this is why you should keep your closets full of secrets

I found my old prayer journal yesterday. Over the weekend I did much cleaning and culling and throwing away. While moving things around to fit more and different things into my closet, I found an old, beat-up, red, spiral-bound notebook. I thought, when I picked it up, that it was my high school poetry. That, it seems, must have been purged long ago. These were high school prayers. 

What a revelation those prayers were! It isn't the case that anger is a new struggle for me: it turns out that I have been struggling with anger for much longer than I remembered. It may be that I have always been quick to feel offended. That I was crazy about boys, however, was not at all a surprise. 

I am relieved to have found compassionate tendencies in that journal. And I am relieved to have learned that I thought much about and struggled greatly with questions about how to be a good friend. This is something I think about a lot these days and I thought that this might be a new concern. It isn't the case that I used to practice friendship with ease and fluency that I have since mysteriously lost. Instead, I found that it was hard for me then to know how much or little to say; when to offer advice and opinions and when to hold back; how much to share with friends and how to ask for help. This makes me feel a lot better now. 

I was happy to recognize myself in many parts of that journal. What surprises me a little is that it feels as though I am meeting myself again. That is, I see now and lately that I feel very angry more often than I would like. In high school I was also aware of my anger. But it seems to me is that there were years in between then and now during which I did not think of myself as angry. The same is true about my concerns regarding friendship. I am aware that other people have needs and boundaries and differences that I can't always see and I am aware of my tendency to hold back, assuming that others don't need or want my advice or opinions or perspective. And I was aware, at least to some extent of that back in high school. There seems to be more coincidence between my current self and the self I found in that journal than I expected and there seems (though I may be wrong in this) to be more coincidence of selves than there was a few years ago. 

What feels alien to me now, of course, is the intense longing for God. I've wondered if I had manufactured (somehow) that desire back then. I don't think I did. I think it was genuine. But I can't imagine being that passionately identified with anything in any way like that at all. 

I am left wondering, then, whether I have been broken or fixed. Or neither. Perhaps just different.

Lately I have been afraid to read. When I say that fear hasn't kept me from reading, you should not cheer me on: I can read the following with ease: 

1. facebook status messages
2. blogs
3. in particular, food blogs
4. self-help books
5. magazines (the shorter the article, the better: I've even been avoiding the real articles)
6. the Ikea catalog
7. Etsy

There are many, many things I honestly want to read. There's that book on Kant's moral philosophy that I started. I enjoyed reading it (the 20 or so pages I accomplished) but have not returned to it. I started War and Peace one night. A bookmark about 15 pages in is all I have to show for it. I have several books on my shelf (free! I have them!) about fiction and literature. These would help me in my dissertation work. I might not even have to take notes on them. And their spines and covers are perfect, without a single crease or bend. I loved The Golden Bowl and I have two copies of The Ambassadors. Haven't started. And then, of course, there is the poetry into which I can't bring myself to journey; I run my mind lightly over their surfaces instead of plunging into their depths.

I just can't bring myself to do it. I am not even entirely sure what it is that I am afraid of. Unless it is that I am afraid to learn and know more than I do. I am at a stage of writing now where I am better able to see the holes in my work. I am also at a stage where I must prepare (much and quickly) to obtain a job, and I see the holes in my professional development. The reading I want to do and must do would certainly help to fill those holes. 

And that, I find, makes me very, very nervous. I see that I have used "I don't know that" and "my background is not very good" and "oh, but I'm not very well-informed about that" as excuses. I have used such excuses to keep myself from becoming competent. That way, when I fail, I can say "well, I didn't know X or Y or Z" even though I could have taken it upon myself to learn them. 

I am afraid, it seems, of being an academic. Of having any authority. Of pushing myself to work (sometimes) at my own limits. If I did that--if I explored and expanded my limits--I'd have to learn to tell new stories about myself. I'd have to develop stories about growth and accomplishment and achievement. And that is why I just cannot, these days, bring myself to read.

