Predictive text poem 1

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Dear Fred,

The hours of sleep and I don’t know what you need.
The waves are not allowed to use the beach.
Kate`s holiday in the world is going through my head.

I don’t know why you want to be in a yoga pose.
The hours of work are beautiful and long.

Change the world and the world changes you.
The waves are beautiful women.
I was there in the hours.

Reply to this post.

Love, George

(This was created using my new Kindle Fire HD. The predictive text sometimes does weird and amazing things. About 80 percent of this was it talking. I did some editing, and every now and then it wouldn’t come up with a noun so I’d type a random letter and go with what it offered then. This is from a new series I have created of letters between two friends – Fred and George. Hopefully I’ll learn more about them.)

On Ash Wednesday and Lent.

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Ash Wednesday is the start to Lent, and it points to Easter. This is a penitential season – a time to pare down and strip bare. By giving up something we want, we get to take on something we need. The beginning is in darkness and mourning, and the end is in light and rejoicing. It is a time of dying to ourselves and being reborn with Christ.
But how do you observe Ash Wednesday and Lent? How can you participate in a meaningful way that makes it real to you, other than going to a service and getting a cross smudged on your head? One way is to wear black or other dark colors on Ash Wednesday, and to not wear any jewelry. Fast, or eat very sparingly – eat small meals that are simple. It is a day of mourning, so going through the rituals of mourning are appropriate.
Many people give up something in Lent. Chocolate, alcohol, and eating out are all common things that people will sacrifice during this time. It is a reminder of the time when Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil, and he was without food or shelter. Some people take something on during Lent. They will volunteer for some non-profit agency. They will commit to reading the Bible every day. They will raise money to help people in need. Either way, it is a change and a reminder that this is a different time and a chance to refocus your priorities.
Sometimes you have too many things in your life. Sometimes your hands are full, and you aren’t able to hold on to anything new. Sometimes what our hands and lives are full of is just stuff. We carry around the idea that if we only had this new Thing, we’d be happy. How many times have we said that we are looking forward to something, only to forget that we need to be grateful for what we have right now? Who is to say that we aren’t stuck in our own wilderness now, being tempted by the world’s enticements? We are called to be in the world, but not part of the world. Lent is a great time to see where your focus is – is it on the world and all its things, or is it on serving God?
Ash Wednesday is a chance to reset. I’ve heard that sometimes a house fire is a blessing in disguise. Everything is stripped away and reduced to rubble. All our trinkets and talismans. All our decorations and dustcatchers. All of the Stuff that clutters our houses that we keep around us to remind us who we are and where we came from are all reduced to ash. When the house burns down, everything is gone. There is just enough time to escape with your life. When you return to the house you realize that there is nothing there and you have to start again from the beginning. This is Ash Wednesday. Those ashes on your forehead are a reminder to you that all you have right now is your life. The stuff is meaningless. You’ve just escaped with your life. What are you going to do with it now? Are you going to rebuild it exactly the way it is, or are you going to use this as a chance to start again?
Ash Wednesday is a wake-up call. It is a time to resolve to live differently. It is the trip to the emergency room at 3 am thinking you are having a heart attack – only to be told it is anxiety. But what about next time when it is serious? What can you do to make changes in your life so that you can prevent that trip to the doctor? It is a chance to stop and think about what really matters. What is really important? What do you actually need, versus what do you just think you need? When we have that wake-up call at 3 a.m. we often promise everything. “ If you will save me God, I promise to do better. I promise to exercise and eat better. I promise to be a nicer person.” Then when the next day or the next week arrives, we are often back to our old ways because they are easy and familiar. This Lent I invite you to take the step of real change. I invite you to use this time as a way to change everything. You won’t be walking alone. Jesus will be with you every step of the way. He has walked this path before and is cheering you on.
I’d been through several Ash Wednesdays over the years. Something different happened a few years ago. Perhaps it was because I was serving as a lector and had gotten vested in a cassock and a surplice. Perhaps it was because I went up in the first group to get smudged. Perhaps it was because the priest used my name when she smudged me – “Betsy, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I don’t know what it was that did it but something cracked open inside me. Something changed. I’d heard those words time and time again, but this time they struck home. This time they were real. I cried a little kneeling there at the altar rail, partly mourning my own mortality, but partly because of the freedom that these words created.
I find it very freeing to be reminded of your mortality. If you know you are going to die, then you know you have to be more intentional about your life. Say you are going to go on a vacation for a week. You have 20 things that you would like to do, but only time for 10. You have to pick those 10 things carefully. What is really important to you? What do you want to do that will really resonate with you? Do you go to the art museum, or spend the day fishing? Do you eat at the fancy restaurant, or do you cook up a simple meal with food you bought at the local farmer’s market? Whatever you choose, do it because it is what is the most meaningful to you at that time. Life is like that – you only have so much time. What is your focus? What must be done?
Part of the meaning of Ash Wednesday is echoed in a quote by Carl Sagan. Sagan told us in his groundbreaking series Cosmos that “Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Also, C.S. Lewis tells us that “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. “ This body, full of aches and pains, isn’t the focus.
I find it interesting to note that Sagan was a confirmed atheist, yet his words help me in my Christianity. In a Parade magazine interview he said that he found no evidence that there was life after death and that he felt his mortality to be a impetus to live life more fully. “Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.” His point is that if there is no promise of an afterlife, then you need to appreciate every day you are given. But here’s an interesting part. As a Christian, you get to have your cake and eat it too. You are promised that you will live on through Jesus. You are promised a resurrection and eternal life if you are part of the Body of Christ. But – because of our mindfulness and our intentionality, we can also use this time right now to live more meaningfully.
Live now. Be awake now. Be fully in the moment, whatever it is. I wish you a blessed Lent, where you are prepared to greet the newly-risen Christ on Easter Day.

