Michelle Meech

The Great Sermon Ego

2008-11-06T07:22:00Z

NOTE: I just have to say I'm extraordinarily proud to be a US citizen today. I deeply admire both Barak Obama and John McCain for the fine speeches they gave last night and I'm amazingly hopeful that the country so decisively chose hope over fear. I’m not that old but I have never witnessed the kind of jubilation I did last night. But Election Tuesday did not shine with all the brilliance it could because Proposition 8 was passed in CA, which is the first amendment in CA history to deny rights to...(read more)

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #14: Daemon

2008-06-27T07:39:00Z

I honestly don’t know how it happens so fast. I spent the most incredible week at home in Bend with my friends. I had a wonderful day back in Berkeley and then… something started to slip. The entire day I’ve been fighting this daemon. Well, not really fighting him as much as trying to pretend, ignore and otherwise scoot around him, “Don’t worry… just keep going. If we don’t look at him then perhaps he’s not really there.” But he niggled and prodded and over the course of the day, the pieces of me...(read more)

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #13: Yearning

2008-05-06T10:22:00Z

I’ve decided that my class in Pastoral Theology is less about learning how to be with other people and more about learning to truly be with ourselves. Of course, I get the joke… I can’t do one without the other. Damn these teachers who know what they’re doing!

It seems that all semester I’ve been coming face-to-face with the demons who have devoured my soul… one by one… just like the dancing girls who come in from stage-left across the front, kicking in unison to some banal band music.

The following is a result of one such bugger-of-a-member of my own personal chorus line.

And now… on with the show!

Sometimes I yearn.

I don’t know what wakes it,

this simple, subtle creature,

but once it emerges from its den of sleep

all I long for is relief

from its insatiability.

My thinking stops

my heart beats, suspended in mock openness, readiness

and every cell of my body seeks to be overcome.

A wide-open mouth to a breast

Eyes expecting loving gazing

Upon that which will grant its own fruition…

Like a docking procedure.

Not desire… nor want, need, wish or covet

Those are not a body’s words

But a mind’s decision to possess a thing

Rather a body’s movement towards

That which it knows not

Something…

it can lock its sights on.

Is it instinct…

this body’s language

that the mind cannot grasp?

Sometimes I want to know why this body yearns

because I want to stop its pain.

The yearning starts and I follow

down this path of trying to find

a something which it seeks

but I never do.

Find it.

There is only this gaping hole,

that never gets fed.

If I could just crawl into the arms of the Lover and be the Beloved,

If I could just feel his Breath fill my lungs and be the Word he speaks,

If I could just suffer his pulsing life into my own and know sweet liberation in that moment of union,

I would never have to dine again.

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #12: Extreme 40

2008-04-07T05:29:00Z

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was martyred 40 years ago on April 4. I was born 40 years ago on April 6. My mother once told me that while she was in the hospital giving birth, there were riots going on outside the hospital in Youngstown, OH in reaction to the assassination. Dr. King was 39 when he was gunned down. As I write this, I have one more day of being 39.

I was telling this to a friend of mine and she said, “It sounds like a relay.”

40 is a big number in Christianity… Noah got 40 days and 40 nights of rain. The Jews were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. Lent is 40 days long (because we don’t count Sundays which are feast days and not really a part of Lent… Christ is always risen on a Sunday).

Recently we read in our Pastoral Theology class about what it means to be 40 and single. Apparently, I'm supposed to be "addressing the fantasy of the Ideal American Family by accepting the possibility of never marrying and accepting the possibility of not having my own biological children" in addition to learning how to define myself through my work... yadda yadda yadda. You've heard it before.

So, I’m turning 40 tomorrow. I can feel my feet on the precipice and things are moving fast.

The wind is wild up here as I look down and out and over this abyss. Things are coming at me from all directions, swirling memories around me sink in through my skin where they slip into some black pool of nothingness. Life outside… things, people, events… moves so much faster than they were before… so precious, so beautiful… while each moment lasts forever. And these pieces of my identity, parts of my memories, all starting to make sense and clicking into place like the final pieces to the sky of some big cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Meanwhile, I stand still on this precipice. Still. Calm. Waiting.

Instead of the usual set-up for yesterday’s Eucharist, we read portions of Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (which I wholeheartedly commend to you), followed by a reflection on today’s world from one of us. It was powerful to hear Dr. King’s words 40-odd years later. He talked about being an extremist:

“So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

And here I am waiting on the precipice. I have to ask myself why. Why am I waiting? What am I waiting for?

