New Life and a Presidential Election

In his poem "The Cure at Troy," Seamus Heaney writes "Call the miracle self-healing; the utter self-revealing double take of feeling... someone is hearing the outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term. It means once in a lifetime that justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme."

"...New life at its term..." It feels as if many around me are caught up in the hope, "the outcry," "the birth-cry" of hope for change, a word which unfortunately has gotten tired in itself from sheer repetition. But add to the hope of presidential change, and financial change, even change in the way we sell cars (hopefully? is it too much to ask?) it is Advent for some Christians, a time when birth-pangs and cries in the wilderness resonate and promise to bring about revolutionary change. Because if we don't believe that each coming of Christ brings about revolution, why are we wasting time reading the Gospel and celebrating the Eucharist, where every sacramental act is an earth-shaking offering of God's power visited on our earthly selves?

This last several months leading up to this presidential election saw young people pounding on doors for voters to come out and be counted, and retirees who had once been active in the peace marches and picket lines of the 60s, but had grown jaded and discouraged suddenly bursting again with new hope for the future of our country. If nothing other than that sheer hope I joined in. Me, one of the products of the "Me Generation" who had sold out the legacy of the 60s for our MBAs and economic pragmatism and guzzling gas in our SUVs and Ford F-250s. And while I was never wealthy enough to completely sell out, I got caught up in the self-analysis and psychological entitlement that comes from worrying more about my inner child than about the starving child in Africa, focusing more on self-empowerment than empoweringthose in Second and Third World countries.

If nothing else comes out of the election of Barack Obama than making history, at least it can be said that the generations of the 60s and 70s got caught up in the idealism of Gen-Xers, and many people, the majority of people in this country came to believe that they could make a difference and their voices were heard.

But I believe even more than that will happen, if we also unite our political voices with prayers that we be given the strength to sacrifice ourselves when that is called for, that we put the needs of the rest of the world on the FRONT burner when we act as a country. This new president has the vision of a larger world that comes from living in other countries, a world view that does not assume that everyone shares the values of affluent white Americans.

Can you feel the synchronicity of faith and justice colliding? Out of this confluence of values a new world is being birthed.

I Confess to Christian Skepticism

The email from the training I had inquired about ended with "Remember that God loves you and so do I!"

I didn't even know this guy, and my first reaction, on a visceral level, was to cancel my registration to the workshop. I hate it when people tell me they love me when they don't even know me. I don't even want a stranger to tell me that GOD loves me.

What was this reaction about, I wondered? There was a hint of saccharine, of over-simplistic theology. And my experience of faith and the spiritual journey is that it is NOT always rosy, sweet, puppies and cream (to mix my metaphors a LOT). SO right away, I am suspicious of anyone who wants to brush over the fact that sometimes faith can be hard, sometimes we feel far away from God and question whether anyone can love us, sometimes we need validation that the wilderness is just as legitimately part of the journey as the wonder. Our God died a tragic death at the hands of human beings. And we are called to die (usually painfully) to our agendas all the time.

So what’s wrong with reminding people of the resurrection, too? I usually believe that the reminder is the most important thing about Christian community. I am reminded on a weekly basis that God does love me, and others are willing to share an altar rail with me, despite what the world may tell me to the contrary.

But there’s something more subtle about how that message of resurrection comes to me through community, and it is tempered with many other complex messages about God. God is transcendent as Creator, higher even than the church ceiling in a cathedral. God is as close as the peace that is exchanged after we are forgiven by God. God is in the fidgety kids and the old couple sitting quietly holding hands, and even in the overly precious verger whose job it is to create some sense of order in the large church. Especially for me, God is in the faces that look up longingly at the altar rail, hoping to see images of God for themselves as they receive the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.

There is nothing simple about the messiness of church, or even in the glimpse of the kingdom of heaven that such messiness might give us. Which is why I resist trying too hard to do liturgy perfectly.

But I realized also that while my skepticism may be a way of protecting myself from overly simple descriptions of God, it may also get in the way of my seeing or hearing God in others.

I went to the church website of my new acquaintance, and saw some great programs being offered that help bring healing and recovery to people’s lives. I saw an attempt to be inclusive and welcoming, which for me is the ultimate test of whether we are living out Jesus’ Gospel. I decided I did not want to be guilty of “contempt prior to investigation,” and to go ahead and attend the workshop.

But I will probably not give up my skepticism entirely.

