“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?
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.
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.
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?
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)
In my town, there is a little hippie-dippy church – open to all peoples, no matter their belief system – that hosts “healing nights” once a month. I like to go with my grown daughters when I can, and our eldest daughter accompanied me to the healing night last Wednesday.
Each “service” is different, but all of them would have been too spooky for my former evangelical self. There’s still a little fun-killing gremlin inside me that says, this is hokum! But the funny thing is that that little gremlin gets hushed like a kid in church when the yoga mat comes out, and I actually remember to breathe.
So we roll out our mats, and brought out the blankies we brought, in case it was cold in there. We pulled out our journals, as the teacher welcomed us all. What will it be tonight? We’ve done Spirit Animals, Reiki, even past life regressions.
These are all things that Evangelical Fundamentalist Me would have at the very least bristled at, and at worse, would have marched up to the altar in a fundie church until someone laid hands on me and “delivered me.” If you don’t know, deliverance ministry is… well, that’s a blog post for another time. I digress.
This session was Yoga Nidra, which – as the instructor described it – is the art of doing nothing. After some calming words, incense, and breathwork, we began. This guided meditation was about colors, he said. “I’m going to take you through the color wheel.”
We started with white. “Quiet your mind, and imagine the purest, cleanest white light you can.” So, after much intrusive, non-relaxing thoughts (where did I put my glasses? what about the state of our country? Are we out of laundry detergent?) I sank into the exercise.
The purest, brightest of white light was conjured by my desperate mind. I thought of Jesus emerging from the center of it, resplendent in white robes, arms outstretched. I thought of my wedding gown (which technically, is off-white,) and for some reason, meringue cookies. I was hungry, I guess.
Next was yellow. I visualized running barefoot through a field of daffodils. And then I focused on a big, ripe lemon. And the craziest thing was that I could almost taste the tartness. Then something unexpected. Something I have not thought about in at least forty years – a flower girl dress when I was little; festooned with little yellow sunflowers and gingham, a green ribbon tied in the back. Just like Holly Hobbie.
When we moved on to orange, I though of…an orange, because how original is that? I sunk back down in my mind and stopped trying to think.
Then I stopped trying to “conjure” visions. I guess I let my mind wander off-leash. You know how in a dog park, when a dog is released to run free within the confines of a fence? And when the leash comes off, they run batshit crazy all willy-nilly, not a care in the world? Yeah, like that. And a flood of imagines bombarded me.
Orange. Orange is the warmth of the sun at the beach, cheetohs, a threat level. I let it fill my mind – all the shades of orange. My breathing was steady. Hey, maybe there is something to this!
And red? The velvet pew cushions at the Baptist church my grandparents attended. Red is the blood in my body, tainted by leukemia. A rich red wave filled my mind, and I tried to think of something less traumatic. A nice cup of Red Zinger tea. I could smell the tang of it, feel the steam coming from it. It’s weird where your mind wanders, when you’re relaxed.
Purple? The sunrise over the ocean, if conditions are just right. Twice I have seen sunrises that are made of pinks, and yellows, and purples. If you are very valiant in war, you may receive a Purple Heart. I get purple bruises all the time. But I also imagined Tudor period dress in purple, laced in gold, as purple was for royalty, as indigo was at a premium. (Nerd thoughts of the history of indigo scribbled all over my nice little meditation.) Get back on track, Jana.
Blue. The sea, where I imagined floating in warm, salty water – turquoise waves moving me gently through ripples. The blue Froot Loops I used to pick out of the cereal to eat first, convinced they tasted best. And then I visualized sitting cross-legged in a field of bluebonnets in my beloved home state of Texas. “Yeah, but the last time you did that, you sat on an anthill in that field,” my brain whispered. Shush, I told it, going back to the field. No ants allowed in my vision, thank you very much.
I hung out there for quite a while. Felt like home.
My daughter and I melted into the floor, splayed out in relaxation. This isn’t hokum, I thought. This is as close to God as I have ever felt in a church. He is found in our imaginings and dreams. I think the hippies are onto something, ya’ll.
I’m sharing this because the experience blessed me, calmed me, comforted me. And God – always in our visions – can choose any number of ways to hang out with you, inhabit you. If I – with my wild anxiety and unfortunate neurosis – can let my mind wander off-leash, then maybe you can too? Maybe we are made for meditation, which I was warned about all my Christian life, but turns out to be a holy experience.
The church may be the “house of God,” but it’s not his only residence. He inhabits our thoughts, hears our prayers, and dare I say – invites us to explore our minds. Are our bodies not the temple of God? Our minds share in the divinity, but we go about or lives paying taxes, working, entertaining ourselves with empty pursuits just to pass the time here. But that’s not all we are here to do. If the body is a temple, the mind is the playroom.
