Quick To Tears

If I look at you with exceeding tenderness
Forgive the intrusion on your privateness
I only try to see
Beyond the hair and the skin
To the roiling, gritty reality
Of you.

I am a green twig
Crushed by your careless passing.
In my darkness
The sap of that fresh wound glistens on my face
Then dries
In beads of longing and desire
Both primitive and present.

Beside you, I am beside myself
In driven waves
Of elation and guilt--
A newly sprouted branch
Moving gently in the thin, cool breath of Spring
Broken by the memory of your warm mouth on my neck,
Yet I am blameless in my intention.
I am sparkling--
Adventurous--
Clean--
And sometimes quick to tears.

Re-Posting of an Old Entry: Feet of Clay

In the midst of the worries of the job search, I have been trying to think. I’m reading Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinner, and Madmen, a Study of Gurus by Anthony Storr. He quotes Friedrich Neitzsche:

‘Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely – a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience.’

It occurred to me that I haven’t lost the conviction that God loves me which is the bedrock of faith. I believe, however, that faith will never intercede between my behavior and my fear (because I obey the command of my ego). The only thing, then, is God’s love. This seems a good thing to be stripped down to, at the end of the day. The conviction of God’s love is a pre-surrender to a new command.

So what would that surrender feel like? What would it be like? It would be nothing, just like my ego is nothing. My fear-thoughts are just that – little Observers that Observe something as fearful. My ego is a moment in the Observer which scares me and prompts me to manage fear with a bad behavior. My sovereign commander is nothing. Surrender would be a nothing that replaces the bad behavior. Surrender would be the Observer who sees no reason to react at all.

I must stand in the path of an oncoming train and calmly let it hit me. The calm is the utter surrender to the sovereignty of Truth. The train is the devastating will of God’s love; devastating only because it is so True that nothing else is worth owning. Oh what a glorious freedom. That is why faith only in God’s love for me is a pre-surrender because if there is nothing else, then all I have left to do is to turn and stand on the tracks. Surrender. Addiction is anything that gives you peace and causes problems in your life. Addictions bring peace and calm as a sour substitute for a will to freedom and the true desire for personal command. My only chance to learn how to command is based in the love of God.

A Part of a Particular Myth

Christians are people who believe an elaborate mythology. They have found a way to explain the unexplainable. Those explanations are a part of every aspect of their lives.

Some of the mythology goes like this:

The Explanation For Suffering

Jesus was sent to earth as a full and perfect atonement for the rejection of God by all. His death made it possible for anyone to know God who seeks him. Because of that one, sufficient and perfect sacrifice—that one example of innocent suffering--no rejection of God can make an individual unacceptable to God, if the individual seeks acceptance.

Since Jesus’ death and resurrection, his living person lives in All Baptised People, aka The Church. Therefore, the sacrifice and suffering of all faithful people helps to redeem the entire world from separation from God. My innocent suffering as part of the living Christ makes it possible for someone else to get close to God. And that’s the way it is for the faithful.

Each Face of a Cut Gem

Life is a facetted jewel showing one face towards us at a time. Each edge falls away onto a new surface. Each facet points directly into our face with intense but painless brightness. Our eyes fix on it. The facets are small flames that find protection between the curved hands of our awareness. There the bright flatness is held by the mind’s eye where it is engendered into conclusion, action and experience -- into Something. We slip over the sharp edge and the jewel turns facing us again, with something new. These shining, flat moments are where we fix our consciousness with pain or indifference. With compelling determination or passionate fearlessness. The surfaces teach and slip one into the next and make a lifetime. The gemstone speaks and turns.

Mother Died

My Mother died on October 19, 2006. My sister told me to sit in the back of the church at the memorial service before the graveside.

I took one of the priests from my church with me for support at the church and I felt quite strong. I sat in a convenient place, neither front row or in the back where my sister wanted me. The priest at that church came back to me to shake my hand, very pointedly including me. I can thank my minister for speaking to him ahead and making sure he knew of the strained and strange circumstances. There was a eulogy read by My brother’s wife Diane which included the many, many things in her life from honey to rummage sales. Mom had asked for Eucharist, (holy communion) too, which was very nice. Funerals are really a time of celebration of the soul returning to God, so the coffin was draped in a sumptuous cream-colored cover. Everything was very beautiful.

The priest wore a capa negra or black cape made especially to go over vestments at a funeral in cold weather. It was a very dramatic touch at the graveside. A friend of the family handed me a yellow long-stemmed rose to put on the coffin as I left. The prayers were very comforting and beautiful. It snowed. It was a beautiful soft blanket in the sky for the day – something she would have loved and even photographed. I know I will get in touch with some people and write some thank-you notes, as well I should.

