-ability

I have been a nervous wreck all week preparing for my interview for Assistant Director of Campus Ministry at West Chester University, which was today. When all is said and done, I think the interview went fine and I made a good impression. I was not prepared, however, for the anxiety that came afterwards when my thoughts of "what if I don't get the job?" turned to "what if I DO!?" I spent the rest of the afternoon with Debbie walking around West Chester (which is a beautiful town--think State College, Manayunk, and Doylestown all rolled together) and stopping in Borders and getting caught up reading Get It Done When You're Depressed by Julie Fast (author of Loving Someone with Bi Polar Disorder).

It seems there are two kinds of depression--the depression that causes lethargy, and the depression that causes anxiety. I have always been prone to the first, but have been struggling with the second lately--which is new for me. Given that I have been going through a large number of changes and life stressors in the past year (moving, changing jobs, interviewing for jobs, finishing school, getting hit by a car, new relationship, introduction to new family, entertaining the thought of marriage, etc.) I think it is only natural to be experiencing some anxiety, so I am cutting myself some slack and, as Tim says, "being kind to myself." Nevertheless, I feel the familiar cognitive distortions, overgeneralizations, emotional reasoning, etc., that hints at depression underlying a lot of this anxiety.

The job at West Chester is everything I've been hoping to find. And what are my thoughts now that it's here? "I can't do it. They'll realize I'm a fraud. Who am I to direct other people? I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not outgoing enough." Etc. Clinically speaking, I know this is depression talking. 99 good things about myself and all I can see is the 1 flaw, a flaw that may or may not even have any bearing on my ability to carry out the work this job entails.

But it still looms large. A diagnosis can feel like a branding sometimes. Just google my name and the article in The Philadelphia Weekly on The Urban Hermitage Project comes up, which mentions that I am bi-polar. It is kind of like having an STD. Then again, Debbie googled my name before we started dating, and saw the article, and still wanted to go out with me (if not more so, for curiosity's sake). Taking this into account in the prospective job search, I think about what my friend Tim told me, "if someone found out you were bi polar and wouldn't hire you for that reason, is that a place you would really want to be working for anyway?" He has a point, and I need to remind myself of this.

Bi polar disorder can be (and is) considered a disability, but it is a disability I have learned to live with--and not only live with, but to thrive with (or in spite of); it is as much an ability as a dis-ability. I may have a different set of limitations, but that doesn't make me any different or less capable than the next person for fulfilling the demands that a job may entail.

I am proud of all I have accomplished in spite of my illness. I recently obtained my master's degree after five grueling years of part-time schooling in addition to working full-time. I have written articles and been published in various periodicals and websites. I rode my bicycle across the country. I have kept my faith. Having to battle to keep depression and mania at bay will continue to be an ongoing struggle for me--in the workplace and in every other place in my life--but it is my own struggle, and I own it, and will continue to accomplish what I can in spite of it.

I often thank Debbie for "taking a chance on me." If she didn't, we wouldn't be where we are. I hope I can extend the same kind of thanks to WCU in the next couple weeks. If they will take a chance on me, I am pretty confident I can say I would return the favor.

The Awakening Sights (2 out of 3)

When Prince Siddhartha, the future Gautama Buddha, first stumbled upon old age, disease, and death outside the realms of his sheltered palace, he was "greatly disturbed." I had a similar experience spending Sunday in the ER with Debbie's father, who was taken in for chest pains. The sight of old age and disease right before me came like a sharp blow, something I was not used to or prepared for.

My two grandfathers died before I was born, and I was sheltered from the death and funeral of my grandmothers, both of whom died when I was young. I cannot recall ever having gone to a funeral; there have been no major medical emergencies in my immediate family, and my parents are still young enough to be independent and active. I have never had to deal directly with serious bodily illness or death in my twenty-nine years among those closest to me. I guess it's about time I left the palace.

Debbie's father ended up being stable pending some tests, but it was still a scare. I found myself in an existential funk after leaving the hospital, besides being concerned for Dr. Resurreccion's welfare. Disease and death are always potentially just around the corner; old age sneaks up on us a little at a time, but promises to overtake us at some point. I know it sounds silly to just be coming to terms with this reality at such an age, but in all honesty, I never really had it in front of my face before in a way that personally affected me like it did this weekend. I haven't been able to shake this sharp, unsettling feeling that it is just a matter of time before it all hits even closer to home in my own family. Until then...one day at a time.

"When the music changes, so does the dance."

--African proverb

A Little Goes a Long Way

12 Things Rob the Fob did today in an attempt to fly a fat, action-based FUCK YOU in the face of lingering depression:

1) Rearranged my bed and made plans to build a couch;
2) Listened to Bone Thugs 'n Harmony;
3) Made a doctor's appointment for a physical;
4) Made chocolate milk after dinner, and had a cookie;
5) Went for a run for the first time in months, and did pushups and situps;
6) Went to the Salvation Army and just browsed;
7) Had coffee with Tim and talked about being present, and looking for a CBT therapist;
8) Resolved to avoid unnecessarily thinking of the future, breeding anxiety;
9) Decided to accept that work-wise, 'where I am now is where I'm supposed to be...now;'
10) Made efforts to love myself for who I am and not for who I am not;
11) Thanked God for my family, Debbie, Tim, and all my supportive friends and their emails;
12) Wrote this blog.

It helped.

Falling off the Rungs

Two of the hardest things about being bi polar is how it affects your relationships, and how if affects your work. I was told recently I was turned down for a position I really had my heart set on in campus ministry, and also had an interview today that I totally bumbled up and don't expect to get a call back for. With stress being such a trigger, I find myself wondering if there are certain jobs I would just not be cut out for.

I remember after college when I moved back home I briefly got a job working as a counselor for sexually-abused children. I was deeply depressed at the time, and I found I was more of a liability at the job because of my depression and inability to face crisis situations, and so I felt I needed to tell my boss what I was going through, and resign. I felt like such a failure, it was all I could do while driving home not to careen my car into a tree.

I faced similar feelings today after realizing that I might not be cut out for the very jobs I thought I would be so good at. My dad slugged through years of teaching while depressed simply by being stubborn, knowing he had a family to support, and that quitting was not an option. Work is hard enough; working while you are depressed is torturous. And interviewing while you are depressed feels like professional suicide.

This was posted on a Bi-polar support group site I read recently, to which I could really relate:

"I was always career minded. However, being Bipolar has now disrupted my career one too many times. Up until 7 years ago I was climbing the corporate ladder with a packaging company until I had a psychotic episode for the first time. I had to quit work for 6 months and then I scored another job with another company. But the same thing happened again. I had a hypermanic episode and became psychotic again and had to quit work. I have been through the same cycle now 5 times where I find work, get the job, relapse and loose the job. The last job lasted 2 days before relapsing again. I guess a sales career was too much pressure. What I want to know is what opportunities are out there for people like me (us) where it seems stress is a trigger. I get so depressed about my illness and the thought of going through this again is scarey. Is there other employment options that are out there that doesn't require any experience and is rewarding? I have been unemployed now for over 7 months since the last episode but it has really been 18 months since I was full time employed. What can I do? What is there to do?"


I hope to never have to go through another psychotic episode, one that has me hospitalized and forced me into taking a leave of absence from work. Thankfully my relationships are in order...I have a supportive family and an understanding, supportive girlfriend. Some people don't have this, and I don't want it to be something I take lightly or for granted. Even though I hate taking medications, I feel like I am on a pretty good set now that allows me relative stability, even with the occassional dips into depression I am presently experiencing.

But the dips are unnerving...will this spiral out of control and leave me jobless? Will I be able to do what is required of me? Can I even tell my boss of my illness, or is this something I need to keep hidden? Will I ever find work that is meaningful, or do I have to limit myself to what I can realistically do without undue stress? I know I have gifts. I know I have talents. I know I am called to do something. But being bi polar does not make this process any easier. Then again, maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill...

The Indignation of the Undignified

I went to visit the Lord yesterday down on Connaroe Street at St. Mary of the Assumption's perpetual adoration chapel. I was never fond of St. Mary's...if you asked me I couldn't put a finger on it...but there was a feeling of not belonging there. My feelings were only reinforced after yesterday.

I try to spend my time in adoration reclining, as it is written in Jn 13: "There was reclining on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. " I don't assume a stiff posture, or sit proper. In fact, my position is pretty undignified: I lay on the pew on my side, against the wall, with my head on a pillow, so I can rest with the Lord, and not be worrying about my bodily pains, sore back, etc. Sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes I just lay there gazing on the Lord in his elegant monstrance. I do not worry about being prim and proper before the Lord, because he is my Lord, and he knows me, and knows my ways, and knows I mean no disrespect, but only want to rest, and rest with him.

So I am reclining on my side, relaxing with the Lord, laying my burdens upon him, when after a while a man (I assume he worked for the church or had some official capacity, maybe as the Govenor of the Chapel or something?) comes through the door and approaches me and asks, "Is everything alright here?" And I respond, "yes, I am praying." "Yeah?," he says, and looks at me suspiciously, as one might regard a homeless person who is not breaking any laws but is sleeping somewhere he should not be, and says, "Ok," he says slowly, as if I have been stamped and approved to pray in the manner and position in which I had chosen, "it just seemed...unusual" (referring to my posture).

I was unnerved, and fought to choke down the "how dare he" idignation that comes when one is reprimanded for straying outside the bounds of social norms. There I was minding my business with the Lord, having a conversation and not bothering anyone. But I understood it was unusual. I remembered 2 Samuel, where it is written:

"Then it happened as the ark of the LORD came into the city of David that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart."

And I thought of St. Therese the Little Flower, who often fell asleep in meditation, but said:

"It ought to worry me that I go to sleep during meditation and thanksgiving. Well, I don't worry! I think of how little children are as charming to their parents when they are sleeping as when they are awake. I also think of how doctors put their patients to sleep before operating on them. Lastly I think of how Our Lord sees our weakness and knows that we are but dust."

And what the Gospels say:

"People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.'"

I fought indignation when I left shortly thereafter and saw the man sitting in his sleek black Dodge outside the church, blocking the street. I do not like being judged, but then, am I not so quick to judge as well? Of course. Best to forget it; as David said: "Therefore, I will celebrate before the Lord." Besides, as it is written, "Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death." Serves her right.

Resurrection

A military wife is told
her husband has been killed in battle.
She grieves, but on the third day
she is told it was a mistake,
that her husband had the same name
as someone else who was killed,
and that her husband is alive.
She rejoices;
he has come back to life
without ever having died.

Welcome to the Roadkill Cafe

I just watched Half Nelson tonight. I had seen it before when it first came out, and knew it was worth seeing again. Ryan Gosling is an inner-city teacher with a drug problem. He wants to make a difference, while his own life is spiraling out of control. In one scene, he unknowlingly has one of his students deliver drugs to him in a motel while he is partying with a couple of crack smoking hookers. He looks up at his student from the floor with a broken wry smile; he has nothing left to hide. I know that smile. It says, 'you're lookin' at it.' This is all there is to me...this is all there is. What you see is...well, what you get.


How often, in religious circles, do people try to hide who they really are; how often do we try to prop up our fallen scarecrow of an angel guise while it's clear we are cowering behind it in plain view. "I'm just a broken-down piece of meat," says Mickey Rourke. And its true; some days I couldn't describe myself better. The trick is to try to be better--not be a broken-down piece of meat-- but even that falls short under the weight of trying to be in a relentless world of "doing." Sometimes it's just who you are.

I wonder if God has a whole freezer full of rotten meat in his back room he's picked up off the side of the road, because he doesn't know its bad meat, that it will make you sick if you try to eat it, that even when you cook it is still stanks and no amount of A1 ain't ever gonna cover that stank up, and that God has no sense of taste or smell, and doesn't see the flies flying around all nasty, and that he thinks we're the best damn meat he's ever had, and he don't get sick either. He just reaches in and grabs some of that rotten meat and sears it on the Purg-a-Tory grill and oh you never smelled something burning so bad, makes you wish you never ignored expiration dates and fell for the $.99/lb SALE TODAY Manager's Special sealed up in cellophane scam. But somehow that meat comes out alright, and better than alright, this is SOUL FOOD baby, he says, and takes off the Kiss the Cook apron and sits down with St. Peter and eats you up slow, no sauce nothing, just you on that white china bleeding out rare clean as day and says: KHATAM BOI AINT THAT THE BEST DAMN STEK YOU EVER ET??

Hats off to the chef.

Between Here and There

"The things we really want to do are usually the ones that scare us the most."

--Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life?


When I started The Urban Hermitage Project last fall, I was fulfilling a dream...building my own little place, implementing sustainable design, attempting to live as a hermit-writer, downsizing and simplifying everything about my life, evangelizing. It had all the good makings of a quarter-life crisis. I bit off a lot...and had some trouble chewing. More than anything, my time spent on the hermitage project was a period of growth, of stepping outside my comfort zone, and simply trying something on for size, something new, so as to stave off any regrets later in life of not having at least tried to live a more....deliberate life.

One thing I don't think I shared during the course of that project was the fact that after I had moved everything out of my apartment and into the bus on the last day of my lease, I drove down the street with all my posessions and parked. I had no where to go. Everything was packed in such a rush I had no room to move around inside. I cleared a place in the middle of the floor to sit down and felt completely broken, like I had gambled something and lost, big time. I don't know what it was I was betting with...my dignity, my security, the simple comforts of running water and plumbing and a street address. But I know I had stepped out of one thing and into another. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go, or how to start this life, how to make it work. I felt trapped. It started to rain, and I started to cry.

Looking back, I still don't know what prompted me to undertake such a project, to radically alter my life...and then radically alter it back to the way it was; moving back to the same neighborhood, back to the same company and work. I don't think I was the same person after that experience, though. For me, it represented the shaking off of clothes that no longer fit. It was the moving into a new stage, through a very eccentric and memorable rite of passage that was completely my own. Months later, Debbie would google my name before we started dating and find this project online and be totally fascinated by my eccentricities. If for some reason this was the only reason to have undertaken the project, to have brought us together, it would have been worth it.


Now I am waiting to hear about a job teaching religion and working in campus ministry at St. Joe's Prep, and I am scared...scared they will say no, and scared they will say yes. I know I would be great for the job, and feel called to it. I went through my interviews, and felt I did everything I could to present myself as the best candidate. It is now out of my hands. I'm afraid of not being able to do the job. I'm afraid of being great at the job. I'm afraid of not getting it and being stuck where I am now. The thing we really want to do is usually the one that scares us the most. What we are really called to asks the most of us. Dreaming and planning your future is easy...living it when it is delivered is another matter altogether.

My New Place

Back from the supermarket
(eight boxes of cereal)
and beating the rain, now
lying on the floor
watching the ceiling fan
swirl round and round
a lonely feeling settles in.

"Be strong and do the work."

--1 Chronicles 28:10

Lectio AM

"Be strong and courageous, and do the work."

--1 Chronicles 28:20

Lectio PM

"Now, who is willing to consecrate himself today to the LORD?"

--1 Chronicles 29:5

Rearranged

I reconfigured the 'garden'...to allow more room for the tomatoes to flourish, and because this area gets more sun. The four pepper plants are planted individually and line the south side by the gate. Four tomato plants planted individually line the second south side (on the left), the rest are the big pots full of beans, squash, and cucumber. The tomato trees will be compliment planted in these pots as well, two to a pot, in about two weeks when the seedlings are mature. And this way, the beans, cucumbers, and squash can climb up the fence and cascade down the other side, 10' down to the driveway.

If God was a gardener, he would garden much differently from me. Rather than focusing on maximizing yields and having everything edible and constantly moving and transplanting seedlings, God would plan, plant, and wait patiently, everything would produce its yield, and it would be pretty too, and much more varied. He would not be constantly thinking about the plants or ways to 'get more out of them' or controlling them, placing them here and there, but would be content to let nature do the work. His way is slow and steady. My way is...less so. So gardening has become a spiritual discipline. My whole spiritual life has always been a curvy line, a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next...anxious, impatient, unbridled, defiant. It never ceases to amaze me how all food, all trees and plants and flowers...arise from a single seed. Nature is truly a miracle worker.

comment to andy jones (frames of figure and ground)

"a retired australian boxer told me about the sport in thailand: 'if you're enjoying it you're not doing it right.' i think that's true for boxing...not necessarily true for writing. let's be compassionate with ourselves, maybe be flexible...say, four-five days a week vs. every day? shit, you had three views today holmes. somebody is reading your jawn, including me. i have been away most weekends, so you're not the only one not writing every day. but remember anne lammot's 'one inch picture frame': all you have to do is write what will fit in a 1" picture frame. and remember muhammad ali's poem, the shortest in the world, and very profound: Me We. you have been writing long entries. try short ones. say everything you want to say for the day in two or three lines. you will find writing then becomes more conscious, less wasteful...and possibly less intimidating. remember to write shit every now and agian. shit is good for the soil."

It's Small-Space Garden Time!

This is year one of patio gardening at Debbie's. We have four pepper plants, threee cucumber plants, sixteen bean plants, eight winter squash plants, and fiften tomato plants (twelve of which are Italian "tomato tree" plants). We got a lattice at Lowes to do "vertical growing." The tight spacing is based on the French Intensive method and modified for containers. The bigger pots are companion-planted. We're hoping to have twice as many plants next year so we can live (for a week or so, at least) on what we grow. It's been a lot of work getting dirt from my parents' house and compost from the Fairmount Park recycling center, but it will be worth it come fall. Now they just need water. We also started a compost bin in the driveway. I am excited!

Cessation/Emancipation

Debbie has started going to the bi-polar family and friends support group in Wilmington, "just to be proactive." This means a lot to me, that she supports me in good times and bad. One thing she picked up at the meeting was a brochure linking smoking and depression. I never really thought too much about the effects of nicotine--all those little 'highs'--on the neurotransmitters in the brain that deal with pleasure, but it can really mess things up.

We have been completely smoke free for five days now, and to be honest it feels good. I feel like it's good for my brain too. I am less snappy and somewhat more clearheaded without the ebb and flow of nicotine in my system. Riding my bike (my new Maza...thanks Todd) to work has been good for the endorphins. I am stepping down and hopefully phasing out Zoloft from my medicine cabinent, and I can already feel my sex drive coming back, and I don't feel as numb to things. I am taking ginko biloba to help with this, and would like to see about going on St. John's Wort at some point. The less chemicals in my body, the better, I suppose. I feel like I'm getting back on the health track. It feels good.

Career Paths

I am beginning to think the career path
to heaven or hell
is less about being bad or good
and more about whether you prefer
what is easy
or what is hard;
what is wide
or what is narrow;
what requires work,
or what comes naturally.

A Good Man

My dad made a friend a few years ago, when he retired. My dad's friend is 'agoraphobic.' That means he is afraid of public places, and is confined to his home. My dad visits him, brings him cigarettes and soda, talks with him. It is through this organization called Compeer that helps find friends for people with mental illness. The man is very interesting, too. He used to be a screenwriter in Hollywood before his illness got the best of him. He looks like a mad scientist, but is very nice, if not a bit nervous.

My dad is not big on public service, especially while he was working and busy with us boys and my mom. But this is one thing he has done that I am particularly proud of. Because my dad suffers from mental illness as well, he can relate to his friend. I don't even put the word 'friend' in quotes, because it is not like some token thing...my dad really has gotten out of himself and engaged himself in the life of another. It is genuine, and I am proud of my dad for taking the time to care...making a difference in the life of just one person. This man has said to my dad, "Bob, you are my only friend." That is very special. Even though it is just one person, it is fully engaged, and my dad is committed to this man, and is proud to call him a friend, not because he is "doing" something, but because he is 'being' someone--himself. I think these are the kinds of things God wants us to do, and God does not forget such things, and I hope when my dad dies, as he eventually will, that God will remember him and this little thing and welcome him home.