And I listen. And I hear this answer coming from some place deep in my belly. I hear:

This precipice is just that… an in-between place of staying on safe ground and jumping off into an abyss. You have jumped off before and have landed hard, with bruises and broken body parts. You have also stayed on safe ground before and gotten nowhere. The precipice is a choice point but it's not the choice you think it is.

The extremist path is not one that does the extreme merely because the extreme is there. So there will be no jumping. But it is also a path, so there will be no standing still. The extremist path is one that moves deliberately forward without worrying what the landscape ahead might look like. The extremist path is one of being led by the heart. The extremist path is to love from a place of knowing exactly who I am and seeing without fear. The extremist path is one dancing step at a time.

I’m 40 and it’s time to be an extremist.

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #11: Digging

2008-03-24T21:49:00Z

I don’t know exactly what it is about our society that somehow “dis-allows” us to experience pain in our lives.

Is it the pharmaceutical companies who are now so prevalently advertising miracle cures for every illness? Is it the myth of “American ingenuity” that tells us to “just do it”? Is it the corporate culture, fraught with insidious catch-phrases such as “forward thinking”, “being proactive”, “run with the big dogs”? Is it the 20^th century phenomenon of snow-birds who move south in the winter to avoid the harshness of winter? Is it the trendy shift to marking a death with a “life celebration” instead of a funeral? Or is it how our spirituality has dissolved like sugar into a sticky syrupy goo that expresses itself in something like The Secret or Joel Olstein’s Become a Better You?

All of these things can be helpful, yes. But are they speaking to truth?

I admit my own issues in this. For those of you that know the Enneagram, I’m a 9. I can reframe anything into a pretty picture. My avoidance of pain and negativity knows no bounds when I’m “at my best.” My own personal catch-phrase should be something like “Silver-linings-R-US” So, those of you who have read any of my posts on here might be a bit confused because for the most part, I don’t dwell on the sunny side of the street.

The explanation is a simple one. I don’t find it particularly helpful in my search for truth to refuse to look into the shadows and boarded-up doorways of my life. I don’t think it’s very wise for me to continue to view the painful parts of my life as that which needs to be reinterpreted through an “enlightened” mind. I don’t believe that I’m meant to hold back from expressing myself anymore for fear that I might offend someone.

I am thankful for the wisdom of the Christian liturgical cycle, Easter joy, Pentecost glory, Advent/Christmas maturity and Lenten desolation. My Lenten discipline this year was to give up sugar and shopping… two of my most heavily used crutches for when I want to escape from something painful. I was not 100% successful, but then discipline is not about always withstanding the temptation. Discipline is about coming back when you’ve missed the mark. But that’s a whole ‘nother post…

However, this same tradition, which is intimately tied to Judaism, also contains remnants of this need to “fix” our experience. I submit the following examples: the golden calf made out of desolation when Moses didn’t come back fast enough, the overthrow and destruction of the people who originally lived in the promised land, turning Jews into scapegoats throughout the centuries, the entire book of Proverbs. Even Job, most likely the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible and arguably one of the most difficult for people to accept, has been found by recent scholars to have been tampered with by later (but still ancient) textual editors in an attempt to make Job’s experience more palatable. Humanity, it seems, has never been able avoid the attempt to make ourselves feel better.

But why should we feel better? Do we really think that feeling better is the same as feeling free? Is “comfort” the same as liberation? Is happiness the same as salvation?

I say no.

I say that to think that life should be ever-comfortable and “nice” is an affront to our own humanity and ultimately an affront to the ground of being from which we come.

… said the person who loves bubble-baths and chocolate and massages and IKEA. Yay irony!

My point is this… that I have no choice. I have to continue digging in the dirt, finding the roots of my own false identity, regardless of what I find there. This is my “engaged spirituality”, this is my holy work.

If I’m not willing to meet and engage with the darker parts of myself, then I never see my whole experience. It’s only when I’m able to welcome my whole experience, I am able to understand that all of it is precious… and therefore, all of me is precious.

And this, I say… is liberation.

How does liberation express itself in your experience?

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #10: View

2008-03-16T07:01:00Z

View...

I live in a gerbil-cage. Well, a habitrail, really.

