A Game

Tags

children, Fathers Day, game

The Engineer and Nora have a game, and it goes like this. Say she is wearing a blue dress:

E: Nora, I like your pretty green dress.

N: No Papa, it’s blue.

E: What, this dress? No, this dress is green.

N: No, it’s blue!

E: Blue? No way, you’re goofy, that’s green.

N: No, YOU’RE goofy, that’s blue!

They’ve been playing this way since she learned her first words for colors. In the beginning she was tentative about it, not quite sure she had her words right. Papa, after all, is much bigger, and he knows far more words, so how could he be the one to make a mistake? Now she is quite confident and calls him out on it every time.

As Fathers’ Day approaches, I’m thinking about all the different ways we are taught. Popular culture has it now that we must intentionally work on our kids’ development on a regular basis. While this springs from the noble goal of doing everything we can to be good parents, it ignores the fact that kids develop every day just by engaging with the world around them, and whether or not we have read the latest book on the subject, we do teach them and help them develop just by being with them and being who we are.

I much prefer the Engineer’s game to any well intentioned educational kids’ activity I’ve seen on Pinterest boards. The game has taught Nora to be confident about the way she perceives the world, and not to hesitate to speak up about it. After all, even Papa, who knows everything, is sometimes just goofy and needs to hear the truth.

 

May, Rome

Tags

Rome, San Clemente, tree of life

May was an eventful month to say the least. The Photographer graduated, with honors, after two long years of hard work, and before his new job started in earnest, we jetted off to Rome. This was a trip we’d been planning and saving for, with one degree of seriousness or another, for nearly five years.

If there is one thing that’s sorely needed after two years of keeping one’s nose to the grindstone, it’s perspective. Rome offered it in abundance. There are still stone roads that date back to the years before Christ. Some of Rome’s original aqueducts still supply the city with water. There are any number of churches that are built on top of older churches and temples. Very little of the ancient ruins in some areas has actually been excavated, which begs the questions, what else is underneath us, still to be discovered?

C.G. Jung once described a dream in which he was exploring a house. As he descended to the ground floor, then down into the subterranean levels, he discovered more and more primitive dwellings. We had a similar experience visiting Basilica St. Clemente in Rome, a 12th century church built over a 4th century church built over a Mithraic temple, built over a Roman home. The story goes that in the 1800s, a monk living in the church could not sleep because he heard the sound of water running. He convinced the other monks to start digging, and eventually the church below was unearthed. It took quite a bit more time for the discovery of the temple, and after that, the Roman home, into which water was still running, the very same water that was keeping the good monk awake.

The Photographer and I were so amazed by this place when we happened upon it early in our visit that we arranged to return for a tour. Our tour guide told us a bit about the ancient Mithraic rites, and the idea that Mithras was born to a virgin on the 25th of December, which led some to speculate about a relationship between Mithraism and Christianity, while others accused Mithraism of parodying Christianity.

Throughout our visit, we kept hearing about how Christianity ultimately tried to stamp out Paganism. Guides pointed to the evidence: Crosses placed on top of Egyptian obelisks, for instance. I saw this evidence a bit differently. The obelisks were still there. They were not taken down or torn apart. The pagan temples below the churches, with some exceptions, were not ransacked or destroyed. The Mithraic space below Basilica St. Clemente was actually remarkably intact.

What is the difference between destroying and replacing something or building on top of it? Everything.

Photo by Allie Caufield

An image on the top level of the Basilica illustrates the point beautifully. At the base of the cross there appears to be a plant. This is actually the Tree of Life, from the Garden of Eden. An apocryphal story I wrote about here details the mythological relationship between the tree and the cross. The idea is that the story of Christ grows out of the story of Adam.

 

Similarly, the story we live now grows from these ancient ideas. It isn’t just in the technology, the aqueducts and roads, it’s in our very foundational ideas, so fundamental to our worldview we cannot fathom life without them. It’s quite literally in our foundations, underfoot, the mortar on which we’ve built our current reality.

It makes sense at key points in this story we live now to go back, go below, and touch base with that foundation. I can think of no better way to start to the Photographer’s new journey, and our new journey together, than this.

On Trauma Stewardship

Tags

breathwork, culture, news, society, trauma stewardship

This afternoon I listened to an interview with Laura van Dernoot Lipsky on what she calls trauma stewardship, which she described as the process of not just working through, railing against, and interrupting trauma and injustice at every opportunity, but simultaneously understanding that pain and trauma have always existed, and will always exist, and that our efforts are not going to (and can never be expected to) eradicate it. It is exceedingly difficult to hold both of these truths at once, and to keep on going.

