The way I was raised did not leave me with a lot of skill for active listening. It was more hearing someone explain half of their feelings and then taking off on a tangent about how to fix things for them. It cost me everything in my life, but I’m hoping that since I once was lost, I now am found. I have a therapist because I’ve been ignoring myself at absolutely all costs. To the point that I didn’t care if I lived or died because I wasn’t important enough. These words are hard to hear, but they shouldn’t be. There are forces in my life bigger than me, akin to hearing a call from God and not knowing if that’s the voice you’re actually hearing or not.
I have wandered for days not knowing if I’m hearing God’s voice or not, so I’ve stopped looking up at the sky. Now, I stare down, a gardener to my core. It’s not a lack of belief in a God or source. It’s that God isn’t found in the moon. God is found in the mud. God is found when it’s raining and there’s shit on your boots. God is found when you’re the only one left. Because when you can only hear yourself think, there’s only one person that talks back.
We all need to claim these pieces of the divine for ourselves, letting blessings rain down on us depending on what we plant.
God is a polyface farm.
Depending on where you stand in terms of religion, that could mean you believe God chose your face intentionally.
Or you could be like me- that I believe everyone I meet is as precious as the historical Christ. That’s because the historical Christ did not ask for glory. We mistook his blessing and benediction as his direction.
In times like these, it helps to remember that the benediction was “forgive them, Father… they know not what they do.” It helps to remember that the disciples did not know what to do when Jesus died, my favorite line about this being that they should just rename the Book of Acts, “Holy Shit, What Do We Do Now?” I feel like that right now. Lost in a world of hurt, but not searching for the face I love. It is closer to me than a breath, we just do not connect in the same way.
- Rose was not the same companion to Ten that she was to Nine.
- Clara was not the same companion to Eleven that she was to Twelve.
- Most companions do not make the transition at all.
Most companions choose to leave when their Doctor does. They are frightened of regeneration energy and The Doctor’s “death.” But it’s only a death if you make it. The Bible commands me to ensure I treat everyone as if I was meeting Christ for the first time, not a mere mortal. I do not need a marketing campaign to tell me that Jesus was a spiritual teacher and healer. His gifts are in the lessons he taught while he was alive, the sincerest reason I haven’t worn a cross in at least 20 years. For me, there is no power in the blood. Power came through fishing. Jesus didn’t give anyone anything by being crucified. It was a needless murder by religious zealots who needed to ensure that Judaism stayed the same. This is true whether you believe in the resurrection or not. I am not here to argue with you; I won’t.
For instance, when Jesus said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s,” the thing that most people don’t notice about it is that he never touches the coin. To me, in some small sense the presidency stayed intact when our current president failed to touch the Bible during his swearing in ceremony. We should stop the practice altogether as a Christian nation who believes in the separation of church and state…. just like Jesus did.
We fight over things that don’t matter when we don’t believe Christ is in the room. For instance, no one would ever come up to the Christ, risen or otherwise, and say “you and your boyfriend aren’t welcome here.” But people have no problem saying it to other gay men they know.
Serious question. How do you know that you didn’t turn away the Christ, risen or otherwise?
Are you sure?
In looking at the Bible from a historical perspective, I have my own thoughts about it.
The Bible is:
- Not an authoritative text over my life, but an ancient blog at best.
- The authors of the Bible were not different from me, they were born at the right time to be included. I believe that I, or anyone else with the personality of a scribe, would have written about what they saw.
- The miracles have taken precedence over daily practical advice. People go to church on Sunday and forget what they’ve heard.
- Luckily, this has never happened to me. 😉
I choose to believe that Jesus is my brother, not Lord. I choose to believe that now, he’s my younger brother because I’ve outlived him by more years than I ever thought I would, frankly. But now my soul is settling. I have found a direction and not a distraction.
Right now, my only choice is active listening both to God and the faces who show up.
But every story has a shadow side, and I know it, too. Everything is what-if and assumptions, but I know for sure that I would not have had post-traumatic growth to the level I’ve had if I’d chosen to stay with Dana. If my friend Supergrover hadn’t appeared. If my mother hadn’t died. If my life hadn’t fallen apart so many times while I was stone cold sober… because when I came to DC I spent almost 10 years sober as a heart attack. As I read research into marijuana as medicine, I read with interest and bought a few stocks. But I did not consume again until it was federally legal due to a 2018 farm bill. I still had all the same problems and all the same quirks, so I knew that marijuana was not the problem. I was.
Then, Zac brought me a baseball cap and my life changed completely. Over time, the idea became that I should be able to buy my own. So, now even though MJ actually helped me with a few things, my direction in life will help me more. I, unlike a lot of people I’ve met in the disabled community, trust western medicine and my biggest problem has been solved. I do not know how or why my protocol changed, but it was. All of the sudden, the medication that was making me throw up all over the place was gone, and weed could leave. I didn’t need it to combat nausea on the train. I saw everything I wanted laid out before me, and I hope it still is. I don’t know whether I’m failing, or failing up.
What I do know is that I’m a Bloom, not a Stephen. When you are a disabled person, you often don’t see the ways that other people are helping you because you have to go through pain to make it work. No one will tell you, “I need you to endure this pain so we make it through together,” so you remain blind.
You see the dried blood after Jesus tells you to wipe the spit and mud off your eyes. And that’s the horror of it, really.
You never realized it was all for you, because you were blind. That part is intentional. No one wants to tell you how hard they’re working and you just have to pick it up on your own. I see pattern recognition backwards, and the pain waylays me. All the Things You Never Knew written by anyone else in my life would be volumes to me, not one blog entry.
I’ve slowed down. I may never work again, because I’ve been advised not to at this time. However, I am in therapy for it. I do not have a death sentence on my career, because Lanagan Media Group has gone silent in the chatroom, but not in the background. I just don’t tell everyone, everything, all the time. I have four friends, and that’s all I need. They are my family and I’d step in front of a bus for any one of them. However, I’m not dumb enough to name them because somebody might be offended they’re not on the list. The reason I’m not dumb enough is because my life is smaller out of necessity. Part of doing penance was wondering what would have happened if I’d just stayed quit from blogging and never started back up.
Words only have the power you ascribe to them, but it’s amazing how much power people ascribe to me. I didn’t write something, then you didn’t like it. I “made you” feel x or y.
I have accidentally hurt a lot of people, but their reaction is not my problem. My problem is how to bring people together instead of tearing them apart. It’s not because I’m trying to be a different person. It’s that PTSD has bloomed into growth and an author is not the same person every day. I don’t want the same character arc because now that my medical issues are solved and my physical problems are in process, I can focus on gratitude. When you leave a disabled person to just sit there in their own misery, they will.
That person was my mother. I didn’t find out that I had hypotonic cerebral palsy until I was in my 40s, but it had been diagnosed when I was 18 and one-half months old. She was not actively listening to me and my struggles because it was important to her for me to be perfect. And then I turned out queer.
I was never perfect, and I’m sure all of my words had an impact on her when she was still alive. But you know what she never did? She never actively listened and changed directions. I am guilty of the same with my own family, and I will atone for it over time. When you know better, you do better.
Because the thing is that you try to solve everyone else’s problems in hopes that they’ll notice your struggling and help you. You notice other people’s struggles to avoid your own. There are all kinds of reasons, but it’s not the kind of help people want or need. The kind of help people need is not for you to give them the moon, but to give them the mud. Respect is earned over time. If we’re meant to shoot the moon, it’ll happen by being equally yoked. That’s in every relationship everywhere, red or yellow.
And that’s what I’ve learned from Polyface Farms.
Stories That Are All True 