would just wink out or time for a holiday near heaven and then back into time into the same instant as a child. Sometimes an infant, sometimes a toddler, sometimes a ten year old, whatever worked best at the time. Always an orphan, but always “adopted” in some way by a key person in that generation. Mary was the exception to the angel and adoption stuff, I was totally human then to make it work out, theologically speaking. God knew I could do it once all by myself, so to speak. Especially with Jesus around most of the time. After Mary things changed a bit, of course, since the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. The person, Mary, went bodily to heaven, while “I”, now Marquesa, received again my angel and went back to work. Yeah, a bit of magic, it’s called a miracle. Things were actually easier, what with the gift of the Spirit and all.
In this present lifetime, I am again only human as it is the turn of the millennium and a cusp in the history of the universe. Everybody thinks this is such an evil time, but relatively speaking, it is really the most peaceful time in history. There are no World Wars or any major wars at all, no Atilas or Hitlers or Pol Pots or Stalins. We just don’t think we’re at peace because there is media coverage of every awful thing that happens anywhere in the world. So much used to happen that hardly anyone ever knew about before the written word and, eventually, radio and TV and satellites and the World Wide Web. And there are just so damn many more people in the world and so much fear. We’ve reached capacity, population will level off soon. Evil per capita and en toto is actually the lowest it’s ever been. Satan was actually totally defeated in Jesus’ incarnation. All that’s left are his leaderless demons and the fear residing in mankind. So, as of this lifetime, there is a critical mass of creativity and Spirit in the world. I get to retire soon. Live a normal life and die like everybody else and stay in heaven. As for the Second Coming stuff, I can see how there might be some confusion, it being around the turn of the millennium and me being so famous and important and all. “Blazing across the sky.” Nobody knows when Jesus will come but the Trinity, not even me.
Not long after all the Second Coming stuff and the deal, about a week, I saved the earth from destruction a couple of times. Again lying on my bed, I was spiritually sent out to the boundaries of our solar system to confront an armada of alien warships on a mission to destroy this evil place called earth. Technologically advanced, they were unburdened by the spiritual and religious constraints on science that have plagued the earth. I was sent as the example of earth spirituality and to point them to the Trinity. They were much impressed and cowed by this great thing known as the Spirit and its ability to reside in so called humans. They opted to study this God and his amazing beauty and power. And returned home. The next day I was called to face another armada from the other end of the universe with similar results. I made vague reference to all this when I checked myself into the mental ward soon afterward, as I was so overwhelmed. They let me go the next day, just a glitch in my medications, not to worry.
The voices tell me what people are thinking and the Spirit allows me to speak to them in their minds. I have averted many suicides and other tragedies by this telepathic counseling. Sometimes I simply comfort people, other times I give suggestions but always pointing them to Jesus or the Father or the Spirit, whichever person of the Trinity serves them best.
Such is the ride I have been on, specifically for the last several months, but with ever increasing dysfunction for the last twenty years.
My voices told me for nearly ten years (I can’t pin down the time this actually began, maybe 1998) that I was actually a woman, that my image of myself as a man was delusion. The horrific Satanic Ritual Abuse I suffered as a child created this delusion. The voices supplied me with an alternate life as a girl and a woman to counter my male memories. My birth certificate was changed to male after the old courthouse in the small town where I was born burned down, something they do in Montana periodically to update their records (There is another story related to my birth certificate but that will come in the next section). Changed in an effort to keep me hidden from the cult of abusers, who viewed me as their chosen one, the one to lead them into the coming new millennium in which we would rise along the Antichrist. When these voices began in about 1987, they soon after helped me through, or perhaps into, two psychotic episodes. A third, less severe occurred in 1992 and several other times I was near psychotic, especially in 1999. The story of the abuse started coming out in, I believe, 1996 and played out in my mind usually dictated by the voice or voices, until about 2002. It has taken until this past year to seriously question the bulk of the story. I still believe I was abused at some time during my childhood but nI now doubt it to be as extensive or horrific as the narrative given me by the voices.
Perhaps I should say I do not hear my voices with my ears, they are not auditory hallucinations. I am told this makes them more like learned scripts rather than voices, which seems actually to give the abuse story more credibility were it not for all the other obviously deluded “thinking.” They occur in my mind, much like thoughts, only in a conversational manner, they refer to me as “you” and themselves as “I” or “we.” They also often use my mouth. I simply relax my jaw and they whisper through my mouth, using my tongue and jaw. For these reasons I find “voices’ a better description. I was certain for many years that at least one of them was God; he seemed to love me so. My constant conversation with “him” or “them,” meaning the Trinity, was constant prayer. I often had what I considered spiritual experiences. In the latter stages they could immobilize me as I lay on my bed, “praying.” This was not only a trance state, but also proof of their divinity. For years I was convinced that I could not live without them. I could not trust the evidence of my senses, they deceived me into believing I was a man and so many other things. I was mad, I could not handle my existence, make my own choices, I had to totally rely upon God. It mattered not that there were so many contradictions, that I suffered much, servants of God suffer, its scriptural. The problems could be my fault, through my sin, or else they were delusions, things were actually just fine. However, I am financially, professionally and personally devastated.
The impact these voices have had on my life for the past twenty years is immeasurable, as they were my guides through these years in all phases of my life. I consistently either avoided discussing these voices with counselors or psychiatrists or, when I did, I greatly understated their importance and prevalence. I did not want my God and guide to be criticized or taken away. Once, around 1998, I did mention to my psychiatrist that I heard the voice of God. He immediately suggested increasing my antipsychotic, which was already at a relatively high level, tranquilizing me too much, I thought. I discouraged the change; this was precisely the type of thing I feared, though my voices were remarkably resistant to medication as they are not strictly hallucinations, as mentioned earlier. As I mentioned, I was told by my voices to ignore the evidence of my senses, I was mad, they could not be trusted, “just trust us.” I eventually insisted that this was impossible. How can one simply ignore all the input of one’s senses, especially when faced with adverse consequences and such great contradictions? It was no way to live.
I was married for thirteen years to a very fine woman. I became convinced I was somehow justified to have an affair. I was also exempt from the moral taboo against such things because of the abuse I suffered as a child. Afterwards, when it was discovered, I was surprised my wife cared enough to be devastated by it. My voices had convinced me she did not care about me anymore, that she was unfaithful herself. She was not unfaithful, I am now certain of this. I was not exempt from consequences and not exempt for tortuous guilt. The voices then convinced me it had not actually happened, that I had been framed. I must admit to some complicity in this and perhaps most of my negative behavior. To say it was all the voices is too convenient. There must have been some character flaws driving at least some of it, though it is wrong to say that mental illness itself is a character flaw. Neither I nor my now ex-wife will ever be the same. In just the past several months I was convinced I had come into a large sum of money and subsequently went on a spending spree whose repercussions I will feel for several more years, if not the rest of my life. I now make decisions ”on my own” and feel less than confident about it, but at least what I do is relatively logical. After my destructive first marriage, I worked hard to develop a sense of personal integrity, and succeeded for the most part. This sense has been destroyed; I am struggling to regain it. I feel I will be able to continue to be stable, though time will tell. I count only a few weeks now in my new life.
There are two little boys in my life (my second wife’s grandchildren) who need me to be a man. My time with them used to be very free and fun and beneficial for all concerned. I have been a major influence in their life, a more complete and dynamic presence than their very decent but limited father. Due to my actions of the past several months (dressing as a woman, irresponsible spending, and a complex little urban neighborhood misunderstanding I choose not to go into) our time is now supervised, limited to the immediate vicinity of their home, and I was at first questioned as to how I was dressed before I came over. This is understandable, especially considering that the parents are both developmentally delayed, but I struggle to accept it, I feel frustrated and insulted and it is frustrating for the boys. My former wife tells me I just need to be patient; the parents need to see that I am stable. Time will perhaps heal, in this as in many other facets of my life.
In the face of much evidence and economic and legal necessity, I have perhaps come to my senses. I know I am poor and deeply in debt, and with consequent legal difficulties. I now know I am male, I no longer dress as a woman, and, as I said, reject much but not all of the abuse storyline. I still desire to be a woman, I have had gender difficulties from my earliest memories, but this will have to come about through “normal” channels, if at all, and not by spiritual intervention. I lived dressed as a woman for much of 1999 and 2000 and again for most of the last seven months. Without my voices to support me, it has become too difficult, too hard to take the hurtful comments, the stares, the ostracization, the bathroom problem. I face opposition in my entire family and was unable to find a suitable job, though I did work briefly for a former employer. I am trying to discern the will of God in this matter, through “normal” channels. I will be male for the foreseeable future, perhaps the rest of my life, though at this time I find this difficult, if not impossible to accept.
I do believe that God was active in my life these last twenty years, perhaps mitigating the damage at times. After separating from my first wife in 1989 things seemed to improve, a lot. I was able to overcome my problems with reality through hard work. I remarried in 1991 and, superficially at least, life was good for several years. In the past decade, though I managed to get a couple of BS degrees,in many ways things simply got steadily worse, I was less sane, the “demons” came out that I was repressing. This decline coincided with the “recovery” of the abuse “memories.” Throughout, I was wholly sincere in my desire to serve God and I believe He honored that. I accomplished much good during the past two decades, there is simply too much damage done, too much pain, too much confusion, too much… to believe that He was truly my guide through it all. There is much more the voices told me, I haven’t the will to pull it all up, but I think you get the idea. I seek God in my heart now, not my mind. Which brings me back to my place with the voices mostly quiet, in a way bereft, but mostly relieved and with a halfway decent grasp on “reality,” if there be such a thing. The Ger’asene is sitting on a rock, clothed and in his right mind, yet feeling lost, guilty, out of place and foolish. And has little idea what to do with himself.

