DIRT CHIC

Brief Thoughts on Morality and Barbarism (Fun Times!)

It's summer in Ohio City and that means kids on the trampoline, seeing people get ice cream at Mason's, and... sirens.  Sirens sirens sirens.  And not because of the weather.

I took a long walk through my neighborhood after spending a day feeling some extremes of emotion and disposition - started the day reading Belleville by Amy Herzog and while it was a really good play, it also made me feel like crap, for lack of a better way to describe it right now. And going to my bank to deposit a check and was reminded of Wednesday and trying to go pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy at the closest hospital (which also has Cleveland Clinic's in-patient psychiatry ward), and turning the corner to see a sheet draped over a body across the street from the ER.  And finding out it was a suicide victim.  And just feeling unpleasant feelings of impending doom for the last two weeks.  As one does. ?

But I took my walk, in this neighborhood with a lot of colorfully-painted old houses and lush gardens, which reminds me of Longmont, which is one of my hometowns, and a dear place in my heart.  And then there were SIRENS.  But I was on my walk because I needed to "chew" on why Christianity, as it generally is today, is so obsessed with morality.  ...I haven't done that in awhile, walk and think on big topics.  I have walked and thought about my writings-in-progress.

I came to the conclusion that it was what I already been thinking: comfort.  Comfort gets a bad freaking rap.  Including by Christians because I sure as hell remember a lot of youth group sermons about not being in your "bubble" or "comfort zone" (though this was all about witnessing and nothing more).  But reading up on global history, and how freaking bloody and barbaric it was (another reason why I have no interest in Game of Thrones - I know it's not history but it is a bit too close to comfort), and thinking back on the arc of the canonical Bible, I can see how religious communities move towards a more strict, calcified version of what I consider to be community-saving laws and moral virtues.  It makes sense, then (and my reasoning and thoughts here aren't really engaging in true rhetoric, btw), that some Christian individuals and groups are totally freaking out about what's happening right now in the U.S., and frequently bringing up their fear that this will cause the decay and ruin of our country.  It's a threat to their comfort, yes - but they do actually think it's a threat to community.  

Which I totally get.  But the problem, to me, is that I don't remotely think gay marriage is an inherent threat to the country, for reasons I loosely outlined in yesterday's post.  I can't make a leap from gay marriage to country-ruination.  And this is because I don't focus on the U.S. being a morally virtuous nation according to Christian principles.  I was wasting time earlier today, because I had a bad morning, and in another dismal mood I clicked on a slideshow of "31 Last Pictures of Celebrities Before Their Deaths" or something like that, and after I pathetically went through that slideshow, it automatically took me to the next one, which was "X Number of Celebrities That You Didn't Know Were Atheist", and I confess to finding that one both dismal and entertaining.  There were actual atheist statements and then there were joke-statements, like from Woody Allen.  But someone - I think it was Nigella Lawson, ?! - who said she wasn't raised to believe in religion, but she was never taught that morals weren't important, or something like that.  And that was one of the more useful things about that whole time-waster.

You can be good and not be Christian.  You can have strong morals and not learn them from straight-up religious texts, teachings, or individuals.  More heretical statements from me, I know.  Because I was taught that our moral selves came from God.  Which is not a bad thing, to me, if God is love.  I think our highest human morals and ethics are definitely of the order of transcendence.  And I'm not actually knocking a Christian's belief in all morals coming from God, I'm just frustrated that this has turned Christianity, as a socio-political force, into a pedantic, phobic cult.  ...Geez.  I just said that.  Because I just thought it.  I don't find individual Christians to be like that - not the ones I encounter OFF of Facebook, that is - but I also don't really hang out with a broad spectrum of denominations.  But the way the religious leaders, the ones whose quips or sermons or ideas get disseminated in media, talk about our nation's "moral downfall" makes it sound like that's what every Christian thinks.

And I still don't see a link between gay marriage, and, like, impending barbarism.  I find fear, ignorance, and hatred more likely indicators that terrible things could happen if gone unchecked.  

And I don't think that pedantic phobias are Christianity.  I do believe, if I remember my Sunday School lessons correctly, that such people who engage in these things rather like Pharisees.  Even though I also don't recall the Pharisees being particularly histrionic.

Anyways.  Morality: good.  Fundamentalism, militantism, and the like: not so much.  We need comfort, yes, because this world can be a MESS - but trying to impose the wrong kind of moral restrictions on non-offending people in order feel less afraid is NOT the point.  The point has gotten lost - Christianity is about love and not a constant barometer of how "righteous" a nation (a nation!  Where does it say in the Bible that the U.S. is somehow special?!) is.  

Opinions, and, Do You Want to Read a Post about Christianity and LGBTQ?

Today has turned into a long string of missive-writings and waxings cultural/spiritual/theoretical.  And it is 12:30, and I have yet to read my play-o-the-day, though it WILL happen, and I will go retrieve a GAJILLION more at the library, and then I will go teach and learn evermore about grammar and punctuation.  And then I will come home and probably read and wax more waxable stuff.

I've been having a long conversation with a dear relative of mine, about our world and our culture and about religion's place in it.  For me, it keeps coming back to my paradigm: good comes from choice, a lot of the time.  Love is a choice, joy is a choice, and small acts are just as important as big ones - and definitely more important than just making noise.  It's important to articulate cultural and personal morals/ethics, but at the end of the day, that better not be all a person does.  That is, if they consider religion to be important.  I also think it's a good idea for anyone.  But I've been focusing on religion, because I like to think about it and human meaning and value.

I've also been reading plays.  I won't name names, but I've read a few that are existential realism and I have little-to-zero use for them.  Existentialism: OVER IT.  Just like I'm over fear-based defense tactics in rhetoric.  Existentialism doesn't automatically mean Great Art!.  I find it boring.  Because: get over yourself and how you don't know if you matter or not.  You do.  We're all out of our minds, some of the time.  Nobody's better off than anybody, so let's stop trying to trump each other in any and every way, with our misery, irony, self-righteousness, on.  I find other excavations of human concern and worth worthwhile.  Let Beckett do Beckett because Beckett does it best.  

OPINIONS.

I have a post I wrote to Christians regarding LGBT.  I will probably post it.  It's a little more obnoxious than my usual, although the paragraph above OPINIONS is basically the same, tonally.  