I'm not really one for inspirational poetry, but I have a photocopy of this poem posted on my desk wall at work that a co-worker gave me...for obvious reasons.

Don’t Quit!

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

when the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest, if you must, but do not quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about,

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don’t give up though the pace seems slow—

You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,

It seems to a faint and faltering man,

Often the struggler has given up,

When he might have captured the victor’s cup,

And he learned too late when the night slipped down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out—

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,It may be near when it seems so far,

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—

It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Dialogue on the morning bike commute

Rob: Life is hard.
The LORD: You want the ups without the downs.
Rob: *!
The LORD: In the time of my favor I will answer you.

Lectio AM

This is what the LORD says:

In the time of my favor I will answer you,
and in the day of salvation I will help you;

But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me,
the LORD has forgotten me."

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast?
Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

Isaiah 49:8, 14-15

Being a pessimist makes you a complainer to yourself. I'm not too fond of complainers, including myself...when I get like this....grass is greener feeling...everything 'unsatisfactory.' Not liking where you are or who you are or what you feel capable of. Seeing an expanse of future gray. Feeling overwhelmed. Being afraid of cars and people and people in cars hitting people on bikes and the city and competition for finite resources. Longing to work quietly in a nursery ("Grass Is Greener Nursery") planting things. The LORD blessed me with a new route home on a bike path. I'm sure I could think of a few other good things as well. But the sun is almost down...it's much past my bedtime.

What now?

I was told last week that I did not get the job at Rosemont College that I had been hoping and praying for for months. I thought it would be devastating, and in a way it is, but I remembered the story of David's son's death, and meditated on it:


"After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground.

On the seventh day the child died. David's servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, "While the child was still living, we spoke to David but he would not listen to us. How can we tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate."

Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate.

His servants asked him, "Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!"

He answered, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, 'Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.' But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.""


Like David, I have nothing more to say on the matter. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away...blessed be the name of the Lord!" What's dead is dead. What lives still needs to be fed...

A Safe Distance

The other day I saw a client who was recovering from an addiction to crack-cocaine and who also had bipolar disorder. He was getting ready to be discharged from a halfway house and had no family in Pennsylvania to live with. He received $102.50 a month in cash assistance and $200 a month in food stamps on which he was expected to live. I had to find him a recovery house where he could live with, one which would take most of his welfare for food and board. He was very nervous about relapsing giving these stresses. I couldn't tell him anything.

Another client I spoke with last week was in a similar situation, but with a wife and child. He didn't want to resort to hustling, but given his intensive outpatient treatment, he was not permitted to work, and had to rely on that $102.50 to live. He kept saying over and over, "I can't work, and I can't go back to my old ways. Rob, what do they expect me to do?"

How in God's good name is someone supposed to live on $100 a month? It is hard enough for non-offenders to get jobs in this economy...ex-offenders have it even worse. And trying to stay clean, stay off the streets, raise a family, find housing, be a productive member of society, given these circumstances? These guys did make choices in their lives, but compared to the hardships of trying to make a life in society, many of these guys figure it is easier to live in prison, and go back. It is such a broken system. These guys have been dealt a shitty hand in life. Some people emerge from such lives like weeds through cracks in the concrete, but many succumb to the environment. I feel like asking my boss, like my client, "What do they expect me to do?"

If you really care enough, it is enough to drive someone to despair. No wonder there is such high turnover and rates of burnout in social work. It's a heavy weight to bear on one's shoulders. That's why I give it to God, whose "yoke is easy, and burden light." I cannot save the world, I can only do what I can do. I try to maintain a safe distance between myself and these problems, for the sake of my own fragile mental health. It's a survival tactic. Or maybe it is just being realistic, and not giving in to emotional response that does no good. Whatever it is, I still marvel at how people survive...like weeds in the concrete.

That same man who asked me in disbelief what he was expected to do...I had nothing to tell him, nothing tangible to make his life better. But I did listen to him. I listened to him talk for almost a half an hour. And that had value for him. He told me so..."it just helps me to talk." So I guess I can do something. Listening doesn't cost anything, and you never know how far it will go. My friend Andy believes in people's stories. And stories, however mundane or tragic, deserve an ear.

Poem for the Morning

Untitled

Nighttime I dream

about seeds,

sprouting food

for me and my family
to eat.

"There's no way like the American way..."

Debbie calls me "earthy-crunchy," but in all honesty, my favorite part of hiking, camping, and the great outdoors is that it makes me appreciate domestic life that much more. Hot showers. Tables and chairs. Not having to carry everything on your back. There is a direct relationship between how much you have been denied something and how much you appreciate it. So, if anything, camping outdoors gives me a new appreciation for being indoors.

I see a viral discontent creeping into our generation because of the fact that we are able to have what we want, when we want it, without having to wait for it. The Medusa from which all these serpents sprout? Credit. Credit is a relatively new phenomenon, as far as how easily accessible it is to the general public. We no longer have to wait til Christmas to get what we want.

This extends to other areas as well. I fear for how the easy access to pornography is affecting men's relationship with their significant others and their sex lives in general. There is a numbing, a desensitizing that occurs with sex-on-demand that isn't always immediately seen but over the long run. As with drugs, the psyche becomes resistant to sexual stimuli and demands more to get the same high. The expectation this places on women as partners to fulfill fantasy nullifies what actually is, and what exists in the relationship between flesh and blood. We reap what we sow, and we as a culture are sowing some bad seeds.

I'd like to try an experiment. For the rest of the week, I would like to try smoking two cigarettes a day: one in the morning, and one in the evening. I am notoriously bad at moderating things like this, so it will be an exercise in discipline. I am hoping this exercise will strenghten my resolve to commit to living a chaste life, to learn to forgo immediate gratification if for nothing else than to appreciate what I have, and to put me through a little hardship at the same time. There is no clean without dirty, no leisure without work, and no redemption without suffering.

Make It Happen

Ever since getting hit by a car over the winter, I have been a little skittish being back on the road on a bike. But the bonds of love are too strong to keep me out of the saddle for long. I gave away my work-issued May Transpass last week in the hopes that I would start riding my bike to work again in order to: 1) save money; 2) get exercise; 3) feel good; 4) promote bicycle commuting; 5) keep off the 23 bus; 6) cop free endorphins. I started today, in the rain, and it was great.

The first thing about riding in the rain is that fenders are your best friend. Since installing a pair on my 3-speed, they have made commuting so much more clean and enjoyable. I ride through puddles and don't splashed. I don't have a wet strip crawling up my back. Riding with fenders makes you feel like a gentleman, and a gentleman on a bicycle is a lovely thing.

The second is that the adage, "there is no bad weather, just bad clothing" holds true. I have two pairs of wet-weather pants I made: one from highly-breathable water-resistant fabric, and one pair from less breathable waterproof/breathable fabric. I chose to wear the more breathable pair this morning since it was only a light rain, but my pants ended up getting soaked through in the front and I got to work with wet thighs and crotch. I keep an extra pair of pants at work, but decided to just wear them as is when I got in the office and let them dry as I'm sitting down. Next time I will wear my waterproof pants, but it was a good experiment, and getting wet is not the end of the world.

I wore a pair of cotton mittens and they were great, because they were breathable and the wind and heat my hands dried them as I rode. Whenever I wear waterproof gloves my hands always sweat and it is uncomfortable. This was much more comfortable. I keep a pair of latex gloves in my bag just in case the rain turns heavy and my hands get cold, but I was pleasantly surprised that the cotton mittens did just fine. To keep my head dry I wore a polypropylene cap that doubles as a balaclava when the weather gets colder. I also wear a helmet now since the accident, and I don't like it, but it makes me feel a little safer. I keep all my stuff dry in a waterproof messenger bag (Cordura lined with PVC-coated vinyl) I made. It works like a charm.

I remember having a revelation on a training ride when I was in college racing for Penn State. We got caught in a thunderstorm and as the storm was approaching I remember we would ride faster and faster, in some attempt to minimize our time in the rain. But once you're wet, you're wet. It won't kill you. I slowed down, and remembered Ray Smith in The Dharma Bums and his realization, "you can't fall off a mountain!" Remembering that wet clothes dry with time makes being caught in the rain, or commuting in the rain, less of a miserable experience.

I locked up my bike in the basement of 260 S. Broad and took the service elevator to the 8th floor, and polished the grit and rain off my black dress shoes (they are waterproof) with a wet paper towel. I felt good, like I accomplished something, like I earned my bread, and I'm sure the endorphins were circulating in my brain. I clocked in and was surprised to see that I arrived fifteen minutes early and it only took me 50 minutes to get from my living room to my office, and that was riding at a leisurely pace. It takes as long on the bus.

Thinking about riding 8 miles in the rain to work makes me a little apprehensive when I think about it, but once you're out there it feels great. I get my exercise in, I'm not on the crowded bus, and I have time to myself riding on the bike path along the river. Now I look forward to it...rain or otherwise...as the highlight of my day.

"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."
(The better is the enemy of the good.)

--Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness

Lectio AM

"Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain;
he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it."

--Ps 39:6

The Stranger

Over the weekend, while everyone and their mother was out playing softball, tennis, basketball, catch, I made a comment to Debbie about how absurd our time on earth is--this throwing of a ball back and forth--given the fact that we are all going to die, how arbitrary it seemed...that the configuration and running around of colors on a pasture seemed as good a thing as any to pass the time on the way to the grave. She laughed at my fatalism and I laughed too, because I knew it was true. There is a comment in Andrew Solomon's The NoonDay Demon about the value of work--how, if nothing else, it was a distraction from the existential depression that comes with knowing our lives have little meaning other than the meaning we assign it. We may as well work, not just because we have to, but because there is satisfaction in it...satisfaction in being distracted from the inevitability of our own demise for a few hours a day.

Since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and going on medication, there have been few days in which I have felt truly happy and grateful to be alive. I have not felt truly sad for anything either. Just awful indifference. It is like Zack Braff in Garden State waking up in a whitewashed room and going through the motions of life--pumping gas, driving to work in traffic, waiting tables--with little to no change in his emotions; it is all the same to him. Life is not bad, but it's not all that great either. The days of high and low waves seems like a dream, another time. I am more stable, but at what price? I can see this is the point when many with this illness 'accidentally' drop their meds in the toilet, saying 'to hell with stability...I want to feel, to live.' I want to care about something. I have abandoned a lot of my hobbies...building bikes, reading, writing, painting...for lack of interest; not doing them seems just as good as doing them. This feels very tragic, and maybe I would be better just to force participation in more things for the distraction, if nothing else, like they say with sex: even if you don't feel like it, do it anyway; you might end up enjoying it.

But I am considering some med changes. Things are 'good,' if goodness if judged by the lack of highs and lows. But it is an awful way to live. My sex drive, my life force, is in hibernation. I suspect that is the Zoloft doing its job. Maybe that should be the first to go? The thing about medication is there is a warranted fear in going off of them (and I'm not talking about going off all of them, just cutting down or eliminating one, for trial's sake), but the 'safe bet' is to be content with feeling 'okay'--not good, not bad, just ok--should be equally feared. Thankfully I have a good relationship with my doctor, who listens to my concerns and takes them seriously, and isn't afraid to step out of the box and try new things, as long as they are closely supervised and monitored. With the sun and the spring weather here in full swing, I would just like a little bit of color back in my day. Life still may seem absurd...but at least the absurdity would be a little easier to laugh at.

Little Things

This morning I decided to kill three birds with one stone: I would meditate, whiten my teeth, and start to learn self-discipline. I sat down and the LORD said to me: "You have not yet learned to suffer (for my sake)." He was right. So I said, "baby steps." I would set my alarm for 10 minutes, sit on my cushion, and not move until the alarm went off.

I put some teeth whitener in a tray and put it in my mouth. It got all foamy after a few minutes and I was uncomfortable. I don't like being uncomfortable. But here I was, 9 minutes left on the clock, and I'm hurting. But I said, "don't move." I so wanted to check the clock...just to make sure I set the alarm right, I rationalized. After what seemed like a long time, everything was still quiet. Why hadn't the alarm gone off yet? I felt like a dog with rabies with the tray in my mouth getting all foamy, and it was starting to burn a little. I took little swallows and some of the teeth whitening jawn slipped down my throat.

I kept second guessing whether or not I had set the alarm right. I wanted to check it so badly. I tried to pay attention to my breathing. This was pathetic. I couldn't even sit still for ten minutes without whining. But this was not the place for chastising. Whatever I did here, whatever effort I made, it was all good, and acceptable to God, because I was trying to learn to suffer for his sake, to endure discomfort, and learn how to be patient. It was all I could do not to check the alarm. Just the other day I got impatient with my bean and pepper seedlings for not shooting up fast enough, and I dug them up just to make sure the seeds were good. Oi. I think about Zorba and the butterfly.

I went to the chapel on campus yesterday before class and sat before the LORD. I left my bag on the marble step behind me, knelt, and closed my eyes. Someone came and knelt next to me for a little while, then got up. I thought, 'I should check my bag.' But the LORD said, 'Trust me.' I figured it was still there, that the LORD wouldn't let anyone take it while I was with him. But you never know, you know? I had work files in there, and a half a ham sandwich! I really wanted to turn around, just to take a little peak for reassurance, but the LORD said, 'trust me.' So I did. I said, ok, and when I got up my bag was still there.

So here I am in agony all foamy-mouthed sitting on my cushion by the sofa and straining to keep my back straight and my mind from wandering and wanting to get up whether the alarm goes off or not fuck it what difference does it make anyway? And the LORD said, "If you cannot learn to endure these little things, how will you learn to die for me?" He was right. I babied myself. I said, ok, one more minute, I will trust. So I squim and squirm for another minute and feel small victory. Then another minute. Then the alarm goes off. And it was a little feeling...feeling slightly embarrassed at all my whining, but feeling the little feeling of being unashamed, and in a small way, victorious.

Prayer for the Evening

God, I feel so incompetent.
Like a dumb ox with no one to lead me.

"You gotta give 'em hope."

--Harvey Milk

Letter to Andy Jones (excerpts)

i just realized that friend in philly you were referring to was me;) i want to say a few things about writing:

the first is that writing is not about the content, whether it is boring or exciting, but (i believe) it is about intimacy. we present ourselves on blogs as we want to be seen, but when i write i try to put the ego aside and offer whatever i write as a gift to anyone who might gain something from reading it. yes, the ego weaves its way in and out in what we choose to disclose and what we choose to keep to ourselves. writing is subjective and an ego trip by nature...we think we are important and have something to say. that is ok. one of the all-time best books on writing, my #1, is 'Writing Down the Bones' by Natalie Goldberg. she is a writer and a zen buddhist, she cuts to the heart and essence of writing with these short little chapters, infusing humor, honesty, affirmation, and joy into the art. i highly suggest buying a copy. if you can't find one, i will lend you mine.

there is a zen story about a man who goes into a butchershop. he says, 'give me the best piece of meat you have.' the butcher replies, 'all my pieces of meat are the best. you will not find one piece of meat here that is not the best.' and the man was enlightened. moments are not good or bad, important or trivial. every moment comes from the hand of God. there is not one moment that is not the best for writing.

writing is more or less a practice. you get 'good' by doing it, over and over. it doesn't have to become a job. but the more you do it, the less self-conscious (or maybe not) you will become. there is another zen saying, something along the lines of 'when you are alone, act as if you were in the presence of an honored guest; when you are in the presence of others, act as if you were alone.' i try to practice this in my writing. i write for an audience, even if none exists, but in the end, i am writing for myself. it is paradoxical, but good for keeping things pure. not everyone is comfortable writing publically, and some people seem to be too open in it. i try to strike a balance. what i post on my blog is what i choose to post; i retain the right to keep my private life private. you have to find your own balance. what helps with this is practicing writing about what you see...whatever it is, nothing is too big or too small...in a way that puts your own stamp on the experience. it takes time to find your voice. it has taken me years, and i am still finding it. i have been lazy about writing lately...maybe we could spurn each other on by sending stuff to each other? i used to belong to a writer's group where we would always warm up with exercises....we would all write about an orange for ten minutes, or something like that...and it was neat to see how different everyone viewed it afterwards.

never abandon joy. you are not a writer by profession. it is not your job...so it should be your joy, or, at least, your recreation. when i taught 7th grade english, i would start each class with 10 minutes of timed stream-of-consciousness writing with the class. pencils weren't allowed to stop moving, and if they did, i would bang on their desk. if the kids were stuck and didn't know what to say, they were to keep writing the last word they were stuck on until they became unstuck. if the word was poop, they would write 'poop poop poop poop yellow balloon.' you get it. most of their stuff was crap, and the trick was learning that that was ok. we tore up what we wrote, threw it in the trash, and got started with class. it was practice. but they loved it, and wanted to 'do the writing thing' every morning. you have the right to write crap. i write it all the time.


so i hope you will keep writing. try some stream-of-consciousness stuff. remove the inner censor and just write from brain to hand without editing about what you see, feel, etc.without erasing, without stopping to think. spill the words, the nonsense. i'll do it right now for one minute:

in the essence of perpetual gray and pink flowered coated fishcakes, the computer screen flashing like a traffic light in moon lit glow of summer sands and the stopping power of those brakes you used to have on your 68 chevette, the smell of grass and dripping things, frogs and animals and things of nature croaking and groaning in twilight, runining water and making you pee your pants, insomnia, middle age, the time it passes so quickly...

there you go. crap on a stick for your licking pleasure.

alright man, clock-out time approaches. hope to hear from you soon. you have something to say, blogged or otherwise...

r

"I chose, consciously and willingly, to abandon myself to God's will, to let go completely of every last reservation. I knew I was crossing a boundary I had always hesitated and feared to cross before. Yet this time I chose to cross it--and the result was a feeling not of fear but of liberation, not of danger or of despair but a fresh new wave of confidence and of happiness." --Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., He Leadeth Me

Poem for the Day

He is breaking my bones;
he is lavishing his hesed on me.

"This tendency to set acceptable conditions upon God, to seek unconsciously to make his will for us coincide with our desires, is a very human trait. And the more important the situation is, the more totally we are committed to it or the more completely our future depends upon it, then the easier it becomes for us to blind ourselves into thinking that what we want is surely what God must also want. We can see but one solution only, and naturally we assume that God will help us reach it." --Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.

Prayer for the Morning

"In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:

'My son, do not make light of the lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and punishes everyone he accepts as a son.'

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.

Moreover, we have all had human fathers who discipline us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplines us for a little while as they thought best; but God dsiciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." (Heb 12:4-13)

Dialogue, 4 AM

Rob: "I waited patiently for the Lord..."
The LORD: You have been waiting, but not patiently.
Rob: *!

letter to D (excerpts)

hey there,

i am proud of you $weety:) way to take charge of your finances.

today was a better day at work. i put in notes from yesterday into the computer and had some things to keep me busy. i am starting to be more comfortable at my job. i also substitute tutored at the learning lab and met up with a friend from college who also tutors there, we had tea at my place afterwards and had good talk.

one thing i realized today is that i really have been making an idol out of rosemont. nothing is promised, and i need to stop living in the future, but in the hear-and-now...at my hum-drum job, in germantown, with being unsettled, and to be 'content in all things.' reading the book by fr. walter ciszek that lindsay gave me also has been affirming in this. listen to what he says:

"Our dilemma at Teplaya-Gora came from our frustration at not being able to do what we thought the will of God ought to be in this situation, at our inability to work as we thought God would surely want us to work, instead of accepting the situation itself as his will. It is a mistake easily made by every man, saint or scholar, Church leader or day laborer. Ultimately, we come to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the real situations in which he places us daily.

The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of 'all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day'--and who then acts upon it be accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God--has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. To predict what God's will is going to be, to rationalize about what his will must be, is at once a work of human folly and yet the subtlest of all temptations. The plain and simple truth is that his will is what he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems."

