thinking of god

I've been thinking about god again.

In school, it makes sense. That's why I'm here. Sort of.

Not all Unitarian Universalists believe in god, but I think I do.

I mean, I believe in a power greater than myself to which I can turn and that helps me.

Only I don't have a clear understanding of what god looks like. I mean for me. Other people I know can describe god with sure voices and clear terms and what I end up talking about is some "power of the universe that runs things and is a force for good." It sounds like the description of a cartoon character.

My god? I'm not sure what my god looks like. I think the instant we try to put human, finite words on the divine we start to try to put clouds in a box. It's interesting to contemplate and sort of fanciful to try, but really? My understanding of the divine is that god is beyond our own words to describe god. By virtue of the fact that we are limited in our language and thoughts to those of the human species, I think by definition that renders us incapable of defining god. It's like the colors on the spectrum beyond infrared and ultraviolet. I know they're there, but I lack the eyes to let me see them, therefore I cannot begin to describe them. Besides, when was the last time you tried to describe the color blue? Every try to do that? Yeah, it's a fun exercise to illustrate how limited language can be.

So I'm trying to get my brain around my understanding of god. I described god earlier as outside myself and an entity I could turn to for help. But that doesn't really fit either. I think the divine lives in each of us, that there is some spark of pure joy, pure love, pure selflessness and generosity that exists in all of us. Some are in touch with it and can access it and some cannot. Buddhists bow to one another in a ritual that roughly translated means "The divine that lives in me acknowledges the divine that lives in you." I like that idea a lot. I like the idea that we all have something of god inside us.

This does not make us god, or gods, or all powerful in any way, but I think it allows us to do good things in a way that maybe we might not consider on our own. Then again, this might be my liberal, white, privileged understanding of things. I can't tell.

So the tricky thing I'm facing these days is getting in touch with my own woundedness and still managing to believe that I am healthy enough and will be healed enough to do ministry.

One of the first assignments in one of my classes was to consider and reflect upon where I am wounded, where I am broken, and in what way that prevents me from being intimate with god.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Last week in that same class, the prof talked about how infants in the first year of life learn trust and how that trust is an absolute base requirement for building relationships, with people and with god. She's right, of course. Only I didn't get that lesson in the first year of life. I learned distrust. So now, 45 years later, can I learn it? Not in the way an infant does, with their still pliable and forming brain, developing synaptic patterns and all. No, it's going to take I don't know what for me to learn trust so that I can function in relationships. And I may walk with a psychic limp for the rest of my life as a result of that break in my infancy. I can't tell. I know that I will have empathy for people in ways that others cannot, but it comes at a high price.

More thoughts tomorrow, I hope.

discouraged

I am allegedly working on a paper for my Buddhism course. It's not going well.

In the course of my learning this semester, I have uncovered a lot of things, both in the classroom and on the therapist's couch (I sit on the couch, it's not old-school analysis). And I have begun to realize some things on my own as a result of this other learning.

Like I was probably not nurtured much -- if at all -- in the first eight months of my life.

At eight months of age, I was abandoned.

And things got better. Mostly. Temporarily. For six or seven years.

When they got bad again.

The childhood stuff from about age four on, I remember that. It's the stuff before that which is causing me concern right now.

I have read the studies done on chimp infants who were not held or cuddled as infants. They grew up to be needy, psychotic freaks, unable to function in chimp culture.

I know what happens to children who are not nurtured or held as infants. It's not always much different from what happens to the chimps.

Now I know that I am not (most days) a needy psychotic freak like those poor chimps in that study, but I do know that I tend toward needy, that I crave approval and attention, and that I often do not feel like I function well in society.

I have grown a great deal in the past five or six years, but still, I wonder how much I can really expect to accomplish with such a deep primal wound. The literature on the subject is not encouraging.

Yesterday I read "Healing the Child Within," by Charles L. Whitefield, M.D. The book is subtitled "Discovery and recovery for adult children of dysfunctional families" and what is says about my particular situation is pretty grim.

The childhood stuff I endured has left me with a legitimate case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, which means I spend a lot of time fearing abandonment, betrayal and/or attack. From everyone, not just family members, but from colleagues, friends, they guy at the garage where I get my car serviced, everywhere.

Here's what he says about my situation:

The PTSD is said to be more damaging and difficult to treat it: (1) the traumas occur over a prolonged period of time, e.g., longer than six months; and especially if (2) the traumas are of human origin; and if (3) those around the affected person tend to deny the existence of the stressor or the stress.

