June 2009

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Signs and Highways

June 25, 2009 in Willingness by Chris | 2 comments

“You’re out there walking down the highway and all of the signs have been blown away.  Sometimes you wonder if you’re walking in the wrong direction.”  -Patty Griffin

Someone else’s experience and writing are much better than my own this morning so I’m sharing an email.

“did you ever see “planes, trains & automobiles?” the scene where candy & martin are driving down the highway and the woman is screaming “You’re going the wrong way!” and they look at each other and say “How does she know where we’re going?” and laugh – my favorite nearly of all time.

not meaning to make light of your journey. surety is so attractive, eh? not ever having to question anything, totally believe. of course they pulled down all of the signs – you don’t need signs when you have surety.

i grew up in a different version of surety world. no signs, no different, no questions. just lots and lots of answers. unfortunately they were to questions i wasn’t asking. but the surety sure felt safe because we were the ones with THE TRUTH, we were the ones who were RIGHT – i’ve come in contact with so many of those who loved me back then, and when they find out that i no longer think surety is the best answer they drop me like a hot potato. as long as they think they can influence me back into the camp they continue to proselytize me, but once i let them know that surety isn’t my religion of choice anymore they move on to the next.

not meaning to read my story into yours – i just heard the words you wrote in my own story and realized that no, most of those people don’t really know where i’m going either. i don’t want their small angry god or their exclusive club that leaves out so many – even if i can wrap myself in the blanket of their faith again and feel all warm, snugly and like i don’t have to think any more.”

My clan accepts me no matter what.  They share their world with me no matter what, but they would dearly love for me to return to the fold.  The invitations are few and carefully chosen, but the intent is the same.  I’m grateful that they accept me no matter what.  Helps me forget how angry I am with their church.

A Sinner Among the Saints

June 23, 2009 in Acceptance, Faith, Integrity, Resentment, Spirituality by Chris | 6 comments

It is so strange, and so strange that it is comforting to be again in the company of my family and among people who share my religious heritage. The Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons) take a very dim view of homosexuality and of drug addiction. Now that the addiction part is under control, and now that my father and I have both worked very hard to heal our relationship, I’m a part of this gigantic clan again.

I have a cousin, Nicholas, who I’ve hung out with a little bit, who only ever knew my name before, not my face, and he knew that my name was always attached to trouble or heartache. “THAT Cousin Chris” is what he calls me. The younger ones figure out who I am and their eyes widen briefly. The little kids, and there are a dozen of them, all think I’m great. I think I’m just better adapted to talk to little children.

Another cousin of mine, Nate, was 6 years old when I effectively left the family. Now he’s a giant man with several children of his own, a wonderful wife, and a really cool job in Washington D. C. that affords him a ringside view of our government. (He really likes Barney Frank, whom he knows personally, and he also really likes Larry Craig, whom he knows personally, and wishes Larry would “just come out already.”) We are polar opposites, politically, but because he came by his beliefs through work and reason (as opposed to being brainwashed by talk radio and Fox News) we are actually closer than one might imagine, and honestly I think he’s really cool.

Being around these people, being in this environment, is so comfortable, and I’m only slightly ill at ease with that. I have some anger about what the LDS church has done to my tribe. I’m even more angry that members of my own family share the political view that prompted church members in Utah (mostly) to pump $40 million into California to pass Proposition 8. I don’t understand how people who love me, who claim to want the best for me, could possibly believe that a world where inequality is the law is morally right. I don’t want to be married in their temple. I am happy to live in a country where they are permitted to practice the religion of their conscience, and I believe in protecting freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is one of the civil rights that our country is built on. Equal protection under the law is another of the ideas that our country is supposed to be built on and until I am truly offered equal protection I will not really be one of them – one among my own people.

So I’m part of our family – but not a full part. Here, in this place I love, among people I love, I am considered to be an inferior.

