Something So Beautiful It Hurts

Something So Beautiful It Hurts

Have you seen this thing so beautiful it hurts?

A white gravel road calls out ahead, threading up

and down the lazy hills.

Shaggy ponies graze, seem to swim,

spotted sable and cream, in the golden green

too-tall grasses.

Mid July, corn of dark green waves

in the breeze, a confusion of edges and leaves

and rows and rows.

Sunshine breaks open my heart with longing.

The plural exhalations of corn fill the air,

humid and heavy, breathy reminders

of my own.  Have you reckoned

your breath with that of the living corn,

the living earth, the hot breeze?

I inhale, I exhale.  I compound

the humidity and scent

and taste of the hazy July sky.

Crossroads call now, a white plus sign

upon the countryside.  Give over

to the ache and stop, just stop, here.

$14

A man came into the Fellowship tonight while the Mindfulness group was meditating.  He waited until we were done. 

He held a red ball cap.
His wife divorced him.
He has a baby boy named Marcus.
He has a rash on his leg and needs medicine.
He used to be a farmer.
He wore a brown jacket and blue jeans.
He was working recently setting up event tents.
He drives a red, small car.
He is trying to sell his tractor.
He needs to wash his clothes.
He asked for money.
He asked for $14.

We tried to refer him to other resources.  We suggested he come back tomorrow when our office staff are here and may be able to help.

He needs salve for his leg.
His tractor may bring $18,000.
His wife took $480,000 when she left.
His baby boy was born at the end of August.
He asked for money at other churches.
He says he'll go get his family when his tractor sells.
He said good Christian people ought to be able to help.
He asked for $14 to do his laundry.

I had money in my car but not with me inside.  I was uncomfortable and unsure what to do.  Someone else talked with him awhile more, and then he left without money.  I watched him drive away in his small, red car.  I feel ashamed of myself now.  I could have given him something.  I should not have felt uncomfortable or uncertain, but I did.  I could have given him $14.  What difference would it have made?

Contemplation on Eyebrows and Such

I had my eyebrows waxed recently by a young cosmetology student at the salon academy.  I'd never met her before that morning.  I was about to let her cut my hair, so I thought, what the heck, let's do the brows too.  What's the worst that could happen?

Her name is Haley, and she sported an expertly coiffed and sprayed halo of blond hair.  My usual gal was sick, and the second they'd arranged for me was also absent, hence Haley.  There's something to be said for showing up.  After describing how I wanted my hair cut and razored, Haley walked me back to the washing sinks and said we'd do my eyebrows before we went back for the hair cutting portion of the show.

I have dark, full eyebrows, and I like them, so it takes faith and trust to give your eyebrows to a cosmetology student you've never met.  I explained that I like them and just wanted them cleaned up and shaped.  I wish I had something hilarious to relate, but I don't.  Neither is there anything horrible about what happened.  It was pleasantly painful in the way that only eyebrow waxing can be.  I enjoy it.   It's a very present moment experience for me.  The wax is warm and sticky.  I concentrate on breathing smoothly in and out.  I concentrate on not flicking my eyeballs around under my lids and looking like I've entered full-on REM sleep.
All the while she's waxing I'm also thinking about my daddy.

My father is nearly 70 now and needed to have eyelid lift surgery to help him see better.  There was concern about the procedure because he has large, protruding eyes.  Shortening the lid too much would result in him not being able to close his eyelid fully.  The complications are serious.  He was scared about having it done but knew he really needed it. 

The photos of him afterward were terrible.  He was bloody, stitched, puffy, red, yellow and blue, eyes swollen nearly shut.  It took weeks to heal, but he did.  They did not take too much out of him, and he is able to blink completely.  However, the surgeon did not get them even, so his left eye is more open than his right.  He knows it and says he doesn't care.  It's a little hard to get used to seeing him.  I think it will take me awhile, and I feel bad for him, but I'd never say so.  His vision is better, and that's the most important thing.

I think how often I take for granted how much I have to trust total strangers and have faith that they'll do OK by me and by others.  It's a bit alarming and a lot amazing.

Books I've Read So Far This Year

Just thought it'd be fun to review the books I've read so far this year, maybe throw in a favorite quote from each.  In order, starting in January . . .

 "The human factor takes many different forms though . . . It's what drives someone to do something they would never have done in any other situation."
 Tony

"You are my creator, but I am your master."
the Monster

"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body."
Van Helsing

"All this had always been and he had never seen it; he was never present. Now he was present and belonged to it."

