Recycled Medium

I've been thinking about what to do with long term personal challenges that have no foreseeable end in sight.  It's too easy to get obsessed with disappointment or any other form a particular pain can take.  It's also such a draining way to live. The church lady part of me is tired of pat answers.  Those familiar verses about suffering aren't comforting lately.  I don't want to be irreverent about Scripture but it's the way I feel.

Been considering again how a friend once said they loved how I made the most of everything. A treasured affirmation.  Today I'm wondering how I can make the most of hurt instead of passively letting it chip away at my soul.  Can I pick up the pain like a brush, dip it into some paint and make a picture with it?  Can I deliberately and even aggressively bring the pain to the piano and use it to write songs? Is this a way I can receive God's comfort and even meet Him in an especially personal way?

Somewhat along these lines, I encourage you, even if you're not artsy,  to look up some artists featured at RiceGallery.org.  Especially the ones from poorer countries.  It's inspiring to read about those creators who grew up with very little and yet made the most of it. Now they're making art with the simplest of materials, even discardable ones.  Their work has an appeal that is almost tangible.  

Dissociation

Here's a term I've heard a lot in my group since I've started attending Freedom Sessions, a nearly 30 week 12 step program.  Dissociation:  The disconnection or separation of something from something else or the state of being disconnected.  In psychiatry:  The separation of a group of mental processes or ideas from the rest of personality.  Extreme cases are amnesia, some forms of hysteria, or multiple personality disorders.  In situations of severe trauma, being able to dissociate or separate yourself temporarily is actually a gift.  A necessary tool for survival.  The disorder part is staying this way long after the crisis is over, when separating becomes the new normal.

What's interesting to me are the milder, subtler and more socially acceptable forms of dissociation. Really, any activity, thought or emotion can be misused to avoid facing part or all of whatever is uncomfortable or worse.

I'm humbled and awed by those I've met who have survived horrific things and are now bravely reconnecting with reality to move on in life.  They make it easier to deal with my own, less dramatic stuff.  I'm more willing to look at and admit how I've dissociated for decades.  I see that I've taken exercise and generally moving fast beyond fitness to removing myself from experiencing, thinking or feeling what isn't easy.  When I'm not speeding around physically, I've given excessive mental energy and space to reading,  to possible futures and to theoretical problem solving instead of being fully in the present.  I've also elevated my verbal wit to such a heady form of entertainment that I can avoid having to trust being loved, enjoyed and valued apart from being amusing.  And this is just the beginning.  For today, though, it's all the honesty I can serve up.  Thanks for "listening", whoever is reading this out there.

Celestial

Had an interesting, perspective stretching conversation with a friend about the zodiac and "signs" people say they born under.  Not something I grew up with at all.  Horoscopes were considered like glorified cookie  fortunes.  Irrelevant but also dangerous, if logic can take anyone there.  It seems like the stars, constellations and celestial calendars have been completely dismissed or uncomfortably ignored by conservative circles I've circulated in...or even orbited, while we're at it.  If stars could be misused, then there was no use at all for them apparently.

More and more I'm seeing created things as what I'll call neutral.  They have do certain properties and certain potential.  What we do with or think about (application and interpretation) these neutral things is a separate, often very entangled matter.  A knife is not bad or good.  It is simply an object. There are bad applications, like stabbing someone, or good ones, like skilled surgery or cutting into a juicy steak. (My apologies to non carnivores.)

Back to the stars.  If God created constellations and perhaps...I tread cautiously...a celestial calendar...then what might there be about them that is worth exploring, understanding and even valuing. I'm not talking about worshiping or trusting the stars. I am wondering what I might be missing through my all or nothing background that the star Creator is telling me about Himself and how He works.  

Nirvana

I've been thinking about the concept of "godliness with contentment being great gain" and particularly about contentment.  The lack of this in my inner life has been one of several reasons for me joining Freedom Sessions this year.  Not even sure yet how much is discontentment and what is just being human in a world that isn't Paradise.  I do think that in this life God allows and orchestrates particular things to be missing or difficult so we can't help but need Him.  Filling and fixing the voids in our souls will not ever fully happen by human means.  Seems like a cruel trick at times, even if my theology knows it isn't so.

