So, the Northern Lights are reluctant to make an appearance here, which means I will be doing the 10 book challenge I've been nominated for several times over. With the usual disclaimer that so many more than 10 books have changed my life, and in no particular order except the one in which they come to mind:
1. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan: it articulated so much about being a child of immigrants that I had felt, but had been unable to express. I couldn't put it down, I couldn't stop crying, and it may be time to re-read it.
2. A Wrinkle in Time and all related books by Madeleine L'Engle. To this day, I use Echthroi, Deepening, kairos and chronos to explain things. I was talking to a friend the other day about another friend I'm worried about, and I said, 'You know, he reminds me of Charles Wallace under IT.' L'Engle's theology helped me articulate mine, and I lost myself in her stories. I still do. And I still cry when Progo...oh, go read them!
3. Goddesses in Every Woman by Jean Shinoda Bolen. My introduction to archetypes and Jungian psychology. Need I say more?
4. Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. I got a copy in 2003 when a Catholic acquaintance was giving hers away. I owe her the deepest thanks: not only did it fill my love of fairy tales and my need for diving deep into the psyche, it was so beautifully written, it read like poetry. Bliss.
5. My Grandfather's Blessings (and its companion, Kitchen Table Wisdom) by Rachel Remen. H/T Alison Porter for this recommendation. Rachel's stories of her family, her practice, her life, entwined with her reflections on the deeper significance are absolutely soul-restoring, and food for spiritual hunger. She is one of my heroines, and I actually have 2 copies - one I lend and one that doesn't leave the house.
6. The Wizard of Oz & associated books: These were the first books I remember being able to completely lose myself in, to escape from here. The irony being, of course, that I collected the whole set because they were the books my uncle bribed me with so I wouldn't tell my parents about the sexual abuse. Several years later, he asked for him back, and I said, 'No.'
7. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: I discovered this on a bookshelf in my father's office when I was 11ish, saw it had been given to him by one of his brothers (NOT that one, but Ambereen and Saira's dad, whom I absolutely adore), and my curiosity was piqued. I took it upstairs to my bedroom and was immediately entranced. Even then, though I didn't have the depth of experience to fully understand and appreciate it, I knew I'd found MY spirituality, MY prophet - and his name wasn't Muhammad.
8. The White Dragon/Pern series by Anne McCaffrey: I found it in the Holton library when I was about 11, and it was the first Pern book I read (I later went back and read the series in order, along with the other trilogies I could get my hands on). I identified deeply with Jaxom and fell in love with Robinton - and later fiercely identified with Menolly in the Harper Hall trilogy (but I wanted to Impress a dragon!).
9. The Shack by William P. Young: Blew the doors off my understanding of G-d and the Trinity. My entire relationship with G-d shifted profoundly after reading that book, because I finally began to trust that I was loved. I have a hard copy, but I suspect it's one I'll want on my Kindle for easy access.
10. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh: I knew my parents had been through Partition - and for some reason, when I was young, I'd assumed it had been a very orderly transition, not recognising much of my parents' behaviour for what it was - the result of extreme trauma. It was only when I stumbled across a documentary here on Partition, sitting through it horrified, that I truly understood. A friend recommended Khushwant Singh's book - a gripping, harrowing read that made me finally understand what my parents had been through and why they were who they were.
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Friday, 16 May 2014
I grieve...
Since 4 May, I have been doing Desmond Tutu's Forgiveness Challenge. After Iyanla Vanzant's four weeks back in December, I thought this would be easy.
*Pauses to laugh hysterically*
The last fortnight has been among some of the toughest emotional work I've done, and that's on top of the last 6 months, which has been an emotional wringer on its own, kicking me out of my numbness into a perpetual ache in my solar plexus, where layer after layer of dark sticky fascia like material feels as if it is being ripped from my inside...sometimes it's just sore, sometimes it makes one want to bend over double - it's always there.
But I finally feel alive - and am beginning to feel so much clearer. To quote John Cougar Mellencamp, 'Hurts so good.' And so does this challenge, even when it knocks me for six through a poem, meditation or making me write down what's going on for me.
Today was the latter when, on day 13, I was asked what I grieve. I thought I might write a couple of things that encompassed everything else, keeping it abstract and at a safe distance, my natural way of defending myself from the pain and the overwhelming grief and sense of loss that followed.
The first part of the challenge was listening to an interview with Alanis Morrisette, and then she said these words that struck home:
As long as we hold on to the victim consciousness, the rage, and the blame, we don't have to feel grief. And the sensations somatically of grief in our body for a lot of us can be really uncomfortable. There are a few feelings. For some of us, anger is more tolerable than full-blown grief.
If I ever wondered why I was so angry, my answer was right there.
I started writing...and didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Everything I'd held in, pretended I didn't grieve, or pretended I'd gotten past, poured out into my diary. But I knew there was one more step. I had to speak it out loud.
Remember, I'm naming it and feeling it. I know I probably don't need to say it, but this needs the space held for it, so please, nothing about moving on, thinking positively, 'you can do something about it' or anything that gets me away from sitting with this. I've spent my whole life defending, being capable, and holding the space for others - now it's time to be with and honour my own vulnerability.
So here goes:
I grieve...
...that I never had ground under me
...that I never had a childhood and the carefree joy and silliness that goes with it
...never knowing the freedom in just being, which I still have trouble with
...never being safe in a pair of loving arms
...never holding my brother as a baby or bonding with him as he grew older
...never being able to rest in the certain knowledge of being safely held and unconditionally loved
...the loss of that which so many other children took for granted: love, security, affirmation, rootedness
...never being celebrated in the way this friend celebrates her daughter on graduation day: "Bittersweet today. I just can't believe how fast you grew into a beautiful young woman! I am so proud of you! And as I sit here with tears... I know you are destined for awesome things!!! I love you"
...never being deeply and truly known from the moment of my birth
...never being close to those whose blood runs through my veins
...the loss of that primal belonging to mother and family; for the sanctuary that belonging offers
...never having the freedom to explore my heart, my talents, my gifts, my body, to work out my shape and way of being as I became a woman
...the loss of the celebration of graduations, birthdays, days that were mine
...never having sense of endless possibility of the late teens, early 20s, the wanton freedom and the ability to let go and experience - clubbing, travelling, what I wanted to do because I didn't know - still don't sometimes - how not to be a spore rather than a seed
...the loss of being able to love with abandon, to give into lust, to explore what my body wanted and be with it. Why? Because with an uncle, I had learned that my body was for someone else's use. From my parents, I learned it was clumsy and something dirty, to be ashamed of
...not having that deep love and intimacy of a long-term relationship because of fear and because I can't believe that I could be loved like that
...feeling unloved for as long as I can remember
...the loss of the time spent fighting them for every precious second of freedom from their need to make me an extension of them, even as an adult
...I grieve. And in grieving, I heal...
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
*Pauses to laugh hysterically*
The last fortnight has been among some of the toughest emotional work I've done, and that's on top of the last 6 months, which has been an emotional wringer on its own, kicking me out of my numbness into a perpetual ache in my solar plexus, where layer after layer of dark sticky fascia like material feels as if it is being ripped from my inside...sometimes it's just sore, sometimes it makes one want to bend over double - it's always there.
But I finally feel alive - and am beginning to feel so much clearer. To quote John Cougar Mellencamp, 'Hurts so good.' And so does this challenge, even when it knocks me for six through a poem, meditation or making me write down what's going on for me.
Today was the latter when, on day 13, I was asked what I grieve. I thought I might write a couple of things that encompassed everything else, keeping it abstract and at a safe distance, my natural way of defending myself from the pain and the overwhelming grief and sense of loss that followed.
The first part of the challenge was listening to an interview with Alanis Morrisette, and then she said these words that struck home:
As long as we hold on to the victim consciousness, the rage, and the blame, we don't have to feel grief. And the sensations somatically of grief in our body for a lot of us can be really uncomfortable. There are a few feelings. For some of us, anger is more tolerable than full-blown grief.
If I ever wondered why I was so angry, my answer was right there.
I started writing...and didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Everything I'd held in, pretended I didn't grieve, or pretended I'd gotten past, poured out into my diary. But I knew there was one more step. I had to speak it out loud.
Remember, I'm naming it and feeling it. I know I probably don't need to say it, but this needs the space held for it, so please, nothing about moving on, thinking positively, 'you can do something about it' or anything that gets me away from sitting with this. I've spent my whole life defending, being capable, and holding the space for others - now it's time to be with and honour my own vulnerability.
So here goes:
I grieve...
...that I never had ground under me
...that I never had a childhood and the carefree joy and silliness that goes with it
...never knowing the freedom in just being, which I still have trouble with
...never being safe in a pair of loving arms
...never holding my brother as a baby or bonding with him as he grew older
...never being able to rest in the certain knowledge of being safely held and unconditionally loved
...the loss of that which so many other children took for granted: love, security, affirmation, rootedness
...never being celebrated in the way this friend celebrates her daughter on graduation day: "Bittersweet today. I just can't believe how fast you grew into a beautiful young woman! I am so proud of you! And as I sit here with tears... I know you are destined for awesome things!!! I love you"
...never being deeply and truly known from the moment of my birth
...never being close to those whose blood runs through my veins
...the loss of that primal belonging to mother and family; for the sanctuary that belonging offers
...never having the freedom to explore my heart, my talents, my gifts, my body, to work out my shape and way of being as I became a woman
...the loss of the celebration of graduations, birthdays, days that were mine
...never having sense of endless possibility of the late teens, early 20s, the wanton freedom and the ability to let go and experience - clubbing, travelling, what I wanted to do because I didn't know - still don't sometimes - how not to be a spore rather than a seed
...the loss of being able to love with abandon, to give into lust, to explore what my body wanted and be with it. Why? Because with an uncle, I had learned that my body was for someone else's use. From my parents, I learned it was clumsy and something dirty, to be ashamed of
...not having that deep love and intimacy of a long-term relationship because of fear and because I can't believe that I could be loved like that
...feeling unloved for as long as I can remember
...the loss of the time spent fighting them for every precious second of freedom from their need to make me an extension of them, even as an adult
...I grieve. And in grieving, I heal...
