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Poem – Made in the Image

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There is something honest
about babies and old people.

They don’t look like any one
gender. They just look like
themselves.

Perhaps this is what is meant
about
being made in the
Image of God.

Perhaps these beings
that are before or beyond
the need
to be
a specific gender,
before or beyond
sex

have it figured out.

Perhaps being intersexed or unisexed or unsexed is it.

When we are past the need
to be female or male
and we get down to the business
of being human

maybe then is when we start
getting to the good stuff

the God stuff.

It is Spring inside us.

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If you are feeling out of sorts right now, you aren’t alone. We have all gone through a major shift. Some are more attuned to it. Some just feel sick and confused.

The old skin is being shed. Nothing makes sense. Old patterns don’t serve, habits don’t help.

This is a time of new growth. This new birth is not a time of throwing away all your old things and ways but it is a time of seeing them in a new way. It is a time of opening up and questioning and being like a child.

A child learns how to walk in part by watching other people. But also the child learns how to walk by just learning how to walk. The child feels things out step-by-step. She checks her balance and she examines it. She figures out if this step works or if it throws her off-balance and makes her fall. This is the same with us right now. We have to feel everything out.

Everything that we took for granted is no more. It doesn’t help us and it doesn’t serve us. This is a whole new life and a whole new way of being. Take nothing for granted. In fact take nothing at all. Nothing is probably the best thing you can have with you right now.

If you keep on doing things the old way you’re going to get the same old results, and you’ll be left behind.

You’ll be wondering what happened
and why is everybody else going so far ahead
and why am I so lost.

It is just like Abraham in the desert. He had a whole new way of doing things and he couldn’t do them the old way. It is just like the new Christians. They had a whole new way of doing things and they couldn’t do them the old way. The old ways have to be reassessed and things that have been discarded have to be looked at again.

It may be time to do an old thing in a new way.
It may be time to do a new thing in an old way.

It may be time
to Be
the Way.

It is a time of feeling things out and trusting the process. It is a time of holding on loosely. It is also a time of not letting go.

You may feel like doing something new and unexpected. Go with that feeling. Don’t worry about doing it wrong, or looking up how to do it. Feel it out, and you’ll know what to do.

We are the ones we have been waiting for. Now is a beautiful time to be alive.

Jesus is my map

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Jesus is my map.

He’s my goal and my guide.

He’s what I use to measure myself and the message of others. How do I and they line up with the message? If they say they are preaching correctly, he is how I know. But I have to be immersed in the Word to recognize the Word.

I separate the wheat from the chaff this way. It is how I know who is true and who is false. Sadly, I’ve even had to use this with ministers. Sadly, the people that I was supposed to be able to trust were the ones who were leading me astray.

I am for every Christian reading the Gospels for themselves, so that they can discern for themselves whether their minister is leading them correctly. To be even more honest, I’m for every Christian becoming a minister themselves. I’m for everyone waking up to the fact that God made them with a mind to be used.

We are not sheep. Jesus has redeemed us, has freed us. And he now guides us home, together.

Spouse

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I’m proposing a new practice. I’m going to try to remember to start referring to the person I’m married to as my spouse, rather than my husband.

The only thing that separates heterosexual marriage from homosexual marriage is the terminology.

If you have a man married to a woman, she is his wife. But if you have a woman married to a woman, she is also her wife. This marks the woman saying that as “other”. It marks her marriage as different.

You know she is married by the fact that she is wearing a wedding ring. But you don’t know that she is gay until she talks about her wife.

I’m for removing that barrier and that difference.

I propose using gender-neutral terms to indicate the person you are married too. “Spouse” and “partner” both work.

This is my way of indicating solidarity with homosexual couples. We are the same, after all.

Marriage is hard enough without social stigma.

Just a pinch.

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What is it about doctors who say that “This is just going to be a little pinch”? It never is a pinch. Sometimes it is more like a punch.

Perhaps they think that if they warn you, you’ll tense up and it will hurt more. Perhaps they don’t know what that procedure feels like for themselves. Perhaps they just aren’t thinking at all.