We expect soldiers to have PTSD after combat deployment. Truly, it makes a ton of sense. But we don't expect children to have, or to get, PTSD. But looking at what kids go through, it makes as much sense, reading Whitefield's analysis of the trauma. I cannot help but think that the trauma in my life that happened before I was verbal and before I was able to think cognitively, must have left some pretty amazing trauma to my psyche.

So now I am torn. I am relieved a little bit, to understand why the Buddhist practice I tried this semester didn't seem to work for me. "As soon as you recognize a thought or feeling, let it go just as quickly" were the instructions. Really? Really? I've been digging around in my childhood and coming up with some very disturbing memories, feelings and understandings. To "let them go as soon as you recognize them" is absurd.

Let go? Let go of primal abandonment? Let go of the realization that I was neglected, abused and abandoned? Just like that?

Poof! All better!

Yeah, no.

These are old wounds, newly uncovered. They are serious, debilitating injuries that need more than a kiss and a wave bye-bye to be gone. These wounds need treatment, they need to have the old, dead scabs scrubbed off, the gravel cleaned out of the raw flesh, salve and ointment applied, and they need to be bandaged and nurtured anew, cared for in a way that never happened the first time around.

Then.

Then and only then, can that anger, that betrayal, that hurt, that rejection, be let go. And my gut tells me that this is going to be a repetitive process for the next couple of years: digging, scraping, cleaning, bandaging, healing. This is going to be a long process. It will take time, it is going to hurt sometimes, and it will not be pretty. My feelings and emotions may come out sideways and when the shit hits the fan, it's likely to splatter and be messy.

The only way I know to get to the other side of this mess is wade through it. And for now, standard Buddhist practices are not going to work. Not on this stuff. I can meditate, and learn to be mindful and other things, but hurts need to be healed before I can let them go.

Thus ends today's lesson. Tomorrow, I hope to get the paper done.

happy new year?

So it's 2011.

This is the year I hope to stop beginning sentences with the word "so."

I am working on the last paper of the semester. It is due on Friday. I set myself a due date on it by this weekend, which has now been extended to Monday sometime, because I am taking an intensive course in religious ethics in January and it begins on Friday the 7th. And I have to have 1/3 of the reading done for the whole course before I step into the classroom, so I am going to need some time to prepare, namely next week.

Which means I need to get this damned paper done. Only it is really resisting my efforts to get it to write itself. Damned thing.

What's troubling me is how much of myself I should put into the paper. For 12, 13 weeks, we have been reading and writing and meditating and writing, and I have worked through a lot of stuff. (The paper is on Anger and Buddhism, by the way.) I have delved deep into myself, working through some childhood trauma, naming my experiences as abuse, and acknowledging that it sucked bad enough to cause problems now. In my reflection papers and in class, I have talked about the anger I carry and how it is rooted in pain and fear and how that pain and fear is rooted in trauma and how I am working to heal that trauma, all these years later. Buddhism, and how we learned about it through experiences this semester, has been a very intense, very personal, and often painful growth process.

I am just unsure how much of that is appropriate for me to include in my final paper. Do I stay true to what I have been doing so far? Do I detach and treat anger a a purely academic construct to be examined through cold, theoretical language? The former threatens to be inappropriate and the latter seems dishonest and unhealthy, as though none of what I have felt and learned and internalized this semester has affected me in any significant way.

I think I am going to write what comes and see where it takes me. Whatever is stuck is personal, so I guess the personal stuff will come out first, maybe kicking loose whatever needs kicking so that I can get to the academic requirements of the paper. I'll let you know how it works out. Stay tuned.

Fire hose

I am not sure how it happened, but it is October already. I received a gentle reminder from a friend that there are people who are interested in how the school thing is going and an update might be well received. I am blessed this week with kindness and love in many forms. More about that later.

School is amazing. It is challenging and invigorating and overwhelming and exhausting. It is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose. There is so much information to absorb and it seems to be coming from all directions at once. I find that every waking moment not involved in cooking or eating meals or personal hygiene seems to be take up with reading. I have never experienced this volume of work before in my life. There is no time for work work. I am reading and writing between 50 and 60 hours each week. Student loans will keep me afloat this year.

For classes, I am taking: Introduction to Buddhism, Introduction to the New Testament (part 1 of 2), Introduction to Islam, and History of the Church in the Global South. I drive to school three days a week, for classes, most of which are in the evenings. Books were moderately expensive, and there are dozens of them. I have papers to write every week, meditations to practice, and it seems like the more I learn the less I know. It's an amazing process.

Of the eight incoming new students I was a part of at orientation in September, all are women and half identify as queer in some way. I am the only Unitarian Universalist student presently enrolled at the Bangor campus, which makes me something of a curiosity in many of my classes. I had expected to struggle with sexism and/or homophobia from my colleagues and professors, but the thing that seems to set me apart from them more than any other is the fact that I am not Christian.