That really spoke to me. Accepting where I am--not where I might be--is what God is really calling me to right now. So I am letting Rosemont go. If it comes back to me then I'll know. Your coffee cup told me so;)

Ah

Reaching for a coffee cup this morning,
I see a cup I've never seen.

"Good morning," it says
this is God!
I will be handling all your problems today.
I will not need your help.
So have a good day.
I love you.


Funny, the coffee seemed to taste especially good.

Good Friday (excerpts)

d,

thanks, i just need some reassurance every now and then. it is kind of hard because i feel like i never left my old job since i am at the same place, but don't know anything. you know, i catch myself thinking sometimes, 'why did i even leave in the first place?' i had a comfy position, a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, etc...and then i realized, 'i am talking like an israelite, post-exodus:

In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death." (ex 16:3)

i honestly felt that when i left the comforts of my comfortable situation, that God was calling me out of it. i had gotten too comfortable. Jean Pierre de Caussade wrote: "God's plans, disguised as they are, reveal themselves to us through our intuition rather than through our reason. They disclose themselves in various ways: by chance or by what seems to be a compulsive thrust which allows no choice of action, by a sudden impulse, by some supernatural rapture, or very often by something which attracts or repels us." In this way i felt God was calling me 'out of egypt' and into the unknown, which i am definitely not comfortable with. He was asking me to trust Him in the not-knowing.

The Lord also said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions."

God's instructions for me now are: be patient. wait. don't worry. I will provide for you. and i catch myself grumbling, doubting, regretting. you know, it is a Good Friday meditation. This is the beginning of the Three Days. Jesus' disciples...they scattered like sheep when he was arrested. After he was crucified, they were in doubt about everything Jesus stood for, didn't know what was going to happen to the mission, would Jesus ever come back, etc. Peter was ashamed of what/who he had committed himself to. For three days, EVERYTHING was uncertain. Jesus was dead. We know he would come back, but at the time, the disciples and those who trusted in him didn't know. As far as they knew, they threw their chips down and lost big. But we know that's not how the story ends.

And so it is with me. This is my Three Days (3 weeks? 3 months?) of waiting for a resurrection. It is a painful, tense, uncertain time. Then again, it is natural that it should be. There is no future. There is no past. There is only now...

Letter to Andy Jones

9 April, 2009

"God's plans, disguised as they are, reveal themselves to us through our intuition rather than through our reason. They disclose themselves in various ways: by chance or by what seems to be a compulsive thrust which allows no choice of action, by a sudden impulse, by some supernatural rapture, or very often by something which attracts or repels us."

–Jean Pierre de Caussade

Andy,


I was so glad to hear about what's been happening in your letter. I will open my own in the words of Paul to the Philippians, because I think it speaks in the same spirit as I would write myself:


Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.


There were some things that stood out for me in your letter. First, it is clear that God is working in you. If I would show you a letter you wrote me a few years ago and hold it up to the one I am reading now, there is real growth there. Faith grows like a beard man...rough little stubs at first, agitations on the skin; then some juvenile scrub, like, 'yah, I got a beard, girl.' If you watch it one day in the mirror, and then check to see how much its grown the next day, you can't see any difference. Then you get filled with Beard Envy, cause you want to be using the little comb, picking and brushing them scraggly curls mountain man suave-like, three-finger stroking in the spring sun. But your beard is still growing. Soon, though, it will fill out, and you will see how far your beard has come.

You know, I was driving on 95 the other day and passed a billboard of St. Michael the Archangel stepping on Satan's head and putting a sword to his neck, with the prayer in big white letters against a black backdrop: "St. Michael, Archangel, defend us in spiritual battle." That was it. No idea who would have spent all that money to erect something like that, because it didn't say. And I thought, it's true: We are at war! Jesus said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but the sword.' I took seeing that billboard as a sign, and it was only a few days after I had read your letter. We are both at war against the flesh and against the devil. One thing you can be sure of...the more the fight intensifies, the closer we are to approaching perfection.

It's funny, too, because we both have backgrounds in Buddhism...this idea of perfection. In Buddhism, a Perfect Mind is one free from craving. In Christianity, a Perfect Heart is one completely broken, in which power is turned over from the self to the Selfless, that is, God. Jesus said, 'unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a grain of wheat.' It is clear from your letter: your old self is dying!

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I don’t know if you realize that leading a group of people through the fucking jungles of Bolivia, being in charge of their welfare, trying to get them to do a job, all of that, despite your perceived failings…shit. You the man.

* * *

Ok, so I just got your email, your correspondence with Kiva, as I was writing you. Ah, what a godsend. I am so bored at work. I just started this new job in drug & alcohol case management a couple weeks ago (it’s a job, which I’m grateful for, but not esp. excited about) and they haven't assigned me a caseload yet, so I am basically like George in that Seinfield episode where he gets a job when the boss is on vacation and he basically sits at a desk for eight hours doing nothing. I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts, but I am bored off my tail. I liked when you wrote: “I contemplated changing careers at more than one point through it all,” because it drives home to me that no matter what you are doing, there are always going to be ups and downs, and that the grass is not always greener. (That being said, please pray I get a job at ROSEMONT COLLEGE in CAMPUS MINISTRY. I should hear about that in a month or so, and the waiting is killing me). So, thanks for the good reading. And no, it is not too personal, come on now;) Ah, I am proud of you boy, and you are proud of you too, which is even more important.

Getting back to the last thing I was talking about, you wrote:


I built my
> spiritual life for many years around the idea that I could find happiness on
> my own if I did enough good, if I meditated enough, if I calmed my mind
> enough, if I opened my heart wide enough. That’s all great and I’ll continue
> to do those things, but I know now that I can’t achieve those things by
> force of will. I know now that I’m not in control.


I had the same revelation years ago...it was the backbone, the impetus of my conversion in the wilderness--that my will was not enough. My being in control was an illusion, and I still believe we are in control to a degree, but ultimately, not. This way of thinking is a break from Buddhism. The nice overlaps have cracked and spread, and now you are being forced to jump to one landmass or the other. That is, if you are committing yourself to something. You might not be there yet, but it sounds like you are approaching it, that things are shifting beneath your feet. Buddha himself would say he is not a Savior, that there is no need for Salvation, but for Emancipation. If you are a Buddhist, this is what you believe. The thing you need to confront in yourself and ask is whether you believe this to be true; do I need to be saved from something? There is a war in me, and I am not strong enough to fight alone. I AM hampered by something in me that causes me, as Paul says, to "do that which I don't want to do." (Read Romans 7 for more on this). This is the Christian presupposition...that there is something in us that needs healing. And it is Jesus Christ who is the healer.

I posted this on my blog, so you may read it, but the following is from St. Augustine's Confessions (which I would highly suggest reading, you can find it online too). It really strikes home this struggle we have within ourselves to give up that which keeps us from evolving spiritually. That tension, the draw of the "old ways" that Augustine portrays has been especially poignant for me as I struggle to free myself from addictions and the flesh, and speaks to me personally:


"It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: "Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you forever?" What were they suggesting to me in those words "this or that"? What is it they suggested, O my God? Let thy mercy guard the soul of thy servant from the vileness and the shame they did suggest! And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was leaving, trying to make me look back at them. Still they delayed me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of them and leap over to the place to which I was being called--for unruly habit kept saying to me, "Do you think you can live without them?"

But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go, the chaste dignity of continence appeared to me--cheerful but not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing, extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good examples--to receive and embrace me. There were there so many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and ancient virgins; and continence herself in their midst: not barren, but a fruitful mother of children--her joys--by thee, O Lord, her husband. And she smiled on me with a challenging smile as if to say: "Can you not do what these young men and maidens can? Or can any of them do it of themselves, and not rather in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in your own strength, and so stand not? Cast yourself on him; fear not. He will not flinch and you will not fall. Cast yourself on him without fear, for he will receive and heal you." And I blushed violently, for I still heard the muttering of those "trifles" and hung suspended. Again she seemed to speak: "Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours, that they may be mortified. They tell you of delights, but not according to the law of the Lord thy God." This struggle raging in my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self. And Alypius kept close beside me, and awaited in silence the outcome of my extraordinary agitation." (XI.26-27)


I’m not going to say much about Kiva, because I think you will know what to do with this situation as it unfolds; it will work itself out. A story, though: I had not really dated too many spiritual or religious people in the past, and up until recently, I was considering just relaxing that standard just to be in a relationship. My friends were telling me to do the same, that I was ‘limiting’ myself. I went out with a few people from a Catholic dating site, and nothing clicked, so I was considering their suggestions. I went to the chapel in Manayunk and prayed to meet a godly woman, or at least someone who was trying to live their faith. I prayed for months. And God delivered with Debbie. I’m glad I didn’t relax those standards. God took his time, but He came through. So, meeting someone who is at least not against your faith in the way Kiva is is worth a try. You never know what might happen. God knows what you need.

Hit me back when you can. I hope your visa stuff gets worked out. This is a great time for you man. The beard is growing…

R

PM Lectio

"Fear Him, do not sin;
ponder on your bed and be still.
Make justice your sacrifice and
trust in the Lord."

AM Lectio

"He set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand."

--Ps 40:2

The Wide Path to Hell

Last week I started working for a public health program called Forensic Intensive Recovery (FIR) which offers court assigned treatment alternatives to incarceration. We work with offenders, probation offers, recovery houses, and other agents involved in the criminal justice system. Yesterday I was downtown at the Criminal Justice Center sitting in on court cases, most being PWID (posession with intent to deliver), and Monday I spent the day at a Methadone Maintenance Center in Germantown. While there was a lot going on in both places, the main thing I took away was that nothing good comes from drug use. Nothing.

In Debbie's bible study they were recently discussing the "cycle of defeat" which comes when one tries to live in obedience to the precepts of God. Nowhere is the cycle of defeat more apparent than in drug addiction and alcoholism. I don't want to go on and on about this, but I will say that being in the throws of addiction to crack or heroin or alcohol is like a modern day possession by evil spirits--it makes you into someone else. I don't know if I necessarily agree with our country's War on Drugs and how it is being enforced, or our cultural acceptance of alcohol and the double standard in marijuana prohibition; but I do know that drug addiction is a scourge of humanity, and if you are looking at it theologically, there is something demonic about it.

Reading the intake evaluations is sobering: clients reporting use of marijuana, alcohol since as young as 9 years old; $50, $100, $300 per day cocaine, crack, and heroin habits; some guys in treatment for abuse of things as benign as cough syrup and OTC medications. Men and women with children and no education. It goes on and on. And I can't help but wonder: if drugs did not exist, where would we be as a society? It certainly wouldn't be here...

19. On Who Is Truly Patient

"Be ready for battle, therefore, if you would have victory. Without battle you cannot come to the crown of patience, and if you will not suffer, you refuse to be crowned. Wherefore, if you desire to be crowned, resist strongly and suffer patiently, for without labor no man can come to rest, and without battle no man can come to victory."

--Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

journal 2-14-04

dear jesus,

yes! you are the christ! all praise and worship be to you.

i'm reading the book jonathan sent me, 'what should i do with my life?' by po bronson. it is revelatory--accounts of people struggling to find their place in life and what they're supposed to be 'doing'--just like me. makes me feel like everyone struggles with these decisions, and at various ages too. it reaffirms that end the end, all people basically share the same desire--'to be happy.' human life is rich and fascinating. you keep things a mystery for us because your father is a Good father, he doesn't want us opening our presents the day before christmas or eating our dessert before dinner...

RPM

30. Of the Help of God to be Asked, and of a Full Trust to Recover Our Former Grace through Devout Prayer

"But now, take good spirit. After your trouble, be comforted in Me, and have full trust in the light of My mercy, for I am near you to help and restore you, not only to the same grace you had at first, but to more grace in great abundance. Is there anything hard or impossible to Me, or am I like a man who says a thing and does not do it? Where is your faith? Stand strongly and perseveringly in Me; be steadfast, awaiting My promise; and you will have comfort when it will be most expedient to you. Abide, abide and wait for Me, and I will come soon to you and help you."

--Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

poem for the day

Ah you mongrel, you mutt!

Ascend Mt. Hippopotamus

Bark at the howling wind!

PM Lectio

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

AM Lectio

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Mt 6:33)

Trial and Error

Thanks to Michelle for the kind comments (and acknowledgment in her most recent manuscript) on Doubt is Torture (01.03.09). Keep kicking through the mire M!

Speaking of writing, now that I am working, I have a feeling I will be writing more. There has been an empty hole lately where my creative center once stood churning away like a fiery orb; really, though, I just have not been writing. I suppose this is natural when you are preoccupied with getting-your-life-in-order things. If anything, now that I am preoccupied at a job I don't like much, I'm sure I will have plenty of time to muse and pen thoughts when I get home from a day at the office.

This has been the year of trial-and-error: I tried being a hermit, and realized I do not want to be a hermit. I tried being a celibate, and realized I really do not want to be a celibate. I tried living in a school bus, and realized I did not want to be some guy that lives in a bus. I tried temporary retirement, and found that the joys of not working are not all they are cracked up to be. Finally, I tried living the life of a full-time, bona-fide writer...and realized I do not want to write for a living. And that is ok! If I would have never tried, I would have always been left to wonder. Props to those who do, though. Jesus. I know there is a calling wrapped up and swaddled somewhere in my vocation as a 'non-profesisonal' writer. I am still peeling back the layers to see what's inside.

Arthur Kade: The Journey

http://arthurkade.com/2009/03/25/fame/#comments

wow. is robsfobs destined to similar D.B. status? let's hope not.

btw, my first day of work back in case management I am bored out of my mind and only have one crossword puzzle to last me through the day! but, yes, i am ju$t grateful to have a job.

Prayer for the Morning

The Lord gently reminded me this morning: "When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive your transgressions."

Rethinking the Issue

Thanks to Anonymous and those clarifying the issue on the Pope and condom use in Africa. I am posting one comment that I found especially helpful in counterbalancing this issue with the media's portrayal:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Pope: condoms not the answer in AIDS fight":

Cambridge, Mass., Mar 21, 2009 / 10:11 am (CNA).- Pope Benedict’s recent brief remark against condoms has caused an uproar in the press, but several prominent scientists dedicated to preventing AIDS are defending the Pope, saying he was correct in his analysis. In an interview with CNA, Dr. Edward Green explained that although condoms should work, in theory, they may be “exacerbating the problem” in Africa.

Benedict XVI’s Tuesday comments on condoms were made as part of his explanation of the Church’s two prong approach to fighting AIDS. At one point in his response the Pontiff stressed that AIDS cannot be overcome by advertising slogans and distributing condoms and argued that they “worsen the problem.” The media responded with an avalanche of over 4,000 articles on the subject, calling Benedict a “threat to public health,” and saying that the Catholic Church should “enter the 21st century.”

Senior Harvard Research Scientist for AIDS Prevention, Dr. Edward Green, who is the author of five books, including “Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries” discussed his support for Pope Benedict XVI’s comments with CNA.

According to Dr. Green, science is finding that the media is actually on the wrong side of the issue. In fact, Green says that not only do condoms not work, but that they may be “exacerbating the problem” in Africa.

“Theoretically, condoms ought to work,” he explained to CNA, “and theoretically, some condom use ought to be better than no condom use, but that’s theoretically.”

Condom proponents often cite the lack of condom education as the main culprit for higher AIDS rates in Africa but Green disagrees.

After spending 25 years promoting condoms for family planning purposes in Africa, he insists that he’s quite familiar with condom promotion. Yet, he claims that “anyone who worked in family planning knew that if you needed to prevent a pregnancy, say the woman will die, you don’t recommend a condom.”

Green recalls that when the AIDS epidemic hit Africa, the “Industry” began using AIDS as a “dual purpose” marketing strategy to get more funding for condom distribution. This, he claims, effectively took “something that was a 2nd or 3rd grade device for avoiding unwanted pregnancies” and turned it into the “best weapon we [had] against AIDS.”

The accepted wisdom in the scientific community, explained Green, is that condoms lower the HIV infection rate, but after numerous studies, researchers have found the opposite to be true. “We just cannot find an association between more condom use and lower HIV reduction rates” in Africa.

Dr. Green found that part of the elusive reason is a phenomenon known as risk compensation or behavioral disinhibition.

“[Risk compensation] is the idea that if somebody is using a certain technology to reduce risk, a phenomenon actually occurs where people are willing to take on greater risk.” The idea can be related to someone that puts on sun block and is willing to stay out in the sun longer because they have added protection. In this case, however, the greater risk is sexual. Because people are willing take on more risk, they may “disproportionally erase” the benefits of condom use, Green said.

Another factor that contributes to ineffective condom use in Africa, is the phenomenon where condoms may be effective on an “individual level,” but not on a “population level.” Green’s research found that “condoms have been effective” in HIV concentrated areas where high risk activities are already being conducted, such as brothels in countries like Thailand.

Claiming to be a liberal himself, Green asserts that promoting Western “liberal ideology” where, “most Africans are conservative when it comes to sexual behavior,” is quite offensive to them. Citing his new book, “Indigenous Theories and Contagious Disease,” Green described Africans as “very religious by global standards” who are offended by “trucks going around where people are dancing to ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’, tossing out condoms to teenagers and the children of the village.”

Green also noted that there is an ideology called “harm reduction” that is being pushed by many organizations trying to prevent AIDS. The ideology believes that “you can’t change the underlying behavior, that you can’t get people to be faithful, especially Africans,” the HIV specialist explained.

One country, Uganda, recognized these issues and said, “Listen, if you have multiple sex partners, you are going to get AIDS.” What worked in Uganda, a country that has seen a decline by as much as 2/3 in AIDS infections, was that officials realized that even aside from religious and cultural reasons, “no one likes condoms.” Instead of waiting for “American and European advisors to arrive,” Ugandan officials reacted and developed a program that fit their culture; their main message being “stick to one partner or love faithfully.”

However, in 2004, Uganda’s AIDS infection rates began to increase once again, due to an influx of condoms and Western “advice”, Green recalled. Western donors also came to Uganda and said behavioral change doesn’t work and that, “most infections nowadays are among married people.” Green said these claims are “misleading,” pointing out that “married people always have lower HIV infection rates than single or divorced people of the same age group.”

Green’s new book, “AIDS and Ideology,” to be completed in the next few months, will describe the industry in Africa that is “drawing billions of dollars a year promoting condoms, testing, drugs, and treatment of AIDS” and is clearly resistant to the idea that behavioral change is the solution.

Yet the two countries that have the highest infection rate of AIDS in the world, Botswana and Swaziland, have recently launched campaigns to promote fidelity and monogamy, the Harvard researcher said. These countries “have learned the hard way” about the failure of condoms in preventing AIDS, he said, noting that “Botswana has probably had more condom promotion” than any other county on a per capita basis. Green said he had no problem “having condoms as a backup to fidelity-based programs.”

According to Green, the Catholic Church should continue to “do what it is already doing,” avoid “arguing about the diameter of viruses” and cite scientific evidence in connection with scripture and moral theology.

The Call

"Oh crap, it's Him."

--Debbie

Sermons of St. Francis de Sales

THE HEART OF PRAYER April 12, 1615

"David says that his whole face prayed [Cf. Ps. 27:8], that his eyes were so attentive in looking upon God that they failed [Cf. Ps. 69:4 and 88:10; also Is. 38:14], and that his mouth was open like a little bird who waits for its mother to come to fill it. But in any case, the posture which affords the best attention is the most suitable. Yes, even the posture of lying down is good, and seems to be a prayer in itself. For do you not see that the holy man Job, lying on his dunghill, made a prayer so excellent that it merited to be heard by God? [Cf. Job 42:9-10]. But this is sufficient."

"If they give you ruled paper,
write the other way."