Broken? Perhaps it is an opening.

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I’ve read that the Japanese like to take an old clay pot or cup that has chips and cracks and “aggrandize” it by adding gold to the cracks. This doesn’t hide the cracks at all – but it certainly makes the pot or cup stronger. It makes the item more beautiful as well. I’ve also read that they also have an idea called “wabi-sabi” where things that are a little “off” are seen as more beautiful than things that are perfect. The idea is that old, worn, slightly unbalanced or otherwise imperfect items have more charm than mass-produced, exactly similar items. I’m totally going by memory here on these things, so if you want more info, please look it up.
And I was also thinking about “Ephphtha” – “Be opened” that Jesus said to a blind man.

I feel that our burdens are the way for God to get in.

I’m reminded of the story of another blind man, one who was blind since birth. Jesus healed him, and his disciples said “Who sinned, him or his parents?” and Jesus said that “No one sinned. He was born blind so that God’s will
might be made manifest in him.”

I’m intrigued by the idea is that this guy’s weakness/disability/burden turned out to be a way for God to get in and show how awesome God is. Sounds a little weird – this guy suffered with blindness, and in those days most likely social ostracism, just so God could show off. This is something I am still working on.
However, where I’m going right now with this is that it also shows that weakness can be what gets us to ask for help.

I’ve read recently “When our burdens bring us to our knees, we are in the perfect position to pray.”
I’ve realized that we usually call for help when we are over our heads. We call when there is a big storm coming – a tornado threatening to tear down our houses. We call when there is a diagnosis of a chronic disease – that too threatens us in the same way. Our well-laid plans for our futures are looking a little shaky. Our goals and dreams that we built as walls against boredom and obscurity are about to be swept up like so much drywall and vinyl siding in a Tennessee summer storm.

We are really good at calling for help when we feel threatened. We often make promises while hiding in the basement during the storm, or laying on the hospital bed in the ER. I promise to be nicer to my neighbors. I promise to stop smoking and start exercising. I promise to be more generous.
When the storm passes and the diagnosis comes back to be not so bad, do we remember those promises? Do we honor them? How many of those conversations are we going to have with our Creator/our conscience that don’t result in change?