"Moth shadows beat an ever-changing tattoo across the faces of Christ, Buddha, Amen-Ra."

"The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god)."

*****

“You're not one of us.”
"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine." 

"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong."










Books I'm currently reading:

Meeting Khenmo

I was fortunate to attend a morning retreat recently in Des Moines.  It was presented by a Tibetan Buddhist nun, Khenmo Drolma, who is Abbess of the Vajra Dakini Nunnery in Lincoln, Vermont.   

She has trained with both HH Dalai Lama and with Pema Chodron, so I was fairly star-struck, knowing that I’d achieved two degrees of separation from those great teachers!  

I sat in the front row, just a few chairs from her.  Her hair is shaved, and she wears the saffron sleeveless shirt and burgundy robes that are so recognizably Buddhist.  What a pleasure to listen to her, not only for her calm instruction but also for her sense of humor and how she addressed the self as “honey.” She felt like a favorite aunt, calling me honey.

I spoke with her for only a moment as she signed my copy of her essays book that I bought and thanked her for her teachings.  It was a good morning.

Yearning

What do you yearn for?  Does yearning have a positive or negation connotation for you?

Dictionary.com says : Yearning is a present participle of the verb yearn

1. Have an intense feeling of loss or lack and longing for something.

2. Be filled with compassion or warm feeling.

I am part of a small group ministry team, and this was our most recent topic of discussion.  The two eldest members said they yearn for security, especially financial security, since they are now retired and facing uncertainties in their lives.  Our facilitator yearns for change in her life situation.  The other member said she yearns for sunshine, to be outside. 

We never got the word longing substituted into our conversation.  It might have been helpful if we had, but I really enjoyed hearing these different perspectives on yearning.  For myself, I talked about my yearning for being with people to converse and exchange ideas, talk about books, music, movies, religion, philosophy.  The times when I’ve felt the sharpest sense of yearning were when I didn’t have people with whom I could meet and talk and share ideas.

I’m fortunate to be in this small group ministry team because it does nourish me in that way.  I’m also part of a reading and discussion group that is providing so much fellowship and intellectual stimulation for me right now!  

On Saturday I found myself in Border’s to buy a wedding card.  Card selected, I checked the religion section, found one book, which I already own, on the shelf -- I’ll be reading it in yet another group.  I don’t need any cooking books, but I glanced through the ones on discount anyway.  Likewise, with the fiction on clearance, then I headed back to science fiction, found one of my favorite authors, Tad Williams, and discovered that not only is the third book of his newest series done, the fourth is completed as well!  I own neither at this point.

I browsed the rows, up and down, back and forth, saw several authors I’m interested in reading.  Found more intriguing covers, titles that hooked me, series waiting for my start.  I do this at the library too and often come home with more books than I can possible read in two weeks.  It hits me then.  The intense longing for books, and not just books but the yearning to read, and not just reading but the time to read as much as I want.

I walked away with just my wedding card, feeling a little sad and a little silly. 

Forgiveness

Show me the way to forgive you
Allow me to let it go
Allow me to be forgiven
Show me the way to let go

                                                                THOMAS by A Perfect Circle

 

                  

I used to think that forgiveness was easy and that a higher power forgave my sins and took them away, all I had to do was ask for it.  My first problem was that I tended not be able to forgive others completely.  Second, I could never understand was why it was so hard to feel that personal forgiveness was real and to believe that I had it when I really needed it.  I didn’t understand then how inclusive true forgiveness is, and I know now that forgiveness is powerful.  It may not be easy, but it is necessary for my feelings of happiness and satisfaction with my life.  I believe in the transforming power of forgiveness.

Many years ago I made a very poor decision and did something embarrassing that I felt bad about.  No one got hurt, nothing illegal took place, but a small group of people, including my best friend, knew what I had done.  I felt ashamed and humiliated.  I would vow to get over and forgive myself.  I prayed to be forgiven, a lot, but I still felt ashamed.  Somehow forgiveness never came, so I carried those awful feelings around and kept them in my heart and let them haunt me every time I remembered what I done.

One day a few years ago, I was reminiscing with my best friend, and she said how bad she still felt about an argument we’d had long ago, one that had ended with her slapping me across the face.  I was surprised because I had nearly forgotten that.  It never occurred to me that she was hurting all those years.  I told her I had forgiven her way back then and none of it mattered, least of all the slap!

