Comment on Comments

When I woke up my computer this morning and looked at email (which I don't usually do until later in the morning, so as not to start the day in reaction mode), I noticed a whole slew of spam comments on more than a dozen posts. This is the second such occurrence this week. My apologies if you were greeted by any of that if and when you tried to post a comment. No really raunchy stuff, at least, though I did notice the word "SEX" embedded in the thick of one comment that was in non-English characters (Korean? Chinese? I should have consulted Anna, our resident Chinese scholar)!

I think I've cleaned them up, and I've changed some settings so that I will be able to moderate comments and reject those that are spam or in some way offensive to the spirit of my blog (while of course still allowing for difference of opinion). This means that when you submit a comment, it won't appear right away on the blog, unless I just happen to be checking my email at the time I get told it's there.

For the time being I am keeping the comments option as open as possible, but if I find that the spammish comments keep multiplying and I have to spend more and more time monitoring them, I may decide to choose a fussier comment option.

As I am delighted by the comment conversation that is developing, I hope to keep the lines as open as possible! Thanks for joining the conversation in whatever way appeals to you, whether by comment or by silent appreciation or by sharing posts with friends and family.

Thanks!

In the Birdcage, part 2

I drove home from Massachusetts that May day abuzz with possibility and excitement, and with Bill's birdcage escape instructions at the front of my mind.

When I got home, I did my best not only to share Bill's insights with David, but also, much harder, to put his advice into practice--to affirm myself as a writer and an artist. (I'm really not sure what he meant by "artist"--I think rather than being about a clear focus on the visual arts, it had more to do with creative self-expression, which was a recurring theme across the several tests and indicators I had taken.)

This was 1997, and I don't know if there were many books around in those days trumpeting the ways of positive thinking and the use of affirmations in creating a new reality for oneself and one's life. I suspect there were some around, though nowhere near the popular explosion of the present book and internet world.

Even if there were some good books about out there that might have supported me in creating and "employing" affirmations then and there, I wasn't reading any of those books. They would have been way way off my reading list and would never have passed the censorship of my predispositions and assumptions in those days.

So I undertook to "affirm myself as an artist and a writer" as best I could. I tried writing simple statements a bunch of times in my journal every morning, and maybe, if I was feeling particularly uninhibited, looking myself in the mirror and speaking out loud: "I am a writer and an artist. I am an artist and a writer." 

I felt incredibly awkward, stupid, and inauthentic. Deep down, I didn't believe what I was saying.

Or maybe really really deep down I did, but in those thicker, tangled middle layers that stood between me and my deepest, truest, highest self, I thought it was hogwash. As patently untrue as if I had stared at an orange and said, "This is a blue apple. This is a blue apple." Mere repetition was not going to change the reality of how I perceived myself.

But I bravely kept it up . . . for a few days. Until I could stand it no longer and began to add more genuine-feeling truth to the statement.

Soon it had become: "I am a writer and an artist and a mother." And the mother part, that undeniable fact of my relational existence, eventually squeezed out the writer and artist. Since I was on sabbatical, I had a reprieve from the Episcopal priest part of my self-identity, but eventually the Episcopal priest part joined the mother part, and . . . you get the idea.

My fiercely protective ego doing its level best to keep me "safe" had won that round: Old, known, and familiar identity had been reaffirmed; potential new identity denied. (Although when David and I returned from that sabbatical, we made small changes to our shared work schedules, with the aim of allowing me more time to write. It was an excellent idea that proved very hard, make that impossible, for me to honor.)

But at least some strangely stubborn and potent seeds had been planted. Actually, I have a feeling those seeds had been planted long long ago, and somehow the sabbatical had provided enough forms of moisture and disturbance to crack the hard shell of each seed case, so that whether I was ready to acknowledge my dreams or not, something, some sort of growth had been set in motion underground.

The most unusual of the tests that I had taken as part of Bill's vocational counseling was called the "16PF". In the written materials Bill had sent me, he noted that many of his clients over the years had found this one test to be the catalyst for the most powerful insights.

