Being in America

Relief

2007-09-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why, but it’s hard for me to ask for help. It used to drive my mom crazy to come to my house for a meal, and I would fetch and carry and my family would sit around like guests. After I quit working my Boyfriend did even less in the house area (which didn’t necessarily mean I did more), and I can’t say I blame him. If I had to go out and spend the better part of my life doing what other people told me to so we could pay the bills, I’m afraid the one at home could have all the domestic chores by default. Still, he loves movies, and he likes my company watching them, and he goes to work before God gets up, which means he’s early to bed, and if we are going to watch movies, we have to start them before the rest of the world even gets off the day shift, which means every evening I am rushing through chores so we can see a movie, to the point watching a movie sure as heck feels like work to me, to the point I often nod off before it’s over, waking up to finish the chores and get a little light reading in before bed.

Yesterday I wanted Indian…palak paneer and something with the cauliflower I had in the fridge before it turned black. And we had Shame (Bergman!=Narcolepsy! if I’m the least bit tired) and Blue (Reading movie!=etc.!). By the time I started cooking, walked the dogs, called the old ladies, I could see it would be late, late, late for us to movie watch. Rushed!=Martyrdom! and why did I ever want a boyfriend anyway? and why don’t I just fall down on the (dirty) floor and whine?

Week-ends my Boyfriend mostly sits around in a housecoat, if he’s not taking a nap. Once again, I don’t blame him. Still, I wanted palak paneer and to watch the movies without feeling like I’m a hostage. I geared up to ask for help and for it to be alright if I didn’t get it. I asked him to walk the dogs. He did. He had to get dressed, but he did.

After that, for some reason, two hours of cooking Indian was a delight…and I did it for—TA! DA!—me. And it was very, very good. As were Shame and Blue, for both of which I stayed awake.

Just hope I’ll also be awake next time life gets too busy to be fun, and that I’ll know what to ask for.

Reality 101

2007-09-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

I had one of those put-upon dreams last night, where people who were supposed to like me didn’t. I woke up in the middle of the night with grievances, and it took some effort to go back to sleep.

This morning I woke up with all the nasty fog in my frontal lobes…the poor-poor-pitiful-me chemicals.

When I joined Kent downstairs, I decided not to check my email immediately; instead, I would drink my coffee and do a little spiritual fancy dancing.

He asked if I had checked my email before going to bed last night. Though it had taken some effort, I had not. “Good for you,” said the man who has bumped my free cell standing from under game 600 to game 2,205.

He’s making fun of my email addiction AGAIN, cried out Evil-Thought Camellia from the fog. “You use my computer more than I do,” I said. You could have called my voice tone peevish. So much for fancy dancing.

“Why are you being so sensitive?” he asked. “Why are you being so mean?”

Me? He’s always the one who has something to say about me and email and addiction. Isn’t he being the mean one?

“I just wanted to know if Susie had answered you.” He and I had been discussing Susie and some unpleasantness she was experiencing. We had sent her some spunky, center-yourself, chuck-up-your-chin advice. "When I tease you about your email, I'm only joking."

Some joke.

But wait. I do think I have an email addiction. I’m beat up on myself about it. So for my spunky, center-yourself, chuck-up-your-chin advice: You can only hear him being the mean voice if you’ve already thought it yourself.

communication V

2007-09-05T04:26:00.000-07:00

People want you to be happy.
Don’t keep serving them your pain.

If you could untie your wings
and free your soul of jealousy,
you and everyone around you
Would fly like doves

Jalal-el-Din Rumi

communication IV

2007-09-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

People want you to be happy.
Don't keep serving them your pain.

Jalal-el-Din Rumi

Communication III

2007-09-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

A friend was dying with uterine cancer. A couple of days before her death, I was sitting by her side. As I have done with other dying friends, I tried to match my breath to hers. She seemed to be floating in and out of sleep. Thoughts drifted in and out of my consciousness, and I began reviewing the time we spent together. She was a private person, not a hippy-dippy spiritualist like me. I often felt like we spoke a different language. When she was well, sometimes it seemed it was more important to her to see me than it was for me to see her. “I wonder if we were really friends,” drifted though my head. She flailed to a sitting position, her eyes wild, fierce and accusing. “We are,” I said aloud, “we really, really are friends.” The fire eased out of her eyes, and she sank back into her restless sleep.

