At the Foot of the Stairs

Candles in the dark

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 21:51:00 +0000

I do want to talk about Kairos more sometime when I can think more about it. Just a quick thought, stealing more from Standing at the Corner of East and Now from Frederica Mathewes-Green:

Between the songs the lead singer urges listeners not to
let the joy of the faith grow cold in their hearts. I hear several
bands give messages like this between songs, which makes me
wonder if cooling emotion is a recurrent problem. It doesn’t
seem to be a concern that listeners will actually lose their faith,
but rather that they’ll fail to experience a sufficiently vivid level
of emotional engagement with it, that they may gradually grow
numb or take it for granted.

A liturgical church has an advantage over one where worship
is relatively spontaneous, in that people powered by religious
emotion simply do run out of steam. Where there is a
liturgy you show up each week and merge into that stream, and
allow the prayers to shape you. But where the test of successful
worship is how much you felt moved, there’s always performance
anxiety; even the audience has to perform.

I had been a Christian about ten years when I noticed to my
dismay that my spiritual feelings were changing; the experience
was growing quieter, less exciting. I feared that I was losing my
faith, or that I might hear the Lord’s words to the church at
Ephesus, “I have this against you, that you have left your first
love” (Revelation 2:4). Then I came to sense that my faith had
undergone a shift of location. It had moved deep inside, and
was glowing there like a little oil lamp; if I were swept away with
emotionally noisy worship, it might tip and sputter. Silence and
attentiveness were now key.

I think this happens naturally in a believer’s relationship
with God, just as it does between two people who are in love. At
first being in love is all so strange, and the beloved is so other
and exciting, that every moment is a thrill. But gradually over
long years the couple grows together and grows alike. They no
longer find each other a thrilling unknown, but drink deeply of
a treasured known that will always extend to mystery. At the beginning,
the heart pounds just to see the beloved’s handwriting
on an envelope; at the end, two sit side-by-side before a fire and
don’t need to speak at all. When these rock bands urge their
audience not to let the joy fade, they may be calling them to
fight a fruitless battle against moving to the next stage of spiritual
communion, the one where God moves deep inside. When
years shape us to be like Him, His presence is less electric and
strange; yet as we draw nearer, deeper faith yields deeper awe.

One of the most salient sentences of that passage for me, and this has to do with Kairos is this: "A liturgical church has an advantage over one where worship
is relatively spontaneous, in that people powered by religious
emotion simply do run out of steam. Where there is a
liturgy you show up each week and merge into that stream, and
allow the prayers to shape you."

We are merging into a stream that has existed, continues to exist, and will exist.

In the French language, there is a verb tense that we don't really have an equivalent for in English: The present perfect continuous tense.

Let's say I am sitting on a bus, and someone calls me and asks me what I am doing. I would use the present perfect continuous tense in French to describe what I was doing: I am currently sitting on the bus, I have been sitting on the bus, and I will continue to sit on the bus for an indeterminant length of time.

They have one verb tense that conveys all of that at once.

Kairos is like that with regard to the spiritual life: I am praying. I have been praying. And I will continue praying indefinitely. When we enter liturgical worship with priests and prayers who have been passing down traditions for 2 thousand years, we are entering a kind of space that defies normal time. It's sacred time. This is also true of Jews all over the world who are covering their eyes and praying before candles at the start of Shabbat. It's been going on for centuries, and when we continue it today, we are participating in something sacred, something larger and beyond ourselves.

But even more than that: We are entering a stream of worship that is constantly ongoing in Heaven. And Heaven is very real, and all around us-- we are surrounded by Saints and Angels worshipping God. So, often during worship services, it is easy to feel transported into another realm, one in which the worship is eternal, and one that we will someday join permanently. This is Kairos: Getting to experience this now.

Last night Darren and I were talking, and he said, "I feel like I am always doing it wrong at church."

And it took me a minute, but I realized he feels this way because he is always being told that he's doing it wrong. This is true-- but I don't think the priest means it the way Darren interprets it, which is more worldly: "You can't do anything right, you'll never get it right, so why bother?"

The way the priest intends it is more like this:

If we are standing in a dark room, we don't really notice the darkness of our own souls. We don't recognize our own sinful nature, because we are accustomed to darkness, so we blend in. We don't seem that bad compared to our surroundings.

If someone lights a candle, we can see a little bit, so we can compare our own darkness to that little bit of light, but it's still not so bad.

Now, let's say that any poximity to light, even a candle, represents our own metanoia, our own turning toward Christ, however small that turn may be. And so, our turning represents repentance, and a cleansing of our souls, and as we repent, we receive more and more access to Christ's light.

Now, we are in a fully lit room. And we are in this lit room because we have been turning toward Christ and trying to keep our focus on him, we have realized that some of the things we do and think make us dark, and we crave the light, so we try to change our actions and thoughts to keep us in the light. But at the same time, that light reveals us starkly. So, at the same time that we are becoming more holy, more able to stand in the light, we may actually FEEL less worthy to stand in it than we did when we were fully engulfed in the darkness and had no light to compare ourselves to.

Continue this analogy until you're standing in the noonday sun,

or perhaps a spotlight on a stage. Father Paul tells us that the more we empty out the concrete and dirt of our hearts, the more room we have for the living water of Christ. But what happens when you add water to dirt? Even a little bit of dirt? You have mud.

So, the more holy we become, the more light we're present for and the greater the light we are comparing ourselves to. So, even though maybe we are far holier and more righteous than we were when we first started, in comparison to the brightness we now see, we feel dark.

This is what it means to say, in Orthodoxy, that we are doing it wrong: We are in a fallen state. We will never quite get to merge with the light in the way that we want. But we will get closer and closer to it. But this is why the holiest of saints and the most humble of monks consider themselves the worst among sinners: They have received the most grace, they have the most knowledge of the light, so they, more than any of us, know how far they have to go. And of course, they are going to feel that they are failing miserably. However, the rest of us are comparing our darkness to that of the saints and monks and thinking, "They're insane to say that they are chief among sinners." And from our perspective it seems that way-- but when we are where they are, we will understand. Just as those of us who have seen glimmers of candle light can tell those who are completely in the dark that they are actually in darkness-- their eyes have just adjusted to the darkness, so they don't fully realize it. Without Christ, they have nothing to compare it to.

Kairos

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 21:17:00 +0000

During Christmas break, I noticed one day that AncientFaith’s ebooks were on sale for $5 each! I bought five, and I have read three of them. I am currently reading the fourth.

Darren and I have been talking recently about how during services at church, we frequently experience a phenomenon where it feels like we are transported somewhere else. Or maybe some time else. It’s like we enter the realm of heaven where the prayers are constantly occurring with the saints and angels.

In two of the books I have read so far, I have encountered an explanation for why we experience this. It’s because of Kairos. Bear with me—their explanations of Kairos are better than I can paraphrase.

I have more I want to say about this, but I have been tired lately, so when I get time to write, I'm too tired. So, with perfect being the enemy of good enough, I'll just let these stand for now.

From Everyday Wonders by Michael Oleska [the bolding is mine, for emphasis]:

“In the modern Western world, our only experience of time is chronological, the kind of time we measure with clocks and calendars. Like a river, it flows forward, never back, and what is past is forever gone. The experience of time the Greeks called kairos, however, is alien to most of the modern world. It derives from a concept of time as repeatable. Important events of the past can not only be remembered, but in ritual, they can be made present. A sacred or significant event of the past can be repeated and its original meaning made accessible under special, intentional circumstances…
“Kairos requires a significant reality, revealed at some past time, which is of such sacred importance that it can be encountered again and again in the present. Not every present is adequate for this—not all eating and drinking, not all bread and wine, are the same. There must be a qualitative break with the ordinary, when we deliberately leave chronos and say it is time for kairos—time to enter meaningful, sacred time. This is what the deacon says to the celebrant at the start of the liturgy—in Greek, “Kairos estin.” It is kairos.…”
[Jen note: This is why we believe that every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are participating in the Eucharist the first time Christ celebrated it.]
“But while the Liturgy is rooted in sacred events that took place in ancient Palestine, it is essentially a projection into the Kingdom to come. Christian kairos is not only a remembrance of the Mystical Supper in about ad 33, but also a participation in the marriage feast of the Bridegroom, an entrance into the reality of the Second Coming, “that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom” (Luke 22:30). One can understand the beauty, the vestments, icons, incense, and singing, only if one realizes that this kairos is different from all others: it is a remembrance of the future. The holy people depicted on the icons are not portrayed in the style of modern or renaissance Italian paintings, but in their future, resurrected bodies, suffused with light, glowing in the reflected holiness into which they have entered, in communion with God.”

From The Mystery of Art by Jonathan Jackson:

“The ancient Greeks had two words to describe time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is where the word chronology comes from. It means sequential time: the passing of time. Kairos means the appointed time or the crisis. The cosmic opportunity. The eternal moment. The supreme moment! As the Divine Liturgy is about to commence, the deacon says to the priest, “Kairos tou poiesai to Kyrio” (“It is time [kairos] for the Lord to act”). The time of the Liturgy enters into the realm of eternity.
“Throughout Scripture we find continual reference to the present moment. The first words of Christ’s earthly ministry were, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). The kingdom of heaven is near. The Hebrew word karav gives an even more immediate interpretation: The kingdom of heaven is here. It is now.
“Christ says, “The time [kairos] is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). When He taught His disciples to pray, He said, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11), enjoining us to remain in the present moment…
“The Apostle Paul expressed the kairos of Christ’s Incarnation and Crucifixion thus: “For when we were still without strength, in due time [kairos] Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). This expresses the historical event that took place. In between chronos, kairos intervened and took action. But how does this event change the reality of time?
“St. Paul continues his theme on kairos, but a profound transition takes place from the historical event of the Cross to its relevance in the ongoing life of man: “praying always [lit., “at all kairoi”] with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” (Eph. 6:18). It is a transition into the language of the Spirit. The Cross has altered man’s relationship with God forever. Therefore, kairos, the appointed time, the time of crisis, the supreme moment, becomes available to humanity now.”

From At the Corner of East and Now by Frederica Mathewes-Green:

"The bishop also got on his knees and leaned under the altarto reach the standing cross with the hole in the top. Into the hole he put a scroll listing the names of all the members of
the parish and small foil-wrapped packets of saints’ relics, tiny chips of bone mixed with beeswax. Though I’ve never been
comfortable imagining the processing of relics, I understand the idea behind them. Relics are often taken from the bodies of saints that did not decay after death, and this incorruption
is evidence that the person was thoroughly transformed by the
Holy Spirit, body as well as soul. As a contemporary monk of
Mt. Athos, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, writes, “Holy relics
are the token that through the nous [the eye of the soul] the
grace of God transfigured the body also.” Orthodoxy does not
exalt the soul and despise the body; both are to be transformed.
“The primary work of the Church is to lead man to theosis, to
communion and union with God,” Bishop Hierotheos goes on.
“Given this, in a sense we can say that the work of the Church
is to ‘produce relics.’”
Once he’d placed these items inside the cross, the bishop poured melted beeswax into the hole and sealed it. He warned us that from then on an angel would stand beside the altar day
and night, offering praise to God and intercession for all of us.
No more joking around or chatting in the church after services;
no more sitting in the back sipping coffee on a weekday. This would be a place of worship, even when none of us was here; we would enter in order to join something already going on."
"Being “saved”isn’t a deathbed event. Eternal life begins now, if it’s eternal; death must be defeated in our lives every day. A story from the desert fathers concerns Abba Joseph of Panephysis, who was approached by Abba Lot with a question. “Father, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and as much as I am able I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?”Abba Joseph, the story goes, then stood and spread out his hands toward heaven, in the prayer stance called the “orans”position. Each of his fingertips was lit with flame. He said to Abba Lot, “If you will, you can become totally fire.”This is one of my favorite stories because it illustrates so well the concept of theosis, the goal of Orthodox life. All the spiritual disciplines are tools to help us get self-will out of the way, so that we can gradually become totally filled with the light of God. We are to catch fire from God’s fire and shine with it, until the Theos Himself animates us. This doesn’t mean we are going to become independent mini-gods. We remain beloved but humble creatures, simple as a lump of coal. But coal has this essential attribute: it can receive fire. One could even say that accepting fire, being consumed by it, is the telos or destiny of coal—the thing it was made for. Dusty, dark, cold and hard, coal has no beauty of its own, but when it is consummated by fire it is beautiful and becomes what it was designed to be."

Matushka Olga

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 21:15:00 +0000

My saint found me!

I can't wholesale steal information about her, so here is a link to some gems.

Three Hermits

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 15:14:00 +0000

I read a story last night around 2 am that I thought I'd share because I really liked it. It's a summary of a story by Tolstoy:

"A bishop and several pilgrims are travelling on a fishing boat from Archangel to the Solovétsk Monastery. During the voyage, the bishop overhears a discussion about a remote island, nearby their course, where three old hermits live a spartan existence focused on seeking "salvation for their souls."

Inquiring about the hermits, the bishop finds that several of the fishermen claim to have seen the hermits once. The bishop then informs the captain that he wishes to visit the island. The captain seeks to dissuade him by saying, "the old men are not worth your pains. I have heard say that they are foolish old fellows, who understand nothing, and never speak a word." The bishop insists and the captain steers the ship toward the island.

The bishop subsequently sets off in a rowboat to visit. He is met ashore by the three hermits. The bishop informs the hermits that he has heard of them and of their search for salvation. He inquires how they are seeking salvation and serving God, but the hermits say they do not know how, only that they pray, simply: "Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us."

Subsequently, the bishop acknowledges that they have a little knowledge but are ignorant of the true meaning of the doctrine and how to pray properly. He tells them that he will teach them "not a way of my own, but the way in which God in the Holy Scriptures has commanded all men to pray to Him" and proceeds to explain the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity.

He attempts to teach them the Lord's Prayer, the "Our Father", but the simple hermits blunder and cannot remember the words. This compels the bishop to repeat the lesson late into the night. After he is satisfied that they have memorized the prayer, the Bishop departs from the island leaving the hermits with a firm instruction to pray as he has taught them. The bishop then returns to the fisherman's vessel anchored offshore in the rowboat and continues his voyage.

While on board, the bishop notices that their vessel is being followed. At first he thinks a boat is behind them but he soon realizes that the three hermits are running across the surface of the water "as though it were dry land." The hermits catch up to the vessel as the captain stops the boat, and inform the bishop, "We have forgotten your teaching, servant of God. As long as we kept repeating it we remembered, but when we stopped saying it for a time, a word dropped out, and now it has all gone to pieces. We can remember nothing of it. Teach us again."

The bishop is humbled and replies to the hermits, "Your own prayer will reach the Lord, men of God. It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinners."

After this, the hermits turn around and walk back to their island.

Prayer as love

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 17:02:00 +0000

Nov. 4, 2019

This weekend was a lot about prayer.

After our neighbors left for the hospital for the baby's MRI on Saturday, we came in and lit candles and incense in the censer and said prayers for the sick. Afterwards, I was trying to open the censer so I could add more incense (it comes in bags and it looks like little tiny rocks)
to the hot coal, and the censer tipped over, because it's HOT and the lid is heavy, and the coal slid behind the bookcase. (By the way, when I light the charcoal for the incense and blow on it, I have to laugh that my years smoking hookah weren't a complete waste). So, we had to move the bookcase out, put the hot coal into a cup of water with a wet paper towel, and sweep up the sand and ashes that spilled.

When we got everything put back, I lit the censer again. We have beeswax candles that burn super fast, so I need to start thinking about buying more. It's nice to be able to buy them from the church-- you can buy candles of all sizes to light for people at church-- but it's also expensive, so I'll probably re-order from Amazon.

The neighbors were at the hospital for a long time. They had to anesthetize the baby to perform the

MRI, and the MRI itself took two hours. They were somber when they returned and said they wouldn't hear anything until Monday-- if then. We got a text asking us to go to Catechumen class early to help out at the church, so we left and went and helped clean some stuff from the party Thursday night. I sanitized all of the highchairs and kids' chairs while Darren moved tables around and chairs to get them ready for the Agape meal on Sunday, and also, for Catechumen class of course.

Catechumen class was very good, but Vespers was even better. It's so beautiful and peaceful with the lights dimmed and the lit candles. And Father Justin spoke a lot about prayer. He was talking about these Orthodox priests who were imprisoned in Romania just for being Orthodox priests, and they were tortured. I read online later about the torture and "re-education" program, but I had to stop reading, because it was even more terrible than what Father described to us. And these priests survived their experiences through deep inner prayer. And then they forgave their torturers. Father Justin was talking to one of the priests and happened to see the priest without his hat. His head was severely dented, and Father exclaimed over it, and the priest said, "From the rifle butts. But this was nothing. The spiritual and emotional scars are deeper." Basically, they tried to make the priests blaspheme, and they tried to get the priests to deny their faith. And they also tried to make the priests inflict torture on each other. Some of them tried to kill themselves so they wouldn't have to torture someone else.