I remember when my father in law went for a bone marrow test. My Mom had been through the same procedure many years earlier and I remembered how it was for her. I asked him if he wanted to know and he said yes. I told him that it was not going to be “a little pinch”. It was going to feel like a mule had kicked him in the hip.

A bone marrow test is like a core sample of your hip. They put a huge needle straight into your hip bone with only topical anesthesia. It is an in-office procedure. It is done if they think cancer has spread to your bone marrow.

He sat with that knowledge for a bit. He didn’t quite believe me, but he trusted that I would have no reason to exaggerate or lie to him. After the procedure he said that he was grateful that I had told him. Otherwise he said he might have punched the doctor because the pain was so surprising.

I had an experience recently that wasn’t as physically painful but it was still upsetting. I’d gone to the dentist because my night guard had broken. I wear it because I have TMJ. They had changed the way that they make them and the assistant had to make an impression of my teeth.

The only problem was that it has been a long time since I’ve had an impression done and I’d forgotten. The last time was at least 30 years ago when I got braces.

She made the mold, asked me to open my mouth, and then put it in. She asked me to move my tongue and then she put her fingers on the mold to hold it in place. And then she stood there, like that, with her fingers in my mouth, for probably five minutes.

I couldn’t ask how long it would be. I couldn’t ask anything. I was a little freaked out.

It is very intimate to have someone’s fingers in your mouth, especially a stranger. It is very overwhelming if you have sensory processing disorder. I don’t have a strong case of it, but it is still there.

Now when I normally go to the dentist, I know what to expect. I know how to prepare myself mentally. I kind of go away in my head. It works. But this was new to me, and I didn’t know what to expect. Nor did she think to tell me. It was routine for her. It wasn’t routine for me at all.

The feeling of the mold in my mouth was a little much. It took up a lot of space in my mouth. Fortunately the smell of the material was a bit like Fruit Loops. That helped a lot. But still, I had a stranger’s fingers in my mouth for a lot longer than I’d expected, which was not at all.

I don’t know why she didn’t tell me what was going to happen. It seems logical to prepare people.

My chiropractor told me exactly what to expect when he was going to adjust my hips for the first time, and again when he was going to adjust my neck. I’m grateful for it. He told me that he does that because he remembers when he was adjusted for the first time when he was eight. He said that the first time his neck was adjusted he cried, and he doesn’t want anyone to have to go through that trauma. He’s very considerate, and that is part of why I continue to go to him.

I have a dream that all doctors will understand what life is like from the perspective of the patient, and stop seeing us as products, but people.

Feeling lonely can be helpful.

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“The first to help you up are the ones who know how it feels to fall down” – from the website “Soul Gazing”.

I often feel alone. I often feel as if I am by myself. Sometimes I really am by myself.

Sometimes I’m in a group of people and when we choose places to sit it turns out that there are three to a table and end I’m one to a table. It hurts. I didn’t choose to sit alone, but I am. It is like I lost at “musical chairs”.

Sometimes I overshare, and I’m a little hard to deal with. Sometimes being my full expression of myself is a bit too much for people. Sometimes that means I get excluded.

I’m starting to understand I’ve been made this way, this being different, this being separate. Because I’m different and separate, I can understand others who are different and separate.

It’s empathy, not sympathy.

Because I understand their exclusion I can include them.

I’ve come to realize that what I have to bring to the world requires that feeling, that sense of alone-ness, of alienation. That way I can “see” others who are also alone, and make a bridge.

It doesn’t make it easier, really. It is still hard. I’d love to feel like I was understood, that people “got” me.

I’m starting to feel that we all have that feeling every now and then. I’m starting to feel that many of us who are “in” are just faking it.

I’m tired of faking it. I’m tired of hiding who I am. I’m tired of conforming. The more I try to fit into someone else’s box, the more I stunt my own growth.

I think that when I’m honestly myself, my true self, I give other people the permission to be themselves too. It is my experiences of alienation and exclusion that have taught me this.

I could have felt forced to comply, to submit, to blend in. Instead, I’m going the other direction – and calling others to join me.

Burial chamber

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I was looking at the “Lakeland Cam” website today and came across this picture.

