Recovery + Laughter + Spirituality + Relationships + Plant Medicine + Chronic Illness and Pain
Author: Jana Greene
I'm Jana and I write about the things that give me joy, help me cope, set me straight, and light my path. Recovery, relationships, spirituality, plant medicine, and assorted struggles and passions.
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.
“Behold, I make all things new!” was the message on the sign gracing yet another Methodist church in the countryside. Twenty-twenty six has been the longest year ever, crammed into 18 days of mayhem. I have been sick in one capacity or another since November, and I’m fried already.
It’s hard to “behold” when you are in survival mode.
But I happen to be married to my own best advocate and dearest friend, and so he decided we should have a weekend getaway, just the two of us. We chose an old historic town on the coast, just a couple of hours from home. Never mind that we already live on the coast. This is a different vantage point. Different sights to see. Different restaurants.
I have been craving the happenstance of something new but was absolutely certain – as my depression kept insisting – the only things new have been ushered in by evil. The only “new” things happening have been sickness and anxiety and being a witness to treasonous leaders.
Pffff, God. Making all things new. It has been the same old same old for a year solid now. One chapter of Revelations per day, if Revelations had 365 verses, and a fat, orange antichrist.
But then we passed another church, identical to the past dozen we have driven by. “I make ALL things NEW!” it read, with offensive positivity. I feel like God hasn’t spoken to me in a minute, at least not what I have “felt.” Feelings, as I learned in AA, are not facts. But they sure are noisy and convincing.
By the time we passed the third church, I could feel the Holy Spirit whisper, Hey kiddo. Are you getting this? I am telling you that the old ways will pass away, and I am doing a brand new, unexpected thing! Just the easiest and least creative message to announce in black, block letters on a sign in front of a church on a new year? Or a message from the Universe to me? It felt personal.
I wanted to remind God that hey, look around you. This place is a shitshow. But it’s a shitshow you so loved. Why? Why does he so love it? I have been so enmeshed in the horrors. One time, I reminded one of my daughters that we are ALL God’s children. And her reply, without missing a beat, was “Yeah. We are all God’s children. And he has left us all in a hot car.”
If ever it has felt like we were left in a hot car, it is now. And so, in our suffering, we can only assume he has forgotten about us. That he stopped at a bar for a drink and forgot about our existence. The evidence is everywhere, that evil is prospering and he hasn’t even bothered to tip the tables, even though the moneychangers have taken over the temple.
What if it’s true, though?
What if it’s truth that God always makes things new? What if we cannot see the kismet beyond the same shit, different day? I had plenty of time to think about it, since I’d promised my therapist that I’d try to stay off social media for the whole weekend. And I did try, and mostly succeeded, and when I did peek in on my page, I avoided political posts like the plague. Didn’t even entertain the idea of checking on the news. It took a change of scenery and three very convincing small-town church signs to remind me.
NEWs. I have been plastered to the television news all year. But God has NEW news. Good news. At the end of the day, we get to choose what we believe. The Universe is a gentleman that way. We get to – we have to – come to our own conclusions. This little getaway – with new sights to see and new experiences – has reminded me that it is not, in fact, over. But it is finished, the end of the story has already been written. And I get to believe there are better things ahead than what lies behind. It is a choice to behold.
Behold, I am making all things new.
Different sights. Different feasts. Different hope.
I am making peace where now there are only the horrors.
I am making a way that you cannot even conceive of.
Evil may appear to be prospering, but where is your faith, little one?
Life on this planet has been so obscenely awful lately, that I thought I’d post something a little lighter. Okay, much lighter! And yes, I DO feel this passionately about jeggings.
ODE TO JEGGINGS
Jeggings, I’m so grateful That someone saw fit to create you – Love child of jeans and sweatpants Oh how I appreciate you! Thanks for your stretchy waistband So I don’t have to suck It in, Thank you for the mad skills you have Of making me look thin. You’re available at Walmart For just eleven dollars, And with you in every color, I can feel like quite the baller. I can wear you as pajamas, I can wear you as yoga pants, And if I were so inclined, I could wear you to break dance. You don’t smush my muffin top Like jeans are apt to do, But rather gently hug it, (so damn merciful of you.) Thanks for being comfy, And having pockets in the rear, And for being so soft and warm, You’re my favorite pants to wear.
