Separation

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separation is not a thing to be avoided and gotten rid of, it is strangely to be embraced as the thing that draws us together.

In this time of social distancing due to COVID19, it occurs to me that the Bible narrative has an awful lot of content about separation and distancing. 

In the Genesis myth – there was this lie about separation.   Adam and Eve somehow felt separated from god and felt they needed to take action to close the gap.  To “become more like god” through knowledge.  So, they did what they thought was needed to end separation which actually led them both to a more profound separation as they hid and as they covered up their vulnerability and nakedness, and as they were expelled from Eden. 

Cain was distanced from his family after he killed his brother

Noah was quarantined with his family during the flood

Abram left his country and went to a distant land.

The Israelite nation are commanded to distance themselves from other nations.  To stay separate.  They have laws and more laws about what not to touch and what to distance themselves from in order to “stay clean" (and likely in those times, before refrigeration and germ theory – alive)

Mystics and prophets distanced themselves in the desert.  

Even the crucifixion story is about distancing, “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me? “

If you are familiar with your bible stories, many more will spring to mind.

What is it about separation and distance?

My religious upbringing spun all this separation in the biblical mythology as a warning about sin and purity.  Sin will separate us from god and from each other.   Purity will keep us from separation.   The goal is to get rid of sin and thus get rid of separation. 

This interpretation is very much like the ancient Jewish notion of purity.  It is about uncleanness, contamination and contagion.   In modern times, we haven’t dealt too much with issues of global, uncontrollable contagion, until the recent COVID-19 pandemic.  Suddenly, we find ourselves thrust into a world of “Don’t touch or you’ll be infected.  Wash your hands, wear a mask.   Unclean! Unclean!”

But underneath the story that is told out of paranoia of becoming unclean, another story is being told.   A story about oneness, longing and desire. 

Separation will keep you safe from contamination, but it will also make you aware that you are not separate at all.  You are a part of a global body.  A body you need to touch, feel and interact with.  A body that, no matter how its members separate from one another, continues to infect one another; not just with COVID-19, but emotionally as well. The more we are separated from others, the more we realize our need for them and our longing to be with them.  The more we try to not be affected by it all (whether physically or emotionally), the more we are aware that we are affected.

By it all.

And in contrast, when we are in too close a proximity, we have no opportunity for desire.  When you get rid of separation, what you start longing for is separation.  During this quarantine parents and kids have just had it with the togetherness, husbands and wives are on each other’s last nerve, even cat memes have become about how they can’t wait for their owners to get out of the house. 

So, separation is not a thing to be avoided and gotten rid of, it is strangely to be embraced as the thing that draws us together.  

 It’s a push-pull.  I want you close, but not TOO close.  Like a fire that needs breathing room to roar and when smothered snuffs out.  

So, maybe rather than all the separation stories in the Bible being about impurity and punishment, maybe these stories are better read like a book about the push and pull of desire. On the one hand, it reads like a romance novel about mankind’s longing to be united with the divine, and on the other hand it is a story about how their attempt to get rid of separation resulted in even more.     

And maybe the COVID-19 story is like that too.  It is a story that is being written in history about how in our separated, xenophobic, polarized world, try as we might to get rid of this separation through political means, along came quarantine to separate us and to remind us just how much we are all one global organism that cannot be separated from itself. Along came COVID-19 to teach us that we love one another and need one another and long for connection with one another. 

Like many good love stories. 

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Life from death.

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I wanted to share it with you so you don’t feel alone.

Today is Easter.  We are all quarantined because of COVID19, and so we watched inspirational talks on social media, and shared pictures of what we baked, and zoomed with our families. 

At noon, I watched Andrea Bocelli live stream from Milan Italy.  I watched a man in a beautiful church, a man who couldn’t see anything of the beauty around him stand there and sing his heart out as his offering to the world.  There were camera shots of the empty streets in Italian cities.  As Bocelli poured out his gift for us all.  

It was breathtaking.

 It made me realize that one of the most moving things about this quarantine is to watch how people are just pouring themselves out to one another to say, “I’m here, I see you, I’m with you.”  Singers are singing to the world from their homes, from isolated places.  For free.    A trumpeter plays from a balcony in Italy.  In Missoula Montana, the entire town howls together at 7pm to show their support for the essential care workers.  In the town of Belper in the UK, residents lean out of their windows at 6:30 each evening a “moo” together.  Oprah invites us into her kitchen to cook.  Preachers and teachers continue to speak words of hope across the miles.  Miki808 holds a dance party for us every day on Instagram.  And most of this has no personal gain attached to it.  The moo-ers and the trumpeters and the howlers are not getting paid for it.   It’s just for love and solidarity and support. 