My God, My God, what have I done?

Update, October 2007

I feel like I have overcome my transgender fixation. I took a lot of time and thouhgt through all the scenarios of a life that followed that path. They all led to dead ends. I no longer believe this is God's will for me. I have a good part time job now, hope to go back to grad school in 09. Will declare bankruptcy after the first of the year ( its pretty bad when bankruptcy is a step up). Been almost two and a half years since the divorce. I feel like i am finally healing from it. I actually had a date with a woman this month. It went well but not ready for a relationship just yet. I'm still depressed a lot and occaisionally manic, but I maintain insight and don't listen to the voices anymore. Things are pretty good.

Paradox

2007-10-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

Paradox
God
All powerful creator
Omnipotent
Omniscient
Infinite

The ancient question:
Can this God
create an object
even He
cannot move?
Pardox.
Or is it?
What of the human heart?
Tweak the question a bit,
Can He create
Something
Even He
Cannot control?
Adam and Eve
His chosen people
Those healed by Christ
And sharply admonished
To tell no one.
His Popes
You and I.
Those who love Him
Choose to do His will.
And even they
Stray.
Evil happens
If we so choose.
Free will you say?
Or Omniscient error?
Proof for the atheist?

Love.
Love is all powerful.
Love creates.
God is Love.

Love does not control.
Love not freely chosen
Is not love.

Man’s heart roams free.
Paradox?
Painful truth.
Is this God cruel
Or mad
Or absent?

Can one who has experienced the power of love
Doubt the existence of God?
Can one who has not or has lost love
Or who has seen evil
Believe in Him?

Evil?
Love’s absence?
Can this infinite God be absent?
Or simply choose
To withhold
His omnipotence
For the sake of love?

To love so much
As to allow
Evil?
Choice?
Madness
Divine madness.

God chooses not to control
The human heart.
Evil will control
The human heart
If the heart so chooses.
Yet love remains
God.

Sodden

2007-10-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

There’s a hole in my heart where the rain comes in
Blue skies or gray it pours in like sin
There’s a hole in my soul where their eyes bore in
Pouring judgment on me until they win
My sodden heart breaks at the seams
And my laden soul cracks at the beams
My God My God I can’t bear the weight
My Lord My Lord I can’t stand the wait.
What have I done
But try to follow you
Sweet Jesus you know I’ve ached to be true.
But here I am
Broken and torn
Sodden and saddened
Beaten and worn.
And still it rains and bores and pours in on me.
I am left on the cross street for all to see.
There he goes, that’s the one
Hell I wish I had my gun
Stares and sneers and a deadly remark
And now I lay alone in the dark
I did not shield myself from anything
Wore my soul on my sleeve, everything.
I did it all for love, did it all for You
So to hell with them, I have been true.
Yes, I’m broken in every way
Yet I live to cry another day.
Sodden, I know all that they say.
Beaten, yes, but just for today
I rise, I walk. I face the fray.
I love You still,
I come to do Your Will.

