Category: control

Faith and Conflict

I wasn’t planning on posting today, but I am in such deep internal conflict, that I felt compelled to respond to well,…I don’t like my words from past posts used against me (which it intuitively feels like, not sure)…even if or when appropriate. It feels passive aggressive and well, more a mechanism to invalidate and pass judgment than appreciate and understand where someone is coming from. While I understand no one can understand a person’s soul, I think I’ve laid mine out pretty consistently here, and regardless of how flawed this journey has been and how damaged I may be, there has been an evolution from older to newer posts…and yet I am still a person of consequence in God’s eyes, and should be treated as such. Kahlil Gibran says that your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite, and that neither reason nor passion should rule alone. Reason without passion is confining, while passion without reason is self-destructive. They are the rudder and sails of the soul; both are needed for a controlled journey. I have always taken this to heart because often the greatest conflicts are internal, and as Gibran says, one must constantly treat passion and judgement like two loved guests in your house giving equal honor and attention to both. I try to also take Jesus’ advice to remove the plank from my own eyes before I point out a speck in another’s. Again, while I’m not always successful, I am the painter in this situation, and I always start with my own canvas first.

Even wielding love requires balancing reason, judgement, passion and appetite. And it is pretty obvious that I’ve treated one guest, reason and judgment in my soul better than the passion and appetite and in the attempt to balance them out it may have gotten a bit messy, especially moving into a space that I never intended, expected or understood how completely overwhelming it could be. Gibran also suggests that loving in secret is a way to protect the love itself from the “foolishness” of revealing secrets and the pain that comes from exposure. He advises keeping passion concealed, as it is both a secret and a medicine, and its hidden nature is what protects it, much like hiding troubles can keep you safe. And while I see the wisdom in that from an individual perspective, unfortunately I believe it conflicts with the love that is commanded of us by God. While praying and giving in private may be a mechanism to insure one’s motivations are pure, and to please God, love is not something that is done in secret, but proven by actions, actions that say to the world that no one should be embarrassed by love… in any form. And, as I have alluded to by my vibrant and vivid dreams of being naked all the time, also tells me that hiding love is something none of us can afford to do right now, so I won’t even when I feel cornered by emotions that are completely overwhelming. I will continue to love unequivocally and unencumbered by personal invention and in accordance to my faith, even knowing that it can and will cause me discomfort, awkwardness and at other times elation. So, there is the unvarnished truth that I didn’t want to share…and yet did. I am walking solo in my own shoes forward into a future that is terrifying yet at the same time rooted in the wonderful blueprint that I was born with and a faith that God has a future for me also rooted in joy and not sorrow. Let me conclude with another line from Gibran: let love be a moving sea between the shores of your souls, its seems to fit my particular situation perfectly.

Faith and the Moment

A change in scenery is often a benefit for me when I am stuck in a place where I feel an inability to move anywhere, on any level. So, the chance to go to Louisville Kentucky to experience the bourbon capital of the world and a Jim Gaffigan concert to kickoff of his bourbon tour by a dear friend of Steve’s was a gift from God (even though, honestly, I don’t like bourbon…like AT all). Staying at the amazing 21cMuseum hotel that also housed its own museum of modern art, which I don’t understand but fell in love with anyway, was the perfect context to appreciate and embrace the emotions that I didn’t understand either. Before the trip I prayed that I would be in the moment for every personal interaction and make good eye contact and let the moment itself lead the way. What followed over the next few days, while exhausting and invigorating at the same time, stilled many of my fears about what and how to feel. I simply chose not to control them, and regardless of how awkward I felt about what the “right” thing to do was, or put any particular name or parameter on them, I just felt what I felt and let my heart guide whatever came out of my mouth (which for someone as cerebral as I am, was a bit like riding a bike with a blindfold on). It wasn’t always perfect, but it was true and honest, which I guess is the best that I could ask for.

I had amazing encounters, for example, I loved the trans concierge who I made sure to keep eye contact with while we bonded over funny stories. She was “obsessed” with my eyelashes and couldn’t believe they were real, told me stories about her ex and the Green Bay Packers and I showed her my latest painting and then asked if I could take her picture because I wanted to paint her. I’m not sure if she believed me, but I got her contact info and look forward to the surprise she will receive someday soon. There was also a moment when I was able to with a look and a give heart gesture with my thumbs because I didn’t know what else to do to give comfort to a server who dropped a whole tray of glassware at the bar and had the wherewithal to ask first if everyone was ok, and was so upset she had to leave the area, but not before I flashed her what hopefully was my sign of been there done that and don’t worry about it. She smiled, though, in a real way…so maybe it helped. I chose, specifically, to make eye contact with the doorman, and thank him for all the great info he gave us about Louisville and oh the smile that lit up his face! I focused on all the staff at the distilleries and restaurants who served us and thanked them personally (because you know they all wear name tags). I think I freaked a few of them out…but the fact that I had to use my umbrella after a while for a cane because my hip was literally killing me from all the standing and the walking we did made me seem a little less, well, weird, I guess. I think there are a lot of people in the world who go about their day doing hard work for others who never get noticed and I made it a personal commitment to notice everyone I had contact with. And it was lovely, and yet, because you know there will always be another side…I was also forced to acknowledge that no amount of training will change the reality that my other hip was clearly coming to a point of no return and would need replacing…like soon. So, amidst the pain of everything emotional, the pain of the physical was right there too but in a weird way it put me in the perfect place to deal with my emotional weakness. Pain seems to have a way of keeping me from faking anything…at all. As an aside, my last hip replacement was a dream, I walked out after less than 24 hours, with just a cane, and was pretty much back to normal after just a few weeks (which is also when Steve nearly killed himself in a bike race). And who knows, maybe there is another mountain or cliff to climb in my future…always good to have goals, right?

The weird thing about letting my heart do the walking and the talking on this trip is that it is also when I felt most deeply that letting go of control, of trying to choreograph what something is “supposed” to look like is when I felt the power of God, of love the most deeply. I want to be very careful here, because I’ve heard plenty of tales of “love made me do it” as a way to justify behavior and other kinds of bullshit, and that isn’t what I’m saying at all. What I am trying to say, however inarticulately, that while I understand cognitively what love means to me, as the force and power that propels me forward from a standpoint of belief, I also needed to allow “it” to be what actually moved me, in whatever form it needed to take without my own baggage getting in the way of it, especially without my interpretation of the what the “rightness” of it should look like. I hope this isn’t too confusing but simply saying that I learned to let go and let God seemed too trivial and stupid, for all the upheaval it has caused me. While I have not completely let go of all the compartmentalized crap I’ve held onto for so long, I have moved beyond it to hopefully a freedom to trust my own heart and allow it to feel what it feels and trust that it will be in accordance with what God requires of me.

I did continue to have trouble sleeping. In the quiet the feelings I avoid would manifest themselves quite powerfully leaving me in a puddle much of the time…but that’s all I’ll say about that. The good news is I never felt alone, ever, but just needed to “let go and let God”, as it were (plus Steve sleeps like the dead so I didn’t have to worry about keeping him awake).

All in all, the trip was incredible, with great restaurants and distillery tours and tastings, and especially the Jim Gaffigan concert, and being able to attend his after party. I don’t think I’ve laughed that long and hard for a very long time. Who knew Louisville and learning to become bourbon forward would help me have faith in living in the moment, but it did.