Keeping Faith

I’ve been wondering lately what is faith? What is it and how does it function in people’s lives? As a word, it has been mostly used in religious context, but I think it needs to be explored more broadly. Perhaps faith is just believing in what comes next, and we don’t know what comes next, do we? "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," so said Mark Twain. I want my faith to be in that what I know is so.

It has become my belief that as we connect with others, that it is in this connection and in our relationships that we allow others to know what is possible, and for me, this is becoming my faith. That that which we don’t know, gets made explicit in and by other people. If we don’t know love, we learn that through others. If we haven’t traveled to someplace, we can go there through the stories of those who have been. If we’ve never felt safe, we may find ourselves in a place of safety, if we allow it, amidst those who welcome and celebrate us. 

What we want can be evident in our longings, and even in our envy of what others have or have accomplished. And as we find more and more of how amazing life can be, along with it comes this sense of abundance, so much abundance that we can only want to share it. This then becomes love. Love that doesn’t differentiate between who is worthy and who is not, love that doesn’t differentiate between what I may or may not get back in return. We live and love to show ourselves and each other what is possible, and if you think of all the people, all the stories that live through history, that is a lot of possibility. 

As we travel through our lives, creating the path in front of us, we call into our lives the people and experiences we desire to expand the view of what can be. I wait in wonderment then, each moment, each day. And I look back in gratitude for all the possibilities that each person in my life has made me aware of. 

First Kiss

Throughout our lives, for many of us, we wonder, am I lovable? Under the word lovable, we can have whole list of what this means. It can mean popular, pretty, even being acknowledged (or accoladed) for our achievements. Sometimes, it just means being seen. Research on relationships are now showing that love in all it’s incarnations pretty much shows up the same, it is being loved and accepted just as we are, it is being heard when we have something to say, it is having our feelings acknowledged and accepted, not swept aside either by words or by the pained look on someone else’s face that might say, “Your emotions are too much for me.” 

This being said, I know now, that for much of my really young life, I didn’t feel loved, and I never felt accepted at the Catholic grade school I attended. At school, I felt generally safe, much safer than I did at home, but I did not feel accepted. I was jealous of the popular girls and boys, too, the ones who talked about having cabins to go to on the weekends, who took family vacations, and who seemed to have an easy confidence that I lacked. It pains me a little now, to remember the small child I was, trying to navigate the world with only my mother’s voice in my head, telling me how she was not accepted in the neighborhood we lived in; and how we were not rich like all the other people in all the social circles we traveled in. Always on the peripheral. 

And so, when in about 7th grade, a boy told me he liked me, I thought he was joking and laughed at him. I didn’t try to make him feel bad, by laughing and joking it off, I seriously could not believe that he could like me. I didn’t know how to like myself, and so I wasn’t able to imagine anyone else liking me. When I found out from my best friend’s brother, who was in the same grade as us, that I’d hurt this kid’s feelings, I felt bad and confused. But wasn’t he trying to make fun of me? I guess not. 

Then the next year in 8th grade, still hanging out with my best friend, and having access to boys because of her brother, one night, I actually kissed and made out with a popular boy, actually, probably the most popular boy in the school. Blond, athletic, sweet and from a good, well-off family. I was surprised by this, but again, confused. Did he really like me? How could he possibly? I was not “one of them.” I was the outsider, if only in my own head, carefully kept within these boundaries, still, by my mother’s voice. If she didn’t know how to belong, how could I? This was not my first kiss, but one of them. I never expected that we would ‘go’ with each other, or that this meant anything more than goofing off and exploring as kids do. 

That was more than 40 years ago. This makes me feel ancient. More than 40 years ago. This past fall, I attended a service for my best friend’s brother. He died young after living a hard life. A lot of people showed up at his memorial, I showed up to be there for my friend. Surprisingly, a handful of people from our Catholic grade school showed up, and one of them, the popular boy that I had kissed in 8th grade. I felt that same sense of insecurity creeping up, but by now, I’d worked through some of it. I could shake hands, make conversation, and know, that I was not ‘less than’ any of these people. It was a nice feeling. What I didn’t expect was to hear him say, “Of course I remember you, you were my first kiss.” 

