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The Place of Nowhere

I wish I were a drinker.
My thirst is an itching wound; an irritation, a constant need. My albatross.
It will remain; a heavy calling. Uncomfortable.  I long for satiation, even as I am arguing against it.
Ice cold, tart, sublime. It will fill me up. Cradling my heart,
that beats too fast;
I want the panic to recede, and so, for a moment I submit to its tender lies, so gently disguised.
The thirst of a drinker, remains. It calls to me. But it is not my calling.
It lies and tells me it is but a moment; infrequent, even good.
It utters frantic, believable thoughts. Yes, believable. You can. You want. You deserve. Your heart is dry as a bone.
Your need is great.
Lingering, it hangs like the moon in the daytime sky.
Calling, enticing, bewitching. A constant source of light.
Beautiful, as it lures me back to that place of forgetting.
I wish I were a drinker, because I will always thirst.
But then I remember what is so easily forgotten,
The lack.
The Emptiness.
The place of Nowhere.
Even still, I long for it.It caresses me, it lures.
The seduction of a drinker is constant.
10/17/08 MHH

Five and a half years I have known that I am an alcoholic – most of five, of which I was unable to face the truth. In that time I have studied the disease and I came to face with the truth that this thing,that is my albatross, although difficult is just that ‘a thing.’  And we all have Things. Mine, yes, is tragic at least to me.  I mean how pathetic that I can’t drink. I love drinking. I really do.  It’s fun. It’s is social. It brings people together. It’s ‘normal.’ Yup, those are the more subtle lies (for me).

Anyway, I guess I just need to say that although I have felt a great deal of shame, that is no longer true. Yes, alcohol had me it its grip, but no longer. I feel freer than ever in my life. And although it does call me, whispering in my ear, seductively at times, I just tell it to shut up! Seriously I am reduced to telling the Liar in my head to shut the fuck up!

I have been sober, since July 2008, and almost daily I remind myself that my life IS worth living —  covering up is weak, feelings are important, and most of all my children and husband need me!  May it always be so that I listen to that strength inside that help me shut out the lure of being a drinker.

Advent Conspiracy

The thought of not spending so much money at Christmas is both terrifying and freeing!  I have long felt that Christmas has lost its meaning and, as a parent, I want my children to “get” what Christmas is really about.  Take Easter, for example, with the bunnies, the baskets, and the candy. I have never participated, with adamant resolve; that’s just not what Easter is about.  And so my kids “suffer” because of my decision – or at least that’s what it feels like as a parent.  Still, it seems that Easter is easier to “opt out of” than Christmas.

Over the last few years, we have sometimes asked extended family to give gifts to worthy organizations rather than directly to us.  I felt really strange asking – kind of self-righteous – although that was not my intent.  But it felt like a good direction, a small step, a reminder to us all that our ‘gift giving’ is often in excess and begins to lack meaning.

When it comes to the stereotypical traditions of an American Christmas, I am afraid this Conspiracy idea will be complex and difficult to process.  In my heart of hearts, I am excited.  But in reality, it is hard to imagine.  I look forward to learning more about the Conspiracy and how we can teach our children (and ourselves) more about these values and ideas.  I think my children, if they really understood how Jesus would celebrate Christmas, would actually come along more quickly than I.

I’ve been reading and studying the book of Daniel through a Beth Moore study, and was hit hard by the truth there in the first chapter about Babylonia which represents a culture that idolizes youth, beauty, intelligence and complete over-indulgence and over-abundance.  Sound familiar? The Enemy wants to keep us in the place of captivity, surrounded by all the temptations of the world, but as we succumb we will lose our identity and integrity.  “Daniel purposed with his heart” against those temptations. (Dan 1:8)

I must ask myself how much of the culture is getting to me?  We are supposed to make a mark for the Kingdom of God.  And yet, most of what I buy, eat, and watch encourages the corruption of our culture in my life, tempting me to believe that it’s actually all about me. Isaiah 47:8 says “I am, and there is none besides me.”  To me, this challenges our culture of total self-absorption.

To bring it back around to the Advent season and the idea the Conspiracy is challenging us with, let us all pray that God would soften our hearts and harden our resolve to live differently.  May we each be open to the ideas here and be willing to be challenged in big ways – not so that we alienate ourselves from the world around us (which is what I fear), but so that we would be open to the Holy Spirit and be able to live differently IN the world as opposed to withdraw into our strange theologies that separate and divide.