Nervewracking: A Tale of Sugar Withdrawal

Jackhammers thudded into the cement outside my office window with a bone-jarring intensity. My head had started to hurt even before getting to work, but this was almost laughable in its assault on my sugar-withdrawing body. In the last five days, it had felt as though my nerve endings were just too close to the surface. Everything seemed to be a colossal effort to accomplish, and my patience with everyone was also pushed to the Nth degree. That morning I had considered getting rid of my two dogs, who insisted on barking and jumping up on me with wet paws from the freshly rained-upon yard.
Not everyone has such extreme withdrawals from sugar, but I have always been super-sensitive to the stuff. When I eat sugar, it is far more soothing to me than the average person. And the next day, I have sick headaches and my energy level suffers unless I have a little “hair of the dog” and eat more sugar, or ride it out for three days of withdrawal.
But this was worse. It was a more complete withdrawal since I was also avoiding white flour and other refined carbs, so my body was reacting at a cellular, emotional and spiritual level. It was not happy. Physically it had become dependent on getting endorphine bursts from the carbs, and had gotten lazy about producing its own sense of well-being without an artificial source.
Emotionally, I was struggling with feelings of unfairness and grief over losing my closest friends, ones who had been there for me when others seemed too busy with their own lives. My friend food had turned on me though, and was now threatening my health. This was what I needed to focus on, I told myself. Not on the cultural obsession with thinness. Not on the distorted value we force on women to be a certain size or shape. It really was a health issue for me. If I did not lose some weight, the stress on my knees was certain to put me in a wheelchair within the next 10 years, I was sure.
But fear is not a good foundation for any project, behavior change, or new perspective on life, so my acceptance of this much-needed change hinged on moving to a spiritual level. I needed God’s grace to stick with my plan. I needed an awareness of God’s love for me that transcended what I looked like, forgave me for treating my body so recklessly over the years, and reassured me when I felt completely alone without my former best friend. And most importantly, I needed a transformative change in my personality that I knew was possible from getting sober in Alcoholics Anonymous – a change that had completely eliminated my desire or need to drink.
Had I simply switched addictions, and therefore not really experienced transformative change? It was not so simple. Seeking the high that alcohol produced seemed to come from a very different place in my psyche. It was more social, more motivated in feeling competent and successful. It was not the survival-based sense I got from food that the word was safe, and I was going to make it another day.
This probably sounds pretty melodramatic, but think about it. Food is about as basic as you can get. The instinct to eat comes to us almost immediately after we are born. Disrupt that instinct in a baby, and you get a pretty distressed baby, perhaps even one who is afraid for her life.
And so my addiction to food probably goes so much more deeply than that to alcohol that I am dealing with more deeply-embedded spiritual needs. After 23 years of being without alcohol, and the spiritual and emotional work I have done, perhaps now I can begin to tackle this more insidious and pervasive addiction to food.
If the jackhammers weren’t pounding, literally, outside my window. If crazy people would quit speaking their craziness as though it were truth. If dogs would quit being so jumpy and barky, and if computers at work would quit being so finicky. If life would just be easy and effortless and unfold miraculously. Okay, maybe there’s hope for that last one, but waiting until everything is perfect is one of the procrastination methods my disease has always used to put off doing the healthy thing I need to do. That disease would prefer it if I was dead, or at least immobilized by the intake or behavior of one of my addictions.
So I need to get into the spiritual response to the nerve-jarring, impatient, grief-stricken frame of mind I am in. “Holy Jesus, I take delight in you love,” I pray, using the words of one of my favorite prayers, even though I cannot feel their truth through the edginess. “Increase my faith in that love that I may let go of all depression and worry,” I continue from the prayer, which is a paraphrase of something Julian of Norwich wrote. What if I so completely believed in that love, so fully allowed myself to be embraced in that love that I could let go of the need for food to give me the assurance that God offers? I cannot imagine such a faith at this point; I can only act as if I do.
And so I show up one more day, today with jackhammers and malfunctioning internet, and offer myself hopefully to life: nerves on edge, lonely and in grief. A food addict in recovery. Just for today.

Celebration is a Matter of Perspective

We have lost our way when it comes to celebrating. As a culture we know how to celebrate grand things like winning a super bowl or an academy award or presidential election. We celebrate hallmark events like New Year's Eve or Christmas or Valentine's Day, as though sending cards will somehow make it into the true event we want it to be. We even celebrate good fortune, a new job, a baby, a marriage, but how do we celebrate in the midst of the everyday life of headaches and tedium and broken toys and hurt feelings?

