It's been a long time ...

   
A long time since I even thought about coming to these pages and writing something, saying something.

Both index fingers have been torn to shreds with me picking off dry skin, and doing so in quite an obsessive/compulsive manner, as if there were no tomorrow!

I am active and inactive by turn, moping about and very busy also by turn.

Aware that my feet and ankles are becoming swollen - perhaps with the warmer weather, perhaps because the GP stopped the Spironolactone about three weeks ago, even though I was taking it for its anti-androgenic properties rather than it’s sodium-retaining anti-hypertensive properties.

The skin on the ends of my index fingers is very hard and almost scale-like, to feel, although not to look at.  And the ends of those fingers are often quite blue, as if no blood, or very little blood, is getting to them.

I am not really a very happy camper, at the moment, although I am not entirely sure why that is so, apart from recently having had a nasty head cold that did leave me feel really “blah” for a week or more once it started to clear up a bit!

I wonder if I have somehow lost a part of who I thought I was, or perhaps even who I imagined I was.  I do not have many friends, and I have little or no contact with the lesbian community, even though Marion is my executor.  Part of being an intellectual snob, perhaps, and not tolerating fools easily.  No real personal struggles.

Although - is that really true, because part of studying theology has meant a deeper questioning about the truth, relative or otherwise, of some of the stuff we seem to take for granted, as Christians.

Don, on Wednesday, suggesting that whenever there is any sort of doubt or confusion, faith will take precedence over reason, or revelation over reason - and it did not feel or seem right to me and yet I could not, at that time, articulate why that would be so - for me, anyway.

If the stories we have in the Bible about Creation, for example, are basically derived from the co-existing Epic of Gilgamesh and several other epic poems extant at the time, albeit with some adaptations to mesh with their own Hebrew conceptions of God and creation and life and everything, then why should the Hebrew version be regarded as being any more “correct” than the original Sumerian version, from which it has been derived?  In a world in which very little was explained, and much of which was inexplicable, because so much of the research and discovery had yet to be done, sometimes it is story rather than science, revelation rather than reason, that holds the key to the question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

When I was a child, all I had was the feeling side of things, to a large extent, and story helped me make sense of stuff more than reason or science - although I do also need to say that I have always been curious and have often gone outside story, per se, to find answers to questions.

That notion of being “curiously unfinished” at birth, and the electrical system in the body needing about 12 years to mature before critical thought is possible.

I can see parallels right throughout the Creation story and other stories in the Bible of the Jews relationship with Yahweh with the process of human growth and development from even before birth through to adulthood and “maturity.”  Not because the Bible tells me there are parallels but because I have put several pieces of different kinds of information and knowledge together in order to make greater sense, for my self, of what this life is really all about.

And, then, the thought that, in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the other Sumerian literature, the storytellers - and their audiences - were trying to make some sort of sense of life and life in the face of nature apparently random “attacks” on them, as well as questions of life and death, etc., etc., etc., just as the Hebrews were trying to make sense of their experiences of Yahweh in a generally hostile world in their stories about life, death, war and so on, so why should we  - or I - take any real notice of what these stories say?  They are not texts handed down by some God who lives, in a skin, somewhere up in the sky, and dictates things to men, so that “revelation” in the form of stories of miracles, victories in battle, etc., becomes part of our basic understanding of the nature of God in this day and age.  They are groups of people interacting, tossing ideas around, considering possibilities, weighing up the pros and cons of ideas of about - none of it is God-given, in the sense that I was taught as a child to believe was the way in which God worked.  None of it is “true,” in the sense that it really, really happened just like it says in the Bible and as expounded by preachers and clergy down the years.

Those councils in the 4th and 5th centuries were not God sorting out the theology - but they were Church Fathers getting together to discuss the best ways of answering their critics!  Writing statements of belief that would be definitive creeds and the bases for catechesis!  Arguing about the minutiae of meaning in Greek words - not even Hebrew words, but Greek words - to convey what “God really means” and who “Jesus really is.”

And, yet, I continue to behave as if I believe these stories.