I look forward with anticipation to what God is going to do in my husband and me and in our precious children as we face our addiction to stuff and prayerfully become deliberate about our Advent choices.  I am so grateful to attend a church that is being prophetic about these issues.

This is something I wrote for my church’s blog.

Albert Einstein and Naming My Blog

I like Albert Einstein.  Of course he was brilliant and quirky, with that crazy hair! But did you know he was a person of faith? I love that he thought for himself (well duh, with relativity and all.)  But he had a real contempt for authority.  Question everything he said. I love that!!

But I especially liked learning that he was slow to develop verbally.  Our youngest was as well. And Einstein thought that his verbal challenges allowed him “… to observe with wonder the everyday phenomena that others took for granted.”

Jacob’s language challenge has been something I have known about and worked to get help for, since he was eighteen months old (I will write about that some day).  I am inspired and filled with hope for my son, learned to speak slowly and who by everyone’s estimation is “delayed” academically.  It all stems from some things doctors have recently identified.  Perhaps Jacob will also learn to see the world differently as he makes his way in it.

“There is no limit to life, when your imagination and mind are vivid and developing.”

This gives me hope.

As a child Einstein “was so fervent about his beliefs that on his own he composed  hymns, which he sang to himself as he walked home from school.”  Lovely!  We like to compose music in our household!  (My kids have a band Squirrel Ticks.  Have you heard them?  I should post a few songs here.)

At age 12, just as he would have readied for his Bar Mitzvah, Einstein suddenly gave up Judaism which he had practiced on his own up to then as his parents rejected the Jewish traditions. As he later put it,

“The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness, that there is a fundamental cause of all existence.”

Einstein did retain from his childhood religious experiences a profound faith in, and reverence for the harmony and beauty of the mind of God expressed in the creation of the universe. In his 50s, Einstein rethought his faith, as he did many times over his lifetime, based on what he called the “spirit manifest in the laws of the universe” and a sincere belief in a “God who reveals Himself in the harmony of all that exists.”

Do you believe in God he was asked?

“I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.”

Do you accept the historical existence of Jesus?

“Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word.  No myth is filled with such life.”

I’m intrigued with how he thought, how he “worked” at his faith, how he was impressed by the lavishness of the Creator and of the person of Jesus Christ.

And I love this: “… the most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious…” I am in so much agreement!  And it is Einstein’s words that were the inspiration for the name of this blog and that echo my own heart as to the mystery of faith, belief or disbelief, science and much of life.

If you’re interested in subscribing to this blog, thank you!  I can’t say how often I will write.  And my musings are quite random and tend to depend greatly on the family schedule.  Thank you for reading and please, leave a comment or opinion!!!  I’d love to hear from you.

Quotations from a TIME.com article on Albert Einstein.  Read the complete article here.

Phantom Love

You can’t just say you love me. Love isn’t words.
Love is time — spent over the span of a life.
Words are a phantom love.

I can’t mend your hurting heart.
I don’t even know why I should try.
Empty, adrift. You are searching for something.
Crying out, and I hear you.
But I cannot help.

You can’t just say I’m sorry.

Love is known through a lifetime of being, searching, knowing.
Love is acceptance. Endurance. Forgiveness.
Each of these is evident — if you love.

What is it that I am to you?
Do you feel you cannot provide for me the things I crave?
I am fully aware and accepting, that I am the woman you both shaped over time.
Strong. Capable. Faithful.
Afraid. Careful. Wounded.

You don’t have to heal me, that task is all mine.
All you have to do is BE,
with me,
in my life.

You can’t just say you love me – show me, you don’t regret, that I am.

Show me.
Just be.
With me.

 

 

(May 21, 2008)

Reaching

Daddy, I reach up with my whole heart and gaze at you,
eyes widened, eager; wishing for your arm hanging there happenstance.
I am filled with hope and I itch
for you to hold my hand.
I linger, waiting, with another glance up at you.
Will you look down, will you grab my hand
a sudden tenderness?

Or will life pull you on toward the rush that ‘doing’ brings?

I planted a Cherry tree in memory of my father. He died five years ago May 19th. This is the first year I’ve gotten a few blooms, because I don’t prune it correctly.  I was always emotionally “reaching” for something from my dad, that infrequently came, whether it was holding my hand or just unscheduled time.
June 4, 2008

Dreaming in Color

Dreaming in Color

Am I comfortably settled or am I stuck?  When was the last time I dreamt in full color?  Of things long forgotten  —  Of pulse pounding, scary, risky things?   Am I fully awake?   I used to love the smells, sights, and sounds of Different. Am I sure that this life right in front of me is the one I was meant to live?  I am blown by forces stronger than myself.  I am carried on the wind into a future I cannot not smell, or see or hear.

