Remembering Eden – Finding God in Nature

By: JANA GREENE

If you’d never even seen a Bible, where would you find evidence of God?

It isn’t heresy to wonder, friends. He put the wonder there, in our spirits.

Think on it a second. If you’d never been “formally” introduced to the concept of God, would you believe in a higher power?

While we were busy paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, we decided Eden was all that great and that we could do better.

I see God as the vastness of the ocean, not fully understandable to us, but too full of life and wonder to be random occurrence.

But he is also made obvious by the minutia.

Tiny, insignificant plankton feed the krill, which in turn feed the whales. Imagine explaining to our ancestors that the largest animal on Earth subsists on the smallest!

And here’s the hook – phytoplankton exist because they turn sunshine into energy. Sunshine. In the great trickle-up of nature, we are made of sunshine, too. Not just anxiety, and angst, and sciatica pain.

If you had never read the words of a tome highlighted in red, would you walk through a forest and find evidence of his majesty? Knowing every bit of flora and fauna was making breathable air to sustain us all? I know we have been apt to describe the Spirit of God as “wind,” but what of his breath?

In a brick-and-mortar church, I learned that God made the earth, and it was good. It’s right there in the Bible.

In 9th grade biology, I learned that photosynthesis is the process of plants turn light energy into breathable oxygen. And that’s also good.

But both of those things, while true, can be dry as kindling or old bones, if Spirit is taken for granted. If the wind doesn’t reach us.

Do we know God beyond book-learning?

Because that’s where the synthesis in us takes place. As in every seed, we carry a holy blueprint. As in the lungs of the trees, we are continually provided refreshment and life. The sometimes slow, indivisible forces sustaining us are forever turning us from sunshine to being. And it is in the trusting of this that we are able to grow.

I pray you find God outside of the Bible today. I hope you smell a flower, hug a tree, or swim in the incredible proof of God that we call “water.” I hope a switch clicks in the recesses of your soul, and you realize the same care taken to create the world, went into making you.

God is real. He is majestic in the minutia of even this shit show, lending us his light to make our energy sustainable. His breath our existence. Our existence his breath.

Blessed be.

August 21, 2024 2

A Depression Nap Makes All Things New (and other things you might have forgotten)

By: JANA GREENE

Whoever needs to hear this today…

There is no consequence to not tweezing your brows even though you can see two errant hairs close up when you look in a magnified mirror.

Your family will not fall apart if you have leftovers three days in a row.

If you wash whites and colors together, nobody has to know. Nobody. Will. Know.

A three-hour trash TV marathon is good therapy.

A nice, well-timed depression nap can make all things new.

Your kids can eat an all-beige diet for all their preschool years and be fine (Flintstone Chewable’s cover a multitude of nutritional sins.)

Listening to really good, really loud music is CHURCH.

Staring off into space for extended periods of time is not a waste of it.

Holding hands is not just for children.

Don’t forget to lollygag and dilly-dally on the regular.

Store-bought is fine, if you can’t make your own serotonin and dopamine.

Paper plates are a mom’s best friend.

Animals are kind of superior to (a lot of) humans.

Remember that “no” is a complete sentence.

Cut ties with people who make you feel less-than important. Or LESS THAN, period.

Buy the concert tickets. You’ll almost never be sorry.

Not a single soul on this planet is better than you. Straighten your crown. You deserve to be wearing it.

Straighten your sister’s crown too, and remind her she’s a queen.

Hit the meeting. (If you know, you know.)

Be sloppily thankful for blessings, and ardently prayerful for troubles.

Shave your legs. Or don’t. No one cares.

Tomorrow is a fine day to start what you put off starting today.

Write the words, paint the picture, sing loud and badly, laugh until you pee yourself a little. And then laugh again.

And remember you are hurtling through space in a big, blue marble through an infinite, ever-expanding universe, and you yourself are made out of stardust and moxie for the express purpose of learning to love and be loved.

So love already.

That’s the main thing.

Blessed be.

August 19, 2024 0

Pilgrimage to Self (a little poetry jam)

I kind of love this image that WordPress so generously offered me. Never mind I would break both ankles (plus probably fall off of the dang mountain) if I tried hiking this. It also occurred to me that every journey we take in life is perilous, and every hike takes us somewhere. Might be the Garden of Eden. Might be the Donner Party encampment. Wheeeee! *insert inappropriate laughter here *

By: JANA GREENE

I stumble along on

a path untread,

afraid to follow

the drops I’ve bled

on roads before,

a pilgrimage known,

with no blood trail

to follow,

I do it alone.

I’m taking a new way,

not following tears,

I’ve been on that journey,

been steered

by those fears.

So familiar is the

that way of despair,

But I think I’d rather

try a path to self-care.

So now I walk on a path

I don’t know,

all my fears and tears

in tow.

Where will it lead me?

How will I grow?

I grab my walking stick

and go,

on this path

I have not trodden,

sure of foot

on rough terrain,

still questioning

the road ahead,

still asking God

for help again,

resolute

in striking out,

feeling stronger

than my fear,

I peek ahead

and look about,

and think

I just might like it here.

August 19, 2024 0

Summer of the Constant Rumble

By: JANA GREENE

It has easily been the longest summer in my entire life. Punctuated by triggers and glimmers and rolling thunder, it rains almost every afternoon. The day will be sunshiny (albeit, hot!) and from a great distance, you will hear the thunder.

At first, you wonder if the noise was a motorcycle or a garbage truck in the neighborhood over. But if you listen closely, there is the thunder cadence – a low vibration awakened, that you feel in your chest before your ears can confirm its source. And then the building growl roiling over the clouds: Yep, that’s thunder. Again. Here we go.