Perhaps because there is a wisdom in them that can only be conveyed in story, a wisdom which may well be much, much greater than the idea of God being portrayed, or attempting to be portrayed in sermons and theology and whatnot!  Perhaps I need to look behind the preaching and the teaching of preachers and teachers of theology, to find the wisdom in them, wisdom which could inform my life, even now, as I enter these last years of my life.  Do I need to work out a systematic theology - or is all that is required is to love others as I love my self?  The essence of the wisdom of Jesus, the Christ …

Wendell Berry on gay marriage

       
This article, from the Associated Baptist Press, is well worth a read -

http://www.abpnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/8130-wendell-berry-expounds-on-gay-marriage#.UYVwzKJTB_B

Al-Anon's Tradition 11, Jesus, and me

The idea came to me during the meeting on Wednesday, talking about Tradition 11, that the 12-Step Programme of Al-Anon is as "upside-down" and as counter-intuitive as the message of Jesus vis a vis the conduct of life. 

For example, in Tradition 11 - "Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films and TV. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all AA members."

Thinking about that "attraction rather than promotion" - in today's world we have the concept of "targeted marketing," based on this, that, or the other "demographic," usually based on age and what people are doing at that particular age. This would be aggressive promotion of a product.

But the message of both Jesus and of Al-Anon is to live in such a way that one's life draws attention to the spiritual basis of a way of life (the "product"). Thus, for Jesus and for Al-Anon, the "demographic" includes everyone, everyone, irrespective of age, gender, sexual identity, race, colour, creed, or whatever else we may use to separate one portion of a population from another. 

Our whole world-view is based on this dualistic way of thinking - this group compared to that group, for example. 

But both Jesus and Al-Anon present a more wholistic way of looking at the world. And even in the emphasis on anonymity - it is not just a matter of "protecting" individuals who may otherwise be judged or stigmatised by a label such as "alcoholic," "drug addict," or some other such epithet. The message and the programme itself is about God - Source, Spirit, Higher Power, etc., etc., etc. It is not about the individual per se. The individual may be the channel for the message, but the individual is not the message. 

Hang on - I seem to have hit a small snag here!

Let me think about this for a moment! 

The feminism of the 1970s argued (amongst other things) that "the personal is political," and was it Alvin Tofler who wrote about "the medium is the message," or was that Kenneth Galbraith or someone entirely different again? Actually, it was Marshall McLuhan.

The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. 

McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message]

This would seem to contradict what I am trying to say. 

However, maybe not - if the content itself is taken to be just another medium! 

Reading further - 

For McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled "the scale and form of human association and action". Taking the movie as an example, he argued that the way this medium played with conceptions of speed and time, transformed "the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configuration and structure." Therefore the message of the movie medium is this transition from "lineal connections" to "configurations".

 Extending the argument for understanding the medium as the message itself, he proposed that the "content of any medium is always another medium" - thus, the content of writing is speech, print is that of writing and print itself is the content of the telegraph.

McLuhan understood "medium" in a broad sense. He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of "the medium is the message". A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during night time that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."

Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous crime may be less about the individual news story itself - the content - and more about the change in public attitude towards crime that the newscast engenders by the fact that such crimes are in effect being brought into the home to watch over dinner.

 Hence in Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the "content" of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. This means that people tend to focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. As society's values, norms and ways of doing things change because of the technology, it is then we realize the social implications of the medium. These range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions that we are not aware of.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message]

So, then - Jesus himself is the message of the Gospel, the Twelve-Steps are the message of the Twelve-Step programme. For me to be a channel for that message, I must first have absorbed the message so that it has become so much a part of my self that, in fact, my "self" is not nearly as important as the original "message" and yet is intrinsic to it.

The two become one. The self becomes the message. The self is the message! I am the message which I convey! 

The sort of non-dualism, perhaps, suggested by what I know of mysticism from Richard Rohr and others. 

And, so, also - the importance of the spiritual principal of anonymity!

A "Whole-Body" Thing

Friday, 16 November 2012, 7.21am. Show Day 2012 - and a “Royal” Show Day, with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall in attendance. 

My surgery is done - almost a week ago, and I feel I am recovering well. 

Last night, it occurred to me that I should come to these pages again, to restore that conscious contact with God that has, at least in some part, been missing, since all this breast cancer emergency took hold. Because I was starting to wonder about the purpose of all this - why am I alive? Not just, why is this happening to me, because that is an unanswerable question, but, what is this all for? What is life all about? Is it just a matter of “being,” per se , or is there something more to it all? Looking for some raison d’etre in the middle of everything - and especially when motivation is so low, even non-existent, for doing stuff I have said I enjoyed doing. Did I really enjoy doing that stuff? Reading, writing, photography, walking, gardening, etc.? Or was it just stuff I did to keep me going, to give my self something to do? 

