trust, love and the divine.

This god stuff has kept me pretty busy of late. I'm in seminary, after all. It feels like I should have something more than a passing idea of what I understand the divine to be. It also seems like it might be a good idea to develop an understanding of the divine that I can trust, so I can build a relationship with that entity that feels trusting and not likely to betray me.

You know that trust issues are big for me. I know that too, and I know that sometimes I trust too completely and when I get disappointed, I feel that the trust has been broken, betrayed, and the disappointment is crushing and complete. Most folks can look at an incident like this and say "damn. this person let me down. that sucks." whereas for me, it is often emotionally devastating. I know that I can train myself to not throw my heart so completely into situations that are destined to disappoint eventually, but that takes some time. I can also train myself to be compassionate with myself and the person or institution that disappoints me. I cannot entrust anyone or anything with responsibility for my happiness and fulfillment and safety.

It's easy to say that on paper. Or keyboard. Or whatever. It's another thing entirely to do it.

And then there is the opposite side of that coin, which is the idea that I should be able to rely on the divine in that kind of complete and total way. I mean that's the whole idea of having a god, right? So that you can rely on that god completely? Only this is where I get jammed up.

Life is life and the universe is bound to disappoint and hurt us. To rely upon a god seems only to set myself up for inevitable pain when life intercedes and my heart gets broken. But it occurred to me this week that what I have been expecting or hoping to get from god is like what Marlin promises Nemo in that fabulous Pixar movie: "I promised that nothing bad would ever happen." That image of a champion, a superpower infused protector parent is what I wanted in a god.

But it's not really what I understand the divine to be. In conversation this week, I found language for the evolving concept that I understand god to be. I understand the divine as love. God is love. It sounds oversimplified in those three words, but that's about where I am in my understanding. I know that it is often unnatural to consider the needs and well-being of someone else. It is counter intuitive to care about someone else before one's own needs are met. Yet we do it. Humans are kind to one another. We care for one another, and we do it even after we've been hurt. And that makes no sense, but it is truth. Granted there are some unhealthy levels of caring that reach into the realm of codependency, but those unhealthy "Giving Tree" moments aside, I think it is the divine at work when we give to others, when we care for others, when we go out of our way to see to the needs of another. That is god. That verb, that action, that is what god is to me.

So back up a paragraph or two, I think I have been looking for an identity for god that is a person as opposed to a concept or an entity that is a force. I wanted a person. What I got was love.

Now, I can rely on love. I can rely on the idea that even after people are hurt, they will still give. Even after we feel loss, we will reach out again to offer comfort. That is love. And that is god. So what is my relationship now with god as I understand god? Can I rely that love will happen, even in the worst of times? yes. Can I rely that compassion will happen even when it makes no sense? yes. Can I believe that people will reach out to offer each other comfort even when they are hurting? Yes. Must I believe that everyone will always behave this way? Of course not. I can believe that some will, though, and that love -- and thus my understanding of god -- will prevail. I can rely on that. I can trust that. It's a start.

digging deep

Day 4 truth: what happens to an infant matters later in life.

When a baby is born, there are some pretty basic things it needs: one end kept full, the other end kept empty, warmth, no loud noises, and being held and cuddled and cooed over.

When I was born, I was the sixth child of a single mother 23 years old. I was the only one sired by my father, the first three having one father, the next two another, and then me. No high school education, no job skills, and the year was 1965. Birth control was illegal in Massachusetts back then. A woman in my mother's situation didn't have a lot of choices about how she could support herself. Chances are good she hooked up with men who could take care of her and her kids. My parents never married. Indeed, they split up early in my life. I did not get a lot of regular attention as far as I can tell. What probably happened was I woke up yelling, was changed, given a bottle and stuck in a playpen. When I yelled, chances are the pattern was repeated, but not always, and not regularly.

When I came to live with my father's sister and parents, I was eight months old and could not sit up on my own. I thrived on the love and attention I got there, but some pretty basic lessons had already been learned. Life was not secure. Sometimes I got hungry and nobody fed me. Sometimes my diaper needed changing and nobody did it for a long time. And sometimes I was left alone in my playpen, with no stimulation for a very long time. I was not held or cuddled or nurtured much at all, I bet.

Psychologists tell us that the first year of a baby's life is when she learns that she is loved and safe and that people care for her and keep her warm and fed and dry. I didn't get that until I was 8 months old. Irreparable damage was already done. Much as I absorbed the love and affection and nurturing heaped upon me by my aunt and grandparents, there was an underlying desperation that made me want to crawl inside their skins to be with them and be held and loved. It is only now that I am able to identify and name that need.

