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Monthly Archives: April 2014

Bike brakes

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When I got a bike as an adult I didn’t know how to use the brakes. The problem was that I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

Within three minutes after getting on the bike I was in trouble. I was headed down the hill and I suddenly realized things were not going well. I was going way too fast and the backpedaling-as-a-brake that I had learned when I was a child didn’t work on this bike.

This bike had handbrakes and my husband the bicyclist had not taught me about them. Suddenly I realized I couldn’t ask for help because he was too far away. Suddenly I realized I had to figure it out on my own right there, right then. Thankfully I did otherwise I would’ve ended up in my neighbor’s front yard. And possibly after that in the hospital.

Isn’t that like life? All the time people don’t tell us what is going on and how to get out of trouble. We’re in the middle of the problem and suddenly we have to figure it out. He could’ve told me “Here is the handbrake and here’s how to slow down”. He didn’t. He thought I knew. He was wrong.

I’ll never forget that terror, that sudden realization that I was in a whole lot of trouble really fast, and I had nobody to help me but myself. But I’ll also never forget the calm that came over me along with the terror. I figured it out. I didn’t get hurt. I was fine.

Sometimes you have to sink a little to learn how to swim.

Studying for life.

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Health isn’t like a test you can cram for. It is something that you have to “study” for every day or you will fail.

So many people want to get in shape but they don’t want to do the work. So many people wait until they have a serious diagnosis before they start to take their health seriously. Really, they want to be in shape, but not to get in shape.

It is too easy to blame someone else. Your parents didn’t exercise, so you don’t. Your friends all eat unhealthy food, so you do. This is such a passive way of living. They don’t feel your pain when you can’t walk around the block, or you can’t get out of bed without help. You have to live your life, and by living, I don’t mean just exist.

There needs to be an entire sea-change in the way we think, but until then we have to do it for ourselves.

I have a dream that hospitals and rehab centers will teach people how to be healthy rather than treat their sicknesses. People will learn that health is more than just about diet and exercise.

They will teach people how to care for themselves through food and exercise. People will learn how to cook for themselves and what are healthy choices when they are out at a restaurant. They will learn how to grow their own food. There will be no caffeine or refined sugar, and no tobacco.

They will learn about healthy boundaries. They will learn how to protect themselves and how to respect the boundaries of others.

They will learn how to share their thoughts and how to listen to other’s thoughts. They will learn dialogue versus debate.

They will get in touch with their inner child.

They will explore different ways to express themselves. All arts will be shared and people will be encouraged to pick as many as needed.

They will learn the value of getting enough sleep.

They will get career counseling to find a job that fits their abilities and beliefs.

This movement starts with each one of us, right now. It isn’t a top-down way of thinking. It is a bottom-up. We have to be the change.

The treasure of the Grail

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The quest for the Holy Grail, if done right, is a quest inside your very self. It isn’t to be found “out there” in an archaeological site or an abandoned warehouse. It is to be found right where you are.

Remember in the last Indiana Jones film how he passed the test by picking the simple cup? Jesus wouldn’t have used a gold chalice, encrusted with gems. It would have been simple and efficient. It was a last minute Passover meal, held in a borrowed room. There wasn’t time for fancy. They didn’t even carry money on them, so they certainly wouldn’t have had a fancy gold chalice.

The cup is simpler than even that. The grail, the cup of Christ, isn’t even a simple wooden vessel. It isn’t a piece of pottery. The Grail is your body. The blood of Christ runs in your veins. The kingdom of heaven is within you, after all.

The Grail, like God, isn’t in some inaccessible place. The Grail, like God, is here on Earth, within easy reach.

It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to look for it. Just telling you isn’t enough. You have to work for this treasure. But the longer you think that it is something far away and something that someone else has found, the more you are missing it.

You are Christ’s body on this Earth. If you have Jesus in your heart, he starts to take over. You start to realize that your life isn’t your own anymore. It never was anyway. You just didn’t know it.

It is kind of like AA. Once you resolve to change your life, everything starts to need to be changed. But like AA, this awakening comes from within. Someone else can’t do it for you. In fact, if they try, it will just shortchange and delay you.

Your job on this earth is to be the cup of Christ, and share the healing that he shared. Your job is to carry him within you, serving everyone you meet in the same loving way.

When we all do that, the Kingdom of Heaven is here.

