Life is an adventure. It’s rigorous, exciting, interesting and prolific. It’s also solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Hobbes, Leviathan). We “grow up” and start thinking that we are living in some harsh, objective, dismissive reality, but are we? Faulty narratives, ethical relativism, privilege, diplomatic sovereignty and quantum uncertainty aside, as a species, we’ve basically been growing recently only too aware of what we’re not really aware of. And, Like I've said, we’re likely on this platform of life for one real purpose and one purpose only: to connect, regardless of what’s real.
If you can really internalize and remember this, you won’t ever lose sight of what’s important. But maybe you don’t buy into that yet. Maybe you're hurt and not really ready yet to connect. How difficult is it for us all to trust each other? How basic is the search for truth? Whether this is a result of willful misdirection, ineptitude, or inadequacy - it doesn’t matter. We are all guilty victims, and we need to get over it. We should have learned to be careful though, as searching for what’s right will almost always deteriorate into control by design. Control is an illusion. None of us are omnificent. We all stem from a singular perspective which must by definition be inherently incomplete and therefore is fundamentally flawed. Even when we feel 100% certain that we are 100% correct, we just can’t be. Instead of vain attempts to impart power over our situation, try doing your best to habitually infuse it. How? First try remembering that empowering yourself and others can only stem from your own happiness. We see this happen naturally when we notice that we happen to be ok. There are moments when we’re not thinking about much. Even if it seems less and less these moments can happen and furthermore, can happen by design. When you are deeply “ok” it’s easier to infuse power to anyone who is not. And if you’re not, value yourself enough to fix that. Ask for help. Reflect on the comparison between decisions you made while happy, and the decisions you made in moments of anger or frustration. There’s a big difference in most outcomes, right? Try making it a kind of rule to always be coming from a good place before you act for a while and just see if it works out. Where that place actually is however, is ultimately up to you.
I grew up in a small, Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Queens, New York. We’d go to church every Sunday, and for a while every week my faith was both tested and confirmed. This occurred with the kind of amazing regularity only befitting a 1st grader. During one particular part of the mass, our priest would lift the Eucharist up to God to ask for it to be blessed. Thing is, every single time he did that (and this is the crux of the plot) - I heard bells! It was a tingly but wildly ubiquitous sound you might expect of an Almighty, but it was unmistakably there. It was consistent.
And this was real life! As a kid, this baffled me. It seemed otherworldly but also here, real, actual. I don’t really remember when it started but it became my one church draw. This was the thought that kept me from groaning too much as I was dragged out of bed on Sunday mornings. I would wait for this moment every mass, and it would happen in every mass, every week, and in every church we ever wound up in.
I remember looking around (and up) marveling at this forest of grown-ups who would take this miracle in such a collectively mature stride. No wonder they acted like they knew everything all the time! This was such a gift because during this brief part of my life, things made sense. I understood every “good” person completely and I truly, authentically pitied every “bad." (Maybe they didn’t hear it?) Things - all things - were either good or bad; there were directions we all moved in: up and down, back and forth, left and right. There was no doubt in my mind that I would spend every waking moment of my entire adult life devoted to this God everybody was talking about. And I would for sure read that giant book of rules he sent down because hey - what’s one lifetime in the blink of eternity? (Even to a six year old!) I figured I’d grow up to be a priest. (It hadn’t dawned on me yet that a woman priest might be an unlikely possibility. Truth be known it had hardly even really dawned on me that I would eventually grow up to be a woman!) What other possible profession besides priest could be as noble? Who cares if you had to wear all those dresses and perform rituals in front of people all the time. I’d deal. I was in. I would be 100% pious!
One Summer Sunday we arrived a little late and had to all sit right up front. I was a little excited and sort of wondered why we’d never even tried to get front row seats before. I never did ask because I always forgot the thoughts I had in church by the time I got out of church. It was such a long stretch without direct conversation that by the time we emerged and the music was far enough behind us my mind was usually on to the relief of freedom and all the activities now available to me. At least, that’s the way it had always been before, until that day. I waited and waited and this time it seemed to come quickly. There were the usual songs, and talking, movements and dances. We’d all shook hands, and now the church snack was being prepared. That was the day I watched in simple stark stupid casual horror as obviously, callously and right in front of me, a hopelessly blasé Altar Boy with a totally vacant facial expression and an arm deliberately readied underneath an indecently short altar skirt, did something that shook my little world to its naive core. I can still remember my eyes following that arm until - I watched that hand with total heart pounding existential dread thoughtlessly, forcefully, almost unconsciously, but all in all very simply ring freakin’ bells!
The clanging that ricocheted off the dome ceilings mocked my spiritually-pained ears. It was deafening. I remember vividly seeing my heartbeat in white painful peripheral pulses that seemed to close my entire visual field. I know this sounds dramatic but my faith plunged in that moment. I could feel it seeping out my feet leaving my knees so weak I actually wanted to kneel. I felt real doubt for the first time in years - I mean since I was like four! I remember feeling so hot I started sweating. People were already lining up for their refreshments or whatever when I looked at that book dagger-eyed and decided right then and there that when I grew up, I was going to read every word of that thing and every other word like it of all these so-called “Gods.” I’d figure out for myself exactly what I should be doing before eternity. But I no longer trusted anything or anyone else to show me the way. It had all been a show. What cruelty!
In truth, however, that time had been a gift. My memory of it is sealed in like a garden in my heart. Things reversed, though. I now understood the fallen and deeply and truly pitied the “saved.”
Fundamentalism isn’t really possible. We don’t know what started everything or even if there ever was some kind of start. And we long to know that - why? So we can figure out what went wrong? So we can judge? So we can blame?
Here’s what we can know. Nothing. Facing that is the burden of youth. I was there for years, and truthfully, I go back and visit often. Now, here’s what we can see. There are laws in life - there is a law of gravity, there are laws of aerodynamics… and there‘s a law we broke long ago that we are only truly realizing now. Please stay tuned. But until we return, work of where your from. Tell me in the comments. If you need a jumping off place - tell me what it's been like to face your own mortality. That's always an uplifting start!
(And yes, I do often crack myself up!)
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