Note to Self...

Artwork shamelessly acquired from Pixels by Emma - Linkage below

Pepperidge Farm remembers...Go someplace and be grateful for it.

Relevant Linkage

Pixels by Emma - Website

Pixels by Emma - Instagram

Pixels by Emma - Etsy

The dEǝЯDeRe-Construction of Me, Part 1

The deconstruction of your faith is HARD. The reconstruction of your faith is HARD.

Both are work and both require thoughtful, considered, as well as emotional contemplation. Otherwise you go off half-cocked and lose yourself in the impulsivity of the moment. Leaving a place, an ideology, a belief you have ardently held because you are hurting or have been hurt or see hurt happening is painful and traumatic. Trauma requires a retreat to a safe place so that healing can take place.

Trauma requires a retreat to a safe place so that healing can take place.

Sometimes that takes a very long time.

It may take forever. It may take a couple days and a martini. Depends on the person.

Regardless, it is A Very Hard Thing.

St John of the Cross didn't call it a Long Dark Night of the Soul for nothing.

It is painful. There are stages of grief one goes through. And however many there are (5/4/12/952) they tend to fall into the same patterns:

• Denial. Dissociation. "I only want life to be as it was"
• Acceptance of the facts, but refusal / denial of the need to (re-)plan. 
• Bewilderment. 
• Anger. 
• Scapegoating. 
• Bargaining. 
• Despair/Depression
• Bewilderment (again)
• Acceptance. 
• Reconstruction -- A missing stage 

One of the biggest issues to improve on, in the 5 stage model, may be around being constructive. The 5th stage is "Acceptance", but a lot of people get stuck in a kind of Acceptance that is little different from Despair – so that accepting the fact has not led to reconstructing a worthwhile life..."Acceptance" sounds completely passive, yet reconstruction must be active. So there seem to be two quite different final stages: (1) passive acceptance, which is perhaps little different to Despair or Bewilderment; and (2) active acceptance which means moving into a new re-planned way of living, which requires the person to be active and creative: "Reconstructed". This isn't just about stages of reaction to grief, but also to other kinds of changed circumstances. ~ Draper, 2021

Acceptance, as the blurb above states, is rather passive. I "accept" that X has been painful and that I need to recover from it. But then what? What do I DO? 

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with faith. In general and in specific to me. I think that is a good place to begin.

Faith is such a personal thing. For most folks it is deeply held and when that faith is violated either by humans or by circumstance (or both) it strikes at your heart and soul. You break and you hurt and are angry and ride what I call the emotional spiral up and down. And while you ride it you sometimes break it apart and examine why you ever thought this was the way to eternal life in the first place. 

Please recall that I can only speak to faith as a Christian, an Eastern Orthodox convert from charismatic evangelical Protestantism. I have no idea if someone from another faith goes through this but I believe it is probably a very human thing to do. But for me, as a Christian, the last decade(give or take) has taken a toll. I have seen folks who claim the Name say, do, and cosign some disgusting stuff all in the name of <insert cause directly orthogonal to the teachings they say they believe in>. If you have not been under a rock you know what I am describing. After a while, I just gave up. And honestly the Great Prestigious Pineapple of 2020 was a godsend because seriously I could just STOP with the uncomfortable "faith -proving" things I felt like I had to do and THINK about why I was doing them in the first place.

The questions and thoughts were...disturbing.

Does faith matter? Does it change people for the better? If so, then why are there some really decent atheists? Is it all about getting stuff from the Great Vending Machine in the Sky? Why is it in the sky? Why are people such assholes? Do they even believe this? If they do why are they being so hateful? Why am I being so hateful? What is the point anyway? Is eternal life even a thing? Does it matter? Salvation from what exactly? Is there a God? Is the God I know about the right one? If God exists, why are They such douchebags? Like, Jesus was chill and all but His Dad has major jealousy and anger issues. And so do His followers, really, and that book (pick a version) and institutions they came up after He took off for parts unknown are seriously in need of some executive reworking. And what about science and the things we have learned? Do not get me started on quantum physics, string theory, and the expansion of spacetime. No one took those things into account when my faith tradition was formed. Heck no one KNEW about those things when my faith tradition was formed!!! Church folks even today outright fight against SCIENCE and it's 2022 and they are still burning books about things they don't like and calling it "Christian". What the everlovin' fuck, man????

