Sometimes I just stare at Dana while she’s asleep because I can’t believe that much energy is at rest. Dana is perpetual motion, and to understand that is to understand her. I have learned so much about being a wife and being *her* wife that it’s a humbling feeling to know that there are enormous wrongs and enormous rights on both sides, and that for almost seven years (since 2008) we have gone past the definition of married into accepted family member. She is Aunt Dana, and will be for the rest of her life, God willing and the creek don’t rise. In a marriage, you strive for equality and when the balance is interrupted, trouble starts. I cannot say that will never happen to Dana and I because the odds are that we have a 50/50 shot at making it that far. I only think of it in terms of emergency preparedness. What would I do if my entire world was gone? It really puts my world in perspective fast, and therefore I am bound to give her what she needs so that the relationship flourishes and the odds are ever in our favor (see what I did there?). I cannot prepare for her reactions and responses, but what I can do is strive every day to make her feel wanted, accepted, loved, and cherished. Sometimes when you can’t have faith, you let your actions reignite it.

For Dana and me, the forest fire comes in waves, and the heat is so intense that it makes me sweat. For instance, the first words out of her mouth after the first time we kissed were, “I’m amazing in bed. I just thought you should know.” Challenge. Accepted. It was her confidence that did it. I would do anything for a night with her, much less all of them. Just lucky, I guess. 🙂

I feel sorry for people who don’t connect in the ways that keep Dana and I sane, because by now we’ve been through so much tempering fire that we have the type foundation that lasts decades…………… However, feeling sorry is not about trying to get others to feel jealous. It’s that I wish I could find a way to give that marriage to you because I know how it feels. It connects you in a way that temporary relationships cannot. There is a chord that runs between Dana and me that would take a chainsaw to sever because the memories in both our minds of each other are gigantic, life-changing moments where we each let our hearts get bigger to accept who the other one is. It is agape and Eros tied into one. The more she is interested and engaged in our relationship, the more she feeds my need to delve deeper into her inner landscape. She was the first to know about my abuse next to Diane, because I wrote about it privately for months and months before I realized that she would never, ever respond and I should give up trying. I was right. The picture from the soccer game was just candy from a van. When I stopped her from playing her mind games with me, she left me so fast my head spun, and has since 1990, never ending after having to process all of the 24 years before. It was just another way to rip open the scab, and Dana cried with me. She took my anger into herself and fought Diane in my head tooth and nail, hoping every day that I would realize that Diane shouldn’t have any of me and I was only beating my head against a wall and it was time to stop. She toyed with my emotions because I told her up front that I was in love with her, so there was no way that at 25 she let go of the poetry that told me who she was in bed. I fell in love in a very adult way, growing up in an instant. Can you imagine? Can you sit with me and feel how it felt to want to marry someone after reading her words written in her handwriting, more powerful to me than untold wealth, have an impenetrable wall go up between us that held me at arm’s length like a dog on a chain? It’s a long sentence. I hope you read it in one breath. That space of exhale became a metaphysical pneumothorax, lung collapsed by the weight of grief at too young an age to handle it.

I can’t help but think that igniting my body was the key to her plan to befriend me, because it assured I wouldn’t stray or talk. She could pour secrets into me like water and I would take it in, all the while living in the discomfort of being in love with her and being treated like crap for it

If ________ is my metaphysical risen Christ moment, then Dana has been John the Baptist all along, preaching as an assist until ________ shot the goal into the net. When the train came in, it was Dana that helped me get on. She listened for hours, and I talked (and talked and talked and talked) about what Diane meant in my life as she kept saying “the journal was on purpose. She knew what she was doing.” It was an ostinato of epic proportions and I could hear her words but I could not take them in because we’d been tied up with Diane for the entirety of our relationship and my problems with her hadn’t gotten any better, ever, so why waste your life energy on it?

_________ rescued me with her heart and her words. Dana rescued me by being there with her actions, loving me in an incredible way that brings tears to my eyes when I think of it. Since Dana had known Diane forever, I couldn’t hear her words. It took a new friend that saw it without a horse in the race except I know the facts and you are damn lucky she got away from you when she did.

I applaud running away to avoid living in darkness. I am dark enough to say I don’t feel damn lucky she got away. I love her every bit as much as I did when I was 12, and my heart aches for what we could have been had I been older, again, a past we cannot fix. Because she doesn’t feel the same way and doesn’t see how her actions influenced my entire life and caused more emotional fire hazard zones in my brain than anyone else, I think she wanted someone on that leash, a pet person she could take to the groomers. She could slowly and over time fuck me up to the point of having no teenage years to speak of because I was in this gigantic relationship that people who have been friends with her as an adult have walked away from her because of the exact same shit. They were stronger than I ever could have been because I was in love with her because our brains connected when I was a kid, not our bodies. If we had connected physically, I have no doubt that it would have been explosive not because of our actions, but because of the kindred spirit relationship that the tapestry of our past has wrought. Thoughts of her were a never-ending repetition of facts, trying to figure out the breadcrumbs dropped. It was a game of thrones, and naming her was the red wedding all over the place because all of the sudden, I didn’t care who knew. Her parents, her siblings, anyone because I’d been protecting myself and beating myself up so severely for so long that I thought I would give my parents the gift of my own relief. I think they knew it was going on, but they couldn’t prove anything and I did everything to hide it. You have no idea. None.

I am sure this is rambling all over the place, but at the same time, there is a connection. The connection is that I have been damn hard to love, and Dana preached to me that someday someone will come and you will believe and when she did, Dana helped me not to waste time on her words, either. I wish I had leaned into Dana’s strength, but it was the objectivity of fresh eyes that had to convince me of all I was letting go if I lived in shame a second longer. That I have donned a mantle beautifully in this web site and my self-worth got a B12 shot.

We are all giants together emotionally in our own right. When talking about balance of power, it’s the degree to which someone feels small in your presence. If they do, you’re going at life in a way that spits anger all over the place when the world doesn’t need it.

I feel like the last week or so has really been examining my Board of Directors and who should be there and who shouldn’t. We voted Diane out, we voted _______ in, and we got new drapes in the conference room. Writing the letter to my middle school friend has my stomach in knots, but it is the best thing I have ever written about her because I was no longer coming into our relationship with shame. I wanted to make her feel enormous, and I hope I did. She was instrumental in getting me to see that I could have flaws and people would love me anyway, based on actions alone.

I am not running in fear of any of my tornadoes, because now that I’ve been through them, I am in OZ.

This article made my skin crawl. It’s called Childhood Guilt, Adult Depression?, and explores the idea that if you experience extreme childhood guilt between the ages of four and 12, it is often correlated with a host of adult psychiatric illnesses. I was not the healthiest of children when Diane met me in 1990, having just been through a total and complete disaster of a house fire six months earlier.