Nobody wants thunder at the beach. Thunder is a rude affront to the vacationers. It means get out of the pool, pack up your sand buckets. Might as well eat lunch out; the beach requires flexibility. But everyone has the same idea, so every restaurant is crowded and has an annoying wait. The kids are whiny, there’s sand in unmentionable places, you just want your ass in a beach chair, your kids in the pool and out of your hair, and BY DAMN you’re going to enjoy this experience in spite of the thunder and rain. All of this started with a little thunder.

When I received the diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia on June 13, when the summer was still fat with promise and completely benign. A lot of people freshly diagnosed with cancer describe the new diagnosis as a kind of hurried chaos. “For a while, it was a blur,” is a common sentiment.

But for me, it has not been a blur. It has been a sloth racing a snail and losing. It has been much pacing through my house, wandering aimlessly. It has been too much time on my hands, angry outbursts, crying seshes, and doomscrolling. I am wishing time away, and then chastising myself for wishing time away.

Because I could have 20 years with this cancer, although that’s the exception. I could also have five. Talking openly about the possibilities is therapeutic for me but makes everyone else uncomfortable. I’m not trying to make anyone else uncomfortable, but I’m trying to accept that we all have an expiration date, and if nothing else gets me first, this cancer will. That’s not fatalistic. That’s realistic. Cancer is not the only chronic health issue I deal with, but it’s a doozy.

Nobody wants thunder at the beach. But every day it comes – the realization- a rude affront to all the plans I’ve made for my life. The doctor’s visits mean crowded rooms where people wait, annoyed. I really just want my ass in a beach chair. Summertime means a season of heat and rain, that’s just the nature of the season.

And it occurs to me today that its exactly what depression feels like. I’ll be swimming with my floaties on under clear skies, when I will feel the rumble in my chest. At first, its mostly vibration, but by the time it’s all said and done, there are torrential tears and terrifying cracks of doom. They show up every day, like clockwork, suffocating me with humidity, impossible to ignore.

So, I write. And that helps. I talk to people I love and to the GTOAT (Greatest Therapist of All Time,) and that helps too. I listen to music loud enough to drown out the claps of thunder, and throw paint on a canvas, or fitfully meditate. The practice doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be practiced. But Jesus help me.

Please help me with the episodic depression that pops my floaties and sucks me under as soon as I hear thunder. Expect it to visit at least once a day. I can hide like a frightened animal in a storm or do a little rain dance; that’s entirely up to me – triggers, glimmers, and rolling thunder – all. Help me to accept that it’s just the nature of the season, and to keep my joy, all while realizing yep, that’s thunder again. Here we go…

Amen.

August 13, 2024 2

Letter to an Old Friend

By: JANA GREENE

Dear Old Friend,

If we were close once, I still think about you. I want you to know I think about you with reverence, no matter what life threw at us to sever our tie. The things you told me – profound and trivial – still come to my mind as random thoughts are apt to do, and my face breaks out in a little state of happy. Please forgive me if I’ve hurt you in any way. I was only learning, as you were.

If we bore and raised our babies together, we were blessed. We did the “Mom Circuit’ together – lazy days of trips to Gymboree, the park, McDonald’s ball pits, endless breastfeeding sessions and diaper changes, co-rejoicing with one another over the milestones our babies reached, because they were our milestones too. That gave me an identity; it gave us an identity, together.

Perhaps we were friends as teenagers, furiously cutting out pictures in old magazines and making collages of our “futures.” We would turn page after page of handsome men we’d marry, fancy cars we’d drive, and families we would raise perfectly. We made vision boards before there were vision boards, and many a glue stick lost its life in our hands in the name of naiveite.

If we made friends as young adults, you were dear to me at a chaotic time. I pulled back from you because I was ashamed of my alcoholism. If you were with me when I came out the other side (24 years ago)? Your friendship is priceless. Not all of the people I love stuck around in my recovery.

If over the years, we laughed until we peed, I feel a poignant pang in my soul when I remember our laughter, even still. (Bonus points for shooting beverages out of our noses.) Yes, if we laughed together, you are tethered to my heart eternally.

Friend, just so you know – nothing that cemented our relationship ceased to exist just because time marched away from us. The prayers we held hands and petitioned to God over? Nothing went to waste.

God didn’t follow our instructions in the least, of course. Disregarded most of our magazine plans and perfect-mommy dreams. Nothing turned out like we thought it would (thank God, but also dammit) No matter. All the weaving became who we are: The smiles, the jokes, the heartache, the lessons we painfully teach each other and ourselves. The music we share, the memes we post.

All of it.

As as we reached middle age, friendships took on new importance. No longer were they relationships to be sandwiched in between the chaos of parenting and busy marriages, but tantamount to every aspect of our lives, our very selves. Friends become family at this stage. We finally know who we are, and that helps us bring our best selves into our fold. And when we’re our worst? You help me stay grounded. It’s so obvious now that we are – cliché notwithstanding – on a journey for real. As the kids say, for real for real. Nobody warns you that in mid-life, you get weepy and sentimental.

Maybe life got away from us, but I remember our bond. I wish you all the best, Old Friend.

Your friend, Jana

August 5, 2024 0

Menu for Dreams (a little poetry jam)

By: JANA GREENE

I wish there was a menu for dreams,

so I could order

the Puppies and Kittens Special,

and not the heartache of dreaming of old

people, places, and things.

I would choose to dream

of a trip to the mountains,

just as an appetizer,

and dream of all the blues

in the Blue Ridge,

instead of dreaming

I’m lost somewhere,

and alone.

I would choose the

Soaring in the Sky entree,

and dream of flying high

over the earth,

and above all the chaos

And for a side dish,

that dream where I’m a mermaid,

breathing underwater,

instead of the nightmare

where I can’t breathe at all.

For dessert I shall choose the

Dreaming of Heaven,

the sweetest of all dreams.

It will come to the table smartly

dressed in a ganache of peace,

just how I like it,

and I would not

miss the dreams of rejection

one bit.

Yes, I wish there was

a menu for dreams,

for I would choose

a different path

for the astral projection

we call sleep.

