Ironic Advent 2016 MediCATION #18: Aloha Advent

A lot has happened since my last meditation.

I was stranded in Indianapolis all weekend after freezing rain covered the roads in a blanket of ice. I watched a Ford Mustang spin out of control and slam into a median, whereupon an SUV, which was following, banged into the Mustang's passenger door. I was behind both vehicles and narrowly missed the whole mess. My GPS was lit up with wrecks all over the area. It took over an hour to get from the south side of Indy to the north side, where I slept on a friend's surprisingly comfortable fold out bed. Props to Kevin for his hospitality. On Saturday the weather didn't let up much so we went to a breakfast joint and I ordered the Mexican omelet. Deeeeelish. Props to The Roost in Indy for knowing how to do it right. The whole reason I went to Indy was to watch Star Wars with some old college friends, so props, also, to Tim and Sarah. Props all around.

Super mega bonus props to Kevin for hooking me up with a cheap flight to Hawaii. Yes, I'm running off to the South Pacific to get away from ice storms and out of control Mustangs. It's a quick trip (I'll be back in time for Christmas) so I don't plan to take my laptop with me, which means this might be my last meditation (unless I can get one out on Christmas Eve, if the jet lag doesn't kill me). If this is the last meditation of 2016, then I'd consider it a fitting end to this first year of Ironic Advent. We've spent a lot of time kicking up dust, chewing on roots, looking for I don't know what. I've puked up a lot of weaknesses on here. It's been exhausting. And I'm still battling the cold I got from all the 1am writing, so I'm alright with this pilgrimage ending in Honolulu, even if it is the least Advent-ish place on Earth.

I feel satisfied. It's good I did it. And I appreciate all those who spent time with my words and shared Advent with me from a distance. I was in over my head from the start, but I've learned a thing or two about swimming in the deep end. This blog isn't going anywhere, and I may still write a little something for Christmas Eve, or even Christmas. Could be I show up here for Lent. Anyways (or anyway as Joe Martyn Ricke says), I want to give you some Ironic Advent reminders. Here they are:

1. take naps
2. go on walks
3. go on walks and take naps in strange places when the weather gets warmer (or if you visit Hawaii)
4. don't buy new TVs just because they're cheap
5. live like an Unmercenary Saint
6. this planet is enemy occupied territory
7. people need rhythm and stillness
8. change usually happens slowly
9. Advent is a good time to cuss
10. read poetry
11. you can't fix a broken heart with stuff or distractions
12. say yes when you mean yes
12. say no when you mean no
14. maybe learn how to be healthily and helpfully dependent
15. go read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Thanks for reading, pilgrim. I would leave you with a Thoreau quote but I've got to get some sleep. So I'll just say this: as long as there are pilgrims, there will be pilgrimages. Take a nap, chew on some roots, and read a poem. See what comes from it, maybe you'll learn some good advice you can send my way, or maybe you'll hear a new calling, or maybe you'll learn how to relax (that's a real art). As for me, I'm heading to bed and dreaming of women in hula skirts. Aloha.

Ironic Advent 2016 MediCATION #17: Stalag 17 and the Spirit of Advent

“I don't know about you, but it makes me sore seeing those war pictures about fIying Ieathernecks, and submarine patroIs, and frogmen, and gueriIIas in the PhiIippines. What gets me is that there never was a movie about P.O.W.s…about prisoners of war.” - Cookie

I’ve watched a lot of Christmas movies and, not surprisingly, there are a few that stand out as particularly atrocious.

The songs and story in The Nightmare Before Christmas are terrible (though I always liked it as a kid, I was obsessed with the animation). Elf is the Pravda of neo-gingerbread propaganda (thanks to Ben Camino for that term) and I genuinely hate the experience of watching it; I think the romance between Jovie and Buddy is disconcerting and the ham-fistedness of the whole thing feels lazy, cheap, and embarrassing. The Polar Express is a charming book, but the movie is unwatchable - repetitive, boring music; creepy animation; a contrived story; and, for some reason, Steven Tyler.

There are some good ones, though. Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, Holiday Inn, Charlie Brown, Rudolph. However, my favorite Christmas movie is Stalag 17, and, ironically, it isn’t really a Christmas movie; it’s an Advent movie, a dark comedy filmed in 1953 about prisoners in a German World War II POW camp.