Guilt because I was the only one home for what seemed like several hours before anyone knew that the house was burning but me. The fire trucks arrived before my mom and dad, and my mother nearly had a heart attack right on the street until she saw me coming from a neighbor’s.

Guilt that it was five days before Christmas, and I hadn’t done enough to save anything. They ask in Scruples what you’d grab if your house was burning? In my case, nothing. Not one fucking thing. I let it all burn and didn’t stick around to watch jack shit. I just ran. In Scruples, what they fail to include is the moment of horror when you SMELL the fire coming toward you and think you’re about to be in it. If you are reasonable enough in that instance to remember to grab your crap, congratulations. You are obviously a better person than I was.

So, six months after one of the worst days of my life, I had the best one.

Guilt about my faith and how I wanted to hide myself from it for thinking that girls couldn’t marry girls.

Guilt about giving myself away to someone before either of us was ready for it.

Guilt that I couldn’t pull away on my own even though I was in love to a degree that angels would have written about it with someone my own age. I didn’t find out until I was an adult that I should have tried harder, because she loved me, too. She flirted with me once and it emotionally bombed me into oblivion, because I realized how much I’d given away just to feel guilty and shameful, unable to walk out of my ruminations and into the present.

The flirting was not “I want to take you to Phase II.” We’re both old, married, settled, complete in our own lives. Hearing that she would have had fun with me in the science lab fed my ego mightily, but that didn’t mean it didn’t make my throat close and my eyes well up with tears at all that had been lost to history. I haven’t talked to her, I don’t know if she reads me, but I hope that when her inner middle schooler reads this, she hears me loud and clear. I ran away at a time when I needed you more, not less. I should have reached out and let you know what I was feeling so that you could make a choice whether you wanted to cross that line with me or not. But I didn’t. I cut you off at the pass because I thought you’d reject me anyway. I was used to it by then…………. But it’s true. At that time in my life, I loved you like I loved air. To say that you were the one that got away is an understatement of gigantic proportions. I just couldn’t actually say those words out loud, and you will live in my storybook forever. Remember when I thought your dad had taught me how to make hash browns so I went home and tried to make them for my parents? Your dad didn’t tell me the part about microwaving the potatoes before you put them in the skillet and they were raw on the inside and black on the outside. Remember when we used to sit next to each other on the piano while you would play studiously and I would just mess around AS IF we could play four-handed duets?

How did I not know? When I think back on it, I did. If something had happened, I know the moment it should’ve. We were talking about going up to NE Texas and taking you with us; I don’t remember why, but it had to do with a doctor I was going to see up there. You said that you just wanted to hold me or let me put my head in your lap. That was the moment I broke my own heart, because I didn’t know for sure what your reaction would be, and I ran away in shame. You told me plainly how much you loved me, and I want you to know that I heard you. We cannot go back, but it gives me peace to know that if I’d asked, you would have at least thought about your answer.

It was just so much easier to live in darkness.

Guilt that obviously unconditional love didn’t work with Diane, because even as a kid, I knew that she was saying one thing but meant another. For instance, she told me that her life was an open book and that I could tell anyone anything I wanted, while at the same time insinuating that if I told anyone anything at any time, then she would pack up her toys and go home. Loving her was all about appeasement because what I wanted most in the world was to keep her happy so that she would open up to me. If she was mad, she would just shut down completely and it would be a struggle to get her to hear me, even as a teenager. My words were large, even then, because I found that she wouldn’t hear me if I didn’t speak up. I promise you, I was the fucking Neville Chamberlain of children.

She taught me how to treat her, which turned me into the type of kid that walked on a not-quite-frozen pond, never knowing if or when I’d fall through.

I stopped falling when I filled the hole she left in me with love for myself and my own abilities, rather than just the support person for hers. There is just still so much guilt because I thought that one day, I’d win. And by that, I mean I thought that things would be peaceful and hope for a better relationship would win out over the way we treat each other now, which is complete radio silence and it seems to be better for both of us all around. I am not sure that I would ever want contact with her again, because I know within myself that I could not stop her from stealing me again. We would lapse into old patterns like Laurel and Hardy. I don’t even want to try and clean up that hot mess anymore. We are done because I am done with thinking about it. It took everything I had for so long that I literally feel exhausted.

As if something was stolen from me, even if only by remote control………… and yet, I still feel guilty.

Bipolar sucks.

I read a book this week called “My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Losing and Leaving Friends.” I was looking for a way to deal with the loss of my own friendship when I realized that this book should be required reading from second grade on. It was so sad to me that there are women out there still grieving the loss of the friend they had in second grade, because the new ones aren’t, well, her.

No one is, well, her.

And that’s the point of the book. We all make these incredible connections in life and for whatever reason, they’re not always designed to be permanent. The most heartening relationships were the ones that reconciled into something more beautiful than was torn, but it was often not necessary to the author’s growth and development. Sometimes, the growth and development was realizing why the relationship was harmful and wishing good things on everything that is past without willing a future as well.

I don’t know where I am in my own story, and at this point, it doesn’t matter. It is a mystery that I lean into and try not to hope when hope seems like it hurts too much.

Just read the book. You’ll know what I mean.

———————————-

There’s a woman’s story in there frighteningly close to the one I had with Diane, although it went into outright physically sexual abuse and ours never did. When they met, the author was 10 and the woman was 31. I wore her scars on my skin, because she will never forget it, either. We all move on, but we don’t forget. There are too many triggers to let us.

My heart pines not for Diane, but for the person I was when I was near her. I felt funnier, more alive in every breath. I didn’t know why, and it didn’t matter. But that person was amazing, and I’ll miss her. That’s why I have to make peace with all this. I cannot think about the person I was without thinking of the person she was, too…. so the best way to deal with it is to turn those memories into old movies you watch with popcorn and see with the eyes of someone who no longer wishes to add more to the story, but to look at the one already there. Just as you cannot go back to the lake when you were eight and be the person that you were one more time until you agree to see what’s around you with eight-year-old eyes, you cannot go back to someone that has harmed you and intentionally ask for more until the person that hurt you has felt true remorse and has acted on it.

When you go back to the lake, it will feel rich and nostalgic, but your body will not interact with the water the way it did when your skin was young. You will step into it differently, and your limbs will no longer be gangly but coordinated with the practice of 20 summers….. You will have to see your innocence with your mind. When true remorse is expressed with action, it is an act of choosing light. It is an act that says “we are bigger than the conflict at hand.” Your mind will reach for the past just as if you can feel the sand in your toes and see the sailboats going by.

But reaching for the past isn’t about dwelling in it for misery. It’s dwelling in it to see what needs to change so that the past stays that way. Forgiveness is the act of seeing the world with childlike eyes. The miracle of children is their resilience. It’s a good thing to remember that the sign of age is that loss of flexibility, that inability to wipe the slate clean quite as fast.