Handcuffs

I am like a person who was sent to prison for something I did not do, and after release wears a handcuff and chain dangling from one wrist. I wear the handcuff as some insane solution to the damage I have suffered. My reasoning is that the handcuff resolves the disappointment and betrayal and loss. It gives a shape to my faulty thinking, guilt, anger and helplessness. It dangles from my wrist and shows the world that I am permanently harmed.

Somehow in my mind it follows that what happened to me is so bad that I cannot think in such a way as to make good decisions for myself. I tell myself that irreparable harm and permanent weakness come from tragedy when the heavens are filled with twinkling stars of human transcendence. I lie to myself and wear the handcuff as some sort of protection that is no protection at all.

I know what the faulty thinking is. I know how a person is when they are unharmed and strong and no victim. I know I have only to accept a different reality full of strength and faith and good, self-loving decisions to be unhandcuffed and unhindered forever

Housekeeping

I clean house. I make the sink brilliant white. I take the stove top apart. I remove the cat litter on the bathroom floor, and I admire bright shining corners.

Most of all, I behold the wooden floor. It shines honey bright.

I do it for me – for the satisfaction and pleasure of cleanliness. Clean means I am in control of something. This is my place of relative safety.

Cleaning makes a statement of caring. I care about order and beauty. I care about my belongings. I care about my own comfort, and I love to work.

Warped Will

The printing company wasn't recovering from debt fast enough to keep me so I'm job searching again. Today's topic, however, is the violence we do to ourselves --

The refusal to create is a violent rejection. One cannot refuse to create and be neutral. We are beings created in the image of God who seem to be required to continue the creation. So very few of us rub the lamp that is ourselves and set the gift free. We settle for a storm in our heads that keeps us sick enough to die slowly.

The will is often violent. We have a will to destroy ourselves and our relationships. If we have faith, then we have an antidote to the destruction. We have a warped will that only God can smooth. In a twinkling of an eye, the beast that tears at the soft lining can be quieted – quieted in the flash of a Thought. The pang of a fear thought into a love thought. That is the cure.

A Very Drunk Person

On August 9th I started a job with a pre-press printing company. My job is to process the orders and it is quite complicated. I am in a situation of dirt and clutter and hostility but I am also in a company that is turning around and where in time I could make a good living. The building is a remodeled factory full of 20-foot exposed-beam ceilings. I watered the dying ivy plant in the reception area and saved its life and I need to believe that that small act was the beginning of my extreme usefulness there.

Back in October of ’04, a very drunk person told me all about my pathetic powerlessness, negativity, underachievement and the self-made emptiness of my life. I was rather drunk too, so I listened. I was told I wallow in my problems and pain. I have a lot of both right now and maybe I am wallowing in the problems (like the complexity of the work) and pain (like the disappointment of not doing better).

It occurs to me that if I assume my accuser is right about me with no rationalization, then there is something I am doing to prevent me from excelling at this new job. No matter how much I was injured as a kid and no matter how ill-equipped I am to learn quickly, I don't have to wallow. Permanent injuries can be compensated for, and being equipped to learn will slowly get to the goal. No matter how long the shadow of childhood injury, I have control over its darkness. No matter how my mind works, I have control over my thoughts and all the while the beautiful, beamed ceilings are encouragement to look up.

The Woman of Sad Mornings

Once there was a woman who ate oatmeal for breakfast with raisins, but it upset her stomach and made her bowels stop. Still, she knew it was good for her so she broke the fast of the night this way for a long time.

Her friends knew her to be sad early in the day and understood that she was a woman of sad mornings. One day she was talking to her brother and said “I am a woman of sad mornings, but I want to tell you about my sadness.” Her brother looked at her with patience, so the woman began, "Brother, my oatmeal and raisins trouble me. They are difficult to partake, my stomach has pain, and my bowels stop."

Her brother replied, "You must add more water so that it is faster to partake and easier on your stomach, then put away the raisins and take jam."

The woman replied, "Water?"

Her brother said, "Yes, the water. When you cook the oats, add more water and your stomach will stay calm."

The woman looked at her brother and said quietly, "I have been a fool and suffered. I have believed in oatmeal for these many years and ate it daily with raisins, but I have never put water on it and cooked it.”

Her brother said, "Will you not eat again tomorrow? Cheer up. See in the stories of our Mothers: Oatmeal is cooked."