Now 2

2007-10-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

I want to start over with this life of mine.
Do it better from now on.
I’ve spent so much of myself
somewhere other than here and now
and somehow anything but happy.
“One day, one place at a time, OK?”
Tomorrow is worry and fear,
yesterday is judgment, regret.
Today is all I have,
now is where I’m at,
so I’ll stay right here in now ‘til its over
because everything happens now.
Nothing happens in the future,or the past.
No amount of fear or worry
can make anything happen in the future.
No amount of regret can change a thing in the past.

I have my own small space in now
where I have some control, if I want it.
With a little work, I can do pretty much what I please,
Be happy, be sad, be content, be afraid...
I now choose to be content within this space of mine
and as I move my space around in life,
to interact with others, or not,
I choose to remain focused on peace of mind,
not worry or fear, so maybe I’l be able
to hold my part of the world together
as now goes on.
And I hope I might somehow make life a little better
for those whose space is most intimate with mine.

Now is all we have
and all we need.
Lord , help me to be here now.
Always now, help me stay away
from other places, other times.
Let me be here now, with you.
Let me be happy in my now, in my little space.
Let me be responsible only for that which you give me, Lord.
Let me not be afraid.
Please Lord, let me not be afraid.

Still

2007-10-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

Trust is gone,
the only thing that relieves the fear
is anger, and that only lasts so long.

I could hardly trust myself to breath, my heart to beat.
life became fear of movement,
and movement the only thing i could do.
Life became fear of forward motion,
of time, especially time.
For any forward motion brings risk
and risk is terror without trust.
Deliberate movement became an antidote,
dance became therapy,
anger became a release.
Planning was beyond comprehension
as it takes faith in the future.
Organization was difficult in that
it took trust in myself,
in my decision making.
Decision making was fine for the immediate, physical,
nearly anything immediately physical was OK.
But anything requiring trust in the future
was futile.
And there was the constant fear
of the movement of time
and of the present.
Fear of now and all its possibilities

Trust in me
Says my God.
How can I when I fear every passing moment?
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still, but I can hardly stand to sit
Let alone be still.
Be not afraid
I am with you.
Really?
I am with you always, until the end of the age.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.
Every hair on your head is counted.
Be still and know that I am God.
I have loved you with an everlasting love
I have formed you and you are mine.
Sorry, I just can’t, I gotta go,
Somewhere, anywhere,
I just have to keep moving.
I am with you
OK, then come on.
We can talk on the way to… somewhere.
Be still…
OK, I’ll try to be still in my head but I got to keep moving.
Bless the Lord, Oh my soul.
Yeah, I really like that one.
Do not forget all the gifts of God,
OK, like be still, and think about the good stuff.

So I had my deliberate motion
in walking through the snow in the dark.
It took a while but I noticed,
It was beautiful.
So quiet, just the crunch of my feet on the snow,
So still, just a few snowflakes gently drifting down.
Somehow I had shut out the cars going by on the street.
With my hood up and my head down I couldn’t see them.
I noticed my breathing, fast and shallow, like I was scared.
My heart, too, beating fast.
Ok, lets be still.
Slow everything down.
Relax, body, slow down, heart, feet.
I stopped, took a deep breath,
And looked up.
The big white snow flakes drifted down
past my eyes through the blue black sky.
They seemed to come from nothing, out of nowhere.
They appeared and fell all around me,
Slowly, continually, gently.
I am with you.
A flake landed on my cheek.
Like a tear.
Angry?
No.

Trust in Me.

Thanks T

2007-10-13T01:43:00.000-07:00

Just lost, late at night...early in the morning. I have a big, bold print out on 8 1/2 by 11 on my wall, the one on the far right, fourth row up, written in a fit of positive thinking: I LOVE MY LIFE, ALL OF IT. EVEN THE PAIN. THERE LIES LOVE. I don't look at it very often. My 9 year old grandson read the first line out loud a few days ago while we stopped in at my apartment. I didn't look up, until I came back much later. Maybe its right after all. Maybe its real. I'm trying to be real. I really don't know how. When I look back on the things I do and say, so often they're just not real. I was just going with the flow, or trying to impress, or please. Yep, people pleaser. Of course, the real me, if I could ever find me, wouldn't be good enough... for... what?... who?... I don't know, I just wouldn't be good enough if I were really me. So I'm often someone else. Who? I don't know that either but it has to be better than me. That's why I like you. You seem to be you. To be real. I remember being me sometimes, being real. I remember it felt good. I could just never keep it up very long. I always lost myself. You see, this illness, which I've probably had all my life, it just didn't hit big time 'til I was 30, separates you from reality sometimes, but you're never exactly sure when it happens. You think you're cruising along just fine annd then things start falling apart and all of a sudden with a horrific, gut renching realization, you realize you have been living in a delusion for... hours, days, even years. And everything crashes. Your whole life falls apart. And maybe you just cry for a while, or maybe you cry and pace the floor all night or maybe you cry and pace the floor all night and then pack some things by noon the next day and walk down to the emergency ward and say I need to go to the...closest Funny Farm, Nut House, Loony Bin, Insane Asylum...no, where I live right now we call it 5C, the mental ward of a hospital in a town 32 miles away. But if you can't get it together to check yourself in, you'll probably either end up in jail for nothing other than being crazy or they'll come and get you with big beefs and choke you out and put you in that funny shirt with eight foot long arms, Straight Jacket, and put you in a metal room (padded cells are for rich people) on the top floor of the county hospital in what's called 5 point restraints (somebody told me this, I didn't count) where you have to call the beef for a bed pan to go pee. and hopefully they drug you enough so you sleep for a long time and hopefully somebody shows up and vouches for you and they let you out into the "population". On the top floor. Where the more advanced "patients" stay. Where they let you out a few times a day for fresh air or smokes on the roof with 9 feet high fences with barbed wire on the top.
But that was nearly twenty years ago, I live a pretty good life now, reasonably stable, I work, part time. receive SSD. Had a real good marriage for about 6 years and a not so good one for six years and separated for a year and divorced over two years ago. This illness is mostly to blame. I'm one of the lucky ones. I really am quite stable most of the time. I don't "look mentally ill" And you really can't tell by looking...
OK folks, I'm really tired, this isn't good for me, been awake for 21 hours now, I'll pay for this. I just had to tell the truth, be real, even if nobody ever reads this stuff.
Thanks T.