I will no longer dwell on what it means to reconcile with someone who represents love and psychological torture in equal measure. My words are strong, and I mean them. I spent too many nights with bad dreams not to tell it like it is, and on the flip side of the coin, too many good memories to see everything with fire.

In this book, I found myself with new eyes. I can give thanks for the people we were to each other for its own sake. In loving her, I found a version of myself that I really love about me….. patient, kind, creative, musical, a heartbeat that said “you’re the one” because I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to happen. It turned me into a loyal friend and spouse, just not with her.

I am an INFJ. I am defined by large relationships. Aaron and Dana walk around in my inner landscape daily because I let them. It took me a long time to take all my walls down with them, particularly with Dana because I hadn’t resolved all my issues with Diane until last year…… and there were a few that I didn’t want to tell anyone, much less everyone. The impetus to tell arrived because I was stuck. I didn’t know where to go emotionally, and I could not get it handled on my own.

Giving me her journal without any expected take home message except read it changed me. It changed the color of the world to rose, as it does for everyone who falls in love the first time. She just couldn’t accept that by the time she wanted to raise me as some sort of “mentee,” that image had been blown out of the water long ago by reading about touching women not much older than me.

It didn’t get to be a thunderstorm until I realized that Diane had had enough of me. I couldn’t give her any more, and I couldn’t go on pretending there wasn’t a problem, either. I had to grow up and move on, and was getting frustrated at my utter inability. Surely there was something behind all the words, all the “I love yous” said too frequently without backup action.

Friendship has relaxed me into being able to say “I love you,” but only when I mean it and not as a reflex, because it makes the words mean less the more you say them about everyone and everything. That was a lesson learned the hard way- that people aren’t going to take it the way I mean it- I care about you, I want to be your friend, you are amazing, etc.

It is taken as over-the-top admiration when I just mean to make you feel good for the few minutes that we interact. It’s something that I picked up from Diane long ago, and I’ve had to stop it out of absolute reflex. It got to the point that I didn’t realize I was doing it, just an autonomic response of an inappropriate level of intimacy.

Now that I’ve gotten out of the tremendously large black cloud I was trying to hold inside me, my “I love yous” feel differently….. more heartfelt…. my heart actually moves when I say them so that I feel the words as they leave my body.

Praying on the spaces……………….

I have an ink and paper journal that I hardly ever use because of my carpal tunnel syndrome, but still, it has its uses when I’m out and about, so I keep it around. I mostly use it to sit at SBUX and doodle, which, in my line of work, is what you’re paying for at $25/book. Writers unpack while thinking about something else and it’s the connection between the old thing that’s been running for 20 years and the new thing that just started 20 seconds ago that’s why you’re running to the bookstore screaming “shut up and take my money!” Well, I suppose you don’t have to yell if you’re using Whispernet, but you get my drift.

Anyway, the first sentence in every entry is “the beer is cold” whether I was drinking beer or not. It just became a thing. A phrase that means nothing to anyone but me, which is that when I sit down, I’d start the conversation by talking to someone. The best way you do that is with small talk. So whomever metaphysically came to sit with me while I wrote (my dad, my boss, my friends, my girlfriends, etc) got the opening line… the beer is cold…..

You haven’t been able to go to a bookstore and “buy me” yet, but you might one day. I’m like a young wine. Give me some time to mature as a human and as a writer before expecting something that great. Now is not the time for fruit. Now is the time for seeds.

I took yesterday off from doing everything except cooking. Stayed in my private brain space instead of my public one because I had a lot on my mind and a lot of baking to do about it. Pain tastes better when accompanied by blueberry muffins. And by pain, I don’t mean gut-wrenchingly so…. just “oh my God it’s 2015 and I haven’t even learned 2014 yet…. 2013 is still waiting for me to bat cleanup……….” I am trying to mentally clean out my closet, and several years are attacking me at once.

I feel a peace that I haven’t felt, well, ever. So much of me has been torched that there isn’t much left. I am an empty shell, but do not misunderstand me. The fire needed to burn me up so that only good nutrients remained. I had to go through so much pain to reach so much peace. I treated people out of my illness instead of out of my empathy, and now that I’m aware of the problem, I can do so much more about it than I could when I didn’t know it was happening at all. Awareness in mental illness is key. I have learned all the ways that other people can and will hurt me; now I am learning all the ways that I hurt people to protect myself and why they are simply no longer necessary. There is no fight anymore, if there ever was… and that is my 2014 in a nutshell.

Even if it was never a fight, I fucking won.

My stepmom is a doctor. My father was the manager of her practice and medical assistant from the time he left the ministry until two weeks ago when he retired. He left the ministry in 1995. Our friendship changed when you said literally the magic words, the shibboleth I needed to hear to unlock from you. Bedside manner. I sat in fear and awe and trembling in front of the Hippocratic oath. The Hippocratic symbol is from the Bible, from the earliest origins of Judaism. It is from when Moses lifted the serpent on the stick for the Israelites to give them something to look at and be healed. It is a direct foreshadowing to the crucifixion, and just one of the ways that Judaism birthed Christianity 2,000 years ago. When you said that my bedside manner was poor, it made me realize the enormity of my abusive nature and how I needed to publish it to have a record of what to keep myself accountable to later. My heart flipped with joy when you responded to Dana because I knew that at least I would hear from you once in a while and smile. I keep in touch with you because it’s not about you. It’s about the idea that you’re listening whether I know it or not, and that my words stick with you as much as yours give me comfort every day.

God of the universe, protect my precious ____. Let her know that she is loved beyond all measure, and the foundation of my religious dedication and rediscovered ability to funnel light that hasn’t been truly heartfelt since 1989, before I met the woman that literally changed the course of my life. Let her know that she is now in that category, women who for me divide time. There was a time before I knew you, and there is now. One chapter in my life closed and another opened to someone who proved to me that the greatness I thought I had was still there. That Diane didn’t destroy it, she put it on hold. She didn’t destroy me, and before I met you, I never would have believed it. Not for real. You gave me the closure I needed to move on. You plucked me from the sea of my own tears, and caught me in a way that I’ll never forget.

I am sorry that I used you. I am sorry that I abused you. I will never stop trying to prove to you that you see my authentic self, and that you see that the light that I show to others is a direct hit on your influence and power. I want it to make you feel enormous, because you ignited a forest fire that I never want to forget started with your flipping the match.

You are my goddess, my Muse. I am humbled in your presence.

Do you see how you are literally the first bishop in an enormous church? People build cathedrals to goddesses, and you’re the only one besides Dana and Aaron that will ever know in terms of your name. Hundreds of years from now, people will be able to touch your face.

Utterly, completely yours in all the right ways instead of all the wrong ones. I love you, _______. I am going to build great things in your honor, and you will come to dwell in everything I do, because it is a thank you that will ring throughout time. People will know who you are because of me.