Then I thought of my bad thing, and I told her how I’d been carrying that with me and how I couldn’t get over it.  I’d prayed for forgiveness dozens of times yet never felt that I was forgiven.  My best friend said, she never thought of that thing.  Do you think those other people do?  Do you think they get together and talk about you, all these years later? 

I started crying and said yes, I thought that. 

She said that’s not true.  You’re the only one still talking about it. 

Standing there in her kitchen, wiping my tears, I knew she was right.  The more I thought about it the lighter I felt.  I realized that I was the one who kept the pain alive, I was tormenting myself, and no matter how many times I’d asked to be forgiven, I had never forgiven myself until then.  That day, I found a new way to think about myself and about people.  I’ve been able to forgive myself, and forgive others and let go of painful situations.  I’m learning to stop reliving and rehashing the past, when before that would never have been a possibility for me.  I believe in the transforming power of forgiveness.

 

Roller Skating Memories

I just got home from Ogden where East Story County Girl Scouts were roller skating for Thinking Day.  I hadn't skated for two years.  My legs got tired very fast.  My shins ached.  My feet quickly got those little sore spots, insides of the arches, big toes, from how I push when I skate.  Those are the places where I always used to get blisters.  The roller rink there has a wood floor.  It's a bit tricky to get used to.  The skates are old-school with those super skinny laces that get all knotted up if you're not careful. 

I sat at a table with my friend quite a bit, watching the adults, teens, youngers and little tiny kids.  Zipping by, creeping past, weaving in and out, holding hands, stumbling, crying, stomping along, clutching each other, smiling, singing with the music, sitting down hard, collapsing onto knees, held up, helped up, guided.  Kind of like life.

When I was growing up, we used to go roller skating in Des Moines sometimes.  There was a rink on the west side.  What was the point of going skating?  Social interaction, exercise?  All I really wanted was a boyfriend.  The skating rink offered the possibility of meeting a boy I didn't go to school with.  God, that agonizingly frustrating couples skate.  Lights low, sort of blue with white rotating spots all over the floor, music appropriate for holding hands and skating slow.  I never found a boyfriend at the skating rink. 

In college we would sometimes go roller skating.  I really got blisters from those skate frenzies.  It was fast and feverish and sweaty, and I'm lucky that blisters were the only wounds I sustained.  I did meet a boy after skating once.  My friend's car broke down, and this guy stopped and drove us back to our dorm.  He called me later and asked me out.  His name was Wayne.  We went to a movie, and I've forgotten now what we saw, but I remember that he cried.

If I ever win the lottery I'm going to build a roller rink.  It'll have good food and snacks, a really awesome game room and great music.  I'll make my husband DJ or at least pick all the tracks.  Where else can kids go these days to hang out and have fun.  Meet someone they didn't go to kindergarten with.  Hold hands and skate to a slow song.

Human Rights - It's us and us, not us versus them.

Human rights apply to all humans.  It's not a cafeteria.  We don't get to exclude or withhold rights based on gender or nationality or whether or not we agree with someone's religion.  Human is human.  We don't get to reclassify some people as less than human and therefore undeserving of human rights because of random criteria we pick or establish.  Religious and political beliefs are frequently used to do this and justify taking away others' human rights.  I believe that we are morally and ethically obligated to cultivate an awareness of and to consider our collective humanity at all times in relation to how we live and conduct ourselves daily.  Difficult, yes.  Necessary, absolutely.   

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

Just one example:

Article 16.

• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Clinging to Life

 

My sister’s mother-in-law is dying.  M. has leukemia, is diabetic and also has a flesh-eating infection that is destroying her legs.  On Saturday, my sister, brother-in-law and their two kids drove to eastern Iowa to the hospital where M. is.  

Apparently, my brother-in-law’s father had not been reporting the situation accurately to convey how serious it is.  Fortunately, my b-in-law’s brother called to tell them how bad it is.  

They cannot amputate her legs.  She’s in terrible pain and on a lot of drugs to help alleviate that.  She was alert enough to talk with my niece and nephew on Saturday, but the doctors didn’t expect her to live through the night.

I meditated on Saturday evening and devoted it to loving-kindness for M. and for her family who is there with her.  It was what I could do.  She lived through the night.  I have not heard further news. 

At what point do we decide to withhold important information from our children because we don’t want to worry them and don’t want to burden them.  Where do you draw the line?  Why do we draw a line?  I will likely grow old.  I’ll probably have health issues of some kind or other.  I certainly will die at some point.  It remains to be seen how much my child will be involved in my life then.