Reviewing the 16PF results, I thought I sounded like a case for a psych ward. I think that's because it is oriented toward the world of corporate professionals, and I had answered some of its "work behavior" questions from the perspective not just of restless parish priest but also of harried, stressed out mother of two young children (that was a big part of my "work" after all!). And Bill did warn me that the 16PF was not exactly geared toward feeling and intuitive (feminine?) ways of wisdom.

This meant that there were some really off-the-mark observations in its analysis of me, suggesting that I might be overly focused on getting my own needs met and inappropriately uninhibited in expressing my emotional responses to my colleagues in working situations (like, yelling at my children?). But then it also said I was apt to keep my thoughts and feelings so hidden and quiet that others had a hard time knowing me. (Ah, not only was there quite a difference between my behavior at work and my behavior at home, but there was also the wide gap between how an introvert perceives and describes her inner emotional climate and what she expresses outwardly.)

Along with some piercing observations about my pattern of being reluctant to ask for support and my aversion to taking risks, the 16PF did leave me really pondering one particular quandary. It stated: "Ms. Curtis tends to get most satisfaction in life from chances to be helpful to others. She feels best, however, when she can do so while working alone and apart from others."

This may sound strange, but I could not get my head around that at all. It struck me as so utterly paradoxical as to be almost nonsense. Like an impenetrable Zen koan, or a brain teaser designed to torture those who try to solve it. 

"How can I be helpful to others if I prefer working alone and apart from others?" I kept asking myself. That's impossible! Aren't those two realities complete opposites? 

I could, of course, see how other people might be able to do what's helpful to others by working alone--scientists, for instance, doing research for the cure of disease; writers writing insightful or inspiring books, articles, or poems; musicians composing music to soothe the soul or awaken new possibilities; painters and other visual artists creating windows to expand our own ways of seeing or celebrating the world. I'm sure there are a thousand more human occupations that might fit.

That made perfect sense to me. For those others. Just somehow not for me. For me to see myself as a writer would be-- selfish and self-centered, grandiose, unrealistic, just another romantic idealist notion to add to my considerable collection of abandoned romantic idealist notions. 

Clearly I wasn't really an artist or a writer or a scientist . . . just an extreme introvert! And there are times, in this very extraverted culture of ours, when being an introvert can feel not just like a quirk of personality but like an immense liability, a major character flaw, perhaps even a moral defect. That is if you believe the accusations that get heaped on us introverts from time to time: "You don't like people." "You're anti-social." "You're kind of a misfit."

To which, in my better moments, I might reply by remembering what one of my colleagues used to say, almost with a hint of envy: "Ah, but you have such a rich inner life!"

(Remember those words--"moral defect"--for later in this story. Well, actually; you don't need to remember them. I will take care of that for you.)

My unimaginative questions continued: Isn't helping other people all about helping them in person, face to face, like the pastoral care that clergy offer to their congregations? Like my adolescent goal of joining the Peace Corps? Like Mother Teresa ministering to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta? Like a mother caring for her children, or a teacher teaching patiently in a classroom?

And lurking somewhere in the background, perhaps not even all that far in the background, the real clincher, the horribly moralistic, incredibly powerful silencer of all thoughts of really honoring myself as a writer and an artist, or even as just a human being apart from my family and congregation: Jesus himself, for Christ's sake (I couldn't resist)! The "pioneer and perfecter" of our faith, the hero, the role model, the guy whose example we are supposedly all dying to emulate, saying loud and clear:

"Whoever would be my disciple, she has to deny herself, take up her cross, and follow me."

To which I now say from a safer distance, "Thanks a lot, Jesus.  But I'm not signing on to that particular scheme."

But back then in 1997, as I said before, my fiercely protective-of-the-status-quo ego, seemed to prevail. And I stayed stuck.

Yoga Again for the First Time

Yesterday morning, in the second session of my new (to me) Hatha yoga class, I found myself considering becoming a Hindu (is there a feminine form of that? a Hindini?). Well, maybe not really a practicing Hindu, since basically all I know about Hinduism is that there are lots and lots of gods and goddesses, and lots and lots of rituals to go with them. And that it started in India and has been around a long long time.