In exactly 17 days, I will celebrate that it has been 25 years since my last drink.
Twenty-five years since I lay on my bathroom floor, begging God for help me quit drinking. Just as I had innumerous times before January 3rd, 2001. It was certainly not the first time. Or the fiftieth.
But because alcoholism is cunning and baffling, I couldn’t get sobriety to “stick.” If you knew me then, you probably had no idea. Nobody knew how much I was drinking. Active alcoholism requires mad distraction skills, a Masters in deflecting, a passel of excuses, and a side of lies, in order to keep the scam going.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I am Room Mother in my daughter’s 2nd grade classroom.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I don’t drink until the late afternoon.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I’m a regular church-goer.
But it was a scam; one I perpetuated on myself. I scammed myself into thinking I could drink “normally,” that I was okay so long as nobody knew my secret. I had at least a bottle of chardonnay a night, all by myself. But GOD, wouldn’t YOU? Kids are fighting, marriage is failing, I am constantly sick. The government is corrupt. The stars aligned in an unfavorable configuration. Tuesday. Any excuse to justify it.
See, that kept me from getting well for a long time. The rationalization that life was just too intense to raw-dog sober. The mental gymnastics of raising kids without my “reward” – Mommy’s “glass” of wine. The prospect of never (NEVER??!) having another drink. Not at my kids’ weddings? N E V E R?
I feel everything. I am a Deep Feeler. Feelings never stop coming. As Cynthia Plath famously remarked, “Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely.” It has always been that way, even in childhood. Maybe especially in childhood.
So, you can imagine my delight at finding out that the antidote to my Deep Feeling came conveniently in a Bartles & Jaymes bottle. There was little trauma that Zima couldn’t smooth over. Boxed wine was the Holy of Holies. You can drink and drink, and nobody sees the level of wine disappearing. You could even take the foil bag out when the box got low, and drink out of it like a dang Capri Sun.
My new medicine came in LOADS of iterations – sweet, savory, celebratory! Every flavor profile. Drinking is sophisticated. You can’t have a toast without alcohol, or take real communion, or ring in the new year. How convenient that my drug of choice was associated with merriment and milestones. Society doesn’t care if you drink to excess. But it would have a fascination with people NOT drinking. Why aren’t you drinking?
I have written my entire story before, but I think only on my prior blog, and I might share it here again. It’s long and intense, but no less dark than my life before I got sober. By the time I was willing to work hard enough for it to “stick,” I was depleted. Turning yellow. I was not the mother my beautiful daughters really deserved. On the surface, maybe, but not in reality.
The heartache, desperation, loneliness, shame? I had it in spades back then. I had become careless, obsessed, and resentful of the drug that had been my salvation. I was poisoning myself. Alcohol got between me and my kids, me and my God.
That was 25 years ago, and that BLOWS. MY. MIND. I can remember sitting in the Rooms, listening to “Oldtimers” talk about their sober time, and thinking, that will never be me. I am not made of stuff that strong. But I stayed and no matter what – I did not pick up a drink. NO MATTER WHAT. I worked the steps, started taking self-care, and talking to God in earnest. I felt ALL THE FEELS and let them land where they wanted.
I imagined Jesus crouched down with me in that bathroom on the sickest night of my life, and that was my proof that I wasn’t in it alone. I can’t scientifically prove to you that he was sitting with me in my pain, but I can spiritually prove it. The proof is my recovery – my janky, imperfect, solid, triumphant, well-worn recovery.
A lot of things came to an end when I quit drinking. Dysfunctional and toxic relationships, chiefly. I could keenly feel the losses, I wish I could have had hope for the gains. Because when I lost my relationship with drinking, I gained a whole entire new life.
I had to love myself and believe I was worth loving at all. But slowly, I regained my self-respect. Any dumbass mistakes I made fell squarely on me, not my “drinking.” And when I am the origin of my own chaos, I can then fix it. The responsibility is mine.
Don’t get it twisted – alcohol is still poison to me. I will have 25 years of recovery, but I could lose it all tomorrow, easy as pie. I respect the addiction. It is still – always – cunning and baffling. I will never “arrive.” Alcoholism has no remission. But so long as I practice what has worked for me this long, I shall hold the monster at bay. One day at a time.