With the introduction of each color that we were instructed to focus on, my senses participated in the practice as well. But those five senses we know in the flesh pale in comparison to the thing that’s truest about us.
The truest thing is that we holy already. We are holy. And we have been given these beautiful minds. Not to make an enemy of it (“lean not on your own understanding”) but to meet God in the Temple. The Holy Spirit lives in you, and not to condemn you, but to guide you through scary thoughts, and say, “You are already enough. Meet me at the playground, which is your mind! It’s colorful there.”
When my daughter and I got up to leave, incense hanging in the air, everyone seemed sleepy and contented, like a baby after the milk she has been screaming for. Most all of us were also smiling. Like having just had the best massage of our lives, our legs were noodley for a bit, hair just a little bit mussed, and a cacophony of yawns.
Because we allowed their minds to wander off-leash and go batshit crazy with the freedom that comes from exploring the beautiful mind God gave you. It’s okay to be all willy-nilly. It’s a colorful world, hons. Don’t let fundamentalism convince you that there is just black and white.
That is what I believed about myself, as an unplanned child. I carried the message that I was an “oopsie” for as long as I can remember. Nobody in my family outright said it, but I carried the shame as if it were by my own doing.
Once upon a time, I was s a very religious teenager, I carried my Bible to high school each day, hoping it would let everyone else know who I was – a Christian. I would not realize until much later, that Bible was a talisman to keep me safe from my peers, because I was scared of the world.
Once I was a young mother, absolutely certain that this – THIS! – was my true identity. All other things I had identified as melted away. This is it. I was a mother. I threw myself into raising my daughters with my whole heart. So, this is who I am, I thought. But I was a mother with a secret.
In a land far, far away, I had somehow also become an alcoholic. I could go through a box of wine (classy, eh?) in two days. Chardonnay was my savior, I could not function without either the promise of, or imbibing in, alcohol. I was not the mother I wanted to be for my kids, so when they were 5 and 8, I decided to get sober.
Then I came to identify as an alcoholic, albeit one in recovery. In each of the hundreds of AA meetings I attended, I would introduce myself to the group with, “Hi, my name is Jana and I’m an alcoholic.” So that was my identity too, in the early years of my recovery.
The next twenty years were a blur of trying on identities, macro and micro. I strove to be a career woman, which was a terrible fit for a person who would rather daydream and create art than push for corporate success.
I buried myself in church activates, becoming a prayer leader, a recovery coach, and a door greeter.
I was playing Identity Whack-a-Mole. Just keep moving and hitting on various things, until I hear DING DING DING! We have a winner! I’m a __________ after all!
Now, once upon a time – in a place not at all far away – I have become angry. Not angry as in a passing mood. Angry as in a whole-ass personality. I am mad all the time, since November 4th.
Every day, I worry and fret about what all of this means for the futures of my three daughters and granddaughter. Every day, I have flashbacks of being obsessed with the Book of Revelation, which I furiously studied way back in high school. Doom. Doom. DOOOOM. Anger is my least favorite emotion and the one I am poorest at.
Hi. My name is Jana, and I’m an angry woman, trying desperately to not become bitter.
And I hate that journey for me. I truly don’t want to be mad. The anger comes from a place of fear for the country I love. But even so, it is transformative in the worst of ways.
I will not get stuck here. I will one day move past anger, and I’m giving myself grace until then.
I now understand that we are all an amalgam of every experience we live. Every “identity” that makes us feel temporarily “special”, just a lily pad jump away from the next thing that will also reveal who we are. Not for us to cling to, but to learn from.
It made me feel special to be a teenaged evangelist, a mom, and even an alcoholic. Looking for ways to prove to myself that I alone – on my own merit – have worth.
And I guess I’m writing this to remind you that if you feel like a mistake; if your hardest struggles cause you to slap a label on yourself, you don’t have to cleave to it.
We are wondrously complex visitors in a place that is equal parts amazing and terrifying. A place that – as you enter and leave – erroneously insists you be labeled for safe consumption.
A society obsessed with asking “how do you identify?” lest your mark on the world be for naught, and your search for identity be rudderless.
Dear Reader, I’m glad we are on the planet at the same time, so that we can remind each other that we are not a fleeting identity, but a PERSON. A messy, floundering one, perhaps. But all the same…
Hi. My name is Jana, and I am not a mistake. I am a life-long learner, a grateful mother. I am indeed an alcoholic. I am a writer who doesn’t get paid a lick for her craft but does it anyway so the feels have somewhere to go. I’m a wife, a partner to the dearest of all to me – my husband.
I will hold doors open for people, even though I’m not a greeter at church. I will be a shoulder for the addict and alcoholic. And I will – heaven help me – learn how to manage anger in healthier ways, so I do not identify as such.