And we really, really were. I know by how much I miss her.

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

Communication II

2007-09-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

I was asked to stay with a friend in the hospital. She was dying of lung cancer and hooked to all kinds of lines and needles. Late in the day she drifted off into a fretful, moaning sleep. I cleared my mind, watched her face, and tried to match my breathing to hers. To sooth myself, I silently repeated words from A Course in Miracles, “There is no pain, the son of God is free. There is no pain, the son of God is free.”

Suddenly my friend spoke out, “If she knew how much I hurt, she’d quit saying that.”

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

Communication

2007-09-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

My neighbor’s 93-year-old grandmother has had a stroke, and is doing her time in rehab. While her automatic speech—yes, no, fine—is clear, anything she tries to tell you comes out as meaningless garble. My neighbor says for the last ten times when her grandmother becomes agitated as she tries to speak, my neighbor prays, “Holy Spirit, please help me understand what she wants.” Then she waits in silence until some idea pops into her head. “Do you want the shades closed?” my neighbor asks. “Yes!” her grandmother will say. “Do you want ice-cream?” “Yes!”

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

Alien-Nation

2007-08-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

I often find an ant running up and down my computer, or feel one tickling across my arm. Of course it’s not the same ant, but all those lone ants have one name: Paladan. Remember the song from Have Gun, Will Travel-- "...a knight without armor in a savage land”? Admiring its courage, I’ll let it travel on, or I'll use as gentle a breath as possible to help it relocate. I’ve yet to hear one yelling "Auntie Em…Auntie Em.”

If there’s a little bunch of ants gaggling around my sink, I offer them a deal: leave before I wipe down the counters and live.

Today I crushed an ant hill with my lawn mower. When faced with a massive invasion of ants who want to colonize my yard or house, I swoop in like the Witch of the West. I wonder what Buddha would do, but I react like a Cylon-- you know, Cylons--the Battlestar Gallactica robot race bent on eliminating the hapless but resourceful humans.

Anybody got another way?

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

when all there is and the best there is--is not enough

2007-08-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Tell me why the pecans in PLANTERS Deluxe MIXED NUTS are better than the pecans in any of the PLANTERS PECAN LOVERS MIXes? And even though my boyfriend leaves me (it’s REAL Deluxe LOVE) every single pecan in the PLANTERS Deluxe MIXED NUTS, I just can’t get enough pecans among all those other nuts and will buy the PLANTERS PECAN LOVERS MIX, even though the PLANTERS PECAN LOVERS MIXes are way more expensive, and even though I eat every one of those pecans wishing they were the PLANTERS Deluxe MIXED NUTS pecans.

And is the difference all in my head, anyway?

Reframing

2007-08-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Have you heard AD36, a common virus that causes colds in humans, also causes weight gain in animals? One-third of obese folks test positive for this virus, as compared with only one in ten of leaner people, and we know those ones in tens virus-carrying skinnies are probably anorexic.

I’m recovering from a twenty-year-old cold, okay? Pass the doughnuts.

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

ON REVIEWING MY VACATION

2007-08-21T05:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Keetha and Nicole and the Rolling Stones:

You cant always get what you want
You cant always get what you want
You cant always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you might find
You get what you need

Looks Like Heaven to Me

2007-08-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

Cabin! Sunsets! Sunrises! Fishing! Pool! Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant! Fun, remember?

Before we left town I hit the bread store for three grocery sacks of reject bread, and the local bakery for sour dough. I returned home three (3!!!) times before Sandra, Tristan and I made it to the city limits. How could I forget the little phone, the antibiotics and the swimsuit…separately? We got turned around in the last-city-to-have-a-bathroom-before-the-resort-Tristan-had-to-potty-how-did-we-end-up-going-North-when-we-were-headed-South, and were so late we had to stop to eat fried fish that had been sitting under warming lights. On the road again, a little fawn ohmygod ran right in front of my big car, whamp, the car behind me swerved wildly to miss rear-ending us, we made it, at the campground there was no pool (wishful remembering), the swimming area was closed in hot, hot August because all the lifeguards had returned to school, there was a brown spider in the tiny bathroom, at the Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant! the gumbo was gray and lunch’s fried-fish-under-the-warming-lights had been better than hot-out-of-the-kitchen-fish here, when Tristan’s grand-daddy came for the night, the beds were ill arranged for sleeping three and one, Tristan’s grand-daddy forgot the fishing poles, the air-conditioners in the cabin almost didn’t work, nobody could really sleep, something bit me in the bed at night and left an angry red welt. This is a for-fun vacation? Thanks, Universe.