And what transpired is a beautiful, full, rich life. It’s not a perfect life, mind you. But it’s mine, wholly mine. My efforts – along with God’s grace – enable it. My efforts. The thing that I was sure would be the end of me, turned out to be the beginning of me. The thing that was going to ruin all the fun in my life actually made me more fun. The thing that signaled an old way of being coming to end, became my salvation. And I am so flipping grateful.
I haven’t written much lately, but today I’m sharing my heart. I hope your heart receives it in full. I hope you cannot relate to my experiences at all – that you grew up safe and protected.
Many of us did not.
Back when I was speaking at recovery meetings, I would sometimes give my testimony to large groups of people. How did I come to be comfortable sharing my most devastating experiences? That’s a much longer blog post. One thing, more than any other, became anathema – the droves of women who would line up to speak with me in order to tell me one thing: ME TOO.
When I say droves, I mean a dozen or more at a time. Women abused and exploited as children and teens. Some had been trafficked. My heart broke for them all.
They came to thank me for being transparent, but also to tell me their own stories. And as I listened, you would think the abuse had happened the day before. I could sense the raw and gaping wounds that still felt fresh, a chasm full of tears of grief.
My own experiences are depressingly common. The family member in a position of power, who wielded his strength over me. The elderly man in our townhouse complex that offered to teach me piano at his house when I was in second grade. The father of a neighbor boy I would play with in kindergarten. The grooming as a young teen in church youth group. In church youth group.
Do you know what it does to a girl, to be objectified as a child? To be told to keep secrets? To see men as aggressors so early in life? To feel helpless, with no safe place to be? I have had over ten years of therapy to help me rise to speak the truth. But it still hurts, all these years later.
Friends, when I tell you this is endemic, it is everywhere.
We are the victims who survived assault at the hands of imposing men, who used their strength against little girls. But we are not going to do the one thing every deviant, abusive man asked of us: Don’t tell.
But we aren’t just walking wounded, no sir. We are TELLING. We are telling, because it’s a salve for our wounds. Because our tears do not go to waste. Because far too many children have been victims for time immemorial.
We have risen from the ashes in order to reclaim our lives, and we are no longer afraid of the flames. In spite of your hijacking our innocence, they didn’t get the last word.
We grew up to be kind, resilient, and bold. We grew up with shattered trust, our little bodies abused, our little minds corrupted. But we are made of the toughtest stuff, and we are saying ENOUGH.
The chickens have come home to roost now. They always do. And I wish I could go back in time and hold Little Me, when she was so terrified. Me, before she deduced that she was worthless.
Me too, friends.
We are witnessing a renaissance right now – what has been done in the dark is coming to light. Not just on the geo-political stage, but in homes and schools and churches all across the nation.
We have alchemized our trauma into strength. And we have no intention of being quiet.
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.”
Boy, it’s been a whole minute since I’ve written one word. But this Rapture thing today has got me reminiscing. About a time I sat in my pastor’s office at 15 years old with two pieces of paper in hand – one with a page full of questions to ask about predestination. The other? HOW DO I PREPARE FOR THE RAPTURE?
And before you ask if I’m making light of the Rapture with blasphemy, let me assure you, I made NO light of it for almost my whole life. I took that stuff seriously.
Have you ever seen the movie “Mermaids,” with Cher, Winona Ryder, and Christina Ricci? When it came out in 1990, I was 21 and the family joke was still that I was still the Charlotte Flax of the family.
Virginal, unnecessarily pious, scared out of my MOTHER EFFING mind of a God I believed was the Old Testament OG, willing to save an incestuous family with a drunk at the helm in an Ark, while thousands of “less holy” human beings are drowned like river rats in the rising tides of doom.
But I digress.
What teenager is wringing her hands about such lofty theological worries? One with terrible anxiety and a crushing need to please people. And to please God, of course.
“That’s a big subject for one so young,” I remember he said. And the next half hour he danced around it, when all I wanted him to say was that I was on Santa-God’s “Nice List,” and clear of the “Naughty” one. No such luck. If you are not predestined for Heaven, you wouldn’t even know it. You either aren’t or you are, and you can’t earn it. Good luck, Kid!