The woman said "Oh! I will not have to chew so very long, my stomach will be easier, and my bowels will move!" She ate hot oatmeal and jam ever after and her mornings were glad and numerous.

So look at your pain, talk about it with those you trust, and take new ideas deeply into your heart to find their truth or falsehood. Put aside your fear of what you may see. Remember that no problem is solved in silence and ignorance. No change is made unless you know what must be changed, for knowledge, especially self knowledge, will bring you true power.

The First Five Days

I started a new job on Monday, June 6th. I am remembering and relating to a flood of facts and dozens of tasks that have little to do with me. It is very odd trying to remember names and facts that are so far removed from who I really am and no one can make me care. Only I can make me care by grounding the information and activities in the value they have to the company and the resultant value they give me. I am marketing what I know and what I do and at present I do not know enough to do enough. I am sure, as I absorb more information and provide work that truly enables my superiors, I will feel connected as a person. It feels very odd, however, to have my real self in a completely different reality. I can only hope that as time goes on, the job will be part of my actual mind.

I live in my heart and my sensations. I live in my reactions to the world as they relate to my calm and happy existence. My relationship with God is the source of my calm and happiness. I want peace of mind and quality of life, and with the peace of mind, the job will ensure my quality of life as far as supporting myself goes. Right now, there seems to be no connection between the work and the people and my inner world or true self. Doing what I do and doing it well pertain very little to personal strength or fulfillment.

I need to keep that separation sharp and clear while trying to remove it at the same time. I want my soul to be happy in my work because it is so much of my life, but if I look for happiness in my soul and calm in the presence of God, I will not learn my job and perform the tasks they expect. How can I be at peace without some sense of happiness and quality in my work day? How can my workplace fit in my life if God is not there in it all? I can only look to the future when I dare begin to blend my peace, my happiness and my work. My work relationships and challenges present themselves as opportunities for my ethical and moral growth, but with the heavy involvement of my heart and my sensations, there will be no room in my mind for the work. I am not my work, under these circumstances especially.

I am deeply grateful for this job if for only one thing. It gives the order I need to have quality of life on my terms and peace of mind of any amount. Job hunting is painful and disorderly. I am inexpressibly relieved to stop the disorder and pain of job hunting. Six full months was a long time to cope minute to minute. I look back on the accomplishment of managing my life and calming myself well enough to step upon this new threshold.

Another day I will come back and report to you how things are going, and at that time I will describe the job. After five days, I can only say that they wanted me and they got me and now it is up to us to make it last. I am responsible for giving 100% and they are responsible for getting my best performance. I am there and I remembered enough facts and performed enough tasks to be of value to them at least for the first five days.

Perceptions

I am out of work with no end in sight, or so it would seem. The backbone of my work experience is in the support of health care professionals. There is a hospital here in town which employs 34,000 people, and in this huge hospital, I have a contact. She is in a higher role than I hope to play and she is advising me. She is real. Her advice is useful and real. Her willingness to back me is real.

On April 11th, I filled out an application, handed in a resume, and provided five respectable test scores. All are now in the hands of the supervisor of a real job opening. I wrote a follow-up letter expressing my pointed interest based on internet research and advice from my inside contact. As of Monday, April 25th, that letter will be in the hands of that same supervisor. I do not see the end I would wish for in sight, but I am encouraged.

Today’s issue appears to be perceptions. The strict rule about job seeking is that a job is not real until the first paycheck has been deposited. Nothing short of that is real. The strict rule about a life of faith is that one is never alone with life, tests, applications or letters. My world view says that I have a strong hand with mine on the pen or the keyboard scratching and tapping away. I am encouraged.

Feeling encouraged is a kind of faith. Faith is the assurance of God’s Grace, and Grace is the assurance of God’s love. Being encouraged means that I have a feeling of strength and acceptance regarding the unknown. Fear is always a lie and faith is always true. That there is no end in sight is a lie. My present circumstances must resolve. As much as I want to know how they will resolve, I know that I do not need to know. In this state of cheerful uncertainty, I have a strong heart. God offers me the choice of how I perceive this moment. I will not be disheartened by a foolish perception of something I cannot know.

Scutwork: Work Done by a Useless person

In Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays, Joseph Epstein discusses athletic coordination. In the title essay, he writes ‘. . . I saw a famous professor from the university where I teach carrying hand weights as he walked home. He was doing it in such a herky-jerky fashion that I could read in every step a boy who had never known physical grace.’ I have known physical grace. I have known deep bodily reactivity and the joy of moving. I had no such joyful reactivity of emotions. Those came in a thick volcanic flow of copious, twitching eruptions. I poured myself out to manage this flood. I call it an unholy compensation for unspeakable emptiness -- a self-wounding to feel something other than nothingness – and I call it the best I could do. Not grounded in reality, I was buried in reality’s former presentation. In my deepest self I have flailed no matter how well my body moved.