Things about which I care much less than previously:

1. Whether my skin stays matte all day
2. The fineness of my hair
3. Having perfectly groomed eyebrows
4. Visible pores
5. The paleness of my legs
6. Being considered "trendy" or "fashionable"
7. Not having a perfectly flat stomach


there are probably non-physical/non-vanity-related things about which I care less now than I did but I cannot think of any now. I am a bit embarrassed when I think of all the time I spent fretting over all the imperfections and flaws that I now see as features that reveal me to be a particular and real person. 

This seems to be part of a larger trend of letting go (which is, nevertheless, very hard!): as I cull my closets and my bookmarks and my blogroll; as I stick closer and closer to my budget and so shop and browse and desire less; as I let my magazine subscriptions go and as I think more carefully about the value of the books I read and the movies I watch—in all these things I am making space, both mentally and emotionally. 

So far I am not making good "use" of this space: I stay in bed too late (and go to bed too early). I still check up on blogs I have decided I no longer need to follow. I still waste time trying to decide the "best" way to make use of my time. I spend far too much time on facebook. 

Nevertheless, it seems that change is possible. And slow. And without grand signs from above. 

in which it appears I am breaking a little in a very good way

I remember a time when I had what I would later refer to as disciples. These were women (now; we were all girls then) a year or two younger than I was who would sometimes ask me to pray with them, who asked me questions about God and faith and discipleship, and who believed I had insight, if not answers.

I certainly thought I had answers. Never since then have I tasted the ambrosia of certainty. I no longer know the flavor. Indeed, I have spent the last many years running away from anything that smelled of even a cheap imitation of that intoxicating illusion. I can, if I like, connect my discomfort with such things as opinions and preferences and decisions with my fear that I will believe too strongly in them--that I will take them for Real and for Right and forget to respect both the trivial nature of my preferences and the viability of other peoples differing preferences.

I am reading a memoir now. Surprised by God by Danya Ruttenberg. It is a terribly difficult book for me to read. The prose is lovely and the rigor is refreshing. It stirs so many things up and I don't know how I will come to respond to the book as a whole or to the way it reframes questions and problems and ideas around which my mind already circles.

She quotes religion scholar James Carse on page 160. In this quote, he describes what a great [spiritual] teacher is and does: a great teacher is unobtrusive. She clears the path so that the student can approach the source/thing/teaching/truth and the student comes away alive with her own thoughts ringing in her head, not the words the teacher spoke. The great teacher makes it possible for the student to experience something deeper than the particular words used to clear and reveal the (or a) path.

My very first thought, after I read those words (just a few minutes ago, really), was that I had no business posturing as any kind of teacher all those years ago. I have had many occasions to regret and to repent, after a fashion, having done so. I have just learned a new lesson in how very wrong I was. Just a little below the bit I paraphrased, she quotes a 17th century Benedictine monk about what spiritual direction is: "[A spiritual] director is not to each his own way,... but to instruct his disciples how they may themselves find out the way proper for them ... he is only God's usher, and must lead souls in God's way and not his own." I only knew my way and only affirmed and held up my way. I didn't know other ways and the possibility of other ways frightened me. In my narrowness, I hurt people who were trying to discover for themselves "the way proper for them."

I am humbled and sad because I have a new way to understand the harm I did previously. I am gladdened, though, when I think of how I have come to value, without being quite aware of it, standing aside so others can learn things in ways proper for them. I am now taking this from a strictly religious context into a broader one, but the gladness and humility both still hold. I had the opportunity to learn two new skills this summer: I taught my very first class and I indexed a book for the very first time. I did these two new things simultaneously and, although this increased the pressure for a few weeks, I got to learn the same lesson from two otherwise unrelated experiences. In my class, the point wasn't to demonstrate to my students how well I could read the texts. I wasn't there to dazzle them with my brilliance, wit, incisive commentary, original interpretations, or mountains of scholarship or research. The purpose of my being there was to clear the path so that they could approach the texts and the ideas and meanings within in a way that would do justice to the discipline, the texts, their contexts, and also to the students' situations and abilities. Nothing in the class was about me or my abilities. My goal was to step aside so that my students could learn the material I taught and not just remember what I said about the material I taught. With the index I learned a very similar lesson. The index was not a text of how well I read the book. I learned a lot from the book and found it very interesting. But that wasn't the point. The point was to make it possible for other readers to find their way into the text and to learn from it according to their needs and situations.