It’s so lovely.

We’re in the midst of an experience which brings us face to face with the reality that we have no real control over our lives  -- our loved ones could become sick and die, our jobs could disappear any minute, our homes, our retirements.  And yet, faced with this reality that we so often don’t have to acknowledge, our instinct is to throw whatever small gift (or large gift if you’re Andrea Bocelli) we have out into the universe for each other…

The collective body of humanity seems to be saying, “I can’t save your job, your bank account or even your life, but here’s my song, here’s the flower I saw on my walk today, here’s a joke, here’s the bread I baked today, here’s a dance I am dancing , here’s my howl or my moo…..  I wanted to share it with you so you don’t feel alone.”      

It brings me to tears.

Life from death.

Happy Easter. 

Meaningless, meaningless

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Today, god affirms the meaninglessness of all evil…

“Today god affirms the meaninglessness of all evil and the shitty randomness of all that is shitty and random. Today is for the countless victims of the unfair trial, today is for the needlessly downtrodden, today is against the lynchings and pogroms carried out in the name of this crucified messiah. Today there is no deeper meaning to your depression, to your divorce or to the death of your child The death of the Christ affirms what you knew in your gut all along, that your trauma is utterly meaningless. Today there is no grand plan. Today, guilt lies firmly at the feet of the abusers and injustice remains wholly unjust. Everything that is random remains divinely…. random” Adam Dawkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0cefepgtGs&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

Even this is my body

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For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected.

incarnate

verb

in·​car·​nate | \ in-ˈkär-ˌnāt  , ˈin-ˌkär- \

a: to give bodily form and substance to

The Genesis story is the the story of the incarnation. God giving substance to the universe. The entire universe in an incarnation of god. God’s body.

God is through all and in all.

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected.

For by god all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through god and for god.

There are parts of the universal body of god that bring death and parts that bring life. God’s body is continually dying and being reborn over and over. This life and death principle has always been at work in the universal body of god

It has been “slain from the foundation of the the world. “

This life and death dynamic within the universal body of god is unavoidable.

“unless you eat and drink of it, you have no life”

The universal body of god includes all of it. Disasters, diseases, pandemics, death. And rebirths and resurrections.

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Chaos

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…you did not recognize the time of god’s coming to you

I’m writing this during the COVID-19 crisis.  People are practicing social distancing, there’s no toilet paper to be had …. anywhere.   Stores and businesses are closing.  It feels like chaos.   Folks are losing their jobs, their retirement accounts, their peace of mind.  

In the Bible, Luke 19, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and says,

“If only you could know what brings peace, but it is hidden from your eyes…. Because you did not recognize the time of god’s coming to you”

The back story here is that the Israelite nation was about to enter a period of destruction and chaos. Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and they would be overtaken by their enemies and “dashed to the ground.” 

Not a happy time. 

Not at peaceful time.

It feels a little like that right now with what’s going on with COVID 19.  Not happy.  Not peaceful.  

I get why Jesus might be talking about knowing what brings peace.  We all look for peace during chaotic times.  But why is Jesus talking about “the time of god’s coming to you?”

What could this mean?

We usually equate “god’s coming to us” with good things.  Beautiful events.  Moments of awe and wonder.  Victories.  Light and joy and all that good stuff.

Chaos is not disorder. Chaos is the totality of existence. You could call it God. You could use the term, the Tao. I like chaos. It means more to us in English. Chaos is all things, wild and wonderful, connected perfectly by the life force. Frederick Lenz

Could chaos also be god coming to us?

Could the chaos that occurs within a cell when it mutates and creates something novel be god coming to us?

Could the chaos in ecological systems that maintains the equilibrium of the planet be god coming to us?

Could the chaos in economic and political systems that correct imbalances of power be god coming to us?

Could god come to us through death and destruction?

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My cynical view on relationships

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Imagine the person you love. What if they sacrificed themselves on the altar of your relationship?

In marriage as in most things, we tend to strive for success.  We’ve made a commitment.  We’ve made a promise.  We’ve made vows, “in sickness and in health, til death do us part”  …. or something. 

