General Tso and Crushed Olives

I got up this morning, did my 2 mile walk, and stopped by the store on the way home. I bought the kids doughnuts (something they don't get very often), and bought myself some frozen General Tso chicken for breakfast. My 10 year old is having a tough time with it, but something about Chinese food in the morning makes me feel adventurous.

Last night, with my group of "Hebrew Hippies," we did this amazing thing. We passed out words, and then (in reflection of the portion of Torah we were studying) used these words to offer pieces of ourselves up to G-d. Words like, "awe," or "creativity," etc. It was a beautiful thing, because it forced us to become just a little more transparent with each other.

When I was talking with my friend yesterday afternoon (while she was planning the evening), I told her, "People will get words of special significance to them --- that's just how G-d works." At that point -- that very moment, I looked at her list and knew what words would come to me.

Sure enough, as we were passing the words around, the one on top when it found me was "trust/faith."I like to say that "faith" is easy for me, because the object of my faith is G-d. I also know that trust is a very, very difficult thing for me because of where I come from and what has happened. I also know "all the answers" the church (organized religion) has for me about forgiveness, "moving on," etc. because I have quoted them to myself countless times. I have it "in my head." But the heart is another story.

So, all these things are mulling about in my mind last night during group. When it came my turn, I simply said, "trust and faith -- two words I don't like a lot." People laughed, and my husband even said, "But she does like the word honesty." Fortunately, my friends let it go at that. I wasn't ready to discuss anything about it -- especially in light of a verse from the portion we read last night.

"You shall command the Israelites to provide you with pure oil of crushed olives for light, to cause it to burn continually [every night]." Exodus 27:20

This is where G-d is giving Moses very specific directions on how the tabernacle (G-d's "dwelling" among the Israel nation while they traveled following the exodus from Egypt) was to be built and maintained. Why would such an obscure verse "speak" to me?

I have this "situation" from growing up. I am among the millions of people who were abused somehow during their childhood. I was not a "worse case scenario," a fact that I have hit myself over the head with thousands of times as I tell myself to "suck it up and get over it." I have never used the situation as an excuse for bad behavior, and have even found myself a little "self righteous" as far as how I have NOT let that fact affect me.

But the older I get, the more it seems to affect me. Everything I have done, every wall I have set up, every rationalization I have held onto for dear life, seems unable to keep this evil, dark thing from showing it's head, like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining." "Here's that hurt, that betrayal, that pain..." it says, smiling and chasing me into still another room.

I thought I could write more about it -- but I can't right now. So, I'll just share what I journaled last night during class:

"Pure oil -- crushed olives -- burn continually"

"Why do those phrases strike me so? Purity ... something I lack. Something I've never really had -- even as a small child. Something I could never treasure, because I was so young when it was stolen from me. The "pure oil" God talks about escapes me. I wonder if I will ever be able to really have pure oil in my life?"Crushed olives -- something broken, mangled, drained of what is precious. That is me. Broken and drained of pure oil. Nothing left to offer to burn in the presence of G-d"Burning continually -- never ceasing. Passion, desire, never dying .... I feel like I have those things, yet they are not kept lit by pure oil. So, what keeps me burning?"

See, I'm not sure why this "thing" keeps coming back to me. Last Sunday, G-d and I spent about an hour talking about "things." Not just this -- but lots of dirty laundry. Things I was sure I was "over," yet in the most unexpected times, they rear their ugly heads. Some business I think I finally took care of ... a past hurt from a former employer, an old relationship that I simply needed to cut out of my heart. But there are others ... and I see the pure oil and crushed olives as a pretty major issue right now.

So, in the midst of all the beautiful things going on in life right now ... the growing of this community I'm a part of, the reaching out, the reacquainting of good friends ... I look into my heart and see the crushed olive I really am. In my brokenness, I cry out to my G-d for healing. And I know He always hears the cries of the oppressed -- even if they are oppressed in their memory. I'm sure there's more here.

But I have to go to work, so it will have to wait for another time.

"There (at the mercy seat of the Ark) I will meet with you and, from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the Testimony, I will speak intimately with you all which I will give you in commandment to the Israelites." Exodus 25:22 (amplified)

It's interesting to me that the God of all creation told Moses that He would meet him not in some elaborate building, or after he had done masochistic repetitive acts, or sacrificed all he had, but rather between the two angels that flanked what is known as the "mercy seat" of the Ark of the Testimony (more commonly known as the Ark of the Covenant).