We are always trying to pull contentment out of the ethers, somewhere – anywhere – but within. But when all the parts of Me Within feel confused, alone, and despaired, the last thing that seems natural to me is to go inward.
FOOL, THAT”S WHATG I’M TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM.
But I’m thinking I get lost sometimes on my way to my heart’s Eden. Took a wrong turn in Albuquerque, as Bugs Bunny would say. I have ended up in a wretched place, yelling “YOU CALL THIS EDEN?? Psssh.
INWARD is where I learned to be scared. That neighborhood is where I got lost in the first place.
INWARD is where I take to my bed, like an eighteenth-century woman who simply CANNOT with this world anymore.
INWARD has historically been a chasm rather than a resort.
It is a place I was warned against by the church proper. God is on high. He is above us, they say, after also reminding you that God also lives in our hearts.
But they say your heart is also full of deceit, so remember that. Remember that within you is The Creator. But also, indomitable darkness.
What, now?
Finding my way to the God inside me is quite the expedition. I still get turned around sometimes.
But through prayer and meditation, I am finding…
Surely, if God lives within our being, perhaps we all harbor an inner Garden of Eden. A garden where a holy Kudzu takes over, covering the darkness.
A place with so much air to breathe, you don’t feel choked by cruel realities.
A place where it’s safe to rest that was formerly a void.
A place where the grating anxiety has been buried in lush soil, and in its place, becomes a tall willow tree.
A place where the rocks themselves cry out in glorious praise, and music fills the atmosphere.
Where pain can be shushed, if not taken away entirely
Where I don’t have to hide or run.
Or conform to a certain expectation.
I’m learning – very slowly and deliberately – that INWARD is a safe place after all.
INWARD is where all the iterations of me gather in a circle to summon the Grace of God.
INWARD is where I am learning to be calm and quiet, and to search for the trinkets of Eden – calm, peace, balance, hope, and LOVE.
My inner Eden is lush with life, springing forth with new green shoots and popping with vibrant flowers.
It has a bounteous garden, a soft place to sit, and a babbling brook that assures me with each ripple you are safe here.
And in the Garden, which is myself, I find God.
Not so much as an entity of blinding light and booming voice, but as a wise little hobbit, living in a hollowed-out tree, who knows all the answers but whose presence makes me forget I had questions.
He sits with me in the ethers, fully content.
And he will dwell with me INWARD forever and ever, in this glorious place we co-created: my contribution being trust and surrender.
God, being big enough to create all that is glorious in existence; but small enough to come as a hobbit, who has time to sit under a Willow tree with me to consider the miracle of the Most High inhabiting my little human soul.
I speak up for myself now. Well, sometimes. As long as it doesn’t rock the boat TOO much. As long as the person I have conflict with won’t stop loving me because I’m mad. Only when I’ve rolled the issue OVER and OVER I’m my brain ad nauseam and have decided I’m with a safe person. Only after I’ve played out the worst case scenario in my head, mini-grieved the possible outcomes. And after I speak my peace (because I’ve learned my peace has value, too,) I will fret and worry that I’ve upset someone. Doesn’t matter if it concerns life events or little frustrations, I speak. Even if it’s a whisper, I speak. Even though I know assertion-guilt will try to make me feel like a bad human. I’m starting – with fits and stops – to say when I’ve been hurt or bothered, even though I’ve been a people pleaser all my life. So… No, You cannot talk to me like that. Little Me had no say, but I’m re-parenting her, you see. I’m teaching her things I should have taught my daughters, and must have somehow over the years. They speak up for themselves, without fear of abandonment, because they know they’re safe. And Little Me is safe now too, finding her voice and using it.
Good morning, Reader. Well, the sun came up again. Damn if it doesn’t just keep happening. You know what that means, right? At your stations! Here we go!
It’s okay if you run to your station, but it’s also okay to inch, crawl, stagger, or be dragged, so long as you rise and report to The Universe you are present. Being present is everything.
Accept that – like Jesus – your holiness and humanity both get to seize this day. He, being 100% divine and 100% human (just like you) equipped to get through the muck. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. He was also a Tipper of Tables.
You get to respond to every new challenge in the way of your choosing. You’re not just rolling with the punches. You’re not a victim, but a participant in this miraculous, jacked-up, eternal production. I know it feels victimizing sometimes.
I am waving to you from my station this morning, hollering at you from over here, “HEY! IT’S ME, YOUR FRIEND WHO IS ALSO EXHAUSTED, BEFUDDLED, FEELING BEAT-UP, AND ANXIOUS! I’M HERE TOO.I KNOW THIS IS HARD. KEEP GOING, OKAY? YOU’RE DOING AMAZING!”
Love always starts the show and always takes the last bow. Remember that when the antagonists seem to be winning. Remember that when the plot is thicker than pea soup and it looks like the bad guys are winning.
