The One Who Didn't Matter

What I thought was going to be a one hour meeting ended up closer to two and a half hours.  I have sought the proper muse, and I am working to bend myself to the challenges I actually asked him to place on me. It is a contract designed by me to help me achieve my goals.  Immediately, he challenged me to write nothing but poetry for the next six months.  I thought perhaps I could walk into that yesterday...but I am still standing at the abyss, not quite certain...not that I might not complete the task...but that I might not survive it. 

It all boils down to a decision I made, somewhere in the age of nine: I decided to never feel again.  I looked at the world I was born into, I had lived in it for ...at least eight or nine years...and I learned quickly that, if I felt what was happening to me and around me...I would be dead or go insane. I happened on a Star Trek episode, where I was introduced to the character of Spock, a 'man' whose people learned how to survive by not feeling.  It was a scathlingly brilliant idea.  Somewhere, in my journals, perhaps destroyed, I wrote the words: I will never feel again.  I won't go into why here. If you have read some of my writings, you will discover why...but it is not so important...or is it?  When I was 33, I read in some books that I was not unique in my decision. It is a pattern some of us choose to cope. To survive. But it is not to think about today. 

I have always been drawn to poetry, in particular, to poetry written by people who suffered greatly in their lives. By age 14, I was in love with the poets who wrote about slavery, and war and prison and famine...I wept so easily of the ballades of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan...and others.

"It is fitting that you be here, my little brown boys with Christ-like eyes and curling hair

Look you upon that crucifix, where He hangs, nailed and pierced

And eyes all blind with the blood that drips from a thorny crown

Look you well.  You shall know this thing.

Judas kiss will burn your cheek

And you will be denied my your Peter also..." 

I could recite most of it to you.  And the others. 

"Where's the Jim Crow section of this merry-go round, Mister,

Cause I want a ride. Down south where I come from,

white folks don't sit with colored folks,

they don't sit side by side..."

I have always loved poetry, great and small.  Perhaps that is why I love the Gospel of John so much...and Jeremiah and Isaiah...the poetry parts...

"And like a lamb led to the slaughter, He opened not his mouth..." 

When confronted with great suffering, there are no words...only feelings: confused, intense, unceasing feelings...that need a name to be set free. 

I used to write them down on little bits of paper and hide them in my house: behind picture frames, inside statues...anywhere...so they might not be destroyed, but found, like a message in a bottle...to prove that I existed...just in case...somebody killed me...or I finally decided to kill myself. 

Such was the desperation of "the one who didn't matter." 

"This is my letter to the world that never wrote me..."

I don't think it's a unique feeling, but ironically, the ones who thought they didn't matter really didn't matter.  There is a powerful new generation out there who truly believes they don't matter. (Yes, the grammar is horrible).  So very evident in this present darkness where our culture seems to glorify humiliation to levels that almost make the age of the gladiator seem civilized.  But I digress.

My exercise now, is to remove my coping skills of studying life and myself as some kind of experiment and feel it.  To invite chaos and let it happen. To let go of cause and effect responses.  To let the art of poetry heal my wounds.

I tell you because...you might be able to help someone...or help yourself...by casting aside that safe world of logic and rules and take on that other part of your humanity...the gift from God that feels...

I know for a fact that some of you have divorced yourselves from emotion, much as I have done, but for very different reasons.  I am convinced that God wants me to use ALL of my gifts, not just the ones I've found so far...not just my head, but my head and my heart together. 

Some of you are already good at that, already there...and I love you for it.  That you are a friend to this strange woman who is still about five years old in that "love" category...or perhaps nine years old...

But this work, like any Ignatian work, should never be done alone. It needs an observor. It needs a herald. It needs an historian.  It needs mercy and grace. And it needs a brave soul.  I have had companions along the way, brave knights who were up to part of the challenge, but were vanquished along the way.  Perhaps their armor was not yet completed for their bodies.  Kind of fun to think of it that way...but truthfully they worked hard and sweated blood...as they were willing and able.   Any spiritual encounter has a price...but its gifts far outweigh the sacrifice, which is why I do the work, why I love the work.

But it is never ever linear.  It is never simply cause and effect.  Enter into someone's life and you are changed by it, too.

This week...I was changed by a woman, who may not remember me...but she changed me...as I told her the truth about what I saw, what would happen, and her tasks...and I saw the miracle yesterday. Telling you now would say too much.  Then today, another woman. She needed me and not a priest, not yet.

Why would I ever doubt my work?

But this wounded healer, to keep going, to not die...must heal more...and again...and each time is scarier than the one before. Each thing I think I cannot live without, I must learn to live without...but not shut down from the next thing, the next time I may fall in love...and risk it all.  I can claim a holy purpose for letting God cut me open again...and risk death...but I must own the selfish desire I cannot leave behind of one more union with Him, the One who created me...what pleasure and joy it brings me...a love that is not afraid...and will never leave me.  The side effect, the child born of this love is the work I get to do.

But each time I see the miracle...each time I feel like that woman in the reading from Matthew today:  "But my Lord, even the dogs get to eat the scraps from the table." Sometimes, to get what we want, we don't just have to be humble, we have to be humiliated.

The work I have to do will be humbling and humiliating.  But I must remember that, by dying to self...in ways I never imagined...life will be more than exquisite...it will be exhilirating. 

I tell you to challenge you to try.  Like a broken record: if we each do our part, we can change the world...and the world needs changing.  Not just analysis, not just some facimile of justice, not some self-righteous display of a particular side of truth...but that real love of God...that lasts...that is trustworthy...that heals...that makes us fully human.

I can't do this alone. I need your help.  But more importantly, God needs your help.
Someone today is discouraged...and needs your hand, not mine...so reach out. Take the risk. Get hurt. Cry if you need to. Then get up and try again.

From the one who didn't matter to the other one who didn't matter:
Breaking news: you matter.

Love,
Cindy