What Does Depression Feel Like?

2007-10-13T01:05:00.000-07:00

What Does Depression Feel Like?
For Therese

Like I’m a spectator at my own life.
Watching and wondering why I am so sad.
I look at the blue sky, the trees, feel the breeze,
Hmmm, I should be enjoying this.
Instead I’m sighing heavily, taking small steps,
(Takes less energy that way),
My shoulders drooping. head down.
Hey, you idiot, it’s a beautiful day!
I look up.
It hurts to look at the sky,
Not my eyes, my heart.
Why does that hurt?
Its beautiful, that’s why.
And I am so… not.
It feels like I am outcast, apart, alone.
I am with my grandchildren.
Nine and eleven.
I watch the scene, it seems idyllic.
Actually my ex, step grandchildren, but
They love me.
They are beautiful, wonderful, little people.
I can hardly stand to be with them.
I push them on the swings
And as they laugh
A wave of palpable gloom
Flows out from my gut.
And I want to run away
And hide or even die.
I’m in my body now.
Its not fear, though I am afraid of it.
There is no word for it.
“It” is a flow of almost physically heavy,
very heavy, emotion..
Perhaps a combination of the downside every emotion I have ever felt since I was the one being pushed in the swing and I’m overwhelmed by “I can’t” and “Why?” and “I’ve got to get out of here!” and “I don’t understand”, and “I’m going to cry or yell….”
But I somehow stay, I even smile.
For them. For a while.
This is so hard.
Let’s go guys. (I need a cigarette)
The air and the sunlight are thick and heavy,
I feel like I’m moving against
Some slow but steady current,
Like a river of mud.
And yes, I feel unclean.
And they’re disappointed we’re leaving so soon
And just when I thought I couldn’t feel worse
I feel guilty and weak and….
Worse.
I have disappointed loved ones again.
Somehow that’s the worst thing I can think of right now.
And I’ve done it.
Again.
It’s always been like this.
It will always be like this.
I want to die.
But the boys…. I manage a smile
Want something to drink?
They always like that.
The mini-mart/gas station/A&W
Is always so bright and busy with cool stuff all around.
I feel better.
“Papa?” One of the boys holds something small and cool but mini-mart priced at twice its value and I wouldn’t buy it even if I could afford it. And I shake my head and say I can’t afford it, sorry, and he’s… that word again and I physically droop and almost cry and I pay for our drinks with a heavy sigh and I still manage a smile as I ruffle their hair and give them a bump of my hip on the way back to the car with the primer black hood and fender I can’t afford to get painted but it’s dependable and they like it.
And I love this but I can’t stand it for much longer.
I let them play their radio station.
Unless the lyrics are too trashy
Then its oldies or light rock and my gut burns with that emotion
As I drop them off at home.
Bye Papa. Bye guys. (I’m sorry)
Damn… I couldn’t… I didn’t… Why?
Guilt. Shame. Love. Pain.
Chain smoking and a few diet cokes
I get free ‘cause I’m a regular at the bar and its more bearable.
Home is upstairs. Empty.
I want to run away somewhere but I don’t have the will.
Thank God there’s an elevator.
On the way up I sigh and cry and
I open the door and I sink a little lower looking at the clutter,
But now I can sit in my dusty prayer chair and be still and
Know that He is God.
I close my eyes. And cry.
Eventually, I’m aware of Him.
I’ll live, somehow.
But why?

Thanks so much Therese. I'll think about making it beautiful, giving it a light, and I'm working on tearing it's guts out, but, as you know, its very messy.
Marquos

Therese is here:
blog.beliefnet.com/beyondblue/2007/10/12-ways-depression-is-like-a-p.html

Perfect

2007-10-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

Perfect, strive for perfection, so noble.
So deceptive, so insidious.
Tasks come before me,
I don’t hear the inner perfectionist say it must be perfect.
It’s the knot in my gut, the anxiety that rises up
The depression that looms as I make my attempt
Then the inner critic as I go about my work,
Nothing is good enough,
So often nothing gets done.
So many tasks abandoned,
Ideas and titles of essays unwritten.
Perfection, the great paralyzer,
The constant critic.
Insidious as it shows itself in relationships gone wrong
Over unrealistic expectations.
So difficult to love and be loved
As in love we must love the imperfections in the other
And reveal them in ourselves.
A simple walk down Main Street,
Or in the park or by the river.
Seeking peace and joy.
But all is not perfect and the gloom descends.
Acceptance of this beautiful,
Imperfect world
Seems the only way out.
To use this critical eye
To see the world exactly as it is
And love it anyway.
My God, my Father, my Papa.
He made this world, these people,
who am I say they're not perfect.
How it hurts me to demand I be
Better than my brothers and sisiters.
A demon looks over my shoulder
And whispers in my ear.
Help me brush him off, Lord
Silence him.
I shall not know joy until.