When Laura described some of the signs that a person might be experiencing some negative and dangerous effects of working with trauma (cynicism, feeling overwhelmed, constant exhaustion), the interviewer astutely observed that this is currently the state of our whole society. Events of the past couple of weeks have put a rather fine point on it. How could we not be collectively traumatized, cynical, overwhelmed and exhausted?

She talks about some practices for dealing with this: breathwork, exercise, practices of just “being” for a time. All things I tell other people to do regularly, and all too infrequently practice myself. So I’m making a promise to my readers that at least for this week, I will do one or more of these things every day. Friends, I ask you to agree to do the same. Whatever it is that you know you need, that you know is a good idea, but somehow don’t have time for, make time for it this week. We cannot afford to be careless with our Selves.

 

 

The First Year

Just about a year ago, we said goodbye to Mom. I’ve noticed my blog posts have slowed since then, and perhaps I’ve just been out of words. Years ago, a writer friend told me that after losing his father, he was unable to write for awhile, but he really enjoyed monster-killing computer games in the interim. I now understand that in a whole new way.

Marking this anniversary seemed like a good time to think about what is different now, one year later. This is what I came up with:

I have an all new anger about the fact that we live in linear time and space. In truth, I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this. But now I feel it in a new way that things change in such a way that it is impossible to go back. This feels so much less reasonable than it used to.

I feel the fragility and temporary nature of things in my life so much more than before.

I no longer feel like a young person. Granted, this is a matter of perspective. In my early twenties I was telling a story to an older man, something I said happened “a long time ago.” He said, “You haven’t lived long enough for anything to have happened to you a long time ago.” He argued that the minimum that could qualify as a long time ago is 30 years, and I still have few memories that precede 30 years ago. Perhaps it’s more the sense of the passage of time, and of loss.

I have less patience for minor things being regarded as catastrophe. Yesterday I saw a TV commercial in which characters were outraged that their cable plan required them to purchase multiple DVRs. It made me feel vaguely like punching the TV. (Don’t worry; I didn’t.)

So, friends, bear with me while I try to find words and string them into sentences and record them here. I haven’t given up. It has just become harder for the moment. But I do keep coming back.

Dream: A One Room Shack

I dreamed I was driving, late at night, in an outlying area near my city. A friend of mine was following in her car behind me, and we were looking for a place to do some work. It had snowed, and the roads were slippery, but we were the only cars on the road. We found a broken down building and figured no one would be using it. We went inside and got ready to work on whatever it was we were there to do. I had the feeling we were running late.

I heard a noise in the corner and realized someone was there. It was a child, and soon after, his mother appeared. They were living in this tiny, one room home in this broken down building. Surprisingly, they were not angry with us for being there. In fact, the mother knew me. She’d contacted me as she was looking for therapy, but I’d had no openings available. Soon her husband showed up, and as she was explaining who I was, I looked around the dingy little room. I felt I should do something for them. Did they have food? Could I give them money? Or take them grocery shopping? Would it be insulting to offer? Clearly, they needed help. I woke up still pondering the question of what to do.

A day later, this dream is still on my mind. I have been working hard lately, most likely too hard. The image of driving late at night, too fast on slippery roads, in search of a place to do work, is pretty vivid. With all that going on, what aspects of my life have been quietly relegated to this broken down one room shack? And is this dream their way of patiently calling me, looking for an opening in my schedule?

In the Dark, the Evergreens

Tags

advent, darkness, evergreens, funeral

Photo by Tibor Fazakas

Bless us, any god who crabs the apples
and seeds the leaf and needle evergreen. 

- From “Lines for Winter” by Dave Lucas

When I wrote about a challenging Advent season, I had the sense of waiting in the dark with difficult questions and wondering about the value of incarnation, of being present in this time and place. This challenging season extended into the New Year when a good friend lost her much loved father, Tony, very unexpectedly, a few days into 2013.

At the funeral Saturday, the church was still decorated for Christmas, and from my seat I could see the evergreen trees in the background, behind the priest as he conducted Mass. I remembered something the Nurse said during one of our Advent discussions several years ago, that our ancestors used to cut down these trees and drag them inside for the worst of winter, the shortest days and longest nights of the year, just to remind themselves that not everything has died.

Culture and technology now prevent us from feeling the worst of winter, the deepest effects of that darkness and the primordial fears it brings. But nothing separates us from deep and powerful darkness when a loved one dies. It shakes the ground and eclipses the light. I sat in the church looking at those trees and feeling deeply for my dear friend who was experiencing that darkening in the moment.

I listened as the priest and my friend’s husband described Tony as generous, something I and so many others have long admired about his daughter, who is among the most generous people I have ever been blessed to have in my life. I learned also that Tony owned a tavern, which people remembered as a place of connection and fun. His daughter, a therapist, owns a space where countless people have found peace and healing, and where many groups have met to share stories, laughter and friendship.