In lieu of swimming we hit three discount stores before we found the big plastic ball and bat, and in the process we managed to land a haul of bubbles and a miniature 18-wheeler and a package of five little super balls. We rolled the beautiful beach towels to block the space between the couch and the floor so we wouldn’t have to constantly bat the little super balls out with the broom handle. Wish you were there?

But we did have the pier and more old bread than the geese could eat. The little fish loved bread, too, so you could see them with their eerie blue fins silently gliding through the water, and did you know the sign for fish is your hand in front of you, little finger on bottom, thumb on top, fingers together and waving as you move your hand from right to left? Try it. Wave those fingers a bit faster. You’ll know immediately you’re signing fish, it’s intuitive. Have I told you Tristan is deaf?

The second day we got the big cabin with extra beds and good air-conditioning. We saw sunsets and sunrises, had pimento cheese on sour dough for breakfast, drank coffee, fed geese and fish, blew bubbles, pitched, hit, and caught balls, read books, practiced sign language, early to bed and early to rise. A grandma and a great-aunt seemed to be just about enough grown-ups for an active four-almost-five-year-old who can’t hear, and when he doesn’t like what you’re signing, has selective seeing.

After our last meal, Tristan tried to take the money we’d left on the table for the waitress. Though he had seen us pay for meals before, perhaps this was the first time we had left money so alluringly in the open. Sandra helped me sign, “That’s to pay for our food.” We could see him understanding that the money made the food possible. I’m the great-aunt, and I gave him a dollar just because, and when he wanted the quarter on the table, I gave him a quarter, too. He grinned and immediately began waving his money, trying to attract the interest of the waitress. “Ask him what he wants,” I told Sandra. She did. He was sparkling. "Ice cream!” he signed, “Candy!”

In the car he spread out both his arms, made little fists with his hands, the little finger and thumb extended. He waggled one hand toward Sandra and then toward himself, and toward me and himself with the other. The sign for together, the three of us.

That Universe. It’s intuitive.

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

Clarity

2007-08-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

My sister Sandra, coming to visit me, was flying with her grandson Tristan for the first time. They would be riding in other people's cars after they arrived. What are the car seat laws, she asked me. Tristan is only four, and by state law would require a child’s seat once he was here. With his stuff and her stuff and nobody to ferry them to the airport, Sandra could not see herself lugging his seat, too. I asked my friend with a five-year-old if she had a car seat we could borrow. She had just gotten rid of hers, so I put the word out among the with-small-child group, only I had discovered what we needed was a booster seat, not a car seat, and nobody I knew had one.

On the ground and headed to my house, Sandra stopped at Wally World and picked up a booster seat for under twenty dollars. With the booster seat Tristan rides high enough to see out the window, and he is also legal.

Today my friend emailed me: When is your sister coming in? I have a booster seat…could her grandson use that instead of a car seat?

If you're feeling a lack in your life, remember you have to know what you want before you get what you think you're asking for or you have to know what you're asking for to get what you want or something like that.

D. Warner, August 13, 2007

Good Vibrations

2007-08-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

Researchers have discovered your facial expression releases emotionally charged chemicals in your brain. A smile releases happy chemicals, a frown releases negative ones. So if you’re happy because you're going on a beachy trip with your sister and her grandson, you’re smiling, right? And when you’re happy, then walking the dog, calling your grumpy daffy old aunt, cleaning the toilet, washing the dishes, just about anything is A-Okay. And you discover August, heat wave and all, really is fun. Go ahead. Try it. Put on a happy face.

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

RECEPTIVITY

2007-08-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

Always in August it seems as if Fun has surely drained from the weave of the world. Those towels striped the color of the tropics, six lush feet of Egyptian cotton and half-price, a mere pittance for such sweet promise, reminded me of that. The old Happy Talk song from South Pacific played in my head—you know—‘you got to have a dream, you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?’ Somehow here it was, another hot, grim August, another year without a beach, how did this happen again, last year I said next year, and now, here under the bright glare of this week’s shopping at Wal-Mart, this year was already spinning out of sight

I’ve read the books, I know the Secret, act as if your dream has come true and it will, so I piled the lengths of Aztec gold and orange with that thin strip of sea blue into the bottom of my basket. At this stage of my life I could afford a frivolous notion, so why at the check-out stand did I tell the clerk I had changed my mind? What I could not afford was to open a drawer some future August and discover the forgotten towel packed in the bottom, dusty and never used.