Mind Freedom International Newsletter

2007-10-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

MindFreedom International Public Service Announcement
http://www.mindfreedom.org - urgent: please forward
Thursday, 11 October 2007
How to Screen Yourself for Normality for Free!
by David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Today has been declared "Mental Health Screening Day" by the psychiatric industry.
But wait! Don't panic!
MindFreedom International, a nonprofit human rights coalition of 100 groups, launches a campaign today to "Screen the World for Normality"!
You can screen yourself *now*, wherever you are, in five easy steps.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NORMALITY SCREENING SELF-TEST
1. Make an animal noise. Now. At your computer screen or wherever you are. Make any animal noise: Meow of a cat. Moo of a cow. Anything. Louder the better.
2. Evaluate yourself. Here is how:
3. Did you make an animal noise of any kind? You show no sign of normality. Congratulations!!
4. Did you did *not* make an animal noise of any kind? You show no sign of normality. Congratulations!!
5. Spread the word: Encourage others to take this simple Normality Screening Self-Test!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WHY SCREEN YOURSELF FOR NORMALITY?
This screening was designed by experts. Every normality screening brings Earth that much closer to declaring victory.
Seriously: End the discrimination and segregation of "mentalism" in the mental health system today! All of humanity are in the same mad boat. It is time to ask some of those "Officially Labeled Mad" for navigation tips.
We normality screeners thank the amazing physician-clown Patch Adams and his international clown network. Their clown troupe in Florence, Italy, helped devise and inspire this normality screening effort.
The Normality Screening campaign is sponsored by MFI's "Voices for Choices in Mental Health Care Campaign" in cooperation with the Mad Pride Movement and the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM), which is a real organization that Martin Luther King, Jr. called for creating more than ten (10) times.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLEASE LET OTHERS KNOW about this Normality Self-Screening Test both on and off Internet!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STAY TUNED HERE for more news.
Just a few hours after e-mailing you this, I and a wonderful MindFreedom Normality Screening Crew -- that includes both a physician and a psychologist -- cross the Potomac River with our rubber chickens and squeaky red noses to peacefully screen for normality directly in front of the American Psychiatric Association headquarters.
Really.
Watch here for results.
We are optimistic.
But then again, we're just not normal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A FEW NON-NORMAL WEB LINKS FOR MORE INFO about...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Screenfor Normality Campaign
Other successful MAD PRIDE activities this week include Belgium (featuring an appearance by Dan Taylor of MindFreedom Ghana Africa)... An Australian music concert... UK's Bonkersfest doing normality screenings... a photo op at the Alternatives 2007 conference in St. Louis:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/screen-normality
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/3dudcq
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David W. Oaks blogs about normality screening here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mad Pride Movement:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM) which Martin Luther King, Jr. really truly did call for more than ten times... along with brief videos about how to screen for normality:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/mlk
or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2xvqfn

The only requirement for *you* to call yourself an IAACM leader is peacefully follow these MLK-inspired nonviolence guidelines:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/mlk-iaacm/peace-rules

or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2cf3u3

And yes, also in the spirit MLK and Gandhi, MindFreedom is seeking to engage psychiatric professional organizations in mediated dialogue.
Videos of MindFreedom activists and allied psychiatric survivor/mental health consumer groups successfully dialoging at the World Psychiatric Association conference in Dresden, Germany in June 2007 are here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/global/world-psychiatric-association

or go here: http://tinyurl.com/2rfc9x

In Arlington, Virginia for the next few days you can meet and hear from the normality screeners themselves, who are attending and speaking at the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology conference, special theme of defending youth from psychiatric human rights violations. David Oaks is one of the keynote speakers:
http://www.icspp.org

MindFreedom International Live Free Internet Radio this Wed., 17 October 2007 at 4 pm features an interview with one of the "normality screeners" in front of the APA headquarters today: psychologist and author Al Galves of New Mexico. You can call in live. Host: David W. Oaks.

http://www.mindfreedom.org/radio

And of course, please visit Normal, Illinois, USA. Because once you've visited Normal, Illinois then you too can wave your hands around and honestly say to your friends, "None of this is Normal":
http://www.normal.org

PLEASE LET OTHERS KNOW about this "Normality Screening Self-Test" both on and off the Internet! Please forward, print out and tell people!
More news at the MindFreedom News Web Site:
http://www.mindfreedom.org
Don't see a news item? Submit it to news@mindfreedom.org
MindFreedom International is a nonprofit human rights group that unites 100 sponsor and affiliate groups with individual members. MindFreedom is the only group of its kind accredited by the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with Consultative Roster Status.
MindFreedom International is also one of the very few totally independent groups in the mental health field with no funding from governments, drug companies, religions, corporations, or the mental health system.
All human rights supporters are invited!
Join or donate here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate
For hard-to-find books and gear (including a Normality Screening Kit, complete with rubber chicken) go to:
http://www.madmarket.org

FOR MORE INFO:
MindFreedom International Office: 454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284; Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA
web site: http://www.mindfreedom.org
e-mail: office(at)mindfreedom(dot)org
office phone: (541) 345-9106
toll free: 1-877-MAD-PRIDe or 1-877-623-7743
fax: (541) 345-3737
Please forward.
Want to get off this MF News e-mail announcement list? Two easy ways:
1) To unsubscribe e-mail a blank email to
mindfreedom-news-unsubscribe@intenex.net
Be sure to "reply" when you get the automatic unsubscribe confirmation message.
2) If you have any trouble getting off this list e-mail to office(at)mindfreedom(dot)org with these words in the subject line:
unsubscribe mindfreedom-news

So Sad

2007-10-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

So Sad

It seems I don’t know how not to be sad
I learned it so well, its apart of me now.
Sadness is my response to most anything.
Its the one emotion I can count on,
the only one not ridiculed by the voices in my mind
(or the people in my memory)
or second-guessed by my heart.
I sometimes cherish my sadness
as the only true emotion I know.
Anger is evil, happiness unreal
and love is impossible but
Sadness will never let you down.
You can’t go wrong being sad.
There is always reason to be sad,
even if its just about the past.
You probably won’t hear
“its dumb to feel sad”
or “you’re gonna regret being sad”
and you won’t be disapointed with sadness, either.
If you’re sad you’re ready to hurt
and you don’t have far to fall.
And when the hurt is gone
you don’t have so far to come to be sad again.
It takes a lot less energy to be sad
You will probably be known
as compassionate
by those who don’t know you well.
Yes, there’s alot to be said for being sad.

Happiness is overated, peace is best, thats what Jesus gave his disciples, do not be afraid is the most common phrase in the Bible, and acceptance of reality is imperative.

Sunday

2007-10-10T00:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday

I’m feeling much better now,
I hardly think of it at all.
I’m only anxious for the morning now
and a little of the afternoon.
The depression comes and goes these days,
Morning, afternoon, evening,
like a wheel that turns
with a shift in the wind.