(That pastor would be fired a couple of years later for sexually harassed several women in the church and having a full-blown affair with another. Freaking creeper. Perverts do not deserve positions in power, but HAHAHAHAHAHA! That does NOT seem to matter anymore! I don’t think you are ALLOWED to be in a position in power nowadays WITHOUT being a pervert!)
Even that didn’t deter me from wanting to dedicate my life to Christ…
And dedicate it again. And again.
And in case God was out that day and my attendance went unacknowledged, dedicate it AGAIN.
Am I in, or not? WHAT IS THE SECRET HANDSHAKE!!???
I have made so many altar-calls in my day, I wore the aisle carpets out. Each time begging God to save my heathen friends so that they too could be caught up in the clouds and not suffer the fiery furnace of Hell. And I really, really hope I am predestined, please God, please please, AMEN.
THE RAPTURE? I took that stuff especially to HEART.
For fifty years, I woke up every day wondering if we would we even hear it over the cacophony of chaos we find ourselves in? (Another thing I believe is that we are CURRENTLY in Hell. We are God experiencing himself through the human element in our humanity, both light and shadows. This is where we learn. This is where we suffer.
My current theology is that one day – one glorious day – we will all share Christ-consciousness. It will be an indwelling of Oneness, not a mass yeet up in the clouds. Sharing God’s mind. (And before you think that’s out of the realm of possibility, look around you. Did you ever think this would be happening? Evil is having its rave, and I know we all feel like we are crowd-surfing madness.)
It’s insanity right now, Dear Ones. I know it is.
But keep looking for the light. Keep BEING the light, somehow. (Good thing I am less Charlotte Flax, and more of who I was created to be.)
I will land on love.
I will land on peace.
I will live out my days without fear of a Sky Daddy who is waiting to smite ‘n yeet us. But seek out the FATHER, who is only ever love.
A father that doesn’t leave our sides, even as we surf the madness.
This used to be our dining room. Now it one of two “sanctuary rooms” – places in my home that I have carved out to be at peace, meditate, pray. An “anti” War Room, if you will.
By: JANA GREENE
Sometimes when I pray, I’m not even sure what to pray for anymore. But when God brings someone to my mind, that’s the impetus to pray for them.
I don’t mean giving God “instructions” on how to help someone, which I used to call “praying with specificity.” I replaced elaborate prayers with simple trust in God, because the most eloquent prayers are “help help help” and “thank you thank you thank you” (as my favorite author Anne Lamott opines.)
I ask and then I try to listen. Because there is no wrong way to pray, and prayer is designed to be communication from one sentient being to a supreme being, no holds barred.
Once I saw a movie that recommended having a “War Room” – a physical place to go to pray where the reception is clearest to God and where mighty battles are fought in the heavenlies, waiting for our next words to change the outcome in supernatural realms.
So of course I decorated my closet with scripture and crosses aplenty. But all I managed to do was feel guilty that I wasn’t praying more (or right?) every damn time I had to grab a pair of shoes out of the closet.
Was I praying enough? What if I don’t and when I get to Heaven, God informs me that he really wanted to do this magnificent thing, but I Was two beggings short of getting the outcome I desired.
See, that puts the onus on me. And the onus is not on me – it is on Love.
I don’t make a big show for myself now, prostrate in my literal prayer “closet,” striving, striving, striving to be the person “God created me to be.” Building a tower of Babylon with my puny, pleading words (which are beautiful to him, by the way, but his love is not dependent upon them.)
No. I mean that if you come to my mind during the course of my day, I am simply asking God to love on you in a way that’s tangible. God loves n us through one another, nature, laughter, and hugs from friends.
If you have a need or a heartbreak, I focus my intention on your hurt as best I can, and believe in advance that he is walking alongside you, no matter what event is anguishing you. Being a very visual person, I picture you in a cloud of love, total acceptance, resolution, and peace. I can’t describe it any better than that, but trust me, it’s better than that.
And I ask him to increase your awareness of him in and around us. Because he is always at work in and around us, even when we aren’t begging for his favor. I pray he uses me in any capacity he sees fit to convey his great love.
One of my favorite episodes of The Golden Girls is the one titled, “The Flu.” The premise is that all the ladies are attending a banquet, where one of them will win the “Best Friend of the Friends of Good Health” award. In sitcoms, chaos often ensues, but is resolved by peals of laughter within the 30-minute run-time, which would be damn handy in real life. Amirite?