I think about this because I ran across a blog for the spiritual community Aldea, which seeks to live together intentionally, live fully, and be present to life, and as only one of its efforts, to gather on Sunday mornings. I am humbled by how the idea cuts through so much of the b.s. that we call church. This month, the community's blogging topic is "Celebration" and especially on celebrating in the midst of Lent and giving up suffering as a Lenten discipline.

As I pondered invading their blog as a relative stranger (sounds like an oxymoron to me), my first thought of a celebration I enjoyed was as a kid during a blizzard in Colorado Springs. The power was down for a few days, and so the whole neighborhood, 11 townhouses lined up out in the middle of a prairie northwest of the city, had a big cookout one evening. Looking back, it seems almost apocalyptic as thought we were huddled together for survival. Perhaps it was not that severe. But we had to eat some of the meat in people's freezers that was beginning to thaw, so everyone pooled their resources and offered it up to the community.

Did the adults think of it as a celebration? I wonder. Or were they so caught up in the worry of when the power would come back on and when the roads would be cleared so they could get back to their routines and the OTHER worries they had? Did they see the mystery of a community stopped cold in its tracks and taking the opportunity to be a slice of the kingdom of heaven as I see so clearly looking back through 10-year-old eyes?

I am struck once again by how much a role our minds, our perceptions play a role in what we see. This Lent, may I shed some of the adult worry seasoned by responsibility and fear and being caught off guard too times in favor of the simple joy and ability to be spontaneous of a 10-year-old.

Alternative Pilgrimage on a California Highway

Someone must have praying for me. Good praying, I mean, not the sanctimonious prayer of some, where the person tells God what the prayee NEEDS (in their opinion). No, this one was coming from someone who knew me enough to want me to have God present to me during my pilgrimage-on-the-California-highways instead of my pilgrimage in Ireland, where I wasn't because I have no discipline and cannot save money. I didn't even have the money to be doing this camping trip which was really a pilgrimage on the ... you get the picture.

Doogie and I (Doogie is my Westie and soul mate) set out one early morning in mid-June for San Diego, and planned to camp there two nights before heading up the coast to Oceano Dunes, stay there for two nights, and then get up to San Francisco. Then we were heading over to Lake Tahoe or Utah, and down to the north rim of the Grand Canyon or through Flagstaff. I was going to be flexible and open, because I don't get to do that in my work as a parish priest enough (you know how those people can be; they are more interested in schedules and actually following the schedulesthan they are about being spontaneous in the Spirit!).

Except that someone whispered doubt into my ear just before I left... and so I abandoned the trip midway, and I could have seen it as a complete failure if somebody hadn't been praying for me.

After two good nights and a full day of dog beaches and dog friendly shops and cooking over a gas stove in San Diego in between, we hit the road for Oceano Dunes. I was prepared to ditch this portion and find a plan D. Oceano Dunes -- I had read and they didn't exaggerate -- was one huge camping and ATV beach. I envisioned 20 -some people on quads zipping all over the beach, up and down the dunes, and the possibility that there wouldn't be much privacy. I was going to listen to my gut (Mizz Holy Spirit herself) to see if it felt safe once I got there. I shot up I-5 because it was close by the campsite, and decided I would just bear down and get through Los Angeles as quickly as possible using sheer will power. Like every big city, there were many detractors telling me how many hours it would take me to get through beyond the city.

It wasn't that bad, really. Except that bearing down and ramming through is one of the best ways to miss the scenery, which I KNOW wouldn't have happened if I had gone on the Ireland pilgrimage with Gil Stafford and his group. One of the stated principles of his group "Peregrini" -- which I vaguely remember from seminary has something to do with traveling -- is that you should NOT miss the scenery.

Fortunately, I came to myself like the son in the story of the generous father (also known as the prodigal son), and got off I-5 a little after lunchtime to take the 101 toward the ocean. The 101, I found out later, has a worse reputation than LA for its traffic snarl-ups, or "parking lots" more accurately.

I finally got off at an exit whose sign pointed toward "Beach Traffic", and took a pit stop in a shopping center. After letting Doogie pee and smell a couple of unhealthy-looking trees in the parking lot (you would be too if hundreds of traveling dogs peed on you every year), I took him to Starbucks and parked him with a scruffy looking guy that looked like he would throw down his life if someone tried to take Doogie from him so I could pee and smell the coffee in my own parking island (okay, that's over the top...)