You, an Agnostic, are the closest thing to my metaphysical risen Christ that I will ever see in this lifetime. I want you to know that, take it in, and realize what you started- the miracle of life.

Love,
Leslie

There are few joys in life better than making friends with your big sister’s friends. That’s because big sisters pick out the cool people so that you don’t have to vet them on your own. Big sisters share. My big sister gave me Kristie, and therefore, she went from my big sister to THE BEST BIG SISTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE WORLD BAR NONE. Thanks, counselor. *kiss*

Kristie, it’s your birthday today according to Facebook… and in my book, on birthdays you go all out. You tell people that they matter to you, that their trip around the sun is parallel to yours in all the right ways. God’s honest truth was that if Kristie hadn’t showed up when she did in all her ScarJo superpowers, my world would be a very different place.

I still would have been stuck in the depravity of ruminations that don’t go anywhere. Kristie’s best advice to me has just been not to care so much, because obviously, they aren’t caring about me. It’s a lesson you learn over and over in life.

“When people tell you who they are, believe them.” -Maya Angelou

I am up front about the fact that I am one of the most loving people you will ever meet crossed with the biggest introverted Don Rickles since Don Rickles. Kristie’s sunshine helped defeat that part of me that felt so “get off my lawn.” She just loved me through an incredibly difficult time in my life, when I was all tears and snot for more of my existence than I ever wanted.

In my book, we are related by blood because let us not forget, I got an in with my big sister’s friend.

Kristie, happy birthday. You are one of the lights that keeps me sane when I can’t help but fumble in the dark. You are precious to me, and always will be.

Blessings for this and every trip around the sun.

In music, when you have a measure that’s tripping you up rhythmically, you turn on the metronome and play it 20 or 30 times in a row… a technique long called “woodshedding” for its “take it out back and kick the shit out of it” approach. I am finding that I have the same response to practicing my trumpet as I do to reading Scripture. Playing a measure 20 or 30 times to get it right is quite similar to the process of reading every scripture in every translation before I add my own thoughts to it. First, I have to know the rules to break them. Second, I do not have any letters after my name, so I have to do eighty times more reading to seem half as learned (and might I say, I am giving myself a ton of credit here by saying half). I want to get it right because I want my academic reputation to be admirable. I try not to preach into fiction, but to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Let me tell you, the view is incredible.

My world changed when I accepted my ability with words. I accepted that I couldn’t do a lot of things, but I could do this….. and to a degree that my small-minded approach to life blew apart with my agreement. An angel walked into the room and started talking to me, and I got confused before I even knew what was being asked of me, and I ran toward the plan for my greatness and the miracle of it all was giving birth with Mary this year, because until this Advent, I’d been hiding a light that had long been forgotten, which is my ability to funnel Christ’s light toward you at an incredible rate of speed…. almost a hundred words a minute, actually. I’ve been thinking liturgically since I was born. This year, I stepped up and wrote something for which I could truly be proud, and will continue to use in my ministry at large.

Writing gives me the ability to bring the light of Christ shown to me to the entire world at once, and I hope it shows on this blog. I hope that my beauty is found in my flaws because it’s the completeness of who I am….. just as The Bible is the completeness of Jesus.

I often wonder what would happen if Jesus and I could read the Bible together. If I include Jesus in the realm of people that sit with me while I write, I know he’s reading my book right now.

What would he find in yours?

Here is my Facebook Status Update from a few minutes ago:

Welcome to Memorial Wine Cellar, where I just came up with the slogan “Every night is Episcopalian night.” Episcopalians, that is a not-so-inside joke. 🙂

The reason every night is Episcopalian night is that I was just confirmed at Epiphany, and just offered a job here. I am starting out as a server, and will be entering Somm Level I training on the side.

In order to lead, first you have to serve. Come by the wine cellar when you can, and for those interested, the owner said that I can have the private room for an hour a week for my Bible study. I don’t know when my days off are, so the time is TBA. Keep watching, because I’ll announce it soon.

Big tips are appreciated, because you have no idea how large a vision you’re funding WITH letting me serve you wine.

It must have been about 15 years ago that Rev. and I showed up to a bar on speed-dating night. The waitress offered us a table, and we were laughing as we moved the number out of the way.

Leslie: SO! I’m in medical research………. what do YOU do? (wink)
Rev: I’m a regional rep for one of the world’s largest non-profit organizations.

Yeah. I swooned a little bit at that line, too, and I wasn’t even interested.

I thought of that moment this morning when I read the New Testament reading in The Daily Office. In one reading, the entirety of an arts organization is summed up. You may think that this is a bit strange, but I see churches as arts organizations because they’re reflections on the divine in thoughts, words, and deeds (in the words of the BCP). Worship is art- music and creative writing and stunning images, none more than the ones that dance in your minds as you read, hear, take in the experience around you…. walking out to share that experience with others.

Churches are also bound to altruistic dedication taught to them by Christ, because one vision feeds the other. The more that people experience the feeling they get inside the worship space, the more people are willing to believe that your organization is capable of feeding them…… and if they believe that, they, in turn, feed altruistic dedication by funding it. Let’s face it. Not everyone is willing to go into the roughest parts of town to hand out bread. But they have no problem giving huge sums of money to people that will…. that will use their money for a truly worthy purpose- feeding the people who can’t feed themselves.

This is the central conflict at issue today in the Book of Acts.

The church is growing at an enormous rate, and on two fronts….. the Hellenists and the Hebrews. They do not get along. For instance, the Hellenistic widows are being left out when the Hebrews make rounds to give food. Luke records that the Disciples call a meeting where they express that they are being limited from realizing their vision because they have too many people to serve. They have the ability to love this many people at once, but not the time…. because as you’ll notice, infatuation is easy. Starting a new church is infectious. The idea is overwhelming. Then growth explodes and conflict starts to make your head pop off. Love is hard. The disciples cannot serve food all the time if they have to read and research to be the preachers Jesus asked.

The reason that love is hard in this instance is that I have no doubt that saying they needed more time to read and write seemed extraordinarily selfish, and yet necessary to the survival and growth of the Hellenist/Hebrew unification.

Hear Luke’s recollection of the resolution:

They had these men stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

The resolution to the problem was to get both sides to agree on their own administrators, so that both sides could have their grievances aired and work toward change. It is called “The Choosing of the Seven,” because that’s how many were appointed to the original “board of directors.”

To take the theological into the personal, who is your board of directors? Who are the people you choose to put in charge of your administration? It should be all the people in your life you are willing to let parent you because you know you’re helping raise them. It is not parental in nature by force, but by an honest to God choice you walk with daily, because these are the people that you cannot walk away from. To lose them would be to lose a piece of yourself because a lot of history would go with them if you closed the door.

