On failure, love, and suicide

Before I start writing a post about suicide at midnight I will first tell you that I have never felt suicidal. And with that disclaimer hopefully putting everyone at ease (at least as much at ease as you can be while thinking about suicide) here are some of the things I've read and thought about lately on the topic.

A couple months ago the CDC released a report about how the suicide rate in the US rose 2.4% and is now the highest it's been in more than 25 years. I read that this means that about every 12 minutes someone in the US ends their own life.

Something I read recently: 

from historian and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, recently published by Yale University Press:

‘When I was getting my PHD in history at Columbia I knew two other poets in the English department.  One of them took her life in 2007, and the other one wrote the posthumous afterword to her book, saying how shocked and upset she was by this. Then, about a year and a half later, she did it too,’ Hecht says.

‘This was profoundly upsetting for me ... in the book, I mention that I was going through some dark times too. When I feel dark, my brain offers suicide as a solution, and even when I’m not feeling terrible that thought comes to mind. I’ve now talked to so many people that I think that more than half of people have that suggestion come to their mind.’

Amid the rhetoric about personal choice, Hecht says it’s important to remember the impact suicide has on not just close family and friends, but even more casual acquaintances. She says that by staying alive despite suicidal feelings, many people are performing a community service.

‘Crying and useless, sitting at the end of your bed is way better than death. It’s a million times better than death. If you feel like a burden, you need to know that your suicide would be a much bigger burden.’

In families where there’s been a suicide, it takes two generations for the rate of suicide to go down.

‘That means that if you want your unborn niece to make it through her dark night of the soul, you have to make it through yours,’ says Hecht.

‘There has to be at least some voice of gratitude in the culture, and I don’t mind starting—thank you, if you’re staying alive for other people, you’re my hero. I know how hard it is, and I am grateful.’

While Hecht says efforts to remove stigmatisation from suicide are laudable, she argues that they can also minimise the reality that suicide is an act.

No Hemlock Rock (Don’t Kill Yourself)

By Jennifer Michael Hecht

Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself.

Don't. Eat a donut, be a blown nut.

That is, if you're going to kill yourself,

stand on a street corner rhyming

seizure with Indonesia, and wreck it with

racket. Allow medical terms.

Rave and fail. Be an absurd living ghost,

if necessary, but don't kill yourself.

Let your friends know that something has

passed, or be glad they've guessed.

But don't kill yourself. If you stay, but are

bat crazy you will batter their hearts

in blooming scores of anguish; but kill

yourself, and hundreds of other people die.

Poison yourself, it poisons the well;

shoot yourself, it cracks the bio-dome.

I will give badges to everyone who's figured

this out about suicide, and hence

refused it. I am grateful. Stay. Thank

you for staying. Please stay. You

are my hero for staying. I know

about it, and am grateful you stay.

Eat a donut. Rhyme opus with lotus.

Rope is bogus, psychosis. Stay.

Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus.

Dare not to kill yourself. I won't either.

****

from: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/5963960

Reading that woman's thoughts reminded me of a song I heard recently and of something I read in M. Scott Peck's, The Road Less Traveled: 

“Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another…The journey of life is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness.” 

"On Your Porch"

I was on your porch, the smoke sank into my skin.
So I came inside to be with you.
And we talked all night,
about everything we could imagine.

'Cause come the morning I'll be gone
and as our eyes start to close
I turn to you and I let you know that I Love You

Well my dad was sick,
and my mom she cared for him.
Her love it nursed him back to life.
And me, I ran. I couldn't even look at him
for fear I'd have to say goodbye.

And as I start to leave
he grabs me by the shoulder and he tells me:
"Whats left to lose? You've done enough.
And if you fail well then you fail but not to us.
'Cause these last three years, I know they've been hard.
But now its time to get out of the desert and into the sun;
even if its alone."

So now here I sit, in a hotel off of Sunset;
my thoughts bounce off of Sam's guitar.
And that's the way its been,
ever since we were kids but now,
now we've got Something to prove.
And I, I can see their eyes,
but tell me something, can they see mine?

'Cause whats left to lose?
I've done enough.
And if I fail well then I fail but i gave it a shot.
And these last three years, I know they've been hard.
But now its time to get out of the desert and into the sun;
even if its alone.

Even if it's alone

I was on your porch last night, the smoke it sank into my skin.