So I found myself feeling deeply grateful for the spiritual and religious tradition from which yoga springs. At least as interpreted gracefully by this particular teacher of the Kripalu "school" of yoga.

I felt myself falling in love on the spot--with yoga's bringing together of masculine and feminine, of body and mind and spirit, of simple yet powerful observations, such as that the "yoga mudra" pose puts one's head lower than one's heart, as if befitting of spiritual wisdom.

Even though I have taken yoga classes off and on (more off than on) over the past ten or fifteen years, something feels different this time. I have a feeling it's not only that I have a different teacher but also that I am a different student. Meaning, I have changed. Something is different about me that makes me much more open to coming to yoga "again for the first time".

The difference between me-and-yoga-now and me-and-yoga-past is a little hard to pin down, nor would it necessarily be in the spirit of yoga or of my present way of being in the world to try too hard to do so, though my analytical mind would like nothing better.

If I had to say, the primary difference is that in the past I have largely approached yoga as a form of "exercise" and with a mindset of disconnect or compartmentalization. That my body might somehow be largely disconnected from other dimensions of my being--mind, spirit, soul. I think the sense of being divided in myself and having "compartments" in my life was much more prominent in former years.

And in approaching yoga as physical exercise, I have, despite knowing that it's not really in the spirit of yoga to compete or compare, been way more concerned with keeping up with the class, with "looking competent" at yoga, with wishing I were more flexible, more adept at remembering one pose from another, at getting things right, at impressing the teacher, at being as good at or secretly even better than my colleagues. And being hard on myself for not being those things.

I don't sense that happening this time. (At least not yet. Now that I've made this claim, we'll see how it goes from here!) What a relief!

Maybe a key factor is that the head of the yoga studio recommended that I start in a Level I class, because it has been a while since my last yoga class and the teacher would be new to me. And something about starting as a beginner really appealed to me! Maybe I felt a slight, teeny weeny bit of offended ego, but not much. That's something new. I don't have to prove myself here. Wow, what an amazing idea.

Much more than that I noticed I felt curious and even excited that I would get to experience allowing myself to be a beginner. To take things gently and slowly and (one can always hope!) mindfully. Not to judge myself for having to start small.

And you know what? I really feel right at home! As if I "belong" in this group. I'm not struggling to keep up (even though most of my peers have worked with this teacher for a while and know the moves better than me). I'm not overly worried about how I look or whether I'm doing it right. Well, most of the time.

Which means I'm there. I'm present, more often than not. Grateful for a practice that is physical as well as attentive to mind and spirit, spiritual as well as physical. That aims to hold body, mind, and spirit together, just as they really are; and that aims to link what you do on your yoga mat with what you do in the rest of your day.

Integration. Union. I think that's what the word "yoga" means.

In the Birdcage, part 1

"The way to open the door of the birdcage is to affirm yourself as an artist and a writer," the vocational counselor offered as we sat in his wide-roomed old farmhouse in central Massachusetts.

The birdcage image was mine, and when I consider that this meeting took place in 1997 I am a bit stunned to realize that it was firmly in place even that far back.  Clearly I had mentioned it to Bill, the counselor. For at least ten years, it seems, it was the dominant metaphor I used to describe how I felt about my professional life. Over time the metaphor got more and more elaborate, which might suggest that my stuckness was bordering on the pathological.

I was a bird in a birdcage (as best I could tell, the cage was parish ministry) desperately trying to get out. I was spending a lot of energy flapping against the bars of the cage getting battered and bruised and never quite getting out. From time to time I would be inspired by some new interest that helped me forget my entrapment (a new approach to Sunday School, or a new book by my favorite spiritual writer, or the whole intriguing realm of historical Jesus research--these come to mind).