In the meantime I find this article about yuppies to be interesting, and honestly, a call to commonality and a de-focusing on material well-being.  (I'm not saying it's not important or valuable.  I just don't think it's everything.  Material well-being, that is.)  I also find this sorta-old article about Facebook to interesting, as well - snide as hell, just warning you, and for the record I don't care for that pathetic-in-terms-of-abusing-pathos quality about it - because I think it's another call to commonality despite its dire conclusion.  Spending quality time with people is more important than anything else.

Hafiz, or Have Not.

Um, today's Hafiz is also for artists:

AN ENTHUSIASM TO EXPRESS DISCOVERY

Some painters were engaged in a passionate
conversation about the value of art.

It was an interesting discussion that I listened
to almost an hour without speaking.

Then a young woman turned to me and said,
"Any comments, Hafiz?" And these thoughts
came to mind that I spoke:

The greatest and most lasting art, the impetus
of it, I feel, always comes from a wanting to help.
A wanting to be free, and an enthusiasm to express
discovery.

Each soul at some point will begin to feel all is
within it and then attends, as it were, to its own
inner world.  That attendance may not result in
anything considered tangible reaching the masses.

But the artist also becomes aware of inner spheres
and mingles with them, and then puts those
experiences into what they most care about for the
world to see and touch if the world wants.

I know all my poems come from a wanting ti give
something useful.

Hoping for More.

There's a lot of extra, unnecessary, unwanted pain in the world today.  

My heart is heavy with that, but also just for a lot of reasons.  I woke up, and to wake up more I read a story about a blind pug and it made me happy and it also made me feel terrible.  I don't poke at my pain about my dog.  I actually just have to push it away a lot.  But sometimes I just let myself feel the feelings.  The guilt.  The anguish about it all.  It makes me twitch.  It makes me keep asking questions, and hoping.  I used to have faith that knew.  Now my faith is just hope.  I have no proof.  I have no proof of anything beyond the now, but the synapses and pathways in my body and brain just revolt at the possibility of this being all.  Probably because they're a little more alive.  Probably because they all died a million times over, when I was doing really bad and struggling to survive, emotionally.  I'm just not natured or nurtured to accept existentialism, materialism.  Not indefinitely.  But being there was somewhere I had to be.  And it was, and is, only my journey.  I am a religious person.  But only religion which heals is true religion.  I don't expect other people to think what I think.  

But I was thinking about shame.  Am thinking about it.  Shame and guilt are two of the worst feelings ever.  The pain of either of them, the distress, provokes such epically strong fight-or-fight reactions.  There's a lot of words said, right now, in our culture, about not shaming various things.  I sometimes feel it's the wrong word.  Because making someone feel bad about something they shouldn't feel bad about is different than trying to get them to see something that needs to be seen.

Shame has taught me about myself, things I do not want to know and do not want to face.  Being ashamed means you failed.  Either yourself, others, or both.  It means that something went wrong.  I think we live in a culture, here in the U.S. at least, where we are so afraid of failure.  So we pump ourselves up with false, or true, confidence, and we maintain strong defenses, or we avoid risk, or we blame others, or we just refuse to look at failure when it occurs.  Understandable.  But if we looked at failure, we might see each other a little better.  If we accepted that we all do it.  Instead, we avoid shame.  We won't even let ourselves be ashamed of our lack of desire to be ashamed.  

I have learned from shame.  It has made me feel like I deserve whatever I get.  I would almost welcome stones thrown at me, partly just to purge the feelings, partly just to die to also purge the feelings, but mostly because I feel so bad.  So bad that I harmed someone else.  Or ruined or marred someone's good opinion of me.  But then I think, this is who I am. Someone who hurts and takes.  So why should someone's opinion be good?  

And that is where failure really fails.  That is probably where the real fear lies.  If we stumble, no one will be there to pick us up.  Instead, someone, some ones, will be there to mock.  Or reinforce the criticism.  Or kick.  Or rub the gravel further into our scabbed knees that are our own fault.  

If we are ashamed, then it gives someone else power.  When we say we're sorry, we admit that we failed, but in saying so we also know that there is a possibility of absolution.  But even more, a possibility of understanding.  When I've failed, I've wanted the first, badly.  But it doesn't come quickly, even when someone forgives.  It sort of eventually feels okay, after the acuteness of the chemicals have had a few days to subside.  But the shame lingers.  The guilt.  The self-criticism.  The penance.  

And knowledge hopefully occurs in that place.  But maybe it's nothing so much as just acknowledging that you f****d up.  That you knew better, but you did the self-serving thing instead, even if by omission or passivity.  And then world plods on.  And failure remains.

But - sometimes someone picks us up.  Sometimes someone stays with you.   Someone offers something sparklingly alien-feeling, in its pristine highest of humanity: grace.  When by their words and actions, tell you that they've given that power away.  That power to hurt you more than you are already hurting in your shame and guilt, even if you happen to deserve it. (Whatever the test of which could truly be.) Moments of mercy, where empathy informs, trumps, triumphs over the understandable need for boundaries, or even vindication.  Transcends biology, evolution, in that the base actions are covered by the unbelievable workings of love.  

Grace changes the workings of the more shattering, horrific parts of being human.  It does not patch - it lives.  It's a gift - a true gift, because it will not be taken away and it will not expect anything in return.  Sometimes nothing is given in return.  Sometimes shameful things happen again.  But I've never seen grace fail.  I just haven't.  Probably because it always changes someone, even if only the person who extends it.  It creates bonds where someone could easily walk away.  It builds.  

I've been on the receiving end of it, and it's honestly the only thing that can wipe away the shame.  I wrote before about forgiveness but I think it's the same thing.  

I'm not actually writing this because of what happened in Charleston.  Too soon.  I was thinking on this yesterday, too.  I find grace on earth, but it's hard for me to imagine that it can't be beyond that.  Earth feels very red in the tooth and claw.  My rational and irrational selves do not want to accept that that's just how it is.  That those who unfairly lose, those who unfairly die, those who hurt tremendously, just got more of that red tooth.  Where is the grace in that?  Is grace only a heightened manifestation of my body's ability to create chemicals of feeling?

I doubt it.  

I hope that someday everyone understands.  Because that is the heart of grace.  I know he's just, "just", a dog, my dog - but I love him, and I hope he understands that I always wanted him to be healthy and happy and whole, and I'm ashamed that I couldn't, or out of fear, wouldn't do what was best for him.  I don't.  I did try.  I really did.  But I'll always think I could've tried harder.  And I hope that all the little and big mistakes I've made won't harm anyone more than I've already harmed them, and I hope instead of melting back into the red earth with my transgressions someday, that there is some alchemy that redeems it all, and that those who have shown me grace understand even more - that yes, I've lived in a shameful way, making choices for myself over others, but that ultimately, I think my love comes out weightier in the balance.  I really think it does.  I hope so.    