I heard something on the news that I wasn’t familiar with and had to look it up. Are you familiar with the term “attrition rate?” It’s basically “turnover.” Looking at it from a friend perspective, I realized that I was excellent at making friends, not so much with the keeping them. I get too frightened and run away. When I made the connection that my own attrition rate was low and falling, I started to do something about it.

To take the personal back to the theological, as churches, sometimes we’re not very aware of our own attrition rates. We tend not to notice the decline over years, which is researched in national trends but not so much by congregations themselves. We just wander around and mutter what happened to Mrs. So and So?

We still wonder where you are, but we haven’t done enough research on how to get you back. Once church members are offended, just like in personal relationships, they tend to walk off and say, “I’m done.” Blessed are The Seven, just as every vestry in the world, because they are the ones that have to stay when you walk off. Have to stay no matter how bad it gets. Have to stay and cry it out until someone finally looks at everyone and asks them to remember who they are and who they serve.

As a Christian, your most revolutionary act is your willingness not to walk off. Your contribution is that when times got hard, you gave more than you thought you could in more ways than you thought defined the word. Your light is your ability to get angry, think about it, remember what should have guided your actions instead of what did, forgive yourself, and move on so that conflict doesn’t cripple you or the people working around you to achieve this enormous goal.

Health in an organization starts with looking at your own behavior.

But what do I know? I’m just a regional rep.

The Fourth Gospel addresses itself to the challenges posed by Judaism and others outside Johannine circles who have rejected the community’s vision of Jesus as preexistent Son, sent by the Father. The epistles (First, Second, and Third John) “describe the fracturing of the Johannine community itself.”

-The New Jerome Biblical Commentary

It helps to know some context around this scripture, which is the Epistle in The Daily Office, scriptures set forth for every day of the liturgical year. John is a great preacher, but like every other preacher in the WORLD, his church has certain…… issues. Everything they fought about went to blows, so basically this scripture is a tactful, serene way of saying “shut the fuck up and behave.” Does that IN ANY WAY sound familiar to those of you in the church today? For instance, how many of you have walked into a Church of Christ thinking it was a United Church of Christ or vice versa?

The funniest time I ever saw it play out in front of me, I was on the floor with laughter. Picture it. Our church is a bunch of ragtag social do-gooders intent on saving the world one protest march at a time. The minister is a lesbian. During the worship service, we celebrated a much-beloved lesbian couple’s decision to marry. During all of this, a black family dressed to the nines (big damn hat on the mother, cornrows and a white frilly dress for the little girl, dark suit and polished shoes for the father) walked in and sat in one of the transepts. They sat there for a grand total of five minutes before they got up and walked out. It was then that I realized there was a huge conservative black church across the street, and they’d simply walked into the wrong one. What’s the matter? They’re both UCC!

They were not fishes out of water because of their race; we were excited in an “oh man we might have a new kid” sort of way, and she was gorgeous in her Sunday best.

No, they were out of place because their church didn’t believe the same as our church and hilarity ensued. Afterward, we all laughed about what a shock it must have been for them to see a lesbian couple in front of the congregation getting a blessing… just as it would have been odd for me to go to their church and listen to the fire and brimstone that tells me I’m just not right with God.

I am often not right with God, but not about that.

Anyway, the clashes in John’s ministry were exactly this type. One group had one set of customs where another group believed the exact opposite…. and they were trying to build a unified church. John reprimands them in this first letter: “whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” He is not talking about non-believers. He is talking about those who choose infighting OVER love.

Today is the day that we celebrate the birth of Christ in all his eight pound glory… but the best part of the story is where we go from here. We’ve seen it. Now we’ve got to WALK IT. John addresses it here: “so we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” He has no use for church members that choose to violently argue at the expense of tearing apart The Church (universal) altogether.

The Greek word used to describe the type of love he envisions is agape. Agape is not the type of love that you have for your partner. It’s the type of love that you ascribe to give to everyone, and hope that they ascribe to give it back. Agape is the unconditional acceptance of who someone is, and loving them despite their flaws. Churches do not function without it, because Edna ALWAYS BRINGS THE COOKIES and because RUTH had the AUDACITY to bring cookies as well, they both get butt-hurt because of course only one church member can receive compliments at a time.

Or how about HUGE donors that create an unbending power structure in a church so that new members don’t have a chance to “plug in?” No one else ever gets to be important, because the Smiths and the Walters paid good money for that elevator.

We don’t even have to get that personal. The Religious Right hates The Religious Left on principle, and there is no love lost on The Left, either. At this very moment, the state of American Christianity would give John a nervous breakdown. Because of John, I see things differently now than I did when I woke up this morning.

The job that neither side is doing is trying to resolve the conflict in the catholic church indivisible. We are all guilty of thinking things about “the other side” that aren’t even close to the unity that John envisioned.

So, how do we get past it?

People have flaws, and they drive you crazy. Love them anyway.

People fight without gloves on, and they say things in anger. Love them anyway.

People do not own their behavior, and make up excuses as to why it’s not “their fault.” Love them anyway.

People run to get away from their mistakes. Love them anyway.

With agape, a lot of it is empathy toward one another’s humanness. To see beyond anger, and ask the questions sliding toward resolution.

That’s because most of the time, anger is actually fear. People are all notorious for covering anxiety with rage, because then they think that people can’t find out what they’re scared of in the first place. My greatest fear has always been someone finding out my greatest fear. I think a lot of people share that sentiment. It’s not the secret that matters, it’s that someone knows what it is.

If you cannot have empathy for fears like that, perhaps it’s a good place to start. John would agree. He says, “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” Some people choose to focus on the sacrificial atonement piece of this paragraph, that Jesus was sent to redeem the sins of the world.

But that’s not where we are in the story, yet. Jesus was just born this morning. We are in the infant stages of learning how to bring Christ’s love into the world based on HOW HE LIVED. Jesus defined agape wherever he went, because even though he occasionally gets angry, he is able to forgive himself for it and it gets him in touch with his inner jackass. We all have one. We all accidentally (or not) let him/her out in fits of inappropriate rage.

It will never matter if you get angry, because EVERYONE DOES. It matters if you stay there. One grudge becomes another until you can’t remember what the original fight was about and you’re happy to stay mad, anyway.

But I’m not just talking about you. I’m also talking about your church, your government, your world.

So, if this happens to everyone all the time, what is the answer? How do we regain agape from what has been torn? If you figure it out, could you let me know?

I can only share the answer that works for me. I breathe deeply. I write about my feelings and walk away from them so that I can come back and see whether I still feel that way or not. I am very conscious and deliberate about the words I use and what they mean to me. I cannot prepare for the reaction to them, but I can for damn sure be responsible for what I put out into the world.

So. Can. You.