Though I put it back, acceded to the nonclutter wisdom of my new housekeeping creed, the colors of the towel hovered in my dreams, soft and bright and full of hope.

Then my sister called. She was coming in the middle of the month, bringing her lone grandchild with her. I have told you: August. Hot. I did not tell you that judges are ordering school children to stay inside, forbidding outdoor sports in this heatstroke weather. What’s a four-year-old, alone with the oldies to do? How are the oldies going to keep him occupied without losing their sanity? What a child needs in the throes of such a month is water.

On a notion, a beach towel wish, I called our favorite little family resort, the one we go to each Easter before the pool is open, the one that by January is booked solid into next winter, the one that has had no openings the previous two times I called this year.

The week my sister and my nephew were coming, our favorite cabin was open. The cabin has air-condition and plenty of beds and a nice little kitchen for breakfast and sandwiches and guacamole. The cabin is on a lake, with a pier and turtles and ducks and fish. The resort has a restaurant with yummy, melting-in-the-mouth vacation food, cooked and served by other people. It is hot, hot summer August and the pool is open.

Cabin! Sunsets! Sunrises! Fishing! Pool! Restaurant! Restaurant! Restaurant!

The connection between beach towels and a trip to a small family campground and receptivity might be a bit subtle, but for me that’s how this Universe/God/Law of Attraction/miracle stuff happens, even when I get the glooms and forget what’s possible. It’s all ideas. We’re ideas. And we get to choose the ideas we want to color our lives. Beach towels dreams, real-time pool trips…Universal truth working out, or hum-drum coincidence? And small stuff at that…what about world peace and joy and love? But the next time I feel like a weary traveler in a glum world, I hope I remember to choose the good dream.

Yesterday in Wal-Mart I bought two six-foot-long gleaming Egyptian cotton beach towels. “You’re going to a beach?” the clerk wistfully asked.

"Yeah," I said, though the beach part wasn’t exactly true. I grinned big time. "I'm gonna have some fun."

© Donna Warner, August, 2007

Forbidden Fruit

2007-07-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

We have a mail slot in our door, and we accidentally trained our dogs to kill the mail. I say accidentally because we caught them snatching the mail, and we thought it was so funny that we would feed them junk mail through the slot. It’s what old, not-too-bright people do for entertainment. Then the little darlings managed to take a chunk out of a refund check one too many times and we got a new mail carrier with a dog phobia. Up went the new outside mail box.

We changed our wicked way, but the dogs didn’t. When the mail comes and is safely deposited in the outside box, they go wild, running and barking and gouging claw marks in the front door. They do this, occasionally falling in a snarl on one another, until I retrieve the mail. The big dog is satisfied when I’ve done my job, but the little one, the Yorkzilla, is still determined to shred anything incoming. He performs wild leaps and twists that would make any Olympic ice skater proud. Occasionally he’s managed to snag a mail-order book or a Netflix cd, and anything accidentally hitting the floor is hamster bedding.

But my husband has taught me a new trick. Select a piece of junk mail. Offer it to him. In the middle of a feeding frenzy, Little Bo gets a befuddled look on his face, and chagrined, turns away from the offering.

When you're playing at being the bad dog, it’s only really good if they don't want you to have it.

© Donna Warner, July, 2007

Redemption

2007-05-24T07:03:00.000-07:00

A friend writes me of her aunt ‘who longs for God and has gone the scary fundamentalist route that still hasn’t filled her up (but she’s scared the beejeezuz out of the rest of us). My mom keeps telling her that she has everything she already needs but she doesn’t get it. It makes me sad for her. She tries so hard and gets no happier. Not saying that I completely get it. Sometimes I still think shoes are the answer but it is a temporary insanity.’

Remember the Three Stooges routine where Larry starts yelling he can’t see, and Mo says what’s wrong, and Larry says I’ve got my eyes closed?

And there’s a Rumi poem about the guy knocking at a closed door, wanting what Methodists from Cleveland would call God to let him in, and then he finds out he’s been knocking from the inside?