I had a nightmare about working at a new job. There was too much – too much work and herky-jerky change. I could not manage. I flailed in body and time. I once dreamed that I could fly seated on disk, dressed in a slick hooded body suit, with fingers tightly gripping the wafer under me. Without fear and with perfectly abandoned elegance, I flew over and under the telephone wires with flying neighbors, past our houses with trees and parked cars flashing below. I swooped in blissful response and exquisite control. All was physical grace and grace of deep psychic peace and harmony.

The sentences resist me like a ball of stiff, dry dough. This new writing is not planning how to live, it is living. Instead of unpredictable heaving up, I write with a new mastery of mind and page that flows like breezes and wind -- an uneven but steady process. I stab the dough with a new intention. It rises, warmed with my intrinsic worth. Resistance bends into a grace of character with an integrity all its own.

Emotional Grace

In Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays, Joseph Epstein discusses athletic coordination. In the title essay, he writes ‘. . . I saw a famous professor from the university where I teach carrying hand weights as he walked home. He was doing it in such a herky-jerky fashion that I could read in every step a boy who had never known physical grace.’ I have known physical grace. I have known deep bodily reactivity and the joy of moving. I had no such joyful reactivity of emotions. Those came in a thick volcanic flow of copious, twitching eruptions. I poured myself out to manage this flood. I call it an unholy compensation for unspeakable emptiness -- a self-wounding to feel something other than nothingness – and I call it the best I could do. Not grounded in reality, I was buried in reality’s former presentation. In my deepest self I have flailed no matter how well my body moved.

I had a nightmare about working at a new job. There was too much – too much work and herky-jerky change. I could not manage. I flailed in body and time. There was no physical grace or grace of mind. I once dreamed that I could fly seated on disk, dressed in a slick hooded body suit, with fingers tightly gripping the wafer under me. Without fear and with perfectly abandoned elegance, I flew over and under the telephone wires with flying neighbors and our houses, trees and parked cars flashing below. I swooped in blissful response and exquisite control. All was physical grace and grace of deep psychic peace and harmony.

The sentences resist me like a ball of stiff, dry dough. This new writing is not planning how to live, it is living. It is awkward and stiff, this writing that is not living on paper. Instead of unpredictable heaving up, I write with a new mastery of mind and page that flows like breezes and wind -- an uneven but steady process. I stab the dough with a new intention. It rises, warmed with my intrinsic worth. Resistance bends into a grace of character with an integrity all its own.

No Matter Where I Go, There I Am

The author Meg Ostrom entertained me with her recent history The Surgeon and the Shepherd telling of resistance work in the Pyrenees during WWII. Classical music played softly. I could have been job hunting, but I wasn’t. I was sitting very quietly reading very quietly with beautiful music somewhere in the distance, and I was full of sweet, simple peace. It was like holding a diamond. There was my life in a gemstone. Blissful. Rapt. Sparkling.

The shades were open still, even though it had been dark for a half-hour. The the black glass stared at me saying I’m Watching You. Forget the light. The lidless Eye of persecution never blinks. I am Scrutiny. I am the remorseless press of guilt and the relentless stare of blame. Then the pain crushed the stone to powder.

Philosopher Hero

I am assured that the pursuit of wisdom is heroic. I am a philosopher hero drawn to a state of calm strength, to humility in weakness, and to an embrace of that weakness as a part of universal wisdom.

Finally

Laid off now since December 3. Last day of work was November 17th and I was urged to set up a blog to chronicle my job search. I’ve finally entered the hive mind.

Job Seekers group discussed Gates of Central Park. Nobody minded. Facilitator had been to see it this week. Gates seem to have a very broad appeal, and after seeing Christo and Jean Claude, I can understand it better. I like the color and movement in the wind.

The Job Seekers group is pressing me to call people more for encouragement when I get stuck. If you call the wrong person, you'll end up feeling worse. Somebody will say "My unemployment ran out and I'm living with someone who doesn't wash" or "Have you prayed about it?" or "Oooooo a job search is the WORST thing" or "I wish I could help you" or there will be a silence like they're trying to think of a way to hang up. That's the risk. Make a call, feel like a fool. Don't make a call, suffer longer. Make a call, maybe get some attitude adjustment. That’s all for now. I have much job hunt work to do.