So, how did prayer save these priests? There were priests who were put into chambers with hundreds of lightbulbs so closing their eyes did no good. And that can make people insane-- isn't that interesting, because we speak of God's light being either painful or cleansing? Light can literally make you insane if you get too much of it. This priest came out of the torture with his sanity in tact because he went deeply into himself in prayer. This requires a lot of discipline. Same with surviving solitary confinement for YEARS. One priest said he used to make friends with the cockroaches because they were other living creatures, and he would weep when they would leave.

We live pretty cushy lives. We don't really *need* to pray or to rely on God, because we live under the delusion that we are self-sufficient. Or, we turn to God in prayer when our little baby neighbor gets cancer in her eye, and we think, "Oh, whoops, I need a little more help than I thought!"

But that's the lie: That we don't need prayer or to rely on God daily. We do. How many of us can say that our lives are aligned every moment with Christ? Some of the monks say the Jesus prayer while they walk, and one monk whom Father Justin met could hear the little old man muttering to himself as he walked around. When Father Justin asked him about it, the monk said, "I'm talking to Christ. You can't sin while you are talking to Christ." And he would just sort of give Christ a running commentary of what he was doing and thinking.

Father Justin was pleading with us to take our prayer lives seriously, and to devote more time to prayer than we do to Facebook or television or other things that may not be harmful in and of themselves, but certainly don't bring us closer to Christ.

This is what Darren and I have been searching and searching for. I've never heard someone plead with me so much to pray for my own sake, because as I said in an earlier post, our prayers don't help God. I have also never had anyone provide the tools for me to put into practice to help me draw closer to God. Fasting teaches us to die to ourselves every day. Of course we would rather eat a cheeseburger than carrots and hummus again during long fasting periods. But we can deny ourselves that cheeseburger because we are humans.

We aren't animals. We don't have to give in to every whim we have. And I can stand for longer and longer periods at church without sitting, because if I sat and prayed and it was easy, what would I truly be giving to God? Father Paul said, "If your legs and back hurt while you're praying? Glory to God!" And if go and stand in front of the icons to pray when I'm very tired and just want to climb into bed, then I am dying to myself. I am dying to my own wants, and I am focusing on Christ.

So, why is it important for me to die to myself every day? Because the more I can empty myself of my own wants and needs, the more room I have for Christ to fill me. That means, in its most simple form, the more room I have for love.

I have never been to another church that asked so much of me for my own sake before. It doesn't benefit anyone else if I fast. We aren't even supposed to talk about it with others (we share recipes, but we're not supposed to boast or complain about it, or ask anyone else if they are keeping the fast).

It can benefit others if I pray, and I'll have to sort of tease this out. Mostly, it's about love. God isn't looking for reasons not to save us. God wants us to turn to him. He will not overrule our free will, but he will save us whenever possible. And so if I pray for someone, even if they are dead, I'm showing love for them. I'm helping to redeem them through love. I don't know if that makes sense-- but maybe loving people through prayer can help lift them up.

Father Justin told the story of a woman who lived in the old country. She was baptized, but she was just mean and nasty her whole life. So, after she died, she went to hell. And the demons and other people there rejoiced, because she was such a terrible person. But then they got the news that no: She was, in face, going to be lifted into heaven. Because one time she had given a beggar an onion. That one instance of love was enough to save her, because God wants to save us. So, an onion (think of one of the long-stemmed onions, not a round one) was lowered to her, and she grasped it, and was lifted toward heaven. The other people started grabbing onto her, saying, "Take us with you!" She kicked them off, saying, "No, this is mine!" And the onion disappeared and she dropped back into hell. Because she didn't have love.

Yesterday after liturgy, Father Justin said prayers for the dead for two people: One is the wife of a priest who died suddenly on Thursday evening of a heart attack. She leaves four small children. She was 35.

The other person was a friend of one of our parish families. She was a ten-year-old little girl named Destiny who committed suicide.

When we say prayers for the dead, altar boys bring out a small table with a dish of Koliva. It's a wheat dish that takes a very long time to prepare, and people often prepare it for Soul Saturdays in which general commemorations are made for the dead.

"In the 5th century CE koliva in the sense of boiled wheat, constituted along with raw vegetables the diet of monks who refused to eat bread.[5] The 12th century canonist Theodore Balsamon maintained that koliva as a ritual food practice was originated by Athanasius of Alexandria during the reign of the Emperor Julian the Apostate.[6]
The association between death and life, between that which is planted in the ground and that which emerges, is deeply embedded in the making and eating of koliva. The ritual food passed from paganism to early Christianity in Byzantium and later spread to the entire Orthodox world.
Christian interpretation
Romanian colivă used in a religious ceremony in a Christian Orthodox church
Orthodox Christians consider koliva to be the symbolic of death and resurrection, according to the words of the Gospel:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24)
Wheat which is planted in the earth and rises in new life is symbolic of those beloved departed who have died in the hope of resurrection, in accordance with the words of Saint Paul:
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body....(1 Corinthians 15:42-44)
This symbolism has its highest expression in the Saints, whose blessed state in heaven have been manifested to the world. For this reason, koliva is blessed not only at memorials for the departed, but also in commemoration of saints."

It tastes (to me) like rice pudding. They put a beeswax candle into the dish and light it and pray around the table, which they also cense with incense.

Father Justin said, regarding Destiny, this little ten-year-old girl, who had been bullied to the point that she took her own life: "Someone said to me-- and this person was an Orthodox Christian -- 'I hope Destiny doesn't go to hell.'" And then Father Justin raised his voice. "I said, 'Are you INSANE? What kind of a God do you worship?'" He went on to say that suicide is a terrible sin-- the height of selfishness-- and the Orthodox won't bury people who have committed suicide. But there is mercy and dispensation for the insane. And a ten-year-old child committing suicide is the height of insanity. "Do you not think she is in the bosom of her Father? Who has more love and compassion than any person? If we can have love and compassion for this child, how much greater is God's? Anything about God that isn't about love is not Orthododox. You can know that. I never want to hear an Orthodox Christian say anything like that ever again."

And I was so grateful to be part of a worship service that offered love and compassion and tenderness and mercy and grace to this child. Instead of judgement and condemnation. Of course, her death if a tragedy. But we pray for her. We lift her up to God. We pray for her salvation. She is blameless before God. She was a *child.*

Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on your servant Destiny.

I got a text from Katie when I was at Catechumen class. Their doctor went in on his day off to read the MRI results. He called to tell them that the cancer is isolated to that eyeball. It has not impacted the optic nerve. It has not spread. She is a perfect candidate for targeted chemotherapy. They are leaving for Phoenix today for the first round of treatment. Imogen will keep her eye. Imogen will live. Lord have mercy. God is love.

I told Katie when we got home that I truly believed that God was showing off, that God made it so the cancer was perfectly contained to the tumor so that Imogen will recover. She said that her husband had made a remark earlier about this being an answer to prayer: "Who gave Imogen the cancer to begin with?"

He walked in just as she was saying this, so I didn't have a chance to respond. This website says it perfectly.

God doesn't give babies cancer. But because of the Fall, illness, corruption, and death entered our world. And just as God will not impose on our free will to save us, God will allow suffering to help lift us up. People asked Jesus what sin a man's parents (or the man himself) had committed that the man was born blind. Christ responded that nobody had sinned. Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."

And yes, ten-year-old little girls killing themselves is a tragedy. Thirty-five-year old women dying of heart attacks is tragic, maybe especially when they leave four grieving children and a grieving husband to raise them. A baby getting cancer in her eyeball is tragic.

But we are all going to die. Every single one of us. So, it's not death that is the tragedy, but the timing or the circumstances, or the people we leave behind. And if we view this life as all we have, then death does become more tragic. But if we believe that Christ is God and that He took on human form to conquer death so that we could once again be in communion with God, there is comfort. There is mercy. There is grace.

Am I a fool to believe this? Am I just trying to find meaning in a meaningless life and universe? Am I creating God in my own image? Just believing what I want to believe? I am sure there are people who think all of those things. But I have stepped into the stream of worship that is ongoing in Heaven. I have stepped into the life of Christ. I have had glimpses of grace. And I believe.

People might also say, "Why are you putting importance on a life AFTER this one that you have no way of confirming is real? It's THIS life that is important."

And I agree. THIS life is all we have. Christ tells us in the scriptures to be in the here and now. Right now is all we have. And the answer is: It goes back to love. I can choose a life of faith and try to fill myself with love and compassion for others and for myself. And that is the life I want. And if that means that I am foolish, then I'll be a fool for Christ. Because this is my best life. This is a life that I want to be free of bitterness and full of love. This is why I am an Orthodox Christian.

Saints Cyprian & Justina

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 15:55:00 +0000

Nov. 1, 2019

Last night, we said an Akathist to Saints Cyprian & Justina.

Father Justin wrote in an email: "(They are especially invoked for those under demonic influence, very important for us to pray for the world on this night)." I am not sure whether this was a Vespers? I guess I need to find out what an Akathist is. Spelling it correctly would be a good start-- I was omitting the end "t." An Akathist is a hymn dedicated to a saint, holy event, or one of the members of the Trinity. I guess it can still be considered Vespers, though, because of the time of the day (we go to Vespers on Saturday nights because in Orthodox time, the liturgical day starts the evening before).

The prayers themselves tell the story of the saints. To paraphrase from the link above, Cyprian was a powerful Wiccan in 249AD, in Antioch. He was trained by sorcerers from a very young age, and dabbled in the Dark Arts, as we say in the 21st century. He commanded demons, and people often sought out his powers.

"Already he was entirely in the depths of hell and in the jaws of the devil; he was a son of gehenna, a partaker of the demonic inheritance and of their eternal perdition. But the Lord, who does not desire the death of a sinner, in His unutterable goodness and His mercy which is not conquered by the sins of men, deigned to seek out this lost man, to draw out of the abyss one who was mired in the filth of the depths of hell, and to save him in order to show to all men His mercy; for there is no sin which can conquer His love of mankind."

Justina was a young woman who also lived in Antioch, and she started to hear about Christ.

"Once, sitting at the window of her house, this maiden, who had then already reached womanhood, by chance heard the words of salvation out of the mouth of a deacon who was passing by, whose name was Praylius. He spoke of our Lord Jesus Christ's becoming man, that He had been born of the Most Pure Virgin and, having performed many miracles, had deigned to suffer for the sake of our salvation, had risen from the dead with glory, ascended into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father and reigns eternally. This preaching of the deacon fell on good soil, into the heart of Justina, and began quickly to bring forth fruit, uprooting in her the thorns of unbelief. Justina wished to be instructed in the Faith by this deacon better and more completely, but she did not dare to seek him out, being restrained by a maiden's modesty. However, she secretly went to the church of Christ, and often hearing the word of God, with the Holy Spirit acting in her heart, she came to believe in Christ."

Her parents, who had been pagans, were also converted after a time. After her conversion, Justina had no wish to marry a mortal man. She wanted to devote her life to Christ. But a young, wealthy man named Aglaias saw Justina and wanted her. He tried to court her, but she would have none of it.

So, Aglaias sought the help of the great Wiccan Cyprian, which is how Cyprian came to be saved.

Aglaias asked Cyprian for a spell to make Justina fall in love with him. Aglaias sprinkled a powder over her house, and Justina was afflicted with lust for Aglaias. However, Justina recognized herself to be under evil influence, and she prayed fervently made the sign of the cross and overcame the spell.

The demon who had been sent to tempt and overtake Justina went back and told Cyprian that Justina had used a weapon that had caused the demon to flee.

Cyprian figured he better just use a better demon.

He sent several more demons to try to tempt her, and one by one, she defeated all of them with her faith and the sign of the cross.

Finally, Cyprian, unable to understand how one simple virgin could overpower all of these powerful demons, asked a demon what the weapon was that Justina had used against them.

"In great disturbance, the proud prince of the demons returned to Cyprian, who, finding out that he had not managed to do anything, said to him: "Can it be that even you, a prince powerful and more skillful than others in such matters, could not conquer the maiden? Who then among you can do anything with this unconquerable maiden's heart? Tell me by what weapon she battles with you, and how she makes powerless your mighty power?"Being conquered by the power of God, the devil unwillingly acknowledged: "We cannot behold the sign of the Cross, but flee from it, because it scorches us like fire and banishes us far away."
Cyprian became angry at the devil because he had put him to shame, and reproaching the demon, he said: "Such is your power that even a weak virgin conquers you!"

Cyprian was furious, so he rained down hell on Justina, her family, and he entire village. However, Justina assured the villagers that God would heal them and remove their trials. She prayed, and what she said came to pass.

People began to mock Cyprian because his power was not greater than Christ's.

Cyprian repented and asked the villagers for mercy. Cyprian told the devil:

"For if you fear even the shadow of the cross and tremble at the name of Christ, then what will you do when Christ Himself comes to you? If you cannot conquer those who sign themselves with the sign of the cross, then whom will you tear away from the hands of Christ?"

The devil attacked Cyprian, who cried out for the God of Justina to save him. He made the sign of the cross, and the devil departed.

Cyprian then gathered up all of his books and took them to the local bishop and burned them. He begged the bishop to baptize him. He was made Catechumen. There is a part of the liturgy that says, "Depart, Catechumen, depart!" and in the old days, indeed, the Catechumen had to leave the church before the Eucharist was brought out. But Cyprian refused to leave until they baptized him.

Cyprian became a reader, then a deacon, and then a priest, and finally a bishop. Justina became one of his primary helpers, and he made her a deaconess and then an abbess at a convent.

The pagans, however, who had relied on Cyprian to help them, were not happy. They complained to the governor that these Christians were trying to overthrow the government.

The governor asked Cyprian why he had given up his life of wealth and power. Cyprian told the governor about what had happened, and the governor threw Cyprian and Justina into prison and tortured them. They withstood every torture, praising God the whole time.

They were eventually condemned to be beheaded. Cyprian was afraid that Justina would be frightened if she saw him beheaded first, so he asked for extra time to pray, but she joyfully stretched out her neck when it was time.

They were both martyred for their faith. Their bodies were unburied for six days, until strangers stole them away to Rome and a pious woman, Rufina, who was related to Claudius Caesar, buried them with honor. Many who have come to their graves in faith have been healed.

We said the Akathist to these saints on Halloween because praying to them helps people who are afflicted with demons-- which we all are, to some degree.

Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy on Me

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 15:54:00 +0000

Father Paul also talked to us about praying. He admitted that up until a couple of years ago, he hated praying. He did it, but mostly to check off boxes. In Orthodoxy (and this is true also in Catholicism and the Episcopal church, to certain degrees-- I don't know about other traditions as much, but it's been a pretty new concept to us), you follow a Prayer "Rule." Usually given to you by your priest. But it usually involves saying prayers that are ancient, and that you either memorize or read from a prayer book. We say the same prayers every morning and every evening. I should probably say the Midday prayers somehow at work or at least on the weekends, but I don't. There are also prayers for grace, and we sort of do a modification of that. But you can also say the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy on Me. Variations of that are: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner. I learned, also, recently, that you you can use the Jesus Prayer to pray for other people: "Lord Jesus Christ, Have mercy on your servant _____." So, when I'm by myself in the car now, I'll pray for other people with the Jesus Prayer, using that method.

But Father Paul told us that he prepares for prayer by reading something inspirational-- usually about a saint or about prayer specifically. Then he does some cleansing breathing to relax himself so that he's relaxed to pray and not feeling tense. And he said that he used to sort of hurl prayers at Christ. Lord Jesus Christ, HAVE MERCY ON ME! And sort of expect God to just fix him. But then it occurred to him that he was shouting at God all the time, and God doesn't actually need our prayers. We don't pray to assuage God's ego. We don't pray because we're to interesting that God craves our company or companionship. We pray because that is one of the ways we can invite God to talk to *us.* So that we can *listen.* So, if we view prayer as an invitation for God to enter us, for us to interact and be in communion with God, then we can view our prayer time as a time to spend time with Christ instead of as an obligation or something we are doing because we think somehow hearing the same words over and over again makes God super happy. I usually *don't* make time to listen to God. I say the prayers though, and not because I'm supposed to. After all, I made the decision to return to the Orthodox Church and to participate in this life. I do it because I want to feel closer to God, and because I want to start and end my day by focusing on God and remembering Him and by making Him the center of my life. But I sort of have to start making time to listen also.

We had a great time tonight at the church All Saints Eve party. I spent almost the whole evening holding a sweet four-or-five-month old baby. He fell asleep in my arms again (he did Sunday as well), even though the noise was deafening.

Even though we had a great time, we got some sober news from the neighbors tonight. Their baby Imogen saw the doctor today and she has a tumor in her eye. We are absolutely gobsmacked. She has a rare form of cancer. I found out on Facebook because Katie's mom started a Go Fund Me for them. When we got home, they were literally sitting in the dark crying on their porch and smoking cigarettes. Fortunately, the dr told them that babies in America don't usually die from this type of cancer. It's very localized-- her other eye is perfect and healthy. They had to put her under anesthesia to examine her eye, and the anesthesiologist told them, "It's probably cancer," the JERK. This was before the dr had even fully examined her. They did an ultrasound that showed "seeds" also. That's a problem. One course of treatment is to send them to Phoenix for a specialized course of chemo to shrink the tumor. But that would shrink the seeds. The other alternative is to remove her eye and just get all the cancer. Another but: they are doing an MRI on Saturday and that will tell them how far it's progressed and whether it has spread. I'm going to go with them for that. It's all so surreal. Grayden is leaning toward the surgery, but Katie wants more information.This is the type of thing that changes people. The baby isn't even two. Two years ago today, they had the ultrasound that told them they were having a girl. Tomorrow is Katie's birthday.