****

Those words from the father to his child, "Well if you fail well then you fail but not to us", that is just exactly what I am hoping to instill in my children's hearts, and in my own in the process. This truth that life is complex and that it is not possible to ever fail completely just as it is not possible to ever love completely. The truth that thinking in black and white about love and failure is dangerous because both are only colored in shades of gray for everyone, always.

Which sounds kind of non-offensive when spoken of in generalities, but turns out to often be super sucky when faced day in and day out in a thousand different ways. When my kids figure this out I will tell them that I think Friedrich Nietzsche was on to something when he said,

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

But in the meantime I will just keep doing things like telling them how much their homemade gifts and crayon drawings mean to me, taking them out in nature whenever I can, and keep saying yes when they ask me to turn up the music and dance with them. 

Turns out 'Cause what's left to lose?' is actually a pretty inspiring sentiment.

My favorite kids' gift

Ver woke up a hundred times last night with a croupy cough and I just couldn't do it, I couldn't get us all to church, so I've spent the day slowly unpacking the van from Christmas and trying to do it without chaos reigning. It really is unbelievable to me how much work it is to pack for traveling with three children and then unpacking might just be worse. Add Christmas gear/gifts to the equation and yes, it's4:42 PM and I'm still working on it. A dear friend gave this completely awesome "After Christmas" six hours of stories audio book to Sophia as a gift and she and I listened to this story from it while I sorted laundry and toys and she laid on her bed and watched it make me cry.

"On the eleventh day of Christmas, the children learn that Andy has to return to Connecticut.  This means King’s Night Barn Dance – planned for Twelftnight - is no longer going to include music and dancing.  Brother and sister are deeply disappointed – disappointed that the King’s night event won’t be what they expected and disappointed that Andy won’t be there.  They don’t like feeling disappointed and sad, but Momma encourages them to honor their feelings.

From “Twelve Tales of a Tullyport Christmas”:  “The Feast of the Eleven Sails”   Long ago, an incredible thing happened on the eleventh day of Christmas in Tullyport.  Eleven enormous ships appeared off the coast, set off-course by a large winter storm.  The families of Tullyport gathered torches and lanterns, and lined the coast, guiding the lost ships to safety.   But when the ships set sail from England, there were twelve.  Where is the twelfth?  Could its captain have guided it to Boston despite the storm?  This experience inspired a yearly Christmas feast, to celebrate both the great joys of the year, as well as the hardships."

The Reason for the Season

On the drive to my parent's house yesterday we stopped at a gas station for a potty break and the girls talked me into buying a bag of Twizzlers. When the lady in front of us finished paying the cashier gave a a cheerful, "Merry Christmas!" instead of the usual we're-done-with-our-transaction "Have a good day". The lady gave an enthusiastic Merry Christmas back and then followed it with, "And Jesus is the reason for the season! RIGHT???" The cashier looked away and got busy with something but the lady said it over again with even more emphasis and need for validation while we all averted our eyes and fidgeted. It made me think of something that resonated with me a few days ago:

"As a Christian I am uncomfortable with trite phrases like Jesus is the Reason for The Season, and its derivatives, popular within Evangelical Christian culture (the branch of the family tree I identify most strongly with).

Family is my reason for the Christmas season. It's why I cook and gift and want it to snow. And it's why we give to others in our community or around the world, so they can be supported in loving relationship with their families.

Having said that, the Christian call and tradition to remember the birth of Christ at this particular time of year (I don't actually care how accurate the date is) provides a reflective season, a sacred space in our 21st century lives, to tell the ancient story of our faith, again, to our children."
- http://fimby.tougas.net/shes-makin-list-checkin-it-twice-and-talkin-religion#comments

It makes sense to me that Jesus would probably actually be pretty uncomfortable with people insisting that he was the reason for the season. Like he'd be like, "No, no, it's not about me, it's about US."

:(

Is it wrong to want to stop reading the news? Not that I even read the news, but this is what the "trending" sidebar of my FB reads right now:

TRENDING


Robert P. McCulloch: St. Louis prosecutor says he believes some witnesses lied to Ferguson grand jury


Cairns: Mother arrested after 8 children found stabbed to death in Australian home, police say


Upstate New York: Missing 5-year-old boy found dead; teen cousin charged with murder, police say
See More

I just want to bury my head for awhile. But I feel a tremendous amount of guilt when I say that. I mean, those people are LIVING that pain and I'm like, "Ummmm...sorry, I don't even want to HEAR it."

