Harnessing the healing power of snark
“Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere.
Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us
our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us if it may be
in all our innocent endeavors; if it may not, give us
strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be
brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath.
And in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of
death, loyal and loving to one another.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
So last Sunday we were at church, which was a trifle unusual in that such an event has not really taken place that often since, um, let’s see…plus one…carry the five…well, let’s just say that to accurately gauge it you’d need a unit of measurement greater than one year, but less than a quarter of a century.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve avoided all things spiritual for that time; just the opposite, in fact. I take very seriously the Biblical example of Jacob wrestling with the angel until he received a blessing, as well as the command to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”; I’ve been doing that ever since my first consciousness of the Divine. My path has evolved through many different phases and forms over the years : raised Baptist; attended a non-denominational church in high school; experienced a brief dalliance with the Methodists in college; converted to Catholicism in graduate school; worked through A Course In Miracles in my early 30s.
My husband is what’s known as a “cradle Catholic”, and even though now if I had to pick an official label for myself I’d probably choose that of “spiritual but not religious”, it’s important for us to share a spiritual aspect to our marriage. Right now what that looks like for us is attending mass which is fine, because I can figure out a way to participate on my own terms, in a way that fits who I am now (as I always do).
So we were at church and the Gospel reading was the parable of The Prodigal Son, which is perhaps not my favorite story because, OH HI UNCOMFORTABLY SIMILAR PERSONAL RESEMBLANCE TO THE ELDER BROTHER CHARACTER.
But the priest giving the homily was really good-smart, sharp, witty, totally my kind of guy. Especially when he broke the passage down to focus on specific words from the original language, and the particular contexts and shades of meaning they added to the passage as a whole (sorry, tiny Grammar Nerd/Literature Major/Word Lover digression there).
So I was really engaged with what he was talking about, how we have all been all the characters in that story at one time or another, and how we can work to become more like the compassionate father, and everything was going so well, and then he said something that made me think A Very Bad Word in my head, which was pretty much the exact, polar opposite of “Christlike”.
I can’t remember his exact words, but it was something along the lines of, “And so if we Catholics go out and act like the arrogant elder brother around Protestants, then they will never realize that they’re off in a distant country, squandering their inheritance on dissolute living.”
…blink…
Um, what?!
“Hey”, said my sister-in-law to her eighteen-month old daughter as she raced across the living room of our rented beach house, “get your hands out of your hind end! Diapers stay on.” She laughed and turned to me.
“You know, since becoming a mom, I say all kinds of things I never thought I’d say.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yep. And do you know what I have to say the most?”
“No, what?”
“Stop french-kissing the dog!”
The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.
-Junot Diaz, How I Write
You must go here now and read this article, “How to Lose All The Weight You Want in Just 89 Simple Steps“.
“Summer’s here and the time is right for getting super duper skinny! Where to begin? Since there are always approximately one point seven two zillion stories about how to lose weight, you might be confuzzled. Don’t be! We collected the most important weight loss stories we’ve seen over the last couple of months and compiled them into one handy guide. If you do everything on this list, you will absolutely, positively lose weight — and maybe your mind.”
Yesterday afternoon, on our way home from our weekly library date, I turned to my husband said, “You know, if we ever won the lottery and I was a little bit healthier than I am now, I would go back to school and get a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing, just for the joy of working with amazing writers, and to take my writing to the next level.”
“Baby,” my husband said, “if we won the lottery, we could hire an entire stable of writers to be your bitches. You could have one to bring you meals, one to clean the house, and then they could all write exposes about how horribly we treat them.”
“Oh, so it would be a win for everyone.”
“Exactly.”
So I was feeling good, just be-bopping along with my life and my writing, and then suddenly, the day after my previous post, our oldest kitty died. It happened in a way that was easy and gentle on all of us and…it still sucks. We got her a year after we were married, and she lived to be sixteen. She had a great life right up until the end, and even then she was OK. And…I really, really hate it that she’s not here anymore.
So that’s why I haven’t really had anything to say here for the last little while. I’ve been kind of quiet inside, adjusting to our new way of being around here. Plus, we spent the 4th of July weekend with our 18-month old niece, our 8-month old nephew, and our 3-year old nephew, and only now have I recovered enough to once again be able to form coherent sentences. Just so you know, all of you parents out there, I am in awe of your awesomeness, and how you do that all day, every day. You guys seriously rock.
Words have started coming back to me, so I imagine I’ll have some things to tell you about by and by. But for now, thanks so much for being here no matter what’s going on. You guys are the best.
I don’t know why I developed fibromyalgia.
It took me about 2 or 3 years to completely stop believing that somehow it was my own fault, that I’d done something wrong, or not done something right, and therefore made myself sick. That was one possible explanation I was glad to discount.
Sometimes I see glistening, spider-web wisps of possibilities: decades of sleep impaired by insomnia and sleep apnea. Genetic inheritance. A delayed consequence of having mono as a teenager. Trauma. Maybe related to my double diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. But no one really knows.
Then there are the more “cosmic” explanations, possibilities from the “Why are we on this earth in the first place?” level of life.
Sometimes it feels like shit just happens. Sometimes it feels as though life is trying to break me. Sometimes it seems as though the only meaning in this experience comes from the meaning I choose to give it.
But sometimes, unexpectedly, my soul whispers to me that it’s OK; this is all a part of our journey.
(At times that thought is balm to my system. Other times, I just tell my soul to suck it.)
This kind of got stirred up for me because I was reading a really interesting book last week called The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood To Holy Vows (by Mother Dolores Hart, O.S.B. and Richard DeNeut). Besides just being a fascinating story, I related to it on a personal level because a few years ago the author developed neuropathy (chronic nerve pain). And I’m always interested to see how other people come to terms with their chronic pain.
I liked Mother Dolores right away, because she states, “I am not easily persuaded by ‘religious’ answers, in spite of the fact that I am a Roman Catholic convert and a member of a monastic community. I’ve found my answers step by step.”
She then goes on to say, “I do believe that, whatever the medium is, the connection to people has to come down to a living person. Some one has to embody the realities, or it doesn’t mean as much.”
And later, “…I have learned in my years of contemplation that one’s deepest wounds, integrated, become one’s greatest power. You have to speak about it. It is your mission.”
I’m not sure exactly what I think about this, but I do enjoy having something new to chew on.
