A Field of Onions?

I'm a big fan of the idea of letting go of ego attachments and whatever comes between one's Original Face and God's will. When friends have had emotional crisis and loss in their lives, I've counseled them to view the experience from the perspective of opportunity to listen for the Still, Small Voice Within to find what is True for them. Especially in times of transition and crisis, it is natural to want to rely on what is comfortable and comforting and so we sometimes will revert to actions and behaviors that once worked to help us maintain equilibrium but sometimes the transition is so great that we are forced to move beyond re-action into new ways of acting and being. I've always thought one should welcome the opportunity to basically start afresh. I've likened it to peeling the ego layers of the onion.

I am the one being stripped of much of what I've taken for granted for the past couple of decades. I don't find myself reverting to past ways of acting but I do have a powerful urge to escape in some way; these are some fleeting impulses I've had: Red, red wine, Hop on the Bus, Gus, or a nice padded room somewhere with or without a dose of lobotomy. Thankfully, I don't care much for alcohol, love my kids too much to abandon them and, well, I will no longer have health insurance and padded rooms don't pay for themselves. I'm death to plants so this metaphor seems a bit of a stretch for me but I know what I need is to think of myself as a field which has been plowed and is sitting fallow, gathering energy by being still. I'd been thinking of layers of onion/ego metaphor but to take it to a logical conclusion begs the question: Do I want to understand my Original Face as being the heart of an onion? Uh, no. I'll go with the idea of a field waiting for the Farmer (you know...God).

2011: A Prayer for Releasing Fear and Accepting the Unknown

2010 ends tonight and with it ends much of what is familiar to me. 2011 brings many more questions than answers.

I can look at this either as if I’m losing security or as if I’m releasing things that no longer fit to make room for growth and change. Although I do have some fear, I’m working to accept the unknown and live in the mystery until I am guided to the place I am supposed to be.

Letting go:

*My marriage
+Bickering
-Affection
+Compromise
-Kissing
-Companionship
+Failed expectations
+/-Identity

*The employment I’ve done for 8 years
+The stress of always being under a quota
+The stress of sometimes working for people who are ineffectual bosses
+The stress of going into the field and knocking on doors not knowing if it will be opened by the Lady or the Tiger
+!Strange dogs
+The unreliability of the work
-The pride I feel working for a respected university
-The pride I feel to have this job with only a high school diploma. This job validates my intelligence and forces people to question their assumptions about people who haven't had the luxury of higher education.
-The really good hourly rate I am paid
-The flexibility of the schedule

*The house I’ve lived in for 10 years

*My status as a married person
-For what it’s worth, some people’s attitudes toward me will change—some for the better and some for the worse.

*The security of having a spouse with a good, steady job
-Health insurance
-I was able to be more selective in accepting work because I had the luxury of my spouse’s reliable income.

I am the one moving out of our home. And yet I will be unemployed within the next couple of weeks. I have no idea how this will unfold. I trust.

I desire a life of submission to God’s will. I will actively do what I know will increase my awareness of God in my life, writing, prayer, fellowship, community. I will try to be open to new leadings and new directions. Not my will but Thine.

I would like to live a frugal life, relatively financially independent. I don’t want to think about retirement but about what kind of impact I am making on the world right now. I would like a low-stress job which would allow me the time to write and build community. Or, I would like to create a business that I can do from home such as owning an apartment building or running a hostel. Or, I’d like to find my own “right livelihood”. I trust Spirit to guide me.

Anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows I want to be automobile independent. In Nashville, with children in school and with a job, I don’t think this is possible. I would like to build into my new life as much freedom from auto-dependence as possible. I may still need to own a car but I would like to walk, (learn to) bike and ride buses whenever possible. I trust Spirit to lead me.

I would like an open house, that is, a house which is open and warm and inviting. I want to offer hospitality and to welcome people with food and generosity. (I’d really like a country kitchen, good for baking bread.) I would like my home to be a gathering place for my friends and my communities and my children’s friends. I trust Spirit to use me.

I would like to have greater compassion coupled with a more effective ability to act. I want to be a member of the Body of Christ on Earth, doing God’s work. I trust Spirit to teach me.

I know the more fearful I am, the more I pull inward and dread the unknown, the less I am able to hear God’s Call. Slowly, slowly, sometimes just cracks at a time, I’m revealing myself, releasing the fear and laying myself open for God. I’m not a patient woman, when I know that change is inevitable, I want it to be done and I’ve a tendency to force it--usually toward the outcome my ego most wants. I could easily do that now. I could apply for any and all jobs (which I started to do last month) and accept the first one offered to me. I could settle for renting whatever house or apartment I can afford for me and my children. I could compromise my values again in order to have stability, health insurance and security. But I’m pretty sure God doesn’t want me to do that right now. Maybe later I will find that taking a job with a corporation or a fast food restaurant or another research firm is where it seems God is leading me but for now I think I’m supposed to rest in the unknown. I think right now is a time of releasing fear and accepting that everything--EVERYthing--is beyond my control.

