Pushing Against the Flow ...

I had a healing yesterday with a dear classmate.   I was examining an aspect of my life that involved a branch on the Tree of Life that is labeled:  Gevurah.   It refers to boundary, structure, discernment,  judgment.   In conversation with this classmate,  what we both discovered is that when Gevurah is in its unhealed state,  it is passive in nature.   I felt so good at the start of my healing work about setting boundaries with others.   The truth was that,  while it looked like boundary-setting by all appearances,  it was a passive arresting of being in relationship.   The "flow"  (or what is known as Chesed -- Gevurah's partner branch on the Tree) is in essence being halted.  It is actually controlling another through what appears to be setting a limit.

Gevurah in its healed state,  on the other hand,  is active.  And,  when it's in relationship to Chesed,  it is a pushing against the flow.   There is conflict, even confrontation.  And there is juicy and meaty relationship !  Boundary setting involves taking a stance and sometimes even fighting for that position.   Not from a place of defensiveness but rather from a place of honoring the boundary that has been set with intention and that is also to be respected.

To draw a line in the sand and say to another:  "you can't cross this"  is passive.  It doesn't allow for the war that is part of negotiating a relationship.   For both of us to keep drawing lines,  moving them, questioning them, stepping our feet over them and stating our intentions for doing so is to be in the active dynamic of Life.  It is an alive engagement !

I have held out the literal and figurative hand to stop others in their tracks.  My will be done.  You will be controlled.   You will not have access to me.   You cannot threaten or hurt me.   This is setting boundaries from quivering terror.  And there is an aspect of this,  which has a palpable sensation,  of cutting another off right in their tracks,  ceasing the flow of human exchange.  It actually feels cruel and harsh.   I did this to many people over the years.

I was in a meeting tonight in which we read Step 1.  I am reminded that I am powerless over EVERY THING.   There is not a blessed thing that I have control over,  even when I act as if I do and,  even more self-centered,  when I act is if I have the RIGHT to.   

Pushing against the flow of Life is to be pulsating with it, dripping in its sweat,  in the thick of its hairy chest and heartbeat.  This is where I have the best chance of seeing God face-to-face in the eyes of another.

Fragile Sparrow

(#128) Appropriately Named, a photo by tinyfishy (gone again to US) on Flickr.

Sweet Jesus
put your hands acoss this fragile sparrow,
dancing against the wind
seeking
she is waiting for the storm
to end ...
Only you
these torn wings can mend
For where I've flown
it will take eternity
with you to spend
Then,
pain will end.
~ Christine

This poem was one of many found in journals of a woman in my AA community after she died last week. This one was featured on the program for her memorial service held today.

I was with 11 other members of our regular Tuesday night meeting to support her boyfriend, also a member of our group. He looked both stunned and shattered today, drop-kicked into Reality amid all of the photos of his Love, ranging from being a little girl until recently, including a special display with pictures of she and him. Those were the pictures that went straight to my heart and ripped it wide open. Especially one photo which captured them, lips touching, in a tender kiss.

There is no mistake that my healing Teleclass today would have included a discussion about our relationship to Life and Death. My heart is the chamber where profound joy and deep sorrow are nested opposites. I felt both emotions today as I took in the photos and experienced the elation I have about my own significant relationship and, simultaneously, the anguish of feeling the insurmountable sadness that would accompany experiencing her death. Many of us could not imagine being in our friend's shoes and we also related to the surrealness and realness that he was trying to juggle today.

Christine's cousin and her minister offered celebratory comments in honor of her life. The way she touched people. And how she loved Jesus and God. They also spoke frankly yet kindly about her struggles with mental illness and addiction and the courage she had to face each head on and seek help. The most moving part of the service was when her cousin relayed to us the conversation she had with Christine the night before she died. Christine spoke about the physical and mental pain she was in and how weary it had made her. She told her cousin that whenever it's her time to go, she wants her hand extended so that Jesus can take her -- peacefully. This is EXACTLY how she died and how she was found that next morning ... her arm extended across the bed.

The reality of death brings us, if we are open, to meet our own mortality and the preciousness of our life. It has a bittersweet taste and it makes my heart swell. I want to stroke those torn wings and let those tears gently fall as I hold the fragile sparrow that I am.

Herded Back to God

Arratsaldea /// Atardecer, a photo by Jabi Artaraz on Flickr.

Every waking moment is an opportunity to be shown the way to God. Sometimes, we stray. And, if we're open and willing to our resistance, our avoidance, our doubt ... we can be lovingly herded back.

The shepherd takes all kinds of forms, sometimes not even human form. It may be as subtle as a fleeting thought or a whisper.