In the midst of whatever new passion or interest had captured my attention, I would flap happily in the cage, even launching myself into flight, flying higher and higher until . . . WHAM! I would reach the upper limits of my caged space, hit the bars, and land with a flop on the bottom on the cage. Dazed and discouraged, I would resettle my feathers, pick myself up, and eventually start the cycle again.

For five months in 1997 David and I enjoyed the gift of a four month sabbatical and our annual one month of vacation from parish ministry. That made a total of five consecutive months off during which we would continue to be paid our modest shared salary while we pursued refreshing activities (sabbaticals are related to the idea of sabbath rest).

Before we started, my official sabbatical plan was to finish up the long distance Montessori teacher training that I had begun the previous fall but had gotten bogged down in almost immediately. My progress had been really slow. My initial interest had been piqued by the enjoyment and fascination I always felt when visiting the "modified" Montessori preschool that my daughters had attended (Anna was still there). When the parish had undertaken a new approach to children's Christian education that was based on the work of Maria Montessori, I saw a way to make a connection between the two (and maybe also to pave the way for another kind of "ministry" in the world?).

On the first night of our sabbatical, a Sunday evening, as David and I had settled into our reading in bed ritual, I began a book that had been loaned to us at the last minute by a parishioner who thought we would enjoy it--Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I was hooked by the end of the first page of the introduction, and by the next morning I had decided to ditch the Montessori sabbatical project and see what would happen if I wrote for at least an hour every day, except on weekends.  By day five of the sabbatical, I had received a flyer in the mail for a drawing class called "Learning to See," using exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and signed myself up right away.

But there was another "project" going on behind all of this, one that felt really essential to my being. In anticipation of the sabbatical, I had knowingly defied all customary wisdom against doing such things during a sabbatical and engaged the services of a seasoned vocational counselor well before the start of our five month leave.

Bill (not his real name) sent me a battery of tests to be taken at home, then mailed back for scoring and analysis; after reading through and responding to the hefty booklet of test results and narrative reports, I was to make a date to meet with him in the Massachusetts farmhouse where he lived with his wife, who bred and raised English Bull Mastiffs.

I attacked the taking of those tests with zeal and curiosity. All those possibilities! There were so many kinds of work that seemed to appeal to me--for instance, nearly everything art or creativity related: graphic design, architecture, fine art, singing, composing music, conducting an orchestra, journalism, writing almost anything.  And there were plenty of occupations that did not appeal to me at all.

From the reports and analysis of my test results I learned, among other things, that I had a lot of "vocational energy". I think that means that I was very restless and probably also quite confused, neither of which was exactly news to me. More than anything, my zeal reflected a lively (desperate?) hope that I would learn something new, that something would become clear about another way of being in the world, especially another way of earning a living, and that I would find the practical way forward.

Unfortunately, Bill was at a point in his career when he was no longer doing that practical way forward part; he would do the testing and give his best considered and intuitive response, then send me on my way and retire to his study to write. I knew that when I started and decided it was worth the risk. He came highly recommended.

When I finally drove to central Massachusetts, it felt rather like a journey to a wise guru of some sort--I was a pilgrim in search of a teacher or a shrine, maybe the Holy Grail, and of course the grail was buried somewhere in myself. But I really wished hard that my guide and guru could make the search a little easier for me. Or maybe even a lot!

Bill ushered me into the farmhouse parlor, wearing a beat up old sweater and scuffing along in slippers. From his days as a career counselor at Harvard assisting students seeking conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, he had developed a system in which he kept no written notes (nothing to be subpoenaed by the authorities that way), but he seemed to have retained strong impressions about me in his memory, which he set into action by asking to glance briefly over my booklet of test results when we first sat down.

First question: "How comfortable are you owning your rather considerable intellectual capacities?"

I squirmed in my seat before answering sheepishly, "Not very."

We talked about that a while, and then he launched his next line of inquiry: "I want to underscore how essential it is to your well being to honor the fact that you are such a strong introvert. How well do you do with honoring that?" (On the Myers-Briggs typology, I'm almost off the chart on the introvert side of the line, and this has been true every one of the gazillion or so times I've taken the "inventory".)