I’m no closer to coming to believe that “a power greater than myself” is appropriate to turn my “will and life” over to the care of. I still think that “Higher Power” is an unconscious, impersonal, greater good –indifferent to my personal circumstance–the law of cause and effect if you will; cause and effect in a system too large for me to grasp. Perhaps if I were omniscient I could understand all of what has happened and what continues to happen. At the moment the power, I think, resides with me and within the group, and in my relationship with my sponsor. I refuse to concede that the Higher Power resides with and favors the saints and not the sinners –no matter what they believe.

Reunion

June 18, 2009 in Perseverance, Spirituality by Chris | 4 comments

It’s been almost 2 years since we were all together.  Grandma’s funeral doesn’t count, but 2 years ago my entire clan got together for a reunion (you can read about here) and we’ll be together again in a couple of days.  For the first time in decades I’ll actually get to SEE my father on Father’s Day.

The place we’re going to is right next to (what my sponsor says is) a great rehab, the Cirque Lodge. Considering my current state I’m not sure that my time wouldn’t be better spent there.  I’m sober.  I haven’t relapsed.  But the people that I’ve talked to assure me that it’s okay that I feel fucked up in the head considering what I’ve been through and the medication that was required.  I’m long off the opiates but my brain still isn’t working right.

Then there is the whole God issue. I went on a “mission” to Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of “Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be” and I think I’m gaining a little bit of peace with the whole “why me?” mind-fuck I’ve been trapped in.  Healing physically certainly is helping, too, and even there I’m FAR from back to normal.

My ribs feel squishy.  They ache.  I get shooting pains and flames in my incisions.  Breathing is still hard; deep breaths. I can’t even describe what that’s like, to take in a deep breath and have half my body feel normal and the other half feel like it’s a different size on the inside.

Maybe being reunited with my father will prompt a little more shift in being reunited with my sense of conscious contact with my HP.  Maybe the scenery will help. Maybe the suggestions in Lama Surya Das’s book will help me let the flame back in.  Maybe I’ll return to my spiritual roots and become an active Mormon again.  I doubt it, but it could happen.

All I know is that as long as I stay sober there is hope that things will get better.  For right now that’s good enough.

A Poor Connection

June 9, 2009 in Spirituality by Chris | 10 comments

Since even before I got sick I felt like I was suffering from a poor connection with HP.  Looking back, it appears that I’ve been running on self will for some time, but I’ve been sober so something must be going OK.  I think.  Anyway, illness has left “that which is lacking” in in even worse shape than it was before, leading me to feel like God is unconscious; that God NEEDS us in order to have conscious experience.  Making God unconscious is easier to accept than the idea that I’m “right where I need to be.”  And if I’m right where I need to be does that include questioning the spiritual stuff from scratch?

I talked to a couple of other people about it, people who had profound spiritual awakening and then lost it, and they’ve told me things like “you can’t be enlightened all the time” or “I got my connection back, but it was never the same again.  It never had the same kind of power.”  That frightens me.  I want so much to have that great fire kind of experience return and I fear that it won’t.  I feel disconnected.  I feel apart from God.

When I got to the program I was agnostic.  Today I feel atheistic, and I don’t like it.  Wishing for the end is easy when there isn’t a greater purpose.  I’m not at that place, emotionally, the place of “wishing for the end”, but I can still see it from where I am, and I don’t like that either.

I haven’t been able to persuade myself to pray to a God I don’t know if I believe in, and I still don’t have enough of an attention span to meditate (or write) effectively.  Perhaps the “effectively” part doesn’t matter so much as making the effort matters.  I should be open-minded enough to try, but I don’t, or haven’t yet.

Is this just part and parcel of being ill or did I break something that I’ll never get back?

You do NOT want to see this . . .

June 8, 2009 in Acceptance by Chris | 5 comments

I’m healing – slowly . . . .

I actually went to work today and stayed for almost 4 hours before the edges of my incisions lit on fire and I had to get home and lie down to take the pressure off them.  Even though the big incision is on my back most of the pain is in the front.  On my skin.  The skin on my back is basically numb, like there are dead areas.  I keep over doing things and having to back off again but all in all I guess I’m getting better.  I can drive and I can get myself to meetings so I’m pretty sure things will be OK.

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