At a conference several months ago a Christian speaker told of an interview with a high ranking Tibetian monk who hesitantly admitted a conflict between Buddhist "annihilation of desire" and the fact that human desires are there nonetheless.  There is always something we long for.  I wish it weren't the case.  My logical mind, which is only part of me, can tell me this life is short.  That I need to focus on eternity and heaven and be like a runner intent on finishing my spiritual race. The rest of me struggles to find this comforting.

Nirvana actually sounds good to me.  No desires for anything seems far easier than pressing on with the realities of my soul.  I want to take a vacation from my doctrine saturated, perennially sensible churchy self and ask Jesus like I've just met Him how He ran this race.  I want to ask Him about contentment. Did He find this hard? What was contentment for Him? And what about the joy set before Him? What exactly did that mean for Him on this earth?    

Divine Motherhood?

On Mother's Day recently I was a loaned musician for a worship team at a church that is quite different my generally-more-conservative-in-every-way church .

Heard a different take on God and motherhood.  In an open sharing time a silver haired lady told of conversing with a child about God the Father.  The child asked who the mommy was, then.  This lady's answer was that the Holy Spirit is like the Mommy.  Hmmmm...

Weirdness, yes, to someone from my current denomination and background.  However, I've gotten slower at throwing out babies with their bathwater, so I gave it a bit of thinking.  Couldn't help notice that the Holy Spirit is called the Helper and Eve in Scripture being called a helper.  Something I can't ignore.

Our mixed background worship team had quite a discussion about all this before the service. Wish I'd recorded it.  Some comments made about the Bible being "cultural" gave me more to mull over and clarify in my mind.  For starters I'm thinking I need to keep the terms and realities of mother/father and male/female in their rightful place as small reflections and image bearers.  God created these earthly realities to show something about Himself to us.  Human gender and parent roles did not come first. They do not form or define God.  On the other hand I realize that there is more for me to see about who God is in the fact that He made male and female, father and mother.

I did tell the team I didn't feel comfortable with a corporate prayer that was read to "Mother Creator, Father God". Calling God Mother is too much for me, though I don't deny mothering aspects of God.  I can't get around the fact that Jesus refers to God as Father.  I can't dismiss this as merely cultural. But my thoughts about God's nature are definitely being expanded and challenged.

Inventories

I'm just over a third of the way through Freedom Sessions (See post called Flavours of Denial) and now we're in the trenches of our stuff.  I feel like if I write about it, I'll survive it.  Every participant has been warned that these are the rapids, the gale force winds, the...well, the place you want to quit, but what would be the point of that?

Recently we're doing several so-called inventories.  The first one, our Strengths Inventory, broke us in gently.  What strengths has God given you? Who in your life has benefited from these?

Now we're into the hardcore stuff.  The Mirror Inventory - The ways I've been hurt, the effect then and the effects on-going in all levels of my life.  This also includes listing my responsibility or not in response to hurts received.  It's surprising what comes up. Not just the apparently major or obvious.

The latest assignment, while we continue to add to our Mirror Inventory, is the Shield Inventory - The ways I wound others and its effect.  Ouch. And I mean starting with me.

There's no fooling around, no beating around the bush here.  I told a friend on the phone today I feel like the skin is being peeled off my soul these weeks.  Sometimes I'm emotionally threadbare. Other times I'm just overwhelmed by normal stuff as life goes on.  I've taken a season off leading another discussion group, feel like napping more often (though I set the timer and don't let this become depressive) and have almost no tolerance for small talk or people who need a great deal of listening.  I realize this is temporary.  Painful.  Necessary.  I've seen people in past years come out the other side of this in-depth program better for it...at the very least alive.

Posthumous

Many Friday evenings I play and sing on a worship team in our church basement for an event called Celebrate Recovery.  This is a low key 12 step program that runs all year and draws mostly those recovering and moving on from substance abuse.  The crowd has regulars and weekly new faces.

Last week I noticed and chatted with a white haired lady with a surprising and delightfully rich Scottish accent.  Not sure how we got onto the topic but she asked me, "How do you make peace with people who have already died?"

Now this is a question I'd love to get some reader feedback on while I ponder it some more.