Shame has taught me this.  So yes, I hope for grace.  All the way.

On Expectations, and Revelations.

I have expectations issues.

I don't know how else to put it.  

I've had a really low threshold of irritability and tolerance the last month or so.  Yeah, I DO suffer from depression sometimes, and I know irritability is part of that, but I've thought about it a lot, and I know I'm not just having a chemical imbalance.  I think it started when Tamir Rice was shot and the Ferguson verdict happened.  No, really.  I just started to feel this really nasty thing about how terrible human beings can be.  This is not something I normally dwell on.  I'm very aware of how terrible we humans can be, so it's not that I don't understand that.  I just feel like the nastiness crept into my bones and stayed there.

But I've also had a rough semester at one of my schools.  Confronted with a lot of things that challenged my empathy levels as well as my patience.  It wasn't about teaching, either.  It was about behavior and ethics and my ability to be flexible and understanding when faced with things that really weren't/aren't in my job description.  And I admit, I've not had a lot of flexibility and understanding this semester.  I taught at two places where the students were really on opposite ends of the spectrum in how they've experienced education and how they are approaching it.  One end is the end I've always been used to.  The other end is something I've been committed to working with.  I've spent most of the semester wondering if my rough time, there, though, was about my being overextended, or an actual problem outside of me.  

I keep coming to the conclusion that yes, I've had a lot on my plate, but even if I hadn't, I'd still have been very, very frustrated.    Because the heart of the problem is not minor behavioral issues compounded.  It's about how I expect people to be decent and to try to improve themselves.  

I feel like I'm going through something where my humanism is working against me.  Like, it's maybe making me unreasonable.  (I'm honestly trying to work through this as I write.)  I've been thinking I "just need a break" which is appropriate because I'm on break.  I do need a break.  What I REALLY need to do is get back into practicing things that are healing, since a lot of those got chucked to the wayside during the busyness of this last semester.  Yoga, poetry, spiritual meditations, exercise, lovely things that are minimally challenging and produce goodness (cooking, crafting).  

Because I think I need distraction from staring at what's apparently the dark heart of humanity, for too long.  I think I need to call out or extract the really potent negative things that have happened and air them out and talk them out of some of their toxicity.  I need to practice not conflating different instances of feeling mistreated or hurt into one bigger thing.  (I don't sit around feeling mistreated.  But I still feel mistreated sometimes.)

I suppose I should focus on forgiveness.

That's a new one.  Haven't really thought much about that lately.

Sigh.

Okay, on to something possibly more uplifting as well as related.

I was at my good friend's wedding on Saturday (in Atlanta, where the drivers are more aggressive than even in Chicago, which did not add to my generosity of spirit towards humanity).  He is an Episcopal chaplain and therefore, the service was very like an Episcopalian service.  In case I haven't mentioned that much, here, I've been going to Trinity Cathedral, first for its radical inclusiveness and second, because it is fundamentally of the faith tradition I grew up in.  So, being there felt familiar and yet, a little new.  Sort of new.  Or, should I say, familiarly different.  

It was a beautiful ceremony, because of the two people getting married mixed with the liturgy itself.  I was trying to be fully present in it, and was largely succeeding, except when my dry-souled reflexive materialism kept shaving off the meaningful corners of the experience.  That's been a thing for me.  I've long lived in close proximity to scientific methodology, logic, and hyper-articulation and -parsing of all things.  And by all things, I mean all things.  When my faith started to unravel a few years ago, this way of looking at things was the tool that did the unraveling.  It wasn't, and hasn't been, without merit or worth.  I've learned a lot in these very lean spiritual years.  I've been able to understand things about people and myself that have informed me fundamentally, that have continued to shape my humanism.  (Oh so vague, but I could probably write a book on all of this.)

BUT I HAVE BEEN SUCH A RELUCTANT AGNOSTIC.  I have not ever wanted to lose what I've lost.  Who does?  Who ever wants to lose something dear?  I've generally thought it would stay this way, though I never would seal off the end, so to speak, and say that this is how it's going to be.  Because: reluctance.  There's a better word.  I didn't choose to have my faith unravel.  It just unraveled.  I didn't want it to.  But it did.  

I started going to Trinity to connect to things I value, but also in vague, tiny hope (if you can call it hope) that I could find my way back into… faith.

(And what is this faith you're talking about, you might ask?  Believing in God, is what I'm talking about.) (And let me add that no matter what faith tradition you are, I am still and always will be inclusive.  I don't write any of this to proselytize.) (Except the humanist part.  I'm a proselytizer for that.  See above expectations issues.)

So I was sitting there, feeling mildly annoyed but accepting of this materialism (this is all there is, there is nothing else), when I realized something I hadn't noticed before, but once I realized it it seemed very obvious (which is usually the case): I was protecting myself.  My reflexive thoughts have functioned as a way of sandblasting past irrationality, unreasonableness, and mistreatment, to get to the heart of who I am and how I'll live.  Interestingly, it's "burned away the chaff" of my former spiritual reflexivity.  It's been my tenacious, fierce method of rebuilding my essential selfhood.  It's not been pretty, and it's not been about ego.  It's been about articulating what I value, and finding myself in that, and finding myself through practicing that for myself and others.  

I've also been surrounded by unexpected and deeply-valued people who have given me support and inspiration when I really didn't expect anything of the sort.  I've been plopped into a city community that I'm starting to think is quite unique.  Things have coalesced.  Coalesced quite stunningly.  In an accruing way, and in a way that asks, or requires, that I keep feeding into to it so that things can keep coming together.  

Which I've found slightly ironic, given my undesired lack-of-spiritual state.

But.  

My sandblasting metaphor is still useful, and is still true.  But I didn't realize until the wedding ceremony that there was a tight little bright ball at the center of me, still.  I didn't realize that I had done some sort of PTSD (I don't use that term lightly) thing in distancing myself from something interrelated with enormous pain.  Because to be spiritual, for me, is to be intensely connected to emotion.  And while I've certainly had emotions the last few years, I've not been friends with them.  I've done a lot of work to make them do what I want them to.  None of this is bad.  It's actually been my way of regaining mental health, and it's been highly functional and has exposed and destroyed pathologies of thought and behavior.  