How would you feel if you went into a marriage being perfectly OK with it failing?  How would you feel if the person you married felt that way? 

It sounds cold, it sounds cynical. 

In my first marriage, which was problematic from the start, we went to a marriage counselor the first year of our marriage.  He led with a statement about how in order to really do good therapeutic work, divorce needed to be an option.  We left and never went back because, for us, it wasn’t an option.  Twelve or so years later, I went to a therapist to work on some anger issues I was having.  She led with a statement about how in order to really do good therapeutic work, I was going to have to be willing to consider ending my marriage as an option.   I stopped seeing her immediately.  It wasn’t an option. 

Of course, if you read my blog you know that my marriage fell apart anyway and divorce, which had never been an option became a reality.   I’ve come to believe that one of the things that contributed to the failure of that relationship was the fact that divorce was not an option.

I know, that sounds weird.  Backward.  Like an oxymoron. 

But there are a lot of deeply spiritual principles that are backward, upside-down, oxymoronic.

Love your enemies.

Blessed are those that mourn.

Rejoice in suffering.

Lose your life to find it.

It’s the final one that speaks to my cynical view on relationships.  And here’s why.  If failure is not an option, then the game becomes about survival and success and not about love. If the goal is success, then one or both people in the relationship may stop being authentic and lose touch with what they want and who they are.  If the goal is survival of the relationship, one or both people may essentially give up anything and everything to preserve the relationship.   The problem with that is that if you give up anything and everything, you ultimately lose yourself as well.  You give yourself up in service to the preservation of the relationship.   And then guess what?  It’s not a relationship you are in anymore.  But rather, some version of yourself that you have created that you think will lead to success.  But not the real you.  Not the one that person fell in love with to begin with.  

Relationships take risk.

You have to be brave.

You have to embrace death to live. 

You have to be able to say, “This is me.  This is what I want.  This is who I am and what kind of relationship I’m interested in.” 

You have to be able to say, “If that’s not what you want, that’s OK, but I’m not willing to lose myself in order to save the relationship.” 

and….

“I don’t want you to either.”  

Some might disagree and say that the ultimate romantic move is for someone to give everything up for them. 

“This is how we know what love is, to lay down one’s life for another.”

But laying down one’s life is vastly different than being fake and living a lie.   Laying down one’s life certainly means sacrifice, but it doesn’t mean dishonesty.  

Imagine the person you love. What if they sacrificed themselves on the altar of your relationship? What if they quit doing what they love, gave up their passions, stopped being THEM for you? Can you imagine what a tragedy it would be? How BORING it would be to be with that shell of who they really are?

The times that I’ve had the courage to say to my husband, “This is me and this is what I want and if this is not what you want it’s OK.”   THOSE were the times I was laying down my life.  I was putting my heart out there to get broken in the name of honesty.  In the name of being true to myself and in the name of allowing him to be true to who he is and what he wants. 

Those other times?  When I was pretending to be something else, or cramming myself into a box that I thought might please?   Those times I was trying to force my agenda on him and asked him to be dishonest about what he wanted so that I would be more comfortable? That wasn’t laying down my life, that was just living a falsehood in order to control an outcome.  

To lay down your life is the ultimate risk, the ultimate surrender.  It involves no control of any kind.  

Because love can only exist where there is freedom.  

“The law brings death, but the spirit of grace brings life.”

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More on mercy not sacrifice

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Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.

I used to hear that I must give up everything to walk in the footsteps of Jesus as a call to sacrifice.  But, Jesus himself said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.   Go and learn what that means.”  

I’ve tried to learn what that means for the past who-knows-how-many years. 

If giving up everything isn’t about sacrifice, then what is it about? 

The following is taken from Awakening is a Destructive Process by Greg Calise and says it pretty well. 

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”
― Adyashanti

Awakening is not a walk in the park. It is a ride through hell. It is the tearing down of all of your cherished beliefs and everything you thought about yourself. There is no way around this. We must come face to face with our shadows. It is there that our false ideas of who we are are shattered. It is there that all of our false beliefs are destroyed. We must face these false notions and see them for what they are. This is the only way to heal, to become whole again, to live in integrity.

It is a complete surrender, a process of brutal self-honesty. It is a path of complete acceptance of the truth, no matter how difficult it is to bear. We go through life with so many false notions – of the world, of spirituality and of ourselves. We build up masks and we believe the facades. It’s all a charade. It is all based upon illusions and deceit. We deceive ourselves at every moment, and the world also deceives us at every moment. We live in perpetual cognitive dissonance, justifying the most absurd things in our minds. We constantly lie to ourselves…. and we believe it.