I give over this fear and trust God to transform it.
I accept the mystery and trust God to keep me.
I open myself, vulnerable and flawed, and trust God to strengthen, guide and use me.

A Reflection on the End of a Marriage

How does one write about the end of a marriage? I can say we’ve been avoiding the end since before the beginning. We fought entropy for a very long time and, finally, we’ve run out of energy and have stopped fighting. In our time together we’ve experienced a lot of good, anger, grief, joy, beauty, many frustrations and scarce contentment. We’ve compromised, given in, conceded and worked and we always wind up back here. 20 years of circling round and winding up here. There’s no right or wrong, no good versus bad, no victor nor victim, just two flawed people who can rarely find a way to take comfort in the security of one another. We’ve never, in our 20 years, learned to rely on one another or to be truly faithful to us: That back door marked “Exit” has always stood open, brightly lit and available. We’ve stood on that threshold for so long we finally found ourselves stumbling through.

I keep thinking about that Dave Mason song:

So let’s leave it alone ‘cause we can’t see eye-to-eye.
There aint no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree.

Yup.

We’re not sure how to go about this reinvention of everything familiar. It would be so much easier if there were some compelling reason—some wrong, some event: an unforgivable hurt—but there’s not; there are only a lifetime of small omissions, thoughtless actions and regrettable words which add to up to this desolation of unity. I think we are both weary of feeling alone together. I’m exhausted by not being able to trust the good feelings to last very long. When things are good, when we are able to turn to one another and relax and find comfort and pleasure in one another, it has so many times felt hopeful, like a new beginning. But one can only believe in the same beginning so many times before one stops trusting in the hope—which, of course, is hopelessness.

After years of discussions, tears, prayer, support from my spiritual community and trying, trying, we’re laying this romantic partnership down and placing our positive energy into our parenting partnership and our friendship. We work well together as parents and we actually, in spite of everything, like one another as people. Those aspects of our relationship have often been overshadowed while the more dramatic and negative dynamics absorbed our attention. We’re letting go the drama so we may define our individual selves apart from the bound-ness of marriage. When individual equilibrium occurs, we anticipate being able to bring what is good and strong and pleasant to our myriad remaining ties.

We are a work in progress. We’re working together to discover who we are apart. It sounds strange and very different but we’ve never shied away from defining things our own way rather than forcing ourselves into the roles given us by society. Normal is being estranged from one’s ex. But who says we must? We still admire the things that drew us together in the beginning. Yes, there are many reasons that we can’t live together but that doesn’t mean that we can’t LIKE one another. And so we are slowly learning who we are as individuals and as former spouses forging a new way of relating with one another and with the world.

Ignorance is Bliss: My Retirement versus Theoretical Suffering

This was the query shared at meeting for worship yesterday:

How do we attend to the suffering of others in our local community, in our state and nation, and in the world community? Do we try to understand the causes of suffering and do we address them as a Meeting?
-Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice

One friend arose to speak about John Woolman and how his witness against the evil of slavery began as a private concern but matured and grew with the spiritual and practical support of his yearly meeting.

I think about our modern life and how little most of us are touched by the institutionalized suffering of others. In the days of slavery, I imagine one could not avoid being aware of the keeping of other human beings as chattel. Nowadays, our lives are comfortable and we are quite well insulated from the variety of human suffering equal to slavery. We are all exposed to news articles about human trafficking, for instance, but our lives seem to be far removed from the prostitution rings we hear about. I would say that unless we work in public schools, medical clinics or as social workers, we probably are not exposed to hunger or abuse. And hunger and abuse can be viewed as singular problems, one child, one family-individual problems with individual solutions: make a phone call to Second Harvest or Children's Services and we've done our duty.

We all hear about the terrible atrocities that occur in third world countries. We know about genocides and wars, famine, disaster and disease. Those things are real but at such a remove that we don't, and really, can't feel any immediacy about how those things are connected to our world. If we do feel a tug at our hearts, we make a donation to Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross and feel (mostly) absolved of responsibility.

I wonder how many of us have a 401k or other retirement program? The overwhelming majority, I would guess. It is utterly unheard of for middle class Americans to not have a retirement savings plan. Retirement, for healthy middle class people, is the opportunity to quit work and still have sufficient financial resources to allow us to do all the things we currently aren't able to do because we spend all our time working. Retirement is the time when we can be who we want to be and live the way we want to live: The kids are grown, the house is paid for and we can travel and garden and golf. Because we earned it. Because we were smart and planned ahead and invested wisely.