Me, squirming more: "Um, well, I try but I'm probably not all that successful."

He: "Someone as strongly introverted as you probably needs a minimum of an hour of uninterrupted silence every day, like silent meditation or something like that, or you will be living with seriously high stress. And you would probably be happier if more of your work were done alone." And a while later he volunteered: "I can understand why parish ministry would not feel very well suited to who you are."


We talked easily for ninety minutes or more--it's amazing how fascinating it can be to hear someone speak about your very own self with so much insight!--and when I glimpsed the time on my watch, I wondered when he would deliver his "verdict" and hand me his vocational prescription for what I should do with my life from here.

When he finally started in, I was on full alert.

"Here are the top three things I think you would be wise to pursue, in descending order:

"First, I think you would enjoy and do well teaching in a seminary." (I noted a flutter of excitement and genuine intrigue rise in my chest. We discussed the slight hurdle of my not having a PhD that would qualify me to do so, almost as if it were no big deal or easy enough to find some way around.)

"Second, I could imagine you teaching religion at the college level." (Some excitement and intrigue, though a little less, and still there was the PhD thing to consider.)

"Third, you and David could relocate to a new parish in a university town or some other more stimulating intellectual and cultural area." (This did not feel very life-giving to me at all, more like a lead weight in my gut.)

"And finally," he began (Wait! I thought he was only giving three recommendations; I was confused.), "if you should win the lottery, I think you should write."

Fireworks of joy exploded in my chest! Somehow I managed to contain myself to listen while he continued.

"I think you should try to give yourself an apprenticeship of sorts, maybe find a writing mentor to work with. Really hone your craft. And I think you'd be great at spiritual writing."

I admit that not all of that sounded exciting to me--finding a mentor, honing my craft-- but overall when I said goodbye and drove my way back to Maine, I was ecstatic! I should write! I should write! He thinks I should write!

And I had his advice about liberation from the birdcage ringing in my ears: "The way to open the door of the birdcage is to affirm yourself as an artist and a writer."

Finishing Things

This morning I've been pondering finishing things. I think this is what Christine Kane, a great creativity mentor, calls "completion". Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, believes it contributes to your happiness.

It seems to me that my small family and I tend to be a bit sloppy about finishing things. We vacuum a room and leave the vacuum cleaner out. We fill the grossest pot from dinner with hot soapy water, then leave it in the kitchen sink 'til morning when it then requires a whole new batch of hot soapy water to complete the job. One of us will use the stapler or the scotch tape or (ahem) my best kitchen scissors and not return said objects to their usual resting place.

With the vacuum, sometimes I like to think the left out vacuum cleaner is a kind of merit badge (as if the clean rug and floor wouldn't be badge enough?), or like a poster announcing to the people who pass through the room (usually Anna's friends) that at least we do use the vacuum now and then! And maybe it's because this house is so slim on closet space (as David's mother warned us before we bought it) that the vacuum cleaner really has no suitable resting place. (That's stretching the truth a bit, but not by much.)

Maybe it's because David and I are both youngest children, and somebody always picked up after us. Or maybe it's because, in our twenty-two-plus years as parish clergy (that's forty-four-plus years combined), nothing is every finished. Or at least it feels that way.

You finish a sermon or a Sunday morning liturgy, and immediately the deadline for the next one is on the horizon. You finish a liturgical season, like Lent, and without a break, you're at Easter, and Easter's fifty days lead to Pentecost, and then the feast day you'd rather skip over, Trinity Sunday, and then the seemingly endless stretch of Sundays after Pentecost, Sundays that get designated by a strange number "after Pentecost" determined by where Easter actually fell on the calendar in the particular year in question. People and families, the members of your congregation, are never finished either, because the flow of life is never finished, except one life at a time.

I suppose lots of kinds of work have no real end (or your job would end!). At least a year of teaching school comes to an end, one set of students moves on, and you get some summer vacation before starting again.