A little background: God had rescued the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. He brought them out into the wilderness, and there at a mountain, He met with Moses, His appointed spokesman to the people. It's here He gives "the Big 10," or the ten commandments. But he also converses with Moses about what the relationship between God and His people should look like.

So, when I read these verses this morning, I found it interesting that God instructed Moses the place to meet with him was a place of mercy -- not power, or repentance, or anything that we so often dress God in. Instead, it was an enviroment most of us don't view God sitting in.

According to Webster's, mercy is, "A refraining from harming or punishing offenders, enemies, etc.; kindness in excess of what may be expected ... a disposition to forgive or be kind ... kind or compassionate treatment ... a fortunate thing; blessing." That was God's calling card to His people. Yeah, He's about justice and worship and many other things -- I'm not trying to oversimplify things here.

But mercy was God's invitation to Moses. He promised He would meet Moses sitting among the insence, between the cheribum (angels), and surrounded with mercy -- kindness, forgiveness, excessive compassion, blessing.

If we as followers of "the Way" would portray to our world this picture of God to our world, to other followers of what we term other "religions," to the poor, the oppressed, the people who have been screwed by this world and tend to blame the synthetic God we often elevate as our "santa in the sky," what difference would there be? And if I would live my life imitating God in this way ... giving up my right to be "right," ignoring the perceived wrongs done to me in light of meeting someone at the seat of mercy, focusing on those things that unite us and not those things that divide us... what a difference I could make! I could actually participate in bring heaven to earth. I coud actually begin looking like the God I say I serve. I could participate in something god-like.

Mercy is mine to give. Mercy is a place I can choose to live in. Mercy is where my God wants to meet with me. It should be where I desire to meet with others, too.

Today I finally did what I've been thinking about for months. I told my manager at the place I work I need to go to one day a week "for a while". I was nervous (why? I'm not sure), but it went really well. She's recently had her first baby, and she understands now more than ever why the family has to be first, not hidden in the shadow of "the job."

So now, what's next? I'm waiting for an e-mail from a contact I had to do on-line transcriptions. I have another lead about writing for the fair housing commission of my state. My son is in the beginning of forming a "musical" relationship with a couple of guys at our church, and my younger ones are just excited I will be home most mornings when they roll out of bed. I think my older daughter even feels a bit of relief.

I'm going to start walking with a friend on Monday morning -- get this old body as sexy on the outside as I feel on the inside. Soon, spring will be here, and there's the garden, the pool, the parties and campfires ... yeah, I feel kind of relieved, without having totally turned my back on my job.

In many ways, this job "saved" me. Sounds corny, but when I started it, I was still in the throughs of hating where I lived, questioning leaving my family and simply running away. I needed so much more than my happly little life was providing. I needed challenge. I needed to be surrounded by people who were as screwed up as I was. I needed reality -- a slap in the face. I needed grounding and freeing all at the same time.

My job became that. It introduced me to some life long friends. It gave me an environment where I wasn't judged because I was different -- in fact, it became the only place in my life where I was the conservitive! (still cracks me up). It taught me to be intimate with coffee -- an affair I will carry on until the day I die. And it gave me perspective -- something you quickly lose when you surround yourself with "church" people all the time.

So, even though I feel like I'm leaving another "season" of life behind, this time it's on my terms and with my consent. It's like a growing, not a yanking out and cutting away. It's a time of anticipation -- not dread. It's about actually feeling like, for once in my life, I waited on G-d's timing, and while I haven't "perfected" this skill, I'm a little proud of myself for waiting instead of rushing in.

That's it. I have a movie waiting to be watched.

Eating left over spaghetti and thinking about anarchy....

"Thus we squander countless hours watching television or balancing checkbooks -- hours that, in retrospect we might have done better to have spent walking on the seashore with our loved ones, cooking gourmet means for our children or friends, writing fiction or hitchhiking across South America. The reality of our future death is not easy for any of us to come to terms with, but it is surely better that we consider this now than regret not doing so when it is too late."*

This quote from a book I happened about reminds me of just how much I don't do. And I don't mean what I left undone that "should" be done.