I hope to have a grandchild someday.  I’d like to see my daughter age and have a life of her own.  I want to grow old with my husband and enjoy our life together.  Clinging, grasping, plotting, controlling, avoiding, fearing . . . Nothing guarantees that what I hope for and what I want will actually happen.

  

What's Worse Than Death?

 ...gracious and eternal death who permits departure...

The book/discussion group I’m in is currently reading zombie fiction and a collection of philosophical essays.  In our first meeting we talked about and defined some terms and ideas.  What is a zombie?  Are zombies human?  Are zombies evil?

We’re a mixed group, some with little to no pop culture knowledge of zombies and vampires.  Others have quite of lot of TV, movies and literature under our belts.  The driving question is why are we so fascinated with the undead? What does it say about our beliefs and spirituality in this modern world?  We’re focusing on zombies at the moment but plan to discuss vampires later as their own group.

A friend at work simplified it in one fell-swoop.  “It’s because cannibalism is the ultimate taboo.”  I think that is true to a certain extent, but it doesn’t explain all of it.    

Last week, we started our discussion by working on a definition of spirituality, what does it mean to be spiritual?  We also talked about soul and afterlife.  This matters because the philosophical essay we'd just read was about the "Badness of Undeath."  Meaning, why is being dead better than being undead.  Obviously, if you believe in heaven, you want to be there, enjoying your death in a new pleasant form of existence.  Being undead means that you are just back here again as this unthinking, falling apart, rotting body that shambles around trying to eat people.   

There are a lot of theological problems associated with becoming undead.  

We also explored the idea that zombies function in two ways: as metaphor and as plot device to advance a message.  Metaphor = science gone wrong.  Plot device for we can’t trust the government not to kill or damage us with their chemicals, vaccines etc. therefore government = bad.

I think our fascination points to things even bigger.  Fear of death, uncertainty of afterlife, ambiguous messages about soul, refusal to think for ourselves about these things, the idea that it doesn't matter what I've done or been in this life I might still be a brain-eating zombie.  I don’t know for sure, but I know that it leads to me to think about things worse than death, and the poem by Sharon Olds  Things That Are Worse Than Death

If you can't think of anything, ask the next zombie or vampire you meet.

Blind Faith Scares Me

Isn’t it about time that we review and reconsider the Bible’s translations and language.  What we know now definitely suggests that many words and phrases have not been accurately translated from the original Greek.  Take a word like messiah, which is the transliteration of a Hebrew term, Mashiach. The New Testament (Greek) equivalent to the word messiah is christos, and both terms mean "the anointed one."   It also has hints of chosen, promised.  After Jesus’ death, the early Christian movement took the word christos and made it Christ to refer to Jesus.

In that vein, I pass this along.  It is yet another compelling reason for why we MUST be able to think critically about the sources of our beliefs.   Blind adherence to anything is ignorant and offensive.  It does not serve God, and it does not advance the truest messages of religious beliefs.

Is Evangelical Christianity Having a Great Gay Awakening?  by Cathleen Falsani

“In his new book Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society, Jay Bakker, the son of Jim Bakker and the late Tammy Faye Messner, gives clear and compelling answers to my nagging questions.

Simply put, homosexuality is not a sin, says Bakker, 35, pastor of Revolution NYC, a Brooklyn evangelical congregation that meets in a bar.

Bakker, who is straight and divorced, crafts his argument using the same "clobber scriptures" (as he calls them) that are so often wielded to condemn homosexuals.

"The simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin ... a capital offense even," Bakker writes. "But before you say, 'I told you so,' consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law.

"The truth is that the Bible endorses all sorts of attitudes and behaviors that we find unacceptable (and illegal) today and decries others that we recognize as no big deal."

Leviticus prohibits interracial marriage, endorses slavery and forbids women to wear trousers. Deuteronomy calls for brides who are found not to be virgins to be stoned to death, and for adulterers to be summarily executed.

"The church has always been late," Bakker told me in an interview this week. "We were late on slavery. We were late on civil rights. And now we're late on this."

Examining the original Greek words translated as "homosexual" and "homosexuality" in three New Testament passages, Bakker (and others) conclude that the original words have been translated inaccurately in modern English.

What we read as "homosexuals" and "homosexuality" actually refers to male prostitutes and the men who hire them. The passages address prostitution -- sex as a commodity -- and not same-sex, consensual relationships, he says.”