I remember when I was little, after my father married and took me away from my aunt and grandmother, how I longed to go back for visits, how I loved to be held and cuddled and hugged when I went! My father and stepmother did not hide their disdain for my need for physical affection, and instructed me not to hug my aunt and grandmother (my grandfather had died by then) like I wanted (needed) to. I was scolded and punished if I was too affectionate with them.

The pattern was set. My source for love and affection and physical touch for my formative years was going to be my aunt and grandmother, and my father controlled when I got to see them and get my need for love met. I don't know whether it was fortunate or not, but my grandmother loved me very much and would insist that I come visit during school vacations. That set things up for me to be used as a pawn. My father extracted all kinds of things from his mother in order for him to bring me to her. He needed money to fix the truck. He couldn't afford my braces, so she paid, and countless other things I heard discussed in tense tones over the telephone in the kitchen as I lay in my bed praying that I please, please, please God, be allowed to go to visit over the holidays.

Thus, love became a bargaining chip, a thing that was withheld as punishment, a thing that could be denied if I misbehaved, or if my grandmother did not pay up. It was never guaranteed. It was always something I didn't dare hope for, for fear of having my hopes dashed. But my heart hoped anyway, and often it was broken. Often I was denied.

I remember wanting my father to love me. God, but I just wanted him to be happy with me, to be proud of me, to tell me he loved me for no reason but I was his daughter and he was glad of it. But it didn't happen.

I still want it.

Inside, I am still a very hurt child who wants her father to love me, to show affection, to hold me just because and to tell me he's proud of me.

As far as I can tell, he has never been capable of that. The truth of the matter is, he probably will never be capable of showing me the kind of love I needed from a father.

And now I have an opportunity to go see him on his birthday. He will be 69 years old. He has Alzheimer's. He's never going to be better than he is now. And what he is now is not great.

This will take some more thinking.

funny how it works out

I went to a meeting tonight - for the first time in a very, very long time. It felt good to sit in the metal folding chair and sip instant cocoa from a Styrofoam cup, even if it was in the basement of a Catholic Church. I was there for my 12 step group, not to genuflect and do the rosary. I got asked to chair the meeting, and I'm not sure why, but I was ready to do it.

I did the normal things one does when chairing a meeting: talk about what it was like before alcohol, what it was like when I drank, what happened, and what it's like now living sober. Standard spiel. And then I talked a little bit about this mourning process I am in. How this has been a tough week for me, how I am hurting, but working through it. I can be healthy and still be in pain. I have no regrets about what I did. I gave everything I had. I put everything I possibly could into the campaign, and it turns out that this time, it was not enough to win. I can't get married. I cried. I didn't whine or carry on, I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I talked about how I felt and how I was dealing with it, and how drinking sure as hell was not going to make anything better.

And I got enormous support. Lots of the people there knew I was working on the campaign. Some didn't. One or two might even have voted yes. I noticed that they did not approach me after the meeting like the others did. By and large, though, the vast majority were wonderfully supportive and sympathetic. My wise and ancient sponsor (he's my "auxiliary" sponsor, we've decided) made a special point to come up to me and tell me to call him. I will do that. He is a wonderful man. An Elder in every sense of the word, not just in his Penobscot Nation heritage. One of the original guys who started meetings on the island years and years ago, he's got 30-some years of sobriety and the wisdom of generations. I must make it a point to see him.

But what I notice now, after coming home to comfy clothes, a cup of tea and two medicinal cupcakes, is how nurtured I feel. One meeting, and I feel back into it. I fell back into the rhythm and cadence, I looked around the room and knew all the faces, and was able to feel all the love.

And that just struck me. I was able to feel all the love in that room tonight.

That is different for me.

Usually I can see it, but I don't always feel it. Tonight I felt it.

And I was not afraid of it.

Oh wow. This is the difference that HAI weekend has made.

wowowowowowowow.

I could see love, accept it, welcome it and feel it.

Without concern over any one's motives.

That is huge. More than I can possibly describe.

I've got to figure some way for us to be able to make it to the Level 2 weekend in December. Crap. Gotta gotta gotta.

We did Level 1 back at the beginning of October. It was intense, and wonderful and enlightening, but until just this moment, I had not seen a real, tangible example of how it had changed how I relate to people. Wow.

Gotta go digest this.

Back tomorrow.

another good one

Lifted right out of the blog of this new guy I'm reading, Eddie. He's over there on the right in a thing called (un)Common Sense. Check him out. He's worth reading.

But here's the video. Very cool stuff.