But what does that mean, "invested wisely"? We work at jobs that provide for us a 401k or other retirement plan or, if needed, we set up a Roth IRA. We make contributions to our plans and, if we're lucky, we become vested and the company we work for matches our contributions. We may or may not have the ability to specify how the money in our accounts are invested--all in stocks, all in bonds or split between these. We do a little research, make the "wise" decision and feel very good about our future (until the stock market takes a hit and we feel very insecure because we "lost" some amount of what we thought we had).

But:
What happens to that money? It's invested. Invested? In what? Where? How? How many of us with retirement investments have a clue where our money goes? Not many, I'd wager. Yes, we may be given the opportunity to choose the types of investments but how many people are given the option of choosing the actual companies invested in? So how is our money distributed? To what corporations? What do they do with the money? We have no idea. The money could be invested in a mom & pop start-up, it could be funding the continuing expansion of an internet behemoth or it could be adding to the power of a corrupt global corporation. I would never support a multi-national corporation to purchase water rights in impoverished countries nor do I encourage deforestation or child slavery: But possibly I have with money I have invested.

We'd like to think our money is going out into the world to help create positive action but I truly doubt it. I imagine our money is being used to grow, grow, grow wealth, whatever the cost. Which, if we're really honest with ourselves, is exactly what we want it to do. We want our money to grow our personal wealth so we may retire in comfort.

Am I being too harsh? Naive? We're just doing what everyone does. We're not actively trying to hurt anyone. Surely our retirement investments must be doing good work or our investment firms wouldn't put our money in them. I mean, I know there's a lot of corruption in the world but I can trust the investment firm my company works with, can't I? As long as our intentions are good, that's all that matters, right?

I think of John Woolman. He did not own slaves but benefited indirectly from slavery by the positive impact slavery had on the economy through lower costs for goods. As he became convicted, he found that he could no longer participate even peripherally. From woolmancentral.com:

John refused to write wills, bills of sale, or any other document that perpetuated slavery. He boycotted slave products, willing to appear foolish in the eyes of others. And he capitalized on every opportunity to explain why he did not use the cotton, silver, rum, sugar or dyed clothing that others found acceptable. It wasn't easy for John to appear "singular". He would have preferred not to. But he understood that actions spoke where words would not, and that actions faithful to God's leadings have a power to persuade.

I wonder what John Woolman would think of the modern economic situation in which we feel absolved of responsibility for the impact our money has on the world due to our complete disconnect from it. Much of our wealth is intangible and unreal. We never see it except symbolically in charts and projections and so feel no connection to it nor culpability for the harm it may cause other people and the Earth.

I offer no suggestions but am resting with these questions.

(These Boots Are Made For) Prayin' and Playin'

A friend went through a spiritual depression a while ago: She described it as dark night of the soul. She said she would try to pray but that it was like she was locked in a lead-lined room so nothing got out and nothing got in.

Although I relate to what she went through, that's not where I am right now. I just feel completely untethered. I feel like when I pray, I'm in outer-space so that my words dissipate immediately...like there's no atmosphere to hold them. Last week at Friends Meeting, the Chihuahua wasn't at the door yapping because she had escaped and was running wildly about the neighborhood. (When Nashville Friends Meeting was at our old location on Acklen, one of the neighbors had a Whippet that would sometimes escape. Trying to catch that dog was like trying to pick up quicksilver with your fingers. That's what the Chihuahua in my head has been like.)

I'm on the cusp of re-creating my life with the rare opportunity to fully align the way I live with my values so my life can be integrated and SPICE-y. So strangely, I find myself completely ungrounded with my thoughts on about everything but God. Wanna talk shoes? because the Chihuahua does! Music! Books (fiction only)! Just about anything but God. Why is this? Is it spiritual cold feet? I don't feel afraid or reticent of commitment. No, I just feel utterly distracted--and not by work, for once.

Thinking this through, what I'm coming up with is that there is so much really heavy stuff going on in my life that I'm needing lightness and distraction. I've made God feel heavy by putting so much weight, so much emphasis on God's Right Place In My Life that I think perhaps I've made God feel like a burden. I think I need to find God in the fun, in music and art and time with friends. Not in a weighty, "we gather together today to..." kind of thing but in a "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy" kind of way.

Maybe even in shoes? Maybe even in these really awesome Fluevog boots:

(Didn't George Fox say sometime along the lines of "Wear your scooter-riding boots as long as you can"? Well...)

I need a little more fun. I need to get off my Serious God kick and spend some time getting a kick outta God.