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
--Kahlil Gibran
...and feel the shoots of joy spring up from the seeds of sorrow.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Dream log: where I'm under a thresher, then in the next dream, forgive my father
Flora - our awesome cook for Wednesday lunches at work - was driving like a bat out of hell on Randolph Rd East near its intersection with New Hampshire - 2 minutes from the house in which I grew up. White-knuckled, grabbing the dashboard, I said, 'Flora. I know this road. It's narrow, it winds, and you can't take the turns THAT FAST.'
She, of course, ignored me.
Fortunately, she stopped off on the side of the road before I had a heart attack. The area near us was a vast field, and the sky was that unearthly, pearlescent yellow that harbingers a storm, with black clouds not far off. Coming towards us was a giant, post-apocalyptic looking machine, which turned out to be a thresher - we were too late to move fully out of the way. A friend (unknown IRL) said, 'The sides! Bend over double and go down the inside of the wheel! Following his instructions, I tucked myself tight to the left hand set of wheels (to my right, since we were going in the opposite direction) and turned to see a man underneath the machine who seemed to be guiding it in some way, walking so close to me we could have brushed shoulders - yet he seemed unaware of me.
Even bent over double, I felt a flat rectangular piece of machinery press into my back over and over, the pressure not quite unbearable, but so intense that I woke up feeling it press into my back one more time before I was fully in this reality...
...I cracked open an eye and blearily checked the clock. 5am. Argh. Tossing and turning finally led to falling into an uneasy doze, where I was suddenly with someone else and we were pinning things to the sides of of a peach posterboard cone. Both our fathers, with whom we'd had tremendously difficult relationships, had died, and we were pinning things up and stating reasons for why they might have been the way they were. The emotional tenor was intense, and it was almost as if their spirits were there.
Suddenly, she pinned up small star-shaped flowers that were glowing, translucent white, with yellow centres that were becoming an otherworldly gold, as she said to me: "He didn't do so well in this physical reality, but his soul loves you." I choked and sobbed, and woke up feeling that intensity of grief, understanding, and finally forgiveness.
The clarity, the spaciousness has stayed with me all day.
Oh, and I didn't know what the flowers were, so I looked them up - Star of Bethlehem. Symbolic in the obvious way, but also eerily appropriate in several others...
...dreams are powerful medicine.
Thursday, 17 April 2014
My G-d, my G-d, why hast thou forsaken me - a reflection on the fourth word of Christ from the Cross
Midway.
We are now midway through the Via Crucis, that most harrowing of
journeys, the point at which the reason for beginning a difficult journey can
feel so long forgotten, and at which the end is nowhere in sight. It is the
moment when looking back can show us how far we’ve come, give us a clearer idea
of where we are, and offer us the courage to go forward – in the words of
Caryll Houselander:
Now from the Cross, before his eyes are darkened, he can look back
down that road which is indeed an image of the road through life of all those
who will come after him.
He has known pain, exhaustion, apparent failure, shame; but it has not only been tragedy. He has known too the blessed dependence of a man upon other men; he has been helped by them and accepted their help; he has realised the joy and the light that comes to other men through helping him, above all through helping him to carry his cross. He has known compassion from the women he met on the way, compassion and the heroism it inspires – the women who blessed him openly with loud voices and Veronica who dared the mockery of the crowd and the authority of the armed guard to come close to him and wipe the tears and filth from his face.
He has known pain, exhaustion, apparent failure, shame; but it has not only been tragedy. He has known too the blessed dependence of a man upon other men; he has been helped by them and accepted their help; he has realised the joy and the light that comes to other men through helping him, above all through helping him to carry his cross. He has known compassion from the women he met on the way, compassion and the heroism it inspires – the women who blessed him openly with loud voices and Veronica who dared the mockery of the crowd and the authority of the armed guard to come close to him and wipe the tears and filth from his face.
He has known all these things and more in his Incarnation, and now
he comes to the final experience that brings him to full humanity: despair.
We’re not comfortable with the idea that our Lord should despair,
or feel darker emotions, such as rage or doubt. Look at how we glide over the
rawness of Gethsemane, the rage of the cleansing of the temple, the despair of
this moment.
Why? Because to acknowledge that G-d incarnate must descend into
the abyss means that we ourselves cannot avoid it, however much we hope that
our faith will allow us a spiritual bypass; however we weave our religion –
whether through ornate liturgy or relentless positivity and ‘goodness’ – to
create a neat, safe world and pretend that the darkness has no claim on us by
calling it 'sin', and ourselves, when we avoid it, 'good'.
But to claim that despair is a sin is to claim that Jesus sinned
on the cross. To claim that rage is a sin is to claim that Jesus sinned in the
temple. To claim that doubt is a sin is to claim that Jesus sinned in
Gethsemane. To deny the darkness that is part of us is to dishonour Our Lord –
because it is to say that His humanity was a lie.
But the truth is that when we deny the existence of our darkness,
claiming we feel none of it, it is our
humanity, our faith, that is the lie.
Because there is no truer moment than now – the moment Jesus hangs
on the cross in utter agony, midway through his harrowing journey, crying out
to the Father, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’
The emptiness. The desolation. The inability to trust what is to come,
to believe in what he has left behind, this descent into the abyss marks the
final moments of his Incarnation in which he has lived the full experience of
his people. He has laughed, he has grieved, he has been angry, he has loved, he
has comforted, he has doubted…
…but only now does he despair, feeling abandoned by G-d, and in
this moment, he has truly become fully human – truly felt as we have felt.
Because he despaired, falling all the way into the abyss, I was
not alone that desolate night I put one leg over an 8th floor balcony railing,
intending to swing the other over and fall into the car park below. You are not
alone in your darkness. Because Christ felt as we felt, NONE of us are EVER
alone.
He is with us in every joy, every sorrow, every ordinary moment.
And because he experienced them, because he has walked the road, he shows us
the way forward.
What does Jesus do in this moment of utter despair? He doesn’t
attempt to be what he thinks G-d wants him to be; he doesn’t try to suppress
his sense of abandonment; he doesn’t pretend to feel or be anything other than
he is. He DOES stay in relationship - He speaks to His Father: “My G-d, my G-d, why
hast thou forsaken me?” He brings his desolation to the Father, surrendering
it, and in so doing, allows it to be transformed.
As Houselander noted, Christ’s road is the road for all of us who
follow: when we allow ourselves to feel the darkness, giving it to G-d rather
than trying to hide it behind our backs because we think it’s ‘bad’, when we
admit we thirst and finally surrender, commending our spirit into G-d’s hands,
new life will follow.
But that new life will not be like our old one; it will be
something beyond our imagining, for acknowledging the darkness, risking the
descent, allowing the surrender bring great gifts that change us at the deepest
level. We may not know how, for that is part of the mystery, but we may get a
glimpse in this exhortation to Christ often sung on Palm Sunday:
Bow thy meek
head to mortal pain, then take, O G-d, thy power and reign.
Monday, 23 December 2013
The gift of giving into despair
Who’s telling the truth? Nearly everyone becomes a liar. Nearly everything becomes a betrayal. The journey of life becomes so insignificant that we seek only the dark — we dim our lights until we can no longer see. We can no longer feel...
This morning, after feeling balanced and open for months, the emotions I'd been holding in check to function - grief, the emotions that sit beneath being strong for others, soul-weariness - all came crashing down. I strongly suspect it's part of the forgiveness practice I'm working through: last night was 'Forgiving your feelings': so no surprise that, after decades of being marginalised, they decided to pour through the open door once it was cracked open.
Weeks ago, in a therapeutic discussion, I discovered that my core emotion wasn't anger, as I had thought, but despair. Today, that was what overwhelmed me. Finally, after years of fighting it, I did something different. I stayed still and let the tsunami engulf me.
And the oddest thing happened. As I went through my day, thinking 'It's all a lie,' I felt a profound sense of peace, even as I felt things I shouldn't:
I completely, irrevocably give up on them.
That friend will never be able to offer the emotional support I need, because they can't deal with my darkness.
She'll always play the victim even as she pretends not to; she's never going to change.
I actually believe that his part of this friendship is about needing me, not genuine affection and appreciation for who I am. I don't think he really sees or wants to see me. I'm done making the effort.
These people will always value status, money, and chase approval. Our core values will always be diametrically opposed. There's no point in engaging.
Why do I keep offering myself, my friendship, things that deeply matter to me to people who are utterly incapable of receiving it? WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?
He's always going to charm his way through life and never discover who he really is. And because this is a shallow world that values appearance over substance, that is going to be reinforced. What difference would reaching out make? I'll leave him to his long, slow, internal death.
I don't care.
They are only going to see what they want to see - why see a marriage, mother and child in trouble when you can pretend to see a perfect family?
I will never get any better - life will continue to be bleak, joyless, and living my purpose and passion will continue to elude me, as will the love and connection I want more than anything.
I don't belong here.
Nothing I do makes a difference.
So, why am I here?
And so on.
I felt the utter absence of hope. I let that be my truth; I acknowledged what was real. I didn't desperately scrabble for hope, thinking, 'I MUST hope, no matter what form it takes,' nor did I scrabble for faux Christmastide feelings; I left my hands by my sides. I let it overwhelm me.
It is still overwhelming me.
But I chose not to lie...and my usually sharp, blunt, German surrogate mum showed a surprising gentleness. My perpetually busy friend checked his motion and heard me, pulling me in for a quick hug that allowed for a much-needed lean against a safe shoulder - and was genuinely present, despite a hundred other things that needed doing.
These moments reminded me of Andrew Bunch's sermon at work's Wednesday chapel last week, when he spoke of the siege of Samaria and the nature of Advent hope. Advent hope, he said, comes when we are at the end of our rope - in the case of the siege, famine and women eating their children; that it often comes from those we despise - as it did from the lepers, who had nothing to lose and had taken the risk of entering the tents of the Syrian army, only to discover the siege broken; and that it is unexpected, miraculous, something we never could have expected - something that has room to happen because we haven't closed off possibilities by insisting that hope appear in a particular way.
I await that extraordinary hope, but I remember that, as today's preacher reminded us, whilst the experience is exceptional, often, the manner is ordinary. That moment when a friend checks his motion and holds the space. That moment when you steel yourself for an expected 'Well, dear, just carry on, these things pass,' and instead get an affectionate look, a finger brushing across your cheek and a gentle, 'You're going to be ok,' from an unexpected quarter. In a song that offers you the only prayer left right now: But I offer all I am for the mercy of Your plan - help me be strong. Help me BE. Help ME.