My reaction was surprise, I hadn’t thought about that ‘make out session’ in my best friend’s bedroom for many years. And so I said, “Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot.” He was like, “How could you forget?” And so, while I so under valued myself, this guy had remembered, and carried with him, me, as his first kiss. So, you see, when we don’t value ourselves, it often stands in the way of believing that others value or love us. I think this is what happened with my mom. In many ways, she stayed the poor child with the immigrant dad, feeling under valued, not being able to see how valued she was , and still is. Still hoping to prove that she is lovable. I understand this too well, and so, only 40 years later, I am learning more each day to love myself, to value myself. To each day, give myself, my first kiss. 

House of Dreams

I had a really strange dream last night. It was a dream about the house that I grew up in. Place is something that is hard to put your finger on, because places change. The earth remains, but geography, too, changes. We actually have so many changes, micro-changes, if you will, going on all the time. Our hair grows and falls out, our skin ages, roads erode and are repaired. Yet sometimes, we find comfort in what remains the same. I’m not entirely sure what all this big house over on Sheridan Avenue represents to me, but it must be more than I realize, because this dream has shaken me a bit. 

Actually I have recurring dreams of walking the street of Sheridan Avenue between 40th and 42nd streets, and the way almost always leads up the sloping driveway to my childhood home. This is the way I walked to school, over and over and over. Starting in kindergarten, all the way up to high school, when I would walk (and not take the bus). So, for many years I walked those blocks. For many years, this home was the safest place I knew, and ironically, not always the most safe place, too. This was the home where I’d lay sleeping as a kid, and my older brother, locked out of the home late at night, would climb up to my second story window and knock on my window to go let him in. Scared the bejeezus out of me, to find my brother there, but I obediently got up and let him in. Strange things could happen in a house with 8 kids. 

This is the house where my younger brothers could behead my Barbies and get away with it. The house where I threw my Chatty Baby doll out my second story window because kids in the neighborhood said they’d catch her, and she’d be OK. They didn’t and she wasn’t, and when I held her smashed little body, crying on the staircase, my mom had no sympathy, just “What did you think would happen?” And yet those stairs held comfort for me in their solidness, the high ceilings in that home left me space to imagine. The very walls were the protection that I longed for. 

So last night, when I dreamt that this home had become a restaurant, and the whole end of the block a mini-mall, I was furious and bereft, crying out to no-one in particular, “But this was the home I grew up in.” There was nothing of a family home left, only a bar at the front end, where I could see in, and what I just imagined as little tables filling in all the spaces in the rest of the house. There was no more ownership, no connection left to who I once was. As I get older, instead of wanting to let go, I want to hold on. I want to hold onto all the places I’ve been, all the people I’ve known, I want to cherish and be grateful for all of my life. How do we gather up the “all of us” I wonder? How do we stay connected on this changing planet, in changing bodies, with changing relationships? I don’t know what the pull is, but I do know, that I need to drive over to Sheridan Avenue, and just sit and know that that big house is still there, and it is still a home. A place that was once, my home, full of dreams, full of wonder, full of fear, full of me, full of us. 

with

moving forward

not against

stepping into

not stepping back

gently untying the ties that bind

leaving politeness and 

entering kind

the rhythm that 

feeds me

is the rhythm

I crave

it cannot be contained

it does not behave

but carries us 

forward gently but sure

there is healing

there is no cure

Easy for You, Hard for Me

How easy it is to place this line in the sand, the air; in our lives. Easy for you, but don’t you know it’s so hard for me. A bit like a child trying to keep up with grown-up stride, but always unable. Unable to walk side by side, unable to keep pace. For a long time I’d felt like this, but unable to tell anyone, just thinking that I somehow felt like a teenager, to everyone else’s grown-up. Stuck, I didn’t want to grow up to be like anyone I’d known, and yet, still looking for someone to look up to. 

This can sometimes be the plight of us who grow up in this culture where intellectual pursuits are rewarded and if you are bright, even the most difficult task, is actually, easy. So, when we as children are told, this is difficult, and we find it’s not, it creates a sense that the person who told us this would be hard, is well, either lying or perhaps, not so bright themselves, and so we are in a way, left to our own devices. 

