Day 36: Sharing Space

 So today was a wash for anything AFL related.  Today is my birthday and I had better things to do than dive deep with the reading material... so I will pick it up tomorrow.  

Today I was trying to understand myself.  I am trying to figure out what is really important in my moments and wondering if I can learn some valuable lessons from the past.  I don't want to be that person who needs to burn all their mementos and discard their memories from their Christian past.  I have given away a lot of those things I no longer find value in, but I haven't garbaged them.  I am taking this journey very differently and I still wonder if I am being true to myself.  Can I share space with my family and friends who are still Christian.  Can I sit and observe and just release any temptation to judge what I am observing?  Can I just be with my Mom in her space?  Why not?  Mom and Dad were able to be themselves in my space.  They came into a very different faith culture back in the day and were able to maintain their own culture.  Why can't I do the same for my Mom?

I thought today that maybe I can just let everyone else be who they need to be.  I don't need to perform alongside to be alongside.  I can be grateful in a different way, and invite my family into those expressions of gratitude, as I discovered today.  My family needed to pray before the meal we shared... and that is something I don't do, but I still needed to express some gratitude for the people who provided the meal.  So I got a thank you card for the restaurant staff, and had everyone sign it.  In my way... that was my prayer.  I was saying thank you to those who provided my meal.  I didn't explain it that way to my family... but they unknowingly participated and thought that was a beautiful gesture.  We got to share space.  

Maybe that is all I can do... be myself, let others be themselves and together we can share space.  

Day 35: Creeds

 

It's almost bedtime and I haven't written my daily blog yet.  I have been procrastinating.  For a good portion of the day, the chat room has been a buzz on the subject of creeds.  I was taken back a few decades when "The Apostle's Creed" was something that was ingrained in my memory.  We recited it often at Lutheran services like mindless drones.  There was nothing personal to me and when I stopped saying it and started listening to the others recite it, all I could hear was monotonous cadence.  Nothing in the recitation of the creed at all convinced me that anyone one was personally invested in its message.  It was only tradition.  

I am grateful to be beyond the necessity of traditional recitations like "The Apostle's Creed".  But I am still sad to hear people fall into the cadence of the recitation, when I know that they are personally invested in their faith.  It is truly beyond understanding.  

Day 34: The torment of saying nothing

"It was the beginning of a long period of nausea, in which the only thing greater than the pain of talking was the torment of saying nothing."  Richard Boothby (Blown Away) 

I decided to go in a different direction with Richard Boothby today.  I have already heard his Wake discussions and found them fascinating.  But something that catches my attention about Richard Boothby more than his philosophy. It is his story.  Which is why I went to "Blown Away" instead of "Embracing the Void".  I read the first two chapters and stopped.  Do I really need to read another story of someone who's son died?  Am I just torturing myself again.  What exactly am I looking for in one more story?   And then I found it in the above quote.  I am still tormented by the silence.  

If writing my story was enough, then I wouldn't be so tormented.  I wrote my story.  I just wasn't able to tell it.  No...wait...  it wasn't about me telling my story... it was about a story I am still waiting from them.  There is the torment of silence.  It was their son that died and it is their silence that torments me.  

I can't ask my family to open up their wounds in order for my torment to end.  I long for their story, but at what expense if they are not ready to tell it.  I guess that's why I am still drawn to stories like Richard Boothby's.  He was able to see that staying silent was worse than reliving his story in order to share it.  If someone has gone through the agony of walking down those dark corridors in their memory, then maybe I can find time to embrace the holiness of their story.  Maybe it isn't about how many more stranger's stories do I get to read before I can read the story of my own family.  Maybe I get to keep  reading one more because their story still matters to me.  

Day 33: Words can still be beautiful

It's easier to start a new puzzle than it is to start a new book.  I find it strange.  I thought I liked both.  But lately, reading has become a chore.  Words are flying past me and not doing much landing.  

I shared a story in today's Processing Group about a phone call with my mother.  Fifty-five minutes of phone time equated to about fifteen minutes of speaking time between both of us.  It might seem strange, but there is a lot of space in the phone calls I have with my mom.  We don't always have words to share with each other, but we don't know how to hang up when the words aren't there.  She might be washing dishes, or knitting, or playing solitaire and I might be puzzling or putting a load of clothes in the washing machine.  We hear each other do things, but it almost seems that words are unnecessary for us.  Three days may go by and I don't have any news for Mom, but I still phone her.  I want to connect.  