My interior has developed its own signaling mechanism to alert the unit known as me that I have gone off course and moved away from God. It can show up as dialogue in my head that has a flavor of victimization. It can appear in the form of mean thoughts about another, compelled to blame or criticize them. It can be the sudden onslaught of cursing out other drivers who are not behaving as I want them to on the road. And, it can be found in my questions such as "Why this?" or "Are you kidding me?" or "What the fuck?"

I am working with a study group from my healing community on my teacher's book about Receiving God. One of the exercises is about holding a difficulty gently and feeling it, without demanding that God show its ultimate meaning, but rather that I take it on faith.

It is being this vulnerable -- in trusting that the difficulty here for me is precious -- that opens up the path back to God. This is Step 3 in all of its powerful Divinity: the surrendering of my will over to the care of God.

Today, I am holding close to my heart the death of a member of my AA community and her Beloved who is here, grieving and lost.

On a lighter note: I am also trying to hold close by, begrudgingly, all of the pesky ants that have invaded my bathroom over the past week. Mostly, I want them all to die. I am incredibly uncomfortable and irritated by their presence, especially when one gets on my skin while I am on the toilet or brushing my teeth. I must trust that something in this too has God-given  preciousness.

21

21st Birthday Cake, a photo by Quirky Confectioner on Flickr.

In AA, there is a tradition of celebrating one's anniversary of sobriety as a "birthday". On September 4th, I turned 21. A legal adult.

I am understanding on a deeper level that this is indeed a birth day ... when we get sober and put down the bottle, we are actually beginning to live, to be in the world. The beginnings of sobriety are truly infancy years, just learning how to figure out how the world works and how to be another living being interacting and interfacing with others. There is a LONG learning curve -- in the program of AA. And, I learned the painful life lesson that you don't "graduate" from AA and forget about working on your recovery. It will come back to bite you in the ass and remind you that you are not the one in charge.

My sponsor was at the meeting last night where I celebrated my AA birthday -- complete with cake. Her only words to me were: "You are officially a sober adult and it's evident that you are living like one." I really took that in. Chronologically, I am more than double my sobriety age and, the Truth is, I really am just beginning to live like an adult.

It is said that the age we begin drinking is the age we stop growing emotionally. Alcohol halts this development and we stay "stuck". That would mean for me that I have been a perpetual 16 year old ! Still at that place of not really knowing who I was, who I wanted to be. Constantly looking to the outside to define myself and my feelings. Both awkward and clingy in relationships. Wanting to individuate yet victorious only in rebellious ways. Full of anger and fear. Not wanting to "belong" anywhere so that I did not have to experience being abandoned -- kill off rather than be killed.

On my actual 21st birthday, I got so wasted that I missed most of it. I was still in college and stayed that summer so I could drink in a bar legally (even though I'd been sneaking into them and getting served illegally since I was 19). I blacked out and passed out by mid-day, lying on a lawn chair while others polished off the keg I bought. 

When I was 21,  I was physically dependent on alcohol,  the consumption of which included desperately trying to fend off regular panic attacks.

When I was 21,  I was raped during a drunken episode.

When I was 21,  I became pregnant from that rape incident and had an abortion.

When I was 21,  I graduated from college,  having attended 5 years versus 4 so that I could extend my period of drinking and not be responsible for having to get a "real" job.


What a contrast to experience my 21st AA birthday -- wide awake, present, fully engaged with people and life, in reality. Those former ways of being in the world seem foreign and so distant. It is a life that was lived with the "who was" that existed then. As it is said in The Promises: "We won't regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." I have to remember this time, as it is a sobering reminder of both the impact of alcohol and of not working a recovery program. I don't ever have to live that way again.

It is a relief and a joy to have a second chance in Life and to turn 21 in a brand new way.

Laid to Rest ...

070710-F-7939S-103, a photo by AnthonyItalia on Flickr.

The telltale neatly packaged American Flag indicates that a military person of honor is the one being laid to rest.

This very scene depicted in the photo is familiar. 18 years ago today, my father was found dead in his sleep and what would follow was a military funeral to honor his service as a Marine in the Korean War.

There is a way, particularly through my healing work, that I have literally "laid him to rest". I have been freed of crippling resentments and bittnerness about our relationship and the time period he was alive. I have developed a deep compassion and understanding of his limitations based on in his state of post-traumatic stress and subsequent alcoholism.

As he was about to be put into the ground, the flag taking its prominent place atop his casket, I can remember, quite vividly, my brother falling apart as he could barely take in the reality of what was before his eyes. He kept saying "No!" and the tears poured down his face. He was barely consolable. To this day, I don't believe he has ever laid my father to rest. I believe, instead, that his memories -- some good and many bad -- haunt him. My brother was the only one of us siblings still in the house when my father died. Newly diagnosed and medicated for paranoid delusional disorder, my brother seemed to suffer the most from his exposure to the end stages of my father's alcoholism. My brother's mental illness impaired him from seeing reality and the reality that was right in front of him was just as horrifying as the delusions that lived only in his mind.