--Juan Ramon Jimenez

Stevia GO!

http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Legislation/Stevia-sweetener-gets-US-FDA-go-ahead

Prayer for the Evening

"I want to thaank you Lord
for all yoove done
foooah me."

--lady singing on Germantown Ave.

An Extraordinary Agitation

St. Augustine, Confessions:

"It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: "Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you forever?" What were they suggesting to me in those words "this or that"? What is it they suggested, O my God? Let thy mercy guard the soul of thy servant from the vileness and the shame they did suggest! And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was leaving, trying to make me look back at them. Still they delayed me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of them and leap over to the place to which I was being called--for unruly habit kept saying to me, "Do you think you can live without them?"

But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go, the chaste dignity of continence appeared to me--cheerful but not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing, extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good examples--to receive and embrace me. There were there so many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and ancient virgins; and continence herself in their midst: not barren, but a fruitful mother of children--her joys--by thee, O Lord, her husband. And she smiled on me with a challenging smile as if to say: "Can you not do what these young men and maidens can? Or can any of them do it of themselves, and not rather in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in your own strength, and so stand not? Cast yourself on him; fear not. He will not flinch and you will not fall. Cast yourself on him without fear, for he will receive and heal you." And I blushed violently, for I still heard the muttering of those "trifles" and hung suspended. Again she seemed to speak: "Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours, that they may be mortified. They tell you of delights, but not according to the law of the Lord thy God." This struggle raging in my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self. And Alypius kept close beside me, and awaited in silence the outcome of my extraordinary agitation."
(XI.26-27)

The Devil Wears Nothing

The Devil wasn't wearing any pants, and told me I'd be happier without mine as well. I told him to go fuck himself. Then he laughed. Then I laughed. Then he frowned. Then I laughed more. I kissed Debbie on the forehead and got up to make some green hot chocolate in the middle of the black night.

Being good sux. It hurts. Whah whah. Man up, asshole. Monday mornings suck too, but you get up and go to work (assuming you have work to go to). St. Antony is in my corner with the spit bucket. I ask my white-bearded coach what my strategy should be "Don't be such a pussy," he says.

Being chaste sucks, at least initially...don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I don't expect any sympathy on this, and in fact am probably opening myself up to ridicule. Going chaste is not a natural choice. It was, however, a mutual one, like buying a five piece bedroom set at Raymore and Flannigan's in seconds with the swipe of plastic. You need the set, but now I'm getting the bill, and I don't want to pay it. But I also don't want it to go into collections. I suppose.

I wrote an email about a year ago to some friends called 'Twenty Minutes in the Lion's Den.' It was about temptation, and spiritual attack, and what the experience is like. I have long since lost the email, but the feelings are the same. You feel like you are on fire and are begging someone to throw a bucket of water on you. You are restless, and just want to sleep. You are stressed, and get depressed. You chain smoke. And you know it can all go away with one simple act of the will. After extricating myself from an unhealthy physical relationship years ago, I went through some serious detox. Your body remembers. When I quit smoking, and started again, and then tried to stop, by body remembered. It put me through the wringer. I have no one to blame but myself for re-introducing it in the first place.

But you hold on; for dear life, if you like. A man's sexuality, his life force, is energy pushed outwards. When it's caged, it is like a baby kicking in the womb, pounding for freedom from the confines of the body. A baby screams in the middle of the night, you get up to feed it. Your body screams in the middle of the night...you get up and make hot chocolate and eat irish soda bread and curse and write about lost sleep and how lame having hot chocolate at 3:30AM compared to the pleasures of the flesh.

After spending a few months living like a monk, sleeping on the floor, not masturbating, etc., I should be used to self-denial. I'm not. I hate it. I hate it like it is good for me. In the words of Daniel Johnston: "I'm laaazy...oh Yeah." Not having sex only makes sense if you have faith that it will bear spiritual fruit. If it's done wrong, it will kill the tree. If it's not done, you risk blight for the Christian harvest. If you do decide to 'prune the branches,' they are slow growing back; that is, getting to an acceptable level of comfort and acceptance in a chaste relationship is like watching pruned branches grow back. That is ok. It takes time. It is slow getting used to. Especially when you are craving some fruit. My Lent has officially begun.

Poem for the Evening

Lectio AM

"Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And delight yourself in abundance."

--Is 55:2

letter to AJ

9 March, 2009


Dear Andy,

I am so proud of you. I think if anyone was out in left field, it was Melissa for thinking her behavior with you as a married woman was warranted or kosher. It is a convenient cover—marriage—that one can retreat into, a safe, sanctified shield that can be used to thwart oncoming advances or to justify certain behavior because it is “protected.” This is bullshit. I can’t think of any married man that would be okay with his wife holding hands or grinding at a party with another man, unless it was her brother or something. That is the slippery start to affairs, and you did everything right by telling her that her coming to Bolivia (come on!) was a bad idea. I’d suggest reading my 8 January 2008 blog post ‘Seven Year Itch’ on this subject.

We are both, as you say, over-the-top emotional guys (though for myself I think less so these days), and on the surface I think you have every good reason to be skeptical about relationships that develop quickly. With Debbie, it has been an informed jump—it is a good fit, she is settled, we connect spiritually and can share our faith together, we have similar temperaments and expectations of the future, she is supportive and generous with her spirit, and I am crazy about her because of who she is and who she wants to be. Being extremely attracted to one another is just one of the many pluses.

The thing I don’t agree with you on is keeping your expectations low. Maybe you meant this in another way. At least in terms of relationships, I would rather be alone than be in something that was low-balled emotionally, safe, and guarded. When you’ve been hurt, this is a natural tendency I think, which you know as well as I do. I think prudence in the externals can come with abandonment to the emotions and the spirit of vulnerability that comes with letting your guard down on the inside. No one is rushing to get married or anything like that, but we are both rejoicing in what we feel has been an answer to both of our prayers, praising God for His goodness, and delivering us when we were both on the cusp of despair of never finding someone to walk the spiritual path with in a relationship.

I have always felt that it was better to temper extreme feelings (of being in love or otherwise) with low expectations and pessimism. I no longer feel that this is a good approach, especially with regards to love. What I am doing is listening to the inner echoes of my heart, tuning my ear like a bat to the reverberations off the walls of my insides, questioning what the frequencies (highly charged emotions have their own frequency different from rational discernment, but both have their place as equalizing informants—like faith and reason, that old married couple), yet choosing what I let in and what is not healthy or helpful. Those things need to wait at the door for their turn to come in and plead their case. So far the prosecution arguing against the relationship has had a tough case, but that’s mostly because their argument is weak in light of a very affirming sense of love, respect, friendship, and many other sustainable qualities Debbie and I hold for one another. In answer to your question, we met on catholicmatch.com.

Paul is a tough one for me too, and like you said, there are some things I just cannot accept that I see as culturally and historically situated that, when taken out of context, are just plain wrong. Perhaps this is my limited, cultured understanding. But I think it would be unrealistic to take things meant figuratively as literally, or to continue to observe customs from thousands of years ago that hold no place in our modern culture (though there are some things that are timeless). I feel a lot of anger sometimes when I read Paul, the Zealot, too. He is strong, and expects all of us to be strong like him, and blameless. Take about forgoing low expectations! Studying theology has been helpful for me in tempering what I see as extreme gut emotional reactions to some of what Paul (and others) write. That is why I have less respect for evangelicals who take everything in the Bible literally. One just has to take Jesus’ teaching on cutting off your hand or gouging out your eye if it causes you to sin to know that not everything he taught was to be taken literally, and it takes wisdom to know discern what was meant by his words.

It took me years to find a spiritual advisor I trusted and one who was a good fit, challenging without being ignorant, compassionate without being coddling. I would encourage you to keep high expectations when it comes to your spiritual life, not to low-ball yourself. God wants the best from you; you should want the best for yourself. You also wrote: “Can I sacrifice potential love and happiness for what I really want to share with a partner – that is, use the relationship to grow closer to God?” You certainly can, and people do all the time. Debbie and I have both waited a long time to meet someone who shared and respected our faith, but we held out for that, and thank God we did. Where your heart is, there your treasure will be. I think I mentioned Karl Rahner to you last letter. What trajectory, what course have you set your life to? On that path, that is where you will find your heart’s deepest desires…but only if you decide to go down that road, with all its perils and potential for heartache, disappointment, and crucifixion. Being a Christian is not easy. Loving someone, and accepting love, is not easy. Waiting is not easy. Doing field work in the mountains for the next month is not easy (but gives you invaluable time to reflect on these things, these golden kernels, that often get lost when we are engaged in the modern world). More and more it seems like nothing worth two bits is easy, and that’s just how the game goes. High stakes, baby. Ante up…I’d love to keep playing hands with you.


-R

I don't make prayer requests very often, but I'd please ask you pray for me as I prepare for my comprehensive examinations this week, the only thing standing between me and my MA. Also, please pray that I find a job, and specifically, pray that Rosemont College considers me for a possible position in campus ministry. Thanks. -RPM

It's the Economy, Stupid!

I try not to let the state of the economy get me down, but its hard to ignore. Hard times is right. We need some good news, and I need a J-O-B. If some news station wants to up their ratings, finding a niche of bringing to light the positives of the economic downturn could be just the thing. God knows we need it.

On a side note: I try to leave issues of personal relationships out of my blog, to have a semblence of a private life reserved from the web. But I just have to thank D. and her family for a wonderful birthday, and to say that I couldn't be happier with someone than I am with her. That's all.

8:59

I try to pray/meditate for 15-20 minutes each morning. What happens most times is I'm good for the first ten minutes, then I get restless, want to get up, and wonder why the alarm I set hasn't gone off yet. I go back and forth with this, until I really start to think I must have forgot to set the alarm. It is like a little game I have to go through every time I sit, called "Don't-touch-the-clock-until-you-hear-the-bell." This morning I sat at 8:45 and set the alarm for 9. In my restlessness I finally succumb an look at my clock: 8:59. The bell goes off in my hand. I wish I could say this was a first.

Hitting the Books...and the Bottle

What better companion for preparing for the most important exams of my graduate career, creeping up like a naughty cat in less than five days, than a bottle of cheap cab-merlot, some homemade soup, and a slew of books and journal articles I can't wait to bury in an academic graveyard following this whole affair? There is a part of me that wants to just consider all preparation as futile and throw it to the wind (which is probably what I will end up doing). Comprehensive exams are the kind of exams you can't cram for. But I'm trying anyway.

As I sip wine and stare out the window, listening to Belle and Sebastian, I realize that stress is not my friend. I worry about the future, about finding a job, about where I will live, and what direction my life will take. This is my quarter life crisis. I am sure it will all be like a bad dream as the future swallows up the present, each day creeping closer to old age, disease, and death.

I have been meditating on two verses from scripture: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged..." --Joshua 1:9; "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." --Jn 16:33. They have been immensely helpful for putting things into perspective. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert for God's sake. I can spend a few months wandering around in uncertainty. Mt. 6:34, the old standby, offers the greatest assurance, though, if I can trust it: "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Nothing has come through on the job front, though there are some prospects. If anything comes through for campus ministry, it would not be until the fall, and in the meantime I am looking for jobs in case management, not exactly desirable, but I need to do something. I also need to have faith that something will come through.

I know I sound like a broken record. One thing I should count myself blessed in is finding love. Some people spend their whole lives building up their careers and making a life for themselves while an empty place stands whistling in the cold where love should be, but isn't, for whatever the reason. It blows my mind how people find each other and make a life together, but it happens. I have to trust that details will get ironed out with time, and that I will also find a fulfilling career, even if I have to wait for it and make some sacrifices. For the present I can revel in meeting someone who is a fit, a godly woman, someone I admire and am awed by for her character, integrity, beauty, and spirit. I trust my gut, though the future is always uncertain. I am drinking wine by the window and waiting for her to ring the bell.

Lectio AM

"I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry."

--Ps 40:1

I Bought a Bad House...

Joel Stein had a great essay in Time this week. "If we reimbursed people who lost cash on risky investments--or, as [Rick] Santelli put it, "subsidize the losers' mortgages"--we'd create a moral hazard, telling everyone there's no risk to gambling." A harsh but well stated call to financial responsibility.

Letter to AJ--excerpts

2 March 2009

Dearest A.,


It is a snow day here in Philadelphia. A course blanket of white covers the delinquent streets and the cars lurk like white hunchback monsters on both sides, waiting in line. I am off from tutoring today. It is the perfect day to get your letter. Especially since I have so much new stuff to write.


I still remember that bible I gave you. It is a great bible. Fr. Fred gave it to me, and I wanted you to have it. It was written for new converts in the Philippines, actually, I think. I think it is good you had your mom sent it to you (and I am sorry to hear you got robbed man. Offer it up, and pray for forgiveness for the douchebag, who was obviously very desperate, desperate enough to steal). Realize, though, the bible has baggage, a history, and has also been used countless time as a weapon to denigrate people and justify arrogance and pride…everything that God hates. The bible is like a table saw or a drill press: you have to know how to use it, that is, how to read it, or you may cut your hand off (see Matthew 5:30).

Yes, I agree about the Old Testament. I actually would not recommend starting there. There are thousands of years and scores of things that set the context for things like the prayers of vengeance and smashing babies heads against rocks and all that crazy shit, that you just cannot understand unless you know the context. Even though the OT comes first chronologically, anybody interested in the words of Jesus should start there: with the NT. I also would not suggest Acts. I would suggest you start with the Gospel of Luke and read that through. Read it slowly and meditatively. Pray before you read it, and when I say pray, I mean this: God is your Father, maybe your Father who you never knew very well, who seemed distant and cold, but who holds you as the most important person in the world, A., who matters to Him. He knows you. He knows how many hairs you have on your balls and all that.

He is also like an Invisible Make Believe Man. You have to make yourself like a child to talk to God so He will listen, and you will have to meditate on what that means to you, and how you will approach it, but I will tell you that if you want to talk with God, just start the conversation like a little kid does (Daddy look what I did today; look at the picture I drew; I am lonely; etc.), and keep it going. Talk to God as if He were real, a la Pascal’s Wager. Pretend you believe. Consider it an experiment in something ridiculous, but don’t worry about what anyone says. Keep it to yourself. Always be honest, since He knows everything already. Zengetsu, a Chinese master of the T’ang dynasty, wrote: “Even though alone in a dark room, be as if you were facing a noble guest. Express your feelings, but become no more expressive than your true nature.” Soyen Shaku, the first Zen teacher to come to America, wrote: “Receive a guest with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.” God is a guest who lives in your heart. You can kick Him out if you don’t want him there. But He is like a stray cat….crack the door open a bit and He will come running back towards you (read the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke).

Let’s talk about repentance. Repentance is the invitation you send out to invite God to come over. It is the story of Nan-in serving tea to the university professor to the point of overflowing: “Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” How can I show you Christ until you first throw out your brothers, your parents, your childhood, guilt, every shitty thing said and done by ignorant Christians, the Crusades, the Inquisition? You have to throw out the Pope, the Church, everything you think you know about anything at all. Then we can talk about Christ, who is (as far as the New Testament is concerned), the only thing that matters. You not make yourself perfect before meeting God. He does not care about your Sunday Best. Your own efforts for perfection will always fall short. Accepting that is like accepting emptiness…it is the bottomless foundation you must first build before God can come to the house.

I hesitate to say repentance is “feeling sorry for your sins.” Forget your khattamn feelings for a minute. Start with what you know. Are you a perfect person? Um, no. Is that okay? Yes. To God that is okay. Can you become perfect under your own power? Well, that is for you to decide. I know that is what Buddhism teaches. I was never able to buy that, for myself that is. We have much more inner strength than we give ourselves credit for. But my weakness is always before me. In the same way Jesus says, “Be perfect as your Father is perfect,” he does not mean be sinless completely in this life, but align your will and orient yourself towards perfection. When I write, “my heart is pure,” my heart is anything but pure. From the heart comes all impurity. But my heart’s desire is pure. Karl Rahner, the German theologian, talks about our orientation to God. Where are your eyes, A.? Where are you oriented? If you were a missile getting ready to be shot, which direction would you be heading? Orientation is what matters, because “where your heart is, there your treasure also will be.” Do not fabricate anything…God sees through your bullshit clear as day. The heart speaks its own language; let it speak. Repentance flows from honesty. It must be organic, and real, to count for anything. Have you ever let down someone you’ve loved, hurt someone. Meditate on that feeling. And know that with God, “there is forgiveness. Therefore, He is feared.”

There is a parable in the Gospel about weeds and wheat, and how good will always grow with bad, and you can’t uproot one without uprooting the other. This is in the world and also in our hearts. Repentance is about asking God to pull up the weeds but knowing, when we are honest with ourselves, that they will probably grow back. The only way to get rid of them completely is to burn the whole khattamn field.

So ask yourself: is your desire to be loved as you are sincere? Is your desire to a live a moral, self-controlled life, however that might manifest, sincere? “What is it that you seek? What is it you want me to do for you?” You asked me about hearing the words of Jesus. I will say they are not words at all, but promptings, like some kind of binary code, a combination of 0’s and 1’s that somehow gets translated into my human understanding of language, and comes to me in my own voice. I remember when my brother and I were hiking in the Green Mountains in Vermont one winter, he asked me about prayer: “how do you know when you are talking to God and when you are just talking to yourself?” I didn’t have an answer. That is faith…the ridiculous lack of reason and rational explanations. Perhaps I am talking to myself, and some schizophrenic imaginary voice is answering back, not God at all.

But have you ever felt loved? You know it when you feel it. And I have felt loved by God when I did not feel loved or accepted by anyone else. The closest human feeling I have for this is the love my parents have for me. No matter what I am or who I’ve done (wait a minute), they love and accept me. I always have a place in their home. That’s how you have to start thinking about God. Empty your cup. Read the Prodigal Son. Take all that John Kabbat-Zinn and D.T. Suzuki stuff and translate it baby. Speak your own language, and listen with your own ears! Christianity is not a nationality…it is universal! It speaks “A.,” that strange blonde bearded language of faith seeking understanding. Zen mind, beginner’s mind, right? Well, think Christ Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Think about falling in love for the first time. Open your heart. So awkward! But once you throw the dregs of the cold tea out of your cup and get a fresh steaming cup, you will know. “No one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.” Empty your cup, brother.

Rob is in love.

You, regular reader. Tell me...should I keep my blog up and public? Do you enjoy reading it? Comments, s'il vous plait.

Lectio AM

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged..."

--Joshua 1:9

Lectio PM

"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

--Jn 16:33

Poem for the Morning

Joy and sadness
congeal in the heart
like gin and bitters.

Lectio AM

"We have finished our years like a sigh."

--Ps 90:9

All Play and No Work...

A peach is nice, but if you keep it off the tree too long it starts to rot. The same might be said about work.

I once met a woman in my bicycle club on a training ride in Bucks County a few years ago. I was just out of college and trying to figure out what to do with my life. As we rode along, she told me "be grateful for your time," or something to that extent. She had gone straight from college to med school to residency to full time work only to realize she never really had any significant time off from working, and probably never would now that she had reached this stage in her career as a doctor. Once the ball gets rolling, its hard to stop.

After four years at the same company, I decided I would try not working for a change. I didn't want to be like that doctor, having no time to live her life, do the things she always wanted to do. I saved up my money, and resigned in July. I haven't worked since.

It was nice at first. I found plenty of things to do. I worked on my bikes. I remodeled a schoolbus into an RV as a project in eco-sustainability (http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/17554/news). I traveled. I did whatever I wanted, and went where I wanted. At one point I decided to try to live a quasi-monastic life, getting rid of most of my possessions. I was happy as a clam, and free.