I mean, I've long known that I've been distancing myself, I just was suspicious that I was distancing myself from something that doesn't actually exist (God).

I can't prove God.  That's been my major hangup.

But I don't need to, anymore.  I need to pay attention to the bright little ball.  I don't have to go back to being the person who, though I valued her so intensely and completely, was primed for all kinds of devastation because of all kinds of life circumstances, choices, and emotions.  That is there, I am still she, but I'm also the me who has grown from that and has learned from it.  I can revisit the tools I've loved, the tools for building up faith, without having to worry that they will hurt me.  I can own them, and they can own me.  It's very apparent to me, now (and I'll continue to chew on this), that things just had to happen in the time they've had to happen.  This is good.  I don't need explanation.  But I do need to dwell in this knowledge.  I have faith again.  WHICH IS very, very awesome.  It's little, but that's enough.  I know it will grow.

But, back to expectations.  

…I think this will help.  "This" meaning spiritual devotional practices.  Like anything good, I'm going to have to make myself do it over and over, lol.  Otherwise I'll just sit and stare at the wall.

This world is a really, really painful place.  It's rather horrible.  People do terrible things to each other, externally and internally.  They do it on purpose, which is terrifying - but they also do it through thoughtlessness or carelessness, or just from incompatible and warring wants and desires in relationships.  This is not so much terrifying as it's disturbing.  

I can't fix the terrible people.  They really do exist.  Sigh.  I'm not saying they're irredeemable.  But honestly, that's besides the point.  

I'm going to work on not letting the nastiness of others, or the unintentional meanness or negligence, invade my heart.  

I'm NOT.

Even if I have to read poetry all day to do it.

SO BE IT.  

Cornucopia is One of My Favorite Words

I'm sitting in the nook at my parent's house.  I feel like I've begun a few blog posts that way.  It's a good place, because what nook isn't?  ...But it also is the easiest place to charge my computer. ;) 

My pecan pie is in the oven.  I finished it after we were done with dinner.  Supper.  ?  THANKSGIVING FEAST.  Because I didn't start cooking/baking until noonish, and because it's just me, Mom, and Dad today, there were no hard and fast deadlines, and I was in no mood to rush.  And let's be honest: NO ONE feels like eating Thanksgiving dessert RIGHT after the rest of the food.

I must note that this is the best pecan pie recipe ever; it is also important that I use dark corn syrup and real dark brown sugar.  I also happened to make real sweetened whipped cream as well, because another recipe called for Cool Whip and gee, there wasn't any, so sad.  Not.

I haven't been home since I put Biff down.  I've been saying, at times, "since Biff died" but honestly, it doesn't entirely work for me, since I'm the one that did it.  I could say he "passed away".  I honestly don't like the term "pass", especially when not used as a lone verb.  Saying he died sucks and is harsh.  Because death sucks and it's harsh.  I could say he's gone.  But that's the worst one of all.  Because that's the one that's the most true.

Dying is abstract.  Loss is not.  I was sort of worried about coming home (duh, self; you posted about it), but it hasn't been a punch in the face.  Mostly because I won't let myself descend into tears.  There's nothing wrong with tears.  But they can be perpetual.  And I don't want to do that to the people around me.  And it might not even help.  

It is good to be home.  It's home.  It will never not be home.  It's very good to be with my parents.  It always is.  I love to cook.  It's therapeutic.  I listened to "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott on my phone.  One of my nieces, Lucy, mercifully graced us with her dear presence for a short hour.  I would've kept her the whole day.  We did mini Springbok puzzles.  I dug a card table out of Mom's garage furniture stash, so we can do the 1000-piece vintage candy wrapper puzzle B found for me at a thrift store (and I just discovered you can buy it at The Vermont Country Store; I feel validated in my tastes and interests :).  I didn't change out of my flannel pj's until right before we ate.  I did not cook everything I normally cook, cuz I didn't feel like being strung out.  AND I messed up my cream cheese crust for cherry pie so frick it, I'm making that and stuffing tomorrow.  The rest was a glowing success.

(Mom, I heard what you and Dad just said in the TV room, and I'm all about ministering to you guys, but believe me, it also ministers to me :)

And I appreciate the continuity.  Because I've thought a lot, this last month, about how much I have been changed by loss, but death is a loss that I haven't had to deal with before Biff.  And I know people who don't relate to this just don't relate to my talking about my dog on such a level, but I don't owe anyone a justification for my feelings.  I assume that the loss of a person is much worse.  Thankfully, comparisons mean nothing to me in situations of the heart.  My pain is mine, my experiences are mine.  I'm thankful, yes thankful, that I'm not getting punched in the face with trauma and grief right now, like when I was here last time.  But life feels lesser without Biff here.  Pets should live as long as us.  Life is lesser without Biff.  My love for him and my precious memories of him are always with me, and they do comfort me.  But a layer of life, a dear one, has been pulled out and away.  He was part of our family.  I did not take him for granted.  I miss him.  My mom misses him.  I want to give him turkey bits.  I want to hear his sounds.  I want to find his hair everywhere.  

That's all.  I was thankful before today, I'm thankful today, I'll be thankful tomorrow.  There are a lot of hard things about existing in this weird human form, and I've really come to understand how there will always be things in the core of me that I miss and long for, but I am often, nearly constantly, aware of how much I have, and how much life I presumably have left, and what I can do, and what that might bring.  Thanksgiving has long been a very lovely holiday for me, to me, because I honestly strive for community and festivity (as well as being solitarily cooking within the busyness - though not quite so solitary, as my dug would always be close by), and marks the beginning of a season I never, ever tire of, no matter where I'm at as a person.  I miss what I miss; this belongs to me; I am grateful.  I fiercely own it.  It is mine.  I am mine.  But of course, by grace of humans and pugs and bigger things, and small things.  

Super-Freaking-Long With No Pictures

I don't work on Fridays.  "Work".  I have plenty I could do on Fridays, for my "work" and my "career".  I could walk around with a t-shirt on that has a Mac spinning rainbow pinwheel of death or the hourglass and giant font that says BUSY.  I woke up on the right side of the bed, but when the coffee cleared the cobwebs I didn't want to stare down everything that was in front of me.  It wasn't just that I felt overwhelmed.  It's that I felt tired.  I felt tired, and I felt the way I felt all week - like I was some sort of semi-porous part of the earth's crust, just there; holding down my responsibilities while everything else weighs down, but not really troubled, because that's just existence.