“Stalag” is German for prison camp, so the movie says, and the men of Stalag 17 live in Advent. Literally - the movie is set a week before Christmas in 1944 - and figuratively - the men do a lot of waiting. Waiting for the war to end. Waiting for letters from home. Waiting for Red Cross packages. Waiting in line at the barrack telescope to peer at the Russian women in the adjacent camp standing in line for the showers. There’s even a prisoner who has to wait in a water tank, holding onto a ladder, in freezing cold water up to his waist (I won’t tell you what he’s waiting for). They create little games and distractions to help with the waiting. They do what they can to reclaim some of their old lives and routines. Sometimes this means a little bit of smuggling, stashing and hiding contraband in the lofts and bunks and floorboards of the barrack. Early in the film, the men huddle around an illegal radio and listen to news reports about the war, “C’mon, Patton!” Come on, war. Get over with already.

The Krauts - er, sorry, just finished watching the movie - ahem - the Germans plant a spy in with the men and that’s the big plot point of the movie. Who’s the spy? Who keeps tipping off the guards? Who told the guards about the radio? Who told the guards about the trap door under the stove? The escape tunnel? And, most importantly, who told the Germans about Manfredi and Jonson’s escape attempt? Who got them killed?

Sgt. J. J. Sefton is a shrewd, hard to like character, always looking out for himself. He stashes cigarettes and other valuables and trades with the prison guards. He’s also the only hope of uncovering the German spy and solving the mystery. Ironically, the rest of the barrack thinks he’s the stoolie, and when things are at their lowest, they pin him down and beat him up after they see him walking past the gate and into the camp with all the Russian ladies (figuring it was a privilege he got for talking to the Germans).

Stalag 17 is an Ironic Advent Meditation and Sefton is the hope we’ve been waiting for, only we didn’t know it. In a place like that, in a prison camp, we need a little irony to make sense of it all, to stomach it. In a place like that, hope doesn’t always look the way we expect. Hope, in Stalag 17, looks suspicious. Hope is in it for the money. Hope gets bruised and bloodied. Hope has got a match and a cigar and knows how to play the odds. Hope doesn’t dress up in green tights and sing Christmas songs and act like a prepubescent boy that somehow hooks up with Zoey Deschanel. Maybe you came to blows with hope thinking it was a German spy or maybe you didn’t like the way it talked to you. Still, when it’s all said and done, hope is what put those wire cutters to the fence and busted you out of the camp. 

The men manage to smuggle in a Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree and a phonograph that plays "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and it's at this moment, with victory music in the air and the men marching and dancing through the barrack, that the spy is finally revealed to the audience (but not to the men). It's a brilliant, eerie, and ironic scene (note, that link takes you to the big reveal, so if you want to watch the movie in its entirety, don't click it).

We know what the "spirit of Christmas" feels like, with all the lights and decorations and presents, the cookies and trees, the red and green and gold and silver, family and friends. It's good. But if you've ever wondered what the "spirit of Advent" feels like, here it is, wearing a smirk, in this black and white film about a German POW camp. Stalag 17 goes digging for irony in the mud and snow of the winter of '44 and finds it. 

Ironic Advent 2016 MediCATION #16: Pink Floyd Advent

Pink Floyd

I've got two songs for you tonight. Both, in my estimation, are Advent songs. The first is Time by Pink Floyd. It is largely a re-statement of Ecclesiastes, which may be the most Advent-ish book of the Bible, at least in the way I've come to understand Advent.

I'm still searching for the "hope" everyone likes to talk about during Advent. If it's real, I'll find it. But I'm not going to assume it exists and I'm not going to be satisfied with words like "joy" and "peace." And another thing, I don't think you're allowed to talk about loving enemies until you've hated someone enough that looking at them makes your left eye twitch and standing in their presence makes your lip curl in a way you only thought possible in cartoons or Billy Idol music videos. Anyways (or anyway as Joe Martyn Ricke says), here's the song. Let it land on you like a midnight snow on the 18th day of Advent.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell

The second song is Stop This Train by John Mayer. This one makes me well up about half the time. That second to last verse always gets me. I think about good friends like Jon, Ben, Jordan, and Daniel. I think about growing older. My parents. Time ticking away. I think about evenings I spent as a child, at the old house, when my mom was my age, and everything feels so fleeting and impermanence wraps me in its cold arms. Still, I think there's hope in this song, a hope that Pink Floyd doesn't offer (and that's okay). There's an Advent lesson in all this, in Mayer's song and in Pink Floyd's. I just don't know fully what it is yet. I'll get there.