Healing through food – personally, generationally

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I come from a long line of women who had an adversarial relationship with food. My Mom learned how to cook from her Mom, who cooked for a man with an ulcer. My father’s mother never learned how to cook. Her Mom married a wealthy man, who thought it was beneath him to have a wife who cooked. My father’s Dad thought the same thing. They didn’t quite make enough money for a maid who cooked, but they did make enough money to eat out. For every meal.

My Mom only really cooked when company came over. She had a few recipes that she would trot out, like prize winning horses. There was chicken rosemary, and steak Diane, and Italian braised beef. It was tasty, but belied the reality of our everyday existence. Cold cereal for breakfast. A plain sandwich on white bread for lunch. Bland, brown meals at supper.

Nothing was ever fresh. Nothing was ever from scratch. Cooking was something you did, like a duty. Perhaps she thought the same about cooking that she did about sex. She told me that sex was a wife’s duty. It was once a week, like clockwork. No spontaneity, no fun, and no love. Not really. Food was the same way.

If we are what we eat, then what are we if what we eat isn’t that much? I’m not talking about quantity, but quality. Eating wasn’t ever fun in my house when I was growing up. We ate at the dinner table, but it was a quiet affair. Well, quiet except for my father’s loud slurping. He ate greedily and ravenously. It wasn’t out of a love for food. It was about eating quickly and piggishly. If I didn’t eat fast enough he would start to eye my food and ask if I was done yet. He wanted what was on my plate. He’d had a full serving and wanted more. He was willing to try to take away my nourishment to feed his insatiable appetite.

He was like that with a lot of things. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. He drank coffee nonstop. He ate whatever and whenever, without regard to actual hunger. He ate out of an addiction. What he was hungry for wasn’t to be found on a plate, but he didn’t know that. I didn’t know it either. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t have the words for it then.

When our grandmother (his mother) would send Christmas money, he would expect my Mom to give him her share. We each got separate checks from her. He never asked me for my check. I guess he thought asking me for my food was enough.

Food is life. We have to eat to live. But not only in what we eat but how we eat are we shaped. Every cell of our body is composed of the minerals and vitamins that are in the food we eat. So if you eat better food, you are improving your body cell by cell.

I realized this while I was baking banana bread today. I make it every week now. It is part of our breakfast nourishment at our house. Instead of eating a banana each, we eat a slice of banana bread. This works out better for many reasons. A whole banana is just too much sugar. I always felt a little spacey after eating one, but there isn’t a good way of saving half a banana. Having a slice of banana bread does the trick nicely. Plus, we are saving money. One loaf of banana bread uses four bananas, and lasts us a week. If we both eat a banana a day for a week, that is fourteen bananas. Flour is cheap. Bananas aren’t.

Somehow in the middle of my mixing and blending today, I decided to dedicate this loaf to my grandmothers. I decided to heal them, through me. I decided that the legacy of being afraid of cooking, of thinking it is something only poor people do, is gone.

Inept, or genius?

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I’m having a hard time figuring out if people I know are playing stupid, or if it isn’t an act. My Dad did this. I have two coworkers who do this. Are they really inept, or just acting like it to get out of doing work?

How much of this is learned helplessness? If you act helpless, people won’t ask you to do anything. My Dad used it all the time, and my Mom fell for it. Well, until she had to be the breadwinner because he was unemployed. Then he had to learn how to wash the dishes and the laundry. Then he was miserable. He complained. He whined. He even sang spirituals about “Washing off his chains”. She ignored him, because she couldn’t do it all and he was at home doing nothing productive.

Laying around on your recliner listening to Beethoven doesn’t count. If only she’d ignored him for years earlier. Maybe he would have grown up.

So I’m trying to tell my coworkers to not let these other coworkers get away with being “inept”. Maybe they really are inept. Maybe they really are stupid. But then, how did they get Master’s degree in library science? How do they run a household? They aren’t in an institution, and that degree has their name on it. Time for them to live up to it. If everybody else does their job for them, then really, they are genius.

They have figured out how to get paid to do nothing. And how to get someone else who gets paid less to do twice as much.

Jesus is the Word.

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I read a post recently by a Rabbi who has a Facebook page. He is very upset about the number of Jews he knows who have embraced Jesus as the Messiah. He says that he will not call them Christians, but that they are still Jews, just mislead.

His biggest issue is not that they have found the Messiah, but that they think that a human being is God. This is idolatry in his eyes.

I get that. But the problem is, Jesus isn’t God. Well, he is, and he isn’t. Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus is the Torah in human form. Jesus is an aspect of God, in the same way that the Torah is an aspect of God.