Then I see people who are really burdened. It looks like the weight of the world is on them. Obese, reeking of alcohol, angry at their children and spouse. Some people just seem like they walked off the set of Jerry Springer. I used to look at them and think “why can’t you just pull yourself together? “ I saw their “sins”, their weaknesses, as signs of a lack of willpower.

I had a lot of the same problems. I was not just overweight. I was obese. I smoked pot up to three times a day. I’d gotten to the point that I couldn’t fall asleep without smoking. I smoked clove cigarettes too. I ate fried foods and if I ate vegetables, they were fried too. Exercise? Hah! How could I afford that? How could I do it, when my knees hurt so much?

Then something happened. I’m going to say it was the grace of God. Somehow, in the middle of all that mess, God woke me up and showed me a new way. I discovered water aerobics at the Y. I figured out that if I ate 2 frozen dinners a week at work instead of eating lunch out, I’d have the money to afford to go. I decided to have organic vegetarian dinners, so that added to the benefit. Then I realized that the extra time I got from not driving to a restaurant meant I had a longer lunch. I started walking for 20 minutes at lunch. I’m grateful there is a nice little park just out the back door of my work. It has always been there – I just never took advantage of it. It is as if I didn’t have eyes to see it. I was blind too, in my own way.

Now I see the burdens people have as their way out.

They aren’t stumbling blocks, so much as stepping stones. They can trip us up, or raise us higher.

Epiphany: or why I think the Magi are the coolest characters in the Christmas story.

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Epiphany is my favorite day in the church year. It is the 12th day of Christmas – the one of the 12 drummers drumming. That isn’t the reason I like it, but it doesn’t hurt. It celebrates the day that the Magi arrived in Bethlehem and saw Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

The birth of Jesus was unremarkable. It happened to two weary travelers, swept up in the hubbub of a random government mess. There was a census. Everybody had to go to their birth-towns to be registered, without any consideration of ability or inconvenience. Here were these two ordinary people, doing what they had to do. There was no place to stay for them, even though the woman was very noticeably pregnant. Nobody took mercy on them. They weren’t special. They weren’t anybody to look twice at. The child was born without any midwives or even friends around. The story could have ended here, with this tiny new family just doing their duty in a strange town, strangers themselves.

Mary knew something was different, and Joseph, her espoused husband had an idea as well. Both had been told in varying ways that God needed them to do something a little different than the usual. God had a habit of calling people in those days – Hey, Moses! Hey, Samuel! Hey, Isaiah! And the answer was “Here I am.” But for most of those people it made sense. There was a definite sense that this was indeed a call from God. Things clicked into place. Their army won. People listened to them. God was working through them to make His will happen in this world.

But this was different. Bring forth the Messiah? Wow. That was a biggie. There wasn’t a blueprint for that. And what if you were just imagining it? Gosh, wouldn’t you look gullible. I can only imagine the looks Mary got from her friends and neighbors when she became noticeably pregnant and wasn’t married to Joseph yet. Gossip spreads very quickly in small towns. That had to be hard on her. She knew the truth, but it wasn’t exactly something you could tell even your friends about. “That Mary, she’s crazy. Thinks she is pregnant with the Messiah. Right, pull the other leg.”

So there we have this tiny new family, jostled about, uncertain, helpless and clueless. They are going on the word of angels and dreams in the night. They have no proof that anything that they are going through is real. It could all be in their heads. Why would God choose them? Surely if this was the Messiah something better would be happening. Surely the Christ deserves a better place to be born. A dirty, smelly stable, filled with noisy farm animals? You have got to be kidding. This can’t be what we thought it would be. We must have been imagining things.

Then people start arriving. First, it is the shepherds. They were called out of their fields by an angel. They were sent to worship this tiny, helpless child, cared for by his inexperienced parents. When they told Mary and Joseph what the angel had told them, there is a really interesting verse. “But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19) This is her first hint to her that maybe she isn’t crazy. Maybe this is really real. Maybe everything she was told and everything she has been taught has finally come to pass, right here, with her at the epicenter of this Earth-changing event.