This election has proven we are as far from compassion as the East is from the West. And as for the trite moral question, “What would Jesus do?”
I’m pretty sure Jesus would go straight to the Temple (the church, or ‘body of Christ’) and throw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. Matter of fact, maybe he’d kick over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dover merchants and declare “My house was designated a house of prayer; You have made it a hangout for thieves!” (Matthew 21:12-13)
That’s actually in the oft-touted Bible that gets trotted out by politicians every election year. But the rest of the verse – from The Message translation – is followed by this zinger: ” Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. They came to Jesus, and he healed them.”
Table-tipping Jesus is kind of my spirit animal right now. I’ve never related to him more. All my Christian life, I did not understand that verse. Because my black-and-white thinking could not relegate sweet white American Jesus, hands folded in prayer, eyes heavenward, to this renegade loose-cannon Jesus.
But LOOSE CANNON JESUS? I SEE YOU NOW.
I’m not going to turn this piece into an opportunist sermon. I’m all sermoned out, plus, since distancing myself from the church proper, I have no intention of evangelizing. It’s too late for that (but it’s never too late for God! you say? Bold claim for people who voted God off the island in his own name.) It’s too late for the next four years anyway.
But don’t expect to be considered the temple when you host thieves in your heart and elect criminals to run the free world. The thing about having a temple full of snakes and liars, is that there is no room for the blind and crippled, not even standing room. We are not getting our healing because we have made a rummage sale out of our freedoms, and a discount house of our blessings. We have done it in the name of a God who has been denied entrance at all, hawking our shiny, empty wares, and calling them holy. The only thing in short supply is love, which is supposed to be the Greatest of These, but has instead been relegated to the scratch n’ dent bin.
“You don’t want THAT,” say the merchants. “You want THIS!” And shown the whole world (this could all be yours!) we have settled.
We are the Temple, my friends. Us. And I will never take the spiritual inventory of another human, except for maybe the guy with his own translation of the Bible (a bold move! I thought for sure everyone would awaken to the audacity when that happened. But, no.) Maybe except for the man half of us elected to run the free(ish) world. We should have all at least peeked at the inventory, and not signed off on it en masse.
Maybe instead of basing our votes on the “economy” (the moneychanger’s specialty!) we should have had a pow-wow with Jesus about what he prioritized – the sick, who will lose insurance benefits. The hungry, which will manifest in children going lunch-less. The poor, who will only get poorer. And the rich, richer. God ain’t worried about the economy, he never has been. That’s our schtick. He’s worried about our hearts.
Make room for the crippled, the sick, and the hurting, so that they might be healed with the resources our creator has made us stewards of.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but please don’t pick up a drink because of all this. Statistics show that the need for liver transplants has risen by 300% since the beginning of Covid – as the stress of the pandemic has pushed so many into alcoholism. This gestures wildly is every bit as terrifying; don’t allow it to push you. I know you are hurting, freaked out, panicked. For an alcoholic, that’s very scary territory. Our own minds tell us unwinding with a drink will chill us out. We fight the urges to drink, yes. But we are also fighting our own brains. Our own bodies. Our disease. I know it’s easy to say … who cares anyway, as mad as the world has gone!? ME. I CARE. So many people care, sweet friend. You are loved, and we need to be of soundest mind to figure out where we can serve next, how we can be the antidote to the hate. Hating is easy, and any old addiction will fall right in line. But loving is hard. Fighting is hard. And requires soberness of mind, and fire of belly. Listen, Beloveds: There is absolutely nothing that using won’t make worse, I promise. Nothing. And the good people of America need you – your love, your example, your strength for whatever crazy is ahead. Use your tools. Call your people. Plunk your ass in a seat at a meeting. Lean into your spirituality. Ask God for help. Practice self care. Just don’t pick up a drink. Please. You’ve worked so hard. I SEE YOU. Stay strong.
This morning, before the sun even rises, I am proper grieving for my daughters and granddaughter.
The election is over. The political ads will stop. Obnoxious snake oil salesmen will cease screaming at us through our television screens.. The mass mailings, like so much kindling for fire, will cease to stuff our mailboxes.
And we should be glad for that, at least. But we aren’t afforded that pleasure. There is no pleasure to be had at the feet of bullies and liars.
Old white men triumph, which should surprise none of us. We should be able to take a breath now, but instead we are gasping for air.
Tyranny has won. Hatred has its day.
I seem to remember reading in the very same ancient texts he used to pander to the people that evil will ultimately prosper on this plane of existence.
