Thursday, April 29, 2004

I went to visit Dr. Watson today. We ate in the dining hall of my old college and I'm happy to say I like what the students are looking like these days. I like how they're turning out, but I don't miss it. That time is over. Dr. Watson gave me a scenario which I truthfully said there was no way in hell I could honestly answer: the one that says "Five years from now what do you see your self doing?"

I think that it's easy to see a dare in this question simply because so many people place one there, and the dare often implied is: will you settle down, will you be secure? That strikes to the heart of who I am? What I have to be.

You see-- and London will understand this-- when the novel was finally finished and finally proofed, and I began to put it up that was when my career began. That was when I sold out. I offer no criticism to writers who write on the side. Write when you can, I say. But I know that if I have a hundred PhDs and three hundred bestsellers my career has begun now, with the long lovely work of writing for myself, out of myself to those who need whatever is in me. The work starts here, even-- especially-- with the hardships, the lack of funds, the occasional rejections. The work is gratified here with the letters and notes from friends, with finding a kindred spirit.

I promise this, and if you are someone who cannot not write, if you are someone who is possessed by it even if-- like certain people called Andrew-- you find that words do not come easily-- promise this to yourself-- not to back down, not to cower into safety, not to compromise the poet's voice, not to stifle the stuff of story. Right now the world needs stories, poems, true commentary more than ever before. Right mankind is sick for it. And I know that we will not go about writing or publishing in the same old way. That something new must happen if we are to get anywhere. And be anyone. If we are to really be healers and teachers, prophets and bards. Not just writers. It's not enough just to be a writer anymore.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

what I've been proofreading



He tells her, “I love you Jinny.”
Her father has just left to go to the restroom, and so this is first time he has been free to speak. Isaac felt his bladder pinch suddenly at the mention of restroom, but he couldn’t pee beside his girlfriend’s father. And a professor at that. No, he just couldn’t.
Up until then the young man had been busy sucking down his last cigarette and drinking a Coke, putting it down, turning his fork into the chicken he’d ordered at the older man’s urging. Isaac laughed at the right times, and nodded when it was appropriate. She was caught in her love for him. Sometimes Jinny loved him almost to death. Sometimes the love was too much, too embarrassing. So she hid it away.
The older man, Professor O’Muil, like most professors, was caught in his own words and full of his personal brilliance. Now the sky darkened, and the high schoolers left, and Isaac Weaver, the young man, scowled murmuring, “They would leave just as we’re getting ready to go.”
The meal was over. They tipped well.
On their way out, Isaac pulled on his lambskin coat with the wool collar and then pulled out the chair from under his girlfriend, and put her coat over her. She was big and pretty. Isaac had never understood what was so great about skinny girls. Black people were right on this score, and he’d tell Efrem this when he saw him. And Efrem would throw his head back and laugh at him.
Suddenly she grabs his hand; she hooks it under his and through his coat. It’s so warm, so intimate. This handholding is more personal than sex. A little shocked he turns his blue eyes on her as if she’d just exposed herself. She is smiling. Her face is round, her hair is crinkly an reddish. Her eyes peat green. She is just so beautiful. Her perfume juat smells so good.
“I love you Jinny Oatmeal,” he tells her.
And suddenly he looks so alive and so happy and so serious, all at the same time that she knows why they have been together so long.
They are both only twenty-two.

Saturday, April 24, 2004

endless day
when i loved you
endless days like purgatories
when i told you all my stories
stories told to your deaf ear
mixed with fear
and all the time i gave the care you would not take
all my love it only breaks you
and you'd make me twice as dead as you

there never was a heathen
in the deepest glen
worshipping idols
praying to pretend
virgin marys
who worshipped stone as vain as i
when i told the lie that we had something
and yet that love was mine
sweet and fine honey from the flower of my nature
any creature before my eyes
would have won that prize
but in that year
for that brief season
without much reason it was you

blot out the sun
snuff out the moon
dissect all music, remove it's tune
and tone and still you'll not get to the bone of me
which is this love from me
undeserved it came to you
but needed it was born from me
it made me free
saturday

Saturday: AKA the day I get to wake up late and take things extremely slow. I couldn’t be more fortunate right now. Last night and today have involved a boob tube marathon of watching the pre-recorded re-runs of Angel off TNT. I am midway through the fourth season. The Beast has darkened the sun and all of Los Angeles is a playground for demons. The infamous law firm Wolfram and Hart has been taken out. Oh, Angel, how could they cancel you? Now we will only be left with Charmed.