This morning’s reading from Daniel 12:1-3 not really all that helpful, certainly not on the face of it. “ ¹ ‘At that time Michael, the archangel who stands guard over your nation, will arise. Then there will be a time of anguish greater than any since nations first came into existence. But at that time every one of your people whose name is written in the book will be rescued. ² Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. ³ Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever. ...’” Foreshadowing the coming season of Advent, perhaps, becoming aware of the pain and suffering that exists in the world, on a whole variety of levels. 

Am I being asked to do something about relieving some of that pain and suffering? Then I wonder, what could I do? As if I am basically unimportant in the overall scheme of things, with no place, without a job to do. And then I read something like http://tinybuddha.com/blog/be-more-by-doing-less-removing-the-distraction-of-busyness/, which arrived in my mailbox just this morning! A sense, maybe, of running away from my self by being busy, by doing , rather than being , and wondering, now, if this breast cancer scare and surgery and follow-up treatment is meant to just somehow slow me down so that I can get more in touch with my self and explore further the relationships between, self, God and others - relationships that have often left me perplexed, even wanting more from them than I was getting. 

And, in the middle of getting the hook wire inserted last Friday morning - using two ultrasounds and the mammogram machine as a final resort - these words came to mind - “God, Lover of my soul, body and mind,” which was all the prayer I really needed to say, at the time. Again, when the nuclear medicine technician was putting the radioactive material into my areola, preparatory to a sentinel node biopsy, those same words - “God, Lover of my soul, body and mind.” Words from God to create calm within, words which then gradually morphed into, “Lord, Lover of my body, mind and soul,” which seems to echo, very clearly the Gospel for Sunday 4 November, the Sunday before, when I led the worship service at Durham Street - “ ²⁸ One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” ²⁹ Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. ³⁰ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is equally important: ‘ Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” [ Mark 12:28-31 (NLT) Talking about that love, that unconditional love, with a group of women from the choir, and hearing responses from other groups in the congregation - and, now, more fully realising that this love is a “whole-body” thing, and encompasses every part of my being - physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, social, mental, sexual - every part of me. 

Yes, there are parts of me that are wilful and egocentric, but there is no part of me, none at all, that does not still come within the compass and embrace of the love of God for me - my Lover! Simple words, with so much wisdom and profundity in them. 7.52am.

Boundaries and Prayer

Thinking about several things at once, here! Talked about “boundaries” at the Al-Anon meeting on Wednesday, then, the next day, the issue arose in discussion around whether or not to go and check on a group member because she had not responded to two txt messages from the hostess regarding our weekly group meeting. It has also been raised in connection with another group member’s health issues and employment situation, which also involves his financial situation.

Boundaries.

When do we just let people make their own choices and take responsibility for the consequences of those choices - rather than running around after them, making sure they are “all right”?

This continues to be a vexed question for me!

The reading from One Day at a Time in Al-Anon on p.86, contains a sentence which makes sense to me:

Acceptance ... means accepting the fact of a situation and then deciding what we will do about it.

Again, at http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/blbud01.htm,

... everyone has the right to make their own mistakes, and learn from them, without my interference or assistance! The key to serenity is acceptance. But ‘acceptance’ does not mean that I have to like it, or condone it or even ignore it. What it does mean is I am powerless to do anything about it, and I have to accept that. I MUST accept it!

Something to do with the idea that churches are sometimes the very worst places for being enabled to continue in one’s own misery and personal disempowerment, simply because there is an idea that in looking after each other we need to do stuff for the other, stuff that the other could reasonably be expected to do for themselves!

Step One stuff!

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

I have no control whatsoever over what this group member or what that group member or what the hostess does.

But we do have a power, derived from God, and that is the power to change our own lives.

[ ODAT , p. 86.]

Where does praying for others fit in to all of this?

I suppose that depends on what I understand by the term “prayer.”

We seem to have inherited a notion that prayer is about asking God to give us what we want rather than releasing ourselves to God to do with us that which is God’s will for us. What is God’s will for my friends or my self at this moment? Perhaps that is what intercessory prayer is about? As individuals and as a group, each finding out what is God’s will for us, and then seeking God’s strength to do it?