No, I'm not color blind
I know the world is black and white
I try to keep an open mind
But I just can't sleep on this, tonight

Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But, honestly, won't someone stop this train?

Don't know how else to say it
I don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But, honestly, won't someone stop this train?

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game
To find a way to say that life has just begun

Had a talk with my old man
Said, "Help me understand"
He said, "Turn sixty-eight
You'll renegotiate"

"Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
And don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly, we'll never stop this train"

Once in a while, when it's good
It'll feel like it should
When you're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
'Till you cry when you're driving away in the dark

Singing, stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know, I can't
'Cause now I see I'll never stop this train.

Ironic Advent 2016 MediCATION #15: Dependent Rational Advent Animals

Alasdair MacIntyre talking about Aristotle (I assume)

I thought I’d take a break from all these meditations and give you my treasured opinions on Donald Trump’s cabinet appointees. Pfft! I'm kidding. I’m not going to do that. There’s lots of folks writing about Trump’s appointees and only a handful of Ironic Advent Meditators (I’m looking at you Joe and Jennifer), of which I am the lowliest (like Jesus). Pilgrim Dude is Holy Ground. I won’t say it isn’t political; after all, kingdom of God stuff is always political, but it’s not that sort of political. That sort of political isn’t allowed in here. 

Before I start, I owe you an explanation. I didn’t post a meditation last night. This happened for 2 reasons, 1) I was watching season 1 of Westworld and I couldn’t focus on writing until I was finished, and 2) when I laid down in my bed, on my stomach, to watch the last episode, my cat Pancake crawled onto my back and fell asleep and I wasn’t about to move. So, I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping out on the 16th day of Advent. I think I had good reason. Anyways (or anyway as Joe Martyn Ricke says), this is the 17th day of Advent and I’m back and I’m glad you’re here (Advent is always better with other people).

I’ve been on a cold streak as of late. I’ve been on 1 date in the past 4 months. I’ve also been ghosted more times than I care to say (for you old timers who don’t know what being ghosted is, here’s a link). This string of failures has got me feeling a little, oh, I dunno, desperate? Is that the word? That’s a very unflattering word but I’m going to roll with it and see where it takes us.

Why? Well, I’m 30 and single and I want a male heir to carry on my line (if you can’t achieve immortality, having kids is the next best thing). I also want a boy so that I can name him Henry Hearst Harnish (yes, Triple H). Then there’s the fact that when you live in meth country it’s slim pickins when it comes to finding a suitable partner and that’s enough to get me feeling a little claustrophobic.

I got to thinking about all this stuff because the old men at the breakfast table this morning were talking about retirement homes (there’s a case of total non-irony). Retirement homes are full of dependent people, folks who are sick or disabled or weak and need consistent help with routine tasks. In life, we move from dependency to dependency, from infancy to old age, and all manner of illness and injury in between. Many of us become sick or disabled and require constant help our entire lives. These facts, as Alasdair MacIntyre notes in his book Dependent Rational Animals, are so obvious that they almost go without saying. He continues (read this, it’s really good):

Yet the history of Western moral philosophy suggests otherwise. From Plato to Moore and since there are usually, with some rare exceptions, only passing references to human vulnerability and affliction and to the connections between them and our dependence on others. [...] And when the ill, the injured and the otherwise disabled are presented in the pages of moral philosophy books, it is almost always exclusively as possible subjects of benevolence by moral agents who themselves are presented as though they were continuously rational, health, and untroubled. So we are invited, when we do think of disability, to think of “the disabled” as “them,” as other than “us,” as a separate class, not as ourselves as we have been, sometimes are now, and may well be in the future.

As someone who has, himself, suffered from difficult ailments (yes, me), both physical and mental, MacIntyre’s critique speaks truly and deeply. It’s also Jesusy.

I wrote down a prayer a few months ago, something like, "God, help me with this vulnerability shit. Amen." I didn’t want to write that prayer because that’s opening a door that in a lot of ways I’d prefer stay the hell closed. But I wrote it and here I am spilling my guts out on a blog about Advent and wondering why I can’t buy a date. Fact is, I probably need to learn a little about how to be healthily and helpfully dependent on another person. Fact is, I don’t like being dependent. I don’t like needing other people. I’m not very good at it. It’s cleaner not to need.