I woke up and my dreams today is are so good. I am frantic to see it, to record it and to somehow divine the world Out There.

It may become too unsettling, upsetting, and disjointed for a family to endure.  It may be selfish.  It may ignore the good places in my life  that I have forged with utilitarian sacrifice; sweat and tears given willingly yet with a price.  My past, my here – and – now is settled, sometimes stuck, but known and understood.  Am I fully alive, if I can not manage to live my Dreams alongside the steady pulse of Love that fills my life every day? Surrounding me. It protects me.  And covers me, and I lose myself.

I can breathe, so I must be alive, but I feel stifled by the collision of my Dreams and every day realities.  I am alive, but I grow cautious and ever more afraid like dreaming is dangerous.  Am I more afraid — to fly — or to fail? Am – I- settled- or- am- I- stuck?  Am I fully alive?

I breathe therefore I Am. But what then?

August 25, 2008

This is a poem about being female, and 41 and a mother. Having left my career for years of motherhood, I was still dreaming of things that I could only imagine. I fear my dreams and yet hope for, wish for and want to have it all.

John McCain’s Temper

I just don’t quite know what to say.  I think John McCain is going Cuckoo.  Don’t get me wrong, I was a John McCain fan, back when he was truly independent, truly a maverick.  I have to admit I was crazy for the guy.  He really had me.  I was so seriously in love with John McCain, I even have a MCCAIN t-shirt and considering the options at the time I confess that I would have voted for him (though I almost can’t admit it now).  But I feel he has ‘sold his soul to the devil’ in order to become the Republican candidate for president.  He is not the man he once was.  I’m not quite sure what has happened.  It can’t be as simple as a lust for power, but it is really distressing.  I’m not writing a treatise here on John McCain, just passing this YouTube video on.  He has done some really productive things for our country as a US Senator.  But growing up with a father who had rage issues, I must admit this video scares the hell out of me.

I know what rage looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like.  It isn’t pretty.

I hope you’ll watch this video, it will take you less than five minutes, on John Mccain’s temper.

I needed [Too Late]

my parents did as well as they could

my parents did as well as they could

I NEEDED

I needed a father who would love me for who I am, not who I might be or who I might become.
I needed to be able to speak my mind, express myself, have opinions, and not feel I was your captive, imprisoned by you being right every time.
I needed a father who would not yell at me, at my sisters, at my mom.  All I can remember is constant bellowing, uproar, fear and pain.
I needed you and what you gave was distance, scowls, the expansive cloud of disappointment hung about us all the time.
Will I ever know why you were so angry?

I needed a mother who didn’t push people away; who wasn’t always afraid of him, of me, of living her life.
I had a mother who was dangerously sad. We all knew it. Because of it, I was always afraid, always tired, and scared of life.  If she couldn’t manage, how could I?  She’s still afraid, but at least, I know why.

I needed parents who knew how to laugh at themselves. I am slowly unlearning that legacy.  I need to be able to poke fun at myself.
It is so simple. So satisfyingly good to gaze at my imperfections and know it’s perfectly okay.

I needed a father who came home and wanted to be there; who gave hugs that didn’t feel off because they didn’t jive with constant anger, constant fear. Hot cold. Hot cold. The sting of our speculation.  If only you wouldn’t feel ‘rejected’  all the time.  If only you  understood that your deeds didn’t match your words.

I needed someone to watch me grow, with joy.
I needed you to remember me daily. If not every day, often enough to not let me get lost in books and fantasy, in forgetting, in weary striving for what’s unattainable, even impossible.
I needed you to help me on this journey of life.   I was falling down, over and over, stumbling, until I thought I couldn’t do anything right. Plunging into failure and living up to your disappointment with your life.

I needed a mother who would remember my birthday.
I needed a father who didn’t make me cry.
I needed.  I needed so much and when I allow myself to imagine how much I needed you, my heart feels full of gravel; my insides closing in. My heart is bursting with confusion, anguish; My heart is full of your unthinkable, backbreaking life.
It is something that I can’t put my full mind to, yet. Perhaps because I don’t want to discover that I needed so much from you and it is too late.  Too late for what I needed. Too late.

[Too
late
for
need.]

10/06/08 MHH