By: JANA GREENE

I told God I would like this week to be something of a “spiritual retreat.” MY husband whisked me away to a beautiful place on the river this week.
The Airbnb beautiful, the views spectacular, and my gastroperesis flare waiting in the wings, aiming to ruin it all – emboldened by a bad fall.
Why must my own body betray me, in such a multitude of ways?
How is barfing constantly “spiritual.”
How is tumbling down a flight of hard stairs “spiritual.”
Missing out on the swimming. The canoeing, even the fishing.
People have their vacations affected by illness all the time. But I had such high hopes.
But sitting out on the porch on our last full day of vacay, maybe I was looking from the wrong perspective.
It’s very spiritual for me to be in nature. It’s my church. If I’m really depressed, sometimes I will drive to a park, sit quietly, and realize that “God wuz here.” Consider the Lillies, right? Well…the trees.
Gazing up at their majesty, considering the network of Mycelium (a fungus that works with the root systems,) that connects them all. What a miracle.
We also have mitochondria and method of breathing, and I can’t help – giving the current state of our civilization- that nature is actually more evolved than we seem to be.
And then, I have been watching water.
Yes you can just sit and watch water for hours. Go ahead, nobody will try to stop you.
My beloved water – environment I prefer to dry land – changing every single day. Today it’s gray and brooding. Yesterday, the sun glinted off the surface like a billion diamonds. The day before, choppy for no good reason.
Even when it’s smooth as a lake, the water is moving, always. And the fish here are acrobats, jumping out of the water, sometimes several times. Chasing food? Or jumping for joy? Who’s to say?
Birdwatching is such a geriatric thing, but I think I know why. It’s hard to see the birds, if you are raising kids or climbing the corporate ladder, or too damn depressed to care.
So okay, wrinkles, cellulite, and presbyopia… the list of crappy aging symptoms. I get it.
BUT HAVE YOU SEEN THE BIRDS!!?
This week, starlings have entertained us for literal hours. They go about their singing, unconcerned about much. But I do think they have little starling dramas, of course they do. Chasing each other through the salty air. Drama and trauma both, It is both the blessing and curse of being sentient.
So maybe this has been a spiritual retreat in spite of my health situation. Just like we can’t put God in a box, neither can we put spirituality in a box. I had a script for the Almighty to follow, this weekend.
And he went rouge on me, which he is apt to do. And as I sit out on the porch, finding God through the elements (and stilling my chaotic mind enough to appreciate it.)I smile.
I am still sick, still feel like I was hit by a bus.
But guess what?
The sun came up again today, despite the state of the nation, my pain, and my plans. The NERVE. But here it is, among the trees, who need it to make oxygen for us, and how often do we stop to consider that? So my “spiritual retreat” was less yoga, meditation, and epiphany; more puking, falling, and insomnia.
But I still got the message.
God is everywhere, all the time. But if you need to find him STAT, nature will be the venue.
Anyway, just some random thoughts this morning. And a picture of the sun to remind you that no matter what, it’s going to come up. No matter what, God will make himself available to you.
Consider the starlings, friends.
Consider the planets, sun, and stars.
Consider the jumping fish, the Mycelium, the water.
And if you’re sad or mad (or glad,) consider taking an hour out of every week to steep yourself in nature, like a healing cup of tea.
Thanks for joining me on my retreat.
Like Mycelium, we are all connected, too.
God IZ here, still.
Thank you.

By: JANA GREENE

Oddly enough, I have had the Donner Party on my mind today. A little backstory: I tend to go down rabbit holes about the most obscure things, and that just happens to be one of my recent niche interests.

I woke up today – sick again – and felt the crush of hopelessness, and the first words I thought of were “forlorn hope” – which is what those survivors of the expedition called themselves. They had run out of hope, in their cold and starving.

Now “forlorn hope” is a people, not just a state of mind. In my suburban life cannot relate to the cold and the starving. But I can completely relate to being forlorn. I actually cracked open a dictionary to read the synonyms.

Comfortless, woebegone, helpless, pitiable.

Comfortless.

I need to start writing more. Not because anyone necessarily reads my work, but I have to give my anxieties a place to call home other than my body. It helps to write. It starves the woe, to be honest.

It has been a very difficult year so far, health-wise. If you’re new here, I am the owner of a plethora of ailments: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, knee surgery, skin cancer surgery, among others. And add bronchitis, which I battled all damn winter long. And it’s back, the bronchitis.