We worked so hard to come by this love. Most of us, anyway. Maybe you – like me – have gone through a season of spiritual confusion, unable to justify a cruel creator to a loving spiritual force. And perhaps you have reached the same conclusion; that everything we’d been taught was dogma. That nobody knows better than we average people do, and that’s terrifying. Maybe you landed on love, like me. Scrap everything else, and act lovingly, like it’s the only thing that matters. Because it is.
This world is rumbling and laboring, every contraction pulsing to either bring us closer together or farther apart. We can all feel it, but we don’t all feel it the same. I rarely quote scripture anymore, but 1 Corinthians 13:1 comes to mind. It says that if you have “all the answers” but don’t have love, you are like a clanging gong – making a bunch of noise, but without any expression of love.
There is so much noise in this world. The gong is deafening, the drumbeats ever closer. The way we are treating one another is shameful. We correct our children when they are hateful to another person. We reward our leaders for it We say, “Here, have more power!” And how do we explain to our grandchildren that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, if grown-ass adults acting a fool on the world stage?
I simply cannot believe the vitriol this political season has wrought us. We people in high places, but also, we average folk. I came here to write about ways we can perhaps rally together, but it’s too late for that. Cult mentality has made certain no common sense is required. Every time we butt up against absolutes, we reap the worst in us. Time and time again, history has shown what happens when a small-minded, evil man collects cult members for his gain. Time and time again, the name of God rolls off the tongues of serpents. Always, there are followers who would die for the cause of a serpent’s dream. And so they do, perpetuating false righteousness.
I lost it all to side with love. Everything I thought I knew had to go in my spiritual fire sale. In churchy talk, they call it being “refined.” It cost me a lot, to come to the conclusion that love always wins. And it’s super easy to set that concept ablaze too, since there is so little evidence around us right now. But we can’t, you see. Some of us are banded together to lasso the hands of the doomsday clock and keep it from ticking further. But others of us have roped the hand from the other side, pulling toward the point of kablooey. There is so much at stake.
You’ll be told we all want the same thing, but that’s just another lie. We most certainly do not. I would like no part of throwing away the rights of others. I do not believe in withholding school lunches from children. And as a cancer / chronic illness patient, I know with certainty that a country that can afford to send billions of dollars to obscure causes half a world away can afford healthcare for all of its citizens. I don’t believe in demonizing whole demographics of human beings.
We are a real cocky bunch, singing about how God shed his grace on thee. I don’t believe God shed any more grace on us than anyone else. In our haughtiness, we have become puffed up with pride about ourselves. “MURICA. Greatest country on earth! This is God’s country! God favors us! (Wherever did we get the idea that God, in his infinite wisdom and love, sanctioned the thievery of an entire continent, the slaughter or decimation of its native people, and determined that our ill-begotten land is a gift from the Almighty.
Maybe that cockiness is part of the reason we are in this pickle.
And see, the funny thing is – I care about these things because I prayed that God would break my heart for what breaks his heart. And damn if he didn’t. He’s a little poky with a lot of requests, in my humble opinion, but not this one. And it’s ruined the person I was. And I’m glad of it. Because that refining took place without being anesthetized by church and political intervention. It was a wilderness experience, becoming who I am. Me and God. Mano a mano, on the mat.
And right now, less than a week until the election, I am feeling a wind blow in from the wilderness again. It certainly is a strange wind, like the breath of a laboring mother. Elections and contractions. Raging and rumbles. Ugliness of weaponized-biblical proportions. Hate.
I don’t know who you’ll vote for, Dear Reader. It is frankly none of my business, and I have no desire to make it my business. But as I sit here at 4 a.m. tapping onto the page what is haunting my mind, I do ask you to search your heart. I know the gong is loud, and I know that drumbeats are getting closer. And it would be easy – justifiable even! – to join in the war cries.
I know people are giving you ample reason to hate, and I know that hate is absolutely trending right now. Like hating is the baseline sentiment., and it’s awful. It seems to be running circles around love, and love – swelling and hopeful – is sitting dormant. But listen. Maybe love is waiting for hate to exhaust itself, and maybe that’s part of the process too. The haters don’t have all the answers; and they are hoping you won’t notice.
It may be too late to rally together, but it’s never too late to get into a quiet space, invite Divinity to show up, ask her to reveal her spark in you, and go forth into the dark places of a hurting world with it. It’s all we can do.
God,
Let us be heart-searchers and let us find love for others we didn’t know we had.
Let us be peacemakers, in that we prefer light to darkness.
Let us love people who think differently than we, with no political addendum attached.
Not long ago, I was having a conversation with my husband, and he used ‘FOMO’ in a sentence about a concert we were hoping to attend. He said something to the effect of, “I know having chronic illnesses gives you FOMO at times.”
“I’m sorry, gives me what now?” I said, completely unfamiliar with the term.