Until then,

I’ll wish myself sweet dreams

and wait.

Because some dreams

come true eventually.

August 5, 2024 0

When it’s Simply a Hell of a Day (My CLL Journey)

By: JANA GREENE

In the interest of transparency, today sucks a little. I share when I have good days and get gussied up – admittedly those are fewer and further apart. And I share when I’m struggling because I don’t want to pretend I have my shit together for social media. That benefits no one. I don’t. And I won’t. Life is messy (and also great and awful, in turn. So who can give up yet?) But today the fatigue is crushing me, literally feels like a smothering blanket I can’t get out from under. And my pain level is crazytown. People get tired of hearing about my pain, I’m certain. But I’m tired of feeling it. So I spent some time meditating. And some time worshipping. And crying. And that’s the truth. That’s me, pulling myself up by my bootstraps. Leukemia sucks. Ehlers Danlos sucks. I’m tired of physical weakness making me feel less strong as a whole person. It’s just a hell of a day.

August 4, 2024 2

Made of Stardust, and All Connected

Thor’s Helmet in Canis Major. This image captures NGC 2359, a nebula shaped like Thor’s helmet in the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog.) Behold the absolute majesty of such creation!

By: JANA GREENE

I have always loved space. I think maybe I was born the year of the moon landing, that event which eclipsed my birth but began my own personal Age of Aquarius. I am also from Houston, where NASA was cause celebre – a field trip destination when I was a child, a portal to the great unknown.

I am 55 now, much more jaded about the conditions here on this planet, and a little obsessed with the beauty of the unknown. And now BEHOLD! The James Webb Telescope is capturing all of the glory I felt was surely “out there.” It’s like a great confirmation that our every day is not just every day in the vast universe. And that is super comforting to me.

Because here we mostly just see what’s here now, and experienceable through a finite number of human senses. It’s easy to forget we are divine beings living in a mousetrap of sorts.

Our daily lives are driving to work and driving past long, rectangular shopping strip malls, each less remarkable than the last. We shop in grocery stores that shelve our sustenance; items stocked neatly in a row, affordable by only some of us, while others go hungry. Traffic lights telling us when we can move, stop signs telling us when to stop. Hospitals housing our infirm, and despondent. Skyscrapers places to while away the time in order to make this thing we have made our god called “money.”

We worship vacations, because they set us free from the mundane for a fleeting time. We marvel at theme parks, because they make us feel like we aren’t ants marching on a big, blue marble. They are fantasy, and we have made fantasy the be-all end-all, another god altogether – who will whisk us away from working, and strip-mall shopping, and boredom.

The two places that seem most like home to me are space and ocean. Something about the mystery of the unexplored, the hope of otherness. Two of my hyper fixations that shape my daydreams and my dream life. Every new image from the telescope making me swoon.

Can you imagine I mean seriously; can you imagine? The colors, thick with stars, speckled with other worlds. Worlds where maybe gravity isn’t such a drag, sucking us to the good Earth. It makes me starry-eyed, morphing me into a child again, who wishes to soar through the cosmos and escape this realm. Escape all of the violence that exists here, and the poverty that breaks my heart, and the man-made monuments we make to celebrate ourselves.

I’d like to astronaut myself right out of this earth suit of mine, with of its maladies and humanity, and soar through endlessness.

But Houston, we have a problem. My feet won’t seem to leave this plain. They are heavy with purpose here, even as my mind likes to travel “out there.” Out there where my mind will quiet, maybe. Out there where God himself decides the order, which celestial bodies to spin where, what galaxies should resemble earthly things. I think some majesty of the universe is that we recognize some of it in ourselves.

A compulsory Google search will show us the Helix Nebula, which appears like a giant eye in outer space. It is often referred to as “The Eye of God.” The “Butterfly Nebula,” captured in 2009 by the Hubble Telescope. The “Horsehead Nebula,” looking for all the world like the profile of a steed. The list is endless.

The ancient stargazers knew that the Universe ties itself to us, even without modern telecopy. It reflects our world so that we know we are a part of it.

Carl Sagan has famously said: “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” A way for the Universe to know itself.

We are literally made of stardust – from the elements God used to create everything. Our good earth in its natural, perfect state. And the great mystery of miracles we call the “sky.” There is so much more glory.

Look up from your day job. Look up from your pain. See that there is so much more! And I will try to keep looking up, too. To quote Carl Sagan again, “Some part of our being knows this (space) is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us.”

Star stuff, mind you. Made for bigger things, better things. Don’t give up hope that God can fix this world through us, through a much bigger reality. I will hold that hope too, as I obsess over the Great Beyond that we call “outer space.” And be reminded we – all of us, and the whole Universe too – are connected.

August 4, 2024 0

Political Lies and Fraying Ties – a little poetry jam

Listen, friends. I feel passionately too. But I am writing this as a simple observer, stepping back and noticing what is happening. And what’s happening is so ugly. Blessed be, and remember that you are a light worker in a dark world. Open doors for people, compliment a stranger, be sloppy generous with the love you put out in the universe, and I will too. And hopefully we can make a difference as we flounder through this dystopian nightmare. Amen?

By: JANA GREENE

It’s interesting to me

that we gain one another

piecemeal,

one kind word at a time,

one kind deed after another,

until we call each other

“friend.”

Yet we are willing to

lose each other in whole,

all at once,

over politics,

over religion,

the two things

we were told would

bring us together,

really just cause

division and loss,

and I think we will

all regret that

one day.

July 24, 2024 0

Hardness, Heaviness, and the Gift of Unexpected Bliss

By: JANA GREENE

Today it’s raining like God has something fierce, like God has something to get off his chest. A bone to pick with humanity. Not a sprinkle but a torrential downpour, and like everything else right now, it comes hard and heavy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of “hard and heavy.” As I sit sipping coffee on the front porch of a little log cabin, I consider society and watching its apparent downfall. And I let my mind play pretend for a bit. I am a pioneer woman, hearty and fulfilled with the simplest of pleasures.