14051318carn_llidi (1)

The author describes it as “burial chamber”. He is in Pembrokeshire, Wales. On the picture’s metadata, it is labeled as Carn Llidi.

I know, in my heart, that it isn’t a burial chamber, in the sense that we mean it. Sure, there are burials there. But not in a physical sense. There are no bodies there.

It is a place for shedding off skin, like a snake. It is a place of building a cocoon if you are a caterpillar. But the snakes and the caterpillars are human, in this case.

These are deaths, sure. These are most certainly deaths, but also rebirths. These are transformations from one state to another. This is a place where people go to become human, to evolve.

It is a place to let go of old selves. It is a place to smooth off the rough bits.

It is a shelter and yet a danger. Look how it is a lean-to. If you sit under it, you’ll be protected from the sun and the rain, but you can still see and hear. You aren’t sheltered like you are if you go into a cave. But it is also a danger. Look at the size of that top rock, and how small that supporting rock is. There is a risk of death there. The rocks could shift and it is all over.

The same is true with transformation. It isn’t always easy, and it isn’t always good. Sometimes bad things happen when we go from one thing to another. Sometimes it isn’t how we planned it would be.

We transform all the time. We transform when we graduate from high school or college. We transform when we marry, have children, get that promotion. We transform when we publish a book or start a band or a business. We transform when we retire. We transform when we die.

There are often ceremonies and rituals for these transformations, these gateways. There are often special places we go to mark them.

This is one of those places.

So sure, it is a burial chamber. But it is also a nursery. It is a place to lay down the old self and pick up the new self. And there is just enough room in there for you. You bury yourself, and midwife yourself here too.

Sideways death.

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If there’s someone you know who has died, it is if they are standing on your side. They are standing just to the right of you. They are outside of your field of vision. You can’t see them but you know they’re there and you can still talk to them.

That’s the most important part. You can still talk to them and you can still hear them, albeit in a different way. You don’t hear them with your ears, but with your heart.

It’s a whole different way of being with someone. Our society doesn’t talk about it, and we don’t have words for it. I’m making them up right now.

But it is real, and they are still there. It may not seem like it, because they aren’t right in front of you. But they are still there.

Try this when you are in need – call upon your relatives who have died/passed on/transitioned. Call upon them – all of them. Call upon those who you knew, and those who you didn’t.

Remember that you are the net result of all of their efforts. It is as if life is a relay race and they have one by one passed the baton on, resulting in you. You are it. You are the peak of the mountain. They existed just so that you can be here now.

Soak in that feeling.

And know that they are cheering you on.

Weeds or flowers?

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What do you pay attention to, the weeds or the flowers?

If you were gardening, sure you have to pull the weeds out. If you don’t take the weeds out they are going to crowd the flowers and you won’t have healthy flowers.

But if all you do is notice the weeds then you’re not going to pay any attention to the flowers. The flowers are going to wilt and wither. They’re going to get eaten by worms. They’re not going to be strong.

Also, all you’re looking at your whole time gardening is the stuff you don’t want to look at. You’re not looking at the stuff that you started gardening for.

Likewise, with your feelings, your emotions, your life, anything that you pay attention to is what you’re giving attention to. You’re giving your energy away. So make sure you’re giving it away to the right thing.

The other side of grief

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You know how it hurts when you see something that reminds you of your loved one? Or hear a song that they liked, or eat a food that the used to make for you? Sometimes you’ll see something and think Hey, I need to call her and tell her about this.

But you can’t call her, because she has died. And then it hurts a lot. Then that wound of grief is opened back up, raw.

This happens often when you are newly grieving, but can also happen years later.

I’ve realized something that can help.

Every time you have one of those moments, that is your loved one thinking of you. That is your loved one saying “Hey, I’m still around. You can’t see me, but I’m still here.”

Every time you hear that song, see something that would make her a great present, find a book you want to tell her about – every time she comes to mind that is her saying that she loves you – and she is thinking about you just as much as you are thinking about her.

Death just changes the relationship. It doesn’t end it. It shifts it sideways instead of straight on. With death, the spirit is free to be with you any time. There is no limitation of a body.