But I don't want "just existence".  I don't want life to be a circle.  I don't want my old self-reflexive mode that I adopted for self-preservation the last couple of years, and mostly kicked - which is whittling everything down to particles.  Everything in my mind.  I'm not a scientist at all, actually, but I can't help but sometimes think of everything that matters to me as a vapor of chemicals or a painless firing of synapses.  I hate it.  Not violently or with attending depression.  But I still hate it.

I finished a draft of the play that I'm supposed to write and it was hard to write, but I marathoned it and I got it done.  And, well, I hated it.  I told myself the usual things about how I have no clear objectivity about my writing - although I do for everyone else's - and I knew that that could be the case, because it has happened in the past, this initial rough-draft hatred; I also knew it could just be a horrible, horrible play, and try as I might, I couldn't totally expel those chemical vapors/thoughts.  (I also know that chemicals/emotions are not vapors.)  I worked on cleaning up the formatting last night, and felt deflated, because having to read through my dialogue didn't make me feel any more confident.  I also worked on it this morning, and as I was running on fresh coffee and 8 hours of sleep as opposed to 14 hours of wakefulness after marathon essay-grading and teaching, I found myself feeling a little more heartened, and with it enough to start making copious notes on what I could do to make it better.

But it bothered and bothers me that I hated it, because there was very little joy in writing it and not much joy in the thought of it getting slowly on its feet this next year.  I said to one of my playwriting buddies yesterday, "I don't really even care if it sucks or not, I just want my actors to have a good time with it."  I do, of course; but feeling self-defeated and bleh about a really awesome opportunity to get my work out in front of people is NOT A GOOD FEELING.

So I walked to the library to pick up some books for another project.  Was thinking on a lot of the mess and death in the world, and then "general dreariness" of a jam-packed schedule.  (That was a Chariots of Fire quote.)  I was thinking the other day on how I didn't choose teaching as a career.  I just kind of went into it because that's what my degrees generally prepped me to do, as opposed to accountancy or dentistry.  My degrees prepped me for the life of an adjunct, at least for now - and I have not yet had a moment where I've wanted to walk away from it.  I've had moments of needing a solid break or an aristocratic beverage, but teaching is a wonderful thing to be a part of and it benefits me, generally - and I hope I benefit the people I work with.  It's like the workhorse for people who are into… equines, and my writing is… the unicorn.  That's why I put "work" and "career" up there, not to make fun of what I do for a living, but because my falling into it without much forethought makes me feel kind of cheap in regards to it.  I don't feel like a hack anymore, because I've gained some teaching chops in all my, well, teaching, but I do feel too jack-of-all-trades-y sometimes, bopping from campus to campus and teaching a crazy grab-bag of classes, whatever gets thrown at me.  I am a jack-of-all-trades with a grab-bag of classes, and I think I will create the one-man-band Bert from Mary Poppins uses because I think that will round out the picture of how I feel like I'm creating and living a bunch of noise that I've made for myself, a lot of mental noise and a lot of busy noise.  

I also think about how a lot of people feel that way about their jobs - generally, they're just trying to do them and do them well and get through the day and week - and then I feel guilty for not taking full joy and self-actualization from my job(s).  I guess I have basically harbored the half-formed idea that if I had a faculty position that I actually chose to work towards when I started graduate school I would not find myself being tired.  Yes, laugh.  Do laugh.  But I don't mean tired in the physical-mental sense.  I mean tired in the emotional sense.  And of course, I don't actually think that would change anything.

So I was walking to the library and thinking about how it's rough to not have much to look forward to.  Yeah, yeah - whine, whine.  But really.  I went from having a lot of free time (which was not always a good thing) and having a lot of hopes and dreams to moving to Cleveland (bless it) and having a lot of amazing opportunities.  And responsibilities.  And I've got everything that I need, in terms of creature comforts and essentials.  I'm married to a person who works extremely hard at a very demanding job, and he's very, very good at it - but I think (I don't speak for him) that he feels like this new version of adulthood is pretty relentless, too.  We work hard, we do what we need to do.  But this is it.  This is what life is.  Sort of.  

I got my books, and walked towards home, and I thought of poetry and Anne Lamott and Madeleine L'Engle and Trinity Cathedral, and how putting myself in the path of certain forms of worship is worthwhile and how when I sit at home for huge stretches of time, writing or reading not-for-pleasure or grading or class-planning I do get a little mentally ill, I do get a little skewed, and I need to stop and smell whatever smells good and think on that until the cobwebs not just in my head, but soul, clear.  But I also thought, blah blah, that's still not going to crowbar me out of my existential funk because I NEVER LET MYSELF totally get free of it - almost never, that is.  I thought about my play, and how in the past I had ideas of grandiosity and plenty of ego was mixed in with my hopes and dreams but dangit, I don't give a rat's ass if people think I am the shiz when they see or read my plays, I just want them to have what I sometimes have at the theatre - an experience where I am moved.  Where what I see is true.  Where it transcends my antsiness and constant-stream-of-thoughtness and I can clap at the end with the fullness of my entire BEING and salute the actors because I just participated in… being alive and knowing it and not just existing.  I just want to write something that moves and is true and if it holds itself up just enough to not fall totally flat on its face while it does this than that's ok, that's all I want.  

Right now it's on its face.  I need to be on my face.  I have to hold myself up through life's responsibilities (because only you can do that for yourself, ultimately - no one else can be your center) but I am not a person who does well without some kind of psychic safety valve.  I rounded the corner to my house and I thought of how the words I grew up with, "come to me and I will give you rest", are some of the best words ever, because that is what hope and faith is - giving all the cares up and placing them in the hands of the universe and falling flat on your face in gratitude and exhaustion.  Not everyone needs it, but I need it.  I miss it.  Devotion is actually a practice, not a compulsion, and I forget it as I do what I think I should do or what I'm tasked to do, which includes my writing, which is also my "work" and "career", which means I also feel cheap about.  Because I do it sometimes with rote commitment and I end up with something that I feel little or no connection to.  I HATE IT.  

Truth and beauty, beauty and truth.  They are fullness.  The best way to the center of them is the secret trap-door of joy and I do have access to that.  They are fullness and they are love, which sometimes scares me because dangit, love is a HORRIBLE SCARY BEAST, or as ee cummings put it so much better, "love everywhere exploding it maims and it blinds".  The times in my life where I have felt most alive, and most known, where the times when I dwelt fully in love, and that is a dwelling-place that I miss mightily and therefore sometimes utterly avoid.  I.  Avoid.  Love.  I think of my dog, who is not well and not infinite, and I think about how I went into that trap-door of loving him and how much it hurts now, and how much it's going to kill, when I have to let him go.  So, why not throw myself into responsibilities that make me forget?  But also make me feel like a crusty ol' crust of the earth?