The Torah is “The infinite compressed into the finite” according to David Sacks, from the podcast “Living with G-d, Spiritual Tools for an Outrageous World.”

The Torah is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh.

Jesus isn’t God, but a part of God. God is quantum. God is everywhere. If Jesus was really God in totality, then who was Jesus praying to in the garden (Matthew 26:36-56)? Who talked to him when he was baptized (Matthew 3:17), and when he was transfigured (Matthew 17-5)? Was he talking to himself?

God gave us the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as an instruction book. It tells us how to live. It keeps us awake and aware. With these stories, we have a pattern for how to live our lives. It is like letting someone else do all the mistakes first for us. We can read these words and know “Oh, this works, do it” or “Hey, that is a big mistake, don’t do it.” With the study of gematria, you can dig down even deeper. There are people who study the letters of the Hebrew alphabet inside and outside. They assign numerical values. They look at the beginnings of the words and the middle. They find in all this study that the Torah is constantly revealing the Message of God, no matter how you divide it.

The Torah is like a fractal. No matter what part you look at – big or little, you are seeing the whole pattern. It is pretty amazing.

Jesus is like that. Jesus is a part of God, and God, and not God. Jesus is a tiny piece of the whole. But because of the nature of the whole, Jesus has the same pattern as the whole.

Get it? Not really? That is fine. I don’t really either. But I kind of do.

God is so much bigger than our human minds can comprehend. We can’t get “I am the Alpha and the Omega” at the same time. Our processor – our brain – isn’t big enough to handle it. We are black and white and 2D. We are a sheet of paper, copied on a copier. God is not only full color but as many dimensions as possible – way more than four. God is everything all together.

That just doesn’t fit here on this planet very well.

It is like trying to play a CD-rom on a Victrola. It just isn’t going to work. There is a lot more information on that tiny disk. You can put a whole encyclopedia on it. And while that Victrola looks like it can play it – it is a turntable after all, and the CD-rom is round, and there is a needle for reading it, it just is going to destroy that disc.

Now sure, Jesus says “I and the Father are one.” – John 10:30

That is what got him killed. That, and “working” by healing people on the Sabbath.

Jesus, or Y’shua as his name is more accurately pronounced, is the Torah, in human form. God can do that, you know. God can do anything.

The Torah wasn’t working. People weren’t getting it. They were following the rules but they weren’t getting where the rules were leading them. It is like they had the recipe but they weren’t putting any love into it, so the food tasted bad. It wasn’t nourishing. You have to put love into it, or you’ll get nothing out of it. If the rules lead you to be loving, then keep the rules. If they just become rules for the sake of rules, then drop the rules and try something else.

God figured that if He sent a human to explain it to live it, it would work out well. Sadly, not so much. People got really angry. People still get angry. Sadly, that is the way of people.

As for me, I see Jesus as a pathway. I see his life as an example. I believe that Jesus came to point towards God, not himself. I believe that Jesus is proof that God loves us – not because of Jesus’ crucifixion, but because of his existence. I believe that what makes Jesus different is that he proves that God isn’t “up there” but “right here” with us, right now.

And that is worth it all.

New work practice

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I just realized a fabulous practice. All the whining and complaining my coworkers do used to drive me up the wall. Now I see it as an awesome test.

You can’t grow if you are sheltered. If you spend your whole life insulated and protected, you’ll never mature or get strong. This is true mentally, physically, spiritually.

I was at a retreat recently and was given this meditation. If you are in a rowboat in a lake and a powerboat goes blasting by, you can get upset or you can ride it out. It is what you do with it that matters. If you get upset then you are just making it worse.

I used to think that it would be nice to not have any powerboats on my lake. I’m thinking Rolling Stones here – “Hey, you, get offa my cloud”.

I’m stuck here for 40 hours a week listening to people bitch and whine about everything. Lots of complaining. Lots. From the staff. About the staff. About the patrons. About their husbands. About their children. About everything. All they do is complain, and they don’t do anything to make their lives better.

They are “letting off steam” and I’m the one getting burned.

It gets old. I’ve pointed out that if all we do is talk about negative stuff, then negative stuff is all we will see. We have to look for the positive. This advice works for about ten minutes and then it is forgotten.

If you want to get stronger, you have to test yourself. To strengthen your balance and your ankles, do tree pose. If you do mountain pose you won’t get any benefits. You have to stand on one leg. You have to challenge yourself.

