Author Archives: Eileen
adolescent
squirming
within my own foreign
erupting and awkward skin
yearning
to be seen
but as another
or better
as myself
(silently)
this time could I be loved?
disheveling
my guise
on the inside
bleeding out
the shifting gaze
the quick tics
distracting haze
me from me
you from me,
I might be
a gazelle
a hawk
a stallion
of my dreams
a champion
I hope I live
to tell
This is for the wonderful students I volunteer to tutor in writing, and all adolescents. Shine on….
To Dye or Not to Dye, That is the Question
She’s bone thin
middle-aged
with an edge of her slip
hanging below her skirt.
Wearing white socks
and sandals,
she’s not exactly
a fashion statement.
She seems frozen,
overwhelmed by
the plethora
of choices
for washed out
blondes
going gray.
Choosing at last,
she reads carefully,
looks at the photo
and sadly puts it back.
With a soft sigh
she seems to collapse
inward with her
arms crossed tightly,
holding herself together.
She stands dejected
oblivious
to her surroundings,
blinking away a tear.
She takes a deep breath
and begins again,
spends thirty minutes
with all the blondes
and once nervously,
almost furtively,
eyeing a red-head.
I bite my lip
and resist shouting,
“YES! Go for it!”
Then, running a hand
through her faded hair
she turns and slowly
walks away.
The Narrow Gate
My memories collide with one another
congesting into
higgley-piggley log jams
in my mind
Complexity clutters my understanding
and confusions of cobwebs
cling to my bold
broken dreams
Creativity thickens and congeals
dwindling into small
fallow pools clotted with
frustration
Idols of old truths and securities
slam against a wall
of Thomas doubt and
Judas fear
Softly, a voice within warns me,
“Narrow gate ahead.
You must not be afraid
to let go.”
Now, in this present moment,
I must trust my inner Spirit
to transform even this
suffering
Her woman’s deep compassion
to turn my empty heart-
my desert- fertile with
her tears.
eon 1991
An Approach to Decision Making
I’ve taken a lot of classes that included processes for decision making. Several things have stuck with me in spite of my unreliable memory.
Perhaps the most important one is that we each have natural tools/gifts, but they are only part of what is needed for an effective problem solving process. Effective problem solving not only needs a team approach, it requires recognition of the equal importance of diverse gifts.
First, it needs a vision of the long term goal, not just the quick fix.
Second, it needs brainstorming that includes all possibilities, even seemingly “pie in the sky” ones.
Third, each possibility will have a down side. So, list and evaluate the down sides. Eliminate the ones with downsides that you feel you cannot live with.
Fourth, look at the practical problems needing solving for each possibility and generate reasonable solutions.
Fifth, Now re-evaluate, in terms of (a) personal values, (b) downsides, (c) actual resources, those possibilities that ended up having reasonable solutions for problems. Then make your choice, or if a group decision is needed, come to consensus.
Note: For believers in Jesus Christ as the perfect human expression of God’s love for all, this process would involve both communal and personal prayer for guidance at the beginning, at any conflict points or questionable areas, and at the final decision making point, and would include evaluations throughout in the light of the values fleshed out in the life and death of Jesus.
Coming Apart and Getting It Back Together Again
I am paraphrasing some quotes that have proven true in my life:
Personal change and spiritual growth cannot happen without coming to peace with pain. (Michael Singer)
Emptiness and despair are not only experienced by those who have been traumatized, but also by those whose lives are full.
More than grief or fear, despair calls us to pay attention to and make meaning out of human suffering. It invites us to change our very selves by changing the way we see the world. When we persevere and don’t run away from our dark night, we can be moved to a muscular faith that has looked into the heart of darkness and emerged to affirm life. (Miriam Greenspan)
Twice over 76 years my inner life has come apart at the seams for no outwardly obvious reasons. I stayed functional, but slowed down my pace while I worked through it. Each time a counselor mostly just provided a safety valve and a non- judgemental listener, so I could hear myself as I read some relevant books, sorted out my pieces, threw some away, found new truths, new strengths, and pulled it all back together for a still imperfect, but more meaningful and personally satisfying way of being in the world. As painful and scary as these times were, they yielded wonderful fruit and I do not regret going through them. I don’t think I’m inferior because I needed that process. Everyone has challenges that they either struggle to conquer or they choose to deny and to settle for a safer, but emotionally and spiritually, poorer life. Eileen
(The Singer and Greenspan quotes were found on the Blog: Make Believe Boutique
Alzheimer’s and Other Cruel Realities (Readers Beware; This is a Downer.)
This is a rerun. Not sure why. I guess because the poem in it, “My Good Friday God,” spoke to me today in a new way.
One of the most difficult things for me to accept is that for some problems there are no good answers. That you have to choose the option that does the least harm to the least number of people. At some gut level, even at seventy-five, I am still screaming in protest at this reality.
My mother’s fourteen years of dying by inches with Alzheimer’s came close to destroying my marriage, my faith, and very close to destroying me. To this good day, sometimes when I let myself experience those memories, I still want to howl with anger and guilt and anguish over her suffering . Here is something I wrote when struggling with this painful time in my life.
MY GOOD FRIDAY GOD
What kind of God are you, dying like that?
I want a real God, a fix it God,
not one that gets Himself crucified.
You’re just as…
View original post 901 more words
The Writing Process, Part 1: Keep It Real ( reblogged from The Holistic Journey)
WOW…….Writer Alert……good advice.
I’m Somebody
When my youngest son was about two, I tried to get him to talk into a tape recorder for a family message to my mother, who lived in another state. When I held the microphone up for him, he froze. I tried to help him by saying, “Tell her who you are.” He remained mute with a tortured look on his face. As I prompted him again, he blurted out desperately,
“I’M SOMEBODY! I’M SOMEBODY!”