Song for Dead Children

I didn't let myself read anything about the massacre at the children's school in Pakistan today until an hour ago, because, well...because I had crap to do. And that truism that one mother's loss is every mother's loss is real to me, and so I didn't want to know anything yet. But after I finally got the last child asleep I read. One thing I read was this poem:

Song for Dead Children

We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate
who required tribute of hot July flowers—
for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering
remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones
not yet braced for conquering.

The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows,
and little girls continue graceful and wondering.
Flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young
heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth,
their strength not tested, their praise unsung.

Weave grasses for their childhood—who will never see
love or disaster or take sides against decay
balancing the choices of maturity.
Silent and coffined in silence while we pass
loud in defiance of death, the helpless lie.

Muriel Rukeyser

And I cried, and cried. And then I got in the shower and cried some more. Because, this is real. This is the world I can't escape and can't save my children from. A world where mothers who would have died to protect their babies don't even get the chance. They are just left to bury their hearts in the ground and walk home with empty arms. Arms that once held their warm child's laughing face.

I also read Anne Lammot's post today where she wrote:

"...he said that 80% of life was just showing up, and it's the truest thing I know."

and

"So yes, I have hope. It is not based on circumstances. It's based on paying attention."

and

"Emily Dickinson said that hope causes the Good to reveal itself."

I'm about to turn this computer off and go lay down next to the baby I'm raising in this world of pain, and those are really the only things I have to offer her when we wake up together tomorrow. I will show up, and I will offer her hope in the form of paying attention. Hope in the form of feeding her when she's hungry, reading her stories when she asks, and putting her to bed when she's tired. And I'm going to hang Emily Dickenson's words on my fridge to remind me to tell her the reason that I do all those things for her, and the reason that I cry with those who've lost someone who was their Good.  

To love life

"To love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again." 

- Ellen Bass

"We're all angry"

This was so good I read it twice.

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/03/anne_lamott_look_at_the_tea_party_some_of_the_angriest_most_hateful_people_on_earth_and_they%E2%80%99re_backed_by_what_they_think_is_scripture/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow


"...To forgive someone is the hardest work we do. I’ve had to be disciplined about it. I always say I’m so disciplined in my writing because very strict discipline is the only way I’ve found any freedom as an artist. Like meditation or in my spiritual journey, or exercise – hiking … you never want to do any hard work – you just want to watch MSNBC and eat miniature Kit-Kats. Believe me, that’s what I’d prefer to do. Or maybe try to catch up with old issues of the New Yorker.

But in my work, I hold an imaginary pop gun to my head, and I sit down and my butt stays in the chair no matter what.

Not forgiving makes you toxic. And then you really have very little to offer your family or the world or your audience, because you’re faking it.

...All wisdom traditions have at their root three basic ideas: To take care of the poor, to cultivate a sense of presence or union with a power much greater than ourselves, and to soften the heart. In the fullness of those traditions – as opposed to the fundamentalist version of those traditions – you don’t hit back. For me as a Christian, the two main things are you’re supposed to “let go and let God,” and you’re supposed to turn the other cheek. Those two things are like my two worst realms. People are always saying, “Let go and let God …” and I just want to stab them. People say, “We just need to forgive and forget.” As if they had.

...The other night I did a big event, and someone asked what I hope people there left with. And I said, I hope people realize that we’re infinitely more similar, more alike, than we are different — that we’re all angry, no matter how sweet or Buddhist or Christian or tender-hearted we appear. We’re all angry. And we’ve got to deal with it at some point. And dealing with the grief and the anger and the lack of forgiveness is the way home.

A tradition of that is something I’ve been able to pass on to my son. He’s grown up with a mother who’s willing to be contrite, to get to the bottom of things – and to see that sometime it’s me who I’ve been mad at. The tradition of letting your children watch you ask for forgiveness is beautiful."

I don't know how it happened

I don't know how it happened but when I moved to Prescott in August I was assigned a visiting teacher that I immediately liked. She is not perfect and she does not pretend to be. I can let out my true feelings and she nods or swears with me or gives me hugs or asks more questions. We exchange articles and parenting advice. She's still nursing her toddler and we laugh when our potty trained, speaking-in-full-sentences children interrupt our conversations to put their hand down our shirts. Both of our eldests are sensitive. She chose natural births (and a water birth with her last) and nods with a look of understanding when I say that I never ever ever ever want to be pregnant again. She babysits for me frequently and invited me over for pizza, cake, and ice cream on my birthday and we let the kids stay up too late running wild while we talked and talked.