Lord, have mercy on your servant Imogen.

You're going to suck at this

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 02:55:00 +0000

I just ordered a lava cake for Darren and I to share. We stepped out onto the porch for a smoke after. The sky is full of clouds and it feels like they are full of snow. They are hanging low in the sky and look like white smoke. It's pretty, but we're supposed to get 1-3 inches of snow tomorrow.

We had a good meeting with our priest this afternoon. We saw Michael the homeless man in the parking lot and walked over to 7-11 and got him a cheeseburger and some chimichangas and a pack of smokes. It's getting colder and I am wondering where he is sleeping. There is a cold, metal balcony above the parking lot that we've seen his sleeping bag in-- which is good because there are rats in the parking lot. But I think if he slept outside this week he could freeze to death.

Father Paul gave us what he calls, "The Talk." He started with how Orthodoxy differs from Protestantism, some of which we already knew He told us that the Orthodox view of sin is that we turn away from Christ. Repentance is turning back toward Christ. Christ does not turn away from us. Our goal is to be in perfect harmony with Christ (which isn't really possible, of course, but one tries). He talked about the parable of the rich man. How does that start? It starts with the man calling Christ "good."

Mark 10:17-31

The Rich and the Kingdom of God

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone..."

So Christ, who IS God, says no one is good except for God.

Father Paul said, "You're going to want to be good Orthodox Christians. That is just setting yourself up for failure. You can't do it."

Then he talked about how we can't do it because we are too full of ourselves. He pulled a glass off the shelf and said, Imagine that this glass were full of dirt. Dirt is our selfishness and pride and sin. Christ told the Samaritan Woman at the well (St. Photini) in John 4:

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

But when our glass is already full of ourselves, how can we be filled with Christ? We can't. So what can we do? We can try to empty ourselves and allow room for Christ.

One day, we will all stand before God, and His light will either be warm or scalding. We are trying to become accustomed to the light now so we will receive it the way God intends.

But the thing is, Christ loves us so much that He won't force His grace on us. So, if we say, "Well, I only want 99% of You, because I am selfish and I would rather sleep for five more minutes than pray or love my neighbor or fast or {insert selfless act here}." So Christ will leave us our one percent of sin. Our dirt in the glass. And what happens when you add water to dirt? You get mud. And so we can never fully experience Grace as humans because we will always have some dirt in our glass.

But we can try to empty ourselves and have as much water in our cup as possible.

St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20:

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

But St. Paul still uses the word, "I." Because we are still us. We are filled with Christ the more we empty ourselves. And what is Christ? Love.

At Catechumen class on Saturday, Father Justin told us that the Good Samaritan is Christ. He's a half-breed. He picks up the man and takes him to an inn. The inn is the church and the innkeeper is the priest. He tells the innkeeper to care for the man.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the boy's father sees the boy coming home because He has never turned away.

God never turns away. We can see this again and again in the scriptures.

Father Paul and Father Justin have also been talking about how the theology department should be housed with the medical school. Confession is about talking about how we have turned away from Christ and finding out ways to turn back to Him. Metanoia. Repentance. Turning back. It's not about punishment-- it's about healing.

Father Paul told us a very important theological concept: "From now on, you should have only two expectations of your spiritual life: First, you're going to suck at this. And second, when you fall, Christ will pick you up again."

Lastly, I saw this icon today:

St. Marina was such a cool saint. I love that image. More about her tomorrow.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 21:30:00 +0000

I should have been writing about this all along on our journey.

One of the ways we figure out what we want or need, obviously, is to learn what we don't want or need or like.

Darren grew up in the evangelical world, so he was more comfortable in it than I was. I didn't like the worship music. I applaud singing as a form of worship, but singing about how God is a "good dad" just offended me. I also didn't like seeing preachers with their arms outstretched telling God how "You are so worthy of being praised." That offended me too. Because it seems patronizing-- you don't get to tell God He's worthy because that suggests that you could possibly tell Him He were unworthy.

Another thing I don't like about evangelical services is people raising their arms in the air during the cheesy worship music. It just smacks of effort-- like they're trying too hard. But maybe I've just never felt like raising my arms in the air to music. I just think it's... copying others who are doing it? I think to some degree it's encouraged by pastors-- I've heard people talk about that. But that also suggests manufacturing some kind of sentimental feeling that people get addicted to rather than genuine spirituality.

Maybe that's what some people need, but I didn't find it very satisfying.

I'm not trying to be critical of other forms of worship so much as to detail my own journey and what I've learned, and what has led me to Orthodoxy. I feel bad because I feel like I've been negative: "I don't like, I didn't like." But that's the truth of it.

I am not completely comfortable, however, with making a laundry list of things I don't like about other traditions and faiths. Maybe it's better instead to focus on what I wanted, what I need, which I think I've touched upon in other posts.

It's so frustrating, because now that I feel like I have completed my my journey to Orthodoxy, I find that I'm not really as interested in recounting it. It seemed incredibly frustrating at the time, but I think that's always the case when you're trying to find something, and you're looking in the wrong places. You try to be open-minded and give things a fair shot, but I think in the past year and a half, I was just going through the motions because I knew my heart was in Orthodoxy. So, I didn't really give anything else a fair shake.

I tried to like the Episcopal church. I really did. I loved the people. I really liked the priest. The theology wasn't offensive. But the corollary to being inoffensive is that it also didn't really inspire anything. The liturgy left me cold. I received the Eucharist there every week, but I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling, and I didn't really feel anything. They say that it's Christ who invites you to the table and Christ who meets you there, but I didn't really get that, and I still don't.

I don't know how I'll feel about receiving the Eucharist at the Orthodox church either. But I know that the fact that I can't receive it until I am baptized changes it a little bit. But having grown up in the Mormon faith with the sacrament being water and wonder bread means that I don't have a particularly special relationship with the Eucharist. But I don't think that the Lord's Supper should be left in the hands of the teenagers of the Mormon church who prepare it, pray over it, and dispense it.

In Evangelical churches, it's often torn bread and grape juice. Same thing. It's not very wondrous or holy or special.

The Orthodox view the Eucharist as a mystery, and in addition to being baptized, you prepare yourself to receive the body of Christ in other ways. Confession, prayer, fasting. They believe that it can be sincerely detrimental to you if you receive it when you have not prepared yourself.

It's hard to write about spiritual things sometimes because I realize that some things sound superstitious. I have enough education and cynicism to anticipate the arguments of potential readers, and it's something that I feel strongly enough about privately that I don't really want to invite commentary or argument about it. It's hard to write about, and I'm not used to that experience.

Learning about Orthodoxy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 21:18:00 +0000

Because we didn't know very much about Orthodoxy, we set out to learn. And we were living in a small town in Utah at the time. The closest Orthodox parish was about two hours from us. I reached out and contacted the priest (who lived in Idaho at the time) and started asking him some questions. I pulled from boxes the books on Orthodoxy I had bought years before when I had first started collecting icons. And we turned, of course, to social media.

Here are some of the first videos I remember us watching together:

The Jesus Prayer

Learning to Pray

Confronting the Fire of God's Love-- Fr Barnabas Powell

Orthodox Boot Camp, Session 1: Fr Barnabas Powell

Orthodox Boot Camp, Session 2: Fr Barnabas Powell

Orthodox view of Salvation to this day, this video has probably had one of the most profound impacts on how I view God. While we had been attending our Bible Study, we had been discussing theology with people from a primarily Baptist background, which was consistent with Darren's upbringing. Because I had come from a Latter-Day Saint background, the general conception was (and mostly correctly so) that I generally knew nothing about real Christianity.

But I knew that what they were telling me didn't really sit well with my own experiences of God. They told us that God cannot look at sin, so that when God looks at us, he sees Christ in front of us. And that the most important part of Christ's suffering and dying on the cross was to die for our sins. This is penal substitutionary atonement theory. One of its primary tenets is that Christ died to satisfy an angry God. You will often hear evangelists say, "God is love, but..." And after that "but" comes "He is also a Just God." They like to focus on the "just" part. That somehow God was so angry with mankind that his own Son had to die to make God less angry. How would that make a parent less angry?

Anyway, this view differs from the Orthodox view of salvation.

According to Orthodoxy, God never turns away from us. Humans can't make God angry. Humans can't make God anything. Father Barnabas Powell (see videos below) likes to say, "God's just fine." It's really ridiculous to think that anything as puny as a human being could make something as huge as God angry. Angry enough that He would demand a blood sacrifice.

In Orthodoxy, the real work of the cross was the resurrection that came afterwards. Before Christ's resurrection, mankind was separated from God by The Fall. Everyone who died went to Hades. After Christ's resurrection, he went down into Hades and pulled everyone out.

The Resurrection of Christ is the central event in the liturgical year of the Orthodox Church and is understood in literal terms as a real historical event. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified and died, descended into Hades, rescued all the souls held there through man's original sin; and then, because Hades could not restrain the infinite God, rose from the dead, thus saving all humanity. Through these events, he released humanity from the bonds of Hades and then came back to the living as man and God. That each individual human may partake of this immortality, which would have been impossible without the Resurrection, is the main promise held out by God in his New Covenant with humanity, according to Orthodox Christian tradition.

The Orthodox also do not believe in a Hell of fire and brimstone, a Hell of eternal conscious torment. What could a man do in his short period on earth to warrant being tortured for eternity?

The Eastern Orthodox Church... teaches that both the elect and the lost enter into the presence of God after death, and that the elect experience this presence as light and rest, while the lost experience it as darkness and torment... Hell as professed in the East is neither the absence of God, nor the ontological separation of the soul from the presence of God, but rather the opposite—Heaven and Hell are the fully manifest divine presence, experienced either pleasantly as peace and joy or unpleasantly as shame and anguish, depending upon one's spiritual state and preparedness.

Sin is viewed in Orthodoxy not as a list of bad things that people do, but as a turning away from God. Repentance is a turning back.

Eastern Orthodox Christians hold that man was originally created in communion with God, but through acting in a manner contrary to his own nature (which is intrinsically ordered to communion with God), he disrupted that communion.

Because of man's refusal to fulfill the "image and likeness of God" within him, corruption and the sickness of sin whose consequence is death entered man's mode of existence. But when Jesus came into the world He Himself was Perfect Man and Perfect God united in the divine Hypostasis of the Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Through his assumption of human nature, human existence was restored, enabling human beings, the fulfilment of creation, through participation in divinity by incorporation into Jesus Christ.

St. Athanasius:

The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image. In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once and for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the Image [of God].^[14]

Salvation, or "being saved," therefore, refers to this process of being saved from death and corruption and the fate of hell. The Orthodox Church believes that its teachings and practices represent the true path to participation in the gifts of God. Yet, it should be understood that the Orthodox do not believe that you must be Orthodox to participate in salvation. God is merciful to all (emph. mine).

The Orthodox believe that there is nothing that a person (Orthodox or non-Orthodox) can do to earn salvation. It is rather a gift from God. However, this gift of relationship has to be accepted by the believer, since God will not force salvation on humanity (emph mine). Man is free to reject the gift of salvation continually offered by God. To be saved, man must work together with God in a synergeia whereby his entire being, including his will, effort and actions, are perfectly conformed with, and united to, the divine.

When I first learned this, my whole being said, "Yes." This is the truth. This is consistent with everything that I understand about God from my own experience as a living, breathing person.

So, everything about Orthodoxy is meant to prepare us for God's presence, so that we can experience it pleasantly, as peace and joy.

Now, Orthodoxy, to the western mind, can seem very strange and foreign. I would even go so far as to say it can be a culture shock. Not just the theology, but also the worship itself. Last week, we went out to dinner with some Orthodox friends who are both former Latter-Day Saints. The husband converted before the wife did, and she went through the process of converting while they were courting. He said to her at one point, "We don't go to church to learn. We go to worship."

And that is absolutely the best way to think of it.

When you walk into an Orthodox service, you are stepping into a heavenly stream of worship that is continuously occurring in heaven, without beginning and without end. We just participate in small moments of it. We step into the stream-- the worship is a living thing-- and when we step out of it, the worship continues, just as a stream of water continues to flow and exist beyond our experience of it.

When we are at home, we also participate in this stream. We stand in front of our icon corners to pray. We have our eyes open, and we pray out loud, ancient prayers, the same prayers every day. We join the stream, just as we do standing at church in front of and surrounded by icons of saints, which represent the saints who are very much alive in a realm we cannot see in our human state.

My First Introduction to Orthodoxy and how I found it a second time (before a third and a fourth)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 21:18:00 +0000

10/7/19

In about 2004, I discovered Orthodox Christian icons in the form of a calendar. At the time I had no idea what they were. I was just dumbstruck by their beauty and drawn to them. I started by taking images from the calendar and putting them up on my dining room wall in a frame. Then, I started buying icons on Ebay. Then I found out that a friend of mine was Orthodox, and she would take my icons with her 90 miles to her parish and have them blessed on the altar. I put them in the windows of my dining room. Icons are the windows into heaven. I didn't know that at the time, but later I appreciated my instinct to put them in the windows. Mostly, I just didn't have anything to affix them to the walls with, so that seemed the easiest way to display them.

I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (The Mormons). I can't really say that that was because of my parents, either, as they were inactive until I basically dragged them back to church.

I had a strong yearning for God from a very young age, which prompted me to ask a lot of questions and ultimately to want to go to church. I suppose Mormonism was it because my parents has both been raised Mormon. And I liked Donny and Marie Osmond (I know, that dates me!).

After I left the Mormon Church, I did some reading to try to understand what Christianity is. I got a hold of Kallistos Ware's book The Orthodox Way, but I think it was too much for me to try to understand on my own without someone to help me unpack it. Christianity and Mormonism are sufficiently different that Christianity seemed strange to me at first, and I had a hard time understanding it. Learning about it has been a long journey, and has included a lot of reading, conversations, scripture study, prayer, and reflection. And as a result of that journey, Orthodoxy again and again has been what calls to me and where I end up.

When I first started learning about Orthodoxy, I didn't have a lot of support for it at home. The parish was 90 miles away, and it seemed too daunting to pursue. I visited the parish a couple of times, bought an icon and chotki at the bookstore, and that was about it. I remember the priest swinging the incense censer down the center of the church and standing a lot, but I don't remember much else.

For a long time, my spiritual life was dormant. I still collected icons, and added crosses to the collection, but I didn't give it much thought beyond the aesthetic.

All of that changed when I met my husband, Darren, nearly four years ago. After several months of reading scripture with him and praying, my yearning for God started to wake up and I identified as a Christian (much to my horror, having believed for several years that Christianity was responsible for most of the world's ills, but I have reconciled my beliefs since then).

Since then, Darren and I have been on a journey together to find a spiritual home. It hasn't been easy. We first attended an Episcopal Church in Missouri, where we were living at the time. We liked it, but we didn't continue attending. We were watching an online preacher who taught the Bible verse by verse, and we were content to stay home and watch that.

We moved to Utah, for various reasons, nearly three-and-a-half years go. And that's when the journey started twisting and turning.

Our first year in Utah, we attended a small Bible church in a small town. It was an easy decision: It was the only Christian church in town that wasn't heavily Baptist (my husband was raised in a small, Baptist cult, so that was NOT an option) or Catholic (no English). However, we didn't love the parish. We liked a few people from the parish and joined (for awhile) a Bible study that we really enjoyed until they started introducing commentary from John Piper. John Piper is a Calvinist, and we don't subscribe to Calvinism in any way, shape, or form. So we broke from the group.

Around this time, Darren bought a Book of Common Prayer and talked about wanting to investigate the Episcopal Church. I must be a firm believer in running before walking, because I said, "Well, why don't you just go back to the beginning and learn about Orthodox Christianity?"

I think he said something about it being just like Catholicism, and it turned out that I didn't really know all that much about it except for the icons (and I didn't know the history of them or why the Orthodox have them or about saints or venerating, certainly), so I really had no idea what I had just recommended. It makes me laugh a little now.

So, before we had quite left our Bible Study, we started googling the Orthodox Church. Darren said at the time, "Don't tell anyone from Group that we're doing this. They will vilify us."

At the time, I didn't understand that at all. I thought, "Why would they mind? Wouldn't they be happy that we're still Christians?"

I understand so much more now. And I have watched Evangelical Christians chew up and spit people out who dared to choose Orthodoxy or Judaism over non-denominational (or Baptist or Calvinist) forms of worship. I call non-denom and Calvinism "worship" very loosely. But I can still see the effect that the Evangelical Protestant (EP) worldview had on our journey to Orthodoxy, and I will discuss that in another post.

Returning to Orthodoxy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 21:17:00 +0000

10/2/19

It’s funny because I took this list home and read it out loud to Darren last week, and we kind of chuckled over it. We were like, “Really? This seemed like a huge deal? This was insurmountable?” Because I wouldn’t say that any of these things are problems for either of us now.

