Conditions of Impossibility and Cultivating the Awake Life

There are conditions
conditions of impossibility

that make people die before they die.

These conditions occur mostly on the margins

places where comfort has been forsaken for some by those with a lot.

Conditions of impossibility eclipse the awake life.
No one willingly opts for death before death.
People who originate in conditions of impossibility
must die a little in order to not die overall.
It's a coping strategy, in other words. And it's about survival.

But when people develop the habit of going away in order to stay alive,

they often cannot stop the habit once removed from the conditions of impossibility.

So they go away and die when they don't have to anymore.

Their loved ones cannot help but feel this leave taking happen

and if the conditions of impossibility no longer appear obvious,

the leave-taking makes little sense, forcing the loved one to make best guesses

about why death before death occurs in the bodies they love so much.

If you're a child and do not understand survival yet,

because your survival is being taken care of from the outside--which it should be when you're a child--all you feel in the leave-taking moment

is an internal cue that someone you love has gone far far away.

You can be clutching that person's body, screaming "Where'd you go?!" but physical presence is often a terrible indicator of one's whereabouts, and besides, you don't understand survival yet.

And because you're a child, naturally unindividuated and completely attached to the source of your own survival, when that person goes away, your source of life dies therefore causing death in you.

That becomes part of the early childhood experience that forms

one's sense of identity. Those you love die and you die, over and over.

So even when the conditions of impossibility no longer surround
the leave-taking person, their habituated leave-taking pattern
causes premature deaths in the one's they bring into the world.
Now once you're in the world,
if you're a good student and develop according to the laws
of your early relationships, you probably go around seeking the relationships

that die and die and die again, so that you can continue screaming "Where'd you go?!"

for the rest of your life--because good students figure out they're role in life
and take up their responsibilities accordingly.
So you see: it sets up this incredibly sad dynamic
where everyone is dying all the time in order to survive.

I want to tell you something:
for all the times you had to die and I was there, clutching your body screaming
"Where'd you go?!"...
I was not mad. I missed you. I never wanted you to go away.

I just wanted you to come back. I thought my rage would wake you up and cause you to return.

And I hated the world for how cruel it had been to you. So I raged on and on.

I want to tell you something else:

my education helped me discover the truth about conditions of impossibility

and once I learned about that, I started to rage against those conditions

with every breath and every opportunity.

People called me militant and angry and selfish,

but I just wanted my loved ones to come back to life.

I've been fighting against your death/s for a long time.

I've been embodying your rage and your desire and your grief for a long time.

In some ways, this has been my own way of dying before I die.

I vacate me in order to fight for you.

And I do it because I am loyal and I am protective, both characteristics that flow from love.

But I have not stopped the leave-taking cycle. And this morning I want to be free.

I don't want to fight. I don't want to take leave anymore. I don't want to keep dying.

I want to live the awake life.

Maundy Thursday

(Dedicated to Wade Meyer & Zachary Moon)

I cannot be a body

if you pretend like you don't have a body.

So for the life in us both,

please honor

our intentionally fashioned togetherness

by letting me kneel down

to touch and wash your flesh

which also happens to be mine

something i can only discover

if you allow me to kneel and touch and wash you

This is our birth

right before my death 

Just let me

That is my prayer tonight. Maundy Thursday 2010.

Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland, Chicago

big city, big city
an ode to you

breath to my lungs
juice to my blood flow

makin my skin crawl
and my eyelids bow before you

an ode.

you make me believe, you pulsing poet,
oh
such absurd things...

i see in you
such delightful dismissals of the proscriptive,
embrace of that musical stuff, that move or be blown back stuff

an ode to you.

because
my unapologetically bold baby
you display my deepest yearnings for Us

you lick the fork of the multitude, savoring every flavor
staring back with your tongue out, like: i dare you to shame me

i never will. i just look upon you with stretched desire that threatens to eclipse me.

you are so alive with the beat of this internally motivated swarm,
this swarm that hustles double time
and looks deeply once

i see you. i'm lookin back, deeply, this once

and so an ode

to you, to you
big bad bold city

oh you hurt me so wonderful
i love you. i do.