Doogie and I sat outside Starbucks grateful not to be moving and grateful not to be in the sweltering Arizona heat, and we people watched. Within sight of the shopping center was a middle class neighborhood. I got out my Atlas and tried to figure out where we were. We had been driving five hours by then, and I realized how silly I had been originally to think I might be able to get to San Francisco in one day. I was even beginning to wonder if we would get to Oceano before it got dark, but remembered they have daylight saving time there in California. We don't do DST in Arizona; there is no need to inflict MORE daylight during our time off when our employers are not paying the AC bill.

I had missed the signs saying where we were. I have full-blown ADHD, but that usually doesn't apply to traveling. I'm more like Jess Blair in his book I Don't Know Where I'm Going but I Sure Ain't Lost which he WANTED to call "I Walk Most Safely When I Don't Know Where I'm Going". His publisher was into selling more books and thought the title needed to have an "ain't" in it like his other books (I Ain't Much Baby But I'm All I've Got was his most famous) and gave it the other title. But I DO walk more safely in new places; I am more aware and more alert to signs and I see great places to relax and eat and enjoy and sit and journal -- well, uring vacations, anway, which could be part of the problem -- that I don't see when I am in my own hometown and into the daily grind.

And while I was on the highway I had been in that mode! I know highways, I had two or three maps, so I was in head-down-just-make-good-time mode. Until I came to myself and got off the highway. But now I was in a town whose name I didn't know and not sure when I was going to make it to my next campsite.

So I asked a very sweet looking white-haired lady on her way into Starbucks.

"You're in Ventura!" she answered me with such glee that I would actually USE the word describing her. I felt as warmly welcomed as any stranger could be, and she helped me find it on my map. When I told her that I had been on the 101 and lost track of where I was, she waved her hand at me and in mock disgust (I don't think this woman could do real disgust), she said "Oh, that 101!" as though not even the smartest person with a GPS and a human navigator both could avoid getting lost on it. Besides, I wasn't LOST. I was just disoriented slightly, and needed to get my bearings.

I left there with the buzz of caffeine and renewed confidence instilled in me by the mother of the the Ventura Chamber in Commerce (well, she ought to be!). We made it to Oceano just two hours later, and got to see lots of ocean on the way. It turned out to be fortifying in needed to deal with the harsh reality ahead.

The REAL Oceano Dunes was much wilder even than the image in my head. First, it was very windy, and many of the 200+ campers had flags on poles in the sand or whipping about from the TV antennas on their RVs, including the Dixie flag, which, after living in the south for 23 years, makes me nervous. Dixie-flag-flyers seem to drink heavily, and when they do, they don't like liberals or women or small white dogs. Well, I made up the last part, but the point is, they make me nervous.

Every once in a while, when I wasn't stuck in the sand or being towed OUT of the sand by one of the Dixie-flag-flyers (they're nice BEFORE they drink), I glimpsed a tent in the midst of all the RVs, looking in the gale force wind like it wasn't going to be there the next morning. And these were decent-sized four- and six-person tents. I had discovered that my Big Five Sporting Goods tent that I had gotten for a sweet bargain at $21.99 was only three-feet tall. Not only did I not look graceful getting out of the tent, but there is no hope of changing clothes inside it, unless you do it lying on your back, which is not easy to do with a little dog who seemes compelled to lick my face if I ever sit or lie still. I wondered where I might find some privacy from the people whom I was sure all knew each other.

And there were quads, all right. Dozens of them. But there were also jacked up pick-up trucks that could have popped my car like a cockroach, or carried my car to a campsight, which almost had to happen three times. In fact, it became so embarassing to be towed out of the sand, that I promised Ms. Holy Spirit and myself that if it happened a third time (because God's signs always come in threes), I was going to leave. So it happened and I did leave. I checked three motels there in town and even the Motel 6 was $150 a night, and I thought there's no way I will pay that much when I missed out on a trip to Ireland because of money and I had already spent $100 on gas, another $150 on campsite reservations, and on the money for food alone I could have flown to Maine to see a good friend (that had been Plan B -- I was in California camping on Plan C, which makes sense alphabetically anyway).