One thing that is very different this time from all of the others is that Darren is really leading the charge on this. All of his hesitation is gone. He keeps saying, “I would be baptized tomorrow.” His plan is for us to be baptized at Pascha (Easter, which is a week later than Easter in the West).

Yesterday morning, he led prayers in front of the Icons. We are easing our way into Orthodox practice this time. We say prayers in bed or the car sometimes. Though, when I was at church for the first time after going back, during liturgy, I realized why we pray in front of the icons at home. Because we stand and pray in front of icons at church. In fact, there are icons in front of us and painted on the walls all around us, and there is a huge one of Christ on the ceiling. We are surrounded by saints. And I think it’s important to note that worship services on earth—Vespers, orthos (the prayers said the hour before liturgy), liturgy, etc., are all continuations of the worship that is continually happening in heaven.

We (by we I mean “Orthodox”—Darren and I can’t yet receive it because we are catechumen, not baptized Orthodox) receive the Eucharist every week because every week, we celebrate Easter again and again. Every liturgy is a celebration of the Risen Christ, and we remember him as He commanded, with the Eucharist.

The warm reception we have received from everyone has been very moving. We were standing at Vespers and Father Paul came up behind us and we just felt his arms around us as he hugged us. And he just said, “How are you? It’s so good to see you. Are you well?”

And then on Sunday at liturgy, a woman came up to me and said, “Jen, how are you? It’s so good to see you!” I was sitting on a bench, and she said, “How is Darren?” and I pointed to him standing behind her and said, “He’s right there.” And she hugged him too. Then her husband came over and hugged us both.

During the liturgy, there is a special blessing for the Catechumen. Becoming Catechumen is akin to being engaged to the Church. So, we didn’t know if, after so long an absence, we were still considered Catechumen. We didn’t go up at first when they made the call. And the husband clasped Darren on the shoulder and said, “Go up!”

Darren said, “We can’t!”

And the husband said, “Yes you can. Constantinople was Catechumen until he was on his death bed. Once you are Catechumen, you remain until you die or are baptized.” I am paraphrasing. But we went up with the other Catechumen and received the blessing.

After liturgy, we were downstairs for the Agape meal, and Father Paul said that when we came up for the blessing, he almost didn’t get through saying it. But then he told himself (and this is a frequent joke he makes), “It’s okay. You’re German. You can do this.”

Last Sunday, Darren was following Father Paul into the bookstore and into his office, getting lists of books to read, and he mentioned that we would like to be baptized at Pascha, and Father Paul didn’t seem to think that was a problem. Some people have even hinted that Father Justin might let us be baptized before then, because sometimes they have such a huge crush of people getting baptized at Pascha that it makes for a very long ceremony.

Father Justin is in Greece with his two oldest sons. They went to Mt. Athos, home of a very old Orthodox monastery. Apparently, the Virgin Mary visited there, and afterwards, they decided never to let another woman visit the island, because none would be as holy as Virgin Mary. But that doesn’t explain why they let men go there. I admit that I would love to go there, but I am not allowed. Given that I would probably not be able to afford the trip, though, it’s hard to get too bent out of shape about it.

Women are also not allowed back in the area where the priests prepare the Eucharist and say hundreds of prayers before Orthos has even started. Women are not allowed to be priests or Deacons either. And I know it’s not very progressive or feminist of me, but I am okay with all of this. To tell you the truth, I was never completely comfortable with female priests in the Episcopal Church. I know that isn’t a very popular position to have, but it’s the truth. I know that there are different interpretations of scripture, but that’s kind of the point, right? Anyone can interpret the scriptures to mean whatever they want. And I am making a choice to interpret them through the lens of Orthodoxy.

The Episcopalians make jokes about “chilly Episcopalians,” but we haven’t really experienced that. But even after attending the church on and off for over a year, people still asked us if we were new. We walked back into the Orthodox Church, and only people who hadn’t been there a year and a half ago think we are new. Everyone else recognized us, even if they didn’t know (remember) our names.

There are a number of reasons for this, probably. We went to coffee hour every week at the Episcopal Church, but we always sat with the same people. And sat with them during liturgy too. In the Orthodox Church, you’re standing and so you can see everyone better. Plus, the Catechumens go up to the front every week, so everyone sees who they are. Also, the whole parish goes to the Agape meal, so it’s a noisy crush, and you can’t really sit with the same people every week. So you meet new people all the time. Not many people go to coffee hour, and if people are sitting behind you at the Episcopal church, they aren’t going to see you. They do have frequent potluck dinners, but even the classes they have before church and on Wednesday evenings have maybe ten people at most, and they tend to be the same people over and over. This makes getting to know a variety of people in the parish difficult.

Leaving Orthodoxy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 21:16:00 +0000

9/25/19

Here is a list of the reasons I wrote to my son when we left Orthodoxy a year and a half ago. I’ll use this as a starting point.

1)      The Church says it isn’t legalistic—but there is the fasting. And you’re supposed to pray twice a day at home—reading prayers from a prayer book. And Saturday, the priest said at Catechumen class that if we went to another church’s service—a baptism, for example—we they would be committing spiritual adultery. And if we went to a non-Orthodox funeral, we were to stand in the back and repeat the Jesus Prayer (they wear prayer beads and repeat this prayer to focus their minds: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner). That’s pretty controlling. And Darren has had very bad experiences with religion in his childhood, so control doesn’t sit well with him at all. It actually triggers trauma.
2)      There is a heavy emphasis on venerating (kissing) icons (pictures of saints) in and out of church. They want you to pray to the icons to ask Christ to help you. That doesn’t really make much sense to us, but to them, the saints are alive, just in a different… dimension, I guess. But present—they are aware of us, we just aren’t aware of them. And there is an even heavier emphasis on choosing a patron saint, learning about saints’ lives, and wow, they really revere Mary. They frequently pray for her to pray to Christ to intervene for them. Like, constantly, in fact. “Oh Holy Theotokos, Save us.” And mainstream Christianity is VERY Christ-centered. It’s Christ, and He is ENOUGH. A lot of EPs (Evangelical Protestants) don’t view Catholics or Orthodox as Christians and think they worship Mary and Saints as idols. But I have noticed that all denominations like to throw around the word “heretic.” So, at any rate, this all feels very extra. As Darren said, “I hear more about saints at church than I do about Christ.” [This seems to depend on the liturgical cycle, because I haven't found this at all in the past few weeks] (And in the Mormon Church, we used to say, “I hear more about Joseph Smith at church than I do about Christ,” so it’s like a similar stripe).  So, that’s troublesome. It seems unnecessary. And it distracts people from reading the Bible, which leads me to
3)      They don’t want you to read and interpret the Bible on your own. (Mormons don’t either—they say the Bible is not translated correctly and want members to read the Book of Mormon instead. Because the New Testament very clearly contradicts Mormonism). The Orthodox like to say that personal interpretation of the Bible has led to more than 19,000 different Christian denominations. So, they really want you to read about saints’ lives or read the Church Fathers and go to a Bible study with your priest there to guide the interpretation. And to mainstream Christians, this is very suspect, because the emphasis should be on the Bible, and everyone has their own agency to interpret it. A lot of Protestants are Sola Scriptura (the Bible is perfect the way it is because the Holy Spirit covers for any imperfections, and you can’t add to it, because it says not to). Darren and I are NOT Sola Scriptura. And the Orthodox would counter that they actually chose which books should be included in the Bible, which is true. But it’s all kind of hard to swallow when you’ve been steeped in a western mindset, which obviously, we have.
4)      They say in their Creed, “I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.” Does this mean they think everyone else is going to hell? Well, they won’t really give you a straight answer to that, and we don’t believe that’s the case. For example, you and your brothers are not religious or Christians, but I don’t think you’re going to hell. (And a lot of Christians would consider me to be a heretic because I hold that view, but I don’t care).
5)      They believe that when they bless their communion wine and bread that it LITERALLY turns into the blood and body of Christ. We think that when Christ broke bread and gave it to His disciples saying, “This is my body,” that he was being metaphorical. But they will actually give communion (they call it the Eucharist) to a sleeping baby two months old. That doesn’t bother me so much as fascinate me, but it bothers Darren. He thinks it’s ridiculous. And, frankly, it is a little. I haven’t entered so deeply into the faith that I really understand it or see how the Orthodox view it.
6)      The Orthodox want you to really surrender to the authority of the Church, and it’s very difficult to do. I don’t want to ask my priest to give me a blessing if I change jobs or if I want to take my medications in the morning before Eucharist so I need to drink some water and have a bit of toast. They also emphasize regular confession, which is also problematic because basically you’re telling all of your secrets to a person who puts on their pants one leg at a time just like you do. And if God already knows… well… it seems controlling. They have a strong emphasis on humility, which is all very well and good, but not if you surrender your brain completely. If you aren’t using your free will, then is it really free will?
7)      The Orthodox take baptism very seriously. Like a marriage. As catechumen, they view us to be engaged to the church. And they view the church as inseparable from Christ. We don’t. So, they don’t want you to enter into baptism unless you’re ready to commit to the church for life—on their terms. And so, we really couldn’t go forward. But it took a lot of conversations to really kind of tease all this out and identify the issues. It has taken several days of reflection to be able to lay this out this way.

Darren and I revisited this when we decided a few weeks ago to return to the Orthodox Church, and this list, which seemed very ominous and serious 18 months ago, was almost comical to us now. We had a sense of, "Really? That was a problem? An insurmountable problem?"

I think my opinions on this have changed in the following way (and I can’t speak for Darren, but we’ve talked about it and I think he would agree). I wanted to be Orthodox so badly before that I felt like I had to do all of it, 100% the way I was told. To assimilate and really be it. But I have read a lot of writing by my friend Rivki who converted to Orthodox Judaism. And she really tried to assimilate at first, to fit in. But now she sees how she can retain her own individuality and still be true to her beliefs.

One of our objections to the “rules” or things you’re supposed to do in Orthodoxy a couple of years ago is that we were still heavily under the evangelical umbrella of “grace is not, cannot be earned.” And I think the Orthodox agree with that. We were also under the evangelical umbrella of “Jesus came to satisfy the law. Jews live under the law, but Jesus commands only to love God and Love our neighbor and love our enemies.”

I still believe those things.

But Christ’s light can both burn and sanctify or it can enlighten and comfort. It depends on how much you want and love the light. The church’s purpose is to accustom us to the light in this life so it won’t burn us later. It’s not to get us to follow a bunch of rules that will cause us to be saved.

So, let’s examine this a little more deeply.

I want to state for the record that faith is a choice. Also that participation in a religious organization is also a choice. These are choices I am making because they give my life meaning and joy and focus. I have made different choices and not been satisfied with them, which is why I am making my current choices. So, I am not really interested in addressing the question of, “Why bother at all?” because the answer is, as stated in this paragraph, fairly simple. Because I want to.

This discussion of rules and salvation is absolutely relevant to the question of, “Why not Judaism?”

Judaism is very attractive for many of the same reasons Orthodox Christianity is:

· It is ancient. It’s even older than Orthodoxy.

· Observant members of the religion really live it every day. It has a prominent place in their lives. And I want that for my life. I said to my husband a few weeks ago:

"This sums up my attraction to Orthodoxy (from my friend Rivki's blog): 'Once that realization crystallized in my mind, I knew I wanted to be surrounded by others who were also trying to observe everything. This religion thing was going to be front and center with me, all the time, and I didn't want to feel like an outlier. I needed to find a community where that would be normal, even preferable.'"

Orthodoxy and Judaism are both very participatory. But with different purposes. Judaism has 613 rules to follow from the Torah. They are the covenant people, and keeping those commandments is very important to keeping Judaism alive. So is tradition.

With Orthodox Christians, it’s more like this:

There are three specific objectives (I am using a term from grant writing—these are actually commandments):

1. Love God

2. Love neighbor

3. Love enemies

And how are we to achieve these objectives? Here are some things that have worked for thousands of years for other people.

· Daily prayer, morning, afternoon, evening.

· Fasting and feasting.

· Learning about the lives of people who have achieved these objectives or died trying (Saints) and celebrating their lives. (This addresses our objection to number 2 above).

· Celebrating the Eucharist every week. Participating in the worship that is always ongoing in Heaven. (see number 5 above)

· Confession as a means to try to improve in either loving God or loving neighbor or loving enemy because “sin” is turning away from God. And usually falls under failure to do one of those three things (so says I). (See number 6 above)

Long time, no see!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 06:02:00 +0000

I feel like the girl who moved to Utah and was never heard from again.

Hello!

Darren and I moved to Utah at the beginning of June and lived happily ever after. The end.

Wouldn't life be boring if that were how life actually worked out? I mean, if it did, I wouldn't complain about it being boring, but that is never how it happens.

When we first moved to Utah, we moved to a part of Salt Lake City (which is very spread out, kind of like St. Louis, with different sections, just as Soulard, Delmar, and St. Charles are all considered St. Louis) called West Valley.

When we first came out to Utah in April to find a place to live, West Valley was pretty much all we could afford. We, like many generations before us, were moving in hope of a better life and more economic opportunities. So, even though people told us that West Valley was a little sketchy, we figured, hey, it's Utah, how sketch can it be?

Pretty sketch, as it turns out. There were always police in the parking lot of our apartment complex. Nobody was friendly, and every time we got home and our balcony furniture was still there, I was shocked. We later found out that there is a lot of gang activity there. Super.

There do seem to be many jobs in Salt Lake City advertised, but the competition is also fierce. That wasn't the most challenging part of the move though. I had often wondered whether living in small towns since I was 11 would impact my ability to live in a city. It turns out the answer was yes.

The traffic alone is overwhelming. And every time we wanted to go anywhere, it meant at least twenty minutes in the car one way, if we were lucky. My mother was in an assisted living facility about a half hour drive away, so when we went to see her, it took an hour round trip just to drive. Not only was the traffic maddening and overwhelming, but we had to fill up the car constantly.

It wasn't just the traffic though. We didn't feel safe walking anywhere in West Valley-- not that there were many sidewalks to walk on. We used to take walks every day in Kirksville, and always felt safe. We began to entertain the idea of getting a gun. I found out that one of my best friends from college carries one in her purse. So, even though I never felt directly in danger, I didn't feel safe either, and that is an exhausting feeling. You have to be constantly on alert, and the first thing we did when we got back to our apartment was bolt the door.

We had found a church in Salt Lake City that we were excited about when we visited in April. But our excitement turned to frustration. It wasn't really a church, it turns out, so much as a group of people gathering every week to listen to one person talk about the scriptures. We had hoped to be able to be part of a ministry, because we had believed before coming to Utah that this was an active ministry. But we were mistaken, and our offers to volunteer to help with ministry were met with bewilderment and almost derision. It was a severe disappointment because we are not really mainstream Christians. We struggle with finding a congregation we feel comfortable in because we are pretty politically liberal. The Episcopalian Church in Kirksville was probably one of the most liberal we have found.

I have already been pretty gun-shy about organized religion because of my experiences growing up in the LDS church. And I have been kind of hit in the face with it here in Utah (shocking, right?) as I struggle to be true to my beliefs and not alienate every member of my extended family. For many years after I left the LDS church, I went "scorched earth" and rejected God and religion wholeheartedly. But I have believed in God since I was very young-- since before I started school. So, then I started to explore religions extensively, reading primarily about Orthodoxy Christianity and Conservative Judaism (which means you try to keep kosher and like the services to be in Hebrew, not that you are politically conservative). I wanted to start back at the beginnings of Western religion-- but not paganism. I have a pretty large collection of Orthodox icons, and crosses from my travels. My friend Liza took my icons down to the Orthodox church with her and they were blessed on the altar there.

When I began studying Judaism, someone remarked to me that I'd have to take down all those crosses and icons, and I balked right then and there.

I never found a "true" church in my searches. My search consumed me for a couple of years, and then I just sort of woke up one morning and didn't care anymore. So, my spirituality went completely dormant.

Having grown up in academia and having tried many times to enter the academic world wholeheartedly with college teaching and never quite making it past being an adjunct, I was happy to let intellectual vanity put to bed any spiritual leanings. I could never embrace atheism, but I pretty much stopped thinking about God at all.

I laugh now when I think that with all the searching and reading I did, I never once picked up a Bible.

When I met Darren, he told me right away that he was a Christian-- in fact, right before I gave him my phone number. At the time, I didn't think it really mattered, even though I had had a pretty strict no-Christians dating policy up to that point. But the previous year, I had stopped dating altogether, and there was something I liked about Darren from talking to him for several months before we started dating. So, I kind of brushed off the fact that he was reading about Christianity and had an, "Isn't that cute that you're a Christian" attitude toward it. I told him immediately about my own issues with religion and spirituality, specifically Mormonism, and he laughed and said he had his own issues. I didn't know at the time that he had his own story about Mormonism.

So, we started dating, and immediately I pulled Darren into my den of iniquity that involved some pretty heavy drinking. But it was a world that I had been trying to figure out my way out of, and when I realized that I was sucking Darren into it with me, I realized there was a good chance that we'd be sitting there ten years from now, drinking wine, and going nowhere with our lives. So, we sat down and had a long talk. And we both decided to try stopping drinking. That was in early January.