Never mind that there were no Airbnb’s on the “Oregon Trail,” (Blue Ridge highway?) only thoughts of sustenance and probable dysentery. Never mind that I would be long dead if that were the case, because childbirth proved nearly fatal for me bringing my two biological children into the world. I come from weak, generic- European stock. We are sickly, pale, and given to dying in childbirth.

But I consider my surroundings as if it were 1847 and I had arrived here by hiking on sturdy legs and enduring hardship, not by Honda Insight. There are berries in these woods probably, and the soil would be fertile for growing vegetables. There are deer for venison (I’m certainly not hunting and killing it – I’ll leave that to the menfolk) and other rodent-based meat – squirrel and rabbit, which I’m also not killing, but would eat if there was no Chick-fil-A nearby.

This is my first vacation since receiving a Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia diagnosis. It’s good medicine to sit in the woods and contemplate your fate, it turns out. I walk barefoot on the dewey grass. I hug the big oak tree that shades the cabin and thank it for its shade. I listen to Teddy Swims and old Van Morrison on the cabin porch, rocking and blissed out.

I literally stood outside in the pouring rain with my face skyward with the intention of screaming into the void, but ended up thanking him for showing up and washing away my attitude with his tears.

The air is God-breathed, my ears are filled with birdsong. And even though is it’s pouring rain; I am glad for it. I watch the clouds tuck the mountains in goodnight. I love a good tucking-in.

I think this property was a Christmas tree farm at some point. Frasier Firs line the property. I guess we were all something else at one time or another. Each phase subject to its own rejoicing; each phase subject to hardness and heaviness. I reckon the land groaned as it weathered changes, just as I do now.

Every journey we find ourselves on – whether involuntary or self-led – is too much at some point. Things are a little too much now. So I groan. Oh how I groan. Oy vey!

We are home from our long weekend getaway now. I’m trying to carry some of the contentment that came so easy in the mountains into today. Nature made an investment in me during he course of our mini-vacay, and I’m trying not to squander the peace it gifted me.

Turn off the news and quiet the weeping and gnashing of teeth long enough to remember that God is close to the broken-hearted.

I am sick, but I am surrounded by love – even in the suburbs where the air does not carry the scent of God’s breath. Even when I’m spiking a fever at the least opportune times, or angsty about the state of the world.

Pain is a constant companion, but I’ve found it is more effective to run a three-legged race with it than to deny it altogether.

It is a part of me, and hating it ultimately ends in hating myself. So, I walk with it daily, with it. Running with it ends up tripping me up. Go one day at a time – the same way I got through getting sober.

Now that I think of it, perhaps pain is like my conjoined twin; one that dislikes all the things I love. We have to compromise, or nothing gets done. At any rate, it’s here to stay, and that can be the hardest, heaviest thing of all. This might sound defeatist, but it’s just acceptance. And as long as there is still nature and hugs and the Spirit of God, I can accept it with some measure of grace. Even as this land groans.

I hope your hard and heavy era passes soon, and you can find some peace in this crazy world.

Blessed be, friends.

July 23, 2024 4

Good News I can Use (my CLL journey)

By: JANA GREENE

Yesterday was a very, very good day. It had been exactly a month since my diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, and my husband and I met with my oncologist to get staged and get a prognosis, after a battery of tests.

I am stage ZERO! CLL begins with stage zero, unlike most other cancers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I don’t have cancer – it just means that it’s in my marrow and blood but hasn’t spread anywhere else. My bone marrow biopsy confirmed that I definitely do have CLL, but the PET scan was clear!

My prognosis is good! We wait and watch now. I will go to the cancer center every three months forever to monitor my white cell blood count, lymphocytes, and web blood cells. But until my WBC doubles within a span of six months or I start to have lymph node problems, I am treatment free.

Will I need it someday? Most likely yes. CLL never entirely goes away. But I’m already on the one day at a time plan with my other chronic illnesses, I manage the POTs, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and about another half dozen chronic conditions.

Life is crazy, man. Yesterday morning I was praying for the diagnosis of CLL rather than ALL – chronic vs. acute. Chronic has to be managed, acute is trouble. Funny that a month and a day ago, I would never been so flippin’ happy that I have any kind of cancer. Now I’m praising God that it is not acute, or do I require any treatment right now.

I didn’t need another major health concern, but I feel like my training wheels are off in this regard. I already live illness every day. And whatever this brings, I intend to rise to the occasion. Probably while doing a lot of bitching now and then, and maybe some crying, and a whole other layer of frustration…

But I’m pretty scrappy.

Thank you for all of you who have been praying for me. It is truly the best case scenario. I love my medical team and I’m so grateful for them as well.

Blessed be, friends. And again, thank you.

July 12, 2024 2

Morning Staff Meeting (for my Medical Conditions)

Photo by Anna Nekrashevich on Pexels.com

By: JANA GREENE

Dear Various Body Parts, Systems, and Self,

Good morning. Let’s start right away, shall we?

I see a nasty headache has decided to show up, which means (a) this will be a very short meeting, and (b) I’m in a crappy mood. So, LISTEN UP!

Migraines, did you NOT get the memo that debilitating headaches aren’t the THING at this time- that getting confirmation that Leukemia is joining our team overrides your meddling right now? That’s a write-up, mister.

*Nods to Leukemia, who is perplexed and unwelcome, and would like a word with the head-hunter than assigned it to someone whose health is already chaotic – the Grand Central Station of Medical Dysfunction, if you will – when it’s painfully (haha) clear that some of this should have been outsourced.