Suddenly, you realise that THIS time, you've actually changed enough that you WILL let G-d help, because THIS time, you've finally offered your consent to getting lost. Which means that you finally trust that babe in the manger enough to step into those outstretched arms and let Him bring you home, even if you can't feel His love just yet.
But you know that, as today's preacher noted, if you stay present to your life as it unfolds, the opportunities to love (and be loved by) G-d come over and over again. And if you stay present, you sense that in one of those encounters, just as you've finally consented to get lost, you'll finally feel - and truly know - you are loved.
Real hope - not the manufactured, even desperate, hope we scrabble for to avoid the dark night of the soul bearing down on us...
...that is the gift of giving into despair and the long dark night.
This morning, after feeling balanced and open for months, the emotions I'd been holding in check to function - grief, the emotions that sit beneath being strong for others, soul-weariness - all came crashing down. I strongly suspect it's part of the forgiveness practice I'm working through: last night was 'Forgiving your feelings': so no surprise that, after decades of being marginalised, they decided to pour through the open door once it was cracked open.
Weeks ago, in a therapeutic discussion, I discovered that my core emotion wasn't anger, as I had thought, but despair. Today, that was what overwhelmed me. Finally, after years of fighting it, I did something different. I stayed still and let the tsunami engulf me.
And the oddest thing happened. As I went through my day, thinking 'It's all a lie,' I felt a profound sense of peace, even as I felt things I shouldn't:
I completely, irrevocably give up on them.
That friend will never be able to offer the emotional support I need, because they can't deal with my darkness.
She'll always play the victim even as she pretends not to; she's never going to change.
I actually believe that his part of this friendship is about needing me, not genuine affection and appreciation for who I am. I don't think he really sees or wants to see me. I'm done making the effort.
These people will always value status, money, and chase approval. Our core values will always be diametrically opposed. There's no point in engaging.
Why do I keep offering myself, my friendship, things that deeply matter to me to people who are utterly incapable of receiving it? WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?
He's always going to charm his way through life and never discover who he really is. And because this is a shallow world that values appearance over substance, that is going to be reinforced. What difference would reaching out make? I'll leave him to his long, slow, internal death.
I don't care.
They are only going to see what they want to see - why see a marriage, mother and child in trouble when you can pretend to see a perfect family?
I will never get any better - life will continue to be bleak, joyless, and living my purpose and passion will continue to elude me, as will the love and connection I want more than anything.
I don't belong here.
Nothing I do makes a difference.
So, why am I here?
And so on.
I felt the utter absence of hope. I let that be my truth; I acknowledged what was real. I didn't desperately scrabble for hope, thinking, 'I MUST hope, no matter what form it takes,' nor did I scrabble for faux Christmastide feelings; I left my hands by my sides. I let it overwhelm me.
It is still overwhelming me.
But I chose not to lie...and my usually sharp, blunt, German surrogate mum showed a surprising gentleness. My perpetually busy friend checked his motion and heard me, pulling me in for a quick hug that allowed for a much-needed lean against a safe shoulder - and was genuinely present, despite a hundred other things that needed doing.
These moments reminded me of Andrew Bunch's sermon at work's Wednesday chapel last week, when he spoke of the siege of Samaria and the nature of Advent hope. Advent hope, he said, comes when we are at the end of our rope - in the case of the siege, famine and women eating their children; that it often comes from those we despise - as it did from the lepers, who had nothing to lose and had taken the risk of entering the tents of the Syrian army, only to discover the siege broken; and that it is unexpected, miraculous, something we never could have expected - something that has room to happen because we haven't closed off possibilities by insisting that hope appear in a particular way.
I await that extraordinary hope, but I remember that, as today's preacher reminded us, whilst the experience is exceptional, often, the manner is ordinary. That moment when a friend checks his motion and holds the space. That moment when you steel yourself for an expected 'Well, dear, just carry on, these things pass,' and instead get an affectionate look, a finger brushing across your cheek and a gentle, 'You're going to be ok,' from an unexpected quarter. In a song that offers you the only prayer left right now: But I offer all I am for the mercy of Your plan - help me be strong. Help me BE. Help ME.
Suddenly, you realise that THIS time, you've actually changed enough that you WILL let G-d help, because THIS time, you've finally offered your consent to getting lost. Which means that you finally trust that babe in the manger enough to step into those outstretched arms and let Him bring you home, even if you can't feel His love just yet.
But you know that, as today's preacher noted, if you stay present to your life as it unfolds, the opportunities to love (and be loved by) G-d come over and over again. And if you stay present, you sense that in one of those encounters, just as you've finally consented to get lost, you'll finally feel - and truly know - you are loved.
Real hope - not the manufactured, even desperate, hope we scrabble for to avoid the dark night of the soul bearing down on us...
...that is the gift of giving into despair and the long dark night.
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
Freedom, or, making sure (some) dreams don't come true
Dreams shouldn’t always come true, as we know. Sometimes, we can make sure they don’t.
Last night, a snippet of a long, involved dream had to do with a gorgeous, blue-patterned butterfly on top of a pool of water. I kept trying to rescue it before its wings got waterlogged, but suddenly it was camouflaged against a larger dress of the same pattern and I couldn’t find it. I searched desperately for it on the dress that was suddenly covering more than half the pool, catching glimpses of it being very still, then losing it. Finally, lifting the very heavy, wet dress out, I snapped it out in the air to release the butterfly. The susurration of wings from out of the dress made my heart lift, then I saw it was a grey owl, not the butterfly. I snapped out the dress again, just in case, but nothing.
With a heavy heart, I stepped out into a large garden as an announcement was being made about a close friend of mine. I can’t remember what it was, but I woke an instant later, a chest-wracking sob threatening to break out. It took a long time to be able to settle down to some semblance of dozing, which was all it was for the rest of the night.
I woke and showered, returning to a butterfly/moth (of a similar pattern to one in the office, who had appeared and hovered for days after my uncle died) fluttering wildly, trapped in the paper globe lampshade on the ceiling.
I sat down on my bed, in shock at the parallel to my dream. Then I committed – this would NOT end like the dream. I lifted the globe, trying to entice the butterfly out…no go. It would come as far as the bottom, creep around the edge cautiously, then go back to its panicked flying inside the globe. I laughed ruefully, the symbolism of how we stay in situations that imprison us, come to the edge of freedom and go back in to what we know, not lost on me. To quote Rachel Remen from My Grandfather’s blessings:
I was surprised: "But they were suffering, Grandpa. Why didn’t they want to go?"
My grandfather looked sad. “They knew how to suffer,” he told me. “They had done it for a long time and they were used to it. They did not know how to be free.”
I was shocked. “But what about the Promised Land, Grandpa? Wasn’t it true?”
“Yes, it was true, Neshume-le, but the choice people have to make is never between slavery and freedom. We will always have to choose between slavery and the unknown.”
And that butterfly, like us, at the edge of the unknown, chose slavery, again and again. One moment, when I saw its still silhouette through the lantern, my heart stopped, afraid that real life would end like last night’s dream.
I was damned if it would. I lifted the globe to disturb its torpor, and finally, enough to force it out, holding my hand against the opening at the bottom as it beat against me, desperate to return. Finally, it settled on the outside of the globe, climbing up. Once it was high enough not to be able to return too easily, I went and flicked off the light, then opened the curtains, making the grey dawn the brightest part of the room.
I stood by my bedroom door in the reluctantly lightening near-solstice morning, willing the butterfly to move, my heart lifting as it landed on the net curtain. I leapt across the room, pushing open my window, pulling down the net curtain to try to force it over the top. Resisting, the butterfly went sideways. I laughed, saying, ‘Trying to take down your defences too soon, am I? Ok, you lead.’
I waited, and when its tiny, insect leg brushed the top of the net curtain, I pulled the curtain down far more gently than the first time, coaxing rather than insisting – out of my own panic, my own need to change the ending of the dream – that it set itself free.
In the next instant it was on the window pane, a heartbeat later it flew out, finally free.
I choked back another sob, a happy one – suddenly realising what my deepest commitment was: freedom. Mine and others’. I may have often misunderstood what freedom is; my understanding of it continues to evolve and deepen, knowing it has as many faces as those who experience it, generated from the same bedrock of truth and love – and it is to fostering that freedom in all that my vocation lies: as a teacher, as a therapist, as the pastor I’ve always felt the calling to be, as the person I’m becoming.
For to be committed to freedom is to be committed to life truly and deeply lived, in whatever form that takes. L’chaim.
I often thought – and I suspect it was true, at first – that my passion for freedom came from growing up in a country that proclaimed it, in escaping a family that tried to enslave. And in the moments where I am fighting desperately, I still feel that. But even as I have known that my ways of being - my tendency to force things into the open; to use anger to transform; to speak out (rarely with the greatest of tact) in places where acting in was the norm; to push for depth and authenticity – that all these things were forged in a difficult family, I have also known that my passion for freedom was woven into every cell, was breathed into me by the G-d who knit me in the womb and called me by name. I have always known that it had a deeper purpose, and again, Rachel Remen – or rather, her grandfather, calls it by name:
“Why does G-d come Himself, Grandpa?”
“Ah, Neshume-le, many people have puzzled over this question and have thought many different things. What I think is that the struggle toward freedom is too important for G-d to leave to others. And this is so because only the people who become free can serve G-d’s holy purposes and restore the world. Only those who are not enslaved by something else can follow the goodness in them.”
That is why.
And though I may fight for it, push myself and others towards it, force the truth into the open, hold the space for others to find their way, it is G-d who comes down and leads – whether a butterfly finding its way out the window or someone leaving an abusive situation of many years’ standing.
Our nightmares need not define us – not every dream needs to come true.
That is the freedom to which we are called - and when we answer 'Yes,' choosing the unknown - to which we are led, by none other than G-d Himself.
Last night, a snippet of a long, involved dream had to do with a gorgeous, blue-patterned butterfly on top of a pool of water. I kept trying to rescue it before its wings got waterlogged, but suddenly it was camouflaged against a larger dress of the same pattern and I couldn’t find it. I searched desperately for it on the dress that was suddenly covering more than half the pool, catching glimpses of it being very still, then losing it. Finally, lifting the very heavy, wet dress out, I snapped it out in the air to release the butterfly. The susurration of wings from out of the dress made my heart lift, then I saw it was a grey owl, not the butterfly. I snapped out the dress again, just in case, but nothing.