His friends did not like me because I wasn't a Christian and because I taught college. There is such a high skepticism of intelligence and education among Christians that it's really off-putting. But it is certainly true that a lot of people who start getting a college education leave their childhood faith behind. And that's not a bad thing. I am glad that I had a chance to completely re-evaluate my spirituality as an adult and that I have experienced both living with and without it, and I can consciously choose which life I prefer, and in which life I am happier.

But I still wasn't a Christian, nor very interested in it at all.

One evening, Darren and I were talking to his parents, and he was very frustrated with Christianity and God and told them that he was giving up and that he was just going to chuck it all.

When we got into the car, I told him I thought it was a mistake to give up on something that was very important to him and that was part of who he is. And I suggested that we start praying together. That night, for the first time, we did. I prayed, and he looked kind of shocked that I knew how to do it, which I thought was pretty funny. I am pretty sure anyone who went to high school with me and had to endure my constant proselytizing about Mormonism would find that funny too.

I thought it was surprising myself that I felt this way, because in many ways, it would certainly have been convenient to drag Darren into my world. I was not sure at the time why I encouraged him that night not to put away his faith. But I am now.

After a bit, we started reading the scriptures together. I think it started because I was writing our wedding ceremony, and I wanted to include some things about the nature of love from the Bible, in part because of Darren's faith and his parents' faith, because I wanted to combine us in the ceremony. But I was pretty unfamiliar with the New Testament, because the Book of Mormon had always been emphasized over the Bible when I was raised. So we started looking things up and sort of following cross references, and I thought it was very interesting. So, we started at the beginning of the New Testament and started to read it together.

At some point along the way, I realized that I believe it. I believe Jesus is God. I read Cold-Case Christianity, and kept reading the New Testament. And I am comfortable saying that Jesus is my Savior and that I believe through His sacrifice, we are saved. Through grace, not works. And I am happier with this faith than I have been since I was a very young adult.

Right now, Darren is struggling with his own faith. I am sort of leading the charge with nightly prayer and scripture study. He is re-visiting Eckhart Tolle and The Power of Now. We are talking about exploring some meditation.

Both of us struggle with the label of Christian. There are so many Christians who practice hate, who are so closed-minded, that it is embarrassing sometimes to stand up and say I am one. I am acutely aware of the damage that has been done in the world in the name of Christianity. But I also believe Jesus is God. So, there you have it. Maybe I'll start calling myself a Nazarene.

I have to stop for now and go to work, but this is just the beginning of our adventures in Utah.

Update

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 23:21:00 +0000

In the interest of extending an olive branch, I decided to remove a post I wrote earlier this week.

This Is What Jen in Love Looks Like

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 01:45:00 +0000

Eric at work told Whitney, "Jen seems so happy. She is smiling so much more."

Today my friend Will said to me, "You look younger every time I see you."

I said, "This is what Jen in love looks like."

I remarked to someone recently that we had been dating almost two weeks, and she seemed visibly surprised that we had been publicly canoodling in the balcony of Baldwin Hall at a recent Lyceum event.

I suppose it might seem sudden from the outside. But I have dated a lot since my second marriage ended. And then I stopped dating for a long time. So, I have been very, very single for two years, and completely date-free/celibate for 11 months of that time.

I've known for a very long time that unless I met someone with whom I could have at least as interesting conversations as I have with my small circle of friends, it wasn't going to have long-term potential. Most of those friends have openly said to me that I was never going to find what I wanted online, and they were right. I wasn't wrong about guys who go online to date pursuing sex-- I was just not meeting any of the guys who aren't motivated by sex because they don't go online. Or maybe those guys are really as rare as they seem, because Darren is definitely a first.

But back to conversations: We talk for hours. The first Saturday night we hung out, we talked from six p.m. to midnight without pausing much except to show each other videos and play songs for each other.

I was going to write about meeting Darren's parents for the first time. Except that sentence is misleading, because, as it turns out, it wasn't the first time. I went over to meet them on Thanksgiving before I went to work. I walked into the living room and saw Darren's dad and sort of squealed, "Hi!!!" and turned to Darren and said, "Darren, I LOVE your parents!" And I hugged his dad and then hugged his mom. They worked as para professionals in the junior high when I taught special ed (and far beyond me). I always loved and appreciated how kind they were to the kids and also to me. They personified helpfulness. I remember when Darren's dad told me about a particularly difficult kid, "If you need ANYTHING, you just call me."

So, we sat in their living room and caught up on all of the kids we knew and where they had ended up while Darren sat and watched us like a tennis match. It was love.

Darren knows everything about me, or at least the most everything I've had the chance to share with him so far. And I know a lot about him. And some of what we know about each other isn't pretty or perfect or even nice. We have shared deeply humiliating things with each other, regrets, fears.

One of the things I've been really aware of is the ways in which I chose separateness in past relationships. Ways in which I realized that gaps were enlarging between us, but played love chicken and let it happen. Love chicken is when you wait to see if your partner will point out the distance, will point out the gaps, will point out the times you chose to stay up instead of going to bed at the same time.

I am also guilty of having believed in the past that some behaviors or ideologies would change, in spite of the fact that there was never any indication apart from my hope that this would happen. I can't blame people for being who they are if I never fully accepted them that way and always hoped that they would change. That isn't fair to anyone.

I have learned over the years that I like being single. But right now, I am radiating happiness. Having someone I can say anything to and talk about teaching, grant writing, JC Penney, the Mormon Church, leaving the Mormon Church, religion, death, life, disappointment, grief, brokenness, strength, meditation, hope, hopelessness, giving up, despair, The Killers, The Cure, John-5, Go Down, Moses, God's Debris, love, sex, heartbreak, God, grace, our parents, our siblings, Tosh, Sting, friendship, integrity, acceptance-- I mean, everything. There isn't anything I can't say to him. I have said everything to him. We have cried in front of each other. I grip his beard in both hands and ask him sometimes, "Are you really real?" I am forty-six. I know how rare this is.

He goes to the hardware store with Chris. He goes out for breakfast with Sam. I slept in til 9 a.m. on Saturday morning and when I got up, he was cleaning the kitchen. "Do you mind if I help you with the cleaning?" he had asked me a few days before, when I confessed that I was a nonconvertible slob.

"Are you kidding?" I said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I know I'm gushing. According to Marsha at the JCP jewelry counter, I'm glowing. And I don't even care, I am unabashadly gushing. There has been so little romance in my history that I really stopped believing in it. That was hard to let go of, but then, after awhile, I was able to embrace my life without it. And I think it is really essential to be able to do that. Because it makes you so rock solid that it doesn't rock any of the foundations of who you are to be able to say, "I found someone who flips my heart inside out, and that's so rare, and I'm so lucky."

If I am actually in a coma, please make sure Christian is taking care of his blood sugars.

How on earth I met him

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 22:13:00 +0000

"How on earth did you meet this guy?" my friend Lynn Carter asked me just now.
I said, "It's a cute story and I am going to blog about it. :-) "

This guy is Darren Pinkerton. He has been encouraging me to start blogging again. "You could even write about our relationship if you wanted to, if you need material."

It is true that he is most of the material I have lately. Otherwise, my life for the past eleven months has pretty much been Criminal Minds, JC Penney, and teaching one creative writing class.

I have had two online dating profiles for awhile now. Since 2012. I have deactivated them at times and reactivated them. But I have not dated, until now, since New Year's. And no, it is not because I have not been asked. I was just tired of not meeting anyone of substance who actually wanted to know ME and wanted to spend time with me outside of the sack. So, I just didn't date. And it was great. To boot, my doctor upped my Prozac in the winter, which completely killed my sex drive. So, I just went through a long period of slumber in which I would half-interestedly peruse each dating site for about thirty seconds a day before signing out again.

My friend Whitney at work has been encouraging me to take those profiles down for a long time now. I took them down this summer, actually, but they had been back up for a couple of months, maybe.

In the meantime, in the early summer, I bought a bicycle with a basket and began riding it to work. I had a thermos I used to take to work filled with coffee, but the thermos was too heavy for my basket. So, I started stopping at Casey's for a part cappucino/mostly regular coffee cocktail that I would put into my basket and ride to JC Penney. The Casey's by my house is farther than the one on Baltimore, and I have a tendency to spill coffee on a longer ride. So, I started going to they Casey's on Baltimore. And after I had been going there nearly every morning for the summer, in August or so, a new cashier was hired. And I thought he was cute. I could tell by my interactions with him that he was smart. And he was always really friendly. Some of his co-workers are delightfully quirky and I enjoy my exchanges with them, but Darren was always more like a peer, someone I could kind of talk to easily. And that was something I sort of tucked away. But since I began dating again after my second divorce, I always said I wouldn't date in Kirksville. And that it would take someone really extraordinary for me to do it. And I couldn't really imagine finding someone in Kirksville I wanted to date-- because I certainly hadn't had any luck with that regard to date. (See what I did there?)

But I sort of started thinking about dating again in the fall, and I started thinking about Darren as someone I might like to date. I liked the look of him. So, we started chatting more and more-- little tidbits about our day and what it was going to look like, or how many days we'd been on in a row if we had seen each other for several days in a row. When I would come in, even if he was heading to the employee break area, he would stop and ask me if I was going to be unloading a truck that day. And I'd embellish my answer with a description of how many hours the truck might be or tell him that we were clearancing or setting a sale. So, I started to think that the interest might must be mutual. But it was so subtle that I didn't even mention it to my friends. Until one Sunday when we were sitting around and I said, "Hey, I need to tell you guys about this guy I like because I'm trying to figure out how to give him my phone number." So, I told them what I just told you.

I had been trying to get Darren to come into JC Penney. "We are having a 25% off Friends and Family event," I said.

"We can use our discount with our friends this week," I said.

"I'll come in," he said to me the next morning, a Monday. And I was afraid he wouldn't.

That afternoon, I had to take my mother down to CoMo to see her rheumatologist. I needed gas and coffee, so I stopped at Darren's Casey's. When I went in he said, "Hey, are you on break?"

"No, I'm getting gas to take my mom down to Columbia."

"Oh, I thought maybe you came in to say, 'hi,'" he told me.

I held up the coupons I had brought in for him and his co-workers. "I did!" I told him. "I brought you guys coupons!"

I went and got bottled water and coffee and paid for my gas. While he was ringing me up, he asked, "So, what do you do in your off time?"

And I thought, "Gotcha!"

I said, "I watch a lot of TV," I said.

"What do you watch?"

"Criminal Minds."

"Good show," he said.

"What do you do in your off time?" I asked.

"I've been reading a lot lately," he said, and handed me my credit card receipt to sign. And my customer copy. Smooth as butter (completely uncharacteristic of me), I flipped that receipt over and wrote down my name and phone number and said, "Let me know if you want to hang out sometime."

"Really?" he said. He beamed. I later told Chris (and then him),

"He looked like he had won the lottery."

He held up my number and said, "I'll call you."

I pointed at him and said, "Text me."

And smiled all the way to CoMo.

He texted me when I was driving back home. We made plans for him to come over that evening around 7:30. We talked for a long time. Then he was saying he had told a friend about me, so I asked if he wanted to take a pic of me to send him. Then I said, "No, I will take a selfie and send it to you."

He said, "Want to take a selfie of both of us?"

And he came over and sat by me and I snapped a pic of us (my current Facebook profile pic). He started to say something about whether or not I was comfortable with him sitting next to me, and I kissed him.

And then he kissed me.

And he was a gentleman and didn't even try to do anything else. And he wanted to see me again. He left before 10 p.m. and we made plans to meet the following evening. And we did.

There are more things I need to tell you, but I am still adjusting to my bifocals, so I'll just make a few notes here to entice you to come back for more.

Meeting his parents.

The talks.

The friends.

Sherri and Stella.

God.

Religion.

Thoughts on Online Dating

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 17:15:00 +0000

Online dating requires strict vigilance. It is time-consuming, disappointing, frustrating, and maddening. Occasionally, it's worth it. But really, being on dating sites at this point is more a form of entertainment than anything else. I keep my profiles active just in case. Just in case of what, I'm not sure because I don't think the man of my dreams is going to pluck me from a dating site so we can live happily ever after. But considering that I rarely go anywhere but my house, my mom's house, the grocery store, work, and work, the chances of my meeting a new person are fairly slim.

So, every once in awhile, someone who isn't a complete creep will send me a message and ask if we can email or chat and get to know each other. Sometimes I am willing to do this, sometimes not. It's based on a number of factors. Does this person have a picture up? Do they sound intelligent in their profile? Did they mention anything specific to me in their message, not just send me the same message they just sent 100 other women?

There are other variables. And one is dumb, but there it is. I will not date an Aquarius. Not ever again. Sorry. But I really do think that Aquariuses tend to be bad for me. And some of the ones I've met on the dating scene have actually frightened me. I think about one situation in particular when I was still very green and naive, and wow, there was a guy who was so insidious and dishonest that I still cringe when I think about it. He called me every night and talked for hours and always sent me little gifts and presents, but there were hints all along the way that something wasn't right. Fortunately, it was from a distance so I never actually met him, but it still alarmed me. I had friends who saw what was going on before I did, but I listened and ended it swiftly. So, no more.

But yesterday an Aquarius wanted to chat. [I am wildly consistent. I know.] I considered it and thought that there was no harm in chatting, because I realize that my behavior about this is irrational (even though, in my limited experience, completely warranted). So, we exchanged email addresses. He wanted us to chat right away. I told him that I was at work and had to finish a project. So, he asked if I could "just tell him something" about me. Now, this pisses me off for three reasons: 1) I have a long profile. Read it. 2) That profile links to this blog. Read that too. 3) I just said I am at *work.* So, if you have so much time, you tell me about you.

I said no, repeated that I have to work. So, I expected his next email to be something to the effect of "Well, how come you have time to email and not chat?" or some such bullying nonsense. There are subtle ways you can tell if a guy is controlling. For example, if someone gets irritated or angry with you for not responding to them fast enough, you just block them and move on. Or, if someone persists in asking you to chat, skype, send a pic, have a phone call-- if someone you haven't met cannot respect a polite "Not right now," then you have a lot of information right there about why you shouldn't not meet them. Instead, he wrote me a short paragraph about how he loves family and friends, is fun, and is looking for someone to marry. Yawn. Boring. And his profile also goes on at length about what he wants from his next relationship. He has it all planned out. Now he just needs to insert a live woman into the formula.

Honestly, I was surprised that he wanted to chat. He must not have read my profile at all. If he had, he would know that if he is a Christian, he won't like me. That if he wants to marry again, he will not like me. So, I just wrote back a short message saying that I think we are looking for different things. We'll see what he responds with. It doesn't matter because I am not going to date him, but it's entertainment.
______________________________________________________________________________
After dating online for a few years now, I have picked up a few things that I didn't know at first, usually after a few blunders.

1) If the guy asks you what you are doing right now, he probably wants to video chat. He's looking for cyber sex.

2) If he asks you if you Skype, he's looking for cyber sex.

3) If he tells me I'm beautiful, he has copied and pasted this to hundreds of other women.

4) If he flatters my writing, he is much more likely to get a positive response from me. BUT, this is also tricky, because sometimes they'll figure out that flattering women about anything the woman professes an interest in will probably get them a response. But they will be vague, flowery, and not talk about anything specific that I've written, nor respond to anything. Just, "Wow, you're a really good writer." This is a little more dangerous than, "You're beautiful," because it requires a little more thought on their part, and used to make me let my guard down. Now, I'm always skeptical because

5) Even the guys with whom I can write for a few weeks without meeting, have good rapport with, and like? Just want to have sex. And if I have sex with them, they will vanish. So, now I feel stupid for sleeping with them, AND I have lost a new friend. And on the rare occasions that they turn out to be someone I date, eventually they'll admit that they did all that writing so they could fuck me-- which is different from wanting to date me.

6) If they don't have a picture on their profile, they're married. But boy will they come up with some interesting reasons for why they don't have one up there: They don't want their co-workers/employer to know they are on a dating site. They can't get the phone app to work. They can't get the computer app to work. They can't get the pics off their phone, but they could text me a pic, and hey, it could even be of their penis if I'd like.

I so would NOT like.

I am not going to go into all of the details now about how I figured all this stuff out, but let's say that these things weren't always immediately obvious, and I got red-faced and cursed a lot.

So, one thing I ask myself a lot is this: Why not revert back to going out more and trying to meet people in person? Well, if I'm in the room with someone attractive and they're pulling this crap on me, I'm going to be even more susceptible to it than I am on the screen! At least from behind the computer, it's a little easier to cut through the bullshit. But it does raise the question of whether having a real relationship with someone you "meet" on a dating site is even possible.

I have a theory: Single men are worried about one thing. Will they ever have sex again? When? With whom? You'd think this means they want one steady woman. You'd be wrong. It just means that they will do anything in their power to get you to sleep with them, and then the next day, they will start all over again. See, they don't necessarily want a relationship, especially if they can convince women to sleep with them on a regular basis. The ones who have gone a really really long time without sex are even worse, though. Some of them do want a real relationship because they don't want to risk going for long stretches without sex. But then you run into the Aquariuses who want to get married. And the fact of getting married is more important than the actual person they are getting married to.