Which doesn’t hold a candle to any Joss Whedon creation.

The second half of Ash Wednesday is now posted at Wicked Fairy. Now that I’m posting these old stories and re-proofing them I wonder if I could actually sell them to a publisher? It would be nice to get a publisher for Jamnia (The Hidden Lives of Virgins) But really, it would nice to have anything published. I wonder what the market for short story collections is?

I saw the story I want to put up next. It will have to be revised—heavily—and step by step. The Homecoming. When I over old stories I ask what the theme is. Is there some overarching message that concerns me that keeps popping up? And don’t say Catholicism, because that’s a given! I don’t know, whaddo you think, Helen? You’ve read almost everything?

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Thursday iii

If you wander on down the sidebar you will se a new site has been added. David's all grown up now, and he's got a blog. David, you say? Who's David? Well, why don't you go on down and see, you silly cabbages?
Thursday ii
Today on NPR Talk of the Nation’s subject was women’s issues. A broad subject. Sooner or later abortion did come into the mix. I would posit that we still haven’t learned to talk about abortion without shouting at each other. Or if we’re not shouting we’re evading. I thought everyone was missing something though I couldn’t tell just what until they moved onto another guest, a woman who was talking about gun rights and women owning guns. At one point she said that women take very seriously the power over life and death and don’t feel very easy with it. That is the power a gun exhibits and before a woman gets one she should consider this seriously.
I thought, that’s it, isn’t it? Regardless if someone labels herself pro-life or pro-choice, before we can move anywhere on the subject we must be willing to say that this is a woman exercising the power of life and death over someone else. It’s no use talking about when life does or doesn’t begin or what is or isn’t human. We have to deal with the fact that abortion does indeed terminate life. When we have looked that in the face without either liberal or conservative drama, then and only then can the nation begin to have a rational discussion .
Thursday i

This morning at Saint Mary’s I was reading Women, Earth and Creator Spirit by Elizabeth H. Johnson. It was one of those books that is, literally, brilliant, where when you read it you can actually feel yourself glowing, your head setting on fire. I would read a page at a time and then have to walk it off. To give it an entirely unfair nutshell Johnson connects the rape of the Earth to traditional patriarchal belief systems. This is the system through Christianity AND modern scientific thought are interpreted and Johnson states, convincingly, that it is a harmful one and one that cannot last.
Anyway, went to Mass at the convent this morning. So, it appears that the less Catholic I say I am the more Catholic I remain. Going to the convent is not the same as going to a regular Catholic church. You are in a house full of very old, very determined old women and the God they are praying with is a different one. The Mass is different. When the priest says, “Body of Christ,” what he is saying is: “We are all is Body. The whole world belongs to him. Will you take your responsibility in this. He has given himself to you if you will give yourself to him. Will you receive him. Can you do this totally? Even though you are afraid.”


Sunday, April 18, 2004

Walls

I've never shirked from doing the difficult thing. I've never given into fear when it comes to dealing with people, or doing what needs to be done. But recently I've started to realize how much harm has come from me jumping in to change things when it wasn't time. How much damage is done when I feel that I have a message and it MUST BE DELIVERED NOW. Today, in church I saw Dean and Kevin, going about their lonely lives. And I knew that as much as I wanted it to be the time, this was not the time for my message. They were in a place where anything I said would have been as useless as a gall bladder and stuck like water to a duck's back.

The walls hardest to take down are the ones put up over our hearts. What is needed is a great deal of patience, and a concentration of love to take those walls. What is needed is the blessed ability to see the crack whereby we can enter. When people build walls, they always leave a crack or a door in the hopes that if someone cares enough they will find it... eventually.
i saw you the other day
i turned away because you asked me to
you'll hide behind a wall trading bloody, dirty life for
routine, pristine
and mummery
hiding in a tower afraid the world will get wise
to all your misery
and so far you haven't let anyone in, friend
i wish you knew
the whole world is filled with people like you
fallen away
i alone remain
i and Baal's five hundred prophets
upon a hill
and it would be easier to call down flame
than to calm my will
easier to constrain the heavens for three years
than these three years damage done on my skin

all i hold is all the world
then all you see
when you look at me
is nothing

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Easter v

or

that you do so well...