Or so I thought. As time went out, and volunteering and writing did not fill enough hours of the day, I began to appreciate more and more the daily rhythm of working, the sense of meaning and purpose it provided, and realized how absent these things were from my own life. St. Benedict warns against the kind of monks (Sarabaites) who are “approved by no rule, experience being their teacher [...] Their law is the satisfaction of their desires. For whatever they think good or choice, this they call holy; and what they do not wish, this they consider unlawful.” Laziness was one of the greatest temptations of early monks, and St. Benedict saw how dangerous such lack of discipline can be. I also saw how it was creeping into my own life, in subtle and not so subtle ways. I grew listless. I did not want to do even that which I needed to get done, daily responsibilities.

I figured all this was justified, since I had essentially "bought" my time, and it was mine to spend however I wanted. This was true, I suppose. My father has a photograph of a wild river in Yosemite or some place like that with the words written: 'Nothing is ours, but time.' Since retiring, my dad appreciates every day. He has plenty to keep him busy, even if they are small things, like running errands, painting the house, etc. He can do this after working for thirty years at the same school. Essentially, he earned it.

But I have not put my time in in this way. I am like a spoiled child that wants what he wants without having to earn it. St. Paul said, "he who does not work, let him not eat." There are various Zen stories that follow the same line. There is something dignified about work, and it is especially important to men. Men glean so much of their sense of self from working, so much so that when that is absent there is a disturbing hole that is more than just a proliferation of free time. A lack of work contributes to a lack of meaning, and a subtle feeling of humiliation.

I once read a quote in Andrew Solomon's book, An Atlas of Depression, something to the effect of work being a distraction from the meaninglessness of our own lives, and for that reason alone it is valuable for preventing depression, if for nothing else. I am beginning to think, if work only kept us from dwelling on this black pit of meaninglessness and our own isolated existence as human beings, then it is a good thing, even if it is merely a distraction, a curtain that veils the unsightly. Some people identify too much of their sense of self with their work, so that when that work gets taken away, they have no idea who they are or what to do. Some people, like myself, I think, do not identify enough with their work.

I realize in writing this that many people do not have the luxury of not working. Bills don't stop when you want to rest, and most people would not really do well with so much free time on their hands. I can't say I am much different, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to perform this little social experiment. If anything, taking time to not work has taught me the value of work, how meaningful it is to me as a man, and how it contributes to my growth, not to mention my financial security.
This has been a year of experiments, doing things I have always wanted to do, and finding what works and what doesn't. Building my own home has always been a dream, and I have accomplished that, even though living in the RV did not work out. Retiring early has also been another fantasy, and one that I can say I have now etertained, albeit for a limited time. Because of this I will never say, "I wonder what it would be like to..." to those things which are important to me. If it were only to teach me this lesson alone, so I can look back with no regrets at having not done something I always wanted to do, I think it was still worth it. I hope to find meaningful work doing something I love, and I will not stop putting myself in a position to find that. In the meantime, doing something I don't love for the sake of working is not looking like such a bad thing. I have an interview on Tuesday for a case management job for the aging in Philadelphia. Wish me luck. It's time to take this rotten freedom fruit and make a delicious smoothie with it.

Poem for the morning

Untitled

3 am
is a quiet hour;
all I hear
is the scuffing of boots
and swaying of trees.

Due Fucking Time

Feeling sick as all hell in class last night, I left early to catch the train back to 69th St. Waiting in the nad-shattering cold and wind, I felt incredibly low. It has not been a good winter for me, and I guess I have plenty to complain about. But I don't really feel like indulging that noxious self-pity, and in essence it really all comes back to where my mind is at. It is not "here," and that always causes suffering.

Winters are always tough for me; This year I am waiting to graduate, waiting for my body to heal, waiting to hear about jobs, waiting for love to walk through the door, waiting for a car, waiting for Spring, waiting to be happy. Some days I feel like I am waiting to come alive. So much of Christianity is based in the waiting (thanks largely in part to Paul the Apostle, the Eternal Anticipator), and last night the train became a symbol for my Christ who takes his sweet time in coming to move me.

I look out into the darkness, the tracks curving into the woods. Nothing. I walk in circles and curse, looking back again, waiting hoping. I am freezing. God is Silent. I want to go NOW, and why is my Train not cooperating? Silly Rob. I hop on my feet like a sparrow. The wind bites and claws at my jeans like a spastic gremlin. I pull my hood up and look like a surly monk or someone mothers keep their children away from, in my brown Carhartt. My eyes become bleary. I recite the morning's Lectio through my teeth: Turn O Lord, how long? I should have waited for Chris to get out of class. I feel like I have been waiting all season.

I am not a patient person. It is one of those stubborn virtues that never yields a good crop, like great bushy leafed potato plants swelling pea sized tubers below. You dig up the soil impatiently, and despair at the sight of these little turds that you had put so many months into feeding and nurturing. I have ripped up more than a few plants just because I got tired of them not growing fast enough. It could be my imagination, but they don't seem to grow back as well after you try to replant them.

In one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite books, Zorba the Greek, Zorba talks about the greatest sin he ever committed:


"I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the back of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried

to help it with my breath, in vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the external rhythm."


I forget that the first characteristic of love, according to St. Paul, is that it is patient. It is "kind, never envious, arrogant, or conceited". But "Love is patient" first. God is so patient with me; I hope I can be more patient with God.

"Fucking train!" I yell in my head. Sigh. I take out my phone to txt Chris, to tell him to meet me in the church on campus after class, I will be sprawled out before the Lord like an unsightly mud stain. Then in the distance, I see the dull, bouncing yellow light, moving closer, screaching into stereo. I put my phone back in my pocket, blushing from tender embarrassment, and get on.

Lectio AM

"Turn, O LORD! How long?"

--Ps 90:13

Existential Children's Tales

Frog Learns to Sit


Frog said to Log, "Get up. It's raining!"
Log was apathetic and full of chagrin.
"Why can't I lie down and die, like the rest of my rotting family?"
"Ah, you mustn't talk like that Log," said Frog.
"Why don't you hop away and go play with Bunny and leave me alone?" Log replied.
"Friends don't leave friend's alone!" Frog cried.
"Ha!" Log grumbled. "I have been a corpse my whole life. Sat on and never noticed, slick with moss."
"A corpse cannot smile"
"Exactly!"
"Log, I will teach you to hop."
"Why don't I teach you to sit?"
"Yes," cried Frog," why don't you?"
"Ah, you could never learn!" Log retorted.
"Oh yes! Please show me Log." Frog begged.
"Well," Log began, "the first thing is you have to learn how to frown."
"Oh!" Frog said.
"Yes. It is imperative that you wipe your smile away. There is no cause for such pride."
"Pride?"
"Yes, pride in being able to move. That which does not move has no need to smile."
"Oh my!"
"Oh my indeed. Next, you must renounce the Days."
"Renounce the days?"
"Yes, and the nights. When you are Log, these things have no meaning."
"No?"
"No. Time is a seamless garment,a vulture that picks at the flesh. Or in my case, the bark."
"My skin is so smooth!"
"That's because you cannot see your warts, friend."
"Whar..."
"Now, your legs. You will be tempted to use them, to bound away in terror of the lack of day and night. Frogs are most susceptible to this. It would be proper for you to sever them. Maybe you could talk with Rock about this."
"No, I don't want to do that!"
"What is wrong with Rock?"
"No, my legs!"
"Yes, they will need to go. You want to sit like me, you will need to cut them off like dead branches. You could offer them to Human as a gift, a del-i-ca-te-sy they call it."
"Log, did you ever have legs?"
"What kind of silliness is this? Do you see above you? I used to be a Tree. This was my family. We had legs that stretched to the core of the Earth. Our arms...spread like rivers through the sky. But once I fell..."
"Fell?"
"Was pushed, rather. By the Wind. I wouldn't have gone down willingly. But my roots, they grew soft. My body, brittle. All it took was a push."
"Now you are a Log!"
"I become Everything. And everything is in me. You will learn this. Perhaps."
"What fun, this sitting!"
"Yes, fun. Now, about those legs..."

Prayer for the evening

021009 travelogues

Running into Jeannie at the airport, same 7am flight, doubletake straight out of some bad rom-com. What can this mean? Perhaps it is pure...Absurd. Poor Duncan, what a trooper picking me up in Oakland in the little Coop yesterday with two broken elbows and a sprained shoulder, squinting heroically with every shift from first to second from his bike wreck. Badass...we look like a couple of street fighters. Went to the Wharf for lunch and North Beach for coffee,City Lights, Vesuvio, then to bowery Bayview to check out Officer Gillies' bike beat. Back to the house to see Cathleen and build up the 66cc bike engine, pick up some 2 stroke oil tomorrow and get the badboy on the road. Grateful for my little SF hermitage back here, 10'x30', sliding glass front, little bathroom, little bedroom, heater, a perfect place to oray and meditate and write and drink tea, sitting in 4am darkness, sleeping houses and gray washed sky, waiting to be born with the dawn...

Poem for the Morning

The Need to Swallow


Kafka with a dry throat,
dying of starvation.
How absurd.


--RPM

Updates

I caught myself jotting down some dialogue in class the other night, not realizing that I was the one speaking: "I fully expect to spend the rest of my life alone, and would be pleasantly surprised if it were in fact to the contrary." Oi. Honestly, it is one of the greatest mysteries to me how people find each other, fall in love, live together, stay together, raise children, grow old together, not kill each other, not kill themselves...in short, how we survive, together, as well as alone, and be healthy. I am sure Providence is at work.

I am able to type with my healing hand now, though the fingers are still shifted to the right and my hand looks more like a claw. The scars are wicked. I saw my doctor this week for my shoulder. She says it is healing well, despite my stupid ass moving a refrigerator by myself a month ago and pulling loose the screw connecting the clavicle to the shoulder. It is a big screw, and I can't wait to have it taken out, but that's won't be til the beginning of March, since I am going to San Francisco next week for a week. My friend Duncan out there also just crashed on his bike and broke his elbow and sprained his shoulder, so we will be a couple of gimps together. He and his wife have a guesthouse so I will have my own place to just drink coffee and write and nap and relax. Duncan ordered a 80cc bicycle engine kit on my recommendation, and I am going to build it up when I get out there. 35+mph, 120-150mpg, EPA approved, $130. How could you not get one of these things?

I got called back for a second interview at Niagara University in New York for a position in campus ministry, and so will be traveling up there in a couple weeks. It is a small school, and I'm a little nervous about that. But I need a job, and campus ministry is really where my heart lies. I feel like its time for a move, but this is not exactly the area I had in mind (Niagara Falls). We will have to see. I am still hoping something might come through at Rosemont, so I could stay in Philly. I also applied to Ohio State for an opening there, which would be just like days at PSU. That could be a good or bad thing.

I have senioritis. I have a twenty page paper to write on sex-trafficking in the former Soviet Union, and have a lot of prep to do to prepare for my comprehensive exams. But I don't want to do any of it. No good excuse, either. In the words of Daniel Johnston: "I'm laaazy....oh yeah."

I have been taking a break from the book. I have writer's constipation...nothing is coming out. I am working on some side projects...wrote a fiction piece called "Endless Kinhan" and a 3 act play called "Breaking" which I may try to send off to some literary magazines (ah, lit mags) so they can tell me they aren't interested.

This has been a rough winter. I can't wait for spring.

AM Lectio

"Remember how fleeting is my life.
For what futility you have created all men!"

--Ps. 89:47

"Desolation Road:" A Play in __ Acts

Characters:

Tom
Jimmy
Ron
Andrew
Brian
Sally

Scene I
Setting: Tom's living room. South Philadelphia. April.


Ron: Threes.

Brian: Again?

Jimmy: That's the third hand. What the fuck?

Ron: [smiling] Lucky threes.

Tom: What you got, Andrew?

Andrew: [goofy smile] Lucky twos.

Jimmy: You're an idiot.

Andrew: What?

Brian: Um, threes are higher...than twos.

Andrew: Oh.

Jimmy: Ron, what do you call this game again?

Ron: Your mom.

Jimmy: Seriously, man, you're still...?

Ron: I call it, "Dropping deuces."

Brian: Ah.

Ron: "...on your mom."

Andrew: Ho0ah!

Sally: [entering] Oh! Gross!

Tom: Hon, get us a beer?

Andrew: [puzzled look] Wait, I thought deuces swept?

Ron: Deuces sweep on even rounds, champ.

Tom: Well, it's a rubbish game in any case. Completely nonsensical.

Ron: Hey, remember "Apples to Apples?" You want to talk about nonsense...

Brian: I loved that game.

Jimmy: Yeah, that's where Andrew made a name for himself.

Ron: Go figure. The most retarded, bass-ackwards game I've ever played and Andrew is the undefeated champ. It's like a Bizarro world.

[Sally brings Tom a beer]

Brian: How was Africa, Queenie?

Sally: Good!

Andrew: That country scares the shit out of me. Have you ever seen 'Blood Diamond?'

Jimmy: Africa isn't a country, champ.

Andrew: Wha? No!

Tom [rolling eyes]: 'Fraid so buddy.

Jimmy: Andrew, your deal.

Ron: Fuck this. Let's go to Mom's.

Tom: Now you're talking some sense...

[end, scene 1]

AM Lectio

"How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.

Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere."

--Ps 84:1-2, 10

Breaking: Act III

Setting: the living room.
Characters: Michael, Danielle
Danielle is sitting in an armchair, looking out the window. Michael is making coffee in the kitchen nearby.

M: You're quiet.

D [distant]: It's quiet outside. I was just following suite.

M: Mm.

D: May I have a cup?

M [Michael brings the french press over to her and pours her a cup of coffee]: Here you go.

D: Thank you. [Pausing] I'm sorry if I was short earlier, in the car. The snow always...I don't know. It is so light, and empty, and deceptive.

M: What do you mean?

D [solemnly]: It melts.

M: Yes?

D: I am a unique snowflake...absorbed in a seamless blanket...I liquefy above freezing, and evaporate when the sun comes out. Three states of being...and not one to lay claim to. I'm nothing, Michael.

M: [silence]

D: So much white. What an aberration.

M: Hon, you're not nothing.

D [putting down her cup]: Ah, but I am. I melt. I evaporate. On the ground, each snowflake has unique company. This sea of white, like drops in the ocean. Is it one thing? Is it a million separate things? Oh, I am a part of this human family. You. Me. Your mother. Papa. Isabelle. That bag boy at the Acme. The whole lot of us. One seamless blanket. We form separately in the sky, and fall to earth, and become One. We don't even see each other anymore. We are so close!

M [putting his arm around her]: That is what family is. A blanket, as you say. That's a good thing, Danielle. To be close.

[Danielle stares out the window and brings her finger to her lip, and says nothing. She lifts the window slightly, and pinches off a few flakes of snow from the ledge, and places them on the radiator.]

D: And here we are.

M: Close that window, please. It's cold.

D: No, Michael, look! Two snowflakes...you and I. Clumped together with our friends, our family. The rest of pristine humanity freshly fallen on the asphalt outside. Watch with me, please.

[Slowly, the small clump of snow begins to melt. Water dribbles down the side of the radiator. Danielle stares intently at a few drops remaining on the top. After a few moments, these shrink, and disappear. Danielle gets up suddenly, knocking the porcelain cup against the saucer.]

D [panicky]: Where am I? Where am I!?

M: Jesus, Danielle, calm down. You're right here.

D: No, no I'm not. Don't you see! I was there. My white gown. My flesh. Boiled to blood. Dried to ash. Blown away!

M: Come on.

D: Michael, you tell me I am something, I am a unique snowflake, and I will walk out this door and never look at you again.

M: Jesus!

D: Where is it...I...you saw it! Disappear. In the span of seconds. How much more, my life? Our life! Like they say at funerals, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." What does dust become? Will it burn?

M: D, I have no idea what you are talking about.

D [pacing, talking to self while biting fingernail]: I was here, and now I'm not. You are here...now...

M: Honey, sit down. You're here.

[Danielle suddenly rushes over to Michael and embraces him, kissing him with force, as if to consume him, then pulls back.]

D: I am a snowflake, Michael, and God is rubbing me between his fingers. In a split second, his heat consumes me. I lose my composition. Nothing stays the same. Reincarnating! No. One life. Yes...this...is it. If you put a snowflake under a microscope...and watch it melt...does it change shape? You know, molecules and what not? God is rubbing me between his fingers, Michael, I know it. I feel so close to annihilation. I can feel the fire behind the door. Remember, the Dark Knight? "In their last moments, people show you who they really are." I am a broken link, Michael, a coward. And I am being consumed...

[Michael pulls her close, and strokes her hair. He thinks she is crying, but her eyes are dry, and unblinking. She looks out the window at the snow falling gently outside.]

M: Listen. You're not a coward. You're the bravest woman I know. And you're here. I'm here. This is real! We aren't snowflakes...we're human beings. Flesh and bones! That doesn't melt so easily. Will we die? Maybe some day. But not today. No! We're here.

D: Here. I have no idea, Michael...where that is.

[CURTAIN]

Breaking: Act II

Setting: in the car
Characters: Michael, Danielle


M: Careful!

D: You careful! I know what I'm doing.

M: I'm not driving.

D: No, you certainly are not.

M: Sorry. Ice scares me.

D: It wasn't ice. It was the trolley track.

M: Right.

[silence]

M: I was thinking...

D [laughing]: I'm glad to hear it!

M [smiling]: You're an asshole.

D: Oh? Is that why you married me?

M: I married you because you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

D [mock scoffing]: "Were!" What am I now?

M: You are still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

D: Oh, come off it.

M [rolling eyes]: And why did you marry me, I should ask?

D: No, you shouldn't.

M: Excuse me?

D: It's nice to have secrets of one's own.

M: But you've told me before!

D: I've told you lots of things before. Besides, if I've told you before, why must you hear it again?

M [disgusted]: Forget it.

D [smiling]: If you must know, I married you...

M: Let me guess..."for the comfort?"

D: Oh, Michael. Yes!

M: And what is it about me, pray tell, that is so comforting?

D: Not you, Michael. Love.

M: You mean "conditional" love, don't you?

D: But of course!

M: So, let me get this straight. Unconditional love, in your opinion, is a farce?

D: I didn't say that. The love of a parent for her child...I think that's as close as it gets to unconditional love. Even that has its limits.

M [silence]: Danielle, do you even want to be a mother?

D: How dare you.

M: It's a fair question, I think.

D [laughing]: There you go again...thinking! Oh Michael, thank you.

M: For what?

D[leaning over to kiss him]: For not throwing me to the abyss...

[close]

Breaking: A Play in __ Acts

Setting: an urban coffee shop, February.
Characters: Michael, Danielle

M: The Joker is a real people person. Listen to this, "You see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?" What type of shit is that?

D [speaking without looking up from newspaper]: The self doesn't mean much when it can be recanted in a moment at the end of the barrel of a gun.

M: Or a knife.

D [sighs, bored]: Or a knife.

M [laughing]: So, if I really want to get to know you, I could...

D [looking up]: Are you sure you want to finish that sentence? You might not be "knowing" me for a while.

M [faux alarm, waving hands]: I take it back! I take it back!

D [smiling]: That's more like it.

M [settling back in chair]: Seriously, though. We haven't been through much together, when you think about all those people at Auschwitz, or in Rwanda, or...

D [abrupt laugh]: Yes?

M: I mean, you love me, right?

D [sighs]: True love is unconditional. Everything else is true comfort.

M [furrows brow]: I love you unconditionally.

D: Please! That mouth...

M: It's true.

D: You don't know the first thing...

M [tenderly]: Hey...I will always love you.

D: Oh! I'm touched. I will remember that the next time your mother asks why I'm not pregnant yet and I'm holding her by the ankles over the Hudson telling her "this is why!"

M [frowning]: Oh, you're full of it.

D: Yes. I'm full of it. I'll remember that when I'm holding you by the ankles over the Hudson. Then we'll talk about unconditional love. Or would you prefer waking up with some cold metal in your mouth?

M: I...