(By the way...if you plan to say something like "Well church is about God and if you were truly a Christian what other people do wouldn't matter blah blah blah." Just don't okay? That is not helpful. It's patronizing and condescending. Yes, people can be dumpster fires and do some icky things in the Name of Jesus, but they don't have to. They could decide to NOT be a dumpster fire. So don't try to say it's MY fault when I hear blatantly racist crap coming out of people's mouths (or posted on their Fb walls) and believe those people should be taken to task by those in charge. AND that those in charge should not be the ones I have issues with in the first place. Thanks just all to pieces)

But I digress...

When I started actually thinking about what I was thinking about I was broken. Like "Man oh man, some of this stuff is just plain TOXIC as all hell," I started reading and doing some research (always dangerous) and noticed that what I was experiencing (within my faith tradition) was not all that uncommon. I was just floored.

It had a name.

It's deconstruction. And I have always liked taking things apart.

It's taking what I know and believe to be true apart and looking at it again. Closely. And with different, less, rosy eyes. When I started this journey, this Christian journey, I wanted to believe. I wanted to have that faith like a mustard seed that could move mountains...I wanted to be worthy of it. I never did. I am however, stubborn and I stuck to it even when I saw its feet of clay. 

I used to love the story of the man in Mark chapter 9 with the child who had seizures. He brought his child to the Lord's disciples for a cure and they were unable to cure the child. Christ, who had gone to pray, came back and they told Him what happened. He told them, "Bring me to being the child and his father." When they got to him, Christ said to the father, "Do you want him healed?" And the father said, "Yes! Please! If you are able!" And Jesus said to him, “If you are able! —All things can be done for the one who believes.” The father of the child says, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:14-24)

I used to identify with that man. I wanted help with my unbelief. But...why do I have to believe first? Like, why is belief necessary? If this thing is true it should be true whether or not I believe it. The sun burns whether or not I believe it burns. Vaccines work. The Earth is warming. The galaxy has a black hole at it's center. And I don't have to "believe" those things.  My belief should not matter. Besides, if didn't believe I wouldn't be here in the first place. If my belief is what makes me worthy then I've been there, done that and bought a dresser drawer full of t-shirts.

It's time for that faith to prove itself worthy of me. 

Relevant Reading

5/4/12 Stages/Steps of Grief/Addiction/Accepting New Ideas, Steven Draper

Orthogonal

The Dark Night of the Soul, St John of the Cross

Mark 9:14-29

Deconstruction Self Care

Celebrate With Me!

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? 

i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

"And. Has. Failed." 

That's the important part. 

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner, but not a failure. 

Relevant Reading

Lucille Clifton

Poems by Lucille Clifton

I Iz Vewwy Scawwy Pony

What is up, buttercups? It's been a couple years. Buuuut, in my defense, there's been fascists and nahtzee yt supremacists, insurrectionists, and a straight up panini-press* so I've been kind of busy. 

I've been doing some thinking lately. Wait, back up...I did something completely UNthinkingly that forced me to think. After, of course, I got over the sheer rage that was caused by what I had done by my own free will to myself.

....pardon me while I digress a bit, my brain is wonky from staring at too many Jira tickets....

Isn't it amazing how that works? That I can do something by choice and under no obligation or duress that makes me fly into a rage inside my own head? Like there is no one here to blame but myself for this. I worry about me sometimes...

Anyway...where was I? Oh yes...I did something to myself that made me think about how people are. So if you know me or have read my blog you know my story so I'm not going to re-hash all that. It's over out and done with and even though there are still some splinters that pop up now and then because that's the nature of the beast we call a brain.

Even if you decide to inflict said splinter on yourself. 

Moving forward.

I am a villain. The Bad Guy wearing the Black Hat and twirling my mustache, come to rain misery and despair over the blameless denizens of the land who are just trying to live their lives. I bathe in the blood of innocent kittens. I eat puppies. I am just this side of evil incarnate. I am consciously manipulative. I am a liar and a ringleader of flying liars bent on spreading lies. 

I am a hypocrite. 

I AM A MONSTER

HA! I wish I could pull all that off. But yeah, I'm the bad guy.

And, after some initial anger (read as RAGE, and cruel thoughts, and disbelief, and a whole heckuvalotta "HOW DARE YOU"s) you know what? I accepted it. I'm the Bad Guy in that story. I made decisions that affected the story of that person's life in ways they didn't like. It doesn't matter WHY I did it, what those decisions were in response to. In that person's story, I am the Bad Guy complete with  Black Hat ™. Possibly even an eye patch. I quite like the eye patch.