A couple days ago I mentioned to said friend that I needed to go coat shopping because I'm being a crazy border girl and running around freezing my butt off wearing a sweatshirt jacket. Five minutes ago I heard a loud knock on the door and children giggling. When I opened the door I saw a gift bag on my doorstep and the backs of two little boys sprinting for a van yelling to each other, "HURRY! HURRY".

This is the note attached, and this is me crying like a baby in my new warm coat.

Oh my gosh, people are so funny!

http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/865606052/Saturdays-Warrior-returns-with-new-contemporized-40th-anniversary-show.html

Some reviews:

"The whitest musical I have ever seen."
--Brian Llewelyn, Scottsdale Courier

"The only non-high school musical playing in Gilbert this month."
--Sarah Evans, Gilbert Telegraph

"The 13/8 time signature of all the songs a perfect fit for the overall plot."
-- Martin Tinedale, Mexicali Messenger

A Sunday Sermon

from: http://bycommonconsent.com/2014/04/13/sunday-sermon-creation/

Author Lauren Winner writes in her book, Still:

My friend Ruth’s mother once told her, ‘Every ten years you have to remake everything.’ Reshape yourself. Reorient yourself. Remake everything. What struck Ruth about this was not just the insight, but the source: she had imagined that her mother, her steadfast, loving mother, was static, was always the same. She didn’t know that her mother had remade everything seven times, eight times. Sometimes the reshaping is not big, not audible; not a move, a marriage, a child, a heroic change of course. Sometimes it is only here inside, how you make sense of things. Sometimes it is only about who you know yourself to be. [6]

I don’t have any great insights on this rebuilding process. All I know is that it will require patience—with yourself, with others, even with God. Abraham 4:17-18 reads: “And the Gods set them [the lights] in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to cause to divide the light from the darkness. And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed” (emphasis added). Sometimes after we start the process of rebuilding something, we have to be patient and watch and wait for things to play out. Maybe it doesn’t work, and we have to start the process over again.

Lauren Winner’s book is about her journey through an ebb of faith. Toward the end she writes:

From this place now—not in the midst of the marital maelstrom; not in the middle of discovering God’s abstraction, but a little while later—in this clearing, I can begin to see those people and stories and words that held me to something resembling the Christian faith; that hold me still, if sometimes with a loose stitch.

It turns out the Christian story is a good story in which to learn to fail. As the ethicist Samuel Wells has written, some stories feature heroes and some stories feature saints and the difference between them matters: “Stories . . . told with . . . heroes at the centre of them . . . are told to laud the virtues of the heroes—for if the hero failed, all would be lost. By contrast, a saint can fail in a way that the hero can’t, because the failure of the saint reveals the forgiveness and the new possibilities made in God, and the saint is just a small character in a story that’s always fundamentally about God.”

I am not a saint. I am, however, beginning to learn that I am a small character in a story that is always fundamentally about God. (Winner, 193-94)

The Björk song “Unravel” poignantly describes a process of recreating:

While you are away
My heart comes undone

Slowly unravels
In a ball of yarn

The devil collects it
With a grin

Our love
In a ball of yarn

He’ll never return it

So when you come back
We’ll have to make new love

What we rebuild will never be the same as what has been torn down. The materials we have at hand might be different, or we might have to reassemble them in a new way—the thimble we used here may have to fit somewhere else, and we may have lost the hub cap altogether. But we can rebuild. May we have the courage and the patience with ourselves to create of our lives what the Lord would have us build, and may we help others along the way.

—

pg. 48

Grades suck

A comment I liked on an unschooling post:

"That's what we've noticed about minecraft, too -the amount of online learning kids do together without grown ups.

Collaborative learning, instead of instruction.

Is the learning invalid just because it's driven by kids who want to play a game? What I mean is, shouldn't learning like that "count?" Collaborative learning is a life skill, not really a school skill. In some school situations, collaboration is "cheating".

If kids only get graded on what the teacher thinks is important, how much do the teachers miss?

An adult asked one of my kids the other day how his grades were. My son kind of looked at me, at a loss. His "grades" are fine, except nobody grades him. About every four months, we write up something detailing our kids' activities, major accomplishments, and interests.