_______________________________________________________________________________
Fall of 2013, I was dating someone. We got together twice a month (I usually drove two hours to see him), and called each other boyfriend and girlfriend and were exclusive. He told me I was beautiful and amazing and for awhile it was good. But then I began to realize that "because of our short time together," that we were just spending all of our time in the sack. Though, he did appreciate "that you're intelligent and fun to talk to, too." But I thought that that would translate into more conversation during the week. Gradually I realized that he was interested in saying hi every day and telling me I was sexy, but he really didn't care about who I was or my daily life.

I wasn't pretty in high school. The only guys who called me were the ones who sat in the hallway and called me horseface and whinnied at me in the hall. So, I am more susceptible than I should be to being told I'm pretty. One of my dirty little secrets is that I don't actually know if I'm pretty or whether people think I'm pretty (and don't you say it, because now I won't believe you)-- but I'm too afraid to ask anyone because of course, anyone is going to say, "Of course you're pretty!" and I still won't know what to think. So, I do like it when men tell me I'm pretty, even if they're creepy liars and maybe I only like it for a second. At any rate, it took me awhile to figure out that this fellow wasn't at all interested in all the fucking work I've put into becoming an interesting, intelligent person whom *I* want to spend time with-- he was only interested me sexually.

No, I don't get flattered when men tell me they are interested in me sexually. That is downright commonplace. And frankly, it just means that any other woman would do-- they are just talking to me at that particular moment. I remember blocking somebody who was trying to get me to tell him how it felt to know that he was hot for me. Because I just really felt bored by it. I don't give a shit. That's how I feel.

So, pretty is good, but only if you like my brain better, and sexy is lame. Got that?

The end came when, at Christmas time last year, I spent a lot of time thinking about what he might need or could use and got him some simple gifts. He said, "I got you something too," and got up and came back with a scented candle in a paper bag. No card. Nothing. And he had apparently forgotten that the previous month he had told me about finding these candles and how he was going to get them for everyone. Something easy and scented that he didn't have to put any thought into. Like me! Between that and him being a little dodgy after about getting together a few times, I just ended it. He asked me to explain, but I did not because I didn't want him to try to protest that he actually IS interested in me. Because he wasn't. And that meant that he didn't actually value me as a human being-- just as a sex partner. Sorry, but that right there is going to kill the sex for me. And bad/boring sex is worse than no sex.

I know men who would disagree.

___________________________________________________________________________________

The thing is, I'm really lucky because I have great conversations every single day. Whether I'm with my kids, my friends, or at work, I am surrounded by interesting, intelligent, funny people. I work, I shop, I cook, I relax, I take care of my kids and my mom. I do not really have enough time to read the book I started earlier this week (on ennui day). Dating is ridiculous. It is going to take someone very, very special for me to try to carve out some time for them. And right now, it's just not a pressing need. I hug my boys and pet my animals-- I'm not suffering from lack of conversation or lack of touch. Very lucky that way. It allows me to be pickier than I have sometimes been in the past. But I think also, as I have grown older, I have just come to realize that I don't know if I have space in my personal space for someone intimate. For one thing, where would we hang out? I don't have time to travel somewhere. And I have no privacy for someone to travel here. It's a thing.

In the meantime, I am about as sexually active as I want to be. Right now, that's about nil. This winter has almost completely killed my sex drive. It's such a relief, LOL. However, I do realize that I tend to be less depressed when I am actively engaged in flirting or trying to dress nicely, keep fit-- just in case I want to date, just in case I meet someone. When I am not in dating mode, I tend to stop curling my hair, stop wearing makeup, and eventually stop really caring what I'm wearing. It's not good for anyone. I become like Liz Claiborne, and just stop trying.

Anyway, these are some of the things I think about. It has been interesting to go from being a woman who was a romantic and wanted True Love and a Kindred Spirit or Soulmate to one who values my independence and privacy. I make the rules for my household. And nobody's word holds more weight than mine. That is heady stuff, and I don't feel like sharing. I am not afraid of "being alone" at the moment, because I am almost never alone. That may change one day. But I can only take one day at a time.

Off to a great start

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 19:27:00 +0000

Happy New Year, rah rah rah. I know I fell off the blogging planet very suddenly, but things just conspired in such a way that I just couldn't blog for awhile. Even though I am a fan of blogging honestly and openly about a number of topics, there are just times when you can't write about what is going on. At least not publicly, and if that is the case, I avoid putting thoughts to paper altogether.

I used to spend a lot of time deliberating about whether or not there are some things one can't blog about, either because it's too painful, too fresh, too invasive of someone else's privacy. As an "artist," I wondered about integrity and firmly believed that self-censure was to be avoided. Now that I am an "adult," I realize that my youthful attitude was based on the fact that nothing of consequence or importance had happened to me yet when I thought that. I've now changed my mind.

So, anyway. Back. Still here. But I'm not even sure why I started writing this, because I'm so bored. I don't feel like I'm depressed, but I could be wrong. I do these little checklists: When was the last time you had fun/felt happy? (yesterday) Can you have fun/feel happy? (yes) Are you sleeping too much because you feel like hiding? (sometimes, but not this week) Is there anything you're interested in/looking forward to? (I'm enjoying watching The Killing, want to see Season 2 of Broadchurch, other tv shows, and I have some books I am looking forward to reading).

But interested in is sort of a misnomer, because what I mostly feel these days is boredom. I was reading my friend Bibi's blog yesterday. Bibi is 31, has four children under the age of 10 (including one-year-old twins), but she is brimming with energy and buzzing with projects she wants to tackle. All this while also staying at home with her kids and breastfeeding twins. I envy her *interest* in things! Where is my interest in things? Why does everything sound so boring? Even skydiving, which my friend Nicola does, just seems mildly dangerous and terrifying, but not really exhilarating or interesting. I'm sick to death of cooking and food. Baking doesn't really sound interesting, and I'm trying to lose the cookie baby I've been growing.

I know that my boredom is my responsibility. I admire and respect people who say they never get bored. But I'm not bored *this minute*-- I'm engaged in my writing. I read. I have engaging conversations. I have moments of non-boredom. I am existentially bored. Sometimes being in a small town for so long means that I have no idea of the interesting and exciting options that might be out there-- I don't even know what to google. I wish something would come along that I found utterly engaging. And right now I'm too tired and bored to make it happen for myself. I care, but not enough to do anything about it. It used to happen, with crocheting or knitting projects or deep exploration of every religion I could read about. But it's been so long that I can't really even remember what that excitement feels like. I wish I could remember what it feels like to fall in love or to be excited about something or someone, something besides coffee and cigarettes that could make me get out of my bed a little faster in the morning.

Mercury in Retrograde

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 20:07:00 +0000

The universe is continually devising innovative and unexpected ways of humiliating me. Last week, it hit my car with a bus while I was in it (school bus; grazed me) and knocked off my license plate and scratched the hell out of my bumper, but the car is drivable. And I need to call my insurance team and schedule an appointment for repairs.

The same morning that I got hit by the bus, I went home and collected myself for the length of two or three cigarettes, and my friend Chris was late to work to come over and sit with me for a few minutes. I had been on my way to Department Store to start a 7:15 a.m. shift, which I began, instead, at 8:20. I think when I was a younger woman with fewer callouses and fewer experiences with the metaphorical rug being pulled out, I would have been more shaken up-- perhaps would not have gone to work that morning. Now? It's just one more thing.

The same morning that I got hit by the bus, my son texted me while I was at Department Store and I read (during my break) that the electric company had shut off our power and posted a hot-pink sign on the door alerting us to that fact. So, I took a chance that a check would bounce and went and got cash, drove to the grocery store in my poor bald car, paid my electric bill, and it was restored within the hour. I was standing in my kitchen when I saw the utility truck stop in the alley behind my house. I could hear the guy humming as he opened the fence and walked into my back yard like he had a right to (which, I guess he does). I ducked past the windows. For some reason, I didn't want him to know I was at home. Probably because he knew my power had been turned off, and that's embarrassing. But he came around and rang the doorbell to tell me that the power was back on, so hiding turned out to be useless after all. And shame on me for hiding in my own house.

The same morning that I got hit by the bus, my mother's siblings and three of their spouses were in town visiting. So, that night at dinner, they asked me how my day was. I told them about the bus. They asked if my day got better after that. So, I told them about the power being shut off. Hiding it or not owning it doesn't make it less humiliating.

This leads me to sunny point c in my ritual humiliation by the universe (is this because Scorpios have birthdays right now?): This morning, I was working at Department Store. We have a new employee, a young woman, and we were talking to her this morning while we were unpacking all of the boxes and de-trashing merchandise, sizing and colorizing it to take to the floor. We have a close-knit team. We all really get along well and like and respect each other, so it's a really great gig. We all laugh a lot and harass each other and tell stories about dumb things we've done. I have done a lot of dumb things, so we laugh about that a lot. So, I said something about how Department Store has a generous policy about hiring dumb people like me, and my team leader said, "She isn't dumb. She has a master's degree, and I have to look up half the things she says. Only, I can't spell them, so I am sitting there saying them into my phone: 'Rogue... Ohhhhh.'"

Then A said, "We should all go to Jen's class sometime. I think we might learn something." She was laughing as she said it, but seriously, it would be fun to have them visit my class.

I said, "Can you please come tell my students that?"

So, our new employee (okay, forgive me, but I am just going to have to call her the new girl, because at Department Store, that's the vernacular) says, "Oh, do you teach the WACT class?"

My eyebrows nearly shot off my head. Before I could ask her how she knew and why she was calling it "the" WACT class, she continued with, "My sister's in your class."

The only thing that could have been higher on the Richter humiliation scale would be if one of my students actually got a job there and was working side by side with me. But actually, I can be bossier there than I can in class, so that might actually be fun. Kidding.

So, I said, "Who is your sister?"

Guess who her sister is? Yep. I said, "Oh, she's the one I called a Nazi!" and her sister replied, "That's not the first time she's gotten that."

It occurred to me, though, that I was glad I've already talked in class about working at Department Store. It's not something I hide or am ashamed of. But what if I were a more private person or more given to genuine embarrassment? I have been embarrassed in the past about working at Department Store. I have felt badly for my former students as they see me working there and wonder about the value of the education they received from me. And if this is where I am, what does that say about their own futures? I have also hidden on occasion from people, because I was embarrassed. Seriously, I've seen a couple of people and told my co-workers that I was going to hide until that person left, and then headed back to the stockroom. I don't do that anymore. In fact, now I give those people coupons. But I have wondered from time to time about how my students feel about the fact that their professor works at Department Store. But I also set my chin (metaphorically) and think, "Tough shit!" That is the reality we all live in. There is no sense in whitewashing it. One of the basic premises that I grew up with, and I don't think I am alone in this, is that we generally attend college and graduate school and do all those extra papers so we don't have to work at jobs like Department Store that pay so little. But my education does nothing to make me more qualified to work at Department Store, actually. As I have said, my mistakes come up a LOT in conversation. I am just lucky that they have been benign mistakes, mostly limited to sizing things incorrectly and then bitching loud and long about what a mess these jeans are and proceeding to size them all wrong, without realizing it. All the while, my team was trying to figure out why the hell the jeans were always still sized wrong. Whoops. And I'm lucky and grateful that they tease me, but they don't make me feel stupid or incompetent. It's just funny. Nobody got hurt. It was dumb, yes, but honestly, sizing jeans just confuses the hell out of me sometimes. But I have had spouses who have been less forgiving of dumb mistakes than my team is at Department Store, so I lurve them. And I appreciate them not linking my mistakes to me as character flaws.

So yeah, those have been my primary reminders of my very small and unimportant place in the universe. But it's not all bad. As I said above, in passing, really, my mother's siblings all came to town last week! Except one, who missed a connecting flight and wasn't really feeling well to begin with. It was amazing to see them all in the same room together.

I haven't seen that since my father's funeral. And I try really hard not to dwell on the fact that I may never see it again. It's a really odd thing to go from teaching a college class to walking into a room filled with your childhood memories. They all got up to hug me as I walked into the room, and I felt loved. It's hard to live away from family all the time. I have my mom and my kids here and friends I love like family. But last night after work, I was walking around the grocery store and it occurred to me that I am very alone. I have always felt like I have a support system here, but it's grown smaller as people have moved, divorces happen, people grow apart. I have been in a hermit-like cocoon for so long that even though I have not made demands on people, I have not contributed anything either.

I used to get angry with my mother for not keeping things together more when I was a teenager. I let my kids see me upset and crying. I am always very specific about what I am upset about though-- they know quickly that it isn't them, that it is temporary, and that I'm okay, but I need to cry at that moment. My mother cried a lot and then when I asked her what was wrong, she said it was nothing. A little given to melodrama, that one. That only confused me and pissed me off, so I don't do it to my kids. I confuse and piss them off in different ways that I'm not aware of and wouldn't do if I could prevent it. But just as I used to get angry with my mother for not keeping it together more, I now get angry with myself for not handling grief and blows and life very well since Karl died in 2008. I am both present and not present. I smile, I joke, I laugh, I cook, I eat, I tease, I love, but the only moments in which I am truly, 100% engaged are rare. I usually feel like I am holding something back, and even though I am aware of it, I don't really know how to stop. Psychologically, I understand that because of some accumulated losses and events, I don't really ever feel truly happy in part because I can't deal anymore with the complete annihilation that comes with losing what you love. And I think in part, I keep myself from becoming too engaged or too attached by shutting down and either feeling like I need to nap or go do something else rather than sitting longer with a loved one or going out with friends. I won't be sad about dying if I never completely embrace my life. And dying is inevitable-- having a happy life is not. There are a couple of people with whom I come pretty close to being fully present for. But even with my closest intimates, I will duck into my phone for a game. In some ways, it is a way to check out, to have some alone time, but it doesn't make my closest friends very happy. Rightly so. But I do a lot of things for a lot of other people, so I am selfishly refusing to give this form of rudeness up. Yes, it is rude. Simultaneously, it's helping keep me sane, and that takes priority. If I'm not rude this way, I'll be ruder more directly, because I will get irritated as time goes on. I need a lot of down and recovery time from three times and a lot of interaction out in the world. I have come to realize that I am an introvert, and I need alone time to recharge myself.

I berate myself, though, for stupid things like not getting family pictures done every year, not baking anything pumpkin this season, for not keeping a cleaner home. Somehow I feel like people who can not only survive but also engage happily in hobbies instead of becoming zombified like I do-- it feels like they're doing it better. Not that it's a contest. But they seem to be better at living life than I am.

I have been wanting to write since last week, but I have some pretty intense work deadlines that I need to return to. I have good intentions about writing in the evening, but by the time I sit down, I just want to drink red wine and watch TV and not have to think so damn hard about how to do what at which job.
__________________________________________________________________________________

There's more I want to write about, but not now, there isn't time. There really isn't even time to think about them. I want to write more about dating, about friendships, about the herbs and spices of existence that I don't have enough time to think about, but sometimes I still do. It is not lost on me that a populace that can't spend time thinking because it is too busy working for its basic survival, or too worn out when the work is done, is exactly what the 1% is going for. But just because I can see how I am being manipulated doesn't mean I can make it end.

Self Love (rated G)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 19:54:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago when I was cooking dinner one night, one of my kids mentioned that they had overheard that some of my students were saying things about me that were not very nice. They didn't know specifics, what was said, who said it. And that really did a number on me. My own child was not trying to make me feel bad-- he was both curious and concerned. I said something at the time about how students don't always love their professors, blah blah blah, but inside, I was crushed. Because now, every time I was walking into my classroom, I knew that people in that room don't like me and say mean things about me that my children then have to process. So, I wasn't very happy, and I wasn't very happy especially about my teaching.

I generally love teaching, but this was nagging at me. I finally had to shake myself and have a little come to Jesus meeting with myself. "Look at how many students you still keep in touch with," I told myself. I decided that I was going to have to approach the situation the way I approach dating:

"Lots of people would be THRILLED to take a class with me. You are LUCKY to be in my class. If you don't appreciate me, then that is your problem."

I'm not a perfect teacher, but damn, I am interesting, I am enthusiastic, and gosh darn it, I actually care about the little lambs. I suspect they say mean things because I scrapped the syllabus and started over. I'm not the most organized person. I extend deadlines and due dates. I confuse the poor things. Their second papers ... how do I say this gently? Ah, the way I phrased it to them: needed more attention and discussion before I felt comfortable assigning them more graded work. So, even though I had already given them the prompt and pre-writing assignment for their third papers, I suspended the deadlines for that papers so I could slow down and actually talk in some line-by-line detail about good and bad writing. I found four examples of bad student writing online and went through them one by one and talked about them. I find it is definitely better to critique writing samples that do not belong to anyone in my class. I am just hoping they can apply what I have said about those other papers to their own writing. But day after day, my students keep asking me when the third paper is due. One day I told them to stop asking me that and try to damn learn something, so now they ask me because they think it's funny (their rough drafts are due Wednesday, if you are curious too). So, my class and its execution are anything but conventional and linear. They send me these snotty, snipey little emails about how confusing everything is because of the syllabus change. Well, suck it up. I give them detailed feedback, I'm honest with them, and I try damn hard to be interesting. I don't really care about their obsession with deadlines and grades. Jesus, we are trying to break them of that.