We are all The Bad Guy in someone's story, though. We craft for ourselves a reality centered on ourselves based on of the way we see the things we live through from day-to-day, moment-to-moment. Their memories are not mine. Their feelings are not mine. Their perspective is not mine. My perspective is not theirs. And they are no more "wrong" in their perception than I am in mine because frankly I cannot change how I am seen from someone else's point of view. In someone else's memory of an event.

And that is.

It.

Just.

Is.

Elsewhere I wrote:

This story is going to be different from whichever perspective you choose to look at it. Only by seeing all sides of a story can the truth ever be understood. This is the truth I lived with. I don't coat it with honey for anyone, least of all myself. Having more of it inflicted on me is nothing I am willing to bear any longer.

My journey is not about vengeance nor is it about seeking retribution. My journey is about me working out my salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). So look to your own salvation and I'll see to mine.

In one of my favorite books, Vigilant by James Alan Gardner, there is an organization that is dedicated to seeking out corruption in the government. Their motto is LIVE IN THE REAL AND NAME THE LIES. I aspire, however waveringly, however faultily, to live by it. I need to embroider it on a pillow.

Live in the Real - I am the Good Guy in my story. I may be the Bad Guy in the stories of those I touch.

Name the Lies - I am ALWAYS the Good Guy (or at least neutral) in the stories of those I touch.

Name the Lies - I need to change myself so that I show up as the Good Guy at all times in everyone's story.

Live in the Real - My actions are not always Divine, Generous, and Heroic. My actions are not always Demonic, Self-serving and Evil. And neither are anyone else's. 

Remember : This story is going to be different from whichever perspective you choose to look at it. 

We have all sinned. We have all played a the bad guy's role in someone's story. We have all hurt and been hurt. We have all treated each other, and ourselves, as things. And that, according to Granny Weatherwax, is where sin begins, when you treat people as things.

"In this life, many things happen in which we play a shameful part. Those of us who are strong forgive ourselves and go om. The weak wallow in they shame and allow it to devour them. There is no one of us who is without sin, child. There ought to be some comfort in that." ~ The Duchess, Through a Glass Darkly

Weirdly, it is kind of freeing to realize I am not always the Good Guy. It is equally freeing to realize I am not always the Bad Guy. 

Both truths exist. They are BOTH true.

They are both/and.

Both. And.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

Relevant Reading 

We are all villains in someone else's story

You Will Always be a Villain in Someone Else's Story

Vigilant

Through A Glass Darkly

Romans 3:10-26

More of Granny Weatherwax's Wisdom

*Panini Press and any other multisylabbic word beginning with the letter "P" has been used to refer to the SARS-COV2/COVID-19 pandemic that has afflicted the world and caused several million yt folks to lose their cot-danged minds but that is a soap box for elsewhere

Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to DO JUSTICE, AND TO LOVE KINDNESS, AND TO WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD? ~ Micah 6:8

I get a little unhappy with folks who think they get to dictate who deserves justice and kindness in a place where so many have been deprived of it in favor of others who meet a certain criteria.

It is not a good thing (or a God thing) to show favoritism. It is in fact a sin to do so (see James 2:9). The point is to open the table to ALL. When the Master said to His servant, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled," he did not tell the servant to inquire about their personal lives, pedigrees, gender, or skin color first. He said "Tell them to come in that my house may be full."

Seems to me that we should actually heed this instead of building fences, complaining about someone coming to take "muh guns," deciding certain people have mental problems because of who they choose to be, and denying basic decency to children and refugees.

Don't argue with me about it. I didn't say it.

Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

Relevant Reading
Micah 6:8
James 2:8-10
Luke 14:16-24

Can we extend forgiveness to black men?

I've been thinking about this a lot since reading about all these folks wanting to drag Michael Vick (again). I saw the articles about the petition and was like, "Didn't he go to jail for that already? What's this about?" I'm no huge football fan or anything but certain things stick out, you know?

So I totally get the disgust. Vick raised dogs to fight and encouraged others to do the same by running a dog fighting ring. That's horrible.

That was kind of a big deal. TWELVE YEARS AGO. In TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN.

I just don't understand!

And it's not like he, oh I dunno...walked into a man's own home and blew him away or anything.

Yet for some reason the latter is granted forgiveness (and a hug, no less) before the former. Even though Vick has served time, done multiple speaking tours about the evils of dog fighting, and donated money to every animal charity under the sun. And, frankly, even though I love me some dogs and think dog fighting is horrific, I kind of think the latter is WAY worse than the former. Just my humble yet accurate opinion.

But certain folk will jump all over a bandwagon to forgive, or at least give a pass to, certain people for just about anything while at the same time holding certain others hostage to their past foibles. Never mind that they have paid for their crime, were very young, didn't know what they were doing, blah blah blah.