Typically, when I walk into my building, I enter directly into a hallway that is narrow and white. The floor ramps down quickly and steeply, so that I nearly always “run” down as it feels like I’m being shot down a chute into the constricted bare white tunnel that constitutes the institutional hallway. I stop at the elevator and turn my key to call the box down to me so that I can ride up a few flights to my floor. I get off the elevator into a hallway that turns this-way-and-that. I arrive at my door and walk into my cozy little 9x14 room that has many of my favorite things waiting for me… my nest. If I’ve been gone for a while, there’s a good chance that my room will be stuffy upon my entrance since there is no airflow when the door is closed. I often keep my door slightly ajar so that I can maintain this airflow, even when I’m down the hall attending to other needs.

My window looks out over a lovely little garden where there is a fountain and around this garden, the habitrail continues on several levels. The sidewalks I can see from my window wind from one entrance to another, up short flights of stairs and around corners… to the chapel, the administrative building, the dorm, the parking lot, the refectory. I see people coming and going all the time, navigating their way to a class or a meeting. I watch fellow students on their way to chapel and teachers on their way to classes, staff members on their way to meetings. From my window, I can also see the entrances to the two most heavily used classrooms in our school and even into the windows of one of them. I hear the classes getting out or going on break as the chatter and door noise increase. At night, things are much less active though. The only thing that interrupts the pleasant noise of the fountain is when the security guard checks the classrooms, that is, unless a stray drunken undergraduate wanders into our little world.

I don’t really have to leave this gerbil habitrail, this seeming paradise of tunnels. The refectory serves all necessary meals during the week and on the weekend, I could just saunter a few steps off this city block, on one of those extended gerbil tunnels that has a dead end, to get a burrito or grab a few grocery items. The wonderful library is directly across the street. The biggest problem is that the coffee in the refectory is really bad and the places a few steps away aren’t much better. So either I suffer (which I do much of the time for the sake of convenience) or I leave my little habitrail and venture to the Starbucks down the hill. It would obviously be easier if they had Peet's coffee in one of those gerbil water bottles for us.

This is a small world I’m in. I nearly always laugh when people ask me how I like living in Berkeley. I want to say, “I wouldn’t know. I live in a gerbil cage.” But I realize that this question is usually a cursory one that is meant to be a social tool of surface-level engagement. It’s kind of like asking “How ya doin?”… they usually don’t really want to hear the actual answer.

Yes, this is a small world I’m in. I’ve heard it referred to by some in our community as a fishbowl or a petrie dish… depending on how deprecating one is trying to be of the situation. We live, eat, work, relax and get sick together (as you can imagine, the germs fly pretty fast in this community). The only thing we don’t do is sleep together… well, most of us anyway. If this weren’t a seminary, I have a feeling that would be happening a lot more than it is.

Once in a while, though, I get a glimpse. I walk by a certain window or along a certain gerbil path and see beyond. Since we’re on a hill (referred to as Holy Hill, by the way) we can see quite literally for miles from the right places. Most of Berkeley is relatively flat and when the hills start, they are pretty steep. From certain points on the campus, I can see all the way across the bay to San Francisco. On a clear day, I can see forever… well, at least to the Golden Gate Bridge.

So, tonight, as I was headed along one of the gerbil tunnels to continue studying in my cozy little nest of a room, I heard Rumi being recited on my ipod... and I had this desire to see the view. I walked to where the view of the bay is most prominent and just stood there for a few moments. The sky was clear and I could see the city lights twinkling. Now, I haven’t had a particularly stressful day. As a matter of fact, it’s been rather enjoyable… even though much of it was full of schoolwork. But as I stood there, I felt this calm come over me that made me smile.

Things get so tight in our own little worlds sometimes. We dig tunnels and caves all the time. We stay close to what is familiar. We substitute busyness for a sense of purpose. We find ourselves in a gerbil tunnel, being directed this-way-and-that. Many of our needs are taken care of in this habitrail and that's, perhaps why we like it so much. Most of the time, these weird little worlds are our own making. Other times, we’ve decided to accompany someone else into theirs. Sometimes we pay a lot of money for it… like one does for grad school.

But the view… that is important. For some people, the view can be scary… it’s big, confusing, unfamiliar. For other people, the view is distracting… needing to be mapped out or conquered in some way. For me, I have to say, the view sometimes seems inconvenient… it requires effort to remember that it’s there and then a conscious decision to participate in it and put aside, for just a moment, the 100 pages of family systems theory I have to read by Monday, the religious dialogue paper I have due this week, the mid-term I have to turn in for New Testament… yadda yadda yadda.