A little more time goes by, and then the Magi come. The Magi are sometimes known as the Three Kings. They were most likely fortunetellers, magicians, seers. They were good at reading signs and portents. They were learned. And from their studies, they knew that something amazing was about to happen. Magi were priests of the Zoroastrian faith – a faith based out of Persia. They believed that the Divine was about to become incarnate – to take on human form.

They have wandered through the desert, at night, following only a star. There was no map. There was no GPS. There was no guidebook. This was a new event. Like the pillar of fire at night that led the Israelites in the desert for 40 years, they had only a God-given phenomenon to follow. They followed it at night, most likely stumbling over rocks and small shrubs. They follow this star, this strange moving star that has led them to the unremarkable, backwoods town. When these strangers show up looking for the incarnation of God, they had to create quite a scene. I suspect their unusual clothing made them stick out. Perhaps they had odd accents. They certainly weren’t from around there. They certainly weren’t Jewish, either. When they arrived, bearing gifts for the Christ-child, they were a sign. They were proof that the visions and dreams pointed to something even bigger than Mary or Joseph could ever imagine. They were Gentiles, non-Jews, here to celebrate that the world had changed.

The Magi are a sign to us that God is real, that He is here with us. God loves us enough to come down to Earth and experience life from our perspective. This is a game-changer. The Creator, the Divine, the Godhead is no longer an impersonal, dictatorial Thing, but a very real, approachable person who loves us unconditionally and unreservedly.

The Magi are also examples of how to follow God. We all have our times of following God like the Magi did. Some dim star, far away, beckons. The only way we can follow it is to go on foot, in the dark. The way is slow and there are no guideposts. We walk in faith, following in trust and hope. We stumble. We get turned around. But again and again we re-align to the star, knowing that it leads us in the right direction.
May your Epiphany be blessed, and may you always follow the Star.

Beads and Writing

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Writing had been an integral part of my life for many years before my parents died. I had written in a journal for longer than I’d known how to drive or cook. I was working on a degree in English so I was surrounded with words. Writing was how I thought. Writing was who I was.

But I stopped writing after my parents died. Full-stop, arrested, halt, “none shall pass” stopped. It was too hard. I didn’t have the words to process my grief. Every time I started to write, even something simple and not-journal-like such as an email, I started to cry with great wracking tears. The emotions overwhelmed me in huge waves and I didn’t know how to deal with them. I was drowning in grief, so I didn’t even want to go near the water.
Yet I still needed to create. I still needed to drink the life-giving water of creation. I think creating is essential to the human soul. I like Madeline L’Engle’s view in Walking on Water, her book about what it means to be an artist and a Christian. She says that to create is to be a co-creator with God. Essentially, we are created to be creators.

It doesn’t make sense now for me to have stopped writing. It was like another loss, another grief. I’d lost my parents, and then I lost my way of thinking, of understanding. I was untethered. My boat was unmoored. I had all these new, unpleasant and unfamiliar ideas and thoughts and I had no way to deal with them, no way to bring them back to a safe shore.

And then I remembered beads. I had started working with beads when I moved to Washington D.C. I’d made that first fateful foray into a bead store in Dupont Circle nearly half my life ago. I went with a student I’d met through the Cultural Consortium, a program that the Kennedy Center had to introduce inner-city kids to the arts in an active and participatory way. Thankfully for me, this student was kind enough to teach me a new way to be creative. That bead store trip was the beginning of a long-term love affair with all things bead, and a new way to think and communicate.

Beads have their own language and their own symmetry. I can say things in beads. I started to string beads together the same way I’d string words together to create a sentence or a paragraph. You can pick out a focal bead the same way you’d pick out a really cool word or a really interesting idea.

Recently I noticed that I had too many ideas. I was carrying around a notebook at work so I could keep up with all the ideas I wanted to write about. I was under the impression that ideas are like beads – when I come across them, I’d better collect them. I may never see them again. It was like I was on a bead-buying frenzy. After a while, it is time to sit down and start working with them.

Sometimes with beads I’ll start work on a project and not be sure where it is going. I’ll leave it in the saucer until I get some better clue as to what needs to happen next. Some saucers stay full. Some projects never get finished because I take apart the proto-necklace again and again until I realize that there is no way I can finish it. Maybe it wasn’t a viable project. Maybe it isn’t a project for me to finish. Maybe I don’t have the right kind of beads or the right mindset.