I keep thinking about Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris and whichever character it is states the awesomest thing that has come from Woody Allen's mind: art is the thing that elevates.  That I should keep pursuing the true.  Yeah, I'm an adult, so I don't get massive stretches of time to myself to create things gloriously.  I do get to be with people and maybe sometimes help them along, in my job and in my non-job life.  Good people.  I love people.  And I am going to revise my play and somehow go to the scary place that I miss, because that's really what's going on, here - I have to practice devotion and I have to go to a place that can be painful.  I need to do a number on the self-reflexivity/pathology.  I need to remember to read poetry.  I need to seek the divine, even though it makes me cry.  I owe this to my play.  I owe it to myself.  

Chock-Full of Discursiveness. On Some Religion and Stuff.

My posting quantity seems to go hand-in-hand with the quality of my mind - as in, when I'm not feeling like my total self (a lot of the time, this last year - too busy, too overwhelmed, etc.), I don't post much.  I was thinking about this today.  This weekend.  About how it's not really a good method, to wait until I feel a certain way to try to be a certain way.  It's not what I preach in my classes.  It's not how I approach writing.  

I also get a little tetchy about only writing about clothes and such, not because such things don't matter to me, but I don't want it to seem like that's all that matters.  That all I do is go thrifting.  ...Well ok.  I can't HIDE FROM THE TRUTH on that one.  I do go thrifting.  A lot.  Less than some times, more than others.  It's TOO MUCH FUN.

A lovely friend was talking to me the other day about wanting to be real, all the time.  I thought it was interesting, to hear that outside of, well, church (though it's been a long time since I rubbed elbows with that brand of theology that concerns itself with being "real"), and from an artist, at that.  But I get it.  When you're an adult and you want to both come across as having it together and being forward-moving, it's hard, if not impossible, to know how to also negotiate vulnerability and openness and being flawed and even failing.  And if you're me, you eventually get super-mad about having to negotiate everything.

I get sick of negotiating.

After one fairly-recent weekend of negotiating I got a book about it, by my communications guru Deborah Tannen: The Argument Culture.  I've long been easily aggravated by this tendency, interpersonally, that some people have, to couch everything in this idea that people are either right or wrong in their personal tastes, feelings, and experiences.  But I've also recently gotten more frustrated by the way our culture falls into this, and in a really playground-y way.  I don't want to have an argument about what's valid, so much as I want to have a conversation about what is shared and what can be done, from there, to change things that need to be changed.  Such as much of the "conversation", politically, regarding healthcare, immigrations, food stamps, etc.  

I went to church this morning, the first time since Easter, because I suck at motivating myself on Sundays.  I went for a lot of reasons.  To re-connect to home, to the faith of my family, to aspects of my former self.  To be with other people who value many of the things I do.  I have to put it out there, again, that I'm not interested in evangelicism or exclusive religion and I'm aware that publicly talking about my religious thoughts and (poor) practices might pigeonhole me as something I'd rather not be, but with that said, I don't go to church for easy reasons.  But I'm a human, and I hurt, and I have need, and while I have a really great thing going here in Cleveland, I miss home, the past, and loves far away, and I have no problem turning to the Episcopal church to messily reconnect with some of that.

For the sake of being (ahem) real, I'll just let it be known that it's really hard for me to participate in a church service without turning into something akin to that one politician in the first X-Men movie who eventually turns into water and just explodes.  They need a "crying box" just for me to sit in and sob without distracting anyone.  (They also needed one at Maleficent, but my ISU hoodie did an adequate job.)  Thing is: I don't cry all that often.  Things lacerate me and my compassion is still intact, so I ache for people and things plenty of the time, but an insta-sobfest?  Not a daily, weekly, or even monthly occurrence.  But I go to church and it's hard for me not to.  I used to think it was just the songs ("holy tearjerkers", as my mom calls them).  

I think I well up for all the reasons why I go: it's re-connection to the part of me that doesn't even have to negotiate the mental and emotional life that daily responsibilities shape into a kind of hyper-controlled existence (at least some of the time).  I can be 14 again.  Or 25.  Or ageless.  I can be vulnerable and I see people around me who are being the same.  It was good to recognize that that's what was going on.

Afterwards, I kind of dinked around, feeling a little bit shook up, and eventually headed to, um, Goodwill.  A woman was roaming the parking lot, asking for money.  I gave her some and she said it was all she needed to catch a bus before the rain started.  Not too long after, I exited Goodwill (empty-handed, let it be known!), and I saw her approach a dude parked in his truck.  At first I was a little miffed.  And then I thought what I usually think in these situations: I don't care what people spend their money on, if I give them some.  I don't care if they use it for booze.  Granted, I don't want them to need it for booze, but that's beside this point.  I don't need to know if it's "well-spent".  Because I don't know what that means for any given person, usually.  I don't know what they really and truly need.

It made me think of a former student, who wrote a short introductory paper that narrated her life as a crack addict.  She lost custody of her children and her mom wouldn't allow her back in her home.  One night, it was snowing, and a stranger found her on the street and took her home, fed her, had her take a hot bath, and let her sleep there.  This was not the turning point.  But it made it in the paper.  She eventually got off crack and onto her feet. I've seen her since then, and I obviously hold her story in my heart.  She's fine.  Feisty and fine.  But I remember the first time I read her story, and yes: I sobbed.  That someone did that for her.  

I'm bad with money plenty of times, and I spend it on stupid things.  I'm a rich American and I can be really ungrateful.  Not just about what I have, but about my life in general.  I feel empty, off and on, and it's almost like I don't want to do the work of getting myself onto my own feet, emotionally.  But I get it: I'm not a robot.  Neither is the lady in the parking lot, nor my former student.  I can't always get it together enough in the moment, but have to figure it out, later.  But who knows what small gestures can mean?  People are more vulnerable than we really know.  People carry enormous burdens.  They don't need me to argue or negotiate.  They need me to give something, whether it's my attention, time, and/or money.  And I won't ever feel the need to defend that.  Christians, in our culture, seem really defensive about not wanting to give.  I don't get it.  It's not Christianity.  They'd rather argue about the meaning of our Constitution.

But anyways.