That’s why the glimpses help… when I pass by the right window or am on the right sidewalk... or hear Rumi in my ear. It’s a tantalizing reminder of the grand scheme and our precious place in it. And I am called to respond. Thank God I am called to respond.

Like the human tapping on the gerbil tunnel… like God tapping on my soul.

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #9: Wound

2008-02-13T01:21:00Z

Wound...

So much of our experience is wound around our wound. Its presence in our life is so subtle that we often don’t recognize it for what it is. It appears seemingly out of nowhere sometimes, and other times you can see it coming at you like a freight train but you can do nothing to stop it or step out of the way. We have many wounds that we are walking around with and some people have more than others. We are the walking wounded. And if we’re not careful about tending to our wounds properly, we can become the walking dead.

I have walked a long, lonely road to be sitting in seminary where I’m studying to become a priest. Most of this road has been of my own creation. At some point my identity got wrapped around the notion that I was not welcome and that I’m merely being tolerated by the people around me who do belong here… the people who are invited. This is my long, lonely road. And I’ve been walking it all of my life. This is my wound.

This wound has to do with articulation… how I articulate myself… doing the right thing, saying the right thing, looking the right way, giving the right gift, creating the right atmosphere… that’s always been in question and it continues to be. I’m blessed though, because I know without a doubt that the core of who I am is something that is right and good and true. This has never been in question. I’ve just always been confused and profoundly hurt as to why it hasn’t been welcome… and that is a big part of why I disappear and try to avoid putting myself “out there”. This is when I stop moving, when I become the “walking dead.”

I’ve been attending to this wound for several years now. It has gotten to the point that I can almost be flippant about it as I notice how it controls what I do and say. This wound is why I’m a people pleaser. I don’t want my articulation to offend anyone because if it does, then that’s just more proof that I’m not supposed to be here. I watch myself avoid conflict or dance around the truth or devalue my contribution. These are all ways in which I manifest in this world. And I’m learning to develop other ways of being that are not controlled by my wound. As I learn these new patterns, I can feel the wound healing.

And then… out of nowhere… something happens. It feels like the wound is ruthlessly ripped open and prodded with a hot iron poker. And then I watch myself take the salt in my hand and grind it deeply into my own open, bleeding wound.

It’s easy for me to tell the story of what happened to me today but that's really not what matters. In essence it was just someone expressing anger over what I had done… how I had articulated myself. And my reaction was to spiral down and think that I have no right to be here. I wanted to leave seminary. As I write this, I still want to leave because right now the force of the interaction has obliterated all other sensory input. I feel utter shame. But I’m trying to hold the tension… even though my grip is desperate and shaky.

I have already forgiven this person for reacting the way that they did. I understand that people get caught in their own reaction and I absolutely forgive that. But now, when faced with forgiving myself for not knowing the right thing to do, my compassion is completely dry. All I hear in my head is that “I have no right to be here”… “who am I kidding that I think I can be a priest”… “no one else who has been an Episcopalian would have made such a mistake, much less a Christian.”

And here I am on the long, lonely road again.

My calendar this year has, as its photo for February, the steaming Minerva Terrace at Yellowstone National Park. If you’ve never seen this amazing creation, the mineral deposits create a thick white crust around pools of scalding hot water. But the white crust looks like ice, like something found on one of the polar ice caps. And because there is steam in the photo, you wonder who is melting the ice. However, if I were there in person, I’m sure that the sulfuric air and the heat would be giving me more of the story. The senses can get mixed up sometimes and give wrong signals. It’s only when we step back and assess the full situation that we get a better picture. It’s only when we are willing to hold on to the tension of what we think we are seeing, that the truth can bubble to the surface.

Interestingly enough, underneath the picture is the following statement:

Compassion isn’t some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we’re trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don’t even want to look at.

The calendar is right. It’s so easy to have compassion for other people, most of the time anyway. But to have compassion for ourselves, for our own wounds… that’s another story. I’m not talking about the wound we feel by having our feelings hurt… that’s one that we like to hold on to so we don’t have to face the really deep one. This deep wound is the one that can and quite often does control what we say and do, how we think and react. We are utterly convinced that this wound is a necessary part of our identity and we refuse to let it heal. And we take every opportunity we can to open it up and rub some more salt in it.