And Ehlers Danlos, you pipe down too, with your pain first thing in the morning. Did I participate in the circus as a contortionist in the middle of the night, and that’s why my joints are on fire? (Speaking of joints on fire, I can see we will be starting this day with a little of the Lord’s Lettuce.) Did I dream I was a middle-aged, chubby Rockette and pull my hip out in a pair sequined pantyhose whilst sleeping? Did a little cereal elf come replace my kneecap with cornflakes when I was sleeping, so that I woke up with a knee that functions like its made of cornflakes, sounds like it’s made of cornflakes, and has the stability of cornflakes a ‘plenty but not a damn kneecap?

POTs, I really don’t want to fall today. And yes, I know you hate the heat and it’s June in the South. And frankly, you don’t give me the physical energy to move me somewhere cooler, so you see my conundrum. Also, I’d really appreciate NOT getting dehydrated now, as it makes everything 100x worse. Lord God, why am I always dehydrated, make it stop.

Sweet, hard-working Immune System, remember: Germs are not our friends. Stop fraternizing with the enemy. I know aren’t armed with much equipment, but try to fight, ok? I know Leukemia moved in. Stand your post. I believe in you.

Migraine, EDS, POTs…Ya’ll act like you’re toddlers at a petting zoo – cutting line in front of each other to get to get to something that’s loud, demanding, only mildly interesting, and shitty. Calm down. There’s plenty to go around.

Whoever is taking the meeting minutes, please note that the next person who sweetly tells me that the Lord never gives us more than we can handle is getting a throat-punch, and I am a very non-violent person. Ditto “God’s ways are not our ways,” and “Just pray harder.” Maybe two throat punches for praying harder.

I ain’t mad at God about this anyway. When he pours our souls into these Earth Suits, he never said they weren’t prone to disease and disaster. The warranty on the vessel leaves much to be desired, but we instead can rest knowing our Spirits are locked up tighter than a bull’s butthole in fly season. (Sorry for the joke, but laughter is going to be ESSENTIAL in getting through this!)

Seriously, guys. Ya’ll are going to have to take turns. Your presentation is sloppy and there is entirely too much overlap.

Thanks for attending this (mandatory) meeting. I know you’re all working so effing hard, just to keep going. To which I say, thank you. A harder working bunch there never was.

The Management

June 18, 2024 0

Scary News and Big Hope – a New Journey Begins

By: JANA GREENE

Hello, friends. I have decided to share my current situation, in the hopes it will help me to process what’s going on, and maybe give someone else hope who is struggling similarly.

I kind of hate that about myself – I want to be mysterious and private, I am just really bad at handling things alone, and there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re in a sinkhole by yourself, (and nobody will even admit there IS a sinkhole, much less throw you a rope.)

So, I’m sharing this in the hope that you guys will lob some prayers and hope and good vibes my way. I could use it. I also hope by sharing this, maybe someone else facing a difficult diagnosis will feel less alone. I have decided to blog about my journey. Feel free to follow here at wordsbyjanagreene.com if you want to keep up.

Thursday, I saw an oncology hematologist at the Zimmer Center, because I’ve had whacky labs and a ridiculous WBC count for a while now. I have been feeling extra run-down. I already have a host of other major medical issues. Why was I being sent to an oncology specialist? Huh. I figured it was just a mix up. It was not. I was told to expect bad news, which was actually helpful to my mental health, even though was the longest weekend of my life.

Today I got the call that confirmed that I have Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. “CLL” is sometimes described as “the kind of leukemia you want, if you MUST have leukemia.” It is the only cancer that never goes away – there is no getting rid of it, it’s in my marrow. Many people live 10-20 years with it, sometimes without needing continual treatment. It is also extremely slow-growing and highly treatable. And I’m hanging my hat on that. But it’s still cancer. The next step is a bone marrow biopsy, and a PET scan to make sure it hasn’t spread. The doctor suspects it has not, and I hope he’s right.

On the one hand, I have answers. Mystery pop-up fevers all the time? Oh. Excessive bruising? Well, that makes sense. Mind-melting fatigue? Whelp. On the other hand, I have a long road ahead and I’m organically TIRED. Not just physically, but in every way.

I am pretty sure I have done all five grief stages in the past few days. Denial – poring over my labs determined to find some easy, benign explanation for all of it. And hitting a wall with obvious markers all weekend. Anger – WHAT THE ACTUAL F&%$? Bargaining – well, maybe not so much. At the end of the day, God is in control, and I am not, and I trust that he knows better than me. I feel his presence so intensely that I know the Spirit is buoying me up. I seem to be teetering between Depression (it’s a bummer any way you slice it,) and Acceptance currently. And the notes of acceptance are starting to be the dominant flavor.

I plan on letting my feelings have their say in all of this, even though it feels like my brain is being operated by untrained carnie workers right now.

The very hardest thing about this has been breaking the news to my three precious daughters yesterday. Literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I am so fortunate – they are all such incredible people and so supportive. And my husband is my ROCK. And I have such beautiful friends surrounding me.

Some people might think I’m the unluckiest woman in the world, what with so many health issues. But I see it differently – how lucky am I to be surrounded with so much love? So lucky. This is not going to steal my faith. Or my sense of humor. Or hope. It can’t. I won’t let it.

Blessed be, friends. I love you all.

June 17, 2024 8

Ode to Ms. Flowers, Teacher Extraordinaire

By: JANA GREENE

I don’t know her backstory, but I wish I did. I’d like to know what made her decide to become a teacher, especially to high schoolers who resent the fact that she was making them write assignments. She was a Journalism teacher, you see. Also, a Creative Writing teacher. And she published the school newspaper and yearbook.

She loved words too. And considered every story a little sacred.

I know that I was going to write this blog series in a humorous vein, with pieces about what things from childhood germinated a sense of anxiety, but how about a piece about something that actually quelled my anxiety? A great teacher makes a big difference indeed.

She reminded me of “Miss Honey” from the movie, “Matilda,” except for her dry wit and constant smoker’s cough. Back in the eighties, teacher lounges were smoking places. Hell, even us kids had a “smoking tree” in the school courtyard.

