Spending time here instead of with the Bible Study group. The weather is awesome and has my mind racing around ideas a longing for a friend or group of friends that might actually "get" my odd ways of thinking. People able to discern when I am being serious and when I am teasing. Knowing when I am testing and knowing when I am full of 'dog's droppings.' The more I long for it, the lonelier I get. And it is always, always in the fall.
God places a few exceptional minds in my path over the years: Ellen, Sam, Susan, Lisa, Tom, David, Bill,Kathleen, John...but I get so bummed not really having any great conversations anymore. When we were kids, before the drugs fried the brains of some great people, we were brave enough to say what was on our minds, and stupid enough to try to get other people to understand them...now we are old and all the fun is gone. We've made decisions to be old. To give up our dreams. To settle for what is in front of us.
Had a great lunch with a Jesuit priest last week. I asked him my one pressing question as a statement: "Give me one good reason why..." and he smiled and said he couldn't provide one for me. I explained how that was not helpful. He laughed. He said, "Cindy, you are how old now? Maybe it's time to grow up. You are not going to win this one."
No, I won't. Yesterday I got my weekly chair massage. The very nice therapist and I got to talking about suicide. I had just gotten off the phone with friend who had just attended a funeral for yet another young person who had killed himself. A Catholic. Want to say more here, but can't. I would give too much away. But over and over again, it just doesn't stop. The question "Why are we here?" gets too big for some people, and then they grow up, get old, think there is no possibility for change or hope, and they end the pain. So many people feel guilty. What could I have done? Why didn't I see it coming? Didn't he know how much I loved him? And then the truly arrogant thought, "How could she not know that God loves her?" Which is usually followed by the thought:"Good thing I don't think like that!"
I was watching my priest lift up the chalice during Mass this morning, and I remembered something I forgot: when my biological mother committed suicide (on Sept 1st, 1985), I recall thinking about how full my cup had gotten. I thought about that cup on the altar...the Bread is the Body which is the source of Life...but the Cup, while it is the Cup of Life, it is also the Cup of Death...in it we are reconciled to God. With it we are reconciled to God. In it are all the sins, the ones we commit, the ones committed against us, all the deaths, the killing we do each day, in our hearts and with our words, and sometimes with our actions...and to live, we've got to swallow it. We have to assimilate, to receive its truth and then give it to God. Much too much for us to hold inside, we have to share it...with our Christian brothers and sisters...but especially with God. Alone we die, connected...connected to the vine, we have a chance for life.
He was holding that chalice up high and I remembered, how much I endured...how I wanted to die so many times when the truth kept coming up...and those early years in the 80s, when I found my real mother, found out I had a real mother, and then, in the blink of an eye, she was taken from me...by her suicide and I looked at that chalice again and how I told people that my cup was already too full...and her suicide was that one drop that caused my cup to overflow...I couldn't take any more from anyone. I just shut down. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually I had shut down many years before...or so I thought. But I didn't have God to lean on. I didn't know God was there. But I did know hell.
All of that came to me as he was holding the chalice. And I thought, how he just listened to generously to me the day before and how we really do have a way out of hell...only most people just don't know that.
And then they kill themselves.
Don't have TV, but been hearing bits and pieces about bullying on FB and the radio in the last 24 hours. And suicides. I have a friend on Facebook right now who took great pleasure in beating the hell out of me when we were kids. She was the person who brought me the greatest comfort at my adopted mother's funeral. Go figure.
Nothing is black and white. And it certainly is not gray, either...but rather, it is the full spectrum of color...sometimes angry reds and burning oranges, and sometimes the heart of love reds and warming oranges...we can reduce the things in our life to categories or to "a,b,c, d" answers. We are more than the flesh and blood that is tangible and measurable. We are part of the Christ. We began there and we long to be home with Him again...in all things.
To enter the kingdom of God, we must become children again. We have to not be old. I posted some stuff on FB, left some crumbs out there for the clever...or the bored...I'll connect a few dots: Shine, the movie: David Helfgott was a great pianist who had a major breakdown: his music condemned him and freed him. The Twilight Zone episode "Kick the Can:" the consequence of deciding to grow up. The Flight of the Bumblebee in a bar...finding beauty in the dark, offering beauty in the dark...and Steel Magnolias: the power of relationship, the gift of anger. Can you see it? This is my way of telling parables. In the 21st century.
The massage therapist was still feeling down six years after his best friend killed himself. I still miss Jackie every fall. But the bit about the chalice is new this year. We look at our demons and each year we grow a little stronger, a little better...but we do not grow up. I do not grow up.
I could grow up. I could decide to be old and let go of my dreams. I could settle. But God has given me the chance to do something different. As painful as it is sometimes, I really like the different. I kind of wish sometimes I was looking out the window to my car in the shade of an olive tree instead of a live oak, but the oak is a good tree, too. It also lives a long life.
I am hearing in the background, finally, my recordings from my iPhone on my computer...now I want so much to put them out here. What a narcissist I am! But it is my art, for whatever reason.
I hear:
Playing the Bach, I hit a wrong note: "Damn!" I hear myself on the recording. It took sitting in the cave of reconciliation last year to get me "over" my obsession for not sharing anything I had with others, for fear of my wrong notes. Not one of us is perfect...and not one of our friends are perfect...
I still want friends who will "get" me, but that's the perfectionist thinking again. Only my divine friend and spouse "gets" me. That should be enough.
MacDowell. Brahms. Recorded. Kind of cool. My ex-husband was right, I am best at playing Brahms. Argh...I still really hate wrong notes.
Why did I write these words this morning? Still on a crusade to stop suicide. To stop violence against the self. To stop bullying. To get us to connect. To hang on to each other, but give away the suffering..to help us allow our cups to overflows with blessings. To share in our brothers' burdens. And the share in their joys. To stay young. To forgive as a child forgives. To love as a child loves. To hope as a child hopes. To dream the dreams of a child. To sit in His lap and let Him love us.
To play games, like "Kick the Can."
Love, Cindy
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