I like to keep in mind the fact that the universe doesn’t owe us a long life; Thoreau died at age 44. Kierkegaard at 42. Nietzsche at 55. Jesus was in his 30s. The purpose of this time we're given isn’t to find a romantic partner. The search for truth, whatever that means for you, is why we’re here, and if along the way we come across a woman who lets us name our son Henry Hearst Harnish, all the better. That’s what I tell myself, anyways. But the pressure to be a simulacrum of everyone else is real. So real that it can leave you feeling a little desperate and lonely when you can’t make it happen. The feeling comes and goes, really. Maybe all this sitting and waiting and writing has worn me a little thin.

Advent doesn’t have anything to do with my dating life, but it has a lot to do with my resistance to vulnerability and dependency. Buried somewhere in all these meditations is a comment I made about a painful fall into co-dependency when I was 19. If we’re being vulnerable, I might as well admit that that little stumble is something I’ve carried around with me for a long time, and it’s probably why I resist dependency, even when it’s helpful and healthy. Sometimes I can’t even tell a difference. Shit.

So, I’m working it out. Hope is not lost and, consequently, I’m not really desperate. I’m waiting until it all comes together or until someone comes along and says, "Yeah, you’re a little weird but when you know better, you’ll do better, and that’s enough for me." I guess that’s alright.

Maybe Advent has a lot to teach us about vulnerability and dependency. Mary was a pregnant and vulnerable teenager. God came to the planet as a baby, helpless and in need, but we’re all waiting for that baby, because, ironically, we need that baby. That baby showed us communion. That baby taught us to love our enemies. That baby said things about the kingdom of God that sometimes make me tremble. That baby challenged the powers that be and that baby was nailed to a cross and left to die, vulnerable and dependent - just like his mom, just like all the rest of us. Could be that vulnerability is something God puts to good use.

Dependent Rational Advent Animals, that’s what we are (that’s definitely what I am because I’m stuck writing these meditations which basically force me to be vulnerable because if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have anything to write about). We need God, we need bread and wine, we need candles, we need crosses, we need prayer beads, we need papasan chairs, we need Christmas lights, we need friends in Kentucky, we need cats, we need poetry, we need walks and naps and Henry David Thoreau, we need sweet potatoes, we need coffee, we need Ben Camino and Ironic Advent Meditations, we need forgiveness, we need salvation, from what? I don’t know, but I know I need it. I need Advent, too, and other things which, in the spirit of Advent, remind me of my vulnerability. When I lose touch with that, I lose touch with that oh-so-human piece of me which reminds me that I am a dependent rational animal and not, as humans are wont to believe, a god.

So, all you Dependent Rational Advent Animals out there, if you’re able, spend a little time tonight thinking about what it means to be healthily and helpfully (I really like those words) dependent. Maybe think about how we all came from dependence and, if we live long enough, that’s right where we’re headed. Those old folks around town, the only difference between you and them is time.

Advent is the cold space between birth and death where we wait, in flesh and blood, in vulnerability and dependence, for a god who set aside his power and put on the very same weakness we all want to be saved from. wtf? That's ironic enough to get you pissed.

May the Schwartz be with you, pilgrim.

Ironic Advent 2016 MediCATION #14: Songs of Our Roots

Willie Nelson's guitar

Roots. I’ve been chewin’ on roots, as Ben Camino would say. Some tasty, some bitter. All of ‘em covered in snow after that storm last night. This won’t be a long meditation (because I’m watching Westworld right now). I was listening to a book the other day that said something along the lines of “speech is the language of mortal man, singing is the language of the spirit” (Women Who Run with the Wolves is the name of it). Well, I recorded a song. It’s the song I’ve been writing about. It’s a song I discovered while dating my first long-term girlfriend at 16-17 and became part of my life again when I went through some hard times at 28-29. I’m not saying it’s a great song. It’s teenage-ish, angsty. But that’s alright. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little angst now and again. Angst is a part of Advent. It's part looking for the coming kingdom. It's a part of winter storms, chewin' on roots, and the fumes of turpentine. And it's absolutely, no doubt about it, 100% a part of repenting, which you'd better do, since the kingdom of God is at hand.

The tuning Dashboard Confessional uses is DADDDD according to the music I found in my Google search. So I dumbed it down, put a capo on the 2nd fret, and strummed out some G, C, and D chords. I make a few mistakes. I bumble some lyrics. Oh, well. Adds to the charm. I’ve never claimed to be much good at this.