I have a feeling our non-finishing of things can't be blamed on any one particular facet of who we are or the limitations of our house's storage space. So I have decided to take on a gentle experiment--that is, to do my best to watch and pay attention to what I finish and what I don't; and then to do my best to watch and pay attention to what it's like if I deliberately finish more things, those that are in my power to finish. Like washing out my breakfast oatmeal pot before I start my day's work.

Like this blog post.

Elizabeth Gilbert-envy

I have a feeling I've already said something before now about how I avoided reading Eat, Pray, Love for the longest time. Like for months and months, maybe for more than a year after it first hit the bookstores and became a big hit, I refused to buy it.

I wasn't interested. Couldn't imagine it could be as good as everybody said. Everybody being the New York Times best seller list, and bodies like that.

My disinterest was part snobbery--"I'm not going to fall for that popular, best seller hype"--and part aversion. Especially to the word "pray" in the title, and the word "spiritual" that got hitched to it here and there. "Rich in spiritual insight," says Anne Lamott on the front cover. And on the back there it is again: "memoir/spirituality" it says.

And this of course all at the time when I was more or less in flight from "spirituality" and "spiritual" books. When someone in a painting class with me raved about The Power of Now, I recoiled. "No can do," my insides were saying.

Outwardly I said, "I've read so many spiritual books in my life that I'm not interested in reading another one." My painting colleague looked at me weirdly. I didn't tell her I was a religious refugee.

So it was the word "pray" and the picture of the prayer beads on the cover of Eat, Pray, Love that kept me from reading it for a long time, until I heard from too many trusted friends too many times in close succession that I just "had to read it". I think I finally bought a copy, still a little embarrassed to be doing so, in the fall of 2007.

And when I did, I found myself enjoying it in spite of myself and my persistent inclination not to. At least I loved the Italy section--the vicarious pleasures of pasta and gelato and those lovely, beguiling Italian words.

But I was really really wary of the India section, which was of course the Pray section. I was afraid I'd feel bad about myself for not having a guru and going to India and sweating it out in a meditation cave. And maybe that happened a little--her spiritual experiences like the pulsing blue light were a bit over the top, after all. But even in India, I read some things that moved me, that spoke to me about my own religious-spiritual struggles. And Richard from Texas made it bearable.

I even forgave her for the fairy tale ending, because there was so much in the book that seemed to encourage me to keep going on my own journey. To inspire me to imagine and to grow into being that kind of a friend to myself as it seemed she became on her journey. Never mind that I was happier not to have to deal with the word "God" being used so seemingly happily and without conflict.

So what's the envy about in the title of this post, "Elizabeth Gilbert-envy"? Well, what's not to envy? Let's see. There's the fact that her book is really the kind of book I want to write--am in the process of writing--honest, poignant, funny.

I know some found her book "self-indulgent", to which I say: "what's the difference between telling the truth and being self-indulgent?" Maybe it's always a judgment call. I have a feeling I have to risk being called self-indulgent, which is akin to being called selfish or self-centered--cardinal sins!!--in order to dare to be honest and to write from my gut and heart and not just my head.

I could of course envy that her book is already written and became a New York Times Bestseller (and her next one is following the same path), but it's not really that. Or not only that. (I will be the first to acknowledge that she has paid her dues as a writer, worked hard for many years before this particular success. While I was writing sermons, she was writing books, articles, and more.)

Maybe it's the fact that the healing journey of her life that became her book happened in the course of one year. One year! That's not long at all for such a journey! And she was able to undertake those travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia with a book advance.

So here I am, writing a much longer, in many ways less dramatic (though that's always the perspective from within oneself, is it not, that others' stories are somehow more interesting than my own?), more drawn out and more redundant story. That is to say more embarrassingly hampered and hindered and slowed down by fear and self-doubt, decision and indecision, and twenty more years of not fully being myself than she had lived.

My story's not a neat one year of traveling trimesters of self-discovery ending in romance and stepping into the sparkling waters of an Indonesian island.

And some would say that's why my story might actually have a place too. Might be more "real" and accessible for other ordinary women at midlife like me.