Topics that were covered in class today were:

Michelangelo digging up bodies and performing autopsies to learn about how to sculpt the human form;
assessment tools and how the criteria for them are created;
House, MD and the formula the show uses weekly / Ira Glass This American Life;
qualitative research versus quantitative research;
political ads and how to develop criteria to evaluate their effectiveness;
Hook, by Blues Traveler;
Nazis;
the right to vote;
felons;
privilege;
the Disabilities Non-Discrimination Act;
No Child Left Behind;
Amendment No. 3 on the Missouri ballot

Yeah, that is a lot to absorb. And I hope that some of the stuff we talk about in class will take them years to unravel. I don't want to give them answers. I want to teach them HOW to question, how to link themes and ideas, and sort of how to *think.* I know that for me, having things mimicked for me helps me to learn them. At my copy editing job, I spent five hours sitting right next to my boss as she trained me on doing the end notes and works cited for our history books. She sat at the computer and explained things and talked for hours without looking up a single thing (except a few details we had to research). It was amazing. I absorbed maybe half of it. Then, I sat at the computer and took a whack. I had lots of questions. There are still entries that I can't figure out on my own. But the learning process is very exciting! I'm learning a ton. And it helps that she and I are both such big grammar nerds that we think the minutiae is fascinating. I learn from a combination of watching, explanation, and doing. If I thought I could get away with it, my ideal way to teach a writing class would be to use an overhead projector and actually go through papers with students line by line by line. Every day. Over and over. And then to have them write and revise. Do it again. Again. Because this is how I learned to write. By thinking about it carefully and constantly. Again, big grammar nerd. But they would all revolt and kill me after the second class. Even though, I daresay, if they cared and paid close attention, they would learn how to write over the course of a semester. But that method if writing instruction probably doesn't work for everyone.

I want my students to have a good experience in my class, but I actually find it very difficult to talk about how to write well. I start to lose my vocabulary for how to talk about it, because there are so many nuances and because so much of it is so complicated. I would have to tell you all of my thought patterns as I write and edit in order to teach you how to write. The best and worst advice I have for them is that I learned to write by doing it. A lot of it. And by paying attention to the suggestions my professors made. But I honestly can't think of many things that have interested me more in my life than words and reading and writing and how to do them well. So, I'm lucky. It comes, not easily, but sort of compulsively for me.
_____________________________________________________________________________
I just ran home for a quick lunch break and to say hi to the kids, because the younger two are out of school today and Monday. Thomas was home, so I mentioned to him that I am always happy to look at his papers before he hands them in. He told me he doesn't like how I edit them without his go-ahead. I told him my reasoning (see above) for doing so. He doesn't like it. Wow, I didn't expect to be proven correct so quickly about not everyone benefiting from that method of instruction.

You know I said above that I was hoping that my students will be able to apply some of what I have said about good and bad writing to their own assignments. I think this is also going to be one of the things it may take them awhile to unravel. But particularly about all of the stuff that I have thrown at them that is a lot to absorb: I have been repeating themes about rights, privilege, social justice, education, the pedagogy of the oppressed, manufactured consent, etc. In today's class, one of my best students demonstrated that it's going to take awhile for any of this to sink in (if, in fact, it does) by indicating that (paraphrasing broadly here) stupid people shouldn't be allowed to vote. It's more complicated than that, but it made me realize that a lot of the things I have been trying to say about social injustice and inequality and privilege is kind of going in one ear and out the other. When I was that student's age, I had similar ideas to these, and I told my class that. I told them that it had taken a process of years and experience for me to change my ways of thinking. The student honestly believed that this view is simply pragmatic. It is. Obviously it is. But I said, and I don't know whether this will sink in either, something to the effect of: "Remember how many people in the U.S. are college educated? The majority are not. But we cannot contribute-- via our complicity and dare I say lack of voting?-- to an infrastructure that leaves some adults illiterate and uneducated and then remove their right to vote their way out of it."

I might have also suggested that this student was being a little bit of a Nazi.

But I look at them looking back at me sometimes and I feel like I have been speaking Greek and they are all afraid to tell me that I am not speaking English.

It could also be that I talk so fast, they actually do *wonder* if I have been speaking Greek, and they are especially afraid to tell me, just in case I am actually speaking English very very fast.

______________________________________________________________________________

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. I am becoming a nocturnal being of the morning. Wednesday night, I had been thinking about Pride and Prejudice (the movie with Keira Knightly, in particular). This is in part because I have been listening to the soundtrack at work. And both of those things are in part because the actress who plays the eldest daughter, the lovely, gentle, and all-things-good Jane Bennett is Rosamund Pike. She also portrayed the cold and psychotic Amy Dunne in Gone Girl (did I actually really take the time to link to things once?), and I think I just needed to get the psychopath out of my head. So, even though usually I have been falling asleep before 9 p.m., I watched P & P and stayed up til midnight. Do you have comfort food books and movies and tv shows and music that you return to during times of stress? I do. Mostly books. My comfort foods are the Little House on the Prairie books, Pride and Prejudice (in all forms), Sense and Sensibility (in all forms), Little Women (in most forms, mostly the extended book), and Anne of Green Gables (in all forms). These books have all been instrumental in showing me who I wanted/want to be.

So, I stayed up til midnight watching it, but I really really needed it for some reason. Last night, I was also able to stay up a little later than usual for some reason as well, and I got sucked into a new program on Hulu that is called the Red Band Society. It's about a group of teenagers (astonishingly good looking teenagers) who are all chronically ill and all living, for the time being, in the same hospital. I had seen the name of the show, but for some reason the name really irritated me, especially because it was cryptic. Of course, I understand it now that I've watched it. But I was dismissive of the show for no good reason before I'd even seen it, and wow, it just sucker punched me right in the jaw. I was surprised, because not many new shows catch my eye anymore unless they have gotten really good buzz ahead of time. I wish I weren't so tired all the time-- I watch TV more than I read because I'm in less danger of falling asleep during it. However, lately, I've been falling asleep watching TV and that disturbs me because it cuts into my down time! I know tons of people who both read and watch TV and movies, so maybe you can relate to this: I seem to thrive more when I have a narrative my brain can turn and return to during the day. I like to mull over storylines and characters. It is soothing to me. And it actually gives my brain something to focus on besides anxiety and stress. Obviously, my brain is focused on work a lot of the time most days, but there are always those peripheral drips leaking in. And I'd rather them be about whether Olivia Pope should tone down her rapid-fire monologues a bit because they are losing their effectiveness with the constant repetition. Or whether Regina is going to get back together with Robin Hood, because she deserves a break. Those are much saner for me than, "Can I order pizza tonight? Will I have enough money to get through til payday next week if I do?" and that whole disastrous spiral of bullshit that not enough pondering in the world can change or fix.

Word Vomit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 22:33:00 +0000

My ultimate goal every weekend is to get caught up enough on sleep and rest to be able to get through the following week. This is particularly challenging, though, because I usually work on Sundays unless I have specifically taken the day off.

I am not succeeding very well, in spite of falling asleep before 9 p.m. usually every single night. I rested Saturday, went to bed early, and Sunday almost killed me. I was at work at 7 a.m. and worked for six hours to move around departments of clothes, build shelves, climb ladders to retrieve tables, carry and push heavy equipment around the store. I am not in my twenties anymore nor even my thirties. I came home and collapsed for the next three hours. Even after I woke up, I was so zonked that I couldn't think straight the rest of the day. I went to bed at 8:30 p.m. woke at 10:30 p.m., was up til 12:20 a.m., then finally slept.

I woke up at 6 a.m. and showered and then lay back down again, because I was about an hour ahead of schedule. But I just couldn't get moving. I emailed my boss that I was running late, and still got to the office by 8:30, even though I didn't feel even remotely ready for my day or even my week. I sat down to an email about some work I did last week and mistakes I made because I was hurrying. My boss walked into my office to say hello, and I started to cry. I talked to her for a few minutes about the email, about how tired I was, about how useless I was. We quickly agreed that I should go home. So, I am trying not to think about the money that didn't get made today and instead hope that having the day off was enough to get me through the rest of the week.

I came home and cried some more. I called Heather because I knew that she would know with very little explanation how I was feeling. I am so tired that I can't do any of my jobs well, but I am too poor to quit one of them so I can catch up on life. Well, the teaching gig will come to its own natural conclusion, but then there is the little issue of making up that salary somehow.

My mom had called me Friday to tell me that her September rent check had bounced. This morning, while I was sitting on the couch and feeling numb and stupid and worthless, she called and let me know that for the second time in the past four or five months, somebody called social services. Somebody called in June or July, so I had to take time off work to go and speak with them about my mother's finances. And now that her rent check bounced last month, they have come around again. I called the bank, found out the balance, wrote the check to cover September, and asked about October's check. It was deposited ten days ago and hasn't bounced. I should call the bank back and just ask them if it has cleared, but I just couldn't do it today. And here I am just hoping that I'll have enough money for the goddamn cable bill again and any diabetes supplies we may need before my next payday. If nothing unexpected comes up, we should be good for groceries too, and the electric bill. My health insurance rates have gone up, so I really have to find new health insurance. As soon as I get more brain power, I'll get right on that.

After I went to my mom's and dropped off a check and updated her medications, I came home and took a nap. I got up and washed my dishes and cleaned off my counter tops while talking to the kids in the kitchen.

You know, the first time someone calls social services on you because they suspect that you are not taking good enough care of your old person, it's humiliating, panic-inducing, degrading. The second time, when you are home from work because of crying, and once again you are being told that you are not taking good enough care of your old person, you just want to cut open your own chest. Here are my financial records. Here is my work schedule. Here are my guts. Sift through it all. Take what you want. Let me know when you're done, and I'll just sew up my chest again and keep going. I don't have anything to hide. Everyone in my entire extended family knows that my mom helps out with the bills. It's not a state secret. I'm going to have to break down and go fill out forms for food stamps and reduced medical bills, because I don't see any answers coming down the pipeline. If I got rid of my health insurance, I could afford to quit one of my jobs. Of course, then I wouldn't have health insurance. And there are still things that I could lose to a catastrophic health event: My house, my car, everything. So, that leaves finding a better rate. Isn't our health insurance supposed to be going down?

Heather and I talked today about how we don't know what to do. Believe me, if I had some answers, I'd be implementing them. Today I entered the thought arena once again that I need to move, that I must go somewhere where I can find a full-time job. I am not sure where that is. When I was doing the dishes, Tommy was standing in the kitchen archway, looking across the house out the front door because he was expecting his girlfriend. He said, "Hey, Mom, next summer, can you get me a job at Department Store?"

I said, "Sure."

He continued, "I want to get a full-time job. I want to make some money."

I laughed bitterly and wiped out a big bowl with a regular towel I pulled from the laundry because I can't find my dishtowels right now. "Well, good luck with both of those things. You're competing against adults who want those things, and there really is no such thing as a full-time job anymore. But you can try to get a job, sure."

He looked non-plussed, even though he knows I was home washing dishes in the middle of the afternoon because I had a little crisis and couldn't stay at work. Sometimes doing a good job of keeping how hard this is from the kids means that they really have no idea how it's going or how the world works. But I didn't continue my rant. I just let the conversation drop. But this is how it's going to be, now, isn't it? I am soon going to be competing for jobs against my own kids, and they'll get the jobs because they don't almost die after six hours of physical work. And I want the kids to get work. I somehow persist living this fantasy that even though I am in this situation that I can't see myself out of, that my kids are going to go to college and get good jobs and have normal lives that include mortgages, car payments, and solvency. Even though I have no reason to believe that this will happen except that I don't really want to think about the alternatives.

I talked to my brother this morning, and we joked about combining households to save money. But it's not really a joke. Honestly, if we could find a way to be solvent and take care of my mom, I would consider a move somewhere with Matt and Heather and combining resources to live a little more securely so instead of two panicked households, we had one sort of solvent one. I am fine with the idea of a societal return to multi-generational housing, if that's what it takes. Instead of picking on adult kids who live with their parents and the parents who let them (because kicking them out will save everything-- new, decent paying jobs will materialize magically due to Tough Love. Dem kids just need more grit!), why don't we adopt this as a deliberate measure. We can spend tons of time running our own individual treadmills and keep trying to return things to the way they were-- each family living separately in their own abode, two parents who both have one full-time job. Or we can try to create a new infrastructure. It may not be a revolution, but I don't think my family is going to be the only family thinking about this. In fact, I'm probably late to this boat anyway. I will have to start looking into this and seeing what is happening on a grassroots level. I am a fan of the tiny houses movement, but that compartmentalizes and separates us, still. Maybe if we start combining households, three or four salaries will contribute to enough.

Obviously, I am overlooking the complications that would develop with multiple adults trying to share a household. It doesn't often work out well for college roommates or spouses, so can it work for siblings or adults who aren't related? There are some planned communities around this area that seem to work, but I don't know how harmonious they are, and I don't know how many kids (families) there are versus single adults.

But so far, every solution that I have some up with that involves me continuing to do this alone just terrifies me because none of them suggest any changes: I still have to work this Sunday. I still won't get time off at the holidays because of Department Store job. It is so funny-- when we give up wheat, we crave bread. I am craving time, time to think, time to reflect. The only reason I was able to eek out this rambling word vomit is because I had enough time off today to be able so sit and rest my head for a moment. The rest of the time, my brain alternates constantly between wondering how I can do a better job at work, thinking of what I have to get done for the rest of the week, counting the days til the end of the month and constantly doing mental arithmetic to make sure that we won't run out of money before the end of the month, wondering how I can get more down time, wondering what the best form of that down time is-- a nap? Washing the dishes? Cleaning the floor? Watching tv? Reading a book? Taking a walk? What single thing can I do with my small amount of down time to maximize the benefits of it? In taking care of myself in order to take care of everyone else, what does that entail? What do I need the most?

So, this treadmill of work, sleep, recovery, breakdowns, emergency breaks, work, sleep, recovery is going no where fast. I've got to start thinking out of the box, but first I need to rest my brain again so I can think.

OK Stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 20:40:00 +0000

One of the things that I don't blog about, well, haven't blogged about, is dating. But there hasn't been another point in time during which I have been both blogging and single. So, you can see how that math works out. But now, as it happens, I am both. I wouldn't categorize myself as dating at the moment. It's been a few months since I've had a date. For the past couple of years, on and off, I used to make time on the weekends to date. I was happy to travel to St. Louis, Columbia, Des Moines, Kansas City on weekends when I didn't have my kids. It was nice to leave town for a bit, fun to meet new people, and best of all, it didn't really impact my daily life. My daily life includes living in my home with my children. I have committed myself not to co-habitating again until my kids are out of my house. Considering that my kids in some combination or another may still be in my house for the next five years or so, it seems pretty safe to say that a serious romantic relationship would have some pre-set limitations. And I made this commitment on purpose to keep me from getting into anything too fast. So far, that has worked out nicely.

This fall, though, it became clear to me pretty quickly that I don't have time to date. I just don't. Even that fact doesn't mean I would rule it out-- but I can't go out of my way to make it happen. And I am not even successfully carving out enough time for myself, so making time for another person right now doesn't seem like a great idea. At least, in terms of a romantic relationship.

Wow, it's so hard to write about this. I am pretty frank about it in most situations. But for so long my blog has been sort of scrubbed clean of any discussion of sex or sexuality. I think I pretended to my mom (and other adult Mormons) for so long that I wasn't sexually active that I just grew accustomed to not talking about it. In fact, I don't know that my mother and I have ever had an honest or open conversation about sex. She was embarrassed to talk about it. She didn't let me watch the end of The Big Chill when I was in high school because Kevin Kline and Mary Kay Place's characters have sex so that MKP's character can try to get pregnant. She is single, she wants a child, they are good friends, and even though Kline is married, his wife Glenn Close orchestrates this deal (because she had an affair with Kevin Costner, whose bandaged wrists are the only thing we see, before his coffin is closed at the start of the movie). Anyway, those are very complicated and grownup themes, and my mother didn't want me to watch it. My mother also came downstairs and danced in front of the tv during Risky Business, because she didn't want me to watch it. It is nothing short of a miracle that I have been able to be open, matter-of-fact, and level-headed about talking about sex with my children.

I remember one Mormon woman I knew when I was engaged to my first husband. She said to me, "You know, premarital sex is only fun because it's forbidden."

I knew differently for myself at this point, and I remember trying not to stare at her in horror. I remember laughing about it later with my fiancee-- I know she meant well, but the only thing she conveyed was that, in spite of her three children, they were doing it wrong.

I still don't discuss sex with my mother, though she knows I date occasionally. One of the reasons I don't discuss it with her is that because I am single (and she is still Mormon), I presume that she thinks that it would be sinful for me to have sex. When I told my parents that my [eventual] second husband was moving into my house with me and the kids (before we were even engaged), my dad asked me if my [eventual] second husband was going to live in the garage behind the house.

It takes a very determined sort of naivety to ask questions like that.