Addiction & Recovery in the Media

   Something in me needs to "talk back" to all this media mess around Tiger Woods that continues to unfold. I read an article by a white straight man this morning who is promoting 12-step buddhist recovery for Tiger. You can read it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-littlejohn/year-of-the-iron-tiger-se_b_477627.html
   Now: I'm all about recovery, but sex and drug and alcohol addiction don't just crop up b/c people feel like ruining their lives. Addiction is a symptom of our economic/social system that is based on material greed. The metanarrative about big bad black masculinity/sexuality and weakling white women conditions people into consumer (material and sexual) roles. When you're in a role, you're easier to control. And when you're in a role, it's easier to locate where you are and who you're with and why you're with them and what you might purchase or get addicted to. If you think addiction doesn't have systemic threads to it, just check out the location of liquor stores in neighborhoods all over the country. Check the concentration of fast food marketing to particular ethnic groups, or the proliferation of cosmetic surgery ads in places where women go looking for something, anything other than themselves for salvation. If you want to know how ridiculously "caught up" our media is with selling these stereo-types, just check out this cover of vanity fair:http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/01/annie-leibovitz-comments-on-tiger-woods-cover-photo.html
   Photographer Annie Leibovitz is quoted as saying: “Tiger is an intensely competitive athlete—and quite serious about his sport. I wanted to reveal that in these photos. And to show his incredible focus and dedication.” What a crock. We had never seen images of Tiger like this until the "scandal" broke. While he was playing a predominantly white sport, we were seeing him in polo shirts and khaki pants. Then when he steps outside of his marriage with a bunch of Paris Hilton look alikes (oh yes: white feminity is being framed through this story too), we see him lifting weights, shirt-less, with vertical bars in the background?? Leibovitz is obviously owned.
   So what i'm personally struggling with is the absolutely obvious need we have for recovery in this economic climate--ecologically, socially and spiritually--being talked about in terms of symptom alleviation. If we don't take the greed-based, material-focused, dog-eat-dog spirit out of our currency with one another, those symptoms will continue to pop up no matter how many individuals are admitting their powerlessness. So yeah, meetings and steps and service are important, but where's the discussion on and commitment to systemic, structural shifting??

Loving What Is: Family

I want to write about the people I've been living with for the last month. When I worked at First Congregational Church of Riverside I got to know the Soares family because I taught Hannah's sunday school class and led the youth group Taylor participated in weekly. Sandra, their mom, often helped with youth events and so I got to know her (slightly) during my eight month interim ministry. That was in 2005, before seminary. They've gone through some monumental shifts and challenges as a family in the last five years but they've always kept in touch. During this winter, when I was going through monumental shifts and challenges of my own, Sandra offered me space in her home. So I've been living here, with them, with Hannah, Taylor and Sandra, in Riverside for the last month.

This is the first big chunk of time I've spent with teen-agers in a while. I spent much of my early 20's invovled in youth work, so when I went to Berkeley for graduate school, I intentionally put myself in adult-ministry situations in order to develop those skills. That choice has served me well. I wouldn't trade my time at SafeHouse or the Palo Alto VA for anything. But I must be real: my heart for ministry, my first love in the church were the youth and families at FCCR. And it's been a straight up, big fat blessing to reunite with them before moving to Michigan.

Living with the Soares family came about unexpectedly, graciously. I am grateful. I am also re-evaluating my thoughts/feelings on the trappings of the nuclear family. My relations with Hannah & Taylor in the last month gave a glimpse into the gifts of siblingity. We've had penetrative conversation, conversation about the meaning/s of life, the responsibilities that come with privilege, the struggles of being young in psycho-obsessed-drugged-up So Cal. But we've also just chilled out, chilled out to music, to books or net-surfing in the same room. I find myself desparately sad about leaving this accompaniment on Friday. I never had siblings growing up; it's pretty f-in rad. I'm sumthin crazy about Taylor & Hannah.