“Fear of missing out,” he replied. And shitfire I was not aware there was a formal acrostic for the phenomenon, but I’ve been having FOMO for years now. Because when you struggle with debilitating health issues, the only way to not live in FOMO-mode is to not make any plans at all. Nary a one. And it’s not that bleak yet. Yet.
We are going to see The Black Crowes tonight in concert, a surprise from said husband, because they are one of my favorites. But we have missed three out of five shows we’ve bought tickets so far this year, because while it’s not that bleak yet, it’s also not that great. I get sick frequently, and the pain and fatigue are out to get me, I tell you. Of all the conspiracies floating around right now, this one has the most solid evidence. My medical team can attest to it. I fight my own body harder than anything else, at present. (What I fight – like what you fight – is subject to change, right?)
Still, my husband bought the tickets because he is hopelessly bad at giving up on me, or the things we would like to do. He is also never disappointed in me when things don’t pan out. And that’s key, because disappointing people is definitely a huge issue of FOLPILD for me – Fear of Letting People I Love Down. Also, FOBAB – Fear of Being a Burden. FOMAC – Fear of Missing a Concert. The list is endless, really.
What do all of these things have in common? Fear.
Fear is the opposite of a lot of things, not just the opposite of faith. That’s too simplistic. It stands in the way of hope, makes letting go impossible. It blocks positive energy, causes despair, and chips away at our dreams. Fear itself is a very useful tool to keep us safe – as an impetus to head for higher ground when a hurricane, for instance. But as Western North Carolina grieves and toils in the aftermath of Helene, we are in collective awareness that even the highest ground can be devastated.
Fear is a warning device, but a shitty insurance policy. It doesn’t keep anything bad from actually happening. It just trains our systems to react to opening a dreaded email like we are being chased by a bear.
So, what the do we do? Live in the confines of fear? After all, it’s there for a reason. Whether we fear or not, we are going to miss out at times. Especially as a Chronic illness patient, for whom FOMO is a constant bedfellow.
And all fear is not the same. Missing out is a first-world problem, in a world full of devastation and disaster. I know that, and have experienced the hollow, dark fear of a terminal diagnosis. The constellation of deep worries that we have for our children. I get that fear, too, and that’s a whole different animal, but just as destructive.
If we are chronically ill, we are going to let people down when we make plans we cannot keep. We will try not to be a burden, but we must cultivate a circle of safe people who understand when we have to reschedule things. I am so fortunate in this regard. My friends understand that most of the plans I make are tentative. I am not flaky, but my health is.
Of course, I cannot tweak the entire tour schedule of The Black Crowes, so today, I rest. Resting is how train for events, like in the Olympics. Okay, its nothing like the Olympics. But it might as well be. People assume resting is fun. Because most people don’t get enough of it – they are forever buzzing around and getting things done (what is that like?) so resting is their side-gig. They do it as a luxury, whereas my body completely stops functioning if I don’t spend half of my damn life in bed. It’s not fun at all. It’s not always relaxing, because the fear of missing out is legit.
And the truth is that we do miss out. On a lot. But let me tell you about a side-effect of this phenomenon. I am abundantly thankful for the occasions I make a concert or party or get to run to the grocery store and run errands like a normalsauce person. Because I GET TO, you see. Oh the glee!
The sweet victory of making it to a concert. The appreciation for running boring errands. I brag to my husband about getting errands done like some women probably brag about their career milestones. Doing physical therapy at the pool, picking up a few things from Trader Joes, AND going to the bank?? Taking a walk AND getting a haircut? *Cue theme song from “Rocky.”*
Tonight, I will fight the urge to stand on my chair and scream “HEY. EVERYBODY! I. AM. NOT. MISSING. OUT RIGHT NOW!” (I will not do that, because I cannot even stand on solid ground without injuring myself, but inwardly, I will be yelling it.)
And that’s a part of me that punches FOMO in the throat. I would not be as filled with gratitude, if I didn’t have this particular set of challenges. I am not just happy when I don’t have to miss out, I am ECSTATIC.
How ecstatic, you ask? Tent Revival ecstatic. Golden-Retriever-with-her-head-out-the-window-of-a-moving-car ecstatic. And grateful? When I can experience activity in life, I am as grateful as a Norman Rockwellian family around a Thanksgiving table. As grateful as a mid-life white woman who missed her calling as a groupie, who gets to rock out to her favorite bands and yell “WOOOOOOO!” – even if she has to sit while doing it.
Blessed be, my friends/readers. (I’m grateful for each of you, too.)
When we are young, we grasp at labels in the striving to know who the heck we are. Our identity is in finding out identity. And we glom on to our role in each life stage until it describes us to a T; until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. And when the wind changes, we are lost.