I now have “saucers” for my words. I’ve developed folders for note-seeds. I can return to them when I have time or inclination to work on/water them. I can revise/prune them later. I can add or subtract, just like with beads – but faster. If only beading had “copy and paste”!
Sometimes I have too many saucers, too many projects. This might be part of the nature of being creative, or the nature of being bipolar. Sometimes I think that the true essence of being an artist is knowing how to edit, and how to know when something is “done”. Sometimes I think another part is just being OK with the process and not worrying too much about what it is going to look like at the end until you get there.

Here are things I’ve “written about” in beads. When I learn how to post pictures I’ll update this post.

The Davinci code book.
The Griffin and Sabine series
A trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama.
What it is like to do water aerobics in the pool at the Y.
The history of the church, from Byzantine to Catholic/Orthodox to Protestant to now.

Interfaith/non faith Christmas dinner prayer

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This is useful if you have a family gathering where not everybody is on the same faith-page. I used this at Christmas at my in-law’s house. The words aren’t original, but the assembly is. I put the references at the bottom. Please let me know if you use this prayer at your gathering and how it was received.

Oh, Thou, the sustainer of our Bodies, Hearts and Souls –

We pause this day, joining with others across the world

who, like us, yearn for peace and harmony and understanding.

We pause to celebrate the joy of people coming together;

serving one another with common goals and concerns.

We pause to ask Your blessing on this, our time together,

on gatherings like ours, across our land and across the world.

May we be thankful for the food we are about to receive.

May it be blessed to our use,

and may we be dedicated to the service of that great family of all souls.

When there is peace in the heart, there will be gentleness in the person.

When there is gentleness in the person, there will be fairness in the nation.

When there is fairness in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

May we be centers of peace and help speed the day where we all may be one.

Amen.

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I assembled this from prayers from the book “For Praying out Loud” by L. Annie Foerster,

specifically “We Pause to Give Thanks” by Laurel Hallman, at a UN peace gathering,

and “When There is Peace in the Heart” by Richard Gilbert, Center of Peace Invocation.

I used a Sufi prayer for the address to the Divine in the first line

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Getting it out.

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Originally posted on FB on 12-23-12

When you swallow something that isn’t good for you, your body has a way of dealing with it. Say it is spoiled milk or meat. You may notice that it isn’t quite right when you eat it, and spit it out. Or, it may be mixed up with other things and you don’t figure out early enough that it is a bit off. Fortunately your body knows better and will end up getting that out of you pretty fast one way or another. Generally you will throw it up, and while the throwing up part never feels good, you invariably feel so much better once you have gotten it over with.

So why do we suppress our emotions? When we take in something bad, something difficult to process, why do we in our society do our darnedest to not cry or yell? These are ways of getting out the bad emotions. I’m not saying that it is a good idea to fake being happy all the time – that too can cause problems. In fact, that is part of the problem. We need to experience all emotions, but we also need to know how to deal with the ones that overwhelm us.

It is OK to cry. It isn’t a sign of weakness. It doesn’t lessen your status as a “man” or as an “adult”. It is OK to yell and scream sometimes. I’ve read several books on grief recently and they all say that loudly expressing your grief is really healthy and helps you start to heal faster. Holding it in is exactly like holding in that spoiled milk or meat – you’ll just feel sicker.

I didn’t fully process my parent’s death when they died 6 weeks apart when I was 25. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t feel that I had time to. I had to handle the estate and then take care of myself. I had to get a full-time job. I had to take care of an old, rambling house. I had to figure out how to sell off my father’s car that he just bought. I didn’t have much help from my family on these matters. My aunt gave some money to tide me through for a bit. My brother was less than helpful, and in fact made the situation worse. My priest performed the funeral service, but didn’t tell me anything about grief. The hospice workers also didn’t prepare me. I didn’t know how to handle the pain, and the only model I had was how my family had handled everything big in the past. Sadly, that model was to just endure it quietly. My friends also abandoned me, one even saying that she didn’t know how to help me now – so she just left. This was common. Nobody called, and nobody came by. So my grief was multiplied- my parents had died, and it seemed like my friendships had died as well. Two years later I ended up in the mental hospital because of my grief and inability to process it.