The tension created by trying to hold its lying message until we can see the truth is too great... and so we believe it again and again and again.

So, I’m going to change my statement a bit…

We are the walking wounded. And if we’re not careful about tending to our wounds compassionately, we become the walking dead.

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #8: Unpuckering

2007-12-20T22:11:00Z

This has been an intense time for me.

3 ½ months of reading and reading and reading and reflecting and writing and going to church and going to church and reading and deciphering Hebrew and reading and reading and writing and reflecting and researching and reading and going to church and planning a liturgy and reading and reading and writing and reflecting and reading and deciphering Hebrew and reading and then synthesizing all of that into a few papers and exams.

Whew! In a meeting with my faculty advisor early in the semester, he asked how I was doing and I said that I felt as though I’d been assaulted by the readings. He looked concerned and then laughed when he realized I was kidding… only I wasn’t really kidding.

And then… coming home… more intensity… hugging and hugging and hugging and hugging and smiling and kissing and hugging and loving and listening and laughing and hugging and telling and sharing and crying and hugging and listening and smiling and hugging and singing and dancing and hugging and hugging and laughing and laughing and laughing and hugging and loving and kissing and smiling.

Whew! I almost wish I had a faculty advisor for this one too.

It’s curious to watch how I deal with all this intensity. At school, the intensity is, well, pretty intense. I was talking to my dad earlier today about it and I told him that this kind of study is so engrossing that before I knew it, a month had gone by and I missed about 9 birthdays. The temptation is to be so utterly focused on the work and the tasks of the community life that all else is forgotten. It isn’t just heady work either, we are constantly being asked to engage and reflect on the content of the classes. But even given all of that challenge, I thrived in that environment. There is something in that kind of work that makes me fully engage. I love it and can meet it head on.

So what about the intensity of being home? You might think I thrive here too. And I do. However, I’m not nearly as graceful with this kind of intensity because I have somehow made the decision (for reasons that I won’t go into right now) that I don’t have much capacity to engage with it, with this overwhelming love. As a matter of fact, when I’m faced with this kind of love and generosity, I “pucker up.” It’s a useful phrase from a less-than-eloquent metaphor. Puckering up for me does not mean that I’m about to kiss someone. No… puckering up for me means that grab on, hunker down, tense up… it means a lack of flow.

When faced with love, my initial reaction is disbelief. I have to fight most of the time to be able to accept it. Sometimes the only thing that gets me to that place is the knowledge that “this person” needs me to accept their love. It’s not a great way to go about it, but it can be a way to open the door, or to use my metaphor, to relax and “unpucker” just a bit.

So, I don’t do well with this kind of intensity. However, I have to say that I’ve gotten better at it with most of my friends. Much of the time I’m actually able to accept this amazing wave of love that overwhelms me and pulls me under. As with the ocean, it seems that when I stop struggling, I’m able to breathe and just swim. I'm happy to report that most of my friendships are just like this. I get swept up by a wonderful wave and it's quite amazing.

And then there are people for whom I have deeper, more intense feelings. This never goes well for me. The puckering happens so fast that I never really have a chance and so I just go away. I can’t even look them in the eyes for fear that they will see it… or perhaps it is a fear that I will feel it and it will come spilling out… all messy and unwelcome. I’ve been trying to imagine what this must look like from the outside… a blank stare, a flat affect, an inability to hold a meaningful conversation because of the 10 malicious directives going through my mind about how to be “less than”… in essence, what it amounts to is a disappearance.

Lately though, there is a growing awareness that I cannot do this anymore. A voice from deep within me is beginning to shout, "NO!" I can no longer abide by my egoic insistence that this is how things have to be. I cannot continue this disappearing act. It’s not true, it’s not honorable, and it’s not loving. I am turning 40 this coming year. So, I have to ask the question, am I really going to spend the rest of my life puckering up? At one time in my life, the puckering was important and probably helpful. Now it just causes me pain as I clumsily interact or not interact with those for whom I have deep affection.

But I’m also aware that I don’t know how to do this… How exactly does one un-pucker? With some sort of cosmic plunging device? I’m being a little silly with this metaphor, of course, but the question is the perennial one: How do I stop getting in the way of love?