When I was a victim, I thought of myself as a victim. And the more trauma I experienced only convinced me that victimhood was my identity. Shitty things had happened to me, stacked-up evidence that I have every reason to be depressed and anxious. Who wouldn’t feel justified, coming out from under that abuse? I’m a victim here. That’s who I am.
Then, I became an alcoholic, and in recovery rooms they tell you “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,” which is no lie. So, I said, “Oh! That’s who I am. An alcoholic.” And while there was certainly no joy about that revelation, it was better than just being a victim, at least. I did the programs, worked the steps. Really dug into recovery, because I am an alcoholic, you see. That’s who I am.
Then I became a mother, and then EUREKA! I found my identity for real! I even had a new name – “Mom.” I was obsessed with being good at it, and so my whole identity became hinged on being their Mama. Then Mommy. Then Mom. Each one of their life stages determined who I was, by virtue of who they were growing up to be. Until they were teenagers, carving out their identities, I was starting to lose my own. Children grow up, and you are left wondering, Gee…who exactly am I, apart from a mother? I’m a mother. that’s who I am.
Eventually I became a fundamentalist Christian. I would tell people that their identities are found only in God. I told people who were full of self-hatred to strive to be “less of you, and more of God.” It’s another confirmation to a hurting person that they themselves are of such little importance, God demands they become even smaller. And if they are like me, they have been trying to be empty of themselves all their lives, not realizing that the God is within them. So, for most of my adult life, being a Christian was my identity. I was on the Greeting Team, for crying out loud – me, an introvert. Being a Christian is who I am.
My husband jokes that I only like to watch TV shows with “complex” characters. Characters who don’t respond how you expected, and perhaps have a dark side. When the bottom fell out of my faith and I went through a deconstruction, I realize you don’t have to die to yourself and your human desires and interests to please God. He doesn’t turn away from our humanity.
Today, I am still those things, but the influence they have over my primary identity is nullified. The way we see ourselves is not static but flowing. I’m a survivor, rather than a victim. I’m still an alcoholic, but the stigma behind it has morphed into acceptance. I’m still a mom but relate to my children as adults now. I am still a follower of Christ but have a different relationship to him than I ever had. A better one. We never stay the same and thank God for that.
And we will never fully understand our identities in this dimension, I suspect. But maybe it’s because we are BOTH / AND a conglomeration of selves. Maybe our identity doesn’t require a label, and neither does the Universe require one. We put that pressure on ourselves. What complex, beautiful creatures we are!
We are complex characters, y’all. However we identify ourselves, we don’t always respond how you’d expect. We have a dark side. We are attributes and character defects, all rolled into one.
My goofy cat soaking up some vinyl prism rainbows through the window. Both of these things make me deliriously happy. I woke up hella depressed, in pain, and with a heavy heart. As so often happens, by the time I finish writing any given piece, I end up with some measure of comfort. It’s a weird phenomenon, but hey – what’s NOT weird these days? I wish you peace today, Dear Reader. Peace that passes understanding. And I pray you find evidence of God today in someone’s kindness.
By: JANA GREENE
I asked myself, “Where the Hell is God right now?” Because seriously WTF is happening? War and loss and disaster, oh my! I was feeling this way when I woke up this morning and sat down to write. Maybe that’ll help? God likes to slap me around with my own words at times…in a non-violent manner, of course, and with lots of love.
When you are having a depressive episode, the realization that a whole new day stretches before you is met with dread. Another one? Another whole day, chock full of pain in my body and pain in the world? Gee. Thanks.
Today we might have a new war. A new leukemia symptom. A new dislocation or migraine. A new issue with one of our kids. A new thing to grieve for, or about.
We occupy a doom-inducing, batshit crazy habitat full of awful unfolding of events in our world. Another day that we are supposed to be glad in rejoice! I do my best to please the Lord, but when he seems to be on sabbatical, it’s rough. Like having an emergency only your boss can fix, but he’s on vacation, left the office in complete disarray, and yelled, “SCREW THIS, I’M OUT!” on the way out. *SLAMS DOOR* Because that’s what I would do for sure.
For thousands of families that, this new day will bring heartache. They are looking for missing loved ones in a thick Carolina mudslide. It is a day that will either bring unresolved searching or crushing confirmation of loss. Again.
For so many around the world, a new day means missile sirens and the obliteration of their homes and possibly families. There is no holiness in war machines. Nothing sacred about violence. And so, for them, the new day brings devastation.
What the Hell is God doing right now? Where are you, God? It’s a mess down here!
But then I heard from one of my dearest friends, who live a couple of hours from the Blueridge portion of the Appalachians. This soft-souled woman and her kind and beautiful adult daughter had made a trip to pick up and foster a motley crew of terrified, traumatized cats and dogs. They brought them home, timid and scared, and are giving them a soft place to land and an environment that will envelop them in love (and probably spoil them, to be honest.) And I said, Oh. There you are, God. In the hands of people who care for the animals.