I'm making a conscious effort to do things just because I want to do them. It's tough, though, because everything in our freaking culture cries out against doing things "just because." At any given moment, I can give you a list of 50 things I should be doing. Right now, there's laundry to be folded, I could be making lunch for my kids (instead of inviting them to do the "left over juggle" and find their own lunch), I could be editing a book I said I would for a friend, or watching another mindless episode of some fabricated reality on television that takes me away from the overwhelming "shoulds" in my life -- if only for 30 minutes. I could be cleaning, exercising, I haven't showered yet today, there are books to organize for a sale ... the list is endless.

But I'm blogging, because that's what I want to do.

I'm constantly caught between the expectations of what others have on me, what I "consciously" place on myself, and the deep yearnings of my heart that know there is something more. I'm not talking spiritually. I'm talking about my day to day life. I emailed a friend this morning, and told him, "I'll probably just end up dying, because I cannot reconcile what I know is right in my heart and what I "know" (in light of societal expectations) I need to do and be."

Yeah, yeah. I know we're all here at one moment or another. But if you seriously start considering how much of our life is "have to..." Even the serendipitous things we often claim as things we "want" to do fall under the category of acceptable social expectations.

If I were to leave my family for a month and wander around the northwest with a friend ... if I were to go on a two week vacation to Cuba to find a fine cigar ... if I decided that every time I go out to eat, I'd invite someone who was homeless to dine with me ... if I wanted to stay out at bars and clubs hearing bands and recording the stories of these musicians in plain clothes ... my husband would freak, my friends would think I was crazy, and my children would feel abandoned. Society would label me a sociopath or schizophrenic, and my "church" would pray for my very soul.

And all this ... passion? Desire? My husband would mistake it for lack of love for him. My children would mistake it for "something they did wrong." My community would call me selfish and a whore and just plain nuts because no one "lives" that way.

And I would argue that very few people live at all.

There's this guy I know who pretty much lives his life this way. He's not married - no kids to support - so he's not constrained by some of the things I am. But he goes and come like a spring rain -- no warning, no reasons but his own. His family thinks he's a little nuts. They are waiting for him to "settle down" and become a "respectable" person, bound and chained by the very things we are taught are normal and desirable.

Me? I hope he never stops. I hope he finds someone to love who will wander with him, or stay at home with little expectation of "what's in it for them." I hope no one and nothing ever fetters Nate's heart, because in him I see so much of what my own heart cries out to do. I live vicariously through his adventures, even the cold, dark, lonely nights he finds himself among. He gives me hope that what is "normal" is only so because we have given it some type of authority in our lives. He reaffirms my belief that the way "civilization" is organized is successful only to reach certain arbitrary levels of complacency and comfort.

That we only live in moments. And those moments are very few and far between.

"Yes, I've had my moments -- but I would have liked for my life to have been nothing but moments, one after another...."*

*Quotes are from Days of War/Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners, 2001

I'm not normally a "political" person. I have been known in the past to vote for "the lesser of two evils" especially when it comes to certain issues. I think overall politics are a necessary part of the system we have, but I actually have very little faith in anything "the empire" (our government and economic system) promotes.

But this upcoming election has me, I dunno, excited? And it's all because of Barack Obama.

Here's the background:

In 2004, while watching the Democratic Convention, my husband and I saw Obama's speech. After he was done, I turned to Bruce and said, "That man will be our president someday. Maybe not in 2008, but someday, watch." That was quite a statement for me to make, seeing I have a traditional Republican bent -- mostly because of the pro-life stance I take. I knew nothing about Obama, but I had a feeling...

At that time, anyone outside of Illinois had heard very little of Obama. Especially around here in no where, Michigan. But there was something -- something impossible for me to define -- that happened in my heart when I heard Barack speak.

Since then, he's become the media darling. I've followed him since 2004, and was not the least bit surprised when he decided to run this year. Today, I got my most recent issue of "Rolling Stone," and there's a great article on Barack Obama. The author, Ben Wallace-Wells, began to give me quite a bit of insight into what it might be that makes me want so badly for Obama to be my next president.

The following quotes are all from the article:

"Just being the president is not a good way of thinking about it," Obama says now. "You want to be a great president."

"People don't come to Obanma for what he's done in the Senate," says Bruce Reed, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Counsel. "They come because of what they hope he could be." (Hope -- that's what I feel when I think about this. Wallace-Wells continues on later...)