So, deep breath, I am an adult woman, and I am sexually active. When I got my second divorce, at the age of 42, I had slept with two men. After my second divorce, it didn't really occur to me that I was allowed to date for awhile. But once it did, I joined OK Cupid and began online dating. I have learned a lot about dating that most women probably learn in college. I have learned a lot that makes me realize that dating a lot more probably would have kept me out of both of my marriages. Unfortunately, what I have learned about dating has only reinforced to me that marriage is a bad idea for me, and, probably, so is cohabitation. I like being the boss of my house. I just do.

But sex is an important part of my life. I think it's a fundamental bodily need. Sure, it can be denied. I'm not here to diss people who don't have sex or have committed to another lifestyle. But it's a bodily need that I have, so from time to time, I set about filling it. And I tested the theory that women can have sex basically whenever we want to. And after I proved that theory, I backed off for awhile and took a break from dating. I go through periods of disgust and disinterest with dating sights and particular men I've had the displeasure of communicating with. I also go through periods when I think it's really fun and that my forties have been the most fun I've ever had. I have a tendency to bifurcate, but I think that dating really is the best and the worst of times.

Because my time for a substantial romantic relationship is limited, I think I make both better and worse decisions. This means sometimes I sleep with people I wouldn't necessarily be good in a relationship with. And I do it on purpose, because I don't want a relationship-- I want sex. I know that makes me sound almost masculine, and it makes me sound like I'm using men for sex, but I promise, I've asked them about this, and they do not seem to mind. Go figure.

I'm not interested in trotting out the details of my dating life here so much as making fun of the guys I never date and never meet because they are such idiotic tools. So, I am probably going to post more about Internet dating, but out of respect for others' privacy, I will try to make sure nobody who comes across this (whom I actually like) would recognize himself.

Waaaaay too long. Don't read. TL/DR

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 19:57:00 +0000

When I think of all of the blog posts I've had rattling around in my head lately, I am sorry that I haven't had more time to write since last week. But I can't worry about those lost posts now-- just have to move forward.

It's been hectic. I have had some big deadlines-- so much so that I came into work Saturday afternoon for 4 hours and then stayed late on Monday evening. I worked Sunday too, but that was different work. Then, for Tuesday, I had deadlines on top of my deadlines, but now it has slowed down somewhat (thank goodness). This morning, my students reminded me that we don't have class on Friday because of the Fall Break. Phew! Just gives me some extra time to think and prepare, you know?

Lately, (sorry, interrupted by a phone call from my mom. For the second time today, she can't get her TV remote to change the channels. I suggested that the remote may need new batteries, and told her I would try to stop by on my lunch hour today to change them. As we have learned, the TV working is a Big Deal.) I have been falling asleep on the couch before 9 p.m. It makes getting up and going to work early in the morning easier, sure, but I'm starting to feel like I am existing rather than living. Is it the mental challenges of three jobs that are so completely different that is tiring me? Because I do work a little more than a 40-hour work week, particularly with Sundays, but that doesn't seem to be it. Even now, a little after noon, I am yawning my head off. (I am drinking water.) And I slept from 8:50 p.m. til 6:00 a.m. That is plenty of sleep. So, it's probably stress, but I don't know what to do to alleviate it. I hope this straightens itself out in December when my class is done and I'm back to just the two jobs.

Heather is home now (yay!), but this week I'm worried about my mom. Last week, poor thing, she had to have a pelvic exam to try to determine what a mass in her abdomen could be. When the doctor palpates, there is something there. He couldn't really get a handle on it through her exam, though, so tomorrow we go to the hospital for a CT scan or a sonogram-- I'm not really sure which. This morning the dr's nurse called to let me know that they did an overnight oximetry test on her to see if lack of oxygen could be contributing to her swelling-- nope, came back within normal parameters. But my mom is really swollen. Her legs are swollen, her stomach is swollen, her neck is really swollen. The problem with not being able to identify the cause of the swelling (we have checked thyroid, heart, lungs, sodium levels, kidneys) is not only that we can't find her any relief for it, but also that the cause might be more sinister than we had previously guessed. The mass in her abdomen could be nothing. It could be fibroids. But the swelling leads me to wonder whether it is tumors that are weeping. I've expressed these fears to the doctor, and he hasn't dismissed them. It could be nothing. It could be something. And I can't really do much about it either way until I know what's up (and probably not then either). When my father's cancer started spreading, the tumors wept until he was so swollen that we measured his abdomen to be 52 to 56 inches. Nurses would have to use a large needle to draw off some of the fluid, but that only makes your body try to replace it faster, so there are drawbacks. The entire process is extremely taxing on the body. There is a pill you can take to help with the swelling, and my dad was on it-- Lasik or something similar-- but my mom's sodium levels are too low for her to take it. Which also means that it isn't too much salt in her diet causing the swelling.

So, a hospital visit tomorrow morning means I had to find someone to take my shift at Department Store tomorrow morning: Any time off work is wages lost. Thanks, America!

None of this is what I want to be thinking/writing about, but all of the thoughts that have been rattling around in my head since last week are scattered like leaves-- fleeting thoughts about my mom's birthday last week, taking her out to dinner with the kids and feeling guilty that we can do that when I've been writing so much about poverty, having a lot of extra visitors last week, not having enough down time, watching television, the importance of having other narratives in my head, other stories than my own. I used to get those narratives from reading novels, but now I just fall asleep reading, so I turned to television, and now I'm falling asleep while watching, so the narratives just end up being lists of what I need to do when.
__________________________________________________________________________________

The batteries have been successfully changed, and Pat's remote is up and running once more. Not only that, but I also laid out all of her pills for the week and called in her refills. I remembered to take the pork out of the freezer for supper tonight. This morning was almost a little catastrophe though. Christian was out of cereal. (Christian has diabetes and had already had a shot of insulin, so skipping a meal is not an option-- not that I'd advocate that for teens anyway, but in a pinch, another healthy teen could make it on a plum and a couple of glasses of milk. I could have grabbed McDonald's for him on the way to school except that the only thing he likes from their breakfast menu is the hashbrowns.) I suggested bread and peanut butter, but we were out of bread.

[Note: We were out because yesterday at lunchtime, there was a half loaf of bread, and I just didn't notice that we were out of cereal-- thankfully, this instance is not about poverty. It's about the kids are going to be with their dad for the next four days or so, so I was being lazy about going to the grocery store.]

I was debating whether to try to make him some pancakes or slap some peanut butter on a tortilla when I found some yogurts I'd bought for my lunches. I handed him two yogurts and a plum. That plus two glasses of milk (and maybe a spoonful of peanut butter) give him enough carbohydrates to get him through to his morning snack, though now I am wondering whether he is skipping that snack ... Need to ask him about that.

I was jittery over my lunch hour today until I got to my mom's. I can't remember the last time I've been this anxious about a test she is having done. I was trying to figure out whether it was too much caffeine, but I had a strong sense of foreboding. The strong sense that I was about to find out something, hear something, get a phone call, something in the mail, learn something or get an unexpected visit from someone I know. I couldn't pinpoint it. So, I drove over to my mom's and etc. Then I ran downstairs to where the tenants of her apartments were having a Halloween Party (put on by the management). They were having some kind of drawing for prizes, so I wove my way through tables and chairs to my mom, kissed her on the forehead, told her the remote was working and that the pills were laid out, that I love her, and I'll see her later. It's kind of rare that she is an activity she likes there (according to her) that I didn't want to interrupt her party-- if I had told her I was there before I took care of the batteries, she would have left her party to come upstairs, and I would have felt bad about that. It's such a balance of independence and nurturing-- how much of each is too much? Often, Pat seems to think that her problems outweigh the needs of everyone else in the world. She seemed genuinely surprised and disappointed both times she called me at work about her remote control. She really seems to think that I should be able to just run over immediately and take care of it. Now, to be fair, I could probably leave one job that's pretty flexible to run over there and change some batteries. But the other two jobs do not offer that option, so I do not offer it as an option for any of them, because how am I supposed to explain that inconsistency when she can't remember most days that I am at work at all? None of this is urgent-- but it is like a little daily irritant that takes up energy and time. I spend a lot of time trying to make up to her for her boredom by taking her out for rides, calling her extra, apologizing, taking her to dinner, hanging out at her place watching tv, or bringing her over to my house. But this is the problem: Because of her memory problems, sometimes she will not remember that last night we went out for dinner. Her boredom and loneliness are fresh to her every day. So, even though I do my best to keep it at bay, I can't stop those twin sisters of depression from stopping by and knitting her into their sticky web. I feel like I am on a treadmill, but it's going so fast that I'll just injure myself if I try to get off.

I have explained these things to Sam at times. Sam has more wisdom than I do. He shakes his head, he says, "Bat, Bat, Bat, you are going to kill yourself with empathy. You have got to stop it. You are just hurting yourself. You need to toughen up."

He's right. But what he doesn't know is that if I don't keep my receptacles open, if I don't retain my empathy, I will become so embittered that I won't recognize myself. [He actually does know this-- I was just using that as a narrative device so I could tell you, the audience.] [I need to stop teaching freshman writing classes.] I have enough little pity parties for and by myself already, so I'm more than happy to jump into someone else's misery for a little while if it helps me to help them better. But Sam's right. It's damaging. And this is why I don't teach junior high special ed [anymore]. This is why I am not a counselor, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, nurse, or god help us, social worker, nursing home worker, hospice worker, or any of the other countless professions that you might think an empath would be drawn to. Those professions would eat me alive.

I am not trying to make myself out to be some kind of mystical empath, like Kes or Deanna, but I do have a strong nurturing streak. And it is also safe to say that at times, it has damaged me. Hopefully not more than the good it has done, though.
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Unrelated: I need to figure out why my health insurance has gone up about $100 a month for the past few months (!!!) and start shopping for new health insurance. I know nothing about Obama Care and hid from the websites because at the time, my health insurance was reasonably priced. I haven't had any big health claims-- something is hinky.

Also unrelated: Today is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day, and I have many friends who are impacted every single day by the grief of this loss. Much love to you all.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 17:14:00 +0000

This morning, I awoke to discover that my get up and go had got up and went. I went to sleep last night before 9:00 p.m. because there was nothing more interesting to me than just going to sleep. Any person who has wrassled with depression will tell you that sleeping a lot is one of the signs that things are not great. So, I recognize these things, but it's not like it's a big shock that I'm not waking up singing these days. I slept in my clothes because my room was cold, and I didn't really care enough to take them off last night. The kids aren't too cold to sleep without the heat on yet, so I am playing Heat Chicken with the weather and delaying the regular use of heat as long as I can. I have turned it on in the mornings occasionally to take off the chill, and we can all smell the heater coming back, the slight smell of singed cat hair and dust signifying its slow wake.

I can usually fight past the depression or even simple ennui, even when I stay in bed til the last possible minute. Getting up and bathing and putting on my face are all part of the routine-- I don't even have to think about them much, but they help me transform myself into a public person. This morning I bathed, but then I stalled. I spent some time unclogging the bathroom sink. Then I cleaned it. I knew I should be getting ready, but I couldn't get myself to stop ignoring myself. So, around 7:30, I decided to call my boss and tell her I needed another hour to pull myself together. I took Christian to school, came home, still in my bathrobe, and poured some coffee, emailed my students to reschedule meetings that had been scheduled for this morning, read Bibi's blog, and started watching Once Upon a Time. Christian made the coffee, for which I am grateful, and I'm not sure what measurements he uses, because it was not very strong, but it was hot and wet, so I drank it. I remember the former Duchess of York, Fergie, saying once that the Brits don't have high standards for tea: If it's hot and wet, they'll drink it. I can be that way with coffee.

I canceled my meetings with students because I thought I could muster making four bibliographies today quietly in my office, but interacting one-on-one was more than I could really face today. I mean, yes, I could have done it, but it wouldn't have made me heroic or anything. They don't care. And I am so far beyond the idea of being able to do or have "it all" that doing or having "enough" is what I'm celebrating these days. ___________________________________________________________________________________

After 23 minutes of television, it was time to go and pull myself together to get to work by 9:00, which is when I said I'd be in. I considered calling back and taking longer, but I hit pause on the Roku remote and went into the house. I am wearing a long skirt today, because elastic. I'm not feeling like I'd have trouble fitting into my pants, but I literally thought it would be easier to put on a skirt, so I did. I'm actually wearing matching socks (my shoes have a hole in them though) and a sweater, and I made myself put on makeup. Sometimes if how I look matches how I feel, it just makes things worse. Even though, by my own criteria, I feel cobbled together today. I let my hair dry naturally, so it's curly and I just put it into a barrette. I hate my hair like this, but drying it and curling it (actually, to straighten and then control the curl) would have just made me later. I need a hair trim, and I need new black flats. But if I don't get either yet, I will save money, so I'm holding off.

So, I'm at work, students are re-scheduling with me, and one is coming at noon, so that's what I get for taking an extra hour this morning-- I will lose it at lunch time.

I try to be careful about using the word "need." I said earlier that I "need" a hair trim and new shoes. Well, in order to maintain a professional look, I do "need" these things. The shoes take priority over the hair, which can be worn back. But generally, I try to ask myself whether things are a want or a need. After looking at my own budget closely, I have been bringing coffee to work instead of stopping to get a 34 ounce gas station refill, because in doing so, I save $1.50/day. That is about $28/month. It's not much, but it adds up. Don't worry, I indulge myself in wine, instead. The other day, as part of the Humans of New York project, there was the story of this guy:

"If they raise the subway fare one more time, I'm going to explode. I'm making nine dollars an hour. I walk home three hours from work every day to save that $2.50, because that's a half gallon of milk for me and my daughter."

Some of the comments on this man's picture and narrative are horrifying. Lots of people telling the man to a) get a bike to save time on the walking (which will also allow him to work extra hours and earn more money); b) get more education so he can get a higher-paying job; c) move.

There is a strong misconception in this country about sheer will. Sheer will *should* be able to make us move mountains! If you have the gumption, you will be able to make not only a decent income, but a great one! So, if you are not making one, then you lack gumption. Perhaps you were born with a limited amount of gumption. In that case, you are a less-worthy human being than all of the people who were born with gumption and a strong sense of personal responsibility, so you deserve to make your low salary. Because you are obviously doing it wrong to be in the position you are in.

Well, what about my friend Missy who has a Masters in the sciences and cannot work because of Crohn's Disease? Damn, she should just have been born with more gumption and personal responsibility so she could work through this.

Well, what about me? I have a Masters Degree, also, and I am making a whisker more than minimum wage at Department Store. I do earn more than that working at my other two jobs, but considering my experience and education, I should probably be earning more. Well, then I guess I should have gotten my Masters in something useful (see Missy with Masters in sciences above) instead of in English. Or, I guess I shouldn't have gotten married at age 22, after obtaining my undergraduate degree. I certainly shouldn't have had children or stayed home with them, because those decisions have undoubtedly hurt me financially. Oh no, wait: What hurt me financially was divorcing my husband. Never should have done that.

I'd have much more earning potential if I had a better degree, not in English, and no children. Or, if I had stayed married, because divorce is sinful and wrong. I should also leave this economic area, because wages are so low. I should move somewhere where there are more jobs. OK, I'll just pack up my kids and my mother, and because I don't have savings, I should take out a loan from a local payday loan company. They'll give me MAYBE $500. That will definitely pay for a moving truck, first and last month's rent (which will be more in almost any city with jobs, so my higher salary will go to higher cost of living), security deposit, and gas for the move. And I will definitely be able to get a job somewhere else, because I have education, gumption, and personal responsibility. Problem solved. And if I point out any of the complications of uprooting my teenagers and elderly mother, then I should just shut up and take some initiative to make my life better instead of sitting around complaining about it all the time.

But the thing that makes me the angriest about all of the rhetoric about personal responsibility being the magic bullet that is going to fix things is the fact that these attitudes smack of emotional abuse. In cases of emotional abuse, the ground rules are not fixed. Rules shift according to the abuser's whims: Well, you must not have a good education. Oh, you do? Then, it must be your fault because of where you live. No? Then it's your fault because you are lazy. No matter what, it is poor people's fault. There is no way to win. There is nothing we can do to deserve NOT being poor except not be poor.

I also love the mantras about: bloom where you're planted, be happy with what you have, count your blessings, so many people in the world have it harder than you do; life isn't fair, nobody owes you anything. If mantras like that worked, I would have stayed Mormon and stayed married. If mantras like that worked, women wouldn't have the vote and it would still be illegal for blacks and whites to marry. But I can't afford to placate myself with pretty new baubles or vacations, things that might distract me from injustices around me, things that might make me less angry.

The thing is, my angry voice is only one of the many. My Facebook feed is inundated every day with stories and voices and injustices. Honestly, I think we do need a revolution, but history teaches us that that is not very likely to happen. But I sympathize with anarchists who think the whole infrastructure needs to be chucked and replaced. Because there are actual CEOs out there who think that access to free, clean, water is not a human right. And there are politicians calling who think that Ebola patients should be rounded up and killed. Let's not forget the people they exposed, also. Remember when people were crying for everybody with AIDS and HIV to be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay? We are becoming a human race bereft of empathy. It's hard anymore to know what I'm supposed to be fighting for, but it's okay because I'm too busy working anyway.