And sometimes the accomplishment is … personal. Spent six months with the neighbors on scooters and skateboards having an ongoing nerf war… That's phys ed, leadership, construction, persuasion, problem solving, financial management, and first aid. We don't really grade it, just make note of it and talk it over with him.

For other activities, the only grade is 100%. Rosetta Stone doesn't advance until your answer is correct. The piano teacher doesn't pass you until the piece is correct. You don't get the part unless your audition is good. Your robot either works or it does not work, and you fix it. Your basketball team wins or loses. The dog learns the new skill, or the child keeps training and practicing.

I try to validate the art of deliberate practice so my kids see the connection between training and results.

I would worry if they spent a lot of time thinking about "grades". Learning is what matters.

Posted by mh on November 19, 2014 at 9:04 am | permalink | Reply

"What sort of of gospel is only good news for the majority?"

from: http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/gender-binaries

"...But what sort of gospel is only good news for the majority? What sort of gospel leaves people behind just because they are different? 

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not so fragile as to be unpinned by the reality that variations in gender and sexuality exist, nor is it so narrow as to only be good news for people who look and live like Ward and June Cleaver. This glorification of gender binaries has become a dangerous idol in the Christian community, for it conflates cultural norms with Christian morality and elevates an ideal over actual people.  

No doubt some will argue that we cannot build our theologies around “exceptions” like Adrian. When I bring up intersex people in conversations about gender and sexuality, I am typically met with blank stares, shrugged shoulders, and dismissive platitudes about how most people fit neatly into male and female categories and generalities, so we shouldn’t worry about the outliers. 

But if Jesus started with the outliers, why we shouldn’t we? If Jesus started with the poor, the sick, the marginalized, and the minorities then why would we dismiss them as irrelevant to our theology of gender and sexuality? 

I can’t help but think of the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts 8. He was a sexual and ethnic minority, and it was considered “unbiblical” for him to even enter the assembly of God, much less be baptized (Leviticus 21:20; Deuteronomy 23:1).  But when the eunuch learned about the gospel through his reading of Isaiah and the witness of Philip, his response is profound: “Look! There is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

Philip could easily have responded by quoting Bible verses and appealing to tradition.  He could have dismissed the eunuch as an anomaly, not worth the time and effort to fight for his inclusion in this new family of God. But instead, Philip baptized the eunuch in the first body of water the two could find. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in….starting with you and me. 

Now, I’m not suggesting we abandon conversations about the Bible and sexual ethics, nor am I interested in promoting a “genderless society” (as some have bizarrely claimed, somehow supposing that acknowledging the existence of gray requires dismissing the existence of black and white). I am suggesting, however, that Jesus didn’t die on the cross to preserve gender complementarity. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to ensure that little girls wear pink and little boys wear blue. Jesus lived, taught, died, and rose again to start a new family in which Jew and gentile, slave and free, male and female are all part of one holy Body. Certainly there will be those who reject the gospel because of the cost of discipleship, but let it be because of the cost of discipleship, not the cost of false fundamentals, not because they've been required to change something they cannot change. 

There is this tendency within certain sectors of Christianity to assume that if our theology “works” for relatively privileged (often for straight, upper-middle-class, Western men), then it should work well enough for everyone else, and the rest of the world should conform to it. But if our theology doesn’t “work” for the least of these to whom Jesus first brought the gospel and through whom Jesus still presents himself today, then it doesn’t work at all. 

If the gospel’s not good news for Adrian, then it’s not good news."

My friend just posted this on FaceBook.

I wonder when I'll learn to let this lesson in when it comes knocking, as it does every few years, instead of fighting the inevitable:

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” James A. Baldwin

I commented, "Now THAT is some deep ****. Why are we not neighbors again??"

I love the FaceBook. So much.