With a heavy heart, I stepped out into a large garden as an announcement was being made about a close friend of mine. I can’t remember what it was, but I woke an instant later, a chest-wracking sob threatening to break out. It took a long time to be able to settle down to some semblance of dozing, which was all it was for the rest of the night.
I woke and showered, returning to a butterfly/moth (of a similar pattern to one in the office, who had appeared and hovered for days after my uncle died) fluttering wildly, trapped in the paper globe lampshade on the ceiling.
I sat down on my bed, in shock at the parallel to my dream. Then I committed – this would NOT end like the dream. I lifted the globe, trying to entice the butterfly out…no go. It would come as far as the bottom, creep around the edge cautiously, then go back to its panicked flying inside the globe. I laughed ruefully, the symbolism of how we stay in situations that imprison us, come to the edge of freedom and go back in to what we know, not lost on me. To quote Rachel Remen from My Grandfather’s blessings:
I was surprised: "But they were suffering, Grandpa. Why didn’t they want to go?"
My grandfather looked sad. “They knew how to suffer,” he told me. “They had done it for a long time and they were used to it. They did not know how to be free.”
I was shocked. “But what about the Promised Land, Grandpa? Wasn’t it true?”
“Yes, it was true, Neshume-le, but the choice people have to make is never between slavery and freedom. We will always have to choose between slavery and the unknown.”
And that butterfly, like us, at the edge of the unknown, chose slavery, again and again. One moment, when I saw its still silhouette through the lantern, my heart stopped, afraid that real life would end like last night’s dream.
I was damned if it would. I lifted the globe to disturb its torpor, and finally, enough to force it out, holding my hand against the opening at the bottom as it beat against me, desperate to return. Finally, it settled on the outside of the globe, climbing up. Once it was high enough not to be able to return too easily, I went and flicked off the light, then opened the curtains, making the grey dawn the brightest part of the room.
I stood by my bedroom door in the reluctantly lightening near-solstice morning, willing the butterfly to move, my heart lifting as it landed on the net curtain. I leapt across the room, pushing open my window, pulling down the net curtain to try to force it over the top. Resisting, the butterfly went sideways. I laughed, saying, ‘Trying to take down your defences too soon, am I? Ok, you lead.’
I waited, and when its tiny, insect leg brushed the top of the net curtain, I pulled the curtain down far more gently than the first time, coaxing rather than insisting – out of my own panic, my own need to change the ending of the dream – that it set itself free.
In the next instant it was on the window pane, a heartbeat later it flew out, finally free.
I choked back another sob, a happy one – suddenly realising what my deepest commitment was: freedom. Mine and others’. I may have often misunderstood what freedom is; my understanding of it continues to evolve and deepen, knowing it has as many faces as those who experience it, generated from the same bedrock of truth and love – and it is to fostering that freedom in all that my vocation lies: as a teacher, as a therapist, as the pastor I’ve always felt the calling to be, as the person I’m becoming.
For to be committed to freedom is to be committed to life truly and deeply lived, in whatever form that takes. L’chaim.
I often thought – and I suspect it was true, at first – that my passion for freedom came from growing up in a country that proclaimed it, in escaping a family that tried to enslave. And in the moments where I am fighting desperately, I still feel that. But even as I have known that my ways of being - my tendency to force things into the open; to use anger to transform; to speak out (rarely with the greatest of tact) in places where acting in was the norm; to push for depth and authenticity – that all these things were forged in a difficult family, I have also known that my passion for freedom was woven into every cell, was breathed into me by the G-d who knit me in the womb and called me by name. I have always known that it had a deeper purpose, and again, Rachel Remen – or rather, her grandfather, calls it by name:
“Why does G-d come Himself, Grandpa?”
“Ah, Neshume-le, many people have puzzled over this question and have thought many different things. What I think is that the struggle toward freedom is too important for G-d to leave to others. And this is so because only the people who become free can serve G-d’s holy purposes and restore the world. Only those who are not enslaved by something else can follow the goodness in them.”
That is why.
And though I may fight for it, push myself and others towards it, force the truth into the open, hold the space for others to find their way, it is G-d who comes down and leads – whether a butterfly finding its way out the window or someone leaving an abusive situation of many years’ standing.
Our nightmares need not define us – not every dream needs to come true.
That is the freedom to which we are called - and when we answer 'Yes,' choosing the unknown - to which we are led, by none other than G-d Himself.
Thursday, 5 December 2013
Monday, 4 November 2013
A letter to Lou on her anniversary
Dear Lou,
It’s been a long time.
So long, I’m not sure you’d recognise the girl - almost too young to be
working a suicide hotline, but already so very weary - you took under your wing.
But then again, maybe you would – because in that short time
our lives intersected, you played a huge part in the woman I became.
It’s hard to know where to start, you know? There’s so much
I want to say, so much I understand now that I didn’t then, so many questions I
want to ask that I didn’t then. But most of all, I want to give you the chance to shelter under my wings – the adult wings that can now
hold as much space as you need – needed – for as long as it takes.
I can’t give you – nor do you need – the shelter I can offer
now that I couldn’t then, because I had to grow into it. But I can sit with
you, on this day of your anniversary - much as Will and Lyra did in their
different worlds – and talk to you. I
hope that’s ok.
First of all, thank you. Thank you for being you – for being
there. For being able to see past the rage and for daring to stick your arm
through it to the hurting girl beneath. Thank you for listening, so often and
so completely – and without judgment. Your faith in me, in my ability to face
situations – both small and large – meant the world and made a universe of
difference to my life. Things got better
in small ways: I remember hearing your Carolina drawl behind me on that
December day, a little over a month after you died, after my biochem exam,
saying, “Good job. I’m so proud of you.” I got the highest grade in the class.
And because you trusted me to handle the small things, you made
it possible for me to go for the big ones: 3 months and 4 days after your
death, I moved out of my parents’ house, leaving them a note on the fridge.
Despite the struggle; the immense pressure from my parents
to move back home; the overwhelming depression that roared to the surface when
I was no longer constantly fighting my family and led me to put my leg over the
8th floor balcony railing one December night; my father ringing me
on my birthday and asking, ‘So, how are you paying your rent? Are you sleeping
with your male friends?’ – despite all that, it was the best decision I ever
made. My life truly became my own that day.
There are no words to thank you for being one of the
incredible, loving people who made it possible for me to make that choice.
But that’s not all there is to say – some things are darker,
more painful. Yet they need to be spoken aloud.
Never will I forget that Saturday morning, having arrived on
shift and hearing that one of the Child Protection line workers had committed
suicide; looking up in horrified curiosity asking, ‘Who?’ and hearing your
name. Even now, I can feel the full
physical agony, as if someone was ripping out the inside of my solar plexus,
and I want to scream all over again.
Yes, even now, the memory feels like this morning's.
The fury was like a wildfire through a forest that hadn’t
seen rain in years – rage at you for making the choice you did, then telling
the police officers who knocked at your door that you were fine, only to die
hours later; rage at myself for being someone who worked a suicide hotline but
hadn’t seen it in you; rage at G-d for letting you do this. I hated you so much. SO much.
I was absolutely functional within minutes: I did a full hotline shift; in the evening, it was off to parental friends for dinner – my parents had
no clue anything was wrong, and to this day they have no idea that I had a
friend who committed suicide. The price
was dear, but there was no way I was going to become the paralysed, incapable
of functioning, manipulative energy-sucker my mother became whenever a painful
situation arose.
I did it by being angry, as I still do occasionally when I
need emotional reserves I simply don’t have; I stoked my rage at you: I didn’t
go to your memorial service; I refused to grieve you; I imagined shouting, ‘WHY????
WHY????????? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU???????? SCREW YOU, BITCH!’ at you so many
times. Then I just wanted to pretend you never existed, had never found a way
into my heart, had never been, for far too brief a time, the mother I needed. I
wanted to gut your room in my heart and redecorate so I could pretend I’d never
been touched. After all, YOU took yourself out of my life, so *I* would make it
so you had never been in it.
But love wouldn’t have it: it was your voice I heard that
December day…and so many days after. Even now, sometimes.
Even now, echoes remain. I freak out during sustained
arguments: what if something happens before we resolve this? ‘Are you ok?’ litters
my vocabulary like kebabs on the pavement on a Saturday morning. Good friends
*have* to say goodbye before extended absences, or the panic squeezes my heart
till I can’t breathe, because I can’t forget the day I poked my head into your
room across the hall and didn’t hug you because you had your back to me,
cutting out a pattern – it didn’t matter because I was supposed to see you
again. I didn’t. My parents made me
exquisitely aware of subtext and emotional resonances, you honed my edge for
catching the leading edge of depression, of the slip into the suicidal. It was
from you I learned that depressed to suddenly
light of heart was not something to be relieved at; it was something to be terrified
of, something to interrogate.
Every last one of these is a scar, but every last one of
these is a gift: even if I'm absolutely certain I’m right, I’ll put my
hand out to reconcile; my friends know I want to know how they really are;
the people I love know I love them; and that therapeutic awareness means I’ve
asked the right questions more than once.
Out of darkness, light.
And what if you were here now, and we could just talk; or if
you’d been here all these years? Would we have stayed in touch, or would there
have been a natural letting go? Would we have become women who genuinely liked
each other and shared confidences, rather than a surrogate mother sheltering a
wayward chick?
I don’t know. But I know where I’ve been – and I can talk to
you about that.
Thirteen months after you died, I was where you were – and made
a different decision when the question ‘What right have you to take yourself
out of other people’s lives?’ came to/was asked of me. In that moment, I
remembered what it felt like when you took yourself out of mine, and knew I
couldn’t do it to anyone else, and pulled my leg back over that railing. So, a
second time, you made me own my life.
It wasn’t the only time – I’ve been there a number of times
since, though not so often in recent years.
I’ve always made the same decision, though I don’t know if I always will,
because sometimes bringing an end to that pain is so desperately tempting – we never know, do we? The moment I realised
that uncertainty about each time that – or any other – decision looms, I
understood.
And I let go – the one time, perhaps, I’ve truly forgiven (both
of us and G-d) but not forgotten.