But that's not the end of my Elizabeth Gilbert-envy. About eighteen months ago when she came through Portland and spoke as a benefit for the Telling Room, a local educational non-profit that offers great support for young people to tell and write their stories, I went to see and hear her.

And that's when the final facet of envy became evident to me. It wasn't just about her book. It was about her standing on that stage speaking to hundreds of people (most of them, of course, women) from her own experience. Inspiring. Encouraging. Giving permission. Talking about creativity, about authenticity, maybe even a little about God (though I don't remember that specifically).

"Ahhh, that's what I want to do when I grow up." Something like that. Not telling her stories but my own. Trusting that they will make a difference to people, a positive difference. And trusting those same people to use them as they will and as they are able, to be more fully themselves, more fully alive, more authentically and fully happy and grateful to be who they are here and now.

And that's what I've started doing, albeit slowly thus far. But you gotta start somewhere, right?

Upside-down and Inside-out: part 4 (final)

About a month or two after David and I had left our shared position at an Episcopal Church in Yarmouth, Maine, I wrote a poem that began with the words: "I am dragging around/ a ball and chain called God."

I didn't exactly "think up" those words; it's more accurate to say that they arose in me, kind of presented themselves to me and insisted that I pay attention to them, which then led me to write a poem. And the poem became the vehicle for facing the truth (my truth, not some universal truth) more fully.

Here's that poem, just to give you a sense of how it felt to be in my shoes at that time. (I consider this kind of an R-rated poem, unsuited to those of a tender religious spirit, especially those who like to think of clergy in gentle, pious, terms; so if that's you, take a few deep breaths. Or just skip this part.)

(I've posted this poem elsewhere in this blog, and in my other (now dormant) blog called "Freedom Diaries".)

Ball and Chain

I am dragging around
a ball and chain called God,
shackled to my right ankle,
thudding down the stairs
behind me, slowing me down
as in a dream when I'm trying to run
but make no progress. As if my legs
have forgotten how to run.

People keep shackling
the dead-weight ball of God
onto me. I don't want to keep
lugging their God; I'd rather be
godless, unburdened.

Terrible, lonely, leadball God,
hand me a hacksaw
and I'll cut you loose,
let you go free,
risk going on
without you.

It's time to start over--
to know what I know
and feel what I feel,
from earth to skin,
blood and bone,
blossom and leaf bloom.

I'd like to think we can part
on good terms, you and I.
Godspeed
I say.
We'll both be
better off this way.

I read this poem at a writing retreat a few months after I'd written it. I can't imagine why, but my small group companions seemed to get worried about me when they heard it.

We were off the coast of Washington State, so I figured all those new-agey west coasters would be fine with this kind of talk. But, NO-O-O-O.

I think I scared them; as they thought I was depressed and heading down a very dark and slippery slope toward some despairing black hole of atheism, or something.

I can see that the poem maybe sounds a wee bit desperate. But for me it wasn't really a song of despair as one of liberation.

(Sometimes the act of writing about or creating from desperation is what begins to transform it. Speaking the truth, especially a long buried truth, activates freedom, and often that's true not just for the speaker.)

Cutting myself loose from God, hacksaw and all, felt like a jail break! Emancipation! My best hope for a deep soul-level freedom to be myself.

Spiritually and theologically I wanted to be free of all the words, all the theological constructs, all the doctrine, the definitions, the whole towering superstructure of Christianity which seemed to threaten to smother me. I was bone tired of the tradition I have vowed to uphold, and I wanted to see what would happen if I scrapped the whole thing.

Where would I end up if I wiped the slate clean and started over, simply paying attention to life--to myself and my own particular life in conversation with the life of everything around me, to the amazing universe and natural world we are part of, and to my very own body without which I have no access to my soul, no way of being in the world?

I wanted a chance simply "to know what I know/ and feel what I feel,/ from earth and skin,/ blood and bone, / blossom and leaf bloom."