An uncomfortable time to be a child

I loved this! http://lauragraceweldon.com/2014/10/08/response-to-kids-misbehavior-good-old-days-vs-now/

And from the comment section:

HomeschoolDad says:

October 9, 2014 at 8:04 am

I don’t know Laura….I see a lot of problems today related to parents letting their kids run roughshod over them. I have no comment on how “schools” discipline kids because I don’t think schools should exist in the first place – at least not government schools. At least back in the old days they would send the brats to bed “without dinner”. I have asked many parents (mostly moms) if they could or would consider inflicting the pangs of hunger on their child….and not one yet has answered affirmatively. I received a lot of , “God NO! I would never…”

Laura says:

Kids riding roughshod over parents isn’t the same thing at all. Adults have made kids the focus of their ambition, weirdly over-empowering children while at the same time depriving them of a childhood. So many kids today have very little time for imaginative and active play of their own devising. They have minimal freedom to form multi-age friendships and to exist in a realm apart from adults. They rarely contribute in a purposeful way to the running of the household or family business, let alone other responsibilities meaningful to them. Their lives are over-structured by adults and yet at the same time there are too few firm rules. This is a very uncomfortable time to be a child, as I see it.

What I really mean

This is one for my fridge. I really have (usually in more subtle ways) told my children to grow up and act their age, when what I really mean is, "I'm overwhelmed and not taking care of myself."

This made me cry

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/11/05/10-things-i-wish-everyone-knew-about-believing-in-god/34916

This was lovely

"Together makes us braver.

I am surrounded by interesting and dangerous women. Sometimes this is wonderful, other times it’s exhausting, it is always challenging. Because they push me. They push me to think harder, to be more honest, to read more widely, to listen more broadly, to get my hands dirty, to stop compartmentalizing my life, to live more seamlessly. They make me examine my choices and my priorities. They question me, they pray for me. When I grow weary, they hold my arms up and growl “don’t you dare sit down.” These women have stretched my opinions, my theology, my mind, and my heart until I hardly know my own shape anymore. The funny thing is that they do this just by getting on with it – no sermons, no programs, no big manifestos, just a company of women being brave in ordinary ways, each so different from the other.

They are being brave with their own lives and so, because I am alongside of them, I am learning to be brave, too.

....I believe that bravery is born in the quiet and ordinary moments long before it’s seen by anyone else. Sometimes it’s as simple and devastating as the moments no one else will ever see – the moments of daring to be honest with our own self, of laying down our excuses or justifications or disguises, of asking ourselves what we really want, of forgiveness, of honesty, of choosing the hard daily work of restoration, of staying resolutely alive when every one else is just numbing themselves against life. These are why our friends matter so deeply: they are witness to the sacred secrets. Not all secrets are terrifying things, some of them are beautiful and transformative."

http://sarahbessey.com/being-brave-together/…

"How are you?"

from: http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-disease-of-being-busy/7023

"In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is yourhaal?

What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask, “How are you?” that is really what I want to know.

I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.

Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.

I teach at a university where many students pride themselves on the “study hard, party hard” lifestyle. This might be a reflection of many of our lifestyles and our busy-ness — that even our means of relaxation is itself a reflection of that same world of overstimulation. Our relaxation often takes the form of action-filled (yetmindless) films, or violent and face-paced sports.

I don’t have any magical solutions. All I know is that we are losing the ability to live a truly human life.

We need a different relationship to work, to technology. We know what we want: a meaningful life, a sense of community, a balanced existence. It’s not just about “leaning in” or faster iPhones. We want to be truly human.

W. B. Yeats once wrote:

“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.”

How exactly are we supposed to examine the dark corners of our soul when we are so busy? How are we supposed to live the examined life?

I am always a prisoner of hope, but I wonder if we are willing to have the structural conversation necessary about how to do that, how to live like that. Somehow we need a different model of organizing our lives, our societies, our families, our communities.

I want my kids to be dirty, messy, even bored — learning to become human. I want us to have a kind of existence where we can pause, look each other in the eye, touch one another, and inquire together: Here is how my heart is doing? I am taking the time to reflect on my own existence; I am in touch enough with my own heart and soul to know how I fare, and I know how to express the state of my heart.

How is the state of your heart today?

Let us insist on a type of human-to-human connection where when one of us responds by saying, “I am just so busy,” we can follow up by saying, “I know, love. We all are. But I want to know how your heart is doing.”

Happy Sabbath to me

Sophia on our way out of church: "I like church way better than school, school is too long. Church is WAY better! I used to pretend that my primary was my school, but now I go to both and I like church WAY better. It's just as wonderful as school but not as LOOOOONG."

Also, when we got home she had me go lay in my bed and put the covers over my head while she did something her teacher, "asked everyone in the class to do before next Sunday". When I came back I found little foam hearts on top of different little chores/clean ups she had done around the house. One of them was she had organized the toys in the toy chest, "See how nicely they are laying in there now, Mommy? SO FLAT, isn't it wonderful??"