When you are grieving, everything seems far away and not connected. It is as if you are looking at your life from far within yourself, and hearing everything as if it is through a paper tube. There is a lot of distance, both physically and psychologically. You may feel like you are walking through quicksand or molasses. Everything goes very slowly. It is hard to take care of everyday tasks, and so it is almost impossible to take care of unusual tasks like tending to your soul’s needs.

Grief isn’t just over a physical death. You can grieve over any loss or change. Changing a job, whether voluntarily or involuntarily can bring on grief. Divorce, whether you wanted it or not can do the same. Any change – moving to a different town or a house, having a baby, getting a new health diagnosis, can cause big emotions. It is important to recognize this and process this.

Bottle these feelings up and it is the same as swallowing your own sickness. It will only make you feel worse. Get it out! Yell, cry, wail. Complain to a trusted friend who can handle it. Seek therapy. I’ve heard something I like that I’ll share with you. There is a Jewish saying that it is important to have friends, and if you don’t have friends, it is OK to buy them – and this is the source of why it is OK to have a therapist. A therapist or a counselor is a paid friend.

So, my suggestion to you is to first recognize you are sick with grief and pain from a loss, and then to get it out. Don’t bottle it in. Crying is excellent medicine. If you don’t start to feel like your regular self in about a month, or if your grief is just too much for you, please seek professional help. Seeking this help isn’t a sign of weakness – to NOT seek help is. Self-medicating also isn’t the answer – it just puts a Band-Aid over a severed artery.

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Mental health vs. mentally ill

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Originally posted on FB 12-15-12

I am so sick of lowering the flag to half mast. There have been too many tragedies. There have been too many murders of innocent people. But I’m also sick of the news and the public equating the term “mental illness” with “psychopath.”

I have a mental health diagnosis. I am bipolar, what used to be known as manic-depression. You’d never know it by talking to me. I know that once I tell people that I have a mental health diagnosis, things change between us. They look at me differently. They treat me differently.

Yet since being diagnosed I’ve done so many things that “normal” people are seemingly unable to do. I’m stable. I’ve had a job for 12 years. I’ve lived on my own. I have been married for over 8 years. I’ve not been in jail. My credit rating is impressive. I give credit to God that I am doing as well as I am. I also take medicine every day and visit a therapist regularly. I exercise, eat well, and pray regularly as part of my therapy.

I don’t like using the term “mentally ill” to describe myself. Mentally ill? Those are folks who don’t work with their doctor to get balanced. Those are folks who take matters into their own hands. One could argue that anyone who steps over the line and kills others is mentally ill – diagnosis or not. People who abuse their children – verbally, physically, emotionally – are mentally ill. Anyone who lies, cheats, or steals is mentally ill. Anyone who has “not loved your neighbor as yourself” is mentally ill.

I think it is time to shine a light on those of us who have a mental health diagnosis yet aren’t mentally ill.

What follows is from the NAMI website – http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Helpline1&template=%2FContentManagement%2FContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=4858

Abraham Lincoln

The revered sixteenth President of the United States suffered from severe and incapacitating depressions that occasionally led to thoughts of suicide, as documented in numerous biographies by Carl Sandburg.

Virginia Woolf

The British novelist who wrote To the Lighthouse and Orlando experienced the mood swings of bipolar disorder characterized by feverish periods of writing and weeks immersed in gloom. Her story is discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.

Lionel Aldridge

A defensive end for Vince Lombardi’s legendary Green Bay Packers of the 1960’s, Aldridge played in two Super Bowls. In the 1970’s, he suffered from schizophrenia and was homeless for two and a half years. Until his death in 1998, he gave inspirational talks on his battle against paranoid schizophrenia. His story is the story of numerous newspaper articles.

Eugene O’Neill

The famous playwright, author of Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Ah, Wilderness!, suffered from clinical depression, as documented in Eugene O’Neill by Olivia E. Coolidge.