The years since you’ve been gone haven’t always been easy,
though there have been many blessings, much laughter and incredibly wonderful
friends alongside the darker times spent struggling with inner demons that
created outer heartache and pain. So many things I’d loved to have discussed
with you: men, religion, life, some of my absolute clangers of decisions,
growing up…but above all, your life. Your experience. I’d have wanted to get to
know your heart, as you’d begun to know mine. And I think you’d have loved
visiting Oxford…so much older than antebellum Carolina ;-).
Oh Lou, you’ve been gone so much longer than the length of
time we knew each other, but I miss you so much. You taught me that 30 minutes
or 30 years doesn’t matter – love does.
I love you.
And I hope I’ve done you proud.
Fried chicken and pecan pie,
Me
Saturday, 2 November 2013
Dream log: Dragonflight
This afternoon, I went into hiding in my bedroom to read and reflect, but found myself passing out within 10 minutes (fortunately, I always set my alarm for 2 hours after I come upstairs for just that reason).
I am, as anyone who has read this blog is aware, a prolific and vivid dreamer. When I nap, I drop straight into very vivid dreams within seconds. This afternoon, they started with the mundane heading for the ridiculous until suddenly, I was dropping through the clouds. As I passed a white tower with an antenna, I thought, 'Oh, I'm dropping into Jo'burg! Okay.'
As I fell, I realised I was performing somewhere as part of a group - whether that was a conference, a speech, stand up comedy, who knows. As soon as my feet hit the ground in Jo'burg, I was off again, landing somewhere along the southern coast - on a stunning white sand beach with the ocean to my left, grassy dunes to my right, mountains in the distance and a small crowd behind me. As I began to run, I heard a friend's surprised voice behind me: 'What are YOU doing here?'
Without turning, I answered that I was there to perform with [group's name].
He responded, surprise and new respect colouring his voice, 'I didn't know you were one of them!'
'Yes, I am.' Grinning, so he'd hear the smile and the warmth/intended cheek, I continued, 'There's a lot you don't know. I'll see you tomorrow,' as I took off. It was bright daylight, but the sun had passed its zenith and was beginning to drop in the west.
At twilight, I found myself on a mountain, looking down at a breathtaking city cradled by mountains on one side and open to the ocean on the other, watching the lights come on, mesmerised - fully understanding Cape Town's reputation as one of the most beautiful places in the world. With glee and fierce exultation, because I could, I ran off that mountain and jumped, knowing I would fly. I soared above the city, revelling in the beauty below me, exquisitely aware of how I was working every air current - but I felt like me; I didn't know what I was. I went through various birds, but none felt right - my wings felt too large or the wrong shape.
I flew out over the water, hoping to catch my reflection. It wasn't till I flew back inland and over a large puddle (not quite a lake!) that I realised I was a dragon. Idly (and vainly, I suppose), I wondered what colour I was, and the answer came: 'You are the colour of sunset flame.' Of course. I flew at twilight; what other colour was there?
Finally, I reluctantly descended, landing near a cave where I would spend the night before going down into the city as a human for various appointments and the performance. Cosy and dry, it was crowded with dragons doing the same - essentially a dragon hostel. I asked one of autumn gold to move over so I could have a bit of room; he did so with alacrity and I curled up to sleep.
Then I woke up here, feeling my dragon shape melting off me.
(Shortly thereafter watching two shows with unexpected dragon references...)
I'll take another one of those, please...
I am, as anyone who has read this blog is aware, a prolific and vivid dreamer. When I nap, I drop straight into very vivid dreams within seconds. This afternoon, they started with the mundane heading for the ridiculous until suddenly, I was dropping through the clouds. As I passed a white tower with an antenna, I thought, 'Oh, I'm dropping into Jo'burg! Okay.'
As I fell, I realised I was performing somewhere as part of a group - whether that was a conference, a speech, stand up comedy, who knows. As soon as my feet hit the ground in Jo'burg, I was off again, landing somewhere along the southern coast - on a stunning white sand beach with the ocean to my left, grassy dunes to my right, mountains in the distance and a small crowd behind me. As I began to run, I heard a friend's surprised voice behind me: 'What are YOU doing here?'
Without turning, I answered that I was there to perform with [group's name].
He responded, surprise and new respect colouring his voice, 'I didn't know you were one of them!'
'Yes, I am.' Grinning, so he'd hear the smile and the warmth/intended cheek, I continued, 'There's a lot you don't know. I'll see you tomorrow,' as I took off. It was bright daylight, but the sun had passed its zenith and was beginning to drop in the west.
At twilight, I found myself on a mountain, looking down at a breathtaking city cradled by mountains on one side and open to the ocean on the other, watching the lights come on, mesmerised - fully understanding Cape Town's reputation as one of the most beautiful places in the world. With glee and fierce exultation, because I could, I ran off that mountain and jumped, knowing I would fly. I soared above the city, revelling in the beauty below me, exquisitely aware of how I was working every air current - but I felt like me; I didn't know what I was. I went through various birds, but none felt right - my wings felt too large or the wrong shape.
I flew out over the water, hoping to catch my reflection. It wasn't till I flew back inland and over a large puddle (not quite a lake!) that I realised I was a dragon. Idly (and vainly, I suppose), I wondered what colour I was, and the answer came: 'You are the colour of sunset flame.' Of course. I flew at twilight; what other colour was there?
Finally, I reluctantly descended, landing near a cave where I would spend the night before going down into the city as a human for various appointments and the performance. Cosy and dry, it was crowded with dragons doing the same - essentially a dragon hostel. I asked one of autumn gold to move over so I could have a bit of room; he did so with alacrity and I curled up to sleep.
Then I woke up here, feeling my dragon shape melting off me.
(Shortly thereafter watching two shows with unexpected dragon references...)
I'll take another one of those, please...
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Persephone, Ogboinba, Cybele, Oya: or, What Samhain can do for you, pt II
(If you missed Pt I, you'll want to start here.)
And fell for the longest time.
Persephone. Ogboinba. Cybele. Oya.
With the exception of Oya, who wasn't drawn, but jumped out of the deck, not a single one of those goddesses was mine.
Persephone was where it began. I sat back, curious to see how she had been interpreted:
Persephone, the Maiden. Find ways to use your innocence as your strength.She is for innocence, and you had yours taken from you much earlier than it should have been, and I think she is here to point out that you need to explore your relationship with that. But there's something else here, something about how you've felt towards that self, maybe? I'm not sure, but I get this feeling that she's here to point to an anger, or even something darker, that you feel to the part of yourself that is vulnerable.
Fuck. YES... I am SO angry. Yes, you're right. I've hated Persephone since I was a child, because she pranced around picking flowers doing girly shit FEELING SAFE and HA! LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO HER, SEE, YOU STUPID NAIVE BITCH???? And then she tried to trick her way out OF WHAT SHE DESERVED BECAUSE SHE WAS TOO STUPID TO KEEP AN EYE OUT. As far as I was concerned, she was weak. I wanted NO part of her in Jean Shinoda Bolen's book, NONE. SHE was weak. *I* was not. Fucking Kore.
And that's how I've felt about my vulnerability: not just ANGRY at it, but repelled by it. At some level, part of me thinks that vulnerable child got exactly what she deserved because she wasn't looking. Like Persephone.
[W]hat strikes me about innocence is that it is a NATURAL state. Like Cybele's wildness. And in my rage at my NATURAL innocence, twisting it into a reason for being abused, I cut myself off from my NATURE as a whole. That's why I don't know who I am outside this identity of helper; what my gifts are; what my intuition says for ME; why I'm not in touch with my wild side, as it were - why it's only the responsible, CONTROLLED side that shows.There's so much in my nature I'm not even aware of, such primal, passionate, wild side - Cybele, who Persephone really needs to grow into, not her more controlled mother (hence no Demeter in this reading, because she is very much part of my persona, and this reading is about who I REALLY am underneath it all, the parts I don't know).
In my vulnerability, my innocence, is my wildness - and my way. As Clarissa Pinkola-Estes put it, 'The wild has a vast integrity to it.' And that is what I have cut myself off from - and why I find it so hard to move.
And fell for the longest time.
Persephone. Ogboinba. Cybele. Oya.
With the exception of Oya, who wasn't drawn, but jumped out of the deck, not a single one of those goddesses was mine.
Persephone was where it began. I sat back, curious to see how she had been interpreted:
Persephone, the Maiden. Find ways to use your innocence as your strength.She is for innocence, and you had yours taken from you much earlier than it should have been, and I think she is here to point out that you need to explore your relationship with that. But there's something else here, something about how you've felt towards that self, maybe? I'm not sure, but I get this feeling that she's here to point to an anger, or even something darker, that you feel to the part of yourself that is vulnerable.
So easy. It would have been so easy to pull back from that, tell her she was wrong whilst acknowledging that 'Yes, I do need to tap into my innocence and vulnerability to be stronger as per Brene Brown, blah blah. Thank you for this, but I might be just a bit angry about it all, but really, I'm just fine.' *Good Mother Demeter airy handwave*
But to do that would have been to continue the lie, to deny the tidal wave of feeling emerging, to make the choice to continue my parents' work and remain disconnected from others. The time had come to make a different choice and speak the truth. But as it always is when I lose myself in writing, I'm never sure what that truth is till I read it back:
And that's how I've felt about my vulnerability: not just ANGRY at it, but repelled by it. At some level, part of me thinks that vulnerable child got exactly what she deserved because she wasn't looking. Like Persephone.
I typed out the full comment, not fully aware of what I was saying till I sat back and read it. Again. And again.
Horrified. Shaken. But finally knowing the truth:
I'd always blamed Persephone for her rape, because of her innocence, her freedom from care (which I equated with irresponsibility) and her lack of vigilance. And in the same way, I blamed the child I'd been, her vulnerability and lack of vigilance, for her parents' emotional abuse and her uncle's sexual abuse.
MY. MY PARENTS. MY UNCLE.
And yet, I'd rip the throat out of anyone who dared suggest that a child was in any way at fault for any abuse that befell them; that a woman was at fault for being raped. But somehow, it was ok to blame the child I was for not being stronger, more vigilant, for not acting.
I'm just starting to cope with that. As I continued in my comment, 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I knew it was bad, but.'
And in the moment I realised what I'd done, I finally understood the truth about innocence, which I'd conflated with naivete and wilful ignorance:
In my vulnerability, my innocence, is my wildness - and my way. As Clarissa Pinkola-Estes put it, 'The wild has a vast integrity to it.' And that is what I have cut myself off from - and why I find it so hard to move.