D: Or maybe your best friend, what's his name. Getting to know him. How about then? You do go away on business quite a lot these days...

M: When...

D [leaning forward]: No, Michael. Love is comfort. When we first met...you know the saying...you fell in love with your self. I was simply a mirror reflecting the dazzling image of your manhood in full swing. You, too, made me look quite good. We were perfect for each other!

M [laughing]: You admit it!

D: Then we got tired of looking at ourselves through each other. So we tried looking at each other, putting the mirror down. Needless to say, you were not the man I "fell"--that is, stumbled--in love with. No, you were something quite different.

M: How different?

D: I don't know how different. Just more real. It was very nauseating. But like motion sickness, you get used to it. I got used to it. Seeing the real you. Isn't that where love starts?

M: "Love begins when the eyes meet the soul and do not turn away."

D [laughing fitfully]: Oh! I could nail you to a wall. I can see where the Joker gets his motivation!

M: What do you mean?

D [rolling her eyes]: Let's be serious for a moment. You've heard the expression, "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link?"

M: You're calling me weak?

D [sighs]: No. But think of our lives...yours, mine, the coffee boy behind the counter, the blond your eyes keep flitting to behind me....

M: Oh!

D: It's enough. Think of our lives like a chain. Each experience is a link. Our integrity as a chain...our ability to tie up and keep out and lock in...can be compromised by a single weak link. A link that bends under stress, when we are pushed to the edge of our "love." That link is us...you, me, everyone...our weakest self. When the link breaks...the "unconditional" chain is no more. Every link will snap...with enough force. That's what I think our marriage is sometimes, all marriage....a weight that increases with time, meant to strain links and test our integrity. Make us our true self...the weakest link. The man I married is not the same man before me. Who, then, do I go to bed with?

M: I'm still the same man.

D: Men change too, Michael, believe it or not. Everyone changes. You've heard we fully reincarnate every seven years. "There's not one molecule...not one...that is in you that was there when you were ten..."

M [scoffing]: Ah...

D: Can you deny it? If ten year old Daniel walked down the street, could I say, "Daniel, come to bed son." I would be arrested!

M: What about you at ten? You were...

D: I was bad, yes, a bad little girl with the good little boys. [Laughing] Have I changed much?

M [smiling]: Not much.

D: It is okay to be a broken chain. We are all broken. Some chains are like paperclips linked together, some are like titanium. But with enough force, any metal will bend and break. The thing is, can you admit we are not unconditional chains with unconditional love? Can you stop pretending we have more integrity that we really do? After all, you just haven't been pushed hard enough?

M: So I have integrity?

D: As much as anyone. That isn't saying much. You're certainly no martyr.

M: No?

D: Um, no. You and I both...we are no better than apostates that haven't been tested. Look at the Christ. Now there is a strong chain. Not one weak link. Unbreakable. Even nailed up there, he never betrayed...

M: That's a hell of a standard to set.

D [sitting back]: Well, you are the one who loves so "unconditionally." You should at least accept what comes with such a boast.

M: I do.

D: Michael, please. It's okay. I didn't marry you because you were real.

M [offended]: How should I take that?

D: However you like.

M: Why did you marry me, then?

D: Oh, Michael. For the comfort! Isn't that what conditional love is? "As long as you don't...x, y, z...I will always love you?

M: You're awful.

D [staring]: Yes, I am. I am...

AM Lectio

"And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;"

--Ps 78:72

PM Lectio

"Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds."

--Ps 73: 23-28

PM Lectio

"God sets the lonely in families"

--Ps 68:6

"No one cares what blinders you choose to wear and you may call good what you will. But unless the dragon speak it...You may blather in Greek of the wisdom of the ancients to your heart's content and wear the motley of the very church, but if as a poet you do not rouse the dragon within you, unscathed! you are by that so much more the fool."

--William Carlos Williams
View, 1942

AM Lectio

"O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water."

--Ps. 63:1

Waiting

St. Paul, along with the rest of Christendom in the second century, was waiting for the Christ to return. Today we are still waiting. Waiting.

I realized tonight that my life is not "incomplete." I am waiting to hear about jobs. I am waiting to meet the right person. I am waiting. But this waiting is living. It is living everyday with the tension of unconsummated experience, with the tension of unfulfilled expectation. But it is still life, living.

I am not a patient person; I want what I want now. This is a cross more than any virtue. I want the Christ to come back. I want to know my future. I want to be settled. But that might not happen anytime soon. So rather than always scanning the horizon for something that isn't here, maybe I should start looking at what's before me, at what's beautiful and unfinished. Appreciate my time, being single,embrace my writer's block and the winter, and having a body which is still healing from the accident. Consecrate my uncertainty.

Jesus said "come to me you who are burdened." Well, here I am Lord. In the words of Mickey Rourke, "an old broken down piece of meat." Not really. But still a beautiful line from The Wrestler. How about "a broken down hunk of uncertainty?" Like the little drummer boy, with no gift to bring.

PM Lectio

"My soul finds rest in God alone;
my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard:
that you O God are strong,
and that you, O Lord, are loving.
Surely you will reward each person
according to what he has done."

--Ps 62:1-2, 11-12

AM Lectio

"Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,
for in you my soul takes refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.
I cry out to God Most High,
to God, who fulfills his purpose for me."

--Ps 57:1-2

Finding a Way

3:30. It was a familiar, though distant memory which surfaced in the utter calm of pre-dawn darkness at the hour before first light. The bell. The sleeping valley. The perfect peace. The call to prayer. The pre-preemptive start to the day.

At the monastery, he used to drink a tall glass of water before bed, the way the Native Americans used to do before a hunt, so he would be awoken naturally, by his body, at the time of the bell. He loved getting up early. Unfortunately that was not always enough to keep him from nodding off during Vigils. While the psalms were recited during Vigils, the release from the Great Silence came usually at Lauds, when the sign of the cross would unfetter the monks with the words: Oh Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise. At Vigils, still considered a nighttime Office, silence--besides the prayer of the Psalms--rested on the lips of every monk like an obedient child.

Pure silence in the outside world is harder to find, but at 3:30, there is not much noise to find fault with. As the man slowly rose from sleep, resting his hands on his knees, and rolling his head, he could here the flicking pitter of sleet on the roof of the house. He looked outside...a fine mist of white was shooting down gently in the light of the streetlamp outside his window. Across the way, the dance and artists' studios were quiet. He knew he could pray by the window without his shirt--despite the bitter cold outside, the air inside was drunk with warmth on account of the spastic radiators--without feeling immodest. There was no one to see him at this lonely hour. Even his roomate had not come back last night, spending the night at his girlfriend's.

Sometimes, he thought, he missed the monastery so much that he tried to bring it home with him. His room was no more than ten feet wide, and was more like a cell, a place of peace. He had a mattress on the wood floor, covered with white sheets, a crucifix on the wall, a small desk, and a bureau. That was all. It reminded him of his cell, and he smiled when he thought of it. The world, he always thought, was too crowded and loud a place. His room, his refuge, did not have to be so.

With no job to go to, no baby to comfort or wife to disturb, he had no reason to get up so early, besides having to tutor in five hours. But he was not sleeping more than six or seven hours a night these days, and having gone to bed early, it was no surprise he should rise early. He did not want to take this time of solitude for granted, for he felt it surely would not be with him forever. The year he had taken off from working had been a respite from such ceaseless activity, but it had become like rotten fruit. If he was not spending it in prayer or writing, there was always the accompanying guilt that would come from misusing a gift. Man was given freedom to serve, not to be served, and he would be wise to remember that.

He slowly dropped to his knees and rested his hands on the window sill. He stared out the window for a long time. He was empty, but made himself an empty gift to God. He learned long ago that he was nothing in the sight of God, but that he meant everything to Him. He had nothing else to give besides his words and his heart, bruised like a reed. He rested his chin on his chest. He was wide awake.

Rising from the darkness, illuminated by the fresh cake of white on the street and the roof of the house, he went into the kitchen barefoot to make tea. He put on kettle and sat down in the darkness at the kitchen table, also illuminated in the light of the snow and dim streetlamp. His roommate's girlfriend had brought over a strange bouquet of blackberries and lilacs, and a kind of cattail that looked like a stuffed bird without a head. It was always nice to have flowers on the table, though, especially in the winter.

He took his bible off the shelf and sat down with it to do morning Lectio. He remembered fondly when the Abbot Martin taught the five candidates who were staying at Mt. Saviour for five weeks one summer, in classes on monastic history, after breakfast. They learned how to read Scripture as if it were alive and speaking as real as any person might speak. The Word was alive, and this he knew to be true. He had had too many experiences to suggest otherwise.

He thought back to those days, listening to the Abbot relate a story about children playing on top of a mountain to illustrate the importance of the Rule. "When there is no fence," the Abbot would say, "the children huddle together for fear of not knowing where the edge is, and falling off. But, if someone builds a fence around them, they have no more fear, and play freely." The Rule of St. Benedict was only meant to limit freedom in an outward way. The goal was true freedom, and it was to this that the Rule led.

He sipped his tea, and thought, as he sat alone, that he was a lousy fence maker. Not that he was required to be one. But it was a constant struggle to simply live by a Rule when you are alone, unsupported by a community, and one easily climbs over the fence when there is no one to stop him, especially when the fence is not "overly burdensome," as Benedict had created it to be.

He recalled in the last novel that he had read, about the Jesuit missionaries, and the martyrs, living and dying in the 17th century Japan where Christianity was being planted "like a sapling in a swamp." He recalled the apostate, the coward Kichijiro, and the words he yelled to the priest in shame. "Father! Forgive me! I was born weak. I was not born strong." Is a man born a coward, or does he become one? It is a frightening prospect. To die for the faith was a coveted gift in his mind; to live for it in the world was so much harder. But to renounce under persecution what one holds so strongly when not persecuted. He shudders. After the rise of Constantine, and the doing away with Christian persecution in the 4th century, fervent Christians had to find another way to die. Hence, the flight to the desert.

I was born weak. I was not born strong. The words haunted him. Was he a Peter wanting to be Paul? Perhaps. He knew his heart was with Peter, and with David, a "man after God's own heart." But his flesh...how could one survive in this world without discipline? And how could one live a life of discipline without the support of his brothers? He was no Antony. He had tried to live the life of a hermit, and was ashamed at his need for other people. He saw it as a weakness, though his friends and family assured him it was not so. He knew it was too harsh a judgment as well. After all, YHWH said "It is not good for man to be alone." But he was alone.

He remembered that night, in the crypt, before the statue of the Virgin holding the Christ and surrounded by candles, when he knew he had to leave...that the life of a monk for him was like an expensive and beautiful shirt that was just a little too short in the sleeves, and a little too tight around the chest. He wanted to wear it so badly, to make it fit. But if something does not fit, it does not fit, unless you shrink yourself to accommodate it. And that is not good for a human person of dignity to do, like Japanese women thwarting the growth of their feet.

He fell apart before her, and wept. The prior, the kind Fr. James, who was like an uncle to him, saw him crying, and put his arm around him, and comforted him. He felt like he had let someone down, though he let no one down, and no one was judging him but himself. He was a harsh judge. In two days, he would leave, and wonder what to do.

The next day, he walked to the workshop to where he was building furniture. He looked around. Br. Bruno was in the barn working on the tractors. Br. John was in the orchard. Br. Pierre was with the sheep. Br. Luke, the oldest, was hobbling around with a wide lucid smile, while the other monks worked in the guesthouse, or the gift shop, or cleaning, or doing laundry. He loved the life, and was sad to leave it. But he knew in his heart of hearts, and against everything that he wanted to admit, and despite that it was all he wanted from life, to serve God, that the life of a monk may not be for him.

AM Lectio

"If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were raising himself against me,
I could hide from him.
But it is you, a man like myself
my companion, my close friend,
with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
as we walked with the throng at the
house of God."

--Ps 55:12-14

PM Lectio

"Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

--Ps 51:10

AM Lectio

"My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.
Because of my loud groaning
I am reduced to skin and bones.
I am like a desert owl,
like an owl among the ruins.
I lie awake; I have become
like a bird alone on a roof."

--Ps 102: 4-7

Existential Threads and Monologues

-Yahweh said, "It is not good for man to be alone." Can we disagree, with God? It is not good...for me to be THIS?...

-I...I'm sorry. I am numb. The air...it is so cold out here.

-I will reinvent my self. I will abandon autonomy. As for you...

-Babies cry when their mothers leave the room, since in the baby's mind, the mother has ceased to exist. I have struggled to develop...to come to terms with...you. You were here. Now you are not. You no longer exist. You are dead to me.

-Ow! My side. My fucking RIB!

"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing, which remark I guess shows I still don't have a pure motive (O it's-such-fun-I-just-can't-stop-who-cares-if-it's-published-or-read) about writing...I still want to see it finally ritualized in print."

--Sylvia Plath

The Greatest Among You

I have always said that my firstborn son would be named David, because he is the greatest man in the bible. Jesus himself is called 'Son of David.' David was a great king. But he was also a great human being, in the broadest sense of the word. YWHW called him "a man after My own heart."

Jesus said, "he who is forgiven little, loves little." David had much to be forgiven. First, he commits adultery with another man's wife. Then, when he finds out she is pregnant, he tries to cover it up. Then he orders her husband be killed. This is not how a man acts, at least not a noble man.

But David is great, even in his sin. When he realizes what he has done (thanks to Nathan the prophet), his repentance is sincere. There is no doubt David had a lapse in judgment. But God is merciful, and he who is forgiven little, loves little. There is a moving humility in David, an openness before God. He is brazen, because he trusts God. He eats the showbread. He dances almost stark naked before the Ark of the Covenant. He takes down a giant with a sling. He expresses himself unabashedly before the Lord, as recorded in the Psalms.

Paul was also a great man, but in a different way. He was not weak, but strong. He deplored immorality. He was a zealot. He also suffered from pride, the "thorn in his flesh." He expected everyone to be strong like him, though he made concessions for human weakness, (i.e., marriage?!). He was a serious man. He did not dance half-naked before the Ark. He did not dance at all. There was no time for dancing when the Second Coming was at hand.

I am proud to share a name with this man. But I do not feel I am like him. My heart is closer to Peter, the Rock who denied Christ three times, who abandoned Jesus at the cross, who "wept bitterly" at his own cowardice. To think that God made a great adulterer and murderer into a great king, and an apostatizer the foundation of the Church, says something about our weakness as human beings. There is no room for pride, nothing to boast about. Our weakness plays a part in our salvation; "My grace is sufficient for thee." When the heart pines for God, the foundation has already been laid, and it is on this that God builds his kingdom within.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"Once or twice her breathing turned into mild snores. Tomas felt no compassion. All he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned." --Milan Kundera

Endless Kinhin, Chapter 5

5.

Endo descended into the grove of bamboo, yellow and gold slashes on the white landscape, as he followed the marks in the snow. They seemed to appear at the brook, with no point of origin. He thought it very strange. The way the finch looked at him...was he a buddha? Hijo taught the monks never to shun the lessons of sentient beings, in whatever form. Of course he believed in reincarnation, and so the idea that a being had returned (albeit in animal form) to earth to teach humanity what it could not teach itself was perfectly acceptable, though he did not understand it. Who could understand such things?

He passed small piles of scat, splintered shoots...he even surprised a small squirrel napping. Endo smiled. He recalled the days when he and Kichijiro would sneak off to the meadows during work detail to nap in midday, always returning in turn for zazen. They would share secret smiles during lecture. How happy he was to be a monk, and how he loved his brothers.

At the bottom of the grove, the bamboo thinned, and led out into a meadow. Endo could see the red clay roof of the monastery far in the distance, the light of midday illuminating the shoji walls. The sky was radiant, and clouds lazily drifted across the blue abyss. As he looked down, the tracks he was following appeared to have stopped. When he looked up, he saw suddenly the swan, the woman of his dreams. She wore the same white silk kimono, and her arms were extended, as if they were wings. He could not believe his eyes. In fact, he was convinced he was still dreaming, that he had never woken up. The woman was consumed by light.

She spoke no words, nor did she move. But Endo entered into her in the same way he had in his dream...her eyes collected him. There was no burning desire. In fact, he felt as if he had no body with which to desire at all. As the gaze of the woman intensified, he felt himself being lifted up; yes, as if he were flying. Never did his eyes wander from hers. And then, as she closed her eyes, Endo felt himself floating, then falling, cloaked in darkness. He felt the edge of an abyss, the empty air, and knew he was not far from annihilation.

[End.]

Endless Kinhin, Chapter 4

4.

Endo opened the door of the hut and stepped outside. There were only a few inches of snow on the ground. He decided to leave his socks in the hut and wear only his sandals for kinhin. He knew the snow would be like needles to his feet, but it would be good training. He would be more connected to the earth.

On retreat, the monks were free to practice whatever form of meditation they wished. The important thing was mindfulness. Endo stepped slowly forward, feeling the snow crunch underneath his feet. He made his way through a grove of snow-covered juhyo trees. They were like great white monsters rising up before him. He watched them calmly. Green needles were scattered underneath them like blades of grass.

As Endo slowly made his way along the brook, under ginkos quaking gently in the wind, his mind wandered back to the woman in his dream. A Japanese saying came to him:

Atop Mt. Fuji
the heart descends
when there is nowhere

else to go.

Standing before the woman in his dream, faced with such beauty, it was a wonder he was not consumed with desire, as if he were lying in a funeral pyre. He remembered how she froze, and stared into him, and how instead of his desire for her being enflamed, it began to assume an awkward chill. It was not her that was frigid--he knew, by her eyes, that he could have her right then and she would have welcomed it. Rather, it was the presentation of the object of desire at that moment, and a kind of rapid cycling through the future that seemed to turn seconds into years, that filled him with the sense that he had already had her. Just before he woke, he did not feel novelty, the consumption of his longing, but the dreadful and nauseating feeling of familiarity, the breeding ground of discontent.

To assuage this unpleasant feeling, he returned to his mind, to the act of walking. The numbness in his toes from the cold snow was mildly distracting while he was thinking, but now it had grown into a warm throbbing. He centered his mind on this pain, and entered into the discomfort. With each step, the pain began to lose its edge, and as his mind entered more deeply into the source of his pain, his whole body began to feel warm, as if it were absorbing it. It was not long before he was walking with a scomplete awareness of everything around him. And not only around him, but inside him--his body, his thoughts, his breath. Cold does not long to be warm; warmth does not long to be cold. Cold is cold, warm is warm, and even that was a completely subjective assignment of value. In isolating the pain of "cold," he had entered into it, turned it inside out, and rendered it completely impotent.

It was an amazing feeling, walking in such a way. He stopped to remove his sandals, so he could feel more closely the crystals of snow melting beneath his feet. The feeling, like the word--"cold"--had become completely devoid of meaning. He marveled at this world of illusion, of things representing realities that were, in fact, empty vessels. He thought of a large basket, the kind pesants would use to carry their vegetables to the village marketplace. He imagined it on the ground, and himself stepping inside it. I am inside the basket, he thought. Then, he stepped out. I am outside the basket. Was one state--of being inside our outside--better than the other? How absurd to say, "it is better for one to be inside a basket than outside it," or even vice versa. Being both inside or outside, one remains in this world. The longing to be what we are not, to have what we have not...how crafty a monkey desire is! How cunning is Mara, Mother of Illusion! Will her appetite be ever sated?

Endo felt as if he was everywhere, and yet as a finite man, he was in fact confined to a single point in space. He was everywhere and somewhere...and nowhere. He crossed the brook, bending down to drink the water. How sweet it tasted! He sat on the bank and watched his breath leave his body, and disappear. He watched a band of finches hop and peck in the snow. One stopped to look at him, riveted. Endo sat motionless, eyes locked upon the birds beak. And suddenly, he was reminded of the swan, the woman in his dream. He glanced towards the birds. What were these? Small footprints pressed lightly in the snow, bigger than that of any animal, leading through a grove of bamboo. He felt a strange warmth, and got up to follow them.