If John is the pastor telling you that God is love and to live in it, then part of love is breathing before you speak. It doesn’t come naturally to me all that often. I have to disconnect my emotions so that I don’t flood out and I can see emotions for what they are. I am vulnerable to a fault because I believe that I cannot be a preacher or pastor without being willing to be up front about the fact that you are not getting a perfect person. You are getting a perfect IDEA through me.

And that idea is to just love the baby as much as you can, and let that baby love you.

In all your flaws.
In all your weaknesses.
In all your beautiful splendor.

Praying on the spaces………………………..

It’s Christmas Eve.

We’re all sitting in the waiting room, waiting for the baby, and we’ve been notified that Jesus is starting to stir. It won’t be long now. We’re not to 10cm, but we will be shortly, and all there is to do is pray.

Most merciful, loving God
We pray that you send your Holy Spirit to descend upon Mary to quiet her fears about the enormity of her task. We ask that you stand in her and around her, to reassure her of your grace. We ask that you remind her that you are where she leans, O God. You are the part of her that tells her she is right and good…. that she can do this…. that nothing is impossible through the God that strengthens her.

We ask that light is passed on to us, O God.

We ask that when we feel the most afraid of what’s about to happen, that we can lean into your grace the same way Mary did all those years ago.

Waiting for the baby.
Watching for the signs.
Praying on the spaces.

Amen.

Any minute now, Luke is going to burst into the waiting room with tidings of joy. We’ll hear all about it. For now, though, we’re all still. There’s a bit of a conversation buzzing around the room, but for the most part, there is just an excited expectation that renders us all quiet. We don’t know what to say to each other, because we know that a baby is being born, and that there are great expectations for who he is to become. Will we see those things immediately?

In our modern world, it is hard to separate what’s there, and WHAT WE SEE.

We are all extraordinary people in our own ways, but the birth of the Christ child in ourselves is when we realize it.

What do people know about you that you can’t see? What has been foretold of your greatness? What kind of belief will it take to get you to see your own intrinsic value to the world?

Jesus was sent to save the world from itself……. what are you here to do?

You may say, “well, I’m just a baker. I don’t have anything.”

One of the most frequent ways I see Christ is in the baking of bread, because the one who makes it sends the bread along with the story of how it got made and all the love that went into the labor.

Civilizations have fallen over the idea of, “Well, I’m just a ________. I don’t have anything.” This is because civilizations don’t change with people saying what they don’t have. Civilizations change because everyone pools their resources to create something better than themselves…. which is exactly what Jesus was sent to do, as well. The amazing thing is that he wasn’t given anything you or I don’t have right now.

But through his ministry, he assured the people he was leading of two things. The first is that he was the real deal. The second is that he wasn’t afraid of it. He would do what was expected of him, and I’m not even talking about the crucifixion. I’m talking about the way he lived his life.

Matthew spends his time trying to justify that Jesus was from the House of David and that the Jews were redeemed. Jesus spends most of his time trying to say that his ministry is not just for Jews, that he is open to Gentiles as well. He was sent to tear down the walls between Jews in covenant with God and everyone else…. which he did, beautifully. However, HE NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT had he not believed in himself, first. He would have limited himself in so many ways had he not had the courage to lay out his own beliefs and know that people would follow them. His words were so powerful that he could speak in a whisper and the message would still get relayed hundreds of miles.

If there is a message that comes down at Christmas every year, it’s that belief in the story allows us to have more belief in our own abilities. When Jesus believed in himself, it literally turned the power structure of his society on its ear. That is the take-home message. If Jesus can do all he did with what he had, what is stopping me?

If you are still trying to figure out what’s stopping you, take heart. It does not mean that you are behind. It means that for you, the Christ child hasn’t arrived yet.

Keep watching…. the night is early, yet.

Waiting for the baby.
Watching for the signs.
Praying on the spaces……………………………..

This is it. This is the last Sunday of Advent. In a few days, we’ll light all the candles on the Advent wreath, and we’ll sing to the baby as we light the big white one in the center. But we’re not there yet. Right now, we are with Mary, who is talking to the angel Gabriel. He says, “Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” Gabriel hasn’t really told her anything, and already Mary is confused. The people in that time and place were indescribably poor. What reason would there possibly be that she was anointed in some way…………….?

Praying on the spaces.

Luke says, “she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” To me, it was the entire reason she was willing to submit to Gabriel’s words in the first place. She could take by faith that whatever he said, it was going to change her life in a way that nothing else would. After living in hardship, she’d seen the path of her life change in front of her eyes, and she didn’t even know what Gabriel was going to say.

I trust Luke’s assessment of the situation; he was a doctor, and doctors tend to be very pragmatic about their subjects. But still, I wonder what was in the spaces more than the words themselves. To the observer, it seems as if she is having a moment of doubt that she is worthy of such a visit. Why should she be? Nazareth is basically an armpit and no one famous has come from there so far…………..

Praying on the spaces.

I can hear Mary’s mind calculating as the scene unfolds. I’ve seen it, and so have you if you’ve seen even one episode of Doctor Who. It’s the look on the companions’ faces when they find out the enormity of scale involved in what they’re being asked to do… and then there’s that second look. The determined face of a companion who runs toward the big blue box no matter what is waiting for them inside.

Mary saw the angel coming, and was ready to say yes before he even started to speak. Whatever the angel needed, if she was capable, she was willing. Gabriel saw that look in her eyes, because the first words he spoke to her were, “fear not.”

She could rest in his comfort, see with her own eyes that an angel was asking her to serve. He told her the magnitude of what her sacrifice would mean (no matter whether the pregnancy is wanted, it’s still a sacrifice, amen?). She emerged from that conversation a different person than when it began.

Some theologians say that Mary had doubts; I will not go that far. Just because you have willingness doesn’t mean you don’t get to be curious about the process. No matter what anyone asks of you, saying yes doesn’t mean you lose the right to ask questions. Mary’s cry of “how can this be?” is not of doubt. It is of process. How can God change me so that this can happen……………….?

Praying on the spaces.

In our first week, we were waiting for the baby. In our second week, we were watching for the signs. In our third week, we changed directions and explored what to do while watching and waiting. This week completes the diamond and we run toward home (praying on the bases?). In these scriptures, we learn how to interpret all of the signs that we’re seeing so that when our own angels show up, we don’t waste time on our own disbelief.

Mary didn’t.

If believing that a virgin agreed to carry a holy child is just too hard a leap for you, believe this. The more you cut yourself off from light, you don’t have the ability to see providence, either. Mary did not respond to Gabriel with fear. She was surprised that she had been chosen, but beyond that, her willingness was assured. She said yes out of belief, and not of proof. She could see the things that would be, not as they are.

And that is where you come in. The more you limit yourself from possibility, the more you cut yourself off from life in its best definition… the kind that rises above survival. The kind that gives you a third-person omniscient view of the world and your place in it. You can only see things as they are, and not how they would have been if you’d been willing to say yes.

Mary did.