Now don't get me wrong. I do actually know the reason why. It's the same thing that causes folk, after a black person has been shot or assaulted by a white policeman or had the cops called on them for living theor lives, to say things like:

• what were they doing to make them shoot/call the police
• why didn't they just do as they were told/not do that
• why were they wearing that/living their life
• why were they black in a public space

It's maddening.

As the article says, no one is owed forgiveness. That is not a thing. It's the partiality I question. The blatant favoritism. Good Lord don't black men deserve the same consideration of others to rectify the situation, pay their dues, and go on? I'm not sure, but I think St. Paul said something about that and in the words of the article,

"So think of forgiveness this way-you’re able to do it with your uncle that says homophobic and racist things every Thanksgiving. You’re able to do it with the boyfriend who holds your head under the sheets and farts. You’re able to do it when a girl buries a baby alive or a woman comes into the home of a man and shoots him dead. Figure out what internally is causing you to hold back on allowing Black men to grow from their mistakes, not be caught up in their past, and live their lives."

Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

#bloginstead #3daysinthewilds

Relevant Reading
It’s Time We Talk About America’s Inability To Forgive Black Men
2 Corinthians 2:5-11
Michael Vick Petition
Bad Newz Kennels dog fighting investigation

Sing Soft Kitty To Me

I don't feel so good.

GERMS SUCK.

Runny noses SUCK. Stuffy noses SUCK. One nostril stuffy while other nostril flows like the freakin' Colorado River SUCKS. Coughing up a lung and waking up in the middle of the night SUCKS (although actually "coughing up a lung" is a thing and can be fatal, don't do it). Sore throats SUCK.

Hm. I sense a pattern of STRAIGHT UP SUCKERY.

Where's my tissue?

#bloginstead #3daysinthewilds

Relevant Reading
Soft Kitty

Day the First of #bloginstead

"Who's got a blog and wants to try an experiment with me?
Here's what I have in mind. Round up as many people with blogs as I can, and have us all follow each other's blogs. Then, for 3 days, we communicate via our blogs INSTEAD of social media. We post on our blogs the way we'd post here - informal, chatty, what's up at the moment, stream of consciousness, whatever it is that constitutes a conversation for you at the time. Everyone in the group reads everyone in the group, and we visit by commenting on posts. Anyone who doesn't have a blog but wants to join in commenting is very welcome. After 3 days, we decide what, if anything, we've discovered."
~ Melinda Johnson

So I decided to participate in a thing. Look at me. Joining.

I have a lot of opinions and thoughts about things, but for a while now I've just let them fly from the id. To quote Nomad (let the reader understand), "That unit is defective. It's thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me...A mass of conflicting impulses." I'm thinking and feeling so many things at once sometimes that it is hard to put them into any kind of order so EVERYTHING becomes stream of consciousness.

It's unsettling.

Do not like.

So I'm going to do that here for the next three days (see date stamp).

For anyone following me for this, beware. I can get rather...salty. And prolific.

#bloginstead #3daysinthewilds

Relevant Reading 
Id (Britannica article)
Nomad on Women
List of Bloggers to Follow

I See Willfully Ignorant People

Once upon a time, the world was very small. People could claim things about other people that were not true and folks were less likely to check to see that these things were true because it was too much effort or something to read a book and too scary to meet people who were different from them. Things like:

• All Black people riot© and are violent and stupid
• All "American Indians" are drunks
• All Muslims are inherently evil
• All Africans are poor and starving
• All Asian women are demure, delicate flowers and like being ordered around
• All Asian men are mathematical geniuses
• All Black women are loud, angry, welfare hoes
• All Black men are gang-bangers
• All Mexicans are drug dealers
• All people who speak Spanish are Mexican
• All British people are stiff, polite, and upstanding
• All Scientists are lying about their research to get more money
• All Teachers get a three month paid vacation
• Etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam

Now, however, we have the ability to learn otherwise. We have this thing called the internet and we have Google and we have televisions and we still have books but now we have books that are narrated to you.

It's amazing the sheer number of ways and means we have the ability to get accurate information from...

And yet don't.

It's very sad. It's not supposed to be this way.

"When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Please note the Commandment includes using your mind and is, in Christ's own words, "the greatest and first commandment."

Use your brain. Or as my mother would say, "Use your head for something besides a hat-rack."

It's a commandment from the Lord.

Thanks just all to pieces.