Yes, I’m feeling much better now,
except for those sunday afternoons
when the Black Terror builds in my gut,
‘til I’m terrified of myself and the future
and the past and the present.
And the anger and the horror build ‘til I know I’ll kill or die...
and its gone.
The Black Terror doesn’t come often,
but the threat of it looms over sunday
like a Hindenburgh about to touch
its mooring post.
As the afternoon creeps by
I fear every twinge in my belly
and dread every wrinkle in my mood.
Some times there’ll be a swell of It
run low and slow through my soul.
Just enough to remind me
just what it is I’m afraid of.

Perhaps it was on sunday afternoons,
all those years ago,
those people took me to their room.
And the terror was for real.
Right after sunday school.
But I hardly think of it at all anymore,
I’m feeling much better, really.

Enemy

2007-10-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

Depression, I fear you. You have brought me low. Many times you have driven me to despair, gripped by a cold, wrenching fear from my gut to my spine. I fear you more than death, there is an ending in death but there seems no hope in your ever ending. To put depression to an end one must regain one’s will, for in depression one’s entire will is taken up in just surviving, there is no will left for living.
I fear your spells of anger, the ones where I am so near the edge, the edge of madness and violence. I fear you most of all. Even a hint of you is fearful for I know you can grow quickly, fed by my fear and lifelong attitudes
Perhaps I will never be completely free from you but if I can learn what makes you grow and stay and thrive maybe I can diminish you to a place where the drugs will make you seem to go away. As it is they only seem to take the edge off. I’m still depressed, I’m still scared, anxious. And sometimes I just can’t take it anymore and I’m walking up the hill outside my house screaming ultimatums at God about help and healing... and it helps. I feel better, the next day is easier. I thank God for one good day and manage to struggle through one more week.
I always look to the weekend to be healing but too often it feels just like the rest of the week there’s just not the demands on my time, not as many tasks to do. I still feel anxious, depressed, despair is not far away, I’m just not pushed, there is less stress... in some ways. Sundays are the worst and the best day. I seem to often have attacks of anxiety and near psychosis on sundays. Though they can take a couple of hours in coming these attacks are mercifully short in their intense stage and afterwards I generally feel quite good. As though I’ve conquered some demon from out of the depths of my mind. But depression, you are still my enemy. I fear you more than death.

I have learned that anger suppressed feeds my depression. I realized recently I still have much suppressed anger towards my first wife. She abused me in every possible way, used me up, drove me mad, and let me go when I was of no more use. I loved her, something in me still does. Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel I could actually harm her, something I didn't do when we were together. I have prayed often recently to be able to forgive her, It is slowly being granted but not until I began to express the anger in bold black letters on my sketch pad and computer. Long diatribes of violence, painfully drawn out of my heart in tears. I am spent. I ask my God is that enough? I get the sense it is not. The only thing I can thank her for is she drove me trembling and broken to the feet of Christ at the same time she drove me mad. I escaped to Christ, He was palpably near as I slipped into psychosis, a calm gentle presence nearby or within as reality shifted toward evil. He was with me, keeping the essential me intact even as my personality splintered, spun, and cried so desperately for freedom for the captives that I was chained. I cling to Him now. Still. Always. Whenever my grip upon Him is loosened and I slip, my life loses balance and meaning. I sink.
She was pathologically jealous. Every blink of my eye was punished as a look at another woman. Every emotion I expressed was chastised as wrong. When I expressed no emotion I was cold and heartless and "dead". I was allowed no friends, no family, no money. She demanded absolute fidelity and truth on her terms, terms shifting and impossible to meet. I can say quite literally I could do nothing right and things I had nothing to do with were judged to be my fault, evidently on some supernatural plane. She herself was free from all restrictions. She lied easily, more often than she told the truth. small lies and grand, involved schemes of interconnecting lies. Every day we fought, she attacked in blunt or subtle ways but consistantly punishing me for imagined evils. Once or twice a month there would be the exceptionally cruel battles that would eventually drive me out into the night to walk for hours and sleep in hallways or laundramats. She would seek me out never letting me go, but letting me rest a bit when I had been gone a day or two. She would be kind for a bit. SHe feared losing me. I was her support as well as her foil and target. I looked good next to her. She often threatened suicide should I leave. Somehow I loved her. She was exempt from her demands of absolute fidelity as she was often unfaithful. She had at least three abortions. This does not count the time, early on when she had me acquire money for one and then used the money to pay rent. I doubt any of the pregnancies were from my loins.
In the end she entered into the New Age and channeled the spirits that drove me over the edge. That is another tale. The anger seems to be dissipating a bit. Writing helps.