To awaken to the truth that you seek, you must tear down the lies. But we are too attached to the lies. We want to hold on to the illusions and to become enlightened at the same time. That is not possible. But there are hundreds of phony gurus and “spiritual teachers” that will tell you it is. They offer you processes to become happy, fulfilled, calm, find your soulmate, be positive, get the right job, make lots of money, balance the chakras, become healthy and whatever else you may be desiring. This has nothing to do with awakening. This is only polishing the ego. They all lead you right back into the matrix. You may even be lucky enough to get a golden cage, but it is still a cage, and you remain imprisoned in slavery. This is the road that most people choose to follow. This road is well traveled by the herd.

It takes courage, discernment and self-honesty to walk the road to truth and freedom.

The herd is going in the opposite direction. One must be prepared for that, to find comfort in being alone, not understood by others.

As Eckhart Tolle has stated, you don’t have to wait for the dark night of the soul to dismantle your false notions, your false self, your life story. You can consciously take that road. But it demands courage, discernment, and a brutal honesty of yourself. The mind is a very tricky opponent, and will deceive you at every step, as your awakening is the end of its control over you. But it can be done……You must simply allow Grace to act within you.

“As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
– Eckhart Tolle

So, the choice rests with each of you. This road is not for the timid or the faint of heart. not at all. But there is no other road. No one will simply wave a magical wand over you.

It is a road of destruction and the question is, “How much are you willing to give up? How much can you endure?” Because on this road, you must give up everything. Every piece of you will shatter. Can you endure that?

“You must die to live.”

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Missing you

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Maybe we are never separated from anyone or anything.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I missed my dad.  

I said yes. 

And, of course, it’s true. 

I do. 

I miss seeing him, the smell of his Old Spice, holding his hand.   I miss the sound of his voice.  There’s something about his voice….

And I don’t.  

Now before you go judging me as a totally cold-hearted bitch for that remark, read on.   (well actually if you want to judge me as a cold-hearted bitch, that’s fine, feel free)

Years ago, when my work involved traveling 3 or 4 days a week, my husband said to me, “Sometimes I feel like when you’re gone, you don’t even miss me.”

My first impulse was to dismiss what he felt with an easy answer, “of course I do!” 

But, his feelings were legitimate and deserved more than that. 

I told him that sometimes I miss people more when they are in the same room than I do when they are miles away.  When I don’t feel that I am connecting, I miss them.  No matter where they are.   So, with him, sometimes I feel close when I’m halfway across the country and sometimes I feel far away when we are in the same bed.  

I don’t miss people nearly as much for their physical presence as I do for their emotional presence.  And emotional presence is one of those things that can be with you no matter when and no matter where.  It is something that is built up over time and remains over great distances. 

So, with my dad, I feel his emotional presence.  It is with me every minute of every day.  The things he taught me, the lessons I learned from him, the ways he supported me, the mistakes he made.   His strength, his weaknesses, they are all with me all the time.  As a football coach, my dad wasn’t home much, but his presence was always large even when he was gone. After I became an adult, my parents moved around all the time but my dad’s presence was still there with me. And in some odd way he is with me now as much as he was when he was alive. 

But, after the question came up about missing him I thought about separation and how maybe it’s just a figment of my imagination.   If I can feel far away from someone who’s close and close to someone who’s far away, maybe separation isn’t a real thing, but just a story I tell myself.  

Every atom, every particle in this world is all part of one huge organism.  We might think we are separate because we have a boundary to our bodies and our mind tells us that this makes us separate, but particles from everywhere are passing through our bodies all the time.  Every second tens of thousands of neutrinos pass through our bodies.  And not to be gross, but the water you are drinking is estimated to be almost 100% Jurassic dinosaur pee. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3101363/Have-drunk-dinosaur-urine-glass-water-contains-100-Jurassic-pee-claim-scientists.html

Another estimate says we eat 10,000 hairs from the heads of strangers each year just by eating fast food, and yet another says we ingest 30,000 skin cells a day many of which belong to those we live with.   The food you eat that builds your body is simply another organism; a plant, an animal that has passed into your body to become you.   And again, not to be gross, but the soil that grows the plants that we eat or grew plants that fed the animals we eat is full of poop and dead stuff.  The more poop and dead stuff, the better things grow.  