Before I go, I’ve got a question for you: what are the songs of your roots? Maybe chew on ‘em and see what you find. Do you have a first kiss song? (I do). A song you listened to with old friends? (No doubt!) Or a song you heard at a funeral? (Yes, my grandpa’s). Maybe I'll tell these stories (we’ve still got 14 days until Christmas). Maybe I'll record a few more songs. But no Christmas songs. Definitely no literal Christmas songs but also no songs that serve up any sort of Christmas spirit. No, we're still in Advent. We're figuring out what it means to wait and keep waiting. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No. Are we th- NO. I'm tired of waiting, too. I've been exhausted since I start this project. But that's the challenge of it, I guess. No one said Advent was supposed to be easy.

Anyways, here’s me playing “Turpentine Chaser.” It took 2 takes. I played it once without the capo but I preferred this.

Happy 3rd Sunday of Advent. Thanks for reading...and listening.

Ironic Advent 2016 Meditation #13: A Year of Advent

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.

Ironic Advent 2016 Meditation #12: This turpentine chaser's got kick

“Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living must be laid for a foundation.” - Henry David Thoreau

***

Irony is heavy on my mind on this 12th day of Advent.

The chlorophyll in the frozen grass outside my house is barely holding on. The air is fresh and sharp and cold, the sky is a white, grayish-blue. Snowflakes are fluttering in the bitter wind, the ivy my father planted jitters against the old brick of the fenced-in arbour outside my window and it all feels very Himalayan, as if we weren’t out here in the fields of the Indiana, as if I wasn’t writing this meditation in the bedroom where my parents spent some quiet, painful nights as their marriage was splintering.

It’s not easy to write about what it’s like to experience up close the divorce of your parents. It’s not just a matter of finding the words, it’s the struggle of putting the memories together, organizing them, making sense of it all. There’s also the disappointment I feel, shame, to some degree, and regret over how everything was handled. There's the rather long footnote about all the health problems I was dealing with, but this isn't the time for that.

There’s a song I used to listen to during the divorce when the house wasn’t safe and mom wasn’t eating and I’d drive out to nowhere to buy a minute of peace. It’s called "Turpentine Chaser." I first heard it when I was 16 or 17 and dating Big Yellow Taxi girl. She introduced me to Dashboard. I’d forgot about the song until about 2 years ago I was sitting in a friend’s car and she had a mixed CD with a bunch of old, angsty songs from the early aughts. "Turpentine Chaser" was one of them. I remember posting something on Facebook during the divorce like, “You know you’ve had a bad day when you’re 28 and listening to Dashboard Confessional.” A friend commented, “OH MY GOD.” Yeah, that’s Dashboard.

This paint has been tasting of lead
And their chips will fall as they may
But it's not just my finish that's peeling
And it's not alone fleeing these walls

Resentment, anxiety, and fear become palpable. That’s what it’s like to experience up close the divorce of your parents. Resentment, anxiety, and fear. Those are the words. They spread like a virus and they twist you in all kinds of ways and they generate different symptoms in different people. Mom, she stopped eating. Dad, he left the house. Me, I was stuck, and I found any way I could to escape - except for actually leaving. I have a thousand excuses for why I stayed, but fuck ‘em all - the fact is, I stayed.

I watched it all unfold at age 28 while I was working with them both at our family business. Sadly, lots of children see this sort of thing, but I don’t expect it’s as common with adults; most adults have the good sense to leave the house by that age, but my circumstances were different. We moved in 2009, my senior year of college, and we lived where we worked, it was all one and the same, and it’s hard to say no to your family when they need you. It’s also hard to turn down a piece of the business. More times than I care to admit I’ve felt like the young man in the gospels who couldn’t give what he owned to the poor.

Jesus looked him hard in the eye—and loved him! He said, “There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.” The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.

Maybe God put the same question to me as he did the young man in the gospel stories. Maybe God put my faith to the test and I too turned away and estimated that money is worth a broken heart. Maybe if I’d taken that Amtrak to the West Coast like I’d planned... Maybe if I’d moved to Houston with Mission Year in 2013 and not let my father talk me out of going... Maybe I could have avoided everything. Sometimes it’s not so easy to tell what is cowardice and what is courageous.

I remember sitting in the driver’s seat of my truck, parked in some lot, my hands squeezing the steering wheel. It was cold. It was dark. It was winter. My breath, water vapor, condensing, visible inside the cab. My eyes, tired, faded. I had a beard because I didn’t care enough to shave. "Turpentine Chaser" on the radio.

