Dry Bones Dance

Nobody's in til everybody's in

I went to class last night, where I turned in a not very good paper. (I suppose this is what happens when you don't start writing it until 11pm the night before it is due.) Anyway, we were talking about our shadows. For those of you who are not familiar with Jung, our shadows are our unknown, unacknowledged, or undeveloped traits, both positive and negative. It's those parts of ourselves that are still in our unconscious, and that we have disowned for one reason or another.

We read this other article that connected the shadow to our spiritual journeys, and the author said something that was so profound that I wanted to make a note of it here:

...no one will get to heaven, the fullness of life, until everyone gets to heaven. Heaven, the fullness of life, will always be incomplete if our worst enemy is not there, transformed, filled with the glory and the love of God. And if our worst enemy is not in heaven, we are not there either because a part of us is still possessed by hate rather than love, apathy rather than concern. That hate in ourselves and in our worst enemy is precisely that which is not heaven....we might think: Well, I can give up a little piece of heaven to see some of the people I hate in hell. It serves them right, and I do not mind paying that little price. After all, I am with enough friends and, in a crunch anyway, I can get by with just one friend.

That pearl of little price! When we have just one fragment of hate, in truth we do not have even one friend. Hate is selfish, it wants no friends, and it will work and work on us until we are absolutely alone. The path to contemplation is the way to make friends with ourselves, with others, and with God.

Geoffrey B. Williams - The Path of Contemplation II

Happy Thanksgiving - one day late

Happy Thanksgiving - one day late. At dinner yesterday, we did the requisite "go around the table and say what you are thankful for." I'm not particularly warm and fuzzy, I don't tell people to count their blessings, and when I meet really perky people, I generally think that it is only because they do not understand the gravity of the situation. Having to generate gratitude can feel like a chore, but I'm increasingly realizing that gratefulness is an important spiritual practice for me - not because some Big Daddy in the Sky saved my sorry ass even though I deserve eternal punishment, so I should get down on my knees and say "thank you" to keep Him from changing His mind.

I heart EMDR

Aaaargh! Just lost a LONG post due to my own stupidity, so now I will have to summarize, because I do not have the will to re-create the entire thing.

So, here's my public service announcement: About a year ago, I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - Complex PTSD if you want to get specific - and for the past few months, I've been doing EMDR to help with the symptoms.

EMDR is about as much fun as getting a root canal without novacaine every week, and it's really expensive, but it's totally worth it. (A point I will have to repeatedly remind myself of over the course of the next year I spend paying it off.)

My unscientific survey

I read this post over at Amba's blog about Hillary Clinton and if staying married to a philandering weasel ruins her feminist cred, and whether or not her marriage should have any bearing on considerations of her fitness to be President.

All things being equal, I would rather vote for someone who does not seem to be an ass in their personal life, but all things are rarely equal. Good policy can trump bad private decisions in my book, and if all of our Presidents had to have their personal lives together before getting elected - well, most of the Presidents we've had until this point wouldn't have made it in.

The question of just how much people can compartmentalize and at what point do private decisions and personal character bleed into your performance as a public official is an interesting one, and I don't think it's one I can answer. Some very corrupt officials seemed to have good homes lives, and some politicians who are disasters on the home front have managed to do a pretty good job. And let's be honest - our political process is not exactly family friendly.

My ecological footprint

I took this global footprint quiz, and these were my results:

CATEGORY GLOBAL ACRES

FOOD 3.5

MOBILITY 1

SHELTER 4.9

GOODS/SERVICES 4

TOTAL FOOTPRINT 13

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 GLOBAL ACRES PER PERSON.

WORLDWIDE, THERE EXISTS 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL ACRES PER PERSON.

IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 3 PLANETS.

Mystagogues and moments of epiphany

I have to write a paper for my spiritual director program, talking about my response to the various classes and reading. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be this: For the first time, someone is telling me that my spiritual journey is valid, that the way I connect to God counts.

When I went to church, the hardest thing for me was the word “we.”, as in “As Christians, we think X or feel Y or experience Z.” Most of the time, I would be left thinking, “But I don’t think or feel or experience that. What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I the only one who doesn’t know the secret handshake?” The things that were supposed to be liberating weren’t, and the things that were supposed to bring me closer to God didn’t. Prayer was the worst. I always felt awkward praying out loud, and the things that made me feel closest to God – silence and walking by the lake – didn’t count as prayer. It always felt like I was speaking a spiritual second language. I worked hard, and I could get by, but I still spoke with a heavy accent and had trouble keeping up with the conversation.

It just didn’t work for me – and not in an “I think God should make me happy all the time sort of way.” Lord knows I was unhappy, but it was more that it didn’t work in a finding God sort of way. I was told there was one path to God, and I was on it – but there was no God there that I could see, so I didn’t know where that left me.

So much for this month's financial solvency plan

Sometimes being honest sucks. Last week, after interviewing at a non-profit for a possible grantwriting gig, I went out to the parking lot to discover that there was a man smoking a cigar in a Rolls Royce parked very close to my car. Why was there a Rolls Royce in the parking lot of a non-profit? I do not know, but the gentleman gave me a "Don't even think about grazing, scraping, dinging or touching my very expensive car in any way. In fact, I would prefer it if your broke ass did not even breathe in my direction."

So, I very very carefully backed out, and as I congratulated myself on NOT in any way contaminating the precious Rolls, I grazed a Nissan. I was going about 2 miles an hour, but I did manage to put some nice scratches on the bumper. I argued with myself for a bit, but it was obviously a very new car, the scratches were noticeable, and I am a good person - or try to be - so I left a note.

The owner called the next day, she got an estimate and called again today to tell me that it will cost $500 to fix. $500! For some scratches - something about taking off more than the paint and the guy having to put molding on or something....

Last week, for the first time in a very long while, I actually put money into my savings account. Now, I have to turn around and take it out again. Sigh.