I brought up that book, earlier, because it makes me wonder if the quality of my life really has to be measured in the quantity of negotiations, or if I can wade back into having many moments and instances where I give and not have to think ahead about what it might mean.  Religion made me, it really did.  Even now, it's a part of who I am, because it's absence has made me feel a shell of myself in many ways.  But true religion does take devotion.  It takes courage.  Bad religion hurt me, played a part in creating enormous pain and damage, so I still feel wary, a little tetchy.  

I want to bring this to a satisfying close, but I can't. :) I can only try to get past the ebb and flow of daily busyness and demands and try to find the sweet spot of grace, which is a loaded word, so instead I'll call it peaceful, joyful transcendence.  I would very much like to.  I'm a better person, and a better person to other people, when I'm not trying to be protective all the time, or thinking about what something has to mean in relationship to something that I've always had a weird relationship with: happiness.  That's kind of just a word for feeding the rewards system of the brain, and while that can be great, it's not a good thing to be devoted to.  

But ANYWAYS: I'm sort of avoiding starting my writing project, which is, by nature, making me feel MENTALLY ILL.  I did go to a favorite spot earlier (after hitting up ANOTHER Goodwill) to appropriately partake in kitsch so I could work on my kitschy work: 

It definitely helped. :)

(I was re-reading this post to proofread and I think this is what I was trying to get at, sort of: you can be real and not have the negotiating get to you, too much.  But I think you do have to have a lot of faith in yourself.  And a lot of love for the world and everyone in it.  HARD.) (Worthwhile.)

Not Holding Back the Feminist Anger, People. (And Theatre, Writing and Teaching Notes.)

ON A WHIM, I picked up my Dramatist's Guild sourcebook (or whatever it's called) to look at submission opportunities - the first time in, oh, maybe a year and a half.  I am now in a bad mood.  I went to one theatre's website and nine out of ten of their previous winners for a playwriting competition were men.  I'm also mad at Vogue; they keep highlighting male playwrights.  

I'm also crabby towards epigraphs in scripts.  Come on.  Just... come on.

But I am warmed (not literally; it's a cold spring) by the Cleveland theatre scene.  When I first moved here, the vibe was weird; my friend Daniel called it "dude energy", and I was worried I had moved into a man's club.  I don't really get that vibe anymore.  My thoughts on the Cleveland vibe is that it just kind of does what it does, with some austerity at times.  (I feel like this about Ohio in general.  There's the kind of east-coast old-world strain going through a lot of it, and it's a hard-working place, but absent is the tenacity and larger-than-life quality of Illinois and Chicago.  I'm not saying Ohio needs to be anything except what it is.  I just am using comparisons and contrasts as a rhetorical method of understanding.  Because I'm a nerd.)  

But this quality makes it prime soil for artistry without pretension.  And for community.

(Cleveland Public Theatre's storefront theatre window; Station Hope poster.  Man, do I love the person who does the CPT promo art.)

I get flak for being a feminist.  Can you believe it?  From people who find their percieved concept of cultural equanimity threatened by my unhappiness with the lack of gender parity in areas of culture and society.  

So I'm WARMED BY THE CLEVELAND THEATRE SCENE.  Especially my company, Ohio City Theatre Project, and CPT, which won the ICWP Applause Award in 2011/12 for having at least 50% of shows by female playwrights.  I think they could very well be eligible for the same award, this last season.  

I have a hard time not feeling oppressed when I get flak.  Why?  Because the non-mindful knee-jerk reaction cuts off all civilized discussion about a reality that is important to humanism, and if any words do get exchanged, it's usually fraught debate or argument.  Ye olde being concerned with the master's concerns, as Audre Lorde so impactfully put it.  I have to argue for the sake of having a chance to argue.  Screw it.  I'll just go write plays (and stuff) amongst the enlightened.

This is another reason why I've broken with fundamentalist faith traditions.  I don't even want to put myself in an environment I have to fight with in order to be seen as a valuable human being.  I'll go to places where it's a given.  I went to Trinity Cathedral, an Episcopal church, for Easter; I felt like I should go to church on Easter, because as I wrote in a previous post, I've missed being a part of faith and a faith community.  I am SO GLAD I went, because it was consummately magnificent, and I felt relieved, not on red alert.  The reverend is a woman, and a huge chunk of the clergy are, as well (it is also an inclusive faith community).  I shouldn't have to defend why I find this comforting and relieving.  I'm not anti-male.  As my lovely and fierce friend and colleague Pandora said (and I paraphrase), I want to see my own experience.  I'm not saying that a woman in any given situation equals my experience, but it is closer than not, in that at least there's the opportunity.  

I really should get on the ball and revise the crap out of my most recent draft of my horror-thriller screenplay.  Third draft's a charm?  At least revising is actually easier than writing the original.  I was/am aided by watching a couple of older horror gems (and deep and abiding thanks to my dear friend Larry for his excellent and incisive feedback about the 2nd draft, as well as one of the movie tip-offs): The Legend of Hell House and Burnt Offerings.  I'm always digging around for new-old horror movies that I haven't seen (that aren't ultra-gory or about torture), so it was awesome to find not one but TWO.  

And in teaching news, am wrapping up a stellar semester.  I've had the opportunity to teach incredible students at a variety of places, and the challenges have all been positive.  I would go to school for the rest of my life, if I could.  With teaching, I get to.  I learn a ton as I go.  And this summer should be fun, as I get to teach a humanities/history course.  WHAAAAAAT.  

And there is other awesome professional news on the horizon, but I'll save that for later. :)

Holiday Thoughts.

Religion and I have not had a good relationship the last couple of years.  I don't talk about it much, because it might hurt people.  And also because it's still complex, for me.  I haven't given up on it, but it got removed as my M.O.  

I have respect for religion.  Enormous respect.  The desire to be something more than just a finite animal, the quest for beauty and truth, the mindfulness.  And in this case of Christianity, which I was brought up in - the nature of love, especially in regards to sacrifice.  

The way religion can be used to hurt others doesn't trouble me in the sense that I find it more bothersome that religion can be used to oppress people than other ways humans find to oppress each other.  The ideas of any given religion will never be totally "as one" in that they will be fully synthesized/realized in any one person or organization, and even if they were, the practices would have problems.  So I can't damn religion, and I don't want to.  Religion is the little girl with the little curl: when it is good, it is very very good, and when it is bad, it is horrible.