Vodou, often spelled voodoo is not a matter of killing chickens and drinking their blood (well, not most of the time) But it is the shamanic practice native to Africans and therefore in my blood. Elements of it are in my shamanic practice though I will never be houngan. I belong to Welsh druidry. It's a comfortable home.

A vever is an emblem one makes to summon certain powers. What needs to be summoned into this house is love. After my terrible performance with Dean I painted a vever for him and lit a votive over it.

Dean, more love and more rest, less fear in your life. If you picked up on any nastiness from me, release it. May your Eric give you love and more love and you do the same for him. But don't be afraid to open your heart to the whole world. Don't be afraid at all. Love is the light of God's face. May love shine upon you tonight.
Easter iv

Ah, I did a no no. At Sacred Heart where so many no noes have been done. It's just that I feel I've been through so many bad friendships with so many wretched people at that church there's no time for another one. And frankly, Dean's got issues. Really. Palm Sunday I tried to say hello, and maybe this is just me: the more I think on it, the more I think it was at least half me, but I felt like he was shrugging me off. It's like there are two Deans: the one Maura and I know who is a good, somewhat ironic pixie of a person and the Sunday Dean who is.... well, sort of snobbish. If I ever told him to his face, "You're a snob," he'd probably burst down and cry. That's the way they are at Sacred Heart. Everyone is so damned desperate to be loved, but no one knows how to do it. They don't mean to be that way. Too many times I've lost patience and watched, to my horror, grown men I thought were made of stone, dissolve under my tongue.

And I'm the one who wants peace?

But I do want peace. I want it so badly I can taste. Sometimes my eyes sting for it. King David was the bloodiest ruler Israel ever had and yet he talks about nothing but peace. Here's what I think? It's not enough just to be non-violent. You've got to really really want love and peace, and that's the difference between me and some tamer people. They don't want to fight, but they don't want to work for peace either. I want, desperately to work for peace. I do not want to fight if I don't have to, but damnit, if it turns out I have to THEN I WILL ! ! !

But back to Dean.

I tend to feel badly for things I think no one will pick up on. I apologize for them. The other person says, "No: I didn't notice." But they do notice and later it comes out. I'm like that with other people. They notice my moods and make far too much out of me. On Thursday, yes, Maundy Thursday, Dean was trying to get my attention and I thought, "To hell with him." Because I thought: he'll just end up being another fool, and who needs that? Good Friday I saw him again before the start of church. The staff remains through all the services, comes before and leaves late. He was rubbing the bridge of his nose and looking ill. He is undernourished and often has dark rings under his eyes. I wanted to ask if he was alright. He would say yes, but it would have made him feel better to know someone gave a damn.

I chose not to give a damn.
Easter iii

Easter Tuesday morning, I began this letter to my old inspiration and professor; Sister Patricia Robinson . . .

