Day 4 Lenten Meditation: Passion

My idea of a creation story for this earth: The world was created in a burst of passion, with the raw materials for life combining in a great explosion of potentiality.

Passion brings worlds into being.

When I write passionately, I create dystopias at times, but I plant the seeds for reclamation.

Passion makes us reach out for justice.

When I see a kindred spirit, I feel passion for their presence.

Passion to live turns every day into love.

When I am most passionate, I come to know myself better.

Passion infuses us with becoming.

Day 2 Lenten Meditation: Commitment

This is a hard thing for me to write about, because I feel the guilt of all the times I broke my commitments because of depression.

My enthusiasm (and hypomania) would carry me into trying to do something but the depression would keep me from following up. I overcommitted, I underperformed.

It took the medication for me to see who I wanted to be. I don’t over-commit these days, knowing that the only thing that keeps me from mood swings is a precarious balance of medication. But I do commit — to my job, to my marriage, to the things I believe in.

Commitment defines me. I am not just what I embrace, but what I follow through on.

Day 1 Lenten Meditation: Prayer

I’ll be honest — I don’t understand prayer anymore.

By “anymore”, I mean “not since I got put on medication for bipolar disorder. I have bipolar II, and my prayer life spun between being elated and feeling like I had a pipeline to our perception of God, and being depressed and praying in vain. Things are evened out, and my logical mind has taken over and made me question praying.

Does God grant our prayers? I wonder what happens when two football teams pray for a victory. Does God pick his favorite team? Does God bribe the referees? Choose the team that prayed the best?

If God grants our prayers, we rejoice that our prayers are granted. If God does not, we don’t say a thing.

I’m not completely skeptical about prayer, though. I think prayer helps us find something within ourselves, strength or comfort or acceptance. I think that prayer fortifies us to help us face an unfair and unfriendly world.

And prayer helps me find my keys in the mornin.

Lent: 40-some days of reflection

I will once again be doing #UULent reflections, even though I am not Unitarian Universalist and I’m not even sure I’m Christian these days given the bad name Evangelism/Fundamentalism are giving Christianity. I do like the concept of Lent as a period not of giving up but of growing up, and I feel like these prompts will help me focus on that outside of myself.

These reflections will be on my blog for the next 47 days (whatever happened to 40 days of Lent?). Please join me in reading and reflecting, whatever your religious preference is.

Day 47 Reflection: Rejoice

I don’t feel too much like rejoicing today. I overindulged in Easter candy. I didn’t sleep well last night and now I feel hung over.

But it’s a beautiful day, the perfect day for Easter. I will go outside today and set up some of my raised beds, for Spring is here and I do not need to wait any more.

I will eat breakfast, and go out, and clean my yard, and look at growing things. I will remember the lines from a poem by ee cummings:

I who was dead am alive again today,
and today is the sun’s birthday

— ee cummings, “I thank you God”

It is part of the human condition to rejoice.

Day 46 Reflection: Faith

I struggle with faith. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in a higher power or that I’m shopping for religion. It simply means that I question my notions of God.

For much of my life, I believed in God as a celestial Santa Claus. I would pray for something I wanted or needed, hoping God would grant me that. Nothing selfish, like a dollhouse or a bike, but things like praying for my mother not to have cancer or praying to win the spelling bee or, on a few really bad days, praying that I didn’t exist. God obviously didn’t grant all my wishes — I didn’t win the spelling bee and I still exist.

Some people told me that God knew what I needed better than I did. This logic worked when a bad relationship broke up and I only found out its fatal flaws in retrospect. I couldn’t accept that, however, when I reflected on the abuse I suffered in childhood. Did God want that to happen? Why didn’t He stop it when I prayed?

My friend Mariellen, a Quaker like me, opened my eyes to a healthier faith in God. She said that every night, she prayed for God to remove her burdens, and every morning she woke up with the same burdens, but with more strength to deal with them.

It makes sense. If people have a personal relationship with deity, then the way that deity acts in their lives will be personal. God doesn’t meddle; the potential of humankind can’t be realized with a meddling God. But I believe God lends strength and courage so we can be our most authentic, most powerful selves in the face of adversities large and small.

I can live with that God.

Day 45 Reflection: Loneliness

Society treats loneliness like a character flaw: “You’re lonely? What are you doing sitting around? Go out and meet people.” As if a birding club will remedy the ache in one’s heart.

Ironically, loneliness is inevitable in today’s society. Our jobs take us far from our families, and often cause us to move before we’ve settled us into a place. Unless we buy a home, and often we can’t afford buying a home, we live in apartments where our neighbors move in and out. We spend our free time online, where we measure our friendships by “likes” and seldom have deep conversations. We meet our potential partners by swiping right, judging them by a picture and a blurb.

We spend our quiet times nursing the ache in our hearts.

In our solitude, we attribute our loneliness to personal flaws. We come up with erroneous reasons for our loneliness, isolating us further: We are too much this, not enough that. We are strange. We are not worthy. Our isolation increases.

We can ease our loneliness, perhaps even with the facile “go out and meet people” that society offers, but it will be hard work because we are swimming against the isolating currents of our society:

Sit in public places, even if you sit alone. Turn your attention outward, again and again. Say hi to people who notice you. Ask to pet people’s dogs.

When the sting of loneliness eases a bit, find reasons to be around people. Volunteer. Find a group that’s exploring something you’re interested in. You will not like everyone you meet in these opportunities, and that’s okay. The object is not to find one person who will keep you from being lonely, but to help you see that you are part of humanity. Friendship will come later as you find yourself in proximity with people you click with.

We were meant to be with people, even if our society makes that harder, even if our beliefs about ourselves and our loneliness make that harder.

Day 44 Reflection: Pain

Pain has a way of blinding us to everything else. It screams at us to stop everything and tend to us. As it should; pain exists to alert us to damage. The damage can be physical, such as torn muscle or damaged cartilage or advanced cancer, or it can be emotional such as the death of a loved one or the predations of an abuser.

Sometimes pain lasts beyond the original insult. Chronic physical pain such as arthritis lasts beyond the wear and tear that caused it. Chronic emotional pain in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder lasts far beyond the instigating factors. The time elapsed doesn’t lessen the pain in these instances.

We are taught to be stoic about our pain. We are told nobody wants to hear about our problems. We are told to tough it out, that no pain equals no gain. We ignore that very valuable alarm until we’ve lost sleep, damaged our bodies, break down, find ourselves with a gun in our hands pointed at ourselves.

Pain is an alarm. We must heed it for our own survival.

Day 43: Ally

Who are the people around you who want to help you evolve your most authentic self rather than mold you into their image of you?

Who are the people who offer comfort, wise counsel, and effective challenges when needed?

Who are the people who will help you transform a piece of the world into health?

These are your allies. Find them, connect with them, love them — for they need allies too.

Day 42 Reflection: Truth

Truth sets us free, but often in a way that feels like a wrecking ball. Or the silence just before the tornado hits, with its gut-crawling suspense. The silence after the crash, after the storm, shelters the whisper of two words: “What now?”

My truth: I have been struggling for seven years, ever since my diagnosis with bipolar and the loss of my original department. I have struggled with depression when my medications fail and when I face major setbacks. The tricks I’ve learned (cognitive journaling and meditation) bring me to zero but not above. Some days, I cycle through contradicting my negative talk and affirmations almost constantly. I believe that, because I make mistakes, that I am worthless.

My truth: I need to go back to counseling for a spell.

The silence left by the wrecking ball. I, a shell of a building, waiting for the materials to rebuild.