So why does the search for God always end in disillusionment? If you think you’re lost, Baby, you best open your eyes and quit banging on the door, because God has always loved you, and could never, would never, never, ever, not in a zillion years, not in eternity, misplace you.

It Really Is That Simple

2007-05-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

“The alarm woke me this morning,” my husband said, “and I was glad.” Usually he is awake before it goes off, and if he is sleeping, it means he’s really tired. “I was dreaming. I don’t remember the dream, but I know I was confronted with an unsolvable conundrum I didn’t want to solve. Then the alarm went off. ‘Eureka!,’ I said, ‘That’s the answer. Wake up.’ So I did.”

Gotcha

2007-02-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

I’m fat. Like the rest of America, I think Fat is a pejorative. A character flaw. Nay—a sin!

And I want to be skinny. But more than I want to be skinny, at times I want chocolate. Or those macadamia nut cookies that cost $1.25 EACH, but then they are SO huge.

Recently my husband uncharacteristically commented on my pulchritude, but not way before I acknowledged to myself the results of cookie coddling was getting out of hand. “I’m trying,” I say. “No more sugar.”

And I avoided the peanut butter cups for over a week, until I felt I had stepped up to lead the brigade on the stress front, and there they were in their covered glass bowl, small and snackable and sweet. That was three days ago.

“We still have any of those little candies?” said my husband who smokes and eats honey buns for breakfast.

Of course not.

“Who ate them?” His smile was sly.

How I hated him. And he knew it.

“I wasn’t being mean,” he said.

Was to.

I thought I was over this. I sometimes encourage myself to believe if I had all those years to live over again, due to my sustained spiritual practice I wouldn’t be so sensitive, tearful, downright rageful. If I had it to do over again, I’d definitely do it better.

Wrong.

“You’re just feeling guilty, or this wouldn’t get you so upset,” said the smoke sucking, honey bun guzzling guru.

And he’s not guilty of a crime that no one other than some awful, catty woman who’s not your friend would commit?

But I knew if I was angry, I was wrong. So I prayed that prayer where I recognized God didn’t create my anger, and it was a mistake, and Love was my only Reality, and I was willing to let the anger go, only I didn’t know how, but I was willing to let it go, and be shown the truth.

And it went. It did. I realized he had done nothing to me, and I really did know him, he wasn’t trying to be mean, and I was even able to let go of putting it off to he was just a man which meant stupid, and I did get to the Love part, and the evening wasn’t ruined, and the willingness to let go and the willingness to receive a different answer worked again.

But why again? Why was I still going insane over something like five peanut butter cups (the little snack ones)?

Then it occurred to me: I had felt guilty.

And there was so much of it I was still lugging around.

Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.
Guilt.

What would happen if I let go of guilt? If the next time I was ready to go off on the cretins, instead of getting to the tears, the rage, the finger-pointing justifications and then praying to let them go, why not go for the jugular? Why not just let go of guilt…not theirs, mine.

Would I possibly be done then?

The God-Shaped Hole

2007-02-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about do-nuts and how, if indulged, there seems to be no end to wanting do-nuts. I ended with “So is there really something else we are longing for? Some wholeness, healing, limitless holiness that offers not more desire, but peace?”

Last night I realized I got the do-nut message wrong. Wholeness, limitless holiness, peace is. Got it? That’s what we are. Now.

If we are longing, even for God, then we’ve forgotten who we are, what we are. And with that longing, even for God, we are just opening up a hole we are unsuccessfully going to try fill: with do-nuts, with trinkets, with people, with new skills, with new experiences, with God.

Won’t happen.

Got it? Just relax. What you really want is already here. Peace.

Letting Go

2007-02-02T07:08:00.000-08:00

“How’s Alton?” I ask my friend.

“He’s okay,” she says. Her voice dips a little, deferring to ambiguity, acknowledging ‘okay’ can accommodate a lot of pain. “He calls his dad a lot to ask him to come home. Now that Justin has had papers drawn up, Alton may understand his dad’s not coming home, maybe he can get a little closure.”

What’s closure to a ten-year-old? The kid is great, full of vim, dedicated to whatever interests him, nice to old ladies, generous…an all around fine person. I know the statistics. I know children of divorce often carry wounds long into their adulthood. I do not want this for any kid, not for this kid.