(cont.)

Endless Kinhin, Chapter 3

3.

Such was the last thing Endo remembered before waking. Rather than gazing into the eyes of a woman, he found himself staring at the thatch roof above him. It took a few moments for his mind to catch up with his new surroundings. It was as if a curtain had been dropped, and a new act in a play which he was in was beginning. Time to get up, he thought, and face this world of form.

He arose slowly, still wearing his black koromo. It was his only possession, but even this did not belong to him, but to the monastery. It was all he was permitted to bring to the hermitage for his one-week solo retreat. There were over one hundred monks at the monastery, and the younger ones such as himself were sent here to spend time alone, away from the community, in order to strengthen their individual meditation practice. Unlike at the monastery, their days were not formally structured, and they were not under the watch of the abbot. The idea was that the young monks would take responsibility for their practice and continue to live as if they were under the watchful eye of their master. The day that Endo was to leave, his presence would be replaced by another monk beginning his retreat.

The hut had everything he needed. It was cold inside, and so Endo lit a small fire in the pit in the dirt floor. He placed a small iron tea pot on a rack above the glowing coals for tea. He had cooked rice the night before, and formed rice balls. He ate the cold rice on his bed, and listened to the birds. He was incredibly content, and happy as a monk.

A peculiar thing often happened shortly after he arose. For three days he had been here, and on each day, a voice had come to him, telling him that it was time for kenhin, walking meditation. At first he thought it was the voice of his deceased master Zenkai, but he did not recognize the voice. It was nondescript, unidetifiable, the voice of a stranger, but one who spoke familiarly to him. Endo poured tea into a small iron cup, and sipped it slowly while chewing on his rice. Then he got up.

(cont.)

Endless Kinhin, Chapter 2

2.

As the silhouette turned towards Endo, time seemed to stop. Everything fell away. The world of dreams, of conscious thought...all became one. There was no separation. Never had he been so aware, so focused on one thing, as he was at that moment.

After what seemed to be an endless time, the shadow arose. Endo heard the soft padding of feet on wood, as the silhouette grew and grew in size, bleeding out to the corners of the paper screen. And then, the slow, crisp, sliding of wood. As he watched, the shoji glided to the left, and light spilled out. No longer was Endo regarding a silohette; he was staring into the eyes of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Endo knew only the life of a celibate. It was not permitted for a monk to ever touch a woman...not that many women came to the monastery. To Endo, the sight before him was like one of a complete alien. He was frozen with indecision. For so long he had been visited by longing for one thing, though he did not know what that one thing was. Could this be it? Was it here, in the arms of a woman, that fulfillment lay? Despite all his years as a monk, years spent training the mind through meditation and self-discipline, he felt enlightenment to be a state as alien as the figure before him. Perhaps they were one in the same.

"Won't you come in?" The woman's voice was soft, and tender, and she wore a white silk kimono. Her hair was still wet from bathing. "Come around the side." It took all of Endo's might to pull himself out of the trance he was in, even in this his dream. He skirted the side of the house like a dog, and heard the shoji door slide open. He stepped inside.

"You are a monk?" The woman asked, then laughed. "I guess that is obvious, judging by your robes." The monk nodded dumbly. His mind was an absolute blank; he could not even think. He was completely in the hands of the one before him, disarmed by a desire so deep that it had no concrete form. It flowed like a black river beneath the earth.

And then, much to his confusion, the woman did not move. She stared into the eyes of the monk as if she were a statue. But she was still very much alive and breathing. Endo had never been under such an intense stare, not even by that of his master. She did not move. He did not move. And slowly, his desire began to melt.

(cont.)

Side Project: "Endless Kinhin"

1.


The grafts of morning pierced the walls of the dark hut, illuminating it with light of the December sun. Outside, a pair of sparrows hopped and fluttered through the white grass, picking apart small red berries and nipping at the insides. A slight wind shook the thin walls, and a few flakes of snow drifted down from the roof and settled on the the ledge outside the window. Endo opened his eyes, slowly, and took in the world, one breath at a time.

It had not been an especially restful sleep. In his village, it was said that the makings of dreams come from fragments of the day, the scraps of unmeditated experience that settle on the mind at night like snowflakes on a warm bath. Endo did not recall an especially blizzard-like day of thought and stimulation that would cause such restless dreams. Nonetheless, he spent much of the night in an acute state of longing, as if he were breathing through a straw, aching for air.

How strange it is, he thought, that we live as if we were not breathing, until our breath is taken from us like a thief. Then it becomes more valuable than gold. He recalled a haiku that his friend Kichijiro had shared with him at the monastery during the summer, when they would go for long walks after evening meditation, chewing thin shoots of bamboo:

Like a whale without a rib,
this life--
a maimed existence.

In his dream, in the light of the Autumn moon, Endo saw the silouette of a girl standing behind a window. The illuminated rice paper was like a canvas on which her form had been spilled from thick India ink: the blotting of her hair collected in a ball on top of her head, the swan-like neck, the gentle curves shaping her kimono. He could see that she was bathing. She let down her hair, a great splash of black, and drew a sponge over her shoulders, and down her slender arms. Endo became aware that the longer he stared at her, the more he became aware of the fact that he was gently fighting for air that did not come in full. His eyes were like great dark lakes, open and vast, and never ending. He heard the voice of Hijo, his master, saying that the world of form is like smoke curling from a stick of incense; only a fool would try to capture it in a bottle and expect it to still be there in the morning. But Endo knew that while the smoke may have leaked out and made its way back into nothingness, the sweet, heavy smell remained like a poignent resin.

In his dream, Endo waded through rice paddies, trying to make his way to the house. Never did he take his eyes off of this bathing swan. He was aware of every step, the warm mud oozing between his toes, the water buffalo moving slowly nearby, his heart beating rapidly. He recalled that Hijo and some of the other senior monks would often go into the forest to meditate amidst the wild boars. "Fear is a tool," Hijo told the monks. "One would be wise to use it to build the seat of enlightenment." Endo was filled with such longing for this young swan that he was gripped with fear. He was afraid that she would disappear before he could actualize her presence. In all his life as a monk, he had never touched a woman. It was all he could do to keep from running with abandon.

Slowly, slowly, Endo approached the window. The blood beat in his head, and his hand was trembling. He was sure that at the moment he touched the screen, the house would vanish, or he would wake from his dream, though at this point, he was not aware he was dreaming. As his fingernail brushed a fiber from the screen, he felt as if the world would crush him any moment.

But the world did not crush him. He placed the ball of his finger lightly on the shoji. It was like skin. He felt the light from the candle inside sway gently as he held his hand up. The air was thin, silent, and quick to betray. The shadow of the swan turned gently, and Endo felt his breath leave him for what felt like an eternity.

(cont.)

Evening Prayer

I will grit my teeth
and continue to trust you
when lack of identity leaves me a faceless pilgrim;
when lack of love brands its searing mark;
when lack of certainty holds me in nauseous tension;
My time will come soon enough,
and I will leave everything behind.
Until then I will grit my teeth
and spit and shed tears
and trust you still;
you will not abandon me to the Void.
My time will come.
My time will come...

My life, like my work, is one unfinished mess after another.

Evening Prayer

Lord, I just wanted to thank you for the other night when I came to you, dropping my heart on the floor, though already broken. I know you heard me and did not stay silent as you often do. I composed myself, and left you, and went next door to Mass. I wasn't even going to go, but I heard you call, all the way in East Falls, on my way home. You said to come, so I came and told you everything about my loneliness.

After Mass a guy next to me (I know you know this already) asked me if I wanted to come to his house to hang out with some people. I did. You handed me an oar, and told me to paddle. I did.

It was great, to connect with other people through a random meeting. They were real, too, genuine, and like me...struggling to live good lives, falling, getting up. They were Christians. I left, feeling better, the cold ride home made less bitter.

You told me to paddle some more, and so I got out of my self and worked up some nerve, and met a great girl. We are getting together Sunday. I really like her, Lord; she is sweet, nice, pretty, Catholic...and real.

I am working at Kate's store this weekend. That was nice of you to prompt her to call me as well. I could use the money, and it keeps me busy.

Thank you for turning your ear to my prayer. I am doing my part to get out and live my life, and I just wanted to thank you for your help in doing that.


Rob

"The notorious Dr. Emil Joystone has formulated, in The Autarkie of Earth a theory that there are three main sources of illusion—drink, sex and religion—and that no modern community can at present survive without copious supplies of at least two out of the three. “Otherwise,” in his view, “a state of illusion-deficiency leads to apathy and even suicide.” The Italians, in his view, get along with sex and religion: the Irish with drink and religion: the Swedes with drink and sex. He warns communities “working on an illusion-basis of only two-thirds” of the danger of interfering in any way with “either of the surviving illusion-habitats.” He relates, with his usual dubious statistical methodology, the high Swedish suicide rate to the increasingly stringent—and effective—liquor laws, and makes a series of coarse Swabian witticisms about the nature of the thread by which the Swedish people now hang."

--Conor Cruise O'Brien, "Why the Swedes Are Sad," Commonweal, Jan 2009

"Sometimes we make it harder than we have to"

Being bi polar and writing a book on being be polar can, well, start to define your existence. Going through a down cycle now (or maybe it is just life circumstances? the eternal question...) and having a hard enough time making it through the day can also make writing a book seem like a sentence. Sue Bergeson's post offered some perspective (original post can be found here):

Zen Question and Response

The students of Tibetan Buddhist Kalu Rimpoche and those of Providence Zen Center founder Seung Sahn arranged for the two Zen masters to meet and engage in dialogue.

When Seung Sahn arrived, he picked up an orange, held it in front of Kalu Rimpoche, and asked, "What is this?" The students awaited an insightful reply, illuminating the nature of reality, but Kalu Rimpoche looked stumped.

Seung Sahn repeated his question with greater emphasis, but Kalu Rimpoche had no answer. Seung Sahn put forth the question a third time.

Finally Kalu Rimpoche responded, "It seems that Seung Sahn has never seen an orange before."

I was thinking about this story for a while. It kind of bothered me. I found all kinds of ways to understand the story based on how I read the text. Was Kalu Rimpoche being sarcastic? Was he giving his "rival" master (which makes no sense in the context of a Zen construct) a put-down for testing him in such a clever way?

Was Seung Sahn trying to "show off" his greater wisdom and strength by taking the offense? And was he nicely put in his place by the wiser, gentler Kalu Rimpoche who refused to play his game? Were they both giving a lesson to their students who somehow needed them to meet in some kind of cataclysmic Zen showdown?

I finally came around to a much simpler reading of the text: Sometimes we make it harder than we have to. If I don't know what an orange is, I should ask. The person I've asked should take me at face value and answer.

I think sometimes many of us get caught up in living with this difficult, chronic illness. We read everything we can. We study all the info about the medications. We have a recovery plan. We come up with wellness tactics. We track our symptoms. We watch our early warning signals. We engage our friends as support to give us insight. We go to talk therapy, group therapy and support groups. We create a WRAP plan and an advance directive.

Sometimes, our illness rules our lives. We watch every nuance and consider how best to respond. For example: I'm tired, so I figure that means I must be cycling down. And I add another wellness tool to counteract my symptom. I carefully consider any actions in the past week that might have triggered this downward slide.

But the reality is that sometimes I'm just plain tired. Like anybody else. Because I worked too long or stayed up too late watching a favorite TV show.

I need to work my wellness, but I can also allow some space in my life to live. I need to credit normal feelings to normal activities ... not as an early warning of problems to come.

Sometimes an orange is just an orange.

I'm going to remember that when I feel out of balance ... when working my wellness starts controlling my life ... when I need to just breathe.

"My writing slowed, then stopped."

--Andrew Solomon

Lectio, AM

"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene.

"In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for special use, some for ordinary. All who cleanse themselves of the things I have mentioned will become special utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work. Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart."

--2 Timothy 2:15-16, 20-22

Lectio

"A good name is to be chosen
rather than great riches,,
and favor is better than silver
or gold.
The rich and poor have this in
common:
the LORD is the maker of
them all.
The clever see danger and hide;
but the simple go on, and suffer
for it.
The reward for humility and fear of
the LORD
is riches and honor and life.
Thorns and snares are in the way
of the perverse;
the cautious will keep far from
them.
Train children in the right way,
and when old, they will not
stray.
The rich rules over the poor,
and the borrower is the slave of
the lender.
Whoever sows injustice will reap
calamity,
and the rod of anger will fail.
Those who are generous are
blessed,
for they share their bread with
the poor.
Drive out a scoffer, and strife
goes out;
quarreling and abuse will cease.
Those who love a pure heart and
are gracious in speech
will have the king as a friend.
The eyes of the LORD keep watch
over knowledge,
but he overthrows the words of
the faithless.
The lazy person says, "There is a
lion outside!
I shall be killed in the streets!"
The mouth of a loose woman is a
deep pit;
he with whom the LORD is angry
falls into it.
Folly is bound up in the heart of
a boy,
but the rod of discipline drives it
faraway.
Oppressing the poor in order to
enrich oneself,
and giving to the rich, will lead
only to loss.

Do not be one of those who give
pledges.

Apply your mind to instruction
and your ear to words of
knowledge.
Do no withhold discipline from
your children;
if you beat them with a rod, they
will not die.
If you beat them with the rod,
you will save their lives from
Sheol.

--Prov (22:1-16, 26; 23:12-14)

Poem for the day

Detail
William Carlos Williams


Doc, I bin lookin' for you
I owe you two bucks.

How you doin'?

Fine. When I get it
I'll bring it up to you.

Doubt Is Torture

I am typing out part of a chapter from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, who has been a huge inspiration in my writing, on doubt and perseverance. Whenever I get stuck or marred in writer's quicksand, I turn to this book. I would suggest it to anyone, writers or otherwise:

A friend of mine was planning to move to Los Angeles with the hope of connecting with the music industry. He was a musician and songwriter, and it was time for him to follow his aspirations. Katagiri Roshi said to him, 'Well, if you've really decided to go, let's see what your attitude is.'

'Well, I'll try my best. I figure I have to give it a shot, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I'll just accept it.'

Roshi responded, 'That's the wrong attitude. If they knock you down, you get up. If they knock you down again, get up. No matter how many times they knock you down, get up again. That is how you should do.'

The same is true in writing. For every book that makes it, there are probably thousands that don't get published. We must continue anyway. If you want to write, write. If one book doesn't get published, write another one. Each one will get better because you have all the more practice behind you.

Every month I am ready to quit writing. The inner dialogue goes something like this: "This is stupid. I am making no money, there's no career in poetry, no one cares about it, it's lonely, I hate it, it's dumb, I want a regular life." These thoughts are torture. If we give ourselves fully to something, it will be clearer when it might be appropriate to quit. It is a constant test of perseverence. Sometimes I listen to the doubting voice and get sidetracked for a while. 'I think I'll go into sales, open up a cafe so other writers can go there, sip cappuccino and write, or get married, have babies, be a homemaker and make wonderful chicken dinners.'

Don't listen to doubt. It leads no placebut to pain and negativity. It is the same with your critic who picks at you while you are trying to write. 'That's stupid. Don't say that. Who do you think you are anyway, trying to be a writer?' Don't pay attention to those voices. There is nothing helpful there. Instead, have a tenderness and determination toward your writing, a sense of humor and a deep patience that you are doing the right thing. Avoid getting caught be that small gnawing mouse of doubt. See beyond it to the vastness of life and the belief in time and practice."

Chapter __: Gluttony

"In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery,
eats twice as much as nature requires."

--Benjamin Franklin

The belly of a manic-depressive is never full, and as we well know, we experience from time to time and raging and dangerous appetite. This is more the case in mania, where the appetite for experiences especially rages, and we live it out by gobbling up everything put in front of us. The world is our oyster…and it is especially delicious with lots of melted butter and bottomless bottles of red wine to go with it.

The desert fathers saw gluttony as an especially dangerous sin for young monks. According to Abba Serapion in his “Eight Principal Vices” (complimentary to St. John Cassian’s Conferences), there are three kinds of gluttony.

“The first impels a monk to hasten to eat before the fixed and lawful hour. The second is pleased with a full stomach and with devouring any edibles whatsoever. And the third desires more refined and delicate foods. These three entail no small loss for a monk unless he struggles to extricate himself from all of them with equal diligence and care. For just as breaking the fast before the canonical hour is never to be dared, so likewise filling one's stomach and the preparation of costly and choice dishes must be avoided. From these three causes different and very bad states of health of the soul are produced.”

So gluttony in this way is composed of the lack of self-control in eating at a designated hour; eating with voraciousness; and having a rich palate. Thomas Aquinas expanded on this definition of gluttony to include:

* Praepropere - eating too soon;
* Laute - eating too expensively;
* Nimis - eating too much;
* Ardenter - eating too eagerly;
* Studiose - eating too daintily.

So it would seem that gluttony is less about food specifically and more about appetite in general. When Gautama Buddha lived as a prince, he was in want of nothing. But he was not in this way enlightened. As a result he set off into the world, and fell in with some wandering ascetics. He fasted to the point of emaciation, but still enlightenment did not come to him. And so after a long time sitting under the Bodhi tree, he found that neither extremes of excess or want were the way to enlightenment. Food was not the source of suffering, but desire. Eating or not eating is within our control, but the arising of desire is not. The only way to freedom is stepping out of the cycle of samsara and suffering, from the illusion that the satiation of desire will make one happy and content.

Appetite is a natural thing: when we are hungry, we desire to eat. In this way the desert fathers link gluttony to fornication, maintaining that one leads to the next. Fornication, after all, is born out of the appetite for sex, or, at least, for sexual satisfaction or release. Sexual promiscuity is often noted as one of the symptoms of mania. When some people become manic they have a raging desire for sex, and will look to satiate it anywhere and with anyone available. When I was manic, I had an overwhelming sexual energy, but sublimated it into activities—writing, projects, etc. This, of course, was a safety measure. Illicit sex with strangers is murder for the spirit, and I believe it was only through grace that I did not find myself in bed with strangers looking to satiate my appetite with a desire that was insatiable.

Gluttony is only kept in check by self-control, with self-control consisting of the coupling of grace and free will. For the Christian, we are given the power to overcome vice only through grace, which itself comes through the Spirit and belief in Jesus Christ, who conquered all temptation.
Overcoming vice itself falls to our lot. And ike all things that call for perfection, overcoming sin takes practice. Because it goes against our appetite, fasting from sin consists of painful endurance. As St, Paul writes, “I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” So it is with us.

Curbing appetites in mania can seem like an impossible task. The appetite for experience is like a river which swells in the springtime following the winter thaw. But mania can become our practice field. When you are manic and devouring whatever food, substance, or person is before you, mobilize your will. Slam on the emergency break, and stop yourself. You will feel searing pain and resistance. This is natural. No one grows stronger who does suffer for it; no one perfects anything except through repetition and practice. Consecrate your suffering to God as a holy offering. Know that it is temporary, but that life after death is everlasting. Scream and yell! But check your appetite, and you will find and appreciate how hard it is to fulfill the words of Jesus, “be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.” Practice makes perfect.

Chapter __: True Religion

“Religion is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress,
and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

--James 1:27

Was Jesus religious? Yes. Jesus was a good Jew. Was he critical of religion? Very much so. I don’t know if Jesus intended Christianity to be an established religion, at least in the traditional sense. We have St. Paul to thank for that. Jesus seemed to be more concerned with the heart of things, including religion. This should be our attitude as well: religion should only have a place in our lives if it has a burning heart of mystery and acceptance.

If we think of life as a body, religion is the skeleton, as well as the skin, the organs and body parts. It provides structure and sets boundaries. Spirit is the heart, the mind, the blood, the life force. A body without spirit is a cadaver, a corpse. Conversely, a spirit without a body is not human.