Relevant Reading
Matthew 22:34-46

Lessons from Deep Space

I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Absolutely love it. For me, DS9 was the best of the Star Trek franchise in terms of acting, writing, and just telling a story. It gripped me time and again with every episode, even the silly ones. But one thing stayed with me even now, 25 years on, and that was the very first episode, Emissary. In it, the new commander of The Space Station Formerly Known as Terok Nor, Sisko, first encounters the wormhole aliens--entities that exist inside a stable wormhole that links the Alpha and Delta Quadrants of the Milky way.

The wormhole entities exist in a timeless state and do not uderstand corporeal beings who live “in time” so Sisko, in tried and true “seek out new life” manner, tries to explain it to them. However, the wormhole aliens, who are accessing his personal memories so they can interact with him by taking the form of people he knows -- his son, Jake, his wife, Jennifer, Captain Jean-Luc Picard-- can’t grasp the idea that humans (and other corporeal beings) live in a linear timeline because Sisko keeps returning to the scene of his wife’s death at the Battle of Wolf 359. He tries again and again but keeps returning in his memories to where he lost his wife. Accordingly, the  entities ask him, “Well if that is true, that you do live linearly, why do you exist in this place? At this time? In this moment?”

And that is when Sisko realizes that he does live, move, and have his being in that place, that time, that moment. Everything he does, every choice he makes arises from that time when he was so profoundly traumatised. He can't leave it. No, he won't leave it. He chooses to remain in that space with those fires and those alarms, and the horror of watching his wife die and being able to do nothing about it.

Understanding dawns and he realizes he is choosing to exist in that place. He is choosing to exist in that place. He is choosing to exist in that place.

It is not linear.

It is not growth.

It is his choice.

Spoiler alert: At the end of the episode, Sisko is beginning to make different choices. He begins to choose to live in a different place. The trauma is still there. The grief is not gone but he no longer chooses to exist, to live, move, and have his being in that place. He begins to heal.

I think we all have those places in ourselves. Individually and corporately. We get profoundly hurt and the trauma is real. It's Ground Zero. Our life looks like Mt. St. Helens blew up and took the very earth from beneath our feet, destroying and ruining the entire landscape of our being.

Borrowed from Del Tackett via Google Images

My Mt. St. Helens blew in my living room about a month ago, 2007. And I lived in that devastation there for YEARS. It was comfortable there, with all that nice sticky mud around me, conforming to my emotions but there was always something (someONE) telling me this is not how you are supposed to live. There isn't supposed to be ash and rubble everywhere ALL the time. The still pools of your spirit aren't supposed to be choked with regret, the rivers of your soul should flow, not continue to stagnate with death and destruction.

I had to choose to do the work that is necessary to NOT exist there.

It was hard work. It involved facing what I did, did not do, was not able to do as well as what was done to me.

It involved forgiveness of others and of myself.

It involved letting it go and letting it be.

It involved recognizing that the only person keeping me in that place, that time, that moment...Is me.

It's not easy to recognize that you are choosing to live in a place of destruction if you've lived there a long time. Humanity is successful because humanity is adaptable. We can adjust to live in just about any environment, including a toxic one of our own making. Defenses are erected, lookouts are posted for any sign of offense, real or imagined, and we settle into our bunker, our muddy foxhole and decide this is how it should be and damn the person who says, "Would you like me to help you move these dead trees and clear out this mud?"

It becomes the place where we exist. Where we live move and have our being. We like our dead trees and mud.

Letting go of that is one of the hardest things I ever did but the first step, saying to myself, "No I do not want to live here. I want to live a linear life. I want to move" was the best one. I revisit these places but on a vertical spiral. The spiral goes up--because I choose for it to go up. When I see the broken places from a higher place, I can see where I need to ask for help to fix them: that river is choked with mud, these busted trees are piled too high for light to shine on the saplings. And then the river flows and the trees grow and I go up again. When I see that space again I see something else that needs adjusting so that light can shine and water can move.

But it has to be a choice I make. No one can do it for me.

Relevant Reading
ST: DS9 - Emissary
ST: DS9 - Time is Linear, Pt2 (Youtube video)
You Choose to Exist Here: Reliving Deep Space Nine
Acts 17:26-28
How the Truth Sets You Free

Edited to add: I think the entire country is living in a place of trauma. I won't speculate on when the trauma occurred but what is happening now is a symptom of so many years of ignoring a huge festering wound where, whether we recognize it or not, we still collectively, exist--live, move, and have our being.

We need to move, collectively, to a better space or else nothing we do will change. We need to choose to not exist as a traumatized people.