Well sooner or later this cold
It's gonna break so our hands will be warm again
But all I want is not to need you now
Yeah sooner or later this code
It's gonna break and our words will be heard again
But all I want are vows of silence now

Silence. There was a lot of silence in the house with me and mom, after dad left. I guess he expected her to move out, too, and leave the work residence to me, as we’d agreed when I started working there. That didn’t happen. Yelling. There was some yelling; when no apartment or house was good enough for her; when she told me, over and over, to my face, that she was eating. She wasn’t eating, of course. She wasn’t looking for a place to live, either. She intended to live there until the anorexia killed her, and I had a front row ticket to the show.

This turpentine chaser's got kick
And the rag that it's soaked in is rich
And the fumes aide the pace of my cleaning
And as soon as I'm done I am gone

Eventually, I did leave. But it was too little, too late. I lived in a haunted house. The air inside was stale and it had an odor and it could choke you, physically. It was like water in the lungs and I drowned in it. I remember, sitting at my desk one morning, I could feel my soul turning, like a gear, grinding and scraping, against my values, against my faith, until I hated the things I believed in - until I hated the things I believed in.

But sooner or later this cold
It's gonna break so our hands will be warm again
But all I want is not to need you now
Yeah sooner or later this code
It's gonna break and our words will be heard again
But all I want are vows of silence now

I remember the morning it all broke. My girlfriend of 3 years left me for another guy; she walked out of my life and it resuscitated me, it put everything back into focus, like a drowning victim pulled from the sea, I suddenly coughed up all the green water that had filled my lungs. I hacked up the resignation and the despair. I left the house that night. The next morning, I wept uncontrollably as I drove through town to church for the first time in several months. Relief.

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

A little over a year. That’s how long it lasted. Dad left in July of 2014. I left in September of 2015. Things didn’t start out so bleak, until I came home one Sunday night from an October trip to Michigan a few months after dad filed. It was obvious my mother hadn’t eaten all weekend. She'd been rapidly losing weight, but that day she weighed 85 pounds. I could see her veins and muscle and skeleton. Her hair was falling out. Her face was gaunt, angular. Her suffering demanded an audience, and eventually, it got what it wanted. My mother's anorexia bears witness to her own neglect, and to the indifference of those around her. Many, many years of it, since she was a teenager. I punched a hole in the drywall of my bedroom that night. It’s still there.

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

My ex-girlfriend told me that she couldn’t keep coming into that haunted house, that she couldn’t live up to her values around my mother. I don’t blame her. I couldn't, either. But I brought my mother red velvet cupcakes again tonight (she's living in an apartment now and I've had time and space to heal) because she already finished the other half-dozen I gave her on Saturday. This morning I helped her find health insurance. Maybe that qualifies as feeding the hungry and caring for the sick. Maybe that qualifies as loving your enemy. I don’t know. If your values can’t carry you through the fire then what good are they? Somewhere in my mid 20s, on my road out of fundamentalism, I picked up some cheap ideas on love and forgiveness. In my late 20s, I learned the difference between wheat and chaff. I went on a long pilgrimage and I didn’t even leave my backyard. I've kept a picture my ex painted for me. It's a silhouette of Jesus on the cross, his blood dripping to the grass, at the top there's a quote, sort of ironic, "The grass isn't greener on the other side. It's green where you water it." It's buried in my closet.

"The marriage of Randy and Cindy Harnish dissolved." It was in our local newspaper last month. 35 years in just one line. That word, “dissolved.” Like turpentine to paint. I don’t know what it takes to keep a marriage, but I know what it takes to kill one. No amount of shopping, no amount of business success, or collectibles, or completed projects, or stuff, no amount of money, no amount of right opinions, can fix a pair of broken hearts. A wall can only take so many new coats of paint before it’s time for a little turpentine. I carry my parents’ marriage with me. I don’t brush over old coats of paint. I strip the walls bare with turpentine. That’s what this meditation is about. That’s what all these meditations are about. Stripping the walls bare.

Thanks for reading.

***

Note: Things are better now, a year later. The past is in the past. I'm managing the business and living at the residence, as planned. Mom found an apartment in November of 2015. She's trying to recover. We're on good terms. Plenty of hugs and cupcakes. I'm moving forward, lessons learned.