Over the course of the past five years, I’ve thought of this episode a bunch. Those Golden Girls always seemed to be forever attending banquets and award ceremonies. I am the age they were, and nary one banquet have I attended. Also, I am certain I would win any friendship awards, period. Several times, I have felt like a candidate for “The Worst Friend of the Friends (“Chaos and Mayhem Chapter.”)
It started with the pandemic. Remember watching Tiger King? I swore was the most unhinged thing ever, (can you believe this guy? ) Little did we know there would be a shift, the likes of which we have never seen. Little did we know, Tiger King was actually the LEAST unhinged thing coming.
The next four years are a blur of pure madness, and for me personally, a diagnosis of leukemia. Because my body does not give a single *&%$ that I was already overwhelmed.
And The Madness we have been living through have affected us all. The political landscape leveled by the scorched earth policies of this administration have divided us in ways we never knew were possible. It’s a red-letter day when I get out of my pajamas, y’all. I’m owning my depression and anxiety.
I used to have boundless energy to nurture friendships and be the best friend I can be. Checking in on my friends, reminding them how cherished they are, and – on occasion – leaving the actual house to see them. The truth is that I care SO much that I’m sort of paralyzed.
We live in the Upside Down now, our little corner of purgatory. Not to be dramatic, but it’s been the worst.
Mentally, it’s like being at the circus for years, with no way out of the tent; scary clowns running amok, wild animals uncaged, terrifying trumpets and trombones, and where the hell is the exit? I am hanging on by a sequined thread of hope somehow.
Because it’s the worst, so am I, on occasion. Or that’s how it feels. Maybe that’s how you feel too. You very much want to be the person you were pre-pandemic. You very much want all of your friendships to thrive, but all you have the energy for is a box of Oreos and doom-scrolling. The struggle is real.
I so badly want to be a truly good friend. I’m so blessed by my chosen family. But the only award I’m up for is “The Best Friend of the Friends of Shitty Health,” or maybe “Friend Most Likely to Dissociate for Long Periods of Time.”
In a way – like the Golden Girls – we all have a “Flu” right now. And we have for years, at this point. We are all operating from a place of “caring fatigue.” It’s a real hard time to be an empath, absorbing everyone else’s energy.
We are all experiencing the achiness of division, the headache of existing in a world so harsh. We are all infirm right now. We were not created for the onslaught of global information, or the over-saturation of horribleness. Our connectedness is in peril. The clarity of those of us seeing through the veil can be a hinderance.
I long to be the friend I was before all of this (*gestures wildly.*) None of us have been this way before, and it’s a real intense pilgrimage to feel deeply.
IMBD sums up the Flu episode thus: “Blanche, Dorothy and Rose all come down with the flu and infuriate each other. When they each suspect that one of them has won a major award for their charity work, their competitiveness causes them all to attend despite their illness.”
At the conclusion, Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose – all who were expecting to win the Best Friends award – are not the winners. Dorothy’s mother, the Queen of Snark, Sophia, takes the prize. But in the end – as sitcom rules dictate – all of the girls come to the conclusion that the award is not the accolade, but their actual friendships that matter most.
I hope we all come out of this mess realizing the same.
Good day, dear readers. I woke up today with a version of this prayer on my lips. Even in times like these, it helps me to consider God as the kindest, gentlest keeper of our precious souls.
I am so tired of hardness and sharpness. It cannot all be bad news, so long as we all remember that we carry the divine that will save us.Amen?
I think about death a lot. Probably more than your average bear. Sometimes more than I think about life. And I don’t know what that exact ratio is, but it’s probably more than enough to inspire a dark sense of humor and a heaping helping of garden-variety neurosis. DO NOT BE ALARMED, friends,I have been morose my whole life and am in no danger of hurting myself – and certainly not anyone else.But in all my musings, I’ve come to believe that while Hell is a headspace, Heaven is also a state of mind. And that far, far better things to come than what lay behind, as C.S. Lewis reminds us.
By: JANA GREENE
Imagine if at the end of your life – somewhere between the dreaded death rattle and Glory -and after crossing over, you find yourself at a roundtable with every person you have ever loved, and who has ever loved you. And each person in the afterlife is manifested in the space and time they were most happy. The most healthy.