I tell you, at a Christian seminary, it's a conversation-stopper.

Colleague: You're not Christian?

Dawn: Nope.

C: Really?

D: Really.

C: And you're what faith tradition again?

D: Unitarian Universalist.

C: D: And that's not Christian?

No. Not since 1960 when US Unitarians and Universalists merged.

C: Really?

D: Yes.

C: So you don't believe in Jesus?

D: Oh, I believe in him. I just don't believe he was god or the son of god. I don't believe in the trinity. Or the virgin birth. Or the resurrection.

C: *head tilt* So, do you believe in God?

D: Well, not like most religions describe god.

C: *head tilts in the other direction*

D: I'm not a strict monotheist. I tend to believe that there is a force (or forces) for good and love in the universe. I don't tend to think that it is out there, removed from us up in heaven or far away, but that it exists in all of us. I think god is too big to fit into any one description or faith. And that it probably wouldn't do us any harm to be nice to each other.

C: Uh-huh.

D: Yeah.

~pause~

C: So how are these classes going for you?

D: Complete foreign culture immersion.

C: I bet.

And that's the truth of it. Seminary is like complete foreign culture immersion for me. I am learning a new language (that of Bible study, not Greek or Hebrew) a new history, a new way of thinking.

Growing up Catholic, I was given a bible and told to put it on a shelf, that the priests would tell me what I needed to know of its contents on Sunday mornings. So that's what I did. Later, I became a Unitarian Universalist, and we don't refer to the bible often at all.

So now I am in class with people who not only read the bible regularly, but with people who have multiple versions and translations in their homes. And they believe what is contained in the pages.

Multiple versions? Really? Yeah. Really.

I knew there were four gospels, but not much else about the New Testament. I am learning a lot. Mostly what I seem to be learning is how little I actually know. It is a humbling experience.

The cost of this adventure is as daunting as the amount of work it involves. School leaves me no time for work that would bring in money, so this term I am relying on financial aid and student loans. Looking long term, though, I can't afford to do that every year. Graduating with $75,000 in student loan debt is crazy. There is no ministry job on the planet that I could get that would make those student loan payments.

So this week I spoke with a friend of mine that I know from meetings. She's got some family money of the very, very old variety, and I know she does a far bit of philanthropy. She supported a series of 11th step retreats for women that I coordinated a few years ago and really liked them, so I am a known entity to her. I told her that I'd like to ask for her help, and she said to call her on Saturday. So call her I did, and she wasn't home so I left a message. Last night after I got home from doing errands, she returned my call.

We chatted about school, about how seminary is graduate school, so the classes are seminars and the work is intense, and about what classes I have to take and what my faith requires of me in addition, and about the Bible and the gospels and the men who wrote them, and AA and ministry and a little bit about my hopes.

Then she asked how much I needed.

I had no idea what to say. I need a lot in order to not graduate with a ton of debt. I told her that I did not know what or how much to ask for. It was honest.

So she threw out a figure.

I can give you X a year. Will that work?

Her figure had one more zero on it than I had dreamed of asking for.

I gulped and stammered and sputtered and very nearly cried.

She laughed and told me to thank God, not her. She's glad to do it.

I sputtered some more.

I heard her get out a pencil and a piece of paper.

"I'll send it to you," she said. "Now, hon, what's your last name?"

Yeah.

What's your last name?

She knows me from meetings. We don't use last names there.

But she was willing to write me a check with what I consider a lot of zeros on it, without ever knowing my last name.

It's the kind of thing to make me sing praises to Jesus and Yahweh, and the Buddha and Krishna and Gamesh and the Prophet Mohammad and all their saints. No kidding. I am blessed.

Now my job is to do well in school. I don't have to worry like I did about how I will pay the electric bill or buy heating oil this year. I'm OK. I've got some breathing room. And I am going to be OK next year and the year after, too. She's offered to write that same check each year that I am in school.

I am blessed. And humbled. And honored.

And I have reading to do.

I'll post back again when I can. Please be patient.

I am truly, truly blessed.

new beginnings

I have had a good few days in a row. It has been brutally hot here, but my emotional well-being seems to be in pretty good shape.

Tuesday brought a phalanx of plumbers and engineers to the site, and a new batch of adjustments to be made to the project, not the least of which is that we're stopping work for a few weeks for the clients to regroup. The cost of the thing has gone way beyond what they had planned (dead raccoons and rotted sills will do that to a project) so now they're taking a breather and figuring out what they want to do next. I should know if I will have work for the fall by the end of September.