So being around all this complaining is a test. How to listen without engaging. How to be there but not really be there.

I can’t solve their problems. They have to do it themselves. They have to see them as problems first. The longer I try to deflect or dissipate their anger, fear, frustration, the more I’m delaying their realization that they are causing their own problems.

Jesus tells us to love our enemies. He says that if we just love the nice people, what good is that? Anybody can do that.

So the trick is to love the bad situation, the complaining, the whining. Be loving. Don’t fight it, don’t resist it. Don’t join it, either.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want to go rowing on a nice placid lake every now and then either. I don’t enjoy being the calm one amidst the chaos. But I have to do something with this reality.

I’m not the only person to notice this. There are a lot of people who have worked there who feel that there is a bunch of negative energy here. Perhaps the fact that there is a large sinkhole on the property is part of it. One friend says there is paranormal activity. Whatever, the reason, the result is the same. And I’m trying to find something good about this. It is either that, or join it, and I’m not hot on that.

Alone again

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Until very recently I used to make sure that I had plans for a day or a weekend off. I always had to be doing something outside of the house. Errands to run, people to meet – something needed to occupy my time. I just realized yesterday how excited I was to not have any plans to go anywhere for today. I thought this was a good sign.

But then I realized that I still had plans. Make hummus and pesto. Work on the condensed Gospel (still an active project). Make jewelry. Paint my toenails. Write. Cook supper. Organize the fridge.

I realized that I was still packing my day full of stuff. The only difference was that I wasn’t going anywhere.

I know some of my need to stay busy has to do with my awareness of time, and how little of it there is available to us in our lives. I know some of it is my realization that if I don’t keep up some level of activity then depression will sneak in and set up camp. But this need to stay busy busy busy is in itself a symptom of a deeper problem.

Being still is, at the heart of it all, being alone. Deep down, I don’t like to be alone. Thus, deep down, I’m not comfortable with myself.

This is hard to admit, and hard to live with.

It, in itself, isn’t a bad thing. Different ways of living are just as valid as having different hair colors or textures. Different isn’t bad or good. It is just different.

What matters is that I am conscious of it, and aware. Do I let this way of being rule my actions? Do I let it decide for me what I am going to do? Do I live my life by reflex, on autopilot? To unconsciously act, whether directed by a crowd or an unnoticed impulse, is the same. It is, at the heart, to not be fully alive but to have your actions taken out of your control.

My need to stay busy is a need to fill up my time and my head with stuff. It is a need to get away from myself, even if I am the only person in the room.

There is strength in being independent. I’ve gained a real sense of power from preparing food for myself and my husband. I’ve also learned valuable lessons about myself and about life from doing this.

But still, even in this lesson, I’ve not really been awake. It is still a method to stay busy, and thus ultimately stay distracted.

I’ve heard “Hell is other people.” Perhaps for me, right now, hell is myself.

I don’t hate myself, not at all. That isn’t it. I have a good life and I’m grateful for my many blessings. But if I still feel empty in the midst of busyness, then something is wrong. My plan for this past year or so has been to uncover, and recover. It has been to dig up and dig out. Simultaneously I have been reforming and recreating myself by becoming more aware and awake.

Some of this is teaching me to be more conscious, while some of this is teaching me to let go. Some of it is about living in the moment as completely as possible. Some of it is about seeing the path ahead and planning wisely. And some of it is just simply about learning to be me.

You’d think I’d know how to do this by now. I’ve had 45 years to practice. But not really. For many of those years I wasn’t really awake, and that isn’t even including the years I spent in a pot-cloud. Or grieving. Or both. I’ve spent a long time running away from myself. Now that I’m conscious, I feel I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

And that is part of it too. Being patient with myself, in the middle, in the mess. Being patient, and knowing that this is where I need to be, and who I need to be right now.

Acolyte instructions

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Back when I was a full-time church member and active member of the altar party (the people who make the service “go”), I wrote out instructions for how to be an acolyte. There probably were instructions written down somewhere. I was never given any. I was given a quick explanation five minutes before the service and away I went, figuring it out on the fly. Sometimes I sat next to the acolyte master, sometimes across from. Either way, there were a lot of directions gotten on the fly, either whispered or pointed. It was a bit nerve-wracking, because things changed from week to week, depending on how many acolytes there were. There never were enough. I wrote out these instructions to myself so I’d have something to look back over during the week as a refresher. I provide them here as some insight on the role of the acolyte, and on how much emphasis the modern church puts on show. Some of this may only make sense if you have been an acolyte.