It is why I have never found this - which I desire more than anything - because to have that intimacy - emotionally, spiritually and sexually - one needs to be able to truly surrender, to truly let go - to become vulnerable and trust. To be wild, natural. And I can't. I'm not easily held, even - perhaps most especially - in the deepest pain and despair.
But perhaps yesterday made a start. Time will tell.
Persephone and Cybele, anchoring the reading because they were the overarching theme: innocence, nature, wild, integrity.
As my friend pointed out, we ALL start from the Kore. For me to deny the Kore, yet accept Persephone, Queen of Hades and conveyor of the dead, is to deny my process, my wholeness, and in the end, myself.
That should have been enough, might have been, but Ogboinba appeared in the reading. I had a hunch she would, and she has always been the one I'd rather not see. The short version of her story is that though her powers grew and she became the most sought-after healer and prophetess, she could not have children, and travelled seven kingdoms to seek a way to become able to bear a child and become a mother.
The warning against discontent is too close to the bone, as is the desire for children - both of these make her an apparently easy read when she shows up for me.
But as I fell into that literal reading, I felt an intense resistance. This wasn't right, and I knew it wasn't just avoidance. I sat with it for a while, asking Ogboinba what she wanted to say here. When the answer came, it shifted the ground under my feet, which will never be the same again:
I could see that [about the child], but I thought, 'Yeah, we know that about me. But this isn't quite about that.'
And then I realised - in this case, the child Ogboinba is looking for is ME. Me as a child who grew up in a happy family; me the undamaged child, the child who was allowed to BE a child. In essence, she is me, travelling over the world again and again, searching for that halcyon childhood I wanted so desperately, the only way I ever believed that I would find out who I was. Searching for the safety, the love, the time to become who I was, to have that group, those people who loved me unconditionally, in whom I could rest.
In my hands were all these gifts born in the crucible of my family - the ability to see, the ability to heal, the ability to know, the incredible strength, problem-solving, the empathy, the ability to use anger as a tool - my arms were overflowing with gifts.
But *I* wanted home. I was FURIOUS at having these gifts; furious that I would HAVE TO USE THEM, be a COMMODITY to the DIVINE, like I was a COMMODITY to my parents. I KNEW, when I asked you last night, that Ogboinba was going to show up; I knew it.
And when I read what you wrote about Ogboinba, this RAGE filled me; this UTTER FURY worthy of Oya. I thought, 'HOW DARE YOU. HOW DARE YOU DEMAND OF ME WHEN YOU GAVE ME *NOTHING*. NO PLACE TO REST, NO PLACE TO BE LOVED, NO SANCTUARY. HOW. FUCKING. DARE. YOU. I REFUSE. YOU *OWE* ME. WHY? WHY SHOULD I PUT MYSELF OUT FOR YOU?
"I WOULD HAVE GIVEN BACK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE GIFTS TO BE LOVED. TO FIND MY BESHERT AND BE MARRIED AND RAISE CHILDREN AND HAVE A QUIET LIFE. EVERY SINGLE ONE. BUT YOU GIVE ME NOTHING AND HAVE THE NERVE TO DEMAND SO FUCKING MUCH. I HATE YOU. I DON'T WANT THIS AND I WILL NOT USE IT OF MY OWN ACCORD. YOU WANT ME TO USE IT, YOU'LL HAVE TO FUCKING PULL IT OUT OF ME."
THAT, for me, is the essence of Ogboinba here. I want what I can never, ever get back; what I can never ever be. I hold all this given me, all that I've made out of it, but I want to be able to be that laughing little girl; that girl who walked into adulthood certain of love. That girl who grew up playing with fashion, clubbing, experimenting, loving college and forming lifelong friendships even through the angst. And I haven't seen that I've gotten so much, but not in the way I wanted.
Finally, finally, years after I should have done, I did what I tell everyone else they should do. I told G-d the truth, no holds barred - everything that was in my heart, everything raw and wild, not pre-processed and analysed in a neat little 'Yes, I know I'm upset about this, and this is why, so it's ok' package. It wasn't okay. It still ISN'T ok. It may NEVER be ok.
And then I realised - in this case, the child Ogboinba is looking for is ME. Me as a child who grew up in a happy family; me the undamaged child, the child who was allowed to BE a child. In essence, she is me, travelling over the world again and again, searching for that halcyon childhood I wanted so desperately, the only way I ever believed that I would find out who I was. Searching for the safety, the love, the time to become who I was, to have that group, those people who loved me unconditionally, in whom I could rest.
In my hands were all these gifts born in the crucible of my family - the ability to see, the ability to heal, the ability to know, the incredible strength, problem-solving, the empathy, the ability to use anger as a tool - my arms were overflowing with gifts.
But *I* wanted home. I was FURIOUS at having these gifts; furious that I would HAVE TO USE THEM, be a COMMODITY to the DIVINE, like I was a COMMODITY to my parents. I KNEW, when I asked you last night, that Ogboinba was going to show up; I knew it.
And when I read what you wrote about Ogboinba, this RAGE filled me; this UTTER FURY worthy of Oya. I thought, 'HOW DARE YOU. HOW DARE YOU DEMAND OF ME WHEN YOU GAVE ME *NOTHING*. NO PLACE TO REST, NO PLACE TO BE LOVED, NO SANCTUARY. HOW. FUCKING. DARE. YOU. I REFUSE. YOU *OWE* ME. WHY? WHY SHOULD I PUT MYSELF OUT FOR YOU?
"I WOULD HAVE GIVEN BACK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE GIFTS TO BE LOVED. TO FIND MY BESHERT AND BE MARRIED AND RAISE CHILDREN AND HAVE A QUIET LIFE. EVERY SINGLE ONE. BUT YOU GIVE ME NOTHING AND HAVE THE NERVE TO DEMAND SO FUCKING MUCH. I HATE YOU. I DON'T WANT THIS AND I WILL NOT USE IT OF MY OWN ACCORD. YOU WANT ME TO USE IT, YOU'LL HAVE TO FUCKING PULL IT OUT OF ME."
THAT, for me, is the essence of Ogboinba here. I want what I can never, ever get back; what I can never ever be. I hold all this given me, all that I've made out of it, but I want to be able to be that laughing little girl; that girl who walked into adulthood certain of love. That girl who grew up playing with fashion, clubbing, experimenting, loving college and forming lifelong friendships even through the angst. And I haven't seen that I've gotten so much, but not in the way I wanted.
Finally, finally, years after I should have done, I did what I tell everyone else they should do. I told G-d the truth, no holds barred - everything that was in my heart, everything raw and wild, not pre-processed and analysed in a neat little 'Yes, I know I'm upset about this, and this is why, so it's ok' package. It wasn't okay. It still ISN'T ok. It may NEVER be ok.
But you know what? That's ok.
Because as all that was ripped out - my solar plexus STILL feels sore - and released, something else took its place.
Connection. I finally FELT G-d. And I finally felt ME.
I did one more long overdue thing: I wept. I wept for the little girl I was, the one I wanted to be, the woman I'd wanted to become, the woman I am.
At long last, I was home.
The Samhain Prelude, or What Samhain can do for you, pt. I
I knew it was Samhain week. Really, I did. And I knew things were shifting. But I didn't expect to do much more than small adjustments. I mean, I know I'd been making a practice of every morning (yes, just in case I forgot to do it before I left the house, I have an Outlook reminder set) of saying a prayer - or several - akin to this beautiful one by Tosha Silver that I've tweaked a bit:
Dear G-d, take me over and do what You will with me.
I am Yours alone.
Just take me over and do what You will with me.
Leading you down into my core where I’ve become so numb
Without a soul, my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until You find it there and lead it back home
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
Frozen inside without Your touch
Without Your love, darling
Only You are the life among the dead
Dear G-d, take me over and do what You will with me.
I am Yours alone.
Just take me over and do what You will with me.
Fill the space between us. Make Me Yours.
Change me into One who surrenders to You and trusts in Your way for me.
You, who have numbered every hair on my head and called me in the womb, who from the body of my mother named my Name, You know me far better than I know myself; You know my true Way. Lead me. You lift my burdens. You know every longing and fear in my heart. You show the way even in the dark.
I am Yours.
You are Mine.
We are One.
All is well.
Change me into One who surrenders to You and trusts in Your way for me.
You, who have numbered every hair on my head and called me in the womb, who from the body of my mother named my Name, You know me far better than I know myself; You know my true Way. Lead me. You lift my burdens. You know every longing and fear in my heart. You show the way even in the dark.
I am Yours.
You are Mine.
We are One.
All is well.
Just needed to keep on keeping on with that and I could carry on in cruise control, give or take a few steering corrections, right?
Oh so wrong. Because when you ask G-d to change you, G-d's going to take you at your word and do it. His way, not yours. And if you're someone with a leaning towards Kali and with Oya as your orisha, it ain't going to be a walk in a pretty meadow on a halcyon summer day. I mean, as a Kali/Oya girl, why would I want that when I can have a stormy winter North Sea, Eyjafjallajökul or monsoon season, right? Oy vey.
I'd been saying that prayer for a week, people. A FREAKING WEEK.
Little did I know that when I gave a good friend the advice, 'Process your emotions, NOT events' (i.e., your feelings are where the truth is, processing events is being a gerbil on a wheel; you'll end up re-creating events that kick up the same feelings until you listen to what they have to say) that I'd be thrown into that crucible myself less than 72 hours later.
There had been signs that this was coming. The student who came up to me and introduce himself, and we ended up bonding intensely over not having talked to our parents (his father for 30 years, both of mine for 9) and the pain in that, no matter how close or distant you were. That I needed Hecate as my profile picture for the two weeks leading up to Samhain. That I needed more space; had even less tolerance for small talk; got home wanting to zone out, not talk. That fewer and fewer male friends could touch me without my flinching. The rising panic as I kept turning over 'I don't know who I am if I'm not taking care of someone. Who am I? What do I want? Am I ANYTHING outside of that?'
Without a soul, my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until You find it there and lead it back home
There may be trouble ahead would have been the warning; Evanescence's Bring me to life the soundtrack.
I'm a therapist. Signs like that should make me stop and listen. Friends telling me my energy was chaotic should have made me stop and listen. They didn't.