My sister had a strained and painful relationship with my father. She never made peace with him when he was alive. She kept his grandkids at a distance to get him back for all the ways he kept her at a distance. She never forgave him for kicking her out of the house at 18 when she got pregnant. And, my sister has never laid him to rest. Every year on this day, she dutifully places flowers at his gravesite. I believe this is the pentance she's given herself in an attempt to seek forgiveness for the way she shut my father out. She is riddled with guilt and remorse.

My mother, for the most part, moved on with her life after dad died. If anything, she experienced the kind of freedom that she had always wanted. Traveling, dinners with friends, decorating a space just the way she wanted, eating anytime she wanted, and going to bed with quiet and peace. I believe my mother put my father to rest long before his heart ever stopped beating permanently. She had to grieve the man she fell in love with before he was exposed to the horrors of war. That man never returned. I experience such deep sadness in my heart as I type this and think of how she remained for almost 40 more years as a living widow residing with the ghost of the man she once loved.

The one who I believe is resting most peacefully is you, dad.  It was far more torturous to be here for you.  And we are all making our way in the world without you. I think all of us, including you, are better off this way.

When the sand runs out ...

Sands of Time, a photo by jrtce1 on Flickr.

On Saturday, I was honored and privileged to be part of a healing circle for a vibrant woman -mother of two, runner, therapist - who has been recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

I was most struck that,  by all accounts, she looks perfectly healthy. Right now, this problem is invisible. It is hard for her to fully drop into the grave reality of this for longer than a moment or so, as she too remarks that there is not yet any real evidence that she is experiencing.

This made me ponder what is the unknown destiny of my mortality ? What is MY brain tumor ? I cannot sit with this woman and be so arrogant as to think that I am lucky that I get to have a long life ... nothing is guaranteed or promised.   Dropping into this more,   I was transported to being a little girl and lying awake,  during sleep hours,  with only the glow of my nightlight,  and being terrified of the idea of death.   I think it was a way that I skimmed the surface of my relationship to the unknown and the terror that came with it.   As an adult,  thoughts of death revolved around self-centered fears of others dying and me being left -- still operating from that place of fear of abandonment.   Today,  being awake to this experience found me moved to tears of exquisiteness and preciousness for my life and what it would be like to know that I am the one leaving.   One of the first pictures that entered my mind was saying goodbye to the love of my life on the ferry last night as she stood on the deck,  the wind blowing through her gorgeous locks and feeling so in love with the beauty of all that she is.   If that was my last contact with her before dying,  I would leave here having experienced such a depth of love that perhaps some never get a taste of.   That is a gift and an appreciation of being in Life.

This precious woman we did the healing with also spoke about trying very hard to live - one day at a time. I suspect it will be one minute at a time on some days. This is what I am taught in my recovery program -- not just to keep me sober, but rather to have me fully engaged in the present moment.

On my drive home through several states last night,  in a torrential downpour,   I put on a song from Rascal Flatts -- "When the Sand Runs Out" -- and I sobbed hearing a portion of the lyrics and thinking about this woman, the preciousness of her life, of my life, of being alive and connected here, as One, with humanity.

Here are a few of those moving lines:
I'm gonna stop looking back
and start moving on
Learn how to face my fears
Love with all of my heart, make my mark
I wanna leave something here
Go out on a ledge, without any net
That's what I'm gonna be about
Yeah, I wanna be running
When the sand runs out

May each of us be in touch with the Reality that we have a not yet known brain tumor otherwise known as our inevitable death, and be in conversation and in relationship to it, so that we may live fully - right here, right now.

Getting my feet wet ...

¿Frío?, a photo by Keep the Funk alive on Flickr.

I am doing a "Life in review" of sorts ... not to tell my life story or recount every sordid detail but rather to feel everything that is here about this exploration of my life.

In getting my feet wet over these last few days, I have also felt like I touched the ocean floor and then back to a toe in a puddle. I am channeling more information than I thought humanly possible to receive. I have found myself on a couple afternoons lying flat on my back on the floor, waving the white flag, no longer able to embody any more material.

I know where I've been and yet I don't really know all about who I was. In a passage in my healing teacher's book this morning, he says: " ... the deepest knowledge is US and we discover ourselves anew when we find it."
I am already finding this to be quite true. I have a knack for offering logical surface explanations which gloss over deep-seated Truths. A beloved friend observed yesterday that I perhaps get fearful to sink into what I already know is underneath and opt for the safer route that is above-ground. My go-to strategy for a long time was denial --- seems to be in operation still on some level. The difference now is that I snap myself out of that trance much quicker because I recognize I am adopting a fantasy story over the real deal biography !

So ... I've got my big toe wet in the waters of my Life. I believe I have the sense enough not to drown, but rather to wade for awhile, then ever so slowly dip in, deeper and deeper...