You’d be walking to class by the teacher’s lounge, and smoke would LITERALLY billow out of the door like Cheech and Chong’s magic bus. Ms. Flowers smoked like a freight train, and that was worrisome. I suspect she was also a sad soul, but a good one – one that used a lot of humor to cope.

I wanted to be a writer since the time I could hold a crayon. I’ve been using written words to soothe myself in this format or that, as long as I remember. And while other teachers had recognized my talent, Ms. Flowers saw me. She. Saw. ME.

“I need you on the Viking Venture,” she said to me in 10th grade, referring to the school newspaper. Out of the clear blue, just like that. She needs me. So, I wrote for the paper. My beat for a while was Girl’s Golf news. Now, I cannot tell you how badly I did NOT want to write about the Girls Golf Club. “I don’t know anything about golf, ” I told her.

“You will after today!” she chirped.

Now, sports and I don’t mesh. Having had a connective tissue disorder that had not been diagnosed yet. I dislocated joints, rolled my ankles, and injured pretty much everything all through high school. As Ms. Flowers was my very favorite teacher, PE teachers were my arch-nemesis. They hate that I had to “sit out” many things. They’d roll their eyes and accuse me of trying to get out of the class. Miss Ma’am, maybe I would participate in PE more if I wasn’t subluxing/dislocating. Can you not see that my knee is facing sideways? Ugh.

But we are talking about Ms. Flowers here, who I still adored, even after she gave me Girl’s Golf. I was the worst sports reporter EVER because female athletes intimidated the bejeezus out of me, and I didn’t know the different between a golf club and a dang baseball bat, barely.

One day, in her Creative Writing class, she asked me to stay after school. OH NO! Being the nervous Nelly I was, I thought she was going to “fire” me. But no.

“Jana,” she said, holding the stack of stapled papers that I had turned in the day prior. “I’m going to see you on the Johnny Carson Show one day. This is terrific!”

“Does he even invite writers as guests?” I asked. “I don’t think he features writers.”

“He will YOU,” was her reply.

Now lest you think I’m boasting about my writing acumen, please know that I am debilitatingly bad at math. Science and English were my favorites, but I barely passed every single math class I ever (was made to) take. My 11th grade Algebra teacher found out I was not taking Algebra II, she said, “I’d reconsider. You will need it for college.” But what she didn’t know is I had no resources to go to college and wouldn’t be going, so PROBLEM SOLVED. Numbers vex me, friends. They vex me.

Ms. Flowers would use big, fancy words when she’d pay me a compliment. Like Pavlog’s dog, I itched for new assignments, because I knew when I turned them in, I would get a word-rich praise.

You write with elegance.

You’re so imaginative.

You’re a natural.

Your words make a difference.

I took every class Ms. Flowers offered, all four years. Creative writing was my favorite, but she taught a poetry class as well. She taught all the right-brained stuff, and so for a few years, I was her shadow – and she didn’t mind a bit.

There was so much chaos in my life then, and the only way I could cope was to write to process angst and ALLTHEFEELS. She saw I was a ball of anxiety, and she encouraged me to do what came naturally – write. It wasn’t a struggle to write. It had a flow, always. It was my saving grace.

I think maybe because she was a ball of anxiety most of the time, too. I would see peeks of it all the time. Kindred spirits. We knew she was going through a divorce and single motherhood. I’m sure she was going through even more than that.

I never did get invited to the Johnny Carson Show. Or any other show, for that matter. And the (sad?) truth is that I’ve never made a dime at writing. So maybe she poured it on a little thick?

I love her for that, too.

But the notion that she believed in me to that degree? Priceless. A great teacher can change lives, and I’m so grateful she saw in me what I had difficulty seeing in myself.

Several years after I graduated, I heard through the grapevine that Ms. Flowers had passed away – lung cancer. I was not surprised, but I was terribly sad. Did I ever tell her the difference she made in the life of an awkward, insecure kid? I wish I had. I pray she knows now.

Ms. Flowers, if you’re listening…

Nobody presented the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and the poetry of Robert Frost with more elegance.

You gave us permission be imaginative, and a safe place to experiment with words.

You were a NATURAL as a teacher. Your own love of learning was infectious.

And you were interested in what we – a gaggle of unhinged teenagers – thought about prose, and our own potential to create it. More importantly, you took the time to find out how we felt about other things – school news, political happenings, our lives at home.

I hope you and Geoffrey Chauser are hanging out with Kurt Vonnegut and William Shakespeare, exchanging those glorious words you loved so. And I hope you’re relaxing in that big Teacher’s Lounge in the sky.

I hope you’re being lauded as one of the greats as well. Thank you for seeing me.

Thank you for seeing us all.

June 6, 2024 0

Spilling Goodness and Mercy

Photo by Jou00e3o Vu00edtor Heinrichs on Pexels.com

By: JANA GREENE

I believe we will all share a Christ-consciousness. I believe that we are all sharing communal birthing pains – periods of big intensity, followed by what could be misconstrued as God’s silence and withholding, if you didn’t know better.

We are all in spiritual labor, that’s why it’s so hard, I think.

I believe the same God who expands the universe and paints the cosmos envelops us in Love and one day – when we are past the bullshittery of politics, fighting amongst ourselves, dealing with pain in our Earth Suits and in our hearts – there is only goodness and mercy waiting for us.

For us ALL.

When the husk of physical being falls away, only universal love and acceptance remain. We can do nothing to enable it, and nothing to suppress it. It’s our birthright. It’s the ultimate reality.

So be encouraged, dear one. Lift your chin. Leave space in your expectations for good things.

Leave space in your ego to accept those good things humbly.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, spilling over and splashing other humans who are lost in the dark.

Here, take my hand, and we will get through this intensity together, one itty-bitty step at a time.

Let us strive to have a dry-run here and now.
Let us learn how to love and accept here and now.