I think that is the cry of all hearts, “I’m somebody.”
Unfortunately, even as Christians, we think that means being somehow special from being better than others. Sibling rivalry carries over even into being the children of God. I bought a Tee shirt once, that said,
“JESUS LOVES YOU, BUT I’M HIS FAVORITE.”
I thought it was funny, but more and more I see that as the root of so much of the conflict in families, churches, countries, the world.
It’s not enough to be loved and loving. We want to be smarter, better looking, richer. We want to be a STAR. Our whole culture is built on this.
Being the least of God’s children is anathema to us in any setting.
And in every conflict, we need to feel we are right, PARTICULARLY when we lose.
To feel mistreated, wronged, unappreciated allows us to be self-righteous, to cling to our sense of being SOMEBODY.
We are of eternal value because we are loved as the unique creation we are. It is not relative to anything or anyone. We are called to be the best “us” we can be. We are not called to be better than anyone.
The only place I have seen this grasped and celebrated is in the Special Olympics. There, when a child falls down, the other children in the race will go back and help them up. Every child gets a ribbon for not giving up, for finishing the race, for doing the best they can. Every parent claps and shouts for every child, not just their own.
This must be how it is in the kingdom of God.
Saved or Loved? Need or Love?
Words have such different meaning for each of us. I’m not very comfortable with “saved.” For one, it sounds like I’m finished, so why am I stuck here? For two, it sounds like now I belong to the in crowd, instead of the rest of the human race. I never was much on being with the in crowd, because it seemed to require trading my individuality for a false sense of pride or security.
To me the message of Jesus was: Humanity is loved unconditionally. Loved unconditionally means you are of eternal value…..it is not a short term thing.
If I’m loved unconditionally, then why wouldn’t I just do whatever I feel like doing?
Because once I experienced that kind of love that is beyond human understanding, it changed everything. Nothing else comes close to that joy….no pleasure, no fame, no drug, not even a parent or spouse’s love. Life is about learning and growing, but particularly it’s about being emptied so we can be totally filled, full to bursting with the joy of that love.
Whether I am a thimble, a tea cup, or an ocean won’t matter, because I will be full.
We learn to love, when we discover that we are not only loved, but that we are of eternal value, so we aren’t limited to a life span. We don’t have to grab all the toys, pleasures, friends, fame, success we can in our limited time on earth. They are here to enjoy, but they are only snacks, not the main course. They are the junk food of life……and though on any given day, in our humanness they may help us temporarily get through a scary place, if we don’t regroup and once again turn to that Love Beyond Understanding, that we call God, we become addicted and make them our whole diet and then there is no room for the joy of love.
Loving others, not just as we love ourselves, but as Jesus loved us, is what makes room for joy. It involves letting go of the bling, of the snacks, so we can be filled with the joy of loving.
I don’t think we can love someone we need. If we need them to be a certain way and they can’t, what happens then?
If we are weak, we are needy. Weak is not being afraid, but being controlled by our fear of pain or suffering. There are a million addictions, probably a hundred per person, that we use to blot out pain, whether the small and shallow or the overwhelming and deep.
But to be controlled by fear of pain means never risking loving someone, because love doesn’t fear not being loved, it fears hurting with the one we love, when we are helpless in the face of their pain. Love increases our vulnerability a hundred fold. Love means letting our fortress walls fall to ruin because it is not the enemy they keep out, it is love itself, the caring more about another than protecting our tender inner self.
I Love You, God, BUT…………
I realize that much of what hits me is really pretty obvious, but sometimes familiar things suddenly speak to me at a different level, hopefully one that will help me grow more loving.
I used to think that praising God was loving God, then I realized that God doesn’t need praise, He wants us to praise him for our sakes. He wants us to lift our eyes from our tiny selves so we can connect with Him and his love, and get a very different perspective on life.
I also, have “known” for a long time that what we do to others we do to Jesus/God.
I had some difficulties with the “Love God with your whole heart etc. and love others as you love yourself.” First, if I love God with my whole self, what’s left over for others? Plus, my study of Psychology and my own experience have shown me that I love others exactly as I love myself! When I am in a good place about myself, I find it much easier to love others and when I am in a bad place about loving myself, I am the Wicked Witch of the West to others. Which fits with Paul’s statement that we love, because God first loved us. God is our well spring. And we may be Spirit filled, but we leak. So we have to keep returning to our source.
Jesus grew in his understanding and ultimately called us to a whole other level of loving….to love as Jesus loved is to put aside our self for others. The way we love God is by loving others with no conditions. Not my favorite thing frankly. This morning after reading a post on the blog “everyday gurus” about a child correcting his father when the father criticized someone the child loved, I realized that mostly my way of loving is, “I love you, BUT…….couldn’t you stop doing …… couldn’t you be more thoughtful……couldn’t you show more appreciation……..” In other words, I love you, but I’d love you more if you met my needs, my expectations.
When my kids were young and got in trouble, they used to say: “Nobody’s perfect!” And my husband would say, “Well, try a little harder!” But that’s the same thing really. The goal isn’t to be perfect, but to love the imperfect. It somehow seemed clearer today that the only way we really have to love God, who is way beyond our comprehension, is to love His creation and creatures, but particularly the most challenging ones, his very human people. I do pretty well with the creation part, a little less well with some of his creatures, and generally at some point fall back to: “I love you, BUT” with his people……. particularly those closest to me, whom I expect to meet at least some of my needs.
So much for loving God! Dear God, I love you, BUT………………………….!
Well, back to the drawing board……………..or better, to the Source.