But that’s people, you say. And I say, how else would he make himself known but by people, made in his image to help and show love.
And then my husband held me for five whole minutes before leaving for work this morning (it would have been whole hours, if I’d have asked him.) He asked me what I needed, because he is so kind to bring me coffee or water when my body is creaky and sore. “Just hold me,” I said. In his embrace, I felt the presence of a loving deity within him. I know he is worried about me and my health and is frustrated that he cannot fix my pain. But in a way, he did, he does, in long, healing hugs. No words, just love so undiluted, I could not deny that God was loving me through my husband.
And as I was asking this very valid question, “Where are you, God?” I had a visit from Ollie, my 26-pound, longhaired black cat. I couldn’t get out of bed. Just couldn’t, too pained. Too sad. Ollie is so affectionate, and as the first tears of the day rolled down my cheeks, he pressed into me, nudging his head on my wet face. I told him good morning, and that I was sad, and he seemed to say, “I know, Mom. That’s what the extra smooshies are for.” Then his tabby brother Neo had his turn, coming to cuddle and say good morning. Purring and content, he let me bury my face in his fur. Yes, I decided. God is in the unconditional love of a pet. Absolutely. And you can never convince me otherwise.
Where are you, God? I was still asking. But as I was doom-scrolling through TikTok, the internet powers-that-be decided to add rescue videos to my algorithm, and dozens of clips of heroes took over my screen. It was like the Universe said, “Well she’s not going to get off of social media, so I’ll send her some digital hope.” And it was a little injection of hope. People being helpmates.
As if the heavenlies broke open, and I saw men and women standing amongst the worst devastation you can imagine, shell-shocked but intent on helping. They are administering first aid. They are in helicopters, eagle-eyed for any sign of life amongst the destruction, ready to drop a rope and climb into the muck themselves. Thousands of people in Appalachia have lost everything they have, but there are scores of volunteers gathering supplies, stepping up to do the administrative work to get them to the people in need. Good people, who carry that particle of God broken off into all of us, are fundraising and praying all hours of the day and night. Ah, God. There you are.
I am reminded of a story told by Mr. Fred Rogers – who carried and exercised his God particle more than most of us – from childhood. He was especially afraid of certain things -a very sensitive and thoughtful boy. When he would see scary things on the television news, his mother would say to him, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” His whole life -especially in times of great disaster – he remembered his mother’s words. ” I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world,” he continued.
Look for the helpers.
I still say WTF IS HAPPENING. Because hey, what the f*ck IS happening? But if you ask me – and you didn’t – I have a theory about why traumatic events are amping up all over the world. While my monkey-mind and lizard-brain are having a pow-wow about how we are DOOOOOMED, my Highest Self is aware that God is actually pressing into us right now. But not in religiosity. And not in a booming voice breaking open the heavens, or in The Big Zapping Up to heaven called “the rapture.”
He is pressing into us when we press into each other. He is comforting us with smooshies from big, fat, affectionate kitties, and rooms full of rainbows that get a little help from plastic vinyl stickers. He is reminding us that he’s still here by holding us for minutes (or hours) in the arms of a loved one. He rescues and fosters terrified doggies and gave them food, warmth, and love. He searches in the landslides for his creation, recovers the lost and returns them to their families. He grieves with the grieving. People forget the shortest sentence in the Bible – Jesus wept. His DNA is in our tears. He looks at the devastation and decides that he can become the hands and feet of volunteers. Made in his image, we carry the literal God.
And we carry him into our hurting world, whether we do it in his name or not. It is the good we carry. When I am hurting, worried, despondent – his voice isn’t booming. No hand comes through the clouds with the announcement BE HEALED MY CHILD, FOR I DECREE IT THUS! I HAVE COME TO COLLECT MY CHOSEN FEW! That’s movie stuff. That’s fundamentalist stuff. Evangelical teaching. There is no chosen few. ALL are made in his image. And anyway, that’s not how any of this works.
This is the “rapture;” his spirit is already present. We are in the thick of it, as we get ever closer to sharing God-consciousness in whole. Until then, chaos – that we ourselves create. It seems to run unchecked, until he comes for us with a compassionate whisper:
Please don’t lose hope. Look for the signs and wonders; they are as plentiful as the harbingers of doom; you just have to look in the right places. Rest in me when the pain comes. Don’t hold back tears, I am collecting them and will exchange them for joy. Keep loving my children, even though they can be brats. Keep loving my children, even though they are picking up arms. Love those who curse you. Throw grace around like confetti. Don’t bemoan your fate – it might be the one thing that gives another hope. Look for that hope in EACH new day. And do what you can for helpless people in hopeless situations, whether it be a personal hell or great disaster.
Words by Jana Greene 