After fortifying myself with a burger and fries and a diet coke, which is NOT as oxymoronic as thin people make it seem, I could think more clearly and make a plan. By this time, I had spent two full days driving and one full day camping. Like my life, I was spending more time getting to the goal than enjoying it once I got there. And the journey had not been that wonderful so far (on my camping trip, not my life, which was defintely better).

That's when I think the anonymous praying kicked in. With great clarity of mind and the calm that comes only from the acceptance of reality, I decided to turn around and head back toward Arizona. San Francisco would wait for another time, when I had more money. As it was, Santa Barbara was an awesome place to visit, and I will make it an intentional destination the next time I go there. It was good that I was heading home. I was out of cash, had lost my debit card before I even left on my trip, and almost no one accepted out-of-state checks. Using my parish American Express to buy gas and another burger on the way home, I put my head down and missed all the scenery getting from LA to Tucson in eight hours. Some habits are hard to break.

Oh, and what had been the doubting comment whispered in my ear, after I had described my proposed itinerary?

"You wish," I kept hearing my friend say as I traveled. I guess sometimes even doubts can be wisdom for some of us foolhardy people.

On the dubiousness of perfection

I am a failure at living a life about social justice. Oh, I recycle, and turn lights off, write my congressman when I can, and boycott Nike, but when I think of a real social justice life, it would involve living simply, and not consuming so much, and being peaceful and meditating twice a day. I know people who actually do these things. And they are vegetarians, too. I barely have enough self-disicpline to stay on a diet for longer than two weeks, much less avoiding meat completely. Or doing anything else consistently for that matter.

Most spiritual people I know are orderly and disciplined and don't move a lot, whereas I move about once a year or whenever the carpet gets dirty, whichever comes first, which is often since I have two dogs. As someone who would have been daignosed ADHD as a kid, and actually was diagnosed as an adult, my life can get chaotically disordered and while I keep my house fairly neat, my checkbook is never balanced and my life is even less balanced.

What I do have that could be considered spiritual are friends and community and a willingness to be honest with myself and others, and maybe even a little bit of humility about never being anything close to perfect. In fact, I look at attempts to be perfect with great suspicion. Perefectionists are people who will never know the joy of finding the right person to do the right job for you, because they do not need anyone else. Perfectionists are tense and rehearse everything in their heads before they make a move, as though making a mistake would cancel out the right for them to take up space on the planet. Which boils down to their belief that you HAVE to be perfect to earn that right.

Forget God and God's unearned grace. These folks have earned their way into the kingdom through sheer, gritty self-determination. And they make me nervous with their perfectionistic glances and the judgment sitting right behind those glaring eyes. I ave not earned anything. I can get giddy with delight at being allowed to play in the kingdom's playground at all.

Perfectionists do not need support groups, either. Oh, they might show up in some of them, out of the pain caused by their perfectionism, but when it comes to actually relying on another person, it just isn't possible. So relying on God, whom we can't see, is an even trickier proposition.

But when I am at my spiritual best, which is relative to my spiritually worst times, I am able to see the scared kid underneath all that neatly ironed and well-groomed facade -- the scared kid who learned somewhere that if he didn't get it perfect, it was a complete failure, and he didn't deserve to be loved. And I am grateful for the mother who used to cuss at me and roll her eyes when I was a handful, but who never let me forget that she loved me. Like God does. Even when I am far from perfect.

Everything in excess!

"Everything in excess!" wrote Robert Heinlein as Lazarus Long, the centuries old salty character in a bunch of his sci fi books. "To enjoy the flavor of life, you've got to take big bites. Moderation is for monks."
What would Lazarus Long say about our current sqeamishness with truth? It has become more important to be careful and not rock the boat than it is to speak truth. There is even a quote floating around out there that Archbishop Rowan Williams can't even defend claiming that he said, "Unity is more important than truth."
I can't imagine that. But if what they say is true, that he hates conflict and just wants peace at all costs, then perhaps he did say it.
Unity may be more important than being RIGHT, maybe. Or unity may be more important than having all the answers. But if some wise person has some truth to offer this crazy world, I sure hope she isn't sitting back worrying about whether it will disrupt the unity. In fact, I might be bold enough to say that without truth, our unity is on shaky ground, indeed.
Let's have an excess of truth! Even if we only believe it's our truth. Let's claim it boldly and let the monks make everyone happy. Although Joan Chittister doesn't seem to care whose unity she disrupts. Salut!