So, I woke up coughing my lungs out, feeling forlornly hopeless, and by the time I left the doctor’s office, I was in tears. It’s all too much, and I don’t have the strength to fight anymore. I’m so tired. And were it not for the hopelessness about my “health,” there are plenty of other things to feel forlorn about.

We are not in a hopeless state of mind. We are becoming hopelessness. I am becoming hopelessness, when I want so badly to give up.

The world is short on hope right now.

Can’t you feel the forlornity? The sadness? I feel it in my bones, where my marrow is trying its level best to keep the malignancy from spreading.

I feel it in my heart, the how will we ever recover? I feel the despair and I know well the pain, it is my constant companion.

But we cannot be comfortless, if we comfort each other.

So let us – even in our forlorn hope – comfort one another.

Blessed be.

By: JANA GREENE

Facing denial is the first step in learning to let go, I think.

It is the antidote to collecting fears, the harmful beliefs of our foremothers, and illusionary truths and biases, a looming pachyderm portent we are afraid to acknowledge. It takes up the whole “living room” – our inner thought world, our belief systems, and even our psyches. Until we deal with it, it makes itself at home, and we enable it, all day long.

Once we give a nod to what we have been denying (and train that damn elephant, instead of letting it take up so much headspace) we can often learn to let go of…

Pretending our habits and hangups are not destructive

The alcoholic propensity for denial, one that certainly takes up the whole room. Many years ago in active addiction, I had to recognize my elephantine blindless. To reclaim my life, I sat in dank church basements, drinking bad coffee with others who seemed to understand me, until I could admit to others there wer monumental issues in my life keeping me sick.

As we learn to let go, we can release….

The weight of our own unrealistic expectations.

Okay, I’m really good at this one. Set the bar so high, I can’t even get a leg over, and then be disappointed in myself that I’m not “good enough” when I fall off the bar altogether and land on my face. Taaa-DAAA!

Believing the negative things others say about us.

This is especially hard to let go of, because I have convinced myself over a lifetime of anxiety that “they” must be “right.” But nobody gets to say what’s right about me, but me. Isn’t that liberating? You can completely ignore the BS people spread about you.

Penchant for people pleasing.

If I know you, I want to make you happy, at the expense of my own happiness, if need be. And frankly, that’s whack. I am not Chick-fil-A. It is not always “my pleasure” to put everyone else’s needs before my own.

That shitty little voice in our heads that convince us we are not enough.

It has played in a loop in my head for neigh on 57 years now. Whatever I can accomplish with my chronic illness each day is my best. Because giving my best is enough, always. It has to be.

Going beyond belief in angry God.

This shift was a game-changer for me. It reframes the entire gospel, and it is a balm to my soul. Not to mention the God of the Old Testament was very little like Jesus. Very little like Love. And my God is quite literally LOVE itself.

Wondering if it’s okay to have doubts.

Yes, it’s okay, of COURSE it’s okay. It’s faith-building, even.

Attempting to fix other people’s problems.

This is a toughie. But I’m learning. I am also learning to say, “what will be, will be,” and actually believe that things will work out just as they should, although I do this in fits and starts.

The soul-sucking monkey on our backs.

Our addictions hijack our focused intention, dull our shine, deplete our energy, and become a barrier to hearing from God within you.

…And the elephant in the living room.

A “Keeping up with the Joneses” mentality.

The Joneses have their own monkeys and elephants. Stay in your ring; they have their own crazy circus.

The belief that there is a separateness between you and God.

This one is a humdinger and will make all the other items easier to let go of. You are not disconnected to God, and frankly, you can’t do anything to become separate from him.

The belief that you’re all alone and we are separate from each other.

We are all connected. Every single one of us. And connected to our Source, too.

I don’t know what your elephant looks like – if its substance use disorder, or a crippling family secret, or abuse you’ve never healed from, or depression. Whatever you are giving a wide berth to in your life cannot be trained and managed in a healthy way until it’s processed. To let go of it, you have to first see it. And when you see it, you can heal from it.

…And that elephant?

That thing you need to address but keep stepping over, walking around, or ignoring altogether? Ask it’s name. Get to know it. And then politely show it the door.

By: JANA GREENE

Is it just me, or does it feel like a giant spiritual Band-Aid is being ripped off in the slowest way possible on a super hairy part of your body? This mess, I mean.

So I interrupt this crawling, spiritual Band-Aid removal to remind you of some things I have to remind myself of daily.

There are still sunrises – ones that spill orange and yellow and pink into the sky. Grounding thought: I am witnessing proof that God still creates beauty and purpose in a broken world.

There are still friendships, although we might have lost a few through this debacle. Grounding though? We are finding our kindred ones, those who are also worried but still keep the faith.