"Too Close to Heaven" preface excerpt

2007-09-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

A word about rage. I had deep, abiding rage that lived in the abyssal places of my mind and body. It was of the blackest of blacks and seemed infinitely deep and wide. When I tried to personify it, it became a huge, snarling gorilla, driven mad by his cage. The source is all that I experienced as a child. I had to learn very early on to bury this rage as any hint of it would be savagely punished. That was one of the reasons I was so silent. I had no energy for anything else but stuffing the rage. I became very good at it, developed a great strength in this area. Later I would learn to use this rage as my life force as I had not the will to live that is the life force of others. I learned to use this power to be both incredibly strong and incredibly gentle. I had witnessed, experienced the effects of rage unleashed and there is nothing I knew that would incite me to unleash my rage. I learned to use it in sport and in work and it served me well for many years. I excelled in all I did due to the tremendous control I had learned in order to survive. People would say that everything came easy for me and I could see why they would think so. But it is precisely that everything was difficult for me that I excelled. Everything required a tremendous amount of focus and discipline to control and focus the rage. And it worked, it worked well. Until the memories returned, then the beast was loose. It was free, ravaging my body and my mind. I had no energy left but to express the monster. I could no longer work. To write what it brought to my heart, to draw what it brought to my mind was all I had energy for. It rose up in my chest and into my throat, literally choking me. Body memories assailed me constantly. I had no strength, my engine had run wild and would spend itself in ranting and attacking me. I searched for my will to live, I could not find it. I took to carrying a seven inch blade under my thigh as I drove at all hours of the day and night across the back roads of six counties, searching for a reason to live. A steady flow of tequila and kahlua took the edge off. There was still no possibility that I would hurt anyone, I had seen far to much hurt to ever hurt anyone. Even myself, though I wanted too and always held it out as a possibility, I knew I could not. That is one of my God's strictest rules. I had developed a deep and powerful faith, beginning with the endless Bible reading of my mothers that were the only words that truly came through to me, and later, faith in God was the antithesis of those who assailed me and was my only comfort. And He was there, he spoke with me walked with me, He and his angels. I would harm no one except to defend another. And I was forbidden to harm myself. So I drove, and drank. I have never truly been drunk in my life though I have tried mightily. Something in all that I have experienced has denied me that pleasure.
So I asked Him, "What is it that people live for?" Lots of things. "Dammit, thats no answer." Silence. "OK, what do you want me to live for since you're determined to make me live?" Faith, hope and love. "Great, like I haven't heard that one before." Silence. "OK, faith I've got, thats why I'm still here but its not enough anymore." "OK, maybe I've got love ,too. There are people who think they love me and people I try to love. Its not satisfying at all and thats not enough either. Don't give me that hope shit, I've never had it, never will. Its totally nonsensical, there is nothing in this world you can depend on, hope is impossible in this world. And yes I have hope for the next world, hell I have an assurance of the next world but it doesn't do me a damn bit of good if I'm stuck here." Silence. "That line about hope never disappoints, bullshit." How do you know? "Okay, maybe I had hope once but so long ago I have no idea what it is or how to summon it up and I know it wouldn't work anyway" You hope it wouldn't work? "You know very well thats not what I said." Silence. Silence. Try it. "No." Silence. "I don't know how" Don't think. Silence. Silence. "I think I'm gonna throw up." Good, thats your defense mechanism kicking in, you'll get past that... eventually. "Gee, Thanks, now I've really got something to live for." Silence. Silence. There's those two little boys, you know (My two step-grandkids, one newborn, one eighteen months). ...Yeah, they're great, but I really have a hard time being around them." Silence. "Its the abuse, isn't it?" Not precisely. "Then it's this hope thing?" Yes. "I can't handle it and they have it." Not exactly, your hope has indeed been destroyed, long ago and since it only brought you pain, you resist it. These boys have awakened your desire for hope. "They're not mine, you know." Does that matter? ...No, not in the slightest, perhaps I feel more strongly because they're not" Yes. "So, maybe I can handle hope for them, I still have absolutely none for myself" Thats fine, for now. "Oh, don't give me that." They're going to need you. Silence. Silence. Silence. Well? "Yeah, yeah, I know, boy do I know." Silence. Silence. What was it you were looking for? "OK, I guess I already have it, I just can't feel it." Thats OK, you've got it. "I still don't buy into this hope shit, though" OK.
Hope is still difficult for me. It requires faith in future things of this earth. I know too well how wrong things can go. So I simply guard the present as best I can and keep my head down. The rage has been largely dissipated now that I have told much of my story. It still rises up and chokes me at times but the gorilla is merely sullen and grouchy now. The infinite abyss is now a large, sometimes placid lake, racked by storms, but landlocked, limited.

Momentary Consciousness, Fall of '99

2007-09-17T22:49:00.000-07:00

My most current difficulties with my illness involve a state which relates to how I experience time. Truly I have had this experience all my life but it has been most acute in the last several years. At best it is a wonderful combination of present moment awareness and sensory experience that I have much of the time. At the worst it is a combination of anxiety, impatience, anticipation, and present moment awareness that is all but unbearable, something very difficult to describe that I call momentary consciousness. In its more innocent form I will be reaching for a cup and the moment before I touch the cup will be frozen in time for me while at the same time I will continue moving to touch the cup and then that moment will be frozen and I will be frozen again until I have a sensation of endless moments that feel like they never end but yet they still move in time, and then I stand up, distract myself and its over. But if that doesn't work the moments still freeze and drag, they pile up upon each other, making it difficult to move, depression and anxiety immediately set in, making it even more difficult to move but move I must because movement is the only antidote, movement of my body to get my mind off the mind-boggling movement and non-movement of time. This will go on for a few moments, a few hours, a few days, or a few months. It constantly feels like it is instantly going to end but then it never ends, it simply has to fade and dissipate into the back of my consciousness. That is why I think it never leaves me. When I am conscious of it, it is unbearable; I simply must constantly shuffle about trying to distract my mind or sporadically try to sleep which is only barely possible and then only for an hour of two at a time. I fear I cannot make it clear what this feels like so maybe a metaphor is in order. Suppose you are walking down a street, on a normal sidewalk and suddenly the very instant before your forward foot touches it, the sidewalk crumbles away, revealing a chasm beneath it. Imagine you are suspended in that moment forever, not falling, not touching anything with your foot but knowing there is nothing there but feeling your body slowly and inexorably fall into nothing but yet at the same time not really moving and knowing it is all totally illogical but there is nothing you can do about it. Each moment is your last moment but yet it is not and there is another moment but yet there is not and each is an eternity and an instant at the same time and it drags on forever, or so it seems. That's the best I can do for the layman, but for those familiar with psychology I offer another. Imagine two strict Rogerian psychologists counseling each other, each absolutely certain the other is right on the verge of a major break through. Extend that moment out forever. Those familiar with mathematics or physics might see it as the physical equivalent of the near ultimate points of a parabola. So near but yet so far and always nearer but at the same time infinitely far away and paradoxically as close as possible and as far away as possible, forever. Perhaps the most successful of my descriptions might be that for the philosopher. I seem to experience paradoxes of time in single moments. I experience the present moment and the passage of time and the infinity of time all at the same “time.” It is excruciating. All I can say is that ime dooes have all three elements, present moment, passage of time and infinte future, if my experience means anything. I am incoherant on time past, though the moment most recently past does seem to hang around a bit before it dissolves into nothing.
There is another element to this phenomena. If I can relax in it a bit, center myself, I feel a spiritual sense. A gentle presence sustaining me. As I lay in bed on these endless nights, it helps to repeat a couple of prayers I know well. The Gloria used in the Catholic mass, a beautiful prayer:
Glory to God in the highest
and peace to His people on earth.
Lord God, heavenly King,
Almighty God and Father.
We worship you, we give you thanks,
We praise you for your glory.
Lord Jesus Christ, only son of the Father.
Lord God, Lamb of God,
you take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
You are seated at the right hand of the father,
receive our prayer.
For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ.
With the Holy Spirit in theglory of God the Father,
Amen

The other prayer I know as the Prayer for Protection:
In the name of Jesus I take authority and I bind
all powers and forces in the air
in the water, in the underground,
in nature and in fire.
You are the Lord over the entire universe
and I give you the glory for your creation.
In your name I bind all demonic forces
that have come against us and our families
and I seal all of us in the protection of
your precious blood that was shed for us on the cross.
Mary, our Mother, we seek your protection and intercession
with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, for us and our families
and surround us with your mantle of love to discourage the enemy.
Saint Michael and our guardian angels
come defend us and our families in battle
against all the evil ones that roam the earth.
In the name of Jesus, I bind and command
all the powers and forces of evil
to depart right now
away from us, our homes and our lands,
and we thank you Lord Jesus,
for you are a faithful and compassionate God.