You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. ❤️

May 18, 2024 0

Celebrations, Pity Parties, and a God who Attends Both

How often do I feel like I’m spiritually “getting things right”? About as often as we see an eclipse. So let’s not lean on on our “understanding” of God and lean instead into Love (which is really just another name God goes by.) And yes, this is my lame attempt at photographing the eclipse.

By: JANA GREENE

If it’s God’s will, it will come easily. That’s how you know you’re operating in the Spirit. Things will click. Things will flow. His yoke is light, etc and so on.

But also, if you are in God’s will, it will be hard.

You’ll know you have holy favor when you’re downtrodden and at the end of your rope. That’s the ol’ devil, don’t you know. And he wouldn’t mess with you if you weren’t doing God’s work.

Well, which is it? Do you see the conundrum?

This is life, and it’s both and neither. It is, so far as I can tell, it’s ALLTHETHINGS, dammit.

I can’t trust a God whose mind I have to pick apart to get it “right.”

I don’t tell my adult children, “Okay, I’m feeling some type of way about you…but WHICH way? Let’s see if you can correctly guess based on interpretation of an ancient text and my jealous, vengeful nature. May the odds be ever in your favor!”

I learn alongside my children, you see. For everything I learn about them, they learn about me. And in the process, and I feel like we are all learning alongside God, with curiosity and wonder and grieving and suffering.

It will be easy, there will be times of flow.

It will be brutally difficult.

It’s all holy favor, you see, and that’s the confounding part.

God only feels ONE type of way about you.

We need not wring our hands in an attempt to earn love, because that’s the way we have been taught to please a world of broken people and an unpleasable diety.

In actuality, the odds are always, always in your favor, Beloved. Even (especially?) when you’re most hurt, downtrodden, and at the end of your rope.

Whether you invite God to a celebration of the soul or an old-fashioned pity party, just invite him. The Spirit shows up for both.

How to be in the will of God? Just be.

Blessings, friends.

April 16, 2024 7

Room Enough for Love

Ahhhh, you have to admit this is HEAVENLY!

By: JANA GREENE

When I thought I understood the hereafter in my evangelical days, I used to talk about the mansions we will all have in heaven, and looked forward to laying down this mortal burden and enjoying my “just reward” after fighting the good fight.

“Mansions!” all us Christians would insist. “We are all gonna have MANSIONS!”

In seems a strange form of idolatry now in hindsight. Entitlement, even. After all, it’s our birthright! In the end, it’s ego wanting what ego feels justified in wanting.

The way we all carried on about the specs for our abode in Heaven, missing the point and slipping into a prosperity gospel mindset.

So, God? You can give my heavenly “mansion” to someone else who struggled with homelessness while Earthside. Transfer the deed, and let it be so. Basking in the undiluted consciousness of the Universe is enough for me.

Perhaps God, you can see fit to let my address be YOU. Peace, not riches, in communion with the holiness we only get to see glimpses of here.

Although I surely won’t mind if you place me near water – perhaps a sea or a stream. I want to be cozy forever and ever, amen – safe finally and well. Whole and free in my little heavenly abode.

And I will invite all of my friends to my little UN-mansion; and that will be enough. A true just reward, eternally.

In my Father’s house, there are said to be many rooms, but I just need room enough for love.

March 28, 2024 2

That Grounding Gospel – Taking God to the Mat

By: JANA GREENE

I do my best spiritual work from on the ground, apparently.

I can remember laying on my mat Kindergarten at naptimes at school, a skinny little girl laying curled in a ball, watching all my classmates fall asleep like falling asleep is just a normal thing people do or something.

From birth, my brain never shut up, and my home life was dysfunctional to the point of chaos. So, I would lay with my budding anxious neurosis on the vinal mat, unable to sleep; afraid to close my eyes (and afraid not to.) No sleep, only unease.

My teacher, Mrs. Carter would stand over me and holler in front of the whole class, “CLOSE YOUR EYES, JANA!” I can remember squeezing them together and doing a rudimentary version of praying. It was a crude and simple exchange with the God of my Vacation Bible School stories. Even as a child, I seemed to know instinctively that there is more help available from the Divine than we ask for or expect.

“I can’t calm my mind,” I would have said to the adults in my life, had I the language to ask for what I needed. But I didn’t. Little girls with big, grown-up worries don’t know how to self-soothe, because OF COURSE they don’t; and they surely don’t know how to articulate anxiety or ask for help calming their minds.

That’s where I remember doing my first earnest prayers – on the kindergarten mat – asking of Jesus who already lives in my heart to be seen and soothed, comforted and feel less alone.

Twenty-seven years later, I found myself on the bathroom floor of my house, battling an alcohol addiction, wishing to die. On January 3, 2001, I came to the end of myself on that floor. Wretching, sick, alone, and desperate. From flat on the tiled floor, my fist in the air, eyes tinged in red, and skin yellowing, yelling at God and no one in particular, I came to the end of myself.

It reminded me of the biblical story of Jacob “going to the mat” with God in an all-night WrestleMania event. “I’m not going to take this laying down!” Jacob was thinking. But he ended up exhausted and limping, which is how most of us end up in that mindset, if we are not careful.

I had prayed many, many times before for sobriety, but there was a different outcome on that day. A peace descended on me like a dove. In my sickness and desperation, I was met on the floor by a God undeterred from my anxiety. One minute at a time, and then one hour, then one day, week, month, year… that was 23 years ago. A lifetime ago.

“I CAN’T CALM MY MIND” I simply told him. And here’s the thing: I know the same Spirit who curled up with me on my kindergarten nap mat is the same Spirit who met me in the bathroom, me clinging to the toilet, him not at all afraid to get the hem of his garment dirty on my behalf.

I am now learning to meditate now, and it’s a challenge. My husband, who never seems to tire of my endless new “hobbies” took me to get a nice, double-padded yoga mat. I’ve been on quite the little awakening for several years now and am learning so much. I absolutely love incorporating the tools I’m learning into my faith life, which is not a conflict with the holiness of God at all, no matter what Debbie at the Pentecostal church says. (I plan to write at length about what I’m learning, if you’d like to journey with me.)