There are things, I thought, that do not die.

To the practices of faith and listening to children, I silently added, inviting what is still green and living and beautiful into the waiting darkness.

Holding the Questions

Tags

advent, children, Connecticut, family, incarnation

I wrote earlier this month about questioning the value of incarnation this Advent season, about having faith, or at times, just attempting to. Recent horrific events in Connecticut have made it even harder to hold these questions, and I walked around for a couple of days furious, shocked and numb. As most everyone else did, I thought of the young ones I love and had to hold at bay any thoughts of “what if” if I didn’t want to hyperventilate.

Increasingly, this Advent season seems to me about holding these difficult questions, as one wonderful commenter on my last post said, sitting with them in the dark before reemerging. I thought of times past when it’s felt necessary to do that, albeit for shorter periods of time, perhaps just the time it takes a plane to take off. I thought of an old post I wrote about What to Say to the Children. Part of my Advent practice this year will be  spending time with them, playing with them, loving them, and paying close, close attention to what they say to me. For all their wonderful lessons, I am so very grateful.

A Challenging Advent Season

I’ve written before about the Advent season, about things gestating, about the wild, restless time before change happens, about changing the world just by being in it and about the unreserved yes. Years ago I heard wise words from Michael Meade, who talked of transcendence and the spiritual life but cautioned that for some people, the spiritual is not challenging. The bigger task is actually to incarnate oneself more fully. This resonated strongly. A friend told a story of a woman she knew who could remember being about three years old and thinking, “This was a mistake; I never should have come here,” by which she meant, being born into the world. I can also remember thinking that, in a way, and I’ve lived most of my life on the edge of my proverbial chair, not fully willing to commit, more comfortable escaping into the spiritual and intellectual than planting my feet on terra firma.

Advent is all about incarnation. The oldest stories tell us that spirit wants to be incarnated, and the Christian story is only one version of that. There must be something to it, descending to this plane, if even God saw the value.

This year has shaken my faith in that idea all over again. Losing my mother, especially, shook ground I didn’t know existed, and there have been days when faith that there is reason and value to our being incarnated like this, in this particular world, has all but left. What’s the use of this screwed up system of living in time and space, where aging and death and grief are universal? My profession doesn’t always help with this. There are days when I feel more pulled by the awfulness some of my clients have endured than by their amazing courage and resilience in healing. I see Mom in more than a few of these stories, both the trauma and the courage.

This Advent season, I find myself reading what I’ve written in years past, and investing in faith that whoever wrote those entries had the right idea. The challenge this year, in the midst of these big questions, these big doubts, is still to live the unreserved yes. Some days I do better at that than others. But today, the act of writing is enough of a faith in incarnation, in the idea of manifesting something in time and space. For today, this one small act is a “Yes.”

Creativity and Miracles

Tags

creativity, miracle, transcendent

Recently I heard Ken James speak on the transcendent function, the function within the psyche that forms a bridge between conscious and unconscious. The transcendent function is said to develop naturally out of the tension between the two, thus making unconscious material available to the conscious mind.

Somehow in the context of Dr. James’s talk, we began discussing creativity and miracles. My friend the art therapist offered that creativity was miraculous. Dr. James disagreed. Isn’t it sad, he countered, that we have gotten to the point where creativity does seem miraculous? It shouldn’t be miraculous. It should be the most ordinary, every day thing in our lives.

I have to admit, creativity has become all too miraculous in my life lately. I’ve fallen into the idea that it requires extraordinary amounts of time and effort, which of course, I don’t have at the moment. I like the idea of regarding creativity as something utterly unremarkable, like all the best things – breathing, loving, prayer.

Dream: Mythic Pediment

Tags

dreams, museum, myth, pediment, plane

I dreamed I was with a group of friends in a museum. It was a private tour, just for us. My job was to write about what I saw. The things we were to see were very high up in the building, so high that the best way to see them was in a small, old fashioned biplane, piloted by a woman I knew well. In my dream, we took this trip once a month, and each time, the exhibits were different.

As my job was to write about what I saw, friends, this is what I saw: A mythic pediment was done in gold and arranged on a wall. It was like a scene from a Greek temple, depicting events in the lives of the Gods. Our tour guide told me that in its native location, the scene would have been much more spread out. They had condensed it to fit it into the museum space. There were purple flowers underneath it, and writing that was advertising some sort of museum event, but it was too small to read from so far away. I remember thinking this was the exhibit’s only flaw.

The plane faltered a bit, very frightening so far up in the air. I thought for a moment about what would happened if it fell. Then I thought, the trip would still be worth it, to see such a thing.