Any thoughts are, of course, welcome and any prayers if you happen to think of it. And just like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life where the bells signify the angels getting wings, if you hear somewhere the sound of a great plunger making that suction sound, who knows… it might just be someone unpuckering.

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series # 7: Sacrifice

2007-11-12T01:43:00Z

Sacrifice

We just re-read the story known as "The Binding of Isaac" for today’s class on the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). For those of you who care look it up, it’s Genesis 22:1-19. The jist of the story is that God commanded Abraham to make a sacrifice to God of his miraculously conceived son Isaac, his blessing from God. Abraham goes to perform the deed out of radical obedience (as Kierkegaard would say) and at the last minute, God sends a messenger to stop Abraham from sacrificing his son, and presents a ram which should be sacrificed instead.

Not one of the more pleasant Abraham stories.

There are many interpretations to this story, all of which have their own validity and none of which I’ll go into right now. What was so significant about this reading is that a few people from class gave a class presentation today on this Abraham story. And because of their presentation, I stopped wondering about how to interpret this story so that it makes sense to me and began to understand what this story means to me. I moved from my head and into my heart.

I suddenly saw myself as Abraham… holding the knife over someone I love.

Then I saw how I do this… all the time.

I don’t actually kill people of course, not in the physical sense. But I do “sacrifice” them to make myself feel better about who I am… which is what my perceived relationship with God is all about… feeling better about who I am. I’m so quickly willing to judge people in comparison to myself and create reasons why I’m ok and they are not… why I’m in right relationship with God and they are not.

Yes… that’s right. They are not in right relationship with God. I have to admit that that is a part of my actual thought process sometimes. Bill Ellis posted a response to Beth Patterson’s journaling on spiritual insults several weeks ago and he said, “We are all jerks, and the sooner we accept that and move on, the happier we will be.” In order to feel better about myself, I judge people for not being willing to do the work so that they too can be in right relationship with God… like me, right? Who knew that I was self-righteous?

Admitted. Are we done now? Not hardly.

Given what I’ve just confessed, I also get to deal with my claims to enlightenment. My stated belief is that we are all God’s children and we are all resting in Love all the time. Do I really believe that? Sometimes I do actually. But most of the time my inner struggle proves otherwise, I’m afraid. Because my inner struggle is about me and how I have to compare myself to others in order to feel better about myself. As it turns out, I don’t really believe my own propaganda after all. There is a significant distance between belief and truth.

If I believed it, then I would be living a life of integrity. I would be in harmony with God and with my brothers and sisters and all of the created order and with myself.

... I would cease to overeat and treat myself with the care that I deserve.

... I would cease to think that people are a puzzle to figure out or a hurdle to get around or a pedastooled entity from whom to seek approval… and just love them.

... I would cease to buy things out of convenience and buy only ethically-produced, sustainable goods.

But I don’t. I don’t really do any of those things. I take a stab at them once in a while… and that feels good for a few minutes. But then I forget again and the ball rolls and rolls and rolls out of control. And there I am, holding the knife of sacrifice over those blessings which God has given me… again.

Why am I not holding the knife of sacrifice over the things which I hold “most dear” instead, the things that tell me I’m ok? Why am I not willing to sacrifice my need to be seen as smart or right? Why am I not willing to sacrifice my need to comfort myself with food? Why am I not willing to sacrifice my need to be autonomous? Why am I not willing to sacrifice my rage, my intolerant tolerance, my Polyanna world-view, my need for ease and convenience? Why am I not willing to sacrifice my incessant need to apologize for being here?

As I write this, I’m sure I’ve posted something like this on here before. And that makes the whole thing even more maddening. I haven’t learned a thing. I haven’t shifted, I haven’t grown, I haven’t changed. I can’t stop. I’m addicted. I’m addicted to... to what? My own struggle? My own smallness? My own "stuff"? There really should be a 12-step program for me out there somewhere… Self-Absorbed Anonymous. I’m joking… not really.

So it appears that I’m an Augustinian* after all, and after I’ve tried so hard to deny his validity in my post-Freudian world of enlightened spiritual awareness and psycho-spirituality. "Doing the work" seems to be work that's done in vain because nothing really changes except that I can articulate my process really well. Just ask me, I know all about what it is to be me.

But what I don't have... I don’t have it within me to stop sacrificing Love.

God’s grace is all I have.

And praying is all I can do.