The first group meditation session I went to, I dutifully spread out my mat amongst the hippies and lovers and seekers at the group event, excited to learn this new coping mechanism. The atmosphere was thick with love and cleansing. Yet can you guess what the prevailing thought was upon getting situated?

I CAN’T CALM MY MIND.

“Okay,” I felt Spirit say, over the Native American flute music and swirling clouds of burning sage (that former evangelical ‘me’ would be scandalized by.) “I am in you and with you and around you.”

If you feel you are on the “floor” in some regard to your life, I just want to remind you that it’s a nice, stable surface from which to start. You are simply grounding, darlings. The floor is a very vulnerable place to be, but be vulnerable we must, if we are to grow. We glorify striving, when simply being is enough.

So just ‘be’ today, friends.

Just be, Groundlings. And don’t forget to breathe. And ask the Universe to make you ever more aware of his presence. If we increase our awareness of this supernatural experience, we begin to see God everywhere – in every ONE.

In you, too! Ready to see, soothe, and comfort you – meeting you on hallowed ground.

March 11, 2024 5

Cringey Vulnerability (a tale of betrayal)

Today’s writing prompt from The Writing Room Collective:

By: JANA GREENE

If you are going to trust with any degree of your tender, fleshy heart, you will get hurt. It isn’t a possibility. It isn’t a “might happen.” We all experience betrayal. Death has lost it’s eternal sting, but betrayal still really smarts.

Many years ago, a woman who was freshly out of rehab was being released into her natural habitat of Life on Life’s Terms. We had a mutual friend at the time, who asked me to reach out to her so I can hook her up with some meeting resources, and just generally be her friend. As a result of her past choices, she relied on others to get her around town – she lost her licence – and I was all too happy to be her recovery buddy and take her to meetings with me.

And become her friend, I did.

Not only did she confide in me, but I in her; and regularly. Looking back now, I cringe at the uber-vulnerability I felt comfortable engaging in with her. I wasn’t her sponsor, but I was her friend, and I have a propensity for letting it all hang out anyway.

She had close ties with people who used to be an intimate part of my life (ESTRANGED family, gee, that should have been a clue!) but I did a crazy thing, which is to trust her.

What I should have caught on to, but missed by a mile, was that her wildly elaborate and passionate stories about recovery were pockmarked with holes, hugs, and bullshit. My gut often doesn’t get consulted on these things, when it should be the FIRST consultation I make.

On our rides to meetings, she was super animated and would often even quote from my own blog to me. I would sometimes think, ‘okay…THAT was weird,’ but most of my friends – and certainly me – are weird. Some of the personal stories she told suspended belief!

Eventually, this friend needed witnesses who ‘knew’ her pretty well, and after taking her to meetings for damn near a year I felt confident about testifying on her behalf. “You’ve worked so hard on your recovery,” I said. “I would be honored to help!”

The Oscar for Best Actress goes to ….

My “friend.”

After I was a character witness for her, I never saw or heard from her again. She fell off the face of the Earth. It’s hard for me to imagine that degree of deception.

Turns out, this woman had been drinking all along – Vodka apparently, so I didn’t smell it. ALL ALONG.

I kind of pride myself on this mission statement: I don’t have relationships with people I don’t trust. That assumes I know untrustworthy people and can tell when they are lying. I thought I had decent discernment. Maybe that pride needs to go the way of ALL pridefulness. In the sh*tter, where it belongs.

The question I keep posing to myself is thus – HOW could I be so stupid and gullible? I honest to God just didn’t see it. I really hurt my own feelings about it. Then I realize, there is no betrayal that can’t teach us a thing or two.

There’s no way to wrap up this post up all clean and tidy-like, because life is just so messy. I don’t think I’ll hear from her again; she got what she had befriended me for.

What I experienced ain’t terribly original.

Active addicts lie. It’s kind of what they do. They deceive, minimize, maximize, lie, cheat, steal, and all to protect their best friend – the drug of choice. I myself used to strategically hide BOXES of wine all over the house (although I’m not sure why, as those in my life at the time didn’t seem to mind if I drank myself to death.)

But once I got into a program, I learned to call myself out on these behaviors and stop lying to myself. Because calling yourself out keeps you sober, frankly. “Rigorous honesty.”

Yeah, that old chestnut.

As with most things about recovery, I’ve learned tons about myself during this time. Had I to do it again, what would I change? Even if I knew she was using me and lying about her addiction?

I would still offer to take her to meetings with me. I would still give her a safe place to vent. I probably wouldn’t have shared as much of my personal life with her, and I surely wouldn’t have vouched for her. Like I said, it sometimes seems that no good deed goes unpunished.

Although the deception happened TO me, it is not ABOUT me. It’s not about me in the least. But it stings all the same – I’m just being honest about how this whole debacle made me feel.

Still, God calls me to be grace-full, and I’m trying. He never called me to be a sucker, though. I have forgiven this lady (although she never asked for it) after wasting precious hours and hours on trying to figure out what clues I missed.

But forgiving someone doesn’t mean you want to break bread with them. You can forgive, walk away, and be wiser for the trouble.

February 28, 2024 1

Ode to the Socials

By: JANA GREENE

I crave connection.

Standing in the gas station,

getting me a tank-full.

I never met a stranger,

and for that I am so thankful.

At the grocery check out,

waiting in a line,

please tell me your life story

and I will tell you mine!

I’m grateful for the “socials,”

because they tend to shrink

this planet that we live on,

and oftentimes I think

what an absolute marvel

technology has become!

Together we grow,

together we rise,

together we come undone.

I crave human connection

because there’s One Love,

you see.

Divinity is our DNA,

it’s for freedom we are set free.

February 17, 2024 0