“Tell him you know he loves his dad. Tell him even when he’s grown, he may still wish you and his dad were still together. But tell him sometimes when you love someone, you have to let that person do what he thinks is right, even if you don’t understand how it could possibly be right.” I want to help Alton, give him someway to honor his own feelings and still love his dad. I want something to heal the wound before it gets too deep.

Later I don’t know if I helped Alton or his mother, but I do realize I’d been teaching myself crazy pain doesn't come from what is gone, but from grasping for what used to be.

Two Minute Musing

2007-02-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

“He’s filed papers,” my neighbor said of her absent husband. She is wan, and her eyes are dark and distant and full of sorrow.

They have been married for 22 years. She could not tolerate me if I told her not to be sad. Instead I offer her the prayer I have to repeat often in my journey, using for her benefit God, since I know that is what she would use, as I often to do to name the Source of All Being.

Tell God you are sad, and that you know it is not His Will for you to be sad. Tell Him you are willing to let the sadness go, but you do not know how. Tell Him to take the sadness for you, and to show you what His happiness really is. Tell Him you are willing to accept what He wants for you.

This is how I have to do it…from having a fellow shopper slam my grocery cart, to some imagined offence by my husband, to the really scary life events I can’t control:

I do not deny how I feel…my sadness, anger or terror.
I acknowledge my feelings were not created by Source/God/Being/What I Am.
I acknowledge my feelings are a mistake.
I acknowledge my willingness to let them go, even if I don’t feel willing at the moment.
I acknowledge I cannot do this on my own.
I acknowledge my willingness to accept instead what God intends for me.

I don’t know how, but for me, it works every time. We are not talking about circumstances here; if I try to direct God’s Will, I am putting a limit on what I will allow Him to do for me. We are talking about feelings, as my husband likes to say sardonically. We are talking about peace/love/joy/happiness. And when I say my prayer (though sometimes I have to say it more than once…sometimes I say it feverishly, repeating it like an incantation…peace/love/joy/happiness always happens. I don’t know how it works. Maybe because that is the Source of my creation, because that’s all that I really am. The rest is just a foolish nightmare, from which I can easily awaken.

The Hungry Ghost Do-nut Jones

2007-02-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

Last year a new do-nut shop opened in the strip mall a block from my house. Sometimes in the early morning as I walk my dogs the air is filled with the smell of cooking do-nuts, a heady mixture of yeast and sugar and sizzling oil that hits me like a rush. At that moment I want do-nuts, one, then another and another, all the do-nutty goodness promised by each intoxicating breath.

Only do-nuts make me queasy. One hot do-nut would melt in my mouth, so light it is almost nothing but an explosion of sweetness, and then I would want another, and even though I would not be nearly done tasting, tasting, tasting, I would feel my stomach roiling. Not to mention what limitless do-nuts would do to my already cautionary blood pressure, cholesterol, and body mass index. And the almost immediate carb coma.

I know this, and though I never buy them, still I want do-nuts. I am not hungry, and still I want do-nuts. I am seduced by the idea of do-nuts.

As you can guess, do-nuts are a…you know…metaphor.

For me the metaphor is the longing for an illusive temptation, something I don’t need, and is, indeed, bad for me, and even makes me ill, and that can never, ever give me enough to be enough. Like the next game of free-cell. Or another new book I don’t have time to read. The right recipe that will knock your socks off. The grievance I would control, expose, punish, forgive, and not forget because, darn it, you really hurt my feelings, and I never, ever want that to happen again.

Go ahead, name your own.

So is there really something else we are longing for? Some wholeness, healing, limitless holiness that offers not more desire, but peace?

That Which Is Lost

2005-04-26T10:46:00.001-07:00

Few people act as if they believe me when I tell them this: I have rarely been happy in my life. I know other people who felt they have problems with depression, but even they did not seem to understand when I would say, “I’ve never been happy.” One friend took a rebirthing class, and reported she experienced deep happiness, the kind she had only felt in childhood. I must have been an anxious baby, anxious in the womb. Happiness was a word I had no context for. Even in the most pleasant, the most fortunate of circumstances, I skittered on the surface of enjoyment, with my footing unsure on the edge of a chasm. Another friend in the upheavals of peri-menopause chemical surges said, “Every time I go out the door, I feel like I have stage fright. I don’t see how people live with this.” My friend was often angry or wary. I had not noticed happiness to be her dominant trait, but even she had known life without that amorphous cloud in the sacral chakra. I was astounded. Perhaps happiness was not an emotion, like the emperor’s new clothes, everyone else was faking.