On Saturday, Sandra and I sat by the pool watching the sun go down together. I'd just seen the movie "Up in the Air." For some reason I came back home from the movie theater weepy, floundering in my skepticism about relationships and family in my future. I admitted to feeling "hard hearted" about romance and intimacy after the loss of James this year. We continued on in conversation about the risks of pain that come with loving. Sandra is an expert on the topic. I trust her. At one point she looked me dead in the eye and said: I wouldn't trade Taylor and Hannah for a hard heart.

Touche.

Missing Joy(e)x2

All those times
we walked the lake
or the marina
or the city streets at night
and laughed about stupid stuff
going on at work
or cried about painful stuff
making mess in our relationships,

all those times

we grabbed coffee

and grabbed more coffee

or ran for dessert

when we'd hit the perfect coffee quotient,
all those times
we made fun of Berkeley hippies and
made fun of those people who made ridiculous announcements in church and
made fun of people who took their facebook seasonal art projects way too seriously and
made fun of each other for various things
like intensity or clumsiness,
all those times
we exchanged music mixes
or driving responsibilities
or sent each other little pick-me-ups in the mail

we were doing the things that i never thought twice about then
but think about all the time now.

I've been traveling, gone from the places of usual,
transported central from the left.
These skies look the same, yet unleash foreign objects
that can determine the possibilities for an entire day.
This hotel room is the same as almost every hotel room
I've ever slept in, yet what I prepare for in this hotel room
might determine the possibilities for the rest of my life.

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on." Henry Ellis

This Wonderful Friend of Mine

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." --Christopher Robin to Pooh

Let Me Be Specific

I gotta thank G-d.

and I gotta let you know exactly what I'm thanking, though I can never communicate exactly what it is that's turned rust to gold.

But I'm going to try because I gotta thank G-d.

There have been moments in the last five months when I didn't think I'd make it out alive, moments where I wept in the darkness of the coldnest night, clinging to some distant hope of any moment less physically painful. This back injury has taken me to the precipice of my faith in life and pushed me over the edge. There have been mornings when I woke up only to hate the idea of moving out of bed because I could feel the futility of motion and the death of the possibilities for the next 24 hours accompanying that restricted motion.
I held the phone to my ear, crying out, wailing, sighing--heard in my worst periods of struggle by faithful companions who would remind me: it's not always going to feel like this. They'd ask questions like: what color is the pain? does it have a message for you? And when I couldn't answer because the agony ripped my voice away, they'd just listen to the wimpering in silent devotion.

And then this morning, after receiving an injection of steriods three days ago, I woke up okay.

DO YOU HEAR ME?

I WOKE UP OKAY. MOBILE, PAINLESS, FREE. Today. Yes I did.

And I gotta thank my beloved. Hear me: I thank G-d.

I thank G-d for the chemicals in that shot. I thank G-d for my spine specialist and all the researchers, medical experts and makers of bio-medical technology that enabled that injection to be administered. I thank G-d for my friend Debra who took me to my appointment on time and let me cry--hard--when it hurt me and I didn't believe it was going to help. I thank G-d for every single person who prayed healing prayers for me. I don't care the words, the tradition or the outcome of those prayers. I'm grateful to G-d for people who give a shit enough to think of someone else's pain and to place their intention into the arms of something greater than themselves in order to be useful for the purposes of love. I thank G-d for my mother who told me she'd take care of me no matter what and payed my first month's insurance bill because I was unemployed. I am thankful to G-d that I even have health insurance. I thank G-d for the loving, gentle suggestions of mentors, friends and faith companions since the injury occurred in March: keep writing, keep walking, keep talking about it. I survived because of those suggestions. I survived because of that care. And I gotta thank G-d. 

I am surviving. I gotta thank G-d. I hope you hear me.

The Plague Upon This House

Ultimate irony:
you water the plants, feed the birds and make the bed upon which both of you sleep
yet she remains parched, unfed, and restless
wishing a love between you, once alive and life-giving
might awaken again.

Hollow soul:
what has deadened you,
positioned your body in defense
and closed any possibilities for openness?

I witness
and find this poisonous ruptured relationship
a challenge to my pastoral stance.
What can I do to heal such cantankerous hostility?
How might I occupy the triangle without being torn apart by it?
What prayers might move against the tides threatening to drown her heart?