My students did, of course, spend much more time than I would have liked trying to attend to the exact words I used and trying to reproduce them in their papers and exams. And the index, being my first, probably reflects more about me as a reader of that book than I hope future indexes will. Nevertheless, I can see now--right now--that I have finally taken to heart a lesson I didn't know, twelve years ago, that I needed to learn. I can now see, and really, deeply understand, the value in stepping aside and being an usher for others to approach something bigger than I am, whether that bigness is philosophy or God. It no longer needs to be about me and it no longer needs to be done in just my way. I still get in my own way. I still have a difficult time being flexible or being able to richly imagine the many ways other people see and feel and experience and need things. Nevertheless, I am encouraged that a part of my person that was harmful to others has broken a bit and shifted to a smaller corner, even if it might never quite be shaken out of me. For now that can be enough.

summer wine

I don't recommend drunkenness. I certainly wouldn't prescribe excess consumption of alcohol. I don't generally enjoy hangovers and would rarely wish them on anyone else. Sometimes, however, it is possible to enjoy a hangover more pleasant than the wine and conversation enjoyed the evening before. Perhaps such hangovers can only happen in the summer, though I would like to think they could happen during a blizzard (and resultant snow day) as well.

This is the hangover that might begin with a bit of a headache early in the morning, but nothing that 2 glasses of water (with lemon), 2 eggs (scrambled, with greens), and 2 cups of tea (strong, Earl Grey) won't cure instantly. After breakfast, the rest of the day stretches until it is easily three times longer than a typical day. Your eyes feel about 90% open, just a smidge lazy and closed. There will be time, it seems, for everything in the world. A meeting with friends is almost unbearably long--enjoyable but colored with shades of eternity. Lunch surprises you with its indolence; it waits for you but in such a complete and perfect way that you begin to feel as though  you have been waiting for it. There is time to run out and find something sweet. There is time and time for everything.

The heat and its muggy, thick perfection recall you instantly into a twelve-year old body and for just a moment (or a minute, or five), you feel as though you are in the middle of your summer vacation and bored, bored, bored in the best of ways. You have the feeling--so rare, now that you're all grown up--that everything is just where it was supposed to have been, that someone very competent is in charge of things, and that things will turn out. Why wouldn't they?

There is time, barely, but fully, to relax into plush words and delight in someone's passionate prose and forget entirely habits of possession. Forget the panic and despair that sometimes accompany the words you did not write, that someone else, someone not you did write and wrote well. Just pure, non-possessive, peaceful pleasure. The words threatened to sail over your head but you, in your perfectly hungover state, did not even reach out your hand to capture them. Like a Taoist master, you let your stillness bring the words to you. You let go of the need for the words and they came, all of them, and you tasted each one.

The day continues to stretch. Yes, there is work to do. Yes, it is good work, interesting work, work of which you approve. Yes, you have done some of it. But there are also unexpected conversations, connections to be made with other people, in the flesh, skin and hair made perfect and soft by the thick and humid air. There are words to seek in addition to the words you write and in your delicious unattachment, you hold them all--all--in your hand, heart, mind, head and there seems to be time for everyone and everything. You wonder, for a moment, why it is you worry so much. No answer comes easily and so you let that question slip away. It isn't even interesting.

The day, the heat, the thickness of the air, the promise, the time, the unraveling of attachment seem to you like just what you hoped those long hot soaks in your bathtub in the winter could have been. This, this perfectly hungover state, is better than any bath. The velvet warmth carries into the heart of you the way a bath never can.

You know, of course, that it would be utter foolishness to try to achieve this state. This feels profound. Had you tried for the perfect hangover, you would have missed it entirely. You probably would not have made it to work; you might not have even made it out of bed. Your inner sage might be holding an awareness that this state need not be lost even if you never drink wine again. Perhaps you won't need wine next time to remember the length of the days, the relief of relinquishment.

not waving, but--

Today I lost it. Angry, tantrumy, teary mess. 