Dear Sister Pat,
When I heard about Sister Catherine I thought of sending a card. But, no. Sending a card is what you do for the old woman in church you don’t really know who loses a husband you don’t really care about. A card wouldn’t do. An e-mail was completely tacky. So I thought, only a letter would be fitting.
I hope this letter finds you well. Aside from that I’m not going to go into any trite platitudes about the beauty of going home to God. It is beautiful, I’m sure. And I know it’s good when pain and suffering end. But death is still sad. Living without someone is still living without.
I’m on my way to study, and if this letter isn’t finished before I have to go, then I’ll wrap it up later today. There’s so much I have to tell you I don’t know how it can be finished before I have to go.
Firstly: you were right when you said that things would work themselves out and I would find my place in the end. Not that this is the end: I hope not. But if we are willing to be surprised then God will always take us where he needs us, and to what we need.
Last year was less than stellar, and I’ll leave it at that. Right now I’m reading Unveiled a new book about nuns. I thought I was through reading about Catholic religious life, but no. Right now I’m reading, once again, about the indomitable Margaret Traxler, and though I respect her decisions, I cannot make them. My time is a different one. She chose to stay on in a church that she felt was opposed to her, to keep a distance from priests, bishops, the Vatican, Mass and everything, but call herself Catholic.
I chose to become an Anglican.
The half bitter rationalism of some ultra-liberal Catholics is, to me, even more unbearable than the lack of imagination or reality displayed in conservatives. You have heard variations of it: I do not believe in Rome, the Vatican or the priesthood. I do not attend Mass but I AM Catholic. I do not like other Catholics. But I am still Catholic. The office I write in is my church. The soup kitchen I work in is Mass. Ah, but an office is an office. A soup kitchen is a soup kitchen. Bitterness is bitterness. Church is church and the Mass is the Mass. I had no time be bitter or half hearted. And, what was more, out of all the places I was actually able to be of assistance or offer ministry not a one of them was Roman Catholic. The door to anything remotely Roman was shut to me. When I heard Gene Robinson’s ordination had the green light, it was like a green light for me. And I joined an Anglican parish.
It is Roman Catholicism without Rome. With a minimum of red tape and a dependence on male domination justified by “tradition”. It is like being Roman, but being free to do the work as a writer I need to do. There is not a thing I have written or an opinion I have spouted in the last few years that would ever receive a nihil obstat, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I remember there is this rumpled, distracted woman at Saint James. Well, one day, we were waiting for the priest to begin Mass. And out she came. And I just sat there sort of laughing to myself. Everyone else took it for a given. I looked at it like a miracle. It was one of the realest Masses I’d ever been too. And not because she was an especially good priest. The truth is we have two ordained women and they are both slightly flaky. But they want to serve God and nothing bars them from doing it. Nothing stops them from being who they are. Everyone is includes, so the Mass is still miraculous. No, not miraculous. The Mass is real. It’s what it’s supposed to be.
It gets better. Yes. I finished up a novel. And then some no name publishing company took it. Only it was my first book so I didn’t care that the company was no name. But then they decided to drop the book. That same day Notre Dame dropped me. And then the following day I received news from IU South Bend that there was nothing to bar me from earning the Masters I needed there. There I will probably have to teach and teach students who need someone. Not just the well heeled and fortunate who—I’m sorry—I have very little sympathy for. And that same day I found Whitmore Press, which actually probably will take the book, and not tear it up the way the first company was going to do. And Whitmore actually has a history of publishing books I’ve heard of. This first company was four years old and the only book that sounded remotely interesting was called: The Frightening Tales of Mommy. Or some bull like that.
Well, it is almost time to wrap this up. The letter is getting long I see. But I have to tell everything. In church, on Friday, God seemed to be telling me to go to the Catholic church after I’d finished up at Saint James. He wanted to show me something. Besides, I needed to kiss a cross, probably. It took me awhile to realize what I was being shown (aside from several reasons I left). But I’m not totally stupid. God was calling me out. I think I was tempted to take the easy way. Say, I am about inclusion. We are all God’s people. And then turn my back on the very people I had been born into. I would have gone into stupidity and bitterness and sworn off ever having been Catholic. But no, these people are God’s people. Not because they are Christian. Certainly not because they are Catholic. But because they are breathing and human and we are all God’s people. So many of these people in this church have been dreadful to me and to each other. I know so many of their secrets. So many of them want to be helped and loved. Deep inside they want to help and be able to love. But they don’t know how to do it. I would not make so bold as to say that I can show them. That’s vain. I do not know how to make peace, but what God needs from me now is the desire to make peace. The willingness to stand, if somewhat less frequently than before, beside the people I come out of. So I still do. Some comment, “We do not see you anymore. You come here so seldom.” Some even say, “We miss you.” How to explain I can’t return that sentiment?
To end where I started: I picked up the book Unveiled. Suckered again. Men my age like to go on about the right woman and marriage and sex and it turns me off and makes me shake my head. I’m getting to the age where some marry. Nothing makes me less sympathetic than seeing other guys my age go on about their wife and their newborn. To them this is the whole world. They cannot understand I feel the same way about my friends, or about the whole world. They don’t understand I think the same way about the habit and the calling of a friar. My vows to my community expired at the end of March. I did not renew them because I was leading it. I was tired of leading and no one else seemed willing to do anything. Almost the next day I stumbled upon the Order of Saint Andrew. Oh, no, I thought. No, I won’t do this again. I will read on and see what is wrong with it. An Anglican order. It requires my time in cloister twice a year. There is a full habit. Though, knowing Anglicans, no one would wear it outside of the monastery. Thank God. There are men, women, married and unmarried and none are counted as more important than the other. The rest of the year we are out in the world doing what God has required of us, our daily work. For who knows your vocation like you?…. So far I see no reason not to apply.