It's scary, but I have a sense of peace and faith that I will be OK. I have student loans that should come through in the next week or two. I have enough cash on hand to pay the rent and the electric bill. My car and insurance payments are taken care of, and I even have money to pay the herbalist I'll see on Monday and the therapist I will see on Tuesday. I will only need groceries and gas for the rest of September, and my larder is pretty well stocked right now, so I'm not as freaked as I might be otherwise. Which is not to say I am not nervous, I am. Just not flat-out panicked like I could be.

I can't tell if the hormones are finally working, if the cohosh and DHEA are working, if the moon has passed through whatever phase it was in that played hell with me or if this is just the normal cycle of my hormones, but I have been feeling better. I can feel tweaks during the day when I get a piece of bad news or when I get worried about this or that, but they do not lay me low with a hammer blow like they have been doing. I can't tell if that is me refusing to feel the pain, anxiety, insecurity or fear, or if it just is not hitting me like it did. This is uncharted territory. I have no point of reference, so I can't tell what is me, what is normal hormone stuff, what is pharmaceutical hormone stuff, what might be diet, or the moon. I just ride with it. Whee.

Or something.

So anyway, today is a big day for me. I am up early - 5:30 a.m. is when I rolled out of bed - and watching the sun brighten the yard as it rises over the wild meadow at the end of my road. It was dark when I woke, so I looked out and thought perhaps the clouds from Hurricane Earl had arrived early, but no, it was just not light out yet. Oops. I feel kinda like a slacker for not knowing that it's still dark at 5:30 a.m. on September 2.

Right. Big Day. Very Big.

Today I go to the seminary for my student orientation. Or, as I have heard people here in Maine say it, "I'm goin' to get orientated."

In preparation for this orientation party, I went yesterday to the little spa area in my local Hell-mart and got a haircut (1/4 inch long in the back, all bristly and soft prickles back there now) and a pedicure with a shade of red that can only be described as "that party'll cost you $800, mister."

I daresay Mary Magdalene would blush at this color. It is utterly delightful.

And didn't the facebookies have fun with it! Seems I surprised more than one with my behavior. Oh well.

I could go into the motives for getting my toes painted cheap hooker red, and I suppose there is a graduate-level thesis somewhere in there. But really? I do it because it tweaks people's preconceived notions around gender roles and gender presentation and what they might assume or think appropriate for a big, bad, butch lesbian to do. I also do it so that I don 't take my big, bad, butch lesbian self quite so seriously. I mean, I can still verbally lay someone out to whaleshit if I need to, insulting their misogynism all the way down, but it goes better if I'm gentler about it, and I am more inclined to be gentle if the world can see my bright red toenails. Because otherwise they might giggle, and that would be bad.

So, armed with a new back-to-school haircut and a pedicure, I truly think I am as ready for this seminary experience as I am likely to be. Pray for me today. I'm more than a little nervous.

(And here's a pic of the piggies in question.)

Interesting thought

Yesterday and today I was/am exhausted. Today I can kind of see it, as I worked hard yesterday. But being tired yesterday baffled me. I had not done lots of hard work on the day before. Really, I had done some errands and washed the cat. OK, so that was traumatic for both of us, but still.

A guy I am working with had an interesting take on what I am going through. As far as he can tell, menopause seems to be like puberty, but in reverse. OK, that makes sense.

And as such, the chemical changes going on in my body are pretty profound. Again, that makes sense.

Those changes can demand an enormous amount of energy that might otherwise be used for doing everyday things. Remember what it was like when you were 16, he asked? You could sleep 10, 12, even 14 hours at a whack? Of course. That's what teenagers do. Right. Because their bodies need it. They need that kind of rest to recuperate from the rigors of daily life on TOP of some pretty profound hormonal/chemical changes.

Oh.

Gotcha.

So this makes sense, after a fashion. I don't remember puberty having such violent mood swings, but I do remember it (me) being pretty dramatic. Hmm. He's pretty smart about girls stuff for a guy who's never actually had his own set of ovaries and the plumbing/hormones that come with them. Huh.

Tired again this morning. Glad I will be able to sleep in if I need tomorrow. Got some things to do to prepare for school, but I can get a bunch of them done over the weekend. That feels good. The pile of textbooks for this semester is growing daily. Oh, and it looks like I will be the only person in the classroom with the professor for one of my classes. The other four students will be participating via closed circuit television in Portland, around 100 miles away. In the parlance of my younger friends, FML. No slacking in that class. Crap. Not that I look for ways to slack, but being front and center does seem to add some pressure to actually know what is going on all the time. Yeesh.

More later. Stay tuned.