Two professors emailed me about a teaching possibility for next year. Very reasonably (I thought), I explained to them why this was a completely unworkable, unreasonable idea: I need to focus on finishing my dissertation by January so I can defend in March and graduate in May. I have been telling myself the story of this timeline for months. It has become something of a mantra: chapter 5 August chapter 6 November chapter 1 January revise February defend March graduate May. Teaching full time would force me to revise the mantra and I have been so proud of the mantra: finally I might redeem all that time I wasted, all that privilege squandered. 

I am teaching now and it is all I feared it would be: more work than I have time to do; no idea how well or poorly I am doing; no clue how to prepare or improve; no pleasure or satisfaction or reward. I hate things I am not already very good at and I am not already very good at teaching. The thought of taking it on full time--more accurately, the thought of trying to do so--scares the shit out of me. I am already more lonely than I thought I could be--I who require large doses of solitude, I who can't handle too much social time am overwhelmed by my feelings of isolation and aloneness and insignificance. The thought of taking on such loneliness for years? I lost it. Freaked out completely. Sobby irrational mess. 

The boy says I have to do it. That I can. That it's necessary to try. I knew he would say so. 

To be at all ruffled would be sufficiently irritating. That I have become entirely disheveled, emotionally speaking, is distasteful. I am just the kind of person I despise. 

I will, with red-faced soul, retract my reasonable arguments and try. Or try to try.

the limits of metaphor

I want to be happy. Maybe it is more true to say that I want to want to be happy. Or that I want to do the work, to put in the effort to be the happy person I believe I can or could be. Being happy would require letting go of many thoughts, thought patterns, fears, judgments, insecurities, and self-doubts. If all of those things could simply be gone--if my psyche could be hollowed out in a soul fire so that nothing but the foundation and walls remained--I'd be delighted. I don't want to have to do the work to carry all those things out of the room of my soul. I don't ever want anyone else to see it happen or to note the changes. I don't want the neighbors to notice all the trash I have to take the curb every day. I don't want my friends to walk in and say "My! You have done a lot with the place!" What I hear in those words is "And why on earth didn't you do this sooner? See. It is all your fault. You have willfully made yourself miserable and it's about time you wised up a little."

A tiny voice way back somewhere invisible tries to tell me that if I can cart out all this emotional junk and trash, I will hear different things in those words. That I will have let go of the filter that hears judgment in acknowledgment. I can't imagine what that would be like. I do know that I am the one judging myself. How did I let things get to be such a mess? What is my problem? My soul is cluttered Hoarders style. Do they shoot a series of that show for folks whose hearts are packed full of junk?

I understand my metaphor and the metaphor makes sense. If I could physically remove things from my soul--as I have been decluttering my home, for example--the task might be easier. I would see the holes for what they are as soon as I removed something. This is all internal work and I can't always see what it is I am doing. I don't know what it feels like to remove something and I don't know how to tell whether I have gone out in the middle of the night and taken it back from the curb. If I can learn to stop feeling rage at co-worker X for complaining about absolutely everything, does that have any effect on my irritation at co-worker Y? How do I take anxiety about the future to the curb? How do I package up nagging for pick-up? How do I get my arms around pushing others to love me so I can get it into the truck and take it to the dump? The metaphor grows and it still doesn't offer any guidance when I want practical solutions.

I absolutely hate the thought of others witnessing any growth or change on my part. That's too much. Too close. To fragile. Too intimate. I don't know how to be graceful in this. I don't want to talk about it. Don't want to think about it. Don't want to think about talking or thinking about it. It seems, of course, that this is just what must happen, just what needs to be done. I am rebelling. Throwing a tantrum because I can't change the shape of the world. I suppose people must do this all the time--grow and shift and change and things. I suppose I do so, too, and that others notice it and adjust. I am resigned to that and it still bothers me. No one else tells me about ways in which I may have changed or grown (or shrunk); I can't see it, either. How will I know, then, if I change any of these thoughts or attitudes in positive ways?