Yours,
Chris

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Easter ii

This is the year it was real for me. I am unable to do the Catholic thing anymore, the whole placing yourself in the body of Jesus and imagining the pain of the passion. There is a tendency in Christianity to believe that if we become guilty enough thinking about the Crucifixion and imagining the sufferings of Christ, then we will do the right thing. Well, right or wrong I don’t have enough imagination in me to be guilty. But when I hear the psalms, the hymns, the scriptures in church, those three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil on Holy Saturday, there is something much more powerful than guilt. I am compelled. I am changed. Last year things were so bad at that time of year. I felt like a country at the end of a bad war, through with some things, but having lost a great deal more. It would be a long time if ever before I recovered. Easter meant nothing more to me than survival. Jesus had survived all of the crap thrown on him. And this was good. But a little more was necessary. Like mission. Like hope. Like release.

To my surprise being an Anglican is making a Catholic out of me. I mean, there is a serious commission in the Anglican Church to be ecumenical, to reach out to brothers and sisters, to share bread at each others tables, and I know our church is already in communion with many other Christians. Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians role out of the doors of Saint James, have joint memberships in several churches. But Catholics and Anglicans do not church together. And here I am on one side saying,. “I am Anglican. I am ecumenical. I want to reach out to everyone,” But on the other side saying, “I have washed the Catholic Church from my hands. I’m through with that foolishness.”
And so, on Good Friday, at Saint James, hearing the Passion, I am very surprised when Jesus gently lets me know that this service will be over in plenty of time for me to hop a bus and be at Sacred Heart, my old Catholic parish, well before the service starts there.
And what will I find when I get there?
The Lord does not say.

Monday, April 12, 2004

Easter i

More than anything I could say about Easter, this seems like the best place to start. The letter I have just written on Easter Monday to a one time friend.


The thing is: in my head, on Easter Sunday, I envisioned myself having a much easier time writing this letter. I had pieced out every paragraph detail by detail, and now I don’t know how to say what. Well, I’m going to try anyway. I have always tried to do right by you, but it seems to blow it your face. My face too, but possibly more yours. You will think I am writing this letter to say something harsh to you, or something uninvited, but that’s not it all.
Last year, when that letter came to my house I would like to say that you will have no idea how incredibly angry I was except that I’m sure you had to know how angry I was. That must be how angry you were when you wrote it. And confused, probably. But I never knew what to say and what not to say to you. Kevin, you ought to have helped me along in that. All the time I asked if went to far, and all the time you smiled, sometimes in person, sometimes in mail, and said, “No.” But I have blamed myself for not being able know I was hurting you or making you mad. Life was going pretty sour at the time, anyway, so the letter was just making a bad set of things worse. I stood over the trash can in my room, ripping it into little pieces because I’d already read what you said over e-mail, but even still, I resolved to make things right with you. I believed it could be done, and that this business would blow over quickly. That is what forgiveness is all about. I thought, “eventually he will respond…” but. My bonehead brothers and sisters, who believe in never quitting or never giving up... ah, they didn’t let me give up. I even went up to you in your car and congratulated you on graduation but eventually it did occur to me just give up. And so I did. Your orders had been specific and I had disregarded them: leave me alone. Do not look at me. There’s more you said in that letter, and so I wish I’d kept it. But I don’t remember it now. All I remember is how angry I was and how resolved I was to get past the anger and make things right. And then, learning that things could not be right I just remembered anger and disappointment.
You probably don’t remember any of this. Half of it is probably in my head. That’s how memories work. What can you do?