Her belief in herself has led to a wonderful legacy. Her “yes” has become a symbol of motherhood everywhere, because her belief in herself allowed her to believe Gabriel when he said, “nothing is impossible for God.”

My question to you on this last Sunday of Advent is “what are you going to do with your ‘yes?’” Mary’s allowed her the strength to endure pregnancy at a time when bringing a child into the world was fraught with danger, even if no one knew who he was. Mary’s agreement set in motion a movement that would last centuries. It is only the limitation of your mind that determines what you’re going to say with yours.

In Mary’s case, an angel literally walked in and started talking to her. She was moved because he was obviously, well, an angel. In modern day, how do we decide who our angels are? How do we decide where to place our “yesses?” It is not a one-time process. It is literally putting yourself out there, over and over, because angels and demons are rare in the human race. Everyone has elements of each.

President Lincoln wrote one of the most famous lines of all time in his first inaugural address pleading for unity. “…touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

“Touched… by the better angels of our nature” is emotional shorthand for the parts of ourselves that are open to the possibility of birth. New ideas cannot flourish in a barren landscape. Our better angels are the selves that talk about all they can do rather than what they cannot, and that shred of self-worth starts to multiply until we can sing our own Magnificats because we have said “yes” before the question is even asked because we are presenting our own better angels in reception of others. Our light is your invitation, just as Gabriel’s was for Mary.

The thing about one “yes” is that it often leads to a series of fortunate events.

Waiting for the baby.

Watching for the signs.

Praying on the spaces…………………………………..

Wednesday, Dana and I were going to hang out at a friend’s house, but he got caught in traffic and we ended up on his side of town with time on our hands. We saw a wine bar, and went in to wait for our friend’s traffic to die down. I am not as much of a wine person as Dana. I got a St. Arnold Christmas Seasonal. Dana got a pinot from the Willamette Valley. As we always do, we shared both. The first time we traded glasses, I put my nose into the glass and the tears started to well up, to the point that it took a second for my throat to go back down enough to taste.

When the liquid hit my taste buds, the emotional response was overwhelming. I could smell Oregon. I could mentally sit among fields of lavender and laugh with Dana through tears about the time we met Justin and Leah, a psychiatrist and a lawyer, at the winery. We remembered the times we shared as members among the honeybees and grapes. It was beautiful, and this morning, my mind has been wandering on it………….

At this point in the story, John has been imprisoned but not executed. He sends his (John’s) disciples to speak to Jesus (important to distinguish they are not of Christ’s first string). John wants to ask him if he is really the one he’s supposed to be waiting for. He wrestles with doubt because it takes time for belief to become action when you’re pondering a question that large. Theologians have accused John of doubt; to me, that just takes things a little too far.

Forgive John his doubt, and use it. Jesus is John’s best painting of his own cognitive dissonance. This is his cousin, someone he’s grown up with. He doesn’t believe, and yet, he doesn’t not believe, either. He unfortunately does not live long enough to see whether he was right or not. He, however, receives an assurance that reads as poetry, and one day I will have it memorized even if I have to tattoo it to my palm to achieve it. Jesus says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” To me, this is the most important mission statement in the whole Bible.

It clearly tells people why being a follower of Christ is important. You are volunteering to move the self out of the way to achieve understanding and peace. It doesn’t matter if you believe in Christ as well, it matters if my willingness to change my behavior encourages you to step up and change yours. It took a while for me to realize that was all Christianity had the power to do for anyone. Change their lives if people were willing.

Since people translate self-actualization in different ways, the Bible is interpreted that many ways as well. But at its core, most people don’t understand that now, they ARE the gospel writers. Their worship experience is their thread back to the one who said good things were exploding all over the place because through his ministry, people were seeing themselves with new eyes!

As I told my friend James this morning, people don’t respond to direct questions. They respond to direct answers. People do not volunteer information about themselves. They slowly unpack themselves layer by layer while they’re doing something else.

In my own ministry, I’ve examined my own pain and it has allowed others to examine theirs. People have metaphysically joined me as I’ve stood hoping to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. Nowhere is that more evident in the Anglican Communion. We all strive to touch at the same time when we go to the rail for Communion.

When the liquid hits our taste buds, the emotional response is overwhelming. We can smell Jerusalem. We can mentally sit in the Upper Room with the extraordinary man we’ve known since he was a baby. We can sit in the miracle of having met him, known him, and shared a meal.

We can go home in a single sip.

I just don’t know what the fuck to write about. Seriously. Every time I think I have a good hint, the worthlessness loop kicks in and I think of every reason not to write about whatever it is because seriously. It’s been done. My life is so boring that writing about past misadventures takes me back to a much more complicated time in my life, because as I age I get younger.

When you get there, you’ll know what I mean. Reminiscence has a way of rejuvenating us back into our best selves. We know why it’s best to have a boring life because we’ve done all the stupid shit we can possibly think of and life is still hard, but it’s easier with rules. You can’t learn that until you need them.

For everyone, it’s a different moment, but we all come to it kicking and screaming. Some people choose running, some people choose Paganism, some people go back to the Christian church that raised them because outside is scary without limits. I don’t mean AMISH rules or anything. I just mean heuristics. You start to take account of the massive amount of emotional damage you’ve put out into the world simply by having a life and being regimented becomes important because it keeps you from going postal with regret over bad decisions. I choose to walk with Jesus because the message is more important than the medium. A regional council approved the Bible. There’s only a few books left that didn’t make canon. Therefore, there has literally been enough time for us to see most, if not all, of the “evidence.” Evidence is the biggest crock of shit you will ever hear when it comes to God. OF COURSE you don’t need proof. That’s not what you use God for. Just like me, you talk to God to make sure you’re not it. That you still have empathy for your family, friends, and co-workers. It’s the lens through which you see the wider world. Science and God do different things for humanity, and it is ridiculous to pretend that you have to believe in one or the other, but never ever both. When did that become the reality?

When did we let anger and retribution win over love? When did we let the debate between science and God go down to this bare-knuckled, mouth-breathing tug-o-war? When did you start thinking that because of this supposed “war,” you couldn’t believe in God anyway because it just seemed like followers of God should grow the fuck up and behave?

Scientists, God affects humanity through self-examining cognition and repetitive behavior. You tend to cite those as negative things, when hearing the stories of people long ago with the same issues as you with a solid way to combat them is gold no matter what imagery it takes to achieve it. When you provide the “what,” we provide the connections that make it sacred. For instance, I was visibly moved by Cosmos, and so were a lot of people. To me, it was the chance to see God’s face, because I am a firm believer in Thomas Aquinas, who developed the Theory of the First Mover. He said that something had to set the creation of the world in motion. That is too big an idea for most people to take in all at once. Their stories are their reflections on the world, just like this blog is mine now.