I know not if the latter prayer has any efficacy in spiritual protection, but it has been my mantra for years and I cherish it. It has become a prayer of worship for me.

With these two prayers running through my head I feel in constant contact with God and this relieves my anxiety as well as distracts my mind from the state it is in.
Recently i was in this state for several weeks and came to the point where I felt i could just not take it any more. I decided to check into the mental ward. I heard a voice in my head say, “Wait until 7:00” That was quite some time away, to far away. I called my couselor, told her my plans. She gently said I could endure. I told what the voice had said. She said, “Well then, wait until 7:00” I waited, it was excriciating, but I waited. At 7:00 the state began to gently recede and I felt a gentle peace. I slept well for the first time in weeks. I don’t claim to understand this. But I learned patience and perseverance, and a trust in my God’s mercy.

Spirituality and Madness

2007-09-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

Spirituality and Madness

It begins, in me and in many other mentally ill people, with a heightening of the senses and a feeling of deeper insight and greater energy. Everything takes on a spiritual aura, depth and meaning, everything. I feel in touch with the very heartbeat of the universe and the voice of God speaks to me, converses with me constantly. I am able to predict the future. Everything I do has spiritual meaning and consequence. At first I have a sense of calm, peace and gentle euphoria. I begin to be the focus of reality. Every song on the radio (the good ones, that is) is about me, the weather revolves about me, I am in touch with all creatures and all people are my responsibility. I become the leading figure of my generation. In the last ten years I have twice become convinced I was female. My life as a man became the delusion. I am God’s emissary of creativity and good, the Holy Spirit within me castes out demons where e’er I go. The first few times I experienced this state, stressful circumstances pressed my reality into an evil cast. The universe turned dangerous and I along with it, though I did no harm. Every time I closed my eyes in sleep I awoke to find the world had had descended to a more decadent level, more evil. I cannot bear to be dangerous so anxiety mounts and I must find a way to cure the evil of myself and the universe to save the innocents. I consider suicide but God prevents me, guides me away from anything dangerous. I fail to save the universe, I lose control, I am incarcerated. There are many variations on this theme. If it comes on along with depression and stress there is no euphoria, only anxiety and despair. Beginning about ten years after my first psychotic break, or episode, I began to be able to manage the state to such a degree that I would remain in it for up to two years, avoiding the descent into evil but it always ended in some sort of crash. The voice, “the voice of God”, remained with me to a greater or lesser degree from about six months before my first episode (February 1986) until the present. It was only in mid 2006 that I finally decided this voice was definitely not the voice of God but I do maintain that God was with me, that I was in touch with spiritual realities along with the delusions.
Since I decided not to listen to the voice it has dissapated and now rarely intrudes into my thinking. I have been told it is not the typical schizophrenic voice as I do not hear it with my ears, it is a voice in my mind with a recognizable personality. I believe it has some connection with my first wife as much of the dysfunctional behavior it elicited were things she might do, tempered by my more compassionate nature. She was extremely abusive and controled me in every conceivable way for over a decade, the decade of my twenties, such a critical period. Toward the end of our time together this control took on a powerful spiritual dimension which quite simply drove me mad. When she finally released me I failed to deal with the years of abuse, I simply stuffed it all and built a new life as quickly as I could. After about eight years this new life began to unravel under the influence of this voice. I have since attempted to address those years in my writing and through counseling. I found there was an incredible reseviour of repressed anger which I have attempted to dissipate but her influence upon my life is immeasurable. There is something in me that loves her still.
Atypical voice aside, experiences such as mine are a very common phenomenon among the mentally ill, this spiritual cast to everything. It can be very confusing, overwhelming, resulting in all sorts of odd permutations of thought and behavior. It is so common because, I believe, there is indeed a spiritual dimension to everything. God inhabits the very fiber of the universe, sustains it and binds it together. In our “normal”, Post Modern Western existence we are shielded from this aspect of reality by the training of our culture and perhaps a chromosome or two. But when our brain chemistry becomes unbalanced this veil is either lifted or our senses are made attuned to this aspect of reality. In most cases we are eventually overwhelmed by it if it does not subside. Variations of the Messianic Complex are extremely common among the mentally ill. One feels as though one is somehow an extremely important and special person in the world, perhaps the most important, perhaps Christ himself. This is understandable in this state. You feel so close to God, he makes you feel like the most special, the most unique, the most important person there is. We forget that he feels that way about everybody else in the world, too. The spiritual experiences of the mentally ill are not entirely delusion, there is much that is real and true in them. But this gets lost in concerns about abnormal behavior and control issues.
There is within us all certain brain centers which have been found to be active during deep spiritual states. Research with yogi masters and others have revealed very specific types of brain activity in such states. I know of no such research on persons going through manic or psychotic episodes but since the religious experience engages specific brain centers in specific ways it seems possible these same brain centers and activities might be affected, the religious experience gone awry.
We here in the West are not far removed from times when the mad were thought to be possessed by demons. This view remains in some cultures and seems to still be in the back of the Western mind. I would say it is possible, it does happen, but this is not the root of mental illness. Mental illness is in general abnormal brain chemistry, derived from a combination of genetics and environmental factors. It is not, as seems the Western attitude, a defect in character. Most mentally ill people are gentle but tortured souls living lives of quiet desperation. Our world is aflame with conflicts arising largely from differing spiritual beliefs. Throughout history, as today, there has been much bloodshed in the name of religion. This is true madness.