“First” means the crucifer – the one who holds the big cross. “Second” means the one who holds the smaller cross. There are also (ideally) two torchbearers. Sometimes there are just two acolytes and they end up doing all the roles.

Light the candles 15 minutes before the service begins. Facing the cross, the left-hand altar (gospel) candle is always lit second, and never is left lit alone.

The series of candles behind the altar are lit from the inside to the outside, extinguish opposite.

Light altar, then behind the altar. Enter at front, leave on side. Turn to bow at stairs.

At beginning – take cross or torch and meet in the center front. Left hand on top of cross pole.

Big first, two torches in middle, then second cross. Face the crucifix. Bow. Turn towards the cross. Process to the front to collect priest in foyer.

Come back in. Bow at crucifix (with head – don’t bob the torch or cross)
If two torchbearers, stand on either side of crucifer.

(Dismiss for children’s church – second takes cross and leads kids to the top of the stairs, comes back, puts cross back. Regathers the children at the confession of sins (with cross))

At Gospel reading time, gather torches and cross and meet at the center front as before. Second holds no cross but waits for the priest who raises the gospel, hands it to second.
Turn to the right, process to the seventh pew. Turn, second holds the gospel braced against chest.

When returning, stand to side, crucifix always leads.

Oblations (Priest says “Walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself as an offering and perfect sacrifice for us”). Second rises, gathers alms trays from first, (bows) stands to the left of the entrance. Waits for oblationers, ushers. Gives top two basins to ushers, takes count from ushers and takes it to the altar.

Waits to Gospel side for ushers to return. Takes two alms basins on top of main basin, turns to altar, raising it up, gives to first. Priest blesses the alms.

Rail closing – two together, do it without gloves so you won’t snag. Don’t forget to bow. Done after “the gifts of God for the people of God…” lines.

Keep gloves in belt. (cincture)

Open back when Communion is over, and the cleaning-up happens.

At final hymn, extinguish candles – altar (left -gospel side first) and behind altar-(outside to inside). Enter to extinguish from the front, leave on side). Turn to bow at stairs.

Gather torches and cross, arrange as before, turn right, process out.

What is so good about Good Friday?

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Imagine the early disciples on the first Good Friday. It certainly wasn’t good in their eyes. Their leader has just been killed, by the state.

This wasn’t a drive by. This wasn’t a domestic dispute. This wasn’t an accident. The authorities put him on trial and then the crowd decided that Jesus was going to die. They freed a murderer instead.

They knew they were upsetting the status quo with their little group but they didn’t know it would lead to Jesus being crucified.

They’ve been up all night with him. They were keeping watch while he prayed. Well, they weren’t really doing a great job of it. He kept finding them asleep. They were sleeping in bits and pieces, outside, on the ground. It wasn’t a restful night. He’d told them what was going to happen but they didn’t really get the severity of it. They certainly didn’t think it would end like it did.

The soldiers came, with Judas. Here’s someone they know. It will all work out OK, they are sure of that. Nope. There’s a fight. A soldier’s ear gets cut off. Jesus gets taken away. Nothing makes sense anymore.

And then this. No last minute reprieve. He’s dead.

Crucifixion is a terrible way to die. It is humiliating. It is long and slow. You suffocate to death, nearly naked, in front of everybody. Meanwhile you are in agony because of the nails that are holding you onto the cross. No anesthesia. No mercy. It is a cruel death – one designed to send a message. Don’t challenge the system or you’ll meet the same fate.

Everything has turned upside down for them. Nothing makes sense. Everyone and everything appears to be against them, and the person they would ask for advice is dead.

They are wondering if they are next.

Where is the person who stilled the raging sea? Where is the person who healed all those people? They are needing healing themselves right about now. There is a raging storm in their hearts, and there is nobody there to say “Be still!”

Let us sit in this moment.

Scattered. Lost. Abandoned. All hope is lost.

Don’t run away from this feeling. You have to live thorough it.

We are those disciples.

We are wondering where is God now. We think God has forsaken us.

We don’t see a happy ending to this story.

Sit with this feeling. Don’t rush ahead to the end of the story. Don’t rush ahead to Easter. You know how this ends. They didn’t. Be those disciples. Feel this loss. Feel all hope draining out of you. Feel the exhaustion and the fear.

And know that God is still with you, even in this moment, even in this agony.