Before we all had to become survivalists out of necessity, even as children. With this life, there is so much weeping.
You imagine that that Mighty Cloud of Witnesses is here to usher you in death. But that’s the zinger, you are told. There is no death. Plot twist!
There never was a death. No sting at all! Just an emergence from a chrysalis, an unbecoming of ego and a becoming of true self.
Around you in the physical, there is weeping as your Earth Side family mourns. They who have held on to you tight in life are releasing their grasp on you, certain that goodbye is forever. They don’t know, you see.
Even as death looms, it’s really just a change of pants. Shedding the bulk of a winter coat. A great kicking-off-you-shoes. A freedom. They don’t know that in your most pitiful state, you are actually becoming resplendent. You are becoming One with every beautiful thing that ever happened or will happen.
Why cry for me, then? I’ll just be in the other room, you’ll think. A whisper away.
Don’t you know that energy created can never be destroyed? That once you are a form of energy, you can never become nothingness? There is no nothingness I will step into. Only the most beautiful muchness you can fathom. Completion beyond what you could have imagined. Togetherness with those we assumed were in a void.
I think we are still learning, in between the death rattle and the last breath. All that we have learned “in the dash” – the time between birth and death – will make sense then. And those cheering from you- invisible to everyone else – will celebrate as you become your Truest Self. Resplendent, whole, and One with all that bear love.
After a grueling religious deconstruction, who is a girl to trust?
By: JANA GREENE
I’m trying this crazy new thing, and it’s called trusting my intuition. It’s crazy. My whole life I have been coached to never trust the human heart – especially your own – for it wants its own way. It is deceitful and full of the flesh, they said. It will steer you wrong, they said. But I am finding it an oracle itself, not separated from a loving God by sin, but part and parcel of the Spirit.
God himself (or herself?) put it in me – intuition. Why would we be sent into the wilderness with sub-par equipment? Is he like the producers of “Naked and Afraid,” letting us choose our one, inadequate tool for the whole journey – and SUPRISE! It’s shitty intuition! Here you go, here’s a stick, when you could have used a pocketknife or a can of “Off” spray!
Godspeed, Kiddo. It’s a jungle out there. Whatever you do, lean NOT on your understanding!
I can no longer fathom that our consciousness is separate in any meaningful way from the Source. So, intuition – while not perfect – is trustworthy, in that it has much to teach us. In the realization that it’s not a sin to consult our intuition is a game-changer.
Most of my life, I have shushed my intuition in an un-valiant effort to prove to God that I had a faith bigger than my understanding.
But the gut is a quiet thing if you’re not used to listening to it. It politely tugs at your hem, whispering “excuse me, please, but I have a feeling about this.” Listen to her until her voice steadies. Listen to her until she is heard and BOLD. But for God’s literal sake, LISTEN TO HER. Say “yes” to the copious heaps of lavish grace and decide to stop eschewing it for distrust of self.
We are so afraid to honor ourselves; we forget God is not the kindly warden overseeing us while we do time in our flesh prisons, but the living breath in us – part and parcel. Holiness is our DNA, and all the self-flagellation in the world cannot whip it out of us.
My gut tells me that it’s true.
Can I get an AMEN?
(Part II to come: Trusting the intuition of others)
I don’t know what to do with the grief I’ve felt since November, so I’m sharing my heart the only way I know how – by writing about it. This is just a stream-of-consciousness share – it has no cadence or resolution. Just words. My heart is breaking for my country, which so many fought to keep free, but now accepts fascism as an acceptable American value. Jesus weeps, I’m sure. And so do I.
By: JANA GREENE
Forgive them, Father. The know not what they do.
Except that some of them know damn well.
And therein lies the crux of the matter.
Some of them know damn well.
And what do you do with that?
Some of them knew that this would happen –
the loss of basic human rights.
They just didn’t think it would happen
to them.
It’s a ball of confusion, this world,
as Marvin Gaye crooned.
Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul,
shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon,
and politicians say more taxes will solve everything,
Good morning, dear readers. I was perusing my “memories” on Facebook, and came across this video I’d made in 2020. Ain’t it just like the Universe to remind me of my own words, in this season of pain and loss? So I thought I’d share it with you – it is a blog post I’d written from the heart. I am hoping it gives you a little comfort today too. Blessed be.
Words by Jana Greene 