So Kali and Oya took things into their own hands.
Bring me to life
A therapeutic conversation about how my parents alternately idealised/demeaned me and moved to prevent me from genuinely and deeply connecting with anyone outside the immediate family (always the hallmark of a toxic/abusive group dynamic) started the ground shifting under my feet. I felt the tremors, prepared for the usual situations highlighting them to come up; made the choice to process with a couple of close friends.
One was what was expected.
The other friend surprised me when she said, Damn it, now I want to pull Goddesses for you.
My eyebrows went up. That WASN'T usual. We carried on chatting, and at the end of the conversation, I said, If you want to pull Goddesses for me at some point this week, I wouldn't be averse.
When I woke up in the morning, she'd done the reading. I waited till I got to work before reading it through, having expected the usual Demeter/Brigid/etc. goddesses that tend to qualify as 'mine'. You'd think I'd have learned by now.
Persephone. Ogboinba. Cybele. Oya.
As I read, I felt the winds whipping through, the surf rising, the storm coming. I looked for a hand to hold, for sanctuary, for shelter. From the conversation the night before, it was clear to me I couldn't ask the other friend to hold the space for what was coming, to hold the coming intensity. I frantically searched my inner circle for those who could hold the intensity, pull me up, those I could reach out to and dismissed the choices because of where they were in their own lives. Then I looked at where they would try to pull me into - a brightly lit room, warm, safe, calm...but tame. Status quo. And I knew the price was far too high to pay. There was only one choice.
Frozen inside without Your touch
Without Your love, darling
Only You are the life among the dead
Like Amy Lee, I let go of the hands of those who would pull me to safety - but only by holding me in place - and kicked back off the narrow ledge, falling into the abyss, trusting in the Unseen.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Reflections on grace and on finally getting the Prodigal Son
I hate seeing people who don't deserve things get them.
When I read that last Wednesday night, given the context (Miley Cyrus), I expected to agree and be exchanging ^5s, left, right and centre; with a big fat 'YEAHHHHHH!' Instead, I pulled back as if I'd been shot and thought, 'What a cold world it would be if we all got what we deserved.'
My inner dialogue continued, '[My favourite little one] doesn't DESERVE my love, but she has it. Does a baby 'deserve' to be cooed over, adored, fed, clothed? Does a violet 'deserve' the same amount of rain as an oak? Do any of us 'deserve' oxygen, the world's breathtaking beauty, a gorgeous sunset, a starlit night? The love of others, to be taken care of when we're ill? Have we *earned* it?'
No. But those are the things that make life worth living.
I grew up - I think many of us did - in a world where 'love' (read: approval, b/c it sure as fuck wasn't real love) was doled out in the tiniest amounts. An arm around my shoulder here for a good grade, a peaceful evening for a good report card, a word of praise if I was lucky. So I, like many others, grew up thinking of love as a scarce, precious resource, not to be 'wasted'. So much so, in fact, that when a friend sent me a long text thanking me for gifts I'd given her little ones, for loving them, I thought, 'NO! Don't waste that on ME!' Being loved like that, thanked like that, far more than *I* felt was warranted - or deserved, made me panic. I had no idea what to do with it, and it took talking to several friends - including a therapist - for me to able to accept it. Being loved like that might be what I want more than anything, but accepting it, acknowledging it to be real, with no strings attached, was something else again.
In the moment I pulled back at my friend's comment, I finally got the prodigal son. Giving the younger son his freedom and welcoming him back, no questions asked, when he chose unwisely and squandered that freedom - THAT was love. It's what we all so desperately want, but never dare hope for, and often, as I did with my friend's text, find ourselves unable to accept. That's why it makes us SO angry, because that lack - of either giving or receiving - hurts so much. We don't believe anyone - not even G-d - could love us so much for who we are, *that even our worst screw-ups don't matter*, that we can always come back to open arms. Love is shamelessly profligate.
But more than that, love gives us what we most need. The younger son needed to feel he was home and forgiven, in a way he could understand and accept, and that meant a feast. The father KNEW that. He also knew that his dutiful elder son didn't need a father's open hand, or a goat for him and his friends - to be whole and healed, he needed his father to challenge him to have an open heart - he needed to forgive his younger brother for going away and to let go of the resentment and rage that was his barrier to love. He needed to step into that feast to love and let himself be loved.
Because that's the thing about being dutiful, about being 'good', isn't it? It isn't about love, which is generous and open; it's about fear, which closes and constricts. 'Duty' and 'good' assume 'love' is that scarce resource to be 'earned', it's what we're chasing to finally get when we 'deserve' it. So when someone who hasn't been as dutiful 'gets' that love we so yearn for, we're beyond rage, because we feel it has been denied us - that we are rejected, unloved. But we're not chasing love, we're chasing approval, which is never, ever worth it - it will never become the love we need.
We so often portray the elder son as selfish, but he isn't: he's scared. He's terrified because he's made that colossal mistake we all make: he believes love is a finite resource, and that for one (his brother) to get love means that it is being taken away from someone else (him). He feels rejected, hurt, and betrayed, protecting himself by shutting himself in and everyone else out. But he's wrong. That his father can love his younger brother so deeply is a mark of how much he is capable of loving - and DOES love - his elder son. Not the same, of course, but equally, because love knows what we need, and we are deeply, wildly and wonderfully unique, needing to be loved in different ways.
Until the elder son sees the truth: that love is infinite, and the more love we give, the more we have to give, he'll be locked in a prison of his own rage and resentment, unable to walk into that feast of profligate love.
And that breaks my heart.
When I read that last Wednesday night, given the context (Miley Cyrus), I expected to agree and be exchanging ^5s, left, right and centre; with a big fat 'YEAHHHHHH!' Instead, I pulled back as if I'd been shot and thought, 'What a cold world it would be if we all got what we deserved.'
My inner dialogue continued, '[My favourite little one] doesn't DESERVE my love, but she has it. Does a baby 'deserve' to be cooed over, adored, fed, clothed? Does a violet 'deserve' the same amount of rain as an oak? Do any of us 'deserve' oxygen, the world's breathtaking beauty, a gorgeous sunset, a starlit night? The love of others, to be taken care of when we're ill? Have we *earned* it?'
No. But those are the things that make life worth living.
I grew up - I think many of us did - in a world where 'love' (read: approval, b/c it sure as fuck wasn't real love) was doled out in the tiniest amounts. An arm around my shoulder here for a good grade, a peaceful evening for a good report card, a word of praise if I was lucky. So I, like many others, grew up thinking of love as a scarce, precious resource, not to be 'wasted'. So much so, in fact, that when a friend sent me a long text thanking me for gifts I'd given her little ones, for loving them, I thought, 'NO! Don't waste that on ME!' Being loved like that, thanked like that, far more than *I* felt was warranted - or deserved, made me panic. I had no idea what to do with it, and it took talking to several friends - including a therapist - for me to able to accept it. Being loved like that might be what I want more than anything, but accepting it, acknowledging it to be real, with no strings attached, was something else again.
In the moment I pulled back at my friend's comment, I finally got the prodigal son. Giving the younger son his freedom and welcoming him back, no questions asked, when he chose unwisely and squandered that freedom - THAT was love. It's what we all so desperately want, but never dare hope for, and often, as I did with my friend's text, find ourselves unable to accept. That's why it makes us SO angry, because that lack - of either giving or receiving - hurts so much. We don't believe anyone - not even G-d - could love us so much for who we are, *that even our worst screw-ups don't matter*, that we can always come back to open arms. Love is shamelessly profligate.
But more than that, love gives us what we most need. The younger son needed to feel he was home and forgiven, in a way he could understand and accept, and that meant a feast. The father KNEW that. He also knew that his dutiful elder son didn't need a father's open hand, or a goat for him and his friends - to be whole and healed, he needed his father to challenge him to have an open heart - he needed to forgive his younger brother for going away and to let go of the resentment and rage that was his barrier to love. He needed to step into that feast to love and let himself be loved.
Because that's the thing about being dutiful, about being 'good', isn't it? It isn't about love, which is generous and open; it's about fear, which closes and constricts. 'Duty' and 'good' assume 'love' is that scarce resource to be 'earned', it's what we're chasing to finally get when we 'deserve' it. So when someone who hasn't been as dutiful 'gets' that love we so yearn for, we're beyond rage, because we feel it has been denied us - that we are rejected, unloved. But we're not chasing love, we're chasing approval, which is never, ever worth it - it will never become the love we need.
We so often portray the elder son as selfish, but he isn't: he's scared. He's terrified because he's made that colossal mistake we all make: he believes love is a finite resource, and that for one (his brother) to get love means that it is being taken away from someone else (him). He feels rejected, hurt, and betrayed, protecting himself by shutting himself in and everyone else out. But he's wrong. That his father can love his younger brother so deeply is a mark of how much he is capable of loving - and DOES love - his elder son. Not the same, of course, but equally, because love knows what we need, and we are deeply, wildly and wonderfully unique, needing to be loved in different ways.
Until the elder son sees the truth: that love is infinite, and the more love we give, the more we have to give, he'll be locked in a prison of his own rage and resentment, unable to walk into that feast of profligate love.
And that breaks my heart.
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Black and White
An example of how laterally my brain works: last night, something outside sounded like a bullfrog ==> so I posted on FB that he might be called Jeremiah ==> Three Dog Night ==> my favourite song by them.
In fact, one of my favourite songs of all time.
It was decades after desegregation that I first heard this as a child, and even then, I felt its power: I stayed stock-still to listen - and cried, falling in love with it years past its heyday.
I sang it as I watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison on television, wanting to ring it out over South Africa in joy and pride.
Today, after SCOTUS' Voting Rights Act decision of a few weeks ago, after Trayvon and George Zimmerman, even the furore around the biracial couple in the Cheerios advert, the sense of Martin Luther King's dream dying makes it even more powerful and poignant, especially as I learned today, whilst hunting it down, that the original 1954 version opened with this verse:
Their robes were black, Their heads were white,
The schoolhouse doors were closed so tight,
Nine judges all set down their names,
To end the years and years of shame.
The Warren Court. The Court I so desperately wish could have been immortal; and if not them, then the Burger Court that followed them, the Court of my childhood.
Three Dog Night dropped the verse - and why not? It was 18 years after Brown v Board of Education; 8 years after the Civil Rights Act. They thought we'd won. How wrong they were.