The issue of boundaries must also come into this, I think. Something about each of us seeking God’s will for our selves and for each other and for the group - not about seeking to impose my will on another or on the group in the name of God.

This whole thing about trying to control what is not mine to control, and relinquishing that control I think I have or want to have. I am not God. I cannot impose my thoughts and feelings and decisions on another or on a group - especially a group that purports to meet in the name of God and to seek God’s will for us as individuals and as a group.

I can share my strength, hope and experience, but others are not obliged to take it all on board as some sort of Gospel truth.

Take what you like, what you can use, what speaks to you, and leave the rest.

There is still a place for reasoning things out in discussion with others, also, again with that idea of taking what you like, what you can use, what speaks to you, and leaving the rest.

Progress not perfection. So much good learning has come from Al-Anon! So many important life-lessons, life-lessons which are also echoed in the words and stories of the Bible!

God, thank you for what you are teaching me today, what I have learned from you in the past, and the lessons you have in store for me in the future, as I walk with you on my life’s journey. I have not always been able to hear what you have wanted to say to me, and yet, in your great love, you have continued to present me with opportunities for learning about you, about my self, about others and the interdependence of all things in my life, you have persisted with me in spite of my self, perhaps even because of my self. Continue to draw me to your self in love so that my life will be shaped and moulded by - and put to good use for the sake of - your great love. Amen.

Coins, Mirrors and Images

The idea of finding images of my self reflected in others, and considering the possibility that some mirrors of my self are distorted, thus reflecting back to me distorted images of my self, has been very much a part of my thinking this week.

If I look to unhealthy and dysfunctional people for a reflection of my self or some part of my self, then the reflected image will be distorted.

Also wondering about my tendency to black-or-white thinking, “either/or” rather than “both - and” thinking. I do have that tendency, no matter my growing ability to look also for the grey areas in between.

Something else I have become aware of during this week is that I tend more to reflective writing than to stream-of-consciousness writing - stopping to think along the way about something I have written and to go from there rather than just putting down the first thing that comes into my head.

Mind you, I can see that there is a place for both these kinds of writing - not necessarily an either/or choice at all, but a both one and the other as appropriate!

Perhaps, too - I am both needy and clinging as well as strong and independent. Yes - again the idea of two sides of the same coin.

And, when I look at a coin, I can only really see one side of a coin at the one time. It is not actually possible to see both sides of a coin at one and the same time. Even to hold a coin up to a mirror to see the other side of the coin in front of me is not to see it accurately, but in a distorted kind of way. It is as if one side of the coin is occluded at any point in time, and so the view of that side of the coin from the side of the coin at which I am looking will always be obscured, or inaccurate in some way.

So - what does this mean, for me?

Possibly that, when I look at my self reflected back in strong independent women, my understanding of the part of me that is needy and clingy will be distorted and inaccurate, perhaps bigger or more important, or in some other way “more than” or “better than” or “worse than,” somehow, than what I see reflected back at me in those strong, independent women - it holds me back, somehow, interferes with, prevents me also being a strong and independent woman, my self.

And possibly, too, that when I look at my self reflected back in needy and clingy women, my understanding of the part of me that is strong and independent is likewise distorted, and gets in the way of my being the person I more fully am, with both a dependent and an independent aspect to my self.

The either/or reflection of my self in another is not the whole story - it is only one side of the coin. I am both the side of the coin I can see at this moment, and the side of the coin obscured to my view in this moment.

Perhaps it is possible to see both sides of the coin at the same time? Metaphorically at least? Or have I merely been shifting focus from one side of the coin to the other when I look for - or see - a reflection of some part of my self in another who may be either dependent or independent?

Like that image from Plato, I think it was, of a person sitting in a cave and seeing the movement of shadows on the back of the cave as people walk by between the sun and the entrance to the cave? Perhaps whatever image of my self I see in another is a distortion? A distorted reflection of some truth? It is not the truth itself, but always a reflection, always a distorted reflection, of some truth. [ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave for more information on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. See also “The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato’s Allegory in Clay” at http://platosallegory.com/ for an animation of the story. ]

Now - if I have a history of being a prisoner in a cave, and a distorted understanding of reality, my view or understanding of the “real” world will be informed by that primary distorted understanding of reality, and I daresay elements of that primary distorted understanding of reality will never really be entirely replaced by any new understanding of reality derived from my experiences of and in the “real” world. Thus, freedom is relative, surely?