Ludwig van Beethoven

The brilliant composer experienced bipolar disorder, as documented in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb.

Gaetano Donizetti

The famous opera singer suffered from bipolar disorder, as documented in Donizetti and the World Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century by Herbert Weinstock.

Robert Schumann

The “inspired poet of human suffering” experienced bipolar disorder, as discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.

Leo Tolstoy

Author of War and Peace, Tolstoy revealed the extent of his own mental illness in the memoir Confession. His experiences is also discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Inner World of Mental Illness: A Series of First Person Accounts of What It Was Like by Bert Kaplan.

Vaslov Nijinsky

The dancer’s battle with schizophrenia is documented in his autobiography, The Diary of Vaslov Nijinksy.

John Keats

The renowned poet’s mental illness is documented in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Broken Brain: The biological Revolution in Psychiatry by Nancy Andreasen, M.D.

Tennessee Williams

The playwright gave a personal account of his struggle with clinical depression in his own Memoirs. His experience is also documented in Five O’Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948-1982; The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams by Donald Spoto, and Tennessee: Cry of the Heart by Dotson.

Vincent Van Gogh

The celebrated artist’s bipolar disorder is discussed in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb and Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Van Gogh.

Isaac Newton

The scientist’s mental illness is discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb.

Ernest Hemingway

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist’s suicidal depression is examined in the True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him by Denis Brian.

Sylvia Plath

The poet and novelist ended her lifelong struggle with clinical depresion by taking own life, as reported in A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath by nancy Hunter-Steiner.

Michelangelo

The mental illness of one of the world’s greatest artistic geniuses is discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.

Winston Churchill

“Had he been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have concluded that we were finished,” wrote Anthony Storr about Churchill’s bipolar disorder in Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind.

Vivien Leigh

The Gone with the Wind star suffered from mental illness, as documented in Vivien Leigh: A Biography by Ann Edwards.

Jimmy Piersall

The baseball player for the Boston Red Sox who suffered from bipolar disorder detailed his experience in The Truth Hurts.

Patty Duke

The Academy Award-winning actress told of her bipolar disorder in her autobiography and made-for-TV move Call Me Anna and A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness, co-authored by Gloria Hochman.

Charles Dickens

One of the greatest authors in the English language suffered from clinical depression, as documented in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb, and Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson.

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The best Thanksgiving ever

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Originally posted on FB 11-22-12

A few years after my parents died, I was faced with a pretty bleak Thanksgiving. My boyfriend at the
time had decided to go to South Carolina to visit family, and I couldn’t go because I had to work that weekend. I was bummed about that too because I didn’t normally work on the weekend at Sweetly Southern, which was a store at the Choo Choo that sold American-made crafts. Everybody else had asked off for that weekend, so I was stuck with it. And it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, so it would be insanely busy. And it was my birthday. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

Then I thought, I bet there is somebody else who is facing a pretty lonely Thanksgiving. I thought about a friend of mine in the medieval reenactment group (SCA) I belonged to back then. Rowan! Yeah! He’ll surely be alone for Thanksgiving. His family is as dysfunctional as you get. So I asked him the next time I saw him at a SCA meeting. “Hey – Rowan, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” He told me that he was fine and gave me a winning smile. Something didn’t sound right. I asked his roommate. As I suspected, Rowan had told me that everything was fine when it really wasn’t. He didn’t want me to worry about him. He had nowhere to go and was also going to be alone. Time to change tactics. I went back up to him. “Hey – Rowan – my parents are dead. My boyfriend is going to be out of town. I’m going to be alone for Thanksgiving. —-What are you doing for Thanksgiving?….” I said pointedly. He got it. He gave me a huge smile. “I’d love to spend Thanksgiving with you!” he exclaimed. Then two other people overheard. “ Thanksgiving at Betsy’s house? Yeah – that sounds like a great idea. We can ditch the parents!” Then others caught the excitement.