My heart hurt - I'm not sure how many more times it can break.
And just like that first time, the older me wept, for different reasons - for the hope in the song, the certainty we were going to be there soon, surely in the 28 years that would mark the millennium. They could never have imagined the SCOTUS decision in 2013 that would be so different from the 1954 one.
The world is black, the world is white, with so many of us so many shades in between. And together we learn to...do everything.
Perchance to dream that one day, all the colour of one's skin will mean to anyone is how much melanin it contains.
Thursday, 18 July 2013
An eldritch night
It wasn't even a Luther or a Hannibal night; my most exciting watching, to my everlasting, now public, shame, was Gypsy Sisters. Nor am I reading anything that would have forewarned me of a difficult night.
On coming to the end of Part 1 of William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise halfway through the midnight hour, I decided it was time for bed, having dozed through the last few pages. Sleep should have come almost immediately...
...when suddenly, the night changed. I heard the sound of something or someone scrabbling on the roof above the bathroom; the sound of something or someone on the porch roof below me. Someone's key was rattling in the door, though everyone was home. Outside, loud voices, a sense of something in the air. The night felt ominous, danger everywhere.
Suddenly, as I lay in my usual falling asleep position on my left side, I felt a hand - and at one point saw a shadow one - trying to grab my right upper arm and pull me over, which then became a whole community of hands from my upper arms to my legs trying to roll me over and off the bed. I may have spoken and said 'Stop,' but it didn't. As I struggled, I sensed a thunderstorm breaking; lightning seemed to flash through my room and I heard an echo of thunder.
The owners of the disembodied hands spoke; claiming to be specific friends, saying that I should just let go. The voices wove themselves into a dream where I told them they couldn't fool me; I know my friends' touches and my parents' (!) touch. Suddenly, the dream shifted, retaining the eldritch urgency of the night:
I was on a steep hill with three friends, all male: they were all sons of judges, mayors, etc., trying to help me: I was being chased for witchcraft. To be fair, I WAS a witch; I both Saw and used Magick; I think it was something I had Seen and spoken of that got me into trouble. The boys were further down the hill and slid into the surrounding bay. I dove from halfway up the hill, ending up near them. Though I was running to preserve my life, though the situation was urgent - I wasn't afraid; I was almost...exhilarated. My main concern was protecting the boys - who were members of the coven alongside me - and making sure they could remain members of the establishment, because their NOT doing so at this juncture meant a greater catastrophe than the one I'd spoken of to the community; the one that had led to this chase.
I saw the dream in double vision - one version where it just happened; the other version lucid, where I thought, 'Past life.' In THAT version, I turned as soon as I hit the water to see that one of the men was a real-life close friend, treading water, trapped into the holding position and prevented from swimming by his wet cotta. Our eyes held the other's, layered by the telepathic sending possible in the dream: his was full of...guilt for not doing more to help me and fear/loss as he thought, 'Oh my G-d, you're going away,' knowing he couldn't leave - not just yet anyway.
My gaze, my Sending, was reassuring, understanding, as I thought at him, 'It's okay. We'll find each other - this time [life] or the next. You know where I'm going,' as I submerged, pulled out of the cotta and swam, like a mermaid, through the underwater cave under the hill that only he knew about; leaving my cotta behind as evidence for the pursuers to think - and the 3 men to 'confirm' - that I'd drowned.
I started into wakefulness, heart pounding, gasping for air and safety, disoriented, into a far darker (it had only been 45 minutes) and utterly - almost preternaturally - calm night; into the deep stillness that only appears once a storm has passed.
I twitched my curtain and looked out to see that the ground was bone dry.
I picked up my phone and emailed one of my closest friends with everything I could remember of the dream until then. Less than a minute after I hit send, my gchat icon popped up with "Shit, are you okay?" I wasn't, but 20 lines later, I was soothed enough to successfully drift off into a night with no further incident.
I woke to a normal world, though eldritch echoes remain: far too many birds flapping behind our office, with one, unusually, playing with the lock on the shed. Normally, all one hears is the occasional stone dropping from above, but today, it's like a roost back there. I can't help but wonder if they are ravens.
Then my officemate noted, several hours later, that today felt 'unnaturally quiet'.
Clearly, eldritch is not quite ready to evaporate just yet. Watch this space.
On coming to the end of Part 1 of William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise halfway through the midnight hour, I decided it was time for bed, having dozed through the last few pages. Sleep should have come almost immediately...
...when suddenly, the night changed. I heard the sound of something or someone scrabbling on the roof above the bathroom; the sound of something or someone on the porch roof below me. Someone's key was rattling in the door, though everyone was home. Outside, loud voices, a sense of something in the air. The night felt ominous, danger everywhere.
Suddenly, as I lay in my usual falling asleep position on my left side, I felt a hand - and at one point saw a shadow one - trying to grab my right upper arm and pull me over, which then became a whole community of hands from my upper arms to my legs trying to roll me over and off the bed. I may have spoken and said 'Stop,' but it didn't. As I struggled, I sensed a thunderstorm breaking; lightning seemed to flash through my room and I heard an echo of thunder.
The owners of the disembodied hands spoke; claiming to be specific friends, saying that I should just let go. The voices wove themselves into a dream where I told them they couldn't fool me; I know my friends' touches and my parents' (!) touch. Suddenly, the dream shifted, retaining the eldritch urgency of the night:
I was on a steep hill with three friends, all male: they were all sons of judges, mayors, etc., trying to help me: I was being chased for witchcraft. To be fair, I WAS a witch; I both Saw and used Magick; I think it was something I had Seen and spoken of that got me into trouble. The boys were further down the hill and slid into the surrounding bay. I dove from halfway up the hill, ending up near them. Though I was running to preserve my life, though the situation was urgent - I wasn't afraid; I was almost...exhilarated. My main concern was protecting the boys - who were members of the coven alongside me - and making sure they could remain members of the establishment, because their NOT doing so at this juncture meant a greater catastrophe than the one I'd spoken of to the community; the one that had led to this chase.
I saw the dream in double vision - one version where it just happened; the other version lucid, where I thought, 'Past life.' In THAT version, I turned as soon as I hit the water to see that one of the men was a real-life close friend, treading water, trapped into the holding position and prevented from swimming by his wet cotta. Our eyes held the other's, layered by the telepathic sending possible in the dream: his was full of...guilt for not doing more to help me and fear/loss as he thought, 'Oh my G-d, you're going away,' knowing he couldn't leave - not just yet anyway.
My gaze, my Sending, was reassuring, understanding, as I thought at him, 'It's okay. We'll find each other - this time [life] or the next. You know where I'm going,' as I submerged, pulled out of the cotta and swam, like a mermaid, through the underwater cave under the hill that only he knew about; leaving my cotta behind as evidence for the pursuers to think - and the 3 men to 'confirm' - that I'd drowned.
I started into wakefulness, heart pounding, gasping for air and safety, disoriented, into a far darker (it had only been 45 minutes) and utterly - almost preternaturally - calm night; into the deep stillness that only appears once a storm has passed.
I twitched my curtain and looked out to see that the ground was bone dry.
I picked up my phone and emailed one of my closest friends with everything I could remember of the dream until then. Less than a minute after I hit send, my gchat icon popped up with "Shit, are you okay?" I wasn't, but 20 lines later, I was soothed enough to successfully drift off into a night with no further incident.
I woke to a normal world, though eldritch echoes remain: far too many birds flapping behind our office, with one, unusually, playing with the lock on the shed. Normally, all one hears is the occasional stone dropping from above, but today, it's like a roost back there. I can't help but wonder if they are ravens.
Then my officemate noted, several hours later, that today felt 'unnaturally quiet'.
Clearly, eldritch is not quite ready to evaporate just yet. Watch this space.
Monday, 17 June 2013
Where I parody Right Said Fred's greatest hit for ... altar servers
This morning (thanks to a friend who posted about 'St Elmo's Fire') was an 80s soundtrack to annual monitoring reports, emails, etc. Beginning with John Parr, it ended with Right Said Fred. For some reason, as I listened to Right Said Fred on loop, the thought of writing a paean to our altar servers took root and wouldn't let go. So with deepest apologies to the Fairbrass brothers, here is my humble offering:
I'm too pious for my Lord, too pious for my Lord
Lord’s going to leave me
I'm too sexy for my cotta, too sexy for my cotta
Could I be...any hotta
And I'm too sexy for Milan, too sexy for Milan
NY and the Vatican
I'm too rigid to cope with doubt
To deal with the unexpected
No way I'm problem-solving!
I'm a server, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn by the altar
Yeah by the altar, by the altar yeah
I do my little turn by the altar
I am such a little star, such a little star
Totes awesome by far
And I'm so in love with my lace
so in love with my lace - puts you plebs in your place
I'm a server, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn by the altar
Yeah by the altar, by the altar yeah
I shake the little bell by the altar
I'm too pious for my…
too sexy for my…
too awesome for my…
I'm a server, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn by the altar
Yeah by the altar, by the altar yeah
I swing my thurible by the altar
I know better than the MC, won’t listen to the MC
Who screwed up? Oh, that was ME!
I'm too pious for my Lord, too pious for my Lord
Lord’s going to leave me
And I'm too po-faced for this song
I'm too pious for my Lord, too pious for my Lord
Lord’s going to leave me
I'm too sexy for my cotta, too sexy for my cotta
Could I be...any hotta
And I'm too sexy for Milan, too sexy for Milan
NY and the Vatican
I'm too rigid to cope with doubt
To deal with the unexpected
No way I'm problem-solving!
I'm a server, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn by the altar
Yeah by the altar, by the altar yeah
I do my little turn by the altar
I am such a little star, such a little star
Totes awesome by far
And I'm so in love with my lace
so in love with my lace - puts you plebs in your place
I'm a server, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn by the altar
Yeah by the altar, by the altar yeah
I shake the little bell by the altar
I'm too pious for my…
too sexy for my…
too awesome for my…
I'm a server, you know what I mean
And I do my little turn by the altar
Yeah by the altar, by the altar yeah
I swing my thurible by the altar
I know better than the MC, won’t listen to the MC
Who screwed up? Oh, that was ME!
I'm too pious for my Lord, too pious for my Lord
Lord’s going to leave me
And I'm too po-faced for this song
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