When you finally spoke to me again, when, to my surprise I learned that you were still here, when I was coming out of Mass one morning, and there you were at the door of the sacristy, let me explain something: what you said was, “It’s good to see you, Chris,” but what I felt was as if someone had kicked me in the stomach. See, after things soured, it was at the end of a very long series of sour experiences, and I was no longer a regular part of any church. I was out in the world working in hospice, care for the dying, but I was not attending church except for on Sunday, and what you had said I took to a great deal of heart. Caring for other people you worship with is a bad an unrewarding business. So I decided not to do it. I had come to church for a bit of piece and there you were.
Well, a while has passed since then to. And I have tried to do right. But I have not actually made any sort of sacrifice or gone out of my way. A Christmas card out of a box of a hundred Christmas cards that we bought at Dollar General three years back does not count as much of a sacrifice. But admitting I am human: that is a sacrifice. And I’m about to come to my real point, which is this: when you said don’t look at you, don’t love you I, at last, believed you. Over Easter, in the last week, I realized: I have not actually looked at you or taken you seriously once in this whole year. I realize that because this is the way I have treated EVERYONE at Sacred Heart. Not in the world, never in the world. Not even in the parish I am active at. But in this church; yes. A half smile, a distant courtesy and a tone of voice that implies: please go away and leave me alone. I’m confessing this because regardless if you feel it or not, I think I’ve used it on you every time I see you. Or don’t see you, but… you know what I mean. And I realized because fleeing from church on Saturday night, right before I exchanged happy Easters with Danielle I saw you talking to her and suddenly, like someone had slapped the crap out of me I SAW you. For the first time in a while I saw people, and I remembered that at a distant point in time we were something like friends, and there were actually good relations between us. I remembered what maybe you can’t remember: things before things went bad. I remembered Bill talking about you and then me meeting you and thinking you were a whacked out freak show, and liking that. Because there wasn’t anyone else like you. And I remember hoping that you wouldn’t change, and hoping that no one would ever make you think you should be someone else than who you were. And I remembered more, and it hurt a great deal. I don’t know that things will ever be easy between us again, and I don’t that it needs to, but I do know that spending three days in church, listening to the life of Christ he was being compelled to do something. He died, the least I can do is write a letter. And I think writing this letter was it. Or part of it.
I hope it doesn’t hurt you, or confuse you, or any of the things that for some reason seem to happen whenever we occupy the same mental space.

Peace,
Chris.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

There is a holy Grace which is our birthright. Like the air we breathe, like the water of the womb we swim in before our birth or the earth we go to when we die. Uncatchable, unnameable, invisible, she belongs to us all, sustains us all; from him do we come and to him do we return. No matter what we call this Grace, even should we ignore it: there God is.
Open letter to Justin George Watson Ph.D

Well,
It’s finally happened. I am one of those lucky people who can say that at the age of twenty-six all of my worse fears for myself have officially come true. In the course of a week a friend I used to sit across from and laugh with has dropped dead of heart failure at thirty-five, my publisher has dropped me, AND a notice has come from my first choice university that they are rejecting me for the second time.

To top this off I have abandoned the faith of my childhood and, more than having difficulties with I, I simply don’t believe in it. I can tell when all the pagan holidays are coming up because, time to admit it, I’ve been one for years, and even worse, I’ve become a Protestant. Worse still, and Episcopalian. I’m anti-gun, pro-gay marriage. I think, gulp, that I might slowly be turning pro-choice (up to a point) Or worse yet, pro-I-don’t-really- know- and-don’t-much-care. I have become of those liberal Christians that I used to hear maligned as atheists and syncretistic.

I have no sustainable income and I live with my mother and father. Far worse, I must admit that I enjoy it, and that I enjoy the Midwest. I, who like Jerusalem was once the Queen of Cities, have become a toiling slave, content to ride public transit and attend public university while practicing Buddhism and druidry, and then skipping off to Anglican Mass.