Cathleen Falsani is author of Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace, The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers and The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People.

Oh, My Little Birdie

I have a head cold.  I’m stuffy, but I can breathe through my nose just fine.  My ears are plugged.  I feel tightness in my head.  I have a sore throat, and I’m out of breath and weak.  None of this would particularly contribute to me contemplating my own death, except that I recently experienced perhaps the worst headache I’ve ever had, and it came on just 24 hours after another unbelievably terrible headache.

Now, I get headaches not infrequently, and I have really bad headaches sometimes.  I have not been diagnosed with migraines, but I understand what they are. I’ve had headaches that made me feel sick to my stomach and want to pull my hair out.  The nearly-migraine kind where light hurts and idea of hitting myself with a hammer has fair appeal.  I normally just lie down and sleep it out with an ice bag on my neck.

The night before I had toughed it out in the living room, covered up with a blanket all evening, sipping ginger ale, before my husband made me take a pain reliever/sleeping pill and go to bed at 9:00.  I was crying from the pain and feeling sorry for myself, and when I laid down I had a panic attack and couldn’t breathe.  Little did I know that it was just a warm up for the next day.

This most recent headache was the mother of all that, a black hole of pain sitting in my forehead and behind my right eye.  I left work at 3:00 and was in bed by 3:30 having ingested an ibuprofen and settled the ice gel pack on my neck and shoulder.  Neither helped, but I slept until 6:00 when my daughter woke me.  She needed a ride uptown to buy poster board for school.  I roused up, put on my coat and a pair of clogs, and we set off.  She is unaccustomed to and not supposed to drive my truck (for insurance reasons), otherwise I would have made her do the driving

My hearing was muted in my right ear, and I had to shield my right eye because light was unbearable.  We made it home.  I took an Excedrin and went back to bed at 6:30.  That was when I started contemplating death.

I think I have a pretty high pain tolerance.  I’ve been through labor and also three increasing painful attacks leading up to trip to the ER on New Year’s Day in Mankato revealing that I had a kidney stone.  On the pain scale I rate labor and kidney stone nearly equal.  The headache comes in third, so lying in bed, upset stomach, blinding pain behind my eye, it’s really no wonder that I started thinking dark thoughts.  Maybe I have an aneurysm.  Maybe it’s a brain tumor.  I was applying pressure to my forehead and covering my eye with my left hand and clutching the comforter with my right, crying, sobbing in pain, trying to breathe and finding it really difficult. 

If you can catch the aneurysm early enough, it can sometimes be fixed.  A brain tumor, though, that’s all kinds of unknown.  What kinds of scans do they do?  I was seeing myself with no hair, which doesn’t really bother me.  But what about the radiation and/or chemotherapy.  How bad does that feel?  How much does it all cost?  I don’t want to leave my family in debt.  I don’t want to ruin their lives with my pain and illness and expensive treatments. 

I feel like my husband would learn to be OK if I died.  I think my daughter would have a really bad time of it.  She’s just about to turn 16.  Emotionally, people can recover, but the money and the debt afterward . . . I don’t want that kind of struggle for them.  Even the hardship of coping with someone who is ill, caring for them and still trying to live and work.  I know people do it all the time, but that doesn’t make it easy.

I have thought many times, is this it?  Will today be the day?  For some reason usually when I’m driving, I glance at my right shoulder and ask that question.  It helps me settle my mind. 

“There are many levels of meditation on death. A simple one is to imagine that a little bird is on your shoulder. When you wake up in the morning, you ask the little bird, "Will this be my last day, little bird?" There's a way to do it that is very superficial, but when you think about it, a wisdom arises within you. You then ask the question, "Am I living the life I want to live?" That is the second question that you should ask. This is very superficial, but it is a deeper way to meditate, by asking yourself again, "Am I ready to die?" It's not to make yourself afraid, it's not to make yourself paralyzed or overwhelmed with fear, but by thinking of death - there are several depths and several techniques, depending upon the nature of the problems - it helps people to get stronger, wiser, and more and more realistic toward life, and helps people to enjoy more of the beauty of life.”

I was able to breathe finally and to find tiny spaces where I could relax a little.  Eventually the pain began to subside, and by the time my husband checked on me again around 9:00, the headache was mostly gone.  Today, it’s not a tumor or an aneurysm. 

I feel the little bird though it is almost weightless.  It sees me with a dark, round eye.  I never imagine it with feathers of any specific color.  The little beak opens and closes, but it’s completely silent.