Then I’ll be in right relationship with God, right? And there goes the ball…

I’m going to go get ice cream.

*St Augustine of Hippo was a Christian theologian from the early 5^th century CE. He has gotten a bad rap as of late because he’s seen as the architect behind the Christian concept of original sin. As I became acquainted with him through reading his works, I realized that what he was also saying is that we are powerless before God and it is God’s love, which is ever-present, that is our salvation. Ultimately, we have no say in the matter… God loves us whether we feel that we “deserve” it or not.

Michelle's Pilgrimage Series #6: Equilibrium

2007-10-06T04:39:00Z

I'm such a '9'... I have this ever-eternal belief that everything will always work out ok. I think that Julian of Norwich just might be my patron saint. When I think of this, I think of Weebles... those toys from the 70's. I don't know if they are still around. I never had them. As a TV kid though, commercials had a big impact on me. Their commercial had this catchy little song... "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down."

You see, Weebles are egg-shaped people-toys with a little weight at the bottom. What an interesting subconscious message... they never fall down. I’m not sure if that’s helpful or if that’s harmful. As with everything, it all depends on how we see it. Then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, right?

<sigh>

So, I’ve been in seminary a little over a month. I think I have found equlibrium. I’m finding a groove, finding a tribe, finding myself. There are actions I have taken to assist with this:

· Taking naps in the afternoon when my thinking is hazy so that I can catch up on the sleep I miss out on when I stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning because that’s when my brain functions best.

· Getting off “Holy Hill” to feel myself again.

· Having sessions with a therapist.

· Allowing my friends to truly take up residence in my heart even when they aren’t here with me.

· Not reading every single word that I’m assigned.

· And the big money winner… stop comparing myself to everyone else.

Comparing myself to everyone else… that’s something I’ve gotten very good at over the years. It’s a hard addiction to give up. How to stop the ongoing thoughts because they just go on and on and on… like variations on a theme.

“Am I ok? Am I more ok than that person or less ok than that person? If that person is ok then what do I have to do to be ok too? If that person is not ok, then that makes me more ok than them, right? That person will never be ok so I don’t even have to think about them. If that person likes me, then I’m ok. And that person didn’t interact with me the way I wanted them to, so they are definitely not ok… so let me figure out exactly why they aren’t ok… hmmm, their Enneagram number is… Or what if they are ok and I’m the one that’s not ok...”

It’s truly maddening. No wonder I zone out to sit-coms as a relief. Everyone is usually ok on a sitcom.

We all have a different take on what ok-ness looks like. For some, it’s success. For others, it’s smart or disciplined, or loved, or free, etc. Mine is being connected, sometimes as a part of the group or sometimes connected to one particular person. Friends is one of my favorite shows... there is always an “other” to be connected to.

When I was a kid, I thought this meant a kind of prince-charming character… someone to see Cinderella for who she is and fall in love with her. We did Cinderella as our 6^th grade musical. I got the part of the wicked step-mother. I attributed that to my ability to sing off-key… and the fact that I already had definite breasts in 6^th grade. But I digress.

The other… who is the other? If it’s not prince charming, than who is it? It’s easy, especially in seminary, to make the other Jesus or even God. I suppose this is just as healthy as anything else. There is some fantastic poetry that talks to this…

When he touches me I clutch the sky’s sheets,

the way other lovers do.

the earth’s weave of clay.

Any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction,

don’t let any prude tell you otherwise.

St Teresa of Avila

What I have been reminded of this past month is that despite my continued attempts to find other “out there”… is never going to happen. I have tried. I have tried everything. It doesn’t work. There is nothing out there to connect to. The ability to be connected to someone else implies that there is a way to be disconnected. As a matter of fact, the whole concept of connection implies that there is an other to be connected to or disconnected from.

My heart says that this mystical lovemaking that Teresa is talking about is not about 2 entities coming together. Instead, it’s about remembering that the lovemaking never stops… even when we don’t remember its happening.

I’m willing to admit that this is my 9 talking… but I suspect that it’s more than that. My 9 is the one who wants to compare self to other in order to connect to other. She wants to turn the conversation I just had about Hinduism with two young gentlemen who passed by my dorm room into a way to figure out what I did to disconnect from them. It’s clear that she hasn’t fully surrendered to God’s lovemaking.

So what do I do with that? I’m not sure that’s the question. I think the question is… do I need to do anything with that?

You see… Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.