This also creates the weird paradox that being smart is the be all and end all and that if you just apply yourself, you will be successful. And what we ask, is this success? To be like you? Step one on the quest for self. So now, I know, that much of what was missing for me was not just a role-model, but a sense of being whole, a sense of integrating my emotions into my intellectual self. A sense of having an open heart chakra, a sense of not competing with others, but of just being. I had to deconstruct all the roles that people play to make themselves the adult, understanding now, that I was not the only one feeling like a child inside, but I was one of the few willing to admit, to naming this. 

I had to understand how people hide behind titles like rev, like president, and vp, and professor, and dr and how these labels only represent a passing through of levels of learning or assessment and do not in any way measure a person’s wholeness, a person’s ability to care or to respond appropriately, or even in their own, or others’ best interests. I don’t feel like a teenager anymore, I feel like a person. I have ages within me, but alongside I have compassion and a much bigger scope of understanding how we come to choose how much of ourselves to share and how much to hide. 

Once I so often thought, easy for you, hard for me, now I know, life is hard, life is easy, life is a beautiful mess, in a random ordered world. I don’t have to hold onto being the outsider, I don’t have to be afraid to step into the often stupidness of our systems, of our ineptness, of our humanness, there is no Santa, no one in the sky with a big book, we have each other, we are enough. 

blue screen

living in computer generated space

becomes an exercise in disappointment

of being alone

of missing out

of waiting for that next email

or text

that will connect us 

to that which makes us feel

so much smaller

than we really are

i want to escape from behind the desk

with the computer

with the glowing screen

with the constant ping

of letters from the rev mrs isaiah watson

whose husband just died

but in the lord

who wants my social security number

to deposit millions from an overseas account

and the ads from the merchant where 

i just shopped over the weekend

reducing me to an object 

to be used

manipulated

and I smile

too smart for that

deleting the email

but not turning off the 

screen

not leaving the office

afraid of what real life might 

have to offer  

Let Rise

I am, in some ways, a month behind in my life. I’ve been struggling with a horrible cold, and then the mind numbing effects of cold medication, and once again, I’ve missed paying bills on time, something that at one time I would be mortified to even say aloud, let alone write for the world to see. And so, yet, even in my writing, I feel like there’s so much I want to write about, so many projects and again, it seems like not enough time. My mother often accused me of cleaning with “a lick and a promise.” I don’t want to live my whole life this way, but sometimes, it seems the only way to get through, is to just get on with it. Right? I mean, who really wants to dust? 

So, to make some sense, to not fall too far behind, and then so, to stave off giving up; I’m trying to recap. I don’t think I ever quite took the time to write about the process of becoming a writer, at least not in the same way I’ve been trying to mark the process of becoming a therapist. Part of this I think, is this awful fear I carry with me, that if you talk about something you jinx it, and especially being a writer comes with all this baggage of how hard it is, how you never get paid for it, and how confusing, even, the whole process is now. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked why don’t I just self-publish. The process isn’t like becoming a therapist. As much as I struggle with the details of the whole getting licensed part of my therapist career, it is a clear path, as opposed to writing.  

As much as I’m juggling writing and therapy, when I try to put my writing on the ‘back burner’ it just won’t stay there. My writing is such an integral part of my life, it won’t take a back burner or a back seat, it wants to drive. So, unexpectedly this past year, a short piece that I wrote was published in an anthology, The People’s Apocalypse, and finally, my writing was in an actual book. One of the editors, Ariel Gore, coached me with the re-writes of my memoir. It still makes me smile. And just last month, I connected with the writer Melissa J. Haynes, her book, Learning to Play With a Lion’s Testicles: Unexpected Gifts From the Animals of Africa had caught my attention (after being one of Jimmy Fallon’s top ten do not read books). 

The book is a beautiful adventure memoir, as Melissa travels externally to Africa, and also journeys inward, on a quest for reconciliation. I was impressed with her risk-taking on more than one level, and as we connected, she was impressed with my writing, and she offered me a guest blog on her site (melissajhaynes.com). Her generous sharing of her blog space and of her support for my writing has ushered in a more fearlessness in myself in making connections with others. Trust, yes, trust has been a big theme for me this year. Trusting myself, trusting others, trusting in the universe; this seems to be the antidote for risk, and it’s companion fear. I need to move into the next year letting go of fear, entering into the warmth of trust, and all that it might foment. I want to come in out of the drafty back porch and exist in the warm kitchen of life. Mix, knead, let rise, punch down, let rise, bake.