One couple had ordered a turkey already and then their plans had changed – so they had a turkey and nobody to eat it with. This was a perfect solution. Another couple always dreaded going to their respective parents’ houses – too much driving, too much drama all in one day. Other people had nowhere to go. Other people were grateful of an excuse to get away from their families. The Orphan Thanksgiving was born. I ended up having a dozen people in my house, none of whom I was related to. I provided a place and spiral-cut ham. They provided everything else, including washing-up. There was laughter and love, and the best kind of family gathering ever – the family that you create out of choice.

They say misery loves company, and this case, it got mixed up in a sort of alchemy where misery got transformed into love.

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On “Apostolic Succession” and ordained leaders

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Originally posted on FB 11-21-12

The Episcopal church and the Catholic church have something called “apostolic succession”. This means that we can trace our roots back to the apostles. This means that when somebody gets confirmed or received into these churches, they have hands laid on them by somebody who had hands laid on them, by somebody who had hands laid on them, all the way back to Jesus. This is pretty overwhelming to think about. It really connects you with the “then” – it becomes the “now”.

I was telling a co-worker about this and he said they were apostolic at his church too. I felt like explaining that his little church that his grandfather started, this little church that has self-appointed ministers and no oversight, is not part of this story. But I didn’t, and I’m glad.

It is. All churches are. All Christians are.

The touch doesn’t matter – it is the message. And the only way you are going to hear the message of who Jesus is and what he did for you and what he continues to do for you is going to be from another Christian. Either it is by them talking to you personally, or from reading in a book. This stuff doesn’t spring up out of the ground. Yes, we are told that even if there is nobody to preach the Gospel, even the rocks will proclaim it, but I think there is no need for that. There are plenty of people around who can and will tell their story of who Jesus is and what he has done for them without having rocks start talking.

Each person heard the story from someone who heard the story from someone who heard the story who was there with Jesus (except for Paul, but he is a special case). So the whole idea of how special it is that these churches have apostolic succession is bunk. We all have apostolic succession.

This also ties into the idea of ordained ministers. Not every organized religion has leaders who are set apart and specially trained. The Sikhs are the first example that comes to my mind. Then there are also Quakers and the Baha’i. Some have leaders who are respected as leaders because they have through their lives shown especial piety and reverence, so they are trusted and looked to. However, the moment they start veering from the path, their fellow members of the congregation will call them on it.

Now – the only way they can call them on it is if they themselves know the path. The only way they can know the path is if they too practice piety and study. I’ve heard in the Eastern Orthodox church that each member is expected to read the Bible for themselves and to study and pray just as much as their Pope does. Their Pope also considers himself to be an equal with them – he is not infallible, he is not above question. In fact, the idea that he can be questioned and challenged is part of what keeps him forever accountable. That accountability is what keeps him humble and honest and not grabbing for power. That power isn’t ours to grab. That power is received by us to then be distributed by us. We are not called to hoard power.

I think the moment you give away your own power, your own religious learning and study, and you expect a religious leader to do it all for you, you have become lost. Yes, it is good to have people you trust, people who have studied. It is good for each member of the community to be accountable to each other member. But it is also good for each member of the community to build each other up with their own skills and knowledge. Each person has unique skills and experience. Each person’s viewpoint is helpful. Remember the Sufi story of the blind men and the elephant? It is only through them talking together and sharing their perception of what they were dealing with that they were able to understand the whole.

I’m going to be bold here and say that I think that is also true of world religions. I think God has called to His creation time and time again. I think God has constantly tried to get us to hear and know that He loves us and wants us to work with Him to make this a better world. I think we short-change ourselves when we only hear one voice and one perspective. Look at the Gospels. Those are four different viewpoints of the same story. They could have been woven together and created into one story, but they weren’t. Sure, you can buy something called a Parallel Gospel and that will put them all together for you. But that is extra. If you buy a Bible with a New Testament, you are going to get four different yet the same stories all telling you who Jesus was. Some stress different parts. Some have the same parables repeated. Some have parts that only are in that one Gospel. Where’s the truth? I say the truth is in all of them, all together. I tell you that it is up to us to winnow through and separate the wheat from the chaff, but we have to go out into the field.

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