Love

I am at an awful point with this list of virtues and sins. The ones remaining look HUGE. Like something for a senior thesis paper, not a blog entry I can sit down and pull out of my ass after supper is over but before I go to bed. (Which is generally how these things work.) Sometimes I write between bites of Ben & Jerry's. Those are happy posts.

So today I was working on the smallest bathroom shower stall this side of a motor home and thinking about all of the pictures I'd like to post and how I can talk about how I nearly burned some very important bits when the molten solder dripped and splattered all over my lap and how this is going to be a really kick-ass shower stall so long as the person using it is in the sixth grade or else is anorexic. So anyway, I was thinking all of this today at work, then I got home and took my shower. I put on my flannel PJs, made supper and checked my e-mail. And then I held Quinn for a little while. She's a very small dog. Really, she's about the smallest pet I have ever had, except maybe my gerbil when I was a kid. But she's about the same color as the gerbil.

Quinn is a Miniature Pincher. She weighs between 8 and 9.5 pounds, depending on her opinion of the kibble dujour and how much chasing of the cat she has been doing. I can hold her with one hand tucked under her bottom. She leans against my chest and allows herself to droop down so her front paws and chin rest in the crook of my elbow.

So she was doing this droop and rest thing tonight while I was holding her, so I decided to droop and rest myself to see how I liked it. Now I know why she does it. I sat down on the couch, appropriately drooped and slouched so that I was nearly horizontal, with my head resting against the back of the couch, my butt nearly at the edge of the seat cushion, and a little dog curled contentedly on my chest/lap.

She was warm, I noted with some degree of pleasure. Warm and snoozy. I smiled. Quinn must have had a happy thought just then, too, because she took a deep breath and then made a big sigh and some very contented Wookie-sounding grunty noises that drifted off until I was sure she must have been out of air. She was, and would inhale again, but at a more normal pace for a sleeping dog.

She periodically made these kinds of declarations for the next half hour. She would lift her head, sniff my nose to see if it had suddenly become a cheeseburger while she was asleep and might now be good to eat, look around, take another deep breath and do the sigh/grunty/happy Wookie noises again.

Love is a strange thing. We humans love each other in this world, sometimes with fiery passion, sometimes with the deep warmth of many decades spent together. We talk about love all the time, and vast amounts of money are spent each year in search of love - over the internet, on the telephone, and through the buying and selling of bazillions of consumer products.

But nothing compares to the love of a puppy. Now technically, Quinn is not still a puppy. She will be two in March, so she's full grown, she's already had a litter of pups back when she was in the puppy mill, she's been fixed and she's seen plenty in this world to qualify her as an adult. But when she curls up on my chest and I can feel her breath on my face and sometimes I can even feel the beat of her heart, it is the truest, most pure kind of love I have ever known. Contentment, secure, and loved, she is happy to snooze on my body for as long as my back will allow the pose (in this case about a half hour). On a Sunday afternoon watching football, she can spend the better part of three consecutive games curled up on either L or me, snoozing contentedly.

Minpins are social dogs who are happiest when they are close by (on top of) their people. Some of what she exhibits I know is related to her breeding. But you know what? I don't care. When she curls up on me and tucks her nose in under my chin and gives a big sigh, the world can go jump off a cliff for all I care. My and my dog, we're not moving.

I do not know if I have ever loved someone the way Quinn seems to love us. Perhaps when I was a child. I loved my family members because the loved me and kept me safe and provided for me and played with me. I suppose Quinn loves us like that.

I can only imagine what parents feel when a baby falls asleep on them. I do not think I could bear such a thing. I would explode. I can hardly handle the puppy. I have heard reports from grandparents that the next generation is even better to hold. That might have something to do with the decreased amount of work related to said child with the advanced generational status, but never mind.

There is so much wrapped up in this kind of love - love and caring and protecting and needing and missing when we're gone and glad to see us home and I want to be with you all the time, and I want to be tucked inside your jacket so I can poke my front half all the way down the sleeve. It's an odd thing, puppy love, but I'll take it. It has a gentleness and an enthusiasm like no other. L and I love each other, and we are often gentle and enthusiastic, and we are often silly and we often snuggle and cuddle. We're both too big for crawling on laps and tucking into jacket sleeves, but there are times when we have both expressed the desire to be that close to one another. We are deeply in love, and it is wonderful. Quinn is another matter entirely. I think she might be very much like having a child around. When she wakes up and bounces around the bed, it can only be described as the Saturday morning experience of our friends with children. There is a lot of bouncing and giggling and demands for breakfast and can we go out and play. The joy is enormous.

I don't know how to describe love except to say that it makes my heart feel full. I am no expert on love or relationships or anything else. But when Quinn tucks her nose under my chin and sighs, I know what love is about.