By the same token, I am free to make sense of my world for my self, incorporating all of the images and distortions and reflections into my self, taking what works for me and leaving the rest. Seeing what I can learn from all the images, distortions and reflections I have experienced, and re-forming them to make a whole for my self which is more real and appropriate for me!

Co-creating my life, hand-in-hand with God, as I understand God?

Mmmm ....

Push and Pull

Something going on inside me head at the moment, but just can’t quite pin it down. Something about church? Something about a depressed friend? Something about Al-Anon? Not quite sure.

Coming home from church, a few weeks ago, I was aware of being somewhat in awe of the new presbyter, a sort of fear, more negative than positive somehow. Wanting to keep my distance, and yet also drawn to her - maybe a bit like with Mum - scared of her and yet wanting/needing her.

Then, again - like when I brought Trudi home and for a long time I expected her to be just like Girlie in what she did and how she did it! But, they were two very different cats!

Maybe expecting the new presbyter to be just like the previous one in what she does and how she does it?

Maybe expecting the women I am drawn to to be just like Mum, somehow?

Caught between two extremes - the utter neediness and demandingness of the friend with depression and the utter confidence and serenity of women like the presbyter?

Maybe moving between the two extremes in my self, in my own life?

Coming into my own power?

I want to say a bit more about the friend who is depressed! She seems to know everybody’s business - and that does not feel healthy or safe, to me. I need to have my wits about me, to use my wisdom to keep my self safe from her. I also need to be able to respond from the heart to others, like the presbyter.

It seems like a push-pull sort of situation. Pulled towards women like the depressed friend, almost as if they represent my ongoing experience of my mother; and pushed away from women like the presbyter, almost as if I have no right to be in their presence or to have anything to do with them.

Something to do with my self - something to do with my self in relation to my mother, somehow. Like I am not really a free agent at all - I bring with me into any relationship my feelings and attitudes about others developed in that very early relationship with my mother - one of dependence and need and yet also of not being able to fully trust and relax with her.

The friend who is depressed is not unlike several of my ex-partners in many respects - damaged women, angry women, maybe even manipulative women.

How to break that enchantment? That magnet? How to become more my own person in relation to others, rather than a wounded child constantly meeting her mother in others? And desperately wanting to be able to really connect with women more like the presbyter? Maybe in a fantasy of my own making, somehow.

Something like the distinction between God’s whore and God’s mother, in my mind - maybe idolising both forms of women and not really able to relate to either?

Who am I? Lusting after women like my ex-partners who were not really healthy for me.

Why do I think I need to be like anyone else? Why do I think I am not good enough as I am? Why not just accept who I am and go from there? Like trying to find a r ôle model for my self as I strive to become more the woman I would like my self to be - although that is not quite right, either.

Wanting to be self-sufficient like the new presbyter, which actually means distancing my self, somehow, from others; and, yet, seeking abusive, manipulative women like my ex-partners for partners.

Maybe two sides of the same coin - like the depth of sadness and the heights of joy - propensity for one as a mirror of a propensity for the other?

And the imagery of a mirror perhaps not so far from how I understand it, with the object in a mirror as far away from the mirror and it is deep into the mirror, when the mirror is flat. Distortions arise with convex and concave mirrors, but even then, measurements can be made and distances calculated.

A metaphor for my life, perhaps.

Maybe I am not looking into a flat mirror, but, rather, into a convex or a concave mirror? Distorted images of womanhood? Maybe needing to be more aware of my self, more honest with my self, more diligent with my self, in order to continue moving towards the person I would like to see in the mirror?

Other women just do not interest me. As rôle models or as anything else I might wish to strive for - sort of wishy-washy - neither really basic nor really solid.

Sort of caught between two extremes. I don’t see much of my self in other women - but I do see my self in women like my ex-partners on the one hand and like the presbyter on the other - like that false distinction between body and mind, sexuality and spirituality. A struggle between the two, as if the two should somehow never meet. As if one would contaminate the other. A splitting in two of my essence, somehow?