The morning after I had shared this idea at the writing retreat, I was visited by a hummingbird as I stood outdoors, naked and wet, in the process of drying off from an outdoor shower. The hummingbird hovered about a foot from my nose, paused there for several seconds, and then was gone. Thus began what I like to call my "Summer of the Naked Truth"--but that too is a topic for another day.

As best I could, back there in 2006, I began my "experiment", if you will, my living experiment of starting over to live my life "without worrying about God", without theology, just living, just being myself, an ordinary human being on this far from ordinary earth.

I honestly believe it was OK with me from the start if I never actually arrived at any sort of definable "religious" faith at all--and that's still the case. Terms and definitions like atheist and agnostic don't really interest me much either. This is not really a theological experiment at heart. It's about life, about being human, about being myself from the inside out.

I hoped when I started simply to arrive at a place where I could stand and speak, not with the authority of conferred on me by ordination or by any religious institution, but with the authority of my own soul, known and embraced first within my own body, and then shared with others.

I understand this soul-level authority to be the birthright of each of us--that we are invited to discover and to claim by virtue of being given life and breath and our own unique blueprint--so that we may offer the peculiar, unrepeatable gift of ourselves to the world while we're here. I have a feeling that's what Jesus often helped people to do (though in a very different social and historical context), and the Buddha, and Hafiz, and a whole host of others.

Though I hesitate to give away too much of the "results" of the experiment too quickly (and it is more rightly understood as an experiment that will only end when I die), I can say that I am delighted to have discovered (or rediscovered) a rudimentary, pre-verbal sort of faith--something that I trust in my bones and yet have very little desire to put into words. At least not yet.

It is enough to savor and enjoy the stirrings of awe, delight, and sometimes fear that mark this largely wordless "faith," a faith that has nothing to do with assenting to religious beliefs--
this sense that something--maybe just calling it "Life" is good enough! or the creative energy that infuses and inspires all of life--is here, there, everywhere, beckoning, engaging, animating, stretching, challenging, "calling" (though that's a word fraught with the baggage of traditional religious usage) me, you, and everyone.

Strangely, the words of a popular song by young country music star Taylor Swift come to mind. (She's presumably singing about a young man, but that doesn't matter--somehow it seems to fit.)

"I don't know how it gets better than this,
you take my hand and drag me headfirst, fearless;
and I don't know why but with you I dance
in a storm in my best dress, fearless."

********************

While the particulars of this journey, this experiment, are uniquely mine, it's not only about one women's journey through mid-life. It's also in large part a broader human story, which is why I dare to believe it is worth offering up to more than just a few of my family and friends.

Most of what I've spoken today has to do with the "before" side of the story, all the stuff that led up to the day I renounced my ordination to the priesthood. Which means that I just might need to have another speaking engagement in order to tell some of the "after" story, although of course that story is still unfolding. There's no simple final destination for that one--just the ongoing adventure of being alive and being myself from the inside out.

But I would like to tell one story from the "after" side of the journey. Several months after I'd let go of my ordination, David's closest friend from childhood into adulthood died, and I went with David to Nat's memorial service, where David gave the homily. Afterward, standing outside the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a venerable Unitarian Church, some of David's other old friends were asking me what I was up to these days, and if I was still "in the ministry."

"Actually, no," I said. "I've left that behind. It just didn't work for me."

They began to ask me more questions, and I began to feel nervous, with a familiar anxiety about how to explain what I'd done and what they would think of me, and all that sort of nonsense. In my restlessness, I turned my head to glance away briefly, as if to collect myself, and there over my right shoulder was one of those posters so common outside Unitarian Universalist churches.

The poster broadcast these words from George Eliot: "It is never too late to become what you might have been."

Maybe the UU Church failed me back in my teens; but I've decided that that one sign at that moment more than made up for it.

************************

Since I began with a poem by Hafiz, I'd like to end with another poem by Hafiz. This one's a lot shorter! It's called, "The God Who Only Knows Four Words".

Every

Child

Has known God,

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don'ts,

Not the God who ever does

Anything weird,

But the God who only knows four words

And keeps repeating them, saying:

"Come dance with Me."

Come

Dance.