There are long naps – respites for our rest, even as the cold and unknown have not settled yet. Grounding thought: Sleep gives me a break from reality, while giving my body rest.

There is still laughter – endless reels and jokes and hilarious entertainment. You cannot be despondent while laughing. For as long as the laughter lasts, we get a break from the anxiety.

There is chocolate to place on your tongue and taste the melty goodness, a brief respite from worry. There are books to read, which literally takes us away from this existence that tests us, and music to listen to to literally rewire our brains.

And we still have prayer, even if (as my favorite author Anne Lamott writes) our prayer is simply “Help! Help! Help! and Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

And that is the prayer of my winter of discontent. Perhaps you are feeling it too?

Help, help, help.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

It’s the little things, Dear Reader.

Sometimes those are the most fervent and genuine prayers that exist. And they are enough to remind you that you are tethered to the Most Holy, divine in nature, and built to get through this.

There is always a grounding thought to reel yourself back in, even if you have to do it a thousand times a day.

I’ll keep going if you will.

Blessed be.

By: JANA GREENE

My husband and I like to spend a week in the mountains of North Carolina each year around our anniversary. We have been coming to the same little cabin for our whole marriage, which turns 18 next week. Eighteen years of marriage now, which I guess makes our relationship “grown.” It certainly did come with growing pains.

The little town where we visit is just a typical hamlet in the South – with a general store that still sells pickled beets canned by the owner’s wife, and an adorable “downtown” trying very hard to become trendy and bougie, lest it fall into disrepair. Candle shops line the streets, a few breweries, even a haberdashery, where you can buy an expensive hat, should you have the occasion to wear one around here.

Anybody else would get bored. There’s kind of nothing to “do” here. No good restaurants, even. We keep coming back because throughout nearly 20 years of marriage that had survived blending a family of three teen girls, job changes, kid drama, becoming grandparents, and scary diagnosises, this is where we “right” ourselves. We grew up here, as a couple.

It’s the same.

It’s where we reset.

The allure here is nature – often to sit out on the back porch and listen to the creek, many steps down the side of the hill. To watch the daily festoonery of fall leaves as they turn. We talk. We listen to music. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. This town is the same every year, pandemics and elections notwithstanding.

It occurs to me as we drove to breakfast this morning, it is easy to “right yourself” in this small town. If I’m not paying attention, I could lose my way. But look – there is the tractor supply store. And ahead is the antique store, it’s offerings exactly the same as a decade ago. There’s a trailhead. There’s a coffee shop. There is the Walmart. Same as it ever was. “Same” steers us to safety.

But the world that has swirled over the course of 18 years is no longer the same place, and I am finding it difficult to right myself in it. There are not enough falling leaves and pickled beets to mitigate the loss of democracy.

Reminiscent of when we were children and we’d fall asleep on the sofa, we would sometimes wake up in a different room, someone having moved us in our sleep, and for a split second, we experience the “WHERE AM I?” panic. We open our eyes and look for things to right ourselves. Landmarks.

Oh, that’s my bedside table, we might think. I’m home. I’m safe. I’m okay.

But for the first time in history, We the People are not able to right ourselves. Our landmarks have been demolished – the checks and balances that were to keep absolute power from corrupting absolutely – gone. The benevolence of a government, scrapped. I feel like I fell asleep in my nice, safe house, and woke up in The Upside Down.

And jarred out of sleep, nothing looks familiar here, in the swirling world we find ourselves in.

“”WHERE AM I” I panic. Yet no stabilizing force comes to assure me. This is the “new normal” now. This is what happens when We the People prop up dictators, when they cut off their noses to spite the face of liberty, and so down we all go. I’m having a hard time accepting that half the country voted for what will become unprecedented suffering of what Jesus called “the least of these.” And they did it in the name of god. And Jesus wept.

Nobody is coming to our rescue – we were the ones who could have changed this trajectory. “Same” is supposed to steer us to safety, only the wheels are of entirely and Jesus ain’t at the wheel. There is a heaviness to this “reset,” I’m afraid. And I guess that’s why we are not to trust in the things we can see, because perhaps not even the things we can see are safe.

Perhaps hope is the safety. Perhaps we don’t lose our way, so long as we can keep that spark alive. We must lean into each other without leaning on our own understanding. Until we can orient ourselves in this changing world again. Let’s try hard to persevere, lest we all fall into disrepair of Spirit.

Perhaps in this land where nothing seems familiar, this is our reset. We are one another’s “familiar.”

Oh, there’s my friend. I’m safe. I’m okay.

Amen.