I'm pretty sure that's the #1 reason why my knee-jerk reaction to it, even now, is to keep it at arm's length.  I don't feel that the religion I was brought up in betrayed me, but I think some of the interpretation of it did.  Seriously.  Personhood is a complex tapestry, so I don't want to get all binary on stuff, but I think boundaries are a very good thing - and there you have it.  The essential betrayal is that evangelical Christianity didn't teach me how to say NO.

If greater love hath no one than this, that a person gives his or her life for a friend, then why couldn't it apply to self-love?  If you love something fiercely you protect it.  I was at Salvation Army the other day and I automatically pulled out my earbuds to listen to my own music, before I was even inside, because I can't stand the Christian music they play.  It's a cocktail for mental illness.  The major lesson of "comtemporary Christian music": you suck and aren't worthy of God's love, but you're so, so grateful for it anyway.  Next lesson: you must always be thinking about how you are feeling about your relationship with God, and if it's not up to snuff, then you're doing something wrong.  But because of that first lesson, you are always probably doing something wrong, because you suck.  You think I'm oversimplifying?  Well, here's an appeal to ethos: I was super, mega hardcore about Christianity for a long, long time.  I was self-steeped in theology.  So I'm completely comfortable with this interpretation.  

I was moving fully into a more progressive understanding of Christianity even before I crashed and burned with it, though.  Couldn't get into the hellfire-and-damnation thing anymore.  Couldn't get into the oppression towards women and the LGTBQ community, either.  It didn't jibe with my understanding, hard-won, of what the canonical Bible was really saying, to me.  It was saying Take care of each other.  It was saying Do not judge.  It was saying that Love triumphs over everything.  It was saying that Inspiration does not equal calcification.  So I ditched the fundamentalism-influenced creed of that particular branch of Christianity, including the statement that the Bible is infallible and essentially perfect.  Including the statement that some of us will rot in hell.  (Emphasis mine.)  

It's not like this was comfortable and freeing - I understand the narrative power of good vs. evil, and to remove the hell factor meant to take the spine out of that faith practice.  If there isn't a bad ending for some, why bother?  That is one argument I grappled with - I also was confronted with the one that asks how can morality be upheld, then?  If there aren't consequences?  But to me, that's not the argument.  It's a different argument.  I stopped subscribing to evangelical theology but it didn't remove any power, actually, from Christianity - it just shifted it elsewhere.  To change the focus of it from salvation as get-out-of-jail-free card to practicing humanism made, and makes, far more sense to me.  I remember the anti-humanism argument being in some text I read in high school or college.  I don't remember its particulars, really, but I suspect it had/has something to do with morality, once again.  That we can't be complex moral beings without absolutes.  I actually agree.  But my absolute is about community, which includes myself.  The problem with fundamentalism and its offshoots is that it gets hung up on how well you maintain morality.  It is the focus.  And the more that is the focus, the more oppressive the legalistic scaffolding gets.  Calcified.  Simplified.  There's no room to move, and little air to breathe.

Jesus was hardcore, and he was no fool.  He was also extremely thoughtful and understanding.  Jesus works, for me, because he turned the natural order on its head - that is, the ways in which humans behave much like the rest of the animal kingdom.  He taught, lived, and died a radical way of living.  Even if he was just a man, he is no less radical to me.  The way he treated others.  The way he spent time with them.  The way he did so many things I'm not going to enumerate here, except for this one major thing: he called himself the son of man, he taught that loving God was the greatest commandment, and the next, to love others as ourselves, which includes loving ourselves.  What this means to me, how I interpret this not only as it is but also from a lot of the other stuff I've read, is that this religion teaches that God is in us.  

That's a big deal.  Even theoretically.

The locus of power, the energy source, determines everything that comes from it.  And the nitpicking about righteousness that stems from depravity theology - that "bit" about how we all suck - stems from a source of power I want nothing to do with.  I've spent an enormous amount of my life self-flagellating and wondering if I was good enough, if I was getting my "faith" right, if I was doing right by it.  It was a waste of time.  I'm good enough.  You're good enough.  Now go and take care of people, dammit.

My heart was a wide-open space before I took some hits and hit on myself, which led to my total faith crisis.  I've learned, since then, how to still let it be open - just not all the time.  I've learned that Christ did not mean I, or anyone else, should put up with mistreatment just because he taught, in one instance, to turn the other cheek.  Turning the other cheek is a choice in a situation, not blueprint to a way of life.  Sacrifice is thoughtful, calculated, intense - and should be practiced with full self-understanding, not in fear.

A lot of the acute wretchedness of that time has passed, though I am not the same and I will always ache for lost things.  And I've discovered, along the way and also in definite moments of understanding, that everything I valued before, still holds true.  What if there isn't a God?  I still believe in compassion, utterly.  I still believe in taking care of those who are without - and that itself can be a complex, revelatory thing.  I still believe in the power of sacrifice and not letting primalism or hedonism, etc., take the reigns in everything.  I still believe in trying to honor my word and practice character, even though I have miserably failed to do this in many ways.  I still believe in joy.  I still look for truth and beauty.  I've found hope, again.  That maybe this isn't all there is - but even so, I still have religion, I guess.  It seems.  It is.  

I'm still in-process.  There is a fierceness that underlies all of this - I have no problem with living with anger.  It is often dormant but it will now fly up to block the hand that intentionally or unintentionally will try to hit either side of my face, so to speak.  It protects loss and pain that I can't communicate but still live with.  Note: it protects.  That's one of the characteristics of love - see Corinthians (and don't either wholly accept or negate everything Paul says, he was definitely flawed - but I love the love passage.  I just do.).  If I had understood that to truly love myself was to protect myself, I think I could've been a better person, could've done better by people, could've done better to myself.  I'm not saying that I regret my life.  I regret causing pain.  That's about it.  But I mourn loss.  I'm writing this because of that.  Losses and also the loss of faith - but also, how I've sort of regained it.  I can't write about it simply, or easily.  It is still messy and difficult.  I miss having a sure-fire, direct source of comfort.  

And I realize it's risky to broadcast such things to the world, in case anyone stumbles across them and maybe holds something back from me that I would like to have or need to have, or in case I hurt someone, or misrepresent myself, etc.  Let me be clear.  I am a humanist.  Period.  I will never use my morphing religious thoughts to oppress anyone.  And I don't want to pigeonhole myself, so I would prefer others not do that, either, if it makes something positive into a negative.

But I do think true religion is a good thing.  So after all of what I've just said, and revisiting my first paragraph, I do realize that it is still my M.O. - it's just different, now.  That's ok.  I'll take it.