What if my best moments in life don't include words.  That is a sad revelation for a writer and somewhat avid reader (though not as of late).  This Wednesday, I am planning to gather with my family and a few friends to celebrate my fifty fifth birthday.  I am worried about only one thing... the words.  The food will be great, the hugs will be fantastic, the laughs will be welcome and the smiles will fill me up inside... but the words... I am dreading those. 

It is why I like puzzles.  Puzzles don't require words.  They don't require that I process anything.  I just need to build and enjoy the beauty of the finished product.  Puzzles are so easy to share; Words are not.  I have lost friends because of words.  I am scared of losing more because of words.  

All that being said... all I have of value to leave behind me are completed puzzles and words.  Not much for fifty five years of living.  Maybe in those puzzles and among those words... There will be a residue of love.  It is all I can hope for.  If anything is hopeful for me, it is that I long to leave behind love.  I don't want to mess that up.  

I just got an encouraging email from my sister-in-law... 

"You have such a gift for expressing your deepest thoughts on paper and you write so well - I always enjoy reading your emails."

Wow... Words can still be beautiful... almost as beautiful as puzzles. 

Day 32: The Nugget I hung in there for.

"And in the light of this grace we perceive the power of grace in our relation to ourselves. We experience moments in which we accept ourselves, because we feel that we have been accepted by that which is greater than we. If only more such moments were given to us! For it is such moments that make us love our life, that make us accept ourselves, riot in our goodness and self-complacency, but in our certainty of the eternal meaning of our life. We cannot force ourselves to accept ourselves. We cannot compel anyone to accept himself. But sometimes it happens that we receive the power to say "yes" to ourselves, that peace enters into us and makes us whole, that self-hate and self-contempt disappear, and that our self is reunited with itself. Then we can say that grace has come upon us." Paul Tillich

After spilling my innards about having enough yesterday, I did say something about the possibility of a nugget or two still coming if I hung in there.  Sometimes those nuggets are buried in some pretty smelly ground and it would be easy to give up the search.  But today, I dug a little deeper because of three words: The title of Paul Tillich's sermon - "You are accepted".   I wanted to find that nugget.  So I had to dig a little past the smell of the "sin" talk (don't get me started on the baggage that word brings to the table).  

I am constantly looking for acceptance from others in order to validate the acceptance of myself.  I understand that.  I am no more looking to the cosmos for acceptance.  I am here.  That tells me that the cosmos has accepted me into the midst of its energy and substance.  For as long as I have existed on this planet, I have been accepted by whatever forces keep this world rotating.  The moment I succumb to a disease or tragedy is the moment that I am not accepted.  

The real challenge of acceptance is within myself.  I think there is enough evidence that some others have accepted me.  Even those who eventually un-accept me due to choice or circumstances, they initially accepted me, if only out of ignorance.  

So do I need the acceptance of others for me to accept myself?  Maybe some days I do.  Maybe I just need to be needed and that is what gives me the acceptance I look for.  I still don't understand being accepted without a contribution to that which is doing the accepting.  I can't expect a relationship to survive if I do nothing to help it grow. Therefore, I am not accepted just on the fact that I exist, I am accepted for what I add to life and add to relationships.  Maybe that is what I can look at for a more internal introspection.  What do I bring to me?  What do I add to my life that makes it one I want to continue having?  Now maybe after I make that list... I will find there that I have found acceptance within me.  That's a good place to start.  

Day 31: I don't want to leave the ocean

 Computers had my attention in Grade 10.  I loved computer science.  It was back in the mid eighties when Basic was the language that students were sinking their skills into and Commodore 64's were the computers we used.  I found my creativity in that class.  When my classmates were trying to get a butterfly to fly across the screen, I was composing Christmas carols in two part harmony.  I literally made the computers sing.  

Programming was simple back then.   That is why they called it Basic.  When I got to college, I found myself still enthralled with computers.  I even got a job as a part time computer tutor for other students.  My most memorable task was getting printers unstuck for them and retrieving programs they accidentally deleted.  That was in the early nineties and our computers then were IBM 386 clones.  My computer tutoring job got me connected with the colleges computer technician, and I even got a little experience with the clone building that he did.  It was fascinating.  Looking back... I almost wish I could have left it at fascinating... but I decided to go further.  