And then there are the animals. I do not know how many I have anymore. The official count is two: a lab mix and a Scottish terrier who takes the MOST inopportune times to yap yap yap. But there are also mice who come to visit no matter how many traps we set out, not to mention (well, I’m going to mention) the things I hear bumping in the walls and the attic and then that whole bird problem that happens in the summer time.

I mention all of this because, though I try to deny the evidence, I am happy. Not content, but happy. I have more than the required daily does of happiness for an American citizen. And we are not a happy people. I mention all of this because I know many people who have every single thing they ever wanted, and they are still the most miserable sons of bitches in the world.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of that.

I will be by to visit Easter week and discuss in full EVERYTHING that has happened.

Yours,
Chris Gibson.

P.S. Even as I type this I realize it’s too good NOT to be a blog post

Monday, April 05, 2004

The difference

Now it is Holy Week and here comes the weird feeling of doing double time in two churches. I went to the Roman Palm Sunday Mass in part because it was the one I could get to and in part because I am used to it being moving. I don’t know if I’ve changed or what, but it seems to have gone drastically downhill. Nobody sings. Everybody looks depressed and afraid and it seems like everyone is trying to hard. Dean is there as sacristan. He’s trying to hard as well. I understand, I understand, I know your history Dean. Never had a father, never lived in one place or went to one school for very long, never was one of the guys, never had a place of importance, never got to be very sure of who you were, so of course you jump at the chance to look important and officious.

Now I realize that the reason I never applied to the public university was because it was public. Ah, when you are Catholic the whole world is Catholic, and though there may be something out there better for someone else (maybe) it is not better for you. We do not acknowledge the existence of other churches or other people or other ways, all of life, all right and wrong, is defined in a book. Heaven, hell, purgatory and earth are all mapped out. You have one allegiance, which is to the Church. Which Church? Ah, you know… Even a liberal Catholic, even a pro-choice Catholic who is all for the ordination of women and impassioned about gay rights is still such an animal. Or else, why remain in a church that you don't agree with? Even a Catholic atheist is someone who refuses to believe in a Catholic view of God. We all only see Rome.

There is a sort of agnosticism involved in becoming Anglican. The Common Prayer book is blessedly vague. The world an Anglican lives in is an ecumenical one full of Lutherans and Methodists, a nod to Catholic cousins, an awareness of Buddhist and Pagans and all the other people out there. It is a much more secular world I’ve come into. It is a free world. But, I admit, I miss the old world because sometimes freedom feels like falling.

Saturday, April 03, 2004

rain iii

"God took me by the hand and blindly I followed."

-- Little Sister Madeleine


Finished the rough draft to Derwydd the Saturday before last. This left me with that space of a few days between working on one project and turning to another. Ah, the dangerous space where I had the near breakdown. But then if I hadn't snapped two weeks ago, I'd be snapping now, this week and at a totally unfit time.

Started in on the new book, a fantasy novel. I had the nerve to try to outline it. Now I just try not to think and move on with the story trusting that at the end of the fifteen weeks I've given myself they'll be something nice to look at.

Jenny, I will pay you MONEY to remove the Proximity link from your site and replace it with Wicked Fairy. Well, I won't pay you, but still...

Speaking of Wicked Fairy, Helen, the second part of "Thirty-One" has been posted.
rain ii

You gotta talk to the one who made you
talk to the one who understands
talk to the one who gave you
all that light in your eyes
all that light in your eyes


-- Sheryl Crow

If don't concern ourselves too much with ourselves, with what is easy, what is advantageous, but rather what is necessary, then I have learned that there is nothing to fear. It is not that God brings us to the best or most successful place or even to the place of our own choosing, but to the place of necessity. We are carried, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently to the place where we need to be, to the people we need, to do what needs to be done. I don't think I've ever gotten just what I wanted, but what was given to me was that which delighted me. And so I delight in this.
rain

I would have given you all of my heart
But there's someone who's torn it apart
And he's taken just all that I had
But if you want I'll try to love again
Baby, I'll try to love again but I know

The first cut is the deepest
Baby I know the first cut is the deepest
But when it comes to being lucky he's cursed
When it comes to loving me he's worst


-- Cat Stevens

When it rains it does pour. I think last week's emotional crisis and everything that surrounded it was to prepare me for this week when everything happened. In a week's time a beloved friend has died, my publishers have rejected me and the university has rejected me as well.