In a lot of ways, I write so that I don’t have to do an autobiography if I don’t want to. It’s already done when someone asks for it. I’m thinking ahead because I’m good like that. I’m preparing to be important. I never have been before. I’ve never had the courage to have opinions in public until now. I was just beaten down into a miserable place, because my entire world shattered and I felt guilty because my friends didn’t even know it was coming and I couldn’t explain how many chess pieces had to move before I could even feel that deep and therefore, I didn’t either. Something snapped. Maybe it was body memory. Something broke and I couldn’t refold the map. It shattered me until my dragon found me and who blasted me with fire until my earth could incubate and sustain new growth. Therefore, I am just as connected to the earth as I am to the cloud. If I can live in both worlds, so can God.

Life is too hard not to have rules. We create them all the time… we just don’t tell others what they are. For instance, one of my pizza night friends doesn’t like deep dish… like, so opposed to it that it is worth vocalizing. Deep dish is an ugly casserole. My favorite pizza in the world is whole wheat deep dish from Star Pizza, most notably the one with EVERYTHING ON IT add pesto. I like the extra bread when the piece of pizza is weighted down with so many toppings. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall apart in my hand just because I got a Supreme.

I feel about pizza the same way I feel about fountain pens, coffee mugs, chef’s knives, etc. I want it to feel exactly like it’s supposed to feel in my hand, and only I know how that feels. No one can pick it out, although I did make one mistake that I’ll never forget. The first day that I worked at Tapalaya, we had the choice of heavy knives or a Global-like weight. I chose the heavy one because of the way it felt in my hand. It didn’t feel that way after eight hours.

So, German at home and Japanese at work. I had to bend my rule to be successful at cooking professionally. What rules do you bend that keep you from moving forward? What are you looking forward to learning in this time of reflection? It has been said that Advent is not a penitential season. It’s not. Lent is for that. Right now, we’re just going with the sun- turning inward to see what will change when we get it back
Science wasn’t built for that. My best hope is that we meet in the middle. I will be there to bless and celebrate their progress, because the more they work the more I do to keep the Bible relevant in the modern world. Part of how I think I do it is by letting this blog be my own gospel. That way, no one will have to wonder what I was like. It will be there in plain sight….. and then when my book joins yours and theirs and all of ours together, we will be joining the living Gospel, instead of the dying one.

What are you going to write? Who or what speaks through you? Who gives you rules? Do you allow yourself to bend them for peace? How quickly does belief become action?

Waiting. Watching. Praying on the spaces.

Amen.

I got my hair cut today. This is because I called my dad and said, “I have ten dollars in my bank account and I need a haircut.” He took pity on me and not only bought my haircut, but came to my house and picked me up to take me to go do it. Does my dad know me or what? If he’d just given me money, it would have sat in my pocket for about six days, because I would have known it was for a haircut, but yet I would not have dragged myself away from writing long enough to do it. Here’s the thing, people. If you really want me to do something with you, come and pick me up.

I think this is because now that I’m older, I understand the implications of driving that I didn’t when I was a kid. It scares me more now than it used to, because when I was a teenager I had monocular vision and no morals.

I still have monocular vision, and now I can see how much damage I have the capacity to do. I limit driving by choice, not necessity. It’s not that I can’t see. It’s that I can’t see everything all at once. My field of vision switches between left and right, but does not bother to tell my brain when it’s doing it. So therefore, I hit curbs a lot. I hit everything a lot, but generally it’s stationery stuff right outside my purview. I’m telling ya, those poles at parking garages intentionally move when I’m not looking. For real.

So I guess that’s two separate issues; the first being that I’m a workaholic and the second being that I don’t actually want to go anywhere. It simplifies my life. I find that I have more room to be compassionate because I am not particularly scheduled. I do not participate in the day to day rush that most people do, even when I’m working full time. I don’t really schedule anything that occurs regularly during the week, with the exception of choir practice on Thursdays… and even that is a struggle because I am so antisocial. You would think that I am the opposite based on my writing style, but I fake it really well. I’ve been faking it for a lot of years.

Being a preacher’s kid is not something that I would have chosen, necessarily, because like being a politician’s daughter, people come after you. One lady went up to my mom and reamed her out for letting me wear false eyelashes. The problem was that they were my eyelashes. That is just one story out of about a million. Instead of having two parents, you end up having somewhere around a thousand.

My natural introvert personality was sidelined for the greater good, and I do not look back with regret. There is a certain comfort to “the mask.” It is a unique piece of yourself, but it’s not deep. Deep is what’s behind the mask, and few people get to see that, especially in person. It embarrasses me when I can’t pull together the mask, because it invites lots of people who ask, “are you ok?” They are genuinely concerned because I’m just “not like this.”

Ohhhhhh, yes I am.

The mask is hilarious. I love her. But she is not really all that “me.” She is an act I created out of necessity, especially once my abuse started, because it caused people to ask me if I was ok at twice the rate… and when you are actively being abused, whether emotionally or physically, you will do anything to protect your abuser. Anything. If being light and bubbly caused people to chill the fuck out, then I’d do it. Because all I wanted at that time in my life was to be left alone. It wasn’t because I didn’t want friends. I didn’t want people to get close to me. I didn’t want people to see the house of cards I had to construct to keep both Diane and me out of trouble. I liked the danger of being caught, and that is the most insidious feeling of all…. that you enjoyed abuse, so it couldn’t have been as bad as all these people are making it out to be………………….

Holding Camille Cosby in the palm of my hand today. Feeling her pain. Walking in it. Allowing myself to feel, because each time I care about her, I have more empathy for myself. More love for all the years I kept my secret, and horrified that she’s choosing to keep hers, but that is not my call to make. As I said on Facebook this morning, “there is no limit to what he (Bill) has done to her mind to make her believe that this is right and sane.” I don’t want to stand in judgment of her, because I can’t and won’t. Because of Diane’s actions, it took me years and years to unpack the fact that friendship and sex are not the same thing. It caused me to believe that I could only have one friend at a time.

Because of this, I cannot stand in judgment of anyone and the negative tapes they spin about themselves all day long.

I’m still fighting mine; you don’t get over an almost-25 year relationship in one or two. It just doesn’t happen. What has happened, though, is that now I see it for what it was. There are some genuine moments that I take with me, but at the same time, in my own mind, I had to get down to brass tacks. My intuition says that her abuse made her a predator, and an extraordinarily good one. Something in her mind had to have changed, because after she moved away, our energy was completely different, and that’s where some real roots had a chance to grow.

The more the real roots grew, the more I forgave the ones that crept around my neck.

So have some empathy for Camille. I guarantee that in some small measure, we have the same story. Maybe her genuine roots are stronger than the ones that strangle her. If they aren’t, she might figure it out one day… and we need to be there for her either way.

When people are trapped in the throes of abuse, they still need help. It would just take an Act of God to get them to admit it.