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| Saint Therese of Lisieux |
"Life is passing, Eternity draws nigh: soon shall we live the very life of God. After having drunk deep at the fount of bitterness, our thirst will be quenched at the very source of all sweetness." - Saint Therese
Well, we’re officially behind schedule. Last night I got all dressed up and went with a couple friends to a gala for Indiana’s bicentennial at a local restaurant called the Sassafras. Most of the folks there had styles on from the 1920s. A few of us bucked the trend and represented the 1980s. I sported some white skinny jeans with frays and rips. If it weren’t 19 degrees outside I would have worn my Def Leppard Union Jack tank top. Be that as it may, I didn’t have time for a meditation. So here we are: meditation 13 on the 14th day of Advent. What a disaster.
I want to take a minute to plug Shoe Goo. No, this isn’t a paid advertisement. Blogs that average 50 views per post don’t get sponsors. I just love the product. I used it to repair my old canvas Merrell barefoot shoes. I’d worn a hole clear through the bottom of the right one and I smeared some of the goo on there and it essentially formed a totally new sole over the hole. I like those shoes and I don’t want to buy new ones (you can’t even get new ones). I like wearing out clothes and if it’s sensible repairing them. Maybe there’s a little Advent in this whole process. Maybe my old shoes were wondering, “Is he going to fix me or throw me out?” Then they waited for the Shoe Goo to arrive, unsure if it would actually work. O come, O come, Shoe Goo. Then the package came and Brandon ripped it open, layed out some newspaper, and started smearing on the goo; then the drying phase, waiting, will this stuff really hold up? It’s so...gooey; then, finally, morning came and much to my delight, and the delight of my shoes, the goo formed a perfect seal over the hole. Mission accomplished. The shoes were saved. You might even call them…Christmas shoes (vomit vomit vomit).
***
I chewed on some hard, bitter roots in my last meditation. I didn’t finish it until 2 in the morning. What with the schedule and all, I sort of have to get the thoughts on the page, edit what I can, and post it. This one, however, needed a couple days of writing and chewing; consequently, I’m not fully satisfied with it. I want to give it a proper ending. My harrowing meditations are supposed to be laced with hope. That one didn’t have much hope to speak of - I mean, it’s there, if you read between the lines, if you know me well enough, but it’s not obvious. I added a small note at the bottom of the post to help temper the despair, but it’s not enough. So, consider this part 2.
I’m going to put down on paper (or type into a screen) for my own benefit a couple of clarifications which I consider important to the story.
1) Dad moved out of the work residence after he filed for divorce. He expected mom to move out as well and leave me to manage the business. This was the plan we’d agreed to in 2010 (well, minus the divorce). Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, but the idea that mom would just pack up and leave is, in the words of Saint Ice Cube the Baptist,
wack. So much so that I don’t totally believe dad when he says it. If he’s telling the truth, if he really thought that, then it’s hard not to conclude that he had so thoroughly disconnected himself from his marriage that he was living in la-la land.
2) I was sick, dealing with a liver problem which was affecting my hormones and causing me all kinds of paranoid, suicidal thoughts, plus depression and anxiety. I went to so many different doctors and health specialists I lost count. Jones, Lai, Ardeshna, Smits, Murdock, Allina, Kaumeyer, and more (really, there were at least 10). Kaumeyer was the one who finally got me on the right track. She works at Riordan Clinic in Kansas. I flew out there and stayed with an elderly Mennonite couple I got in contact with by randomly calling a Wichita-area Mennonite church. I went to the movies my second night there and watched
Ex Machina. It was so good to be alone.
3) I stayed in the work residence, living with mom, for a year and 3 months after dad left. At the end of September, I moved out. I told dad that I would rather sleep on the sidewalk than spend 1 more month in that house. He insisted that I come out to his place. I did. A few weeks later, after mom still hadn’t found a new place, I quit work. This year of living alone with her, no end in sight, wasn’t part of our agreement. I set a date for myself that I would leave the state and start a life somewhere else on Dec. 1st. Mom moved out in late November.
This experience, this story, this year of Advent, of waiting, of not knowing, of hoping, of despairing, cut me deeply and change me. It became difficult to trust others, to trust myself, to say nothing of God. I stopped writing, journaling, and practicing self-care. I told my ex-girlfriend once, “My life…is either distraction or despair.” Distraction or despair. Living so close to death - my mom’s suicidal anorexia, my own failing health, my parents’ marriage, my relationship to my father and mother, my relationship to my girlfriend - this was a Dark Night of the Soul. The loss of boundaries numbed me to any sense of compassion and I became unable to practice empathy; besides, those values had gotten me into this mess. I could relate to the Phantom.
Raoul: show some compassion!
Phantom: the world show no compassion to me!
Life hit so fast, so hard, and all at once (as it sometimes seems to). The Dark Night of the Soul is not an “opportunity for growth.” It skins you alive, and, like Wolverine from the
X-Men, you grow new skin, if you survive. It is a spiritual bloodbath, as if God sanctioned the Purge in your heart and spirit. It is a killing of the spirit and in some cases the soul. There is, however, for some people, sometimes, life after death.
Those last few lines to "Turpentine Chaser."
The frightening facts
We've been facing our backs to for so long now
Are begging for eyes
To bear witness to lies and indifference
Now we're saying aloud
The things we've declared in our silence
That new coats of paint
Will not reacquaint broken hearts to broken homes
Reacquainting my broken heart to the broken home I come from - that I came back to, when I moved into the work residence after she left - has been a grind. It’s taken a little bit of sage and a lot of therapy; a little bit of prayer and a lot of writing. Re-building trust and re-discovering my capacity for compassion has involved repairing my sense of boundaries, knowing what it is okay and what is not okay, saying yes when I mean yes, and saying no when I no mean no. Old ideas like courage and integrity and honesty matter when we need to heal. I didn’t repaint any walls, but this house feels changed, it’s got scars, like me, but it’s not living in the darkness anymore. Sitting here in this old bedroom, as I normally am when I write these meditations, I think this place has breathed as big a sign of relief as me. It’s a young house and it’s never known peace, until now.
The nights come earlier and stay longer during Advent. The rhythms of the planet match the rhythms of liturgy. The long night. The waiting. I wonder if the festivities and lights of the “Christmas season” don’t push from our vision the agony and darkness of Advent, of a world before a savior. I doubt we can fully know Christmas without Advent.
So it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to the other;
that difficulty and ease produce the one the other;
that length and shortness fashion out the one with the figure of the other;
that height and lowness arise from the contrast of the one with the other;
that the musical notes and tones become harmonious through the relation of one with another;
and that being before and behind give the idea of one following another.
Was the world waiting for a savior like a child waiting for Christmas? I doubt it. Unless that child is orphaned and has no reason to expect that Christmas should come to him but for a shameful, dangerous tinge of hope, and he has no good idea what Christmas would mean for him if it did come. I’m not sure Advent really has anything to do with “expectant waiting.” The way I see things now, Advent is the Dark Night, the place where meaning and purpose fall away and dread takes hold. That the traditional time for waiting and fear has been replaced by shopping is somehow ironic and predictable, and utterly American.
I am happy to report, as I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, that my relationship with my mom is being repaired. I don’t know if she’ll ever fully come back from her disease and her sorrow. But I am grateful that the anorexia didn’t take her when I was still bitter. I am grateful for the chance to make amends. I can’t say whether Christmas morning will bring any sort of miracle or salvation for my mother. But for us, mother and son, for our flesh and blood relationship, every day is a kind of Christmas, after a long and difficult year of Advent.
Amen.