Sob.

Sharing all of this because it's not right to only put down the good and the easy stuff. If I'd write that a publisher wanted me, it's only fair to also report being rejected.

The lyrics above are from my new favorite song. And it's not new at all. I'm listening to the Sheryl Crow version. I didn't know Cat Stevens did it first.

The last two days have been fair and lovely. The sky an incredible blue. It got nippy though this afternoon and the clouds have pewtered. This morning went to the Chrism Mass at Saint James. Everyone belts out the hymns and is happy to be there. Growing up it seemed that when I was in church everyone was a spectator and everyone thought that God was somewhere else. Here it's as if everyone feels wealthy, blessed with the gift of God's love and a burning desire to put love and justice out into the world.

What I have been feeling lately is incredibly grateful. I keep on looking at the rejection letters and feeling a little miffed, but thinking, "I should be angrier than I am." Only these days I can't remain angry or afraid for very long.

Friday, April 02, 2004

In a very few days the Holy Triduum will roll around again. Resurrection is a lengthy process and a recurring one. That’s the lesson I’ve learned in the last year. Unless there is some resurrection in this life—which, in fact is the very life Jesus says is eternal—it will not matter to us that our bodies shall be raised up when we die. A distant heaven will not matter if we don’t begin to see heaven in our lives now. You must understand, at Easter last year my problems were far different from those of atheist or agnostics or faithless Christians. It was not that I didn’t believe in the Resurrection. Simply that it no longer had any bearing in a life that sorely needed to be revived.

Now I begin to see what it is to be reborn, to take on new names. Nearly a year later (a spiritual year, for Easter’s time shifts from calendar to calendar) there are things that I no longer am, and things I never thought I would be, names I never thought I’d apply to myself: God manifests in the strangest places. Elijah: God is God.

Last year everything fit and everything was in order, but it was all dead and past its purpose. A few paradoxes in my life made me wonder. Now I take them for granted. In the western world we are so split up and compartmentalized that if we are to ever be whole a little paradox is inevitable. Yesterday I read someone describe themselves by the bland and disconcerting title: secular humanist. But after the shrug I realized that’s what I am too. My best friends are Catholic. On Sundays and during the Triduum I will mostly attend a Catholic church. When I hear them speak of heaven and hell, forgiveness, reward and punishment I realize that none of these motivates me and that whatever church title I wear I am really a secular humanist. My spirituality is really Quaker though I can’t stay away from a good Mass. I don’t believe in Rome, but because being a good Anglican means never forsaking where you come from, never cutting off other Christians, I’ll never renounce being Roman Catholic. I am a Christian, but I am an apprentice to a druidic tradition and hence, unregrettably pagan. I have as many shades as a stained glass window and am made up of about just as many pieces of broken down and ground up crystal.

But for the first time in a very long time I am also myself.

I am whole.

I begin to know what it means to be resurrected.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Just saw the title of a book: God is an Englishman. This is certainly not so. It never has been, and yet this is what—more or less—the Western world has been saying for centuries now, and it is this that must be combated if we here in the West are to have any meaningful spirituality in the next century.

I have observed that white people tend to have (I said TEND) a greater difficulty with God and spirituality than other Westerners, and men more than women. Yet the King James Jehovah is someone they invented.

Every age has had to combat the “God is a What I Am” syndrome. The Buddha, wishing to free the divine from Hindu mythology and anthropomorphism took an agnostic stance on God, one that bordered on atheism. He chose not to worship God, but to live a godly life. Christ went to the same place by a different road. For a Christian to live well is to live like Jesus, and to live like Jesus is to experience the Kingdom of God. To declare the nearness of God Christ said, “I AM”. Christians who would wish only to worship, but not to follow fail to realize is he also said, “So are you.”

What now is called for is a radical combination of this insistence on mysticism and a sort of atheism: a refusal to believe in the anachronistic god handed to us from old white men, and a heartfelt pilgrimage to the temple within.

God is great and God is good
In the sky and in the wood
God is red
God is black
God is she
God is they
God is pink,
God is gay
God is you and God is me
God is we