"There is a desire to own his story, to be both his own Boswell and his own investigative reporter. When you read his autobiography, the surprising thing -- for such a measured politician -- is the depth of radical feeling that seeps through ...Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising. Obama's life story is a splicing of two different roles, and two different ways of thinking about America's. One is that of the consummate insider, someone who has been raised believing that he will help to lead America, who believes in this country's capacity for acts of outstanding virtue. The other is that of a black man who feels very deeply that this country's exercising of its great inherited wealth and power has been grossly unjust. This tension runs through his life (Obama's story is mine -- is ours!) Obama is at once an insider and an outsider, a bomb thrower and the class president. 'I'm somebody who believes in this country and it's institutions,' he tells me. 'But I often think they're broken.' "

I read that an am blown away. I feel so similar ... not only my country, but the church, my faith, most "leaders" and authority figures in my life have brought out similar feelings. Barack Obama is a reflection of me -- of my culture and generation -- so strongly that I can hardly stand it. All the other guys are still "old school" politicians. They use the system -- abuse it -- and don't really give a damn about me, my family or what we think and feel. Barack Obama's heart is our heart. Amazing. Here's more from the interview:

"When Obama returned to Chicago, he turned down big-money firms to take a job with a small civil rights practice, filing housing discrimination suits of behalf of low-income residents and teaching constitutional law on the side..." Someone who really cares about the poor? The oppressed? Give me more!

According to Paul Harstad, Obama's pollster on the campaign trail, "We were doing a focus group in suburban Chicago, and this woman, seventy years old, looks seventy-five, hears Obama's life story, and she clasps her hand to her chest sand says, 'Be still, my heart' Be still my heart -- I've been doing this for a quarter of a century and I've never seen that...the most remarkable thing, for Harstad, was that the woman hadn't even seen the videos he had brought along of Obama speaking, had no idea of what the young politician looked like. 'All we'd done,' he says, 'is to tell them the Story.'"

"The Story.." this concept is playing a big role in the community I am a part of, and to a lesser extent the church we are currently a part of. I realized, after reading this article, Obama's story is what gripped me, even before I knew it! His story is written all over his face -- his smile, his body language, his persona. I look at Obama, and I listen to his speech and his story, and I have hope that the America I was raised to believe existed may really, truly still be possible.

The article goes on to tell more about Obama's life and his political goals (which are still unclear in some areas, so that's where I need to do more research), as well as his ability to be real, unassuming, and make people comfortable. Wallace-Wells tells of his going back to Kenya, and the overwhelming response from the people of his father. His genuine concern for Africa, for the issues that concern me, too. He is the first politician who I believe speaks to this "thought generation" I am a part of.

People are comparing his charsima and his campaingn to that of Bobby Kennedy. I don't remember that -- I was way too little. But I do sense something -- electric? Different? -- in this election. We'll see ... I just pray some kook doesn't try to wack Obama before he gets a chance to show us what hope realized would look like.

"Obama biro!" is Swahili for "Obama's coming." It's my heart's cry right now. We'll see what the next year brings.

Long time -- no write.

I'm back, thanks to the encouragement of my friends. I spend a lot of my "creative energy" right now involved in a couple of new projects, so I've spent some time "re-visiting" stories of my past ... I've journaled for most of my life, and it's given me a grasp on my history that many people don't have.

What I've learned is that where I'm at now is simply a continuation of a journey I've been on a long time.

Here's what I wrote March 31, 2005:

"I think absolutely honest people would say that satisfaction is at best occasional -- shards or glimmers in the grand schematic of time and space.
We "experience" only what the broken mirror of "knowing in part" will allow us to see. Distortion at best. But we choose (again, in ignorance) to base our impression of what is true and real on that distorted image, rather than accept the fact that we are flawed and can only see in part. Our infant minds make conclusions riddled with error.

We settle for a life that is less.

We fear the relentless hunger that is our discourse. The restless spirit that invades my every waking moment cannot find its home here -- ever.

I guess people who feel like the percent they know is the "whole" are naive, or content to live a lie. They are stupid, or just blissfully ignorant -- or lazy.

They settle.

Maybe I'm beginning to do the same. Thinking I am finding satisfaction or relief from the relentless wandering that my soul suffers. Substituting whatever I find to relieve the longing for "something more." Imagining I can find a soul mate within anyone but God. Running, cursing, and hating the very desire and sadness that makes me who I am. The hunger that keeps me from falling in line with the masses.

God, help me know You!"

I read my past voice, and hear so many echoes in my present situation. These things that I consider "new" projects are simply the next part of my life. Or maybe, they are God's long awaited answer for the child who spends most of her time living lost. I don't know. But I'm glad I don't have to walk this road alone.