The search for happiness has been the impetus for my entire squandered life. First I wanted to fit in the bosom of my family, then be a best friend, then have a boyfriend, interspersed and followed by self-help and how-tos, then spirituality, seeking the God Who Would Save Me from Myself. Perhaps I equated love and competence with happiness, but somehow, no matter how I was petted or praised, both seemed illusively out of my grasp, perhaps because I was constantly dancing for approval from someone else, while myopically focused on my frantic steps.

After years of pleading, bargaining, practicing, failing, maintaining, I began to have breakthroughs. On occasions, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, I was not unhappy. I was actually timorously optimistic. Sometimes, usually with someone who was in a state more angsted than mine, I was confident and calm. But not happy. I simply had no reference for happy.

Then one day while I was taking care of my paralyzed father, a stranger in a check-out line began to berate me, telling me how stupid I was. In my frazzled and frumpy existence, I had no trouble believing him, but I had been working on the concept of peace, the peace that passeth understanding, and I just wanted to pay for my goods and take my fatigue home. I had to call on God, and not very nicely, to handle the situation. Then a strange thing happened. My tormentor gleamed like honey. The store was suffused in an amber glow, a heavenly golden light. And from somewhere, not from me, but like a sea that had birth me, Laughter…. I have no words for it. I, the angry young man, his harried mother, the weary check-out clerk, the shoppers, we were all loved and supported by Laughter, and we were of It and It was of us. Nothing else changed, except I was at peace, and I was happy. I was of Happiness, Who had just shared a marvelous joke with me.

Though there were good moments after, Happiness did not reappear until two years later when I was trapped in the car with a woman with whom I had formed a contentious bond, a woman with whom I spoke more sharply than any other person in my life, a woman whom I was constantly telling she was Wrong. If I had not had hardening of the arteries, I would have left most encounters with her with a migraine. Still we were called together, and on this day, my spiritual lesson was “God’s will for you is perfect happiness.” Like magnets , we had been drawn into a difference of opinion that finally resulted in war. “You,” I hissed to the God of Lies who promised me happiness, “You need to fix this, because I cannot,” because she and I were broken, and even if we separated, we would be infected and could not expel the deadly toxin.

Then she spoke softly, discussing the meal we had just shared. And when I heard the music of her voice, I also noticed the amber glow enveloping us. I felt the leap of Laughter. I knew, once again, I was home, and I was glad. My friend, the Saint, and I could not go back and repair the damage done, for in that instant there was no damage. There was only Now.

The Laughter and Heaven’s glow ebbed, but I carried its memory everywhere, for I now knew happiness was real, and I expected to meet it again. Several months later I was sitting on my couch, watching a silly movie with my husband, when I noticed a weird feeling. Something was different. I checked out my body, part by part, until I realized the cloud of anxiety in my belly wasn’t present. Then I recognized the amber glow. Nothing was happening, and I was happy.

It lasted for a day. The following afternoon I felt something was slightly amiss. I realized I was missing the anxiety I had lived with for fifty-four years, as if a difficult family member had suddenly disappeared even though nobody had been fighting. By night, my sacral chakra was cloudy again. This was not what I wanted, even if somehow I had chosen it, chosen it in the womb, or some other life time ago, by some habitual action.

But I have learned, happiness is not the result of anything I do, or anything anyone else can do for me. It is the Eternal Source of my being. God is Love. God is Happiness. And though I have chosen to think I have been the source of my own happiness, though I’ve always failed miserably in achieving it, I can choose again, every day. I can choose to let Someone choose for me. And In Love, in Laughter, I know I am at Home, where Peace passeth all understanding. One day I will know it, forever.

Little Awakenings

2005-04-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

4-19-2005

In the German movie, Mostly Martha, Martha, the second-best chef in Hamburg, obsesses on her work to keep the emotional world at bay. All of that changes when her sister dies, and Martha must provide her orphaned niece with the love the child requires in order to heal. But healing love is unlimited, and Martha is unwillingly included in its cure. In the final scene, Martha’s therapist has cooked a dessert for Martha, following her instructions, but his effort falls short of perfection. “Did you do this, add this, stir just so?” Martha asks, trying to pinpoint the error. Finally she addresses the sugar. He had not use the kind she suggested. “You can taste the sugar I used?” he says. “Of course not,” she says. “I can taste the sugar you didn’t use.” And as it is with sugar, so it is with love. If my life is not quite sweet, perhaps I am tasting the love I haven’t used.