So we are never really separate from anyone or anything – we just feel that way. 

Make no mistake, there are times when I just want to see my dad and I’m sure there will be many, many more times when the emotional presence thing just won’t be enough and I will want to hear his voice again and smell his Old Spice. Times when I will feel separate.

It’s those times when we feel separate that we do all kinds of things to feel otherwise.  We hold those we love virtually hostage sometimes to keep them close, we control and manipulate, we build shrines, we write stories, we just can’t let go.

I put up a picture of my dad at the top of my stairs after he died.  I look at it most mornings when I go into my office and say a little hello.  I have his ashes in my front room with another picture of him there.  I like to say hello to it too.  Thinking about my dad’s ashes led to a google search on what people do to the ashes of their loved ones.  People eat them, drink them, snort them, bake them into cookies, mix them in with tattoo ink.   Just to feel close and not separated.  

I was speaking with someone who read this blog post who told me this story:

She was at a close friend’s funeral and ran into his brother while smoking a cigarette behind their church. She had met him 10 years prior and didn't know him well. They laughed together at being the "bad kids" smoking behind a church.

"I snorted my brother this morning" he told her.

She said, “I died! I've never laughed so hard! I asked him why and he said "I don't know- I think he would think it's funny, you think it's funny- it's dumb- but I wanted to feel close"

He said "don't tell anyone. It's so stupid, but I think he would think it's funny and I wanted to make him laugh one more time."

We talked about that story, which I think is gorgeous in a way. She said that for her it was like some kind of perverse communion. And it was. A way to feel connected. A way to be WITH the person.

I’ll say it again.  Maybe we are never separated from anyone or anything.   And maybe we are never separate from god either – whatever your concept of god is.

Is this what is meant by eternal life? 

Who knows. 

But what I do know is that I miss my dad. 

And I don’t.

I Gave a Gift to my Brother

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Lots of gifts are that way. We give them so that we feel like good people.

My brother doesn’t like Christmas gifts and the whole commercialization of Christmas.  To be clear, he’s not opposed to gifts per se, but just feels that the obligatory gift-giving that takes place at Christmas, and Christmas overall is not his thing. 

He has asked the whole family before to not give him gifts.   We’ve talked about this in years past and I’ve tried to tell him how much pleasure it gives me to give gifts.  He has pointed out that if the gift is for MY pleasure, it’s not a gift to HIM, but a gift to me. 

Of course he’s right.

And yet, we all continue to send him gifts.    

This year, I was going to leave him off my gift list.  I sent out little token gifts to my other siblings and to my niece and nephews, but then I felt bad not giving him a gift, so I sent one to him as well.   

Even though I knew he didn’t want one.

I shouldn’t have done it.

Unwanted “gifts” are given all the time. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes unwittingly:

  • The workaholic who tells his/her spouse or children, “I’m doing this for YOU,” but in fact, the children just want him/her to be home more.  Less money would be OK with them.

  • The man on the street who calls out the unwanted catcall to the woman, “hey sexy!” and feels he has given her the gift of a compliment.

  • The unsolicited advice.

  • The time I did the dishes at my daughter’s house and thought I was giving a gift and being a good houseguest.  She felt criticized by it.

But in the case of my brother – it wasn’t unwitting or inadvertent.   I knew he didn’t want it.

Why did I give it?

What was that about? 

Of course we both know the answer.  It was for me.  It was my ego and nothing more.   It was so I didn’t feel like I’d left him out, it was so I didn’t feel like a bad sister or some kind of scrooge.  It was so I’d feel generous and inclusive. 

Lots of gifts are that way.  We give them so that we feel like good people.  We give them so that others will admire us and our superior gift-giving generosity.

We feel pressure to find just the right gift and wrap it just the right way.  Is this for us or for the recipient?  Who are we trying to impress?  Who do we want to feel good?   

It’s not just gifts, it can be acts of service towards others, charitable acts, religious observances, obedience, compliance, compromise. 

It’s not always obvious to us why we are giving.   But when we fail to receive recognition, appreciation, thanks, reciprocation, reward, or any type of results we were hoping for we know.  If we resent or regret having given in the absence of these results, we know it was for us and not a real gift. 

And, of course, when we give something that the recipient has already told us they don’t want…. then what the fuck?