And then we went on a walk around our neighborhood and the girls played in the piles of beautiful fall leaves that are decorating our streets right now. We gathered a whole bunch of all the different kinds and brought them home and Sophia taped them up all over our house as art. I would have taken a photo if my cell phone weren't lost. But this is what our neighborhood looks like right now.

And then for Sunday dinner I made chicken nuggets and fruit cups of red grapefruit (they had SECONDS) for the kids, and I ate a frozen dinner of saag paneer which was as perfect a dinner as I think I could have asked for. I am now motivated to find a way to buy these in bulk. AND, Sophia ate some with me, I was so shocked and she was just giggling and giggling at my sincerely (and maybe dramatic) disbelief after every bite she would take.

And now the kids are laughing like crazy while they jump on my bed and dress up in my clothes.

I read this the other day:

"We have art in order not to die of the truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche

In my world today it would be,

"We have art and children in order not to die of the truth." 

"Just say no" lied

Recovery of brain dopamine transporters in methamphetamine (METH) abuser after protracted abstinence. With treatment that keeps abusers off METH, drug-altered brains can recover at least some of their former functioning, as these images illustrate. Using positron emission tomography, we can measure the level of dopamine transporters (DAT) in the striatal region of the brain as an indicator of dopamine system function. The METH abuser (center) shows greatly reduced levels of DAT (yellow and green), which return to nearly normal following prolonged abstinence (red and yellow). Source: Volkow, N.D., et al. 2001.Journal of Neuroscience 21:9414–18. 

Recovery is possible

It is not enough to “just say no”—as the 1980s slogan suggested. Instead, you can protect (and heal) yourself from addiction by saying “yes” to other things. Cultivate diverse interests that provide meaning to your life. Understand that your problems usually are transient, and perhaps most importantly, acknowledge that life is not always supposed to be pleasurable."

- http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain.htm

Sometimes addiction sounds so tempting. Creating a life around just pleasure? Not having to keep putting one foot in front of the other through the pain when there's only one healthy way through it, and word on the street is that it doesn't include numbing?

The other day at the grocery store I stood in front of these carts and imagined feeling better, just like that.

I stood there and texted this photo to a good friend who drinks, along with the caption, "You know how I love me a good deal!!!"

And then I told her that I was done with feeling and wanted to take up drinking instead. I asked her to tell me in one sentence why she drinks. She wrote back, "Because it makes me feel like a grown up." And then awhile later this text came, "My suggestion: Just don't go there at all. It's really not all it's cracked up to be."

To numb, or not to numb? Is it really a choice that is so black and white? Can't I choose to numb, just a little, and still find health? Honestly, it is still a question that eats at me. But as I walked around that store and put bread and eggs and milk and silly strawberry toothpaste into my cart I repeated over and over in my head,

Fuck you, Addiction. I choose my kids.
Fuck you, Addiction. I choose my kids.

Weight bearing questions

This one, oh this one (obviously):

http://bycommonconsent.com/2014/10/21/life-withers-on-testimony

And I liked this next one, but the questions posed by Isaac in this part of his comment below resonated better for me:

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2014/10/the-body-of-christ/

Isaac Hess on October 16, 2014 at 8:29 pm

I prefer the question, “Is this God’s church? Is this God’s work?” I consider that question load-bearing, but an affirmative answer to that question carries far fewer assumptions than the simpler, “Is the church true?”

What does it mean for a church, a massive institution and bureaucracy, to be _true_? Not much. But believe that this is “God’s church” still allows a fair amount of error, sin, and imperfection that are apparent, along with the beauty, grace, and truth which are also apparent.

Most therapists suck

Seriously. But somehow I found one that doesn't. I'm still a little in awe of how the therapist I have now fell into my lap so easily. The first recommendation I got and she is extraordinary. She is experienced and thoughtful and nonjudgmental and honest and she cuts through the mess so easily to the heart of the questions. And, she even cried with me one time. That is probably what I need most in a therapist. Someone who cares. If I can find competency and caring, those are my top two wish lists and she kicks the crap out of those two. Barbara Rye Ryan, if anyone in Prescott is looking for someone. But anyway, back to my reason for posting, I also think most of the marriage advice articles I come across are pretty sucky too, but when Penelope Trunk links to a therapist's blog I always click, and this guy didn't disappoint.