When I graduated from that college, I enrolled at a technical institute in Computer Systems Technology.  Little did I know that I was swimming too far into the ocean with no way to keep my head about the water I was in.  I didn't even make the four months of the first semester.  I found myself at the subway  enroute to take an exam in C++ and deciding then to let it all go.  I didn't finish, I quit, I abandoned it... whatever verb I use, I can only find myself either trying to whitewash the experience or remind myself of the shame I felt at not feeling smart enough to keep up.  

I have started a lot of things in my life.  The passion to learn something new is constant with me, but seeing most attempts through to some sort of completion... well that is a whole different story.  Now that I am my mid fifties, I have a different perspective.  Did I really expect myself to finish every attempt I made at further education?  I don't know.  Why would I spend the money and time if not to finish?  

I am fluent in English only... but I have made attempts at French, Spanish, German, Greek and ASL.  I find languages fascinating, but I have never had the strong community to enforce my use of the languages in my day to day activities.  But I am glad I tried.

All those attempts at learning something new, that never saw completion, were still life lessons.  I am going to be fifty-five in less than a week, and I still want to attempt learning new things.  I just don't have the high expectations I had when I was younger.  I realize that starting something can be valuable.  If I needed the assurance of completion everytime I started something, I might not start anything.  I never know when I start a project, if I can make something of it, or if I will have to scrap it mid way... but I need to be able to have the confidence to still begin.  

* * * 

At this point... Day 29... I am ready to let go, quit, abandon AFL.  I am not getting much out of the readings in the last weeks and I find myself scrolling through the Whats App messages at alarming speed.  I wonder if I am not trying to get more out of the course because I am not struggling as much with how I see things.  I don't need Freud or Nietzsche to help convince me that I'm okay being agnostic or atheist... I think I am just okay.  I am coming around to being okay with how I see the world.  Maybe part of me still wants to understand a few things, but I don't think I need the struggle.  I am grateful for some amazing voices I have been exposed to over the last two years of taking AFL.  I have found friends in some of those voices.  I just feel that I can't keep up and I am not all that disappointed in my lack of keeping up.  Maybe it's okay to say "Enough".  

Am I there yet?  I don't know.  I still open my AFL emails, hoping for something that I don't need Pete's "Coles Notes" summary in order to make sense of it.  Maybe I can hang in there until Good Friday and find a nugget or two yet.  I probably won't be back next year.  I think I might try something else for my Lenten journey.  I might still write, but maybe I can be less dependant on someone else's curriculum.  

I think I am getting too old to be someone I'm not and my time needs to be spent with less unnecessary struggling.  Maybe even that is the takeaway.  How can I know that I'm over my head if I don't first venture out in the water?  I don't want to leave the ocean; I just need to be able to swim enough to get to where I can still enjoy the water without the fear of drowning. 

Day 30: Wolves in the Snow

 This morning I awoke with an email in my inbox from my husband.  He sent me a link to a 2000 pc Ravensburger puzzle on Amazon, entitled "Wolves in the Snow".  I was amazed by the beauty of the picture.  The print is called Wolves in the Snow.  As I looked at the detail and the different elements in the picture, my mind went to yesterday's reflection and I was somewhat conflicted.  I wondered if I was odd that I couldn't grasp the significance or inspiration behind the artwork of Barnet Newman.  I felt like my mind was drifting back to the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" again.  Am I supposed to be like the crowd and fall into amazement at the lack of artistry?  Maybe the lack is what is important, but I can't find it beautiful.  So this morning my husband's email was timely.  He sent me an affirmation that someone understands what I find beautiful, because he finds it beautiful.  

I was looking for my next 2000 pc puzzle, and it came in the form of a beautiful gift and gesture from someone who is trying to make me happy in this journey of life that provides so much sadness.  So as I work on this puzzle, I will hold him in my heart and embrace the beauty and inspiration that reaches my heart and let go of the stuff that doesn't.  

I don't want to pretend to get something out of these AFL readings when in reality some of them fly way over my head.  Authentic Lent is exactly that... Authentic.  So I will leave the Newman art for others to find space for and inspiration on their journey.  I won't deny them that experience.  But I am back to my wilderness pictures and my "Give me Bob Ross" conclusion.  And I don't have to feel alone in my passion because the person I love the most in this world, shares it with me.