Religion is the alpha spirit: heady, ritualistic, concerned with rules and what should or shouldn’t be. It is slow to change, conservative by nature. Spirituality is the beta spirit, the feminine: it is not confined to shoulds and shouldn’ts, but only what is. It is all heart, and pure mind. It is not exclusive but universal. It is spontaneous, like a child.

Yahweh said, “it is not good for man to be alone.” A man who is pure alpha is unbalanced. He is too rigid, all bone, needs feminine spirit to be whole. Likewise, a woman who is pure beta is not whole. Spirit needs flesh and bones in order to be integrated into material existence, to be actualized in the world. This is why it is said, in the story of Genesis, that woman was fashioned from the bone of man. They were once one, but have been rendered into two distinct parts. We are sexual beings because we are always yearning to be return to the state of oneness.

In this way, religion and spirituality are like husband and wife. It is no mistake that Jesus called the Church his spouse. The spirit of Christ needs a body on earth, and this is the church with a little ‘c.’ To keep things ordered, the big ‘C’ has been established…for better or for worse.
On a larger scale, the body of humanity is made up of many different and unique parts. The major religions of the world—Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity—make up the large bones, the large organs. Other religions—Sikhism, Jainism, Confucianism, Animism—are like the smaller parts, and no less important. It is difficult for me to say to these smaller, more esoteric religions: “I have no need of you,” just as St. Paul writes: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” Though people be of different religions, we are all brothers and sisters.

Fr. John McNamee, author of Diary of a City Priest, was an admirer of the French intellectual and political activist Simone Weil, and quotes her frequently throughout his book. Weil, who was attracted to Roman Catholicism but was never baptized, drew inspiration from many different religious traditions. She was, however, an opponent of syncretism—the attempt to analogise and create a unification of disparaged beliefs— which she felt did not do justice to the unique character of different religions. She explains her philosophy concisely and unapologetically:
“Each religion is alone true, that is to say, that at the moment we are thinking of it we must bring as much attention to bear on it as if there were nothing else...A "synthesis" of religion implies a lower quality of attention.”

When speaking of mystical ecstasies, I tend to use the terms “religious experience” and “spiritual experience,” interchangeably. I take the same approach towards my diagnosis, using the terms “manic depression” and “bi polar” without distinction. I am not a linguist, so the intricacies of differentiation in language is not a sticking point for me. I do not like to be referred to in terms of being a “religious person” or a “spiritual person.” While I recognize the variance in terminology, I consider my religion and my spirituality to be intertwined, so that it is not enough to be classified as one of the other.

It is fashionable in my generation to eschew religion in favor of spirituality. This is hard for me to come to terms with, though I know for some people it does work. While I was visiting a Trappist monastery I found a book in the guesthouse titled, Peace Pilgrim about a woman who spent her life walking back and forth across the United States to promote world peace, carrying only a comb and a few possessions in a tunic she wore with the words on the back: “25,000 miles for peace.”

Many people regarded her as a holy person and in many ways she was. Though she claimed no formal religion, she spoke of God transcendentally as love and peace, and she lived and breathed this spirituality, encouraging people to trust blindly in Love, and not fall prey to the anxieties of life. I think if Peace Pilgrim (the name she went by) confined herself to an exclusive religious tradition, she would not have drawn in as many people as she had. In this sense I would call her a spiritual person for sure, while at the same time she embodying the true heart of religion, and all that is good.

I feel religion is important, but it is unequivocally a means to an end. The true heart of religion is not always synonymous with its practice. One need not look very far to expose the dysfunctions and hypocrisy of religion (or rather, the followers of religion) throughout history. I do not try to pedal my Catholicism to others, but rather try to live out the words of St. Vincent de Paul: “Preach the Gospel always; use words, if necessary.” That being said, I never shy away from talking about all the ways in which religion has helped me live a good life. Manic-depression is an explosive disease; it resists attempts to be reigned in. But sometimes we need to be reigned in in order to live a sane life.

When I spent a month-long retreat at a Benedictine monastery for men discerning religious life, the Abbot told us a story about living under a rule (in this case, the Rule of St. Benedict). He painted the scenario of children playing on a mountain top in the fog (while failing to elucidate on why children would be playing on top of a mountain in the first place). The children huddled together for fear of not seeing the edge and falling off the mountain. But when a fence was built around them, the played freely, unafraid of falling off.

Freedom is the purpose of the monastic or religious rules. It is one of those great Christian paradoxes: the way to freedom is to make yourself a slave. Christian monastics profess a vow of obedience to their Abbot or Abbess, and they take this vow very seriously. In America, the “land of the free,” we equate freedom with being able to do what ever we want. In reality, though, “freedom is the ability to become who we are meant to be.” Sometimes freedom requires boundaries to be set in this big bad world.

As I said earlier, I am not one to pedal religion. But I personally cannot imagine my life without it. I try to take the goods and leave the bads. Religion may not work for everyone, but I don’t think people really give it enough of a chance to prove itself. We are impulsive, falling privy to shallow gratification and trembling at the idea of commitment.

I think manic depressives can benefit from the self-imposed restrictions and ordinances of religion. If anyone asked me, “Does Christianity hold anything for me?” I would answer, “of course.” After all, it is the path I have chosen, and I can speak about it because I have made it my own. I cannot speak with such authority on Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam; that is not my place, nor my desire. But, of course, all religions have deep wisdom for living to share as well. I do not say to myself, “I cannot read the Upanishads or the Dhammapadda because they are not Christian.” That is silly. Wisdom is not exclusive.

St. Augustine said, “Love, and do as you please.” Once the fences are up, we can let the animal within us run wild…something manic-depressives are especially good at.

That man

When I was younger I used to fantasize about being a writer, single, with a short beard, writing on a weekday in a quiet cafe by the window. Today, I am that man.

Chapter __: Dispositions

“But as it is, God placed the parts,
each one of them, in the body as he intended.”

--1 Cor. 12:18

When I was in college, I knew a woman who was a consecrated virgin, a lay person committed to living the life of a single person in the world. She was the most joy filled woman I had ever met.

At first I did not like her. In fact, in all honesty, I disliked her very much. I suppose there was an underlying jealousy at the heart of my hostile feelings towards her: I wanted the stable mood she had--she seemed always happy. It makes one think, "what is wrong with this person." Being perpetually filled with joy does not seem natural. I regarded it as a kind of superficial phoniness. How dare she be so happy when there are so many awful things happening in the world! Did she have her head in the clouds, or in a hole of some sort?

The fact is, Maria is her own person. We are one in Christ, but represent different members. I have known people who never seem to be sad, to whom depression is a foreign state. I have known people who were manic all the time (or at least hypo-manic), and never seemed to crash. I also know people who are perpetually depressed.

Manic depressives are a different sort. We have no fixed disposition. We run the spectrum from one pole of emotions to the next; some making several laps in a day, others spreading their vacillations over the course of weeks or months. I cannot say, "I am a happy person," or "I am a gloomy person." I am both, and neither exclusively.

The saints throughout history represent a microcosm of humanity as a whole. St. Francis of Assisi seemed to be a genuinely joyful man. St. Terese of Lisieux was a mercurial wildcard. St. Antony of Egypt made army generals look like lazy lollygaggers with his extreme asceticisms. Mother Teresa of Calcutta had a glowing outer shell which radiated love, but inside she was barren, steeped in darkness; a walking contradiction.

All this is good. We are different. Problems arise, however, when we begin to think that we should be this or that. I think "shoulds" are of the devil; they never seem to lead to anything constructive. When we say I should be this or that, we are really saying we are not content or accepting of who we are. If I felt that I had to be happy all the time like Maria, I would go crazier than I already am. Such a disposition is probably natural for her; she may not think twice about being anything but what she is, which is a joyful person. But it is not natural for me. And that is okay!

Learning to ignore "shoulds" was a big part of the cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) I went through for a number of years early in my diagnosis. While I am not presently in therapy, CBT provided me with the tools to be discriminate when the "shoulds" sneak their way in to my thought process in my life. The first therapist I had was excellent. She gave me homework to do, and encouraged me to watch my moods carefully and to catch myself in the act of giving in to destructive and irrational thoughts. Once these thoughts were caught red handed, they were exposed to the light of cognitive reality and put to shame. When I think, "I am stupid. I have never done anything good," I am encouraged to grab them by the neck and hold them up to the light of what I really know. It's point, counter-point. I say, "What about that award you won, the compliments your friends shower you with. Are they telling of a stupid person?" When I do this, these cognitive distortions vanish like demons exposed to the light of Christ.

One of my favorite poems is by Gregory Corso, one of the great beat poets of the fifties and sixties. It is titled Marriage, and begins: "Should I get married? Should I be good?" Our lives are chock full of shoulds. When they begin to crowd out your rational sensibilities, beware of an impending mental breakdown. Throw shoulds out the window of the mind into the darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Don't ask "should I get married?" Either get married, or don't. Take yourself where you are as if you were the only person in the world with no one to compare yourself to. Do what you do, and be who you are. This is so important.

When you make sincere efforts to be good, to live a virtuous, spiritual life, you are bound to fail at some point or another. The mind of a manic depressive is a fantastic but tender thing. Do not reprimand yourself in any way or with any more force than Christ himself would do to you. You may find yourself in a wicked downward spiral, and it is there that you give the Devil a helping hand in destroying you. When I beat myself up and give myself black eyes for not being good like Maria, or St. Teresa, or Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I am not loving myself as I should; I am judging myself harshly. As a good friend who knows how hard I can be on myself would tell me, "hold yourself gently." Whatever your unique disposition, know that God made you that way. Be good. But be yourself.

Chapter __: Forsaken

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”

--Psalm 22:1

In his book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon affirms the place of religion for the mentally ill. Despite being an atheist, he says that religion “provides answers to unanswerable questions.” As beneficial as this might be for those suffering from depression, he also notes that “it [religion] cannot pull people out of depression; indeed, even the most religious people find their faith thins or vanishes during the depths of depression.”

When the secret diaries of Mother Theresa were released, many people found it shocking that this holy woman should be so forsaken by God. For more than forty years, Mother Theresa lived in spiritual darkness, without the comfort or assurance of the presence of God. In Come Be My Light, she writes:

"Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?"

Why does God seem to forsake those most in need of His comfort? It is to make them strong. It is a common thing for us to miss the things we do not have, and to take for granted those things that we do have. For someone so accustomed to an intimate relationship with God, His absence can be especially painful. The absence of God can lead one either to despair or to a burning longing. In this way our faith is tested: we are called to trust in what we cannot see or feel, and to spit in the face of despair.

The fact that the Son of God would utter the words: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” is in many ways unfathomable. How could Jesus as the incarnate God be separated from Himself? It is generally accepted that in taking the sins of the world upon himself, Jesus assumed sin and all its consequences; namely, separation from God. St. Paul wrote, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

In our seemingly perpetual state of sin, we should be perpetually separated from God. But God does not abandon us, even when He draws Himself into the shadows from time to time. Like the Apostles who scattered when Jesus was arrested, it is we who abandon God. And yet God does not turn his back on us; it is we who turn our backs on God.

I do not think God withdraws Himself as some kind of punishment. Theologically speaking, God and sin cannot coexist. When we choose sin, we choose it over God, and assume the consequences. When we turn our hearts to God, despite our sin, God is there. In this way it is only to our senses that God abandons us in our darkest hour.

Depression is a kind of abandonment. As Andrew Solomon writes, it is the “flaw in love.” Where there is no love, or when love cannot shine through the thick mucus of depression, there is the feeling of being forsaken. In this sense, it is a natural feeling. That does not, however, take away from the real pain of such an absence. In the darkest depression, sometimes nothing helps. It is here we are called to sit with the tension of our pain, to ride it out like a storm. The spiritual response is to believe in the face of unbelief, trust in the face of despair, in the spirit of Pascal’s Wager. Fitting is St. Augustine’s paradoxical prayer: “I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief!”

Is there anything which helps to assuage this pain that does not require running away from the darkness God deigns us to sit in? One tangible thing that does seem to help me when I am depressed is writing. In it I can spill my self onto paper and offer it to God as a humble oblation of suffering, of my very self. I pray best on paper. When I have been especially negligent, the page screams out, “Rob, Rob, why have you forsaken me?"

Writing—or whatever form of self-expression—in this way flips the feeling of abandonment on its head, just as being there for someone who is depressed while we ourselves are imprisoned by depression frees us to love, and gets us out of ourselves. This is a worthy offering in the eyes of God, since it is tried in the blazing furnace of existential pain. Knowing this pain of abandonment, we become reluctant to abandon others.

Writing is my way of personally revealing myself to God. When I refuse to open myself to God in this way, it is I who forsakes the page, not the other way around. However, we all have our own unique gifts and ways of laying before God our wretched self. In this way we are a little like God, creatively actualizing. Try writing you pain out on the page, like a child writing a letter to Santa Claus. Do not edit yourself; spill your entrails unabashed. Or try creating something. Paint. Plant seeds. Volunteer. Take the hard opportunity to go against your feelings and love and create in the face of death and despair, just as Mother Theresa did all her life. We are not Mother Theresa, but we can do little things with great love, or at least, as much love as we can muster given the circumstances. Doing so can help to loosen the debilitating grip of depression, maybe even lessen the pain. And remember: this, too, shall pass.

It is time to write...

There is no other time.

Yes Man

I went to see Yes Man with Jim Carrey last night somewhat reluctantly, in a bad spot and desperate for diversion. So funny, and well written. Carl (Jim Carrey) is a 'no man;' "Carl, do you want to go out tonight?" No. "Carl, will you approve my loan (he is a loan officer)?" No. Carl... No. No. No. Carl goes to a self-help seminar--"YES is the new no." The pedaled philosophy is to stop saying 'no' to life by saying YES to any opportunity that prevents itself. It gets a little ridiculous, lots of funny scenes.

What struck me is that God, too, wants us to be YES men. Yes Lord, I will go wherever you send me. Yes Lord, I do whatever you ask of me. The saints were serious yes men and women, pedaling the gospel as an affirmative YES to life everlasting, and a firm NO to sin, whatever the circumstances. Yes Man was funny because it took YES to the extreme, throwing caution to the wind and following blindly into the uncertainty that YES promises.

When the Lord said, "quit your job," I quit. When the Lord said, "write a book," I said okay. When the Lord presented a green school bus and said, "Buy it and build it and they will come," I did, and they--press, exposure, curious bystanders--came. Now I am finding myself left out of an essential part of life--work--, dismantling the bus and donating it to charity, and struggling through writing a book that does not write itself...a lonely and rocky endeavor.

Was saying "yes" a mistake. No. I didn't know what I was getting into but when God corners you like he did me, its hard to squirm out with a "no." I don't regret any of it. But in the wake of YES, the path is not so clear where to go next. That's not part and parcel of the gospel philosophy. You need to get acquainted with uncertainty and promises and unknown roads or your YESes will soon slide into NOs.

I will make writing my work. I will trust that building the Green Ark and getting it out to the press was more purposeful than living in the contraption. I will suck up my lot and celebrate uncertainty. I took a beeting last night. But I'm back up again.

Album for the night. Morphine: "Yes"

Prayer for the evening

I imploded like a black star
on the living room floor
shooting shards of my shattered self in all directions
breaking windows, cutting plaster.
You are the most important thing to me.
In a heap of black fleece and denim,
I fear for my future, wondering
if you had handed me the wheel to drive,
or if I was expected to keep my hands off,
let us roll into a ditch, fold like an accordion into a tree;
give away my ritches,
and be forced daily to beg it back.
Oh happy chance.
When night sets upon me I run to created things,
lighting matches, dialing worthless numbers,
and you chastise me,
My son, why do you run to created things? Am I not enough?
You are! I know that! My reason!
And yet you do not trust me? Why do you turn your back on Me,
when my arms are open to bring you in?
Where are your arms that bind? Where are your hands that caress
matted hair and soaked cheeks?
Someone who offers themselves to a black hole
gets what they deserve, they tell me.
You left Mother in darkness for half her life.
You had your reasons, I suppose. Look at all she laid at your feet,
and you return only darkness. She said
you despised her. What hope is there for me, then?
I am like a crumpled bag, empty and soiled. I ate what was inside,
what I had brought for you, because I was hungry. I wiped myself
with the bag, because I had no toilet paper.
And yet I still consider this a gift worthy to offer to you?
They throw me out out your courts
for insulting you with this filthy gift.
And yet you call me back in, chastise the guards
for how they treat me.
I am disgraced beyond belief by my profane emptiness.
And yet you take it in your hands, smooth out the creases,
erase the stains, anoint it with oil and fill it with good things.
I have nothing to give! I scream and cry,
outraged at your charity,
an affront to my vindictive reason.
I make all things new, you say. I burst into fiery tears that sear
my face, paint me with stripes.
If I loved you, if my words held any integrity,
I would stay in your courts forever,
forsake my plans, crucify my worry.
Living is so painful! And yet I know you planned it this way.
All I have to offer you are my sins and my desire to be good;
everything else is broken beyond repair,
not even worthy of the scrap yard.
Oh, that I could rest in your love forever,
but you push me out into the cold, to fight and make my way
beyond the warming hearth of your house,
among acquaintances and ghosts who do not see me;
to be blown by the gentlest gust
into a wall, to have my hands broken;
to sit on bathroom floors in the damp moonlight;
to collapse on beds of cloth;
to be surrounded by lions which circle me and wait to pounce.
Who will save me from this body of death!
Oh Paul, with hands stained with holy blood.
Are you haunted by your self, by your clinging past?
Have you cut it so far from you that the wives and children
of those who sent to be buried would not recognize your brazen eyes,
your proud zeal and lust for Christian blood.
I know who you are,
who you were.
You are no better than me.
And yet you are a thousand times better than me.
I will let you carry your own yoke.
I must carry my soiled empty bag,
to make an offering to my Lord,
soiled in sin, the stench of which offends him.
He sends for me, draws me close,
and pushes me back into the night.

Poem for the evening: Pilgrim's Lot

Oh, would I throw away my pen,
spit dirty tobacco into my mug,
make up things and jobs to tell women,
as I walk the land lady's dog
in a stained white undershirt and muffled cap.
What kind is he? A rare breed,
rare indeed. Half man-half man;
half a man, actually. He comes
from the coward genus--
notice the sagging hips, the coal eyes
that once ignited everything.
Oh, if you could have seen him! So handsome. Mmm.

Yes, we should have coffee
sometime, or bourbon,
if you are that kind of girl. Back at my place,
I think of things to do.
If you can think for yourself,
perhaps you can unyoke my straining
mind, fishing quickly for things to bring us closer
to our end, turning a blind eye
to the apocalypse.
So, who will take care of your dog?
you ask, putting me in a tight spot.
More ginger ale? I wish I had something

more to offer you. I have one plate
and a bowl, a few forks;
Which would you like?
You frowned when I showed you
my reed mat, where all the harrowing dreams
of my quiet demise hover above my resting corpse
like chunky angels, driving their fish hook arrows
in and through me as i gently move
the hair in my nostrils with tender breath.
All a man needs is two feet
of space in which to lie, I told you. I catch your eyes
flitting towards the door.

A friend told me: all girls make sure they know
where the windows are, how many flights up,
if they could jump and not break anything.
I picked a woman up off the sidewalk once,
I tell you, to put you at ease,
On my way to court. She told me she was raped
in a man's bathroom, and had jumped out the window,
and broken everything.
I set her up and we had lunch
in Love Park, smoking Kool cigarettes, me trying to keep her
sober. But she kept falling.
She was very heavy.

I'll remember your name, of course,
when I am taking my cold morning shower,
watching the sun rise through the window,
wondering where you had gone that night,
when I turned to go to the bathroom.
I wish i could have offered