Reason number two was the one that Penelope Trunk quoted in her blog post:

The nine most overlooked threats to a marriage

"2. Marriage doesn't take away our loneliness: To be alive is to be lonely. It’s the human condition. Marriage doesn’t change the human condition. It can’t make us completely unlonely. And when it doesn’t, we blame our partner for doing something wrong, or we go searching for companionship elsewhere. Marriage is intended to be a place where two humans share the experience of loneliness and, in the sharing, create moments in which the loneliness dissipates. For a little while."

And this one:
http://drkellyflanagan.com/2013/05/01/the-most-important-thing-to-look-for-in-a-life-partner/

Wisdom from a stranger

I came across this picture on my family blog while searching for a quote I posted years ago. Verity is two years and and five months old right now. So this photo is probably almost exactly two years old. It feel like an eternity. Like I'm looking back on a stranger.

This is what I wrote with the photograph two years ago. Stranger or not, looks like I still believe it.


To Sophia (and everyone else I love)

“The truth is that the more intimately you know someone, the more clearly you'll see their flaws. That's just the way it is. This is why marriages fail, why children are abandoned, why friendships don't last. You might think you love someone until you see the way they act when they're out of money or under pressure or hungry, for goodness' sake. Love is something different. Love is choosing to serve someone and be with someone in spite of their filthy heart. Love is patient and kind, love is deliberate. Love is hard. Love is pain and sacrifice, it's seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.” 
― Unknown

Who're we kidding, I'm never jumping ship physically. But this quote is why I am so intent to stop losing it with Sophia (and everyone else in different ways, of course). I am "jumping ship" with my heart whenever I mistreat her. And I want to be honest about that with her. When I try to process difficult moments with Sophia I find myself saying these kinds of things after hurting her: 

- I will always always always say I'm sorry. I will always always always forgive you when you've hurt me. 

- I will always always always find a way to soften my heart and start treating you right again. 

Davey and I have talked often (actually mostly before we even had kids and had time for philosophizing about these kinds of things) about saying, "I always love you, even when I'm mad at you." to our kids. What I've come to for me and how I want to talk to the girls about it is this. 

There are two kinds of love. One is mostly biological. You are my baby and because of that fact alone I would die for you anytime in a heart beat. Even if I'm super super super mad at you at the moment. This kind of love isn't hard for me, it is just there. All the time. It never leaves me. I'm like a mother bear and it is a part of my instinct that I could never get away from. I will ALWAYS love and protect you from outside harm at whatever cost. 

The other kind of love is the kind I have to choose. When I lose my temper or yell at you or feel mean feelings toward you, these are examples of times when I'm not being loving. These are times when I treat you poorly and when I would not expect that you'd feel love from me. Because I would be feeling resentment, frustration and animosity toward you. I would assume you'd be feeling my resentment, frustration or animosity, not love. But what I can promise about this is I will never ever ever let those feelings stay. I will always always always find a way to soften my heart and choose to let that love enter my heart again and I will always ask your forgiveness. I will always start feeling love again. 

Basically, I want to be honest that I am not always loving, but I will never leave you. I will never stop showing up. I will never abandon you, I will always repent and offer you the love that was missing during my failure. 

Okay so that was really long and rambly, but now it's on paper and that is something! 

Also, here are what I've heard Davey say over the years in my memory quote that is not a quote, haha:

"If someone tells me they love me while they're treating me like [crap], then they can keep that "love".  If the animals can have that kind of love then it's not what's going to save us. The kind of love that means something is the kind we have to choose. The kind we lose and then get back again, over and over, for our whole lives and in the greatest and never ending work of mankind."

Sweet Songbird

I've probably listened to this song a hundred times.

Sweet songbird singing in the morning hour

Waking me up to tell me how
Another day passes along
I love that simple song that reminds me
I'm getting closer to you

And every time thoughts tumble down
My mind is unwound
So much to say
Maybe on another day
When these words will come out right

A lesson in love is the hardest thing
You and I will ever learn
Because our hearts are so shy
And I think of you everyday
And in the night I pray
That you're safe from harm

We're walking on a thin string
But I know the Lords got the whole thing in his hands
We're strangers in this land
But together could make our way home
Make our way home


The fire passed me by
The earthquakes shaking the mountain
And I let em' go
When love had left me dry
Your quiet voice broke through
To water my soul now

Oh sweet thing, she's coming round my way
Oh sweet love, what else can I say
Today