4-14-05

Pallets

Miss Fran wanted pallets for her garage and basement. Being twenty years younger and having truck access made me the get-it-girl. I quickly became pallet aware: Sears, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, the in-business plant nursery and the nursery for sale. Sears had pallets, sometimes, on Tuesday afternoons only, and we would have to come and get them before the mysterious pallet man swooped them up. Wal-Mart, the grocery store, and open plant nursery used theirs (those things cost twenty dollars apiece, the grocery man said). The For Sale telephone number on the closed nursery was wrong. I remembered years ago when all the pallets were free, behind every building to be snatched by teen-agers for bonfires; but no more. Finally the deli had five wooden pallets and two plastic ones, and the skinny young manager helped me load them because his momma would be mad at him if he didn’t. Other than being slightly taken back I was old enough to be somebody’s momma’s concern, I had netted the prize.

But I remained pallet aware. The neighbor who owned the auto parts store said she got them in on occasion, and was always happy to give them away. The For Sale sign and the pallets disappeared from the closed plant nursery. Today I went to the lumber yard. Back in the corner were haphazard stacks of pallets, plus some littering the edge of one of the tin buildings.

“Do you sell those pallets?” I asked the check-out clerk.

“No,” he said. “If you want some, ask Travis. He’s not here right now.”

Fran doesn’t need more pallets, but I’ve seen my lesson for today. If you want something, keep looking. Somewhere it’s waiting for you, in abundance.

4-16-05
Strawberries

For a while I’ve been eyeing the strawberries in the grocery. They are big and red and look very eatable. Next to them is a flat cake called Bavarian sponge cake. The package of strawberries is huge, and I have resisted. Until yesterday, in honor of delicious spring weather, when I went whole hog…strawberries, Bavarian sponge cake and whipped cream. After I got home, I waited until late afternoon. Then I sliced the berries, sprinkled them with a tiny bit of sugar (even though the berries were so large, and not real juicy, they were sweet), layered them on the cake, and topped it off with whipped cream. I could barely wait until I was seated to munch my first bite. And the cake was dry, tasteless and crumbly. Which brings us to today’s lesson…if you choose a poor foundation, no matter how much lush sweetness you layer on top, you’re going to be disappointed in the end.

4-16-07
Awareness

After my dad was paralyzed and we came home from the hospital, we badly needed a ramp. I cannot now remember how long it took us to get one. The men from his church group were going to build it, then the carpenter down the street. I read everything I could get my hands on concerning ramps. All I remember now is that the incline should be one inch of rise for each twelve inches of height, which means, I think, if your front door is two feet off the ground, you must have 24 feet of ramp. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of ramp. We finally hired the lumber yard to build it, and it was beautiful and liberating. My father’s been dead for two years now, the house sold, the wonderful ramp dismantled, but to this day I admire the fine slope of a well-built ramp.

When we cleared out my parents’ home of fifty years, I scrounged packing boxes for months. It’s still hard pass a good box wasted in the trash.

Recently it’s been pallets that I’ve been hunting for a friend. Though she’ll never require another pallet in this lifetime, I now note the location of every pallet I pass.

Busted up concrete. Yep. My neighbor landscaped her walks and flower beds with slabs of concrete, and I decided to do the same. While I don’t have the tenacity of my neighbor, I do have piles of concrete I’ve begged, and I think the guy who helped me in my yard a while, stole. Don’t ask. He’s not working for the city any more.

The church two blocks over is tearing down their original sanctuary, and I walk past it every day. A couple of days ago, I saw an amazing sight, and when I passed my neighbor’s house, she was working in the yard, in her new herb bed bounded by small, symmetrical hunks of concrete.

“Mary Jane,” I said, “you won’t believe the prize rubble over at the church.”

She fell out laughing. “Keith was so happy when I quit forcing him to pick up broken concrete,” she said. “I don’t know if I can break his heart, but I’ve got to go and look.”

Somebody else’s ramp, boxes in the trash, pallets, and rubble. Dogwoods, geese, kittens. Harsh words, misdeeds, a helping hand, a kind remark. Be warned. If you focus on it, you’re going to see it for a long, long, time.